Man of Stone

by Frances Roding

  ‘I was just telling Luke that he must take you to the Midsummer Ball. It’s a charity “do” that’s held at the Grosvenor. A most wonderful affair. You’ll thoroughly enjoy it.’

  Sara couldn’t look at Luke; she knew how little he would want to escort her to such an affair. Her head bent as she mumbled the first excuse that came to her mind, a guilty flush staining her skin.

  It was wrong to pretend that she couldn’t leave Tom, but there was no way she was going to endure the humiliation of listening to Luke find an excuse for not accompanying her.

  It was plain that her grandmother was disappointed, and Sara felt guilty at spoiling her happiness. Was her grandmother entertaining foolish dreams of a marriage between Luke and herself?

  If so, she would have to find a way of making her see how impossible they were, Sara acknowledged.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS SHE SURVEYED the flowerbed she was weeding, Sara eased her aching back with a small smile of satisfaction.

  She had been living with her grandmother for over a month now, but it was only this week that she had discovered the pleasures of gardening. She was weeding one of the intricately planted knot gardens, and it was almost idyllic work, kneeling in the full strength of the summer sun, breathing in the clean smell of the earth and the scents of the flowers.

  Tom had made friends with a couple of boys in the village, and he was out with them now, riding his bicycle. The bicycle had been a present from Luke—a very generous present, Sara admitted.

  In Luke, Tom was finding the guidance and firmness he had never received from their own father. Luke would be a marvellous parent.

  He had been to London several times to see Cressy, and as far as she knew her stepsister was still preserving the fiction that she was going to California, although her departure had been delayed.

  Only last weekend Cressy had asked her for money, complaining that she was completely broke. Sara had given her what little she had. Her own bank account was practically depleted, and she was too proud to ask her grandmother for any.

  She had decided that she would have to find a job, locally if possible, if not, in Chester. She was gradually taking over more and more responsibility for the house, and thus relieving her grandmother of its burden. She frowned as she plucked at a recalcitrant and deep-rooted weed.

  Her grandmother was shortly due to visit her specialist in London. Every time Sara tried to raise the subject of her health, she evaded her questions. There was no doubt in Sara’s mind now that her grandmother was far more frail than she wanted anyone to think. She glanced at her watch. Three o’clock. Time to go in and have a cup of tea.

  She went first to the kitchen to wash her hands, and then to take the tray from Anna.

  She pushed open the sitting-room door, calling out cheerfully, ‘Tea and Anna’s scones!’ and then almost dropped the tray as she saw her grandmother’s crumpled figure.

  She put down the tray with shaking hands, calling frantically for Anna.

  Her grandmother was still alive. She could feel her pulsebeat, but her colour was frightening and her breathing so shallow.

  ‘Anna, please call the doctor…’

  She didn’t know how she managed to get the words out of her choked throat. All the time, a message was beating through her brain. She mustn’t panic… she mustn’t panic… If only Luke was here… a small sob caught in her throat, and she suppressed it.

  ‘Perhaps we should carry her upstairs,’ Anna suggested.

  ‘No, no!’ Sara said sharply. ‘We’d better not touch her. She might have broken something when she fell, Anna,’ she added more gently.

  The doctor seemed to be a lifetime in arriving, although it could only in fact have been minutes. Sara prayed as she had never prayed before that her grandmother would live.

  The doctor’s examination was quick and knowledgeable. He popped a tablet into her grandmother’s mouth and then said to Sara, ‘She’s been lucky this time. I’ve warned her time and time again against overdoing things.’

  ‘How… how serious is it?’

  ‘Serious enough,’ he told her gravely. ‘She’s starting to come round. I’ll take her upstairs. Could you come with me?’

  When her grandmother finally came round, Sara was sitting on her bed, holding her hand, her face anxious.

  ‘Gran…’ Her voice broke, and she stifled the tears burning her eyes.

  ‘It’s all right, my dear.’ She patted Sara’s hand. ‘I have these little turns from time to time. Don’t I, Doctor?’ she appealed to the man standing beside the bed.

  ‘Only when you don’t do as you’re told,’ he asserted firmly.

  To hear her grandmother’s chuckle was such a relief.

  ‘You frightened me,’ Sara told her unsteadily.

  It was shock that was making her tremble so badly, Sara acknowledged, as she fought to control the tremors in her hands.

  ‘Oh, my dear!’

  Sara saw the concern in her grandmother’s eyes, and fought to get herself back under control.

  ‘You’re to stay in bed for the rest of the day,’ Sara heard the doctor telling her. ‘You’re due to see Alan Gray soon, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, next week,’ her grandmother agreed placidly.

  ‘Um… well, take things easy until then.’

  Sara saw him out to his car.

  ‘Try to make sure she rests,’ he urged her.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  He gave her a kind smile.

  ‘No, my dear… Just having you here is the best medicine she could have, but she must learn that she has to take things easy. She can get up later, if she wants to.’

  ‘Sara, promise me you won’t say anything about this to Luke.’ She was upstairs with her grandmother. It was some time since Alice’s accident, but Sara still felt shaky.

  ‘I don’t want him to worry,’ her grandmother persisted, seeing the doubt in her eye.

  ‘All right, I won’t tell him,’ Sara agreed reluctantly.

  Luke was away in London, and not due back until very much later in the evening. She ought to tell him about Gran, Sara acknowledged later that evening. She could understand that Gran didn’t want to worry him, but the seriousness of her condition was such that Sara didn’t think she had the right to keep it from him.

  She would wait up until he came home and tell him, Sara decided. And then she remembered that her grandmother sometimes couldn’t sleep and came down to make herself a drink or get a book. If she discovered her down here, she was bound to guess that she was waiting for Luke—and why.

  It would be better if she waited for him in his room.

  Sara had never been in Luke’s room before. It wasn’t very far from her grandmother’s, and she opened the door with a faint feeling of trepidation.

  She had been in the middle of getting ready for bed when she had been forced to acknowledge that she would have to break her promise to her grandmother and tell Luke what had happened, and she had pulled on an old terry-towelling robe over her underclothes.

  She had brought a book with her, but she was too strung up with adrenalin-based tension to pay much attention to it. She read a half a dozen words, and then the print blurred and all she could see was her grandmother’s still form.

  She looked at her watch. Luke normally got back about eleven, and it was now almost ten past. She stifled a yawn. Her body ached from her gardening stint this afternoon, and her head was beginning to feel muzzy. She yawned again and looked yearningly at the bed.

  Luke’s room had a very traditional four-poster. In fact, all the furniture in the room was very old and very valuable. It was decorated in rich shades of blue and terracotta. Anna had turned down the bed invitingly.

  She looked at her watch again. Half-past eleven. When would Luke be back?

  At one o’clock she gave in to the tiredness that was making her head muzzy and her body ache, and crawled on to a shadowy corner of the bed.

  She fell asleep al
most immediately, unaware of the bright arc of Luke’s car’s headlights, or of his entry into the house.

  Not even the sound of the shower in the adjacent bathroom had the power to wake her, and so the first thing she knew about his presence was the sudden and shocking grasp of his hands on her recumbent body as she lay asleep.

  She woke immediately, crying out in fear and bewilderment.

  Luke shook her.

  She stared at him, confused and disorientated.

  ‘You’re not wearing any clothes.’ Her bemused brain formed the words before she could silence them, and then her eyes widened in shock as the bedroom door opened and her grandmother walked in.

  ‘Luke, I heard someone call out—’ she began as she entered the room.

  Sara felt the tension grip him as her grandmother stood staring at them. Sara saw her shocked expression, and realised sickly what her grandmother must be imagining.

  ‘No, Gran… You…’ But Luke was before her, pulling on his robe, his voice calm and even as he said quietly, ‘Alice, I’m sorry. Sara and I should have told you. We want to get married…’

  Sara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. What on earth was Luke saying? Then she looked at her grandmother’s face, and saw the joy reflected there.

  ‘Oh, my dears! Oh, Sara, this is exactly what I wanted!’

  ‘I’m sorry you had to find out like this.’ How grim Luke sounded, and no wonder! ‘But it’s been a long week, Alice, and I’ve missed Sara very much indeed.’

  ‘I’m not so old that I don’t remember what it’s like to be in love, Luke,’ Sara heard her grandmother saying. ‘I’ll say goodnight to you both now. No doubt Sara will soon be returning to her own room,’ she added, firmly and diplomatically.

  She was gone before Sara could protest. Her breath seemed to have leaked away somewhere deep inside her chest. She stared at Luke in bewilderment, wondering if he could possibly have gone mad.

  He was standing well away from her, and there was nothing lover-like at all in the way he was looking at her.

  ‘Very clever,’ he told her gratingly. ‘Such a neat and effective trap. Old-fashioned, of course,’ he said it almost musingly, ‘but effective, none the less. Cressy warned me that you were on the look-out for a rich husband, but I never imagined…’ He broke off and looked unkindly at her.

  Sara was appalled. ‘You can’t possibly think I want to marry you!’

  ‘Cut out the pretence, Sara, we both know the truth. Oh, I don’t flatter myself that you have any personal interest in me. Any rich man would have done, but with me, of course, you have an advantage. You know I’d do anything in my power to stop Alice from being hurt, and she would be hurt, wouldn’t she, if she thought her precious “innocent” granddaughter was indulging in a relationship with a man to whom she wasn’t married?’

  It was archaic, impossible! And yet, what he said was also true. Her grandmother would be hurt. Sara had seen that in those few agonising seconds before Luke had made his unexpected announcement.

  ‘So you’ve trapped me very neatly, unless, of course, you want to go to Alice and tell her exactly what you were doing in my bed.’

  Sara looked at him wildly and then trembled.

  ‘No, I thought not. By the way, what would you have done if she hadn’t happened along at precisely the right moment? A clever idea that, to scream so effectively—and loudly.’

  ‘I didn’t scream. I was frightened—you shocked me…’

  ‘By getting into my own bed?’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Sara told him desperately. ‘I didn’t come here to trap you into marrying me. Gran was… was ill this afternoon. She made me promise not to tell you, but I had to. I thought it would be best if I waited for you here, so she didn’t guess. You’re normally back from London around eleven,’ she added indignantly. ‘I was tired…’

  ‘You’re lying.’ The flat way he said the words was like a blow in the face. ‘Oh, I don’t doubt Alice did have a black out—very conveniently for you, but I know too much about you to be taken in, Sara. I suppose, once you discovered there was no money in the family, you decided that marriage to me was the next best thing.’

  ‘No money?’

  ‘Bar the odd few thousand, that’s why…’ He broke off, his mouth hard. ‘This whole discussion is pointless. We’re committed now, just as you intended we should be. You’ve got what you wanted, Sara, but be warned. I intend to make sure you pay for it in full measure—very full measure. Now, get out of my room.’

  She was too stunned to argue. How could he think she had actually plotted to trap him into marrying her? It was ridiculous, farcical! Like something out of a Jane Austen novel, when a woman could be compromised simply by being seen unchaperoned in the company of an unmarried man.

  She was tempted to go straight to her grandmother and tell her everything, and then she remembered that quivering look of delight Alice had given them both.

  Her grandmother wanted this marriage, she acknowledged painfully. Knowing the precarious state of her health, how could she go to her and tell her the truth?

  In her grandmother’s day, young ladies were not found in men’s bedrooms unless they were engaged at the very least, Sara acknowledged wryly.

  If only she had spoken up and told her the truth immediately, everything could have been explained, but now it was too late. If she told her now, she was going to be so disappointed.

  But marriage to Luke? Her body shook at the thought. He couldn’t possibly intend to go through with it. He was just trying to frighten her, to force her into being the one to back out. Well, she wasn’t going to. He was the one who had announced that they were getting married, and so he could be the one to explain to her grandmother that they weren’t.

  There was no sign of Luke at breakfast, and Sara allowed herself to hope that last night had all simply been part of a hideous nightmare.

  This comfortable fiction was destroyed by her grandmother when Sara took in her breakfast tray. Her grandmother was sitting up in bed, her face radiant.

  ‘Sara, my dear, I’ve been making plans. You’ll be married here, of course. Luke insists on only having a very small affair. He’s even threatened me with being forced to stay in bed until the ceremony if I don’t behave myself.’

  Sara swallowed, her determination to force Luke to be the first to back down from their bogus engagement forgotten.

  ‘Grandmother, about last night—’

  ‘Sara, there’s no need to say a word. Luke has already spoken to me.’ She sighed. ‘When a man as virile as Luke falls in love…’ Her voice trailed away, and Sara was aghast to find herself blushing beneath her grandmother’s benign smile.

  Grandmother thought that Luke had been overcome by desire for her. It was as plain as though she had actually said the words.

  ‘No, Gran, you…’

  ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. Luke wants to see you in his study. You know which room it is, don’t you?’

  She did. It was the one room in the house Anna was forbidden to touch.

  ‘I’d better go down and see him, then.’

  She saw from her grandmother’s frown that she had expected a more enthusiastic response, and she escaped before anything more could be said.

  There was an instinctive urge to stop and knock before entering the study; she subdued it, her head held proudly as she opened the door and marched in.

  Luke was sitting behind the desk, frowning into a computer terminal. It looked very similar to the one she had trained on in her evening classes, and she looked at it with interest. So that was how he kept in touch with his businesses in Australia!

  She waited while he jotted something down, going to stare out of the window on to the rose garden. The roses were the old-fashioned variety. They had been planted by one of her ancestors.

  ‘Gran said you wanted to see me.’

  ‘There are things we need to talk about.’

  ‘Such as how we’re going to break the news to Gran
that we aren’t getting married, you mean?’

  There was a tense silence, and then suddenly he was at her side, wrenching her face round to his so that he could look into her eyes. His fingers bruised her too sensitive skin and she flinched trying to tug away.

  ‘Just what are you threatening now?’ he breathed dangerously. ‘If you say one word, just one word to your grandmother suggesting that we aren’t getting married…’

  Sara’s head spun, whether from the shock of what she was hearing, or from the pressure he was exerting on her blood vessels, she wasn’t sure.

  ‘You don’t want to marry me!’ she protested.

  ‘You should have thought of that before,’ he told her tightly. ‘Oh, come on,’ he added when he saw her white face, ‘you knew what you were doing. You know how much Alice means to me. She’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to any family, and there’s no way I can let her think I’ve callously seduced her precious grandchild—and you know it.’

  He had hated betraying even that much to her, Sara noted numbly. She swallowed hard against the odd lump of pain in her throat, wondering why she should feel this surge of pity for him.

  ‘I could have explained,’ she told him slowly. ‘Gran would have understood.’

  ‘What would you have told her?’

  ‘The truth,’ Sara told him quietly. ‘That I was waiting to tell you about her passing out, and that I fell asleep.’

  ‘Dressed in nothing more than a flimsy robe.’

  Hot colour shot through her skin. So he had noticed that.

  ‘Oh, come on, even Alice isn’t that naïve.’

  ‘But you don’t want to marry me. You don’t love me…’

  ‘Love isn’t necessarily a prerequisite of marriage,’ he told her sneeringly. ‘Surely you don’t think I haven’t noticed the signals your body’s been giving mine. My bed’s been empty for a very long time, and your body will fill it as adequately as anyone else’s, I’m sure.’

  Sara was horrified by his cynicism.

  ‘You don’t mean that… What about Cressy?’

  ‘Are you asking me if I’ve been sleeping with her?’ he asked, deliberately misinterpreting her shock. ‘If so, the answer’s “no”.’