When Love Is Blind (Warrender Saga Book 3)

by Mary Burchell

  She had been shattered to learn from Gordon Everleigh that, even in the moment of his brightest hopes, he had recalled his implacable determination to track down that girl; and now that discovery was so near she was shaken with terror.

  Identified as the object of his almost obsessional hatred, bereft of the very special link which his blindness and her tenderness had forged between them, she would be simply the girl who had spoiled his life and then grossly deceived him. How would the love of any man — much less a ruthless, arrogant man like Lewis Freemont — survive such a discovery?

  With fresh anguish and remorse she recalled reading out that list of names from which she had deliberately omitted her own, and it seemed to her now that this had been the ultimate in contemptible deception. She might tell herself that desperation had driven her. She could even imagine that some people might understand and have pity for her terrible situation. But could she really suppose that Lewis Freemont, of all people, would look with sympathy and understanding on the fact that she had actually profited by his blindness to deceive him?

  She wished now that she had not allowed herself to be stampeded into saying she would be at the flat when he returned from the nursing home. How could she be there? It was unthinkable that the moment of his return should also be the appalling moment of truth. But he had made a point of it and this at least she had promised him. Was she to fail him even in this?

  From the regular reports which she received she knew that the day after he entered the nursing home an operation had been performed. But after that there had just been the conventional bulletins about ‘as well as can be expected’, ‘in good spirits’ and so on. The important fact was that he had to be kept absolutely quiet and no visitors were allowed.

  Not until the end of the week did Gordon Everleigh come in — full of the vital optimism which contributed so much to his successful handling of artists — bringing the news that Sir Everard Blakin had the very highest hopes of complete success.

  ‘The great man declares that everything has gone exactly as it should,’ Gordon Everleigh said. ‘Freemont is still in a darkened room. But, barring any dramatic change, he should be home in a matter of days.’

  ‘Of days?’ Antoinette could not keep from her voice a slight quiver of mingled joy and apprehension.

  Mistaking this for disappointment, Gordon Everleigh said cheeringly: ‘Yes. But you won’t have to wait as long as that to see him. He wants you to go along there tomorrow. There’s something he wants to discuss with you. He’ll expect you about three.’

  ‘What does he want to discuss with me?’ She was frightened and could not hide the fact.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said the manager, looking rather surprised.

  Antoinette moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and said nervously, ‘He — he won’t be able to see me yet, will he?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Again misreading the reason for the tremor in her voice, Gordon Everleigh patted her shoulder kindly. ‘He’s still in a darkened room, as I told you. But cheer up! He’ll soon be home now, practically as good as new. You go along to see him tomorrow and let him give you his own news.’

  So the following afternoon Antoinette went to Sir Everard Blakin’s fashionable nursing home, trying, though without much success, to control the tremors of anxiety and dread which shook her from time to time.

  A pleasant-faced young nurse told her she was expected and took her along a wide, elegant-looking corridor and ushered her into the darkened room where Lewis Freemont was sitting. He turned eagerly at the sound of her entrance, but it was plain that at this stage he was still relying largely on his acute hearing to tell him who was there and what was happening.

  This immediately gave her a measure of reassurance, so that her loving sense of pity for his helplessness blotted out all personal considerations.

  She came to him immediately and, taking his hand in the warm, firm clasp which she knew meant so much to him, she said, ‘It’s wonderful news about the success of the operation! But I can well imagine that these last days of waiting must be the worst.’

  ‘Well — ’ his fingers were tight on hers — ‘I get a sort of panic occasionally, in case everything is going to be dark again after all. But most of the time I keep my nerve — ’ he laughed slightly, in a sort of self-mockery — ‘and I tell myself that everything is going to be all right.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  She could sense that her quiet confidence communicated itself instantly to him. But not only that; it also suddenly settled the worst of her own inner conflicts. For all at once she knew, beyond any doubt or confusion, that whatever the outcome to herself — or indeed, to him — what really mattered was that his sight should be restored.

  It was a discovery which brought a fresh wave of revulsion for the tangle of deception in which she had involved herself. In that moment she thought calmly that it would not have taken much to make her confess the whole thing.

  But, as she reached for a chair with one hand — still letting him hold the other hand — her new-found calm was put to an immediate and terrifying test. For he said, almost conversationally,

  ‘Toni, there’s a question I want to ask you, and I wish you’d promise in advance that you’ll answer it truthfully.’

  She was so petrified with shock and fear that her hand closed spasmodically on his, though she was not aware of it until he exclaimed, ‘What’s the matter? What are you so scared about?’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ she managed to insist. ‘It’s just — just such an odd way for you to speak to me. As though — ’ she swallowed — ‘you thought I might not tell you the truth.’

  ‘Well,’ he said sombrely, ‘have you always told me the truth?’

  ‘Of course! To — to the best of my ability.’ She hated herself for this further lie. But what else could she do, short of making a full confession? And for this she simply had not prepared herself.

  There was an odd moment of silence and she felt he was looking hard at her, as though willing himself to pierce the darkness of the room and the veil which still hung between him and complete vision. Then, even as he drew breath to speak again, she rushed into the first words that came to her.

  ‘There’s something I want to say first!’ Her tone was unnaturally bright and, with an almost symbolical gesture, she drew her hand away, as though severing the real line of communication between them. ‘It’s about the — the different situation there will be in the future, now that you’re going to recover your sight. You won’t really need me any more for — ’

  ‘Of course I shall need you,’ he interrupted almost irritably. ‘What is all this nonsense? You know more about my affairs by now than I do myself. There’s no question of my doing without you.’

  ‘But you didn’t have a full-time secretary before you were blind,’ she reminded him. ‘You told me so yourself. You said you disliked personal ties, and that you preferred just to have someone from an agency from time to time. You could do that again, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t want to do that again!’ He sounded angry and, in some odd way, almost scared.

  ‘It would truly be the best way. Particularly if — you force me to say this — if you still have some sort of romantic feeling for me.’

  ‘Why can’t you say it frankly?’ he demanded roughly. ‘You mean — if I love you still. Well, suppose I do? What about it?’

  ‘N-nothing,’ she stammered. ‘Except that — you must see it! — it would be best for us to make a break now. Believe me, you have quite an idealized notion of me. You’ve literally never seen me. You hardly know me, in the real sense of the word. If you met me — ’

  ‘Not know you?’ he repeated. ‘Not know you, Toni? Why, I know you as well as it’s possible to know any woman without making love to her in the final sense of the term!’

  ‘Don’t talk like that!’ she cried. ‘You’re putting a totally false value on our relationship. The whole world is opening out for you onc
e more. Your career has been given back to you. You will be the complete musician again. It’s music that is your world! Not me or any other woman. The very way you talk of music is proof of that. I’ll never forget some of the things you’ve said — ’

  ‘What, for instance?’ he interrupted her suddenly.

  ‘Oh — I don’t know. A dozen things.’ She groped confusedly in her memory for some of the revealing, telling phrases he had used; anything that might distract him from the dangerous subject of herself. But only one thing came to her very clearly, and she could not quite recall when he said it. On his insistence, however, she spoke again, not very steadily.

  ‘You told me once that the first requisite of the true musician is to make music. Just that — and to serve the composer one is privileged to interpret. You claimed no honour, no glory. Just the right to make music — and to serve the great.’

  ‘I said that? — to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t exactly remember when. It’s the sort of thing which just sinks down into one and becomes part of one.’

  ‘But you can’t remember when I said it to you?’

  She was struck by the extraordinary change that had come into his voice, but she could only say uncertainly, ‘N-no. Does it matter?’

  ‘I’ll say it matters!’ There was a note of grim triumph in his voice that was frightening in its intensity. ‘I remember! I remember exactly when I said it to you. My God, what a fool I’ve been! That explains everything. I said it to you the day I failed you in that music exam at St. Cecilia’s.’

  ‘No!’ she cried in utmost terror. ‘No!’ And she struggled to withdraw the hand which he had suddenly seized again. But he held her so that there was no possibility of escape. ‘That wasn’t me,’ she lied wildly.

  ‘Of course it was! Why did I never think of that before?’ There was still that note of triumph in his tone, and his grip was so tight that it hurt. ‘And the name — ’ he obviously made a tremendous effort of memory — ‘the name was Antoinette. That was it! Antoinette — Toni — Antoinette. You looked at me as though you could have killed me. And then — you began to follow me round — ‘

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘You were there at nearly every concert. You even sat in the front row and smiled at me once. And finally — ’ his voice dropped to a harsh half-whisper — ‘you were there, in the middle of the road that day. Toni, in God’s name, why did you do that to me?’

  ‘It’s all wrong — ’ she began wildly, and at that moment, the pleasant young nurse opened the door and said,

  ‘Sir Everard to see you, sir.’

  ‘He can wait,’ replied Lewis Freemont savagely.

  ‘Sir Everard doesn’t wait!’ exclaimed the nurse in a scandalized tone. And, as though in proof of this, the famous surgeon came briskly into the room with an air of great authority.

  ‘Ah, Freemont — ’ he began genially.

  But Antoinette heard no more. This was her moment, her one chance of escape. Snatching her hand away, she fled to the door, where the nurse was waiting determinedly to escort her elsewhere. In her view, quite obviously, mere visitors dwindled to extreme unimportance once the Great Man arrived. But she said pleasantly to Antoinette:

  ‘You can wait in the room on the right.’

  ‘No, thank you. I can’t wait.’

  ‘I don’t think Sir Everard will be long.’

  ‘I can’t wait!’ Antoinette repeated almost frantically. ‘I must go. Please tell Mr. Freemont — tell Mr. Freemont — ’

  But what was she to tell Mr. Freemont?

  For one moment of tragic confusion she could do nothing but stare at the other girl, until she saw astonishment written so plainly on her face that sheer necessity forced a decision.

  ‘Tell him,’ Antoinette said slowly, ‘that I’m sorry I couldn’t wait. But we had already said everything there was to say.’

  Then she went out of the nursing home and into the sunlit street, and she walked and walked, not really knowing where she was going.

  After a while, a sort of leaden order began to come into her chaotic thoughts.

  It was over. Everything was over. The long, long months of deception. The alternation of hope and despair. His desperate need of her. The bitter-sweet knowledge that he loved her, and would do so until he knew who she really was.

  In all her life she had never known such a sensation of coming to the end of the road. Not even when she had been told with such brutal frankness that she could give up all her hopes and illusions about a musical career.

  He had told her that. It was he who had given her both the worst and the best moments of her life. But now it was all over. There was nothing else to share or explain. He might be bitterly curious about certain details; but not enough to want to have them explained. Now he knew the horrible, salient fact that she was the author of his misery, he would want nothing but to wipe her out of his life. She had not lived beside him for months without knowing him well enough to guess that.

  There would be no need now to make excuses for not being there when he returned home. The fact would be self-explanatory. She would never have to face the moment when he looked at her and she saw appalled recognition dawn in his eyes.

  In a way, she supposed, she would be thankful for that small mercy. But she felt thankful for nothing — only sick and dazed and despairing because her world had finally crashed around her.

  Without knowing it, she had walked instinctively in the general direction of his flat, and now she found herself within sight of it. Perhaps subconsciously the part of her which was the conscientious secretary was still aware that there were one or two minor matters to set right. This was her best opportunity to tie up those loose ends. He was still in the nursing home and could not possibly come home and surprise her. Even tomorrow might be too late.

  She went into the block and up to the well-known door which had been for her the threshold to so much happiness. Everything was very quiet when she let herself in with her own key, so Mrs. Partridge and the maids were evidently out. And in the silent flat, and alone, she began to sort out and put right the few matters still outstanding.

  The shock of disclosure and the scene which had followed seemed to have left her with a strange clarity of mind. She worked without pause for perhaps an hour. Then she glanced round and knew that any competent secretary could walk in there tomorrow and take things up exactly where she herself had laid them down.

  Another secretary.

  She sat at her desk for the last time, trying to imagine the place without her and failing. Though that, of course, was absurd, she told herself. Life went on and the waters closed over the place one had left. New contacts were formed, new friendships made, new plans hatched, new triumphs achieved. He would manage all right without her.

  That was what hurt most of all. He would manage all right without her. After being his support and his inspiration for so long she was suddenly entirely superfluous. And at that thought she buried her face in her hands and sat there for a long, long time, until she roused herself with a violent start to realize that the front door bell was ringing.

  A sort of illogical panic held her rigid for a moment. Then common sense told her that this could be no one specially important. And getting to her feet, she went into the hall and opened the door.

  ‘No one specially important,’ was not quite an accurate description. It was Oscar Warrender who stood outside.

  ‘I looked in to hear the latest news,’ he said. ‘Everleigh told me you were going to the nursing home this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, yes — yes — ’ All that beautiful clarity of thought seemed at this point to desert her, and she stood there staring at him, unable to imagine what she was going to say to this terrifyingly penetrating man.

  ‘May I come in?’ He spoke a little abruptly.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She stood aside and then, closing the door behind him, she followed him into the study.
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  It was ridiculous, but she could think of nothing with which to start the conversation, and after a moment he said, grimly but not unkindly,

  ‘Well, I see it’s bad news. You’d better tell me.’

  ‘It’s not bad news. Not about him. What makes you think such a thing?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘The fact that you’ve obviously had some sort of shock.’

  ‘Oh — ’ she passed her hands absently over her cheeks which felt cold and probably looked pale, she supposed. ‘It’s nothing to do with — him. I mean, nothing to do with his sight. He was — quite well, when I saw him. Sir Everard came while I was there — ’

  ‘And what had he to say?’ Oscar Warrender asked quickly.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t — stay.’

  ‘Didn’t wait to hear his report, you mean?’ the conductor looked incredulous. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’ She swallowed nervously.

  ‘What do you mean — you couldn’t?’

  ‘Mr. Warrender,’ she said desperately, ‘I’m going away. I’ve finished here.’ She looked round helplessly. ‘It’s — over.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Oscar Warrender was not one to need his facts underlined. It obviously cost him no effort of memory to recollect almost word for word the disclosure Antoinette had once made to him. It might not have been of great importance to him, but he remembered it, and he said, without hesitation, ‘You mean that Freemont recognized you at last?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By actually seeing you?’

  ‘No. By something I said. But it was equally conclusive.’

  ‘Did he upbraid you? — tell you you could go?’ He seemed to think he had a right to know. And without hesitation she conceded him that right. People did where Oscar Warrender was concerned.

  ‘There wasn’t time for that,’ she explained. ‘Sir Everard arrived just at that point. There was just a — a ghastly sort of moment of truth before we were interrupted. I think he could have killed me.’ She shivered.