Runaway Wife (42 page)

After a moment, Frasier came to her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Goodbye, Rose.”

Rose waited for his car to disappear round the track before she let herself cry.

•  •  •

At some point after Frasier left, she must have fallen asleep, if only for a few minutes, sitting in her father’s chair, the sunshine dappling on her cheek. Rose woke up with a start, certain she had forgotten something and, more than that, that something was terribly wrong. Sitting up abruptly, she felt her heart pounding fiercely in her chest, gripped by an instinctive fear that she knew was real.

Her first instinct was to go to John’s room, where, after a moment’s inspection, she reassured herself he was just still sleeping, his chest rising and falling steadily. And then she heard it, just a snatch of voice carried by a breeze through the open window. It was Maddie’s voice, and although Rose heard it for only a second she was certain that Maddie sounded afraid.

Remembering that her daughter had been in the barn alone for over an hour, Rose panicked, racing toward the building, but Maddie was nowhere to be seen. The open door, swinging on its hinges in the increasingly brisk wind, slammed shut in a series of nerve-shattering bangs. Turning wildly on her heel, Rose scanned the empty yard, whipping round frantically to study the hillside for any sign of Maddie in her brightly spotted sundress, afraid that the little girl had taken her newfound freedom to heart and gone by herself for a walk.

“No!” Rose gasped. Maddie’s shout came from inside the barn, but not from the first room; that had been empty. She must be in the room where John dried his work. Her heart in her mouth, Rose rushed back, pausing for a fraction to see the padlock that normally kept the door locked had been forced open, but the door was pulled shut.

Sick with fear, Rose flung the door open to see her daughter staring defiantly up at her father, who was standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. He was speaking, but so quietly Rose didn’t catch a word of it before he looked up and saw her. He turned towards her smiling, one hand still possessively gripping Maddie.

Rose took a ragged breath, her body urging her to run as fast as she could, her heart keeping her rooted to the spot where, a meter away, she was certain her daughter was in danger. Richard had finally found them, and he was very, very angry.

She stood for several seconds staring at him, the set of his shoulders, the incline of his head as he talked to Maddie, trying to decipher his mood as she had a thousand times before. To anyone who didn’t know him the way Rose did, watching him now, he seemed completely relaxed, at ease.

But Rose knew better. She knew that no one could do a
better job of hiding away his rage behind a pleasant smile and a polite tone than her husband. Maddie, on the other hand, was harder to read. She looked calm, determined even, but her fists were tightly clenched, and although she was standing perfectly still, Rose could see that every sinew of the little girl was repelled and desperate to be away from her father’s touch.

There was nothing for it, Rose realized, struggling to control the fear that gripped her. She could not run away; there was nowhere to hide. This was the moment when she had to face him. Now she would find out if she really had what it took to stand on her own two feet, to protect her daughter, to be the woman she needed to be finally to be free of him.

“Rose,” Richard greeted her, no doubt seeing the look on Maddie’s face as she approached. “I found our daughter alone and unattended in a barn, a building literally chock-full of death traps. Not the most responsible of parenting, if you don’t mind my saying. Not that I’m in the least bit surprised. By the look of what you’ve done to your hair you really have lost it this time. You look ridiculous.”

“Why did you break into this room?” Rose asked him, keeping her gaze locked on him, afraid that if she stopped looking at him, even for one second, something might happen that she couldn’t prevent.

“I didn’t,” said Richard, while Maddie’s flinch as the tips of his fingers whitened on her bare shoulder revealed the real truth. “The door was already open.”

Why did he come here and, instead of coming to find and confront her, take Maddie somewhere he thought no one would see and hear them? What dreadful way had he been planning to take his revenge on her?

“Maddie, come here,” Rose said as calmly as she could, holding out her arms to her daughter, who took a step towards
her but was prevented from coming farther by her father’s hand.

“What are you doing?” Rose asked him as calmly as she was able, drawing on her years of practice of not letting him see she was afraid, even if he already knew it.

“I’ve missed my little girl,” Richard said, his tone so cold, so devoid of any affection that Rose wondered if he’d ever loved their daughter at all, if all that too had been just another charade to add to his carefully constructed replica of the perfect family man. Her maternal instinct flaring fiercely, Rose went to Maddie and took her arm in one hand, the other detaching his hand from her shoulder with relative ease. Richard seemed amused by her efforts, but not intimidated.

Rose backed away towards the door, sheltering Maddie against her body, noticing the red fingerprints on her skin that would soon turn to bruises.

“What do you want, Richard?” she asked him.

“I’m rather surprised that you have to ask me that,” he said, his smile icy. “You run away, for no reason, with
my
child, without telling me where you are or how she is. Am I expected just to give up without looking for you, when you know I love you both so much and that your place is at home with me?”

“I didn’t run away for no reason.” Rose forced herself to speak, despite feeling paralyzed by the fear that came from knowing what her husband had been, and was, capable of. The longer she kept him talking like this, the better chance she would have of finding a way out, of getting Maddie away. Rose knew that this polite conversation was a thin veneer, scarcely concealing the fury that simmered below, and if Richard was willing to intimidate his daughter to get his own way, there was no telling what else he would do. It seemed that her bid for freedom had eroded what little self-control
he’d had. Now he felt justified in doing what he must to regain control, and Rose knew with heart-stopping certainty that he was waiting for his chance to crush her in whatever way he could. She also knew that there was a very real chance she might not be able to escape him.

Think of Maddie, she told herself, tensing every sinew of her body, refusing to allow herself to shake in front of him. Save Maddie.

“I left you, Richard, and you know perfectly well why,” she said.

Richard’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and then he smiled that awful smile so laden with menace that Rose knew only too well. It was her final warning.

“I’ve missed you too, Rose, I can’t wait for the chance for us to get reacquainted,” Richard said, walking slowly towards them.

“Maddie, go to Granddad,” Rose said urgently, pushing her daughter towards the door, putting her body between the exit and Richard. “Go and tell him where I am.”

“But . . .” Maddie hesitated by the door, torn between wanting to run and a reluctance to leave her mother.

“Go!” Rose told her, as steadily as she was able to, unable to muster a smile. “I will be fine.” The last thing Rose wanted was to be parted from her daughter, but she could not use her as a human shield and they could not stay here in this stalemate forever. If Richard was going to strike, it was best that it was when Maddie wasn’t there. Maddie took one last look at her mother and ran, the outer barn door slamming shut in the wind that raged outside, rattling the rafters and beams of the barn.

Rose turned back to Richard and braced herself for what was to come, her relief at getting Maddie out of immediate danger short-lived. The rational part of her mind told her this
was her husband, and she’d been married to him for years; it wasn’t as if he was going to kill her. But another, more primal part of her knew with awful certainty that something had broken in Richard, that what little restraint he’d had before was gone and now he was capable of anything.

“Shall we?” he said, gripping her arm the moment that Maddie left, dragging her farther inside the room and pushing the door shut again.

“Don’t touch me,” Rose said fiercely, shaking free of his grasp with some effort, feeling the imprints of his grip on her tender arm. She glared at him, gratified to see that her show of temper surprised him, not that it would do her much good. In one maneuver, he had her trapped inside the room and was blocking her way to the door.

“You don’t get to touch me anymore, Richard,” she said boldly. He wasn’t used to her standing up to him, being anything but compliant and meek. Perhaps if she showed him how strong she had become he would back down. It was a faint hope, but the only thing Rose could think of at that moment.

“Don’t I?” Richard said, watching her and seeming to take a great deal of pleasure in her predicament. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

“Look,” Rose said, fighting to keep her composure, her voice strong and loud, struggling to say anything,
do
anything that would defuse the situation, “if you just think, for a minute . . . see what you are doing. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to hate each other. Let’s just do the right thing. Let’s get divorced and you can see Maddie. I won’t stand in your way. I just want—”

“Nice try,” Richard said, slowly closing the gap between them. “It’s too late for that now. I want my family back in my house. I want you and my daughter back in my home where
you belong. And when I’m ready, you’ll go inside, you’ll pack your things, and we’ll leave. But first, I think it’s time we had a little reunion, don’t you?”

“No.” Rose shook her head, pressing her lips together to stop her teeth from chattering. “No, Richard, please don’t—”

“Don’t argue with me, Rose,” Richard said, dangerously close to losing his cool.

“Why?” Rose asked him desperately, trying to circle round him toward the door. “Why do this? When you haven’t loved me for years, if you ever did. When all you do is trap and torment me, even hurting your own child, because you can’t wait to punish me for something I will never understand. Why?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Richard asked her angrily. “You belong to me. You owe me. I rescued you, Rose. I picked you up at your lowest, most pathetic point, and I gave you a life, a husband, a family, a home. And now you are going to repay me for all the strain and stress you’ve put me through. You’re going to make me feel better, like a good wife should.”

Richard backed her against a wall, his sour breath filling her nostrils, making her want to gag.

“Just do exactly as I say,” he murmured as he closed the gap between them.

On the last two words he closed in on her, trapping her against the wall of the barn with an arm either side of her head.

Gritting her teeth, Rose was determined not to show him fear, not to show him even a glimpse of the sickening dread she felt coursing through her, knowing all too well what would come next.

“No,” she told Richard, determined to meet his eye. “I will
never
do what you want me to, never ever again.”

With whiplike precision Richard hit her sharply across
the face, sending her cheek smashing into the barn wall with the force of the blow. Rose blinked, fighting the darkness that suddenly crowded the edge of her vision, stumbling sideways, momentarily dazed as stars swam in front of her eyes. Adrenaline was the only thing stopping her from passing out—that and the knowledge that, no matter what happened, she couldn’t leave Maddie and John to Richard’s mercy.

“See what you made me do?” Richard asked her. “Me, who has never laid a finger on you in anger. And now you’ve made me hurt you. I hope you are ashamed, Rose. You should be.”

Despite the pain that seared down her neck, Rose brought her gaze up to meet his.

“You are pathetic,” she told him, quietly defiant, finding a will to fight him that she didn’t know she had. “Nothing more than a bully. I’m done being frightened of you, Richard. You bore me.”

“You are my wife,” Richard said, fury twisting his face as he pushed her hard into the wall, pinning her shoulder with one hand, and pulling at the buttons of her jeans with the other, dragging the waistband down over her hips. “And I think it’s about time I reminded you of that. I’ve missed you, Rose.”

“No!” Rose shouted, using every scrap of strength she had to push him backwards with just enough force to break his grip on her for a few moments. She twisted herself away from him, pulling up her jeans, as she raced for the closed door. But Richard grabbed her arm before she could make it, throwing her, sprawling, onto the hard concrete floor. Rose felt the back of her head reverberate with the pain on contact, as he stood over her, his image blurring before her eyes.

Do not pass out, she told herself furiously. Do not pass out!

“You are my wife,” Richard repeated as he knelt down between her legs. “You belong to me.”

Furiously, Rose pushed against his weight as he lay on top of her, one arm pinned across her throat, pressing hard against her windpipe, the other dragging down her jeans once more, until she could feel the cold, rough floor rasp against her skin.

Unable to talk, barely able to breathe, Rose struggled for as long as she could, until it hit her with a sudden cold clarity that she could not win this fight. If she kept trying to push him off, he would only hurt her more, perhaps more than her body could bear, and even though in those last few seconds before Richard got what he wanted, death seemed like a haven, Rose could not allow it to happen. She knew she must do whatever it took to survive.

Turning her head away from him as she ceased to struggle, she fixed her eyes on the wall, where once she had stood and gazed at one of her father’s beautiful paintings. And she tried with all her might to recall it in every detail, every brushstroke, every color, to free herself from shame, the knowledge that no matter how her heart and mind might be strong enough to repel him, her body never would be, and that was why he would always win.