The nerve of him, to suggest that she had lovers by the dozen! Who the devil did he think he was?
She was about to put out her light when she suddenly began to wonder just what she was so upset about, and again she dissected their conversation.
'Oh, grief,' she muttered five minutes later. No way had he implied that she was a tart!
Fabienne put out her light and lay down and was swamped by confusion.
What the dickens was it about the man that, when she had always been for the most part even-tempered, he barely had to say a couple of words out of place and she was up in arms? What was it about the man that in split-seconds he could have her all emotional over nothing? What was it about
him that the man could so swiftly, so effortlessly, shatter her equilibrium?
She had not come up with any answer when she fell asleep. As if by magic, after so much rain, it was a beautiful sunny morning when Fabienne opened her eyes. 'You came back!' exclaimed a happy, husky voice, and she sat up in bed to see that John, wearing the first truly happy smile she had seen on him, was standing at the bottom of her bed. 'Didn't I say I would?' she smiled back, and the day got off to a good start. She was, however, slightly ashamed of what she now saw as her unprovoked eruption of the evening before as she and the twins later entered the breakfast-room. 'Good morning,' she greeted Vere crisply as they took their seats.
He favoured her with a baleful look. 'Trust the sun to be shining,' he grunted.
'It always does on the righteous,' she replied sweetly, in no doubt that he was referring to the wet weekend with two fretful children.
'Give it time,' he gritted, and got up from his chair, ruffled two shiny heads in passing and, as Fabienne burst out laughing, went off to work.
With the day starting off so well from the way she was looking at it, things were much improved, she decided, as it began to dawn on her that she found her exchanges with Vere quite stimulating.
The day went even better, in that when she returned from taking the children to school-having declined Lyndon Davies' offer of lunch, this time-she found that Rachel was up and dressed and doing her utmost to be positive. 'I really meant to be up in time to go with you to school,' she apologised, 'but those wretched tablets make it difficult for me to get going straight away.'
'Don't worry about it,' Fabienne smiled. 'Perhaps tomorrow.'
'Perhaps,' Rachel agreed. 'I am making progress, honestly I am, but it's a sort of two steps forward, one step back kind of progress. Though I'm heaps better than the mess I was at Easter when Vere...' Her voice tailed of. 'Come on, let's go for a walk or something,' she suggested.
'Yes, let's,' Fabienne encouraged, delighted at the positive effort Rachel was making.
It was gradually, during their walk, that Fabienne learned that Rachel originally came from a village not more than a half hour's car journey from Lintham. 'Are your parents still there?' she queried tentatively, not wanting to upset her if they were dead.
'We-don't get on,' Rachel replied haltingly.
'Oh, I'm sorry,' Fabienne murmured sympathetically.
Rachel sighed. 'In a way, so am I now. I've thought lately that I really should make an effort and get in touch with them again.'
'Perhaps I could drive you over to see them one day,' Fabienne suggested, trying to be helpful. Rachel had her own car, which Vere had had brought to Brackendale for her, but she did not feel up to driving just yet. 'I could leave you and go and see my mother for an hour and pick you up on the way back,'
she warmed to her theme.
'I...' Rachel hesitated. Then, 'I'm-not ready yet.'
'No hurry,' Fabienne stated easily.
'We had a row,' Rachel went on. 'They were right, of course, and I knew that they were right, but...' Her voice started to falter, and while Fabienne was so very tempted to suggest that she leave it there and say no more, she somehow sensed it would be more helpful for Rachel to start to talk whatever it was out of her system. Rachel took a steadying breath, and then blurted out bluntly, 'Nick, my husband, was a womaniser-first-class. I knew it, of course, but didn't thank my father for having a go at Nick for not treating me better.'
'You quarrelled,' Fabienne put in quietly.
'I flew off the handle and, regardless of all the love they had always showed me, I told both my parents to keep out of my business.'
'They didn't come to Nick's funeral?'
She shook her head. 'They know me well. I didn't want them there.'
'Things will get better one day,' Fabienne promised, and received a faint smile for her efforts.
'Shall we go back to the house?' Rachel suggested, and Fabienne knew that Rachel had had enough for one day.
It did not surprise her that she kept to her room when the time came for her to collect the children from school. It did surprise her, though, that as she sat outside on a garden bench and watched while some yards away the twins played on the lawn in the sun, Rachel should come out to join her and, for the first time, looking all sparkly-eyed-shiny eyes that had nothing to do with unshed tears.
Fabienne was just thinking how their walk that morning must have done more good for her than she had thought when Rachel remembered, 'Oh, by the way, Alex phoned while you were out.'
'Did he?' Fabienne enquired, pleased he had rung but sorry that she had missed him. 'Did he ring for anything special?'
'To remind you that it's your father's sixtieth birthday in two weeks' time.'
How odd! She wouldn't dream of forgetting her father's birthday. It was a week on Sunday, and they'd planned a big family lunch with aunts and uncles and some friends of both her father and mother. 'That's typical Alex,'
she reflected. 'He's so thoughtful. Not that I would have forgotten.' Rachel was looking across to the twins. 'He's divorced, isn't he?' she questioned absently.
Fabienne hesitated. Alex was special. But she guessed he must have told Rachel that himself and anyhow, loyalty apart, Rachel had opened up to her that day and friendship was a two-way street. 'Yes, he is,' she replied and, whether Rachel was truly interested or not, 'He has a son, Philip, a year older than Kitty and John, but he's having a few "rights of access"
problems.'
'Oh, how awful. I didn't know...'
'Alex will sort it out, I expect, but it's such a shame, and so unnecessary.
I've always liked Victoria, his wife-ex-wife, I should say-but-' Fabienne dried up, her loyalty to her brother such that she thought she had said enough. She looked over to where Kitty and John had tired of their game and were starting to irritate each other. 'How long is it since you've played rounders?' she asked Rachel. 'Four of us?'
Fabienne looked over to where the gardener was busy at work. 'Bob looks the fit type,' she remarked of the fifty-year-old man, 'I'd bet he'd much rather play ball than hoe that lupin bed.'
'You wouldn't!'
For a bonus Rachel joined them for dinner that evening, too. Fabienne couldn't be off noticing how courteously and gently Vere behaved towards Rachel, and for a few moments fell into a most peculiar reverie where she wanted Vere to be gentle to her, too, instead of the brutish swine he so easily turned into whenever they had any dealings on a one-to-one basis.
'And Fenne-' She jerked out of her peculiar thoughts on hearing John speaking her name. 'Fenne?' his uncle queried.
'Fabienne says it's all right to call her that if we want to,' John explained with an anxious look, as if he had been impolite.
'Fabienne's a bit of a mouthful sometimes for a seven-year-old,' Fabienne burst in protectively.
Vere gave her a quirky look, as though to say, put your ruffled feathers down, and thereafter proceeded to ignore her as he asked his nephew, 'So what did Fenne do?'
'Fenne said we were going to play rounders, and we did,' Kitty took up.
'And Bob was just, just brilliant and in my team, and he scored six, and-'
'Bob?' Vere asked faintly. But while Fabienne realised that confession-time was at hand, she discovere
d her confession was not necessary, because, fast as ever with his deductions, Vere scored a direct hit when, with a cool glance over in her direction he guessed, 'I'll bet it was Fenne who said he'd be a jolly good fielder.'
'She did!' John agreed eagerly. 'Bob seemed a bit-a bit shy at first, but Fenne told him that he could hoe his old lupin bed any old time and-'
Fabienne felt it was time that she spoke up. 'Bob was most reluctant to leave his duties,' she stated clearly. And, as Vere's cool grey eyes pinned her with a steady look, she tilted her chin and added, 'I accept full responsibility.'
For a couple of long, tense seconds she held eye-contact with him, half expecting to be dismissed on the spot for taking his staff away from the work they were engaged to do, but-and she had to own it was a relief-'Who else?' was all he said.
Fabienne went to her bed that night wondering about that 'Who else?'.
She rather felt that in those two simple words she had been told off. As if, feeling unable to go for her jugular in front of two children who were starting to recover from trauma, he was saying 'who else' but her would have such almighty cheek!
Her good intentions to give Bob a hand with his weed-ing the next day proved a non-starter when the day dawned grey, gloomy and decidedly wet. Rachel, however, maintained her good spirits of the previous day, though when the children came home from school and started bickering she sent Fabienne a pleading look and left her to cope.
Fabienne was discovering that John, although for the most part malleable, had a stubborn streak that was rock-solid. Kitty would push
him, but only so far, and then he would round on her. The next day was as dreadful weather-wise as the day before and Fabienne had left the twins watching TV in the next-door room, while she tidied up the after-school chaos in Kitty's room, when all hell broke loose.
In a flash she was in the playroom. 'She started it!' John got in first, that look about him that said it would be best to wait a while before delving into the crime.
What could she do? For a start, Fabienne decided, throw away all the textbooks on how to deal with temper tantrums, and try a bit of good old-fashioned bribery.
'So-who's coming down to the village with me for an ice-cream?' she asked, and crossed her fingers that neither of them would remember that Mrs Hobbs probably had a freezer compartment full of ice-cream. But, 'Me!' Kitty yelled at once.
'I'm not taking the car,' Fabienne warned, knowing that they would have been to the village and back and could be back to square one inside twenty minutes if she did that.
'We're walking-in the rain?' John queried, losing some of his mulish look and starting to look interested.
'We'll have to wear our wellies and raincoats,' she answered. An hour later she and two laughing and animated children were walking back up the drive. There and back they had walked the best part of two miles, demolished ice-creams in no time, splashed in puddles, were drenched-and happy.
She was happy herself, Fabienne realised-and just then noticed that Vere's car was standing on the drive. He was home early. The happiness in her took on a warmer glow.
'We'd better go in the back way,' she instructed the twins. 'We can leave our wellingtons in the rear hall for now.'
Feeling strangely comforted to know that Vere was home, Fabienne opened the rear door supposing that, whether home early or late, she would not see him until dinnertime. And then stopped dead.
'Hello, trouble!' Vere greeted them, and as they trooped in, she realised that he must have been in the kitchen having some conversation with Mrs Hobbs. 'Hello, Uncle Vere!' the twins chorused and, while he attended to
divesting John of his rainwear and Fabienne assisted Kitty, they excitedly told him of their ice-cream adventure.
'Pop into the kitchen and get Mrs Hobbs to dry your faces and anything else that needs a towelling,' he instructed them indulgently-and as they went off to see another of their favourite people he turned his attention to Fabienne.
'Just look at you!' he commented, looking down into her damp, upturned face. 'They say rainwater's good for the complexion,' she laughed, uncaring that she had not a scrap of make-up on.
His eyes roved her face, her skin, her features, and then he made her heart race by solemnly declaring, 'Yours doesn't need any help.' She wanted to swallow, but couldn't. Felt transfixed, couldn't move, couldn't speak, yet knew she had to say something-and chose to tell him the only thing to come into her head-even though the children had already told him. 'We've been to the village for ice-creams.'
'In this weather?' he questioned, and to her delight there was a definite gleam of amusement in his look.
'Why not?' she tossed back at him with a grin.
'You didn't think that perhaps Mrs Hobbs' freezer could have saved you the journey?'
'If you don't tell the children, I won't,' she laughed, and was riveted when the most wonderful smile broke on his face.
Impulsively then, or so it seemed, his head came down and, causing her heart to thunder, he placed a light kiss on her gently parted lips. 'You're a child yourself,' he told her-and she wasn't having that.
Without thinking she stretched up and placed her mouth warmly against his. She felt his hands come to her waist, grip and hold, felt his mouth move against hers and was just about to hold on to him when somehow, perhaps by mutual consent, they broke apart.
Her head was anywhere; yet again she knew she should say something. By happy chance, from somewhere she found an impish grin and, aware that there had been nothing childlike in her kiss to him, 'Say that again!' she teased.
Vere's glance went from her eyes down to her inviting mouth and, 'Be off with you, woman,' he growled. 'You could harm a man's sanity.'
Fabienne's head was in a whirl as she dressed to go down to dinner that night. She could still feel Vere's lips against her own, still feel a tingle from that touch. Oh, lord, what was happening to her?
For the first time she regretted that she had only a limited wardrobe with her at Brackendale. But, dressed with the greatest of care, she went down to dinner with Rachel and the children-only to discover that Vere was not there, that he had gone out.
Disappointment hit her like a body-blow as she recalled that while he usually garaged his car round at the rear of the house it had been standing on the front drive when she and the twins had come in. Obviously he'd come home early because he'd got some heavy date lined up. A frisson of anger stirred in her, and Fabienne realised that she did not at all like the idea of him with some other woman. A moment later, however, and she was aghast at herself.
Good grief, it was nothing to do with her-she was just the hired help, and no more than that. And, heaven save us, that was all she wanted to be! Most definitely!
CHAPTER FIVE
FOR some totally unknown reason Fabienne discovered she was experiencing a most unexpected shyness when, with the twins in tow, she went down to breakfast the following morning.
Vere was there, but although his greeting to Kitty and John was affable she detected a glint of cold steel in the look he flicked her way. His answer to her quiet 'Good morning' was little more than a grunt.
Be like that, she fumed, and could not have been better pleased that, by the look of it, his date of the previous evening seemed to have soured him.
It was not, however, his date that was at fault, she discovered that evening, but herself! He was quite friendly with everyone else, conversing amicably with the children and Rachel at dinner-but not with her. Fabienne felt more than a little shaken by this turn of events, and told herself that she was being over-sensitive, imagining it. But, as she 'watched points' at breakfast on Friday and at dinner in the evening, too, there was no mistaking in her mind that, while Vere observed every courtesy and politeness with her in front of the others so that she was certain that they would have no idea that she was being cold-shouldered, she knew.
'I think I'll go home tonight, if no one minds,' she said out of the blue just as everyone was finishing the pudding co
urse. She skimmed a glance at Vere from beneath her long lashes, and found the idea of driving up to Lintham setting like concrete. His glance back at her was cool, dispassionate, and Fabienne knew that any chance he might again ask, 'You do intend to come back?' was laughable. She slid her eyes from him-no one was going to see her hurt, least of all him-and her gaze lit on the twins. John was looking anxious again, she saw, so she smiled and assured him, 'I'll see you two reprobates first thing on Monday morning.'
Immediately he looked relieved. 'What's a repr-?'
Fabienne phoned her parents to tell them that she'd see them in a couple of hours, and drove to Lintham almost praying that they would have a continual monsoon in Sutton Ash that weekend and that the twins, who were now growing daily more lively and more like any other seven-year-olds, would drive one Vere Tolladine up the wall.
To her chagrin, summer returned the next day. She doubted, since Sutton Ash was not all that far away, that her monsoon hopes would be fulfilled.
She spent the rest of the day wishing that she could think about something other than that wretched man and his cold attitude towards her. 'Anything
wrong, love?' her mother asked as they loaded the dishwasher Sunday morning. 'Wrong?'
'You seem a bit preoccupied.'
'Really?' Her mother was just one wonderful person and Fabienne had always felt able to confide absolutely anything in her. But, 'Nothing wrong,'
she smiled, somehow unable this time to share her most intimate worries.
'Other than, of course-' just in case her mother would not swallow that '-I'm constantly trying to think up new games to keep Kitty and John amused.'
That was true. But it was odd, Fabienne thought as she took Oliver for a walk, that even though Vere was being such a brute to her she should feel she would not mind at all getting back early.
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