Sinful Nights: The Six-Month Marriage / Injured Innocent / Loving

‘You want me.’ It was Blake’s thick utterance of the words that brought her back to reality. That, and her own bitter mental acknowledgement that somehow he had aroused her, had touched a deep core of need inside her that none of Alan’s gentle caresses had ever revealed.

‘I want Alan,’ she lied curtly, ‘but since he’s not here …’

Blake withdrew from her immediately as she had known he would. His pride would never allow him to be a substitute for someone else, but what did surprise Sapphire was that he believed her. But then he could not, as she could, compare her reaction to him with her reaction to Alan. She did love Alan. What she had just experienced in Blake’s arms; that bitter tension that had made her body ache and her eyes sting with suppressed tears was just something left over from the past, that was all.

‘Are we going to eat, or do you want to spend the rest of the evening in the car?’

The harsh words rasped over too-sensitive nerves. Sapphire pushed Blake’s hand away as he reached out to help her with her seat belt, and knew by the tension in his body that she had annoyed him. How on earth were they supposed to live together, supposedly as man and wife, preserving the fiction that they had been reconciled when they reacted so explosively to one another? If only she hadn’t made that stupid comment to her father, but he had looked so ill … and he had been so pleased, almost as though she had given him a reason to go on fighting to live. And so she had.

The restaurant was just as attractive as she remembered. The old barn had been sensitively restored, and while the atmosphere was not one of luxurious glamour there was something about it that Sapphire found more appealing than any of Alan’s favourite haunts.

The Head Waiter recognised Blake immediately and they were swiftly shown to a table for two.

The restaurant wasn’t a large one, the proprietors preferring not to expand and risk losing their excellent reputation. As they studied their menus, Sapphire glanced covertly round the room, wondering if she would recognise any of their fellow diners. A couple sat at one table talking and Sapphire stiffened as she recognised Miranda.

Four years ago this woman had been her husband’s mistress, and she was still as beautiful as ever Sapphire recognised, and still obviously bemusing the opposite sex if her table companion’s expression was anything to go by. Just as Sapphire was about to look away, she raised her head, her eyes narrowing as they met Sapphire’s. Conscious that she was staring Sapphire tried to look away and found that she could not. A familiar nausea started to well up inside her, and she fought it down. She was over all that now. She wasn’t going to let it happen again, and yet against her will her mind kept on relaying to her mental images of Blake and Miranda together, of Blake’s long-legged, narrow-hipped body making love to Miranda’s, in all the ways it had never made love to hers. The menu dropped from her fingers as she tried to stem the flood of images. She was over this; she had been over it for years … She knew now that most of her anguish sprang not from the fact that Blake and Miranda had been lovers, but rather from the knowledge that he had desired Miranda as intensely as he had not desired her. If Blake had made love to her she would not have suffered this torment; she and Miranda would have met as equals; as women, not as adult and child.

‘Sapphire?’

She realised that Blake was talking to her; watching her and her face closed up. How much had she already given away? She glanced desperately at him but he was looking at Miranda.

Sapphire followed his look, tensing as she saw the other couple stand up and head towards them.

‘Blake.’ Miranda’s companion held out his hand to Blake, who rose to shake it, but it was at Sapphire that he looked.

‘Sapphire.’ Miranda’s greeting to her was coolly mocking. ‘You’ve barely changed.’

The words were designed to hurt, but Sapphire chose to turn the barb back on its sender. ‘In four years?’ she murmured, ‘How flattering. I must confess I barely recognised you.’

A blatant lie, but she could always use it to explain away her too lengthy scrutiny of the other woman. And she had aged, Sapphire noted now. Although she was still very beautiful, she was now more obviously a woman well into her thirties. She must be a year or two older than Blake. Her companion was in his forties, and although he looked pleasant enough, physically he could not compare with Blake.

‘Sapphire, let me introduce you to Miranda’s husband.’ Blake’s words were a shock. Her husband? Her eyes went automatically to Miranda’s ring hand where a huge diamond solitaire nestled against an obviously new wedding ring.

‘Jim is the Senior Registrar at Hexham General.’ Blake told her. ‘He and Miranda got married a couple of months ago.’

‘What brings you back up here Sapphire?’ Miranda questioned her.

She stared to reply but Blake beat her to it, drawing her hand through his arm, pulling her into the warmth of his side as he said calmly, ‘We’ve decided to give our marriage another try.’

‘A rather sudden decision surely?’ Icy blue eyes swept over Sapphire, Miranda’s tone intimating disbelief.

‘Not really.’ Blake’s voice was as smooth as silk and for the first time, Sapphire was grateful for his ability to conceal the truth. ‘It’s been on the cards for some time. Sapphire just took a bit of convincing that’s all.’ His possessive smile was meant to indicate that he considered himself lucky to get her back, but Sapphire wasn’t deceived for one moment. There was a subtle tension between Blake and Miranda which suggested to Sapphire that getting her father’s land wasn’t the sole reason Blake wanted a ‘reconciliation’. Had Miranda married to spite Blake? To prove to him that if he didn’t want marriage then other men did, and was he now retaliating by announcing their reconciliation? Even worse, had he known that Miranda and Jim would be here tonight?

‘Well congratulations to you both.’ Jim smiled warmly at them, and took Miranda’s arm.

‘Yes indeed, better luck this time.’ The words were innocuous enough but Sapphire wasn’t deceived. She read the venom behind them, and knew that Blake had too.

When the other couple had gone she sat down and picked up her menu. Eating was the last thing she felt like but she was determined not to let Blake see how much seeing Miranda again had disturbed her.

‘I’m sorry about that.’ His terse apology stunned her and Sapphire looked up at him. There were deep grooves of tension running from his nose to his mouth. ‘I didn’t know they’d be here.’

Sapphire shrugged dismissively, ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t realise Miranda was married.’

‘Why should you?’ Blake was curt and abrupt, ‘I didn’t realise that …’ He broke off, his mouth grim. ‘Look I don’t think coming out tonight was such a good idea. Let’s leave shall we? I don’t think either of us is in the mood for the type of celebration your father had in mind.’

‘But what about Miranda?’ Sapphire objected. ‘If we leave now, she’ll never believe what you said about us being reconciled.’

Blake shrugged, standing up to come round and hold her chair as she got to her feet. ‘Does it matter what she thinks?’ He sounded tense. ‘As a matter of fact, what she probably will think is that we’ve decided we’d rather be making love than eating.’

‘Because that’s what you’d be doing if you were with her?’ The words were out before Sapphire could stop them. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something,’ she added bitterly. ‘Miranda knows exactly how undesirable you find me. You told her—remember?’

‘I told her nothing,’ Blake grated back. ‘She tricked that admission out of you, but if it worries you so much I can take you back to Sefton House right now and make you my wife in every sense of the word.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ Somehow she managed to inject just the right amount of scathing indifference into her voice, but it was hard not to react to his words; not to shiver beneath the rough velvet urgency of his voice, nor to turn to him in blind acceptance of the pleasure it promised, but instead to simply precede him and walk out of the restaurant as calmly as though she were completely unaffected by his words.

Were he and Miranda still lovers? Somehow Sapphire didn’t think so; there hadn’t been the complicity between them she would have expected had they been. Instead there had been something almost approaching antagonism.

They drove back along the road they had come in a silence which remained unbroken until Sapphire realised that Blake had taken the turning for his own house instead of carrying on to her father’s farm.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not kidnapping you,’ he told her sardonically as she turned to him in protest. ‘It’s barely ten o’clock. If I take you home now your father will think there’s something wrong.’

‘And he’d be right.’ Sapphire muttered the words under her breath but Blake heard them.

‘This isn’t easy for me either you know,’ he told her grittily, ‘but why should I expect you to realise that? You were never any good at seeing the other person’s point of view.’

‘Meaning what exactly?’ The anger that had been burning inside her all evening burst into destructive flames. ‘That I should have played the “understanding” wife and turned a blind eye to your affair?’

Light spilled out into the cobbled courtyard as Blake pulled up outside his house. He stopped the engine and Sapphire saw him tense almost as though he were bracing himself to do something. ‘Sapphire, look, my “affair” as you call it never …’

‘I don’t want to hear about it.’ She cut across him quickly. She didn’t want to exhume the past; it was far too painful. Talking about his relationship with Miranda forced her to remember how intensely she had once longed to have those brown hands touching her body, exploring its contours, giving her the pleasure her feverishly infatuated senses had told her she could find in his arms. ‘It’s over Blake,’ she reminded him determinedly. ‘We’re two different people now.’

‘If you say so.’ He unfastened his seat belt and opened his door. ‘Hungry?’

Sapphire shook her head.

‘Come inside and have a cup of coffee then, I’ve got a mare waiting to foal in the barn, I’ll check up on her and then I’ll take you home.’

He didn’t invite her to go with him, and Sapphire stood forlornly in the immaculate kitchen of Sefton House listening to the sound of his footsteps dying away as he crossed the yard and entered the large barn.

Once she had been part of this world, and he would have thought nothing of inviting her to join him. Together they had shared the miracle of birth on many occasions in the past, but now she was deliberately being excluded. It baffled Sapphire that the anger she sensed churning inside him should be directed against her. Blake had no rational reason for being angry with her: had someone asked her she would have said he was incapable of feeling any emotional response towards her whatsoever.

More to keep herself occupied than because she wanted any she started to make some coffee. The kitchen was immaculate, but somehow impersonal. Presumably he had his own reasons for not replacing his aunt with a housekeeper. At least that was one complication she wouldn’t have to face this time. Sarah Sefton had never made any secret of the fact that she considered her far too young for Blake. She had disapproved of her right from the very start, Sapphire mused, watching the aromatic dark-brown liquid filter down into the jug, and breathing in the heavenly smell.

‘That smells good.’ She hadn’t heard Blake return, and she swung round tensely, trying to mask her automatic reaction to him by asking after the mare.

‘She’s fine. This will be her third foal, and we don’t anticipate any problems, but like any other female she needs the reassurance of knowing someone cares.’

He said the words carelessly but the look in his eyes was far from casual as he added softly, ‘Does Alan let you know he cares Sapphire?’

‘All the time.’ She managed a cool smile, ‘I’ve made us some coffee, I hope your “help” won’t mind my rummaging in her cupboards.’

‘I’m sure she won’t,’ Blake responded equally blandly, ‘but when my aunt retired I decided I preferred having the place to myself. A woman comes up from the village to clean; apart from that I’m self-sufficient.’ He saw the assessing glance Sapphire slid over the immaculate kitchen, and said softly, ‘I don’t spend enough time here to make it untidy. In fact recently I’ve been eating as many meals at Flaws as I have here.’

‘Yes, I haven’t thanked you yet for taking on the responsibility for the farm.’

He smiled sardonically at her, as though he knew just how hard she had found it to mutter the words.

‘That’s what neighbours are for. Your father would have done the same thing for me had our positions been reversed.’ He pulled off his jacket, dropping it carelessly on to the table, and then checking and picking it up again. ‘One special licence,’ he told her withdrawing a piece of paper from an inner pocket. ‘Special dispensation from the Bishop of Hawick. I went to see him today.’

‘So we’ll be married …’

‘The day after tomorrow,’ Blake told her. ‘In Hexham, everything’s arranged, the vicar …’

‘A Church wedding?’ Sapphire’s head came up, her forehead creased in a frown. Somehow she had expected the ceremony to be conducted in the more mundane surroundings of a registry office.

‘It seemed less public,’ Blake told her carelessly. ‘Have you told your boyfriend yet?’

Sapphire shook her head. ‘No, but he’s coming up for his car, I’ll tell him then, it isn’t the sort of news I could break over the ‘phone.’

‘He’s going to get quite a shock.’

Why should she think she heard satisfaction beneath the cool words? ‘It’s only for a few months, once I’ve explained the situation to him …’

‘He’ll wait for you?’ Blake supplied sardonically, ‘Get your coat on and I’ll take you back to Flaws, I’ve got to be up early in the morning. We’ve got to get the sheep down off the high pastures, the weather’s about to change.’

They didn’t speak again until Blake stopped his car outside the back door to Flaws Farm. For a moment as she unfastened her seat belt Sapphire panicked. What if he should try to kiss her again?

But apart from opening her door for her Blake didn’t attempt to touch her. He walked with her across the cobbled yard, both of them stopping by the door.

‘I won’t see you tomorrow,’ he told her, ‘but I’ll be round the morning after. Our appointment with the Vicar is for eleven o’clock, so I’ll pick you up at ten.’ Giving her a brief nod he turned away and walked back to the car. He had reversed out of the yard before Sapphire had managed to pull herself together sufficiently to open the back door.

What was the matter with her, she chided herself as she prepared for bed. Surely she hadn’t wanted him to kiss her? Of course she hadn’t. So why this curiously flat feeling; this niggly ache in her body that was all too dangerously familiar? Stop it, she cautioned herself as she slid into the cold bed. Stop thinking about him.

IT WAS EASIER said than done, especially with twenty-four empty hours stretching ahead of her with nothing to fill them other than doubts about the wisdom of marrying Blake for a second time, no matter how altruistic the reasons.

She helped Mary with her chores, and spent the afternoon outdoors, but although she kept her hands busy she couldn’t occupy her mind. Her father noticed her tension when she went to sit with him.

‘Worrying about tomorrow?’ he asked sympathetically, closing the book he had been reading. ‘Blake is a fine man Sapphire,’ he told her gently, ‘I’ve always thought so. In fact in many ways I blame myself for the break-up of your marriage.’

When she started to protest he lifted his hand. ‘I wanted you to marry Blake, even though he thought you were too young. He wanted to wait, but …’

‘But you dangled the bait of this farm,’ Sapphire interrupted briefly, ‘and he couldn’t resist it.’ She bit her lip as she realised how cold and unloverlike her voice sounded. Deliberately trying to soften it, she added, ‘But that’s all over now, we’re making a completely fresh start. We’re both older and wiser.’

She couldn’t bear to look at her father. His fragility still had the power to shock her, but even so her mind refused to accept that soon he would be gone from her.

Downstairs she found Mary busily baking. ‘Blake just rang to confirm that he’ll pick you up at ten tomorrow,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Having a day out?’

Her curiosity was only natural and Sapphire forced a smile. ‘Yes … In fact you might as well know Mary, that Blake and I are going to give our marriage another try.’ She couldn’t look at the other woman. ‘I suppose it took something like my father’s … illness to show us both how we really felt.’ That at least was true, even if Mary was hardly likely to interpret her words correctly. The other woman’s face softened.

‘Yes I know what you mean,’ she agreed. ‘So you’ll be moving to Sefton House.’

‘Yes.’ Sapphire swallowed nervously. So far she hadn’t let herself think about the intimacy of living in such close proximity to Blake. No matter how non-sexual their relationship was going to be; the thought made her stomach tense and knot in anxious apprehension. What was she frightened of for goodness sake? Not Blake. She already knew that he felt absolutely no desire for her, but last night he had talked about taking her home with him and making her truly his wife. Sapphire shivered. Those had been words; nothing more; words designed to keep her tense and apprehensive; and in her place. No, she had nothing to fear from Blake. Or from herself? Of course not. She had suffered the agony of loving him once, it was hardly likely to happen again.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE AND BLAKE were husband and wife again; Sapphire could hardly believe it. She glanced down at the gold band encircling her finger. It was the same ring that Blake had given her once before. She had been stunned when she saw it. Somehow she had never imagined Blake keeping it, never mind giving it back to her.

‘It saved the bother of buying a new one,’ he told her sardonically correctly following her chain of thought. He glanced at his watch flicking back his cuff in a manner that was achingly familiar. It shocked her that her mind should have stored and retained so many minute details about him. ‘We’d better get back. I take it you don’t want to go out and celebrate our reunion?’

‘Can you think of any reason why I should?’ Her voice was as cool as his, her eyes locking with the gold blaze that glittered over her too pale face. ‘I’ve married you for one reason and one reason only Blake—my father’s peace of mind, and just as soon as …’ she gulped back the stinging tears that suddenly formed, ‘… just as soon as that reason no longer exists our marriage will be over.’

The silence that filled the car on the way back to the valley was not a comfortable one. Sapphire sat back in her seat, her head on the headrest, her face turned dismissively towards the window, and yet despite her determination to ignore Blake, she was acutely aware of him. Every time she closed her eyes she saw his face; pictured the lean strength of his hands on the steering wheel. For a moment, unnervingly she even pictured those hands against her skin, touching; stroking … Stop it, she warned herself. Dear God what was happening to her? Blake no longer possessed the power to affect her in that way. She was completely over him and the childish infatuation she had once had for him.

‘We’ll drive to Flaws Farm and pick up your things first.’ His cool voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I’ve got the vet coming out this afternoon to look at the mare, so we won’t linger.’

‘The fact that we’re married doesn’t mean we have to do everything together,’ Sapphire pointed out tartly, not liking the way he was taking control. ‘I can easily drive myself over to Flaws. In fact,’ she turned in her seat to look determinedly at Blake, ‘in view of my father’s illness and the fact that no-one knows that we’ve been divorced, I think it would be quite acceptable for me to remain at Flaws …’

‘Maybe it would,’ Blake agreed sardonically, ‘if your daughterly devotion wasn’t a bit late in coming, and I was prepared to agree. Oh no, Sapphire,’ he told her softly, ‘I want you where I can keep an eye on you. You’re not running out on me twice. Besides,’ he added, ‘if you don’t come back to Sefton House with me, your father’s going to get suspicious.’

His last words were undeniably true. Biting down hard on her lip to prevent her vexation from showing Sapphire turned back to stare out of her window, relieved when she saw the familiar turnoff for Flaws Valley. This tension between herself and Blake wasn’t something she remembered from the past. Of course, she had always been aware of him; but surely never like this, with a nerve-rasping intensity that made her muscles ache from the strain she was imposing on them.

‘You’re back early.’ Mary greeted them without any surprise, but of course as far as she was concerned she and Blake had merely had a morning out together. ‘Are you staying for lunch?’ Her question was addressed to Blake, but his arm tethered Sapphire to his side when she would have slipped out of the room. ‘We haven’t got time, I’ve got the vet coming this afternoon.’ He released Sapphire to smile down at her, his eyes so warm and golden that his glance was like basking in the heat of the sun. ‘I’ll go up and see your father while you pack.’

He was gone before Sapphire could speak, leaving her to face Mary’s raised eyebrows and expectant expression. Sapphire couldn’t face her. ‘I … I’m going back with Blake,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I … we ….’

‘Your father will be pleased,’ Mary assured her coming to her rescue. ‘Look,’ she added, ‘why don’t I make some coffee and then come upstairs and give you a hand with your packing. Not that you brought a lot with you.’

Sensing the speculation behind her words Sapphire said shakily. ‘N … I had no idea then that Blake …’

‘Still loved you?’

The words surprised her into a tense stillness, but mercifully Mary was too busily engaged in making the coffee to notice her startled response. It had been on the tip of her tongue to blurt out that Blake had never loved her, but fortunately she had caught the words back just in time.

It was over an hour before they were finally able to leave. Her father had been so pleased by their news. Sighing Sapphire tried to settle herself in the car, telling herself that her sacrifice must surely have been made worthwhile by her father’s pleasure.

‘I’m going to have to leave you to find your own way about,’ Blake told her tensely when he stopped the car in his own farmyard. ‘I want to have a word with the shepherd before the vet arrives. You’ll have to make yourself up a bed I’m afraid—unless of course you prefer to share mine.’ The last words were accompanied by a cynical smile.

‘Hardly,’ Sapphire told him crisply, ‘I’m no masochist, Blake; nor am I a naive seventeen-year-old any longer.’

‘No,’ he agreed bitterly, and for a moment Sapphire wondered at the deeply intense timbre of his voice and the drawn expression tensing his face, before dismissing her impressions as false ones and berating herself for allowing her imagination to work overtime. Blake had no reason to feel bitter—unlike her.

As she let herself into the kitchen she was struck by the fact that despite, or perhaps because of its gleaming appearance the room seemed oddly sterile; not like a home at all. The mellow wooden cabinets which should have imparted a warm glow, looked too much like a glossy, cold advertisement; there were no warm, baking smells to tantalise or tempt. Blake’s aunt had made her own bread, she remembered with unexpected nostalgia, and she remembered this kitchen best filled with its warmly fragrant scent. Of course if the smell of freshly baked bread was all it took to bring the place alive, she was more than capable of supplying that herself. Her culinary efforts so much despised by Blake’s aunt had improved rapidly in the security of her own small home. Alan often asked her to cook for important clients and among their circle of friends she had quite a reputation as a first-rate hostess. Alan approved of her domestic talents; Alan! Her body tensed. What was he going to say when he heard about all this? She could well lose him. Why was she not more concerned at the prospect; after all she had been planning to marry him? Pushing aside the thought she opened the kitchen door and stepped into the square parquet-floored hall.