Duelling Fire Read online

  ‘Good.’ Harriet smiled now. ‘I think we’re going to get on very well.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Harriet finished her coffee, and then lay back in her chair, regarding Sara with apparent affection. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve always wanted a daughter. Someone to talk to, to share my thoughts with, someone young and beautiful like you …’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  Sara grimaced, but Harriet was serious. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘Once I hoped, but—it was not to be.’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t know what it means to me, now that you’re here.’

  ‘I just hope I can make myself useful.’ Sara paused. ‘You still haven’t told me what you would like me to do.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’ Harriet lifted her hand, as if it was of no consequence. ‘There’s plenty of time for that. Settle down first, get the feel of the place, adjust to our way of life. Then we’ll start worrying about what there is for you to do.’

  Sara sighed. ‘I don’t want to be a parasite.’

  ‘You won’t be that, my dear.’

  ‘No, but—well, if there’s not a lot for me to do here, perhaps I could take a job, even a part-time one, to help support—–’

  ‘I wouldn’t hear of it.’ Harriet sat upright. ‘I’m not a poor woman, Sara. One extra mouth to feed is not going to bankrupt me. And besides, there’ll be plenty for you to do, you’ll see.’

  Sara was doubtful. Her foolish ideas of changing library books, reading to her aunt, or taking her for drives in the country, seemed so remote now and she didn’t honestly see what she could do to earn her keep.

  ‘Now, you’ll need some money,’ Harriet went on in a businesslike tone. ‘I propose to make you a monthly allowance, paid in advance, of course, and deposited to your account at the bank in Buford.’

  ‘I do have a little money,’ Sara protested, but Harriet waved her objections aside.

  ‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘You don’t know when a little capital might come in handy. Take the allowance, Sara. It would please me.’

  Sara shook her head a trifle bemusedly. She was grateful to Harriet, more grateful than she could ever say; but vaguely apprehensive too, although of what she could not imagine. It was like a dream come true, this house, her room—Harriet’s kindness. Surely even Laura could have no complaints in such idyllic surroundings.

  Jude had not returned when Sara went to bed. Janet brought hot chocolate and biscuits at ten o’clock, and by the time Sara had drunk hers, her eyes were drooping. It had been a long day, and in many ways an exhausting one, not least on her nerves, and she was relieved when Harriet suggested she should retire.

  ‘You must get your beauty sleep, darling,’ she remarked, lifting her cheek for Sara to kiss, and the girl hid her slight embarrassment as she quickly left the room.

  The stairs were shadowy, now that the chandelier was no longer lit, but her room was warm and cosy. Someone had been in, in her absence, and turned down her bed, the rose-pink sheets soft and inviting, folded over the downy quilt.

  Sara quickly shed her clothes and replaced them with a pair of cotton pyjamas. Then, after cleaning her teeth and removing her make-up, she slid between the sheets with eager anticipation. It was so good to feel the mattress yielding to her supple young body, and she curled her toes deliciously against the silky poplin. Sleep, she thought, that was what she needed. Right now, her mind was too confused to absorb any deeper impressions.

  She must have fallen asleep immediately. She scarcely remembered turning out the lamp, but she awakened with a start to find her room in total darkness, so she must have done. She knew at once what had awakened her. The sound was still going on. And she lay there shivering unpleasantly, as the voices that had disturbed her sleep continued. She couldn’t hear everything that they were saying. Only now and then, Harriet’s voice rose to a crescendo and a tearful phrase emerged above the rest. For the most part it was a low and angry exchange, with Jude’s attractive tenor deepened to a harsh and scathing invective.

  Sara located the sound as coming from a room some distance along the corridor. Harriet’s room perhaps, at its position above the stairs: a likely explanation why their voices carried so well. The echoing vault of the hall would act as an acoustic, throwing the sounds back at her with unwelcome resonance.

  Drawing the quilt over her head, she endeavoured to deafen herself to the exchange, but it was impossible. Phrases like: You don’t care how you hurt me! and Jude, please! were unmistakable, and Sara would have rather slept in the stables than be an unwilling witness to such humiliation.

  The sounds ceased with sudden abruptness. A door slammed, footsteps sounded—descending the stairs?—and then silence enveloped the old house once again. Sara expelled her breath on a gulp, and only as she did so did she realise she had been holding it. It was stupid, but even her breathing had thundered in her ears while they were rowing, her heart hammering noisily as she struggled to bury her head in the pillows.

  Turning on to her back, she now strained her ears to hear anything at all, but there was nothing. Only the haunting cry of an owl as it swooped low over the house disturbed the stillness, and her limbs trembled weakly as she realised it was over.

  What time was it? she wondered, and gathering herself with difficulty, she leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp. The little carriage clock glinted in the shadows, its pointers showing a quarter to two. Goodness, she thought, switching the light out again, it was the middle of the night!

  Of course, it was impossible to get back to sleep again. The first exhausted hours were over, and had she not had the proof of seeing the time for herself, she would have guessed it was almost morning. She felt wide awake, and restless, and with what had just happened to disturb her thoughts she knew it was hopeless to expect to relax.

  After lying for perhaps fifteen minutes, staring into the darkness, she leaned over again and switched the lamp back on. The clock chimed as she did so, just one delightful little ring to mark the hour, and she gazed at it disconsolately, wishing it was later. It wouldn’t be light for hours and she had learned to hate the darkness since her father’s death. She remembered everything connected with that night so clearly, not least the clammy coldness of her father’s skin when she had tried to wake him …

  Unable to bear the connotation, Sara swung her legs out of bed and pushed her toes into her slippers. She needed something to make her sleep, but the tablets the doctor had given her she had flushed down the lavatory. And in any case, lately, she had not needed anything. Living with Laura had helped her get things into perspective, and time and healthy exhaustion had done the rest. But tonight was different. She was in a strange house, in a strange bed—and the argument that had woken her had implications she could not ignore. Was this what her father had meant when he had spoken of Harriet having troubles of her own? Had he known of Jude’s existence? Or the relationship between them?

  Pulling on a cotton wrapper over her pyjamas, Sara opened her door and listened. The corridor was silent, the only light coming through the window at the end, a silvery moonlight, that turned everything grey.

  Sara’s tongue circled her lips. Jude had evidently gone to his room. The house was quiet now, and no one would know if she slipped down to the library and helped herself to a drink. Alcohol was the only thing she could think of that might make her drowsy, and she might even take a book from the shelves while she was there, just to help it along.

  Drawing her door almost closed, she padded along the corridor and reached the head of the stairs without incident. The hall below was dark and empty, and without giving herself time to speculate upon the possible ghosts which might haunt an old building like this, she ran lightfooted down the stairs.

  She was breathing quickly when she reached the hall, but the library door was unmistakable. She remembered exactly where she had been standing when Jude spoke to her earlier, and she crossed to it quickly and turned the handle.

  The fire
was just a few glowing embers now, enough to give a little warmth but no illumination. With careful precision Sara closed the door behind her, before reaching blindly for the switch.

  She felt, rather than heard, the movement behind her, the sudden awareness that she was not alone in the room, that prickled up her spine with icy fingers. Cold panic reigned for only a moment before her hand found the switch, but the frantic flicking of the catch produced no cheering illumination. Either the bulb was defunct or it had been removed—both possibilities offering little in the way of reassurance—and Sara’s hand went automatically for the door knob, in a terrified attempt to get out of the room again.

  But the door wouldn’t open. No matter how she twisted and tugged at the handle, something seemed to be preventing the door from moving, and a sob of hysteria rose in her throat as something brushed over her shoulder.

  The flooding warmth of mellow light caused a choking cry to escape her, followed almost immediately by a sense of bitter resentment. The reason why the door would not open was plain. Jude was leaning against it, his broad shoulders encased only in the brown silk shirt he had been wearing earlier, resting easily against the panels. The thing that had brushed her shoulder must have been his hand, on its way to the switch, although how he had been able to work it when she could not, she couldn’t imagine.

  But her own anger at his cruel game was more than equalled by the fury in Jude’s face, the curiously light eyes gleaming with pure malice as they rested on Sara’s flushed cheeks.

  ‘What the hell are you doing down here?’ he snapped, before she could gather herself sufficiently to offer her own protest. ‘Sneaking about in the dark! What did you expect to find?’

  Sara swallowed her indignation. ‘I came to get a drink, actually,’ she declared, pulling the lapels of her wrapper closer across her throat. ‘I had no idea you were in here, or I shouldn’t have intruded. And—and in any case, you had no reason to frighten me like that!’

  ‘Frighten you!’ Jude’s mouth twisted. ‘You gave me one hell of a start, creeping in here like some pale wraith at the dead of night!’

  ‘I was not creeping!’ Sara resented his tone. ‘I—I just didn’t want to disturb anyone, that’s all.’

  Jude straightened away from the door. ‘Having been disturbed yourself, one supposes,’ he remarked sardonically.

  ‘Well—perhaps.’ Sara was loath to admit as much. ‘I— I was thirsty, that’s all.’

  ‘So you came for—what? Scotch? Sherry? Isn’t the water in your bathroom good enough?’

  Sara sighed. ‘All right. I wanted something to help me get to sleep.’

  Jude surveyed her broodingly, one hand searching inside the unbuttoned front of his shirt. It was a disturbingly sensuous gesture, and one that Sara in her heated emotional state was not unaware of, and she had to drag her eyes away from his lean body and the confusing feelings it engendered.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he said, after a moment, and although Sara wanted nothing so much as to get away from him, and the disruptive effect he had on her, she forced herself to cross to the cabinet and pick up a bottle of Scotch.

  As she fumbled for a glass, she noticed his jacket thrown carelessly over the desk and another bottle standing significantly beside the sofa. Obviously, that was where he had been sitting—or lying?—when she entered the room, but it still didn’t explain how he had been able to turn on the light when she hadn’t.

  The bottle was hard to open, and as if growing impatient with her uselessness, Jude came and took it from her. The stopper unwound easily beneath his strong fingers, and he poured a generous measure into her glass before closing it again.

  ‘I—that’s too much—–’

  The amount he had given her looked equal to two doubles, and Sara was not sure her head could stand it. She didn’t want to spend her first day at Knight’s Ferry with a hangover, but his expression mirrored his derision.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, with mocking politeness, and before she could make any objection he had lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed half at a gulp. ‘Better?’

  Sara took the tumbler from him half resentfully, and the grey eyes revealed his awareness of her reluctance to drink from the same glass. It was as if he was, in some obscure way, using her to assuage his own frustrations, and she sensed the dangerous precipitation of his mood.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to drink it?’ and she glanced nervously down at the glass in her hand.

  ‘I—I thought I might take it up to bed,’ she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze, and the taunting bitterness of his expression made her wish she had never left her room.

  ‘I guess in that outfit, it’s the only offer you’re likely to get,’ he remarked offensively, and Sara’s indignation at last spilled from her.

  ‘It’s the only offer I’d want from a parasite like you!’ she snapped, ignoring the ominous tautening of his face muscles. ‘You may believe your position here entitles you to behave without consideration for anyone’s feelings but your own, I don’t! And I should warn you, if you have conceived any notion that I might provide a passing diversion, forget it! I’m not interested.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ The words seemed to be torn from him, the usually light eyes smouldering with a dark and angry flame. ‘And what if I don’t accept that? What if I choose to prove to you that you could be oh, so wrong? What are you going to do about it?’

  Sara’s face burned. ‘I—I think you’ve had too much to drink, Mr Jude—–’ she began, only to break off convulsively when his hand closed round her wrist, forcing her to lift the glass she was holding to her lips.

  ‘Go on,’ he said harshly. ‘Drink it. Put your lips where mine have been. Sicken yourself!’

  Sara gulped. ‘You’re crazy—–’

  ‘Am I?’ A dark brow quirked. ‘Why? For letting you speak to me like that? Believe it, if you were a man, I’d have knocked your teeth down your throat before now!’

  Sara quivered. ‘If I was a man, I wouldn’t have said it.’

  ‘You might,’ he retorted grimly. ‘It wasn’t all to do with sex, was it? I seem to remember you said something about my being a parasite.’

  Sara tried to free her wrist, but all she did was spill Scotch on the carpet. ‘I want to go to bed—–’

  ‘I am not a parasite, Miss Shelley,’ he stated harshly. ‘I work for my living, believe me. You’ll find out.’

  Sara did feel sick now. ‘Please let me go,’ she begged, tugging away from him, but her behaviour only seemed to incense him further. With a savage twist he took her wrist behind her back and brought her up close to him, the glass spinning heedlessly on to the floor as he bent his head to hers.

  ‘There’s more than one way to taste my lips,’ he declared, and her knees sagged helplessly as his mouth sought hers.

  She had to clutch his arm with her free hand to prevent herself from falling, the taut muscles beneath the silk of his sleeve firm and unyielding. She was aware of so many things in those few seconds—the alcohol flavouring his lips, the hardness of his chest against her breasts, the clean male scent of him, that acted like an intoxicant on senses already inflamed by his arrogance. Even the pain in her arm was numbed by the probing caress of his mouth, as the violence of aggression gave way to a sensual invasion.

  He released her arm abruptly as his lips left hers to light a burning trail across her cheek to her ear. His tongue stroked the area behind her ear, where a tiny pulse raced madly, and probed the sensitive skin of her nape, in the scented hollow of her neck. Sara could hardly breathe. Her face was pressed suffocatingly against his throat, and weakness overwhelmed her when his fingers strayed familiarly over her waist and hips, before sliding upward to the fullness of her breast. Her muffled protest was barely audible, and even through the double layer of cotton he must have felt her instinctive response. When his thumb rubbed sensuously over the hardening nipple, her traitorous body softened, and she arched herself unguardedly against him. />
  The muscled hardness of his thighs made her want to part her legs to accommodate him, and she sensed his quickened breathing as his mouth returned to hers. Searching deeply and persuasively, it plundered her trembling lips until she had no will to resist him: and her fingers sought the hair at his nape to hold him even closer. She felt the unfamiliar pressure that swelled against her, the pulsating heat of his manhood as it sought a closer intimacy: but it was his strangled oath that separated them, and the violent thrust of his hands.

  ‘Get out of here!’ he muttered, turning abruptly away from her, and Sara swayed confusedly, bemused by his sudden rejection. ‘Go back to bed!’ he grated, breathing deeply as he spread his palms on the desk, and the whole horror of her submission swept over her.

  ‘Still here?’

  The hateful derision in his voice brought her quickly to her senses, particularly as he had evidently recovered his composure, and had straightened away from the desk to regard her sardonically. Sara wrapped her own arms about her body, wishing she knew some way to wipe that scornful expression from his face, and unconsciously chose just the way to do it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and his features tightened ominously. ‘Thank you for confirming the opinion I’d formed of you. I just wonder what your employer would say if she knew how you’d abused your position!’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SAFE in her room again, albeit without the Scotch she had ventured downstairs to get, Sara succumbed to a total sense of lassitude. She felt sick and shaken and weak with revulsion, her whole being shrinking from the scene that had just taken place. Had it really happened? Had she actually incited Jude to physical violence? And was it really such a short step from there to savage violation? She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it. But her arm still ached where he had twisted it, and her legs were not trembling for nothing.

  Sinking down on to the side of the bed, she gave way to a shuddering reaction, pushing her fingers into her hair and turning her head from side to side. How could he? she breathed. How could he have done it? Whatever she had said to taunt him, how could he have treated her that way? She was a relative of his employer, a guest in the house. His behaviour was disgusting, and completely unforgivable.