Читать книгу Mistaken Adversary - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 7

‘YOU’RE very quiet, Georgy. You’re not still worrying about me, are you?’

Georgia focused on her aunt’s pale face, forcing herself to try to smile. She had in fact been thinking about Mitch Fletcher and his extraordinarily intimate disclosure just as he was leaving the cottage. She really would have to tell him that he was mistaken about her, to explain—if not everything, then at least enough for him to understand that it was her aunt who took up so much of her time and not some non-existent married lover.

She frowned a little, acknowledging how hard it must have been for him to witness the disintegration of his parents’ relationship, to have his own love for and trust in his father destroyed, as it obviously had been destroyed. Poor little boy... She caught herself up, shaking her head angrily. What on earth was she doing, feeling sympathy for someone who had suggested that she...? She bit her lip in vexation, unwillingly acknowledging that if he had misjudged her it was at least partly her own fault.

She wasn’t really sure why she was so reluctant for him—for anyone—to know the truth. Was it because in facing their concern and sympathy she would be forced to make herself confront the reality of how seriously ill her aunt was? No...no! Her thoughts scattered, frantically fleeing from what she could still not bring herself to face—fleeing from the enormity of that realisation... Her aunt was getting better... Only this morning she herself had said how well she felt, and yet as Georgia looked at the tiny figure in the bed, her fear was like cold, cold fingers tightening around her heart.

Unwillingly she looked into her aunt’s face and saw the tiredness there. She was holding her hand and it felt so frail, so cold.

‘Georgy—’ her aunt smiled at her through her tiredness ‘—you mustn’t...you mustn’t—’

She stopped speaking and, before her aunt could finish what she had been about to say, Georgia began to tell her about the garden, describing for her the new flowers that were opening, her voice high with denial of her terrible fear. ‘But you’ll be seeing them for yourself soon. Just as soon as you get well enough to come home...’ She thought she heard her aunt sigh. Certainly the pressure of those frail fingers holding her own tightened a little. She could feel herself starting to tremble, as fear and love rolled through her.

As always, the precious time she was allowed to spend at her aunt’s bedside was gone all too quickly, and it was time for her to leave. The sister in charge came towards her as she was going. Georgia smiled at her, saying eagerly, ‘Aunt May seems so much better since she came here. I’ve been telling her about the garden. She’s always wanted a proper garden of her own. The roses will be out soon. We bought them last year—scented ones. Perhaps she’ll be home in time to enjoy them and—’

‘Georgia, your aunt is doing very well,’ the sister interrupted her. ‘But you must realise—’ She had to break off as one of the nurses came quickly towards her, excusing herself to Georgia as she turned aside to listen to what she had to say. ‘Oh, dear, I’m afraid I’m going to have to go, but...’

As she watched her hurry away, Georgia fought to ignore the tension and fear she was feeling. Sometimes when she talked to her aunt about the garden, about the future, Aunt May looked at her with such a compassionate, concerned expression that Georgia felt as though... As though what? As though Aunt May knew and accepted something which she herself did not know—or did not want to know?

She was trembling when she got into her car, cold with fear.

* * *

As always when she suffered like this, Georgia found the only way to hold the terror and the pressure of her own despairing thoughts at bay was to work as hard as she could, so that all her mental energy was exhausted, making it impossible for her to dwell on the truth that her intelligence told her existed but which her heart refused to acknowledge.

It was almost one o’clock in the morning before she admitted that she was so tired that if she didn’t stop working she would probably fall asleep where she was.

She had, she confessed to Louise Mather, been lucky to find an agency with enough work to enable her to temp from home, but Louise had corrected her, telling her frankly, ‘No, I’m the one who’s lucky to have such a highly qualified and hard-working person on my books, and if you ever do want something more permanent, don’t hesitate to let me know.’

Louise knew what had prompted her move from London, but she was one of the very small circle of people who did. The doctor was another, plus the staff at the hospice, and the farmer’s wife—who was their closest neighbour and who, in the days before Aunt May had gone into the hospice, had been a regular visitor, bringing them fresh eggs and vegetables, and shared with Aunt May her own countrywoman’s lore. Aunt May was a very private person, and she had brought Georgia herself up the same way, and besides... Georgia leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes to relieve the strain of staring at the screen, and acknowledged that one of the reasons she was so reluctant to discuss her aunt’s illness with others was because somehow in doing so it was as though she was physically holding it at bay, refusing to allow it to tighten its grip on their lives. It was as though, by refusing to admit its existence, she could somehow pretend that it did not exist. Was that what she was doing? she asked herself. Was that why she preferred to allow someone like Mitch Fletcher to believe that she was having an affair with a married man rather than admit the truth?

Mind you, if she had a psychological problem, then so too did he. How on earth had he managed to leap to the conclusions he had about her on such flimsy evidence? It hadn’t been so much a leap as an impossible connecting together of facts which surely even a fool could see could not possibly amount to what he had seen in them. It was obvious that the trauma of his childhood had left a very deep impression on him—just as hers had left her with a fear of being alone, without someone she could call her own. Was that why she was so desperately afraid of losing her aunt? Not so much for her aunt’s sake, but more selfishly for her own?

Georgia shivered, hugging her arms around her body as though trying physically to ward off the darkness of the thoughts passing through her mind. It was because it was so late...because she was so tired...because she was alone... Because she was still even now suffering the after-effects of the emotions churned up by Mitch Fletcher...

Mitch Fletcher. She stood up unsteadily, smothering a yawn. She should never have allowed him to give her that cheque. She should have stood her ground and told him that she had changed her mind, that she no longer wanted a lodger. But then that would not have been true: she did not want a lodger, but she needed a lodger because she desperately needed the income having one would bring in. What she did not want was a lodger in the form of Mitch Fletcher, and what was more she suspected he was perfectly well aware of her feelings. Despite the easy charm, the warmth she had seen so clearly exhibited earlier in the day when he had responded with humour to their small confrontation, there was quite obviously another man beneath that easygoing surface, a tough, determined man whose relaxed outward pose cloaked a will of steel. She shivered, acknowledging that it wasn’t the cool night air coming in through her bedroom which was responsible for the lifting of the tiny hairs on her skin.

It was only when she was finally sliding gratefully into an exhausted sleep that she remembered that she hadn’t told her aunt about Mitch Fletcher. Tomorrow, she would tell her tomorrow. No, it would be today now, she recognised in a confused manner, impatiently blaming Mitch Fletcher for the fact that, infuriatingly, although she was both mentally and physically exhausted, as soon as he had slipped into her thoughts all desire to sleep had somehow evaded her.

* * *

As she was discovering more and more often these days, her sleep was brief and not very relaxing, and her first thoughts when she opened her eyes were, as always, for her aunt. Perhaps her inability to sleep properly lately was a legacy of those weeks when her aunt had herself been unable to sleep and when she, Georgia, had—ignoring the protests—sat up with her, talking to her and trying to help her to overcome the intensity of her pain. Now her aunt was receiving the benefit of the hospice’s care and experience in helping people to control and live with such pain, but Georgia herself could not get back into the habit of sleeping deeply and well.

Long before seven o’clock she was up and had eaten her breakfast—or rather had attempted to eat her breakfast, pushing away her cereal barely touched. Now, as she wandered through the garden, ignoring the discomfort of the early-morning dew soaking into her trainers, she paused to study the buds on one of the rose bushes she and her aunt had ordered the previous autumn. These were special roses, old varieties which they were growing for their scent rather than for the perfection of their blooms. As she looked at them, carefully examining them for any signs of greenfly, her throat ached with the pressure of the tears she dared not allow herself to cry.

When she returned to the kitchen for a pair of scissors and a basket and carefully cut a half-dozen or so buds, it was an impulse decision, and one which made her hands shake with emotion when she carefully placed the buds into the basket. Why was she picking them when surely her aunt would soon be able to come home and see them for herself? What was her subconscious mind trying to tell her? For a moment she was almost tempted to destroy the buds, to trample them into the ground, so that she could forget that strong current of awareness that had compelled her to cut them; as though some deep part of her was already acknowledging that her aunt would never see them blooming in their natural setting. A sharp, agonising dart of pain shivered through her. No...that wasn’t true! As she tensed her whole body, bracing it to reject the strong current of her own thoughts, she saw someone walking across the grass towards her.

It took her several seconds to recognise Mitch Fletcher, and then several more to pull herself together sufficiently to wonder what he was doing. She hadn’t been expecting to see him until this evening.

He, like her, was wearing a pair of trainers, hence his unheralded approach. He was also wearing a dark-coloured tracksuit, and he explained briefly, ‘I run this way most mornings, and when I saw you were in the garden I thought I’d stop to ask you if you minded if I brought my stuff round this afternoon instead of this evening? The hotel need my bedroom and they’d like me to check out before lunch...’

As she mentally calculated the distance from the town’s one decent hotel to the cottage, Georgia reflected that it was no wonder he looked so tautly muscled and fit if he ran that kind of distance most mornings.

A lot of people used the footpath that went past the cottage to the farm, both for walking and running, and she had become so used to them going past that she scarcely noticed them now, hence the reason she had not spotted him before. His abrupt intrusion into her sombre and painfully reflective mood left her feeling jarred and on edge, exposed somehow, and anxious for him to go, and yet somehow still too saddened by what she had been thinking to make a snappy quick response to his question.

There was no reason why he shouldn’t move in during the afternoon: she would be at home after all, working, and yet she wanted to say no to him. Did she want him lodging with her? She had no option now, and it would be stupid to allow her own emotions to cut her off from such a valuable source of much-needed income. She had kept from her aunt her worries about their financial resources, wanting the older woman to concentrate all her mental energy on fighting her cancer, not worrying about her niece.

‘Old-fashioned shrub roses. My grandmother used to grow them.’ The bleak, almost hard comment broke through her guard. She focused on Mitchell Fletcher as he leaned forward to examine the nearest bush.

Something in his voice made her question, ‘You didn’t get on with her?’

The look he gave her was sharp and prolonged. ‘On the contrary,’ he told her, ‘she was the one source of stability during my childhood. Her home, her garden were always somewhere I could escape to when things at home got out of hand. She was my father’s mother, and yet she never took his side. I think in many ways she blamed herself for his promiscuity, his lack of loyalty. She had brought him up alone, you see: her husband, my grandfather, had been killed in action during the war. She found great solace in her garden, both for the loss of her husband, and for the faults of her son. She died when I was fourteen...’

Unwillingly, Georgia felt her emotions responding to all that he had not said, to the pain she could tell was cloaked by the flat hardness of his voice. ‘You must have missed her dreadfully.’

There was a long pause, so long that she thought he must not have heard her, and then he said even more flatly, ‘Yes, indeed. So much so that I destroyed her entire rose garden... A stupid, pointless act of vandalism which incurred my father’s wrath because by doing so I had seriously brought down the value of the house, which was by then up for sale, and caused another row between my parents.

‘My father was in mid-affair at the time—never a good point at which to annoy him. We could chart the progress of his affairs by his moods, my mother and I. When a new one started, there was a general air of bonhomie and cheerfulness about him. As the chase hotted up and the affair began to develop, he would become euphoric—almost ecstatically so when the affair eventually became a physical reality. After that would follow a period when he was like someone high on drugs, and woe betide anyone who in any way, however inadvertently, came between him and his need to concentrate exclusively on the object of his desire. Later, in the cooling-off period, he would be more approachable, less obsessed. That was always a good time to get his attention.’

Georgia listened in silent horror, wanting to reject the unpleasantness of the words being delivered in that flat, emotionless voice, knowing how much pain, how much anguish they must cover, unwillingly finding herself in sympathy with him.

Abruptly he shrugged, a brief flexing of his shoulders as though he was actually throwing off some burden, his voice lighter and far more cynical as he added, ‘Of course, as an adult, one realises that no one partner alone is responsible for all the ills in a marriage. I dare say my mother played her part in the destruction of their relationship, even though as a child I was not aware of it. Certainly what I do know is that my father should never really have married. He was the kind of man who could never wholly commit himself to one single woman...’

He leaned forward and looked into her basket. ‘Roses... A gift for your lover?’ His smile was very cynical. ‘Haven’t you got it the wrong way round? Shouldn’t he be the one giving you roses, strewing them dew-fresh across your pillow in the best of romantic traditions? But then of course I was forgetting he can never be here for you in the morning, can he? He has to return to the matrimonial pillow. I’m not surprised you want to keep this place. It’s ideal as a lovers’ retreat: tucked away here, cut off from the rest of the world, a secret, secluded, private paradise. Do you ever ask yourself about her—about his other life, his wife? Yes, of course you do, don’t you? You couldn’t not do. Do you pray for him to be free, or do you pretend that you’re content with things as they are, gratefully taking the small part of his time that is all he can give you, believing that one day it will be different—that one day he will be free?’

‘It isn’t like that,’ Georgia protested angrily. ‘You don’t—

‘I don’t what?’ he interrupted her. ‘I don’t understand? Like his wife? How your sex does love to delude itself!’ He turned away from her. ‘Will it be all right if I come round this afternoon with my stuff, or will it interfere with...with your private life?’

‘No, it won’t,’ Georgia told him furiously. ‘In fact—’

‘Fine. I’ll be here about three,’ he told her, already starting to lope away towards the gate, with the easy movement of a natural athlete.

Impotently, Georgia stared after him, wondering why on earth she hadn’t acted when she had had the opportunity and told him not only just how wrong he was in his assumptions but also that she had changed her mind and that she was no longer willing to have him as a lodger. Too late to wish her reactions had been faster now. He had gone.

The perfume of the roses wafted poignantly around her. She touched one of the buds tenderly. Poor boy, he must have been devastated when he lost his grandmother. She could well understand the emotions which must have led him to destroying her roses...the grief and frustration. He must have felt so alone, so deserted. It was so easy for her to understand how he must have felt. Too easy, she warned herself as she walked towards the house, reminding herself that it wasn’t the boy she was going to deal with but the man, and that that man had leapt to the most erroneous and unfair assumptions about her, based on the most tenuous of links and such scant knowledge of her.

Later, as she showered and prepared for her visit to her aunt, her conscience pricked her, reminding her that she needed only to have stopped Mitch Fletcher when he first mentioned her supposed lover and that she ought to have corrected him then. Why hadn’t she done so? Not because she was the kind of person who enjoyed allowing others to misjudge her so that she could wallow in self-pity and then enjoy their embarrassment once the truth was ultimately revealed. No, it wasn’t that. It was because...because she was afraid of discussing her aunt’s condition with anyone, afraid...afraid of what? Of what she might be forced to confront in doing so?

Her heart had started to hammer, the familiar feeling of panic, despair and anger flooding through her, the sense of outrage and helplessness... Abruptly she switched off, refusing to allow her thoughts to charge heedlessly down the road they were heading—down a road she could not allow them to go. Why? Because she knew that road led nowhere other than to an empty wasteland of anguish and pain. She had, after all, already travelled down it once when her parents died. Then there had been Aunt May to help her, to hold her, to comfort her. Now there was no one. No, she would be completely on her own...

She could feel the panic building up inside her, the rejection of what her mind was trying to tell her, the impotent rage and misery.

As she went downstairs she saw the roses she had cut, and for a moment she was tempted to pick them up and throw them into the dustbin. Then she remembered Mitch Fletcher’s flat and yet extraordinarily graphic description of his destruction of his grandmother’s rose bushes and she quelled the impulse.