He looked stunned and tried, ineffectually, to disguise his concern.
Lissa shook his arm. ‘Well, have you?’
The portion of steak pudding fell from his fork to the floor and he grieved for it. ‘Broomdale is gritstone and granite, like Shap Fell,’ he insisted.
‘Some of it is, yes, but my grandfather has lived in that dale all his life and if he says there’s limestone, then there is.’ She offered up this information with triumph in her voice, a toss of silken curls and a wide smile. ‘Wouldn’t that make a big difference to your Board’s plans?’
‘The limestone could be sealed.’
‘At what cost?’
Too high, said the expression on his pale face and he set down his fork with a trembling hand. Much as he’d enjoyed these visits to the Lake District, and there was no doubt that he had benefited financially, as had his dear mother who now had her own personal attendant to save him the bother of fetching and carrying for her, nothing at all had gone right. Manchester Water Board had grown irritated with his frequent alterations of plan and gone so far as to appoint other consultants to check out the area. Nor had they expected such opposition, so well planned and orchestrated. It was developing rapidly into a nationwide campaign being talked about on radio and TV. Barristers, members of parliament, poets and every man and woman in the street deemed themselves fit to express an opinion on the subject. It was really most disconcerting.
Lissa could see that she had won. It was written plain in his eyes.
And so it proved. By Christmas, Meg had word that the Water Board would not be pursuing their decision to create a holding reservoir in Broomdale. The land had proved unsuitable for their purpose. The family were jubilant.
‘Bless you, Grandfather,’ Lissa cheered, hugging the old man.
‘Nice to know we old ’uns still have some use,’ said Joe, pink-cheeked and smiling for once.
Victory was sweet. Lissa’s achievement turned her into a local heroine, at least for a time. Even Grandfather Joe was quoted in every paper, and there was a picture of him standing on Broombank land, the neb of his cap set straight on his round head, looking as proud as if he’d saved it single-handed.
Their success seemed to add further fuel to the ongoing contest with the Water Board but everyone knew that it was only a matter of time now before they admitted defeat over the question of another reservoir. The debate would continue, the battle rage on for a while yet, and a major public enquiry was planned, but the people of Lakeland had the bit between their teeth and did not intend to lose. The land was too precious, the loss to the nation would be too great.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Victory over Broombank also meant that Philip lost his prospective purchaser for Larkrigg Hall. All the fight seemed to go out of him after that. He spent more time locked in his study with a bottle of whisky at his side. Correspondence came regularly from the bank manager, and frequent telephone calls were taken behind closed doors.
Lissa found herself consoling him, almost forcing him out of his study to eat or go out, but he showed little interest in attending either the Golf or the Yacht Club. Each evening he downed several gin and tonics, barely picked at his food and then started on the whisky. It was Lissa who made the decisions now.
‘Larkrigg must either remain empty until the twins are old enough to decide for themselves, or we could perhaps find a tenant. In the meantime I’ll have the water turned off and see the windows are properly boarded up.’
‘We should still sell it. It could save us. Do you realise we could lose our home?’ His eyes were bleary with drink and worry. ‘I owe the bank more than I can repay and as a solicitor I’m not permitted to go bankrupt. I’d be struck off.’
This news jolted Lissa but she knew better than to show it. ‘Then let them have it. It’s only a house. We could live in the flat over the shop.’
She might very well have suggested they camp in a cave, so horrified was his response. ‘Never. I refuse to live in a flat. I have my status to keep up.’
‘Perhaps if you’d been satisfied with less status we wouldn’t be in this mess. What has happened to all your money? Why are we in such dire straits?’
‘Nannies, cars, houses, entertaining. And that damned Manchester man, greedy little tyke!’
Lissa wanted to say that the source of the greed was closer to home but managed to hold her tongue. A small frown creased her brow. ‘You did pay Elvira Fraser a proper sum for the house, didn’t you, Philip?’
He made a sound of disgust and reached for the whisky bottle again. ‘Questions, questions, questions. Do you never stop?’ Watching him, Lissa thought that if he really had got the house cheap or, if Derry was right and perhaps paid nothing at all, then to lose it to the bank would be fitting retribution for Elvira’s penniless death. But not for the world would she say as much.
With Broomdale safe and her little shop continuing to thrive, Lissa wished she could solve her personal problems as easily. She’d created as good a life for herself as she could but Philip still had no intention of letting her go. He had merely lengthened, not cut, the chain.
She once spent an afternoon, when she knew that Philip was safely out of town, going through the desk in his private study at home. She wasn’t sure what she searched for but found nothing of interest, nothing that she understood. There was probably nothing to find.
‘Why don’t you search his office?’ Renee suggested when Lissa confessed to this piece of snooping.
Their friendship had been bruised by Renee’s failing to collect the twins that day, but Lissa had forgiven her. Renee loved the twins to bits, and how could she have known Philip would use blackmail in that way? The fault was as much her own. She shouldn’t have been so trusting as to sign a piece of paper unread, should have realised it might not be what it seemed. But then it was easy to be wise after the event. He had tricked them all.
Now there would be no divorce. Derry was gone, and she was back where Philip wanted. His good little wife.
‘I did hope he might take a mistress,’ Lissa told Renee, with a wry smile. ‘But he’s taken to drink instead.’
‘That’s men all over. Never do what you want them to.’ And they both had to laugh.
Sarah came skipping into the shop, plump cheeks glowing. ‘It’s snowing again, Mummy. Can we go skating on the lake?’
‘No, darling.’
‘Please.’
‘There isn’t enough ice on the lake. It would break. Absolutely not.’
Beth came in and added her own pleas to her sister’s, tugging at Lissa’s hands, one on each side.
‘At least you have these two to keep you going.’
‘Yes,’ Lissa agreed, eyes shining with love and laughter. ‘Thank goodness. I’ll take you to play snowballs. Will that do?’
She wrapped them up warmly and off they went, hand in hand along Carndale Road, through St Margaret’s Churchyard, past the Marina Hotel and down to the benches by the shore. She never thought of those youthful summers now. It was too dangerous, and much too painful.
‘Let’s build a snowman,’ Beth shouted, grey eyes bright.
They were searching for bits of stick to mark his nose and eyes when Renee came hurrying up, holding her side and panting for breath. ‘It’s Miss Henshaw. She says you are to come at once to the office.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Go on, I’ll look after these two.’
Lissa turned and ran back up the church steps and across the busy crossroads of Benthwaite Cross. She did not stop even to think, or hope, what this summons might be about. Miss Henshaw was waiting for her at the door, a rather shabby but flustered woman in a navy suit with her glasses dangling on a chain about her neck.
‘We have visitors,’ she said, half under her breath as she pulled Lissa in to the little kitchen and closed the door. Lissa’s heart leapt, robbing her of the ability to speak for a whole half minute.
‘Who? Who is it?’
Miss Henshaw was wearing her professional expression, though there was some other emotion behind it too. Disbelief, uncertainty, fear? ‘Two accountants, sent by the Law Society. They’re going through all of Mr Brandon’s papers. Taking the place apart they are. They arrived just after lunch and Mr Brandon, well ...’ Miss Henshaw paused, drawing in a shaky breath. ‘I can’t say where he is now. He lost his temper when he saw them, blew up he did. Never, in all my life, have I seen him lose his temper, but he did today. A shocking rage he was in, throwing books everywhere. Now he’s taken himself off, I don’t know where. In a huff I shouldn’t wonder. He’s not a happy man. Not at all.’
Lissa felt numb. Whatever was going on? ‘Why are they here? Who brought them in?’
‘Elvira Fraser’s grandson. He not satisfied about what happened to all her money.’
‘Is he the one Derry talked to at the funeral?’
‘Derry?’ Miss Henshaw nodded, fingers twitching on her chain. ‘I suppose he did, yes, now I come to think of it. The grandson claims to have found letters in his late father’s desk proving that Mr Brandon had made himself entirely responsible for the investment of Mrs Fraser’s funds. He wants to know where every penny has gone and has put in an official complaint to the Law Society. I must say, Mrs Brandon, that it doesn’t look good.’
‘No,’ Lissa agreed. ‘It doesn’t.’ Then why was her heart beating almost with delight? As if her wishes were at last about to come true?
Moments later her mood changed as Jimmy burst through the door, bristly hair standing even more on end than usual.
‘He’s done it again,’ Jimmy cried. ‘Came up whilst me and Renee were helping the twins finish the snowman and just took them off. Only this time she’s gone with him, says she’s not letting them whippersnappers out of her sight.’
Lissa felt herself grow quite cold, yet her voice was oddly quiet. ‘Where has he taken them, Jimmy?’
‘Don’t you fear, Lissa, he seems very calm and them two is happy as gnats. He’s taken them up to Larkrigg.’
‘Oh dear God.’
The trees by the tarn were feathered with snow, hanging as heavy as lace over the white-encrusted surface. A dry, freezing cold bit through Lissa’s thick woollens and her breath froze into puffballs of ice on her cheeks. She struggled through the thick snow, frustrated by its cloying softness in her anxiety to reach the colourful figures out on the ice. Renee crouched beneath the rowans, shivering and making tiny keening sounds in her throat.
Lissa pressed a hand to her shoulder. ‘Don’t fret, Renee. I’ll soon have them home and safe. Where is he?’
‘He wouldn’t listen,’ she mourned. `Oh, hecky thump.’ Renee slid her eyes round to where Brockbarrow wood stood, black and forbidding against the stark white of the snow. ‘He’s over there, brooding.’
‘Beth! Sarah!’ Lissa called, waving to her excited children.
‘We’re skating, Mummy. Watch.’
The twins, both dressed in their red and blue hooded jackets and thick trousers, ice skates clamped to their small boots, slid about in the middle of the ice, wobbling madly. Lissa’s heartbeat quickened, but she smiled reassuringly at them. ‘I must speak to Daddy, then I’ll watch you skate. Take care now. Come away from the middle. Keep to the edges where the ice is thicker.’
‘Yes, Mummy,’ they said, in sing-song, happy voices.
Lissa found him at the opposite edge of the small copse, seated on a rock above Whinstone force. Below him shafts of water split and cascaded over jagged stones, the brilliant spray crisp as diamonds in the sharp air.
‘Hello, Philip.’ The gushing sound of the water hammered in her head. It made her feel giddy. The falls here, high on the fells, made Skelwith force look like a trickle. ‘Can we sit somewhere else, please?’
He did not respond. He sat unmoving for so long that she touched his arm, in case he hadn’t heard. When he turned towards her his face was empty, bleak as the landscape. ‘Hello Philip,’ she said again, trying to put some warmth into her voice. ‘I thought I might find you here.’
‘Why have you followed me?’ His voice was bitter yet rich with self-pity. ‘Why aren’t you working, as you always seem to be these days.’
‘I was concerned about you.’ Lissa propped herself on a rock beside him. It felt dangerously slippy with spray from the water. ‘Miss Henshaw told me about the Law Society’s visit. Why did you do it, Philip?’
‘It was necessary.’ The eyes he turned to hers were vague, as if they looked into some other place.
‘Did you really embezzle Mrs Fraser’s money?’ When he chuckled she could only stare at him, appalled. ‘Why? Why couldn’t you earn your money honestly, as other people do?’
‘I am not other people. I deserve more. My mother always told me I was special, and I am. We were quite poor then,’ he said, as if it were some sort of crime. ‘My father was useless, an ineffectual idiot besotted with books and fishing and points of law. He let my mother down, showed her up before everyone by being totally lacking in ambition. Once I had control of my own life, I vowed never to let that happen to me, or any wife of mine.’
‘But to cheat an old woman is despicable.’
He glared at her, eyes burning with unexpressed fury. ‘People like her have too much money, why shouldn’t I have some of it?’
‘You mean there were others?’
‘Her family never visited her so why should they inherit what they don’t deserve?’
‘Even so…’
‘You don’t understand,’ he snapped, grasping her arm and wrenching her suddenly towards him. ‘You never understand anything, do you?’ The gushing drops of water spun before her eyes and Lissa instinctively shrank away, her finger nails scrabbling for purchase on the slippery rock beneath her. Surely he wouldn’t toss her down the waterfall? The dark anger in his charcoal eyes told her he was capable of anything in his present mood.
‘Philip, please be calm. Why don’t we go home? It’s cold and the twins will be wanting their tea.’
‘I never had this trouble with Felicity.’
The sudden reference to his former fiancée took Lissa by surprise. ‘I beg your pardon? What has Felicity to do with all of this?’
‘She did as she was told. You never would, not once. Felicity was humble and sweet and obedient.’
Out on the ice came a loud squeal and Lissa jerked her attention back to her children. She could just make out Sarah pulling Beth about by her coat tails as if she were a sled and they were both squealing with delight. Then she was brought sharply back to her predicament by the sting of icy water upon her face. One wrong move and both of them would plunge thirty feet into the abyss, beautiful in spring and summer, lethal in winter, as now.
‘You aren’t well,’ Lissa gently reasoned. ‘It must have been a shock seeing the Law Society move in. But we can face it.’ She swallowed. ‘Together.’
It would be the end of his career and they both knew it. His laughter rang out, bouncing back off black rocks and Lissa shuddered, fear crawling up her spine.
‘Felicity was considered delicate,’ Philip said, conversationally. ‘She was an only daughter. Spoiled, of course.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Her father knew I wanted to marry her but did everything he could to stop us. He didn’t consider me quite suitable.’ Philip patted his pocket. ‘Not enough in here to match his own fortune.’
Lissa struggled to take in what he was saying, hoping that if she kept him talking she could gradually ease him back from the brink of the gorge. ‘Did Felicity want to marry you?’
‘Of course, but in the end she wouldn’t because of Daddy. He’d convinced her she was too delicate for marriage.’ His lips curled at the corner into a parody of a smile. ‘Even got a doctor to agree, would you believe? Utter nonsense. It didn’t matter to me if she was. I loved her and would have looked after her.’
‘Oh, Philip.’ Lissa felt her blood start to freeze, and, as she shifted a foot to more solid ground, accidentally loosed a
stone which fell and bounced from rock to rock till it disappeared, swallowed up by frothing foam. ‘So what happened?’ She really didn’t want to know. All Lissa wanted was to get off this icy rock and take her children home to a warm fireside.
My darling Felicity simply could not disobey her beloved father and that, she said, was the end of it. I took my revenge, of course. I had every right to do so. They ruined my life. Instead of being a member of a well-respected family with a rich and beautiful wife, I was to be deserted, jilted, cast aside. I couldn’t let that happen. Not when I’d worked so hard.’
Lissa scarcely dared breathe.
‘I did explain to her how it had to be,’ he said, sounding perfectly reasonable as he turned to Lissa. ‘I suggested it would be far less painful than living a lonely life without love, under the thumb of her father. She agreed, in the end. Always compliant, my sweet Felicity. It was all so very simple, and everyone was most sympathetic. How tragic, they said, to lose a fiancée by drowning, mere days before the wedding. For one so young to take her own life in such a way was so very sad.’
Oh, dear Lord, what was he saying? Lissa found she was shaking uncontrollably, her eyes flickering from the hard planes of his face to the gushing water below.
‘What future did she have, without me?’
She gazed at him in horror. ‘But why, Philip? Why? You gained nothing from her death, nothing at all.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Of course I did. I kept my good name, the respect and status that was due to me. And I gained my revenge. Her father deserved to suffer as I had.’
Lissa could find nothing else to say. Her silence was overwhelmed by the roar of the water, muted only slightly by the icicles forming at its edges. She had no wish to repeat Felicity’s mistake. The poor girl must have lost all will to resist, but she’d fought for her freedom and gained it. She was her own person now and must cling on to that with all her strength. She looked down at his fingers, curled possessively about her arm. ‘Let go, Philip.’ Cold panic threatened but Lissa knew it was vital to remain calm, to stay in control.’ We have to take the twins home for their tea. We mustn’t have them catching a chill now, must we?’
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