Lingering Shadows. PENNY JORDAN

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      Davina turned into the drive. She was home. Home; she smiled mirthlessly to herself as she stopped the car and got out.

      She had lived in this house all her life and she felt very little affinity towards it. It had never truly been hers. During her father’s lifetime it had been his, and after his death … Well, he might have willed it to her, but she had never truly felt it belonged to her.

      It had been Gregory, during one of his many affairs, who had produced the interior designer responsible for its present décor; she and Gregory had been having a passionate affair at the time, and even though she knew it was quite ridiculous, since she knew Gregory could never have had sex with her here at home, Davina felt somehow as though the very fabrics the woman had chosen were impregnated with the musky odour of sex.

      She loathed the brilliant harsh colours the woman had chosen, the dramatic blacks and reds, the—to her—ugly rawness of so much colour and emotion. They made the rooms seem claustrophobic, reminding Davina of that awful honeymoon hotel with its cramped room and lack of air.

      As she unlocked the front door and walked into the hall she wondered with a certain wry amusement if she was always to associate sex with a lack of breathable air. She also wondered even more wryly if, had it not been for Matt, she would ever have felt this faint stirring of curiosity about Giles. If all she had ever known was Gregory’s lovemaking, somehow she doubted it.

      It had been a long time now since she had finally recognised that Gregory might not have been the skilled lover he had always claimed. Five years, to be precise.

      But now wasn’t the time to think of Matt.

      ‘Lucy, I’m home.’

      Giles tensed as he heard the sound of pans being slammed in the kitchen. Increasingly these days he dreaded coming home, dreaded the inevitable row that followed his arrival.

      Ducking his head to avoid the house’s low beams, he walked slowly towards the kitchen. Outside the closed door, he paused, mentally willing away his involuntary mental image of opening the door and finding not Lucy, his wife, waiting there for him, her face sharp with temper, but Davina.

      Davina, who always looked so cool and calm; Davina, whom he had never once heard raise her voice; Davina, who was always so relaxed, so easy to be with, her manner directly the opposite of that of his emotional, highly volatile wife.

      He must stop thinking like this, he told himself fiercely as he took a deep breath and then pushed open the kitchen door.

      Lucy was standing by the sink.

      She was tall and slim, her thick, dark red curls a fiery glow of colour round her small pale face. Her eyes, green and almond-shaped, glittered with temper. Giles could almost see it vibrating through her tense body as she glared at him.

      ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she demanded. ‘You were supposed to be back at half-past five.’

      ‘I had to talk to Davina.’

      ‘Oh, you did, did you? And did you tell her that you were leaving? That she wasn’t going to have your broad manly shoulder to cry on for much longer?’

      Giles winced at the bitterness, the acidity in her voice.

      She had gone too far. She could see it from Giles’s face, and for a moment she was afraid. She had thought she had learned to control these rages, these outbursts of temper fuelled by fear and insecurity.

      ‘Well, I hope you’ve had something to eat,’ she told Giles, ‘because there certainly isn’t anything here for you. Half-past five, you said. It’s almost seven.’

      ‘I’m not hungry,’ Giles told her wearily. ‘I’ll make myself a sandwich later.’

      ‘Why bother?’ Lucy goaded him, driven relentlessly towards self-destruction by her fear and anguish. ‘Why not ring Davina and have dinner with her? She’s a wonderful cook … although rumour has it that she wasn’t much good in bed. Still, that won’t bother you, will it, darling? You haven’t had much interest in that department yourself recently, have you? Or is it just me you don’t want?’

      ‘Lucy, please,’ Giles begged her wearily. ‘Not now. I——’

      ‘You what? You don’t want to discuss it. All right, let’s discuss something else, then, shall we? Like your telling Davina that you weren’t going to stay. You did tell her that, didn’t you, Giles?’

      Giles sighed. ‘I … I tried. Look,’ he said desperately when he saw Lucy’s face, ‘it won’t be for much longer. Only another few weeks. She needs me, Lucy.’

      He knew the moment he said it that he had said the wrong thing, but as he watched the way Lucy’s face closed up, her eyes as hard and flat as dull river pebbles, he also knew it was too late to call back his words.

      As Lucy slammed down the pan she had been holding and walked past him he said desperately, ‘Lucy, please try to understand …’

      As she opened the door she turned on him, feral as a maimed cat. ‘I do understand,’ she told him. ‘I understand that Davina James is more important to you than I am.’ As she slammed the door the whole house seemed to shake.

      It was an old house, parts of it dating back to the fourteenth century, a long low-timbered building. They had bought it eight years ago when they first moved here shortly after their marriage.

      They had been so happy then. So much, so passionately in love. When had it all changed? Why?

      He had thought himself so blessed when he met Lucy, bemused by the way she had flirted with him, teased him and coaxed him, dazzled by her fire, by the life, the energy that filled and drove her. She had been a passionate lover, overwhelming all his hesitation, overwhelming him.

      He had been thrilled, disbelieving almost when she had told him she wanted to marry him, shy, hesitant, unsure of him for the first time in their relationship. He had loved her so much then. And he still loved her now. At least, a part of him did; another part of him …

      He tensed as he heard the front door slam and then the sound of her car engine starting up.

      It had been unjust of her to accuse him of not wanting her any more. She had been the one to reject him, to turn away when he reached for her, to let him know without words that his body, his touch no longer aroused her.

      Helplessly Giles sat down, his head in his hands. Maybe for the sake of his marriage he should have stood firm and told Davina that he could not stay on. Maybe he should have done, but the truth of it was that he hadn’t wanted to. The truth was that he had looked at Davina and had ached to take her in his arms, to hold her, to protect her. Davina was that kind of woman. She did not, as Lucy had always done, challenge his masculinity, she complemented it. Where Lucy was all fire and passion, Davina was all loving, comforting serenity, and something within him ached to have that serenity wrapped around him.

      He was so tired. Tired of Lucy’s wild outbursts of temper, her volatility, of all the things about her that had once held him in such thrall. Including her passion? Her love for him?

      Sick at heart, he groaned helplessly to himself.

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