Desperate Defiance by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788675710
Publisher: Barbara Cartland Ebooks ltd
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Tony Grayling was a very normal and charming young man. His heart was very elastic and he gave it plenty of scope by proceeding to fall in love with almost every attractive young woman he ever met.

Needless to say, from the first moment that he set eyes on Vivian he ‘fell for her’, as he naїvely put it, ‘head over heels’.

Vivian was amused and she found that his obvious admiration and adoration made the passage of the days easy and entertaining.

There was no heart-tearing emotion or any subtle complexity of sex or mind. It was just natural, human and enjoyable.

Love to Tony was simple and inevitable and so his undisguised pleasure in her company helped more than anything in healing that still throbbing wound to Vivian’s pride.

While Alec seemed more and more aloof and detached from the party, Tony and Vivian found no lack of interest in each other or in absurd and often childish ways of passing the hours between meals.

Even Vivian flushed when Alec, striding unexpectedly into the room with orders for Tony, found them sitting on the floor building card castles.

“Look out! Don’t make a draught!” Vivian said as he entered, thinking that it was her father.

Then, as Tony asked, “do you want me, Alec?” she realised who stood behind her.

She slowly turned her head to face Alec, a faint colour rising to her cheeks. Tony took the papers that Alec held out to him, listened carefully to his instructions and hurried off, saying to Vivian,

“I shall only be an hour or so. Don’t forget you have promised me my revenge at six-pack bezique.”

As the door slammed behind him, Vivian got up from the floor, shaking the creases out of her green skirt. There was a little silence, but intuitively, although she did not look at Alec, she felt that his eyes were on her.

After a minute she felt the silence to be oppressive and pregnant with deep meaning and hastily and nervously she started to speak,

“Is Daddy fretting?” she said lightly. “How much longer do you think the storm is going to continue? It is no use him going until it has completely died down, he would be frozen to death if he had to stop all night on the mountains now, wouldn’t he?”

Alec brushed her words aside and, fixing his eyes on her half-averted face, he asked very softly,

“Why are you avoiding me, Vivian?”

“Avoiding you?” Vivian echoed in insincere surprise. “I assure you I am not. After all it would be rather difficult in such cramped quarters, even if I wanted to.”

“Vivian,” Alec said, taking a step forward and his voice vibrated on her name, “look at me.”

Almost fearfully Vivian obeyed him and raising her head until, nearly on a level with his, their eyes met and he then held her glance almost, it seemed, against her will.

There was something inscrutable, something she half-feared, in his expression and yet she had to look at him and she found herself murmuring almost inaudibly,

“What do you

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