Читать книгу Unspoken Desire - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 7

IT CERTAINLY wasn’t. Rebecca had been at Aysgarth for just over a week and so far had made absolutely no progress at all in winning the twins’ trust. They avoided her at every opportunity, and for the last two days the only time she had seen them had been at mealtimes and then later in the evening when, at her own insistence, she had helped Norty put them to bed.

Frazer had telephoned once during the week she had been there. On picking up the receiver and hearing his voice, she had been so parlysed with shock that she had been unable to do anything other than pass the receiver over to Mrs Norton. Luckily perhaps in the circumstances, because she had a pretty shrewd idea that neither the housekeeper nor Aunt Maud had seen fit to inform Frazer of the fact that his self-appointed governess to the children had left and that Rebecca had taken her place.

The sound of his voice had disturbed her more than she wanted to admit, at once so familiar and alien.

When Aunt Maud came to take the receiver from the housekeeper to speak to her nephew, Rebecca discovered that it was impossible for her to leave the room. It was as though some invisible and painfully tight thread kept her within hearing distance of his voice.

Dazedly she heard Aunt Maud confirm that she and the twins were well, and although her brain registered the fact that no mention was made either of the governess’s leaving or of her own arrival she was feeling far too shocked to insist on Aunt Maud’s informing Frazer at once of her presence at Aysgarth. That she herself was now party to the deception that Maud was perpetrating against her nephew only struck her when Maud finally replaced the receiver.

‘You didn’t tell Frazer about my being here,’ she reminded the older woman wryly.

‘Didn’t I, dear?’ Aunt Maud instantly fell back on her prime means of defence, adopting a vague and slightly puzzled attitude.

‘No, you didn’t,’ Rebecca reaffirmed quietly.

For a moment Aunt Maud looked a little bit guilty, then she said triumphantly, ‘But, my dear, he must know you were here. Mrs Norton told me you’d answered the telephone.’

What could she say? How could she admit that she had been so shocked emotionally by the sound of his voice that her vocal cords had virtually become paralysed?

‘I…I passed the receiver straight over to Mrs Norton,’ she said uncomfortably, ‘so I never actually spoke to Frazer.’

She bit her lip and then, much as it went against the grain to take to task this now elderly but still very awesome old lady for whom she still felt a slight residue of her childhood awe, she knew she had to tell her how uncomfortable she was about the fact that she was here at Aysgarth, living in Frazer’s house without his knowledge, while being fully aware herself of how little he would want her there. And yet she wondered how to say as much in a way that would convince Aunt Maud that Frazer must be told and yet at the same time stop her asking any far too awkward questions about the nature of the supposed quarrel which had led to his reluctance to have her staying in the house.

To her relief and amazement, Aunt Maud took the burden of responsibility off her shoulders by patting her arm gently and saying in a kindly manner, ‘You came here at my insistence, Rebecca, and to help me. If at a later stage Frazer should choose to take anyone to task about that, then, my dear, I’m afraid that my nephew is not the man I’ve always found him to be. In the absence of their parents and Frazer those children are my responsibility, and a responsibility which I take very seriously. But you can see for yourself that I’m far too old to keep an eye on them.’

Rebecca had to admit that this was true. Helen and Peter, while a little afraid of their great-aunt, were adept at manoeuvring themselves out of her presence. They had far, far more freedom than Rebecca remembered having at the same age, even here at Aysgarth.

Mrs Norton had told her on more than one occasion that they were regular little devils, especially, as she put it, ‘Miss Helen’. Helen was the ringleader, the bolder of the two. Her awareness of the vulnerabilities and vanities that went up to make the adult psyche were far too great for a child of her own age, Rebecca considered.

‘Perhaps a good boarding school might be the answer,’ she suggested cautiously now, but Aunt Maud shook her head decisively.

‘Don’t think I haven’t suggested it, my dear, but Frazer won’t hear of it. He believes the children need the security of living at home.’

‘But we all went to boarding school,’ Rebecca protested.

‘Yes, but Frazer contends that you all, especially you and Robert, had a far more secure and emotionally stable home background than the twins.’

Rebecca had to acknowledge that this was true; but, while she could see Frazer’s point in wanting to keep the twins at Aysgarth, she still wished she had not allowed herself to be dragooned into coming up here to share that responsibility.

‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ Aunt Maud comforted her. ‘I know you’re finding things difficult at the moment, but I have every faith in your ability to bring those two to a proper realisation of at least a little discipline in their lives.’

Aunt Maud had more faith in her than she had in herself, Rebecca admitted ruefully. It had shaken her hearing Frazer’s voice so unexpectedly like that, reminding her of things she had thought safely tucked away in the past. She had been fifteen when she first fell in love with him, dreamy-eyed and vague, her feelings more innocent and cerebral than physical.

She had likened him to all her favourite fictional heroes, had spent her holidays dreamily following him as much as she could, content to worship from afar. At sixteen her feelings had become sharper and far more painful; the physical awareness of her maturing body had both delighted and embarrassed her.

She remembered how the Christmas she was sixteen, when Frazer had bent to kiss her in the cousinly fashion that was his habit, she had ducked out of the way, petrified of betraying not just her feelings but her total lack of sophistication and experience. She so desperately wanted to be older, more experienced, more on what then had seemed to be Frazer’s unattainably sophisticated level.

She remembered that that Christmas there had been a girl staying at Aysgarth—Frazer’s latest girlfriend, a pretty and no doubt very pleasant girl, but Rebecca had invested her with all manner of unpleasant traits.

She had been desperately jealous of her and her relationship with Frazer. She remembered that she had refused to join the others on their annual walk to watch the Boxing Day meet set off. She remembered as well that, while Rory had jeered at her for being sulky and childish, Frazer had looked at her with thoughtful, concerned eyes. On reflection she realised that it was hardly surprising that he took his responsibility towards the twins so seriously. Even though only a handful of years had removed him in age from Rory, Robert and herself, he had always somehow or other seemed so very much more mature, a halfway stage between themselves and their parents.

She remembered her utter embarrassment when later that same holiday he had come up to her when she was sitting in her room daydreaming over an impossible sequence of events which concluded with him sweeping her into his arms and proclaiming his undying love. She remembered how he had knocked on her bedroom door and walked in, a tall dark-haired, jean-clad figure, wearing an old check woollen shirt, his body carrying the tang of fresh male sweat after his labours outside clearing a fresh fall of snow from the drive.

Rebecca remembered how her sensitive, newly emerging awareness had reacted to that very maleness of him; how a fierce thrill of pleasure had run through her as he sat down beside her on the window-seat. His first words to her, though, quickly dashed her foolish hopes.

He had come, he told her gently, to find out if something was wrong; if perhaps there was a problem at school. The knowledge that he so obviously still considered her to be a schoolgirl, a child, had been so bitterly painful that she had found it impossible to respond to anything he said, retreating further and further into her own protective shell, putting between them what she now recognised had been the beginning of a distance which neither of them had ever broached.

After that, with growing maturity, and aware of how potentially embarrassing for all concerned it would be if her feelings for him were ever to become public knowledge, she had made a point of avoiding him whenever she stayed at Aysgarth, spending more time in Rory’s company than she did in Frazer’s—and apparently so effectively convincing him that he was nothing more to her than merely an older and rather boring cousin that, when Rory had claimed she was the one with whom he was breaking his marriage vows, Frazer had had no difficulty whatsoever in believing him, which of course was exactly what she and Rory had wanted. So why afterwards had she felt that savage backlash of agonising pain that he should so easily have accepted their deceit? What had she expected him to do? Deny their claims and in doing so say passionately that he knew that she, Rebecca, could not possibly be involved with anyone else, because she loved him…and moreover that that love was returned?