She had not simply married him because of Andrea, she was forced to recognise that now and although she had not consciously formed her decision on the strength of their first meeting, subconsciously…
She stiffened as she heard footsteps on the brick path. Had Lyle noticed her absence and come after her? The sharpness of her disappointment when she realised that the intruder was David increased her annoyance with herself. It was insupportable that a woman with her training and knowledge should have been stupid enough to do the one thing she herself, in her books, preached against so earnestly. It was her own thoughts rather than David’s presence that made her twist uncomfortably against the tree. Jessica had always prided herself on her honesty and her very real belief in what she wrote, and now she was being forced to confront the fact that she herself had fallen helplessly into the trap Nature wove so treacherously for the unwary. She did not even have the excuse of having been encouraged to love Lyle. After all, he had made no bones at all about his feelings towards her—or rather his lack of them.
‘Well, well, all alone without your new husband. What interpretation are we to put on that, I wonder?’
As always, David’s slightly unctuous manner irritated her. Today of all days she felt ill-inclined to humour him and instead snapped crossly, ‘None at all, David. I simply wanted some peace and quiet,’ she told him pointedly.
He laughed, or sniggered rather, and mentally Jessica contrasted the grating effect of that sound on her eardrums when compared with the richness and warmth of Lyle’s laughter. Not that she had heard it very often, of course, and when she had it had been generated by one or other of his sons.
Stop being so maudlin, she berated herself, moving away from the tree-trunk intent on rejoining the others. She had no wish to stay here alon
e with David of all people.
‘Not so fast.’ His arm across the arched opening through the rose trellis prevented her from going through, but before she had had time to form the scathing rebuke rising to her lips, he continued silkily, ‘Andrea will have it that you’re desperately in love with your rather dour husband, but you and I know better, don’t we, Jess? You aren’t capable of love, it’s against all those high-minded principles of yours. You married him to stop Andrea from finding out about us.’
He was so close to the truth and yet so far away from it, that Jessica was tempted to laugh. If he had confronted her with those words only a matter of days ago she would have agreed, albeit with some modifications; but now she knew just how wrong he was, and ironically how very much she wished that he might have been right.
Even so, it gave her a degree of rather wry pleasure to be able to say to him quite honestly, ‘You’re wrong, David, I do love him.’
She held his eyes and had the satisfaction of seeing his glance drop away first, but not before she had seen the sudden flare of rage spring to life in them.
All at once she was acutely conscious of how secluded they were, and as though somehow in loving Lyle she had become acutely vulnerable in a way she had not experienced before, suddenly she was uneasily aware that she might have been wiser not to push David quite so hard.
‘You bitch! You enjoyed telling me that, didn’t you?’
Breathing hard, he grabbed her with painful fingers that dug into her arms and refused to release her no matter how hard she tried to push him off. The pressure of his mouth against her own nauseated and affronted her. She kicked out wildly at his shin, but it was not her own frantic attempts to evade him that brought her freedom, but Lyle’s totally unexpected presence, his face blackly grim as he said curtly to David, ‘I think you’d better go back to your wife.’
To Jessica’s relief, her brother-in-law made no attempt to argue, simply going back the way he had come.
Her heart was pumping frantically, her whole body shaking. She was just about to thank Lyle for coming to her rescue when he said grittily, ‘Couldn’t you even have the decency to wait for a more propitious moment? I’m no fool, Jessica,’ he told her when she would have interrupted. ‘Did you honestly think I believed for one moment that tale you spun me about him? You may not be lovers right now, but it’s plain to me that you have been. But if you think you will be again, let me tell you right here and now that it won’t be while you’re married to me. For God’s sake,’ he demanded rawly, ‘what the hell did you think you were playing at? Anyone could have come down here and seen you, your sister for one, the boys for another. Did you stop to think what that might have done to them? No. You didn’t think about a damn thing apart from satisfying your own lust, did you? And don’t tell me there was more to it than that, Jessica. You’ve already told me that you don’t believe in love, so what else could it possibly be?’
She was still shaking, but not with shock now but anger.
‘Nothing to say?’ His mouth twisted as he watched her, his eyes condemning her.
‘Plenty,’ she told him shakily, at last. ‘But since you already seem to have condemned me without waiting to hear it, there doesn’t seem to be any point.’
Without waiting to see what his response was, she pushed past him and fled back to the others.
They were all sitting round the pool, a very chastened David standing by Andrea’s chair.
‘Ah, there you are,’ her sister smiled at her. ‘Lyle was getting quite concerned about you.’ She turned her head to smile at David. ‘It quite takes me back, darling. Remember when we were first married?’
Only someone who was completely blind could surely think that Lyle had been driven to seek her because he wanted her company, Jessica thought, looking at her husband’s grim face.
‘I think we’d better make tracks, Jus,’ she heard him saying to his sister. ‘The weather doesn’t look too promising, and I don’t want to get caught in a storm on the way back.’
The sky did look ominous, but Jessica was not deceived. She knew why she was being hurried away like a recalcitrant child, and so, she suspected, did Justine, although the latter admittedly said nothing to her as she accompanied them all out to the car, Oliver coming with her, and standing with his arm draped round her shoulders as they made their farewells.
This time Lyle drove, getting into the driver’s seat before she could challenge him for possession of it.
He was a good driver, she acknowledged, all his attention apparently concentrated on his driving, but before they were home, they could hear the first ominous growls of thunder in the distance.
It continued to thunder all evening, low, spasmodic rumbles, the odd flash of lightning illuminating the unnaturally dark sky.
The boys were tired after their games in the pool and settled down quite happily after supper to play chess. Jessica had expected Lyle to take himself off to do some work, but to her consternation he remained in the sitting-room with them.
At nine o’clock she had to suppress a cowardly desire to give in to the boys’ entreaties to be allowed to stay up for a while. Even so, she managed to drag out the routine of getting them into bed until just after ten. As she went back downstairs, having wished them both good night, she found herself hoping that the sitting-room would be empty.