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She was about to point out that he hadn’t really answered her question when he forestalled her.
‘I can’t see much sense in raking over the ashes. As soon as your memory returns you’ll be able to judge for yourself how trivial it was. Now I suggest that you try and relax. Let things come back in their own good time rather than keep asking questions.’
Questions he didn’t want to answer?
Yet if not, why not? Unless he didn’t want her to regain her memory?
Helplessly, she said, ‘But there’s so much I don’t know. I don’t even know where L..we...live.’
‘Upper East Side.’
That figured. It went with his obvious wealth, his air of good breeding, his educated accent. She frowned. His accent... Basically an English accent?
‘You’re not American?’
‘I was born in England.’
‘How long have you been in the States?’
‘Since I was twenty-one.’
‘How old are you now?’
‘Thirty.’
‘Do your family still live in England?’
Glancing at his handsome profile, she saw his jaw tighten before, his voice repressive, he replied, ‘I haven’t any family.’
Plainly he was in no mood to be questioned. But, needing to know more about this stranger she was married to, about their life together, she persisted, ‘Where did we meet...?’
He swung the wheel and they turned into a paved forecourt and drew to a halt in front of a huge apartment block.
‘Was it in England?’
Curtly, he said, ‘I thought I’d made it clear that I wanted you to rest rather than keep asking questions.’
Resenting the way he was treating her, she protested, ‘But I—
He put a finger to her lips. This is the Ventnor Building and we’re home. Any further questions will keep until tomorrow.’
The light pressure of that lean finger against her mouth stopped her breath and made her lower lip start to tremble.
Watching her with hooded eyes, he moved it slowly, tracing the lovely, passionate outline of her mouth, and she was submerged by a wave of sensation so strong that it scared her half to death.
She saw his white teeth gleam in a smile, and suddenly felt terribly vulnerable. He knew only too well what effect his touch had on her.
As he got out and came round to open her door a blue-uniformed night-security guard appeared from nowhere.
‘Mr Saunders, Mrs Saunders...’ He gave them a laconic salute. ‘Want me to park her for you?’
‘Please, Bill.’ Jos tossed him the keys and stooped to help Clare from the car. With a strong arm around her waist he led her past the main doors to a side entrance and slid a card into the lock.
The chandelier-lit marble foyer, ringed by glittering stores and boutiques, was vast and empty. Their footsteps echoed eerily in the silence as, watched by the glassy eyes of the elegantly dressed mannequins in the shop windows, they crossed to a bank of elevators.
He produced a key, and a moment later the doors of his private elevator slid to behind them.
‘You live in the penthouse.’ Her own certainty surprised her.
Brilliant eyes narrowed to slits, he turned to watch her like a hawk, his hard face all planes and angles. ‘What makes you so sure?’
As they shot smoothly upwards she pressed her fingers to her temples and struggled to pin down the elusive recollection. It was like trying to trace one particular shadow in a room full of shadows.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
They slid to a halt, and with a hand beneath her elbow he led her across a luxuriously carpeted hall and into an elegant living room. The room must be on a corner of the building, she realised, because two walls at right angles seemed to be made entirely of lightly smoked glass panels which opened onto a terrace and roof garden.
She could see the shapes of trees and bushes and hear the splash of a fountain. It seemed strange when they were so far above the city.
With some trepidation, she said, ‘I think I’m scared of heights.’
‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t have chosen to marry a man who lives in a penthouse.’
With a sudden sensation of déjà vu, she felt sure he’d said those mocking words to her once before, used the same coolly cutting tone.
Though unable to recall the precise terms of their relationship, she was certain it wasn’t of the pleasant, friendly ‘rub along together’ sort, but rather the tempestuous ‘strike sparks off each other’ kind.
The kind where someone could get hurt.
No, not someone. Her. Every instinct warned her that Jos was dangerous, that he wanted to hurt her, would enjoy hurting her.
‘Why do you want to hurt me?’ The question was out before she could prevent it.
‘Why should I want to hurt you?’
Glancing quickly at him, she saw his dark face was cool and shuttered. It would only reveal what he wanted it to reveal. He would only tell her what he wanted her to know.
‘What makes you imagine I want to hurt you?’ he persisted.
She made a helpless gesture with her hands. ‘I don’t know. I just get the feeling you don’t like me very much.’
He moved towards her.
Instinctively she backed away.
Reaching out, he caught her wrist and pulled her against him. One arm held her while his free hand came up to encircle her throat lightly.
Something about his stillness, the tension in his muscles, warned her that he was waiting for her to struggle.
When she stood as if frozen, he bent his dark head and let his lips wander over her cheek and jaw. She caught her breath, aware of the faint scent of his skin, the slight roughness of stubble.
His lips brushed her ear, making her shiver, as he said, ‘Liking is such a bloodless, insipid emotion. It has nothing to do with what I feel for you.’
Recognising something fundamental in his words, knowing she was close to an important truth, she felt her heart begin to race with suffocating speed. ‘What do you feel for me?’
The sudden flare of anger in his eyes made her blood run cold. Before she could do or say anything he covered her mouth with his own.
While he deepened the kiss, ravaging her mouth with a savage, punitive expertise, she lay against him, lost and dazed, knowing only that if he released his grip she would fall.
When he finally lifted his head she was trembling in every limb, her breath coming in harsh gasps.
He looked down at her, studying the violet eyes that looked too big for her heart-shaped face, the swollen lips, the fine dew of perspiration on her forehead, and said tightly, ‘You should know better than to try to provoke me.’
‘I wasn’t trying to provoke you,’ she denied in a husky whisper.
With a muttered oath he let her go so suddenly that she staggered a little, and the beautiful room whirled sickeningly around her head.
A moment later he had swept her up in his arms and was carrying her into what was obviously the master bedroom.
‘What are you doing?’ she croaked.
‘Taking you to bed.’
‘No!’ Every trace of colour drained from her face, leaving it ashen.
Setting her on her feet, he said coldly, ‘Credit me with some sensitivity. I can see you’ve had about as much stress as you can handle, so for tonight at least I’ll sleep in the guest room.’
She gave the kind of shuddering sigh a child might give.
The impatience dying out of his face, he opened one of the drawers and tossed her an ivory satin nightgown with shoestring straps and a matching negligee. ‘Do you need any help?’
‘No!’ she snapped, then added more moderately, ‘No, thank you.’
‘You’ll find your toilet things in the bathroom. I’ll give you ten minutes.’
In the big, luxurious bathroom, hurrying as much as her debilitating weakness would allow, she pulled off her clothes and dropped them into the dirty linen basket, showered, cleaned her teeth and dragged a brush through her damp hair.
She was safely in bed, leaning against the pillows, the lightweight duvet pulled chest-high, when he returned.
Sitting on the edge of the king-sized divan, he handed her a beaker of hot chocolate. ‘Drink that before I tuck you in.’
The smell made her wrinkle her nose. ‘I don’t like hot chocolate.’
‘Drink it all the same. It’ll help you sleep soundly.’
Sipping obediently, she avoided his eyes.
As soon as the beaker was empty he put it on the bedside cabinet and then, rising to his feet, reached to flatten her pillows.
As she slid down his hand brushed her breast and she flinched away.
His chiselled mouth tightened. ‘There’s no need to look quite so alarmed. I am your husband, you know.’
But that was just it, she thought as the door closed behind him, she didn’t know. As far as she was concerned he was a stranger.
But a stranger who had a devastating effect on her.
Earlier, when he’d kissed her, desire, terrifying in its intensity, had overwhelmed her. And, though his intention had clearly been to punish her, she’d sensed a fierce reciprocal hunger in him, which even such a cold, self-controlled man as he couldn’t totally hide.
Their relationship, whatever other dark threads were woven into it, was undoubtedly a passionate one.
Suddenly she was even more afraid of what the future held than she had been when she’d left the hospital.
CHAPTER TWO
CLARE’S brain stirred into life slowly, unwillingly. Lying stretched on her back, eyes closed, she was aware of softness and warmth, of a physical comfort that went hand in hand with a kind of bleak mental anguish.
Bodily she was at ease, but her mind was a teeming mass of disturbing, shadowy thoughts. When she tried to hold onto them, to coax them into the light, they vanished like wraiths, leaving only a set of hard, handsome features indelibly printed there.
Jos. Her husband.
Her heart began to beat at a fast, suffocating speed. She recalled him coming to the hospital. Bringing her home. Kissing her. Innocuous enough memories except for the powerful black undercurrents which, like some deadly whirlpool, threatened to drag her down and drown her.
Undercurrents which, if she could only remember, would almost certainly explain why she had taken off her rings and walked out in the first place.
But had she just stormed off in a temper, as he’d tried to imply? Or had she meant to go for good?
If she had meant to leave him, surely she would have taken a case? Certainly she would have had a handbag. Some money...
Eyelids still closed, to help her concentration, she tried to think, but her memory would go back no further than awakening in the hospital.
Sighing, she opened her eyes to semi-gloom. Abruptly the sigh turned into a gasp. The sight of Jos lounging in a chair by the bed, his eyes fixed on her face, made her jerk upright.
His mere presence brought a surge of dismay and excitement that took her breath and made her heart start to race again.
As though he’d run restless fingers through it, his hair, peat-dark, not quite black, was slightly rumpled, his jaw was smooth, clean-shaven, his lean face, with its fascinating planes and angles, heart-stoppingly attractive.
He was casually dressed in light trousers and a dark green cotton-knit shirt open at the neck, exposing his tanned throat, and with the sleeves pushed up his muscular hair-sprinkled forearms.
Pulling the duvet high, though her nightgown was perfectly modest, she demanded hoarsely, ‘How long have you been there?’
His clearly delineated mouth curved slightly. ‘Most of the afternoon.’
The idea of him sitting watching her sleep was disturbing, to say the least. Slowly, with an effort, she smoothed her face into a careful, unrevealing mask, before asking, ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
Rising to his feet, he crossed to the wide window and drew aside the curtains, flooding the attractive blue and white room with light, before answering, ‘I wanted you to wake up naturally. I thought perhaps...?’ He allowed the question to tail off.
‘It’s no use...’ She heard the desolation of her own despair. ‘I can’t remember anything prior to waking up in the hospital.’
Suddenly he was by her side again, looming too close. Tilting her chin, he examined her face, taking in the translucent skin stretched tightly over the wonderful bone structure, the paleness of her lips, the lost look in the long-lashed violet eyes.
His touch closed her throat and made her mouth go dry. Unconsciously, she ran the tip of her tongue over parched lips.
Something flaring in his green eyes, he followed the small, betraying movement. She froze, terrified he was going to kiss her, wanting him to kiss her...
He, who seemed never to miss a thing, obviously noted her reaction and smiled a little. Releasing her chin, he touched a bell by the bedhead before sitting down again. ‘When you say “anything”...?’
It took her a moment or two to recover. Then, forehead creased in thought, she said slowly, ‘I remember the ordinary everyday things of life. How to read and write, add up and subtract...that kind of thing. It’s personal memories that have gone...’
Were those memories so dark, so disturbing, that her subconscious wanted them blanked out? Had she needed to lose herself and the past in order to survive some emotional trauma?
Or was this feeling of being threatened by past and future alike merely symptomatic of her amnesia? When her memory returned would she find she was a perfectly ordinary woman with a perfectly ordinary marriage?
But suppose it never returned?
Fighting down a rush of blind panic at the thought, she went on, ‘I don’t know anything about myself. If I’ve got a middle name or what my maiden name was... I don’t even know how old I am.’
‘Your middle name is Linden, your maiden name was Berkeley and you’re twenty-four. You’ll be twenty-five on September the third. A Virgo,’ he added, with a derisive twist to his lips.
Before Clare could react to what seemed to be a sneer, there was a tap at the door, and it opened to admit a dark-suited dignified man, carrying a tray. Pulling the metal supports into position, he placed it carefully across her knees.
Bending his balding head deferentially, he said, ‘I’m delighted that madam is safely home.’
‘Thank you, er...’ She hesitated.
‘This is Roberts,’ Jos informed her. Then, to the manservant, he said, ‘I’m afraid Mrs Saunders still hasn’t recovered her memory.’
Roberts looked suitably grave. ‘Very upsetting for both of you, sir.’
After deftly removing the lid from a dish of poached salmon, he opened and shook out a white damask napkin. ‘Mr Saunders thought a light meal... If, however, madam would prefer chicken, or an omelette...?’
‘Oh, no... Thank you.’ Then, sensing a genuine wish to please, she remarked with a smile, ‘I’m sure this will be delicious.’
Roberts departed noiselessly.
‘A butler instead of a housekeeper?’ Sipping her tea, Clare spoke her thoughts aloud. ‘I get the feeling you don’t care much for women?’
‘In one area at least I find a woman is indispensable.’ His mocking glance left her in no doubt as to which area he referred to. ‘I also employ a couple of female cleaners. But I happen to prefer a male servant to run the household.’
Head bent, hoping to hide her blush, she asked, ‘Has Roberts been with you long?’
‘He came with the penthouse.’ Then, with no change of tone, he added, ‘Your salmon will get cold.’
Uncomfortably, she asked, ‘Aren’t you eating?’
‘I had a late lunch a couple of hours ago, when it appeared that you were still in shock and were going to sleep the clock round.’
She glanced at her bare left wrist before asking, ‘What time is it now?’
‘Nearly four-thirty.’ Lifting her hand, making the huge diamond solitaire flash in the light, he asked, ‘Do you remember what happened to your watch?’
‘Do I usually wear one?’
‘Yes. So far as I know, always.’ Letting go of her hand, he urged, ‘Do eat something or you’ll upset Roberts.’
Feeling suddenly ravenous, Clare began to tuck in with a will. Glancing up to find Jos’s eyes were watching her every move, she hesitated.
‘Don’t let me put you off,’ he said abruptly. ‘You must be starving. It’s over twenty-four hours since you were knocked down.’
Glancing once again at her empty wrist, she suggested, ‘Perhaps I left my watch behind when I... with my rings...’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘You wouldn’t have left it behind.’ Dark face thoughtful, he went on, ‘When you arrived at the hospital you had no handbag with you. Didn’t you think that was strange? Don’t most women carry a bag?’
Putting down her knife and fork, she agreed, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘It’s my belief that when you were knocked down, by the time the cabby had pulled himself together and got out, your bag and watch had been stolen. It’s a pretty rough area... Have you any idea what you were doing there?’
‘No.’ Then, harking back, she asked curiously, ‘What makes you so sure I wouldn’t have left my watch behind?’
He rose to his feet and, lifting the tray from her knees, set it aside before answering, ‘Because it was a twenty-first birthday gift from your parents.’
‘My parents?’ Her heart suddenly lifted with hope. ‘Where do they—?’
‘They’re dead,’ he said harshly, resuming his seat. ‘They died in a plane crash in Panama a few months ago.’
‘Oh...’ She felt a curious hollowness, an emptiness that grief should have filled. ‘Did you know them?’
After an almost imperceptible hesitation, he said, ‘I knew of them.’
‘Can you tell me anything about them?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Anything that might help me to remember? Our family background... where they lived?’
This time he hesitated so long that she found herself wondering anew if he would prefer her not to remember.
Then, as though making up his mind, he said, ‘Yes, I can tell you about your family background.’ His face hard, his green eyes curiously angry, he went on, ‘Your father was Sir Roger Berkeley, your mother, Lady Isobel Berkeley. He was a diplomat and she was a well-known hostess, prominent in fashionable society.’
Clare could sense an underlying tension in his manner, a marked bitterness.
‘You were born and brought up in a house called Stratton Place, a mile or so from Meredith.’
‘Meredith?’
‘A pretty little village not too far from London. A lot of rich people live there—bankers, stockbrokers, politicians... You went to an expensive boarding-school until you were eighteen, then a Swiss finishing-school.’
He sounded as if he resented their wealth and position, and she wondered briefly if he’d come from a poorer environment. But that didn’t tally with his voice and his educated accent.
‘You were an only child—and a mistake, I fancy.’ Chilled both by the concept and Jos’s deliberate cruelty, she asked, ‘How could you know a thing like that?’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I’m judging by the type of woman your mother was, and the fact that you were pushed off to boarding-school at a very early age...’
Clare felt impelled to defend the mother she couldn’t remember. ‘But are you in a position to judge? If you didn’t really know her...’
‘I know all I need to know. When your father was posted to the States she joined him in New York. The society gossip columns had a field-day. Men swarmed round her like flies, and she soon got quite a reputation as a goer...’ There was contempt in the deep voice. Softly, he added, ‘You’re very like her.’
Every trace of colour draining from her face, she sat quite still. Surely she couldn’t be the kind of woman he was describing?
Watching her expressive face mirror her consternation, he allowed a scornful little smile to play around his lips.
In response to that smile, she lifted her chin. No, she refused to believe it. Some fundamental self-knowledge told her he must be wrong.
‘I can’t answer for my mother,’ she said calmly, ‘but I’m sure I’m not like that.’
‘You’re the image of her in looks...’
‘That doesn’t necessarily make me like her.’
As though she hadn’t spoken, he went on, ‘You both have the kind of beauty that can drive any man wild.’
Clare shook her head. ‘When I woke in the hospital I had no idea what I looked like. The nurse gave me a mirror. I’m not even pretty.’
‘You’re far more than pretty. You’re fascinating. Wholly bewitching.’
But the way he spoke the words made them a damning indictment rather than a compliment.
A shiver ran through her. ‘I didn’t bewitch you,’ she said with certainty.
His voice brittle as ice crystals, he contradicted her. ‘Oh, but my darling, you did.’
She didn’t believe it for one moment. Almost in despair, she asked, ‘Why did you marry me?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘I don’t know. If I’m like my mother—’ She broke off in confusion.
‘You mean it wouldn’t have been necessary?’ He smiled like a tiger. ‘If I’d only wanted a casual affair, it wouldn’t have been.’
He spoke with such certainty that her blood turned to ice in her veins.
‘But I wanted a great deal more than that...’
Without knowing why, she shivered. ‘So what did you want?’ Perhaps she needed to hear him put it into words, like some coup de grâce.
His mouth smiled, but his eyes were cold as green glass. ‘I wanted to own you body and soul.’
She shivered again. Then slowly, almost as if in accusation, she said, ‘You didn’t love me.’
With no reason to dissemble, he told her matter-of-factly, ‘I never pretended to. On the contrary, I went to great lengths not to mention the word “love”, so there would be no possibility that you could have any illusions, be under any misapprehension...’
Filled with a lost, bleak emptiness that was far worse than anything she had yet experienced, she accepted the fact that he had never loved her and she must have been aware of that.
Then why had she married him?
Recalling the overwhelming effect his kisses had had on her, one reason immediately sprang to mind. Yet surely common sense would have prevented her marrying a man simply because he attracted her physically?
Unless that attraction had developed into an infatuation and, more like her mother than she wanted to believe, she’d been unable to help herself...
‘And neither was I...’ Jos was going on, his voice like polished steel. ‘I knew perfectly well why you agreed to marry me.’
Shrinking inwardly at the realisation that her sexual enslavement must have been obvious, she waited for him to crow.
Incredibly, he said, ‘I was wealthy, and you wanted a rich husband.’
At that moment all she could feel was relief. The fact that he didn’t realise how obsessed she must have been went some way towards salving her pride.
‘Someone who could give you the right kind of lifestyle.’
‘It’s my impression that I already had that.’ Somehow she kept her voice steady.
‘Ah, but you didn’t. When you left your smart finishing-school, for some reason—you never told me exactly what—you struck out on your own. You rented a small cottage in the village and took a job in a real estate office while you waited for the opportunity to catch a suitable husband.’
‘Did I tell you that?’ she asked sharply.
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘And I suppose by “suitable” you mean...?’
‘Stinking rich.’ He spoke bitterly. ‘Because of the kind of life your parents led—jet—setting, champagne parties, lots of entertaining-they always lived above their income, and I suppose you must have realised there’d be nothing left when they died. Therefore, you needed to hook a man with money.’
The picture he was painting of her was a far from pleasant one. Pushing back a tendril of dark silky hair, she objected, ‘If I was an ordinary working girl, what chance would I have had of ever meeting any rich men?’
‘Hardly ordinary. You still had that air of good breeding, that finishing-school gloss, and Ashleigh Kent, the firm you worked for, was an up-market one, dealing mainly with wealthy clients wanting country estates and the like. In fact that was where I met you—when I was over in England on a business trip.’