Another Way

by Frankie McGowan

  A general chorus of ‘marvellous’ and ‘how exciting’ was the perfect cover Ellie needed as she excused herself to Lady Broughton.

  ‘I’m afraid I must leave,’ said Ellie quietly as everyone moved towards the door, not wanting to look at Theo. ‘It’s been quite a day. Thank you for...’

  ‘Not yet,’ Theo said, curtly interrupting her. ‘I want to talk to you, then I’ll drive you home.’

  ‘I don’t think we have anything to say and Oliver can send a car for me...’

  ‘On the contrary, I think there is a lot to be said and I will drive you home.’

  ‘What about your guests? And Debra’s film. Surely…?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Eleanor, just do as I say,’ he said with such anger in his voice, she visibly stiffened. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes and tone did.

  For a brief second she looked at him in a way that did nothing to disguise her anger at being so addressed. He dug his hands impatiently into his pockets and shrugged.

  ‘Please?’ he said, in quite a different voice.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  You don’t have to do this, Ellie told herself as she waited for Theo to join her. I mean, why don’t you just get up and go? You owe him nothing.

  But even as she remonstrated with herself, she knew that a combination of curiosity and anger was proving a stronger argument for staying and that eminently more potent mixture was going to see her through the next few minutes.

  And minutes are all he is going to get, she promised herself. This was all hideous. What did she look like? The answer didn’t bear examination.

  She glanced around the room into which Theo had silently escorted her a few minutes earlier, across the stone-flagged hallway and along a small passage to what was obviously the library.

  Her departure had gone unnoticed since they were all converging back into the drawingroom, where Finlay’s young assistant had already organised a pull down screen, to watch Debra’s latest movie.

  ‘Wait here, I won’t keep you long,’ had been Theo’s terse, unsmiling comment as he closed the doors behind her. Ellie was left alone in a book-lined room with a log fire blazing comfortingly in an open fireplace. Long crimson velvet curtains were drawn across the mullioned windows, low table lamps cast a warm glow across the silent room.

  Ellie crossed to the fireplace and sat down on a velvet stool, leaning back against a deep, winged chair. Debra’s sharply aimed barb had found its target. In a more reasonable moment, Ellie would have found no difficulty in shrugging it off as the ill-mannered comment it undoubtedly was.

  However, Jill’s warning came back to her, making Ellie groan. You fool, she harangued herself, wrapping her arms round her knees, rocking to and fro, and you thought you knew better? You fell for the charm that someone like Theo Stirling dispenses and uses with the ease of a man born to get what he wants. He only had to crook his finger and you came running, she jeered at herself. It was hard to choose which offended her the most: that she had been such a pushover, or that he had known she would be?

  It began to dawn on her that these days, where men were concerned, she was giving a highly persuasive performance that she was utterly bereft of any kind of judgement.

  She was rising from her position in front of the fire to find a psychologically more advantageous one — such as safely home at Delcourt or Fulham — when the door opened so softly that Theo was in the room before she could move.

  Ellie looked up with a start, hearing the click as he closed the door behind him.

  ‘No, don’t get up,’ he told her, crossing the room. ‘Finlay will have coffee and brandy sent in here. But it would help if you stopped glaring at me. You really can be very frightening, you know.’

  She knew it was absurd, that it was a comment designed to disarm her. She had to fight to stop herself smiling. She managed instead a very creditable display of cold displeasure.

  She gazed up at him. ‘I might appear to you to be — frightening, but then I can only appear to be so if you have something to be frightened about.’

  He studied her thoughtfully and was spared the necessity of replying by the arrival of Finlay with a tray of coffee. Setting it down, Finlay then poured brandy into two warmed glasses and silently brought the tray to Ellie. She was about to refuse but seeing Theo — who had clearly remembered she disliked it — about to do so on her behalf, she promptly decided the thing she most wanted in the world was brandy and, smiling sweetly at Finlay, removed one glass from the tray.

  After the manservant had gone, she half expected Theo to sit in the winged chair just to disarm her even further and sliding off the stool, she carefully removed herself to a safe distance. Instead he strolled over to the fireplace and dropped down on the rug in the space she had vacated directly opposite.

  ‘I hope that you drink every last drop of that brandy,’ he said pleasantly. ‘And I’m going to keep you company until you have even if it takes all night. And if it makes you feel ill, it serves you right,’ with which he leaned back against the winged chair, his elbow on the seat, the other with his hand cradling his brandy resting on his raised knee. He smiled expectantly at her.

  Without taking her eyes from his, Ellie deliberately lifted the glass and managed to swallow a respectable quantity without a change in her expression.

  ‘I think,’ she lied, slowly lowering the glass, ‘like most things you surround yourself with it’s the best I’ve tasted. I don’t think you’ll be sitting here all night.’ With which she matched his smile, just hoping she wouldn’t actually be sick.

  He looked as though he was trying not to laugh and, oh damn him, Ellie groaned as she fought to control her features, it really was absurd. Two grown people waging war over a glass of brandy.

  His reserve broke first. ‘Eleanor, you are wonderful,’ he laughed as she broke into a grin. ‘I wish you liked me instead of wanting to fight me.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight you,’ she answered quietly. ‘I just want you to...’

  ‘What?’ he prompted gently.

  Ellie studied the contents of her glass. She suddenly wasn’t sure of anything, searching for the right words. She was going to say, I just want you to get out of my life, I just want you to leave us in peace. She looked at his face; his expression was puzzled, serious, waiting.

  She took a deep breath. It all came out in a rush, the anger, the misery, the confusion. ‘Why do you want that land, it’s Oliver’s home you’re damaging? Why do you keep insulting me? Why do you want to use me like this... like tonight? Just tell me why? What have we... I... any of us, ever done to you?’

  ‘Oh, Eleanor,’ he said with a crooked smile. ‘You look just like you did when you were fourteen and I found you in the garden. Ready to fight the world. You haven’t changed.’

  ‘Of course I have,’ she protested. ‘I want answers just like I did then, only now I’m determined to get them. Tell me. Please just tell me!’

  The silence hung heavily between them. He looked down at his glass, frowning, and she waited, totally lost now, nothing else to say. Finally he raised his head and looked steadily at her.

  ‘Tell me, why were you at the house that day?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘What…? That day…? I... I was looking for something. Something that was quite personal to me... daft really,’ she said as he signalled to her to go on. ‘There was an awful row going on. I just needed to get away and for some reason I just wanted to go home. But all your lot had taken over. It was a horseshoe, a tiny silver one. My mother fixed it above my bedroom door when I was a baby... but it had my name on it and her name and... well, I don’t remember her, she died in a road accident. It was just something I used to find comforting. I thought I might be able to sneak in and get it, but then you appeared, shouting and ordering me off the land, and I just went. You were, er.... pretty frightening,’ she ended sardonically.

  ‘Didn’t you have anything else to remember her by?’ Theo asked, surprised.

&
nbsp; ‘Well, no. The house belonged to my mother’s family. But Dad was always hard up and it was a barn of a place, so when she died everything except her wedding ring and engagement ring was sold to raise money.’

  Ellie was puzzled that his face had become hard and inwardly she just shrugged. A man like Theo, with his parents still alive, with all his money, wouldn’t understand that being sentimental isn’t a luxury every family can afford. They were poles apart; there was an unbridgeable gulf that was getting wider by the day. Sadly she turned and gazed into the fire and when he spoke she didn’t even turn her head.

  ‘I shouted at you because I wasn’t expecting to see you there, and you were climbing through the window to the library, which we had just discovered had a cracked beam. The slightest movement was going to bring it down. The whole place was unsafe. Whoever converted it had ignored every basic rule of building safety.’

  If Ellie remembered correctly, the subject of the conversion of Delcourt into the much-disputed flatlets had also given rise to an angry exchange between Aunt Belle and her father. She had only been a child but she still remembered Aunt Belle’s immoveable belief that her father had a bunch of cowboys in the house. It didn’t seem a good idea to repeat this, so she merely showed what she hoped was a surprised expression, tinged with disbelief for good measure.

  ‘You could have said so then,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I might have done, if you hadn’t run off. Eleanor, listen to me... No, please just listen. What happened here tonight was indefensible. Debra’s remarks were out of order, I think she just misunderstood — after all you didn’t keep it quiet that you were gathering quotes from people who know me.

  ‘To be honest I thought you had given up because everything went so quiet. And then you went back to writing for Focus and it seemed to coincide with the meeting that was held in the village this morning.’

  Ellie hadn’t a clue what he was talking about and said so.

  ‘Any information I may or may not have gathered was done months ago. Why would I need any more? Frankly I’ve been too busy trying to get a job... I mean getting between here and London,’ she hastily corrected herself, ‘to give you much thought.’

  ‘Do I take it you’ve dropped the idea of — how shall I put it? — a personal view of me?’

  Difficult ground had never bothered her in the past. Now she felt a moment’s panic. The truth was that she had never, not even in the midst of her depression and the long, dreary days when her mind was concentrated on just surviving, considered dropping the idea. The opportunity had simply been removed. Now she had it back. The one thing she had learned about this man was never to underestimate him.

  ‘’Fraid not.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know why you think I would drop the idea, it seems a perfectly reasonable one to me, particularly after tonight.’

  His eyes closed. Exasperation was written all over him.

  Good, thought Ellie, that will show you I’m not a pushover. She sat surveying him calmly.

  ‘Charming room,’ she said eventually, chattily. ‘Do you bring everyone in here to browbeat them? Or just the ones that are more difficult to bring to heel?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘You’re quite deliberately whipping up this ludicrous image you have of me, and you know it.’

  Ellie yawned and gazed round.

  ‘Why do you do it?’ he asked bluntly.

  A Stubbs original over the fireplace seemed to be holding her attention.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, looking innocently at him. ‘Did you say something?’

  He regarded her gravely.

  ‘You know, Eleanor, I don’t wish to get personal.’

  Ellie could barely suppress her glee. She’d rattled him.

  ‘Oh, be as personal as you like,’ she invited. ‘I have metaphorically speaking — a very broad back.’

  He looked relieved.

  ‘Oh well, in which case you won’t mind me mentioning that you have what appears to be soot all over your face. These damn chimneys.’ Theo shook his head sadly as Ellie shot one hand to her cheek.

  ‘No, no, you’ll only make it worse,’ he said helpfully.

  Ellie scrambled in her bag for her compact, blushing furiously. Oh God, how humiliating, she thought, snapping open the gold case and hurriedly searching her face.

  It was flawless. Nothing. ‘But where…?’

  She stopped. Her hand holding the compact frozen in front of her. Slowly, deliberately, she closed the case and as steadily as a deep desire to hurl it hard at his grinning face would allow, returned it to her bag.

  ‘You do seem to have a remarkably inventive mind,’ she said coldly. ‘First still convinced I’m making enquiries about you and then a schoolboy’s trick to gain points. However,’ she continued, rising and smoothing her trousers. ‘I am now bored with this conversation and with you. You haven’t said one single thing that has interested me so far and I think I’d like to go. Oliver and Jill will thank you themselves…’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Theo said bluntly. ‘And sit down again. Why do you have to keep making all these dramatic gestures? I only want to talk to you. Okay, okay, okay. Sorry.’ He threw his hands up in defeat. ‘Truly, completely, even humbly if it helps, sorry.’

  It seemed absurd to remain standing, so she sat down on a long couch and looked pointedly at her watch.

  Theo got up and came and crouched down in front of her. When he took her hand she made no attempt to pull it away.

  ‘I’ll take back that I thought you were making enquiries. I can see perfectly well that you were not and my friends weren’t told to charm you. Eleanor, I don’t give a damn about good or bad publicity or what you write. But what I do care about is what you think.’

  ‘Excuse me, but what exactly is the difference?’ Ellie shot at him.

  ‘The difference is that you believe you have good reason to write adverse things about me. But I don’t believe that’s what you want to do. What I mean is, I don’t want you to judge me without getting to know me on your... our... own terms. Not what someone else a long time ago made you think I was.’

  She let him go on and simply slid over to make space for him when he moved to sit alongside her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. She couldn’t understand why when he was close to her she couldn’t think straight, she couldn’t make any sense.

  ‘I want you and I to start again,’ Theo was saying. ‘Pretend the past hasn’t happened, forget the future. Let’s just meet in the present, two people who should have the chance to decide for themselves the rights and wrongs about each other. Will you do that, Eleanor?’

  He hadn’t attempted to do more than lightly hold her hand, just sat and waited for her answer.

  Ellie heard Jill’s warning voice. This time she heeded it.

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s possible,’ she told him. ‘Really... just listen to me for a moment. Supposing we decide that we have misjudged each other — and I’m not saying we will — what then? Do you mean you’ll back off buying the land next to Oliver, that you’ll tell me why your family nearly ruined mine?’

  His answer was to put his hand very gently against her mouth. ‘It won’t work if there is a deal. You and I have got to be honest with each other, not get to know each other against a background of what we’re going to get out of it. Let’s come to that when we’ve given it a chance.’

  ‘I’d like to think it over,’ she told him, knowing it was ridiculous to pretend she found his request unreasonable. Instead she said, ‘I mean, how do we go about it?’

  ‘Well, we could start in the nicest way possible, but I think you might suspect my motives,’ Theo laughed, seeing the flash of apprehension in her eyes. ‘So we could either rejoin the others and watch the rest of the movie — or I could take you home and have you to myself for a while.’

  Ellie blushed, she actually blushed and felt suddenly very shy.

  ‘I think I’d like to go home. I’m not sure I could
cope with Deb... any more fun this evening,’ she corrected herself. ‘But won’t Debra mind if you leave with me? She might not understand.’

  ‘That’s my problem,’ he said easily. ‘And it really isn’t up to Debra who I drive home.’

  ‘But I thought you... I thought she and you...’

  ‘What did you think?’ he asked as he pulled her to her feet.

  ‘That you and she are, well... together.’

  Theo was still holding her hands.

  ‘Did I tell you that?’ he asked.

  She was conscious of a very strong desire to just slide her arms under his jacket and hold him close but instead she simply shook her head.

  ‘Then let’s get one thing straight, only believe what I tell you.’

  Ellie had the oddest feeling that believing him was the one thing she wanted more than anything else at that moment. Then very gently Theo bent his head and kissed her, and for someone she had vowed to hate, she didn’t mind at all.

  This time she didn’t try to resist or move away when he raised his head. All the laughter had gone from his face. Ellie wasn’t laughing either.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he ordered and reached behind her to press a switch on the phone, pulling the receiver to his ear. ‘Finlay. I don’t want to be disturbed. Tell Lady Broughton I’ve driven Miss Carter home.’

  Ellie should have left then, but as he swiftly kissed her, moving towards the door, she found this impossible to do.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered as he turned the key in the lock and rejoined her, pulling her back into his arms.

  ‘I’ve made sure we’re not disturbed.’

  There comes a point in everyone’s life when they have a split second to make a decision that they might live to regret.

  Theo saw the hesitation and handed her the key. ‘Take it. You can leave any time you like. But I hope you won’t.’

  ‘But Debra’s film...’ she said, knowing that it was the weakest and most unconvincing reason she could proffer and the decision was made. Had been made an hour before when she should have gone home and instead had agreed to all of this.