This Way Out Read Online Free PDF Page B

not been enough to revitalize her self-esteem.
    Belinda felt grateful to Hugh for choosing her. He was so good-looking, so well-mannered and amusing in company. (‘There’s exactly the same difference in age between myself and Belinda as there is between Prince Charles and Diana,’ he liked to say, adding with a grin, ‘and as you see, exactly the same difference in height.’) And because he was the only suitor she had ever had, and she was urgently in need of a husband’s companionship and support, she was terrified of losing him.
    She just wished that she wasn’t, at the same time, scared by the thought of being married to him. She had tried to resist his pre-marital demands but Hugh had refused to be denied, and all she ever experienced in the process was shame and discomfort and anxiety.
    Belinda dreaded the prospect of having to submit to Hugh whenever and wherever and however he chose. She was disturbed by his hairiness, and alarmed by the way his lips drew back to reveal his one sharp tooth as he scrutinized her naked body before swarming over her like a perverted ape, biting her tender flesh and prying into every orifice. Surely, she thought, making love ought to be nicer than this?
    She hugged her stomach and moaned softly, partly from unhappiness, partly from pain. And then, thankfully, she discovered that her flow had started.
    The couple left the Duke’s Head and went to lunch at a spaghetti house further down the road. Hugh was self-employed, with more spare time than money, and Belinda’s allowance from her father, though originally generous and still more than enough for her own needs, did not run to expensive meals.
    Hugh was surprisingly cheerful. ‘Snobs,’ he had snarled dismissively of his godfather’s relatives; but that was all.
    Belinda knew what he meant. She had had to dodge back into the ladies’room cubicle at the Duke’s Head in order to avoid an embarrassing re-encounter with Mrs Cunningham and another female member of the family, and had overheard them discussing her fiancé. Happy not to be pregnant, and to be out of pain, she had felt defensive on Hugh’s behalf when she heard him described as ‘that odious little man.’
    â€˜So pretentious,’ Belinda had heard Mrs Cunningham’s voice continue. ‘He left Godfrey with the impression that his father was one of my brother’s company commanders, instead of merely his soldier servant! And as for having saved his life …’
    â€˜Not true?’
    â€˜ I don’t know. My brother never talked about such things. But I simply don’t believe a word that upstart says.’
    Belinda couldn’t see that Hugh’s father’s army rank mattered a scrap. Her own father had been a corporal or something in the war, but who cared about that kind of thing now? She too had been prepared to dismiss the women’s attitude as snobbery; but then Mrs Cunningham, raising her voice above the splashing of the washbasin taps, had given her something to worry about.
    â€˜The man’s a thief. My brother encouraged him to join the Army, in the hope of establishing him in a career, but he was cashiered for misappropriation of Mess funds. He used to visit Hugh regularly until about ten years ago, and apparently there was always something missing after his visits – loose cash, or anything that was easily pocketable and saleable. Eventually my brother caught him at it, though he refused to prefer a charge against his godson. He did ban Master Hugh from his house, though, and I’d hoped we’d seen the last of him.’
    â€˜What colossal cheek, then, to come here today!’
    â€˜Exactly. No doubt the little horror was sniffing round in the hope that he’d been left something in my brother’s will, but as you know Hugh divided what he had between the family and the Cathedral.’
    â€˜Quite right too. It would be wasted on that