Leigh would have loved to answer the questions with a few well-phrased replies.
‘Well,’ Lady Jessica swept on, disregarding Leigh’s high-pitched response, ‘it’s a good thing, as I said, that I walked in on the two of you. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t. All I know is that Nicholas would have lived to regret it. We both know what sort of plans you’ve been harbouring, but you had better exclude Nicholas from them…’
‘Plans?’ Leigh managed to find her voice, albeit several decibels higher than normal. ‘Harbouring? What do you think I am?’ A stupid question since she knew full well what Lady Jessica was getting at. Had the two of them discussed her? Laughed at her? It very much sounded so.
‘A conniving little vamp, my dear.’
Leigh stared at her, aghast. Any minute now, she thought, two sharp fangs would appear and Lady Jessica would transform into a vampire. Clad in her black satin robe, with her dark features, she definitely radiated something not quite human.
‘Well, you’re wrong!’ Leigh succeeded in finding her tongue, which she had begun to think was stuck to the roof of her mouth. ‘Not that I care what you believe.’ She looked at Lady Jessica witheringly, and couldn’t resist adding, ‘Though I’m surprised at your reaction. From what I gathered, you and Nicholas have split up.’
There, she had said it. It was a bit below the belt, but then all of Lady Jessica’s remarks had been as well, and there was no reason why she should have the monopoly on snideness.
There was an electric silence. Leigh could almost hear the sun rising outside. She looked pointedly at her bedside clock, yawned so widely that she heard her jaws click, and hoped that Lady Jessica would seize it as an opportune moment to leave the bedroom.
‘What an illicit thrill that must have given you,’ Lady Jessica went on spitefully, ignoring Leigh’s carefully directed hints, ‘listening to details of what was no business of yours!’ Two red spots had appeared on her cheeks, and Leigh could almost feel sorry for her. After all, hadn’t they, ironically, something in common?
They had both made the mistake of loving the same man, when common sense should have warned them to run a mile the minute they set eyes on him.
‘What did he tell you?’ The tell-tale flushes of pain had vanished, and the alabaster-white skin was cold and hard.
‘Oh, nothing, really,’ Leigh prevaricated awkwardly, regretting having ever said anything.
‘Did he tell you that we had agreed to split up?’ Lady Jessica looked at her searchingly, and Leigh nodded. Even in her confused frame of mind, those words had a familiar ring to them.
Lady Jessica gave a triumphant snigger.
‘And do you know why he phrased it like that?’
‘I have no idea,’ Leigh said shortly, with the instinctive feeling that she was about to hear something unpleasant, ‘and I don’t particularly want to know. I haven’t slept for more hours than I care to count, I’m tired, and I don’t much want to sit here and play twenty questions with you.’
It was the most lucid retort she had managed since Lady Jessica’s unexpected appearance in her room, and it made her feel much better. After all, why should she lie in this strait-jacketed position in her bed and listen to someone whose only motive in talking to her was inspired by hatred? All she wanted to do was bury herself under the blankets and quietly nurse her misery.
‘I didn’t realise that we were playing a game,’ Lady Jessica replied smoothly, an icy smile cracking the marble-white veneer of her skin. ‘I thought we were having an adult conversation about something that matters to both of us…’
Really? Leigh thought, feeling anything but adult.
‘It may matter to you, but it doesn’t to me,’ she lied, lowering her eyes to her entwined fingers.
‘Oh, I think it does,’ Lady Jessica intoned relentlessly. ‘You’re after Nicholas. Sure, you entertained Gerry for a while as a possible catch, but it’s Nicholas you really want to get your tenacious claws into. It’s as obvious as the nose on my face. Do you really think I haven’t noticed the way you follow him around with your eyes? It’s laughable. We both think so.’ She paused for breath, and Leigh looked at her in horror.
She simply wanted the earth to open up and swallow her up because she had never felt so humiliated in her entire life. Follow him around with her eyes? she thought. Had she been so obvious? She squirmed with mortification at the thought.
She only hoped that he had not guessed at the horrendous truth that she was in love with him. Almost better to be treated as a gold-digger than scorned as a gullible idiot.
Her face was white, but her voice remained calm and flat when she replied to Lady Jessica, ‘You must be crazy. I never wanted to come down here. Nicholas persuaded me that it would do Freddie good to get out of Yorkshire for a while. As far as I’m concerned, I’d return to my home village tomorrow if it weren’t for my brother. As for being after Nicholas…’ The words almost stuck in her throat. ‘Ha! Your imagination’s been running away with you!’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Lady Jessica commented, holding up her elegant hands and pretending to inspect the long, polished fingernails. She rested them languidly on her lap and crossed her legs. ‘I wouldn’t want to see you hurt, after all.’
Sure, Leigh thought acidly. And pigs fly. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Now are you finished?’
‘Yes.’ Lady Jessica stood up and flicked imaginary flecks of dust from her robe. ‘Oh, just one last thing. I never got around to explaining why Nicholas told you that we had agreed to split up. I mean, don’t you think that’s a very odd way of putting it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, the reason he said that is because I finished with him, and not the other way around. I hate to point out the obvious, but the only reason he indulged you when you made a pass at him was because he was probably depressed.’ She smiled a crocodile smile. ‘Maybe he thought that you were better than nothing?’
She spun around, leaving Leigh staring open-mouthed at her, and walked out of the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
Better than nothing, Leigh thought viciously. She snatched one of the pillows from the bed and hurled it at the shut door, narrowly missing some porcelain ornaments on the nearby shelf.
She might as well face it; there was no way that she was going to get any sleep at all. She glared at the light streaming through the window and turned on her side. She wanted to die. How could she have let that odious woman come into her bedroom and spend half an hour insulting her? It was the first time she had ever allowed anyone to even think of insulting her without vigorously defending herself.
But Lady Jessica had caught her unawares, and by the time she had gathered her wits together it was too late. Insinuations had been made, accusations slyly targeted, and, even though she knew that most of it had been founded on lies, Leigh still found the distasteful remarks turning over repeatedly in her head. Niggling, poisonous little insects that left her stomach churning over uncomfortably.
She tried desperately to think back to Nicholas and what had happened between them in the study, but the details became elusive. All she could remember with any clarity was the strength of her response to him, the fierce need she had felt to get away before she allowed him to show her just how vulnerable she really was. And that was just about the last thing she wanted to remember.
Lady Jessica’s words were vividly clear in her mind, though. At a push she could recall them word for word, and every word had been like a drop of acid.
Had he really made a pass at her on the rebound? Had he wanted someone else to be there in the study with him? Someone who had decided to end the affair?
She would have laughed aloud at the idea of Lady Jessica’s being the one to give Nicholas the push, when her every move seemed designed to attract his attention, but if he had been the one to finish things, then why didn’t he come right out and say so? Was it because, she thought bitterly, gold-diggers didn’t deserve explanations?
She finally fell asleep at the unearthly hour of six o’clock in the morning.
She was oblivious of all the early morning sounds, oblivious to everything until almost eleven o’clock, when she emerged downstairs, feeling not in the slightest refreshed for her sleep, to find that they were going to leave much sooner than expected.
‘Jessica’s ill, apparently,’ Gerry confided mournfully to her, as he sat opposite her at the dining-room table, watching her consume a cup of black coffee and three croissants.
‘Is she?’ Leigh asked uninterestedly. Let’s hope, she wanted to add, it involves a few years’ bed rest.
‘Looks awful, and she’s absolutely insisted on being driven back to London as soon as possible. In fact, she would have left already, but Nicholas waited for you.’
Leigh chewed unhurriedly on her croissant.
‘He needn’t have. I could have caught the train back.’
‘I could have dropped you, although it would have been difficult. I’ve got to be here tonight.’ He beamed cheerfully at her, and Leigh attempted to beam cheerfully back.
She would have lingered endlessly over her breakfast, feeling not in the least guilty that Lady Jessica was in a hurry to get back, but Nicholas appeared in the doorway with a look on his face that insisted she hurry up.
Leigh looked at him, drinking in his dangerous good looks, wishing she could detach herself from the emotions pounding through her. After everything Lady Jessica had said, after everything that she herself had painstakingly reasoned, she still wanted him, still felt that odd quiver of excitement when she saw him, or heard his voice, or even knew that he was near by somewhere. Where was that celebrated Yorkshire pride now when she needed it most?
She finished eating quickly, packed in even more record time, and almost before she knew it she was in the car, in the back seat, trying to ignore the painful knot in her heart.
CHAPTER NINE
THE drive back shot past. One minute they were surrounded by open fields, and the next they were edging back into London, manoeuvring through the treacle-slow traffic and listening to the radio inform them of enough tailbacks to put one off cars for life.
Leigh suddenly had an overwhelming desire to get away, to get back to the simplicity of life in Yorkshire, where the days drifted happily into each other and she still had control over her emotions.
She looked at the dark head in front, sneaking a glance in the rear-view mirror to see the handsome features frowning with concentration as he tried to edge into the flow of traffic.
Then she looked at Lady Jessica’s sharp profile, the mouth drawn into a tight line. She had spoken very little on the drive back. What had she been thinking? Was she regretting her decision to finish with Nicholas? Had she decided to re-cultivate their relationship now that she thought there was a rival on the scene? Maybe she had been thinking of something more basic, like a thousand and one ways to murder a rival without being caught.
Humour, she thought dejectedly, was a poor defence against being in love. How could someone have such power to crush all her carefully fabricated defences with just one gesture, as if they were a stack of cards? There should be a law against that.
What would her grandfather have said about it all? He had brought her up to be totally self-reliant, had drummed into her the importance of being independent. She thought with bitter irony how little it had taken for her to realise that her independence was so much hot air.
She only noticed that they had arrived when the car pulled up outside the house, and Nicholas informed her that he would let her out before dropping Lady Jessica back.
‘Of course,’ Leigh said tonelessly. Why not? Maybe he sensed a big reconciliation scene on the cards.
‘Leave the bags,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll bring them in when I get back.’
‘Fine,’ she murmured, ‘there’s no rush.’
He looked as though he was about to get out of the car to open her door, and to forestall him Leigh jumped out, slamming the door behind her, and walked up to the house, not bothering to glance in Lady Jessica’s direction. She had had enough acidity to last a lifetime. She could do without another dose.
From behind her, she heard the car swish back down to the road, and she was quite proud of the fact that she steadfastly resisted the urge to spin around and see whether Lady Jessica’s forgiving arm had slid up behind Nicholas’s head.
When Freddie opened the door, she swept past him in a fit of anger, not seeing him at all, and not aware of his presence until he called out after her in surprise. She slowed down, took a few deep breaths, counted to ten, and turned to face him, a large, tinny smile plastered across her face.
All she wanted to do was get into a hot bath, shut her eyes and pretend that she was several million miles away, but she thought guiltily that she had barely seen Freddie over the past few days, and had not the faintest idea what he had been up to.
And, she thought guiltily, she was supposed to be here in London for his benefit.
She cast one lingering look in the direction of the staircase and followed him into the sitting-room.
For once, his usual boisterousness was missing, even though the tousled blond hair falling across his eyes still managed to conjure up the image of someone dying to play a practical joke.
Through the blur of her own chaotic emotions, Leigh listened and responded to what he was saying, hardly taking it in, until he hesitatingly informed her that he was thinking of doing his apprenticeship in the little village close to their home in Yorkshire.
Leigh sat up at once.
‘But I thought you liked it here!’
‘I do,’ Freddie hedged, ‘but I miss home, and, besides, we can’t leave it unattended forever.’
‘I meant to get back,’ Leigh interjected defensively, ‘soon. As soon as you were settled.’
‘I’ve been settled for a while,’ Freddie replied mildly. ‘I mean, the apprenticeship’s been fixed up for some time. I’ve really only been hanging around here because of Sir John.’
‘Sir John?’ Leigh asked, at a loss.
Freddie coughed and reddened with embarrassment. ‘Sure; the old man’s become accustomed to having me around.’
‘Has he?’ This was news to Leigh, although, casting her mind back, she did seem to recall that they had been getting along exceptionally well. In fact, only a few days ago, she had been delighted when she had met Sir John coming back from a morning in London, on his own, the first in a long, long while. She had not associated his sudden independence with her brother, but of course it all now fitted together. It was just that she had been too wrapped up in her own affairs to notice what had been going on around her. Now Freddie wanted to go back home and it was like a bolt from the blue.
How could she leave London? She had become accustomed to it, for heaven’s sake! She fidgeted restlessly, half listening for the front door, and thinking that of course the best solution to all her problems had been solved by her brother. If she returned to Yorkshire, then she would free herself from the bog she seemed to be stuck in, and gradually things would return to normal.
She stood up and said firmly, ‘Good.’
‘Good?’ Freddie looked at her, bewildered. ‘What’s good? Are you feeling all right, sis?’
‘Of course I’m feeling all right. Why shouldn’t I be?’ She waited for him to answer and when her question was met with a bemused shrug of the shoulders she repeated stoutly, ‘I’ve never felt better, in fact. And as for your decision to return back home, good idea. That’s what I meant by good. We’ve both had enough of London, and I agree with you—it’s high time we went back to where we belonged.’
‘Sure. One thing, though—Sir John’s coming as well.’
‘As well?’ Leigh repeated faintly. ‘Sir John?’
‘Do you mind?’ He looked anxiously at her. ‘We’ve been discussing it for the past couple of weeks, and, well, he hates it here. Says it’s like a morgue.’
‘A morgue?’ Things were happe
ning very quickly here. Too quickly. She felt disorientated.
Freddie nodded. ‘Haven’t you noticed anything?’ he asked querulously.
Not much, she thought with a guilty pang. ‘It’s just such a surprise. Where will he live in Yorkshire?’ Stupid question.
‘With us. The old man needs someone to look after him. You don’t mind, do you? I kind of miss Yorkshire, to tell you the truth. Don’t you?’
‘Sure,’ she lied. Miss Yorkshire? Never. Not when the alternative was living in the presence of an arrogant, infuriating, insulting man.
‘You’re right, of course,’ she found her voice. ‘We can’t simply vanish from the cottage forever. Heaven only knows what state it’ll be in when we return.’ She tried to think of the actuality of getting on the train and never seeing Nicholas Reynolds again, and felt a quiver in the region of her stomach.
Of course, Sir John coming with them, delightful though the prospect was, was just another nail in her coffin. More scope for accusations of gold-digging. She was realistic enough to realise that wild horses wouldn’t be able to stop him from renovating the cottage. He would look at all the repair work that needed doing, and he would be insulted if she denied him the chance to do it.
Freddie’s decision sealed her fate. And wasn’t it for the best? What did she expect her future to hold? A lifetime of moping about behind a man who wanted her body but considered her beneath him when it came to involvement?
A stint in hell would be better.
‘We can’t live off charity forever,’ she continued more confidently, pushing aside images of the vacuum awaiting her in Yorkshire. ‘I mean, I’m earning good money now, even if it is through Nicholas. I’ve got enough experience now to look for a better job. Yes, the time is just right for going home.’
Home. Didn’t quite have the same ring about it as when she had just left it behind. Then, it represented everything she had ever known, all her little joys and disappointments, memories of her grandfather. Now, it would always remind her of her grandfather, but she felt as though reality, her life force, was where she was now.
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