by Sara Craven
It was a long time before she slept, and when she woke it was late on a clear Sunday morning which lived up to its name in glowing brightness.
The better the day, the better the deed, Lydie thought wearily as she turned on the shower. She felt muzzy and disorientated, and hoped that the water would clear her head. She needed all her wits about her today, and more, she decided grimly, forcing down the raw ache in the centre of her being.
Sunday breakfast at Greystones was always a buffet affair, and Lydie found the dining room empty, apart from Mrs Arnthwaite who was pointedly hovering, waiting to clear away.
Lydie poured herself a cup of coffee and took it into the garden, where she found Jon brooding over the Sunday Times crossword.
‘Where is everyone this morning?’ Lydie tried to sound casual as she took an adjoining chair.
‘Mother’s in bed, having a migraine.’ He didn’t look at her. ‘Austin and Marius have been at the mill since first thing—another cosy high-level conference.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘I’m beginning to know how a turkey must feel when it hears carol singers.’
‘They didn’t ask you to attend?’ Lydie bit her lip. ‘Oh, Jon.’
‘Oh, I was invited to accompany them all right,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But only to bring your car back. Our new managing director was being managing,’ he added tautly.
He tossed the paper down beside his chair. ‘I understand congratulations are in order. And also why you slid out of that embarrassing little confrontation last night. I’m not surprised Ma’s got a headache. I thought she was going to explode when you didn’t show.’
‘Confrontation?’ Lydie echoed, then realised he meant the dinner party with Hugh. She grimaced. ‘I slid out of nothing, believe me.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Getting engaged to the future master of all he surveys seems like a sound move.’
Lydie winced inwardly. She needed to talk, but Jon in his present mood was the last person in whom she could confide.
‘You look like hell,’ she remarked candidly. ‘Heavy night?’
‘And an even weightier day in prospect,’ he said morosely.
‘It may not be that bad.’ She wished with all her heart that she could believe it. Everything seemed to be slipping away, out of control for all of them.
‘It already is.’ His smile had a bitter edge. ‘Marius has all the evidence he needs. The last few months have been disastrous—botched orders, cancellations, undercutting by other mills. One whole fabric run wasted because we got the colour wrong. Two of our best customers telling me we’re unreliable and they’re looking elsewhere. It’s been a nightmare.’
‘But you’re not solely to blame, surely?’
‘I’m sales director,’ he returned. ‘The buck stops with me.’ He looked much younger suddenly, and frightened. ‘And a lot of the mistakes were mine, Lydie.’
‘Then why not take matters into your own hands?’ Lydie leaned forward, trying to speak robustly. ‘You’re an artist, love, not a salesman. Ask Marius to transfer you to the design department—or, better still, get out of Benco altogether. Get some formal art training and build a whole new life. Nell will back you every inch of the way.’
‘You make it sound all so bloody simple,’ he said wearily. ‘But it isn’t. I can’t afford to finish with Benco. Lose that and I’ll lose everything else, Nell included.’
‘I think you’re doing her an injustice,’ Lydie said gently. ‘Look, why don’t we go off somewhere—take some food and drive up onto the moors? We can talk it all through, and you can paint. It’s been ages since you did that.’
He shook his head. ‘Not today, sis. I’ve got some serious thinking to do.’
Lydie could only hope it wasn’t through the bottom of a glass again. She sighed. ‘Well, I think I’ll go anyway. I need to blow some cobwebs away, do some thinking of my own.’
His mouth twisted. ‘I thought all your decisions had been made?’
‘No,’ she said, with painful lightness. ‘Not necessarily.’
She went up to her room to fetch her bag and a jacket. No matter how hot the day, there was always a breeze on the tops, and she genuinely needed to be on her own and breathe some fresh moorland air. Greystones suddenly seemed oppressive, its atmosphere weighed down with past mysteries and future uncertainties.
As she emerged onto the landing, she saw Mrs Arnthwaite coming out of her mother’s room with a grim expression and an untouched breakfast tray.
Lydie hesitated. Experience had taught her long ago that Debra’s migraine attacks existed mainly in her own imagination. On the other hand, her mother had been genuinely thrown by last night’s events.
If the engagement was such anathema to her that it had made her take to her bed, then perhaps Lydie should reassure her—put things straight.
I certainly owe it to Austin, she told herself with reluctant humour. He has to bear the brunt of mother’s attacks, after all.
She tapped quietly on the door and went in. The room was in semi-darkness, and frowsty with stale perfume and used air.
Lydie grimaced and went to the window, pulling back the curtains and opening one of the casements. When she turned back to contemplate the wide bed with its frilled peach draperies, a feeling of shock went through her.
This was no play-acting, she thought, viewing Debra’s ravaged face and hollow eyes. Her mother was really ill.
‘Darling.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and took one of the slim, shaking hands in hers. ‘What is it? Do you want me to get a doctor?’
Debra moved her head in almost convulsive negation.
‘Then what’s wrong? Is it Marius?’ The sudden tension, strong as an electric current, which jolted her mother’s body gave her the answer she needed.
She said soothingly, ‘You mustn’t do this to yourself. There’s nothing to worry about. I promise you, I’m not going to marry him...’
Debra reared up on her pillows. She said hoarsely, ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about? You have to marry him—you must...’
Lydie stared at her. ‘But last night you were appalled at the very idea. And, anyway, the engagement isn’t a real one. He’s just playing some kind of game.’
Debra’s fingers closed round hers with painful sharpness. ‘Then you’ve got to play it too. Go along with anything he wants. Accept anything he says or he’ll destroy me—all of us.’
‘I think,’ Lydie said, trying to be patient, ‘that you’re overdramatising again.’
Debra’s laugh was harsh, torn from her throat. ‘You think so? Lydie, I tell you he’s come back for one thing—for his revenge.’
‘But that’s crazy.’
Debra shook her head. ‘He blames us—me—for having him sent away.’ She began to cry. ‘I knew about the girl—the pregnancy. I told Austin. I told him...’
Lydie felt sick at heart. ‘Don’t you think Austin would have found out anyway?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her mother’s voice was choked by sobs. ‘But it doesn’t matter, because I told him and Marius knows. He knows, and he hates me for it. And now he’s going to do the same to me. He’s going to have me sent away...’
‘He can’t. He wouldn’t.’ Lydie felt helpless under the onslaught of such violent emotions. ‘Not for telling the truth.’
Debra shook her head, rocking backwards and forwards. ‘You don’t know,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand.’
Lydie watched her with misgiving. There was something terribly wrong here—far more than her mother was admitting.
She said carefully, feeling her way, ‘Mother—is there something you haven’t told me?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Debra was defensive. ‘I did what I had to do.’ She stared past Lydie. ‘I never thought he’d come back,’ she said, half to herself. ‘Austin was so angry—so terribly angry.’ She beat at the pillow with her clenched fist. ‘I counted on him never coming back.’
‘And now he’s here,’ Lydie said quietly.
>
Debra clutched at her hand. ‘Lydie, you’ve got to help me. Do whatever he says. Play along with whatever he wants. Don’t let him destroy me—my marriage.’
‘Is that why you turned up in his room last night? To plead with him?’
Debra moved restlessly. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking straight. But he’d listen to you. You could make him listen. He wants you, Lydie. He always has...’
‘Not any more,’ Lydie said wearily. ‘I told you—the engagement’s a fake.’
‘But you could make it real,’ Debra urged. ‘A clever woman can make a man do anything—’
‘No.’ Lydie detached herself from the clinging hands and stood up, feeling slightly sick. She said quietly, ‘I’ll talk to him, certainly. I have to for my own sake. But I can’t promise more than that.’
She went to the door, ignoring the tremulous ‘Lydie’ which pursued her.
She went down to her car, but she made no attempt to start the engine. She was trembling, her stomach churning, her mind running in all directions.
She felt as if she was stumbling through a maze where, try as she might, she could never find the centre, the answer to the riddle.
By reavealing Marius’s secret liaison Debra had undoubtedly behaved spitefully. But her actions were hardly grounds for vengeance. Marius, after all, had been guilty as charged, she acknowledged with a pang. Yet, clearly, her mother was badly and genuinely frightened.
And perhaps, Lydie thought, remembering with what ease Marius had turned the tables the previous night, the callous way he’d destroyed her own pathetic illusions, she had reason to be.
I’ve got to think, she told herself; to plan how to approach him. Somehow I have to convince him that there’s nothing to be gained by punishing Mother.
With a sigh, she drove off. She had no clear destination planned, yet when she found herself on the single-track road leading to High Cragg she realised that it was the only route she could have taken.
It had always been a special place for her. Or it had been once, she amended painfully. It had been the first of the moor’s wild places that Marius had shown her, and one which they’d come back to over and over again.
That first time, she remembered, she’d just read Wuthering Heights and had secretly imagined herself as Catherine Earnshaw revelling in her forbidden passion for a Heathcliff who bore an astonishing resemblance to Marius.
How sweet and silly, and how innocent it had all been, she thought sadly. But then, she had been innocent, the darker realities of passion—she would not call it love—still a closed book to her.
Since then she had tormented herself with images of all the others Marius could have brought to that high and lonely spot, reminding herself pitilessly that it could even be the place where his child had been conceived.
She herself had never gone back. Until now, when invisible threads seemed to be drawing her there.
Today the moor was a smiling place, its rolling, rock-scarred landscape studded with clumps of gorse like golden flame and the occasional stubborn tree bending its back to the prevailing wind. Sheep nibbled sleepily on the close green turf, while above them a hawk circled slowly and purposefully, scanning the terrain below for tell-tale scurryings.
Lydie parked off the road, in a shallow gully dug out by the Ice Age thousands of years before, and set off across the uneven rising ground to where the group of huge, lichen-encrusted boulders reared like a beacon on the skyline.
In spite of the recent dry spell, the ground was still boggy in places, and she moved carefully, ruefully aware of the inadequacy of her flimsy leather sandals.
She was breaking all the rules, but in a world where chaos suddenly reigned that hardly seemed to matter any more.
Before she’d covered half the distance she was panting. Out of condition, she castigated herself mentally. Since the gallery had started she’d let her aerobics class slide, and her visits to the local tennis and squash club had become infrequent.
Leaving Greystones would only be part of the turning point in her new life, she told herself with determination. It was time to let go of the past and its pain and concentrate all her energy on the future.
She broke into a run, pushing herself up the steepening slope until she reached the rocks, sagging gratefully against the support of the nearest as she recovered her breath.
The view was amazing—stark but splendid for mile after windswept mile, as far as the eye could see. In another month the heather would be in bloom, covering each undulation in a carpet of pink, crimson and purple.
The stone behind her felt pleasantly warm as she leaned against it, but Lydie wasn’t fooled. On the horizon clouds were moving, massing, and the breeze had freshened, striking a chill through her thin shirt. Everything signalled a capricious change to the pleasant day.
Her visit would only be a fleeting one after all, she thought with a sigh, so she would have to take full advantage of the peace and solitude it offered.
Here she could think—without pressure, and without distractions.
Then, from the hanging rock beside her, came a scraping sound and a rattle of loose stone. A shadow descended, landing beside her as lithe and silent as a cat.
Lydie recoiled with a cry, bumping her shoulder clumsily against the rock.
He said softly, mockingly, ‘So here you are at last, Madonna Lily. And this time we won’t be interrupted.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
LYDIE found her voice. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you.’
‘But you didn’t know I’d be here.’
Marius’s mouth twisted. ‘Didn’t I?’
The question seemed to burn into the brief, tense silence which enfolded them.
She thought, Of course he knew—just like he’s always known. Both of us drawn here—even against our wills—by each other...
She rallied herself. She said crisply, ‘I thought you were at the mill—with Austin.’
He shrugged. ‘We finished going through the sales reports earlier than expected.’ There was a flatness in his tone which confirmed the trouble that Jon had foreseen. ‘I dropped him at the golf club and came to find you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because by now you’ve had time to think, and you’ll want to talk,’ he returned laconically. He paused. ‘I guessed it would be a conversation best enjoyed in total privacy.’
Her heart missed a beat. She said, ‘I didn’t see your car.’
‘I came by the other road.’
It was, of course, the obvious explanation, but the thought that he’d been able to predict her actions, and had been lying in wait for her here, was still a disturbing one.
She moved abruptly, and winced as the shoulder she’d knocked throbbed in protest.
He noticed instantly. ‘What have you done?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Really?’ he asked sardonically. He put his hands on her arms and turned her so that he could inspect the damage. His touch was gentle but unequivocally insistent. Lydie knew that she could not have pulled away if she’d tried.
Marius was frowning, tight-lipped. ‘You’ve torn your shirt,’ he commented. For a heart-stopping moment she felt the brush of his fingers as he lifted the ripped material away from her skin. ‘And you’re going to have the mother and father of a bruise. Maybe you should have it looked at.’
‘And maybe I shouldn’t,’ she said curtly, stepping back as he released her, hating the way her pulses were pounding. ‘I bruise easily.’
‘I wouldn’t have said so.’ There was a note in his voice which grated along her senses. His smile was swift and humourless, his eyes without warmth as he studied her. ‘You certainly never used to startle so easily.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said steadily. ‘I used to have less reason to be nervous.’
He nodded meditatively. ‘Your thinking seems to have been to good purpose, Madonna Lily.’
Perhaps it was the new edge to the
breeze which made her shiver. She looked up at the great mass of cloud advancing steadily towards them.
She thought, ‘The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.’
She said slowly, ‘I asked you—that first night—why you’d come back. And you didn’t answer. I’m asking again now.’
‘I came,’ he said, ‘to reclaim everything that belongs to me.’
‘Not for—revenge?’ She could hardly believe she’d said the word. Nothing seemed real any more—not the ache of her bruised shoulder, not the ground beneath her feet, or the cool wind bringing the first hint of rain. And certainly not this stranger confronting her across some unthinkable, unbridgeable gulf.
‘Ah—revenge.’ His mouth twisted. ‘A dish best eaten cold—isn’t that what they say?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you have a horrible suspicion you’re going to find out.’ His brows lifted mockingly.
She wanted to tell him to do his worst—to go to hell. That she wanted no part of whatever devious, twisted game he was playing with them all. That he’d caused her, surely, enough pain, enough bewilderment for one lifetime. But an image of Debra’s frightened, ravaged face rose in her mind and held her back.
She thought, I promised her I’d try...
She lifted her chin. ‘I could ask you to be merciful.’
‘You’d do better,’ he said quietly, ‘to ask the price of my silence.’
‘I don’t think I understand.’
‘On the contrary, Madonna Lily.’ He spoke with jeering emphasis. ‘You understand perfectly well.’
He threw back his head, his eyes as remote and hard as the stones which surrounded them.
He said, half to himself, ‘I suppose, at first, I didn’t want to believe it—that all that innocence and grace could be turned against me. When Austin sent for me that day, I had no idea what to expect. And, even when I saw he was angrier than I’d ever known him in my entire life, I still didn’t realise that I was directly concerned in that anger.
‘We’d had our disagreements before, but this was totally different. He was calling me things—using filthy words which I knew were completely alien to him. Shouting at me that I’d betrayed his trust, defiled his home. At times he was almost incoherent.’