Free Forever Yours by Rita Bradshaw Page B

taken you down? Tell me.’
    ‘Stop it!’ She was struggling violently, panic-stricken and afraid, and as she did so the shawl which covered her head and was tucked in the collar of her coat slipped about her shoulders. At the sight of her golden hair, soft tendrils of which curled on to her forehead and cheeks, he seemed to go mad.
    Pulling her against him, he crushed his mouth down on hers, her head going back so far she thought her neck would crack. Now Constance fought in earnest but her frenzied efforts had little impact on the hard male body. Although she was tall for her age, she was slender and finely boned. Vincent was a man in his prime and big and broad; the muscles he had developed in his years before becoming weighman had not yet turned to fat.
    The snowstorm had driven everyone inside and the street was deserted; there wasn’t even the odd child or two playing out. He had stopped her a hundred yards or so before the grid of streets wherein was home and safety, and now her terror increased as she felt him begin to manoeuvre her off the main street and into an alley which led to a piece of waste ground the colliery were due to develop for housing.
    His mouth had left hers, but now one large hand was clamped across her lower face, stifling her screams but also her air supply. She felt herself going faint and limp, and strangely, as she stopped struggling, this seemed to check his madness. He paused a few feet into the alley, removing his hand as he shook her slightly, saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry – you’re all right, aren’t you? Look, I didn’t want it to be like this. I don’t want to hurt you. I want . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Just tell me, and I want the truth, mind: have you and Heath been carrying on?’
    He was still holding her arms and she hated herself for the pleading note to her voice when she said, ‘No, no, I told you. I swear it.’ Her breath caught in a sob. She didn’t understand this. He didn’t know her, so why was he behaving like this?
    ‘You swear it? On your grandmother’s life? He hasn’t touched you? He hasn’t done anything he shouldn’t?’
    She shook her head and his eyes moved from her mouth to her hair and then back to her mouth. ‘I can find out if you’re telling me the truth. And I don’t like being lied to.’
    ‘He hasn’t touched me, he hasn’t done anything. No one has.’
    His hands tightened on her arms again but not roughly now. Thickly, he said, ‘I’m the first?’
    Help me, please help me, God. He was going to hurt her, she knew he was going to hurt her. Her lips trembling, she whispered, ‘I have to get home, they’ll be worried.’
    ‘Your mother played me for a fool.’ He straightened away from her but still didn’t let her go. ‘You wouldn’t do that, would you? I can offer you more than any man in the village and it would all be above board, legal and proper, once you’re old enough. You’d want for nothing.’
    Dumbly she stared at him, barely able to take in what he was saying. He was the weighman and to her eyes he was old, as old as the fathers of the girls she’d gone to school with, and even before this night something about him had made her flesh recoil.
    ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ His hands dropped to his sides but she knew if she tried to run he would grab her. ‘I want you and I’m prepared to wait but I won’t be messed about, be very sure about that. You’re mine.’
    Again his voice had that funny little quiver in it that made her skin crawl, but instinct told her to say anything he wanted to hear. ‘I – I understand.’ She didn’t dare move a muscle in case it inflamed him again.
    ‘And you’re willing? You’re willing to be my lass?’
    ‘When – when I’m old enough,’ she said faintly, repeating his own words back to him.
    He rubbed his hand hard across his mouth, his eyes unblinking as they searched her face. She knew he was weighing her up, wondering if he could trust her.