Читать книгу The Strength Of Desire - Alison Fraser, Alison Fraser - Страница 6

TEARS streamed down Hope’s face as the radio played the song for which Jack was best known:

‘The sun in your hair,

Pure gold.

The sky in your eyes,

Cloudless blue.

How can I not love you?

The stars in——

She switched it off, and sank down on a chair. It was a shock. Not the song, but the announcement beforehand: ‘Jacques Delacroix died last night in a road accident.’

Why had no one told her? Why hadn’t Guy? The thought of Jack’s brother could still make her angry. Her mind quickly moved elsewhere.

Maxine. She needed to tell Maxine before anyone else did. How would she react? She was difficult at the best of times.

My fault, Hope acknowledged, all too aware of the way her daughter was going. At twelve she could pass for fourteen—a moody, resentful fourteen. My fault because I was too young.

Seventeen she had been when she’d met Jacques—or Jack, as he’d been called. Just turned eighteen when she’d married him. Pregnant shortly after. Ridiculous.

That’s what Guy had said, of course. Guy DelacroixJack’s little brother. Hope’s lips twisted at the term. That was what Jack had called him and that was what Hope had expected. A younger, paler version of Jack. But Guy had been in no one’s shadow.

She remembered their first meeting. It had been at a London restaurant. Jack had invited him to lunch to meet Jack’s future bride. He’d driven up from Cornwall where he lived and had arrived late. Jack and she had already been seated at the rear of the restaurant and had not noticed his approach.

He had appeared at their table and Hope had just stared in surprise. Jack’s little brother had turned out to be anything but little.

At six feet two, he was several inches taller and broader than Jack, and, on first glance, actually looked older, with his dark hair and steel-grey eyes and a slightly weathered complexion.

The brothers were totally unalike. At thirty-five Jack could have passed for twenty-five. Blond, boyish and handsome, he was a slim five feet ten. He had all the charm of an older man with the outlook of a much younger one. The age-gap between Hope and Jack-seventeen years—seemed nothing.

Nothing until Guy Delacroix pointed it out. He stared at her, long and hard, then spoke to Jacques, excluding her.

He said, ‘Es-tu fou, Jacques? Elle est une enfant.’

He did not look at Hope. If he had, he might have seen from her face that she wasn’t stupid. She could certainly translate basic French: ‘Are you mad, Jack? She is a child.’

She waited for Jacques to deny, to resent, to explode, but he just laughed. ‘Peut-être. Mais une très belle enfant, n’est-ce pas?’ He smiled at his brother.

Hope could translate that, too. O level French was one of the few she’d managed to acquire at the trendy boarding-school where her father had sent her.

‘Perhaps,’ Jack conceded. ‘But a very beautiful child, isn’t she?’

Guy’s eyes slid back to her. From the expression on his face, he didn’t agree.

Hope didn’t care what he thought of her looks. She responded, ‘Je ne suis pas une enfante ni stupide.’

‘I am not a child or stupid,’ she informed Guy Delacroix, blue eyes narrowing in temper.

Jack looked surprised, then laughed again. He had not known she could speak French, but was unembarrassed by it.

If anything, his brother looked even further down his long French nose, his thin lips twisting. Hope’s first impression of a powerfully handsome man was rapidly forgotten, as she thought him mean-eyed and cold.

‘Do you wish me to apologise?’ he directed at her, not one degree warmer.

‘Not if it’s going to kill you,’ she retorted in a careless tone.

They exchanged looks again, registering their true feelings. Hate at first sight.

Jack seemed amused as he suggested, ‘Shall we start again? In English, this time, I think…Hope Gardener, meet Guy Delacroix. My fiancée. My brother.’ He nodded from one to the other.

After a moment’s hesitation, Guy Delacroix muttered a scrupulously polite, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ as he extended his hand towards her.

His personality seemed to change with his language. From Gallic temper to English dispassion in one easy move. At any rate, it was the first and last time he ever spoke French in front of her.

Hope wondered which was real as she reluctantly returned his brief handshake and he sat down. She recalled what Jack had told her about the Delacroix family. Their mother was English, from Cornwall. She had married a Frenchman and they had spent their early years in Paris. When their father, Armand Delacroix, had died, Jack had been twelve, Guy seven. A couple of years later they had returned to live in Cornwall.

On first impression, Guy had seemed the more French, but, as she listened to his ensuing conversation with Jack, she revised that opinion. He was a lawyer who talked in dry, lawyer terms. Jack allowed him to handle his business affairs. With Guy based in Cornwall, inconveniently far from London, Hope assumed Jack did this as a favour.

Not that Guy Delacroix appeared particularly grateful. If anything, his tone to Jack was one of reproof as they talked of contracts and percentages. Jack, in contrast, was his usual affable self, uninterested in money or the business matters behind his work as a performer.

Hope was on his side. Jack was an artist. He sang in a gravelly voice that was adored by millions of women, and wrote love-songs that wrenched the heart. Who could blame him if he didn’t want to discuss the boring mechanics behind the brilliant concert performances he gave?

‘Come on, Guy,’ he eventually said to his brother, ‘lighten up. Hope doesn’t want to listen to the niceties of contractual law. Do you, chérie?’ He smiled sexily at her, and she smiled back, the look in her eyes sharing secrets.

‘She might, if it stops you ending up bankrupt,’ Guy Delacroix’s voice intruded gratingly.

Hope’s eyes switched to him, questioning. What was he implying? That she was just interested in Jack’s wealth?

That was the way Jack took it, laughing a little as he said, ‘My little brother is a cynic. He thinks you just love me for my money…Why don’t we convince him otherwise?’ he suggested silkily, and leaned across the table to kiss her.

Hope wasn’t really given a chance to respond. She gasped a little in surprise and Jack slid his tongue into her mouth with an intimacy that quite shocked her. Before she could sort out her feelings, he broke off the kiss and grinned at his brother.

Hope’s face suffused with colour. Because they were in a booth at the rear of the restaurant, only Guy Delacroix had witnessed the kiss, but that was enough. Though his face was rigid, there was disgust in his eyes.

Jack seemed unaware of it as he laughed, ‘I’m a lucky man,’ then started relaying plans for their wedding.

He explained that Hope didn’t want a big ceremony, and they had decided on a register office. Jack asked Guy to be a witness. Hope knew instantly that Guy would refuse, even before he went through the motions of asking the date and discovering he had court commitments he couldn’t break.

Jack was clearly disappointed. He had no suspicion that his brother might be lying. Hope caught Guy Delacroix’s eye again, and was certain of it. He had no intention of giving support to a marriage he considered disastrous from the outset.

No, Guy wasn’t a hypocrite. He never pretended to be anything but displeased. When Jack excused himself during the meal, his brother didn’t hang about. He went on the attack within seconds.

‘How old are you? Sixteen?’ he guessed, lips thinning.

‘Nearly eighteen,’ Hope snapped back, immediately on the defensive.

‘That old,’ he muttered, drily sarcastic. ‘I assume you’ve asked for the day off school—for the wedding, I mean,’ he added in the same vein.

‘I left school last year,’ Hope relayed, quite unnecessarily, she was sure.

A black brow was raised in disapproval. ‘At sixteen.’ ‘Yes. Right.’ Hope gave up trying to win her future brother-in-law’s approval. Temper made her run on, ‘Uneducated as well as young and stupid. Why don’t I just give you a list of all my faults, then you won’t have to bother grubbing around for them yourself?’

He looked taken aback for a moment, having underestimated her ability to fight back, but it didn’t discourage him.

‘Why don’t you?’ he echoed, bland in the face of her temper.

‘Let’s see,’ Hope muttered tightly. ‘Well, I have no job or prospects of one. I have no money and, very soon, no home. I get hay fever in the summer, and chest complaints in the winter…Oh, and the women in my family tend to develop thick ankles by thirty,’ she added, the most ridiculous thing she could think of saying.

Just for a moment she glimpsed the merest hint of amusement on his mouth, but it quickly disappeared. Guy Delacroix had decided to disapprove of her on sight, and nothing was going to change his opinion.

‘Your family…’ He picked out another line of attack. ‘How do they feel about your marrying someone seventeen years older?’

“They feel nothing,’ she retorted, and told him bluntly, ‘My mother died when I was born, my father a couple of months ago.’

His eyes narrowed, as if he acknowledged the pain of the last, but he expressed no sympathy. Instead he asked, ‘Did you meet Jack before or after he died?’

‘I’ve known Jack for years,’ she could claim quite truthfully. ‘My father produced a couple of his early albums.’

‘Gardener…’ He mused over her name, then worked out, ‘Max Gardener was your father?’

She nodded, surprised that Jack hadn’t told him that.

He read her mind, saying, ‘Jack doesn’t believe in giving much detail. I heard you were young, blonde and beautiful…and, of course, the love of his life. That was all.’

But he hadn’t believed it, Hope realised from Guy’s tone. He thought she was just another of Jack’s conquests.

‘Have you slept with him yet?’ he added, almost offhandedly.

‘What?’ Hope stared at him incredulously.

‘Have you slept with him?’ he repeated, as if it were a quite normal question to ask a complete stranger.

‘I…We…It’s none of your business!’ she finally exploded.

He watched as colour suffused her face. ‘You haven’t,’ he concluded. ‘Well, perhaps you should. I can recommend it as one of the quickest ways of discovering incompatibility.’

‘How do you know we’re incompatible?’ Hope retorted angrily.

‘Apart from the seventeen-year age-gap, you mean?’ His tone was heavily ironic.

‘You’re just jealous!’ she accused in return.

He smiled thinly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You might be beautiful, but schoolgirls aren’t my thing.’

Hope glared, sure he’d deliberately misunderstood. ‘Jealous of Jack, I meant. His talent. His fame. His—-’

‘Money?’ he suggested wryly.

Hope went from glaring to fuming. Guy Delacroix obviously had her written off as a gold-digger and wasn’t about to change his mind.

He continued at her furious silence, ‘No, I can’t say I’ve ever been jealous of Jack. I have sufficient money for my own needs. Talent…Well, admittedly writing love-songs is hardly my forte.’ He made a slight face, dismissing such a skill as unimportant. ‘And fame, well, that’s a dubious privilege at the best of times…But I suppose it all seems very glamorous to you.’

‘I’m not that naive.’ Hope was well aware of the price of fame. Her father had once been famous as a record producer—and rich. But he’d paid for it. When the popularity of his music had waned he’d felt a failure, and sought solace in a whisky bottle.

‘No, I suppose not,’ Guy Delacroix conceded. ‘You must have met many famous people through your father.’

‘When I was little,’ Hope replied, ‘but not lately…People in show business don’t like to associate with failures. They think it’s catching,’ she commented cynically.

He raised a brow, surprised by her astuteness. ‘What did he die from?’ he asked bluntly.

‘Cancer—not catching either,’ she said on a bitter note, ‘but it still kept them away…Apart from his funeral-they returned in droves for that. It’s a pity he missed it. He would have appreciated seeing his ex-wives sobbing their little hearts out at the loss of their alimony.’

‘How many?’ he enquired.

‘Ex-wives? Three, but only two attended the funeral,’ Hope recounted.

He pulled a wry face at the number. ‘Does that total include your mother?’

‘No, she was never an ex,’ Hope declared stiffly, but didn’t expand on it.

She knew, for her father had told her often enough, that her mother had been the great love in his life. It had sounded sentimental, but it had also been true. It was a fact that each wife, in turn, had come to face.

‘Is that where you met Jack again? At the funeral?’ ‘No, he came before, in the last week or two when Dad became really ill. Then later he offered to help with the arrangements.’ Hope’s voice revealed how grateful she’d been to Jack. He’d been a true friend to them both, and her love for him had developed even as she’d struggled with the pain of grief.

“That was good of him.’ Guy’s tone was flat, but there was a look of scepticism in his eye.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Hope demanded in return.

‘Nothing, just…’ He hesitated for the first time, then switched to saying, ‘Look, we got off on the wrong foot. My fault, I admit. I misunderstood the situation.’

‘That’s all right.’ Hope was ready to forgive him. She didn’t want to be enemies with Jack’s family.

‘However,’ he continued in a serious vein, ‘I still feel you really should consider what you’re doing. You’re only seventeen. You’ve just lost your father. You’re vulnerable…’

‘I can take care of myself,’ Hope claimed, but not quite convincingly, as her fingers plucked agitatedly at the tablecloth.

‘Fine, take care of yourself,’ he echoed, stilling her hand with his. ‘Just don’t let Jack do it for you.’

He spoke with such force that Hope’s eyes flew to his. She met their steady grey gaze and for a moment saw the man behind the dispassionate mask. She sensed his strength, and was scared by his certainty. For a moment she almost listened to him, then Jack suddenly returned to the table.

‘Holding hands?’ Jack enquired, not quite casually, as he tried to assess the situation.

Hope flushed although she had nothing to feel guilty about. Not then. She hastily pulled her fingers from Guy’s grip.

He was unflustered, drawling to his brother, ‘Not exactly. I was just trying to persuade Hope that she was about to make the biggest mistake of her young life.’

‘By marrying me?’ Jack concluded, and laughed out loud when his brother nodded. ‘That’s what I love about my little brother. You can always trust him to be totally up front about things…Well, you’re wrong this time, Guy. Hope and I are going to make the distance. Just watch…’

‘Just watch.’ Hope shut her eyes as she recalled Jack’s words all those years ago. Guy had watched all right. He’d watched his words come true. He’d watched their marriage disintegrate. He’d…more than watched.

Hope caught the direction of her thoughts and put a brake on them. She wasn’t going down that road again.

She looked at her watch, and, realising she’d lost almost an hour, got up quickly to fix her face.

She’d just finished washing when Maxine announced her presence with the usual banging doors. She hadn’t time to put on make-up before her daughter tracked her down to the bathroom. For once Hope wished she’d taken a less liberal attitude on privacy.

Maxine walked in, took one look at her face and demanded, ‘What’s wrong? You’ve been crying.’

It sounded like an accusation, but then everything did at the moment with Maxine.

‘No…Well, actually, yes.’ Hope wished she’d rehearsed this speech. ‘It’s…it’s your father.’

‘My father? Don’t tell me—he’s dead,’ Maxine said, but purely for dramatic effect.

While Hope searched futilely for the right words, her face gave away the truth.

Maxine shook her head as if denying it, then started to back away from her.

‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Hope made to reach out a hand but her daughter kept backing away. ‘A car accident. I don’t know the details. It was on the radio. I’m sorry—-’

‘Well, I’m not!’ Maxine almost shouted at her. ‘And don’t expect me to cry! Just don’t…’

With that, Maxine turned and ran from the room.

Hope followed her daughter to her room. She found her face down on the bed, crying like a baby.

Hope sat down beside her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Maxine stiffened, then, turning on her back, sobbed out, ‘I don’t care. I hate him! I hate him!’

‘I know. I know. It’s all right,’ Hope said in comforting tones, and stroked strands of hair from her daughter’s tear-soaked face.

Maxine looked at her in utter misery, then accused, ‘It was your fault, all your fault!’

It hurt. Of course it hurt, but Hope did not retaliate. Maxine was right. The whole mess was her fault.

Hope contained her own feelings, but Maxine read the pain in her mother’s eyes, and hesitated between attack and remorse. In the end she sat up and threw her arms round Hope’s neck, and began crying again.

‘I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!’ she cried into her mother’s neck.

‘No, I know.’ Hope held her daughter and rocked her gently, as she had when Maxine was a baby.

But her thoughts were elsewhere. With another baby. A baby held briefly in her arms, all those years ago.

She remembered how much she’d wanted children, how she’d imagined being a mother would make her complete. She hadn’t questioned why she’d felt incomplete.

She’d also imagined Jack would be happy, too, but, of course, she’d been quite wrong…

‘You’re what?’ he had almost shouted at her when she’d told him.

The joy had drained from her face as she’d repeated, ‘I’m pregnant. Three months.’

She’d waited and waited. For a smile. A flicker of happiness. A gesture of concern. Anything other than Jack’s expression of utter dismay.

He’d recovered himself eventually, saying, ‘It’s a shock. I thought we’d have some time together. We agreed…’

‘I know.’ Hope nodded. They had agreed to take precautions, but something had gone wrong. ‘I didn’t plan it. I didn’t realise you’d mind so much.

‘It’s not that,’ Jack denied, although his lack of enthusiasm was almost palpable. He strode across to the drinks cabinet and fixed himself a stiff drink, before running on, ‘It just doesn’t fit in very well with our plans. My world tour starts in three months and won’t finish before the baby would be born…Perhaps we should wait.’

‘Wait?’ Hope echoed, confused. ‘Wait before you go on tour, you mean?’

‘No, that’s impossible. The tour can’t be cancelled,’ he told her firmly. ‘I just thought…Well, if you’re only three months along…’ He left the idea hanging there.

Hope caught it and her heart sank. ‘You think we should cancel the baby.’ She finally said the words aloud. They were like stones in her heart.

‘I’d hardly term it that,’ Jack said, ‘but, yes, I feel we should consider the alternatives…’

Perhaps Maxine was right. It really was her fault. If she’d listened to Jack, terminated that baby and waited for another, their marriage might have survived. But that baby had been real to her, a person even in the early stages of pregnancy. To terminate on a matter of convenience had been abhorrent to her.

‘Look, Maxine.’ She spoke quietly to her daughter now. ‘I realise you haven’t seen much of your father over the years, but, as I’ve explained before, it was never personal to you.’

‘I know—he didn’t like children.’ Maxine grossly simplified what Hope had actually told her over the years. “Then why did he come those times? Why did he bother?’

Hope had asked herself the same question many times. After ten years’ silence, Jack had turned up on impulse on her doorstep one afternoon, and been all charm to a daughter who, at ten, was already promising to be beautiful. With Hope’s blue eyes and wide, smiling mouth, Maxine still managed to look quite different, her features more defined and her hair a mass of thick black waves.

‘It would have been better if he’d never come,’ Maxine said now, her tears turned to anger as she scrambled off the bed and went to wash in the basin in her room.

Hope agreed with her, but at the time she’d been unable to control the situation. Jack had wanted a daughter, for a while at least, and Maxine had wanted a father. But Jack’s interest hadn’t, of course, lasted.

‘I’m sorry about the way things turned out, Maxine,’ Hope said gently, when her daughter finished drying her face.

She realised the inadequacy of her words even before Maxine looked at her with accusing eyes. ‘Are you? You never wanted me to go places with him.’

Hope remained silent. It was true enough. In fact, after a year of Jack letting Maxine down with a string of broken promises, Hope had deliberately put an end to the relationship.

‘That’s Katie,’ Maxine added as the doorbell downstairs rang. ‘We’re going to do our homework together. I’d better let her in.’

‘Yes, OK.’ Hope blinked a little as her daughter disappeared downstairs to greet her best friend. She heard them laughing in the hallway. From utter misery to girlish giggles in one short move.

How wonderful it would be to be twelve again. To forget so easily. To live in the present. To be free of the past.

Hope had never quite managed it. She was thirty-two next birthday, and had spent twelve years on her own, yet she was still haunted by the past, still tortured by a sense of failure…

She was six months pregnant and miserable. She had read that women bloomed in similar circumstances but she seemed to have wilted. Jack was fed up with her. She didn’t blame him. She was fed up with herself.

“There’s no choice,’ Jack said for the hundredth time as they drove down to Cornwall. ‘It would have been different if your pregnancy was straightforward, but, with your iron-levels, you’d be fainting all over the place. You can’t come on tour with me and you can’t stay at home.’

‘I could have stayed with Vicki,’ Hope lamented, still hoping that Jack might change his mind.

‘Vicki,’ Jack repeated her best friend’s name, ‘is a nice kid, but, be honest, how much use would she be in a crisis? She is the original dizzy blonde.’

Hope bristled silently, but couldn’t deny the truth of it. Vicki had been enormous fun at boarding-school and a good friend since. Catering for the needs of a pregnant woman, however, wasn’t one of her talents.

‘Anyway, Vicki’s asked if she can come on the tour,’ Jack reminded her. ‘I don’t know if she’ll be much help, but, as a favour to you, I’ve agreed.’

‘All right,’ Hope sighed, resigned to her fate.

Three months staying in the wilds of Cornwall with Jack’s mother. That she didn’t mind. It was the fact that the lady also happened to be brother Guy’s mother. Did this mean she might have regular contact with him?

She had not seen Guy Delacroix since their first meeting. He had been as good as his word and not attended their wedding, although his mother had.

In her late fifties, Caroline Delacroix had seemed younger. Her hair was silvery-blonde and her face, despite signs of aging, still had an English-rose bloom to it. She was a sharp, intelligent woman, without being an intellectual, and she spoke her mind.

‘I don’t suppose you’re going to listen to me, but I think you’re probably too young and certainly too good for my son,’ she’d finally announced, after they’d taken tea together.

Already liking the woman, Hope hadn’t been too upset by her comments. ‘Your other son’s already said the same. Well, the too young part, anyway.’

‘Yes, I understand Guy tried to warn you,’ Caroline had confirmed, ‘and that you and he didn’t exactly hit it off.’

‘Not so you’d notice.’ Hope had made a slight face. ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing much. Just that you were “bloody impossible”,’ his mother had confided, but with an amused air that softened any offence. ‘With Guy, that could be a compliment. He doesn’t like women who fall over themselves to please him. Unfortunately, most do.’

‘Well, this one won’t,’ Hope had vowed then to Caroline Delacroix, and vowed now, as she travelled down to the Delacroix family home in Cornwall.

It was actually her first visit. Jack’s mother had come to London to meet her before the wedding, and, almost straight after it, had disappeared on a two-month tour of China. On her return, she’d stopped over briefly in London, issuing an invitation for Hope to come down to Cornwall any time she liked. But Jack’s work schedule had precluded even a weekend trip, and Hope’s only recent contact with her mother-in-law had been over the telephone. The older woman had been pleased at the prospect of being a grandmother, and had willingly agreed to her spending the final months of her pregnancy in Cornwall, but Hope still felt she was intruding when they finally drove up to the Delacroix family home.

It was called Heron’s View, and Hope could immediately see why. It sat on a clifftop overlooking the Atlantic and was the most wonderful house she had ever seen. It was a house from a fairy-story, with turrets and towers, walled gardens and secret places. It was large and imposing without being grandiose or ostentatious. It suggested a bygone era, of the years before the First World War, when large families were the norm, and Hope could imagine voices of children echoing through the twists and turns of the many stone passages.

‘It belonged to my father’s family. There were seven of them, and he inherited as the eldest,’ Caroline relayed as they stood in the hall which was at the centre of the house, with rooms leading off and a wide staircase leading up. ‘He, in turn, gave it to my eldest sister who never married. She died a couple of years ago.’

‘Is that when you moved in?’ Hope quizzed.

‘Oh, no, I’ve always lived here—’ Caroline smiled round the shabby hall with pleasure ‘—apart from the ten years I spent in France. I returned with the boys here. My father gave it to Hetty because he felt I was secure financially, but it was always a family house. Hetty helped me bring the boys up, too, although she was rather more interested in her dogs.’

‘She had six,’ Jack put in. ‘Red setters. She dedicated her life to breeding a Cruft’s champion.’

‘Did she manage?’ Hope asked, interested.

‘Not exactly,’ Caroline replied, ‘but one of her dogs was the grandfather of a supreme champion…Anyway, I hope you like dogs.’

Hope nodded. ‘We had a retriever when I was little.’ ‘Good,’ Caroline nodded, ‘because Guy seems to have inherited some of Hetty’s fanaticism. He keeps three setters, and each is as mad as the other. I insisted he lock them away until you were settled.’

‘Guy keeps his dogs here.’ Hope trusted that was all she meant.

But a deep, drawling voice answered her. ‘Guy keeps himself here, too,’ and, as Hope’s eyes were drawn, horrified, to the back of the hall, Guy Delacroix emerged from the shadows.

‘There you are,’ Caroline greeted her son with fond exasperation. ‘I called to you that they’d arrived but you seemed to have disappeared.’

‘I was locking up the hounds, as requested,’ he answered his mother, but his eyes slid to Hope, acknowledging the difference in her.

When they had first met, she had been as slim as a reed and in the best of health, her long blonde hair silky, her complexion soft and clear. In a maternity dress, with hair escaping from a hastily tied ribbon and her skin with a bluey-white tinge, she looked like the drudge she felt.

‘You’ve changed,’ he said bluntly, and Hope could have cried.

But she was tougher than that. She asked herself if she cared what he thought, and, lying to herself, decided she didn’t.

‘You haven’t,’ she answered him, and her tone said it was a pity.

Jack recognised the enmity between them, and, if anything, was amused. But a frown lined Caroline’s forehead, as it occurred to her that life at Heron’s View might be less than smooth in the coming months.

Guy was unruffled, continuing, ‘I assume no one informed you I was in residence.’

Before Hope could answer, Jack slipped in, ‘I didn’t want to scare her off, little brother.’

‘No, I don’t imagine you did,’ Guy echoed drily, and clearly meant more than his words said.

Jack appeared to understand. He gave his brother a conspiratorial smile. It was not returned by Guy, however. He was stony-faced.

Hope wondered how these two men could be brothers. Jack was charm itself; Guy was charmless.

Their mother decided it was time to move things on. ‘Would you like to see your room? Guy suggested you might prefer some privacy, so we’ve rearranged things to give you most of the west wing.’

‘Thank you,’ Hope acknowledged in a small voice, but didn’t look at Guy. She wasn’t fooled. It was the family that was to have privacy from her.

Caroline led the way upstairs while Guy and Jack went to take in her cases. The west wing, as the name suggested, was almost a separate part of the house. It was reached by a long corridor off the main stairway. As well as a large double bedroom, it boasted an adjoining bathroom and dressing-room. The most interesting feature, however, was a perfectly circular room inset in one of the turrets. It had been turned into a small sitting-room, with a wonderful view over the cliffs and the Atlantic beyond. From it led a staircase that wound down to the back courtyard.

Hope loved the room, and didn’t hide her enthusiasm from Caroline. The older woman smiled in relief, saying, ‘Oh, I am glad you like it. I thought Guy’s taste might be a little functional for a young girl.’

‘These are Guy’s rooms?’ Hope repeated, her face falling.

Caroline realised her mistake and quickly reassured her. ‘Yes, but don’t worry. You’re not putting him out. He’s only really here at the weekends, and he was quite happy to move to the east wing.’

Anywhere, as long as it was away from her, Hope thought for a moment, then told herself not to be so paranoid. Guy Delacroix mightn’t be keen on her, but she wasn’t that important to him.

And so it appeared, in the next couple of months as she lived in limbo in the house on the cliff. Caroline was kind without being effusive. Guy was largely absent. His work was based in Truro and during the week he stayed there. If she saw him at weekends, it was only in passing or at dinner on Sundays. Pleading sickness, she could miss even that contact. If things had not gone so drastically wrong with her pregnancy, they probably could have maintained their distance for her whole stay at Heron’s View.

But things did go wrong. It was six weeks before the birth. She had seen almost as little of Jack as she had of his brother, with him returning only for the odd visit between concert dates. And separation had not improved their relationship. While she was tired from heavy pregnancy, he was running in overdrive from his tour. He longed to be doing, drinking, partying, carrying on as before, only he was chained to her by duty.

‘It’ll be all right after the baby,’ he kept saying, and Hope felt the reassurance was as much for himself as for her.

It actually made her heart sink as she realised the life Jack was planning for them. The tours and the concerts and the travelling would continue. She would go with him. The baby would stay at home with a nanny.

But Hope couldn’t share the vision. No matter how sick or how lonely she felt, she already loved the child inside her. To leave him, or her, would be an agony. But, if she didn’t, she knew she might lose Jack.

She sometimes wondered if she’d lost him already. His visits were so infrequent. Only tears had extracted a promise from him to be at her side for the week before and after the birth.

In the end he didn’t make it. The baby came early. It was terrifying.

She was alone. Caroline had offered to stay in, but Hope had insisted she go to her regular Friday bridge evening. Guy hadn’t returned from Truro.

The storm began at nine. Normally Hope wasn’t scared of a little lightning or thunder. But this wasn’t a little; this was an electric display of pyrotechnics that lit up the sky. She watched at the window of her sitting-room as the waves crashed against the cliff-face and the rain came down in a sheet. She went to another window, looking on to the courtyard, and was in time to see a bolt of lightning flash out of the sky and seem to hit the roof of Heron’s View. She started in surprise.

It was a couple of minutes before she realised it wasn’t just her heart that was contracting with fright. The baby was coming. She tried not to panic. She had rehearsed in her mind so many times what they would do, but it had always been ‘they’. Now she was on her own.

The thought occurred to her that she would always be on her own. It was a bleak prospect. She pushed it away and concentrated on the practicalities.

She went to the telephone to do the obvious—call an ambulance. The line was dead. She couldn’t believe it. She banged down the receiver, as if that might cure some temporary fault. It didn’t.

Once more she told herself not to panic, but it was harder now. What to do? Drive. Drive what? The old MGB Guy kept in one of the garages. Did it work? Where were the keys? Could she get her bump behind the steering-wheel?

A sob escaped her, but she stifled a second one. If she wanted this baby to live, she had to keep her head. Driving to the hospital wasn’t feasible. She had to wait until Caroline arrived home; that could only be two hours away, maybe three. Meanwhile she had to go downstairs while she could still move. If she didn’t, it was possible that Caroline might go to bed without checking on her.

She got to her feet and went out into the corridor and along to the main staircase. She held on tightly to the rail as she descended. She hadn’t become too large in late pregnancy, but she’d remained tired and weak through low iron-levels. She was almost downstairs when another contraction ripped through her body. Clutching her swollen stomach, she sat down on the third step and tried to breathe the pain away.

It seemed an interminable time that she sat on that step, praying for help to come. The contractions were coming every five minutes when she heard the outer door bang open. She could have cried with relief.

With what seemed the last breath in her body, she called out, ‘Caroline,’ then gasped once more as another contraction tore through her. She threw her head back, her brow damp with the sweat of effort and fear.

But it wasn’t Caroline.

Guy Delacroix came into the hall, rain dripping off his black hair. ‘It’s me.’

He took one look at Hope and assessed the situation.

She looked back—in horror. It should have been relief. Help was at last at hand. But her very first reaction was horror.

‘You’re in labour.’ He frowned in disbelief.

She nodded.

‘Have you called an ambulance?’ he added.

‘I tried,’ she breathed out. ‘The line seems to be dead.’ ‘I’ll try again.’ He crossed to the telephone in the hall.

She watched him as he confirmed that the line was dead. He seemed amazingly controlled, but then he wasn’t the one in labour.

He looked at her again, judging the urgency of the situation, before saying, ‘Right. I’ll get my car back out of the garage and bring it round.’

He left her, and Hope struggled to contain her panic. She was scared for herself. She was scared for the baby. It was far too early.

Guy returned shortly. He must have run to the garage. When he appeared at the door, Hope tried to lift herself up, but the next contraction hit her just then. The wave of pain made her sink back on the step.

He walked over to her and waited until the pain subsided before helping her up.

‘Put your arm round my shoulders,’ he instructed quietly, and, bearing much of her weight, took her out to his car. He installed her in the back where she could stretch out.

‘I’ll write a note for my mother. Hopefully she’ll follow on to be with you,’ he informed her, and returned to the house.

He was gone only a minute or two, but it seemed like an age. He arranged over her a blanket he’d brought, before climbing into the front and setting the car in motion. Hope curled up like the foetus inside her and wished it were all over.

He didn’t bother her with unnecessary conversation. He just drove. When she gasped with pain, he asked, ‘How frequent are the contractions?’

‘Every four or five minutes,’ she answered, wondering if it would mean anything to him.

Perhaps it did, as he seemed to increase his speed. It was a tortuous route down the hillside from Heron’s View to the main road, but he took the bends with practised ease, seemingly unaffected by the flashes of lightning that lit up the sky.

Hope was frightened, but his calmness helped her contain her own fear. They arrived at the hospital without mishap, and, after taking directions from a car-park attendant, Guy drove straight up to the maternity department partment entrance. Then he left her briefly to find a nurse, who recognised the situation as a far from normal labour and the next thing Hope knew she was on a hospital trolley being pushed along corridors to the delivery suite.

She was still dressed in her night gown and robe, and a midwife helped her out of the robe, but she indicated that she wished to keep her nightie on, especially with Guy Delacroix still at her side.

He stood frowning down at her, perhaps wondering how to extricate himself, then another contraction made her draw her knees up.

‘Hold her hand, Dad,’ the nurse instructed briskly. ‘I think your baby’s well on its way.’

He remained still for a moment. Hope waited for him to deny the identity that had been thrust upon him. Instead he took her hand in his.

‘He’s not—’ Hope tried to explain the true situation, but another contraction ripped through her. It was the worst yet. She couldn’t believe the pain.

She gripped Guy’s hand as if she could transfer some of the pain to him. It seemed to help. At any rate, she had no breath left for explanations as the doctor on call appeared.

Everything happened very quickly after that. She had started to haemorrhage. The doctor decided a Caesarean was the only option. Before they could wheel her into an operating theatre, she lost consciousness, still holding Guy’s hand.

They did their best, but it was already too late. Her baby, her first-born, had been a boy. A perfectly formed baby boy who had never drawn breath in the world outside.

Some time later she woke to find herself attached to a drip. Guy was by her side, waiting. He said no words. She saw the truth in his eyes.

She’d always considered him a cold, emotionless man, and perhaps he was, but that night he held her in his arms while she cried out her grief and bitterness at losing her first baby.

He was still there in the morning. He had sat by her bedside while she slept. He took her hand when she woke.

Hope bit back tears and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ for it should have been Jack who was there, Jack who was sharing her suffering.

He shook his head, and asked simply, ‘How do you feel?’

‘Empty.’ Hope put a hand to her stomach to protect her baby. But he was gone. He was dead. ‘Can I see him?’

‘If that’s what you want.’ Guy accepted her need to see the baby as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘I’ll speak to the nurse.’

He arranged it for her. The baby was brought to her, wrapped in a blue shawl. Guy sat with her while she held her child for the first time, and the last. He let her cry over that small, lifeless human being, then held her again when she cried as they took the baby away.

Somehow she survived that terrible day, and what Guy had been to her remained their secret.

Caroline appeared in the afternoon. Because of the storm, she’d stayed overnight with a friend and had just returned to find Guy’s note.

She took over from Guy at Hope’s bedside, while he went to follow up the calls he’d already made to Jack, currently on the other side of the Atlantic.

Flowers with sympathy notes arrived before Jack finally did, a day later. Only then did Guy fade into the background, possibly relieved that his brother was there to grieve with her.

But, of course, he didn’t. He talked, but his words weren’t the right ones. He tried to console her with the idea that she had been too young for a baby. Only her body didn’t think so. It longed to hold the life it had briefly created.

Jack had no desire to see their baby, either. It had never been real to him. Hope had given him a nameSamuel—but Jack never used it.

She remained in hospital for a week, then returned home to Heron’s View. Jack went back to his tour, suggesting she join him when she was properly recovered.

Perhaps it was then that she should have left him, when her love for him had already died a little with their baby. But she just couldn’t accept the failure. Growing up, she’d watched each of her father’s marriages disintegrate with frightening ease. She’d promised herself that things would be different for her. She felt there was no choice but to stay with Jack.

It must have seemed weakness to Guy Delacroix. He continued to be kind to her after she left hospital, but the kindness changed to incredulity when she announced her intention over dinner one night of flying over to the States to be with Jack.

If Caroline Delacroix had any reservations, she kept them to herself. Guy waited until his mother left the room before he expressed his.

‘You can’t go,’ he told her from across the table. ‘You look like hell.’

‘Thanks.’ Hope pulled a face but took no offence. She was growing used to Guy’s bluntness, and she was still grateful to him for looking after her during her labour, and afterwards.

‘You know what I mean,’ he accused gruffly. ‘It’s only been four weeks. The doctor said you needed to rest.’

‘Well, I won’t be working in America,’ she countered.

‘That isn’t the point!’ he went on in exasperation. ‘Who’s going to look after you if you do get sick? And don’t say Jack. He can barely look after himself.’

Out of loyalty, Hope felt she should challenge the latter comment. The trouble was that she suspected it was true. Jack could not be relied on.

‘I have to go,’ she said simply. ‘Jack’s my husband.’

She considered it an adequate reason but Guy didn’t, snapping back, ‘That’s a mistake you can remedy.’

This time Hope was hurt. ‘Why are you so against me, Guy?’

‘God, I’m not against you, Hope. That’s the last thing I am. If you knew—’ He stopped himself in mid-sentence, and changed to saying, ‘I’m just worried about you. You’re still so…’

‘Young,’ Hope concluded for him, and shook her head. ‘No, I’m not, Guy. Not any more.’

Hope didn’t think she’d ever be young again. Grief had made her old.

Guy understood, and his anger gave way to compassion. He reached across the table to lay his hand over hers. The gesture was too much for Hope. She didn’t want his pity. She didn’t want even to think what she might have wanted from Guy, had things been different.

She took her hand away and rushed from the dining-room. He didn’t follow.

She left for the States just a day later, without talking to Guy again.

But she was to return.