Christmas Nights (20 page)

‘I know why you came here,’ he interrupted her with unexpected sternness. ‘You came to be looked over as a potential wife for Mary Hanford’s precious son.

‘Where’s your pride?’ he demanded scornfully. ‘However, a potential bride is all you will ever be. Mary Hanford knows quite well who she wants Henry to marry, and I’m afraid it isn’t going to be you…’

‘Not now,’ Lisa agreed shortly. ‘Not—’

‘Not ever,’ Oliver told her. ‘Mary won’t allow Henry to marry any woman who she thinks might have the slightest chance of threatening her own superior position in Henry’s life. His wife will not only have to take second place to her but to covertly acknowledge and accept that fact before she’s allowed to marry him. And besides, the two of you are so
obviously unsuited to one another that the whole thing’s almost a farce. You’re far too emotionally turbulent and uncontrolled for Henry… He wouldn’t have a clue how to handle you…’

Lisa couldn’t believe her ears.

‘You, of course, would,’ she challenged him with acid sweetness, too carried away by her anger and the heat of the moment to realise what she was doing, the challenge she was issuing him, the risks she was taking.

Then it was too late and he was cutting the ground from beneath her feet and making a shock as icy-cold as the snow melting on the tops of the Yorkshire hills that were his home run down her spine as he told her silkily, ‘Certainly,’ and then added before she could draw breath to speak, ‘And, for openers, there are two things I most certainly would do that Henry obviously has not.’

‘Oh, yes, and what exactly would they be?’ Lisa demanded furiously.

‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t have the kind of relationship with you—or with any woman who I had the slightest degree of mild affection for, never mind being on the point of contemplating marrying—which would necessitate you feeling that you had to conceal anything about yourself from me, or that you needed to impress my family and friends with borrowed plumes, with the contents of another woman’s wardrobe. And the second…’ he continued, ignoring Lisa’s quick, indrawn breath of mingled chagrin and rage.

He paused and looked at her whilst Lisa, driven well beyond the point of no return by the whole farce of her ruined Christmas in general and his part in it in particular, prompted wildly, ‘Yes, the second is…?’

‘This,’ he told her softly, taking the breath from her lungs, the strength from her muscles and, along with them, the willpower from her brain as he stepped forward and took her in his arms and then bent his head and kissed her as Henry had
never kissed her in all the eight months of their relationship—as no man had ever kissed her in the whole history of her admittedly modest sexual experience, she recognised dizzily as his mouth moved with unbelievable, unbeatable, unbearable sensual expertise on hers.

Ordinary mortal men did not kiss like this. Ordinary mortal men did not behave like this. Ordinary mortal men did not have the power, did not cup one’s face with such tender mastery. They did not look deep into your eyes whilst they caressed your mouth with their own. They did not compel you, by some mastery you could not understand, to look back at them. They did not, by some unspoken command, cause you to open your mouth beneath theirs on a whispered ecstatic sigh of pure female pleasure. They did not lift their mouths from yours and look from your eyes to your half-parted lips and then back to your eyes again, their own warming in a smile of complicit understanding before starting to kiss you all over again.

Film stars in impossibly extravagant and highly acclaimed, Oscar-winning romantic movies might mimic such behaviour. Heroes in stomach-churning, body-aching, romantically sensual novels might sweep their heroines off their feet with similar embraces. God-like creatures from Greek mythology might come down to earth and wantonly seduce frolicking nymphs with such devastating experience and sensuality, but mere mortal men…? Never!

Lisa gave a small, blissful sigh and closed her eyes, only to open them again as she heard Henry exclaiming wrathfully, ‘Lisa… what on earth do you think you’re doing?’

Guiltily she watched him approaching as Oliver released her.

‘Henry, I can explain,’ she told him urgently, but he obviously didn’t intend to let her speak.

Ignoring Oliver’s quiet voice mocking, ‘To Henry, maybe,
but to Mary, never,’ she flushed defensively as his taunting comment was borne out by Henry’s furious declaration.

‘Mother was right about you all along. She warned me that you weren’t—’

‘Henry, you don’t understand.’ She managed to interrupt him, turning to appeal to Oliver, who was standing watching them in contemptuous amusement.

‘Tell him what really happened… Tell him…’

‘Do you really expect me to give you my help?’ he goaded her softly. ‘I don’t recall you being similarly sympathetic when I asked you for yours.’

Whilst Lisa stood and stared at him in disbelief he started to walk towards the door, pausing only to tell Henry, ‘Your mother is quite right, Henry. She wouldn’t be the right wife for you at all… If I were you I should heed her advice—now, before it’s too late.’

‘Henry,’ Lisa began to protest, but she could see from the way that he was refusing to meet her eyes that she had lost what little chance she might have had of persuading him to listen to her.

‘It’s too late now for us to change our plans for Christmas,’ he told her stiffly, still avoiding looking directly at her. ‘It is, after all, Christmas Eve, and we can hardly ask you to… However, once we return to London I feel that it would be as well if we didn’t see one another any more…’

Lisa could scarcely believe her ears. Was this really the man she had thought she loved, or had at least liked and admired enough to be her husband… the man she had wanted as the father of her children? This pompous, stuffy creature who preferred to take his mother’s advice on whom he should and should not marry than to listen to her, the woman he had proclaimed he loved?

Only he had not—not really, had he? Lisa made herself admit honestly. Neither of them had really truly been in love.
Oh, they had liked one another well enough. But liking wasn’t love, and if she was honest with herself there was a strong chord of relief mixed up in the turbulent anger and resentment churning her insides.

Stay here now, over Christmas, after what had happened…? No way.

Without trusting herself to speak to Henry, she turned on her heel and headed for the stairs and her bedroom, where she threw open the wardrobe doors and started to remove her clothes—her borrowed clothes, not her clothes, she acknowledged grimly as she opened her suitcase; they hadn’t been hers when she had bought them and they certainly weren’t hers now.

Eyeing them with loathing, her attention was momentarily distracted by the damp chilliness of her bedroom. Thank goodness they had driven north in her car. At least she wasn’t going to have the added humiliation of depending on Henry to get her back to London.

The temperature seemed to have dropped since she had left the bedroom earlier, even taking into account Mary Hanford’s parsimony.

There had been another warning of snow on high ground locally earlier in the evening, and Lisa had been enchanted by it, wondering out loud if they might actually have a white Christmas—a long-held childhood wish of hers which she had so far never had fulfilled. Mary Hanford had been scornful of her excitement.

As she gathered up her belongings Lisa suddenly paused; the clothes she had bought with such pleasure and which she had held onto with such determination lay on the bed in an untidy heap.

Beautiful though they were, she suddenly felt that she knew now that she could never wear them. They were tainted. Some things were just not meant to be, she decided regretfully as
she stroked the silk fabric of one of the shirts with tender fingers.

She might have paid for them, bought them in all good faith, but somehow she had never actually felt as though they were hers.

But it was her borrowed clothes, like the borrowed persona she had perhaps unwittingly tried to assume to impress Henry’s family, which had proved her downfall, and she was, she decided firmly, better off without both of them.

Ten minutes later, wearing her own jeans, she lifted the carefully folded clothes into her suitcase. Once the Christmas holiday was over she would telephone the dress agency and explain that she no longer had any use for the clothes. Hopefully they would be prepared to take them back and refund most, if not all of her money.

It was too late to regret now that she had not accepted Alison’s suggestion that she join her and some other friends on a Christmas holiday and skiing trip to Colorado. Christmas was going to be very lonely for her alone in her flat with all her friends and her parents away. A sadly wistful smile curved the generous softness of her mouth as she contemplated how very different from her rosy daydreams the reality of her Christmas was going to be.

‘You’re going to the north of England—Yorkshire. I know it has a reputation for being much colder up there than it is here in London, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get snow,’ Alison had warned her, adding more gently, ‘Don’t invest too much in this visit to Henry’s family, Lisa. I know how important it is to you but things don’t always work out the way you plan. The Yorkshire Dales are a beautiful part of the world, but people are still people and—well, let’s face it, from what Henry has said about his family, especially his mother, it’s obvious that she’s inclined to be a little on the possessive side.’

‘I know you don’t really like Henry…’ Lisa had begun defensively.

But Alison had shaken her head and told her firmly, ‘It isn’t that I don’t care for Henry, rather that I
do
care about you. He isn’t right for you, Lisa. Oh, I know what you’re going to say: he’s solid and dependable, and with him you can put down the roots that are so important to you. But, to be honest—well, if you want the truth, I see Henry more as a rather spoiled little boy than the kind of man a woman can rely on.’

It looked as if Alison was a much better judge of character than she, Lisa acknowledged as she zipped her case shut and picked it up.

L
ISA WAS HALFWAY
down the stairs when Henry walked into the hallway and saw her.

‘Lisa, why are you dressed like that? Where are you going?’ he demanded as he looked anxiously back over his shoulder, obviously not wanting anyone else to witness what was going on.

‘I’m leaving,’ she told him calmly. It was odd that she should be able to remain so calm with Henry who, after all, until this evening’s debacle had been the man she had intended to marry, the man she had planned to spend the rest of her life with, and yet with Oliver, a complete stranger, a man she had seen only twice before and whom she expected… hoped… she would never see again, her emotions became inflamed into a rage of gargantuan proportions.

‘Leaving? But you can’t… What will people think?’ Henry protested. ‘Mother’s got the whole family coming for Christmas dinner tomorrow and they’ll all expect you to be there. We were, after all, planning to announce our engagement,’ he reminded her seriously.

As she listened to him in disbelief Lisa was shocked to realise that she badly wanted to laugh—or cry.

‘Henry, I can’t stay here now,’ she told him. ‘Not after what’s happened. You must see that. After all you were the one—’

‘You’re leaving to go to him, aren’t you?’ Henry accused her angrily. ‘Well, don’t expect Oliver to offer to marry you,
Lisa. He might want to take you to bed but, as Mother says, Oliver isn’t the kind of man to marry a woman who—’

That was it. Suddenly Lisa had had enough. Her face flushing with the full force of her emotions, she descended the last few stairs and confronted Henry.

‘I don’t care what your mother says, Henry,’ she told him through gritted teeth. ‘And if you were half the man I thought you were
you
wouldn’t care either. Neither would you let her make up your mind or your decisions for you… And as for Oliver—’

‘Yes, as for me… what?’

To her consternation Lisa realised that at some point Oliver had walked into the hall and was now standing watching them both, an infuriatingly superior, mocking contempt curling his mouth as he broke into her angry tirade.

‘I’ve had enough of this… I’ve had enough of both of you,’ Lisa announced. ‘This is all your fault. All of it,’ she added passionately to Oliver, ignoring Henry’s attempts to silence her.

‘And don’t think I haven’t guessed why you’ve done it,’ she added furiously, her fingers tugging at the strap of her suitcase. She wrenched the case open and cried out angrily to him, ‘You want your precious clothes back? Well, you can have them… all of them…’

Fiercely she wrenched the carefully packed clothes from her case and hurled them across the small space that lay between them, where they landed in an untidy heap at Oliver’s feet.

She ignored Henry’s anguished, shocked, ‘Lisa… what on earth are you doing…? Lisa, please… stop; someone might see… Mother…’

‘Oh, and we mustn’t forget this, must we?’ Lisa continued, ignoring Henry, an almost orgasmic feeling of release drowning out all her normal level-headedness and common sense.
For the first time in her life she could understand why it was some people actually seemed to enjoy losing their temper, giving up their self-control… causing a scene… all things that were normally completely foreign to her.

Triumphantly she threw the beautiful Armani suit which she had bought with such pleasure at Oliver’s feet whilst he watched her impassively.

‘There! I hope you’re satisfied,’ she told him as the last garment headed his way.

‘Lisa,’ Henry was still bleating protestingly, but she ignored him. Now that the sudden, unfamiliar surge of anger was retreating she felt oddly weak and shaky, almost vulnerably light-headed and dangerously close to tears.

In the distance she was aware that Henry was still protesting, but for some reason it was Oliver whom her attention was concentrated on, who filled her vision and her prickly, wary senses as she deliberately skirted around him, clutching her still half-open but now much lighter suitcase, and headed for the front door.

There had been a look in his eyes as she had flung that trouser suit at him which she had not totally understood—a gleam of an emotion which in another man she could almost have felt was humour mixed with a certain rueful respect, but of course she must have been imagining it.

As she tugged open the front door and stepped outside a shock of ice-cold air hit her. She hadn’t realised how much the temperature had dropped, how overcast the sky had become.

Frost crunched beneath her feet as she hurried towards her car. Faithful and reliable as ever, it started at the second turn of the key.

As Lisa negotiated the other cars parked in the drive she told herself grimly that she had no need to try to work out
whom that gleaming, shiny Aston Martin sports car belonged to. It just had to be Oliver Davenport’s.

As she turned onto the main road she switched on her car radio, her heart giving a small forlorn thud of regret as she heard the announcer forecasting that the north of England was due to have snow.

Snow for Christmas and she was going to miss it.

It was half past eleven; another half an hour and it would be Christmas Day, and she would be spending it alone.

Stop snivelling, she told herself as she felt her throat start to ache with emotional tears. You’ve had a lucky escape.

She knew she had a fairly long drive ahead of her before she reached the motorway. As she and Henry had driven north she had remarked on how beautiful the countryside was as they drove through it. Now, however, as she drove along the empty, dark country road she was conscious of how remote the area was and how alone she felt.

She frowned as the car engine started to splutter and lose power, anxiety tensing her body as she wondered what on earth was wrong. Her small car had always been so reliable, and she was very careful about having it properly serviced and keeping the tank full of petrol.

Petrol. Lisa knew what had happened from the sharp sinking sensation in her stomach even before she looked fearfully at the petrol gauge.

Henry had not bothered to replace the petrol they had used on the journey north and now, it seemed, the tank was empty.

Lisa closed her eyes in mute despair. What on earth was she going to do? She was stranded on an empty country road miles from anywhere in the dark on Christmas Eve, with no idea where the nearest garage was, no means of contacting anyone to ask, dressed in jeans and a thin sweater on a freezing cold night.

And she knew exactly who she had to blame for her sorry plight, she decided wrathfully ten minutes later as the air inside her car turned colder and colder with ominous speed. Oliver Davenport. If it hadn’t been for him and his cynical and deliberate manipulation of the truth to cast her in a bad light in front of Henry and his parents, none of this would have happened.

Even now she still couldn’t quite believe what she had done in the full force of that final, unexpected burst of temper, when she had thrown her clothes at him.

Lisa hugged her arms tightly around her body as she started to shiver. It was too late to regret her hasty departure from Henry’s parents’ home now, or the fact that she had brought nothing with her that she could use to keep her warm.

Just how far was it to the nearest house? Her teeth were chattering now and the windscreen had started to freeze over.

Perhaps she ought to start walking back in the direction she had come. At least then the physical activity might help to keep her warm, but her heart sank at the thought. So far as she could remember, she had been driving for a good fifteen minutes after she had passed through the last small hamlet, and she hadn’t seen any houses since then.

Reluctantly she opened the car door, and then closed it again with a gasp of shock as the ice-cold wind knifed into her unprotected body.

What on earth was she going to do? Her earlier frustration and irritation had started to give way to a far more ominous and much deeper sense of panicky fear.

One read about people being found dying from exposure and hypothermia, but it always seemed such an unreal fate somehow in a country like Britain. Now, though, it suddenly seemed horribly plausible.

Her panic intensified as she realised that unless she either
managed to walk to the nearest inhabited building, wherever that might be, or was spotted by a passing motorist, it would be days before anyone realised that she was missing. There was, after all, no one waiting at home in London for her. Her parents had agreed not to telephone on Christmas Day because they knew she would be staying with Henry’s family. Henry would assume—if indeed he gave her any thought at all—that she was back in London.

As she fought down the emotions threatening to overwhelm her Lisa happened to glance at her watch.

It was almost half past twelve… Christmas Day.

Now she couldn’t stop the tears.

Christmas Day and she was stuck in a car miles from anywhere and probably about to freeze to death.

She gave a small, protesting moan as she sneezed and then sneezed again, blinking her eyes against the dazzling glare of headlights she could see in her driving mirror.

The dazzling glare of headlights… Another car…

Frantically Lisa pushed on her frozen car door, terrified that her unwitting rescuer might drive past her without realising her plight.

The approaching car was only yards behind her when she finally managed to shove open the door. As she half fell into the icy road in her haste to advertise her predicament any thoughts of the danger of flagging down a stranger were completely forgotten in the more overriding urgency of her plight.

The dazzle of the oncoming headlights was so powerful that she couldn’t distinguish the shape of the car or see its driver, but she knew he or she had seen her because the car suddenly started to lose speed, swerving to a halt in front of her.

Now that the car was stationary Lisa recognised that there was something vaguely familiar about it, but her relief
overrode that awareness as she ran towards it on legs which suddenly seemed as stiff and wobbly as those of a newborn colt.

However, before she could reach it, the driver’s door was flung open and a pair of long male legs appeared, followed by an equally imposing and stomach-churningly recognisable male torso and face.

As she stared disbelievingly into the frowning, impatient face of Oliver Davenport, Lisa protested fatalistically, ‘Oh, no, not you…’

‘Who were you hoping it was—Henry?’ he retorted sardonically. ‘If this is your idea of staging a reconciliation scene, I have to tell you that you’re wasting your time. When I left him you were the last thing on Henry’s mind.’

‘Of course I’m not staging a reconciliation scene,’ Lisa snapped back at him. ‘I’m not staging a scene of any kind… I—it isn’t something I do…’

The effect of her cool speech was unfairly spoiled by the sudden fit of shivering that overtook her, but it was plain that Oliver Davenport wouldn’t have been very impressed with it anyway because he drawled, ‘Oh, no? Then what was all that highly theatrical piece of overacting in the Hanfords’ hall all about?’

‘That wasn’t overacting,’ Lisa gritted at him. ‘That was…’

She shivered again, this time so violently that her teeth chattered audibly.

‘For God’s sake, put a coat on. Have you any idea what the temperature is tonight? I know you’re from the south and a city, but surely common sense—?’

‘I don’t have a coat,’ Lisa told him, adding bitterly, ‘Because of you.’

The look he gave her was incredulously contemptuous.

‘Are you crazy? You come north in the middle of December and you don’t even bother to bring a coat—’

‘Oh, I brought a coat all right,’ Lisa corrected him between shivers. ‘Only I don’t have it now…’

She gritted her teeth and tried not to think about the warmth of the lovely, heavenly cream cashmere coat which had been amongst the things she had thrown at his feet so recklessly.

‘You don’t… Ah… I see… What are you doing, anyway? Why have you stopped?’

‘Why do you think I’ve stopped? Not to admire the view,’ Lisa told him bitterly. ‘The car’s run out of petrol.’

‘The car’s run out of petrol?’

Lisa felt herself flushing as she heard the disbelieving male scorn in his voice.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she defended herself. ‘We were supposed to be coming north in Henry’s car, only it was involved in an accident and couldn’t be driven so we had to use mine, and Henry was so anxious to get… not to be late that he didn’t want to stop and refill the tank…’

Lisa hated the way he was just standing silently looking at her. He was determined to make things as hard for her as he could. She could see that… He was positively enjoying making her look small… humiliating her.

In any other circumstances but these she would have been tempted simply to turn her back on him, get back in her car and wait for the next driver to come by, but common sense warned her that she couldn’t afford to take that kind of risk.

Her unprotected fingers had already turned white and were almost numb. She couldn’t feel her toes, and the rest of her body felt so cold that the sensation was almost a physical pain.

Taking a deep breath and fixing her gaze on a point just beyond his left shoulder, she said shakily, ‘I’d be very grateful if you could give me a lift to the nearest garage…’

Tensely she waited for his response, knowing that he was bound to make the most of the opportunity which she had given him to exercise his obvious dislike of her. But when it came the blow was one of such magnitude and such force that she physically winced beneath the cruelty of it, the breath escaping from her lungs in a soft, shocked gasp as he told her ruthlessly, ‘No way.’

It must be the cold that was making her feel so dizzy and light-headed, Lisa thought despairingly—that and her panicky fear that he was going to walk away and simply leave her here to meet her fate.

Whatever the cause, it propelled her into instinctive action, making her dart forward and catch hold of the fabric of his jacket as she told him jerkily, ‘It wasn’t
my
fault that your cousin sold his girlfriend’s clothes without her permission. All
I
did was buy them in good faith… He’s the one you should be punishing, not me. If you leave me here—’