The Hidden Years (71 page)

From the garden he paused and looked back at the house,
picturing her lying in her bed. She had felt so light when he had
caught her to him, so small and fragile.

He turned back towards the house and started to walk and
then to run. He met Ian Holmes just as the latter stepped out of the
french windows.

The ambulance will be here shortly. Chivers informs me
that Liz is asleep. You're staying in the village, I
believe…'

'I was,' Lewis told him, adding, 'Until Liz is fully
recovered I shall be staying here…'

'Yes…'

They looked at one another for a long time and it was Ian
who looked away first.

A vehicle was approaching the house. When he saw it was
the ambulance, Ian excused himself, leaving Lewis to watch him walking
away.

Liz woke up abruptly, conscious with the odd clarity that
came in the heartbeat of space between sleeping and waking that
something was wrong, that the light coming in through her closed
curtains was not the light of early morning—and then she saw
the motionless figure seated in the chair.

'Edward.'

As she said his name she was aware of a feeling of
coldness and fear, a sense of despair and panic.

'It isn't Edward, Liz, it's me, Lewis.'

The relief, the joy—the immediate reversal of
all her earlier emotions as Lewis's voice transmuted them from the
darkness of fear and pain into the shining gold of exaltation and
delight—made her shiver with the knowledge of how dangerous
her emotions were, how impermissible and wrong.

'Edward's in hospital,' Lewis told her, getting up and
coming over to the bed, quickly adding, 'It's all right. There's
nothing wrong with him. But your doctor… He seemed to think
that it was the best place for him right' now. Personally,' Lewis told
her grimly, 'I should have thought prison…'

He saw the small anguished movement of her body beneath
the sheets and stopped before telling her emotionally, 'My God, Liz, he
could have killed you,
would
have—'

'No,' she denied immediately. 'No. He didn't
mean—'

'Didn't he?' Lewis interrupted her. 'When I
arrived…' He stopped and then demanded passionately, 'Why do
you stay married to him, Liz? He's no husband for you… Why
did
you marry him in the first place? And don't tell me you love him. I saw your face just now
when you woke up and thought I was him.'

Liz winced, her face going paler.

Her throat was almost too sore for her to speak. It felt
swollen and raw inside. She felt weaker than she had ever felt in her
life. She could feel the tears burning at the back of her eyes and knew
that there was nothing she wanted more than to reach out to this man
who watched her with such angry, hungry eyes and to tell him how much
she loved him, to beg him to take hold of her and to go on holding her,
to keep her safe not just from Edward, but from all her own fears as
well.

But if she did that… She shuddered, knowing the
burden of guilt they would both have to carry if she allowed herself to
give way to her vulnerability.

He was right to criticise her… to condemn her.
It was
her
fault that Edward had attacked her. It
was her fault because she had never realised, never known until it was
too late how much Edward loved her, and how dangerous that love would
become without any natural outlet, how it would turn in upon itself and
slowly poison their whole relationship.

'I'm sorry,' she heard Lewis apologise huskily. 'I had no
right… I'm behaving as badly as
Edward—worse…'

'No,' Liz contradicted him tiredly, 'I shouldn't have
married him, but you see…'

Suddenly she wanted to talk to him, to unburden herself to
him, to explain to him why she had acted as she had.

She told him as quickly and as briefly as she could,
skimming over the emotional poverty of her life with her aunt, and the
deliberate cruelty with which Kit had treated her.

'It's too easy to make excuses for myself now, but if I
had known how Edward really felt—'

'How could you have known?' Lewis interrupted her
tenderly. 'You were just a child.'

Liz gave him a wry smile. 'Hardly… I was
seventeen, more than old enough to—'

'As I said, you were just a child,' Lewis told her grimly.
He was fighting to control his anger… against Edward and
against his cousin.

'And this Kit, David's father… You still love
him, still want him.'

Like lovers throughout eternity, he couldn't quite keep
the jealousy out of his voice, but the tiny shudder that went through
her still body, the look in her eyes, at once so haunted and so
anguished, immediately reassured him.

'No,' Liz told him honestly. 'Nor have I wanted anyone
else since. I've been content in my marriage to Edward…'

Liar, an inner voice taunted her. You might have been
content once but you aren't now.

She shivered beneath the bedclothes. It was true. She
wasn't content any longer, hadn't been since…

'Content.' Lewis looked grimly at her. 'Are you, Liz? Are
you really content to live with a man who might quite easily murder
you, a man…?'

She didn't want to be reminded of Edward's attack on her.
She moved jerkily, covering her face with her hands while her body
trembled violently as it remembered the frightening sense of
helplessness and fear which had overwhelmed her when she realised she
couldn't break free of Edward's hold.

'Oh, God, Liz, my darling… Don't, please!
Don't.'

She hadn't seen him move, hadn't been aware of anything
other than the shock of her remembered fear, until she felt the bed
depress beneath Lewis's weight and looked up to find he was reaching
down to her, taking her into his arms, holding her, cradling her,
whispering to her all the soft sweet words of love for which her lonely
heart had so dangerously yearned.

While he kissed her face and stroked her hair, she told
herself frantically that she must stop him, that she must not allow
this to go any further, but there was so much sweetness, so much
warmth, so much love in the way he held and touched her that her
starved senses refused to listen to the warning urgings of her brain.

Instead of telling him that he must leave, that to stay
here with her now was to promote a situation which could only
ultimately increase her pain, she found herself telling him more about
her marriage, about her unhappiness in her brief affair with Kit, about
her son, and even, self-betrayingly, and oh, so hesitantly, she
actually found she was confiding to him her awareness of her own lack
of any strong sense of sexuality.

'If you're telling me that because you think it will put
me off, you're wasting your time,' Lewis told her gravely. 'It's you I
want, my darling. You…'

As he spoke he smoothed the hair back off her face and
looked down into her eyes. 'Leave him, Liz,' he begged her huskily.
'Leave him now and let me take care of you…'

Just for one wild, crazy moment she wavered, telling
herself that she had the right surely to snatch at this precious,
undreamed-of happiness…that she and Lewis loved one another
and that their love must be allowed to live and grow… that
whatever she had to sacrifice to be with him must be
worthwhile… and then sanity took over and she realised how
impossible it was for her to do what she was contemplating.

'I can't,' she told him. 'Please try to
understand—'

'I understand that I love you,' Lewis interrupted her
savagely. 'And that you love me… Don't try to deny it. I've
seen it in your eyes, felt it in the way your heart beats when I touch
you. We were meant to be together, Liz. To try to prevent that from
happening would be the sin, staying with Edward when you don't love
him—those would be sins… not leaving him to come
to me…'

She closed her eyes, her heart and her body both filled
with unbearable pain.

She wanted to give in, to say yes, to throw everything
else aside and simply go with him. Perhaps if she had still been a girl
of seventeen she might have been able to do so, but she wasn't that
girl any more. She was a woman; a woman, moreover, who was a whole
decade older…and wiser.

As she looked at him, she felt the pain inside her grow,
and knew with certainty that she would love him for the rest of her
life. She touched his downbent head gently, blinking back her tears as
she asked herself why fate had been cruel enough to send him into her
life when it knew that there was no place for him there.

'I can't leave Edward,' she told him.

He looked up, about to argue with her, about to remind her
that Edward, her precious husband, had almost killed her, and as he
looked at her throat and saw the bruises darkening the skin, and then
into her eyes where he could see her anguish and despair, he cursed
himself for his selfishness, and said quietly, 'Right now what you need
more than anything else is to rest. Your doctor has left a sleeping
drug…'

Immediately she shook her head.

'Right now all I really want is a cup of warm milk,' she
told him huskily. She knew she should ask him to leave… tell
him to leave if necessary. After all, there was no real need for him to
stay. She had Chivers and by tomorrow she would be back to her normal
self, fully able to get up and take control of her life again. She
would have things to do, as well. She would have to get in touch with
Ian, and arrange to go and see Edward…

Edward… She could feel her mind fighting to get
away from even thinking about her husband, her body clenching with fear
and misery at the mere thought of being with him, and yet what else
could she do? How could she leave him now when his need of her would be
so great? It wasn't a matter of being concerned about what others might
think—it was what she would think of herself if she abandoned
him now, turned her back on him now…

'I'll go downstairs for that milk,' Lewis told her softly,
'Don't you dare move from this bed, and that's not coming from me, it's
coming from that doctor of yours.'

As he stood up she turned her head, revealing more
swollen, dark bruises along her throat.

A feeling of such pain and rage welled up inside him that
he knew that if Edward were there in the room with them, despite his
infirmities he would probably have slowly strangled him. How could he
have done this to her, hurt her like this…?

Almost without realising what he was doing he reached out
and gently traced the dark marks with his fingertips, and then, when
she shuddered and closed her eyes, he bent his head and tenderly
pressed his lips to each individual bruise. When she trembled, he
released her and stood up, watching her for a moment before saying
quietly, 'I'd better go down and heat that milk.'

After he'd gone Liz told herself that just as soon as he
came back she'd tell him that he must leave, but her fingers strayed to
her throat, touching the bruises he had kissed, and her body quivered
with sensations that drowned out logic and common sense.

There were so many things she ought to be doing. It was
foolish of her to stay here like this in bed when she ought to be up,
and yet her body felt so drained, so weak and exhausted. She closed her
eyes, telling herself that she would just rest until she had had her
milk and that then she would get up and ask Lewis to leave, but when he
eventually arrived with the milk he had heated for her she was fast
asleep.

He watched her for a moment and then put down the tray.
Somehow there had to be a way of convincing her that there was no debt
she owed Edward. Somehow… and he would find it, because when
he left England to return home he was taking her and David with him and
nothing was going to stop him. Nothing.

Liz was dreaming. In her dream she was in her garden, the
sun was shining and she was warm and relaxed, and then suddenly a
shadow started to creep over the sun, obliterating the light. She
looked up towards it, her happiness giving way to fear as she saw that
the shadow was that of Edward, her husband, who was coming towards her
with such a look of hatred in his eyes that she cried out to him not to
come any closer, but he wouldn't stop, he was reaching out towards her
and she couldn't move, even though she knew that once he took hold of
her he would hurt her, kill her even… Already she could
almost feel the bite of those hard fingers against her skin, already
she could almost feel their pressure on her throat, already…

Lewis had fallen asleep in the chair. Her first low cry of
fear woke him, so that he was already stumbling stiffly towards the bed
as she started to cry, smothering the high, frantic sound against his
own body as he took hold of her and half lifted and half dragged her
from the bedclothes and into his arms, soothing her, rocking her in his
embrace as he held her to him with one arm, and pressed her face
against his shoulder with the hand of the other, his fingers splayed
out beneath her hair as he cradled her head and whispered soft,
reassuring words in her ear.

The relief of discovering that she had been having a
nightmare and that Edward was not actually there overwhelmed any
instincts of caution and restraint which might have urged her to think
beyond the present to the future.

As she trembled in Lewis's arms and felt the tender
comfort of his lips caressing first her temple and then her cheek, she
turned towards him.

'Liz.'

She felt the emotion in his voice, deep within her body.
She shouldn't be doing this… Shouldn't be here with him like
this… But already it was too late, already he was kissing
her, caressing her mouth with his so that her lips parted helplessly
beneath the pressure of his.

For a long time he did nothing more than kiss her, but
they were kisses unlike any she had ever known, kisses which she hadn't
even realised could exist, kisses which were a whole world of intimacy
in themselves. Kisses which turned her bones to water, and her senses
to a mindless confusion of delight while she responded to them as
helplessly and innocently as though he were her first lover. Which in
reality he was.