Читать книгу In Bed With...Collection - Emma Darcy, Emma Darcy - Страница 54

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MAGGIE didn’t know what would make her feel right. She didn’t know what to do. She lifted her gaze to a sky so endlessly blue it seemed to stretch on to infinity. Her heart ached with so many griefs, her mind couldn’t encompass them all. They slid into a desperate, silent plea for help.

Vivian... Vivian...

Where was he? Did he see it had gone terribly wrong? It was such wicked, painful irony...the marriage he’d wanted between her and Beau...the child to carry on his family line...it was in her power to deliver on the promise...yet her soul revolted against accepting the form it was taking.

Give it a chance...

I did. I tried. It can’t work like this, she cried, exonerating herself from the burden laid on her.

Yet the needs of others kept pulling her back to it, denying her release.

Sedgewick... You must cultivate a positive attitude. Was she being too negative in the face of Beau’s desire to keep her and the child?

Mrs. Featherfield...A new baby at Rosecliff. I can’t imagine anything more perfect. Was it fair to deprive her child of its natural inheritance?

Wallace seeing sexual attraction as the answer... and she couldn’t deny it had led to this shared parenthood. Given more open expression, might it not bridge this dreadful gap between them and soften their differences?

Mr. Polly... Nature will take its course. A little help and care and you can always get the result you want.

Could Beau learn to care?

Did a baby help?

Would anything change if she gave it more of a chance, or would the prison gates inexorably close her in if she stayed on here?

She took a deep breath and looked at him...this man who knew her intimately yet did not know her at all. Vivian’s grandson. The father of her child.

Her heart fluttered at that last thought. It was real now. The father of her child. She couldn’t deny him, yet...what would it lead to?

“How can I trust you?” she blurted out, anguished by her uncertainties.

A muscle in his cheek contracted but his eyes didn’t waver from hers, dark pools of green, seemingly reflecting the pain she felt. “It would need you to take a risk, Maggie,” he said quietly. “I can’t prove your trust is not misplaced unless you’re willing to chance it.”

“Marriage is too big a risk for me, Beau.”

He nodded, then managed a wry smile. “A classic case of fools rushing in...I’m sorry, Maggie. My understanding has been very amiss. I seem to have blundered all the way along the line with you and I wish like hell I’d done everything differently. But I know that doesn’t make anything better for you.”

His regretful attitude soothed some of her jangling nerves. He probably thought she was mad, rejecting his offer of marriage out of hand, and so fiercely. Impossible to explain just how threatened she’d felt at that moment, with him looming over her in a pose of commanding authority and the bank of distrust forming too dangerous a current for her to ride.

He looked...almost kind now. Caring. Of course, it could be another pose. On the other hand, there had to be good in him. Everyone at Rosecliff couldn’t be entirely deceived on that point. Maybe with their child, he would show his best side. He couldn’t hang anything nasty on an innocent baby.

What was it about her that brought out the mean judgments he made? If they were to be linked by their child, she needed to understand where he was coming from with her. At least that way she would be more prepared for handling the situation. She searched for some meeting ground and instinctively homed in on the person who’d brought them together.

“Vivian loved you, Beau. Very much.”

“I know,” he murmured encouragingly.

“He expected...because we were both dear to him...he wanted us to like each other.”

“Yes, he would,” came the ready agreement.

“I warned him it might not happen. I was always prepared to leave if you didn’t like me. After all, you were his grandson. His real family. I thought you might see me as a usurper of his affections...”

“Maggie, I don’t see you like that,” he quickly assured her. “Nothing and no one could have changed the bond between my grandfather and me. It was unique to us. Just as I’m sure what you shared with him was unique to you.”

Yes it was. Wonderfully, unbelievably unique. No one could ever guess, ever comprehend what it had meant to her. Which was why she had to be as fair as it was reasonably possible to Vivian’s grandson.

“You could have been jealous,” she suggested, still unsure of his feelings where she was concerned.

“No. Not in any possessive way, Maggie. My grandfather gave of himself to many people. It never diminished what he gave to me.”

He sounded so genuine, so reasonable, it made no sense of what he’d done. “Then why have you been so mean to me?” she bluntly asked, searching his eyes for the true answer.

He grimaced, guilt and shame flicking over his face. “I was upset over not having seen my grandfather for so long. I guess I felt cheated by his dying when he did. And when I first arrived home you did seem like a usurper, acting the mistress of the house, the staff taking their lead from you. I simply wasn’t prepared for what I walked into, Maggie, and it chewed me up. I’m sorry you became a target of distrust.”

A target...the focus of all his bad feelings. Yes, she could accept that explanation. But it didn’t make her feel any safer with him.

“You aren’t anymore, Maggie,” he assured her, an earnest plea for forgiveness in his eyes. “I realise they’re probably empty words to you but they’re true.”

She wished she could believe them. “Vivian asked me...he made me promise...to give it a chance. Liking you, I mean. Being open to liking. He knew...understood...I tend to be wary of people.”

“I wish he’d still been here to say the same to me,” Beau said ruefully. “It would have been different, Maggie. I am genuinely sorry for all the misunderstandings.”

“I’m sorry, too. Because I don’t trust you now, Beau. I’d leave here today except...it’s Vivian’s grandchild and I know I wouldn’t feel right, not giving it every chance to work out something we can live with... amicably.”

“Then may I make a suggestion?”

She nodded, having no ready answers in her own mind.

“Come away with me for a while. People get to know each other very well when travelling together. I want to scout a tour through Europe so it’ll be a business trip for me.” He suddenly grinned, a sparkle of gentle teasing in his eyes. “You can accompany me as my nanny, if you like, looking after the kind of things you did for my grandfather.”

Laughter bubbled out of her throat. Maybe it was the absurdity of the idea or some form of hysterical relief from nervous tension. Maggie shook her head, feeling too limp and drained to care.

“No pressures, I promise you,” Beau went on, his voice eager with the wish to persuade. “Separate rooms. And you’ll have your ticket home so you can leave me anytime you choose.”

A trip to Europe...fantasy, she thought, but a very seductive one. Vivian had always been referring to places there.

“It’s a break away from here, Maggie. It’ll make it easier for you to leave Rosecliff, if you must. You won’t be upsetting Sedgewick and the others. I think they’d all approve of me taking you with me.”

He was right about that, she thought ironically, though it couldn’t really be done.

“And I will look after you, Maggie,” Beau pressed. “If you’ll risk the chance to let me show you, it’s a step towards resolving the future, isn’t it?”

He looked so keen. Her heart jiggled painfully. “It’s...it’s a good suggestion, Beau. I’d like to try it...but...it just isn’t possible.”

He frowned. “Why not?”

She flushed at the hopelessness of a situation he probably couldn’t comprehend. “Apart from the bank account Vivian organised for me with his accountant, for my salary to be paid into, I have nothing to prove who or what I am. Vivian and Mr. Neville were referees for me to the bank manager because I didn’t have any of the usual forms of identification. But that won’t do for a passport.”

“You have your birth certificate...”

“No. I don’t. I tried to get a copy once but the registry wanted information I didn’t know,” she confessed. “And it’s no use looking for the answers. No one would admit anything now. I may not have even been registered.”

She turned her gaze out to the harbour, once more awash with the helpless feeling of a dislocated person with no roots and nothing to steer by. I’m like a piece of flotsam on the water, she thought, but at least I’m still afloat. Better than being submerged in hopelessness.

“Maggie, let me help you with this. There must be people who know...”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Beau. It’s not there anymore. They’ve gone. If there were records, they’ve gone, too.”

“What’s not there, Maggie?” he asked quietly.

She’d said too much. It was really better not to say anything. People didn’t—couldn’t—relate to something so far outside their experience. She remembered telling a workmate once. It made the woman look at her differently, as though she were some kind of freak.

“Are you afraid of...whatever’s gone?” It was a soft, tentative question, sensitive to her feelings.

She had no reason to be anymore. No one could take her back to that life in the compound. She’d been free of that fear for many years, but the sense of having a big chunk of her life stolen and used for the supposedly higher purposes of others never left her.

“Maggie...will you trust me with this? You can stand on judgment of me right now. I want to help, to move forward with you.”

She heard the plea in his voice and it touched her. The father of my child, she thought. Was it right to drop the shield with him? If she did, would they move forward or would he back off?

Best to know.

“All right.”

She shifted to the comer of the balcony, instinctively putting distance between them before she turned to face him. A challenge like this required space. He stood side on to the balustrade, watching her, waiting, maintaining an air of confidence that encouraged her to unburden herself on him.

Maggie put the past at a distance, too. It was easier to pretend it had happened to someone else, a part of her that she was now separated from, a different person. She knew it wasn’t really true but the disconnection allowed her to speak more objectively.

“I was brought up in a kind of commune. There were about fifty children. Different ages. Eight to a house with a housemother in charge. None of us knew who our real parents were or if we had any at all. None of us had any memory of a life outside the compound.”

He didn’t show any shock at all. “You were always kept inside it?” he asked, gently inquisitive.

“Yes. The idea was...we were the innocent children of God and we were to be kept pure from the world. It was a cult thing. I guess you could call it a social experiment.”

His face tightened but he nodded for her to go on.

“We were taught to read and write but had no formal schooling or examinations as I later discovered the children outside took for granted. Music was a big part of our daily routine, singing and playing hymns and good songs. If you didn’t question anything, it wasn’t a bad life. Very regimented, very disciplined, very...stifling.”

“It was a prison to you,” he said softly.

She winced, aware of having given that away too tellingly to refute. “There was no freedom...for anything. No privacy except in your own mind. I escaped when I was fourteen.”

He looked surprised. “That young?”

“I was tall. I could pass for older.”

“Where was the compound, Maggie?”

“Northwest New South Wales. Deep country. It’s been abandoned.”

“How long ago?”

“Eight years. I was twenty when the news of its existence broke. I don’t know who or what tipped off government officials but the compound was raided and the children were taken away and put in the hands of welfare people to sort out. Those who were in charge of the compound—they were called The Inner Circle—destroyed whatever records they’d kept and skipped the country.”

“They weren’t pursued?”

“Traced to Hawaii, but they disappeared from there. There was a flurry of investigative journalism. More sensational than helpful. Problems with the children being assimilated into normal society. The older ones found it most difficult, wanting to go back to the safety of the compound.”

“You didn’t think of coming forward at that time and telling your story?”

“It came out in the newspaper stories that there were professional people—doctors and lawyers—who’d helped the Inner Circle get children who were given up for adoption. Abandoned babies. I didn’t trust the people in power. I didn’t know what they might do to me. Besides, I was making my own way. I didn’t want what they might think of as help.”

“Fair enough.” No criticism. He seemed to understand the dilemma she’d faced. “Did you tell my grandfather any of this, Maggie?”

“Yes. But not for a long time. It’s hardly a subject I care to bring up. To begin with, when he wanted to know my bank account, which I didn’t have, I just told him I’d always worked for cash in hand and most of that went in day-to-day living.” She shrugged. “It was the truth. There was no other way to avoid the paperwork I had no answers for.”

“He didn’t press you about your lack of official status?”

“Why should he? The accountant made me official enough to cover Vivian’s requirements. The question of a passport never came up.”

“I see,” Beau murmured, then looked at her quizzically. “When did you tell him what you’ve just told me?”

She paused for thought. “He was talking about family lines. He wanted to know my...my background. It would have been about two months before he died.”

Beau heaved a sigh that seemed to hold both relief and satisfaction. “Thank you for confiding in me. It answers a lot.”

Maggie didn’t want to ask what it answered. If he was now seeing her in a different light, it didn’t show. It didn’t seem to be affecting him one way or another.

“Will you come with me to Europe, Maggie?’ he asked.

“I told you...”

“I’ll get you a passport. I’ll get you all the official identification you’ll need for anything, whether you come with me or not.”

“But how?”

“Believe me, I have the power and the resources to do it.”

She stared at the resolution stamped on his face and felt something hard and cold inside her start to warm and melt. “You’d do that for me?” Her voice was a bare whisper.

“Yes. I’ll put it in motion at once.”

Decisive, confident, fearless. Maggie was sharply reminded of her first impression of him...the aggressive vitality of the man, the flow of positive energy, the innate power that seemed to proclaim he could overcome anything or anyone, a hunter who always succeeded in attaining his goal, no matter what road he had to take or what hardship he had to endure.

A mate worth having...fighting for her...

She felt the stirring of desire again, the pins and needles of promising possibilities. Hope danced in and out of her brain, taunting her caution, fraying her doubts. He was waiting on her answer to the suggestion he’d made. Not forcing. Waiting for her to choose, of her own free will. Her heart insistently pumped one message...give it a chance.

“Then I will,” she said huskily. “I will come with you to Europe.” She managed a wobbly smile. “As a nanny.”