Ruthless Awakening

by Sara Craven

  ‘Rhianna knew exactly what was going on,’ she said. ‘Even though she’s supposed to be the bride’s lifelong friend. But she must have had a recent attack of guilty conscience, as she’s been trying to bully me into having an abortion. I wouldn’t do it, because I know Simon loves me, and our baby is part of that love.’

  Meanwhile, inside the church, the Vicar of Polkernick, the Rev. Alan Braithwaite, announced that both the ceremony and the lavish reception for two hundred guests would be indefinitely postponed.

  As disappointed friends and family left the church, the bridegroom and best man departed by a side door, refusing to comment.

  Also unavailable was Rhianna Carlow, who allegedly aided and abetted the secret affair, and whose portrayal of scheming, immoral Lady Ariadne in Castle Pride has raised eyebrows all around the world.

  According to local reports she has not been seen since she left a prenuptial party hand in hand with glamorous multimillionaire Diaz Penvarnon, whose gracious home, Penvarnon House, was due to host the cancelled reception.

  It is believed the couple decided to boycott the wedding for a love tryst of their own aboard the millionaire’s luxury yacht, which sailed from Polkernick Harbour on Friday evening for an unknown destination.

  Meanwhile the betrayed bride, pretty twenty-three-year-old Caroline Seymour, is being comforted by her family, with callers barred from the Penvarnon mansion.

  Rhianna drew a deep breath and looked at Jason Tully. ‘Not such an unknown destination after all, it seems.’ She tapped the paper with a contemptuous finger. ‘Well, you’ve already done your worst, Mr Tully, and earned yourself a national by-line. So why are you here?’

  ‘To confirm a few things and make some more money.’ He looked around. ‘Very cosy. But where’s the boyfriend? Still sleeping off the Ariadne effect?’ His smile was a lecherous insult. ‘Hasn’t lasted, though, your grand passion, has it? Maybe it occurred to him that having Grace Trewint’s daughter as his mistress was a bit too close to home.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he added softly, as Rhianna gave an involuntary gasp. ‘People couldn’t wait to fill me in on the old scandal—not when they heard what you’d done to Miss Seymour. Your name’s dirt in Polkernick. And lucky me has another exclusive. I gather the wronged wife lives just over the French border,’ he went on. ‘What will she say, I wonder, when she hears that her son’s been following so closely in his father’s footsteps? Will she be impressed? I don’t think so.’

  Rhianna said calmly, ‘The most you’ll get is “no comment”. I can promise you that. Anyway, why involve her when you have me? I’ll give you what you want to know.’

  She got up, smoothing her dress and smiling. ‘As you’ve guessed, it was just a brief fling.’ She slowed her voice to a drawl. ‘One of those things that happen when you’ve both had too much to drink, alas. I threw myself at him, and he caught me. Something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but wasn’t. And now it’s over, and I’m out of here.’ Her smile widened. ‘If you’re heading for the airport I’d be glad of a lift.’

  For a moment Jason Tully looked almost nonplussed. ‘You have no plans to meet him again?’

  ‘Absolutely none,’ she said. ‘We agreed on just one thing—enough is definitely enough.’

  ‘Right,’ he said slowly. ‘And what are you planning to say to Caroline Seymour next time you see her?’

  How was it possible to stand and talk and function with some semblance of normality when you were hurting so much? When all you wanted to do was sink to your knees and howl?

  She shrugged. ‘I have no idea, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.’

  ‘And how do you react to rumours that your Castle Pride contract may be cancelled after the next series has been shown?’

  She certainly hadn’t been expecting that, she thought, flinching inwardly. Who said there was no such thing as bad publicity?

  She said lightly, ‘Merely that all good things come to an end.’

  She was braced for another question, but at that moment Pilar suddenly erupted on to the scene from the back of the house, her voice rising in a crescendo of fierce Spanish as she flourished a threatening broom at the startled Tully and his companion.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted as the bristles grazed his shoulder. He turned on Rhianna. ‘You tell her that’s assault, and I’ll have the law on her.’

  ‘I think she’ll tell you this is trespass,’ Rhianna returned evenly. ‘Also this is her country, and her boss is a respected figure locally, so don’t count on the police being on your side. I’d just leave, if I were you.’

  She didn’t expect her advice to be taken, but with a lot of muttering they went, and she heard the car drive away.

  It was only when she felt Pilar’s hand on her shoulder, and the older woman’s voice urging her to be calm, that she realised she had sunk back on to the bottom stair and was sitting with her face in her hands.

  She said shakily, ‘Pilar, I have to go now. This minute. I must get back to England. Get an earlier flight if I can. Could Felipe drive me to Oviedo?’

  ‘Felipe is disgrace,’ Pilar said icily. ‘He let in men—strangers—to the house of Señor Diaz. Take money. Bring dishonour on family.’ She paused. ‘Better you wait for the señor.’

  ‘No!’ Rhianna grasped her hand. ‘I can’t—not after this.’ I can’t face him. Not after what’s happened—and what I’ve said. She went on, ‘Whatever Felipe’s done, I really need him to drive the car. Please, Pilar. Tell him to take me to the airport, por favor.’

  There was a silence, then Pilar nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Ay de mi.’ She raised clenched fists. ‘What I say to the señor when he comes? What I tell him of men in house?’

  Rhianna handed her the crumpled newspaper. ‘Just give him this,’ she said quietly. ‘It will explain everything. And now will you get Felipe, please? Because I really have to go.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’ Daisy stared at Rhianna open-mouthed. ‘You’re coming out of Castle Pride because of this nonsense? Darling, you don’t mean it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rhianna said steadily, ‘I do. I’ve realised I simply can’t do it any longer.’ She pushed the tabloid newspaper she’d brought with her across the kitchen table. ‘This decided me.’

  She pointed at a large picture of Diaz walking along a street, his face cold and fierce with anger as he realised the presence of the camera, and at the screaming headline which accompanied it: ‘He laid Ariadne and lived! Millionaire’s drunken sex romp!’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, God, how vile and sordid is that? Diaz is the last man in the world to want his private life gloated over in this ghastly way. Especially now that the papers have all picked up the story about my mother and his father being lovers.’

  She attempted a smile. ‘My attempt at a diversionary tactic has just made things a thousand times worse. I’ve failed everyone, including myself. But I’ve been well punished for my failure. Diaz must really hate me after all this.’

  Daisy picked up the coffee pot and refilled their cups. ‘Well,’ she pointed out reasonably, ‘as you’ve sworn you’re never going to see him again that hardly matters. Nor are you responsible for something that happened long before you were born.’ She paused. ‘Besides, you didn’t drag Diaz Penvarnon on board a yacht and sail off with him into the wide blue yonder. That was all his own idea, and if it’s backfired—tough. It’s certainly no reason to jeopardise your entire career.’

  She gave Rhianna a long look. ‘What on earth did your agent say?’

  Rhianna bit her lip. ‘Plenty.’

  ‘I bet,’ said Daisy. ‘And the production company probably said even more.’

  ‘I haven’t had their reaction yet,’ Rhianna returned. ‘Although I’ve reason to believe they won’t be too upset. Not that it will make any difference.’ She leaned forward. ‘Don’t you see? In everyone’s minds I’ve turned into Lady Ariadne—this monstrous creature. She’s become the reality instead of me. And I can’t ha
ndle that any more. When I started playing her it all seemed quite harmless, but it isn’t any more. And I—I need to get away from it all. To get away from her.’

  I’ve also realised I don’t want to take off any of my clothes again in front of anyone but the man I love, she thought with sudden anguish.

  ‘Just don’t be too hasty.’ Daisy put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘Because it won’t always be like that. This Donna Winston rubbish will soon be forgotten.’

  ‘Not,’ Rhianna said bitterly, ‘by me. Or by many other people while she’s on every daytime TV chat show, banging on about her fight for love and the safety of her unborn child. Making me into the real-life villainess of the piece.’

  ‘Whereas, of course, the actual villain has got off scot-free.’ Daisy wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘According to one story I read, he’s vanished to South Africa—and good riddance.’ She hesitated. ‘Have you managed to contact your friend in Cornwall yet?’

  ‘No,’ Rhianna admitted dejectedly. ‘I’ve tried phoning the house, but they won’t let me speak to her.’ She stared into her cup. ‘And last time, when her mother answered, she called me a treacherous bitch.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t she?’ Daisy said robustly. ‘You’ve said yourself she’s always hated you. She needs someone to blame, that’s all.’

  ‘She and a million others,’ Rhianna said unhappily. ‘I feel I’m a step away from being stoned in the streets. I came here this morning in a wig and a pair of sunglasses so no one on the Tube would recognise me. And though the Jessops have been wonderful, as always, letting me stay with them while the press are camped out at my flat, it can’t be a permanent arrangement.’

  She sighed. ‘I feel I need to go and hide somewhere that no one will ever find me.’

  ‘As long as you come out of hiding in six months’ time,’ Daisy said agreeably. ‘Because you’re going to be wanted as a godmother.’

  ‘A godmother?’ Rhianna sat up sharply, her own woes temporarily on hold. ‘Truly? Oh, Daisy, my love, that’s so wonderful.’ She hesitated. ‘Is that why Rob…?’

  ‘Went into panic mode and ran?’ Daisy supplied, brows raised. ‘Absolutely. My beloved idiot suddenly saw a future where all the work had dried up and he had a wife and child he couldn’t support. He got all the way to his parents in Norfolk, realised he was insane, and came back.’

  She began to smile. ‘Now he’s given up the idea of being theatrical knight and his lady in favour of being a patriarch, with his family and their golden retriever in the garden of their palatial country home.’

  There was a silence, then Rhianna collapsed in the first fit of genuine laughter she’d experienced since her return from Spain over a week before. Daisy joined her.

  ‘God bless our boy,’ Rhianna managed weakly at last, wiping her eyes. ‘Incorrigible, or what?’

  She was still smiling to herself as she made her way back to the quiet road where the Jessops lived.

  Mrs Jessop met her in the hall, her kind face concerned. ‘You’ve got a visitor, dear. A lady. She’s in the front room.’

  Carrie, Rhianna thought as she pushed open the door and went in. Oh, please, let it be Carrie.

  Instead, she saw a tall woman with silvered blonde hair, dressed in immaculate grey trousers, with a matching silk blouse, and a coral linen jacket hanging from her shoulders.

  For the first startled instant, as her visitor turned from the window to face her, Rhianna thought that it was Moira Seymour, and braced herself for the inevitable onslaught. But this woman was smiling at her. Diffidently, perhaps, but quite definitely smiling.

  ‘So.’ It was a soft, clear voice. ‘Grace’s daughter. We meet at last.’

  Oh, God, thought Rhianna, panic tightening her throat as she recognised the face from the portrait. It’s Diaz’s mother.

  She said uncertainly, ‘Mrs—Penvarnon? I—I wasn’t expecting this. What are you doing here—and how did you find me? I don’t understand.’

  ‘To be frank, I hoped you’d never be obliged to,’ the older woman returned wryly. ‘But when Diaz sent me the photographs he’d found in your room and demanded an explanation, I knew I no longer had a choice.’

  ‘The photographs?’ Rhianna stared at her. As soon as she’d got back to London she’d realised they’d gone. That they’d somehow been missing from her bedside table when she cleared her room. ‘You mean Diaz had them?’ She added with constraint, ‘But why would he send them to you when they were mainly shots of his father?’

  ‘Mostly,’ Esther Penvarnon corrected her quietly. ‘But not all. There were—others.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Rhianna agreed, still puzzled. ‘There were several of Mrs Seymour, plus a few taken with her husband. But I don’t see…’

  ‘No,’ the older woman said. ‘It wasn’t Moira with her husband. Those photographs were of me—with my lover.’

  ‘You?’ Rhianna looked at her, stunned. ‘You were having an affair?’

  ‘Yes.’ The reply was steady. ‘An affair with my brother-in-law, Francis Seymour. He and Moira had come to live at Penvarnon when I’d first become ill, to provide me with company and run things when Ben was away. He used to sit with me in the evenings and read to me, or we’d listen to the radio together. Gradually our relationship—changed.

  ‘It wasn’t a trivial thing,’ she added with emphasis. ‘We were both unhappily married and we fell deeply in love. Although I realise that is no excuse for the damage that was done.’

  ‘But you were in a wheelchair,’ Rhianna protested.

  ‘I had been, certainly,’ Esther Penvarnon returned. ‘But my health had been slowly improving for many months. However, I chose for my own reasons to maintain the fiction that I was helpless She paused. ‘May we sit down? It might make what I have to say a little easier for me.’

  Rhianna drew a deep breath. ‘I think that’s a good idea.’

  Esther Penvarnon seated herself in the armchair on one side of the fireplace, and Rhianna occupied the opposite one.

  ‘Firstly,’ Mrs Penvarnon began, ‘my husband did not leave me because of some illicit passion for your mother. Grace Trewint was only ever resident housekeeper at his London flat—and a much needed friend. Ben told me so in a letter he wrote to me not long before his death, and I believe him. He left Cornwall, and the home he loved, because he too had been shown photographs, far more damaging ones than those Diaz saw, proving that I was being unfaithful to him, and he was devastated.

  ‘Your mother wasn’t dismissed because of any wrongdoing, either. She’d left of her own accord weeks before, because she suspected the truth and wouldn’t lend herself to such gross deception of a good man. And Ben Penvarnon was a good man, Miss Carlow. He was also very rich, dynamic, and extremely handsome, and he attracted women like wasps round honey. He was just—not for me.

  ‘I’d always been the quiet one, you see, living in my sister’s shadow. So I was flattered—dazzled—when Ben fell in love with me, not her, and I somehow managed to convince myself that I must love him too.’ She stared into space, as if she was contemplating an image too terrible to bear. ‘However, the realities of married life soon taught me differently. I felt—nothing for him. Eventually I became sick with dread whenever he came near me.’

  Rhianna moved restively. ‘Mrs Penvarnon, I don’t think you should be telling me these things. They can’t matter any more.’

  ‘Ah, but they do. Because they’re my sole excuse for the continued pretence that I was ill. I was cheating the kind, considerate, generous husband who loved me for a long time before Francis and I became involved. And I think that was what he could not forgive—the lengths I went to in order to avoid being a wife to him.

  ‘Once he’d gone, the three of us that were left went to even greater lengths to make sure the truth didn’t get out. Moira was too fond of being lady of the manor to contemplate divorce. And I—I was shattered, and wanted only to get away. So when Kezia Trewint began to spread her tissue of lies we denied nothing.�
��

  ‘But she took the photographs,’ Rhianna said slowly. ‘Took them, then showed them to your husband. Why did she turn on him?’

  ‘Because she was in love with him—obsessed by him.’ The older woman shrugged wryly. ‘She believed, poor creature, that he’d be grateful to her, and much more besides. But he left by himself, and when she learned that Grace was working for him all that hidden passion turned sour, and she deliberately twisted their relationship into dirt.

  ‘And I let her,’ she added sombrely. ‘Even after Ben’s letter I said nothing. I told myself there was nothing to be gained by the truth. That Moira and Francis had patched up their marriage, and by this time even had a child. Best, I told myself, to let sleeping dogs lie. To go along with the myth of the betrayed wife.’

  Esther Penvarnon paused. ‘But none of us bargained for you—Grace’s double—reawakening all the old resentment and all the guilt.’ She added quietly, ‘And I didn’t allow for the possibility, my dear, that my son might love you so much that he would insist the record be set straight and your faith in your mother vindicated at last.

  ‘So I’m here to ask if you can forgive me. If some good can finally come out of the sorrow and bitterness of the past, and there can be healing.’

  There was a silence, then Rhianna said slowly, ‘Perhaps—if it was just the past. But it isn’t.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’m grateful that my belief in my mother has been justified, but I can’t go any further than that. You see, Mrs Penvarnon, nothing’s changed for me. My whole life is a mess. A disaster. I was drawn against my will into a totally unacceptable situation where I was also forced to keep other people’s secrets. As a result I’ve been vilified in the tabloids and on television.’

  She got to her feet, her legs shaking under her. ‘My career, such as it was, is finished. My attempt to protect the happiness of my best friend has been a disaster. Her life is ruined, and she’ll probably never speak to me again. And my relationship with Diaz, which began for all the wrong reasons anyway, has been dragged through the gutter press and distorted beyond recognition. You’ve seen the papers. How could he ever want to know me again—even if his sense of honour has demanded that the truth must be told?’