Heath spoke for the first time. ‘I’m sorry. I thought this was the best way to do it—for you.’ There was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice.
Stephanie dabbed at her eyes again. ‘I appreciate that, she said shakily after a moment, ‘but …’ She stopped and looked up at Jonathan sitting on the arm of her chair and saw the faint warning in his eyes. ‘Yes, you’re right. What’s over is over. It is over?’ she added with a sudden anxious note in her voice as her eyes roamed over Heath. ‘I mean, you’re not hiding anything from me now, are you?’
Sasha found her voice suddenly. ‘The operation was entirely successful,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Heath’s as good as new—or almost,’ she amended with a faint quirk to her lips. ‘In a couple of days his eyes will be able to stand up to anything. But …’ She stopped. She’d been going to say playfully—this engagement is just a sham, don’t take it seriously. Break it to them lightly…
‘But what?’ asked Stephanie .with her brow furrowed.
‘Well …’ Sasha licked her lips and knew somehow that there was no way to break the news lightly without perhaps breaking Stephanie’s heart. Oh no, she thought, that’s ridiculous. But how?
It was Heath who unexpectedly took the matter out of her hands. He said gently, ‘I think what Sasha is trying to tell you is that she wanted to let you know but I wouldn’t let her.’
‘I was not!’ she protested indignantly, and the words were out before she stopped to think.
‘Then what were you trying to say, my love?’ he queried with a smile lurking in his eyes. ‘From our respective parents’ reaction, which was obviously quite unpremeditated, I don’t think you have to worry that they’d object should we decide to get married tomorrow.’
Sasha’s lips formed a soundless O of astonishment and the look she sent him was one of shock and despair. But before it could become apparent to the two other people in the room, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her calmly on the lips.
‘Heath!’ she whispered faintly when at last his lips left hers. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Stephanie and her father as he released her. ‘As you can imagine, it’s been rather a traumatic experience for us. And to top it off, Sasha was worried you might not approve.’
‘Oh, Blossom!’ Stephanie exclaimed with a sigh of relief.
But it was Sasha’s father who unwittingly set the seal on Sasha’s silence. ‘Honey,’ he said gently, ‘if this is what you want I can only applaud your good taste and good sense. I have to admit that I long ago understood what you felt for Heath, just as I have to admit that I’ve always liked and admired you, Heath, man to man, and I have no doubt that you’ll take good care of her. So you see, Sasha, this union has my blessing. Indeed, much more. Like Stephanie, it’s fulfilled one of my greatest desires, and that’s to see you happily married to the right man.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Why did you do it?’
Sasha’s stunned words hung in the air.
Stephanie and Jonathan had just left them. They had only arrived in the country that morning and were understandably tired, and they had decided to spend the night at the flat. Sasha was to join them later for dinner.
Heath didn’t answer immediately. Sasha was standing in her favourite spot by the window and her face was white and drained.
‘Heath!’ she said urgently.
He got up off the bed impatiently and came to stand beside her. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he said abruptly.
She took a step away from him, her eyes wide with disbelief.
He looked at her assessingly, noting her pallor and the look of shock, and turned to look outside. ‘Hell!’ he muttered with unexpected savagery. ‘They were so pleased. It would have been harder than taking candy from a kid.’
‘I know, but we have to tell them some time,’ she whispered.
There was a long silence during which her nerves seemed to stretch like piano wires.
But what he said finally came as an even greater shock. ‘Perhaps we needn’t tell them.’ He turned back to her as she stood like a statue, ‘After all, Sasha, maybe they’re right. Maybe we are well suited. At least I know you’re good for me …’
‘What are you saying?’ she cried, coming to life I suddenly. ‘What about Veronica?’
‘Look, let’s forget Veronica,’ he said with his teeth gritted. ‘I can assure you I have. It was an attraction that simply burnt itself out. It had to, and I’m not blaming her any more than I’m blaming myself, but it was far too volatile to last even if … anyway, we’d have torn each other to pieces, Sasha. Do you think I didn’t work that out months ago?’
‘Then … but … why?’ she said helplessly.
‘Why what?’
‘Why did we get engaged? I thought it was because you felt it was unfair to her if… to expect her to spend her life with someone who was blind.’
‘I didn’t quite say that.’
‘Yes, you did.”
‘No, Sasha. All I said was I didn’t think she could handle it. I meant—handle the fact that we really were finished, washed up, etc., gracefully. And I didn’t feel like coping with it like some sitting duck at a fairground.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a rather devious way out, I guess. In more ways than one,’ he added abruptly, and shoved his hands into his pockets.
‘Heath, I wish you’d come out and told me straight,’ Sasha said despairingly at last.
‘What difference would it have made?’ He watched her with narrowed eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ she said feebly, at last. ‘I can’t think straight. Just… well, why didn’t you?’
He moved restlessly. ‘It seemed like another good idea at the time. But this is beside the point, Sasha.’
‘No,’ she said swiftly. ‘I mean, if you’re sure about Veronica, you must wait until you find someone else.’
‘I have found someone else,’ he said carefully. ‘Someone I know I can live with, someone I admire, someone I can trust. What more could you ask for?’
‘Someone you love,’ she said shakily. ‘All those things you mentioned are fine, but without… the right spark they could be nothing in a marriage. That’s the difference between friendship and love. And friendship could turn into a noose around your neck, Heath, when you do find someone you love. So that, while I admire you too, I also have no intention of becoming that noose around your neck.’
‘Maybe love will come, Sasha,’ he said gently. And then added with an effort, ‘Once, not so long ago, you would have been willing to try it.’
She coloured faintly and grimaced. ‘I know. But I was very young and silly then. And as you predicted, I grew up.’
‘Grew up to think I wouldn’t be any good for you now, Sasha?’
She bit her lip and drew a deep breath. ‘I’m trying to tell you it’s not a good enough reason to marry a person because you think they might be good for you! Or because you’re grateful to them. Or to please your mother!’ she finished distraughtly.
His eyes smouldered and his lips tightened before he said coldly, ‘You can acquit me on that count, Sasha. I’m not exactly proud of it, but I’ve never done anything just to please my mother.’
‘I thought that’s how this came up,’ she said tightly.
‘Well, you thought wrong. But tell me something. What about Brent? Why haven’t you stopped this discussion by simply mentioning his name?’
Oh God! She thought. He’s right. If I was in love with Brent it would have been the first thing I thought of…
‘Tell me, Sasha,’ he said instantly.
She licked her lips and for an insane moment she was tempted to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and take up his offer of marriage and make the best of it that she could. Then sanity prevailed and she knew that she would die slowly, within, like a withered tree, if she did. Because it would never be enough for her just to be ‘good’ for Heath. And it seemed to her that the best way to put an end to this tortu
re was to lie again. But it was so hard.,.
‘It’s not easy to talk about Brent,’ she heard herself saying uncertainly. ‘He’s such a special person.’ That was true in one way. ‘And,’ she took a deep breath and raised her eyes to his face, ‘what I was really trying to say to you was that I do understand, as I tried to tell you the other day, how you feel. Gratitude and all that. But the best way you could ever repay me for what was really an enormous piece of impudence on my part would be by taking your life up again and just being … well, the old Heath. That was all I ever wanted,’ she said simply.
‘I see,’ he said at last in a curiously toneless voice. Then, ‘I hope you’ll be very happy with him, Sasha.’ He turned away.
She closed her eyes and felt the tears trickle down her cheeks. She rubbed her eyes desperately and then reached for her purse for a hanky, only to find it taken out of her hands.
‘Here,’ he said, and pressed a slip of cotton and lace into her fingers.
‘I don’t know why I’m crying,’ she said tremulously when she had done the best she could with her face. ‘I’m turning into one of those females who cry at the drop of a hat!’
She looked up to see him staring at her sombrely and felt as if her heart was being squeezed in her breast as every detail of him seemed to burn itself into her brain—the gold of his hair, the dark blue of his eyes, the width of his shoulders … as if it was vital to record it all in case she never saw him again.
She moved to ease the pain and said huskily, ‘I’ll explain it to our respective parents tonight.’ She bent her head and slid the ruby ring from her finger. ‘But I must tell you, I do agree with them in one regard. As a husband, you’d be something else again, Heath—for the right wife.’ She held out her hand to him with the ring lying in her palm. ‘And you were right. I did wear it with a kind of love.’
He didn’t move, just watched her, and there was a stillness about him that alarmed her faintly, so she looked around and set the ring on the bedside table, valiantly trying to control her shaking hand.
Then he spoke abruptly. ‘When will the wedding be?’
‘I don’t know. Not … not for a while. I … might look for another job in the meantime. Just temporarily until B-Brent ties up this series.’
‘Sasha…’
‘I’m glad you called me that,’ she interrupted with a tiny smile but still a gleam of tears in her eyes. ‘If you’d called me Blossom or Napoleon or any of the other names I seem to attract, I’d have been most offended. I’m not Sasha Derwent for nothing,’ she said, and smiled again at the faint frown that came to his eyes. ‘My father used to say that to me,’ she explained.
‘Sasha Derwent—Sasha Havelock,’ he murmured. ‘Whichever, you’re the only Sasha I’ve ever known or am likely to know.’ He reached out a hand and touched her hair.
‘I guess I could say the same for you, Heath Townsend,’ she managed to whisper.
‘So it’s … au revoir?’
‘It’s goodbye, Heath.’
‘You’re crying again,’ he said softly.
‘I told you…’
‘Yes. I’m sorry I made such a … rather, I’m sorry for all the times I made you cry.’ He traced the path of her tears down one cheek.
She didn’t know what to say, what to do. The emotion that clouded her throat made speech impossible, so she turned away and gathered up her purse blindly, then with a quick pressure of her fingers on his j hand in passing, fled the room.
Nothing could have exceeded her expectations of the shock Stephanie and her father experienced when she told them that night, over dinner, that she and Heath weren’t really engaged. It was like a visit to the dentist, she thought afterwards, when you’d consoled yourself that these things often turned out less fearful than you’d feared—only to find it was more painful than anything you’d experienced.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Stephanie protested immediately.
Sasha looked appealingly at her father before she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid it’s true. We … I wanted to tell you this afternoon, but you were so thrilled. I don’t know if it’s ever happened to you when you know you should do something but just can’t grasp the opportunity? That’s what happened this afternoon.’ As she spoke she was aware of her father watching her very closely.
‘But I don’t understand!’ Stephanie said desperately. ‘Why the pretence in the first place? Why the ring?’
Sasha explained as best she could.
‘Well,’ Stephanie said haltingly, ‘I suppose I should be thankful he’s not still infatuated with that woman, but …’ She stopped speaking and rested her forehead desolately in the palm of her hand.
Nobody said anything for some time, but it was plain to see that Stephanie was grappling with her emotions, and even in the lamplit dining room, her face looked curiously old. So much older, Sasha thought.
‘There’s one thing that puzzles me,’ her father said into the silence. ‘I can appreciate how you found it difficult to explain in the light of our reactions, Sasha. In fact looking back I can now pinpoint the moment when you did try to explain. But I can’t recall that Heath was under the same kind of strain. To me it seemed the opposite, if anything.’
He raised his grey eyes which Sasha had inherited to stare at her steadfastly and her heart missed a beat.
She lowered her eyes and decided the only thing she could do was to be truthful—to a degree. ‘After you left, Heath did ask me to marry him.’
Stephanie whispered her name imploringly.’…Sasha!’
‘I couldn’t do it, Stephanie,’ Sasha said very quietly. ‘You see …’
‘Is there someone else?’
Sasha flinched inwardly. Then she thought of all the complications she had invited as it was and decided quite suddenly that, she could not launch into any more prevarications.
‘That’s not the point,’ she said firmly. ‘The point is I know why he did it. Out of a mixture of gratitude and perhaps because he’s got to so used to having me around.’
‘I see,’ her father said at last, and Sasha had the uncomfortable feeling that her father saw a lot more than she had actually explained. But she was eternally grateful for the way he took command of things from then on.
He put his hand on Stephanie’s as it lay slackly on the table and cast her a warning glance.
Stephanie opened her mouth to speak, but to Sasha’s surprise, she closed it again and then with a touchingly affectionate gesture, laid her head on his shoulder for a moment.
‘Well, my dear,’ Jonathan Derwent said to Sasha, ‘I think it’s best if we forget about all this. Let’s imagine we’ve only just arrived home and start off from there. You know, we’ve got nearly nine months to catch up on. And we’ve got cartloads of presents and mementoes and photos to show you.’
‘What made you decide to come home like this out of the blue?’ Sasha hastened to ask with a sigh of relief. ‘You could have given us some warning!’
‘A good solid bout of homesickness, my dear,’ he told her. ‘We were sitting in the umpteenth hotel room when it hit us jointly that there’s no place like home!’
Sasha spent the week with her father and Stephanie at the flat. They had decided to stay in town until Heath was released from hospital and they visited him every day. But there seemed to be a tacit agreement between the three of them that Sasha didn’t accompany them, and beyond progress reports, Heath wasn’t discussed.
It seemed a silly situation, Sasha often thought, and she couldn’t help wondering what the nursing staff and - Doctor James would be thinking, but for the life of her she couldn’t help but be grateful for it, even as she also wondered what had passed between Heath and his mother and her father on the subject.
The other problem that plagued her thoughts was what she was going to do with her life now. And it was her father again who came to the rescue.
He said easily one day over lunch, ‘Much as we’d love to have you come back to the farm with us, Blos
som, I suppose you’re thinking of getting another job?’
‘Yes,’ she said ruefully. ‘I mean—yes.’
‘Anything in mind?’
‘Not yet,’ she confessed. ‘I haven’t really started looking.’
‘Well, I bumped into an old friend of mine yesterday,’ he said casually. ‘He’s a political journalist and he happened to mention that he was looking for a research assistant. I thought of you immediately because you have the political background and a research background.’
‘It sounds like an ideal job for Sasha,’ Stephanie said quietly. ‘And I’d be delighted to give you a truthfully glowing reference.’
And that was how it happened.
Sasha got the job, although from something her employer let drop, she began to have doubts about the accuracy of her father’s description of how they had ‘bumped into’ each other.
But for all that, she liked working for this older man with his gentle blue eyes that masked a fantastically sharp brain. And perhaps more to the point, he was very pleased with her work.
She had taken another flat in town, although she spent a lot of time commuting between Canberra and Sydney, attending parliamentary sessions. But her father and Stephanie made a point of pinning her down regularly for lunch or dinner in town and because it was second nature to Stephanie to discuss her only son, she couldn’t help letting the. odd items of news out, despite the peculiar restraint of the situation.
So that, two months after they had arrived home, Sasha knew that Heath was still at the farm with Stephanie and Jonathan living there too, and Edith also in residence; while her own home had been leased out. Privately she couldn’t help wondering how long this arrangement would last and how Heath was occupying the time. But then she remembered that her father obviously had the knack of handling Stephanie, and maybe now Heath too.
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