by Penny Jordan
The way he looked at her, the ironic contempt in his voice, stunned her into dismayed silence.
This was not what she had expected at all, this gage flung down at her feet for her to pick up. But what on earth could she say to him in her own defence?
She glanced at Tara. ‘Take Harriet down to the paddock, Tara, and tell your mother that Saul’s arrived.
‘We didn’t expect you quite so soon, and I’m afraid everything’s still rather a mess. However, we’d be delighted if you’d have lunch with us.’
‘My, my… how you’ve changed.’ Again that biting mockery. ‘Or have you? Those are very pretty party manners you’ve got somewhere along the way, Lucy. You certainly didn’t have them twelve years ago.’
His cynicism stung her into replying fiercely, ‘Twelve years ago I was still a child, Saul… And what’s more I had just lost my mother.’
Watching his eyes harden she bit her lip, angry with herself for being so easily provoked. What on earth had happened to all her good resolutions about proferring an olive branch?
Turning away from him to hide the hot tide of colour flooding her skin from his penetrating glance, she mentally derided herself for the sensations engulfing her.
The truth was that she had stupidly expected a more physically adult version of the boy Saul she had remembered, but what she had got was a man who seemed to share nothing other than a name with that boy she remembered.
‘I want you to have lunch with us,’ Tara interrupted firmly, gazing up at him. ‘I want you to tell me all about your pony. What was his name?’
‘Mustard.’
For some reason the slow smile he gave Tara made Lucy feel bleakly excluded and hurt.
‘You’re sure it’s no trouble?’
He was looking at her now, his eyes still cold, smoothly assessing the shape of her body beneath its covering of skimpy T-shirt and ancient jeans, Lucy recognised. Anger flared hotly inside her, her mouth hardening as she turned away from him. As she fought for self-control she reminded herself that Saul had good reason to feel antagonistic towards her; he would after all have based his assessment of her on the girl she had been at twelve, and she could not really blame him for looking for chinks in her armour. Even so, in some strange way it hurt that he should have looked at her like that, dismissing the blood relationship between them, to treat her with a sexual contempt which she had found shatteringly demeaning.
Forcing a smile and ignoring the look he had given her she said calmly, ‘No trouble at all. It will be about an hour or so before it’s ready, but if you like I’ll introduce you to Mrs Isaacs before I go. She and I have just been trying to clean the place up a bit.’
She just caught the look of surprise in his eyes before he suppressed it and suddenly he looked more like the boy she remembered.
‘Rather a demeaning role for you isn’t it? Cleaning? Or were you hoping for a few more pickings?’
A sense of despair engulfed her as she heard the contempt in his voice. How could she have thought that she simply had to extend to him the hand of friendship to wipe out the past? Saul might have left behind the awkward aggression she remembered, but in its place was something far more lethal: a cold hardness that warned her that in his eyes she was more foe than friend.
‘If you’re referring to the estate,’ she told him quietly, ‘my father was entitled to sell what he did.’
She wasn’t going to add that privately she had not been in agreement with her father’s actions, but without raising her voice she added significantly, ‘He did after all have certain responsibilities.’
Saul looked at Tara and then equally softly told her, ‘In the last few months of his life your father raised almost two hundred thousand pounds from selling off everything that was unentailed—that’s an awful lot of money to support one widow and her child… Or are you telling me that you’re included in those responsibilities? Hasn’t anyone ever told you about the pleasure of being self-supporting, Lucy?’
She could feel her face sting, but even if Tara had not been looking on there was no defence she could honourably make. How could she tell him of her promise to her father to keep the family together, to look after not only the children but Fanny as well?
‘I’ll take you to meet Mrs Isaacs.’
She caught the flash of bitterness in his eyes as she refused to respond to his barb, but what else could she do? She had not realised how bitter he would be about her father’s actions, but without betraying the secret of Oliver’s birth there was nothing she could do.
She maintained a cool distance while she introduced him to Mrs Isaacs, hesitating before offering to show him round the house. Mrs Isaacs was a warm-hearted soul, but a devout gossip, and she didn’t want it to get round the village that there was bad feeling between herself and Saul, which would be the conclusion Mrs Isaacs was bound to leap to if she did not make the offer.
‘I think I remember the layout pretty well. And I do have the plans so I don’t think I’ll get into too much trouble. Thanks for the offer though.’
He was dismissing her, Lucy thought irately; making it plain that he had no desire whatsoever for her company—or her presence in what was now his house.
‘I’ll see you at lunch time then.’ Try as she might she could not quite keep the corresponding stiffness out of her own voice, and as he dipped his head in acknowledgment she recognised that he was entitled to the mockingly victorious smile that twisted his mouth.
As she had half expected, when she got back to the Dower House Fanny was still in bed. She wondered what the children had had for breakfast.
Concealing her exasperation, Lucy went up to warn her about their visitor.
‘What’s he like?’
‘Tall dark and handsome,’ Lucy responded flippantly, and then realised that it was quite true; and more than that there was a masculine strength about him that she found inordinately appealing.
Appealing? Nonsense! She was letting the fact that the responsibility for Fanny and the children weighed heavily on her shoulders get to her.
It took her almost half an hour to persuade Fanny that she ought to join them for lunch.
‘You’ll have to meet him sooner or later,’ she reminded her stepmother. You don’t want people to talk.’
It was a good ploy and one that brought a petulant frown to her stepmother’s forehead.
‘How on earth are we going to feed him, Lucy?’ she demanded. ‘These Americans are used to eating well, you know.’
‘And so he will,’ Lucy responded tartly. ‘We’re having asparagus from the garden, fresh salmon, and strawberries and cream.’
The salmon had been a gift from one of their neighbours, a retired colonel who had been a close friend of her father and who lived alone.
‘I suppose the salmon was from Tom Bishop?’ Fanny shook her head. ‘That poor man. You know, he really should marry again Lucy… Living all alone in that huge house, spending all his time fishing…’
∗ ∗ ∗
At one o’clock on the dot Saul rapped on the front door. Lucy, who had been working nonstop from the moment she walked in the house, determined that there was no way he was going to be able to look as slightingly on her meal as he had done on her person, paused in the hallway and then called to Tara to let him in.
‘Take him into the drawing-room to your mother,’ she instructed the little girl, ‘and then go and tell Oliver to come downstairs.’ Oliver was in his bedroom, organising his possessions.
She had been so busy she hadn’t even had time to change, but now, from the safety of the kitchen where she was checking on the light sauce she had made to go with the salmon, she heard the drawing-room door and judged it was safe to dash upstairs and do something about her appearance.
Her wardrobe wasn’t exactly bursting with fashionable clothes, her lifestyle didn’t require them, but the few clothes she did have were good, carefully chosen and well cared for. Before her death her mother had once remarked approvingly t
hat Lucy had inherited her own eye for colour and design, and the dress she hurriedly selected, a soft wrap-over style in pastel hued silk with pleats falling from the hip, was both elegant and feminine.
The soft peachy pink fabric with its pattern of muted greys and blues emphasised her summer tan, at once making her hair seem fairer and her eyes darker.
There was no time for her to bother with make-up and, quickly running a brush through her shoulder-length hair, she slipped on a pair of high-heeled sandals and hurried out of her room, almost colliding with Oliver at the top of the stairs.
He was, she saw with a sinking heart, looking oppressively sulky, his expression so like her father’s that she wondered that she had never realised the truth.
‘What’s wrong?’
He glowered at her. ‘I don’t want any lunch… I don’t want to have to talk to him… I don’t want him here, Lucy.’
‘Maybe not, but he is here and he has every right to be here,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘Oliver, I do understand how you feel, but you must try to realise how he feels as well. You don’t want everyone to think you resent the fact that he’s inherited the Manor do you?’
He shook his head slowly ‘I suppose not.’
‘Good. Now come down and have your lunch. It’s salmon. The colonel gave it to us.’
‘Did he?’ His face lit up. ‘I wish I’d been there when he came. He might have told me some more about during the war.’
Lucy laughed, relieved to see his sulks banished.
‘Well, there’ll be plenty more opportunities to talk to him I’m sure.’ Deliberately she didn’t let him go into the drawing-room alone, propelling him slightly ahead of her as she opened the door.
Fanny was sitting in one of the armchairs facing the french windows and to her astonishment Saul was standing close beside her, one arm casually draped over Tara’s shoulder as they all looked at something on her knee.
‘Oh there you are, Lucy dear…’ Fanny looked slightly flustered. ‘I was just showing Saul the photographs of our wedding. How pretty you look. It isn’t often we see you in a dress. That must be for your benefit, Saul.’ She smiled coyly up at him, blushing a little, while Lucy mentally seethed. She knew her stepmother to be completely innocent of any charge of guile, but nevertheless it was extremly galling that Saul should think she had dressed especially for him.
‘Well I could hrdly sit down to lunch in my work clothes,’ was all she said, but she was conscious of the mocking scrutiny in Saul’s eyes as she crossed the room with Oliver, and introduced him to the older man.
She was pleased to see that instead of talking down to him Saul shook hands with the boy, gravely treating him very much as the man of the house. Oliver visibly relaxed and Lucy gave a mental sigh of relief. Oliver could be extremely intractable and sulky when he chose—the result of too much laxity and spoiling, which she tried to counteract as best she could, all too conscious that once Oliver went away to school he would find that discipline was imposed upon him whether he liked it or not. Here again she blamed her father for not taking a firmer hand and not realising what a traumatic shock it could be for Oliver to go straight from his mother’s spoiling to the rigours of boarding school.
‘Darling, I think we’d better go into the dining-room for lunch.’ Fanny suggested. ‘Will you bring it in?’
It was good to see Fanny rallying from her depression and taking an interest in something once more and Lucy willingly complied, leaving the others to make their way to the dining-room while she hurried to the kitchen.
Everyone was seated when she went in with the asparagus.
The furniture in this room had been her mother’s, and if the Sheraton dining chairs were rather scratched and worn, they were still undeniably elegant.
‘Asparagus… Very English,’ Saul commented as Lucy served him. ‘From here?’
‘From the Dower House’s garden, yes,’ she agreed, making it plain to him that the asparagus was not from the Manor. In point of fact the vegetable garden attached to the Dower House was better stocked and cared for—a legacy from one of their tenants who had been a keen gardener.
She had the satisfaction of seeing the faint tide of colour creep up under his skin as he digested her remark.
‘Lucy, really,’ Fanny reproached her. ‘There’s no need for that. I’m sure that Saul wouldn’t have minded in the least had the asparagus come from the Manor.’
The smile she directed towards him was one she had always used to good effect on her husband, and, watching Saul respond to it, Lucy wondered a little bleakly if she herself wouldn’t be well advised to adopt a few feminine wiles.
Not once had Saul smiled at her like that. Not once had he smiled at her at all.
‘This is really delicious.’
He was looking at Fanny, who coloured modestly but said nothing.
Oliver, seated beside Lucy, frowned watching the by-play and then said sturdily, ‘Mum didn’t cook it—Lucy does all the cooking.’
She was aware of Saul looking at her, but refused to look back, concentrating on her food until she felt the concentration of his gaze slacken.
Fanny she saw was frowning slightly, not pleased by her son’s comment. ‘Poor Lucy has had to take charge of so much,’ she told Saul, giving her stepdaughter a little smile. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been so prostrate with misery that I haven’t been able to do a thing.’
For a moment Lucy had to stifle a wild desire to remind her stepmother that never once since the start of her marriage had she shown the slightest interest in running the Manor, but she stifled it at birth, telling herself that she was being unfair. Fanny was Fanny and that was that.
‘I’ll go and get the main course,’ she said calmly instead, quickly collecting the plates and heading for the door.
Saul reached it before her, his forearm touching her body as he leaned across her to open the door.
A frisson of sensation shivered through her, so unexpected as to be faintly shocking, and she drew back from him as though her skin burned.
‘Am I correct in thinking I recognise the Sheraton?’
No one else could overhear the remark because Saul had his back to the room and she was almost through the door.
‘Yes,’ she agreed curtly. ‘It belonged to my mother and she willed it to me.’
There! Let him make what he liked of that!
The remainder of the meal passed all too slowly for Lucy. She was aware of Saul and Fanny conversing, but made no attempt to take part in their conversation. Saul praised the salmon and its accompanying sauce, looking at her this time, but she made no response. His remark about the furniture still hurt. Hurt? She examined the word covertly. Why should she feel hurt? Anger would be far more appropriate.
‘Do you see much of Neville these days?’
The unexpected question caught her off guard and, remembering how she and Neville had treated him that summer, she coloured a little.
‘Oh Neville’s a regular visitor,’ Fanny answered for her, giving her a teasing smile. ‘Although she always denies it I suspect Lucy has a soft spot for him. Of course he’s a very popular young man, more so since he’s taken over his father’s position in the business. Did you know about his connection with Holker’s, the publishers? He was most helpful to Lucy with her book, wasn’t he darling?’
Lucy felt her spirits plummet. It was all too easy to guess at the conclusions Saul had arrived at from Fanny’s artless speech.
‘It was my uncle who recommended Bennett’s to me, not Neville,’ she reminded her stepmother. ‘We don’t see quite so much of Neville as we once did.’ she added, looking directly at Saul, ‘but he does come down occasionally.’
He ignored her last statement to comment, with what she was sure was faked admiration, ‘So you’re writing a book. I’m most impressed Lucy. What’s it about?’
As though he, too, had sensed the derision behind the surface pleasantry of the words, Oliver answered for her.
�
��It’s all about the Martin family… And Lucy spends hours in the library reading all about them. It’s going to be really good when it’s finished.’
Fanny laughed indulgently. ‘Really, Oliver darling. He quite dotes on Lucy,’ she told Saul over the latter’s head. ‘Sometimes I feel quite jealous. But then of course the children have been spending so much time with her recently. And then of course, living here… in her house.’
There was a sudden silence while Lucy gazed incredulously at her stepmother. Did Fanny resent the fact that the Dower House had been left to her?
She frowned, shocked by the thought, swiftly banishing it. It was because Saul was here that she was having these unfair thoughts.
‘Tell me more about this book of yours.’
Saul’s question caught her off guard, a faint frown pleating her forehead as she looked at him.
‘There isn’t very much to tell really. I’ve finished the draft of the first book, and I’m due to go to London next week to discuss it with the publishers.’
‘Mmm. What is it exactly? A history of the Martin family?’
‘No… not really, although I have used family papers and diaries as a background. It’s a fiction work not a factual one, but by using the family documents I’ve been able to give it a strongly factual framework.’
He was looking at her in rather an odd way and rather belatedly Lucy realised that she had betrayed herself into her usual enthusiasm for her project. Instilling some of her earlier coldness into her voice she added, ‘Of course, if you would rather that I don’t use the library at the Manor from now on I shall understand.’
‘Magnanimous of you.’
His dry tone made her flush as she realised how easily the cool voice she had used as a defence could be misconstrued as being rather haughty and supercilious.
She remembered now, too, how she and Neville had mocked his American accent, so different from their own British accents. How silly she had been to think it would be easy to wipe out the slights of the past. It was plain to her now that Saul felt nothing but contempt for her, and would doubtless laugh in her face if she were to attempt to apologise.