Long Cold Winter

‘Well, I don’t want you.’

She sensed that her response had disconcerted him, although he recovered quickly, shielding his thoughts from her and watching her from beneath lowered lashes, his hard face unreadable.

‘Well, well, you’ve grown up with a vengeance, haven’t you?’ he drawled softly. ‘Anyone who didn’t know you could never guess that you’re as vulnerable as an oyster without its shell under all that surface toughness.’

Somehow she managed to laugh, a light, silvery sound, her head thrown back challengingly to reveal the smooth, seductive arch of her throat.

‘You’re the one who doesn’t know me, Yorke. Two years is a long time, and the toughness, as you call it, isn’t just on the surface. It goes way, way down. God knows why you had to drag Alan into our private affairs, but I’ve already told him, I’m leaving Travel Mates as of tonight, and I shall be on the first available flight out of St Lucia. You and I have nothing to say to one another.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Yorke told her softly. ‘I’m going to see to that. And you’re not as tough as you like to pretend. You’ve forgotten, Autumn, I know everything there is to know about you.’

She smiled again.

‘Not true, Yorke. You knew all there was to know about a girl called Autumn. That girl no longer exists. And you don’t know the first thing about the woman she’s become.’

‘Then perhaps I ought to start finding out,’ Yorke breathed huskily, but Autumn was too quick for him, freeing herself from his grasp and going to stand by the window.

‘Our marriage is over, Yorke, and all I want from you now is my freedom.’

‘That could be arranged.’

She whirled round, staring at him.

‘You’ll agree to our divorce?’

‘I might, under certain conditions.’

‘What conditions?’ Autumn breathed, knowing the moment that she spoke that she had betrayed herself.

‘Not so changed after all,’ Yorke taunted. ‘You’re still as impetutous. I want you back, Autumn, as my wife, living in my home.’

His words caught her off guard, and she flung at him bitterly. ‘Home? And where would that be, Yorke? The flat in Knightsbridge? The one you spent at least one night a month in, in between your business trips. Thanks, but no, thanks. There isn’t any way you could persuade me to go back to you. No prisoner ever enters the condemned cell twice.’

‘Is that what our marriage was to you? And yet you entered it willingly enough, as I remember; even to the extent of being quite prepared to anticipate its vows.’ His mouth twisted wryly at the dark colour flooding her skin.

He was so arrogant, so sure of her capitulation, Autumn reflected angrily, staring out into the night. Over the last two years she had developed an armour against the past; an unscalable wall behind which she had dammed up everything that had happened, including the girl she had once been. Now Yorke was trying to tear down that wall.

‘Don’t try to pretend you ever cared about our marriage, Yorke,’ she said bitterly. ‘We both know that if I hadn’t left voluntarily when I did, you would have had me forcibly removed. You told me yourself that our marriage was a mistake and that I bored you. And it didn’t take you long to replace me either.’

A shaft of pain lanced through her, as the past broke through the barriers, and she tensed automatically, as though by doing so she could hold it back.

‘Why didn’t you divorce me when I left?

Yorke shrugged. ‘Why should I? A wife is an excellent deterrent against unwanted involvements.’

His cynicism took her breath away.

‘But you don’t want me… you don’t love me…’

The words fell between them and she wished them unsaid. They had been her tearful refrain to so many of their quarrels. ‘You don’t love me…’ And never once had he denied it.

‘I need you.’

‘Need me?’ She stared at him, her eyes darkening. ‘You never needed anyone in your entire life—you used to boast about it, telling me how invulnerable you were. I’ve built a new life for myself now, Yorke, and I don’t need you.’

‘Just my consent to our divorce, and I’d give you that; for four months of your time.’

Four months! Autumn wrapped her arms protectively around her body, chilled despite the warmth of the tropical night. During the brief span of their marriage she had come to know that beneath Yorke’s surface, charm lay a cold implacability to have his own way, which would admit no fallibility, no opposition, and now he was saying that he wanted her back. Why?

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!’