Campaign For Loving Read online

  ‘Whatever happened in the past is the past, Blake,’ she said as evenly as she could. ‘I don’t deny that I was naive, and, yes, too clinging. I can understand how that must have irritated you, but you see it was because ... I always knew you married me partially because you felt sorry for me, because I was so inexperienced, and I was so terrified of losing you.’ There was a huge lump in her throat and nothing could have made her look at Blake, but she had to go on. ‘Every time you left I was frightened that you wouldn’t come back; that you would realise you had made a mistake in marrying me.’ She couldn’t go on. ‘We’re here.’

  Henry’s car turned into the car park ahead of them.. There wasn’t time to say any more, and Jaime was glad of the protective dusk when Blake opened the car door for her. She didn’t want to spoil her mother’s evening, so she talked gaily, avoiding Blake’s eyes, hoping she was deceiving the others better than she was deceiving herself.

  Blake was unusually morose, barely speaking to any of them. Surely, her mother and Henry must notice something, she thought nervously, but they were so wrapped up in one another and their love that they didn’t.

  ‘Why don’t you two go and dance?’ Sarah suggested, when she and Henry returned from the small dance floor.

  ‘No. . . .’ Jaime murmured her refusal, but Blake was already on his feet, his arm curving round her waist.

  The tempo of the music slowed slightly as they reached the dance floor. Jaime tried to pull away as Blake circled her completely with his arms, but he wouldn’t let her. Often, in the past, they had danced close together like this, but then she had leaned her head against Blake’s shoulder, her palms pressed flat against his shirt front. Now, she tried to hold herself away stiffly, not wanting the torment of his body brushing hers, but he misunderstood her tension and said thickly, ‘For Christ’s sake, Jaime, I’m not going to rape you in the middle of a dance floor. Try to relax. We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves.’ His hands pressed against her spine as he spoke, forcing her against his body. She could feel the heavy beat of his heart and smell his clean, fresh cologne. Her hands had nowhere to go, other than his chest. The dance seemed to last an unendurable age, but, at last, it was over. By the time they were ready to leave, Jaime’s head was aching with tension.

  Once they got back to the cottage, Henry insisted that they all have a nightcap. Fern hadn’t stirred, Mrs Widdows assured Jaime. ‘Don’t worry about her. She’ll sleep until morning,’ her mother chimed in, ‘and you’ll be able to get ready much faster without her. She’ll love the beaches. I remember the first time I took you to the seaside. You rushed on to the sand and started building a sandcastle.’

  ‘She hasn’t changed much, then,’ Blake pronounced dryly, ‘She did much the same thing on our honeymoon.’

  And afterwards they had made love in the dunes, on the soft car rug Blake had spread there, watching the sea eat into her creation. All at once, she wanted to cry, but tears would change nothing, nothing at all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jaime’s head was still aching the next morning from the tension, and wine, of the night before, when she and Blake drove to her mother’s cottage in an uncommunicative silence. As she knew from their honeymoon, it was at least a four-hour drive to the Pembroke cottage, and she was glad when Fern fell asleep after the first hour.

  ‘Another hour, and we’ll stop somewhere for lunch,’ Blake told her, but Jaime shook her head. ‘Don’t bother unless you’re hungry. I’m not, and Fern will probably sleep through until we get there now.’

  Apart from a brief tightening of his lips over her ungracious response, Blake said nothing.

  The countryside flashed by them, Jaime trying not to remember how it had been the first time she had gone this way with Blake. They had just been married, and she had still been dizzy with wonder because he had wanted her. She stifled a small sound of pain, and tried to follow Fern’s example, leaning back into her seat.

  ‘Wake up, Jaime, we’re here.’

  Blake’s voice sounded very close to her ear. Jaime reluctantly opened her eyes, appalled to discover that she was leaning against his shoulder.

  ‘You’ve been asleep for ages, Mummy,’ Fern accused from the back seat, ‘but Daddy said I wasn’t to wake you.’

  It must have been the tablet she had taken for her headache, Jaime thought muzzily, fighting against a reluctance to lift her head from its solid resting place. Poor Blake, his shoulder muscles must be quite stiff after supporting her weight for so long. If they were, he gave no sign of it, calmly reaching across her to release her seat belt, and then freeing his own before turning to free Fern from her seat.

  For a man who had claimed that he never wanted children, he made a very caring father, Jaime thought as she opened her door and stepped out.

  The cottage was miles from anywhere, perched on the cliffs with the National Trust pathway, that ran the whole length of the Pembrokeshire coast from St David’s, only yards away from the front door. Small and compact, it had been an ideal honeymoon retreat, and Jaime knew that Fern would fall in love with the tiny, secluded beach within easy reach of the cottage, just as she had done.

  The nearest village was three miles away and, during their honeymoon, Jaime and Blake had walked there when they wanted to reprovision. This time, she doubted that there would be long, private walks or lovemaking in the seclusion of the wild headllands. Not that they had spent all their time alone; they had gone one day to Milford Haven, to watch the naval vessels, and another to Haverford West. They had also visited Pembroke Castle. Castles were something Pembroke was rich in, but Fern was too young to want to do much more than play on the beach.

  The cottage was very much as Jaime remembered, with one double bedroom and the two smaller interconnecting ones, into which she put her and Fern’s things.

  ‘Would you like me to unpack for you?’

  Blake was outside, still unloading the car, and he nodded his head briefly at her question. How polite and formal they were being to one another, and yet Jaime felt as though their politeness was unnatural, like the ominous silence before a thunderstorm. Only Fern seemed relaxed, chattering eagerly as she followed Jaime from room to room. The cottage had no television, and Jaime wondered how on earth she and Blake would pass the long, light summer evenings once Fern was in bed.

  As Blake had told her, the freezer in the kitchen was well-stocked, and she had brought with her a selection of Fern’s favourite foods.

  After they had eaten, Fern insisted on going down to the beach.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ Blake offered, and Jaime wondered, watching them go as she tidied up after their meal, if this resentment was something all women felt when they were excluded from the activities of their men and children.

  Half an hour later they were back, Fern clutching some small shells, her face wreathed in smiles. They had paddled in the sea she told Jaime, as Jaime got her ready for bed, and then Daddy had climbed on some rocks. . . .

  Telling herself that she was a coward, Jaime went downstairs and told Blake she was going to bed. ‘I’ve had a headache all day,’ she said, with some truth, ‘and I think I’ll have an early night.’

  ‘I need to stretch my legs,’ Blake informed her when she had finished, ‘I’ll lock up when I get back.’

  Although she strained her ears, listening for sounds of his return, Jaime fell asleep before Blake came back, and their first evening at the cottage set the pattern for the evenings that followed.

  The weather remained hot and sunny, but with a sultriness in the air that promised storms to come. Every morning Jaime took Fern down on the beach while Blake worked, using the portable typewriter he had brought with him. They returned at lunchtime when Jaime prepared a light lunch. After lunch, Fern napped while Jaime worked in the cottage garden or walked to the village.

  Sometimes, later in the afternoon, they went out in the car, although these expeditions were seldom successful. Jaime felt that Blake was accompanying them as a duty, and his
presence was a constant reminder of how much things had changed between them.

  In the evenings he disappeared—to the village pub, Jaime suspected, where he, no doubt, found more congenial adult company than that to be had at the cottage.’

  Their fifth day was much as the others, although it was hotter, the sky a brassy yellow colour. During the afternoon it became so sultry that it was as though the entire countryside was holding its breath.

  Fern was in a fretful and irritable mood that ended in a temper tantrum and tears; for once, she seemed to prefer Jaime’s company to Blake’s, even to the extent of wanting her mother to read her bedtime story, something Blake had done ever since they had come to the cottage.

  When Jaime finished settling Fern and went downstairs, she discovered that Blake had gone out. The thought of another solitary evening was just too much to be borne. A restless urgency pulsated through her body, but, of course, she could not go out and leave Fern.

  Thunder rolled ominously in the distance, and there was no sign of Blake when Jaime went to bed. He would probably get soaked on the return journey from the village, because he had not taken the car. ‘Serves him right for leaving me here alone,’ she thought crossly.

  Jaime was dreaming. She lay trapped in a cold, dark cave, with water dropping on her from the moist, unseen roof. She felt clammy and uncomfortable, but no matter how much she tried to wriggle away, the dripping continued. She shivered and woke up to discover that the dripping had been no dream and that her bedding was saturated from a leak in the ceiling above her bed.

  Outside she could hear the fierce sounds of a storm, her curtains billowed at the open window, and the temperature had dropped several degrees. Cold and wet, she clambered out of bed in the dark, searching for the towelling robe she used for journeys to the bathroom, stubbing her toe on the base of the old-fashioned bed and knocking over a chair as she hopped up and down on one foot.

  Lights sprang on outside her bedroom, the door opening as Blake strode in frowning, ‘What the devil’s going on?’

  Like her, he was wearing a towelling robe, which he was hastily tying, as Jaime indicated the damp ceiling.

  ‘There must be a slate loose. I’ll get someone from the village to look at it tomorrow. It’s probably been loosened by this storm. What about Fern’s room?’

  ‘I’ve only just woken up,’ Jaime told him. ‘I’ll go and check.’

  Fern was sleeping soundly and drily. Jaime turned back to her own room. Blake was leaning over the bed, pulling off the covers and the mattress which he propped up on its side away from the damp.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jaime demanded.

  ‘Propping this thing up so that we can get it dry. Tonight, you’ll have to share with me. You can’t sleep here,’ he pointed out when Jaime was silent, ‘and I’m certainly not giving up my bed to sleep on that apology for a settee downstairs. It’s barely four feet long.’

  It was, Jaime knew. Even she would be cramped up if she tried to sleep on it.

  ‘I’ll sleep in Fern’s room—on the floor,’ she said coolly.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Blake was frowning. ‘Why make a martyr of yourself when there’s a perfectly good double bed available—but then, you always did enjoy that particular role, didn’t you, Jaime? Come on, leave this lot, we’ll get it sorted out in the morning. You’re cold,’ he added, frowning when he saw her shiver.

  ‘And wet,’ Jaime agreed, shivering again. The thought of a cosy, warm bed was extremely alluring. She stifled a yawn. She really was too tired to argue with Blake tonight, and, after all, what was there to fear? That he might try to make love to her? ‘Would that he would!’ a small, inner voice sighed mournfully.

  She looked for a dry nightdress, and then remembered that she had washed her spare one that morning and that it was downstairs in the ironing basket. She grimaced distastefully at the thought of keeping on the damp, clammy one she was wearing, and then remembered the silk ‘teddy’ her mother had bought for her. Eyeing it wryly, she took it with her into the bathroom. It was no more revealing than the cotton tops and shorts she had been wearing all week; but it was decidedly more provocative, she reflected, when she had towelled some warmth into her cold body and slipped it on.

  During the week her skin had tanned, and it glowed softly beneath the fine fabric. The silk clung lovingly to her body, caressing it almost, but it was all she had to wear other than her undies, and so Jaime pulled on her towelling robe, and comforted herself with the thought that Blake would probably be asleep by now anyway.

  He wasn’t. He was propped up in bed, reading some typed sheets with the aid of a bedside lamp, when Jaime walked in.

  Apart from glancing up when she opened the door, he paid no more attention to her. Even so, Jaime kept her back to him as she stood by her side of the bed and quickly slipped off her robe. That way, all he could see of her, if he did look, was her back. She sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed back the covers, and it was then, as she glanced up, that she saw the long pier mirror facing her. In it she could see both her own and Blake’s reflection. He was leaning, watching her, his head propped up by one hand, his work forgotten, and Jaime’s face flamed as she saw the way he was looking at her.

  ‘If you’ve quite finished, I’d like to get some sleep,’ she said icily.

  ‘Why wear it if you didn’t want me to see you in it?’ Blake drawled easily. ‘Why not stick to those cotton monstrosities you seem so fond of?’

  ‘Because I only have two of them with me,’ Jaime seethed. ‘One is soaking wet, and the other is downstairs, unaired. It was either this or nothing. . . .’

  ‘I think I’ll go for the second option,’ Blake said softly, and, before Jaime could stop him, Blake was reaching for the tiny pearl buttons that fastened the front of the teddy.

  ‘Blake, stop it!’ she lashed out at him with small, tight fists.

  ‘Shussh. Don’t make so much noise; you’ll wake Fern,’ he warned, ignoring her attempts to stop him, and easily imprisoning her wrists in the iron span of his fingers, securing them behind her back.

  ‘Umm, very nice.’ His free hand had worked the first few buttons open, and the silk fell away to reveal the tawny rise and fall of her breasts. Jaime kicked angrily out at him, quivering with anger. How dare he treat her like this! She had completely forgotten that, not ten minutes before, a part of her had longed for his lovemaking. The punishing grip of Blake’s fingers jerked her wrists back so that she overbalanced, her arms still pinned beneath her by Blake’s hand.

  ‘Now what are you going to do?’ he mocked softly. ‘I know what I’m going to do, and it’s this.’

  ‘This’ was his fingers flicking open the rest of the buttons that ran down to her navel. She looked like some slave girl spread out for her master’s delectation, Jaime thought disgustedly, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Her skin glowed tawny against the soft silk, the rise and fall of her breasts tightening the frail fabric through which she could clearly see the outline of her own nipples. Even the way she had fallen on to the bed when Blake overpowered her suggested a sensuality that angered her, her body a languid sprawl of sleek, tanned legs and provocative, pale silk.

  ‘Blake, this is ridiculous. Let me go at once,’ she protested.

  ‘In a moment. When you’ve told me you don’t want me to do this . . .’ He bent his head, and his tongue delicately flicked aside the fragile silk that covered one taut nipple, ‘or this . . .’ The tormentingly light, moist circles his tongue painted around her pulsating flesh had Jaime tensing her whole body against the urge to cry out the need his touch engendered.

  ‘Well . . . tell me you don’t, and I’ll stop.’

  She wanted to. Oh, how badly she wanted to, if only for the sake of her pride, but her tongue seemed to have stuck to the roof of her mouth. Speech was impossible. There was only feeling— wave upon wave of it—as Blake turned his attention to her other breast, repeating the torment he had already inflicted.


  ‘You always did enjoy this,’ he murmured shamingly, studying her flushed face with knowing eyes. ‘You want to deny it, but you can’t, can you Jaime? This,’ he touched his mouth to the pulse pounding at the base of her throat, ‘betrays you. It’s no use, Jaime,’ he told her softly, ‘I mean to have the response from you I know your body wants to give, even if it takes all night.’

  ‘Blake . . . please, you can’t do this,’ Jaime protested, making a last-ditch attempt to sway him. ‘You can’t use me, just to slake a sexual hunger. . . .’

  ‘Why not?’ he countered smoothly, with a barely discernible edge of anger under the soft words, ‘You’re using me to protect your mother. . . .’

  When he said that, Jaime knew she could not argue against him. Without another protest, she forced her body to relax.

  ‘All right, Blake,’ she said numbly, ‘rape me, if you must, but just . . . just get it over with.’

  ‘It won’t be rape,’ Blake told her softly, ‘and I promise you, Jaime, you won’t want me to “get it over with”, but to prolong every tormenting moment of pleasure. You always did.’

  It was useless to deny what he was saying. They both knew it was the truth. He bent his head, tracing a line of kisses down between her smooth breasts, down to where the final button lay close to her navel. Jaime drew in a sharp breath and then tried to release it as his tongue investigated the small hollow. She tried not to move but her body betrayed her, quivering in heated response to Blake’s expert caresses. His tongue drew a line along the barrier of silk, and Jaime moaned protestingly, tugging her arms free. Blake released her, as though he knew that, this time, she didn’t want to hold him off.

  Her fingers stroked the smoothly compact muscles of his back, tracing the line of his spine, her body arching in helpless supplication to the sweet torment he was wreaking. When he lifted her hips to slide the silk free, Jaime sighed with pleasure, welcoming the sensation of skin against skin as the hard warmth of his thigh brushed against her. Now there was no question of her not wanting him to go on. Her whole body cried out for him, shamelessly telling him so, as it arched and seduced.