Long Cold Winter

She asked him, tensing herself against his answer, not knowing what to expect.

‘Business,’ he told her succinctly.

She was glad he couldn’t see her expression. ‘Business?’ Hadn’t that been partially to blame for their break-up? They should never have married in the first place; Yorke had never intended that they should. A brief affair had been all that he wanted, but he had underestimated her inexperience. It would have been better by far if she had simply had an affair with him, she admitted with hindsight, but at nineteen… She sighed, pulling her thoughts away from the past and turning round to face him.

‘Business?’ she reiterated with mocking bitterness. ‘You don’t change, do you, Yorke?’

‘Perhaps if there’d been something worth coming home to I might have come home more often,’ Yorke replied cruelly. ‘But we’re not talking about the past, Autumn, we’re talking about the future. I’m in line for a K—a knighthood,’ he explained curtly when she looked blank. ‘Services to industry, you know the sort of thing.’

She hid her surprise under a cool smile. Where his business was concerned Yorke was tirelessly ambitious, but she had never known position or wealth matter to him for their own sake.

As though he had followed her train of thought he added coolly, ‘For myself I don’t give a damn, but it will do the airline good, and the way competition is these days, every little helps. The problem is that I’ve been warned that under the present very correct government that it will greatly aid my chances of success if I were seen to be respectably married. The playboy image is not favoured, and that’s why I need a wife.’

‘You bastard,’ Autumn said huskily. ‘Go and find yourself one somewhere else, and get out of here.’

He laughed without humour. ‘What did you expect? That I’d come chasing all this way just to get you back into my bed? You always did have a highly charged imagination. You were good, Autumn, but not that good,’ he added brutally. ‘And as for finding myself a wife somewhere else, why should I, when I’ve still got you?’

Their eyes met and held, and Autumn could feel the hot anger welling up inside her, fighting it down as she tried to remain cool and controlled.

‘Stop it, Yorke,’ she warned him. ‘I’m not your possession. And I’m not coming back to you.’

‘Afraid?’ he taunted. ‘You haven’t changed at all, Autumn. You’re still running scared, still terrified of facing up to life.’

She tried to block out his words, but they held a core of truth which echoed bitterly through her.

‘I’m not afraid of you, or any man!’ she lashed back angrily. ‘The past is past for me, Yorke.’

‘But it isn’t, is it?’ he said softly. ‘How can it be while you’re still my wife—and that’s just what you are,’ he reminded her suavely. ‘No matter how much you’d like to deny it or forget it you can’t, can you? And how you hate it!’

His taunts made her writhe with mingled rage and anguish.

‘You’re a coward, Autumn,’ he said coolly. ‘You think you can escape from what happened by pretending not to see it, instead of facing up to it. Or is it something else you fear?’ he taunted softly. ‘Perhaps you’re not as indifferent to me as you pretend?’

‘Indifferent!’ She went white with anger, unable to prevent the highly charged surge of emotion his accusation aroused.

‘I’m not indifferent to you, Yorke,’ she told him bitterly. ‘I hate you, and I’ll go on hating you until the day I die. Does that satisfy you?’

She was panting slightly, her eyes glittering as she threw the words at him. ‘And as for our marriage… Get out of here, Yorke!’

She turned her back on him, fighting for self-control. They had played this scene so often before. Her defiant; him taunting, sure of her ultimate capitulation, which had always been forthcoming, but she was not going to allow her bitterness to give him victory now. The ardent passion which had once held her in thrall to him had been tamed and the searingly painful lessons his humiliation of her pride had inflicted upon her mind acted as a curb upon her senses. She felt like a laboratory mouse trained to react to light and heat, as the sensual softness of his voice reminded her of the bitter pain which had followed her abject surrender, freezing her emotions behind a wall of ice.

‘I’m not the floor show, Yorke,’ she said coldly. ‘I know you get a kick out of baiting me, but you aren’t going to get a reaction. Those days are gone, and I’m immune—you saw to that. Another two years and I’ll be free of you for good, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.’

She hadn’t heard him come up behind her, and when his hands grasped her wrists, pulling her back against the hard male warmth of his body, she froze instantly.

‘So, you’re immune, are you?’ he whispered savagely, turning her towards him and imprisoning her against him, his mouth feathering tormentingly against her throat, reawakening aching memories of how she had once responded to that light caress.

Her mouth felt dry, every muscle tensed against his deliberate and calculated assault upon her senses. So many times before he had broken her self-control like this, but this time she was not going to give way.

She knew the exact moment when his cool amusement gave way to hard anger. She could feel it in the sudden changed pressure of his mouth as it moved against her skin, trying to prise her lips apart as they remained stubbornly closed to him, her eyes open and defiant as they met the smouldering rage in his.

When at last he raised his head, his eyes were murderous.

‘Finished?’ Autumn asked sweetly, enjoying her victory.

‘Like hell!’ Yorke responded, bending his head again and taking her still parted lips in a kiss of searing brutality, from which she automatically withdrew, closing her mind to what was happening and standing within the circle of his hard arms like a stuffed doll, and still it went on, punishing, probing, ripping the scars from old wounds and leaving her exposed and bleeding, her nails digging deep into the palms of her hands as she fought not to betray any emotion.

Yorke released her with a muttered oath and pushed her away, his face suffused with angry colour.

‘You little bitch, you enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ he grated.

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand.

‘No, I didn’t enjoy it, Yorke, no woman enjoys being humiliated and degraded, but I have learned to distinguish between punishment and pleasure. Now perhaps you understand what I mean when I say that nothing on this earth would induce me to live with you again as your wife.’

‘Not even if I promised you a divorce the moment the New Year Honours List is published?’ Yorke suggested softly.

She was powerless to prevent her instinctive reaction, and hope leapt to life in her eyes as they flew to meet him.

‘Think carefully about it, Autumn. I can make it easy for you, or drag you and the past all through the courts, opening up all the old scars. I can fight you every inch of the way and you’ll be the one who’s hurt, I’ll make sure of that. Remember how it was between us, and think hard before you decide whether you want it spilled out in front of strangers. All I’m asking for is four months of your time. You give me what I want and I’ll tell my solicitors to draw up the divorce papers the moment the Honours List is announced.’

She ran her tongue round lips which had suddenly gone bone dry. She knew that Yorke wasn’t making idle threats and shivered suddenly, tormented by the vivid picture he had drawn, knowing that she could not face the sort of court action he was talking about.

‘You want that divorce—and badly,’ Yorke reminded her softly. ‘Don’t bother trying to deny it. I’m even prepared to put my promise to agree to our divorce in writing if you wish.’

‘You’ll have to,’ Autumn responded crisply, checking as he pounced in triumph.

‘So you’ll do it?’

What alternative did she have? Another two years of hell, trying to hold back the past, with the ordeal and blood-bath of a court hearing at the end of it, or four months of playing the part of Yorke’s ‘wife’ in return for her immediate freedom.

She took a deep breath to steady herself.

‘Yes, I’ll do it, Yorke, but on two conditions. Your promise in writing that the divorce begins the moment the Honours List is published, and your agreement to helping Alan with this venture. That shouldn’t prove too burdensome—eventually the island will prove extremely profitable.’

‘No third condition?’ he taunted softly. ‘Banning me from your bed? A safeguard in case you forget that you’ve turned into a piece of ice and remember how it used to be with us.’

His words brought back memories Autumn would rather have remained forgotten, but she managed to breathe evenly without betraying any of her inner turmoil. He had broken through her defences once tonight; he wasn’t going to do it again.

‘I don’t need a third condition, Yorke,’ she told him quietly. ‘As we shall no doubt be living in your apartment and the bed will be yours, the problem shouldn’t arise. Or have you forgotten telling me that the only way I would ever get into it again would be if I crawled on my hands and knees and begged? My begging days are over, Yorke. I wouldn’t ask you for water if I were dying of thirst. The only reason I’m agreeing to come back to you at all is for the pleasure in four months’ time of leaving the past behind me for ever.’

She saw the colour leave his face, and knew that she had touched a raw spot. When it came to dishing out the contempt Yorke was a past master, but it was a different matter when he was on the receiving end of it. Bile rose in her throat and she felt the bitterness of the past rising up to swamp her, fighting off the cringing memories of that last destructive quarrel when Yorke had thrown those words at her. She had known then that she must get away from him or be completely destroyed, because then her need of him had been so great that she had known that she could not continue to live with him and not eventually plead with him to make love to her, and once she did that she would have destroyed the last fragile remnant of her self-respect.

‘I hope Alan appreciates what you’re doing for him,’ York said sardonically, interrupting her train of thought. ‘Or is it just for him?’ His hand caressed her bare arm, the flesh rising in goosebumps under his skilled fingers, his mouth descending to tease her skin with coaxing, soft kisses. Autumn forced herself to remain still and cold.

‘No, Yorke,’ she told him quietly. ‘It’s for me as well. Call it part of my therapy. I’d like to tell you that having you touch me fills me with loathing,’ she added calmly, ‘but that isn’t true.’

She felt him stiffen and sensed that he was expecting her surrender.

‘You see, Yorke,’ she told him emotionlessly, ‘I feel nothing. Nothing at all, neither for you nor anyone else. You destroyed my ability to feel.’

She moved away from him as she spoke, acutely aware of him behind her as he unlocked the door, throwing her the key.

‘Don’t try running out on me, Autumn,’ he warned her curtly, ‘or I’ll make you wait for eternity for divorce. The moment I’ve got the negotiations here all wrapped up, we’re leaving—together.’

Autumn did not respond. She could not. It was taking all her will-power merely to breathe. She felt as though she had died and been born again, living through some dreadful, indescribable holocaust, to emerge from it another person.

How long she stood staring out of the window she did not know. A soft tap on her door roused her, and Sally’s anxious face told her how concerned her friend had been.

‘I saw Yorke leaving,’ she said by way of explanation for her presence. ‘What happened?’

‘He’s promised me my divorce, provided I live with him for the next four months.’ Autumn explained the situation emotionlessly, whilst Sally listened.

‘You’re hoping that living with him will free you from whatever it is that haunts you from the past, aren’t you?’ she said shrewdly.

‘In a way,’ Autumn agreed wryly. ‘Don’t hypnotists use much the same method for freeing patients from their hang-ups? A mental regression to childhood to live through the trauma once more and come to terms with it?

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Sally said unhappily. ‘You could be playing with fire.’

‘I’m immune,’ Autumn told her. Discussing Yorke’s offer with Sally had helped to clarify her own thoughts on the subject, and confirmed her own view that the time for running was over, and yet still fear lingered, urging her to flight. That was the response of the gauche adolescent she had been, not the woman she now was.

‘Sure you don’t want me to stay?’ Sally asked her.

Autumn shook her head. She wanted to be alone, to think things through slowly and carefully. When Sally had gone she stared out of her uncurtained window, the soothing movement of the sea beckoning her like a benison, then she opened the french window and walked towards it.

For two years she had told herself that she was free, but she wasn’t, and never would be until she could lie in Yorke’s arms and feel nothing, apart from the intense satisfaction of her rejection of him!

The beach was in darkness and deserted, the faint strains of music reaching her from the hotel fading as she walked farther away from it, her feet making delicate imprints in the damp sand.

She loved the sea, endlessly fascinated by its ceaseless movement. Lying on it was like being rocked in a huge cradle. The tide had washed up a huge conch shell and she picked it up, shuddering a little as she glimpsed the fleshy eel-like conch inside. The sting of a conch could be particularly painful, and she made a mental note to remind the new holidaymakers of this fact in the morning. Collecting the varied shells to be found on the beaches was a favourite pastime with the visitors. The wooden beach hut which held the diving and snorkelling equipment was closed up for the night, the dinghies and windsurfers pulled up outside it; the two power boats the hotel used for water skiing drifted easily at anchor.

The beach came to an abrupt end, the black volcanic rock from which the Five Fathoms restaurant was carved stretching skywards in a sheer, unscalable cliff, thick with luxuriant vegetation, and plunging steeply into the sea. Autumn sat down on a piece of driftwood and stared out into the darkness.

Ever since she had left Yorke she had been hiding from her memories, but now she could hide no longer. The exorcism would have to start somewhere, and the very beginning was as good a place as any, she mused.

CHAPTER THREE

THE very first time she had set eyes on Yorke, Autumn had been standing behind the reception desk of the hotel where she worked, and she had been struck instantly by the hard-boned masculinity of his face and the sensual appeal of his tall, narrow-hipped body clad in a thick cream sweater and thigh-moulding dark pants.

The only time she had ever seen men like him had been in magazines that the guests left behind or on television, and in the flesh he had an impact that sent her senses reeling.

Mary, the girl who was officially on duty and supposed to be teaching her, stared at him in open-mouthed awe and murmured appreciatively to Autumn.

‘Now that’s what I call a man! And all alone. Pity he’s so dark—he’s bound to prefer blondes.’ When Autumn looked puzzled, she exclaimed in affectionate contempt,

‘God, you really don’t know anything, do you?’

Autumn could have replied that she knew quite a lot, but she knew the ‘anything’ Mary referred to meant anything about the male sex, so she kept silent, colour grazing her skin as she saw that the man was watching her.

Mary served him with ingratiating politeness, but he seemed barely aware of her, his eyes totally indifferent as he signed his name on the register and moved away while she rang for a porter.

Who was he, Autumn wondered, and what was he doing here? Her lonely childhood had turned her into something of a daydreamer, and as though he sensed that she was curious about him, he turned to look at her, his eyes losing their cool indifference and surveying her with an intensity that brought the swift colour to her cheeks.

She had gone off duty shortly afterwards, but the next day Mary had been full of their new visitor.

His name was Yorke Laing, she had informed Autumn, and he had been ordered to rest by his doctor following a bout of ‘flu.

‘Yorke Laing.’ Autumn had savoured the name, wondering why it should have such a familiar ring until she remembered who he was. Surely the Yorke Laings of this world did not recuperate from their illnesses in tiny little hotels perched on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors? The South of France or somewhere equally glamorous seemed more in keeping.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ Mary breathed as Yorke walked past the desk. ‘And I bet there isn’t much he doesn’t know about women!’

Yorke turned and smiled at them and Autumn flushed vividly, and Mary’s shrewd eyes noted her changing colour.

The other girls in the hotel had been inclined to tease Autumn at first, when they realised how inexperienced she was, but they were on the whole kind-hearted and their teasing had given way to affectionate protection, and although at nineteen Autumn was only a couple of years their junior they tended to treat her very much as the ‘baby’ of the staff.

It was only since she had come to work at the hotel that she had realised how old-fashioned her upbringing had been. Her parents had been killed in a road accident when she was still a baby, and she had been brought up by a spinster aunt of her father’s, who had lost her own fiancé during the First World War. Emma Kane had been a product of an era that brought up its daughters to be ‘correct young ladies’ and she in turn had brought Autumn up in the same mould. A small private school had given Autumn an excellent education, but as she had always held herself a little aloof from the other girls she had never made any close friends, and the result was that the gap between herself and other girls of her generation had steadily grown wider.

When Aunt Emma died Autumn had been shocked and dismayed. The little cottage in the Yorkshire Dales had been sold and, completely alone for the first time in her life, Autumn did not know what she would have done if her aunt’s solicitor had not very kindly recommended her as a trainee receptionist to the owners of the hotel.

Over the months Autumn had grown accustomed to the other girls’ teasing, which was never malicious, and had even dated boys whom they had introduced to her, but none of the dates had been memorable enough to make her want to repeat them.

She had never been in love in her life, and when Yorke Laing smiled at her in slow, deliberately enticing way, she felt both excited and terrified.

‘I think he fancies you,’ Mary whispered enviously. ‘I told you he would prefer blondes.’

Autumn glanced uncertainly at her friend, not sure if she was teasing her.

‘Honestly, you’re the limit!’ Mary complained. ‘Didn’t that aunt of yours tell you anything?’ She heaved a sigh and put her hands on Autumn’s shoulders, turning her round to face the mirror. ‘Now, take a good look at yourself,’ she instructed.

Autumn stared at her own familiar reflection. Her hair was long, and curled gently on to her shoulders, hesitant blue eyes staring back at her between their fringing of black lashes. Beside Mary’s petite plumpness she felt gangly and awkward, oblivious to the delicate slenderness of her own bones or the inherent grace with which she moved.

‘You’re hopeless!’ Mary announced. ‘There isn’t a girl here who can touch you for looks, Autumn, but for all the use you make of them, you might just as well be a nun. Don’t you know how men look at you?’

How did they look at her? Autumn wondered, and then remembering how she had felt when Yorke Laing smiled at her, she blushed and turned away from the mirror to busy herself with some papers on her desk.

She was only on duty until lunchtime and had promised to go shopping with Mary during the afternoon. Mary wanted some new shoes and she had persuaded Autumn that she needed a pair too. Autumn liked Mary; she was the eldest of a large family, cheerful and outgoing, and it was she who had coaxed Autumn into experimenting with make-up and clothes, showing her how to apply a discreet touch of eye-shadow and glossy lipstick.

Autumn was alone on the reception desk when Yorke Laing came back. She had just been about to go off duty, and the sound of his voice, husky and faintly quizzical, made her blush furiously as she examined the pigeonholes for his mail.

There was nothing for him, and she started to tell him so with a faint stammer, when he smiled, making her catch her breath, as he asked when she went off duty.

‘Now,’ she told him without thinking. ‘Did you want something? I could…’

‘I was wondering if you’d care to spend the afternoon with me,’ he told her suavely. ‘Perhaps show me something of the district.’

Her heart, which had started to pound with excitement, dropped. Of course! He knew nothing of the area and merely wanted a companion for the afternoon. He had only asked her because she happened to be there.

Stammering and blushing, she explained to him that she was going shopping with Mary.

‘Another time, perhaps,’ he said smoothly as her relief came to take over from her, but when she related the incident to Mary later, the latter took her to task over her lack of guile.

‘You should have told him you were free,’ she scolded. ‘Fancy passing up a date with him to come shopping with me!’

‘He only wanted someone to show him round the area,’ Autumn told her uncomfortably.

‘Look, love,’ Mary announced, taking her by the arm and dragging her across the road, ‘men like Yorke Laing don’t need to look for companions; they just take their pick from the willing victims flocking at their heels.’ She glanced at Autumn’s face and gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Perhaps it’s as well you didn’t go with him. You’re such an innocent, you wouldn’t know where to begin with a man like him.’

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