Past All Forgetting (9 page)

'Of course I noticed,' she said gaily. 'A promise is a promise after all.'

He hesitated. 'I'm not in a dancing mood, Janna. You'll have to forgive me for tonight.'

She could have wept with disappointment and frustration. All evening she had been waiting for this. It had been the culmination of all her planning, all her hopes, and now it was to be denied her. Or was it? Not if she knew it.

She lifted her chin. 'Very well, my lord. Then your handmaiden will dance for you.'

The music from the hall drifted through, the beat slow, heavy and rhythmical.

At first she had intended it as a joke, an attempt to jolt Him out of this strange introspective mood. She'd expected him to laugh and capitulate and take her into the hall and dance with her. But he did not. He stood and watched her as she circled and swayed in front of him, and gradually she became aware of a growing intentness in his gaze—a new and disturbing tension that had entered the atmosphere between them. She began to follow the beat of the music more closely, moved her feet less and her hips more, acting on pure instinct. Her lips felt dry and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue and saw her action was not lost on him. As the music rose to its climax, she placed her hands behind her head, arching her body towards him with deliberate provocation.

'God in heaven,' he said unsteadily. 'Janna—you…'

There were no more words. He pulled her towards him, crushing the softness of her breasts against his hard body, kissing her passionately and demandingly without regard for her total inexperience of such an embrace. For a moment she was shocked. Her innocence had not prepared her for this, then suddenly, instinctively, the woman in her took over, and she was responding at first shyly and then with a warmth and ardour she had not dreamed she was capable of.

As she had danced, she had let her hands slide down her body. Now his hands followed the same path, and everywhere he touched, her nerve-endings awoke to a quivering vibrancy. Unashamedly she pressed herself against him, recognising his arousal and glorying in it.

This was the only witchcraft between a man and a woman, she thought, her head reeling. This demand, this longing to touch and be touched, to kiss and be kissed, to know and be known.

At last he raised his head, and his arms fell away from her. She swayed towards him.

'Rian,' she murmured, the ache of wanting unmistakable in her voice.

'Janna!' His hands descended sharply on her shoulders, deliberately holding her away from him. His face was white under his tan, and his dark eyes seemed to burn as he looked down at her. 'This is madness and we both know it. You're a child, and you don't know what you're doing.'

'Then teach me.' Her voice shook.

'
No
!' he said with sudden violence. 'You don't know what you're asking. You're a virgin, Janna, totally innocent, so don't try and pretend otherwise. And don't ask me to destroy that innocence. Keep it as a precious gift for the man you'll marry one day.'

He let her go abruptly and turned and walked away from her into the lamp-lit brilliance of the drawing room. Janna stood alone in the darkness, totally bereft, a taste of blood in her mouth. But as coherent thought began to return, one thing dominated. Rian wanted her, as completely as a man could want a woman, and it was only some quixotic notion of chivalry which had stopped him from taking her. He'd thought her simply carried away by her feelings, overwhelmed by her first experience of adult lovemaking. She would prove to him that she was in deadly earnest, and that her desires matched his.

She went through the darkened hall, where a few couples swayed in each other's arms oblivious to everything else, and up the stairs. No one noticed her, or if they did, they drew the obvious conclusion that she was looking for the bathroom.

On the landing, she paused, nerving herself. She had no idea which was Rian's room, but she had no doubt that her instinct would take her to it, or that she would find him there. Cool reason suggested he had gone to seek privacy in which to regain his self-control.

The enigmatically closed doors gave her no clue whatsoever, but she knew just the same. The carved knob twisted easily under her fingers, and she walked into the room. Rian was standing at the window, smoking a cigarette. He had discarded his jacket and loosened his tie. He swung round at the sign of the opening door, and she saw that he was frowning.

'Janna,' he said, and his voice was grim. 'I'm warning you, go away from me now. Go back downstairs before something happens that we'll both regret.'

'I shan't regret anything,' she said steadily. 'Rian, I—I've brought you a gift. Don't you want it?'

Her fingers shook slightly as she unfastened the flimsy crochet top, and let it fall to the floor.

He took one deep, unsteady breath and then his cigarette went flying out through the open window, and he came to her.

She clung to him without reserve as he lifted her on to his bed.

'I've been wondering all night what you could possibly wear under that fragment.' A laugh tore at his voice. 'Now I know.'

He bent and kissed her breasts, his mouth warm and urgent on her body, and yet at the same time she knew that he was deliberately restraining himself, devoting himself to her pleasure, her arousal, so that when the time came she would have no fear of him.

'God, I've wanted you,' he whispered. He took the pins out of her hair, letting it tumble on to her shoulders. He lifted a handful of dark strands and held them against his face.

She drew his head down to her, offering him her lips, and he took them fiercely.

At last he muttered raggedly against her mouth, 'Janna, my love, my sweet witch, you're wearing too many clothes, do you know that?'

She knew that even then he was giving her the chance, if she wished, to change her mind. But she did not wish.

'So are you?' she whispered in return. She slid her hands under his unfastened shirt, enjoying the unfamiliar warmth of his bare skin.

The sudden blaze of light in the room was intrusion enough. Mrs Tempest's voice, unnaturally high-pitched and agitated, crying out, 'Rian—good God!' was a sickening, mind-numbing shock.

Janna felt Rian roll away from her on to his back, his hand shielding his eyes from the sudden dazzle of the lights. His aunt was standing near the door, her hand still on the light-switch. The Colonel stood behind her.

For a second, Janna was too terrified to move, then she snatched at the coverlet, pulling it across her body.

'What the devil is the meaning of this?' The Colonel's voice was thunderous with anger. 'How dare you, sir! How dare you turn your aunt's home into a brothel! Have you no sense of decency?'

There was a long pause, then Rian said very levelly, 'In future, I'll remember to lock my door.'

'Is that the only answer you can give?' the Colonel roared. 'You disgust me, sir. Do you think I'm blind? I've always known you had the morals of an alley-cat, but I've said nothing, as long as you didn't parade your trollops in front of my wife.'

Janna, half paralysed with shock, realised numbly that he was talking about her… She saw Mrs Tempest looking at her, and read shock and condemnation in her eyes.

'Janna!' Mrs Tempest shook her head helplessly. 'How could you abuse our hospitality in this way?'

Janna gasped. This was a nightmare. It couldn't be happening. Not to her. Not to Janna Prentiss. Her parents' faces swam across her dazed vision. Her parents who loved her and were proud of her. What would they say, she thought wildly, when she was brought home in such utter disgrace? All their faith in her, their trust would be destroyed. From the moment Rian's arms had closed around her she had not given them a single thought. Now the thought of her mother's face, grieved and outraged, seemed to fill her mind to the exclusion of everything else. It couldn't happen. She wouldn't let it happen.

'No!' she cried hysterically as Mrs Tempest turned to leave the room. 'No—you don't understand. He—Rian brought me here… I didn't want to—but he made me.' She pointed at the scrap of white crochet lying in the middle of the bedroom carpet. 'He—he tore my top off. I thought he'd gone mad. I—I was frightened. I begged him to stop—but he wouldn't.'

The silence in the room seemed endless. No one seemed to be breathing at all. She couldn't look at Rian—couldn't meet his eyes.

The Colonel found his voice first. 'Are you saying,' he said hoarsely, 'that you were unwilling? That my nephew actually tried to—rape you?'

It was too late now to hedge, or even retract what she had said. She had sown the seeds of the storm and now the whirlwind would follow.

'Yes,' she whispered, and burst into tears, long strangled sobs that tore at her throat. It was the final touch of conviction her story needed. Her youth and her fright would do the rest.

The Colonel was speaking very quietly. 'You'll leave my house in the morning, Rian, and I never want to see your face again. You have disgraced your family and your name as well as insulting and terrifying this young girl. I would send you packing now if the house were not full of our guests. I have no wish to cause your aunt any further distress.' He paused. 'Have you nothing to say?'

It was as close, Janna realised afterwards, as the older man would ever come to asking Rian to deny the whole thing.

As if in a dream, she heard Rian reply levelly, 'Nothing at all, sir. It all seems to have been said already—most comprehensively.'

The Colonel was addressing her now. 'My wife will— er—assist you, young lady, and see that you get home. We shall of course say nothing of this to anyone. I realise it is asking a great deal of your generosity to request that you do the same. Nevertheless, I am asking it.'

He waited, and accepted her brief, convulsive nod with a little sigh.

'Tidy yourself, Rian, and come downstairs. We still have guests. Nothing has happened here do you understand? Nothing.'

'Nothing,' Rian repeated. His tone was quiet, almost reflective, but the memory of it still had the power to chill Janna, even seven years later.

She came back to the present with a start as someone rattled impatiently at the bathroom door. She got up slowly from the hard chair and walked to the basin, putting in the plug and running in the, cold water.

She glanced at herself in the mirror, noticing almost dispassionately her white face and tearstained cheeks. Hardly any different, she thought, from the girl who had huddled into her clothes under the cold inimical gaze of Mrs Tempest. That girl had cried too, partly in relief because she was safe from her parents' anger, partly in fear, but most of all in an agony of shame and regret at her own cowardice.

That girl had had good reason to cry.

'But I have no reason—no reason at all,' she told herself, beginning to splash cold water on to her face. When she had finished, her face was calm again, and the tearstains had disappeared. Only the guilt remained, and the dread, and those she could conceal under her usual composed exterior—at least for the time being, she thought with a wry twist of her mouth. The question was—just how much longer did she have?

It was raining when she got outside, great leaden drops from an impenetrably grey sky. She stood hesitating under the shelter of the hotel arch, trying to make up her mind to make a dash for it. She had neither headscarf nor umbrella with her, so she had resigned herself to a drenching.