The Shrouded Web

by Anne Mather

  Piers lifted his shoulders. He looked particularly attractive, she thought, in a dark suit and a white shirt, his tan complementing his colouring, although now that they were in the light she could see lines of strain in his face which had not been there before and he too seemed thinner than she remembered. But then she recalled his poisoned arm and decided that was why he seemed to have changed.

  ‘Do you have brandy?’ he enquired now, and Rebecca looked down at the bottles.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, picking up a bottle of cognac. ‘You should know…’ Then she compressed her lips. She must stop behaving so shrewishly. Whatever his reasons for coming here she should not show him so blatantly how much he had hurt her.

  She handed him his drink carefully, making certain that their hands did not touch, and he swallowed half of it at a gulp. Then he studied the remainder with critical intensity.

  ‘To begin with,’ he said quietly, ‘I want you to know that Nurse Stephens was summarily dismissed from her post a week before Adele’s death.’

  Rebecca twisted her hands together, not attempting to pour herself a drink. She felt it would choke her. ‘I see,’ she said.

  Piers looked up at her rather impatiently. ‘Don’t you want to know why?’

  Rebecca pressed her lips together. ‘If you want to tell me.’

  Piers uttered an angry exclamation. ‘For God’s sake, Rebecca, try and be objective for a while. There’s so much you have to know, and I’m finding it difficult enough as it is finding words to express what I have to say.’ His dark eyes flickered over her. ‘Believe me, I am not normally so forbearing.’ Then he sighed. ‘I’m sorry. As you can see, I am a poor apology for a counsellor, even when I speak for myself.’

  Rebecca shook her head. ‘Go on. I—I find it difficult, that’s all, understanding why you are here. When I was at Sans-Souci—’

  ‘When you were at Sans-Souci I wanted to hurt you, as you had hurt me,’ he ground out violently. ‘I did not know then that it would be so many weeks before I could see you again and explain.’

  Rebecca stared at him. ‘You mean—you didn’t mean what you said?’

  Piers clenched his fists. ‘Yes, I meant it. But not quite as you seem to imagine,’ he answered, finishing his drink carelessly.

  He came towards her almost compulsively, taking her hands in his and sliding his fingers between hers. He looked down into her face intently, his dark eyes caressing, and she swayed towards him weakly. He bent his head and kissed her eyes gently, and then allowed his mouth to move caressingly across her cheek to her ear, catching the lobe between his teeth. ‘You see,’ he murmured huskily, ‘I am not to be trusted when you are around.’ He kissed her mouth almost hungrily, and then with determination put her away from him. ‘Not yet,’ he said unevenly. ‘I must go on.’

  Rebecca moved away from him, and seeking a low chair sank into it thankfully. For all she knew that he found himself unable to keep his hands from her she was still afraid. After all, everything he had said had actually reinforced her opinion of why he was giving her the villa and she ought to use her head instead of allowing her emotions to run away with her. They were alone here, apart from Rosa, and he must be aware as well as she that he could seduce her defences without any apparent effort on his part. She compressed her lips with intense self-loathing. Was she such a fool that she would allow him to believe that she was in any way different from the woman she had always been?

  Piers had poured himself another drink and was swallowing the raw spirit with obvious enjoyment. Then he turned and looked at her, leaning with negligent grace against the wall. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what was I saying? Oh, yes, Nurse Stephens.’ He frowned. ‘It was while I was ill and she was dressing my wound that I discovered she imagined she had some—how shall I put it?—interest in me.’ He shook his head. ‘I am not at all sure how she obtained this infatuation, but nevertheless, it was there, and I had to repulse it.’ He looked at Rebecca broodingly. ‘Does that sound arrogant? It was not meant to. But I have only ever loved one woman, and Sheila Stephens is not she.’

  Rebecca coloured. ‘I still don’t see what that has to do with Adele.’

  He fingered his glass experimentally. ‘Do you not? No, perhaps I am not being lucid. It seems that Miss Stephens took the post for slightly different reasons than we had supposed. In any event, she chose to vent her frustration at this little setback on Adele, with the result that Adele became over-excited and I regret she had a rather severe attack. Of course, I dismissed Miss Stephens at once. Mrs. Gillean had heard them shouting and drew my attention to it.’ He sighed. ‘Unfortunately, although we obtained another nurse for my sister-in-law, the excitement was too much for her and a second attack proved fatal.’ He swallowed some of his brandy, while Rebecca pressed a hand to her throat. She had not dreamed that Sheila had any other reason for writing to her than to try and wreck her happiness. It seemed she had personal reasons too.

  Piers moved about the room rather restlessly. ‘Naturally, I blamed myself,’ he went on. ‘After all, had I not been perhaps a little unkind to the girl she might never have behaved so carelessly. But a talk with Adele’s physician convinced me that her condition had deteriorated since her return to England and there was nothing anyone could have done.’

  Rebecca tucked her feet under her and then said: ‘Why did she come back to England? Did you send for her?’

  Piers regarded her sadly. ‘Does that seem likely? Do I seem the kind of man who would invite such a woman into his house? No, of course I did not send for her. But she insisted on returning for Jennifer’s funeral and she continued to stay on.’ He lifted his shoulders and then let them fall. ‘It was then that I began to realise how foolish I had been allowing her to come at all.’

  Rebecca shook her head. ‘She seemed to take a kind of vicarious delight in thwarting other people’s attempts at happiness,’ she murmured, almost to herself.

  Piers looked at her. ‘Your own, for instance,’ he suggested.

  Rebecca flushed. ‘My affairs are unimportant.’

  ‘Not to me!’ Piers was abrupt. ‘Never to me!’

  Rebecca pushed back the heavy curtain of her hair. ‘How can you say that when until I went to Sans-Souci you had forgotten my very existence!’

  ‘That is not true!’ Piers was angry now. ‘Did I not ask you there about Halliday—’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Rebecca’s lip curled. ‘Your investigator!’

  With an exclamation, Piers went across to her and dragged her up out of her seat, holding her in front of him, his hands hard and cruelly biting on her shoulders. ‘Very well,’ he said huskily, ‘it is obvious that you cannot accept my explanation without contradiction, so I must make it plain now that my motives for coming here are wholly—how would you say it?—honourable! I am not, as you seem to imagine, some kind of monster who imagines that because I cannot have you any other way I can offer a kind of bribe for your services! I have done many things in my life for which I feel shame, but where you are concerned I have no reason to feel so. Of course we have had our difficulties, of course when you left me to return to England with your so-prim conventional morals disturbed I hated you! And why not? I loved you, I wanted you. I would have done anything in the world for you! The fact that I could not marry you was my only sin. And then it was a little sin, for Jennifer was never a wife to me!’

  Rebecca turned her face aside. ‘Oh, Piers!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, Piers, nothing!’ He continued to hold her grimly. ‘I want you to know how you hurt me then, because it was for this reason I did not follow you to England and force you to submit to me. And I could have done it, but you would have despised me afterwards, this I knew. So I buried myself in my work to the exclusion of everything else and for a time it was hopeless. Tom will tell you if you do not believe me. He knew something was wrong, but I could not tell even him, you had destroyed me so.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and then went on: ‘But I knew I had to know where you were, wha
t you were doing, whether you were well. So I employed Halliday to discover your whereabouts and in his investigations he went to the hospital where Nurse Stephens still worked. It seems obvious now that she used him as well as he used her, for when Jennifer died and Adele came to England and advertised for a nurse, she immediately applied. Her references were good and after all, she was a good nurse. It was only afterwards I realised that she and Adele had become confidants and the story about Halliday was passed on.’ He sighed. ‘So many things happened, Rebecca; my wife was newly dead and it was impossible for me to seek you out then. Instead, when Paul wanted to take up the medical profession, I arranged that he should join the staff of St. Bartholomew’s and in effect give me a reason for interesting myself in their affairs. You cannot imagine the horror I felt when I discovered that my son was—was involving himself with a young sister called Rebecca Lindsay!’

  Rebecca put a hand to her forehead. ‘So you knew all the time…’

  ‘Of course. I knew everything about you. My intentions were that when a decent period had elapsed I would seek you out and offer you my life—such as it is. Unfortunately again, circumstances chose to prevent this and after Adele was dead I could think of no better way to help you and myself. The villa was mine. I bought it from Adele when it became obvious that she would not return to Fiji. I wanted you to have it. I could not let it be sold to a stranger, not after we had met there…’

  ‘But you were sending me to Fiji, when you were in England!’ Rebecca stared at him, quelling the impulse to believe that this was really happening—to her!

  Piers sighed. ‘Do you recall when you were at Sans-Souci, Tom was mentioning a job we intended to take up—in Australia?’

  Rebecca’s eyes grew clear. ‘You mean—you mean—you were going to be in Australia?’

  ‘I mean I wanted you here, near me, near enough for me to visit you and see you and show you that my intentions towards you were not to make you my mistress!’

  Rebecca’s cheeks burned. ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing. You were going to spend several weeks here growing strong again, and then I would approach you. Then yesterday, in Canberra, I got an urgent message from Tom in London. He had discovered quite by accident that Sheila Stephens had learned from Paul my intention to give you the villa. Knowing her as I have learned to, I guessed she might try to spoil things for you. Just as she tried to spoil things for me by telling me about your affair with Peter Feldman.’

  Rebecca was horrified. ‘But there was no affair…’

  ‘I know that.’ Piers smiled faintly. ‘I regret to confess that I have a little knowledge of your sex and I am perfectly aware that you are completely unawakened when it comes to sexual experience—’

  Rebecca would have drawn away then, embarrassed by his candour, but he drew her closer instead so that she could feel the hard strength of his body.

  ‘So, you see, that is why I am here,’ he murmured. ‘I knew you would not allow yourself the luxury of accepting something of mine, and I had to see you and tell you…’ He leant his forehead against hers, feeling the trembling awareness of her as she quivered in his arms.

  ‘And now?’ she whispered huskily, unable to think coherently any more, or wanting to.

  ‘That is up to you,’ he said quietly. ‘I have put my—how do you say it?—cards on the table. Do you wish to take them up?’

  ‘You said—you said Paul had spoken to Sheila. What—what does he know about—about us?’

  Piers’ eyes narrowed. ‘Everything. I had to tell him. It was only right he should know.’

  Rebecca shook her head helplessly. ‘You once told me I could not love without security. Is that why you are offering me it now?’

  Piers sighed. ‘The only security is love itself,’ he replied gently. ‘Without it, there is nothing.’

  Rebecca touched his cheek with tentative fingers. ‘I was leaving tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Were you?’ He watched her closely.

  ‘I thought you felt sorry for me.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Piers touched her neck almost compulsively with his lips. ‘I love you. I need you. And believe me, I have never loved anyone else. Oh, I admit I have made love to other women; I am no saint; I am a man with a man’s failings and complexities, but with you I am young again, I am a boy with my head in the clouds.’ He smiled gently. ‘You are the only thing that matters in this crazy world of mine, and I want you in it always as my wife, able to share my name, my fortune and my bed…’

  Rebecca slid her arms round his neck, loving the feeling of belonging that was enveloping her. ‘Piers,’ she murmured shakily, ‘you know I love you. If you can forget all the things I’ve said I shan’t ask anything of you. You have had one disastrous marriage, I should not ask you to risk another—’

  But now Piers’ face changed, and his eyes smouldered brilliantly. ‘There is no risk with you,’ he told her arrogantly. ‘Without you I am only half a man, a shell of a being without heart or soul. Would you condemn me to living half a life simply because time got in our way?’

  Rebecca shook her head helplessly. ‘But Paul—’

  ‘Paul will get used to the idea,’ said Piers, his hands sliding over her waist to her hips. ‘He is young. We have wasted so much time. Will you marry me? I am sure I can arrange it somehow, and afterwards we can be married again for all the world to see, but this will be for us. I simply cannot conceive of a long engagement…’

  Rebecca pressed her face against his neck. So many thoughts flooded her mind, so many wonderful prospects had presented themselves. She thought with regret of Sheila and her abortive attempt to spoil everything. Rebecca felt she ought to thank her, for without her intervention it would have been several weeks more before paradise overtook her…

  ISBN-13: 9781460348499

  THE SHROUDED WEB

  © 1972 Anne Mather

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