An Immoral Code Read Online Free PDF Page A

out a slender cigar. ‘Because you were pregnant.’
    ‘You tried to persuade me to have an abortion.’
    She watched as he lit the cigar carefully, tilting one of the candles on their table towards him. ‘But I changed my mind.’ He looked at her levelly. ‘And I loved you.’ He did not add that he had, at that time, badly needed something to give his life an aura of respectability, something to remove the taint of rumour regarding sexual scandals in his past life which had threatened to prevent him being made a QC. A wife had been just the thing. And there had been Rachel, beautiful, intelligent, and conveniently willing.
    ‘Loved?’
    ‘I still love you.’ Her eyes met his, and she wanted to believe him with every fibre of her being. ‘It’s just,’ he added softly, drawing on his cigar, ‘that I need more.’
    There was a long silence, while she considered all of this, feeling slightly dazed. She could make nothing of it. ‘What am I meant to do?’ she asked at last, looking up at him.
    ‘Do?’ He smiled, then shrugged. ‘Whatever you want to do. There are no rules.’
    She met his gaze, and the expression in his eyes seemed fathomless. As so often before, she felt there was no way in which she could reach him. It was a situation in which she felt completely helpless. She could not make threats or issue ultimatums – it would get her nowhere. What he had just said was true. For Leo, there were no rules. He might say he loved her, but he loved no one enough to allow them to dictate his life. That she knew. Any other woman would probably leave a husband who was behaving as Leo was. But she was too much in love with him for that. Before she had met him she had not thought herself capable of feeling anything for any man. It was Leo who had taught her not to be afraid. He had rescued her from many things. Maybe it was because he was so amoral that he could understand men and women so completely, and betray their trust utterly. No, she knew she could not go – but what kind of life were they to lead together if she stayed?
    ‘I think I’d like to go home now,’ she said quietly.
    ‘Very well,’ said Leo. He glanced at her curiously as he signalled for the bill. He had wondered how she would react when all this was out in the open, and he was still not sure what she was thinking. He knew that the answer would come in the next few hours.
     
    When he came into the bedroom, loosening his tie, Rachel was lying against the pillows, feeding Oliver. Her eyes were closed,and her nightdress was opened to the waist. Oliver lay at her breast, lightly and rhythmically stroking her skin with a tiny fat hand as he sucked. Leo watched them. He always found the sight vaguely erotic, her body open to the child; the blissful mutual absorption of mother and baby made him feel excluded, tantalised him.
    He took off his tie and threw it over a chair, unbuttoning his shirt. Then he lay down next to Rachel. Oliver, sated, eyes still closed, moved his head away slightly from her breast, exhaling a little bubble of milk. Rachel opened her eyes and looked at Leo. He gazed at her and traced her lips with his finger, then slid his hand down to caress her. This was the moment. If she was going to say, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t ever come near me again,’ she would say it now. But she said nothing.
    ‘Put him in his cot,’ murmured Leo. Wordlessly, she picked Oliver up and went through to the nursery. Then she came back and lay back down next to Leo, and let him kiss and draw her body against his, enveloped by a sense of passion that nothing could extinguish, not even the worst of his actions.
    Two hours later, while Leo slept beside her, Rachel still lay awake, staring into the half-darkness. With an odd sense of detachment, she wondered why the events of the evening had not made her weep, why the pillow was not wet from her sobbing. Wasn’t that the natural reaction? But crying was easy. It was for small griefs, not for