A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

he wouldn’t query it, so seeing Anthony had become briefer, mainly because she could not bring herself to submit to his kind of violent love-making. Once she had loved it, but oddly not now.

‘I told James I’d only be gone an hour. I can’t have him asking questions and me having to lie,’ she said after they’d kissed in the hallway, but he seemed hardly to hear her.

‘It’s all arranged, darling – weekend after next. So you’re going to have to lie to him once more. Tell him you’ve been invited to stay that weekend in the country with some friend or other. It’ll be all right because he’s not well enough to go with you.’

It was said almost casually, as though he was glad James was ill. But she said nothing, her mind centred on the awfulness of the coming prospect.

‘Tony, I don’t want to do this,’ she said as they moved towards the stairs and his bedroom. ‘Say if it all goes wrong? I’m terrified. I don’t think I can go through with it.’

‘It won’t. And you have to.’

He sounded so casual, no soothing word of understanding. As they began to mount the stairs she felt suddenly angry. ‘You don’t seem to care how I feel,’ she cried, coming to an abrupt stop halfway up.

‘I’ll be with you.’ But his tone was impatient.

‘With me?’ she spat. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

‘Look. It’ll be over in less than a few minutes then a little wait and it’ll all come away. You’ll have a nice rest, a good sleep, and next day we’ll be back here and you can take it easy for the rest of the day. You might be a bit shaky but you can say you felt ill while you were away – or something like that. Now come on, darling.’

He gave her arm a little tug but she stood resolutely where she was, glaring up at him, for a moment, hating him. ‘It’s all so easy for you, you unfeeling bastard!’

Pulling her hand free of his, she turned to go back downstairs. The next second, she hardly knew how, her foot had slipped on the next step, her body following, and she found herself sliding helplessly down the remaining six steps on her back to finally land with a heavy thump on the hall floor.

She vaguely heard Anthony cry out, ‘My God, Maddie!’ then he was there bending over her. ‘God, Maddie, are you hurt?’

She was crying. ‘Of course I’m hurt! I’ve hurt my back. And my left leg is doubled under me.’

She felt him gently manipulate the leg until he could straighten it to its normal position. It gave her no pain, her back hurting only a little now.

‘Can you try to stand?’ he asked and when she nodded, saying she would try, he gently helped her up, she resting one arm about his neck. Her leg seemed fine and the pain in her back had diminished to hardly anything.

‘I’m all right,’ she said, annoyed with herself now for being so clumsy, and with him for being the cause of it.

‘Do you still want to go on upstairs?’

Such a damn stupid question! ‘No thank you,’ she said sharply. ‘I need to sit down in an armchair.’ She now found she was trembling. Even a mere six stairs was quite a way to slide down on one’s rump.

Carefully he helped her to an armchair in the sitting room, asking after she’d sunk down if she’d like something to drink, a whisky perhaps. She nodded then immediately shook her head. ‘I’d rather have a cup of tea if you don’t mind.’ She still wasn’t feeling happy with him.

‘I’ll tell Mrs Glover. She’ll be in the kitchen.’

His cook, a woman he could trust to keep his business to herself, whatever her private opinions might be, was soon bringing in a tray of tea, enquiring as she poured for her if she felt all right, to which Madeleine nodded, thanking her for her concern. Mrs Glover, trusted servant though she was, had no idea of course of her condition and returned to her kitchen convinced that no harm had been done by the fall.

The moment she finished her tea, Madeleine stood up carefully, testing her back and, finding it only slightly tender, said that she felt she would be better returning home, taking an odd sense of satisfaction on seeing Anthony’s face lengthen. Surely he hadn’t expected her to roll around in bed with him after what had happened?

He was obviously worried for her, telling her he would get her a taxi, cautioning her to take things easy, only to spoil it by hastily going over the arrangements afresh for the weekend after next.

She understood the need for urgency but couldn’t quell the return of her queasy anxiety at what was to come, nor the screwed up anger that it was she who must go through it, not him, and refusing to allow him the benefit of her feeling that he too might be keyed up and worried for her.

One more week and it would be all over she kept telling herself but it didn’t help. As requested she told James she planned to visit some old friends in Oxfordshire that weekend, but it reaped no strong response.

‘That would be nice for you,’ he said as he lay propped up in bed, having suffered another sudden bout of laboured, wheezing breath. ‘You need to get away for a day or two. No pleasure spending day after day with a sick old fool.’

‘You’re not an old fool!’ she told him angrily, upset with herself mostly for needing to deceive him as she was doing.

‘But I am sick – and that can be no fun for you. And a weekend with friends will do you good. Go and enjoy it. Don’t worry about me. I’m being well looked after.’ All this between each laboured intake of breath.

‘Are you certain?’ she couldn’t help asking.

‘Of course, my dear,’ he replied but