Reluctant Wife(60)

Roz stared at him, her face still and pale apart from the streak of dirt on it. ‘Did you?’ she asked barely audibly.



‘l certainly tried to,’ he said harshly. ‘That l didn’t succeed doesn’t alter the fact that the intention was there. I’m sure what they say of good intentions applies to the other kind, don’t you think?’



‘So… are you trying to tell me this woman means nothing to you? She whispered bewilderedly.



‘Beyond that she was astonishly understanding where many mightn’t have been, no. But what I’m really trying to tell you …’



He stopped as silent tears slid down her face, but they were tears of relief and comprehension.



‘Roz,’ his mouth set in a hard line, ‘it’s too late for that. I … ’



‘Adam,’ she interrupted, swiping. the tears away resolutely, ‘you said once that we were at cross purposes, but never more so than now. Will you let me explain?’



He said nothing, but she thought that he looked fractionally less angry, although his gaze was as sharp as an eagles and chillingly dispassionate.



She drew a breath. ‘Something happened to me too. Something that made me—I don’t quite know how to put it into words—afraid. Made me so afraid to fall in love with you that I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening to me. It will probably sound crazy to you, and perhaps because it happened when so much had gone wrong for me, it made more of an impression than it should.’ She stopped for a moment, then she told him baldly the real reason why the Howards had found her so unsuitable for their son.



He stared at her and she saw the shock in his eyes. Then the almost murderous glint that came to them. ‘Roz, why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?’



‘I—I didn’t even want to think about it,’ she stammered. ‘It made me feel so awful and … cheap, somehow.’



‘And that’s why you married me.’



She managed to smile faintly. ‘I’d often wondered what it would be like to be married to you well before that, actually. Do you remember the very first time we met, when l was about fourteen? Well, I used to dream about you for months afterwards.’



’I … ‘ Adam started to say something, but it was clear she taken him by surprise again.



‘Oh, I’d got over that, or thought I had, but when you asked me to marry you I thought how… safe and uncomplicated it sounded—it was more like a business proposition, although you said you found me desirable. That was why I married you. It seemed to cancel out the stigma of … of,’ her voice cracked, ‘other men thinking I was … something I had no desire to be. It seemed to offer protection from the kind of agony Mrs Howard was going through. And because I really had no idea what else I could do,‘ she finished honestly, ‘I said yes.’



‘But,’ she swallowed. ‘Subconsciously, perhaps, I also vowed to keep it that way—safe and uncomplicated. Nor did I really understand how Mr Howard’s view of me had affected my vision of myself, made me determined to stamp out any vague resemblance to the kind of woman he assumed I was, whether in his own defence or not.’ She stopped and put a hand up wearily to her face. ‘I got terribly mixed up, I suppose you could say. And l was only able to start unravelling it all the night you rang me from Tokyo.’



‘Go on,’ said Adam very quietly.



Roz dropped her hand and straightened her shoulders. ‘It… that phone call crystallised all the fears I had since you’d suggested we have a break from each other, Together, those two things were the turning point, Adam.’ She looked at him directly. ‘I can’t deny it. But they made me understand I’d fallen in love with you, why I’d been fighting you, why I was so terrified to accept how I felt. Also to remember that it hadn’t been part of your plan …‘



He stared at her with the line of his shoulders taut and rigid.



‘It certainly hadn’t been part of my plan to imagine you in the arms of some lovely geisha and feel like dying,’ she confessed huskily.



‘I told you—you told me, Roz …’



‘I know.’ She smiled sadly. ‘All the same, I did. And even if I got the girl wrong …’



‘You got the scenario right,’ he said roughly.



‘Perhaps, but I knew l only had myself to blame. You … ’ She stopped and stared down at her hands, then lifted her lashes abruptly. ‘You thought I didn’t mind what Lucia told me. You were wrong, but I’d already faced it, you see—and done something about it which may not have seemed earth-shattering to you, but it was something I once would never have believed I could do. I mean, fight you for the right to love you … with my body.’