The Sister Secret (Family Ties)

by Jessica Steele

  ‘Incommunicado?’ she queried—and then light dawned. ‘You followed me up to my room, ostensibly to carry my case down, but really...’

  ‘To make sure you didn’t phone him,’ Latham finished for her.

  ‘You read my note to Josy too, in—’

  ‘In case it was a note to your lover—and never loved you more when I realised that for Josy to believe what you’d written about going to stay with your retired friend who was feeling low, it must be the kind of typical thing you would do. Just as it was typical of you that you’d arrange for someone to exercise her horse while you were away.’

  ‘Actually, Josy very bravely managed to exercise Hetty herself,’ Belvia replied, and, her happiness brimming over, ‘Oh, I do love you, Mr Tavenner.’

  ‘Kiss me when you say that, woman,’ he growled, and she did, and it was quite some minutes later that they breathlessly broke apart. Looking down into her slightly flushed face, he said, ‘That, I think, was what helped me to keep going.’

  ‘A kiss?’ She was too bemused to think straight and, his eyes caressing her, he gave her an adoring smile.

  ‘How could you be in love with him, or anyone else, yet respond so ardently to me? I was in love with you and didn’t want to look at another woman, much less return an embrace.’

  ‘Oh, tell me more!’ she cried.

  ‘Minx,’ he laughed, and she loved him.

  ‘So—um...’ She tried to get her head back together. ‘So what made you think I’d go away with you in the first place?’ She managed to get a question together.

  ‘Was there any doubt, sweetheart?’ he asked gently.

  She remembered his threat to Josy. ‘No, I suppose not,’ she smiled.

  ‘And you don’t hate me?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘How could you not? Though, if it’s any consolation, I nearly blew it when you looked up at me, all big brown eyes, and asked for my promise not to come over all amorous. That was when I wanted to hold you safe in my arms, to protect you, and to tell you everything was all right.’

  ‘But everything was not all right, was it?’

  ‘Very far from being all right,’ he agreed. ‘So off we went, and I so enjoyed being with you, just the two of us—lunch—the supermarket—it was all wonderful; you were wonderful. We reached Rose Cottage and I began to hate like hell that I was going to have to get on the phone to my sister and invite her and her husband down.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ she sighed—but then cried, suddenly remembering, ‘You phoned Caroline from your car-phone!’

  ‘I did,’ he confirmed. ‘I had to. I had to kill whatever it was between you and Astill dead.’

  ‘You were beginning to doubt I was having an affair with him?’ she questioned, thinking that was what he meant. But he shook his head.

  ‘The evidence was too strong. And yet you seemed oddly nervous when I came into the bedroom while you were bed-making. Something wasn’t right—I knew it.’

  ‘You held me in your arms,’ she recalled.

  ‘And that did seem right,’ he smiled. ‘It felt as though that was where you belonged—it felt right for me, so it had to be right for you too, didn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, it was,’ she beamed.

  ‘Oh, love,’ he murmured, and held her close. ‘I must have been blind. Everything was adding up to you being a totally different woman from the one I’d been led to believe you were—yet still I was ready to believe the worst.’

  ‘You were determined to believe I was having an affair with your brother-in-law?’

  ‘I did ask you on Friday night if you had a problem with it when you admitted that you knew him.’

  ‘I only met him the one time—at that party. But that was long enough to realise he has a loose mouth, and would see no need to keep from any mutual acquaintances, friends, that I’d been rooming with you...’

  ‘Oh, dear love—that was what you meant. I thought...’

  ‘I see now what you thought,’ she laughed. ‘You thought I was saying I had a problem because if I was rooming with anyone, it should be him.’

  ‘You’ve so much to forgive me for. I only began to realise just how much when last night I held you sleeping in my arms.’

  ‘Oh, Latham,’ she cried. ‘I tried so hard to be asleep before you came up the stairs.’ She smiled as she told him, ‘Brute that you are, I was wide awake—and you came up and went out like a light.’

  ‘No way!’

  Startled, she stared at him. ‘You didn’t? But—your breathing was...’

  ‘The same as yours.’ His smile matched hers. ‘We were both pretending like hell. For my part I was in torment, wanting to come to you, while at the same time knowing that I wanted more from you than just one night.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ she sighed, all her fears about how little he must think of her gone forever.

  ‘Sweet love, I wanted your affair with Astill over, ended, out of the way, before I claimed you. Then your breathing really did relax and I knew you were asleep. But just as I’d started to grow calmer, so you suddenly started yelling. I was out of bed, had to wake you. Yet while I was desperately trying to be strong you suddenly leaned against me and—I was lost.’

  ‘Blaming me again?’ she teased lightly.

  ‘Never again,’ he murmured, and laid his lips on her hair, and after a minute or so of just holding her quietly he told her how it had been with him. ‘At first I just couldn’t get over this stupendous loving we had shared, couldn’t get over the wonderful and astonishing discovery I’d made about you. I couldn’t believe it, and but for the fact that you were sleeping naked in my arms, I might well have believed I was dreaming after all. And then, as daylight started to enter our room, I began to grow angry.’

  ‘Angry? With me?’ she asked, looking at him wide-eyed.

  ‘Not with you—never again with you, sweet love. Though at first I was tempted to wake you so you might answer some of the questions that were spinning furiously through my mind.’

  ‘Why didn’t you—wake me, I mean?’

  Latham smiled tenderly down at her. ‘The reason, lovely Belvia, being that as I looked at you my heart was so filled with love for you that I wanted to shower you with kisses. And yet, should I have kissed you gently awake, then I could not be certain that I wouldn’t be lost again, that I wouldn’t make love to you again.’

  ‘You didn’t want to?’ she asked, unaware of her naïveté.

  ‘Sweet innocent,’ Latham crooned, ‘I have so much to teach you. But not then. Then I owed you more than that I should again make you mine. First I wanted answers—not from you, I realised. You, my darling, owed me nothing. But somebody did.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘He’d come to me, seemingly worried to death that you were having an affair with my brother-in-law. You’d confirmed you had a married man-friend. My brother-in-law himself, when challenged, admitted he was the one—a smoke-screen to stop me finding out who he was really seeing, I now realise. As I also realised, as you lay sleeping, that your unfortunate remark stemmed purely from the fact that you were too spirited to be put down by my clear dislike of what I thought you to be.’ He kissed the tip of her nose lest that comment in any way bruised her.

  ‘To be honest, I was feeling most awkward at the start of the evening that my father was entertaining you purely for his own ends. Though, as the evening went on,’ she felt she should confess, ‘I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps you and my father deserved each other.’

  Latham smiled, as if in agreement. But his smile had gone when he revealed, ‘I thought back to that time when this morning I set about looking for answers. I’ve met all types through my business but didn’t know what to believe about Edwin Fereday. I wanted to declare my love—dared to hope that the hint of jealousy I’d hoped I’d heard in your voice when you’d asked about the lady-friends I’d brought down to Rose Cottage might mean you cared just a little. I’d had to dismiss it at the time, but resurrected it ag
ain when I realised Astill was nothing to you. I added that hope to the wonderful way you had given yourself to me—and, hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking you, I took my clothes out to the landing and got dressed.’

  ‘You got dressed out...’

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. From the very beginning you had not been treated right. You owed neither me nor anyone else a thing—but I was owed! From the beginning I’d been misled. It was time I collected a few answers.’

  ‘You went to see my father?’

  ‘By a stroke of luck Astill was wandering about downstairs, looking for aspirins.’

  ‘You asked him first...’

  ‘It didn’t get as far as that. Before I could grab him by the throat and tell him to start talking he had the temerity to ask—the implication obvious—if I’d had a good night. Sorry, my darling, but there are types like him around.’

  ‘Obviously you didn’t reply.’

  ‘He was measuring his length on the floor before I could speak—it was truly one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. But, before I could stand him up and repeat the pleasure, Caroline was standing there, witness to how I was too enraged to remember my promise never to hit him. I couldn’t regret what I’d done, but was glad to hear her say thanks, and add as she stepped over him and came out to my car with me that she intended to divorce him. Which, my darling, left me with just one more person to see before I came back to claim you.’

  Oh, how wonderful that sounded. And oh, how she wished that she had dumped her pride and waited at Rose Cottage. ‘Oh, if only I’d known you intended to come back.’

  ‘You’d have saved me going half demented, hope fading with every mile, when I left Rose Cottage for a second time today—this time in search of you.’

  ‘Oh, Latham!’ she cried, and leaned forward and kissed him. Then she pulled back and, her brain-patterns all haywire, from somewhere found enough intelligence to suggest, ‘The—um—first time you left was to go in search of my father?’

  ‘And did he have a tale to tell!’

  ‘A believable one?’

  ‘At first, no. Only when I told him I knew absolutely everything, and he slipped up to the small extent that he revealed he was considering—only considering, mind—approaching my company for some capital, did I get an inkling of what he was really about. How, incredibly, he was prepared to use both you and your sister, and anybody else he had to, to keep Fereday Products in business. He wriggled like hell, but at last I got the whole of it out of him.’

  ‘H-How did you leave things?’ Belvia asked, aware that she loved her parent but not feeling she owed him anything.

  ‘I said something to the effect that I’d be in touch, and raced off to Wiltshire.’

  Gently their lips met, and for a while Belvia was oblivious to everything save that she loved Latham and that he, unbelievably, loved her. Then, his look tender, Latham was pulling back.

  ‘You’re heady stuff, Miss Fereday,’ he stated, his voice thick in his throat. ‘I’m trying like hell to remember that it’s Sunday morning, I’m in the sitting-room in your home, and that your sister could come in at any moment.’

  ‘I don’t think she will,’ Belvia smiled, knowing it for a fact. But then, trying to get her head together after the nonsense he had made of it, she asked, ‘Um—er—will you be in touch with my father about his business, do you suppose? Er—will you invest in his company, do you—?’ She broke off. Latham was looking at her with a most serious look in his eyes. ‘What...?’ she questioned chokily, and felt one of his hands come up again to the side of her face.

  ‘What do you think, my sweet love? Should I let him have the investment he needs—send in my own men to ride shotgun? He won’t like it—but he won’t get a better offer. Or—’ his arm about her shoulders tightened ‘—should I let my father-in-law’s firm go under?’

  ‘Father-in-law?’ she croaked.

  ‘In case you haven’t realised it, dearest love, that’s what he’ll be to me when, as soon as I can arrange it, you become my wife.’

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped, pink tingeing her cheeks, her heart racing fit to burst—and Latham started to look anxious.

  ‘You are going to marry me, aren’t you?’ he demanded sharply. ‘Hell’s teeth! God knows I don’t deserve you, but—’

  ‘I’d like very much to marry you,’ Belvia cut in quickly, her voice little above a whisper.

  He checked. ‘What did you say?’ he asked urgently.

  ‘I’d like to be Mrs Latham Tavenner as soon as you can arrange it, please,’ she said, and heard his small sound of utter delight—and the next she knew she was crushed up against his heart—where she wanted to be.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-8569-9

  The Sister Secret

  Copyright © 1995 by Jessica Steele

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