Silver. PENNY JORDAN
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sorry it was so bad,’ he told her coolly. ‘But it’s over now and it won’t ever bother you again. Sit up and take this…’
‘What is it?’ she asked him, eyeing the tablet warily, but for some reason she couldn’t understand obeying his command to uncurl her body and crawl into a sitting position. She winced as she did so, still sore and tender inside, even though the pain had abated.
‘Pain-killer,’ he told her. ‘I need them sometimes. It won’t harm you. You’re going to bleed for a while, I suspect. If you’re still bleeding in the morning…’ He frowned and Silver looked away from him, even though he couldn’t see her flush of embarrassment.
She looked at him and for the first time said quietly, ‘Thank you…’
An odd expression crossed his face. One she couldn’t define at all.
He looked down at her almost broodingly, and she wondered what was going on behind the implacable hardness of his face… what thoughts were locked away in that over-alert and too perceptive mind. He had known her fear, felt it, touched it, tasted it; she had given him a unique weapon against herself and yet he had not used it.
And now, when another man might have experienced discomfort, impatience, embarrassment or just the sheer plain desire to turn his back on the whole incident and on her, he was still standing beside her, his fingers resting lightly against her inner wrist, monitoring the feverish race of her pulse.
The deep understanding which had led him not to betray either surprise or anger, the compassion which had given her the pain-killer, his calm, matter-of-fact awareness of the possible physical consequence of the tearing of that too-protective unwanted veil of flesh, betrayed a much deeper awareness of her than she had known.
‘You’ll want to sleep alone,’ he commented now, and then, when she started to move, his fingers curled round her wrist, making her yield to their pressure.
‘No… you stay here. I’ll sleep in your bed tonight.’ His mouth curled and then softened into an incredibly illuminating smile, one she had never seen curve his mouth before, and for a heart-stopping moment she was breathless and motionless beneath its potency, dazzled by its lure and promise. And then it vanished and his mouth was the cynical curl of contempt with which she was so familiar as he added drily, ‘I trust that you don’t go to bed wearing that appalling perfume.’
‘It isn’t appalling. It’s very expensive, and I happen to like it,’ she told him fiercely, hating herself for the odd sensations she had just experienced, wanting to push them out of her mind and bury them deep where she would never have to face them again. They were too disturbing, too distressing, especially now, when not just her body but her mind as well felt drained of all energy and will to combat anything.
‘Liar,’ he derided her softly. ‘It isn’t you at all. You should wear something sharp and fresh, something that smells of young fresh grass after spring rain… something subtle and tormenting—–’ He broke off suddenly, and Silver knew instinctively that he had spoken words he had not intended to say.
‘We both need to get some sleep,’ he told her curtly. ‘But if you need me for… anything during the night…’
She shot up in bed, simultaneously reaching for the sheet to cover her body—a wasted gesture since he couldn’t see it—and wincing sharply with the pain that splintered inside her, so that he heard her sharp indrawn breath. Then she realised that he had not been taunting her with sexual innuendo, as she had thought, but had simply meant if she was in any physical discomfort.
She had spent enough dreary hours recovering from the pain of her own operations to know why he should be so aware of how long and dark those nights could be when the physical body was tormented by its ills and the pain stretched out tentacle-like fingers, which it hooked into vulnerable flesh and raked it into an agony that never seemed to subside.
‘This tablet should do the trick if it’s one of Annie’s wonder pills,’ she told him gruffly, not knowing why now, after all that had happened, she should feel awkward and embarrassed by his detached concern… why the mere thought of having to ask him for comfort and relief of any kind should make her skin go hot and cold and her mind shudder back from the edge of some unsuspected chasm which lured her to its edge even while she cringed back from it.
She wanted him to leave so that she could go into the bathroom and clean her body, not of his touch, which at all times had been minimal and clinical, but of the evidence of her own humanity and weakness. But he stayed where he was, hovering over her like a dark eagle while she swallowed the pill and drank the water, and even after that, until the pain started to subside and her eyes started to close.
They parted the next morning, outside the bank, where Silver formally handed over to him his money and where they faced one another gravely, still two antagonists. Her body felt stiff and slightly sore, but there was no bleeding and she knew with inner conviction that she would soon heal.
As he took the money he said firmly, ‘I won’t wish you good luck. I know you believe you’re right in what you’re doing, but I can tell you that you’re not. Unfortunately, by the time you come to that realisation yourself, it will be too late. It’s one of life’s more bitter truisms that we can’t learn from the experience of others.
‘I, too, have had my time of black despair, my thirst for destruction, my need to reach out and contaminate with my hatred those who contaminated me and mine with theirs; I, too, have known what it means to set myself above the law and consider myself justified in doing so.
‘Revenge is a drug; once it gets hold of you it doesn’t let go, it pervades your whole life.’
He couldn’t have said anything more calculated to strengthen her hand.
‘That might be your experience, it won’t necessarily be mine. My father taught me to shoot when I was twelve years old,’ Silver told him thinly, angry with him that he should choose now of all times to give her an unwanted moral lecture. ‘Always shoot to kill, he told me. And always kill cleanly…’
He smiled at her then, mocking her with his soul-deep awareness of her thoughts as he said softly, ‘Yes, but mutilation has such a subtle appeal, doesn’t it? What point is there in inflicting a wound if the victim doesn’t feel it… and it is mutilation you thirst for, isn’t it, Silver? Mutilation and destruction…’
‘What I plan to do has nothing to do with you,’ she told him distantly, dismissing him with the ice that ran through her voice like the chill of northern snows. ‘I did what I had to do, and now it’s over.’
She turned her back on him and swung down the street, a tall, silver-haired woman whose arresting beauty drew glances from everyone she passed. But for once she was unconcerned with the effect of her looks, and for the first time, although she herself didn’t know it, her face was that of a woman real and alive, full of emotion and character, and not simply a mask of beauty almost unreal in its perfection.
She had two more days before she left Switzerland and returned to London. She took a taxi back to her rented chalet, dismissing the maid, who was so well trained that she exhibited no surprise either at Silver’s command or at her reappearance in the middle of the day, after an unexplained absence of several weeks.
From the chalet she rang Annie, who expressed pleasure at hearing from her.
‘Where have you been?’ she scolded. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘Oh, I had things to do,’ Silver told her vaguely, quickly changing the subject. ‘Annie, I’m leaving in a couple of days… How about dinner this evening?’
‘I’d have loved to, but Jake beat you to it. Unless of course you want to join us…’
Silver paused for a moment, her heartbeat quickening. Would Jake tell Annie what had happened? Somehow she doubted it, and anyway, what would it matter if he did? There was no point in joining them for dinner simply to sit in torment all evening waiting for Jake to mock her by revealing their arrangement. Despite the fact that she