The Sister Secret

by Jessica Steele

  ‘My—’ he began, his eyes on her face, her colour.

  But she did not need any sarcastic comments from him—even if his expression did not seem to be particularly sarcastic—and from somewhere she found the acid she needed to snap tartly, ‘I thought you promised to keep away from my sister!’

  ‘You don’t seriously still believe—’ He broke off, seemed oddly at a loss for words, but then took what seemed to her to be a long breath, as though groping for self-control—though what he needed self-control for, she failed to see. But it appeared he had the control he needed, for his voice was even, stern almost, when he continued, ‘It seems I’ve more explaining to do than I realised—are you going to let me come in?’

  Oh, why did he have to come here? She wanted to see him, of course she did, but all she had been to him was a one-night indulgence and that did not need any explaining!

  ‘Come in—if you must.’ She denied her fast-beating heart even as she hated herself for her weakness. Any explaining he wanted to do could be done in two minutes on the doorstep, surely?

  Having been weak enough to accede to his request, however, she turned about, leaving him to follow her into the sitting-room. Once there, though, she was undecided whether to sit down as her shaky limbs required or, since this could not possibly take very long, remain standing.

  The matter was settled for her when Latham closed the sitting-room door and went over to the couch and waited, clearly asking her permission to be seated. By that time she was afraid to speak in case she gave away, by word or look, a hint of how she felt about him.

  She went over to one of the easy chairs and, by taking possession of it, let her action speak for her. Latham followed suit and, seated on the couch, turned to face her. Oh, Lord, how dear he was to her!

  She lowered her eyes, studied his shoes without really seeing them—but suddenly started to grow angry. Who the devil did he think he was that he could be the way he had been with her last night and then, without so much as a word, troll off this morning when business beckoned—and then come calling at her home, as casual as you like? Dammit, what the devil did he think she was!

  ‘I’m surprised you expected to find me here!’ she snapped tartly, raising her eyes to give him the full benefit of her hostility.

  ‘I knew you’d be here,’ he replied calmly, bearing her hostility very well.

  ‘You knew!’ She added lying to his list of crimes. ‘How could you know? You left me stranded at...’ Her voice tailed off. Oh, what a fool she was—she had not meant to refer to that wonderful, sublime time in Wiltshire.

  ‘It wasn’t my intention to leave you stranded,’ Latham assured her, and when she stared at him, not ready to believe a word of it, went on, ‘I went back to Rose Cottage for you, only—’

  ‘You’ve been back to Rose Cottage!’

  ‘Of course I have!’ he confirmed straight away. ‘Leave aside my feelings when I got there and found the place locked up.’ He had feelings! Before her startled thoughts could sort themselves out, though, he was going on. ‘The obvious thing to do was to ring Caroline to enquire if she’d seen anything of you.’

  ‘She told you she’d given me a lift.’

  He nodded, and added with bone-melting gentleness, ‘I wish you had waited.’

  Oh, no, please don’t, the weakness in her for him implored, ‘You know, somehow I just knew that I’d end up being the one in the wrong!’ Her mouth overrode her weakness.

  ‘Oh, love—’ he smiled ‘—I deserve everything you throw at me.’

  She wanted neither his endearments nor that wonderful, quite marvellous, twitch of his lips. She looked at her watch without the least interest in what time of day it was. ‘If I could ask you to finish your explanation,’ she suggested pointedly. ‘My father will expect his lunch on the table at one o’clock sharp, and Josy likes me to—um—mix the Yorkshire pudding.’ Why should Latham Tavenner have the prerogative of lying?

  ‘Your father’s part-sponsoring a golf tournament today,’ Latham replied with a level look.

  She knew that, but she had not expected him to remember. ‘So he is, but that doesn’t mean that he has to personally attend. He will, of course, later—to present some of the prizes.’ Having started to lie, she found herself in too deep not to continue. ‘But he always has liked his Sunday lunch at home.’

  ‘He hasn’t been to the tournament yet, then?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she confirmed. ‘So if—’ She broke off. Latham was looking at her with a look on his face which she found hard to distinguish. It seemed to fall midway between amusement and—affection!

  Affection! scoffed her head, but she was all ears when Latham asked, ‘Did I once say you were priceless?’ And then, causing her heart to race feverishly, ‘You, my dear,’ he added, ‘are above price.’

  Much more of this and she would be forgetting about pride, forgetting that she had to live with herself once he had gone. ‘Now what did I do?’ she questioned snappily.

  ‘Blatantly lied, for a start,’ he replied urbanely.

  ‘You can talk!’ she retorted—but couldn’t resist asking, ‘How did I lie? When did I lie—er—recently?’

  ‘Recently, not five minutes ago.’

  ‘You’re suggesting my father is not at home—?’

  ‘I’m not merely suggesting, I’m stating it for a fact,’ he cut in unequivocally. And, even as her mouth started to form the word ‘how’, he was metaphorically pulling the rug from under her feet by adding, ‘He was at the golf tournament when I went to see him first thing this morning.’

  ‘You’ve been to see my father?’ she questioned in astonishment, the fact that she had been found out in her ‘blatant’ lie not seeming to be of importance just then.

  ‘I have,’ he agreed.

  ‘But—but...’ she spluttered—and got a few more words together to accuse hostilely, ‘You didn’t think to mention at any time yesterday that you were going to see him this morning!’

  ‘I didn’t mention it because I didn’t know then,’ he replied.

  Which left her without argument. She gave what she hoped looked like a careless shrug. ‘I confess your way of doing business seems a little haphazard, but—’

  ‘I didn’t go to see your father on a business matter,’ Latham stated before she could finish.

  Her eyes shot wide—he’d gone to see her father on a personal matter! Her foolish heart started to race—and then she remembered, and something inside her froze. ‘Josy,’ she said, and that was all. But Latham understood.

  Why, then, he shook his head she could not tell. Nor could she believe it when, his eyes steady on hers, he told her categorically, ‘I was never, at any time, interested in Josy.’

  Not for one single solitary moment could she believe it. ‘I should thank God your name’s not Pinocchio, if I were you—otherwise the length of your nose would hit the other side of this room.’

  She stood up, impatient with him that he could tell such lies, and impatient with herself that there was something in her that wanted to believe him, whatever outrageous lie he uttered.

  She presented him with her back, loving him even while she hated him—and knew herself for a fool once more when, leaving the couch, he came and stood behind her, placing his hands in a gentle hold on her upper arms. She should have moved away, but she felt helpless to do so. She wanted him to hold her. He had held her oh, so gently last night.

  She tried to banish such reminders, and then Latham was speaking again, and was saying, ‘My dear, I don’t want to hurt you but, in order to clear away all lies and deceits between us, hurt you I’m afraid I must,’ and her mouth went dry. His tone, those words ‘between us’, as if ‘us’ mattered, made her want to hear every word he had to say. Made her want to stay and listen to what he had to explain—no matter how hurt it sounded as if she might be in the process.

  ‘It—concerns me, then?’ she asked chokily, and did not know where to look when Latham turned her round to face him.<
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  ‘You’re trembling,’ he murmured.

  ‘It’s the weather,’ she replied, and nearly died when he brushed a feather-light kiss on her brow.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ he urged, and led her not back to the chair she had occupied but to the couch. And it did nothing to quiet her trembling when he sat down on the couch beside her.

  ‘So,’ she said as she strove desperately to get herself back together, ‘You went to see my father—on a personal matter, you said?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he agreed, but added very carefully, ‘Though, at the beginning, before you and I had met, it was your father who came to see me.’

  ‘Ah!’ Belvia exclaimed, and only then realised that, when so much had taken place between her and Latham, she was going to have to remember at all times that her father still wanted him to invest in Fereday Products. ‘Hmm—my father came to see you about some business, I expect?’ she queried.

  But to her astoundment Latham replied, ‘No,’ going on, ‘And if I could spare telling you what I have to, I would. But I insist you know the truth before...’ He checked, took a deep and steadying breath, and seemed to change direction when he went on quietly, ‘Perhaps, to save you from tying yourself in knots in trying to make me think well of your father, I should state that I now know everything there is to know about him—including the fact that he’s anxious for my company to invest in his.’

  ‘Oh!’ Belvia exclaimed, not certain she did not grow a little pink about the cheeks.

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ Latham smiled, watching her, and nearly sank her yet again when, seeming sensitive to her every thought, he carefully stated, ‘What lies between you and me has nothing to do with money.’

  She stared at him for long seconds and knew then that, whatever it was he had to explain, she wanted to hear every word. More, as her intelligence started to function again, she wanted to know, since Latham was again referring to their two selves, what in heaven’s name her father had to do with any of it. She thought it was time she began to find out.

  ‘You—um—suggested that the first time my father came to see you—it was not about business.’

  ‘It seemed not—though it’s only today that I found out that that was just a ploy.’ Oh, grief! She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. Latham too, by the sound of it, had now learned just how devious her father could be for his own ends.

  ‘He—er—didn’t ask you to invest straight away?’

  ‘Business was never mentioned,’ Latham replied and, making her head all haywire again, he took a gentle hold of both her hands and held them firmly in his. He seemed reluctant as he added, ‘What your father came to see me about was the—’ his grip tightened ‘—the affair which he knew you were having with my brother-in-law.’

  ‘The aff—’ Witlessly, she stared at him. ‘Me!’ she exclaimed, her tone shocked. ‘But—but I never—’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Latham cut in. ‘My dear, don’t I know, more than anyone, that you’ve never had an affair in your life?’ Warm colour stained her skin again, and suddenly Latham let go of one of her hands and placed an arm about her shoulders. ‘Sweet Belvia,’ he entreated, ‘can you not see how it was with me? How I couldn’t rest until I had everything sorted out?’

  She was still striving to recover from hearing that her father had gone to him with some tale that she was having an affair with Caroline’s husband. But at what Latham had just said her hopes started to rise. ‘Is—is that why you—um—rushed off this morning?’ Had he gone from her because he thought her—important?

  ‘It was more than time somebody started to be fair to you,’ he replied, and Belvia looked at him, loved him, and knew she was never going to be able to concentrate—not while he had his arm about her.

  She moved a few inches from him, pulling out of his arm, pulling her hand from his hold. ‘Perhaps you’d better start at the very beginning,’ she requested, as evenly as she could.

  Latham studied every detail of her face. ‘It won’t be pleasant,’ he warned, and she could not help thinking, as he continued to watch her, that should any of what he had to say seem too much for her he would stop immediately—which was enough for her to determine to mask her emotions as much as possible. She wanted, needed, to hear all that there was to hear.

  ‘Caroline told me over the phone,’ he began, ‘that because of an empathy she immediately felt with you, she found herself telling you of her husband’s unfaithfulness to her.’

  ‘I knew beforehand,’ Belvia admitted. ‘He was at a party I was at this past year. We were introduced and someone told me he was married—but you’d never have known it from the way he was behaving. Caroline’s well rid of him.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more. She’s had far more to put up with than any woman should.’ He paused, and quietly added, ‘He’s in the middle of some affair right now.’

  Belvia stared at him. ‘And you thought, because of what my father said, that I was the woman he was having an affair with?’

  ‘I didn’t just take your father’s word for it,’ he replied. ‘To tell it as it is, Caroline has been married to Astill for five years, and in those five years for my sister’s happiness—since she stated she still wanted him—I’ve bought off as many women. When some months ago I recognised that look in her eyes that said she was hurting again, I employed a top-class private investigatory firm I’d used before to find out who the current woman was.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Belvia exclaimed, this being a whole new world to her. ‘You bought that woman off too?’

  But Latham shook his head. ‘This time Astill was playing it very cagily, and the investigators, although still on to it, were coming up with nothing.’

  ‘You’re sure he was having an affair?’

  ‘That was beyond doubt. Who with, however, was what I needed to know, for my sister’s sake.’

  ‘Graeme Astill must have known about the private detectives you’d put on to him before.’

  ‘Caroline, in a weak moment of their last reconciliation, told him of it.’

  ‘I see,’ Belvia commented, realising that Graeme Astill, as Latham had said, had been playing this one cagily rather than have his brother-in-law spoil his fun for him. ‘But...’ She stopped, unable to see any tie-in here with her father. Even while she felt bruised that her father could apparently go to a stranger and say that she was the one Graeme Astill was having an affair with, questions suddenly started queuing up to be answered.

  ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ she admitted helplessly. ‘Why would my father tell you I was having an affair with Caroline’s husband when I wasn’t? What good...? And how did my father know he was having an affair anyway? And...’ Her voice faded as her intelligence really got to work. ‘I didn’t know my father even knew Graeme Astill!’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ Latham replied, adding swiftly, ‘According to your father, when I insisted this morning on knowing everything there was to know, he’d listened in to an intimate phone conversation his secretary had with Astill some weeks ago.’

  Even while Belvia felt slightly sickened—any other person accidentally happening on an intimate conversation would drop the phone like a hot coal, but not her father—she was gasping, ‘Vanessa Stanley! Is she the one...?’

  ‘There was not the slightest doubt, your father said, that the two were having an affair. Just as there was no doubt—my name coming up, apparently, and the fact that I was furious to know who the woman was—that they were taking every precaution to prevent me from finding out.’

  ‘Your brother-in-law didn’t want you buying Vanessa off?’ Belvia queried as she quickly digested that indeed Vanessa Stanley was the one.

  ‘I doubt very much that he mentioned she might be rewarded to give him up, but he no doubt fed her some plausible line about why their affair must remain most secret.’

  ‘But...’ She was starting to grow a touch confused, so sought to pin her thoughts on the most basic knowledg
e. ‘So—while my father knew about their affair, neither Vanessa nor your brother-in-law was aware that anyone else knew.’

  ‘They thought they had been much too clever—and but for that phone call, they had,’ Latham agreed.

  ‘Yes, but I still don’t see—’ She broke off. Knowing her devious father well, all at once, with a clarity that was nauseating, she did begin to see. And—while she could hardly credit that her father would use her so—she was quietly stating, ‘My father thought that, if he came to you with this piece of information, you’d be so pleased you would look favourably on his request—at some future date naturally—’ he could be both devious and wily, her father ‘—for investment...’

  ‘Had he been speaking the truth, I should, of course, have felt very much indebted to him.’

  ‘But you didn’t know he wasn’t speaking the truth until...’ Oh, grief! It was only last night that he had found out... She flicked a glance at Latham; he looked warmly back at her and reached for her hands. But she took them out of his range. She needed a clear head—even his warm look was devastating, without the feel of his skin against hers. ‘So—my father came to you and said that I was the woman your brother-in-law was having an affair with,’ she went on, striving desperately hard to keep her head straight.

  ‘Your father’s much more subtle than that, Belvia,’ Latham replied gently. ‘At first he wouldn’t tell me anything, but said that he needed to contact my brother-in-law quite urgently—and did I know where he could be found? I suggested he rang him at home, but in the ensuing conversation gathered that he wanted to contact him without my sister knowing.’

  ‘Ah! That was when your protective antennae for your sister went on red alert?’

  ‘Antennae for our sisters we share, you and I,’ Latham commented softly, and her heart raced, and her insides fluttered at his tone—and Belvia had to try harder than ever to keep her head straight.

  ‘What happened then?’ she asked firmly.

  ‘The upshot was,’ Latham answered, seeming now to want it all said and done with quickly, ‘what with my refusing to say where he might find my brother-in-law until he told me more, your father had to “reluctantly” confess that Astill was having an affair with his daughter, and that he wanted it stopped.’