by Liz Fielding
But she was in no hurry for bed. Despite her long day she knew she wouldn’t sleep. She was still sitting at her dressing-table, brushing her hair, when there was a light tap at the door.
‘Sophie?’ Chay’s voice was muffled through the heavy timber.
‘Hold on,’ she called, and flew to wrap herself in her flimsy gown before turning the key in the lock and opening the door.
‘Was that to keep me out, or you in?’ he asked. She didn’t answer. She didn’t know what had prompted her to turn the key in the lock.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded.
He thrust her camera bag at her. ‘I want you to go. Now.’
‘Go?’ She stared uncomprehendingly at the bag, then raised her eyes to his. ‘That’s it?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
‘No. It’s not nearly enough. You keep me here for days against my will, then choose to throw me out in the middle of the night without so much as an apology?’
His eyes darkened slightly, he took a step forward and a frisson of excitment bubbled in her blood. ‘An apology?’ he demanded. ‘What, precisely, should I apologise for?’
Her pulse picked up a beat. This was better. For the last two hours, while he had been polite but withdrawn, she had felt as flat as punched dough. Now suddenly she felt alive again. ‘Give me half an hour and I’ll write a list,’ she offered.
‘Don’t bother.’
‘I won’t!’
For a moment they stood facing each other a little breathlessly. ‘You’d better pack your things and go before I change my mind.’ He turned and began to walk away.
‘Right now?’ she enquired disbelievingly.
He was back at her side in a single stride, her arm firmly grasped in his hand. ‘Damn you, Sophie, but you play dangerous games.’
For a moment she stared at his hand, then quite deliberately raised her eyes to hold his glance. ‘Do I?’ The question was rhetorical. She knew she was playing with fire, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘I’m glad to have my freedom, Chay, but it’s a little late to do anything about it right now.’
‘There are plenty of hotels.’
‘Dozens! I should know! But if you want me to leave right this minute, I have to tell you that you still have my suitcase under lock and key!’
An explosive rush of air expelled between his teeth was a warning that she had gone too far. ‘Then let’s get it. I wouldn’t want anything to keep you.’ He caught her hand and hauled her after him, up the stairs to the second floor. He reached up and took the key from above the ledge.
‘That’s what happened to the key,’ she said, the words startled from her.
‘You didn’t expect me to leave it about after you admitted snooping?’
‘That was the first place I looked,’ she said furiously, then stepped over the threshold. Unlike the floor below there were no dividing walls. It was just one massive room. An artist’s studio. Sleeping and work-space in one. Left just as it had been the last time it had been used, a half finished canvas was still propped against an easel. A portrait of a girl. Brushes and paints were heaped anyhow on a work-table. ‘This was Matt’s room,’ she said.
She picked up the photographs of Maria from among the debris. It was the one that had been in Chay’s desk.
‘The door is locked to keep Tom out. He broke the glass in that photograph and cut himself a few months ago.’
‘I see.’ She replaced the frame very carefully. ‘Will you ever tell him?’
His eyes narrowed, dangerously. ‘Tell him?’
She lifted her chin very slightly. ‘Will you ever tell Tom that Matt is his father?’
‘It was this morning, wasn’t it?’ he said slowly. ‘When we were out riding? I saw something in your face and I had an idea then that I’d said too much.’
‘It took me a while to figure it out, Chay, but the dates didn’t add up. You didn’t arrive in Malta until late in October. Tom was born in April.’
‘He could have been premature.’
‘You buried your brother, comforted your mother, rushed back, wooed and won Maria and produced a son all within seven months? I said you were fast, Chay. But even you would be hard-pressed to achieve that schedule.’
‘Haven’t you overlooked the fact that Maria might already have been part of my life?’
‘Have I?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think so. You had been away from the island for four years.’ Her eyes returned to the photograph of Maria. She could hardly have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old. ‘I think Maria would still have been in school then.’
‘Did I really tell you all that?’ Sophie didn’t answer. She didn’t really think he wanted her to.
‘I wouldn’t ever betray you, Chay.’ She glanced at him. ‘I don’t suppose you have any reason to believe that. But it’s true, none the less.’
‘I don’t think you would do anything to hurt Tom,’ he said carefully.
‘I wouldn’t do anything to hurt either of you,’ she said, without hesitation. And then with a jolt realised that she meant exactly that. No matter what it cost her.
For a moment he stared at her, then nodded, as if accepting that she meant it. ‘You know so much, you might as well know it all.’ He swept a pile of papers from a sofa to make room for them both. ‘I suppose I should have the lot cleared out,’ he said, looking around.
‘I do understand.’ Her mother had kept Jennie’s room as a shrine. ‘But from what you’ve told me about Matt, I think he would find it rather…’
‘Silly?’ he provided, as she struggled for some word that wouldn’t offend. ‘You’re right, of course. He’d laugh his boots off that anyone should take him so seriously.’ He lowered himself beside her. ‘He never took anything that seriously.’
‘Not even Maria?’ she asked. ‘She was the secret, wasn’t she?’
‘You remember everything, don’t you?’
‘Everything.’ Everything connected with Chay Buchanan. She thought she would remember this week for the rest of her life in brilliant rainbow-bright detail.
‘After the funeral I came back here to clear up the loose ends. I intended to sell the lease on the tower, try and forget what had happened. But the day I came back Maria arrived, distraught, on the doorstep. It took a long time to get the whole story from her.’
Sophie remembered his interest in Jennie and began to understand a little. ‘Had her family turned her out?’
‘Oh, no. Quite the reverse. She had escaped—climbed down a drainpipe, apparently.’ He smiled slightly. ‘She must have had considerable practice during her assignations with Matt, since she was already betrothed to a man her family had carefully chosen for her. They are old people. A noble family, from the Mdina.’ Then his face grew grim again. ‘They had only one answer for the sort of disgrace she had brought to them. She had been told she would be kept out of sight until her baby was delivered and then she would be sent away, to the convent.’
‘I’ve seen it. At least the outside.’ Grim walls, bars. The guide had told her that the only way out for the nuns was in a coffin. And that was a concession only granted as recently as twenty years ago. Before that the nuns had even been buried in a cemetery within the convent grounds. She shuddered. ‘So you let her stay.’
‘Yes, I let her stay. But that wasn’t enough. Maria thought it would be, that I could protect her. It wasn’t that simple. And her brothers were at the door within the hour, demanding that I hand her over.’ He laid a finger along his nose. ‘A memorable encounter.’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘I told them the child she was carrying was mine and that we were going to be married. I don’t think they believed me, but they gave me a week. If we weren’t married by then, they would be back.’
‘Not long.’
‘No, but I didn’t need to be pushed. I was afraid they might still return mob-handed in the night to try to reclaim her, and without a passport I couldn’t even get her out of the country. So we were married within three days by the
British High Commissioner. It was the only way I could be certain that Matt’s child wouldn’t just disappear to be adopted by some unknown family.’ He sat forward, staring at his hands. ‘He was a Buchanan, entitled to everything that Matt had, that I could give him. When Tom was born it was like getting a small piece of my brother returned to me.’ He looked at her then. ‘A kind of forgiveness.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘YOU didn’t tell anyone?’
Chay shook his head. ‘My mother had to know. But Maria’s family had sufficient influence to keep any mention of the family name out of the newspapers, so it wasn’t picked up by the British nationals. You do see? I couldn’t take the risk that they would take Tom. But once my name was on the birth certificate, he was mine—’
‘Yes, I understand.’ She covered his hand with her own. ‘Truly.’ But her heart bled too for Maria, a young girl who had married a stranger to protect her child.
‘Why did you stay here afterwards?’ she asked. ‘I would have thought—’
‘Don’t you think I wanted to go?’ he turned on her angrily. ‘I never wanted to set foot in this place again. It was Maria. She refused to leave. She stayed up here in Matt’s room day and night… I should have known then that it could only end in disaster. But I threw myself into research for my next book and hoped that once the child was born she would snap out of it.
‘Just after Tom was born I had to go to London for the launch of a book I had finished the year before. The publishers had arranged the usual round of chat-shows and interviews, and to tell the truth I was the last person in the world Maria wanted about her. Matt and I weren’t twins, like you and Jennie, but we were very alike. She must have found it hard to take. I hoped that, if I left, she might begin to recover her spirits, take some interest in the baby.’ He let out a low, soft breath. ‘Theresa had come a few months before Tom was born–she had looked after Maria as a child–and Paul promised to keep an eye on her… I thought she would be all right.’
‘Paul knows?’
‘It’s a little difficult to keep something like that from a doctor. And he knew Matt.’
‘What happened, Chay?’
He sat back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Publicity happened.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I hadn’t told Poppy that I had married. I didn’t quite trust her not to use wedding-bells for a little extra hype, and I wasn’t in a position to produce the blushing bride for the obligatory photographs. In the event, of course, I was presented as the literary world’s eligible bachelor, a girl thrust on my arm whenever there was a camera pointed in my direction. Maria must have seen the photographs in the papers. Her family certainly had.’
‘But surely Paul—’
‘If Paul had known what was happening he might have been able to help. But Gian’s mother had been taken desperately ill and they had rushed off to Florence to be with her.’ He paused painfully. ‘Maria swallowed a handful of paracetamol. She didn’t mean to kill herself…it was a cry for help. But no one heard.’
‘Oh, Chay. How pitiful.’
‘It was a couple of days before Theresa realised there was something wrong. The symptoms take longer than sleeping pills but are just as deadly. I flew straight back, but by then it was already too late to do much more than pray. She made me promise to stay at the tower, Matt’s home. She wanted Tom to know he was Maltese, to learn to speak her language. And she wanted me to try and reconcile her family to the boy…’ His voice cracked on the words, and as he turned to her she took him in her arms and held him, her own cheeks wet against his shirt-front.
It was a long time before he held her away from him. ‘Sophie—’
‘It’s all right, Chay. No matter what happens, I’ll never betray your trust. Never.’ She held his head between her hands. ‘Believe me.’
His eyes held hers. ‘That was the reason I couldn’t let you go. Maria’s family pride was frozen stiff with the disgrace. And how they hated me staying here. They wanted the whole thing swept under the carpet. They even sent a lawyer, threatening all kinds of problems if I didn’t take the boy and leave the island.’
‘Dear God. What did they do?’
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’ But his face tightened at the memory. ‘He was their grandchild, and for Maria I was determined they would never be allowed to ignore him or forget him. I took him to the cathedral every Sunday because I knew they would be there. And I knew, that first day, when Maria’s mother saw him, that I had one friend. Theresa brought a letter from her. Be patient, she said. Be quiet. And I have been very quiet. Nothing to cause a ripple of publicity of any kind.’
‘So you stopped writing and became a respectable businessman instead.’
‘I tried to stop writing. I quickly realised that was impossible, but I told Poppy that I had burned myself out. The bills didn’t stop coming in, though. I was halfway to qualifying as an architect when my first book was published. The tourist industry was booming, so property development seemed the obvious choice. And every time Maria’s father saw my logo it served as a reminder that I wasn’t going to go away.’
‘He’s had plenty to remind him. I’ve seen your boards everywhere.’
‘Have you?’ His look was long, assessing.
‘I found a business card… When Poppy mentioned your business…’
‘It hardly matters. You know everything else.’
‘Not quite. What is going to happen on Sunday? You said it wouldn’t matter after Sunday.’
‘Maria’s father has finally relented. A heart-attack has apparently given him a glimpse of his own mortality. On Sunday, Sophie, after the most delicate negotiations with his lawyers, Maria’s father is going to receive his grandson.’ He raised one shoulder slightly. ‘You came blundering into that, threatening all kinds of mayhem. I couldn’t take the risk.’
There had never been any risk. But it hardly seemed to matter now. ‘You’ve sacrificed so much—’
‘No. I gave Maria my promise. I would do it twice over if necessary.’
‘Thank you for telling me. Your trust…is a precious gift.’ Sophie reached up and kissed him lightly on the mouth. For a moment nothing happened. Then with a groan he gathered her into his arms and he kissed her. There was nothing of the practised flirt or the arrogant predator about his embrace. It was simply a man holding a woman, kissing her because that was what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world. And Sophie responded unreservedly, with a delight that shimmered through her.
‘Sophie…’ he murmured. His breath was soft on her eyelashes and her arms curled about his neck like a silk scarf and drew him down to her. For one hectic, rollercoaster moment, as he kissed her with a fierce, almost angry intensity, she thought she would die of happiness.
Then without warning he broke away, and, ignoring her soft cry of loss, held her at arm’s length, as if she represented some mortal danger. And, as he stared at her, it seemed to Sophie that her fate hung in the balance.
He stood up and turned away. ‘Go to bed, Sophie. Now.’
‘Chay…?’ Her voice quivered with the shock of his rejection. They had been on the edge of something so beautiful, so thrilling…his dismissal was like a blow. But his back remained turned resolutely towards her and after a moment she turned and stumbled down the stairs.
Sophie was about to start Tom’s birthday cake when the doorbell rang the following morning.
‘Sophie,’ Poppy smiled, swept into the hall without waiting to be invited, and stepped past her.
‘Chay’s out,’ Sophie informed the woman’s back. When she had crawled miserably from her bed that morning, just after dawn, there had been no sign of him.
There was the minutest pause. ‘Mmm. I know.’ Poppy turned with a delicately teasing laugh that must have taken hours of practice to perfect and quite set Sophie’s teeth on edge. ‘I’ve…er…just left him,’ she said, managing to load the words with hidden meaning. A burning blush betrayed Sophie. It was barely eight o‘clock. Chay hadn’t left v
ery early this morning. He had left very late last night. ‘I’ve called to collect his manuscript.’ She regarded Sophie with a touch of amusement. ‘He told me where it is,’ she said. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your chores.’
Sophie turned on her heel. It was none of her business, she reminded herself as she returned to the kitchen, what Chay got up to with Poppy, or if he had decided to go ahead with publication of his book now that everything was going to be settled with Tom’s grandfather. Although after waiting so long it seemed a little careless.. :
But last night she had been so sure that she was the one he had wanted to hold in his arms… She cracked the eggs into a bowl and began to beat them ferociously, not sure whether it was Chay or Poppy she wanted to reduce to batter.
She jumped a little while later, as the door banged after Poppy, then sagged against the work-top, unable to support herself any longer, and let the bitter tears fall.
Half an hour later she had pulled herself together and was beating sugar and butter to cream when she sensed Chay’s presence. The mixer had drowned out the noise of his arrival. And even as she refused to acknowledge him he leaned over her shoulder and hooked his finger through the mixture. ‘Mmm, chocolate.’
‘Don’t do that,’ she warned tetchily.
‘Or?’
She turned and looked up over her shoulder. ‘Or I shall have to slap your wrist,’ she threatened, a little shaken by the unexpected closeness of a mouth bracketed by the deeply carved lines of a smile. He must have been home for a while because he had showered, and moisture still clung to the thick mop of dark hair. And, having finally gained her full attention, he dropped a kiss tasting of cake mixture on her mouth.
‘Why don’t you try? he invited. Her heart gave a painful little gasp and, apparently satisfied, he moved to the table and picked up a list. ‘Are you in a desperate hurry for any of this, because I’ll be a while?’
And she could imagine just what would take the time. ‘Don’t rush back,’ she advised coldly. ‘But, if you can spare the time, there is something you can do for me.’