Savage Atonement Page 7

  ‘It’s all right, Laurel,’ he told her drily, ‘You can look at me without me pouncing on you, you know. You must be hot in that outfit,’ he commented, suddenly changing the subject, glancing casually at her tweed-suited figure and heavy shoes. ‘Have you brought anything lighter with you?’

  She had—two linen suits and the staid court shoes she wore during the summer for work.

  ‘A swimsuit?’ he queried, grimacing slightly as she coloured. ‘No, of course not, I don’t suppose you possess such a thing, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a pool,’ she said evasively.

  ‘And of course nothing in this world would persuade you to swim totally nude. Not even if I were to tell you that the kiss of the water against your skin is the most erotic sensation in the world, after the kiss of a lover’s body, of course.’

  Laurel was aware that hectic patches of colour stained her cheeks, Her head bent and her voice husky, she pleaded, ‘You shouldn’t talk to me like that.’

  ‘Why not? Do you find it… disturbing? You shouldn’t—you’re frigid, remember?’

  ‘I find it… disgusting!’ Laurel spat back at him. ‘Perhaps your women friends enjoy being spoken to like that, but.…’

  ‘It isn’t conversation my “woman friends” as you’re pleased to call them want from me, Laurel,’ Oliver told her softly, watching the colour come and go in her face. There was a small, electric pause.

  ‘Come on,’ he said abruptly. ‘We won’t be able to get any work done tonight, but at least we can make the place habitable. I hope you weren’t expecting luxury and a cleaning staff laid on? We get deliveries once a week from the local town, but that’s the limit, and I don’t intend to waste precious time on shopping trips. Which do you prefer to do? Making the beds or doing the dusting?’

  ‘I’ll make the beds,’ Laurel offered, avoiding his eyes as they glowed with mocking awareness of her disturbed emotions as he showed her where the bedlinen was stored. As he bent down to open the chest the nape of his neck was exposed, oddly vulnerable in some way, and she had a sudden urge to reach down and touch the thick glossy hair. An urge she subdued in appalled horror, only too aware of Oliver’s mocking reaction if he were to glance upwards and see what she had been feeling.

  She couldn’t understand herself, she reflected an hour later, as she finished washing the patterned china off the dresser. Hitherto she had hated and loathed all men, dreading their touch, hating them to come anywhere near her, and yet she had experienced both curiosity and an urge to touch Oliver’s body. She couldn’t understand it, and she told herself it was a natural result of her desire to be revenged upon him. After all, how was she going to be able to find his weak points if she didn’t get to know him?

  With that in mind she studied him covertly over their evening meal. Oliver, much to her surprise, had insisted on preparing them an omelette and salad, both of which Laurel found she was enjoying. She watched him as he ate, each movement sparing and controlled, unlike her stepfather, who had been wont to eat greedily.

  He hadn’t aged much in the last six years. If anything his features were harder, leaner, that was all.

  ‘Tired?’

  She hadn’t realised that while she studied him, he had been watching her.

  ‘A little,’ she admitted, ‘but there’s still the washing up and I haven’t unpacked.’ With a start she remembered that her case was still in the car.

  ‘I’ll go and get it for you,’ Oliver announced when she mentioned this, ‘but don’t bother unpacking tonight,’ he advised her. ‘Leave it until tomorrow. We won’t start work for a couple of days. I’ve got some reading up to do, and it could take you a while to work off the effects of the journey, especially if you intend to walk around dressed for the Arctic,’ he added, giving her tweed suit a cynical glance. ‘Why do you do it, Laurel?’ he asked. ‘A way of repelling all boarders, like the hairstyle all scraped back and severe?’

  He saw too much, knew too much, and it frightened her.

  ‘I.… It’s tidy,’ she said defensively, her hand going instinctively to her sleek chignon. ‘I prefer it like this.’ She had a vivid memory of how she had looked in court, her hair all wild and untidy, and how the jury had reacted. ‘It suits me better.’

  ‘You think so?’ For a moment Oliver’s eyes were oddly compassionate. ‘You go on up to bed, I’ll get your case and leave it on the landing—and, Laurel…’ She looked up at him. ‘There’s plenty of hot water if you want a bath, and I promise you you won’t be disturbed.’

  She gave him a cold glare. Of course she wouldn’t be disturbed. She knew very well she was hardly likely to appear desirable in the eyes of a man like Oliver Savage, and with the knowledge for some reason came a tiny shaft of pain, as though there was something to regret in that fact.

  Later, drowsy and on the edge of sleep, she found herself remembering that tiny shaft of pain, remembering and questioning it, but she was asleep before she could find an answer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE sun streaming in through her window eventually woke her, too strong to be restrained by the thin curtains. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was, and then she glanced at her watch in dismay, sensing that she had overslept.

  It was half-past nine. Oliver had said that they wouldn’t start work immediately, but he had mentioned sharing the chores, and for all she knew that meant her getting the breakfast.

  She remembered the meal he had prepared the previous evening and how much she had enjoyed it. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so relaxed in the company of another human being, and yet underlying the relaxation had been a frisson of excitement. An awareness of him as a person—as a man!

  She was letting her imagination run away with her, she scolded herself; any excitement she might have felt had its roots in her determination to be revenged upon Oliver for the past. She groped towards the end of the bed for the thick, quilted housecoat she had brought with her, then remembered that she hadn’t got as far as unpacking it. She looked round for her case, sure that she had left it beside the bed, but now it seemed to have vanished.

  ‘Lost something?’ Oliver drawled from the door. He held a cup of steaming fragrant coffee in one had, the other propping him up against the door frame. Hastily averting her eyes from the dark vee of flesh exposed by the unbuttoned neck of his shirt, Laurel nodded her head.

  ‘My case. I’m sure I put it by the bed last night.…’

  ‘So you did,’ he agreed, sauntering easily into her room and placing the coffee beside her bed. ‘And I removed it—after you’d gone to sleep.’

  ‘You.…’ For a moment Laurel thought she must have misheard him.

  ‘I removed it,’ he repeated softly. ‘Shall I tell you why? You’re dressing like a woman of fifty plus, Laurel, hiding your body behind a barrier of unenchanting clothes. I’ve already told you why I brought you here.…’

  ‘So that you could turn me into a woman,’ she agreed bitterly, forgetting her determination not to antagonise him. The sense of wellbeing with which she had awoken was totally destroyed, and she shrank instinctively further down the bed as Oliver stretched out lazily and flipped back the covers, grimacing at the prim plainness of her thick cotton nightdress, which enveloped her from head to foot.

  ‘What am I suppose to do?’ she demanded huskily, not wanting to meet his eyes; not wanting to witness the derision she knew must be in them. ‘Wear this all the time I’m here?’

  ‘Hardly,’ he replied dryly. ‘It’s even worse than that obnoxious tweed suit. No, my dear Laurel, you will wear the clothes I bought for you in Nice when I arrived. Oh, please don’t thank me,’ he drawled mockingly when her mouth fell open. ‘Call it a small recompense for past… errors. Don’t you want to see what I bought you?’

  An inner instinct warned her that he was being deliberately provocative; that he expected her to react, and so she was doing, her body quivering in fierce indignation, and pain too. With a jolt she realised tha
t his condemnation of her clothes had hurt, and he had been right, she admitted bleakly. She had used her clothes as a barrier. Her clothes and her hairstyle.… Her hands went automatically to her hair, thick and loose.

  ‘Leave it,’ Oliver instructed as she started to screw it up on top of her head. His fingers covered hers, but his eyes weren’t on her hair, they were on the taut thrust of her breasts, their shape outlined by the movement of her arms, and a hot wave of colour flooded over her body, as just for a moment his glanced stripped her of the camouflage of her nightgown, And then nausea followed embarrassment as she remembered how her stepfather had looked at her, his features transposing themselves on Oliver’s.

  ‘Laurel!’

  His voice held a command she couldn’t ignore. It was as though he knew what had happened and was determined not to let her confuse him with her stepfather.

  ‘Laurel, look at me.’ His voice was husky and compelling.

  ‘I don’t want your clothes,’ she told him bitterly, using her anger to stamp out other, less understandable emotions.

  ‘Oh yes, you do,’ he contradicted softly, ‘and if need be I’ll dress you in them myself. You’re a woman, Laurel,’ he goaded her. ‘Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious? Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to have a man look at your body with love?’

  ‘With lust, don’t you mean?’ she shot back at him. ‘And I know what it’s like!’

  ‘Laurel, all men aren’t like your stepfather. Surely you can accept that? Surely you can take that first step towards freedom?’

  ‘Freedom?’ She looked up at him, and she sighed.

  ‘You’re trapped in a cage, Laurel,’ he told her, ‘and the only way out is by learning to trust, to believe that all men aren’t like your stepfather.’ He spoke quietly, intently, almost sincerely, but of course he couldn’t be sincere, she knew that.

  ‘Perhaps I like my cage,’ she returned doggedly. ‘Perhaps it’s safer inside than out.’

  ‘Cages are lonely, stultifying places, Laurel,’ he warned her slowly. ‘Outside you can breathe clean air, experience everything that life has to offer. It may not be safe and it may not be protective, but it’s a damned sight better than slowly dying of cowardice. Now, drink your coffee, and I’ll show you what I’ve bought for you.’

  He was treating her like a child, Laurel thought impotently, overruling every objection she raised by the simple expedient of ignoring them, and she was completely at his mercy. Was this what he had had in mind all along? She ought to have listened to him when he told her how long he had been looking for her. Ought to have thought less about retribution and more about his motives for agreeing so readily to her suggestion that she work for him.

  ‘Is this what you had in mind all along?’ she demanded tautly as he passed her the coffee cup. ‘Turning me back into a woman, freeing me from the past?’

  ‘No, because I didn’t know how it had affected you. Initially I merely wanted to apologise, but when I saw you—You said yourself that I was partially to blame, Laurel. I’m a man who always pays his debts.…’

  ‘And if I don’t want this one paid?’

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ he said softly. ‘It’s just the method of payment we’re arguing about, isn’t it—not the necessity for it?’

  He move away from the bed and opened the armoire, tossing several prettily wrapped packages on to her bed.

  ‘Try pretending it’s Christmas,’ he told her flippantly. ‘When I was doing this I didn’t know whether to buy things for the girl you were or the woman you should have become.’

  ‘And which did you decide on?’

  ‘Look for yourself,’ he suggested.

  ‘I’m not going to wear them!’

  ‘Not willingly perhaps,’ he agreed, ‘but wear them you will—understand that, Laurel. You’ve clung to the past for too long. It’s over—finished.’

  ‘It can never be over,’ she told him fiercely, ‘can’t you understand that? Can’t you see that every time a man looks at me or touches me.…’

  ‘He becomes your stepfather? Of course I can see it, Laurel. But the issues aren’t as clear-cut as that, are they?’ he suggested, watching her.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘No? I think you do. You hate me nearly as much as you hate him. He’s gone beyond your reach, but I’m still here. Sometimes the only way to stop a forest fire is to start another, do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?’

  ‘No,’ she told him shortly, appalled by his astuteness.

  ‘I think you do, but never mind, one step at a time will do me fine for now. So, are you going to open those parcels and thank me nicely, or would you prefer me to drag you screaming from that bed and put them on you?’

  Strangely enough she was not frightened of him sexually; her rage against him was too great for that, and with fingers that trembled uncontrollably she unwrapped the gaily wrapped packages.

  One contained a minute bikini in autumn gold and sizzling blue, so brief that she couldn’t imagine herself wearing it. To her chagrin Oliver laughed at the expression on her face.

  ‘Quite modest by South of France standards, I can assure you,’ he told her. ‘Madame in the boutique would much have preferred to sell me a sexy cache-sex, consisting of little more than a minute triangle of silk and a pretty ribbon. Normally I’m not an advocate of any female apart from the adolescent going topless, but in your case.…’ His eyes returned thoughtfully to her breasts, causing her to shrink deeper into the bed.

  ‘Open the rest of them,’ Oliver instructed, throwing them towards her. ‘The bikini you can wear when you’re sunbathing, but even I have to admit it isn’t quite the thing for taking dictation in.’

  One of the other parcels contained emerald cut-off jeans and a brief white tee-shirt, plain but very obviously expensive, another a cream linen skirt, with a toning striped blazer and a brilliant peacock blue blouse. There was a button-through cotton dress, two pairs of shoes, and then in the last parcel several sets of underwear; all plain white; all beautifully made in satin and lace.

  ‘Bra and briefs only,’ Oliver told her dryly. ‘Something tells me you’ve a long way to go before you start choosing underwear with a lover in mind rather than simple necessity.’

  ‘I’ll never do that,’ Laurel told him jerkily, flinging the garments away as though they had contaminated her. ‘I’d rather die than wear anything you bought for me!’ What was the matter with her? For a moment she had almost felt tears pricking her eyes.

  ‘Ah, but then there are fates far worse than death, aren’t there, Laurel?’ he reminded her cruelly. ‘Try telling yourself it’s like taking nasty medicine and that it’s good for you in the long run. Can you honestly tell me you don’t want to be able to give and receive love, Laurel?’

  The angry words she wanted to utter died on her lips at the image he had conjured up. A bitter yearning filled her, and she was acutely aware of a sensation of terrible loss. She couldn’t afford to give way to such weaknesses. Ruthlessly she reminded herself why she had come to France.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Oliver told her, scooping up her hairclips from the dresser where she had left them. ‘Leave your hair down. Be brave, Laurel, take the first step back into life. You can do it, you know.’

  After he had gone she did contemplate simply remaining where she was, but she knew that he would simply return and do as he had threatened—dress her himself. A wave of sheer resentment flooded over her. How dared he take over her life in this high-handed manner? But it wouldn’t be for long, she comforted herself. She would soon find some means of turning the tables on him. There must be something she could discover about him that she could use to her own advantage. All she had to do was to discover it!

  She dressed in one of the silky bras he had bought for her, flushing as she realised how accurately he had guessed her measurements. The soft fabric clung seductively to her curves, making her aware of her femininity; the matching briefs wer
e tiny and she hastily averted her eyes from her body, wondering a little at the heat that suddenly overwhelmed her.

  She chose to wear the cut-off jeans and the tee-shirt, feeling strange having her hair curling down past her shoulders instead of restricted on top of her head.

  ‘Very good,’ Oliver pronounced when she finally plucked up the courage to go downstairs. ‘Now you look like a girl of twenty-two.’ He reached up, brushing his knuckles against her skin before she could move away.

  ‘Real peaches and cream,’ he stated softly, ‘and eyelashes so dark they don’t need mascara. You’re a very attractive lady, Laurel.’

  ‘You don’t have to pay me compliments,’ she told him in a stilted voice, ‘especially as we both know they aren’t true.’

  ‘No?’ His eyebrows rose.’ And just what the hell do you know about the truth? All you know is what your stepfather told you, isn’t it Laurel? Didn’t he tell you, you were desirable?’

  Panic clawed at her stomach, horror screaming through her veins, She wanted to turn and run; blot out his question; anything to hide from the memories it evoked. His glance seared her with its fierce intensity.

  ‘Didn’t he, Laurel?’ Oliver pressed, grasping her arm as though he sensed her desire to flee.

  ‘You know what he told me,’ she said bitterly. ‘You wrote it all down… he told me I led him on, he.…’

  ‘He told you you were desirable,’ Oliver repeated inexorably. ‘He told you that, didn’t he, Laurel, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, yes.…’ Suddenly she was screaming the word. Her hands pressed over the ears to obliterate his tormenting questions. Tears spurted from her eyes and she was seized in a vortex of pain and anguish, barely aware of Oliver’s arms coming round her, cradling her while she sobbed convulsively against his shoulder. As she got her emotions back under control, she became aware of the fact that she was in Oliver’s arms; that he was stroking her hair, soothing her with soft whispers, gentling her, she realised with a stab of perception, as though she were a terrified wild creature.