A Stormy Spanish Summer(43)

‘This morning I couldn’t find my mother’s locket.’ She rushed into speech in an attempt to block from her thoughts memories of their intimacy, but simply referring to the initial cause of it was enough to have her whole body burning—and not just burning but aching as well.

‘I have it. The catch is faulty. I shall get it repaired for you in Granada.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Before I leave you, there’s something I must say.’

Fliss had never seen Vidal look more grimly stern, never heard his voice contain such harshness—not even on that dreadful evening when he had looked down at her with such cruel contempt as she lay trapped in Rory’s hold.

Automatically she tensed, as though waiting for a blow to fall, so Vidal’s next words came as an unexpected shock.

‘I owe you an apology—and an explanation. I realise that there are no words that can undo what has been done. No amount of explanation or acknowledgement of blame on my part can give you back the years you have lost when you should have been free to … to enjoy your womanhood. All I can do is hope that whatever satisfaction you took from last night is sufficient to free you from the pain I inflicted on you in the past.’

Although Fliss had flinched over that word satisfaction, not really sure if he was trying to subtly taunt her by referring to the sexual delight he had given her, she managed not to betray herself in any other way.

‘The accusation I made against you that evening was born of my … my pride and not your behaviour. You had looked at me with an innocent desire and …’

‘And because of that you thought I was promiscuous?’ Fliss finished for him. Her face was burning over his reference to her ‘innocent desire’, but much as she wanted to refute it she knew that she couldn’t. That was definitely not a subject she wanted him to dwell on, so she told him fiercely, ‘There’s no need for you to say any more. I know what motivated you, Vidal. You disliked and disapproved of me even before you met me.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes, it is. You wanted to stop me from writing to my father, remember?’

‘That was—’

‘That was how you felt about me. I wasn’t good enough to write to my father—just as my mother hadn’t been good enough to marry him. Well, at least my father had second thoughts about our relationship, even if you still wish it didn’t exist.’

For her sake maybe it was better to allow her to believe what she was saying, Vidal decided. It could not undo the harm that had been done, of course. Nothing could do that. But he could not and would not burden her with his love—a love she did not want. She desired him, though. Perhaps he was late in recognising that loving her meant putting her happiness first, but now that he had recognised that it would be shameful and wrong of him to use her first taste of adult desire as a means of trying to persuade her that she could grow to love him. He couldn’t do that. Not even if it meant watching whilst she walked away from him.

The empty house, as though its silence had been disturbed by her arrival, had ultimately settled and sighed around her in the way old houses do, reminding her of the similar sighs and creaks she had experienced from her old family home when she had walked round it one last time before saying her final goodbye to it. Fliss had thought of her mother and her father as she’d walked from room to room, her sadness for them and for all that they had never had filling her emotions and her thoughts. Two gentle people who had simply not been strong enough to fight against those who had not wanted them to be together.

But she was the living proof that their love had once existed, she reminded herself as she stood in the doorway of the house’s master bedroom. Not her father’s bedroom. According to Vidal, her father had preferred to sleep in a smaller room, almost cell-like in its simplicity, further down the corridor. A room that in its starkness told her nothing about the man responsible for her existence.

Now, with her exploration of the house complete, she had nothing to do other than wait for Vidal to return. Nothing to do, that was, other than try not to think about the intimacy they had shared. As a sixteen-year-old she had spent many private hours in fevered imaginings of Vidal making love to her. Now that he had. Now that he had she wanted him to do it again—and again. She wanted the pleasure he had given her to be hers exclusively, wanted Vidal himself to be hers exclusively.

What had she done to herself? Fliss wondered bitterly. In proving to Vidal that he had misjudged her she had simply exchanged one emotional burden for another. Now she had no anger with which to conceal her real feelings for Vidal. Her real feelings? Could one fall in love for life at sixteen? Could one really know that the possession of one’s first lover, was the only possession one would ever want? Her heart and her senses gave her their answer immediately and forcefully. She loved Vidal, and her anger against him for misjudging her was entangled with her pain because he did not love her back.