And No Regrets by Rosalind Brett Read Free Book Online Page B

way of taking out their grievances on those they love the most.”
    “Ross and I try not to argue,” Clare murmured. “ He works so hard on the plantation, and the heat gets at his nerves and his vitality—luckily I have the piano,” she gestured to it with a smile. “I employ music to soothe his savage breast.”
    M rs. Pryce laughed appreciatively. “The bush can make or break a man—he is, I must add, looking better than the last time I saw him. There had been an accident with a tree, his boys had to pull him out from under it. He’s strong and luckily he sustained only severe bruising, but when a man is laid low in this climate it takes its toll of him.”
    C lare caught her breath. Ross had never mentioned anything about an accident ... dar n him, he talked to her so little about himself!
    T he Pryces retired to their room, and Clare moved round the living-room straightening cushions and picking up dead flower petals. The boy, Mark, had blithely made up a camp-bed in Ross’s bedroom, and now she didn’t know how to ask her husband to bring it out here to the living-room. What was she afraid of? he would ask, sardonically. Hadn’t he proved in the six months they had been together that he was immune to-her charms?
    “ You’re mooning about like a cat who wants someone to open the door so she can streak out of it.” Ross closed down the piano lid with a sudden snap. “If you’re like this because we’re about to spend a monastic night together, I dread to think what you’d be like if my intentions weren’t strictly honourable.”
    “ Don’t be so sarcastic.” She gave him a glare. “I—I want the bed brought out here.”
    “ And I refuse to bring it out here.” He sat on the piano bench and gave her a steady, almost impudent look. “I don’t want it all along the bush grapevine that my marriage is strictly a platonic one.”
    “ Frightened of spoiling your virile image?” she jeered.
    H e stood up then and she saw the violent bunching of his hands in his pockets. His eyes narrowed to metalli c slits, and Clare’s heart gave a jolt of apprehension beneath the thin flowered chiffon of her dress. Ross was not a man you could try too far, yet something was driving her to try him. She realised with a pang that she was provoking him to a quarrel because she wanted to shake him out of his indifference to her as a woman.
    She saw him cast a glance at the door behind which the Pryces were sleeping—or listening—and suddenly he was standing over her, catching at her arm and marching her forcibly into the other bedroom. With his foot he kicked the d o or shut behind them.
    “If we’re going to argue, then let’s do it in privacy,” he crisped. “Look, don’t you think you’re being a shade on the melodramatic side over all this? These people will be gone in a few days—”
    “I like privacy,” she broke in. “It isn’t much to ask, that you carry my bed out of your room to the living- r oom.”
    “ Curse it all , no!” The words thumped at her like small blows.
    “I shouldn’t have thought you cared two hoots on a tin whis tl e what people thought or said, about you,” she scoffed. “Just shows how wrong a girl can be about a man.”
    “And vice versa,” he snapped. “I thought you a girl with some control over female hysterics, but you’re rapidly proving me wrong, aren’t you? First the storm, now this virginal display of modesty. I noticed you spilled the salt pot at dinner—what’s up, did Auntie once warn you that to spill salt means your chastity is threatened?”
    “You sarcastic bully!” Clare could feel herself panting. She wanted to reach out and claw that brown, taunting face. “Why did you choose to bring me out here to this nerve-racking wilderness? Why me?”
    “Maybe I’m an impulse buyer,” he drawled. “I could be regretting the bargain as much as you, you know.”
    “Regret i s the word,” she agreed recklessly. “Your bossy temperament is pretty