by Penny Jordan
If he hadn’t been given that mistaken bit of gossip would he have acted differently? he mused as he dressed and quietly went downstairs, letting himself out of the house.
He would let Dee sleep off the trauma of the day and then, once Peter had seen the specialist, he would ring her, invite her out for dinner, take her somewhere discreet and romantic where he could...
Humming to himself, he unlocked his car.
Oh, yes, if he hadn’t thought she was married and out of reach, he suspected that he would have come back sooner. Much sooner. And if he had...
Immediately his imagination conjured up an image of two children: a boy with his mother’s eyes and a girl.
Oh, yes, he still loved her...had never stopped loving her...and right now—before he reversed his car out of her drive he glanced up towards Dee’s bedroom window—right now the temptation to go back into the house and stay with her was so strong that... But he owed it to Peter to be with him.
Peter.
He grimaced ruefully to himself. Peter had rather misled him with his anxiety over Dee’s proposals, and he could see that he was going to have to have a talk with him.
Dee!
He didn’t dare start thinking about her, Hugo recognised. Not now. Not whilst he was driving.
CHAPTER TEN
DEE woke up abruptly from the dream she had been having. In it she had been walking with her father along the river. He had been holding her hand, just as he had done when she had been a little girl, smiling at her as he’d paused and pointed a shoal of minnows out to her as they swam busily in the reeds. The water had been so clear she had been able to see the bottom of the river.
Further out from the bank, though, the water had been much deeper, and suddenly she had felt afraid, drawing back, gripping her father’s hand tighter, but he had laughed at her, telling her that there was nothing to be afraid of and that he loved her.
There were tears on her face, Dee recognised, but they were tears of love. As she sat up she noticed a piece of paper lying on the empty pillow beside her.
Uncertainly she picked it up, her heart thumping heavily as she recognised Hugo’s handwriting.
‘I love you’, he had written.
I love you.
Dee closed her eyes. Hugo loved her and Hugo had told her that he didn’t believe her father had taken his own life. She slid out of bed and padded over to her bedroom window. It was almost dusk, and Hugo’s car had gone from her drive. She had no idea where he had gone, or why, but Dee knew instinctively that he would come back.
‘I love you’, he had written, and coming from Hugo those words meant exactly that. He loved her.
Her body ached in odd, unfamiliar and yet somehow very familiar little ways and places. She could still smell Hugo’s scent on her skin, and if she closed her eyes she could almost feel the touch of him beneath her fingertips. She had no idea what lay ahead of them.
Hugo could, he had told her during their argument at Peter’s, live virtually wherever he chose. His role within the aid programme was no longer one that required him to work out in the field. Her work demanded that she live here in Rye-on-Averton, but if the committee refused to sanction the changes she wanted to make to the charity she wasn’t sure that she wanted to remain involved in it. Her father’s charity could be carried on without her direct involvement, and without her fearing any damage to her father’s name. She had no responsibility, no duty to keep her in Rye now. She could move, live wherever she wished, go with Hugo wherever he wished. If that was what he wished.
‘I love you’, he had written. Not, I want you, I need you...with me always...as my partner, my wife, the mother of my children.
Children. Dee touched her stomach. Did Hugo know, as she had known, had he felt as she had felt, that fierce pulse, that fusion, that heartbeat of time which had created a new life...their child? Or was it just a woman’s thing, a woman’s special secret knowledge, that awareness that her own body was no longer exclusively her own?
Hugo’s child conceived within her. Her father would have loved to have had grandchildren.
Her father.
Dee closed her eyes and then opened them again. Was Hugo right, or had he simply been trying to comfort her?
She went to the bathroom and showered quickly. There was something she had to do. Somewhere she had to go.
* * *
‘Well, now that Mr Stewart has been able to put Peter’s mind at rest, he certainly won’t need to be so dependent on you,’ Jane told Hugo briskly.
They were in the kitchen of Peter’s house. The specialist had left, having examined Peter thoroughly and then declared that he was extraordinarily fit for a man of his age and likely to live at least another ten years. But the doctor had lingered on after he had gone.
‘He feels very vulnerable and alone,’ Hugo told her.
‘Mmm... Well, you mustn’t allow him to become too dependent on you, you know. After all, you have a right to a life of your own,’ she added, with a coy look, before continuing, ‘Speaking of which, I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me one evening.’
Hugo smiled gently at her.
‘It’s very kind of you, but I’m afraid I can’t...’
Couldn’t and certainly didn’t want to. The only woman he wanted to be with was Dee—the only woman he had ever wanted to be with, the only woman he would ever want to be with.
It had been his pride that had prevented him from pleading with her to change her mind all those years ago when she had told him it was over between them, and if he had known then just why she had said it... But she had taken good care that he shouldn’t know.
It was later than he had hoped before he could leave. Peter had wanted to talk over the specialist’s comments, and Hugo hadn’t had the heart to cut him short or show any impatience.
‘You’re going out? But it’s late,’ Peter protested when Hugo explained.
There was no reply to the brief phone call he made before he left Peter’s, and he assumed that Dee must still be asleep. But when he pulled into the driveway of her house he saw that her car was missing and he started to frown.
He hadn’t said, of course, that he would come back that evening, but somehow he had assumed that... That what? That she would be there waiting for him with open arms...?
He grimaced ruefully as he felt his body’s reaction to his thoughts.
He could stay here in his car and wait for her to return, but suddenly Hugo thought he knew where she might have gone. It was an instinct, a gut feeling, with nothing logical or practical to back it up, but nevertheless he set his car in motion, driving through the town.
A dozen or more teenagers were sitting on the benches in the town square, obviously at a loose end. Dee’s report had surprised him, and made him feel rather ashamed of the judgements he had made.
As he drove through the town he could see his destination ahead of him—or rather its spire.
The first time she had brought him to Rye-on-Averton, Dee had pointed out the pretty parish church to him. Her parents had been married there, she had told him, and she’d hoped she would be. Many generations of her family were buried in its graveyard, including her father.
As he drove into the close that led to the church he saw Dee’s parked car. Sometimes it paid to listen to one’s instincts.
* * *
The graveyard was quiet and shadowy, but it was a pleasantly peaceful place rather than a threatening one, Dee acknowledged. She had never been here at night before, although she had visited it many, many times during the day, especially in the early days after her father’s death, with the rawness of her own heartache. Now the scars were softer. She touched her father’s headstone and traced the words carved there.
‘Was I wrong, Dad?’ she asked him huskily. ‘Was i
t really an accident after all? It hurt me so much to think that you’d deliberately left me,’ she told him conversationally. ‘To feel that your pride and other people’s respect for you were more important to you than my love. I hated Julian Cox for what he’d done, and sometimes I almost felt as though I hated you as well.
‘Hugo says you would never have taken your own life. Never have hurt me by doing such a thing. You were always so quick to criticise him, and he you, but I knew it was just because both of you loved me. I hated having to choose between you, but how could I go with Hugo, leaving you to face the fear which had driven you to your death on your own? I had to stay...I had to protect your reputation from any harm that Julian Cox might do to it.’
‘Dee...’
She froze, and then swung round as she recognised Hugo’s voice.
‘Hugo...what are you doing here? How did you know...?’
‘I just knew,’ he told her gently as he came towards her, stopping just a few feet away from her.
‘I had to come here,’ she told him simply. ‘I had to...to talk to Dad...to ask him...to—’
‘Dee, why didn’t you tell me what you feared?’ Hugo interrupted her softly. ‘Surely you could have trusted me.’
‘I could have trusted you, yes,’ Dee agreed quietly, ‘but I couldn’t burden you with my...my doubts, Hugo. You’d already told me how important it was that you had an unblemished reputation. For me to tell you that I thought my father might have taken his own life, that he could have become embroiled in a sordid fraud case... I couldn’t do it to you. I...I couldn’t expose my father to you, and I couldn’t expose your reputation to...
‘And besides...’ Dee looked away from him ‘...I felt that I wasn’t important enough to you...that your plans, your ideals mattered more, and I was afraid...I was afraid of committing myself completely to you, Hugo, because I feared that you wouldn’t commit yourself completely to me.’
‘So you told me you didn’t love me any more. Was it true, Dee?’
Dee shook her head.
‘No. Never,’ she told him in a raw whisper. ‘I wanted you to come back. I wanted to tell you that I’d changed my mind. But you never did...’
‘No?’ Hugo gave her a wry look. ‘I managed to last six months in the field without you and then I had to come back, but when I did I heard that you’d got married, that you and your husband were expecting a child.’
‘It wasn’t true,’ Dee told him, shaking her head. ‘My cousin married, but...’
‘Perhaps I should have asked more questions...probed more deeply. But I was so shocked, so bitterly hurt that... I think I hated you then, Dee,’ Hugo told her gruffly. ‘There’s never been anyone else for me...no one ever came close to making me feel the way you did...do...’
‘No, it’s been the same for me. I...I wanted a family...a child...children...so desperately at times, Hugo, that I almost contemplated... But...’ She paused. ‘In the end I just couldn’t. I couldn’t bear my child to have any father but you.’
She looked down at the gravestone.
‘Do you really think it was an accident?’
‘Yes, I do. A tragic, senseless, wasteful accident—but still an accident, Dee.’
‘An accident...’ Dee touched the stone tenderly and then, lifting her fingertips to her mouth, she kissed them softly and then touched them to the stone.
‘Goodbye, Papa,’ she said softly, using the pet name she had had for her father as a little girl. ‘May you rest in peace.
‘I think maybe you’re right,’ she told Hugo, her eyes brilliant with unshed tears as she added huskily, ‘I hope that you are right.’
‘I am right,’ Hugo promised her, and he held out his hands to her and commanded, ‘Come here. I’ve missed you so much, Dee, wanted you so much—so much more than I’ve ever allowed myself to know. But today, holding you...touching you... I couldn’t endure to lose you again. I don’t know how I’ve endured these years without you.’
Dee stood up and let him take her hands in his and draw her towards him. The warmth of his hands wrapped around her own filled her with the most intense sense of peace, of release, and somehow, as she went to him, Dee suddenly knew that he was right, that her father hadn’t taken his own life.
With that knowledge came a lifting of her heart, her spirits, that made her feel almost light-headed, buoyant, filled with such a sense of joy and love that the intensity of her emotions seemed to make the air around her sing. Like a weight slipping from her shoulders and from her heart she could feel all the animosity she’d had, all the anger, all the bitterness she had felt towards Julian Cox leaving her like ice melting in the warmth of the sun. There was no room in her heart any more for such dark and painful feelings, because now it was overflowing with the joy of rediscovering the love she shared with Hugo.
‘Let’s go home,’ Hugo suggested simply.
‘Home!’
Dee gave him a whimsical smile as she let him guide her back to where their cars were parked.
‘And where exactly might that be?’
They had reached the edge of the graveyard, and as he led her through it and onto the road outside Hugo turned her towards him and told her as he bent his head to kiss her, ‘Home for me is where you are, Dee. Wherever you are.’
* * *
He followed her back to her house, parking his car behind hers, taking the key from her trembling fingers to unlock the door and then kicking it shut behind him before taking her in his arms and kissing her.
‘How did you know where I was?’ she asked him when he released her.
‘I don’t know...I just did. I had planned to take you out somewhere special for dinner. It’s a bit late for that now.’
‘Mmm...’ Dee agreed, and then added teasingly, ‘It looks like you’ll have to think of some other way to satisfy my...hunger...’
‘Oh...I thought I’d already done that,’ Hugo responded just as teasingly, adding suggestively, ‘But of course, if that wasn’t enough...’
‘Hugo!’ Dee exclaimed. ‘What about Peter? He—’
‘Peter’s going to be fine. That was why I went back.’ Quickly he explained to her about the specialist’s visit.
‘Which reminds me—these proposals of yours...’
Dee tensed. Surely they weren’t going to quarrel so soon?
‘I’m not prepared to change my mind about them, Hugo,’ she warned him quickly. ‘Not even for you. I know how Peter and the others feel, but I truly believe that there is a genuine need—’
‘I agree.’
Dee stared at him. ‘You do?’
‘Mmm...and from what I’ve read of your proposals I have to admit that I can’t really understand just why Peter is so opposed to them.’
Dee sighed. ‘Neither can I—not really. But he is getting old, and he’s very set in his ways.’
‘I’ll try and talk to him,’ Hugo promised her. ‘Unfortunately, morally, if nothing else, whilst I’m acting as his Power of Attorney I have to vote as he would wish to have done.’
‘I understand that,’ Dee assured him gravely.
‘I have to vote as he would have done, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t make my own assessment of the situation and try to persuade him accordingly,’ he told her.
‘I thought you’d have enough to do lobbying the university authorities without lobbying Peter on my behalf,’ Dee told him ruefully. ‘Is it really fair, though, Hugo, to try to persuade the university to use funds that are meant to be used for the benefit of scholars’ charitable work to help finance aid programmes, no matter how deserving they might be?’
Hugo gave her an astonished look.
‘Is that what you think I’d do? You’re wrong. The reason I want to speak with the university authorities is to try to persuade them to introduce a voca
tional course for students to educate them about the way we work and the way they can help us. We need young, keen, innovative brains to come up with solutions to the problems we’re constantly facing—but right now what I need most of all is you.’
‘Me...?’ Dee looked at him mock innocently.
‘Mmm... You,’ Hugo repeated.
* * *
This time they made love slowly and tenderly, luxuriating in every touch, every kiss, sharing their joy at their mutual discovery of each remembered pleasure and adding new ones to them.
‘You’re even more beautiful now as a woman than you were as a girl,’ Hugo told Dee as he stroked his fingertips along the soft warm curves of her body.
‘And you are even more dangerously sexy,’ Dee told him, glaring mock angrily at him as he threw back his head and laughed. ‘You don’t believe me? Ask Dr Jane Harper,’ she challenged him.
‘Who’s Dr Jane Harper?’ Hugo demanded huskily as he bent his head to tease the erect nipple he had just been stroking.
Dee closed her eyes and gave a soft moan of liquid pleasure.
‘I felt so jealous of her,’ she admitted.
‘Not nearly so jealous as I was over your supposed husband,’ Hugo assured her, his voice suddenly stark with pain as he told her, ‘You don’t know what that did to me, Dee, how close I came to—’ He stopped. ‘But I told myself there were still people who needed me, even if you were no longer one of them. Life has to go on. Your father knew that too, Dee.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed quietly. ‘I believe he did.’
It was easy to let go of the past and all the pain it contained now that Hugo was here with her, holding her, loving her. She was never going to let him go again. Never.
* * *
Their guests had gone and Beth was stacking the dishwasher whilst Alex washed the crystal glasses which had been a gift to them from his family in Prague.
‘Wasn’t that the most extraordinary thing with Dee and Hugo?’ Beth asked him conversationally.