Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ contempt stirred her in a way that his indifference would never have done. Because the dark inner struggle which was taking place on those cold, beautiful features was surely some sort of indication that he cared? Did she dare to let herself hope?

      ‘There was very little inheritance in any case,’ she told him calmly. ‘The estate is all tied up for future generations. Mark’s brother’s son will inherit. And the remainder—the fairly modest amount of cash and jewels—well, that was needed to pay for Mark’s mother’s nursing. She’s infirm now, and needs round-the-clock care—’

      ‘Yes, I know,’ he said bleakly, and turned a piercing silver gaze on her. ‘And all that is admirable of you, Romy—but I’m still no closer to understanding why—’

      ‘We didn’t consummate our marriage?’ Romy looked down at her ringless hands.

      ‘Precisely.’

      Romy thought of Mark and the comfort she had offered him. Of the long, dark nights when she had held his hand to try to ward off his fears. Able to give him in that small way what he had been unable to take from her in any other...

      She looked up at Dominic, her eyes suddenly wet, her face a mass of confusion. ‘It’s Mark’s story,’ she said.

      ‘And Mark is dead!’ he lashed back, almost viciously.

      ‘Yes.’ Mark was dead. And Mark had loved her, in so much as he had been capable of loving anyone. The very last thing he had said to her before he died had been, ‘Be happy, Romy. Promise me.’

      And she had replied in a voice choked with tears, ‘I promise.’

      ‘I never slept with Mark before we were married,’ she began slowly.

      ‘That became very apparent just a short while ago,’ Dominic clipped back, his eyes hooded and suspicious.

      Romy swallowed. ‘He told me that it was because he loved me and respected me—which was why he wanted to wait until we were married.’

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘I knew that wasn’t the way that most people these days behaved, but in a way I was glad to wait.’ Romy swallowed. ‘It seemed an indication of how much he cared for me. And also...’

      Dominic frowned as he heard her voice quaver. ‘Yes?’

      ‘It reassured me that I wanted to wait, too. That I was not desperate to leap into bed with him. That I was not as promiscuous as my...as my...’

      ‘As your mother?’ he guessed suddenly, and it was as though a curtain before his eyes had been lifted.

      ‘Yes.’ Romy did up another button of the shirt almost absently, not noticing that Dominic’s eyes followed the movement obsessively. ‘Then I met you. In the lift. And, well...you know what happened next.’

      She scrubbed at her eyes furiously with the back of her fist, and Dominic had to quash the urge to go across and take her in his arms once more.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, in a grim voice. ‘I know what happened next—it has haunted me ever since, Romy.’

      ‘And me too!’ she retorted fiercely. ‘Or do you really think that I did that kind of thing with every good-looking man I bumped into? Well? Do you?’

      He didn’t give it a moment’s thought. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I don’t think that.’

      She quickly brushed a tear away. ‘I went back to my room that day. I don’t know what I planned to do—maybe talk to my mother, except that she had passed out cold on the bed. And then Mark came by and I...’ She looked up, the truth written in her dark eyes, and Dominic recoiled as though she had hit him.

      ‘You told him?’ he queried incredulously. ‘You told Mark?’

      ‘Yes, of course I told him.’

      ‘Just what, exactly,’ he demanded, his eyes glittering dangerously, ‘did you tell him?’

      Romy swallowed. ‘I told him that we had been—intimate. That if circumstances had been different we probably would have ended up making love. I didn’t go into details about what we had actually done.’

      ‘Thank God for that!’ uttered Dominic quietly.

      ‘I gave him the opportunity to call the wedding off, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He blamed himself, saying that he had put me in that position by not...’ She took a deep, painful breath. ‘By not making love to me himself. He told me that you were the type of man who had always had hundreds of lovers, and that even if I called off the wedding you wouldn’t be interested in me for more than a night.’

      ‘Oh, did he?’ asked Dominic, in a quiet, emotionless voice.

      She knotted her whitened knuckles together. ‘He begged and pleaded with me to stay with him, and to marry him.’

      ‘And you agreed?’ he queried incredulously. ‘You agreed?’

      Her eyes were dark and curiously empty. ‘Yes, I agreed,’ she told him sadly. ‘But I was young, Dominic. Frightened and guilty and confused. And I wanted to escape. Mark knew that—he played on my weaknesses, while I confess that I allowed him to. And I was nothing if not optimistic. I convinced myself that on our wedding night my love and affection for Mark would be enough to obliterate every memory of you.’

      ‘But it didn’t happen?’

      Romy shook her head. ‘No, it didn’t. We didn’t make love on our wedding night, nor on any other night.’

      ‘Mark didn’t want to?’

      ‘Mark couldn’t,’ she told him bluntly. ‘Mark was impotent.’

      He let out a long, tortured sigh. ‘Dear God,’ he said to himself bitterly. ‘And when did you discover this, Romy?’

      She swallowed. ‘On our wedding night, actually. He told me then.’

      Dominic’s eyes narrowed with suppressed rage. ‘He was prepared to do that to you? To begin a marriage knowing that it might never be consummated?’

      Romy stared at him, wide-eyed. She had never thought about it in those terms before. ‘He told me that he had never had any interest in sex, but he was too frightened to go to the doctor about it. And when eventually he did, soon after we were married, we discovered that he had very little time left.’

      ‘And of course you couldn’t leave him then?’ he guessed.

      ‘Of course I couldn’t,’ said Romy. ‘And he didn’t want me to.’

      ‘Emotional blackmail,’ said Dominic heavily.

      ‘Oh, it was a lot more complex than you make it sound, Dominic. In a way, I felt it was the least I could do after betraying him—and with his best friend, too. I was at least in part responsible for the ending of your friendship. And it wasn’t as bad as it sounds—I liked Mark. I always had done. Staying with him was not an awful prison—I was glad to be able to help him. And besides,’ she finished miserably, ‘I had СКАЧАТЬ