Читать онлайн книгу «Secret Obsession» автора CHARLOTTE LAMB
Secret Obsession
CHARLOTTE LAMB
Sins Pride comes before a fall… .Will Nerissa's love for another man come before her husband? Nerissa is married to Ben and she has tried to love him. But, since she was a child, Nerissa has also adored her cousin, Philip. Now Philip lies in a coma and Nerissa's special bond with him is perhaps the only means of bringing him around.But how can she tell Ben she must leave him for Philip's bedside? Ben is so proud and will never let her end their marriage! Love can conquer the deadliest of Sins .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u8e11e0d4-0708-54a0-a972-cc69328f1bee)
Excerpt (#u5fc4f201-05ed-51a6-8e61-5ba7cd4775ac)
Dear Reader (#u92c7c8bb-d063-5b20-803b-d3f8c849ce73)
Title Page (#uc04b259a-8eb2-5c06-97d9-e3ae597ede49)
Chapter One (#ud25b96f7-c413-59cf-9766-fb1b40cbe6ec)
Chapter Two (#u0e02d5bd-125e-519b-aeae-5e067f9b33ed)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Do I have to remind you that it was me you married, not him?”
“I want a divorce, Ben!” Nerissa broke out in a voice that shook, and the room filled with an intolerable tension.
“I’ll fight it,” he said curtly. “I’ll use any weapon I have to—even if it means bringing him into it. What do you think that will do to your family pride?”
Dear Reader,
The Seven Deadly Sins are those sins which most of us are in danger of committing every day: very ordinary failings, very human weaknesses, but which can sometimes cause pain to both ourselves and others. Over the ages they have been defined as: Anger, Covetousness, Envy, Greed, Lust, Pride and Sloth.
In this book I deal with the sin of Pride. In certain circumstances, pride can be a strength and comfort, but in other circumstances it can be deadly, particularly when family pride leads people to lie, to suppress the truth about the past, or when someone is too proud to admit their feelings.
Charlotte Lamb
This is the first in Charlotte Lamb’s new series, SINS. Watch out in the coming months for six more romances—all complete stories in themselves—where this exceptionally talented writer proves that love can conquer the deadliest of sins!
Coming next month: Deadly Rivals…the sin of Covetousness. Have you ever hankered after forbidden fruits?
Secret Obsession
Charlotte Lamb
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_7cc7c29b-7865-578e-b324-9326a393a72c)
‘I‘LL be back on Friday week,’ Ben said, his back to her but his reflection visible in the dressing-table mirror as his long fingers carefully knotted a blue silk tie, adjusted the set of his collar. Every movement was calm, unhurried, assured—as though he had all day to get ready.
It was Nerissa who was on edge, her blue eyes constantly glancing at the clock and away again quickly, before Ben noticed. He was too quick to pick up signals; he might start wondering why she was on tenterhooks to get him out of the house; he might ask questions and then she might panic and give away too much. That was what happened to a lot of people when Ben was interrogating them; she had watched it happen in court often enough—heard witnesses start stammering, go pale, flush, betray themselves.
From this angle she could see the razor-edge of his profile—intimidating, forceful, his mouth level, his grey eyes narrowed and intent. He smoothed down his tight-fitting waistcoat, checked the time by his watch.
Oh, God, why was he taking so long?
She took a deep breath to steady her voice, then said, ‘Your taxi’s waiting!’ It had arrived early; the meter must be ticking away.
‘I ordered it for eight o’clock and it is only just that now. He can wait,’ he said in that deep, curt voice which made her tension worse.
If he didn’t leave soon she was going to miss her train. In an agony of impatience she moved to the window, looked out through the lace curtain, saw the London street bathed in autumn sunlight, the horse-chestnut trees in the gardens opposite shedding their russet leaves in a brisk wind, having already shed the spiky orbs which split as they hit the ground, making it easier for the local boys to hunt among the leaves for the shiny brown nuts.
‘It’s going to be a beautiful day,’ she said in melancholic irony. Wasn’t that always the way? Weather always mocked you at times like this; it was never in the right mood.
It should be grey, elegiac, rain seeping down from dark clouds; the wind should howl across the city, or lightning strike the horse-chestnuts and set them blazing.
Instead, it was glorious out there—rich and glowing colours, a brilliant blue sky radiant with sunlight.
Ben clicked down the locks on his suitcase and lifted it to the floor. She hadn’t even packed yet—she hadn’t dared; it would have been too risky. She would throw a few things into a case while she waited for a taxi to come and collect her. She hadn’t dared call one, of course. Nothing must alert Ben to the possibility that she was going away too.
‘I’ll ring you tonight, from The Hague,’ he said.
She had her excuse ready, but her voice was slightly breathless, all the same. ‘I may have to work late; Gregory wants me to go out to Worcester to see a client. We don’t yet know the size of the job and it could take all day to assess. I don’t know what time I’ll get back.’
That much was true—Gregory had given her instructions for the job yesterday and she hadn’t told him that she wouldn’t be doing it. She would ring him later, before she left.
Ben’s arms slid round her waist and he rested his chin on top of her head, on the cloudy dark mass of hair she hadn’t yet brushed into order. She trembled as she felt his body touching her, his hands below her breasts, resting there lightly, the warmth of his blood reaching her through her jersey wool dress.
‘Are you going alone? Or with Gregory? I don’t trust Gregory an inch—I hope you don’t let him flirt with you!’ Ben was smiling as he said it, though. Her boss was a happily married man who had never shown the slightest interest in her. If Ben had even suspected that Gregory might fancy her his tone, his look would have been very different—and they both knew it.
‘As if I would!’ she said, trying to sound amused too, but so strung up that she couldn’t quite manage it. He made her so tense.
They had only been married for three months. It had been a whirlwind romance; she was still breathless. It had happened too fast for her to be quite sure what she was doing. There was so much about him that she did not know.
Of course, marriage was always a gamble. Until you actually lived with someone you could never be quite sure about them, but that was doubly true about Ben.
She had met him a year earlier, at a party given by one of his clients who happened to work with her. Nerissa had hardly known anyone in the crowded room and had backed into a corner with a glass of white wine. The host had brought Ben over and introduced them, then left again, and Ben had asked her a series of questions about herself to which he had got shy, monosyllabic replies.
She hadn’t thought she would ever see him again, but a few days later he had rung her at work and asked if they could have dinner. A little uncertainly she had accepted, and spent an evening with him at a well-known restaurant in Mayfair. They had talked—or rather, Ben had talked and she’d listened. Ben had asked questions and she’d given husky answers. Nerissa was not a talkative girl, but that didn’t seem to worry him.
Ben Havelock, she discovered, was a very successful and wealthy barrister. He had very little spare time, so they hadn’t seen much of each other during those early months. Last spring, however, he had managed to get a fortnight’s holiday and they had spent it together up in Northumberland, where she had been born and had spent most of her life.
That had been Ben’s idea. He wanted to get to know her better against her own background, he said. He already knew that London was not Nerissa’s territory; she had a lost look at times—she lacked the necessary skills for city life and wasn’t street-wise or sophisticated. Ben was a Londoner, a city man, with all that that implied of shrewd, hard-headed sophistication. Not much surprised him, but Nerissa was different. She intrigued him; he wanted to find out what lay behind her façade, where she came from, what people had bred her.
He had achieved his aim. She hadn’t wanted him to visit her home but he had insisted, and he had discovered a lot about her during those two weeks—more than she had meant him to know.
She had secrets she had wanted to keep; Ben had guessed at them within hours of their arrival. He worried her, disturbed her, but he had persuaded her to marry him all the same, in spite of her doubts and reservations.
‘It will work,’ he had promised her. ‘All you have to do is forget the past. This is a new beginning. For both of us.’
He had memories he wanted to forget, too. He had told her about them freely enough, yet she still felt uneasily that she did not really know him very well. She had thought that once they were man and wife she would really know and understand him, but there was a darkness in Ben which still locked her out. She was beginning to be afraid it would always be there—a wall around him through which she could not pass and which hid a side of him which worried her.
The taxi hooted and she jumped. ‘He’s getting impatient!’
‘Let him!’ Ben turned her round and lowered his head. His mouth was possessive. She felt her pulses quicken, her body begin to burn. That was one side of their marriage which worked; they were passionate lovers. In bed she could forget her uncertainties—she might not yet have the key to Ben’s mind, but his body was as familiar to her as her own.
Ben abruptly ended the kiss and, lifting his head, framed her face between his hands for a moment, staring at her as if trying to memorise the way she looked.
‘Is there something on your mind?’
The curt question made her heart do a back-flip. She had known it would be hard to deceive him; his training in court made him too accustomed to reading expressions, picking up nuances.
‘I’m not looking forward to being here alone, that’s all,’ she lied.
That was true enough and he knew it; she always felt uneasy about being in the house alone at night. London was a dangerous city, especially to a girl from a peaceful little village miles from anywhere.
He frowned but accepted the excuse. ‘Why don’t you ask one of the girls from work to stay with you while I’m away?’
‘I might do that,’ she murmured, knowing she wouldn’t because she wasn’t going to be here.
The taxi hooted again and Ben’s mouth indented impatiently. ‘I’d better go or I’ll miss my plane! If I don’t talk to you tonight I’ll ring tomorrow.’
He kissed her again, quickly, then he was gone. She heard his feet on the stairs, the front door opening, slamming shut.
Leaning her face on the cold glass of the window, she watched him walk rapidly across the pavement and get into the back of the taxi. He leaned sideways to look out and up at her, his face briefly visible before the taxi vanished—a hard-boned, sparefleshed face, cool grey eyes, a wide, controlled mouth, black hair springing from a window’s peak on his high forehead.
He would be a bad enemy, she thought, and her nerves tightened. When he found out that she had lied, discovered where she had gone, she was going to find out just how dangerous an enemy Ben could be.
His hand lifted for a second; she waved back, then the taxi turned the corner and Nerissa hurried away from the window. She packed her case first, not caring what she folded into it—it wouldn’t matter what she looked like so long as she took warm clothes with her; it would be cold up there.
Downstairs in the kitchen she left a note on the table for the girl who did their cleaning and had her own key to the house. Then she went into Ben’s study, rang for another taxi, then switched on the answering machine to record phone calls, including those from Ben later, or any from his secretary, Helen Manners, a slim blonde woman in her late twenties who had made her dislike for Nerissa clear from the minute they had met.
As she leaned over the desk Nerissa’s eye was caught by their wedding photo, half buried among a pile of law books.
They had been married on a summer morning—a civil ceremony with only a few guests—some family and a handful of friends. It hadn’t felt like a real wedding, somehow; Nerissa had always believed that when she married it would be in her local village church, among the people with whom she had grown up. That brisk, businesslike exchange of vows in London had had no romance, no sense of joy. She had gone through it numbly, with a sense of disbelief.
Helen Manners had been there, very elegant in an olive-green silk dress, her blonde hair piled on her head in a French pleat and pinned there by a large bow made of the same material as her dress. She had long, shapely legs and displayed her tiny feet in handmade black high-heels; she had expensive tastes.
Nerissa didn’t like her and it was mutual. Helen had raised one perfectly drawn black brow as she’d run her scornful eyes over Nerissa’s plain, creamcoloured dress and the Victorian posy of summer flowers she carried in a silver holder.
Ben had seemed oblivious of his secretary’s hostility to his new wife, just as he was indifferent to his sister’s dislike of Nerissa. Ben’s sister hadn’t even come to the wedding, in fact. But then neither had any of Nerissa’s family.
It had been an odd wedding.
Nerissa stared at Ben’s face in the photo—tough and uncompromising, his eyes locked and hiding secrets.
Nerissa turned away, biting her lip. When he found out…She couldn’t even bear to imagine what he would do to her. He was capable of killing; she was convinced of that. The dark vein in his nature ran deep, and his pride was stony, unbending. Any injury to that pride was never forgiven.
She shivered, which reminded her that she was going north—the weather at this time of the year would be cool if not downright chilly. She went back upstairs and found a warm, heather-coloured tweed coat, a purple woollen scarf and knitted gloves that matched—a Christmas present from Aunt Grace last year. Aunt Grace always made the presents she gave; she was very good with her hands, could sew and knit expertly. For much of Nerissa’s life Aunt Grace had made most of her clothes on the sewing-machine in the little sewing-room looking out over the farm orchard.
Nerissa stiffened as she heard the unmistakable sound of a taxi throbbing away outside.
She ran downstairs and picked up her case, opened the front door and hurried out—a slightly built, almost fragile girl, with a wild cloud of dark hair around a pale, triangular face, dominated by those huge, cornflower-blue eyes.
‘Where are we going, Snow White?’ joked the taxi driver, turning to stare at her.
‘King’s Cross station, please.’
He started off, saying over his shoulder, ‘Where are you off to, then, love?’
‘Durham,’ she said, hoping he wasn’t going to talk to her all the way. She was in no mood for a light chat with a taxi driver. She had too much on her mind.
‘Never been there—what’s it like?’
Nerissa stared out of the window at London’s busy, crowded streets and thought of the wind off the moors, the open sky, the dinosaur contours of the green and brown hills with their rounded shanks and bony shoulders lifting against the horizon.
She had missed it, ever since she’d left just over a year ago. She realised suddenly how much she ached to see it again.
‘Cold, at this time of year,’ she said. ‘Durham is almost in Scotland, you know.’
‘Don’t fancy that much; give me lots of sun, that’s what I need, especially in winter.’ The taxi driver began to tell her about his holiday in Spain and how hot it had been there last month on the beaches of Torremolinos. Nerissa heard one word in every three.
She caught her train by the skin of her teeth. She had reserved a seat but her compartment was halfempty anyway, and got emptier as the journey continued up north. The train was an express and only stopped at a few stations—the important cities along this route. At intervals someone came round with a trolley containing sandwiches, crisps, drinks, but she wasn’t hungry so she just had a coffee midmorning. She spent the long journey staring out at the changing scene—the smoke-blackened chimneys of London, the grey and yellow London brick, the dull red tiles in the endless rows of little houses as they flashed through the suburbs, and then the flat, rather scrubby fields and hedgerows which succeeded them before they broke out into the real countryside of the heart of England.
By the time they were in the Midlands the sun was quite warm on the window, summer’s last, flickering, expiring flame moving over the landscape, the autumnal trees, the stubbled fields, the mist-hazed hills in the distance.
She had not been north since the spring, since that visit with Ben, since her marriage.
Had she changed? she wondered, trying to remember how she had felt before she’d met Ben, how she had felt as she’d made that first journey southwards to work in London.
She grimaced, still staring out at the countryside flashing past. Of course she had. A lot had happened to her in London. She was very different from the girl who had left the farm all those months ago.
Would they notice? Did it show—was it visible? She bit her lip. Philip would see it; he knew her better than anyone else in the world. He would know at once that the Nerissa who had come back to them was not the same girl who had left the north a year ago to work in London.
Except that Philip might never get the chance to notice anything about her.
She flinched at that idea, her skin white, stretched, taut. Stop it! she told herself. Don’t even think it. He is not going to die.
She looked at her watch; they were running to time. They would pull into York any minute, not much longer now. Her uncle would meet her at Durham. He would have the latest news.
As the train slowly steamed into Durham she collected her case and her other belongings and a moment later stepped down on to the platform, her long, slender legs admired by one of the porters hanging about waiting for someone to require his services.
‘Carry your bag, miss?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘I can manage, thank you.’ She hurried away with her case; it wasn’t very heavy.
She saw her uncle before she reached him and waved, breaking into a run.
He hadn’t changed, which was one comfort. Still tall and loose-limbed with iron-grey hair, a weathered countenance, deep-sunk pale eyes, John Thornton was a man who spent most of his days out in the open and it showed. Sun and wind had given him a skin like leather, the horizon-gazing eyes of a sailor and the slow patience of a ruminating animal—like those he looked after on his farm, the wiry upland sheep of the Northumberland hills.
‘Nerissa—thank God you’re here. We need a miracle.’
He bent and kissed her cheek, took her case from her. ‘I was afraid your husband might not want you to come.’
‘Ben’s away, abroad.’
Their eyes met, exchanged wordless understanding. ‘How long for?’
‘A week,’ she said, and saw her uncle’s face tighten.
‘A week? It’s going to take longer than a week.’
She had realised as much, had known as she left her home that she was going for a long time. She hadn’t been able to face telling Ben; she had known how he would react. His pride would never have agreed to letting her come. He would see it as a betrayal, a choice between him and Philip, and in a sense she supposed it was, but in another sense she had had no choice. She had had to come.
‘How is he?’
‘Bad.’ The monosyllable was flat yet filled with pain.
Her eyes stung with unshed tears. As they walked out of the station Nerissa slipped her hand through her uncle’s arm in a gesture of silent comfort.
He squeezed her hand against his side with an affectionate look, but didn’t say anything. He was not a man who said much; he had spent so much time alone in the fields that he had almost lost the habit of speech. That was one reason why she had grown up saying so little, why she was disturbed by noise and busy city streets. Silence had been her environment for so many years.
‘You’ll want some food; they never have anything worth eating on the train these days,’ he said as they drove away.
‘I’m not hungry!’
‘Nay, you must eat!’ He shook his head at her, half smiled. ‘Grace told me to make sure you did. Won’t do any of us any good if you get ill too! We’ll stop at a pub on the way, get a bite to eat there.’
They stopped at a pub just a stone’s throw from the hospital, found a seat in a corner, then John Thornton went up to the bar to order them both a ploughman’s platter—chunks of local cheese with pickles and salad and home-made bread.
‘How’s Aunt Grace bearing up?’ Nerissa asked, sipping her glass of cider which had a strong, homebrewed taste of fermented apples, rich, golden, autumnal, sending a warm glow through her and making her feel slightly less strung up.
Her uncle looked sombre. ‘She never leaves him. She’s sat by his bed ever since it happened, talking to him. She’s certain he’ll hear her voice and start to wake up.’
A pang hit Nerissa. She bit her lip. ‘How long is it now?’
‘Since he went into coma? Three days. We thought…hoped…he’d come out of it sooner, but he hasn’t, and the doctors can’t tell us when he will…if he will.’ His hands curled into helpless fists on the table between them.
‘Of course he’s going to get better! You mustn’t think like that. It isn’t like you to give up.’ She gently uncurled his fingers, held them tightly. ‘You know Aunt Grace won’t stop talking until he wakes up in self-defence!’
He gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘You bad girl, you! Lucky for you she can’t hear you!’
Nerissa smiled at him. ‘Have you finished your drink? Shall we go?’
If only took a few minutes to reach the hospital. She had spent a few days there once, years ago, when she’d had her tonsils out. The smell of polish and disinfectant and soap was familiar; her nostrils wrinkled at it. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floors as they tramped for what seemed hours along cream-painted corridors, up stairs, along more corridors, until they reached the intensive care unit where Philip Thornton lay, on a life-support system.
His mother sat beside the bed watching him unwearyingly and for a few seconds Nerissa and her uncle stood in the doorway, watching her while she was unaware of them, so intent on her son that she had no attention to spare for anything else.
Nerissa looked at him, too—and away again, appalled by what she saw. Everything his father had told her was suddenly a reality, in front of her; she hadn’t believed it fully until that moment—now she had to.
It was a relief to look at her aunt instead. Grace Thornton was the opposite of her husband. Where he was tall, she was short; where he was thin, she was plump. His skin was brown and weather-beaten; hers was as soft as a rose-petal and as rosy as an apple.
His eyes were very pale blue and deep-sunk; hers were slightly protuberant, very bright and a warm, rich brown, and her curly, goldy-brown hair showed no trace of the grey which had taken over in his hair.
Her voice was soft and warm; it flowed unceasingly while Nerissa and John Thornton listened. She had always done all the talking in the family while her husband and her son and Nerissa listened, and it was somehow reassuring to hear her talking now—it made the alien hospital surroundings seem more homely.
‘And the top field will be given a dressing this next week—if your father gets round to it—now the ploughing’s done. The turnips are coming on nice, then when the sheep have eaten all the grass we can turn them into the top field to eat turnip tops—and turnips too, if need be. Did I tell you the vet had been to see that ewe we thought might be carrying? Well, she wasn’t. Hardly worth keeping her; she hasn’t lambed for eighteen months. Past it, I reckon. She can go to market with the others next time.’
John Thornton moved forward and his wife stopped talking and turned her head. She saw Nerissa and her face lit up.
‘Here’s your father now, Philip,’ she said conversationally. ‘And Nerissa’s with him! There, I told you she’d come, didn’t I? And she looks just the same; she hasn’t changed.’
She got up and held out her arms; Nerissa ran into them and they hugged, kissing. Aunt Grace moved back to look at her, tears sparkling in her bright brown eyes.
‘You look well. She looks well, Philip. Lost weight, mind. Skinnier than ever! Don’t you eat down there in London? Did your uncle take you to have a bite to eat before you came here? I told him to make sure you got some lunch first—I know those trains—nothing but sandwiches and crisps; that’s all you get on them these days. In the old days they had a proper buffet car and a three-course lunch, with waiters in white coats and silver cutlery and good glasses on the table, but these days they can’t be bothered.’
‘We stopped and had a ploughman’s in a pub,’ Nerissa said, and her aunt clucked her tongue.
‘Is that all? Did you hear that, Philip? Isn’t that just like your father? John Thornton, you should have taken her somewhere better than that. A bite of cheese and some bread isn’t a fit meal for anyone but a mouse.’
‘She said she wasn’t hungry!’
‘You shouldn’t have taken any notice of her!’
Nerissa had stopped listening. She moved to the bedside and looked down at Philip, her heart wrung, wanting to cry. The top of his head was bandaged, domed, only his face visible. He had been shaved, she noted. There was no sign of stubble on his cheek and she knew that Philip needed to shave every day. He had once stopped shaving for a weekend camping trip on Hadrian’s Wall, not far from his home, and come back on the Monday morning with the rough beginnings of a curly brown beard.
His mother wasn’t talking any more. She was watching her niece. ‘Say hello to him, Nerissa. He can hear you; they say he can, even if he isn’t showing any signs. You know she’s here, don’t you, Philip? You’re waiting for her to talk to you.’
His hand lay on the white coverlet, brown and strong, with wide-spanned fingers, nails cut very short, a practical hand used to hard manual work. Nerissa touched it lightly, whispered, ‘Hello, Philip, it’s me.’
‘Say your name,’ her uncle urged her. ‘Say, it’s Nerissa.’
‘He knows,’ Grace Thornton said, still watching Nerissa. ‘I told him she was here, didn’t I? Not that I needed to; he’ll have known her voice the minute he heard it. We’ll go and have a cup of tea, Nerissa, and leave you to talk to him.’
Nerissa didn’t look round, just nodded. She heard them go out, heard the door click softly into place. She sank down on the chair her aunt had been sitting on and picked up Philip’s hand, stroked it lightly.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t come until now. Your father only rang me yesterday.’
It had been one of the biggest shocks of her life. She had been at work, had picked up the phone expecting it to be a business call and heard her uncle’s voice with a start of alarm. She had known it couldn’t be good news; he wouldn’t ring her at work for that.
‘I came as soon as I could,’ she added. She couldn’t get over the blankness of his face. The emptiness. His features unmoving, unchanging.
This is how he would look if he were dead, Nerissa thought, and her body winced in pain. Maybe he is dying? If they switched off this life-support machine would he die?
‘Darling, wake up!’ Urgency possessed her. She was afraid to touch his face, afraid of jarring his head, so she put her face down against his hand and kissed it, held it to her cheek. She had half expected his skin to be cold but it was warm; she put her lips against his inner wrist and felt the blood pumping sluggishly there, in the blue vein which she could see threading beneath the skin.
‘Wake up, Philip!’ she whispered against this one sign of Me in him.
There was no response, of course; she didn’t expect any. He had lain like this ever since the car crash in which he had suffered head injuries necessitating surgery—surgery which had physically relieved the pressure on his brain, her uncle had told her, but had left him like this, in a deep coma.
She couldn’t bear the idea of Philip dying. They had grown up together, as close as twins. For most of her life Philip had been the most important person in the world to her.
Behind her she heard the door open and sat up quickly, still holding his hand.
‘You must be his cousin,’ said a friendly voice and she turned to see a nurse behind her. ‘Hello, I’m his day special—I look after him during the day. He has someone else at night. I’m Staff Nurse Courtney.’
Nerissa smiled shyly at her. ‘Hello.’
‘How do you think he’s looking?’ The shrewd brown eyes watched her. ‘Bit of a shock, I expect, seeing him like this, but his condition has stabilised; there’s been no deterioration over the last couple of days.’
‘Does that mean he’s getting better?’ Nerissa asked hopefully, and saw the other girl hesitate.
‘Not exactly. It just means he isn’t getting any worse, which, believe me, is a hopeful sign.’
Nerissa’s face fell and Nurse Courtney quickly added, ‘It could mean he is going to take a turn for the better any minute. His mother’s doing a wonderful job and now you’re here, too. Keep talking to him; he needs all the stimulation he can get, anything that keeps jogging his brain.’
She left a few minutes later and Nerissa sat down beside Philip again and took his hand. ‘Do you like her?’ she asked him conversationally. ‘She has a very nice face—it matches her voice. I think you’ll like her. She’s the one who shaves you every day, she says. She’s good at it, too; you couldn’t do better yourself.’
His parents came back while she was telling him that it had started to rain. ‘Typical—it was wonderful weather in London, but I get back here and down comes the rain! It’s a wonder we don’t all have gills and fins, the rain we get up here.’
John Thornton laughed behind her and she glanced round. ‘Oh, your mum and dad are back, Philip.’
They sat down near by and talked to her, spoke to Philip as well, all the time, as if he were awake, so that after a while it seemed quite natural to Nerissa to do the same. She almost began to expect him to chime in occasionally—argue about something, laugh.
It had got dark by the time Grace Thornton looked at her watch and said, ‘I think you should take Nerissa home for some tea, John. She’s had a long journey today; she’ll need a good night’s rest.’
Nerissa couldn’t deny she was tired—her eyelids were heavy and she had to suppress yawns all the time—but she protested. ‘I went to stay, in case he wakes up!’
‘You can’t stay here all the time,’ said his mother. ‘It’s exhausting. I should know; I’ve done it for hours at a stretch. But if you’re to be any use to Philip you need to be fresh, and that means getting sleep. I shall be home later. I like to see him tucked up for the night, then I go home. We’ll come back tomorrow morning.’
Nerissa fell asleep in the car during the drive through the hills to her uncle’s farm. She woke up only when she heard dogs barking, and realised that the car had stopped in the farmyard.
‘I thought I was going to have to carry you up to bed!’ John Thornton said cheerfully. ‘Grace was right. You’re dead on your feet.’
‘I think I’ll go straight to bed,’ she admitted, yawning. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You said that before,’ he said, unlocking the solid oak front door and switching on the light in the small, panelled hall. ‘Look, you get undressed and hop into bed and I’ll bring you some hot chocolate and a sandwich—how’s that?’
She hugged him. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you, both of you, in London! It’s great to be home.’
She caught the flash of sadness in his eyes, and knew what he was thinking. She couldn’t let him say anything, though, so she ran up the old, creaking oak stairs, her nostrils filling with the familiar fragrance from her childhood—beeswax-polished furniture and stair-treads, home-made potpourri from the roses and lavender in the garden.
This was not a large house but a solid, well-made one, built of local stone and flint, carefully placed to shut out the prevailing winds on these Northumbrian hills, sheltered on all sides by ancient trees and high stone walls. Lantern Farm had been in one family since it was built in the seventeenth century. The Thorntons were not rich but they had always lived comfortably, running their sheep on the pastures above the house, keeping a few pigs, geese, horses and hens to supplement their income.
The furniture was all old, worn, shabby and wellkept. It shone with polish. Any tears in curtains and upholstery were neatly darned and there was rarely need to buy anything since the attics were well-stocked with household objects which were often brought back into use when a fashion returned after a century or so.
There were four bedrooms. Nerissa had always had a small one at the side of the house, overlooking an orchard. She undressed and climbed into bed, shivering a little because it was so much colder than her centrally heated home in London. At Lantern Farm they still kept wood fires, and none had been lit in this room since she’d left.
The faded tapestry curtains were threadbare; the wind blew through the lattice panes and rattled the door. On the bed lay an old patchwork quilt, made by John Thornton’s mother when she was first married from dozens of little cut-up pieces from old cotton shirts, dresses, curtains. The colours had faded but Nerissa thought it was beautiful. She stroked it, following the pattern, the diamonds and circles interlocking, and then she looked around the room, feeling very strange; it was like being caught in a time warp, spun back to her teens, to a very different Nerissa.
Her uncle arrived with a tray bearing a plate of tiny, finger sandwiches—brown bread leafed with ham and salad—a glass of water and a mug of hot chocolate. Under his arm he carried a hot-water bottle in a furry case which he handed her first.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said gratefully, pushing it under her covers and feeling warmth begin to circulate around her frozen feet and legs.
‘I should have lit a fire in here—shall I light one now?’
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ she said, and bit one of the tiny sandwiches. ‘Mmm, that’s delicious. You remembered, I love ham.’
‘Always did,’ he said, beaming. ‘Goodnight, then, love. If there’s anything you want, give me a shout.’
Ten minutes later the light was out and Nerissa was already half asleep.
It was strange to wake up in that house again. Strange to put on jeans and a thick, warm sweater and go out into the crisp autumn dawn where the shouting wind caught her black hair and blew it around her like a banner. She ran, startling horses in the pasture below the house. Climbing the wall and jumping down, she hunted for new mushrooms in the long grass where they had always grown.
When she went back to the house she found her aunt slicing tomatoes. ‘I saw you from the window gathering mushrooms; we’ll have them with toast,’ Grace Thornton said. ‘Your uncle’s away up to the top, to work on one of the walls—it came down in the last storm. He took his breakfast with him and a flask of tea. There’s nothing like rebuilding a wall to cheer him up.’
Nerissa remembered he had always gone off to work on the drystone walls whenever he was upset; the routine task was soothing to him.
After breakfast she and her aunt drove off to the hospital again. There was no change, Staff Nurse Courtney told them.
‘No change isn’t necessarily bad news, though,’ she said, and Nerissa wished she could believe her. ‘It’s a long, slow haul,’ added the nurse, and that, at least, Nerissa believed.
Towards the end of that very long day she wondered how her aunt managed to stay so cheerful, how she kept talking to her son when there was absolutely no response.
They had taken it in turns to talk to Philip. When his mother was tired she went off for a break and a cup of tea and sat outside, in the cool fresh air, in a little garden beside the ward, so that if she was wanted she was near by. Several times that day Nerissa went out and left Philip alone with his mother. After sitting about for hours Nerissa preferred a brisk walk around the garden after she had had her tea and a sandwich.
Her uncle arrived in the afternoon, and at six o’clock Grace Thornton sent them both home again. ‘And make sure you eat a proper cooked meal this time,’ she told them. ‘John, did you remember to pop that casserole into the oven?’
He nodded. ‘Just as you said, at two o’clock. What time shall I take it out?’
‘As soon as you want to eat. It won’t spoil, but it’s ready whenever you want it.’
When they got back to the farm Nerissa said, ‘I’ll serve supper,’ but John Thornton shook his head.
‘Nay, lass, your aunt told me to do it, and I’d better, or she’ll never let me hear t’end of it.’
‘I’ll lay the table, then.’
They ate in the farm kitchen, the biggest room in the house, with white-washed deep stone walls, small windows, an old range which gave out great warmth on cold days and cheerful red and white checked curtains. The table was old and wellscrubbed, the wood deeply bitten with knife-cuts and scratches and carved initials. Along the high windowsills stood rows of pink geraniums, all grown by Grace Thornton, who often won prizes for them at local flower shows.
The casserole was lamb, with seasonal vegetables—potatoes and carrots, late green beans and leeks and onion. It was all grown there, on the farm, and the smell was mouthwatering and the taste delicious.
They washed up and put everything away, leaving some of the casserole in the oven for Grace when she got back. John Thornton went out to his yard to feed some of his animals, and Nerissa switched on the radio to listen to some music.
She curled up in a chair, her mind occupied with Philip, worrying, remembering his white face and the carved, blind look of his closed eyes.
Was he ever going to wake up? And, if he did, would he be some sort of human vegetable? She knew that that was what was terrifying his parents. They hadn’t said anything, but she knew them. She had caught looks they gave each other, words they began and cut off.
She put her hands over her face. It wasn’t fair! Why had this happened to Philip? Hadn’t he borne enough grief already?
The phone rang beside her, making her jump. She had a sudden presentiment that it was news of Philip, that it was her aunt ringing from the hospital to say…what? That he had come out of his coma? Or…was dying?
Her hand shaking, she reached for it, whispered, ‘Yes, hello?’
There was a silence at the other end.
‘Hello? Lantcrn Farm,’ Nerissa said urgently. ‘Aunt Grace…is that you?’
The phone cut off suddenly. She held it, listening to the dead tone. Whoever had rung had hung up without speaking.
The silence was eloquent. Nerissa felt ice trickle down her nape. It could be a wrong number, of course. But she was afraid that it wasn’t.
She was afraid it was Ben. He would have rung their home, only got the answering machine, then perhaps tried ringing friends, her boss. She had known that sooner or later Ben would realise she was not at home. She had hoped it would take him longer to work it out, but she had known it would happen, and that he would not forgive her for going to Philip without telling him what she meant to do.
Her heart beat with terror. If that had been him, what would he do now?
For the moment, nothing, she quickly told herself. He was in The Hague representing a client at the Court of Human Rights. He couldn’t leave; this was an important case. Ben had been working on it for a long time; he wouldn’t walk out on it now. He had said he estimated that it would take at least a week, maybe longer, for him to present his case. He wouldn’t have to stay there to wait for the court’s decision—that might take weeks, even months—but he certainly couldn’t leave yet.
She had a breathing space. Days. Maybe a week, maybe longer. But sooner or later he would arrive and demand that she leave with him, and when she refused—as she knew she must—their marriage would be over.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_131a918f-0a85-5a51-a4e9-76e951820ea6)
NERISSA didn’t sleep much that night, and when her aunt saw her next morning she gave her a frowning, anxious stare.
‘You look terrible. Didn’t you sleep? Your eyes look like holes in a white paper bag. I can’t let you go to the hospital looking like that. They’ll take one look at you and send you home in case you’re coming down with something contagious.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, sitting down at the table and looking without much interest at the fruit, the cereal, the coffee waiting for her.
‘Fine? Nonsense!’ snorted Grace Thornton. ‘I know what you’re like—if you’re upset you don’t sleep or eat and the next thing we’ll find is that you’re ill, too. Look what happened when you were competing in the county swimming competition—you couldn’t stop throwing up for hours beforehand. And what about the year you took your final exams at school? You ended up with pneumonia that time. You’re one of those people who can’t take any sort of strain for long.’
Nerissa gave her a wounded look, her huge eyes darkened. ‘I’ll be OK. Don’t stop me going to see Philip; I can sleep later, when I get back. That’s all that’s wrong with me—I had something on my mind and couldn’t get to sleep for hours, that’s all.’
Grace Thornton frowned, face intent. ‘Something on your mind? What? Philip?’
‘Of course. I can’t help worrying about him, can I?’
‘You mustn’t let yourself worry; you have to be fit to sit by his bed all day. You must train yourself not to think too much.’
Nerissa laughed bitterly. ‘That would be a good trick. Tell me how I do that!’
She poured herself some coffee, took one of the apples grown in the farm orchard—an oldfashioned, crunchy, brown-skinned russet—and bit into it, very aware of her aunt watching her.
‘It isn’t just Philip you’ve got on your mind, is it? What else is bothering you?’ A pause, then Grace shrewdly said, ‘Your husband?’
‘Sometimes I think you’re a witch,’ Nerissa said, smiling wryly. ‘How can you always read my mind?’
‘I know you,’ Grace said, and sighed. ‘You should never have told him,’ she added, her voice thickening with remembered pain and angry pride. ‘I can’t understand why you did, talking about family business to an outsider like that!’
Nerissa put down the half-eaten apple, her head bent, the cloudy dark hair falling in a wave over her face, hiding it from Grace.
‘I didn’t tell him. He guessed.’
A snort. ‘How could he?’ Grace rejected. ‘He only spent two weeks up here and folk who’ve known us for years never guessed—how should he? What would he know about folk like us, and him coming from London, where they don’t even know their own neighbour, let alone give them a helping hand when times are bad? Nay, lass, if he guessed you gave it away—you must have said something to give him a clue.’
‘But I didn’t tell him,’ insisted Nerissa. ‘He just picked it up from something I said, or read it in my face, or in yours…or…’ Her voice faltered. ‘Or in Philip’s.’
Grace Thornton flinched, but said gruffly, ‘I don’t believe it. He couldn’t have.’
Nerissa said flatly, ‘Ben is very shrewd, especially with people. He’s a lawyer, remember, trained to read character, to sense when people are telling the truth or lying—whether it’s an out-and-out lie, or just not telling the whole truth. I never lied to him, I just…left out things…but all the same he guessed. It’s as if he has antennae like a radio and can pick up what isn’t being said, right out of the air.’
Grace Thornton’s face had stiffened into a pale mask; she watched Nerissa bleakly. ‘Aye, he doesn’t miss a trick! A hard man—I could tell that from the minute he walked in here with you. I reckon they grow an extra skin in big cities like London, just to get by, like. It can’t be easy living there, but I can’t say I liked him. He’s not our sort. But he is your husband; there’s no getting past that.’ She fell silent for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Are you happy with him, Nerissa?’
She didn’t ask, Do you love him, Nerissa? That was ice too thin for either of them.
Nerissa said, ‘Yes,’ quickly, too quickly.
Grace Thornton wasn’t deceived. ‘I’d feel a lot easier if I knew you were happy, love,’ she said, and sighed.
Nerissa could never fool her. She had never known another mother; the bond of affection between her and Grace Thornton was very strong and sure, based on years of caring and security. There had been a time when it had been shaken, that trust—but its roots had been too deep and in time it had been rebuilt because of that long, deep affection.
Nerissa’s parents had both died when she was very small—too young, in fact, to remember them clearly. Her mother had been Grace’s sister, but they couldn’t have been more different. Ellen had been tiny and delicate—it was from her that Nerissa had inherited her build and colouring. Ellen had died of leukaemia three years after her only child was born. Her husband, Joe, had taken Nerissa up to Northumberland to her aunt, and that was Nerissa’s first memory—of being tired and weepy after a long journey from somewhere she didn’t remember but later discovered to have been London, of wanting her mother, wanting her own home, being frightened and bewildered. Her father had carried her into the comfortable firelit kitchen and her aunt had taken her into her arms, kissed her, brushed back her black curls, murmuring to her, while over her shoulder Nerissa had stared down at Philip, who was almost a year older, but a sturdy little boy, much larger than herself, sitting on a rug playing with toy cars.
‘That’s your cousin; that’s my Philip,’ Grace Thornton had said. ‘Go and play with him, sweetheart.’ And she had set Nerissa down and given her a gentle push towards the other child.
Philip had grinned at her, silently held out one of his cars.
Nerissa had toddled over to take it and sat down on the hearthrug with a bump and had begun to push the car back and forward, making the same noises Philip was making. ‘Brrmm…brrmm…’
She had never forgotten the moment. In a sense, it had been the beginning of her life. She couldn’t remember anything that had happened before that moment, that day.
The first three years of her life had vanished—her mother’s face, where they had lived—every detail. All gone, as if they had never happened.
Except that one moment, at the beginning, when she was carried into the firelit kitchen by her father. That instant was sharp and bright in her memory, beginning her conscious life.
Her father had left the next day and never come back. He had gone to Australia, she was told, and one day he would come back for her—but he never did. When she was seven she was told he had died, in the outback, of blood-poisoning, after neglecting a cut on his arm. There had been no doctor for many miles and it was too late by the time his condition was finally diagnosed.
Nerissa had cried when they’d told her, mostly because she felt she should, and even at the age of seven she’d had a strong sense of what she ought to do, think, feel. Her father’s death had made no real difference to her life because by then she had felt she belonged here, with her uncle and aunt and Philip.
They were her family. She had forgotten she had ever had another one. Her life lay here, on the farm, in these remote, wind-blown hills. Their isolation threw them together more than most families; they had no near neighbours. There was another farmhouse half a mile away across the fields, but the farmer and his wife were old and their children grown-up and living away from home.
The nearest village was nearly two miles away, and it was tiny. It had a pub, a church which was hundreds of years old and a shop which sold anything and everything. Once there had been a school; it had closed years ago and now the children had to catch a bus to the next village which was larger and still had a school.
Nerissa and Philip had gone there, together, on the school bus which picked them up at the end of the lane running past the farm gates. In time they had both graduated to a large comprehensive, even further away, which meant a very long journey every day.
In the school holidays, and in the evenings and at weekends, they had helped on the farm, of course; Uncle John needed every spare hand he could get.
Farm work was hard, but it could be fun, toohelping to clear out ditches, cut back hedges, wheel barrows full of stones for mending drystone walls, prepare food for the various farmyard animals, muck out the stables, tramp the fields to check on sheep which had wandered and round them up with the help of the two sheepdogs.
Doing it alone wouldn’t be so great, but when there were two of you—talking, playing jokes on each other, laughing—the time flew and you hardly noticed what you were doing.
There was always something new to do, too. Every day brought a new job—help to run the sheep through the bath of disinfectant every year, hold sheep for the vet while he injected them against the innumerable ills sheep were prone to, feed chickens or the few pigs they kept, whitewash outbuildings, slash back the nettles which invaded the yards if you didn’t keep them down in summer.
Nerissa and Philip hadn’t minded doing any of that. They’d enjoyed the variety of work on the farm; the jobs followed the seasons, changing all the time with the rhythm of the year.
Whatever they’d done, though, they’d done together. They’d always been together—inseparable—riding ponies across the fields to take them to the blacksmith to be shod, jumping walls and ditches, or in the summer lying in the sweet-smelling hay stored in the barn, talking and arguing, or in the fields, chewing ears of wheat and watching the poppies quiver in the warm air while Uncle John drove the harvester backwards and forwards across a field, and the blue sky wheeled overhead.
It seemed years ago. Nerissa winced, her blue eyes haunted by memories of how Philip looked now, how he had looked yesterday, in the hospital.
‘I hate to think of him lying there, day after day! Philip always hated sitting still. He was full of energy.’
‘Don’t talk in the past tense!’ snapped his mother. ‘He isn’t dead! And he isn’t going to die, so stop talking like that!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nerissa said. ‘It’s just…I feel so helpless. If only there were something we could do!’
‘We’re doing everything we can,’ his mother said. ‘Don’t let it get to you, Nerissa. You won’t help Philip by making yourself ill with fretting.’ She smiled at her again, comfortingly, then looked at her watch. ‘Let’s be on our way.’ She began to clear away the breakfast things and Nerissa got up to help.
Maybe there would be some change! she thought as they drove to the hospital later. Sooner or later he would open his eyes, surely! He must. He couldn’t stay the way he was, a living statue, locked inside his own mind, dead to them.
But there was no change at all. That day was much the same as the previous two had been. They talked, while Philip lay unmoving, without expression. Nerissa read to him from the day’s newspaper, began reading Treasure Island to him, because it had always been his favourite book—he had read it over and over again when he was a boy.
John Thornton arrived and spent an hour with his son, then Aunt Grace sent them both back to the farm.
‘Go to bed and try to sleep, Nerissa,’ she said as they left. ‘Promise me you will.’
‘I’ll see she does!’ John Thornton said and his wife nodded, patting his arm.
‘Good lad.’
Nerissa watched and was overwhelmed with affection for her aunt; she was an astonishing woman, proud and strong, and full of warmth and kindness. She held them all together; without her they would be lost.
When they reached the farm Nerissa made tea, and she and Uncle John had a cup together in the kitchen before he got up, sighing.
‘A farmer’s work is never done, especially if he runs sheep!’ he said. ‘Stupid animals. I can’t think why I bother with them, sometimes.’
He tramped off into a rainy mist, which had come from nowhere, and Nerissa went up to her bedroom and found to her grateful surprise that Uncle John had lit a fire in the tiny grate. She stood in front of it and undressed down to her silky white slip, bra and panties, then lay down under the old, patchwork quilt, the curtains drawn, the fire dying down a little but a few flames still making black shadows climb the bedroom walls and the soft sound of rain soaking into the garden making a gentle lullaby.
A sound woke her. Her lashes fluttered, lifted. Drowsily she wondered what she had just heard—not a loud noise, a very quiet one. The sound of ash dropping through the fire grate? Or a log cracking apart in the flame? Her uncle’s tractor far away on the hill?
What time was it? She rolled over to look at the clock and froze as she found herself looking into Ben’s eyes. For a second she actually thought she was imagining it, calling him up from her unconscious because she was so terrified of seeing him again.
But she wasn’t imagining anything. Ben was there, sitting beside her bed, and looking as if he had been there for some time, watching her while she slept.
Her body seemed to drain of blood. She stared into his eyes and felt like someone looking out into a winter landscape—grey and icy, impenetrable.
She was so stunned that she blurted out stupidly just what was on her mind. ‘I thought you were going to be in The Hague for a week?’
The cold lips parted just enough to bite out a few words. ‘So you hurried back to him.’
She winced as if at a blow from a lash. ‘You don’t understand——’ she began, and was interrupted.
‘Oh, I understand. You’re still obsessed with him; you couldn’t keep away.’
‘No, you’re wrong, I——’
His voice overrode hers. ‘Have you been sleeping with him?’
‘Philip’s in hospital!’ she shouted, sitting up, dragging the quilt with her to cover herself. ‘He’s in a coma; he doesn’t even know I’m here.’
Silence. Ben stared fixedly.
She shrank back against the bedhead, went on flatly, ‘He crashed his car nearly a week ago. His injuries were pretty bad. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt; his head was…’ She swallowed, not bearing the idea of what had happened to his head. ‘He had to have surgery to relieve pressure on the brain and he’s been in a coma ever since. They can’t say if…when…he’ll wake up. It could be days, or weeks, or months—they just don’t know.’
Ben’s mouth indented. ‘I’m sorry, I’d no idea,’ he said in a low, harsh voice. ‘No wonder you look like grim death.’
‘We’re all very worried, obviously,’ she muttered, pushing back a strand of her dark hair which had strayed across her face. ‘His mother’s at the hospital with him, now—we’ve all been there, we go every day—but she sent me home early because she thought I looked tired.’
Ben’s grey eyes roamed over her delicate face, bone-white at the moment except for the smoky shadows under her great blue eyes.
‘That’s why I was in bed at this time of day; I’ve been sleeping,’ she added, very aware of his gaze and feeling her skin prickle with a familiar slow, sensual response. From the minute they’d met she had felt this unwanted reaction to him—not to the man himself, whom she had not even known at first, but to the male animal inside his expensive designer suit, to that powerful sexual mix of bone, muscle, flesh and dominating drive. Women always noticed Ben; she had seen it happen over and over again. The insistence of his personality made them gravitate towards him even in a crowded room. Nerissa had felt a strange pang many times as she’d watched his effect on other women, recognising it from her own first reaction to him.
It wasn’t love, after all—how could it be? No, what she had felt—and still felt—was pure sexual desire, and she despised herself because it happened every time she saw him—even now, when she was so worried and unhappy over Philip.
She had always believed that you only felt like that about a man you loved. She wasn’t sure yet exactly what she did feel about Ben, but she didn’t think you could call it love.
Oh, he had become necessary to her—she wanted him, she thought about him when he wasn’t there—but she didn’t understand him the way she understood Philip. She didn’t know him the way she knew Philip. The wordless, warm, certain love she had for Philip was a world away from the disturbing power Ben had over her.
If she could have married Philip…Her heart winced at the thought of how different her life would have been.
But fate had played a savage trick on them; they had been wrenched apart forever, with no hope of any future for them.
‘How long have you been here?’ Ben asked curtly, sitting down on the edge of her bed.
She couldn’t meet his eyes. After a moment she whispered, ‘Since the day you left for The Hague.’
A silence, then he bit out, ‘They rang and told you about the accident after I’d left?’
She swallowed, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. ‘No, they rang me the day before.’
He didn’t move or speak but the silence vibrated with violence. She sat there, trembling, afraid to look at him.
‘And you didn’t tell me.’ His voice grated on her nerves; she wanted to scream, and couldn’t. ‘You let me leave, without saying a word, and as soon as I was out of the way you rushed up here without even leaving a note to tell me where you had gone.’ He got up suddenly, walked across the room and back, and she picked up the simmering rage inside him.
This was the reaction she had been expecting. She knew how Ben felt about betrayal. His first wife had had an affair with his best friend for a year before Ben had found out. He had come home one day to find them in bed together. There had been a fight between the two men; Ben had put his ‘friend’ into hospital with a broken nose. Ben’s wife had gone with the ‘friend’ in the ambulance after screaming abuse at Ben. Two years later Ben had divorced her; it had been another six years before he met Nerissa.
Nerissa knew he still carried the scars of disillusion and bitterness. Whatever he had been like before the day he’d come home to find his wife in bed with someone else, he was now a hard, remorseless man, determined never to let himself fall in love again. All he wanted from her was pleasure in bed. Love did not enter into their bargain.
He stopped at the bed and looked down at her, his eyes a blaze of rage. ‘What were you going to do at the end of the week? Come back to me without ever mentioning that you had been away? Did you really think you could get away with it?’
‘No, of course not! I knew you would find out but, anyway, Philip might be like this for weeks, months, and I—’ She broke off, biting her lip.
‘Didn’t mean to come back at all,’ Ben finished for her, his voice slow, his mind working all the time as he watched her. ‘You’re going to stay here,’ he thought aloud. ‘You never intended to come back to me.’
She clutched the quilt tighter, her small hands white-knuckled, her chin lifted and defiance in her eyes.
‘He needs me,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t leave him now, not like this, and it isn’t just Philip—Aunt Grace and Uncle John need me, too. This has hit them pretty badly.’
Ben’s mouth curled coldly, cruelty in the lines of it. ‘Uncle John!’ he repeated, and laughed.
‘Don’t!’ she said, dark red invading her pale face, her eyes stricken.
Ben muttered under his breath and swung away again, walked back to the window, pulled aside the old tapestry curtain and looked out. A shaft of grey, rainy light entered the bedroom.
‘Where are they both? I knocked on the front door but nobody answered, so I went round the back and the kitchen door was open, but there was no sign of anyone downstairs.’
‘Aunt Grace is still at the hospital with Philip. Uncle John’s somewhere on the farm, working. He has to spend so much time at the hospital, he has got behind with his work. He says he’ll have to get someone to help out for a while, but the farm only just pays enough for the three of them to live on—it will be a drain on their budget to have to pay wages to an outsider.’
‘And they hate outsiders, too,’ Ben said in that cold, angry voice, swinging to face her.
She bit her lip. ‘That’s a bit over the top. I wouldn’t say that; it’s just that they…they are conservative.’
‘They hated me from the minute they saw me!’
She pleated the quilt hem with her shaking fingers. ‘That isn’t true; they didn’t hate you! They were…taken aback…when I brought you here. They hadn’t expected—’
‘You to find another man?’
‘I was going to say someone like you!’ she retorted, very flushed. ‘Life here is so different from life in London. People like them…you just don’t understand them; they’re not like anyone you know.’ Her eyes softened, her voice filled with affection and Ben watched her intently, frowning. ‘They rarely meet strangers,’ she said. ‘They never go anywhere very much. Oh, they go to market once a month, they go to Durham to do Christmas shopping, but otherwise they almost never leave the farm. The furthest I can remember them going is to Scarborough, for a seaside holiday, and they don’t do that every year even now, when Philip can take over and run things while they’re away. They couldn’t afford to go abroad. Hill farmers don’t make enough money for foreign holidays. I don’t think Uncle John has even been to London.’
Ben flared suddenly, his voice harsh. ‘Why do you go on with this pretence? Isn’t it time it all came out into the open? What the hell is the point in going on with these lies and half-truths? This whole business is so ingrown and contorted—if you once faced up to facts you might actually work out a few things about yourself.’
‘Do you think I haven’t?’ she huskily threw back, looking up then, her eyes almost black with emotion in that white face. ‘Once I knew…I realised I had to go away, and I did—you know that!’
Ben brooded on her, his face grim. ‘How could they lie to you all these years? That’s what I don’t understand. The lies. Why couldn’t they come out and tell you, years ago?’
‘Pride,’ she said, sadness in the line of her mouth, in her eyes. ‘I said you didn’t understand them. Can’t you see? It was their pride that kept them from telling me.’
‘Their pride?’ exploded Ben. ‘They cheated you for their own selfish reasons—you grew up unaware that you had a living father, not a dead one! If they had told you when you were small…’
‘They couldn’t bear to!’
‘To hell with what they couldn’t bear! What about you? Look what they did to you, with their pride and their lies! If they had ever cared twopence for you they’d have told you the truth years ago, and you would have been spared a lot of grief.’
‘If they had known it was ever going to matter they’d have told me, but how could they guess? They couldn’t see the future; they didn’t have second sight.’
Ben’s grey eyes flashed contemptuously. ‘You’re a born victim, aren’t you? No matter what they did, you forgive them. Where’s your pride, for heaven’s sake? Where’s your self-respect?’
Nerissa watched his hard, remorseless face and knew how he had looked when he’d seen his first wife, Aileen, in bed with her lover. Ben was not the forgiving type; from that instant his first marriage had been finished. And although he had told her, when they’d first met, the bare outline of what had happened he had never mentioned his first wife’s name since. He had excised her from his life ruthlessly.
Nerissa was in no doubt that he would do the same with her. It would be easy enough; Ben had never been in love with her. She suspected that his capacity for love had died with Aileen’s betrayal. One wound had been enough for Ben; he had made up his mind there and then never to let himself be vulnerable to such hurt again.
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CHARLOTTE LAMB
Sins Pride comes before a fall… .Will Nerissa's love for another man come before her husband? Nerissa is married to Ben and she has tried to love him. But, since she was a child, Nerissa has also adored her cousin, Philip. Now Philip lies in a coma and Nerissa's special bond with him is perhaps the only means of bringing him around.But how can she tell Ben she must leave him for Philip's bedside? Ben is so proud and will never let her end their marriage! Love can conquer the deadliest of Sins .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u8e11e0d4-0708-54a0-a972-cc69328f1bee)
Excerpt (#u5fc4f201-05ed-51a6-8e61-5ba7cd4775ac)
Dear Reader (#u92c7c8bb-d063-5b20-803b-d3f8c849ce73)
Title Page (#uc04b259a-8eb2-5c06-97d9-e3ae597ede49)
Chapter One (#ud25b96f7-c413-59cf-9766-fb1b40cbe6ec)
Chapter Two (#u0e02d5bd-125e-519b-aeae-5e067f9b33ed)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Do I have to remind you that it was me you married, not him?”
“I want a divorce, Ben!” Nerissa broke out in a voice that shook, and the room filled with an intolerable tension.
“I’ll fight it,” he said curtly. “I’ll use any weapon I have to—even if it means bringing him into it. What do you think that will do to your family pride?”
Dear Reader,
The Seven Deadly Sins are those sins which most of us are in danger of committing every day: very ordinary failings, very human weaknesses, but which can sometimes cause pain to both ourselves and others. Over the ages they have been defined as: Anger, Covetousness, Envy, Greed, Lust, Pride and Sloth.
In this book I deal with the sin of Pride. In certain circumstances, pride can be a strength and comfort, but in other circumstances it can be deadly, particularly when family pride leads people to lie, to suppress the truth about the past, or when someone is too proud to admit their feelings.
Charlotte Lamb
This is the first in Charlotte Lamb’s new series, SINS. Watch out in the coming months for six more romances—all complete stories in themselves—where this exceptionally talented writer proves that love can conquer the deadliest of sins!
Coming next month: Deadly Rivals…the sin of Covetousness. Have you ever hankered after forbidden fruits?
Secret Obsession
Charlotte Lamb
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_7cc7c29b-7865-578e-b324-9326a393a72c)
‘I‘LL be back on Friday week,’ Ben said, his back to her but his reflection visible in the dressing-table mirror as his long fingers carefully knotted a blue silk tie, adjusted the set of his collar. Every movement was calm, unhurried, assured—as though he had all day to get ready.
It was Nerissa who was on edge, her blue eyes constantly glancing at the clock and away again quickly, before Ben noticed. He was too quick to pick up signals; he might start wondering why she was on tenterhooks to get him out of the house; he might ask questions and then she might panic and give away too much. That was what happened to a lot of people when Ben was interrogating them; she had watched it happen in court often enough—heard witnesses start stammering, go pale, flush, betray themselves.
From this angle she could see the razor-edge of his profile—intimidating, forceful, his mouth level, his grey eyes narrowed and intent. He smoothed down his tight-fitting waistcoat, checked the time by his watch.
Oh, God, why was he taking so long?
She took a deep breath to steady her voice, then said, ‘Your taxi’s waiting!’ It had arrived early; the meter must be ticking away.
‘I ordered it for eight o’clock and it is only just that now. He can wait,’ he said in that deep, curt voice which made her tension worse.
If he didn’t leave soon she was going to miss her train. In an agony of impatience she moved to the window, looked out through the lace curtain, saw the London street bathed in autumn sunlight, the horse-chestnut trees in the gardens opposite shedding their russet leaves in a brisk wind, having already shed the spiky orbs which split as they hit the ground, making it easier for the local boys to hunt among the leaves for the shiny brown nuts.
‘It’s going to be a beautiful day,’ she said in melancholic irony. Wasn’t that always the way? Weather always mocked you at times like this; it was never in the right mood.
It should be grey, elegiac, rain seeping down from dark clouds; the wind should howl across the city, or lightning strike the horse-chestnuts and set them blazing.
Instead, it was glorious out there—rich and glowing colours, a brilliant blue sky radiant with sunlight.
Ben clicked down the locks on his suitcase and lifted it to the floor. She hadn’t even packed yet—she hadn’t dared; it would have been too risky. She would throw a few things into a case while she waited for a taxi to come and collect her. She hadn’t dared call one, of course. Nothing must alert Ben to the possibility that she was going away too.
‘I’ll ring you tonight, from The Hague,’ he said.
She had her excuse ready, but her voice was slightly breathless, all the same. ‘I may have to work late; Gregory wants me to go out to Worcester to see a client. We don’t yet know the size of the job and it could take all day to assess. I don’t know what time I’ll get back.’
That much was true—Gregory had given her instructions for the job yesterday and she hadn’t told him that she wouldn’t be doing it. She would ring him later, before she left.
Ben’s arms slid round her waist and he rested his chin on top of her head, on the cloudy dark mass of hair she hadn’t yet brushed into order. She trembled as she felt his body touching her, his hands below her breasts, resting there lightly, the warmth of his blood reaching her through her jersey wool dress.
‘Are you going alone? Or with Gregory? I don’t trust Gregory an inch—I hope you don’t let him flirt with you!’ Ben was smiling as he said it, though. Her boss was a happily married man who had never shown the slightest interest in her. If Ben had even suspected that Gregory might fancy her his tone, his look would have been very different—and they both knew it.
‘As if I would!’ she said, trying to sound amused too, but so strung up that she couldn’t quite manage it. He made her so tense.
They had only been married for three months. It had been a whirlwind romance; she was still breathless. It had happened too fast for her to be quite sure what she was doing. There was so much about him that she did not know.
Of course, marriage was always a gamble. Until you actually lived with someone you could never be quite sure about them, but that was doubly true about Ben.
She had met him a year earlier, at a party given by one of his clients who happened to work with her. Nerissa had hardly known anyone in the crowded room and had backed into a corner with a glass of white wine. The host had brought Ben over and introduced them, then left again, and Ben had asked her a series of questions about herself to which he had got shy, monosyllabic replies.
She hadn’t thought she would ever see him again, but a few days later he had rung her at work and asked if they could have dinner. A little uncertainly she had accepted, and spent an evening with him at a well-known restaurant in Mayfair. They had talked—or rather, Ben had talked and she’d listened. Ben had asked questions and she’d given husky answers. Nerissa was not a talkative girl, but that didn’t seem to worry him.
Ben Havelock, she discovered, was a very successful and wealthy barrister. He had very little spare time, so they hadn’t seen much of each other during those early months. Last spring, however, he had managed to get a fortnight’s holiday and they had spent it together up in Northumberland, where she had been born and had spent most of her life.
That had been Ben’s idea. He wanted to get to know her better against her own background, he said. He already knew that London was not Nerissa’s territory; she had a lost look at times—she lacked the necessary skills for city life and wasn’t street-wise or sophisticated. Ben was a Londoner, a city man, with all that that implied of shrewd, hard-headed sophistication. Not much surprised him, but Nerissa was different. She intrigued him; he wanted to find out what lay behind her façade, where she came from, what people had bred her.
He had achieved his aim. She hadn’t wanted him to visit her home but he had insisted, and he had discovered a lot about her during those two weeks—more than she had meant him to know.
She had secrets she had wanted to keep; Ben had guessed at them within hours of their arrival. He worried her, disturbed her, but he had persuaded her to marry him all the same, in spite of her doubts and reservations.
‘It will work,’ he had promised her. ‘All you have to do is forget the past. This is a new beginning. For both of us.’
He had memories he wanted to forget, too. He had told her about them freely enough, yet she still felt uneasily that she did not really know him very well. She had thought that once they were man and wife she would really know and understand him, but there was a darkness in Ben which still locked her out. She was beginning to be afraid it would always be there—a wall around him through which she could not pass and which hid a side of him which worried her.
The taxi hooted and she jumped. ‘He’s getting impatient!’
‘Let him!’ Ben turned her round and lowered his head. His mouth was possessive. She felt her pulses quicken, her body begin to burn. That was one side of their marriage which worked; they were passionate lovers. In bed she could forget her uncertainties—she might not yet have the key to Ben’s mind, but his body was as familiar to her as her own.
Ben abruptly ended the kiss and, lifting his head, framed her face between his hands for a moment, staring at her as if trying to memorise the way she looked.
‘Is there something on your mind?’
The curt question made her heart do a back-flip. She had known it would be hard to deceive him; his training in court made him too accustomed to reading expressions, picking up nuances.
‘I’m not looking forward to being here alone, that’s all,’ she lied.
That was true enough and he knew it; she always felt uneasy about being in the house alone at night. London was a dangerous city, especially to a girl from a peaceful little village miles from anywhere.
He frowned but accepted the excuse. ‘Why don’t you ask one of the girls from work to stay with you while I’m away?’
‘I might do that,’ she murmured, knowing she wouldn’t because she wasn’t going to be here.
The taxi hooted again and Ben’s mouth indented impatiently. ‘I’d better go or I’ll miss my plane! If I don’t talk to you tonight I’ll ring tomorrow.’
He kissed her again, quickly, then he was gone. She heard his feet on the stairs, the front door opening, slamming shut.
Leaning her face on the cold glass of the window, she watched him walk rapidly across the pavement and get into the back of the taxi. He leaned sideways to look out and up at her, his face briefly visible before the taxi vanished—a hard-boned, sparefleshed face, cool grey eyes, a wide, controlled mouth, black hair springing from a window’s peak on his high forehead.
He would be a bad enemy, she thought, and her nerves tightened. When he found out that she had lied, discovered where she had gone, she was going to find out just how dangerous an enemy Ben could be.
His hand lifted for a second; she waved back, then the taxi turned the corner and Nerissa hurried away from the window. She packed her case first, not caring what she folded into it—it wouldn’t matter what she looked like so long as she took warm clothes with her; it would be cold up there.
Downstairs in the kitchen she left a note on the table for the girl who did their cleaning and had her own key to the house. Then she went into Ben’s study, rang for another taxi, then switched on the answering machine to record phone calls, including those from Ben later, or any from his secretary, Helen Manners, a slim blonde woman in her late twenties who had made her dislike for Nerissa clear from the minute they had met.
As she leaned over the desk Nerissa’s eye was caught by their wedding photo, half buried among a pile of law books.
They had been married on a summer morning—a civil ceremony with only a few guests—some family and a handful of friends. It hadn’t felt like a real wedding, somehow; Nerissa had always believed that when she married it would be in her local village church, among the people with whom she had grown up. That brisk, businesslike exchange of vows in London had had no romance, no sense of joy. She had gone through it numbly, with a sense of disbelief.
Helen Manners had been there, very elegant in an olive-green silk dress, her blonde hair piled on her head in a French pleat and pinned there by a large bow made of the same material as her dress. She had long, shapely legs and displayed her tiny feet in handmade black high-heels; she had expensive tastes.
Nerissa didn’t like her and it was mutual. Helen had raised one perfectly drawn black brow as she’d run her scornful eyes over Nerissa’s plain, creamcoloured dress and the Victorian posy of summer flowers she carried in a silver holder.
Ben had seemed oblivious of his secretary’s hostility to his new wife, just as he was indifferent to his sister’s dislike of Nerissa. Ben’s sister hadn’t even come to the wedding, in fact. But then neither had any of Nerissa’s family.
It had been an odd wedding.
Nerissa stared at Ben’s face in the photo—tough and uncompromising, his eyes locked and hiding secrets.
Nerissa turned away, biting her lip. When he found out…She couldn’t even bear to imagine what he would do to her. He was capable of killing; she was convinced of that. The dark vein in his nature ran deep, and his pride was stony, unbending. Any injury to that pride was never forgiven.
She shivered, which reminded her that she was going north—the weather at this time of the year would be cool if not downright chilly. She went back upstairs and found a warm, heather-coloured tweed coat, a purple woollen scarf and knitted gloves that matched—a Christmas present from Aunt Grace last year. Aunt Grace always made the presents she gave; she was very good with her hands, could sew and knit expertly. For much of Nerissa’s life Aunt Grace had made most of her clothes on the sewing-machine in the little sewing-room looking out over the farm orchard.
Nerissa stiffened as she heard the unmistakable sound of a taxi throbbing away outside.
She ran downstairs and picked up her case, opened the front door and hurried out—a slightly built, almost fragile girl, with a wild cloud of dark hair around a pale, triangular face, dominated by those huge, cornflower-blue eyes.
‘Where are we going, Snow White?’ joked the taxi driver, turning to stare at her.
‘King’s Cross station, please.’
He started off, saying over his shoulder, ‘Where are you off to, then, love?’
‘Durham,’ she said, hoping he wasn’t going to talk to her all the way. She was in no mood for a light chat with a taxi driver. She had too much on her mind.
‘Never been there—what’s it like?’
Nerissa stared out of the window at London’s busy, crowded streets and thought of the wind off the moors, the open sky, the dinosaur contours of the green and brown hills with their rounded shanks and bony shoulders lifting against the horizon.
She had missed it, ever since she’d left just over a year ago. She realised suddenly how much she ached to see it again.
‘Cold, at this time of year,’ she said. ‘Durham is almost in Scotland, you know.’
‘Don’t fancy that much; give me lots of sun, that’s what I need, especially in winter.’ The taxi driver began to tell her about his holiday in Spain and how hot it had been there last month on the beaches of Torremolinos. Nerissa heard one word in every three.
She caught her train by the skin of her teeth. She had reserved a seat but her compartment was halfempty anyway, and got emptier as the journey continued up north. The train was an express and only stopped at a few stations—the important cities along this route. At intervals someone came round with a trolley containing sandwiches, crisps, drinks, but she wasn’t hungry so she just had a coffee midmorning. She spent the long journey staring out at the changing scene—the smoke-blackened chimneys of London, the grey and yellow London brick, the dull red tiles in the endless rows of little houses as they flashed through the suburbs, and then the flat, rather scrubby fields and hedgerows which succeeded them before they broke out into the real countryside of the heart of England.
By the time they were in the Midlands the sun was quite warm on the window, summer’s last, flickering, expiring flame moving over the landscape, the autumnal trees, the stubbled fields, the mist-hazed hills in the distance.
She had not been north since the spring, since that visit with Ben, since her marriage.
Had she changed? she wondered, trying to remember how she had felt before she’d met Ben, how she had felt as she’d made that first journey southwards to work in London.
She grimaced, still staring out at the countryside flashing past. Of course she had. A lot had happened to her in London. She was very different from the girl who had left the farm all those months ago.
Would they notice? Did it show—was it visible? She bit her lip. Philip would see it; he knew her better than anyone else in the world. He would know at once that the Nerissa who had come back to them was not the same girl who had left the north a year ago to work in London.
Except that Philip might never get the chance to notice anything about her.
She flinched at that idea, her skin white, stretched, taut. Stop it! she told herself. Don’t even think it. He is not going to die.
She looked at her watch; they were running to time. They would pull into York any minute, not much longer now. Her uncle would meet her at Durham. He would have the latest news.
As the train slowly steamed into Durham she collected her case and her other belongings and a moment later stepped down on to the platform, her long, slender legs admired by one of the porters hanging about waiting for someone to require his services.
‘Carry your bag, miss?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘I can manage, thank you.’ She hurried away with her case; it wasn’t very heavy.
She saw her uncle before she reached him and waved, breaking into a run.
He hadn’t changed, which was one comfort. Still tall and loose-limbed with iron-grey hair, a weathered countenance, deep-sunk pale eyes, John Thornton was a man who spent most of his days out in the open and it showed. Sun and wind had given him a skin like leather, the horizon-gazing eyes of a sailor and the slow patience of a ruminating animal—like those he looked after on his farm, the wiry upland sheep of the Northumberland hills.
‘Nerissa—thank God you’re here. We need a miracle.’
He bent and kissed her cheek, took her case from her. ‘I was afraid your husband might not want you to come.’
‘Ben’s away, abroad.’
Their eyes met, exchanged wordless understanding. ‘How long for?’
‘A week,’ she said, and saw her uncle’s face tighten.
‘A week? It’s going to take longer than a week.’
She had realised as much, had known as she left her home that she was going for a long time. She hadn’t been able to face telling Ben; she had known how he would react. His pride would never have agreed to letting her come. He would see it as a betrayal, a choice between him and Philip, and in a sense she supposed it was, but in another sense she had had no choice. She had had to come.
‘How is he?’
‘Bad.’ The monosyllable was flat yet filled with pain.
Her eyes stung with unshed tears. As they walked out of the station Nerissa slipped her hand through her uncle’s arm in a gesture of silent comfort.
He squeezed her hand against his side with an affectionate look, but didn’t say anything. He was not a man who said much; he had spent so much time alone in the fields that he had almost lost the habit of speech. That was one reason why she had grown up saying so little, why she was disturbed by noise and busy city streets. Silence had been her environment for so many years.
‘You’ll want some food; they never have anything worth eating on the train these days,’ he said as they drove away.
‘I’m not hungry!’
‘Nay, you must eat!’ He shook his head at her, half smiled. ‘Grace told me to make sure you did. Won’t do any of us any good if you get ill too! We’ll stop at a pub on the way, get a bite to eat there.’
They stopped at a pub just a stone’s throw from the hospital, found a seat in a corner, then John Thornton went up to the bar to order them both a ploughman’s platter—chunks of local cheese with pickles and salad and home-made bread.
‘How’s Aunt Grace bearing up?’ Nerissa asked, sipping her glass of cider which had a strong, homebrewed taste of fermented apples, rich, golden, autumnal, sending a warm glow through her and making her feel slightly less strung up.
Her uncle looked sombre. ‘She never leaves him. She’s sat by his bed ever since it happened, talking to him. She’s certain he’ll hear her voice and start to wake up.’
A pang hit Nerissa. She bit her lip. ‘How long is it now?’
‘Since he went into coma? Three days. We thought…hoped…he’d come out of it sooner, but he hasn’t, and the doctors can’t tell us when he will…if he will.’ His hands curled into helpless fists on the table between them.
‘Of course he’s going to get better! You mustn’t think like that. It isn’t like you to give up.’ She gently uncurled his fingers, held them tightly. ‘You know Aunt Grace won’t stop talking until he wakes up in self-defence!’
He gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘You bad girl, you! Lucky for you she can’t hear you!’
Nerissa smiled at him. ‘Have you finished your drink? Shall we go?’
If only took a few minutes to reach the hospital. She had spent a few days there once, years ago, when she’d had her tonsils out. The smell of polish and disinfectant and soap was familiar; her nostrils wrinkled at it. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floors as they tramped for what seemed hours along cream-painted corridors, up stairs, along more corridors, until they reached the intensive care unit where Philip Thornton lay, on a life-support system.
His mother sat beside the bed watching him unwearyingly and for a few seconds Nerissa and her uncle stood in the doorway, watching her while she was unaware of them, so intent on her son that she had no attention to spare for anything else.
Nerissa looked at him, too—and away again, appalled by what she saw. Everything his father had told her was suddenly a reality, in front of her; she hadn’t believed it fully until that moment—now she had to.
It was a relief to look at her aunt instead. Grace Thornton was the opposite of her husband. Where he was tall, she was short; where he was thin, she was plump. His skin was brown and weather-beaten; hers was as soft as a rose-petal and as rosy as an apple.
His eyes were very pale blue and deep-sunk; hers were slightly protuberant, very bright and a warm, rich brown, and her curly, goldy-brown hair showed no trace of the grey which had taken over in his hair.
Her voice was soft and warm; it flowed unceasingly while Nerissa and John Thornton listened. She had always done all the talking in the family while her husband and her son and Nerissa listened, and it was somehow reassuring to hear her talking now—it made the alien hospital surroundings seem more homely.
‘And the top field will be given a dressing this next week—if your father gets round to it—now the ploughing’s done. The turnips are coming on nice, then when the sheep have eaten all the grass we can turn them into the top field to eat turnip tops—and turnips too, if need be. Did I tell you the vet had been to see that ewe we thought might be carrying? Well, she wasn’t. Hardly worth keeping her; she hasn’t lambed for eighteen months. Past it, I reckon. She can go to market with the others next time.’
John Thornton moved forward and his wife stopped talking and turned her head. She saw Nerissa and her face lit up.
‘Here’s your father now, Philip,’ she said conversationally. ‘And Nerissa’s with him! There, I told you she’d come, didn’t I? And she looks just the same; she hasn’t changed.’
She got up and held out her arms; Nerissa ran into them and they hugged, kissing. Aunt Grace moved back to look at her, tears sparkling in her bright brown eyes.
‘You look well. She looks well, Philip. Lost weight, mind. Skinnier than ever! Don’t you eat down there in London? Did your uncle take you to have a bite to eat before you came here? I told him to make sure you got some lunch first—I know those trains—nothing but sandwiches and crisps; that’s all you get on them these days. In the old days they had a proper buffet car and a three-course lunch, with waiters in white coats and silver cutlery and good glasses on the table, but these days they can’t be bothered.’
‘We stopped and had a ploughman’s in a pub,’ Nerissa said, and her aunt clucked her tongue.
‘Is that all? Did you hear that, Philip? Isn’t that just like your father? John Thornton, you should have taken her somewhere better than that. A bite of cheese and some bread isn’t a fit meal for anyone but a mouse.’
‘She said she wasn’t hungry!’
‘You shouldn’t have taken any notice of her!’
Nerissa had stopped listening. She moved to the bedside and looked down at Philip, her heart wrung, wanting to cry. The top of his head was bandaged, domed, only his face visible. He had been shaved, she noted. There was no sign of stubble on his cheek and she knew that Philip needed to shave every day. He had once stopped shaving for a weekend camping trip on Hadrian’s Wall, not far from his home, and come back on the Monday morning with the rough beginnings of a curly brown beard.
His mother wasn’t talking any more. She was watching her niece. ‘Say hello to him, Nerissa. He can hear you; they say he can, even if he isn’t showing any signs. You know she’s here, don’t you, Philip? You’re waiting for her to talk to you.’
His hand lay on the white coverlet, brown and strong, with wide-spanned fingers, nails cut very short, a practical hand used to hard manual work. Nerissa touched it lightly, whispered, ‘Hello, Philip, it’s me.’
‘Say your name,’ her uncle urged her. ‘Say, it’s Nerissa.’
‘He knows,’ Grace Thornton said, still watching Nerissa. ‘I told him she was here, didn’t I? Not that I needed to; he’ll have known her voice the minute he heard it. We’ll go and have a cup of tea, Nerissa, and leave you to talk to him.’
Nerissa didn’t look round, just nodded. She heard them go out, heard the door click softly into place. She sank down on the chair her aunt had been sitting on and picked up Philip’s hand, stroked it lightly.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t come until now. Your father only rang me yesterday.’
It had been one of the biggest shocks of her life. She had been at work, had picked up the phone expecting it to be a business call and heard her uncle’s voice with a start of alarm. She had known it couldn’t be good news; he wouldn’t ring her at work for that.
‘I came as soon as I could,’ she added. She couldn’t get over the blankness of his face. The emptiness. His features unmoving, unchanging.
This is how he would look if he were dead, Nerissa thought, and her body winced in pain. Maybe he is dying? If they switched off this life-support machine would he die?
‘Darling, wake up!’ Urgency possessed her. She was afraid to touch his face, afraid of jarring his head, so she put her face down against his hand and kissed it, held it to her cheek. She had half expected his skin to be cold but it was warm; she put her lips against his inner wrist and felt the blood pumping sluggishly there, in the blue vein which she could see threading beneath the skin.
‘Wake up, Philip!’ she whispered against this one sign of Me in him.
There was no response, of course; she didn’t expect any. He had lain like this ever since the car crash in which he had suffered head injuries necessitating surgery—surgery which had physically relieved the pressure on his brain, her uncle had told her, but had left him like this, in a deep coma.
She couldn’t bear the idea of Philip dying. They had grown up together, as close as twins. For most of her life Philip had been the most important person in the world to her.
Behind her she heard the door open and sat up quickly, still holding his hand.
‘You must be his cousin,’ said a friendly voice and she turned to see a nurse behind her. ‘Hello, I’m his day special—I look after him during the day. He has someone else at night. I’m Staff Nurse Courtney.’
Nerissa smiled shyly at her. ‘Hello.’
‘How do you think he’s looking?’ The shrewd brown eyes watched her. ‘Bit of a shock, I expect, seeing him like this, but his condition has stabilised; there’s been no deterioration over the last couple of days.’
‘Does that mean he’s getting better?’ Nerissa asked hopefully, and saw the other girl hesitate.
‘Not exactly. It just means he isn’t getting any worse, which, believe me, is a hopeful sign.’
Nerissa’s face fell and Nurse Courtney quickly added, ‘It could mean he is going to take a turn for the better any minute. His mother’s doing a wonderful job and now you’re here, too. Keep talking to him; he needs all the stimulation he can get, anything that keeps jogging his brain.’
She left a few minutes later and Nerissa sat down beside Philip again and took his hand. ‘Do you like her?’ she asked him conversationally. ‘She has a very nice face—it matches her voice. I think you’ll like her. She’s the one who shaves you every day, she says. She’s good at it, too; you couldn’t do better yourself.’
His parents came back while she was telling him that it had started to rain. ‘Typical—it was wonderful weather in London, but I get back here and down comes the rain! It’s a wonder we don’t all have gills and fins, the rain we get up here.’
John Thornton laughed behind her and she glanced round. ‘Oh, your mum and dad are back, Philip.’
They sat down near by and talked to her, spoke to Philip as well, all the time, as if he were awake, so that after a while it seemed quite natural to Nerissa to do the same. She almost began to expect him to chime in occasionally—argue about something, laugh.
It had got dark by the time Grace Thornton looked at her watch and said, ‘I think you should take Nerissa home for some tea, John. She’s had a long journey today; she’ll need a good night’s rest.’
Nerissa couldn’t deny she was tired—her eyelids were heavy and she had to suppress yawns all the time—but she protested. ‘I went to stay, in case he wakes up!’
‘You can’t stay here all the time,’ said his mother. ‘It’s exhausting. I should know; I’ve done it for hours at a stretch. But if you’re to be any use to Philip you need to be fresh, and that means getting sleep. I shall be home later. I like to see him tucked up for the night, then I go home. We’ll come back tomorrow morning.’
Nerissa fell asleep in the car during the drive through the hills to her uncle’s farm. She woke up only when she heard dogs barking, and realised that the car had stopped in the farmyard.
‘I thought I was going to have to carry you up to bed!’ John Thornton said cheerfully. ‘Grace was right. You’re dead on your feet.’
‘I think I’ll go straight to bed,’ she admitted, yawning. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You said that before,’ he said, unlocking the solid oak front door and switching on the light in the small, panelled hall. ‘Look, you get undressed and hop into bed and I’ll bring you some hot chocolate and a sandwich—how’s that?’
She hugged him. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you, both of you, in London! It’s great to be home.’
She caught the flash of sadness in his eyes, and knew what he was thinking. She couldn’t let him say anything, though, so she ran up the old, creaking oak stairs, her nostrils filling with the familiar fragrance from her childhood—beeswax-polished furniture and stair-treads, home-made potpourri from the roses and lavender in the garden.
This was not a large house but a solid, well-made one, built of local stone and flint, carefully placed to shut out the prevailing winds on these Northumbrian hills, sheltered on all sides by ancient trees and high stone walls. Lantern Farm had been in one family since it was built in the seventeenth century. The Thorntons were not rich but they had always lived comfortably, running their sheep on the pastures above the house, keeping a few pigs, geese, horses and hens to supplement their income.
The furniture was all old, worn, shabby and wellkept. It shone with polish. Any tears in curtains and upholstery were neatly darned and there was rarely need to buy anything since the attics were well-stocked with household objects which were often brought back into use when a fashion returned after a century or so.
There were four bedrooms. Nerissa had always had a small one at the side of the house, overlooking an orchard. She undressed and climbed into bed, shivering a little because it was so much colder than her centrally heated home in London. At Lantern Farm they still kept wood fires, and none had been lit in this room since she’d left.
The faded tapestry curtains were threadbare; the wind blew through the lattice panes and rattled the door. On the bed lay an old patchwork quilt, made by John Thornton’s mother when she was first married from dozens of little cut-up pieces from old cotton shirts, dresses, curtains. The colours had faded but Nerissa thought it was beautiful. She stroked it, following the pattern, the diamonds and circles interlocking, and then she looked around the room, feeling very strange; it was like being caught in a time warp, spun back to her teens, to a very different Nerissa.
Her uncle arrived with a tray bearing a plate of tiny, finger sandwiches—brown bread leafed with ham and salad—a glass of water and a mug of hot chocolate. Under his arm he carried a hot-water bottle in a furry case which he handed her first.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said gratefully, pushing it under her covers and feeling warmth begin to circulate around her frozen feet and legs.
‘I should have lit a fire in here—shall I light one now?’
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ she said, and bit one of the tiny sandwiches. ‘Mmm, that’s delicious. You remembered, I love ham.’
‘Always did,’ he said, beaming. ‘Goodnight, then, love. If there’s anything you want, give me a shout.’
Ten minutes later the light was out and Nerissa was already half asleep.
It was strange to wake up in that house again. Strange to put on jeans and a thick, warm sweater and go out into the crisp autumn dawn where the shouting wind caught her black hair and blew it around her like a banner. She ran, startling horses in the pasture below the house. Climbing the wall and jumping down, she hunted for new mushrooms in the long grass where they had always grown.
When she went back to the house she found her aunt slicing tomatoes. ‘I saw you from the window gathering mushrooms; we’ll have them with toast,’ Grace Thornton said. ‘Your uncle’s away up to the top, to work on one of the walls—it came down in the last storm. He took his breakfast with him and a flask of tea. There’s nothing like rebuilding a wall to cheer him up.’
Nerissa remembered he had always gone off to work on the drystone walls whenever he was upset; the routine task was soothing to him.
After breakfast she and her aunt drove off to the hospital again. There was no change, Staff Nurse Courtney told them.
‘No change isn’t necessarily bad news, though,’ she said, and Nerissa wished she could believe her. ‘It’s a long, slow haul,’ added the nurse, and that, at least, Nerissa believed.
Towards the end of that very long day she wondered how her aunt managed to stay so cheerful, how she kept talking to her son when there was absolutely no response.
They had taken it in turns to talk to Philip. When his mother was tired she went off for a break and a cup of tea and sat outside, in the cool fresh air, in a little garden beside the ward, so that if she was wanted she was near by. Several times that day Nerissa went out and left Philip alone with his mother. After sitting about for hours Nerissa preferred a brisk walk around the garden after she had had her tea and a sandwich.
Her uncle arrived in the afternoon, and at six o’clock Grace Thornton sent them both home again. ‘And make sure you eat a proper cooked meal this time,’ she told them. ‘John, did you remember to pop that casserole into the oven?’
He nodded. ‘Just as you said, at two o’clock. What time shall I take it out?’
‘As soon as you want to eat. It won’t spoil, but it’s ready whenever you want it.’
When they got back to the farm Nerissa said, ‘I’ll serve supper,’ but John Thornton shook his head.
‘Nay, lass, your aunt told me to do it, and I’d better, or she’ll never let me hear t’end of it.’
‘I’ll lay the table, then.’
They ate in the farm kitchen, the biggest room in the house, with white-washed deep stone walls, small windows, an old range which gave out great warmth on cold days and cheerful red and white checked curtains. The table was old and wellscrubbed, the wood deeply bitten with knife-cuts and scratches and carved initials. Along the high windowsills stood rows of pink geraniums, all grown by Grace Thornton, who often won prizes for them at local flower shows.
The casserole was lamb, with seasonal vegetables—potatoes and carrots, late green beans and leeks and onion. It was all grown there, on the farm, and the smell was mouthwatering and the taste delicious.
They washed up and put everything away, leaving some of the casserole in the oven for Grace when she got back. John Thornton went out to his yard to feed some of his animals, and Nerissa switched on the radio to listen to some music.
She curled up in a chair, her mind occupied with Philip, worrying, remembering his white face and the carved, blind look of his closed eyes.
Was he ever going to wake up? And, if he did, would he be some sort of human vegetable? She knew that that was what was terrifying his parents. They hadn’t said anything, but she knew them. She had caught looks they gave each other, words they began and cut off.
She put her hands over her face. It wasn’t fair! Why had this happened to Philip? Hadn’t he borne enough grief already?
The phone rang beside her, making her jump. She had a sudden presentiment that it was news of Philip, that it was her aunt ringing from the hospital to say…what? That he had come out of his coma? Or…was dying?
Her hand shaking, she reached for it, whispered, ‘Yes, hello?’
There was a silence at the other end.
‘Hello? Lantcrn Farm,’ Nerissa said urgently. ‘Aunt Grace…is that you?’
The phone cut off suddenly. She held it, listening to the dead tone. Whoever had rung had hung up without speaking.
The silence was eloquent. Nerissa felt ice trickle down her nape. It could be a wrong number, of course. But she was afraid that it wasn’t.
She was afraid it was Ben. He would have rung their home, only got the answering machine, then perhaps tried ringing friends, her boss. She had known that sooner or later Ben would realise she was not at home. She had hoped it would take him longer to work it out, but she had known it would happen, and that he would not forgive her for going to Philip without telling him what she meant to do.
Her heart beat with terror. If that had been him, what would he do now?
For the moment, nothing, she quickly told herself. He was in The Hague representing a client at the Court of Human Rights. He couldn’t leave; this was an important case. Ben had been working on it for a long time; he wouldn’t walk out on it now. He had said he estimated that it would take at least a week, maybe longer, for him to present his case. He wouldn’t have to stay there to wait for the court’s decision—that might take weeks, even months—but he certainly couldn’t leave yet.
She had a breathing space. Days. Maybe a week, maybe longer. But sooner or later he would arrive and demand that she leave with him, and when she refused—as she knew she must—their marriage would be over.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_131a918f-0a85-5a51-a4e9-76e951820ea6)
NERISSA didn’t sleep much that night, and when her aunt saw her next morning she gave her a frowning, anxious stare.
‘You look terrible. Didn’t you sleep? Your eyes look like holes in a white paper bag. I can’t let you go to the hospital looking like that. They’ll take one look at you and send you home in case you’re coming down with something contagious.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, sitting down at the table and looking without much interest at the fruit, the cereal, the coffee waiting for her.
‘Fine? Nonsense!’ snorted Grace Thornton. ‘I know what you’re like—if you’re upset you don’t sleep or eat and the next thing we’ll find is that you’re ill, too. Look what happened when you were competing in the county swimming competition—you couldn’t stop throwing up for hours beforehand. And what about the year you took your final exams at school? You ended up with pneumonia that time. You’re one of those people who can’t take any sort of strain for long.’
Nerissa gave her a wounded look, her huge eyes darkened. ‘I’ll be OK. Don’t stop me going to see Philip; I can sleep later, when I get back. That’s all that’s wrong with me—I had something on my mind and couldn’t get to sleep for hours, that’s all.’
Grace Thornton frowned, face intent. ‘Something on your mind? What? Philip?’
‘Of course. I can’t help worrying about him, can I?’
‘You mustn’t let yourself worry; you have to be fit to sit by his bed all day. You must train yourself not to think too much.’
Nerissa laughed bitterly. ‘That would be a good trick. Tell me how I do that!’
She poured herself some coffee, took one of the apples grown in the farm orchard—an oldfashioned, crunchy, brown-skinned russet—and bit into it, very aware of her aunt watching her.
‘It isn’t just Philip you’ve got on your mind, is it? What else is bothering you?’ A pause, then Grace shrewdly said, ‘Your husband?’
‘Sometimes I think you’re a witch,’ Nerissa said, smiling wryly. ‘How can you always read my mind?’
‘I know you,’ Grace said, and sighed. ‘You should never have told him,’ she added, her voice thickening with remembered pain and angry pride. ‘I can’t understand why you did, talking about family business to an outsider like that!’
Nerissa put down the half-eaten apple, her head bent, the cloudy dark hair falling in a wave over her face, hiding it from Grace.
‘I didn’t tell him. He guessed.’
A snort. ‘How could he?’ Grace rejected. ‘He only spent two weeks up here and folk who’ve known us for years never guessed—how should he? What would he know about folk like us, and him coming from London, where they don’t even know their own neighbour, let alone give them a helping hand when times are bad? Nay, lass, if he guessed you gave it away—you must have said something to give him a clue.’
‘But I didn’t tell him,’ insisted Nerissa. ‘He just picked it up from something I said, or read it in my face, or in yours…or…’ Her voice faltered. ‘Or in Philip’s.’
Grace Thornton flinched, but said gruffly, ‘I don’t believe it. He couldn’t have.’
Nerissa said flatly, ‘Ben is very shrewd, especially with people. He’s a lawyer, remember, trained to read character, to sense when people are telling the truth or lying—whether it’s an out-and-out lie, or just not telling the whole truth. I never lied to him, I just…left out things…but all the same he guessed. It’s as if he has antennae like a radio and can pick up what isn’t being said, right out of the air.’
Grace Thornton’s face had stiffened into a pale mask; she watched Nerissa bleakly. ‘Aye, he doesn’t miss a trick! A hard man—I could tell that from the minute he walked in here with you. I reckon they grow an extra skin in big cities like London, just to get by, like. It can’t be easy living there, but I can’t say I liked him. He’s not our sort. But he is your husband; there’s no getting past that.’ She fell silent for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Are you happy with him, Nerissa?’
She didn’t ask, Do you love him, Nerissa? That was ice too thin for either of them.
Nerissa said, ‘Yes,’ quickly, too quickly.
Grace Thornton wasn’t deceived. ‘I’d feel a lot easier if I knew you were happy, love,’ she said, and sighed.
Nerissa could never fool her. She had never known another mother; the bond of affection between her and Grace Thornton was very strong and sure, based on years of caring and security. There had been a time when it had been shaken, that trust—but its roots had been too deep and in time it had been rebuilt because of that long, deep affection.
Nerissa’s parents had both died when she was very small—too young, in fact, to remember them clearly. Her mother had been Grace’s sister, but they couldn’t have been more different. Ellen had been tiny and delicate—it was from her that Nerissa had inherited her build and colouring. Ellen had died of leukaemia three years after her only child was born. Her husband, Joe, had taken Nerissa up to Northumberland to her aunt, and that was Nerissa’s first memory—of being tired and weepy after a long journey from somewhere she didn’t remember but later discovered to have been London, of wanting her mother, wanting her own home, being frightened and bewildered. Her father had carried her into the comfortable firelit kitchen and her aunt had taken her into her arms, kissed her, brushed back her black curls, murmuring to her, while over her shoulder Nerissa had stared down at Philip, who was almost a year older, but a sturdy little boy, much larger than herself, sitting on a rug playing with toy cars.
‘That’s your cousin; that’s my Philip,’ Grace Thornton had said. ‘Go and play with him, sweetheart.’ And she had set Nerissa down and given her a gentle push towards the other child.
Philip had grinned at her, silently held out one of his cars.
Nerissa had toddled over to take it and sat down on the hearthrug with a bump and had begun to push the car back and forward, making the same noises Philip was making. ‘Brrmm…brrmm…’
She had never forgotten the moment. In a sense, it had been the beginning of her life. She couldn’t remember anything that had happened before that moment, that day.
The first three years of her life had vanished—her mother’s face, where they had lived—every detail. All gone, as if they had never happened.
Except that one moment, at the beginning, when she was carried into the firelit kitchen by her father. That instant was sharp and bright in her memory, beginning her conscious life.
Her father had left the next day and never come back. He had gone to Australia, she was told, and one day he would come back for her—but he never did. When she was seven she was told he had died, in the outback, of blood-poisoning, after neglecting a cut on his arm. There had been no doctor for many miles and it was too late by the time his condition was finally diagnosed.
Nerissa had cried when they’d told her, mostly because she felt she should, and even at the age of seven she’d had a strong sense of what she ought to do, think, feel. Her father’s death had made no real difference to her life because by then she had felt she belonged here, with her uncle and aunt and Philip.
They were her family. She had forgotten she had ever had another one. Her life lay here, on the farm, in these remote, wind-blown hills. Their isolation threw them together more than most families; they had no near neighbours. There was another farmhouse half a mile away across the fields, but the farmer and his wife were old and their children grown-up and living away from home.
The nearest village was nearly two miles away, and it was tiny. It had a pub, a church which was hundreds of years old and a shop which sold anything and everything. Once there had been a school; it had closed years ago and now the children had to catch a bus to the next village which was larger and still had a school.
Nerissa and Philip had gone there, together, on the school bus which picked them up at the end of the lane running past the farm gates. In time they had both graduated to a large comprehensive, even further away, which meant a very long journey every day.
In the school holidays, and in the evenings and at weekends, they had helped on the farm, of course; Uncle John needed every spare hand he could get.
Farm work was hard, but it could be fun, toohelping to clear out ditches, cut back hedges, wheel barrows full of stones for mending drystone walls, prepare food for the various farmyard animals, muck out the stables, tramp the fields to check on sheep which had wandered and round them up with the help of the two sheepdogs.
Doing it alone wouldn’t be so great, but when there were two of you—talking, playing jokes on each other, laughing—the time flew and you hardly noticed what you were doing.
There was always something new to do, too. Every day brought a new job—help to run the sheep through the bath of disinfectant every year, hold sheep for the vet while he injected them against the innumerable ills sheep were prone to, feed chickens or the few pigs they kept, whitewash outbuildings, slash back the nettles which invaded the yards if you didn’t keep them down in summer.
Nerissa and Philip hadn’t minded doing any of that. They’d enjoyed the variety of work on the farm; the jobs followed the seasons, changing all the time with the rhythm of the year.
Whatever they’d done, though, they’d done together. They’d always been together—inseparable—riding ponies across the fields to take them to the blacksmith to be shod, jumping walls and ditches, or in the summer lying in the sweet-smelling hay stored in the barn, talking and arguing, or in the fields, chewing ears of wheat and watching the poppies quiver in the warm air while Uncle John drove the harvester backwards and forwards across a field, and the blue sky wheeled overhead.
It seemed years ago. Nerissa winced, her blue eyes haunted by memories of how Philip looked now, how he had looked yesterday, in the hospital.
‘I hate to think of him lying there, day after day! Philip always hated sitting still. He was full of energy.’
‘Don’t talk in the past tense!’ snapped his mother. ‘He isn’t dead! And he isn’t going to die, so stop talking like that!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nerissa said. ‘It’s just…I feel so helpless. If only there were something we could do!’
‘We’re doing everything we can,’ his mother said. ‘Don’t let it get to you, Nerissa. You won’t help Philip by making yourself ill with fretting.’ She smiled at her again, comfortingly, then looked at her watch. ‘Let’s be on our way.’ She began to clear away the breakfast things and Nerissa got up to help.
Maybe there would be some change! she thought as they drove to the hospital later. Sooner or later he would open his eyes, surely! He must. He couldn’t stay the way he was, a living statue, locked inside his own mind, dead to them.
But there was no change at all. That day was much the same as the previous two had been. They talked, while Philip lay unmoving, without expression. Nerissa read to him from the day’s newspaper, began reading Treasure Island to him, because it had always been his favourite book—he had read it over and over again when he was a boy.
John Thornton arrived and spent an hour with his son, then Aunt Grace sent them both back to the farm.
‘Go to bed and try to sleep, Nerissa,’ she said as they left. ‘Promise me you will.’
‘I’ll see she does!’ John Thornton said and his wife nodded, patting his arm.
‘Good lad.’
Nerissa watched and was overwhelmed with affection for her aunt; she was an astonishing woman, proud and strong, and full of warmth and kindness. She held them all together; without her they would be lost.
When they reached the farm Nerissa made tea, and she and Uncle John had a cup together in the kitchen before he got up, sighing.
‘A farmer’s work is never done, especially if he runs sheep!’ he said. ‘Stupid animals. I can’t think why I bother with them, sometimes.’
He tramped off into a rainy mist, which had come from nowhere, and Nerissa went up to her bedroom and found to her grateful surprise that Uncle John had lit a fire in the tiny grate. She stood in front of it and undressed down to her silky white slip, bra and panties, then lay down under the old, patchwork quilt, the curtains drawn, the fire dying down a little but a few flames still making black shadows climb the bedroom walls and the soft sound of rain soaking into the garden making a gentle lullaby.
A sound woke her. Her lashes fluttered, lifted. Drowsily she wondered what she had just heard—not a loud noise, a very quiet one. The sound of ash dropping through the fire grate? Or a log cracking apart in the flame? Her uncle’s tractor far away on the hill?
What time was it? She rolled over to look at the clock and froze as she found herself looking into Ben’s eyes. For a second she actually thought she was imagining it, calling him up from her unconscious because she was so terrified of seeing him again.
But she wasn’t imagining anything. Ben was there, sitting beside her bed, and looking as if he had been there for some time, watching her while she slept.
Her body seemed to drain of blood. She stared into his eyes and felt like someone looking out into a winter landscape—grey and icy, impenetrable.
She was so stunned that she blurted out stupidly just what was on her mind. ‘I thought you were going to be in The Hague for a week?’
The cold lips parted just enough to bite out a few words. ‘So you hurried back to him.’
She winced as if at a blow from a lash. ‘You don’t understand——’ she began, and was interrupted.
‘Oh, I understand. You’re still obsessed with him; you couldn’t keep away.’
‘No, you’re wrong, I——’
His voice overrode hers. ‘Have you been sleeping with him?’
‘Philip’s in hospital!’ she shouted, sitting up, dragging the quilt with her to cover herself. ‘He’s in a coma; he doesn’t even know I’m here.’
Silence. Ben stared fixedly.
She shrank back against the bedhead, went on flatly, ‘He crashed his car nearly a week ago. His injuries were pretty bad. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt; his head was…’ She swallowed, not bearing the idea of what had happened to his head. ‘He had to have surgery to relieve pressure on the brain and he’s been in a coma ever since. They can’t say if…when…he’ll wake up. It could be days, or weeks, or months—they just don’t know.’
Ben’s mouth indented. ‘I’m sorry, I’d no idea,’ he said in a low, harsh voice. ‘No wonder you look like grim death.’
‘We’re all very worried, obviously,’ she muttered, pushing back a strand of her dark hair which had strayed across her face. ‘His mother’s at the hospital with him, now—we’ve all been there, we go every day—but she sent me home early because she thought I looked tired.’
Ben’s grey eyes roamed over her delicate face, bone-white at the moment except for the smoky shadows under her great blue eyes.
‘That’s why I was in bed at this time of day; I’ve been sleeping,’ she added, very aware of his gaze and feeling her skin prickle with a familiar slow, sensual response. From the minute they’d met she had felt this unwanted reaction to him—not to the man himself, whom she had not even known at first, but to the male animal inside his expensive designer suit, to that powerful sexual mix of bone, muscle, flesh and dominating drive. Women always noticed Ben; she had seen it happen over and over again. The insistence of his personality made them gravitate towards him even in a crowded room. Nerissa had felt a strange pang many times as she’d watched his effect on other women, recognising it from her own first reaction to him.
It wasn’t love, after all—how could it be? No, what she had felt—and still felt—was pure sexual desire, and she despised herself because it happened every time she saw him—even now, when she was so worried and unhappy over Philip.
She had always believed that you only felt like that about a man you loved. She wasn’t sure yet exactly what she did feel about Ben, but she didn’t think you could call it love.
Oh, he had become necessary to her—she wanted him, she thought about him when he wasn’t there—but she didn’t understand him the way she understood Philip. She didn’t know him the way she knew Philip. The wordless, warm, certain love she had for Philip was a world away from the disturbing power Ben had over her.
If she could have married Philip…Her heart winced at the thought of how different her life would have been.
But fate had played a savage trick on them; they had been wrenched apart forever, with no hope of any future for them.
‘How long have you been here?’ Ben asked curtly, sitting down on the edge of her bed.
She couldn’t meet his eyes. After a moment she whispered, ‘Since the day you left for The Hague.’
A silence, then he bit out, ‘They rang and told you about the accident after I’d left?’
She swallowed, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. ‘No, they rang me the day before.’
He didn’t move or speak but the silence vibrated with violence. She sat there, trembling, afraid to look at him.
‘And you didn’t tell me.’ His voice grated on her nerves; she wanted to scream, and couldn’t. ‘You let me leave, without saying a word, and as soon as I was out of the way you rushed up here without even leaving a note to tell me where you had gone.’ He got up suddenly, walked across the room and back, and she picked up the simmering rage inside him.
This was the reaction she had been expecting. She knew how Ben felt about betrayal. His first wife had had an affair with his best friend for a year before Ben had found out. He had come home one day to find them in bed together. There had been a fight between the two men; Ben had put his ‘friend’ into hospital with a broken nose. Ben’s wife had gone with the ‘friend’ in the ambulance after screaming abuse at Ben. Two years later Ben had divorced her; it had been another six years before he met Nerissa.
Nerissa knew he still carried the scars of disillusion and bitterness. Whatever he had been like before the day he’d come home to find his wife in bed with someone else, he was now a hard, remorseless man, determined never to let himself fall in love again. All he wanted from her was pleasure in bed. Love did not enter into their bargain.
He stopped at the bed and looked down at her, his eyes a blaze of rage. ‘What were you going to do at the end of the week? Come back to me without ever mentioning that you had been away? Did you really think you could get away with it?’
‘No, of course not! I knew you would find out but, anyway, Philip might be like this for weeks, months, and I—’ She broke off, biting her lip.
‘Didn’t mean to come back at all,’ Ben finished for her, his voice slow, his mind working all the time as he watched her. ‘You’re going to stay here,’ he thought aloud. ‘You never intended to come back to me.’
She clutched the quilt tighter, her small hands white-knuckled, her chin lifted and defiance in her eyes.
‘He needs me,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t leave him now, not like this, and it isn’t just Philip—Aunt Grace and Uncle John need me, too. This has hit them pretty badly.’
Ben’s mouth curled coldly, cruelty in the lines of it. ‘Uncle John!’ he repeated, and laughed.
‘Don’t!’ she said, dark red invading her pale face, her eyes stricken.
Ben muttered under his breath and swung away again, walked back to the window, pulled aside the old tapestry curtain and looked out. A shaft of grey, rainy light entered the bedroom.
‘Where are they both? I knocked on the front door but nobody answered, so I went round the back and the kitchen door was open, but there was no sign of anyone downstairs.’
‘Aunt Grace is still at the hospital with Philip. Uncle John’s somewhere on the farm, working. He has to spend so much time at the hospital, he has got behind with his work. He says he’ll have to get someone to help out for a while, but the farm only just pays enough for the three of them to live on—it will be a drain on their budget to have to pay wages to an outsider.’
‘And they hate outsiders, too,’ Ben said in that cold, angry voice, swinging to face her.
She bit her lip. ‘That’s a bit over the top. I wouldn’t say that; it’s just that they…they are conservative.’
‘They hated me from the minute they saw me!’
She pleated the quilt hem with her shaking fingers. ‘That isn’t true; they didn’t hate you! They were…taken aback…when I brought you here. They hadn’t expected—’
‘You to find another man?’
‘I was going to say someone like you!’ she retorted, very flushed. ‘Life here is so different from life in London. People like them…you just don’t understand them; they’re not like anyone you know.’ Her eyes softened, her voice filled with affection and Ben watched her intently, frowning. ‘They rarely meet strangers,’ she said. ‘They never go anywhere very much. Oh, they go to market once a month, they go to Durham to do Christmas shopping, but otherwise they almost never leave the farm. The furthest I can remember them going is to Scarborough, for a seaside holiday, and they don’t do that every year even now, when Philip can take over and run things while they’re away. They couldn’t afford to go abroad. Hill farmers don’t make enough money for foreign holidays. I don’t think Uncle John has even been to London.’
Ben flared suddenly, his voice harsh. ‘Why do you go on with this pretence? Isn’t it time it all came out into the open? What the hell is the point in going on with these lies and half-truths? This whole business is so ingrown and contorted—if you once faced up to facts you might actually work out a few things about yourself.’
‘Do you think I haven’t?’ she huskily threw back, looking up then, her eyes almost black with emotion in that white face. ‘Once I knew…I realised I had to go away, and I did—you know that!’
Ben brooded on her, his face grim. ‘How could they lie to you all these years? That’s what I don’t understand. The lies. Why couldn’t they come out and tell you, years ago?’
‘Pride,’ she said, sadness in the line of her mouth, in her eyes. ‘I said you didn’t understand them. Can’t you see? It was their pride that kept them from telling me.’
‘Their pride?’ exploded Ben. ‘They cheated you for their own selfish reasons—you grew up unaware that you had a living father, not a dead one! If they had told you when you were small…’
‘They couldn’t bear to!’
‘To hell with what they couldn’t bear! What about you? Look what they did to you, with their pride and their lies! If they had ever cared twopence for you they’d have told you the truth years ago, and you would have been spared a lot of grief.’
‘If they had known it was ever going to matter they’d have told me, but how could they guess? They couldn’t see the future; they didn’t have second sight.’
Ben’s grey eyes flashed contemptuously. ‘You’re a born victim, aren’t you? No matter what they did, you forgive them. Where’s your pride, for heaven’s sake? Where’s your self-respect?’
Nerissa watched his hard, remorseless face and knew how he had looked when he’d seen his first wife, Aileen, in bed with her lover. Ben was not the forgiving type; from that instant his first marriage had been finished. And although he had told her, when they’d first met, the bare outline of what had happened he had never mentioned his first wife’s name since. He had excised her from his life ruthlessly.
Nerissa was in no doubt that he would do the same with her. It would be easy enough; Ben had never been in love with her. She suspected that his capacity for love had died with Aileen’s betrayal. One wound had been enough for Ben; he had made up his mind there and then never to let himself be vulnerable to such hurt again.
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