Love Forbidden by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barbara Cartland EBooks ltd
Published: 2014-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

A clock in the distance struck one o’clock. At almost the same moment there was a faint sound in the passage outside Aria’s bedroom door. She switched off the reading lamp that stood by her side, plunging the room into darkness.

She was still dressed in the black evening gown that she had worn for dinner, but she had flung a wrap over her shoulders and now, despite the warmth, she found herself shivering as she listened.

It seemed to her that a century of time rather than a few hours had passed since she had come up to her bedroom and deliberately made no effort to go to bed. Instead she had sat pretending to read, holding the book in front of her eyes, but not seeing the printed pages.

Now, what she had anticipated had happened, and another sound told her all too clearly that there was someone outside the door.

She waited.

The handle of the door turned very slowly, but it would not open and after a moment there were several faint clicks as if someone pushed hard, with perhaps a muscular shoulder, against the unbending woodwork.

The handle was turned again, this time less silently and then came a faint knock.

“Aria! Aria!”

The voice was in a whisper, but there was no mistaking who spoke. In the darkness Aria put her hands up to her cheeks as if to feel the warmth of the blood coursing there in a crimson flood.

The knock came again. Then, reluctantly, as if their owner found it hard to admit himself defeated, footsteps moved away from the door and down the passage.

Only when there had been silence for a long time did Aria reach out and switch on the reading lamp. Then she rose and went to the window to draw back the curtains and let in the night air, drawing deep breaths into her lungs as if she felt suffocated by the need of it.

This was what she might have expected, she told herself. And yet somehow it was difficult to face the fact now it had happened. She had a sudden vision of the pretty, painted women with whom her father had loved to associate.

She could see all too clearly the expression in their eyes, the invitation on their curved lips, the voluptuousness of their every movement, everything about them invariably a calculated provocation to sex.

How she hated them! Even before she had understood what they meant and all they stood for in her father’s life, she had felt disgusted and somehow a little soiled because she, herself, had come into contact with them.

And now a man had thought of her as being in the same category as those poor creatures whom she had eventually come to pity rather than despise.

She wished now she had opened the door and told him what she thought of him. And, then she knew that it would have done no good. He would not have understood and she would have merely cheapened herself by ranting at him for something that was instinctively beyond his comprehension.

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