The next instant Hal was turning to her, taking her with a rough urgency that demanded a total surrender from her. Karen instinctively responded with a fierce need of her own, a need to grab him back from the dark demons which were possessing him. In a silence which was only broken by tortured gasps, they claimed one another in the most primeval act of all, and when satisfaction had been taken, they lay exhausted in each other's arms.
Their physical closeness soothed Karen into sleep, but when she awoke the next morning Hal was not beside her. He was sitting slumped in a chair by the glass doors, his gaze seemingly fixed on the view, and even in profile his face looked drawn and haggard as if he had not slept at alI. Karen's heart was squeezed by the loneliness that emanated from him. She threw off the bedclothes and padded quickly across the carpet, the closeness of their embrace last night still pulsing in her memory. She wanted to recapture that closeness even if it was only physicaI.
She slid her hands aver his shoulders and down his chest as she leaned her cheek on his head. 'What is it, Hal?' she appealed softly. 'Can't you trust me with your confidence?'
He gave a mirthless laugh and flung her hands off him. In a harsh rejection of her caring gesture he jerked his head away and stood up. 'Trust you!' he shot at her derisively. 'Do you take me for a complete fool, Karen?'
She shook her head in hurt bewilderment. 'Why do you say that? What have I done wrong?'
Again came that mirthless laugh and the savage mockery was back ilI his eyes. 'Oh, you've done nothing wrong, Karen. It's almost a faultless performance. You've even got my father believing in it and normally he's a very astute man, not easily taken in.'
Karen raised her hands in helpless frustration. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
Hal swung around and caught her arms, shaking her as he grated out his accusation. 'Don't give me that! You're a damned good actress, but I know the facts, remember?'
'Actress?' she repeated dazedly.
His mouth curled into a snarl of contempt. 'For the last six weeks you deserve an Academy Award. Every appearance of being happy, contented, serene with your lot. You even give the impression of a woman in love. Sometimes it even fools me!'
'But I do .. .' She couldn't say it. He wasn't going to believe that she loved him and she could not bear to hear him deride the claim. 'I do care for you, Hal,' she said defeatedly.
His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her arms and his mouth tightened into a grim line. 'Don't lie to me! You're married to a man you don't like, forced to share a son you don't want to share, and you're playing a waiting game. I know it. So when are you going to put the knife in, Karen? What moment are you going to pick to get your revenge on me?'
'I don't want to hurt you!' she cried vehemently, more shaken by his words than by his hands. Her eyes desperately tried to reinforce the truth of what she was saying. 'I want you to be happy, I want to be happy with you. Please believe me, Hal.'
Rejection was written in every taut line of his face as he let her go and paced away from her. 'So what put you in this happy frame of mind, Karen?' he demanded sarcastically. 'The car? The house and servants? Did you decide the easy life was worth having?'
His words hit her like blows, and she recoiled from him, trying and failing to absorb the venom he had fired at her. Her heart writhed over the knowledge that he thought her so mercenary. Her eyes bleakly registered his unrelenting stance, the hard pride of the man. The hopelessness of trying to convince him he was wrong beat through her mind. The barrier he had built between them was impenetrable. Her only weapon was the truth, if only he had ears to hear it. 'I'd live anywhere with you, Hal,' she said quietly.
'Don't take me for a fool!' he retorted bitterly, and his mouth twisted into a sneer. 'I've heard that before from Kirsty. You and your sister are two of a kind. Neither of you have any regard for the truth. We both know how deeply Kirsty cared for me, don't we, Karen?'
Anger rolled over the hurt. He had no cause to revile either her or Kirsty any more. Restoration had been made for the wrong that had been done. The debt had been paid, with interest. Karen's hand moved to her stomach in an instinctive need to protect the life within the life he had put there out of revenge for the past and her voice throbbed with her own turbulent emotion. 'Kirsty loved you--she loved you with her dying breath. I know it.'
'How could you possibly know such a thing?' he mocked.
'There were things about Kirsty I knew which never had to be put into words.'
Cutting cynicism challenged her. 'Give me one example of something you knew for a positive fact, which was never put into words.'
Somehow she had to prove it to him. She had to make him believe that she was speaking the truth. Any hope of a happy future for their marriage was hanging in the balance right now. Desperation forced Karen to search her mind for the one most telling fact which might turn him around. She found it, and spoke with all the aching urgency in her heart.
'When Kirsty died, she died in terrible agony. I felt it--it woke me up. You know that's true, Hal. You were with her. No one has told me that, but I know it to be a fact!
His eyes swept her with contempt. 'You're wrong, Karen. That wasn't even a good try. Kirsty didn't die in agony. She had hardly any pain at all. I'll tell you preeisely how she died, because you obviously don't know. She had one wound, only one, but it severed her femoral artery and nothing could stop the bleeding. She was in shock, but if there was any pain, it was minimal.'
The blood drained from Karen's face. A wave of dizziness made her feel faint. What Hal said couldn't be true--it couldn't! She had felt Kirsty's pain, so strong it had been that it had pierced her heart from halfway around the world. Slowly understanding dawned, understanding of what Kirsty had been suffering in those fatal few minutes.
'So you deluded yourself over this, Karen,' Hal jeered at her relentlessly. 'But I don't intend to delude myself over you.'
He was beyond reaching; it was hopeless even trying. A wave of nausea kept her silent for a moment, but the attack on her integrity had to be answered. Pride dictated it, and the emotional wounds he had so brutally inflicted cried out for some redress.
'I once called you a monster, and I was right!' she cried. 'All you're concerned with is yourself. You think you know everything, but you're so blind, Hal Chissolm, you wouldn't know love it you stumbled over it!'
Her passionate words did not move him one iota.
He stared back at her with cold, unyielding eyes, eyes which had passed the most heinous judgement on her and her sister. But Karen wasn't finished. She was going to hammer the truth home to him if it was the last thing she ever did.