Knight to the Rescue

by Miranda Lee

  ‘I...don’t know where to start,’ she sobbed, and looked down at the floor. Tears ran down her cheeks and dripped from her nose. ‘You must hate me. Everyone hates me. Everyone except Warwick. He’s been...amazingly caring and understanding.’

  ‘He loves you,’ Audrey managed to say.

  ‘Yes,’ Lavinia nodded. ‘I can see that now. I never thought he did. I thought...’ She shook her head. ‘The day we were married he told me he didn’t want children. I was crushed. I wanted a child. But all Warwick seemed to need from me was sex. I used to think it was because he wasn’t capable of loving anyone after your mother’s death. He even sent you off to boarding-school. But then I saw how he so looked forward to your coming home in the holidays and I was deeply jealous. I hated the place you held in his heart,’ Lavinia confessed unhappily.

  ‘You shouldn’t have, Lavinia,’ Audrey said kindly. ‘I used to think Father didn’t love me at all. I only realised recently that he finds it hard to show his love, to be demonstrative.’

  ‘Yes, so he’s been telling me, but I too thought he didn’t love me, especially when as the years went by he seemed to withdraw further from me. Sex became less important to him. He found other interests, golf and collecting art. I felt...neglected. I...I did things... Things I deeply regret.’

  Audrey’s stomach turned over. Russell, she thought. She’s talking about Russell...

  ‘When you started blossoming and then produced Elliot, I was green with envy. I...I went really crazy. I wanted to strike out at you, and Warwick. I thought if I got Elliot to go to bed with me I would soothe this devil that was raging within me. But Elliot didn’t touch me, Audrey. I swear it! Don’t ever doubt he loves you. He does. Very deeply. I don’t think he realised how much till all this happened. I’m to blame for everything, your break-up with Elliot, your accident. You have to believe me!’

  Audrey stared into those wild black eyes, full of such pain and remorse, and finally saw the truth. It hit her like a physical blow. ‘I do, Lavinia. I do.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ she cried. ‘Thank God. Maybe now I’ll be able to live with myself at last.’

  ‘Lavinia?’ Audrey said shakily, her heart racing.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you mind leaving me now? There’s something I have to do...’

  ‘Oh... Yes, of course. Thank you again, Audrey, for listening to me. I hope that some day you might find it in your heart to forgive me too.’

  The moment Lavinia left the room, Audrey snatched up the phone next to her bed, her hands trembling as she dialled.

  ‘Elliot Knight speaking,’ he answered on the third ring.

  Audrey sucked in a silent gasp. How dreadful he sounded. So lifeless and dull. Not like her Elliot at all.

  Her heart groaned with regret. I’ve done this to him, me and my stupid lack of trust. Only an innocent man suffered like this. Only an innocent man would have persisted after being so cruelly rejected. Oh, how blind I’ve been!

  ‘Elliot?’

  The silence at the other end was like a dagger in her heart. She could feel Elliot’s torment like a tangible thing, piercing into her soul.

  ‘Elliot, I’m so sorry,’ she cried. ‘I know you didn’t do anything wrong. Forgive me for ever doubting you. I...please come in and see me.’

  She waited breathlessly for him to speak but still he was silent. Or so she thought. But when his voice finally came down the line, choked with emotion, she knew he’d been struggling to regain his composure. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he rasped.

  It took him twenty minutes, no doubt another record since the Royal North Shore Hospital was hardly on Newport’s doorstep. Audrey had planned how she would greet him, with warm smiles and loving words. Instead she took one look at his ravaged face and darkly ringed eyes and burst into tears.

  Elliot looked shattered for a moment. But then he came forward to sink down beside her bed and gather her into his arms. ‘Oh, Audrey,’ he groaned. ‘My darling...my sweetest love...’

  They just held each other for a long long time. Several nurses peeped in, and went away, smiling happily.

  * * *

  ‘It’s just as well dear old Russell’s gone to New Guinea,’ Elliot said a long time later. ‘Because if he hadn’t I’d pulverise the bastard! No wonder you jumped to the conclusions you did, after what he said to you.’

  ‘I still should have given you a chance to explain,’ Audrey murmured, ‘how you were half-dressed that day because you went back to bed with a migraine.’

  Elliot nodded. ‘Once I took some pain-killers I was soon out like a light. I was sound asleep when Lavinia knocked and I didn’t have enough presence of mind not to let her in. Besides, she pretended she was concerned about you and wanted to see if you were all right. I didn’t ask her to come, Audrey.’

  ‘I know that now, but it was such an amazing coincidence, her showing up on the one day I didn’t come home for lunch.’

  ‘It was no coincidence. Edward had mentioned the staff medicals when he’d been at Warwick’s for drinks at the weekend. She knew exactly where you’d be. When she started trying to seduce me, I really took her to task, told her she should wake up to herself before Warwick divorced her. Then I hauled her over the coals over her treatment of you. By the time you arrived, I think my words were beginning to sink in. She seemed genuinely upset. But after your accident she really cracked up. Lavinia is a very remorseful woman, believe me.’

  ‘I know. She came to see me. But it wasn’t only her so much who opened my eyes. It was Yvonne...’

  ‘Aaah.... She gave you my message, did she, about my not being a Russell?’

  ‘Yes. How I could have ever believed you could act like him I don’t know.’

  ‘I wasn’t always so noble, Audrey. But I’ve changed.’

  ‘Moira changed you,’ she said simply.

  Elliot was taken aback. ‘Why do you say that? What do you know about Moira?’

  ‘Yvonne told me a lot about Moira. And about you.’

  ‘Me? She knows very little about me!’

  ‘Doesn’t she? She was a close friend of Moira’s, Elliot. Women friends confide in each other. Women don’t have to put on a macho show, like men. They can open up to each other without fear of being ridiculed, or thought less of.’

  His grey eyes clouded over with deep thought. ‘That must be quite something,’ he murmured.

  ‘You can always open up to me, Elliot,’ she said gently. ‘That’s what true love is all about. You need never feel alone, never keep deep dark secrets.’

  He stared at her for a long time, his eyes deeply thoughtful. Then he picked up her hand and spoke in a low measured voice.

  ‘In that case, there is something I’d like to tell you, to explain my past attitude to love.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There was this girl once...’

  Audrey tried not to look startled. A girl? He couldn’t possibly be talking about Moira here.

  ‘She was rich...beautiful...sexy...I was twenty-two at the time. It was my first year on the European skiing circuit. Felicity was her name, and following the ski-season her game. Only I didn’t know that at the time. I fell madly in love with her. She told me she really loved me back and wanted to know everything about me. I’ve never liked talking about my past but she kept on and on at me till it all came out, about my—’

  His eyes snapped up. ‘Did Yvonne tell you about my childhood, and my...mother?’

  Audrey nodded. ‘I know she was an alcoholic and abandoned you when you were eight. I also know about the foster homes and the institution...’

  For a second Elliot looked annoyed, but then he nodded too, a wry smile softening his annoyance. ‘Moira always was a sticky-beak into people’s pasts. She thought their past held the key to their future. Not an excuse, but a key...’

  A very smart woman, your Moira, Audrey thought.

  ‘Anyway, I was too dumb to notice Felicity’s withdrawal when she found out I’
d been a charity case. When she didn’t come to my room the next night I went in search of her. I found her all right...’

  There was no denying the black cynicism in Elliot’s voice.

  ‘In bed with another man?’

  ‘Not quite. In bed with two other men.’

  Audrey cringed with disgust.

  ‘Yes. Not a pretty picture. She didn’t even know I came and went, she was so—er—busy.’

  ‘Oh, Elliot. I can see that must have made you very bitter about love and women.’

  ‘Partly. But that’s not the point of the story.’

  ‘I...I don’t understand.’

  ‘I realised very quickly, you see, that I’d never loved Felicity at all, that my feelings had been entirely sexual. She was my first woman, you see. Unfortunately, my cold reaction to Felicity’s disloyalty only reinforced what I already suspected about myself. That I was a hard bastard who’d had every scrap of real love and caring torn out of me during my younger years. After that, I plunged into a life of transitory sexual relationships, never turning a hair when each was over. It wasn’t till I met Moira that I realised I could actually be friends with a woman.’

  He smiled a rueful, remembering smile. ‘Do you know, she actually said that, if I was such a black-hearted rogue, then why did I only have affairs with the sort of older woman whose hearts wouldn’t be too badly broken? Of course I told her she was crazy, that I was rotten through and through. At which she only laughed and suggested that in that case I should move in with her so that she could salvage my soul.’

  ‘Which she did...’

  Elliot shook his head. ‘No, Audrey. Moira didn’t salvage me at all. While I was married to her I still did exactly what I liked, when I liked, my only concession to my marriage being that I gave up sleeping with other women. I hurt her, Audrey, with my aloofness, my indifference. For Moira truly loved me. She told me just before she died. It...rather broke me up. And made me vow never to hurt anyone like that again...’

  He closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. ‘But I did... With you...’ He heaved a ragged sigh. ‘Hell, I tried not to. I came home after dropping you off that first Friday night and broke the world record for long cold showers. And what did you do? Called me up, conned me into seeing you again then showed up looking like a goddess. I kept telling myself hands off, but somehow my body didn’t get the message. Nor my heart. For while I was wanting to make love to you, I also ached to cherish and protect you, to give you everything I thought you deserved. But I’d spent too many years not listening to my heart to take notice of its new message. And too many years listening to my body to ignore its very familiar demands.’

  He reached out and gently touched her face. ‘Yet, in a way, it was sex that showed me the difference between what I felt for you and any previous woman. In the past I could satiate my desires with frequency. But with you, Audrey... The more I made love to you, the more I wanted and needed you. You made me feel so special, my darling, so loved. If anyone has salvaged me, sweet thing, it was you...with your gloriously unselfish nature, your kind and trusting soul, your true beauty...’

  He kissed her then, his lips trembling with emotion. ‘It took the shock of seeing you unconscious in that car to make me wake up to myself. I prayed for your life that day, Audrey. Prayed hard. And I vowed that if God gave you back to me I would never hurt you again as long as I lived. I love you, Audrey. Love you terribly. And I want to marry you, have babies with you. Will you take a chance and say yes?’

  Audrey’s heart quivered with joy. ‘Oh, Elliot... Yes. Yes. Oh, you’ve made me so happy.’

  ‘I hope so, my darling. Because if anyone deserves to be happy you do.’

  * * *

  The music started up and Audrey took her father’s arm, giving him a nervous but loving glance as she did so. He looked very handsome and dignified, every inch the proud father of the bride. Not to mention the proud father of a babe-to-be, Lavinia having recently announced the warming news that she was going to have a baby.

  ‘You look so beautiful,’ he whispered as they started the walk down the aisle behind the matron of honour. ‘And so does your friend. That deep red is very becoming on her.’

  Audrey smiled, remembering how Yvonne had initially resisted her offer to be the bridal attendant opposite Nigel as best man. ‘But I’m too old!’ she protested.

  ‘You’d better just go along with what she wants, Yvonne,’ Elliot said with a sigh. ‘God knows what happened to the sweet malleable young thing I fell in love with. She’s turned into a real tartar! Do you know what she told me the other day? That I had to go back to work—said she can’t have the father of her children lounging around the house all day like some gigolo. Well, I ask you!’

  They all laughed and Yvonne gave way.

  Now the big moment had come and Audrey was drifting down the aisle, past her smiling friends and relatives, all of them giving her admiring glances. Then suddenly Yvonne turned the corner at the end of the aisle and Audrey saw Elliot, standing there, waiting for her.

  Her eyes glazed and she was reliving it all—that first moment in the coffee-lounge, with her gallant knight coming to her rescue; their wonderful weekend of lovemaking down at the chalet; their long long talks which often extended well into the night nowadays; and now this... Her eyes cleared to focus on Elliot... This was the best moment of all, when they were about to pledge themselves to each other forever.

  She reached him and he took her hand, smiling down at her with so much love in his face. ‘Not nervous, are you?’ he asked softly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too...’

  The minister coughed, then began to speak. ‘We are gathered here together in the sight of God...to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony...’

  Bystanders were to tell the tale for years afterwards of the wedding they had witnessed between the strikingly handsome groom and delicately fair bride, of the way they looked at each other during the ceremony, and how, by the time the minister pronounced them man and wife, there was hardly a dry eye in the church.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-8428-9

  Knight to the Rescue

  Copyright © 1992 by Miranda Lee

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k with friends