‘I think you’d better tidy yourself up a bit, darling, your husband’s here.’
What an actor Chris was, pretending that she had welcomed his touch when...Jon...Jon was back! She sat up quickly, struggling with the ties of her bikini.
‘Why not let me do that for you?’ Chris was actually daring to reach out and touch her.
‘Get away from me!’ She stood up shakingly, securing the strings, and looked at Jon. He seemed to be studying the progress of a particularly heavy bee.
‘Thank heavens you’re back. Chris forced himself on me, Jon,’ she told him thickly. ‘I was asleep and...’
‘Oh come on, darling, surely you can do better than that?’ Chris was jeering now, but she could see the very real hatred in his eyes, and wondered at the cause of it. Why was Chris doing this to her? And then instinctively she knew. He had never forgiven her for her frigidity and now he wanted to punish her for daring to find sexual happiness with someone else.
‘I’m sure your husband is nowhere near as stupid as he looks.’ He looked tauntingly at Jon, who returned the look with mild curiosity. Grinning at her, Chris walked away from them. Sophy watched him go in complete silence. Hadn’t Jon understood what she was telling him?
She heard a car engine fire and then slowly purr down the drive and bitter resentment flooded through her body. It was wrong and unfair that Chris should be able to walk away like that after physically molesting her and humiliating Jon. She took a deep breath and found that she was shaking...tense with an anger that had to find an outlet.
‘Do you realise that if you hadn’t come back when you did he would probably have tried to rape me?’ she cried emotionally. ‘And you let him just walk away. You...for God’s sake, Jon, what kind of husband are you?’ she demanded thickly.
Had he even heard what she was saying? He appeared to be studying one of the flowers but at last he lifted his head and looked at her in that rather abstracted way of his, glancing away to remove a piece of fluff from his shirt-sleeve before replying.
‘The kind who feels that when he discovers his wife in the arms of an old lover, discretion might possibly be the better part of valour,’ he told her calmly. ‘You must admit that I had no way of knowing whether his embrace was welcome or not, Sophy.’
‘But I’m married to you,’ she pointed out despairingly. God, didn’t he even care the smallest bit? Wasn’t he the slightest bit jealous or resentful? If she had been the one to walk into that scene...if she had discovered him...
‘Our marriage does not give me the right to assume physical chastity on your part.’
‘But you said—’ She broke off. What was the use? Jon plainly did not care one way or the other, despite his statement before they were married that he would not expect her to take lovers.
‘Always logical and calm, that’s you, isn’t it, Jon?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘You’re just like one of those damned computers you’re so fond of—incapable of any human emotional reaction.’
She pushed past him and ran into the house, going straight up to her room, and flinging herself face down on the bed. She badly wanted to cry, in a way she couldn’t remember doing in years. Chris’s attack had frightened her; her body ached with the tension that fear had brought, and her breast throbbed where he had hurt her but what hurt far more, was Jon’s calm indifference. He had stood there and let Chris insult him and her, and he had said nothing—not even when she had told him that Chris had attacked her. He had looked at her with his face wiped clean of all expression—totally emotionless.
She was his wife for heaven’s sake. She had a right to expect his protection...his...his championship. Chris had hurt and frightened her...and primitive though it was, she acknowledged that she would have liked to have seen Jon hurt and frighten him in return. Had he believed what Chris had said to him? She swallowed suddenly turning over and staring unseeingly up at the ceiling. Surely not? She had been so caught up in her own feelings, in the shock of listening to Chris’s lies, that it had never occurred to her that Jon might believe them, that he might take what had happened at face value.
Did he really think she was that sort of woman? The sort who would break the solemn vows of marriage...who would allow herself to be involved with a man who was already married, who had once treated her with such contempt? Didn’t Jon know her at all?
Tiredly she got up, but instead of going downstairs and apologising to Jon for her outburst and talking to him about what had happened as she knew she should, she showered again, and dressed slowly, too heart-sick to face him. Her apology would have to wait until she was in a calmer frame of mind. As she went downstairs, she heard sounds from the study and guessed that he was working. Well, that gave her an excuse not to interrupt him.
He was still working when she went to fetch the children back from school. For once their energy and chatter gave her no pleasure. She felt drained and deeply unhappy. This was the time when she needed a mother or a sister to talk to, she thought wearily, someone who would understand what she was feeling.
When they got back, an unfamiliar brand new car was parked outside the house. Mentally admiring the sleek lines of the very expensive BMW, Sophy shepherded the children inside the house. The car probably belonged to one of Jon’s clients, many of whom were extremely wealthy men and she paused outside the now silent study, reluctant to disturb a business meeting.
The children it seemed had no such qualms and burst in before she could stop them, Alex shouting out, ‘We’re back, Uncle Jon!’
Reluctantly she followed them to find that Jon was alone in the study. She glanced round it and then looked at him. ‘I thought you had someone with you,’ she told him. ‘There’s a car outside.’
‘Yes.’ For once he looked neither vague nor embarrassed. ‘It’s yours... I bought it for you this morning.’
She had to sit down to get over the shock. Jon had bought that car for her! ‘But it’s so expensive! Jon...’
‘You said we needed a larger car and from what I can discover, this one seems to combine all our requirements. Of course, if you would prefer something else?’
She shook her head. ‘No...no, of course not.’
‘It’s ours?’ David was wide-eyed with excitement. ‘Come on, Alex,’ he instructed his sister, ‘let’s go and have a look at it.’
In the end all four of them went back outside, the children enthusing over the car whilst Sophy admired it in stunned silence. She was pleased to see that it was fitted with rear seat belts for the children. When she got inside she found it both luxurious and well equipped. At David’s insistence they went for a short drive although she was not familiar enough with the car’s automatic gears and power steering system to take them very far.
‘Jon, it’s...it’s very generous of you,’ she said haltingly when they got back. The words seemed to stick in her throat, her earlier accusations lying painfully on her conscience. She wanted desperately to call back those earlier ugly words, but found she could not do so in front of the children, and it still tormented her that Jon might actually have believed Chris’s lies.
Supper was an uncomfortable, silent meal; even the children, it seemed, were aware of the tension existing between the two adults. Afterwards, when Sophy was supervising their baths, she was shocked when Alex asked her hesitantly, ‘Have you and Uncle Jon quarrelled?’
‘No, of course not,’ she assured the little girl swiftly. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She screwed her eyes up and then said slowly, ‘P’haps because at tea time it just felt like you had quarrelled...all stiff and sharp somehow.’
‘Well, I promise you we haven’t,’ Sophy reassured her kissing the curly head, feeling guilty because she was the one responsible for the atmosphere Alex had so accurately described.
She had to apologise to Jon, she acknowledged mentally as she tucked both children up in bed, and kissed them good night. She had been wrong to say the things she had to him and then to flounce off in a huff. After all why should she expect him to...to behave like a real husband?
She pressed her fingers to her temples which were throbbing with tension and pain. What had she been hoping for when she ran inside like that? That Jon might follow her...that he might... What?
Telling herself that there was nothing to be achieved by putting off the evil moment she went back downstairs. Jon was in the study. She knocked briefly and then went in, her eyes immediately going to the letter in front of him, recognising it as the one which had arrived from Nassau that morning.
‘This is from Harry Silver,’ he told her. ‘Confirming his visit. He’ll be bringing his wife with him. I thought we might have them here to dinner.’
‘Jon, I must talk to you.’ How stiff and unnatural her voice sounded. She could see Jon frowning and her heartbeat suddenly increased, thudding nervously into her chest wall. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said miserably, ‘and I owe you an apology... I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did...I was wrong.’
‘Yes, you were,’ he agreed evenly, standing up and coming round the front of the desk. There was a look in his eyes she found hard to recognise, but instinctively she took a step backwards, only to find that Jon was right in front of her. ‘Very wrong,’ he murmured softly reaching out and pulling her into his arms. ‘I’m not a computer, Sophy...and I am capable of feelings. These feelings.’