It must have something to do with the power of his voice, she comforted herself, because there was absolutely no way he could be doing anything other than making the most outrageously impossible threats…Was there?
CHAPTER TEN
DESPITE Jessica’s insistence that he take her straight to the hospital, Daniel took her instead to a small and very obviously expensive private hotel, where he stunned her by announcing that he had booked her a room.
‘What for?’ she demanded.
‘Your mother will be at the hospital with your father. I suggest that it would be wiser to telephone and discover how your father is before rushing round there.’
While she could see the wisdom of this, Jessica felt compelled to point out that she could quite easily have gone to her parents’ home in Kensington rather than come here with him.
‘Do you have a key to the Kensington house?’ he asked her quietly.
Jessica’s face flamed. She didn’t, of course.
‘Your mother has enough to cope with without worrying about you. I told her I’d bring you to London and that I’d make sure you had a bed for the night.’
‘Very sure of yourself, weren’t you?’ Jessica stormed at him. ‘I suppose what you had in mind was my sharing your bed.’
She was stunned by the look of acid disdain he gave her. It silenced her, leaving her throat dry and her muscles tense.
‘Now who’s guilty of coercion?’ he asked her softly, watching the colour rise up under her skin and then saying cruelly, ‘If you want to make love with me, why not be honest and just say so?’
‘I don’t,’ Jessica told him wildly, her heart pounding with shame and rage. ‘And anyway, it wouldn’t be making love—it would be just sex.’
She felt her heart plummet as he looked at her, his mouth twisting.
‘You almost tempt me, but I don’t have the time or the inclination to play those kind of games. There’s a telephone here in the foyer. I suggest we ring the hospital from there, just so that neither of us gets any confusing ideas about each other’s motives. I was going to offer to take you up to your room, but under the circumstances…’
Jessica had never felt so humiliated in her life, and the worst thing of all was that his accusation held a grim kernel of truth, even if she had only realised that fact herself after he had pointed it out to her.
As he walked across to the public telephone Jessica wished she had the strength to dismiss him and tell him that she didn’t need his help, that she would make the call, but she knew that some part of her was frightened—frightened of what she might hear, frightened of the pain of learning that her father was dead, frightened of the burden of guilt that news would bring—and so, torn between resentment and anguish, she watched while he dialled the number and spoke once more to the ward sister.
The conversation was brief, and she was unable to hear it without joining him in the cramped intimacy of the booth—something she had no desire to do. Another weakness, another failing, she taunted herself bitterly as she waited for him to rejoin her, her stomach in knots of tension, her mind clouded by fears.
‘He’s holding his own,’ he told her tersely. ‘He’s only allowed one visitor at the moment, and it’s your mother’s wish to stay with him.’
‘Does she know? Does she know I’m here?’ she asked him unevenly.
‘Yes. I told her you were here. The best thing you can do now is to try and get some sleep,’ he told her, turning his back on her, dismissing her, she recognised.
She swallowed and said painfully, ‘If anything should happen to my father…’
‘I’ve asked the hospital to let us know.’
She felt perilously close to tears, and ached for the warmth of his arms round her, holding her, protecting her…
What was she thinking? There was no safety, no warmth, no protection for her in Daniel’s arms.
She went up to her room alone. It was well appointed, and a good size. Someone had already taken up her case, and there was also a thermos of coffee and a plate of delicate sandwiches, the sight and smell of which made her stomach lurch protestingly with nausea.
She spent what was left of the night tormenting herself with regrets for all that she had left unsaid and undone to show her parents how much she did love them.
Daniel had made her see the different and hurtful construction someone else might have put on the way she had so determinedly detached herself from her parents’ lives—not knowing that it was because of her great fear that out of love for them she might commit herself to a life which she had known would ultimately lead to intense unhappiness for her.
Had she been as selfish and thoughtless as Daniel had implied? Perhaps she could have explained in more depth to her parents just why she had felt too vulnerable, too fearful of succumbing to the need she had felt in both of them, but more especially in her father, that she should be a part of the chain that linked the past with the future.
Only now, alone with the bleakness of her thoughts, did she realise that part of her fear, her resentment, had sprung from jealousy of the tradition which had made the bank such an important part of her father’s life; as though, in turning her back on it, she was making a childish attempt to demand from him a statement that she was more important than the bank, like a child jealous of its siblings.
A flush of shame for her own immaturity stung her skin. Nothing would make her change her mind about the necessity for her to live her own life. She could never have made a career in the bank and found the contentment and satisfaction she found in her present work, but she could have explained in more depth, discussed, talked to her parents about her feelings, instead of seizing the excuse of her kidnap and thus foisting on them both, but more especially on her father, a burden of guilt that it was their fault that she had left the bank, that it was the bank raid and her subsequent ordeal at the hands of her kidnappers which had led to her desire to change her whole way of life, when in truth that had simply been an excuse she had seized upon because she was too weak to admit the truth.
Dawn came and brought no surcease from her mental anguish. Her head ached; she felt sick, alternately hot and cold as she tried not to let her imagination portray her father’s death.
As her feeling of nausea grew she put her hand on her stomach and prayed grimly that the only reason for her nausea was her fear for her father. To have conceived Daniel’s child would be the ultimate irony—her father would have his grandson, after all, or maybe a granddaughter, and she…She gave a fierce shudder and banked down hard on her too fertile imagination. Didn’t she already have enough to worry about?
The discreet tap on her door startled her. For a moment she thought it might be Daniel, and the fierce thrust of emotion that speared her at that thought was its own betrayal, and didn’t need underlining by the swift downward plunge of disappointment
when the door opened and a smiling girl came in carrying a tray of tea.
Thanking her, Jessica poured herself a cup, her hand shaking when she recognised the aromatic blend she herself favoured first thing in the morning. Only Daniel could have ordered that particular tea for her, and to her consternation her hand wavered and her eyes filled with tears. When he had already hurt her in so many harsher ways, why it should be this small, deliberate hurting that should cause her to waver on the edge of breaking down, she did not know.
She looked at the phone. How long before she could ring the hospital? On impulse she picked up her clothes and hurried into the bathroom, showering and dressing before she had time to change her mind, leaving the cold tea undrunk as she found her handbag and let herself out of the room.
The hotel foyer was deserted apart from the receptionist on duty, as well it might be at this early hour.
Outside, the sun was struggling to emerge from behind a barrier of clouds, the air sharp and bitter, flavoured with the scents of the winter to come.
The commissionaire found her a taxi, and as it traversed the still quiet city streets Jessica realised with a shock how close it was to Christmas.
The knowledge brought a sharp stab of urgency, a need to see her father. Memories of past Christmases when she was a child flashed through her mind. How loved she had been, indulged but never spoilt. She closed her eyes in mental agony, wondering why it had taken Daniel to show her all she had deliberately blinded herself to.
Outside the hospital she hesitated, half yearning to turn back, afraid to go forward, afraid of the pain that might be waiting for her, and then a smiling porter asked her helpfully if she was lost, and she told him she was looking for the intensive care unit.
After he had directed her to it, he added warningly, ‘Not that they’re likely to let you in—not unless…’ but Jessica was already hurrying away, suddenly in a fever of urgency to see her mother.
The doors to the intensive care ward were firmly closed. A nurse was seated outside at a desk, working on what looked like a horrendous mass of paper. She looked up curiously as Jessica approached her.