by Lynne Graham
Harriet swallowed hard. ‘I look at it.’
‘However the tests go, I’d like to see you wearing it.’
Harriet bent her head to hide the shimmer of tears in her strained gaze. ‘OK.’
She had complete faith in the fact that the tests would fully confirm her mother’s claim. What would happen when Rafael was forced to accept the inevitable? Would he start trying to think of her as a half-sister? Or would he distance himself? When she found herself thinking that she was lucky that he owned fifty per cent of the livery yard, she knew she had sunk low indeed.
The following morning, Fergal called in to see her at breakfast time. Accepting the mug of tea that she automatically offered, he gave her a huge grin. ‘Rafael Flynn has offered me a job on his stud farm. Assistant trainer, no less…Well, I’ll be one of four, but it’s a fantastic opportunity!’
Harriet was amazed. ‘I had no idea you were looking for a job.’
‘I wasn’t.’ Fergal laughed, his excitement making her want to smile too. ‘But, sure, working with the horses is what I always dreamt of doing. When Mr Flynn came to watch me schooling Tailwind last week I thought he was interested in the gelding. Instead he was considering me for the vacancy he had!’
‘So you’ll be moving to Kildare. Will your mother mind very much?’
‘She knows my heart isn’t in Dooleys. She’ll keep up the post office, but my uncle will hire a bar manager. I’ll be earning good money, and sharing a flat at the stud, so I’ll be able to send cash home to help out,’ the young blond man said earnestly.
‘I’m really happy for you.’
‘The one drawback is that I have to leave almost immediately. I’ve made arrangements to sell my horses. It wouldn’t make sense to try and keep them.’
‘When do you have to go?’
‘Day after tomorrow. I won’t get the chance to say goodbye to Una, so I was hoping you would pass on my good wishes and stuff,’ Fergal said gruffly, studying his oversized feet. ‘I’m hoping to get home once a month.’
‘Be sure to come and tell me how you’re getting on.’
Harriet was appalled at how ruthlessly efficient Rafael was at attaining his own ends. He had said he would deal with his sister’s infatuation with Fergal and he had not been joking. Una and Philomena had just gone off on a three-day trip to Dublin, which had been a gift from Rafael. Una would come home to Ballyflynn and Fergal would already have gone to live on the other side of the country. The teenager would be shattered by that development.
Harriet invited Tolly over for lunch the next day. He was always bringing her fresh vegetables and fruit, not to mention flowers and cakes, and she loved having his company. Indeed, if her mother’s revelation had not been of such a sensitive nature she would have confided in Tolly. The doorbell went when they had finished eating and were discussing possible sites for the vegetable patch she had planned for the autumn.
‘I only want to grow easy things to start with…lettuce, peas.’ she was saying to Tolly as she opened the front door.
‘I would’ve phoned, but I was afraid that you would put me off. I really do need to talk to you,’ Luke stated flatly.
Harriet was stunned into silence by the sight of her onetime fiancé.
Tolly lodged in the kitchen doorway. ‘If you have company, I’ll nip down to the kitchen garden to get in a couple of hours before the sun goes in.’ He walked forward to extend his hand to the younger man. ‘I’m Harriet’s neighbour—Joseph Tolly.’
‘Luke Jarvis.’
The old man’s welcoming smile died round the edges, and he took his leave with clear reluctance.
Harriet turned back to Luke to say, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Alice and I are finished.’
Harriet studied him, looking in vain for the man she had once loved. He was not as tall as she recalled, and he was a touch heavy round the jowls. She no longer found him attractive. Eight years, she thought with regret. Eight years that had been wasted in many ways—for she had never loved Luke as she loved Rafael. That undeniable fact made her feel oddly guilty, and a touch less ready to condemn Luke for his infidelity. But she could have borne his betrayal a good deal better had he strayed with someone other than her own sister.
‘You’ve made quite a mess of my family circle,’ she told him flatly.
‘I do owe you an explanation.’
‘You didn’t feel you owed me one when it mattered, so don’t waste your breath now.’
Stubbornly determined not to be deflected from his purpose, Luke stood his ground. ‘I still have a lot of feelings for you, Harriet. In fact I don’t think I ever stopped loving you. Alice was the biggest mistake of my life. I’m here to ask you to give me a second chance.’
Harriet surveyed him with incredulous eyes. ‘Even you can’t imagine I’d consider taking you back after you slept with my sister! Or accept a nonsensical claim that you still loved me while you were planning to marry her!’
‘You and I were meant to be together for ever…but it got too comfortable. I didn’t want to marry Alice, but once I’d lost you I couldn’t face the truth that your sister and I were a disaster together. I should have married you a couple of years ago. It’s my fault that we stood still and got stale.’
‘We didn’t have the passion anyway.’
‘I would much rather have a woman with a brain and a work ethic,’ Luke argued. ‘Alice and I were only good for an affair, and it was never meant to be anything more. What I had with her wasn’t real…it was a fantasy.’
‘Maybe so, but I’m still not interested. I found my fantasy with someone else…and it was real—very real—I assure you.’ Her throat thickened as she made that declaration, but she was no longer ashamed of it. It might not be possible for her to be with Rafael any more, but with him she had learned what it was to really love. Nobody could ever take the knowledge of the joy and fulfilment she had briefly found away from her.
Luke frowned. ‘You’ve always loved me, Harriet. I may not offer fantasy, but we make a very good team—’
‘I can’t believe you think that I still might care about you…I don’t!’ Harriet declared in exasperation.
‘My firm is opening a branch in New York and I’m transferring there to make a fresh start. We could go together.’ His mouth tightened. ‘We could even get married before we go.’
Harriet almost burst out laughing when he offered that ultimate sacrifice. Instead she opened the door again on the summer sunshine. ‘Go home, Luke,’ she advised ruefully, embarrassed for him. ‘Don’t be so lazy that you can’t be bothered looking for a new woman!’
‘But you were so much a part of my life…it doesn’t feel right without you!’ he ground out accusingly.
Harriet saw that he did still have some genuine feelings for her, but he had caused too much pain and too much damage for her to pity him.
When he was gone she went out to the barn to start going through the crates of miscellaneous items that had been removed from the old sheds before they were demolished. While she sorted the stuff out into various piles she put on the radio for company.
When the music went off suddenly, her ears rang in the silence.
‘Harriet…’
She whirled round: Rafael was straightening, his hand dropping back from the radio. The last word in designer elegance, his pale grey silk business suit looked incongruous in the dusty untidy confines of the barn.
‘I’m filthy,’ she mumbled.
‘So…’ Stunning dark golden eyes glittered over her and then veiled. ‘Your ex visited you.’
Harriet blinked. ‘Does Tolly tell you everything?’
‘I was halfway to the airport when he unrolled that one.’
‘Halfway to the airport?’
‘Tolly phoned me to tell me. I had to turn back. What did Luke want?’
She rubbed grimy hands down over the thighs of her jodhpurs. ‘You’ll never believe it…he wanted me back.’
‘I believe it,’ Ra
fael breathed very quietly.
‘Poor Alice,’ she sighed.
Rafael took a sudden step closer and then froze to the spot, as if someone had turned a shotgun on him. ‘Are you taking him back?’
Harriet studied him in disbelief. ‘Do I look that stupid and desperate?’
Rafael spread lean brown hands in a soothing gesture that was less expansive than usual. His behaviour was very low key for him, she thought, her brow furrowing. She watched him breathe in, very slow and very deep.
‘I need to make that flight or my next deal is toast,’ he shared, not quite steadily.
‘You were halfway to the airport and you came back just to ask me about Luke?’
Rafael jerked his handsome dark head in mute acknowledgement.
‘But…but why?’
Rafael shrugged and shifted fluid hands, as if he had no idea either. ‘I have to go,’ he said, and thirty seconds later he had gone and she was wondering if she had actually dreamt up the entire episode.
Thirty-six hours later Harriet was checking the fencing on a field boundary when she saw Tolly waving frantically at her from the gate. His car was parked at an angle behind him with the engine still running. Thinking that something bad must have happened, she hurried over to him, only to be handed a phone.
‘Rafael…he says it’s urgentl’ the old man told her anxiously.
‘What are you doing out without your mobile?’ Rafael demanded.
‘I forgot to bring it with me this morning. What’s wrong?’
‘I got the results. You’re not my half-sister.’
‘I’m not your half-sister…’ Harriet repeated, dry-mouthed, feeling the blood drain from her face as shock, wild hope and an equally wild fear of being hurt again all coalesced into overload and destroyed her ability to reason.
‘We’re not related—except in so far as we are both human.’
‘Not related…But are you sure?’ she prompted shakily. ‘Could the lab have made a mistake?’
‘Take a deep breath and listen to me,’ Rafael advised her with measured care. ‘The tests were conclusive. You are not my sister. We do not have the same father. I even had my own DNA matched to Valente’s to check that I am his son…OK? There is no margin for error in these results.’
Her mind was swirling. Her legs were hollow. She felt weak as a kitten. ‘OK.’
‘We’ll have to talk to your mother about this result.’
Her eyes flew wide, for she had not yet managed to think that far ahead. ‘Will we? But Eva’s in Paris!’
‘I’ll get a flight organised for you. We’ll meet in Paris tomorrow morning. Call your mother to let her know that you’re coming, and that you’re bringing someone you would like her to meet.’
‘I can’t believe what you’ve told me yet,’ she whispered, suddenly finding her eyes filled with tears.
‘You will. It’s over. We’ll never have to think about this nightmare again.’
When he rang off, that assurance kept on ringing in her ears: It’s over. We’ll never have to think of this nightmare again. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, impervious to the reality that Tolly was still lodged on the other side of the gate, much as if he had taken root there. Was Rafael letting her know that their relationship was still dead in the water? And, if he was, how could she blame him? What casual affair could survive such a misapprehension?
‘Harriet…’ The old man’s face was deeply creased with dismay and concern. ‘I didn’t intend to listen, but I heard what you said to Rafael. Is that what’s been wrong between the two of you? Is it possible that you picked up the daft idea that you might somehow be brother and sister?’
Harriet reddened as she realised how indiscreet she had been. She was grateful that Tolly could be trusted to keep that devastating misconception to himself. ‘Yes, we did have cause to think that. But we had DNA tests done and thankfully…Well, it was nothing but the daft idea you just called it.’
‘But where did you get that idea from?’
Harriet winced. ‘Mum.’
‘Will you come back to my house with me? I think it’s time we had a chat about something that’s been playing on my mind.’
She stole a worried glance at his troubled expression. When she had first met Joseph Tolly she had admitted that she was keen to find out who her father was. Now she was remembering her suspicion that the older man might know more about her background than he was comfortable admitting.
Tolly sat her down at the scrubbed table. ‘I may know who your father is. I feel I have to speak up, but I don’t feel right doing it.’
‘I’d be grateful for anything that you can tell me.’
‘Your mother used to work weekends in the village shop. The family who owned it were the most prosperous for miles around. Their daughter was called Sheila. She was a bit older than your mother, but the two girls were very friendly. Sheila was engaged to my son Robert at seventeen, and married him a year later, when he was twenty-one. Eva was one of their bridesmaids.’
Sheila and Robert Tolly. All Harriet could think about was Sheila’s hostility towards her and Eva. Tolly reached into a drawer and pulled out an old-fashioned photograph album.
‘There’s the three of them together.’
Her slim body tense, Harriet examined the colour picture of his son’s wedding. Eva looked like a delicate blonde angel in an ugly pink satin frock. Her smile struck her daughter as false. Sheila looked nervous and happy, and back then Robert Tolly had been a surprisingly handsome groom.
‘The bridal couple were very young—too young,’ Tolly breathed heavily. ‘My son has always denied that he was unfaithful to Sheila with your mother. He won’t admit that anything happened. He won’t even discuss it. I only have facts to offer you. No proof of anything, though.’
Harriet was hanging on his every word. ‘Go on…’
‘Sheila lost a baby a few months after the wedding. Eva stopped working at the shop very suddenly, and Sheila started spreading unpleasant rumours about your mother’s morals to anyone who would listen. Much later I heard talk that Robert had been seen out with Eva in his car around that time. But it’s only gossip,’ he stressed carefully. ‘A little while later your mother left Ballyflynn.’
‘And you believe that your son may be my father?’
Tolly turned several pages in the album to show her another photograph. ‘This is my late wife, Muriel. You’re the very picture of her…and your hair is the same colour. But that’s not a lot to go on, is it?’
The cheerful woman in the photo had died long before Harriet was even born but Harriet could see the resemblance and she smiled through her own tears to reach for Tolly’s hand. ‘I would be more than happy to settle for a grandfather in place of a father.’
‘If only I had known you were getting tests done with Rafael, we might have found out for sure. Robert wouldn’t have co-operated, but I certainly would,’ Tolly asserted eagerly.
‘Why didn’t you speak up before now?’
‘If your own mother didn’t want to tell you, and my son was equally keen to remain silent, it didn’t seem my place to interfere.’ He shook his white head. ‘Try not to think too badly of Robert. He and Sheila have had their problems and disappointments. Sheila never had another child, and that was a great cause of sorrow to her. If you are Robert’s daughter, it would explain why my daughter-in-law felt the need to be so rude about your mother that day in the gift shop…Yes, Father Kearney mentioned it to me.’
Harriet winced with sympathy. ‘Oh, dear…what a tangled web.’ She sighed. ‘When did you find out that I existed?’
‘Kathleen told me a couple of years after you were born. She believed, like me, that Robert had been responsible, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Eva made it clear to your cousin that she didn’t want contact with anyone in Ballyflynn. When I discovered you were coming here to live I was delighted, because I was hoping to get the chance to know you.’
A happy smile illuminated Harriet
’s face. ‘I bet you were responsible for the flowers and the fire that greeted me the day I arrived at the cottage.’
‘I wanted you to feel welcome. I was really hoping you would stay for good.’
Harriet stood up and gave him a hug. ‘Thank you for being there for me ever since I arrived.’
She thought of phoning Rafael, to share what Tolly had revealed, but lacked the confidence to contact him. She would tell him when she reached Paris. She had a shower and fussed over her hair.
She was packing an overnight bag and agonising over what to wear when Una stumbled in and wailed in despair, ‘Fergal’s gone!’
Harriet sat her down and pointed out that Fergal would visit the stables occasionally and that she would see him then.
‘Hardly ever, though,’ the teenager gasped, stricken. ‘I hate my brother!’
‘Why? He’s given Fergal a great chance—’
‘How?’
‘Fergal’s a really nice guy, and hugely popular. I imagine he’ll be equally popular on the stud farm and I bet he does really well there. Rafael will notice that. Here, Fergal was working as a barman, and I don’t think that would have struck much of a note with your brother—’
‘You’re right.’ Her attention fully engaged by Harriet’s more optimistic outlook on the situation, Una swallowed back a sob and scrabbled for a tissue. ‘Rafael wouldn’t have been impressed by that at all.’
‘This way Fergal gets to prove himself and do what he loves—’
‘And meet some other girl!’
‘That could happen here too,’ Harriet pointed out.
Una looked tragic. ‘I suppose it could.’
‘But he’s only twenty-two…I doubt if he’ll go rushing into anything too heavy for a while yet.’ Harriet watched the forlorn brunette pick up strength from that forecast.
‘I love Fergal so much…’ Una wiped her streaming eyes dry. ‘I’d lock him up in a tower if I could.’
Harriet knew the feeling, but thought it wisest not to empathise too much.
‘If I want to see more of Fergal I’ll have to get Rafael to take me to the stud farm, and to the races…’ Una remarked thoughtfully.
Harriet thought the teenager would find that a tall order.