A Man Possessed
PENNY JORDAN
Penny Jordan is an award-winning New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of more than 200 books with sales of over 100 million copies. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection of her novels, many of which are available for the first time in eBook right now.He'd rejected her long agoA cruel fate brought Dominic Harland back into Kate Hammond's life. Eight years ago, in the midst of a bleak marriage arranged by her mother, Kate had offered herself to Dominic only to be humiliatingly rejected. That hurt and, when her husband had died, she'd vowed there would be no more men in her life.Now, Kate was starting over – selling her house, starting a business – when Dominic reappeared, still desiring her. He now wanted to claim what he had once refused!
A Man Possessed
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u6be61cbc-83b6-5814-adf0-d100a66dc67b)
Title Page (#u00ad12ed-b10e-5649-b4b5-deaa34f22fc8)
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#udc1b75c9-db78-5096-a202-2468a28842be)
‘KATE, for goodness’ sake, it’s a dinner party I’m inviting you to, not a Roman orgy!’
With wry exasperation, Sue reflected that her husband John had been right when he said that Kate would dig her heels in and prove to be as intractable about refusing this invitation as she had been in refusing all their others.
She and Kate had been friendly ever since their High School days; they had grown up together, and yet despite that, there was a barrier between them now, that Kate used as a drawbridge, to pull up and hide herself behind.
Sue knew why, of course, and she sighed inwardly, reflecting how perverse and cruel fate could be. No woman gifted with Kate’s looks and sensuality should live as she did, completely cutting herself off from almost all human contact. At least she had agreed now to put the farmhouse up for sale, Sue reflected. The land that had once gone with it was long gone, sold after Ricky’s death to pay off his gambling and other debts. Kate refused to blame Ricky for the wasteland their marriage had been, but Sue’s quick temper and loyalty to her friend were fired every time she thought about him. It was all very well for Kate to say that she was equally to blame; that she should never have married him. But she had been a naïve eighteen to his twenty-eight; still shocked by the sudden death of her father and the totally unexpected arrival into her life of the mother she had not seen since she was ten years old.
Perhaps Kate was right, and Ricky was not to blame; it had after all been Kate’s mother who had been so eager for the marriage. The land Kate had inherited from her father had run alongside the farm Ricky had inherited from his grandfather, and he hadn’t taken much persuading that in marrying Kate he would be gaining far more than a docile, biddable wife. Even then there had been rumours about his gambling, and Kate’s mother must have known about them, but it had still not stopped her from marrying her daughter off to him, with what Sue, now a mother herself, recognised as extremely unmaternal haste. But then, at only seventeen and a half, Kate was still under age, and her mother would have had to take her back to the States with her, if she had not been able to leave her with Ricky.
Sue knew enough about Valerie Patton to know how unwelcome an addition a beautiful teenage daughter would have been to her Los Angeles lifestyle. Following her divorce from Kate’s father, Valerie had resumed her acting career, landing a part in an American television ‘soap’, eventually giving up that role in order to take up the far more financially rewarding one of becoming Mrs Harold Patton the Third.
She had been frankly staggered when she saw Valerie at her ex-husband’s funeral; she had looked barely half a dozen years older than her own teenage daughter, and almost as beautiful. But unlike Kate, Valerie’s beauty was barely even skin deep; her charm as brittle and delicate as the mask that a clever plastic surgeon had fashioned on her face. No, there had been no room in Valerie Patton’s life for a grown-up daughter, and so while she was still suffering from the shock of her father’s death, Kate had been hustled into marriage with Ricky.
Only once in the ten years since then had Kate ever mentioned the subject of her marriage to Sue; and that had been six years ago, just after Ricky’s death. What she had confided then had both appalled and stunned Sue. Even then Kate would not blame Ricky, claiming that she herself was as much to blame; that she had married him of her own free will believing herself in love with him, and that admission more than anything else had made Sue’s sympathetic heart ache, especially now from the vantage point of her own maturity. What could a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old, who had only known the distant and ill-expressed love of a much older father, know of adult emotions? In Sue’s opinion, if Kate had believed herself in love with Ricky, it had been because both Ricky himself and her mother had taken good care that she should do so. Although Kate had never confirmed it to her, Sue had a strong suspicion that knowing of Ricky’s predilection for gambling, Valerie had offered him more than just her ex-husband’s land when he married her daughter. After all, Valerie Patton was an extremely wealthy woman.
A soft, faintly mocking cough drew Sue back from the past to the present. Kate was standing in front of the window and the light from it framed the darkly turbulent beauty of which she herself was so unaware.
Once again Sue sighed. It was all such a waste. Kate should be going out, meeting people, enjoying life, not living here alone in this remote farmhouse. She had tried again and again to get her friend more interested in life … in men, but Kate had changed over the years. She was no longer the shy, vulnerable adolescent she had once been. In fact nowadays she was surprisingly firm, self-possessed and stubborn; sometimes maddeningly so, like now.
‘Look, Kate, I promise you I’m not trying to matchmake,’ Sue told her firmly. ‘I want you to come to dinner with us, that’s all.’
‘Only with you and John?’
Humour curved her full bottom lip, her densely blue eyes gleaming knowingly as Kate looked back at her friend.
‘No, not just John and me,’ Sue admitted. ‘There’ll be others there … But, Kate, can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?’ She sounded exasperated now, and she was. She had talked this over with John again and again, and her husband who was a G.P. in local practice agreed with her that because of the isolation of her home, and her habit of cutting herself off from other people, Kate was in real danger of becoming too solitary. ‘You’re young … only twenty-seven,’ Sue persisted doggedly. ‘You’re clever, beautiful … Kate, you can’t possibly want to spend the rest of your life alone!’
Just for a moment a faintly brooding, haunted expression touched the blue eyes, and then they hardened to mocking flippancy as Kate responded teasingly, ‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you …! Well, you’re coming to this dinner party, even if it means driving out here to drag you back myself. You’ve got to start living again some time, Kate.’
Across the room their eyes met, and then suddenly, almost wearily, Kate gave in.
‘Okay, I’ll come,’ she smiled wryly, ‘who knows, I might be able to persuade one of your guests to buy the farm.’
Sue smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re selling it, although I know you’ve always loved it.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Kate smiled evenly at her and said with chilly truthfulness, ‘I sometimes wonder if it was Ricky I married, or this place. I fell in love with it when I was six years old. I could just see the rooftops from our cottage. I can’t afford to keep it on though, Sue—it costs a fortune to run.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sure it’s no secret locally how Ricky left me financially. What was left of the land had to go to meet his debts. Next winter the roof is going to need repairing. It’s a listed building and can only be repaired with original or expensively hand-made roof tiles, and that’s just the start of it …’
‘But what do you plan to do! Where will you go?’
‘There’s still the cottage,’ Kate reminded her. ‘It’s been let as a weekend base to a couple from London for the past few years, but their tenancy runs out this year, and I’ve decided to move back there myself. It’s plenty large enough for me after all, and it will be much cheaper to run.’
‘And the money you get from this place, carefully invested, will bring you in enough to manage on, I suppose,’ Sue mused, able to see the logic of what her friend was suggesting.
‘It might do, but that’s not what I’ve got in mind. I’m thinking of starting up my own business.’
Sue stared at her totally bemused for several seconds before exlaiming, ‘Doing what?’
‘Working in stained glass,’ Kate told her calmly, amusement gleaming in her eyes as she surveyed her friend’s stunned face. ‘It was one of the crafts I studied at art school, and it fascinated me. I was only there six months, not long enough to learn very much, but I’ve been spending a couple of days each week over the last few months at a craft workshop in London learning more about it. The whole subject’s one that intrigues me, and more and more markets are opening up for it—not just for restoration work in churches either.’
‘But … but you’ve never said a word!’
Kate shrugged and then smiled. ‘Until now there was nothing to say. Although I’ve enjoyed what I’ve been doing, until Harry suggested we went into partnership last week, it never really occurred to me that it might be a way in which I could make a living.’
‘Harry!’ The stunned, almost inarticulate way in which Sue repeated the name of her mentor and proposed partner made Kate grin mischievously.
‘Don’t get excited,’ she cautioned, chuckling. ‘He’s fifty, happily married and a grandfather.’
‘But, Kate——! I’m amazed … you’ve been making all these plans and never said a word!’
Kate could tell that her friend was hurt and hurriedly made amends.
‘To be honest with you, Sue, until Harry mentioned us going into partnership last week, I hadn’t thought of what I was doing as anything other than an enjoyable hobby, but now that he has mentioned it, I really feel that it’s something I want to do. Of course we’re only talking about it at this stage, but Harry’s very enthusiastic. He likes my designs and he’s keen for me to develop that side of my work.’
Sue sat down in a chair and stared up at her. ‘Kate, I’m so pleased. This is just what you need to take you out of yourself. I’m sorry you’ve got to sell the house, of course, but it’s time you had a fresh start.’
‘Mmm … maybe. But keep it to yourself, would you, Sue? My plans are far too tentative at the moment to become the subject of village gossip.’ Kate made a rueful moue. ‘You know what this place is like.’
‘Only too well! Don’t worry, I shan’t breathe a word.’
The grandfather clock in the hall suddenly struck the hour and Sue jumped up, grimacing. ‘God, is it that time? I’ve got to pick the kids up from school in half an hour. I’d better go … but before I do, I want your promise that you’ll come to my dinner party.’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘Good, because I meant what I said, you know. I’ll come and drag you away from this place forcibly if you try and wriggle out of it now.’
‘Oh, yeah!’ Glancing from the vantage point of her five-feet-eight to her friend’s petite five-foot-nothing, Kate grinned, reviving a taunt from their mutual schooldays as she teased, ‘You and whose army?’
Ten minutes later, bowling down the lane in her small car heading in the direction of the village, Sue reflected warmly that at long last Kate was showing some signs of rejoining the human race. She couldn’t wait to get home and share her pleasure with her family. Her husband was almost as fond of Kate as she was herself, and her widowed mother loved Kate almost as a second daughter. It was so good to see her smiling again; reverting to the lovely laughing girl she had been before her father’s death, and then again, if only briefly, in those weeks before her marriage. How long after that marriage had it been before she stopped smiling? A month … six weeks? Over and over again Kate had denied that her unhappiness was Ricky’s fault, but in the shocked aftermath of his death she had broken down completely and admitted to her what a travesty their marriage had been.
Sexually Ricky had been completely indifferent to her; had made love to her less than half a dozen times, always perfunctorily, from what Sue had been able to gather from Kate’s weepy outpourings; and then once they had been married a couple of months, never touching her, but turning instead for sexual pleasure to a succession of girl-friends. He had been with one of them when he died in a horrifying head-on crash with another car. Kate had wanted to divorce him, she had confided, but she had been too ashamed of admitting to anyone what a travesty their marriage was to do anything about it.
What her friend had experienced would be enough to put any woman off the male sex for life, Sue admitted, but although Ricky had apparently constantly jeered at her for being sexually cold, that was not how Sue saw her friend. On the contrary, she had always thought there was an aura of warm sensuality about Kate … an air of womanliness and warmth, spiced with sexuality, and she knew that her husband John agreed with her. Even so … physical rejection from one’s husband must be a terrible burden to carry …
Although she wasn’t aware of it, as she stood by the drawing-room window looking out on to the mellow countryside Kate’s thoughts were following a similar path to her friend’s, although it was not the bitterness of the burden of her husband’s rejection that was occupying her thoughts, but that of another man.
Strange how, even now, after all this time, eight years in fact, that memory still had the power to torment her. She sighed, and tried to push it away, turning her back on the scenery outside and turning instead to survey the familiar surroundings of her home, but that was a mistake.
Nothing had changed in this room in over ten years. It was still the same now as it had been when she came to the house as a new bride. Although she hadn’t known it at the time, the décor had been chosen by one of Ricky’s girl-friends. Whoever she was, she had had excellent taste, Kate mused, her glance taking in the soft lemony-gold washed walls and ceiling; the dark stained beams which were part of the original Elizabethan house. From the parish records they knew that this house had once belonged to a prosperous buccaneer, who had made his money with Drake, and who had bought this land with the Queen’s goodwill, building a home on it for the bride he had brought here from London.
A soft blue-grey velvety carpet covered the floor, the cottagey atmosphere of the drawing-room reinforced by the two large sofas upholstered in a beautiful Colefax and Fowler print of blues and greys on a soft yellow background. An antique ladies’ writing desk was set against one wall beneath an attractive group of prints. The room retained an open fireplace and was large enough to take a collection of antique occasional tables, and a couple of easy chairs upholstered in soft yellow fabric to contrast slightly with the florals of the sofas. Matching curtains hung at the windows at either end of the room, the whole effect a careful blending of colours that harmonised, seemingly casual and slightly shabby and yet epitomising a country house style of furnishing that was wholly English. Which made it all the more disruptive that she should be able to so easily imagine standing within this background a man who was most definitely not the slightest bit English—at least not in looks—and one, moreover, who had spent no more than a mere weekend at most here. And yet it was easier to recapture his image than it was to recapture Ricky’s. But then, of course, the rejection she had suffered at Dominic Harland’s hands had been far more savagely painful than that she had known with Ricky.
She shivered, suddenly cold despite the afternoon sun pouring into the room. Even now she couldn’t bear to think about that weekend.
But perhaps she should, she told herself hardily; perhaps it was time she stopped hiding away from the past and faced up to it. She was after all about to make a new start in life … a fitting point at which to give one final look at the past and then shut it away for ever.
Almost dreamily she walked into the large hall, glancing automatically up to what had originally been the minstrels’ gallery and what was now the landing. He had been standing up there the first time she saw him. She had been in bed when he arrived … had known nothing about him until Ricky, whom she had not expected home that weekend, told her that he was an old friend whom he had met in London and invited down for the weekend.
Numbly Kate tore her attention away from the gallery, shocked by the unexpected pallor of her own face as she caught sight of it in the mirror hanging on the hall wall. She looked drained of all colour, her hair stark black, although in reality it was very dark brown, the curling thick mass of it in stark contrast to her face, as though somehow her hair had drained all the colour and energy from her skin. Even her mouth looked pale, almost bloodless, only her eyes possessing colour.
Her colouring was Irish, her father had once told her, which was why he had chosen to call her Kate, but Kate could see no beauty in her vibrantly sensual colouring; she would have preferred to have been blonde like her mother. Ricky had always preferred blondes too. The girl he had died with had been blonde … bleached apparently, but blonde nevertheless.
Slowly Kate went upstairs, her feet automatically finding the shallow indentations on the stairs made by the feet of many generations. One of the things she loved most about the house was its age.
She found it soothing to remind herself that these walls and rooms had seen every facet of human life both happy and miserable, and in the past it had often given her a sense of perspective on her own problems to think of this.
Once upstairs she made for her bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. It was not the room she had shared with Ricky during their marriage. She went in there these days only when she had to. Ricky had insisted that she continue to share the huge fourposter with him even when he had made it plain that he had no interest in her as a woman—how galling that had been, to know that her husband, who would turn in the street and look lustfully at almost every girl who walked past him, had absolutely no sexual interest in her.
She closed her eyes, automatically letting the past wash over her, remembering how confused and uncertain she had been after her father’s death. Her mother might have pushed her into Ricky’s arms, but she hadn’t had to push too hard. The trouble was that she had been in desperate need of someone to love and be loved by in return. Ricky had been attractive enough to make any naïve girl’s heart beat faster; tall, fair-haired, and indolently languid in a way which Kate had misinterpreted as being sophisticatedly exciting—she had been all too eager to believe herself in love with him.
Her full lips twisted slightly. God, what a fool she had been! Well, she had soon learned the truth. Ricky had refused to take her away on honeymoon, claiming that he was too busy, but she soon realised that Ricky used those words to cloak his heavy gambling. He had gone gaming the night they were married, leaving her alone in the house after the few guests who had attended their register office wedding had gone. He had come back late—and drunk. Weeks later when she had accused him of this he had sneered at her in open contempt and told her that that was the only way he had been able to bring himself to make love to her. Although she hadn’t known it when they married he had been heavily involved with someone else, a woman whose tastes were much more in accord with his than her own.
It was when, after a tearful fight, she had accused him of not loving her that he had told her this, and much more besides, jeering at her for ever believing he might have done.
He had never wanted her, he told her then, and never would; she was too cold … too inexperienced. No, the reason he had married her was because the addition of her father’s land to his own had made it much easier for him to raise a mortgage on the land, and that plus the fact that her mother had been willing to pay him to take her off her hands had made marriage to her an attractive proposition.
They had been married exactly two months when he told her that, and at first she had been too shocked to take it in.
Convinced that his hurtful words were just born out of temper, she had made several clumsy attempts to approach him and to bridge the gap between them, but he had rebuffed her so callously that she was soon forced to realise what he had said was the truth and that he did not desire her as his wife in any physical sense at all.
At first she had been too shocked to think of divorce; to do anything other than live through each agonising day as best she could. The discovery that he did not love her, coming so soon after the blow of her father’s death, numbed her to such an extent that for months she had simply drifted through life.
But then two years after she and Ricky were married had come that dreadful, fateful weekend when she had met Dominic Harland.
Ricky had arrived home late one Friday evening with him.
Kate had been in bed when they arrived. The sound of Ricky’s car had woken her and she had gone out on to the landing in just her cotton nightdress, not expecting Ricky to have anyone with him. He had not been home at all the previous night and she was rigid with tension and anguish, only registering the other man’s presence when he stepped out from behind her husband. The light on the landing threw his profile into strong relief and she had literally gasped out loud, stunned by the masculine perfection of his features. Honey-gold skin stretched tautly over strong bones, tawny-gold eyes, the colour of a lion’s pelt, stared mockingly into her own, thick black hair curling down over the collar of his shirt.
Even in her ignorance and innocence Kate had recognised the powerful sexual aura of the man, and a curious, twisting sensation curled through her body, making her eyes widen and her lips part as she stared down into his face like someone possessed. Her heartbeat quickened, her whole body pulsing with a deep, aching sensation hard to define. As she watched, transfixed, the hard male mouth twisted, the golden eyes narrowing, hardening, disengaging from her own with cool indifference making her uncomfortably aware of the long schoolgirlish plait of her hair, and the little girlish cotton nightdress she was wearing. No doubt his women wore silks and satins to bed; their appearance as sophisticated as his own. As she stumbled back to the bedroom she had a momentary and tormenting mental picture of his naked body, tanned and hard; very sure and knowing as it reached out to claim the filmy image of a woman, in the act of love.
Her skin hot with shame, Kate dived into bed and curled up beneath the bedclothes. There must be something wrong with her, thinking like that about a complete stranger. There was something wrong with her, she decided distractedly minutes later as an uncomfortable heat pervaded her body, followed by a tight, coiling tension. She could hear the two men moving about in the adjacent bedroom. The door opened and closed, she heard footsteps along the landing and then her door opened and Ricky came in.
She knew better now than to make any approach to him. He undressed quickly, throwing his clothes on to the floor before heading for their bathroom. He was gone for over half an hour, but when he returned Kate was still awake. She felt the bed depress as he got in beside her, turning his back on her. She closed her eyes, but it was not her husband’s image that danced tormentingly behind her shuttered lids. It was Dominic Harland’s.
And that was how it had begun, Kate thought wryly, shaking herself free of the past and opening her eyes, knowing that she did not have the courage to take herself back through that entire weekend. God, the humiliation of what had heppened! It scorched and burned her even now, far, far more than any rejection she had endured at Ricky’s hands. Of course, it had all been her own fault. She ought to have realised the moment she set eyes on him what manner of man he was. Certainly not the type who could ever be interested in a shy, naïve girl such as she had been. But she had been so desperate then to prove that she was a woman that she had not seen that. She had only seen that he was a man who aroused within her desire and in whose arms she could wipe out the humiliation of her husband’s lack of interest in her.
She laughed bitterly. Heavens, how stupid she had been! But that was all in the past now. The grandfather clock struck four, and she remembered that she had promised to telephone Harry and give him her decision about going into partnership with him.
It was only this afternoon talking to Sue that she had realised what she intended to do. Squaring her shoulders slightly, she went downstairs. It was time she made a fresh start, put the past behind her once and for all and what better way could there be to do that than to embark on a new career?
As she dialled the number of Harry’s workshop, she smiled slightly to herself. It was almost two years since they had first met now. She had gone to London on business to see Ricky’s solicitor. Following her husband’s death she had discovered that he had considerable debts outstanding to various gambling establishments, and although the solicitor had advised her that she was under no legal obligation to clear them, she had insisted that she wanted to do so. With the sale of what had been her father’s land, she had been able to clear the last of these outstanding amounts, and it had been that that took her to London.
With a free afternoon at her disposal she had wandered through Covent Garden, pausing to study the goods on sale on the wide variety of stalls, and it was there that her interest in stained glass had been rekindled when she spotted an attractive selection of window ornaments on sale on one of the stalls.
Seeing her interest, the girl who ran the stall had told her about the artisans’ workshop which had recently been established in London’s dockland to give craftsmen an opportunity to develop their work, and she had gone on to invite Kate to go back there with her to see the workshops for herself.
Normally very reticent about involving herself with strangers, on impulse Kate had accepted her invitation, and it had been at the workshop that she first met Harry. Harry was their mentor and teacher; Lucy, the girl who had invited Kate back with her, explained that it was Harry who taught them the intricacies and skills of working in stained glass, and on hearing his name, the tall, bearded man had ambled over to introduce himself and to chat to Kate.
Other craftsmen besides the glass workers shared the same premises, and Harry had elected to take Kate on a brief tour. She had watched fascinated as she saw her contemporaries engrossed in such traditional skills as gilding, marbling, marquetry and a wide variety of other crafts, but it was the glass work that fired her imagination.
What she had intended to be a brief courtesy visit in response to Lucy’s invitation lasted well into the late afternoon. They were a very friendly crowd, most of them around her own age or younger, with a smattering of much older tutors, who like Harry were keen to pass on their own skills to a younger generation.
‘It’s their interpretation of the skills we teach them that we find so stimulating,’ Harry told her enthusiastically. ‘They’re young and their ideas are fresh. It’s fascinating, and an education for us to see what they can do.’
While he was talking Kate was absorbed in watching a young man deftly shaping the lead to hold the glass he was working on, and seeing her, Harry smiled, touching her arm to say disarmingly, ‘You’re dying to try it for yourself, aren’t you?’
‘It fascinates me,’ she admitted. ‘We touched on the subject very briefly on the arts course I took, but I hadn’t thought of it as having any modern application.’
‘Mmm … you thought of it as being applicable only to church windows, that sort of thing. Well, it’s a common enough mistake, although nowadays many young architects and designers are becoming far more aware of its possibilities. Only the other week young Rob over there finished a commission for a renovated Victorian conservatory. It really was beautiful, a trail of climbing roses all along one glass wall. The small bits and pieces, the window hangings, plant containers, that sort of thing, they’re the bread and butter, but the jam is in the new commissions we’re getting, and we’re getting more and more all the time.’ He paused and looked at her consideringly. ‘If you’re really interested, why don’t you come to my classes?’
Kate had shaken her head, instinctively retreating from the suggestion in the way that she retreated from everything. Her life with Ricky had left painful scars, and the loneliness of her life which Sue saw as a handicap she saw as protection, but less than a week later she found herself on the London train once more with the intention of taking Harry up on his offer.
Since then, her friendship with Harry, and to some lesser extent with some other members of the workshop, had grown, and six months ago her first commission was accepted—a feature window panel for the new, prestigious office block of a three times winner of the Queen’s Award to Industry, whose go-ahead young architect wanted a modern design to include both these and some indication of the company’s business. Since this was the rapid transportation of parcels and goods, Kate had chosen a bird motif, the swift, and when Harry told her that her design had been accepted she had been almost speechless with delight.
Quite early on in their relationship she had discovered that Harry lived only twenty miles away from her. She had met his wife and two grown-up daughters and their children and now felt quite comfortable in the small family circle.
Harry’s suggestion that they set up in business together had come entirely out of the blue. It would be a challenge for both of them to move outside the protective security of the craft centre, but it was a challenge that suddenly she was eager to accept.
Harry was convinced that her design for Howard Transport would bring in further commissions, and in addition to that, Harry himself had been offered a contract with the Church authorities to make repairs and care for the windows in parish churches in a fifty-mile radius of Dorchester, which would bring in enough work to keep them both working steadily in the early months of their partnership.
Their work would not make them millionaires, Harry had told her that, but it would be stimulating and a constant challenge. Already she was a regular visitor to the Victoria and Albert Museum, avidly studying everything she saw, her busy mind drinking in all that was best of the period and working out how she could translate it into modern-day designs.
Liz, Harry’s wife, answered the phone and chatted to Kate for a few minutes before summoning her husband.
When he took over the receiver, Kate had a few seconds’ panic. Was she acting too impulsively? She would have to sell the house to raise her share of the capital they would need to set themselves up and give themselves a safe margin of working capital, and despite everything that had happened she was still deeply attached to her home … but then how long could she keep it on anyway? As she had said to Sue earlier, the roof needed attention … Taking a deep breath, she banished her panic, and calmly told Harry of her decision.
Hary was predictably delighted.
‘That’s great! I’ll make us an appointment at the bank … and how about coming round for dinner on Saturday to celebrate?’
‘I’d love to, but I can’t. I’ve already promised to have dinner with an old friend.’
The words were out before Kate realised what a first-rate excuse he had given her to pass on Sue’s dinner party, but it was too late to recall them now, Harry was chuckling and telling her that it was high time she started going out a bit. Harry knew nothing about her past life, other than that she had been widowed young. She never mentioned Ricky other than in passing, and neither Harry nor his family ever questioned her about him. It was so much easier to adopt the mantle of a young woman, widowed tragically young, who had loved and been loved by her dead husband, than to live with the truth, which was, no doubt, why she was sometimes so prickly with Sue, she thought guiltily.
After all, it was not Sue’s fault that she had confided in her, and like the true friend that she was, Sue had never raised the subject with her since. She had needed the catharsis of confiding in someone, so why now did part of her resent the fact that she had?
Shrugging aside thoughts far too deep for such a mellow summer afternoon, Kate opened the french windows and went outside.
The sunken brick patio, with its terracotta pots of plants and traditional wrought iron furniture, had been designed by Ricky’s mother, and Kate often wondered wistfully if things might have been different if she had known Ricky’s parents. They had died when he was four years old, killed in a plane crash, leaving Ricky to be brought up by his grandfather.
Beyond the patio lay the smooth greenery of the lawns with their cottage garden herbaceous borders. A brick path in the same soft earthen colours as the house and patio meandered through the lawns and through a rose-smothered brick wall to the enclosed area which had originally been a kitchen garden and which was now a brick-paved sun-trap complete with pool and fountain and some extremely large and lazy koi carp.
Kate loved the garden almost as much as she loved the house. She found working in it relaxing and therapeutic. She had spent almost the entire summer following Ricky’s death busy in it, exhausting herself physically to the point where she could drop into bed at night and fall fast asleep.
Those had been worrying days; days during which she had finally grown up, when she realised the extent of the debts her husband had left … the extent of his infidelity to her. Days when she had finally come to realise that the blame for the failure of their marriage was not hers alone … that she was no more to blame for the fact that Ricky was not attracted to her than he had been.
She walked through the garden and sat down by the pool, watching with a slight smile as the greedy carp surfaced, waiting to be fed. As she watched them, in her mind’s eye, she pictured the scene done in stained glass. The goldfish forgotten, she got up and hurried back to the house, making for the study.
Time passed without her being aware of it as she worked, stopping only when the light started to fade, astonished to discover how long she had been sitting at her desk. She even felt hungry. She grimaced faintly. Sue was always telling her that she was too thin. It was true she was a little on the slender side, but food rarely interested her.
Once things had been different. In the early days of her marriage she had eaten for comfort, thoroughly confused by Ricky’s attitude towards her. She had never been fat, but it was probably fair to say that she had been a little chunky. She frowned, dismissing the too intrusive memories waiting to surface, and got up flexing her lithe body, encompassed by a sense of wellbeing as she looked down and studied the work she had done.
CHAPTER TWO (#udc1b75c9-db78-5096-a202-2468a28842be)
‘AND if you want a lift tonight …’
Kate interrupted Sue’s busy flood of words to say calmly, ‘No, I’ll drive myself over.’
‘In that death-trap you call a car?’ Sue was plainly horrified. ‘Honestly, Kate, it’s barely roadworthy!’
‘It passed its M.O.T.,’ Kate responded mildly. It was true that her ancient Mini was on its last legs, but she couldn’t afford to change it and, living as remotely as she did, some form of personal transport was essential. She was easily ten miles away from the nearest village—ten miles down narrow, empty country lanes at that.
‘I can easily arrange for you to be picked up,’ Sue persisted, but Kate remained adamant. She knew her friend of old. Although Sue insisted that she had no intention of matchmaking, Kate suspected that whoever got the chore of picking her up would be male and unattached, and as embarrassed and disgruntled as she would be herself by Sue’s so obvious machinations.
She knew that her friend meant well, but every time she tried to pair her off, Kate was reminded of the failure that her marriage had been and it left her feeling as though she were incapable of attracting anyone by herself … that she was somehow intrinsically lacking as a woman. It was a fear that rose up to haunt her with monotonous regularity. She had told herself that it didn’t matter that sexually she was undesirable. She was perfectly happy with her life as it was, but deep down the knowledge still nagged at her … taunting her, and that was something she had never confided to anyone. And it wasn’t as though it were only Ricky who had rejected her. Shivering slightly, she walked into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. After the lazy summer warmth of the last few days, this morning’s rain was disheartening, even if the garden did need it. She had no idea what to wear for Sue’s dinner party. Although her friend had not changed over the years, her circle of friends had, and included several very sophisticated London-based couples who found the village so conveniently just off the M4 an ideal spot in which to have a weekend cottage.
The contents of her wardrobe could hardly rival the clothes worn by women accustomed to shopping in Knightsbridge, she told herself ruefully, and then almost immediately was struck by the strangeness of her thought. Normally her appearance was the last thing to worry her when she was invited out. Shrugging the thought aside, she went upstairs to see what she could find.
Her clothes were serviceable rather than attractive. After Ricky’s death there had been no money to spare for such fripperies even if she had wanted them, and her normal garb consisted of jeans, shirts and jumpers.
She frowned slightly as her fingers touched her few summer dresses, most of them relics from the early days of her marriage when she had naïvely hoped to impress Ricky with the cheap chain-store clothes she had bought locally in Dorchester. She hadn’t known then that he was accustomed to far more attractively and sophisticatedly dressed women than she could ever hope to be. Her frown deepened as she touched a dress as yet never worn. It had arrived the Christmas before last, a large brown parcel with American stamps, a Christmas present from her mother. The first one she could ever remember receiving since her parents’ divorce, she thought wryly now, fingering the rich deep pink silk fabric. Why her mother had sent her such an obviously expensive and unsuitable gift was a complete mystery to her, and after one look at it she had consigned it to the back of her wardrobe, knowing she would never have either the self-confidence or the occasion to wear such an outfit. But now things had changed, she thought, fingering the fabric absently. If the secondhand Vogues Sue passed on to her were anything to go by, even the most simple dinner party now demanded sophisticated dressing, and the prospect of her new career had given her a self-confidence she had never expected to have.
Impatiently she tugged the dress off its hanger and held it in front of her. She had never even tried it on, but one glance at the label had made her decide that her mother had indulged herself in malicious amusement in sending her a size ten dress when, on the last occasion they had met, Kate would have had difficulty in getting into a size twelve.
Now, however, things were different, and the draped, wrapover style of the dress meant that the bodice would easily accommodate what she personally considered to be her rather over-full breasts.
Against the rich intensity of the silk her skin took on a matt creamy tone that emphasised the sultry darkness of her hair; the image she could see in the mahogany pier-glass at once familiar and yet unfamiliar, tantalisingly hinting at another Kate, and one moreover who looked as though she could be as turbulent and passionate as Shakespeare’s vividly drawn Shrew. Impatiently she dismissed her thoughts as ridiculous. Cool control, that was what she aimed to portray, it was safer … made her less vulnerable. Annoyed with herself, she threw the dress down on to the bed. She would have to wear it, she had nothing else suitable, and after all, who was going to notice her? Certainly not whatever poor male Sue had picked out for her, for despite her friend’s promise, Kate knew enough about her to suspect that Sue had picked someone out.
Fifteen miles away in the comfortable Edwardian house that had once been a vicarage Sue was frowningly concentrating on what her husband was saying. John Edwards was a large, placid man who was a good doctor and a compassionate one. He could tell by his wife’s face that she didn’t like what he was saying, but he still continued mildly, ‘It isn’t on, Sue, and Kate will be furious … you know that.’
‘But it isn’t my fault, it was the Bensons who asked if they could bring him. He’s a close friend of theirs, apparently, more or less completely on his own in London … what could I say?’
‘Mmm … well, Kate won’t see it that way. It would have been much better if you’d explained the situation to her. She’ll take one look at him and immediately she’s going to think the obvious—that he’s someone you’ve invited specifically to partner her, and you know how sensitive she is about that sort of thing.’
‘Mmm. Honestly, John, it almost breaks my heart. It’s such a waste … She’s so beautiful, but she behaves as though she’s the original Ugly Sister.’
‘I know. Ricky Hammond has one hell of a lot to answer for.’ John got up and put an arm round his wife’s shoulders. ‘I know you only want to help her, Sue, but you can’t. God alone knows what kind of psychological damage Hammond and her mother between them did to her, but it certainly can’t be put right by arranging dinner party partners for her.’
‘Then what will put it right?’
‘I don’t really know. It sounds trite, but all I can think of is good old-fashioned love, and Kate’s so withdrawn I doubt she could ever allow herself to believe any man could love her.’
‘How could he do that to her, John?’ Sue asked her husband miserably. ‘How could Ricky marry her and then treat her like that?’
‘Men like Hammond who are driven by an obsession, whether it’s drink, drugs or gambling, don’t function in the same way as the rest of us.’
‘Mmm … If I ring Kate now and tell her that the Bensons are bringing a spare man, ten to one she’ll refuse to come.’
‘Okay, but be prepared for fireworks,’ her husband warned her with a grin. ‘Kate won’t like it. Who is this man anyway?’
‘I don’t know his name. Vera Benson simply rang up last night and asked if they could bring him along. Apparently he’s in the same line of business as her husband—merchant banking, although at the moment he’s based in New York. Vera said he was thinking of transferring his main business to London, something about world time differences working more efficiently for him in London than they do in New York.’
‘Mmm … a lot of the big money men are transferring their business to London. Because of the new sophisticated communications systems it means that they can take advantage of the fact that, during the British working day, they can get in touch with both New York and Hong Kong during their working days, which gives them an immediate advantage.’
John grinned at his wife’s astounded expression and admitted wryly, ‘I read it in the Sunday Times magazine. If the Bensons’ friend is one of these money men, chances are he’ll be a real high-flier. Most of them are burned-out by the time they’re thirty.’
‘Oh, yeah? Did you read that in the Sunday Times as well?’
‘Yep.’ His smile was unrepentant, as he added comfortingly, ‘It sounds as though he isn’t going to be Kate’s type at all. If I know anything about these big business men he’ll spend most of the evening talking with Benson, so with any luck Kate won’t realise you’re trying to palm him off on her.’ He broke off as he saw the frown pleating his wife’s forehead and enquired, ‘Now what’s the matter?’
‘What? Oh … if he’s as important as all that, he’s not going to think much of the simple meal I was planning to serve. I wonder if it’s too late to …’
‘Yes,’ John told her firmly. ‘Whatever it is you’re planning to change, don’t. He’ll probably appreciate simple fare for a change. For goodness’ sake, Sue, stop worrying. It’s giving you grey hairs,’ he teased, watching as his wife abandoned her concern over the menu to rush over to the mirror to stare at her still-bright blonde hair.
Half-past eight was the time Sue had specified for her arrival, and knowing that she needed to allow a good three-quarters of an hour to drive to Sue’s home, at half-past six Kate abandoned the work she was doing and went upstairs to run a bath.
At half-past seven she was ready to slip into her dress. She paused to check her make-up first, wondering if the deep pink glossy lipstick was too much. She had a natural eye for colour, and although she didn’t wear make-up very often, tonight she had found it surprisingly easy to apply. Just a touch of dark blue eyeshadow brought out the intense depth of her eyes, blusher highlighting the cheekbones which gave her face its distinctive definition. The fullness of her mouth beneath its careful coating of lipstick was almost gypsyish, as was the untamed thickness of her hair worn long now as opposed to the short, almost boyish cut her mother had chosen for her just before her marriage.
She picked up the dress and put it on, securing the two buttons that fastened it at the waist. It fitted her surprisingly well, the wide stiffened belt that went with it emphasising the smallness of her waist, the silk hissing softly as she walked across the room to put on her shoes—a rather old pair of black high-heeled sandals which were the only suitable footwear for the dress that she had.
In them she would probably tower over most of the other guests at the dinner party, including the men, she thought wryly, eyeing her five foot eight frame with familiar dislike.
The rain had stopped, and as she stepped outside she breathed in deeply, savouring the fresh, clean smell of wet grass and earth. She was so lucky to live here … to have the lifestyle that she did, and even though she had to part with the house, she still had the cottage.
There had been a letter for her in the post this morning from her solicitor confirming that the lease was now terminated. Tomorrow she must go down to the cottage and look over it, and then she would have to put the house on the market for sale.
Sighing faintly, she slid into the driver’s seat of her ancient car and started the ignition. As always it was several minutes before the little car coughed and spluttered into life. This evening for some reason in fact, it seemed more reluctant than ever to start, and even once it had, the engine ran in a hesitant, uncertain fashion that made Kate guiltily aware that it was some months since she had last had it serviced.
Because she felt reluctant to push her car too hard, she arrived later than she had anticipated and there were three unfamiliar cars already parked in the Martins’ generous drive before her.
She stopped her car and got out, cursing herself for arriving late. She would have preferred to arrive first so that she could study her fellow guests without feeling that they were scrutinising her. Now it might seem almost as though she had deliberately delayed in order to make an entrance.
Sue opened the door for her, her eyes widening in stunned appreciation of her dress.
‘Kate, you look fantastic!’ she enthused, hugging her. ‘Where on earth did you get that?’
‘My mother sent it to me a couple of Christmases ago.’ She grimaced faintly. ‘I hope I’m not going to be overdressed.’
‘In that?’ Sue grinned mischievously at her. ‘I doubt that any man would think so. It’s really quite sexy …’ She could have bitten her tongue when she saw Kate’s wary, troubled expression, and quickly hurried her towards the drawing-room, whispering as she did so, ‘The others have all arrived. The Hugheses and the Dentons came together, but …’ She broke off as they reached the open drawing-room door, standing back so that Kate was forced to precede her through it.
The Martins’ drawing-room was as familiar to her as her own and so she was free to concentrate her attention on her fellow guests. Two couples stood by the window chatting, and Kate vaguely recognised them from Sue’s Christmas cocktail party. One of the men was a consultant based at the local hospital and the other man was something in hospital administration. The quartet saw her and smiled in her direction. Nothing to worry about there—two comfortably married middle-aged couples. A little of her apprehension melted and the tension down her spine eased slightly.
‘Kate, come and meet Vera and Ian Benson. They’ve bought The Grange …’
The couple Sue wanted to introduce her to were standing by the fireplace, and John stood behind them, his head turned away from her, obviously speaking to someone who was blocked from her view by the angle of the chimney breast.
‘Vera … Ian … let me introduce an old friend of mine to you.’ The thin, dark-haired woman turned as Sue touched her arm, smiling charmingly at Kate and extending her hand. She had that look of glossy perfection that Kate had come to recognise as belonging to Londoners, but despite the elegance of her appearance, the immaculate make-up and the designer dress, the smile she gave Kate was warm and genuinely friendly.
‘Sue’s told us so much about you,’ she told Kate, ‘and about your house. It sounds lovely.’
Her husband had turned away to talk to John, but now he turned back, directing his attention towards Kate, warm grey eyes twinkling slightly as he took her extended hand. ‘So you are Kate.’ He gave Sue a mock reproachful smile and teased, ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was beautiful? I’d have left Vera at home.’
‘No way,’ his wife interrupted firmly, adding with a smile at Kate, ‘Not that I imagine a girl like Kate would be interested in you anyway. I expect she has men queueing up to take her out.’
It wasn’t the sort of teasing that Kate was used to, and she flushed a little, even while she realised there was no malice or unkindness in Vera’s words, and was glad of Sue’s timely interruption when she tapped her husband on the shoulder and asked him to get Kate a drink.
It was as John turned towards her that Kate had her first glimpse of the man he had been talking to, and in the same instant that her brain registered the familiarity of his features, hardened and honed by time though they were, her body froze. She couldn’t move … couldn’t even breathe, could only stare at him like a petrified creature while distantly she was aware of Vera Benson chattering gaily, saying something that included both his name and her own. She saw him move … reach out towards her, and a dreadful tearing panic took hold of her. She wanted to turn and flee, but as though she were trapped in some horrendous nightmare it was impossible for her to move.
‘Kate …’ The deep measured voice hadn’t changed, nor the clipped curt way he said her name, even if he was saying it as though he had never heard it before, looking at her as though he had never set eyes on her before too.
Relief flooded through her, acting as a trigger to release her from her stunned paralysis.
He was extending his hand towards her, and she almost cringed away from touching it, but some deep instinct for protection urged her to take it, to behave as normally as she could.
He shook her hand, his fingers cool and hard against her own. Strange to think that she had once dreamed of those fingers against her skin … touching, caressing, bringing her to womanhood. She shuddered deeply and stepped back, completely unable to look into his face. Could it be that he hadn’t recognised her? Oh, please God, let that be the case. She didn’t think she could bear the humiliation of having to face him if he knew the truth.
‘Dominic has just arrived from the States,’ she heard Vera Benson explaining. ‘He and my husband are in the same line of business—merchant banking.’
Merchant banking. Was that what he called it? Against her will, Kate felt a deep anger stir inside her. That weekend when Ricky brought Dominic Harland home with him, she hadn’t realised why. That realisation had only come later after Ricky’s death, when she discovered the extent of the money her late husband owed his old school-friend. It was Dominic who held a mortgage on the farmland surrounding the house and she had sold that land to repay his losses after Ricky died, but it wasn’t because of that that she couldn’t bear to face him.
‘Come on, everyone, dinner’s almost ready. Kate, you’re next to Dominic,’ Sue announced, shepherding them all towards the dining-room. Instinctively Kate stopped and looked across at him. He was staring back at her, the gold eyes darkly topaz, and as he watched her Kate knew that he had not forgotten … that he had recognised her. Dark colour stained her normally pale skin as the agony of her memories convulsed her. Dear God, she had never thought she would ever see him again. She had prayed and hoped she would not, comforted in the worst moments of her self-torment by the knowledge that he was not a man who would ever reappear in her life, but now here he was, carrying with him information which could blast apart all that she had made of herself, and all that she had struggled to put aside after Ricky’s death.
The meal was a nightmare, from which she surfaced briefly aware of the ebb and flow of comfortable conversation going on around her, but totally unable to take any part in it. She heard her name mentioned and looked up unguardedly, letting her glance mesh with Dominic Harland’s. Anger and contempt burned in the gold depths of his eyes, scorching her.
‘My goodness, how very interesting!’
She was aware of Vera Benson turning towards her with a warm smile, but felt totally unable to respond.
‘You must come over and look at our conservatory,’ the other woman was saying. ‘It’s been badly damaged, I’m afraid, and a lot of the glass needs replacing. I had been thinking in terms of something pretty and amusing in one of the panels.’
This was business, Kate told herself, struggling to break free of her own terror, forcing herself to respond and ask when it would be convenient for her to call.
‘I’m not sure what our plans are at the moment—we’re still based in London, but perhaps I could give you a ring, say, later in the week when I know what we’re doing next weekend.’
Kate gave Vera her telephone number, making a mental note to mention to Harry that they would need business cards. She knew she ought to have been elated at the prospect of her first freelance commission, but she felt too weighed down with anxiety. Would Dominic Harland tell his friends what she had done? She closed her eyes. No … no, surely not …
‘Kate! Kate, are you all right?’
She opened them again to be confronted by Sue’s concerned face. ‘You went quite white,’ Sue explained worriedly. ‘I thought for a moment you must be ill.’
Oh, if only she was. If only she could make that excuse and leave, but if she did Sue was bound to worry. It wasn’t fair to her friend to disrupt her dinner party.
‘Not ill … just slightly tired,’ she fibbed. ‘I stayed up too late last night …’
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dominic’s mouth curl downwards.
‘It seems that widowhood hasn’t changed your lifestyle then, Mrs Hammond.’
Kate wasn’t sure who was the most shocked by his comment; Vera Benson was staring quite openly at him, while Sue’s eyes had widened to their furthest extent. Neither of the other two couples seemed to have heard his remark, but John was looking at him, frowning slightly.
Please don’t let me be sick, Kate prayed feverishly. Of them all, only she knew what Dominic meant.
‘I was working,’ she said tonelessly. ‘An idea for a design——’
‘I didn’t realise you already knew Kate, Dominic,’ Vera Benson interrupted, plainly puzzled that he had not mentioned it before.
‘I knew her husband,’ he corrected, his voice grating slightly as he looked across the table at Kate. ‘He was—a client of mine.’
Suddenly it was almost too much for her. He was baiting her deliberately, she thought bitterly … he was deliberately trying to push her into … into what? Into admitting what she had once tried to do? But why? Oh, she could understand well enough why he might loathe and despise her, even why he should want to punish her … but didn’t he realise he had already done that in the most effective way there was?
Suddenly too tired to pretend any longer, she looked directly at him, forcing herself to meet the cold blaze of his eyes.
‘My late husband was a compulsive gambler,’ she said wearily for Vera Benson’s benefit, adding for Sue and John’s, ‘Mr Harland’s company was the one that loaned Ricky money against the security of the farmland.’
‘Very neat, Mrs Hammond, but I notice you were very careful not to explain exactly why your husband turned to gambling.’
His mouth was a tight line of anger, the bitter words hitting her like bullets, making pain explode inside her. She had no defence against what he was saying. She wanted to cry out that it was not her fault she had not been the wife Ricky wanted, that it was not her fault that …
Instead she gathered all her self-control round her and speaking slowly and carefully, spacing out the words so that her voice wouldn’t tremble, she said quietly, ‘My friends don’t require explanations, Mr Harland, and others don’t warrant them.’ Then she dropped her eyes to her plate and made a pretence of being totally involved in eating what was left of the chocolate mousse Sue had served.
She was also too aware of the atmosphere around her. Vera Benson was chatting animatedly to John, trying to pretend that nothing untoward had happened. Sue got up to remove their plates, and sensing a reprieve, Kate got up to help her.
Only when they were safely inside the kitchen did Sue speak, her fair skin flushing, anger darkening her soft blue eyes as she burst out, ‘What an absolute rat! I swear, Kate, if I’d known, I’d never have agreed to have him here. The Bensons just asked if they could bring a friend.’
‘Please, Sue, honestly it doesn’t matter. You couldn’t have known.’
‘But he was so rude to you! What on earth was he trying to imply when he made that crack about your lifestyle?’
‘I … I don’t really know,’ Kate lied. ‘I only met him once when Ricky brought him home for a weekend. I’ve no idea what Ricky told him about the way we lived.’
‘Not the truth, that’s for sure,’ Sue commented bluntly, ‘otherwise he’d be singing a very different song. How on earth did Ricky come to be involved with him in the first place? Vera was telling me he’s virtually a millionaire, very strait-laced and honourable in all his business dealings too, apparently—hardly Ricky’s cup of tea, I would have thought.’
‘No. He and Ricky were at school together, and Ricky’s grandfather invited him to spend the holidays at the house a couple of times. His mother was South American, and his parents spent a lot of time over there. Ricky said something about his mother’s family being extremely wealthy.’
‘South American. Mmm … well, that would explain that fantastic tan … and those looks … Still, I think I’d rather have my John,’ Sue commented. ‘He might be a good-looker, but he’s far too hard and judgmental for my taste. Of all the things to happen,’ she wailed miserably, ‘just when I’d persuaded you to come out of your shell a little!’ She saw her friend’s white face, and flung down the cloth she had picked up, grabbing Kate’s arm instead. ‘Oh, Kate, don’t let him get to you,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s obvious he doesn’t know the first thing about you … the sort of person you are. He’s obviously making his judgment of you on something Ricky must have told him, and we all know what Ricky was. Please don’t let it upset you. If you like I’ll get John to have a word with him and put him right.’
‘No!’ The sharp panicky denial sounded over-loud in the comfortable kitchen and Kate blenched again, saying more gently, ‘No, honestly, Sue, it’s okay. After all, I’m hardly likely to see him again, am I? It really doesn’t matter what he thinks.’ She forced a tight smile. ‘Please … let’s just forget about the whole thing.’
‘Okay, if that’s what you want,’ Sue agreed reluctantly. She had been looking forward to seeing Dominic Harland’s arrogant face change when John told him the truth about poor Kate and about what Ricky had done to her.
‘Come on, everyone will be waiting for their coffee,’ Kate reminded her strategically.
Vera Benson came over to sit with Kate when Sue had served them their coffee in the drawing-room.
‘I feel I must apologise for Dominic’s behaviour,’ she said hesitantly to Kate. ‘I honestly don’t know what came over him. He’s normally most charming. I hadn’t even realised he knew you.’
There was a trace of speculation in her voice, and Kate said evenly, ‘Well, we only met once when my husband brought him home for the weekend. Tell me, what exactly did you have in mind for this glass panel?’ she asked, quickly changing the subject, but only listening with half her attention as her companion started to talk about her plans for the conservatory.
Kate wasn’t the first to leave. The two couples who had travelled together went first, but once their car had disappeared, Kate, who had followed Sue and John into the hall, announced that she too must go. This way she could avoid having to say goodbye to Dominic Harland, and although Sue frowned a little, she let her go without too much protest.
For once her car started first time, but she was shaking so much that she crashed the gears badly as she took off down the drive. Not until she was home would she feel safe, if then. How could it have happened? How could fate have been unkind enough to thrust Dominic Harland back into the arena of her life, now, when she was finally making an attempt to get over the past?
CHAPTER THREE (#udc1b75c9-db78-5096-a202-2468a28842be)
ONLY when she was safely back in her own home could she let the memories sweep over her, devastating her with their intensity, overwhelming her so much that she only had to close her eyes to be transported back to the past … To the morning after Dominic’s arrival with Ricky.
She had been downstairs in the kitchen when Dominic walked into it, ducking to avoid the low beam close to the door.
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