by Penny Jordan
‘Well then. Now we really are kissing cousins.’
The smile that curled his mouth made her pulses race. His eyes on her lips, he said softly, ‘I certainly hope so.’
* * *
She was still half in a daze when the others came home. Oliver was full of the war stories the colonel had been telling him, and Tara was talking anxiously about the labrador puppies who needed a good home.
‘Tom is such a sweet man,’ Fanny told her when the children had been put to bed. ‘And so thoughtful. He told me he thought I ought to get away for a little while… have a holiday. Of course I told him it was out of the question. For one thing there simply isn’t the money. And then I could hardly go off and leave you alone to cope with Oliver and Tara.’
At first inclined to agree with her, it occured to Lucy that her recent irritation with Fanny might have sprung from the fact that they were both still suffering the after-effects of her father’s death and, that being the case, it might possibly be a good idea for Fanny to have a short break.
‘If you wanted to go away I’m sure something could be arranged,’ she suggested thoughtfully.
‘Do you think so?’ Immediately Fanny brightened. ‘Tom did mention that a friend of his has an apartment in Marbella which he is sure I could rent for next to nothing.’
Privately Lucy doubted that, but she held her peace. They were not so short of money that Fanny couldn’t go away if she wanted to and although she was determined to take a responsible and caring attitude towards her guardianship of the children, it was no part of her brief to monitor Fanny’s spendings or say what she should spend her allowance on.
‘I think it would do us both good,’ Lucy told her generously. ‘We’re neither of us used to living so much on top of one another. The Dower House is quite sizeable compared with most houses, but it is an awful lot smaller than the Manor.’
‘Oh, Lucy, you are a darling.’
She found she was being enthusiastically hugged. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a beast lately. But I’m so lost without your father. Would you like me to speak to Saul and tell him that I was wrong—that you don’t dislike him?’
Lucy shook her head, giving her a small smile.
‘No—it’s already done,’ she told her wryly. ‘By me!’
Within a couple of days everything was arranged. Fanny would fly out to Marbella at the weekend for a fortnight’s stay in the colonel’s friend’s apartment.
During those two days Lucy had seen Saul on several occasions. Nothing personal had occurred between them, no reference had been made to the way he had kissed her or the way she had responded, but she was conscious of a complete change-about in his manner towards her and she basked in the warmth of it, like a small cat indulging herself in the heat of the sun after the coldness of winter.
Without her knowing it there was a subtle change within her, a certain feminine chemistry that made her more alluring… softer. Tara noticed it.
‘I really like living in the Dower House,’ she confided in Saul one morning when he found her in the stables where he had insisted that Harriet remained.
‘Lucy likes it, too. She’s always laughing—and she cuddles me a lot. I like that!’
Lucy, coming into the stable in search of her just in time to catch her last words, felt herself go a vivid scarlet. Saul, who was looking at her, grinned as she turned to leave the stable; he paused beside her and murmured so that only she could hear, ‘So would I!’
CHAPTER FOUR
FROM then on it seemed at though both she and Saul were possessed by an inner radar system that caused them both to gravitate to the same point at the same time.
Every time it happened Lucy found herself less and less sure that she was too old for the folly of falling in love. Saul only had to look at her and smile for her insides to start melting and her heartbeat to thud. And with every smile, every small gesture he made towards her, Saul said silently that her feelings were not hers alone. Outwardly there was nothing obviously lover-like in his behaviour towards her, but her senses so delicately attuned to his informed her that he was quite well aware of what it did to her when he placed his hand on her arm when he was talking to her, or pushed a wayward curl of hair back off her face with gentle fingers. And his eyes told her that he enjoyed the contact just as much as she did, promising that what was happening between them was merely a tentative, learning prelude to what was to be.
It pleased Lucy that he didn’t rush her. Her feelings towards him were powerful enough to make her slightly afraid. Desire of such a voluptuous intensity was unfamiliar to her and, even while his touch delighted her, it was frightening to realise how vulnerable she was to him.
When they talked it was of commonplace, day-to-day things. She told him about Fanny’s trip to Spain. He suggested that, since his car was the larger, he should transport Fanny to the airport, adding that if she cared to they could make a day of it, seeing Fanny off on her early morning flight and then going on to spend the day in London with Oliver and Tara. She responded gravely that she would put it to the children, already knowing they would not refuse.
Fanny was nervous on the Saturday morning of her flight, half inclined not to go, but by the time Saul pulled up outside she was feeling more cheerful.
In no time at all they were all in the car. Fanny and the children in the back, Lucy seated next to Saul in the front. Fanny had been about to take the front passenger seat but, by some dextrous manoeuvre, Saul had got her ensconced in the back. A tiny frond of pleasure uncurled inside her as Lucy sat beside him, content in the knowledge that he had wanted her there.
As they drove through the gates he slowed down and then stopped as their postman cycled towards them.
‘You’re getting an early start.’ His smile encompassed them all as he handed two or three letters to Lucy and then reached past her to give a large bundle to Saul. Most of them seemed to have American stamps; business letters by the look of them, and it struck her how little she knew of the life Saul had lived in the States. Almost as though he knew what she was thinking he smiled at her before glancing wryly at his mail.
‘From my company by the looks of it. I’ve taken some leave of absence to come over here, but it looks like some things won’t wait.’
His words reminded Lucy that his stay in England could not be a permanent one. No doubt as soon as he had put the Manor on the market he would be returning to the States. An icy finger of dread touched her heart. What would happen to her then? If he were to ask her to go with him, would she?’
Her heart leaped at the thought. She would go anywhere with him, she acknowledged shakily, or at least she would had she been free to do so. She had her obligation to Oliver and Tara to consider… She shivered, forcing back a wave of desolation, and Saul, seeing it, looked at her with a concerned frown.
‘Cold?’
She shook her head, retreating into silence as she tried to remind herself she had only known Saul a very short time; far too short surely to be thinking that, without him in it, her world would be a very desolate place indeed.
* * *
‘Tired?’
Both children nodded sleepily in response to Saul’s question as Lucy bundled them into the car.
After seeing Fanny safely off they had gone on to London, spending a few hours at the zoo before having lunch at a MacDonalds. A bus trip round the sights of the city, followed by afternoon tea at the Grosvenor House Hotel, and then a brisk walk through the park, had resulted in two very happy and very tired children.
* * *
‘If we didn’t have these two to think about, I’d suggest rounding off the day with dinner somewhere,’ Saul told her as he drove home. Both children were fast asleep in the back of the car, and Lucy glanced back at them.
‘Fanny’s not exactly maternal is she?’ Saul commented.
‘In her own way she is.’ Lucy felt bound to defend her stepmother. ‘She loves them both very dearly.’
‘But she’s qui
te happy to let the responsibility for them rest on your shoulders.’
‘I love them, too,’ Lucy told him quietly, remembering how miserable she had felt earlier when she had contemplated the thought of him returning to America.
‘I know you do. I suspect the man who marries you is going to find himself taking on the kids as well.’
Was he trying to find out if she would expect the children to live with her if she married? Up until today, she had never given much thought to her own future; marriage had seemed highly unlikely and certainly had been unwanted. But now…
‘Not necessarily. Fanny is their mother and if I married I’m sure she would want them to live with her. The income she would get from her allowance and the trusts is enough for them all to live on, but of course I am their co-guardian and as such I would want to keep in touch with them.’
‘Mmm… Strange that… After all, Oliver has his own father doesn’t he? I’d have thought he’d be the one to support Oliver and not your father.’
What on earth could she say? The knowledge that she was actively deceiving him made her tongue slow and her voice hesitant.
‘My father loved Oliver very much.’ It was after all the truth. ‘He was a man who much preferred sons to daughters, and he and Fanny married when Oliver was quite small.’
‘Mmm… Even so, it was rather odd, don’t you think, that he should make such generous financial arrangements for a child who wasn’t his own?’
What could she say?
‘He wasn’t the sort of man whose decisions you could question,’ she told him, knowing that, whilst her comment was the truth, it was only a tiny part of it.
To get off such a potentially dangerous subject she asked him curiously, ‘What do you intend to do about the Manor? Obviously you can’t keep it…’
‘No?’
It was more of a question than an agreement, and she looked sharply at him.
‘It would take a fortune to make it properly habitable,’ she reminded him, ‘and even without that, the rates and running costs alone…’
‘Mmm… You’re right of course. Don’t you feel any sentimental attachment to it at all, Lucy?’
Now it was his turn to be curious and this at least was something she could answer honestly.
‘Of course I do, but I’m afraid I’m also practical. During the last few months of my father’s life, I had to take charge of running the estate, paying the bills and so forth, and I’m afraid that cured me of a lot of my sentimentality. Besides, I’d grown up knowing that one day I’d have to leave.’
‘Yes, your father was very resentful of that entail, wasn’t he? I remember that summer I came over, he never stopped reinforcing how much he disliked the thought of it coming to me. Was he very disappointed when Tara was born?’ he asked her perceptively.
Lucy bowed her head so that he couldn’t see her expression. ‘A little,’ she responded guardedly. ‘Obviously you realised how he felt about the house—and the family. Up until the time my mother died I think I believed that somehow the Martins were immortal, inviolate, and way, way above the fate of other human beings. My mother’s death taught me differently.
‘So it wasn’t resentment that summer—just pain.’
She liked him for seeing that.
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
‘Well that’s all behind us now.’ He lifted his hand from the wheel briefly to cover hers, the contact warm and sure.
‘I haven’t seen you using the library since I’ve arrived. I hope that isn’t because you don’t think you’re welcome?’
Initially it had been; that and a stubborn, difficult pride, but now…
She shook her head. ‘I just haven’t had time to do any more work on my book. The draft of the first one is finished anyway and with the publishers. I’m going down to see them next week, and although I’ve been sifting through the diaries and letters for background information I don’t intend to start on the second in the series until the first one’s been passed and accepted.’
‘You must be very good to have got this far,’ Saul commented praisingly. ‘I know how difficult it is for a new author to get a first book accepted, especially when it’s fiction.’
‘Well I was lucky in that my uncle was able to give me a recommendation,’ Lucy reminded him modestly.
‘True, but if your work hadn’t been good enough, no amount of recommendations would have helped.’
Lucy knew that this was true, and it gave her a warm glow of pleasure to hear Saul’s praise.
That was what she had missed since her mother’s death, she acknowledged. Someone to share her ups and downs, no matter how small and trivial. Her father had never been interested in her writing, and Fanny, although kind-hearted, considered it a nonsense that any woman could actually want to work and become financially independent.
There was her uncle, of course, who she loved very much, but she didn’t see that much of him, especially now that he had retired, and the fact that she and Neville no longer saw eye to eye tended to make her visits to his parents less frequent. Neville had his own flat in London, but Lucy always tended to feel a little uncomfortable in her aunt’s presence, knowing how much she adored her only child. Her uncle, she suspected, saw his son more clearly, but he was a gentle, mild-mannered man, as far removed from his arrogant callous son as it was possible for a man to be.
‘Will the books follow the fortunes of the Martin family?’ Saul asked her, returning to the subject of her work.
‘Very loosely. I’m going to use the more scandalous bits—the Martin who cost the family a title by refusing to go to bed with the Prince Regent will probably feature in it, and of course the family’s trading connections, especially with the West Indies, make a very good background.
‘Although I’m not up to that point yet, I’m thinking about incorporating the anti-slavery act, probably by using two brothers… twins maybe, one for and one against. I’d like to see the diaries and papers, if I may.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to take them to the Dower House with you?’
‘Yes it would, but they are family papers, and I felt they belonged to the Manor.’
‘Rather a different view to your father’s. I gather from my conversation with the solicitors that he managed to dispose of almost everything that might raise any cash.’
It was a just criticism and one she could not defend. She had privately considered it deplorable that her father should have stripped the house of its assets—assets that, had Saul inherited them, he would have been able to sell to keep the house going.
‘I’m not my father, Saul.’
It was all she could say, and she knew from the warm touch of his hand against her own that he understood how she felt.
Although it wasn’t very late when they got back, she felt tired enough to make her own way to bed less than an hour after she had tucked both children into theirs.
She and Saul had parted without so much as a kiss but she did not feel cheated or disappointed. The look in his eyes before he left her had told her there would be a time for them, and it had soothed her earlier fears about his imminent return to the States. Had he been questioning her about the children earlier because he did intend to ask her to go with him?
One step at a time, she told herself sleepily. One step at a time.
* * *
Her appointment with her publishers was fixed for Tuesday lunch time and on Monday Lucy went down to see the vicar’s wife, to ask if she could possibly look after Oliver and Tara for the day. She had known Nancy Smallwood nearly all her life; Nancy’s daughter Veronica was five years her senior and married now with two children.
‘I’d love to have them,’ Nancy assured her warmly. ‘Veronica’s bringing Daniel and Amanda down this afternoon—I’m looking after them for a week so that she and Ryan can have a break—so they’ll be company for one another.’
‘How’s Saul settling in?’ she asked, having met Saul the summer he had staye
d at the Manor.
‘Pretty well. Oliver was inclined to resent him a little at first, but now he tends to rather hero-worship him.’
‘Oh well, that’s no bad thing. A boy that age needs a man to model himself on. Does Saul intend to stay do you know?’
‘I don’t. I can’t see how he would be able to keep the Manor on—that would take a fortune.’
‘Yes. So what will he do—sell I suppose?’
‘I expect so. He hasn’t discussed it, but I don’t see that he has much option. It won’t be easy to find a buyer.’
‘It would make a first-rate hotel—or a school… or even a convalescent home.’
She was right, and Lucy frowned slightly. The last time she had seen Neville he had been talking about a consortium he knew who might be interested in buying the Manor, but knowing Neville and his sharp practices Lucy doubted that any sale to Neville’s friends would be very beneficial to Saul. She frowned harder, remembering how derogatory Neville had been about Saul the last time they met.
There had been an unpleasant degree of antipathy and contempt in his sneering comments about Saul’s financial position and intelligence. She smiled rather grimly to herself. It might do Neville good to realise that Saul was not the hick country boy he seemed to think.
It didn’t take her long to walk back from the vicarage. She had left the children in the care of Mrs Isaacs, and so she made her way up to the Manor without stopping at the Dower House.
When she got there there was no sign of Saul and Mrs Isaacs told her that he had had to go out on business.
‘Had a phone call from America he did this morning,’ she confided expectantly to Lucy, but Lucy refused to be drawn, collecting the children and thanking her for looking after them.
Some last-minute doubts about her book kept Lucy at her typewriter until late afternoon. Her study was at the back of the Dower House so she wasn’t aware that Saul had returned until Oliver burst in announcing, ‘Saul’s back. He’s in the kitchen talking to Tara and he wants to see you.’
Pushing back her machine she got up, automatically flexing stiff muscles as she followed Oliver into the kitchen.