Man of Stone

by Frances Roding

  Her stepsister wasn’t pretty now, she noticed with admirable, if forced, detachment. How mean those pale blue eyes could look when they were narrowed with malice the way they were at the moment.

  ‘You think you’ve been very clever, don’t you, getting Luke? It won’t last, you know. He’ll be bored with you within a month.’ She laughed, the sound high and shrill. ‘You’re so stupid, Sara. Didn’t you stop to question why a man like Luke would want to marry someone like you?’

  Of course she would have, if she had not already known the answer. She turned her head away. How wearying Cressy could be when she was like this! In the past, she had always tried to humour and coax her stepsister out of these vicious rages, but today, for some reason, she didn’t have the energy—nor the inclination.

  ‘He married you because he didn’t have any other option,’ Cressy told her tauntingly. ‘I know that…’

  ‘And so do I,’ Sara told her coldly, standing up. She marvelled at the levelness of her voice, when all the time inside she felt so betrayed. Luke had told Cressy everything… Somehow, she had not expected that of him, although she had no idea what she thought he should have told her stepsister.

  Cressy gaped at her.

  ‘You know? And yet you still married him?’

  Sara walked over to the window.

  Neither of them saw the man standing within the half-open door. ‘Yes. You see, Cressy, I decided to take a leaf out of your book.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I married Luke for his money,’ Sara lied evenly, amazed at the discovery of this hitherto unsuspected talent within herself.

  ‘What did you expect me to say?’ She laughed brittlely, taking advantage of Cressy’s shock. ‘That I’d fallen in love with him? Well, I haven’t…’ She swung round and came to an abrupt halt as she saw Luke standing in the half-open doorway.

  All the blood left her face as she saw the contempt in his eyes. She took a step towards him and then stopped, pride coming to her rescue. What did it matter if he had overhead her lie? He already thought as badly of her as it was possible to think, and yet deep down inside herself she ached to run after him and to tell him the truth.

  ‘Fool, fool!’ she berated herself.

  Cressy summoned her own forces and told her angrily. ‘Well, you’ve got him, Sara, but you still have to hold on to him. I won’t be in California for ever, and when I come back…’

  ‘What did you say to Tom to upset him?’

  Her abrupt volte-face threw her stepsister. Cressy stared at her. This was more like the familiar Sara she knew; so concerned for their young half-brother, only there was no emotion in her voice or in her eyes. No, this was a new Sara, a harder, colder Sara, who she was just beginning to realise could be a formidable enemy.

  ‘Tom? I told him that Luke should have married me and not you,’ Cressy told her, tossing her head defiantly. ‘Honestly, such a fuss! You’d think you were his mother, not his half-sister…’

  ‘Oh, Cressy, how could you? You know how vulnerable he is…’

  ‘Because you’ve pampered him,’ Cressy shot back. ‘I’m beginning to think Pop was right. You molly-coddled Tom.’

  Sara closed her eyes and was amazed to hear herself saying fiercely, ‘Get out! Just get out…’

  She had never, never spoken to her stepsister like that, no matter what the provocation. It had taken Luke to make her do so. Luke and her ridiculous, dangerous love for him.

  Cressy didn’t even bother to stay for lunch. Luke drove her to the station, while Sara went to sit with Tom, who was now awake.

  ‘Sara, you and Luke are going to stay married, aren’t you?’ he demanded warily when he saw her.

  ‘Of course we are.’

  She crossed her fingers behind her back, praying superstitiously that she was right. If anything should happen to her grandmother, there would be no need for Luke to continue with their marriage, and in those circumstances… She shivered as though a cold wind had touched her skin, when in point of fact Tom’s room was warm from the strength of the sun.

  He wanted to get up, but she managed to persuade him that he must rest at least until tea time.

  ‘Poor Sara, you’re surrounded by invalids,’ her grandmother commented when she went downstairs.

  ‘Tom has every chance of growing out of these attacks… Perhaps I do tend to wrap him in cotton wool too much… What do you think?’ she appealed to her grandmother.

  ‘I think you’re right to be cautious. Asthma is a very dangerous thing, and not unconnected with emotional trauma in some cases, I believe. Tom strikes me as a little boy who has not had the love and attention he should have received from his parents…’

  Sara couldn’t say anything. Loyalty prevented her.

  ‘I’m afraid Cressy was rather upset by the news that you and Luke had married,’ Alice Fitton continued. ‘A very selfish young woman, that one. As I have said before, she reminds me very much of Louise.’

  Sara didn’t want to hear about Luke’s dead wife; she felt as though she had more than enough emotional burdens to bear already.

  ‘You should be resting,’ she scolded her grandmother, trying to change the subject.

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret, my dear. This heart of mine has been giving me problems for a very long time, but it’s never let me down yet, and I don’t intend to let it do so for a very long time to come. I’d like to hold my great-granddaughter in my arms, Sara. Another Fitton woman to love and cherish this house. Strange how history always credits the male line with such importance and magnificence, when it is, in fact, the female line that is always the strongest. Women are the more enduring sex, my dear. We are designed to endure, that is our great strength. Even in these modern times, we are the ones who nurture the new generation. A child of yours, whatever its sex, cannot help but love this house. I know that, but I find myself hoping that you and Luke will have daughters.’

  Sara was too choked to be able to speak. What could she say? How could she destroy her grandmother’s hopes by telling her that she and Luke were unlikely to have children? Unless… Unless she had already conceived his child.

  Her skin burned at the thought, her body curiously light, her breath catching in her lungs. If only that might be so! Luke’s child… Luke’s daughter.

  ‘Louise was to have borne Luke’s child,’ her grandmother continued, unintentionally shattering her dreams and making her face the reality of the fact that Luke could never want to have a child with her. ‘But she… she lost it just before the accident.’

  So Luke had not only lost the woman he loved, but their child as well. Strange how too much pain could have a numbing effect, as though one’s senses could only endure so much.

  Luke returned from dropping Cressy off at the station, looking very grim. He went straight upstairs, and half an hour later, when Sara went up to get changed, she heard him talking to Tom.

  It was a shock to open her bedroom wardrobe and discover that her clothes were missing. She stood for several seconds, staring at the empty space, her brain too sluggish to understand where they had gone. Too much had happened to her in too short a space of time.

  She felt almost punch-drunk on the after-effects of trying to absorb too much information.

  ‘I asked Anna to move your things into my room.’

  She spun round, her nerves on edge at the sound of Luke’s cold voice.

  ‘You expect me to share your room?’

  ‘It is customary between man and wife. And we are most definitely that, aren’t we?’

  He was reminding her about last night, reinforcing his subjugation of her, and she felt the hot colour burn her skin.

  ‘A masterly stroke, to retain your virginity so long, but it was wasted on me, I’m afraid. Even in these modern times, it is still a powerful bargaining counter, but you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I say that I found your virginal state a little too contrived, too calculated. You’re what—nearly twenty-four?’

  She nodded,
unable to speak for the pain erupting inside her.

  ‘To have remained inviolate for so long bespeaks a very strong will, or a very low sex drive.’ His voice was colder than Arctic ice as he added softly, ‘And we both know it wasn’t the latter, don’t we? In the past, a bride gave her husband the gift of her virginity as a sign of purity, her intention to honour their marriage vows, as well as for more practical reasons, such as proof that she was not carrying another man’s child—very important in the days when inheritance was often a vital issue. And a man cherished that gift and honoured the responsibility that went with it.

  ‘Strange that, today, such a gift of purity should somehow be tarnished. Perhaps, like the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, your virginity was tainted by the use you made of it, to goad and torment the male sex. So, now you have your rich husband, my dear; be careful you don’t find the price you have to pay for him is too high.’

  Sick at heart, she watched him go, knowing there was no way she could ever bridge the chasm that yawned between them. His misjudgement of her was too deep, too allconsum-ing to allow for any frail bridge to extend between them.

  At dinner, she kept up what pretence she could. Her grandmother remarked several times on her forthcoming trip to her specialist, and Sara divined that she was very nervous about it. Tom had been allowed to get up and eat with them, and he was the only member of the quartet who was behaving in anything like a normal fashion, Sara suspected.

  It was over coffee that her grandmother dropped her bombshell. Tom was in the kitchen with Anna, and the three of them were alone.

  ‘Luke,’ she began, ‘as you already know, it was my intention to will this house on my death to a charitable trust. However, since Sara has come into my life, I have been having second thoughts.’ She looked at her granddaughter and smiled wryly.

  ‘My dear, a house such as this demands a great deal. Simply to run it costs a very large amount of money. Had you not been married, I should have hesitated to burden you with it, but knowing how much both you and Luke would cherish it, I have decided to change my will and to leave it to you jointly.’

  She held up her hand when Sara would have protested.

  ‘I am not being morbid, but we all know that my specialist is more than likely to recommend an operation. Such operations are relatively commonplace these days, but one should never take life for granted, and so I am telling you both now what I intend to do. I am seeing my solicitor in the morning, so if either of you would prefer not to be burdened with the house…’

  ‘Gran, you can’t…’

  Luke’s hand on her arm stilled her impulsive speech.

  ‘We’d love to accept your gift, Alice,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re right in saying that we both love this house. It is the only place I have ever been able to think of as home.’ His smile was bitter. ‘All the more strange, perhaps, when one remembers how much Louise detested it.’

  Sara froze at the mention of his first wife’s name. She was still shocked by her grandmother’s generosity. To hear that she and Luke would one day own Fitton Place… She and Luke… Suddenly it struck her that here was another tie that bound them together. Was that why her grandmother was doing this? Did she suspect that their marriage was not all that it should be?

  Sara could read nothing in the serene face opposite her.

  ‘Nothing either Sara or I could do could ever match such a gift.’

  Sara heard her grandmother chuckle.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Luke. As I was only saying to Sara this afternoon, I am very much looking forward to holding my first great-granddaughter in my arms.’

  Sara felt Luke looking at her, probing her mind, trying to read what was hidden there. Did he guess how much she ached to conceive his child? Did he know of the fierce need that had been born in her today to have at least that tiny part of him to love without the taint of deceit?

  She got up unsteadily, saying that she wanted to look in on Tom.

  As she had suspected he would be, the little boy was deeply asleep. He always slept like this after an attack. She smoothed his pillow and picked up the book he had been reading.

  ‘Odd, how such a very scheming woman should be such a caring substitute mother.’

  She didn’t look round, her throat too tight with tension to allow her to move.

  ‘I thought you believed I was more interested in Tom’s money.’

  The bitter words seemed to jump from her tongue. There was silence, and she thought at first that Luke had gone, and then she knew he was standing behind her. The intensity of her body’s awareness of him made her shudder openly, but she still didn’t turn round.

  ‘About that great-granddaughter Alice wants,’ he said harshly. ‘No child of mine will ever be used as a hostage to fortune.’

  He was telling her that he didn’t want her to conceive his child.

  Oh, God, how could she bear such emotional agony? He hated her so much, and she, in her innocence, had not realised.

  It was too late to wish she could recall those impulsive words she had flung at Cressy. Even if she tried to tell him the truth, Luke would not believe it, and what difference would it make if he did? she asked herself drearily. He didn’t love her, he never would love her, and she saw now that nothing less than his absolute love would do.

  It was pride that made her stand stiffly and turn round, her eyes shielded from him by the thick fan of her lashes as she said quietly, ‘I assure you that the very last thing I want is to have your child, Luke. And, certainly, I made Gran no promises about a future great-grandchild, if that’s what you’re thinking. The assumption that we would have children was hers.’

  ‘No… no, I suppose you wouldn’t want children, would you?’

  He sounded so angry that she was mystified. He had just told her he wouldn’t allow her to have his child, and now he was turning on her as though… almost as though he wanted a child, and she was refusing to have one.

  ‘Your sort never do, do they? They never want to burden themselves with unwanted encumbrances. I should have remembered that.’

  There was a withdrawn, brooding look in his eyes, and Sara felt as though part of him had forgotten she was even there.

  At eleven o’clock, she went to bed. She wasn’t entirely surprised when Luke announced that he had work to do.

  She doubted that he would wake her in the darkness of the night tonight, take her in his arms and transform the dreary travesty of their marriage into something warm and alive.

  And she was right.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS AMAZING, really, that two people could live in such intimacy and yet remain so unintimate.

  Luke was always up and dressed before her in the morning, and, if Sara did occasionally open her eyes while he was still finishing dressing, she always closed them again, as determined to preserve the façade of uninterest she had built to protect herself as Luke was to remain aloof from her.

  He seldom came to bed before the early hours, but whether that was genuinely because of pressure of work or whether he was simply avoiding being with her, she had no way of knowing.

  What also amazed her was the human capacity for pretense. In public, although he didn’t behave towards her with physical affection, Luke still managed to create an aura of intimacy that was enough to deceive both her grandmother and Tom.

  Today was the day that her grandmother had her appointment with the specialist. Tom was not going with them. Anna was going to look after him and, since they were staying in London overnight, Luke was driving them down in his car.

  They were booked into the Dorchester, which apparently was her grandmother’s favourite London hotel.

  ‘I used to meet your grandfather there during the war, whenever he managed to get leave.’

  Her grandparents’ marriage had been a happy one, Sara deduced, and she had been surprised to discover that it had in part been arranged by their families.

  ‘Not so much arranged,’ her grandmother had told
her, ‘as wished for. Girls married so much younger in those days, of course. I was only twenty, and your grandfather twenty-eight. He was in the Navy, and our two families had known one another for years. There was a remote connection between us.’

  Before they set out, Sara offered to sit in the back, but her grandmother protested that she must sit in the front with Luke.

  Was it her imagination, or was that faint blue tinge to her grandmother’s skin actually increasing? If they had had a different relationship, she could have discussed her fears with Luke. The circumstances surrounding their marriage, the fact that he had a totally erroneous opinion of her, precluded even the most casual kind of friendship between them.

  All her life, a part of her had longed for someone she could turn to, someone with whom she could share her thoughts and fears. In part, she had found that someone in her grandmother, but deep in her heart Sara longed to be able to turn to Luke and tell him how very frightened she was.

  These days women did not marry so that their husbands could shoulder all their burdens, she told herself bracingly. Marriage was an equal partnership, with both partners giving succour to the other in equal measure. She had no desire at all to play the ‘clinging vine’. No, it was just that she craved that very special intimacy that existed between two people who shared a deep and very genuine bond. Stronger than her physical desire for Luke, which was very strong indeed, was a need to have some sort of emotional bonding with him.

  It had got to the stage where she froze every time her dead cousin’s name was mentioned, so great was her envy of her. She had known Luke’s love; she still possessed it.

  A tape of her grandmother’s favourite chamber music filled the car, precluding conversation. Because Luke had no desire to talk to her, or purely for Gran’s pleasure?

  She bit her lip, trying not to think about how humiliating it was to share a bed with a virile adult male and to have him repeatedly turn his back on her, leaving a vast gulf between them.

  Once, she had woken up and found that he had turned towards her, his leg thrown across hers, their bodies within touching distance. She had cried then, self-pitying, weak tears for something she could never have, or so she had told herself in the morning.