Читать книгу The Hidden Years - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 9

‘I HADN’T realised—it was almost as though Gran wasn’t there at all.’ Camilla shivered, despite the centrally heated warmth of the hospital.

‘She’s heavily drugged, Cam,’ Sage told her gently. ‘The nurse said that it was to give her body a chance of getting over the shock of the accident and her injuries…’

Camilla swallowed visibly, suddenly a child again as she pleaded anxiously, ‘She isn’t going to die, is she, Sage…? I don’t want her to die…’

Sensing the hysteria lurking beneath the plea, Sage turned to her and took her in her arms. ‘I can’t answer that question, Cam. I only know, as you do, that if anyone can survive this kind of thing your grandmother will do so…’

Sage was wondering if they had been wise allowing Camilla into the intensive care unit. She had seen the compassion in the nurse’s eyes when Camilla had visibly reacted to the sight of her grandmother hooked up to so much machinery, her body still, her eyes shuttered, to all intents and purposes already gone beyond any human help.

‘Please, let’s go… I can’t…’

‘I have to wait to see the specialist,’ Sage reminded her quietly. ‘But you can go and wait in the car if you’d prefer… Perhaps your mother…?’

She turned to Faye, who was if anything even more visibly affected than her daughter, but Faye shook her head and said doggedly, ‘No, I’ll stay with you.’

Handing Camilla the car keys and watching her walk a little unsteadily down the corridor, Sage nibbled ferociously on her bottom lip.

‘I hadn’t realised,’ Faye was saying unevenly beside her. ‘I knew she was very ill, but I hadn’t…’ She swallowed. ‘Oh, God, Sage, I’m so scared… I can’t bear the thought of losing her… I thought…I thought the worst was over and that it was just a matter of time…of recuperation, but now… And I’m being so selfish. She’s your mother and not mine…’

‘And because of that I must love her more?’ Sage smiled grimly. ‘How naïve you can be sometimes, Faye. You know the situation between Mother and me. We don’t get on; we never have. Oh, as a child I wanted her love, craved it almost until I realised I simply was not and never could be the child she wanted—or another David… I don’t blame her for that… After David, I must have come as a deep disappointment to her. I don’t suppose you can understand. The whole world adores my mother…adores her and respects her…’

‘I do understand.’

It was said so quietly that Sage almost didn’t hear it. She turned to look at her sister-in-law and surprised such a look of raw pain in her eyes that she had to turn away again. It was as though she had momentarily opened the door into a private, secret room, and she withdrew from it with the instinctive speed of a nature that hated to trespass or impinge on anyone else’s privacy because she valued her own so much.

‘Sage—’

The fierce urgency with which Faye said her name caused her to look at her again, but just as Faye was about to speak the door opened and the specialist she had seen before, Alaric Ferguson, walked in.

If anything he looked even more exhausted, Sage recognised. He gave her a distant glance before focusing properly on her, saying as he recognised her, ‘Miss Danvers, Sister will have told you that we have had to sedate your mother in an effort to lessen the physical shock of her accident, and until we’re completely happy that that has taken place we won’t be able to do anything further.’

‘Her injuries—what exactly are they?’ Sage demanded urgently.

He paused, looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then said bluntly, ‘We suspect there’s some pressure on her brain—how much we can’t as yet tell. In case you don’t understand the seriousness of this, perhaps I should explain…’

When he did so, outlining in brutal detail the small, very small chance of her mother actually recovering, Sage discovered that she was gripping the inside of her mouth sharply with her teeth to prevent her lips from trembling. Behind her she heard Faye give a low, shocked cry. She reacted to it immediately, spinning round to reach out to her, but the specialist had moved faster and as Sage turned towards Faye he was already reaching out to grip her arm and steady her.

He wasn’t the kind of man who appealed sexually to Sage—oh, he was tall, and probably well enough built if one discounted the exhausted hunch of his shoulders and the stoop that came from working long hours. True, his skin was pale from lack of fresh air, his eyes bloodshot, his dark red hair untidy and badly cut, but underneath his lack of outward physical gloss there was such an obvious aura of male strength and reliability about him that Sage was astounded to see Faye stagger back from him, her face white with deathly fear, her mouth contorted almost in a grimace of atavistic rejection.

Sage knew that her sister-in-law preferred to keep the male sex at a physical distance, but she had never seen her react like this before, never seen her make a movement that was uncoordinated…never seen any emotion across her face as intense and primitive as the defensive rage which now etched it.

For a moment she was too shocked to speak or intervene. The specialist looked as shocked as she felt, and then Sage saw shock give way to a mingling of curiosity and concern as he quickly withdrew from her.

‘It’s perfectly all right,’ he told her quietly. ‘I’m sorry if I alarmed you.’ With that he turned on his heel and left them alone.

In the strained silence of the empty room, the harsh battle Faye was fighting for control of her body and breathing was painfully audible. Sage dared not reach out to her, dared not speak to her, never mind touch her. Her eyes had gone wild, feral almost like an animal’s when the primitive instinct of panic overcame every trace of domesticity. It was almost as though, if Sage did reach out to touch her, Faye might sink into her hand the teeth she had bared in that shocking sharp snarl of rejection.

Her skin, usually so pale, was now burning with colour. She started to shake violently, her eyes slowly focusing on Sage, their brilliance dimming as recognition took the place of rage and then gave way to flat, open despair.

She was shaking so much that she could barely stand up, and very gently, very cautiously, Sage reached out to her and, when she let her take hold of her arm, led her gently over to a chair.

Much as she longed to ask what was wrong, she suppressed the words, knowing by instinct that she wouldn’t get an answer.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Faye was whispering painfully. ‘So very sorry… It was just the shock…’

Of hearing about her mother’s slender chances of recovering, or of being touched by the specialist? Sage wondered silently.

‘He could have broken the news rather less brutally,’ was all she allowed herself to say. ‘It’s just as well Camilla decided not to stay…’

The look of mingled agony and gratitude Faye gave her made her wince inwardly for her own lack of strength. Had she been her mother, there was no way she would have allowed the incident to be passed off like this… She would have insisted on routing out the real cause of Faye’s reactions… Would have told herself that, no matter how much pain talking about it might cause Faye, in the end she would feel better for unburdening herself of whatever it was that had caused such a violent response.

But she wasn’t her mother… She avoided encouraging people to confide in her, to lean on her. Selfishly she didn’t want their problems…their confidences. She was almost glad that Faye had withdrawn from her, that she was keeping whatever it was that troubled her so desperately to herself.

‘I think perhaps I’d better leave calling at my office until tomorrow. It’s been a traumatic visit for all of us. We can’t do anything to help Mother by staying here, no matter how guilty we might all feel about leaving her. The sister said they’d ring us immediately if there was any change in her condition…’

‘If she dies, you mean,’ Faye said bitterly. ‘Have you noticed how even here in a hospital, where they’re dealing in death every day, they refuse to use the actual word? Not at all well…but never, never dying…’

Watching Faye pound her fists helplessly against the arms of her chair, Sage wished she could give vent to her feelings as easily.

She too was frightened, she recognised… No, her fear wasn’t the same as Faye’s… But it was there none the less. Hers was a selfish fear, she thought in self-contempt. Hers was a fear of having to shoulder the burdens her mother had carried… Of having to step into shoes which had never been designed for her… which she knew instinctively would cripple and hobble her. And already it was happening…already Faye was turning to her. How long would it be before she started to lean on her the way she had leaned on David and then on her mother?

Shocked and almost disgusted by the selfishness of her own thoughts, Sage took hold of Faye’s arm and gently pulled her to her feet. ‘Camilla will be waiting,’ she reminded her.

She had always liked Faye, albeit with the same kind of affection she might have felt towards a favourite pet, and it came as a shock to find herself almost close to hating her, to feeling as though Faye had set in motion a trap which was starting to close around her. Faye wasn’t the clinging type in the accepted sense of the word. On the contrary, she visibly and painfully struggled not to be so, and yet one was always aware of her desperate need for the strength of others, for the companionship and caring of others. Why she had never married again was a mystery to Sage. She so obviously needed the strength and devotion of a husband, of another David…but then men like David were hard to find, even if one looked, and Faye did exactly the opposite of that, preferring to shut herself off from the rest of the world rather than go out to meet it.

She couldn’t go on like this, Faye recognised as she followed Sage down the corridor. For a moment there in that small stuffy room she had virtually destroyed everything she had worked so hard to create…for a moment there with that male hand reaching out towards her, she had stupidly, recklessly come perilously close to throwing everything away, everything she had spent her entire adult life trying to achieve.

Why had she been so careless? Why had she over-reacted so dangerously? She could put it down to the shock of realising how very ill Liz was, but that was no excuse.

Thank God Camilla hadn’t been there to see… She swallowed hard, her mouth full of nervous saliva. She glanced sideways at Sage.

Her sister-in-law was far too astute not to realise that it was more than mere shock at Liz’s condition which had made her react so violently, but thank God she had not tried to question her, to dig and delve as others might have done. Surely after all these years she ought to have more command over herself, more self-control? Why had she behaved like that, and to a man so obviously unthreatening, so obviously well-intentioned? How on earth would she ever be able to face him again? She had seen the shock, the concern, the curiosity shadowing his expression as he looked at her, and no wonder… She wished that he weren’t Liz’s specialist, that there would be no occasion for her ever to have to see him again, but how could she refuse to visit her mother-in-law? How could she allow Sage to shoulder the burden of visiting her mother alone? How could she abandon Liz to the cold efficiency of the machinery which was keeping her alive when she owed her mother-in-law so much? How could she put her own welfare, her own needs before theirs? She couldn’t do it… She could only pray that the specialist would accept, as Sage seemed prepared to do, that her shock had been so great that it had led to her idiotic behaviour. A psychiatrist of course would have recognised immediately—but Liz’s specialist wasn’t a psychiatrist, thank God…he would have no inner awareness, no realisation… It was stupid of her to feel this panic, this fear, this anxiety. No one could, after all, compel her to talk about the past. To revisit and relive it…

She ached to be back at Cottingdean, to be safe, protected, within the haven of its womblike walls. By the time they reached the car she was trembling inwardly as though she had been running frantically in flight, a stitch in her side caused not by exhaustion but by tension, by her grimly clenching her muscles until they ached under the strain she was imposing on them.

Running, running…sometimes it felt as though she had spent her entire life in flight. Only with David had she felt safe, protected… Only with David, and with Liz, who knew all her secrets, knew them and protected her from them.

Liz… This was so wrong. She ought to be thinking of Liz, not herself—praying for her recovery, not because she needed her so much, but for Liz’s own sake. Please God, let me be strong, she prayed as she got in the car. Give me the strength I need—not for myself, but for Liz and for Camilla…and perhaps as well for Sage, she added, glancing at her sister-in-law, and wondering if the latter had yet recognised within herself the same fierce will-power that was Liz’s particular gift. And, like all gifts, a two-edged sword which could be honed in use for the benefit of others for the greater good, or sharpened on the dangerous edge of self-interest and used against other, weaker members of the human race.

Thank God for Sage: without her… She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat, physically and mentally exhausted, longing only for escape, for peace of mind, and knowing how little chance she had of attaining either.

‘Did you manage to get through everything in Liz’s files on the proposed motorway?’ They were having tea, produced by Jenny, who stood sternly over them until it was safely poured, ignoring their protests that they weren’t hungry. Even in absentia Liz’s habits still ruled the household. Perhaps all of them in their separate ways were clinging to those habits, in an instinctive need to believe that in keeping them alive they were keeping Liz herself alive, Sage thought.

‘Mmm…’ she answered, responding to Camilla’s question, her forehead furrowing. She had read them, but nothing in them had given her any clue as to how her mother had hoped to prevent the construction of the new motorway. Far from it.

‘You don’t think we’ll be able to stop them, do you?’ Camilla guessed astutely.

‘It’s too soon to say, but it doesn’t look very hopeful. If the road was being constructed near a site of particular archaeological significance, or special natural beauty, then we’d have something to work on, but as far as I can see—’

‘Gran would have found a way,’ Camilla told her, almost belligerently. ‘But then I suppose you don’t really care anyway, do you? I mean, you don’t care about Cottingdean…’

‘Camilla!’ Faye objected, flushing a little. ‘That’s most unfair and untrue…’

‘No, she’s right,’ Sage said as calmly as she could, replacing her teacup in its saucer. ‘I don’t feel the same way about Cottingdean as the rest of you. It’s a beautiful house, but it is only a house—not a sacred trust. But it isn’t just the house that’s at risk; it’s the village as well, people’s livelihoods. Without the mill there’d be no industry here to keep people in jobs; without jobs the village would soon start to disintegrate—but I don’t expect that the planners in Whitehall will be inclined to put the needs of a handful of villagers above those of road-hungry motorists.’

‘Gran has offered them another site on the other side of the water meadows…’

‘Yes, on land which is marshy and unstable, and which will require a good deal of expensive drainage and foundation work on it before it can be used, as well as adding countless millions of pounds to the cost.’

‘I don’t know why you’re going to the meeting, when it’s obvious that you don’t care—’

‘That’s enough, Camilla,’ Faye reproved.

‘I do care, Cam. I just don’t know how Mother planned to persuade the authorities to reroute the road… I’ve no idea what she had in mind, and I can’t find out from what I’ve read in the files. I’ve no doubt she had some plan of action in view, but whatever it is only she knows… The best I can hope for is to use delaying tactics and to hope that somehow or other a miracle will occur enabling Mother to take over before it’s too late.’

Since all of them knew just how much of a miracle would be needed for that, the three of them fell silent.

She wasn’t looking forward to the evening’s meeting, Sage acknowledged later as she went upstairs to change. She was not accomplished at using guile—she was too blunt, too tactless. She did not have her mother’s gifts of subtle persuasion and coercion. She had no experience of dealing with officialdom, nor a taste for it either. She remembered that David had once tried to teach her to play chess and how he had chided her in that gentle, loving way he had had for her impatience and lack of logic, her inability to think forwards and to plan coolly and mathematically. No, the skills of the negotiator were not among her gifts, but for tonight she must somehow find, somehow adopt at least a facsimile of her mother’s mantle.

She recognised with wry amusement how much she was already changing, how much she was already tempering her own beliefs and attitudes—even her mode of dress.

Tonight she was automatically rejecting the nonchalant casualness of the clothes she bought impulsively and sometimes disastrously, falling in love with the richness of their fabric, the skill of their cut or simply the beauty of their colour and then so often finding once she got them home that she had nothing with which to wear them.

Not for her the carefully planned and organised wardrobe, the cool efficiency of clothes chosen to project a certain image…

But tonight she would need the armouring of that kind of image, and as she rifled through her wardrobe she recognised ruefully that the best she could manage was a cream silk shirt worn with a fine wool crěpe coffee-coloured skirt designed by Alaia. If it clung rather more intimately to her body than anything her mother might have chosen to wear, then hopefully that fact would be concealed by the table behind which she was bound to be seated.

An elegant Chanel-style knitted jacket in the same cream as the shirt would add a touch of authority to the outfit, she decided, taking it off its hanger and glancing at her watch.

Seven o’clock…time she was on her way. She thought fleetingly of the diaries, acknowledging something she had deliberately been pushing to the back of her mind all day.

At the same time as she was eager to read more, to discover more about this stranger who was her mother, she was also reluctant to do so, afraid almost… Of what? Of finding out that her mother was human and fallible, and in doing so finding out that she herself was no longer able to hold on to her anger and resentment? Why should she want to hang on to them?

Perhaps because they added weight and justification to her refusal to allow her mother into any part of her life, her determination to sever the emotional ties between them and to keep them severed—to continue to punish her mother. But for what? For failing to love her as she had loved David? For destroying her happiness—for allowing Scott to be taken from her? Or was she simply still inside an angry, resentful child, kicking at her mother’s door, demanding that her attention and her love be given exclusively to her…?

Exclusively… She frowned at her reflection in the mirror. Had she wanted that? Had she wanted her mother to love her exclusively…? Surely not. She had always known that love must be shared. Or had she? Had she perhaps always inwardly resented having to share her mother with anyone else, refusing to acknowledge her right to love others, just as she had refused to acknowledge Scott’s right to share his for her with his father, to feel that he owed his father a loyalty, a duty that went before even his love for her?

They had quarrelled about that, and bitterly, Scott insisting that before they could marry he had to return to Australia and explain the situation to his father. He had wanted her to go with him but she had refused. Why should she subject herself to his father’s inspection when they both knew that he would reject her? Why couldn’t Scott see that there was no need for them to bow to his father’s will, that they could make a comfortable life for themselves away from his father’s vast acres, that they did not need either his father or her mother?

‘But can’t you see,’ he had asked her, ‘they need us?’

She had lost her temper then… They had quarrelled angrily, almost violently on her part. When Scott had slowed down the car, she had reached for the door, surely never really intending to open it and jump out; but in the heat of the moment…her unforgivable, relentless temper had driven her so hard. Ridden her so hard.

Anyway, now she would never know what she might or might not have done, because Scott had reached across her to grab the door-handle and in doing so had failed to see the oncoming car.

Ironically it had been his arm across her body that had protected her from greater injury and prevented him from saving himself, so that he took the full brunt of the collision, so that he suffered the fate which should by rights have been hers…

Oh, God, she couldn’t start thinking about that now… Not now. Hadn’t she paid enough, suffered enough, endured enough guilt to wash away even the blackest sin?

Downstairs the grandfather clock chimed the quarter-hour. Thankfully she abandoned the painful introspection of her thoughts and hurried downstairs.

‘We’ve put you next to the man from the construction company,’ Anne Henderson told Sage once their mutual introductions were over. ‘I don’t seem to have a note of his name… Our secretary’s little boy has been rushed into hospital for an emergency appendix operation…quite the worst possible time for something like that to happen but what can you do…? Fortunately I do have records of the names of the two people from the Ministry. They’re a Mr Stephen Simmonds and a Ms Helen Ordman. They’re all due to arrive together. I hope they won’t be late. The meeting’s due to start at seven forty-five.’

The village hall had been a gift to the village from her mother, or rather from the mill. It was originally an old barn which had been in danger of falling down, and her mother had had it rescued and remodelled to provide the villagers with a meeting place and somewhere to hold village jumble sales and dances.

Meticulous in everything she undertook, her mother had seen to it that the half-gallery of the original building had been retained, and whenever a dance was held the band was usually placed up on this gallery. Tonight it was empty, the stairs leading to it closed off. Glancing round the familiar beamed interior, Sage reflected that a stranger entering it would never guess that behind the traditional wattle and daub lay a modern purpose-built kitchen area, or that one third of the floor space could be elevated to provide a good-sized stage, much prized by the local drama group. Her mother had thought of everything; even the chairs now placed in neat rows were specially made, in solid wood, with comfortable, practical seats.

‘People are starting to arrive already,’ Anne Henderson told her. ‘The vicar’s wife rang to warn me that the vicar might be a few minutes late. He’s on the committee as well. Your mother had hoped to persuade our local MP to join us tonight, but I haven’t heard anything from him.’

The other committee members were a local solicitor and a local GP, both of whom had very strong views about the proposed road, and both of whom were extremely articulate.

They would need to be to make up for her deficiencies in that direction, Sage reflected, as they came in and she was introduced to them.

For tonight at least the most she could hope for was to act as a figurehead, representing her mother’s stand against the new road, rather than contributing any viable arguments to the proceedings.

Her role was rather like that of a regimental standard: there simply to show that the regiment’s strength existed, rather than to take any part in the fight. She was there simply as a representative of her mother…a focal point.

The hall was beginning to fill up, and from the look on the faces of the people coming in it was obvious that they were taking the threat to their rural peace very seriously indeed. Feelings were going to run high, but whenever had emotion been enough to batter down logic? If it had, why had she not been the victor in so many arguments rather than the vanquished?

There was a flurry of activity over by the door and Anne Henderson excused herself, saying, ‘I think that must be the opposition. I’d better go over and introduce myself.’

Sage watched them walk in. A man and a woman: the woman a slender elegant brunette in her early twenties who had dressed in the kind of suit which the glossy magazines and upmarket newspapers were continually pushing as a working wardrobe for the modern woman. Yes, Sage thought drily, provided she could afford to buy the simple and so expensive designer garments they lauded. And this woman, despite the businesslike clothes she was wearing, came across to Sage not as a dedicated career type, but as a sensual, almost predatory female who to Sage’s eyes had dressed herself not so much with the meeting in mind, but for a man. The plain silk shirt that was seemingly so carelessly unfastened just enough to hint at a provocative tempting cleavage. The flannel skirt, short and straight to reveal slender silk-clad legs, the hair and make-up, both elegant and discreet, but both very definitely sensual rather than businesslike. A woman, of course, could recognise such things immediately—men were rather different, and Sage wondered in amusement what on earth it was about the rather nondescript, jeans-and-windcheater-clad man at her side that had aroused such predatory instincts.

At first sight he seemed ordinary enough: average height, mid-brown hair, wearing, rather surprisingly for a Ministry man, the kind of casual clothes that made him seem more like one of the villagers than anything else. He was talking earnestly to his companion as Anne shepherded them towards the raised stage.

Sage stood up as they reached her, shaking hands with both of them and introducing herself. She could see the younger woman assessing her, and hid her own amusement. She really had nothing to worry about—Sage was not in the least interested in her quarry.

The man from the Ministry attempted to take the next seat to her own, but Anne stopped him, informing him, ‘I thought we’d let the chairman of the construction company sit there…’

‘Oh, yes, I ought to have mentioned,’ his companion chipped in, ‘I’m afraid he’s going to be a few minutes late. He suggested that we start without him, as he’s attending the meeting primarily to answer people’s questions about the actual effect of the construction of the road.’

‘Isn’t that rather premature?’ Sage heard herself intervening coolly. Helen Ordman looked coldly at her and waited. ‘You are rather presuming that the road will go ahead, which is by no means certain as yet.’

Stephen Simmonds looked uncomfortable and shuffled his feet, and Sage was surprised to discover how much satisfaction it gave her to see the brunette’s immaculately made-up face darken to a rather unbecoming red.

Sage rather suspected that she was the kind of woman who traded very heavily on her looks, using them to bludgeon those members of her own sex who were less well-favoured into a state of insecurity and those of the opposite sex into helpless submission.

‘Well, the feasibility of the proposed new road is what we have come here to discuss,’ Stephen Simmonds interrupted quickly. ‘Naturally we can understand the fears of the local residents, and, of course, it’s our job to assure them that full consideration has been given to their situation and that the work will be undertaken with as little disruption as possible to their lives.’

‘And after it’s been completed?’ Sage asked drily. ‘Or don’t you consider that having a six-lane motorway virtually cutting the village in half is a disruption to people’s lives? I suppose you could always provide us with a nice concrete bridge or perhaps even a tunnel so that one half of the village can keep in touch with the other without having to drive from here to London and back to reach it—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! Naturally, provision will be made to allow for normal daily traffic,’ Helen Ordman interrupted acidly, treating Sage to the sort of look that suggested that she thought she was mentally defective.

‘I think we’d better start,’ Anne Henderson whispered on Sage’s left. ‘People are beginning to get restless.’

Sage opened the meeting, introducing the guests and then handing over to Anne Henderson, as she was naturally more familiar with the committee’s running of the affair. From her mother’s meticulous research and the minutes of the earlier meeting, Sage did, however, have a very good idea of what to expect.

This one followed much the same pattern: a calm speech from the man from the Ministry aimed at soothing people’s fears and making the construction of the road appear to be a reasonable and unalterable course of vital importance to the continuing existence of the country.

Anne Henderson gave a far less analytical and logical speech against the road’s construction, and it was plain from the audience’s reaction where their feelings lay.

The questions followed thick and fast, and Sage noted cynically how carefully things were stage-managed so that Helen Ordman always answered the questions from the men in the audience, turning the full wattage of her charm on them, as she skilfully deflected often very viable points with the warmth of her smile and a carefully objective response which never quite answered the question posed.

These were early days, the first of a series of skirmishes to be gone through before real battle was joined, Sage recognised. Having studied her mother’s files, she was well aware of how much help could be gained in such cases from the ability to lobby powerful figures for support.

Was that why her mother had been in London? There had been a time when it had been suggested that she might stand for Parliament, but she had declined, saying that she felt she wasn’t able to give enough time to a political career. Even so, her mother had a wide variety of contacts, some of them extremely influential.

Engrossed in her own thoughts, Sage frowned as the hall door opened and a man walked in.

Tall, dark-haired, wearing the kind of immaculate business suit she had rather expected to see on the man from the Ministry, he nevertheless had an air of latent strength about him that marked him out as someone more used to physical activity than a deskbound lifestyle.

One could almost feel the ripple of feminine interest that followed him, Sage recognised, knowing now why Helen Ordman had dressed so enticingly. Not for her companion but for this man walking towards the stage, this man who had lifted his head and looked not at Helen Ordman but at her. And looked at her with recognition.

Daniel Cavanagh. The room started to spin wildly around her. Sage groped for the support of the desk, gripping it with her fingers as shock ran through her like electricity.

Daniel Cavanagh… How long was it since she had allowed herself to think about him, to remember even that he existed? How long was it since she had even allowed herself to whisper his name?

She felt cold with shock; she was shaking with the force of it, the reality of the reasons for his presence immediately overwhelmed by the churning maelstrom of memories that seeing him again had invoked.

Memories it had taken her years to suppress, to ignore, to deny…memories which even now had the power to make her body move restlessly as she fought to obliterate her own culpability, to ignore her guilt and pain—and yet after that one brief hard look of recognition he seemed so completely oblivious to her that they might have never met.

She heard Anne introducing him, was aware of the low-voiced conversation passing between him and Helen Ordman and, with it, the undercurrent of sexual possessiveness in the other woman’s voice, and bewilderingly a sharp pang of something so unexpected, so shockingly unwanted, so ridiculously unnecessary, stirred inside her that for a moment her whole body tensed with the implausibility of it.

Jealous…jealous of another woman’s relationship with a man she herself had never wanted, had never liked even…a man she had used callously and selfishly in anger and bitterness, and who had then turned those feelings, that selfishness against her so remorselessly that her memories of him were a part of her life she preferred to forget.

So many mistakes…her life was littered with them—she was that kind of person—but Daniel Cavanagh had been more than a mistake…he had been a near-fatal error, showing a dangerous lack of judgement both of herself and of him, a turning-point which had become the axis on which her present life revolved.

He was taking his seat next to her, the economical movements of his body well co-ordinated and efficient, indicative of a man at ease with himself and with his life.

Now, without the softening influence of youth, the bones of his face had hardened, the outline of his body matured. He was three years older than she, which made him about thirty-seven.

A faint ripple of polite applause broke into her thoughts. She watched him stand up and recognised almost resentfully that his suit was hand-tailored, as no doubt were his shirts. He had always been powerfully built, well over six feet and very broad.

She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but could hear only the crisp cadences of his voice, stirring echoes of another time, another place, when he had been equally concise, equally controlled, equally clinically detached as he had stripped her pride to the bone, ripped her soul into shreds, destroyed the very fabric of her being and then handed the pieces back to her with a cool politeness which had somehow been even more demeaning than all the rest put together.

‘I pity you,’ he had told her, and he had meant it. He, more than anyone else, more than Scott even, had been responsible for the destruction of the hot-headed, headstrong, self-absorbed girl she had been and the creation of the cautious, careful, self-reliant woman she had made herself become.

Perhaps she ought to be grateful to him… Grateful…that was what he had said to her, flinging the words at her like knives.

‘I suppose you think I should be grateful…’

And then he had turned them against her, using them to destroy her.

All these years, and she had never allowed herself to remember, to think, cutting herself off from the past as sharply as though she had burned a line of fire between her old life and the new.

She was still cold, desperate now to escape from the hall, to be alone, but she couldn’t escape, not yet—people were clamouring to ask questions. Whatever Daniel Cavanagh had said, he had stirred up a good deal of reaction.

She ought to have been listening. She ought to have been able to forget the past, to forget that she knew him…she ought to have been concentrating on what he was saying. That after all was why she was here. Sage closed the meeting without being aware of quite what she had said and the world came back into focus as Anne was saying something about the vicar having suggested that they all went back to the vicarage for an informal chat and a cup of tea. She shook her head, fighting to hold on to her self-control, to appear calm.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’

‘No, of course, you’ll be wanting to get back… Has there been any more news from the hospital?’

Sage shook her head again. It was beginning to ache dreadfully, a warning that she was about to have the kind of migraine attack she had long ago thought she had learned to control.

All she wanted to do was to shut herself away somewhere safe and dark, somewhere where she wouldn’t have to think, to pretend, somewhere where there was no tall, dark man standing at her side making her remember, making her feel.

She was the first to leave the hall after the meeting had broken up, her footsteps quick and tense, her nostrils flaring slightly as she got outside and was able to breathe in the cool fresh air.

Her Porsche was parked only yards away, but she doubted her ability to drive it with the necessary degree of safety. Her stomach was churning sickly, her head pounding… It wasn’t unheard of for her to actually black out during these migraine attacks.

If she had any sense she would telephone the house and ask Jenny if someone could come and collect her, she recognised, but to do that would mean lingering here, and inviting the possibility of having to face Daniel.

Already she could hear his voice behind her, and the softer, almost caressing one of his companion.

Had the woman no pride? she asked herself savagely. Didn’t she realise how obvious she was being, or didn’t she care? Daniel was not your ordinary straightforward male… Daniel knew all there was to know about the female psyche. Daniel…

‘Sage… I hear that, like me, you aren’t able to join the others at the vicarage…’

He was standing next to her—good manners, good sense, demanded that she turn round and acknowledge him, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn her head, couldn’t even open her mouth to respond.

‘Daniel, must you go? There’s so much we need to discuss…’

Thank goodness for predatory women, Sage thought in relief as Helen Ordman came between them, possessively taking hold of his arm.

‘Yes, I’m afraid I must. I’ve got a board meeting in the morning, and a mountain of papers to read through… Sage, I suspect that scarlet monstrosity must be yours. You always were an advocate of conspicuous consumption…in all things…’

He left her as he had found her, speechless and immobile, staring after him with, as she discovered with sick chagrin, eyes that were stupidly filmed with angry tears.

She deliberately waited until Daniel Cavanagh had driven off, in a steel-grey vintage Aston Martin, which she knew quite well had cost far more than her new-model Porsche, before walking away from her own car in the direction of Cottingdean.

The house was only a couple of miles from the village, not far at all, and a pleasant walk on such a warm spring evening. As a teenager, before she had learned to drive, she had travelled those two miles sometimes several times a day and thought nothing of doing so.

Then, though, she had not been wearing three-inch heels, nor had her body been reacting as violently as though it were suffering the most virulent form of viral flu.

What had happened to the life of which she had felt so powerfully in control? When had that control started to disintegrate? With her mother’s accident…with the knowledge that the strictly controlled physical and emotional involvements which were all she allowed herself to share with the opposite sex were designed to appease an appetite she no longer had…

The chain had begun to form long before tonight, long before this unwanted resurgence of old memories, but she couldn’t deny that seeing Daniel Cavanagh again had formed a link in it, so strong, so fettering that she doubted that she could break it open and slip free and safe back to her old life.

She saw the car headlights coming towards her, and instinctively walked off the road and on to the grass verge, only realising when the car swept past her that it was Daniel’s grey Aston.

She could hear it slowing down and stopping. Panic splintered into sharp agony inside her. She desperately wanted to run, to hide herself away from him… Not because she feared him as a man… No, she well knew she had nothing sexual to fear from him. No, it was her own memories she wanted to flee, her own pain, her own self-condemnation.

She heard the car door open and then close, and knew that he had seen her. If she walked away now, if she ran away now… Pride made her stand stiffly where she was, but nothing could make her turn to face him as he walked towards her.

‘I thought you were driving back.’

‘I decided I preferred to walk.’

‘In high heels?’

He always had been far too observant.

‘There isn’t a law against it,’ she told him sharply. ‘Although, of course, if you get your way and you run a six-lane motorway through here, the days of walking anywhere will be over for all of us.’

‘The motorway will run over a mile from here. You won’t even see it from Cottingdean. It won’t interfere with your lives there at all. But then you always did prefer emotionalism to logic, didn’t you, Sage?’

‘What are you doing here, Daniel? You’re on the wrong side of the village for the motorway and London…’

‘Yes. I realise that. I took a wrong turning and had to turn back again.’

She had the odd feeling that he was lying, although what he was saying sounded plausible. Was it because of her knowledge of the man, her awareness that taking a wrong turning in anything was the last thing he was likely to do, that she found it hard to believe him?

He was watching her, she realised, refusing to give in to the magnetic pull of his concentration. His eyes were grey, the same metallic colour as his car, and she didn’t need to look at him to remember how powerful an effect that intense concentration could have. He also had the most ridiculously long curling lashes. She remembered how she had once thought they gave him a look at times of being almost vulnerable. More fool her; ‘vulnerable’ was the very last description that could be applied to him. He was solid steel all the way through.

The sick pounding in her head, which had started to ease a little as she walked, had returned. Automatically she raised her hand and pressed her fingers to her temple.

‘Migraine?’

She stared at him, forgetting her resolve not to do so, surprise momentarily widening her eyes.

‘How did you…?’

The ironic look he gave her made her stop, the swift colour burning up under her skin stripping away the veneer of fifteen years of sophistication and reducing her once again to the girl she had once been.

‘I’ve got a retentive memory,’ he told her drily.

‘You must have,’ she agreed bitterly.

‘I’ll give you a lift. It isn’t safe for a woman to walk alone at night these days… Not even out here.’

‘No, thanks, I’d prefer to walk. I need the fresh air…’

‘So go and walk round Cottingdean’s gardens once you get home. You should be safe enough there…’

His calm assumption that she would allow him to make her decision for her infuriated her. ‘I don’t want a lift,’ she repeated tightly, but he had already taken hold of her arm and was walking her towards his car.

Thankfully the thickness of her jacket muffled the sensation of his fingers on her arm, and his touch, although firm, wasn’t constraining.

It was easier to go with him than to argue, she decided weakly as he opened the passenger door and waited politely until she was safely inside before closing it on her.

‘You really needn’t have done this.’

‘I know,’ he agreed as he set the car in motion.

He was a good driver, careful, controlled.

‘Odd,’ he mused, as the gates to the house appeared, ‘you’re the last person I’d envisage chairing a committee for environmental protection.’

‘I’m not,’ Sage told him stiffly. ‘I’m simply standing in for my mother.’

‘Really? The Sage I knew would have taken that as a heaven-sent opportunity for sabotage rather than a sacred bit of family flag-waving.’

Sage felt herself stiffening. This was what she had been dreading from the moment she had set eyes on him. Being reminded of the past, of its pain, of its shadows…and most of all being reminded of the person she had been…

Was it reading her mother’s diaries which had thrown so sharply into focus the differences between them, made her so sharply aware of her own shortcomings, of her own faults, not just of omission but of commission as well?

‘No comment?’ Daniel asked her softly as he brought the car to a halt.

‘Did you ask me a question?’ Sage challenged him acidly as she reached to open her door. ‘I thought you were simply making a statement. How I live my life has nothing to do with you, Daniel…it’s my own affair.’

‘Or affairs,’ he murmured cynically, making her forget that she was still wearing her seatbelt, so that she pushed open the heavy door and tried to get out, only to discover infuriatingly that she was still trapped in her seat.

‘Still the same old Sage. Impatient, illogical. So damn used to getting her own way that she doesn’t even have the sense to avoid any obstacles.’

He opened his own door, and was round her side of the car almost before she had finished unfastening her seatbelt.

She discovered that she was trembling as she got out of the car, not with dread any longer, but with anger…anger, and something else, something that fuelled her adrenalin and banished the pain from her temples.

‘Thanks for the lift.’

‘You’re welcome.’

His face was in the shadows, but as he turned away from her to walk back to the driver’s door his expression was briefly illuminated by the moon, and for an instant he might have been the old Daniel she had once known so well, only to discover she had not really known him at all.

Daniel Cavanagh… Why had he come back into her life, and now of all times, reopening doors—wounds—she had thought long since sealed?

Daniel Cavanagh… She discovered she was shivering again as she walked towards the house, fighting against the threatening avalanche of memories she was only just managing to keep at bay.