Walking in Darkness by Charlotte Lamb Page B

was English. She could hear his cool, deep, cultured tones without straining although he was not raising his voice and all around them both people were talking loudly. She had loved the way he talked, she had always loved the way the English talked. It was very close to the way her own people talked in New England.
    She had made no move to go over to him; she had been so sure he would come over and speak to her and she had known, even then, right from the very first, that this was going to be the most important relationship of her life.
    He had detached himself from the group he was talking to and strolled calmly, without hurrying, towards her, and she had waited without looking at him, her whole body alive with excitement.
    She couldn’t remember what they had talked about, although they must have asked each other the obvious questions. ‘Who are you? What do you do? Where do you live?’ The only thing that mattered was that they had not felt like strangers; there had been something so familiar about him, as if she had known him in another life, and this was meant, intended, they belonged together.
    After a while they had quietly slipped out of the party, indifferent to watching eyes or the gossip they might arouse. They were almost silent in the cab they took back to his hotel room. They had sat side by side, their bodies not even touching, from time to time looking at each other, and knowing what was going to happen as soon as they were alone.
    Cathy had never before gone to bed with a stranger. She wasn’t promiscuous; there had not been that many men in her life. She had twice thought she was in love. If she had not met Paul she might have married the man she had been seeing just before the night of that party. Steve would have been there with her if he had not been abroad that month.
    She had known Steve most of her life. She had believed she was in love with him for a while, but at the first sight of Paul she knew the difference.
    Everything she had ever felt before had been playing at love. Paul hit her like lightning striking a house, setting her on fire, and the whole landscape of her life was illuminated for her by what she felt with him. She knew she would never be the same again.
    They had made love three times that night, and in the morning after sleeping a few hours they had woken up and made love again. She had been so stunned that she had said to him, ‘You aren’t real! Do you always do it this often?’ and Paul had hoarsely laughed and shaken his head.
    ‘Never in my life before! I can’t believe it either. It’s just that I haven’t been to bed with anyone for a long time, and you’re so bloody marvellous, I can’t have enough of you. I feel like a starving man who gets his first meal for days and can’t stop eating.’
    It had not been a romantic declaration of love, but it had made her heart turn over. She could have told him there and then that she was in love, but she waited until Paul told her first. From the beginning she had let him set the pace, even when she was consumed with the need to know he loved her. Paul was the sort of man, she knew instinctively, who needed to be in control of everything in his life, and Cathy loved him enough to give him what he needed, whatever the cost to her.
    He had proposed before he went back to England and she hadn’t even stopped to think about it before accepting. Her father had known she was seeing him, but he hadn’t had any idea it was serious and when she told him she was marrying Paul he had been stunned.
    ‘But . . . Cathy . . . he’s not much younger than me!’ he had protested.
    It was an argument she had expected. She had her answer ready. ‘He’s forty-eight – but so what? I’m not far short of thirty. I think that’s quite a good age-gap.’
    It had taken a while to talk her father round, but he had always been sensible enough to know when she was serious. And there were compensations. He couldn’t deny it was a good match: