Sara Craven - Fugitive Wife

Or had she simply left it on the small table in the hall, she wondered desperately. She opened the living room door and peered out, but the table was bare except for the discarded envelopes from Logan’s letters.

There was only one other explanation. Logan had taken her bag with him when he went off to have his shower, in order to prevent her from running out on him. The realisation set the match to her temper, relegating her fears and forebodings to a poor second. How dared he? she raged inwardly. She had taken several impetuous steps along the hall when one of the doors opened and Logan emerged, and the sight of him halted her dead in her tracks. He was wearing a damp towel hitched loosely round his hips, and his tawny hair was darkly streaked with water. His eyes, as they encountered Briony’s openly hostile gaze, were enigmatic.

He said smoothly, ‘Coming to meet me halfway, sweetheart?’

‘I was coming to find my handbag.’

He gestured towards the door opposite him. ‘It’s in there.’

After only a second’s hesitation, she turned and walked into the room he had indicated. She had guessed it was his bedroom and she was right. Her bag was there, lying in the middle of the bed—a double bed, she registered in silence. There was little other furniture. Like the living room, it suggested that its occupant was someone constantly in transit, living out of suitcases, and there were few personal touches.

She picked her bag up from the bed, and turned. Logan was lounging in the doorway watching her, and she could read nothing from his expression, but his presence there meant that her retreat was effectively cut off.

‘You didn’t bring the coffee.’ His tone was almost conversational.

‘I—I didn’t want any.’ Damn! she thought in vexation. Why hadn’t she said it was waiting in the living room, and thus made good her escape?

‘Then I won’t bother either,’ he said affably, and walked forward. ‘After all, why waste time when we have more important things to do?’

She took a step backwards. ‘No,’ she got out. ‘I—I can’t!’

‘Can’t you?’ He didn’t hurry as he covered the distance between them. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t a large room, and she was standing with her back against one wall. There was simply nowhere else to retreat to. ‘You can,’ he said. ‘It’s easy—I’ll show you.’

He detached the bag from her suddenly nerveless fingers and tossed it on to a nearby chest of drawers, following it with her suit jacket which he slipped expertly from her shoulders, almost before she realised what he was doing, and then he was unfastening her shirt—as casually as if he was changing a dummy in a shop window, and with about as much feeling, she realised, a sense of hysteria rising deep within her. Her hands came up to push him away, her fingers fumbling as she sought to thrust the buttons he had undone back into their buttonholes.

‘What’s the matter?’ He made no attempt to stop her. He was even smiling faintly.

‘How dare you?’ she choked.

‘I wasn’t aware that daring entered into it,’ he said, his voice cool. ‘You made it quite clear what you wanted, and I’m more than willing to provide it. So what’s the problem?’

‘The problem?’ She stared at him helplessly. ‘You’re behaving as if—treating me like …’

‘Like the spoiled brat you are?’ he cut across her stumbling words with merciless harshness. ‘What’s the matter, darling! Isn’t it all romantic enough for you? But what did you expect? It’s ladies who are being seduced who get the flowers and champagne treatment. Little girls who throw themselves at men merely get laid. It may not be the lesson you expected to be taught this afternoon, but I hope it will prove a salutory one all the same. Now I suggest you get out of here before I forget you’re your father’s daughter and give you the beating you so richly deserve.’

For a minute she stared at him, then with a little inarticulate cry, she struck him across the face and ran past him out of the room and down the hall. She was struggling with the stiff catch on the front door when he caught her.

‘You forgot your handbag.’ His tone was soft and jeering. ‘And your jacket.’

‘Thank you.’ She snatched at them, her face crimson with humiliation, suppressed tears stinging her eyelids.

Logan swore under his breath. ‘Oh God, Briony!’ He turned her to face him. ‘You got off lightly,’ he told her harshly. ‘Just be thankful that I didn’t take advantage of you, and for God’s sake don’t go round offering yourself to any other man who happens to take your schoolgirl fancy unless you want to end up as yet another unpleasant statistic for the sociologists to mull over.’

‘Suddenly everyone feels they have a right to lecture me—to feel responsible for me,’ she said stonily. ‘Now please take your hands off me. I’d like to go home.’

He released her immediately. ‘That’s the best idea you’ve had yet.’ He sounded weary. ‘Go and play in your own league, sweetheart, and leave the adult games until such time as you’ve learned the rules.’

And the flat door slammed behind her.

The remembered sound seemed to strike an echo closer at hand, and Briony stirred in her chair, dragging herself almost reluctantly back from the pain of the past to the reality of the present. She soon saw what had roused her—the noise of a piece of coal falling out on to the hearth—and she knelt down to replace it on the fire and sweep up the resultant ash.

She was shocked when she glanced at her watch and saw how long she had been sitting there, remembering. A pointless exercise if ever there was one, she thought ironically. As she’d told Logan all those months ago, the past wasn’t very productive. Only no one had warned her that the future could be even less so.

She got to her feet, stretching wearily. Now was the time to go and see about her room, otherwise she could well end up spending a cramped night in that very chair. But there was a surprise in store for her when she reached the top of the stairs and turned into the main bedroom at the front of the house. The bed was already made up and waiting, with crisply ironed sheets, and an old-fashioned eiderdown covered in flowered cotton.

Briony frowned as she set down her case and looked around her. Could it be possible that Aunt Hes was expected after all? But that was ridiculous, she knew. Aunt Hes rarely visited the cottage after the beginning of November, because she said frankly that the cold of North Yorkshire seemed to eat into her bones these days, apart from the fact that Kirkby Scar was often cut off by snow for days on end.

On the other hand, could she have let the cottage, perhaps? If so, when the tenant arrived, Briony would simply have to apologise and withdraw. She could spend a couple of days in York, she thought. Now that the tourist season was over, she would enjoy a leisurely tour of the Minster and the museums. It wasn’t what she had planned, but was that necessarily a bad thing when most of the things she planned went so utterly and disastrously wrong?

She took a nightdress from her case and threw it across the bed, then walked to the window to draw the curtains. The second surprise was more in the nature of a shock. The darkness outside was full of the wild swirl of snowflakes, and the ground beneath as well as the kitchen roof and the neighbouring trees were already crusted in white. A swift sigh of exasperation escaped Briony’s lips. She remembered now the forbidding leaden sky which had greeted her arrival, and realised she should have guessed its significance. She could still leave, of course. She could repack her case and find the car and drive to a slightly more accessible hotel. She glanced at her watch again, imagining the reaction if she turned up at this time of night without a booking. She might even end up spending the night in the car. No, she would stay where she was for tonight at least and risk being able to get out in the morning. It was surely too early in the winter for a really heavy fall, she argued to herself without a great deal of conviction. The real trouble was the isolation of the cottage from the village, and the difficulty of stocking up with fresh food if the weather was really turning nasty. She couldn’t subsist for ever on a diet of black coffee.