Guilty Passion (14 page)

She said with difficulty, “I'm sorry. That
was
childish. I'll clean it up.”

He got up and helped her with silent efficiency. She couldn't figure out why he seemed quietly pleased with himself. He didn't insist again that she eat something, but when he brought out cheese and biscuits while she made coffee, and put a biscuit on her plate with a slice of Gruyère, she meekly ate it.

A few days later while she was lazing on the beach after a swim, he came down the path and stood beside her, wearing a towel about his waist and surveying the modest one-piece that had already dried on her body.

“Come into the water with me,” he said.

“No, thanks.” She closed her eyes.

“I said, come in,” he reiterated, and she felt his hand on her wrist, drawing her to her feet.

“I've had a swim.”

“Have another.”

She gave a halfhearted tug at her wrist, and looked up at him. His eyes were gleaming, expectant, almost as though he anticipated a fight and was looking forward to it. She sighed, her shoulders sagging. “Oh, all right,” she muttered.

He didn't seem pleased, quite the reverse. His mouth went grim, but he discarded the towel, revealing dark briefs, and kept a hold on her wrist until they were in the water, then struck out strongly away from her and circled back. “You okay?” he enquired, shaking water from his eyes.

“Yes, of course.”

“Want to try for the rock out there?” He indicated the flat, bare little rock that rose from the sea just past the point.

“No, thanks.”

“You're not out of practice now. You've swum almost every day.”

“It's too far,” she lied. She had swum out there a couple of times with Jeff.

“Afraid I'll have to tow you back?” he taunted. “But you might enjoy that.”

“I didn't last time.”

“Tell that to the marines,” he scoffed, and swam away from her on a diagonal path, heading for the rock.

She hesitated, then struck out after him, drawing level and trying to pass him. He kept up with her, though, and they arrived together, climbing onto the smooth rock, only a few feet out of the water. Celeste lay back, panting.

Ethan loomed over her. “I didn't suggest a race,” he told her.

“It wasn't a race.” She turned over on her stomach, pillowing her cheek on one arm. “I just changed my mind.”

He sat beside her with one knee drawn up, and when she peeped at him she could see he was scowling into space. She rolled over and sat up.

Ethan turned and looked at her. His gaze was like an examination, as though he was searching for flaws.

“Do I pass?” she asked flippantly.

“Oh, you more than pass, Celeste,” he said. “You always did.”

She looked away from him, towards the land. The fast swim, or the stimulus of Ethan's uncomfortable presence, seemed to have momentarily cleared her brain. “What do you know about Alec's mother?” she asked him.

“What?” The question was obviously unexpected.

“Alec's mother.” Celeste turned to him. “She left when he was six or seven. That's all I know. I wondered how he felt about that.”

“He never spoke of it. I don't know any more than you do. He could hardly have remembered her,” Ethan added dismissively.

“All the same, it must have affected him, at that vulnerable age.”

“His father more than made up for it. They were very close, right up until Dad died.”

“Did you mind that? You told me once he was the only father you had known.”

“I wasn't jealous. My stepfather was very good to me.”

“Alec said his father was very bitter over his mother. They must have discussed her.”

“I suppose they did, at some stage. I daresay Dad would have explained—tried to explain—what had happened.”

“When Alec told me about his mother, he said, ‘The bitch left us.'”

Ethan looked faintly startled.

“I asked him if he'd ever seen her again, maybe tried to contact her when he was older. He said he wouldn't have crossed the street to give her the time of day.”

He said nothing, but Celeste could tell it was news to him. “Do you know?” she pressed on, “I think that in a way, he blamed your mother for his father's death.” Ethan's mother had been hospitalised for weeks before her death of a kidney disease, and his stepfather had suffered a fatal heart attack only days after her funeral.

“That's nonsense.”

“I know,” Celeste agreed. “But our feelings are not always rational. I think he felt that. . . that your stepfather loved your mother more than his own son. That once she was gone, he had nothing to live for, not even Alec.” She was thinking aloud, trying to make sense of a whole lot of random remarks and casual conversations from the past, fumbling for some sort of rationale. She felt she was on the verge of understanding something.

“There was no question of loving anyone more!” Ethan said harshly. “Alec was an adult by the time his father remarried. He always got on perfectly fine with my mother—and with me.”

“I know. Well, you were hardly competition, were you, being so much younger? And not his father's own son. But your mother couldn't take the place of his own mother, could she? It was too late for that.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I think. . . somewhere inside Alec was an insecure little boy who felt betrayed by his mother.”

Ethan gave a scornful laugh. “Alec was one of the most confident people I knew. He could do anything. Even after he was disabled, he gritted his teeth and forged a totally new career, kept himself at the forefront of his profession. Everyone looked up to Alec. You can't saddle him with an inferiority complex.”

Celeste sighed. “I'm not trying to saddle him with anything. I just want to try to understand him.”

“Really. It's a pity you didn't try harder when he was alive then, isn't it?”

Celeste stood up. “The trouble with you is, you've made up your mind, and you don't want to consider any facts that could lead you to change it,” she said. “In some ways, you are very much like your brother.”

Ethan stood, too, big and angry, and she instinctively took a step back. “Don't try to blacken Alec's character to me, Celeste! If I'm like him in any way, I can only be proud of the fact.”

“Yes,” she said. “You would be. Even if it means you're
both
wilfully blind and prejudiced because of what goes on in your own sick little minds. It's only now that I'm beginning to see what Alec did to me.”

“Huh! What
he
did to
you
?” Ethan said.

“Yes! Oh, I'm not saying I'm totally blameless. Perhaps if I'd been older, I might have understood the demons that drove him. I might have coped better, been able to help him. As it was, all I could think of was to try to be what he wanted, what he seemed to want. I let him stifle my personality, curb how I expressed myself. I even changed the way I looked. And he was never satisfied, because he was trying to kill the very things that had attracted him to me in the first place.”

“That's not true,” Ethan contradicted her. “Alec never tried to curb you or repress you.”

She cried, “How would you know?”

“I told you—he wrote me letters.”

“Letters!”

“Yes, letters.”

“What exactly did he accuse me of?”

Ethan said, “He never
accused
you of anything. The man bloody worshipped you! No matter how much you hurt and humiliated him, he let you go your own sweet way because he was terrified of losing you. He was so damned tolerant of your youth, your natural high spirits, your love of pretty things and what he thought of as your naive love of being admired—it just about broke my heart. Anyone reading between the lines could see he was bleeding to death over your heartlessness, your selfishness, your greed for clothes, for money, for admiration. And for sex, although he didn't ever want to believe you'd go to another man for that.”

As her cheeks flamed, his mouth twisted in an ugly line. “Well,
we
know the truth about that, don't we? And in the end you didn't even allow him that illusion, did you? You took my brother for a fool, Celeste. Don't ever think you can do the same to me.”

Celeste closed her eyes in horror. Now she understood Ethan's suspicion of her, his hostility. She could imagine the letters, knew just how they would have appeared to him. And the worst of it was, Alec had honestly thought that he was trying to understand her, to make the best of things, while inside him his jealousy grew day by day like a monstrous cancer, warping his judgement and torturing him with baseless suspicions. And all her desperate efforts to conform with his apparent wishes had been futile. She had tried so hard to make a good thing of her marriage, ruthlessly suppressed her own needs, even her own natural exuberance, refused to countenance any thought of Ethan and the sweet, snatched moments they had shared—and all for nothing. It had not made Alec happy. It had not erased the emotional scars of his mother's desertion and his father's hurt bitterness, or convinced him of his wife's devotion. And worse, Ethan did not believe that she had even tried.

She turned away from him, her whole stance defeated. He gripped her arm and swung her back to face him, lifting her chin rather roughly with his other hand, finding her eyes glazed and lifeless.

“Don't crawl back into that shell again,” he said. “Not now.” He moved his hands to her shoulders and gave her an impatient little shake. “Wake up, Celeste, damn you! I won't
let
you retreat from me again!”

She said huskily, “Let me go, Ethan. Leave me alone.”

“I'm not going to leave you alone, and I'm not letting you go,” he said. “So get that into your head. I'm going to haul you out of that comfortable dreamworld of yours—kicking and screaming if necessary. Understand?”

Hopelessly, she shook her head. “It's you who don't understand.” She stood between his hands and waited for him to release her. “You'll do whatever you want, I suppose. I can't fight you.”

He gave a furious, disgusted exclamation. “At one time you'd have had a damn good try!”

She looked away, her head drooping again.

Ethan said, in a strange tone, “Well, this worked before. . .” And he hauled her into his arms, her head tipped back against the curve of his shoulder, while he regarded her upturned face with glittering fury. Her lips parted in silent protest, her eyes widening, and his mouth curved grimly before he lowered it to hers, taking no notice of her reflexive attempt at escape. “Too late,” he murmured, tightening his hold on her. And then his lips were determinedly exploring hers, with a concentration and intensity that overwhelmed her. A tide of panic rose inside her as she felt the heat of his body through her swimsuit. One of his hands moved down her spine, forcing her closer; she went as taut as a bowstring, and made another effort to free herself. Ethan's hand clamped behind her head, and his mouth continued wreaking its devastation of hers.

He didn't stop until she shuddered against him and went quiet. Then he lifted his head to look frowningly into her dazed eyes, and slowly released her.

Celeste stepped back one pace, steadied herself, then swung her hand back and up. She saw the gleam of triumph in his eyes, the beginning of a smile on his mouth before her slap wiped it away. He had seen it coming and had not even tried to defend himself.

She didn't stay around to see any more, but dived cleanly into the water and headed for the shore. When she reached the sand and snatched up her towel and began to climb to the house, he was still standing on the rock, watching her.

She spent the rest of the day in her room, lying on the bed. Later she heard Ethan come up the stairs, pausing outside her door, but then the soft footsteps went on to his workroom.

Celeste cooked dinner and served it, and they ate in near silence, treating each other with exquisite politeness. She refused to meet Ethan's eyes, her gaze sliding obliquely away as she passed him the potatoes or took away his plate for washing.

Afterwards he said, “I'll make the coffee. Go into the other room.”

When he brought it, she took hers and waited for him to sit down. Then she said, “May I read Alec's letters?”

“Why? Do you want to relive the hell you put him through? Did you enjoy making him feel a fool?”

She winced. “Whatever you think of me, you have no right to say a thing like that.”

The look that crossed his face was so fleeting she couldn't read it.

She said, “You've condemned me on the basis of evidence I've never seen. Do you think that's fair?”

“I don't have the letters anymore. They weren't the kind of thing you'd want to keep around.”

“Even that last one he wrote?” she asked. Surely he wouldn't have discarded the letter that had arrived after Alec's death.

Ethan said slowly, “I'm not sure what effect it might have on you. It could send you into another emotional tailspin. I daren't risk that.”

“You admit I have some feelings, then.”

“Some, yes. Guilt, at least. No matter what I think of you, Celeste, I don't want to be responsible for making you ill.”

“No, you might feel obliged to pay my hospital bills, or worse still, be saddled with me yourself.”

“I don't have a premium on unfairness, do I?”

She flushed. He had never shown any signs of grudging anything she needed when she was ill.

“You've been very patient,” she conceded stiffly, “considering what you think of me. But I'll make arrangements to leave as soon as possible.”

“Running away?” he jeered softly. “Once you'd have had more guts than that.”

“I'm not running away. I'm removing myself from an unpleasant situation, and one that you can't be enjoying any more than I am.”

“It has its moments. Do you really hate it so much?”

“Not everything.” She gazed down at the steaming liquid in her cup, then took a small, warming sip. “I love the island. . . your house. And I like Janice and Henry. . . and Jeff. But I can't stay.”

“So it's only me that you can't stand.”

“I've never said that. Never.” She raised her eyes and gazed at him over her coffee cup.

He sucked in his breath. “When you look at me like that, I could almost forget—”

“—how much you hate me? You don't have to hate me, Ethan. I wish you wouldn't.”

“Then why don't you stay,” he said slowly, his eyes very intent,”and see if you can change that?”

It was a tempting thought, a slender ray of hope. She tried to read what was in his face, but he had shifted a little and his face was shadowed. As usual he had only turned on the wall lights.

“Do you mean it?” she asked. Would he be prepared to listen to her version of events, to keep an open mind?

“I mean,” he said, “that I don't want you to go yet. Not for a while. And if you're as innocent as you claim, you should jump at the chance to prove it.”

“Prove it? How?”

He said, his eyes totally unfathomable, “I'll think of something.”

A small shiver of apprehension ran down her spine. “What do you—”

He interrupted her. “But first, I want you fully fit and well, emotionally as well as physically. As for the rest. . . try not to think about it.”

“Will you promise to do the same?” she asked him. “Try not to think about it?”

He looked thoughtfully at her, leaning back in his chair. “Okay,” he agreed finally. “It's a deal.”

Celeste forced herself to eat more, and to swim every day. Swimming was relaxing and it was gentle exercise. She refused to accept excuses from herself that she was too tired, or the tide was wrong, or she had other things to do.

Ethan sometimes strolled on the beach with her or swam with her. Once or twice they went out in the boat with Jeff and she looked the other way each time the men hooked a fish and hauled it into the boat. And in the evenings she sat with Ethan on the terrace after dinner watching the stars come out and listening to music through the open door to the house.

He was going out of his way to be considerate, although occasionally she caught a hint of impatience in his eyes. But gradually she began to feel more alive. Janice remarked with relief how much better she seemed. Mrs. Jackson said with approval, “Getting over it then, aren't you, dear?” Even Jeff noticed. She seldom saw him alone these days, although sometimes he joined her and Ethan on the beach.

One day when the three of them had been swimming, Jeff put a friendly arm about her shoulders as they left the water. “Has Ethan taken you to the Trocadero yet?” he asked.

“No. What is it?”

“A nightclub. It's not half-bad. How about it?” he said. “We could all go out tomorrow night.”

“I have work to do,” Ethan said.

Jeff grinned at him. “Don't we all? I'll take her on my own if you like.”

Ethan had picked up his towel and was rubbing his hair. He paused and shot a glance at his friend, which Jeff met with quizzically raised brows. Ethan said, “Would you like to go, Celeste?”

Aware of Ethan's eyes on her, Celeste hesitated. Her first thought was to refuse. Then she remembered her resolution to start living a normal life again. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you, Jeff. I'd like that very much.”

“Tomorrow, then. Sure you won't change your mind?” Jeff asked Ethan.

“Three's a crowd,” Ethan said shortly. “I'd better get some work done. See you later.”

Jeff looked after him, then flopped down on the sand. “What's eating him?”

“I've no idea.” Celeste spread her towel beside him and rolled over on her back.

“Could he be jealous?” Jeff asked, as though the idea had just occurred.

“On his brother's behalf, perhaps. Maybe he thinks it's too soon for me to be going to nightclubs.”

“It's almost three months, isn't it?”

With a slight shock, Celeste realised that he was right. She nodded, and he said, “He must know you can't mourn forever. The Trocadero is just a small place. Classy. I think you'll like it.”

She wore the hand-painted silk dress she had bought in Conneston, with a narrow silver belt and the green sandals. When she came down from her room, her hair flowing about her shoulders, Ethan was prowling about the living room with a glass in his hand. He stopped dead and surveyed her as she descended the stairs.

She reached the floor, and hesitated. Ethan took a gulp of whisky from his glass and said, “Jeff will be impressed.”

“Why don't you come with us?” she asked him. “You were invited.”

“Isn't one man at a time enough for you?”

Not realising that it was a measure of her recovery, she flared into real anger. “That's a filthy thing to say! I thought we agreed—”

“On some sort of truce, yes. I apologise. How are you feel ing these days?”

At the moment, she felt fully alive and aware, her senses singing, some complicated emotion making her pulses race in a way that was not entirely unpleasant. In the last few weeks she had truly climbed out of the pit of despair and depression in which she had been wallowing. “I feel. . . okay,” she said. Her chin lifted. “Is that a signal to start insulting me again?”

His lips curved in a smile that held calculation and perhaps anticipation. “And if I do. . . insult you,” he drawled, “will I get as good as I give?”

She snapped, “That's a promise!”

He stood surveying her for several long seconds, then, very softly, he said, “Good. I'll look forward to it.”

A frown gathered on her forehead. “Why do you want to fight with me?”

Blandly, he said, “Did I say that?”

“You certainly implied it.”

“You're far too lovely to fight with, Celeste. Especially tonight.”

Her voice brittle, she said between her teeth, “Thank you.”

“Not at all,” he replied with mocking courtesy. “Should I have thought of taking you nightclubbing, myself?”

“I can't think of a single reason why you should.”

“Can't you?” He paused. “Just the prospect of it seems to have brought you right out of your shell. I haven't seen you look so. . . vital, since you arrived here.”

“I'm looking forward to an evening out,” she said.

“I apologise. I haven't been a very good host, have I?”

“You've been. . . extremely generous with your home, and your time.”

His mouth went dry. “Don't lay it on too thick, Celeste.”

“I was quite sincere, actually.” She met his eyes almost defiantly.

“I'm not asking for your gratitude.”

“I know that.” Something wordless passed between them. She saw his eyes narrow, and inwardly shivered. But the familiar shrinking hopelessness was no longer there. There had to be a reckoning between them, she knew that, knew this was what his patience and persistence had been all about. In a strange way, she almost welcomed the prospect. Face it and get it over with, she thought.

But not tonight. Hearing a car turn into the driveway, she said, “That must be Jeff. Excuse me.”

“Ask him in,” Ethan said, “for a drink before you go.”

“Do you think that's a hgood idea, if we're going to be drinking later?”

He said, “Jeff isn't a fool. He won't overdo it.”

He followed her to the door and invited Jeff in himself, whistling derisively at the pleated shirt and bow tie the other man wore with a dinner jacket.

“Okay.” Jeff grinned. “I have to live up to this girl.” His comprehensive glance at Celeste was appreciative. “You look beautiful,” he said sincerely.

Ethan handed him a drink, and poured some sparkling white wine for Celeste. Jeff said, “Sure you don't want to come and play chaperone?”

“I told you, I need to work.”

Jeff shrugged. “Suit yourself. We'll think of you when we're tripping the light fantastic.”

“Do that.” His gaze was on Celeste, his voice apparently absentminded, but something in his eyes made her lower hers abruptly. She shivered and put down her half-empty glass.