'Don't lie to me,' she said savagely.
'I'm not! That night was the end. I went back to my flat alone and I sat up all night and tried to think, to work out what was happening to me. I still hadn't realised I loved you. I couldn't think, though. My brain wouldn't operate, my heart kept pounding, I was sweating—I felt ill. All I could think of was that I'd lost you, had never had you, that maybe you were somewhere in his arms.' He had perspiration glistening on his skin now at the memory and his eyes were haunted.
'I should have been,'she said in cold bitterness.
She felt the stricken flinch he gave. 'Don't say that.' His arms caught her and held her tightly. 'I couldn't bear it. That night I was in hell. And afterwards it didn't get any better. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. I worked—that was all I could do. I worked like a madman. Music had always been the most important thing in my life, but I'd never needed it the way I did then. It was the only way out for me. I played to forget you and I couldn't forget you, so it all went into my music.'
Marina had felt it, heard it, surging in the music; a wild passion which had misery in it. She had recognised the power of the emotions without ever identifying it as anything to do with herself that night.
'I travelled around as usual, but I can't remember anything that happened while I was away from you. I wouldn't let myself face what had happened to me.' His mouth writhed in a bitter mimicry of humour. 'I was scared stiff. I was afraid that if you found out how I felt you'd somehow have power over me, that you'd own me the way my mother had done, smother me.'
She had known that. His admission held no surprise for her. She stood quietly listening, her face sombre.
'But I was sick for you, obsessed with a need to see you. When I got back to London I sent you some tickets for a concert because I had to see you, even if it was only across a hall, and I was afraid that if I rang you up to ask you out you'd refuse.'
She would have refused, of course. Trapped in her own painful fight to forget him, she would have refused and suffered in doing so.
'Then you came with him,' said Gideon in that harsh voice. 'I knew you'd come, I felt you there, I played to you, I said all the things I couldn't say and I knew you heard me. But when I looked at you, you looked the same. I'd thought there would be a change in you, something visible which would tell me what he meant to you, what had happened between you. I had to know.' He broke off and then said thickly, 'If you loved him I had to know.'
'What if I had?' she asked, moving her head to look at him, her eyes trying to read his face.
His eyes burned. 'I didn't think past the fact that I had to know. And when I asked you if you loved him and you didn't answer, I looked round at you and something in your face told me I could have you.'
That stung, it pierced her like a burning knife. She tried to pull away and he wouldn't let her go; his body shook as he held her. 'Don't be angry. I didn't plan it. I didn't take you there meaning that to happen, I swear I didn't, darling. The moment I had you in my arms I just went crazy. My whole body went wild. I had to have you. I stopped thinking and just.. .'
'Just took what you wanted,' she said with biting contempt. 'As you always have done. That's all that matters, isn't it, Gideon? What you want is the only thing that matters. You've never asked yourself what all this did to me, what I went through during those months?'
He looked stunned, his face blank, and she saw that she had been right. Gideon had never asked himself how she felt, what she had suffered even before she lost the baby and was so ill.
'What do you think was happening to me all this time?' she asked icily. 'Or did you imagine that I was so stupid I had no ideas in my head at all, no feelings to be hurt?'
He stared down at her, the black eyes intent. Slowly he said, 'You were so young, so utterly innocent. I didn't think it would ever have entered your head to feel anything but friendship for me.' His hand lifted to stroke her cheek slowly. 'What did you feel, Marina?' he asked in a low, husky voice.
She caught the eager gleam of the dark eyes and saw the trap in time. Gideon wanted her to admit she had loved him. His eyes had taken on that watchful, excited brightness and his mouth was being held in check by an effort of will.
'All you cared about, all you've ever cared about, was your own feelings, your own desires. I should have avoided you like the plague from the day we met.'
She hadn't, though. She had yielded, helplessly, tempted by her own craving for him and weak in the face of his burning desire for her.
'You had no right to touch me,' she broke out bitterly.
'I knew that,' he muttered grimly, self-contemptuously. 'But at the time all I thought about was satisfying my own need for you.'
Her eyes reinforced her biting contempt and he registered it with a compression of the mouth. 'I did love you,' he insisted. 'I just wouldn't admit it, even to myself. I told myself that it was a crazy infatuation which would end one day. I thought it was just frustrated desire and that when I'd had you I wouldn't want you any more.'
That was what she had thought, too, and it had hurt her badly. During those weeks she had been miserable and in despair, and Gideon hadn't even been aware of her feelings. He had never in his life been aware of anything but his own emotions. He had never considered for a moment what he might be doing to her.
'Why did you marry me?' she asked bitingly. 'You could just have paid me off, agreed to support the baby.'
His eyes closed and his skin paled. 'Don't! You know why I married you—I wanted to marry you. My God, Marina, I jumped at the chance!'
'Do you expect me to believe that?'
His eyes opened and he looked at her with haunted self-contempt. 'Don't you understand? When you vanished like that and I couldn't find out where- you were I began to suspect you'd gone away with somebody else. I went crazy. I was so jealous and miserable I wanted to die. Then Grandie told me the truth and I saw at once that I could marry you without ever admitting how badly I needed you.'
She could only stare at him dumbly. That had been a terrible time for her, pregnant and afraid of the future, aching for his love and knowing she did not have it, and all that Gideon had thought about was himself, as usual.
'You really are a swine, aren't you?' she said with a slow bitter distaste.