by Margaret Way
“But surely she doesn’t want to sell?” Stella asked. “I remember you told me how adamant she was when Keith Munro, the developer, wanted to buy it. She’s probably deeded it to a relative. She’s a good age.”
“Eighty-five. I spoke to her this afternoon.” Cate’s voice, another of her assets, turned low and ironic. “She’s prepared to meet Lord Wyndham.”
“Oh, capital!” Stella cried, throwing up her hands. “The Lord Wyndham did it, I suppose?”
“Sure helped. After all, your father was the fourth Baron Wyndham, was he not? One would have thought he was a criminal, you kept it so quiet. The thing is Lady McCready doesn’t have the right sort of relative to leave Isla Bella to. She believes any one of them would sell it on the spot. So I guess the right buyer thinking of a private retreat might appeal. I’m sure he means what he says. Bring the wife and kids, and some close friends.”
“He married her, then?” Both Cate and Stella had fully expected it. “What was her name again?’
“Marina,” Cate supplied briefly. She had never felt any bitterness towards Marina. Marina wasn’t to blame for anything. Her bitterness was reserved for Ashe and his dreadful snob of a mother who had given Lady Marina the thumbs up.
“So you’re expected to arrange a deal?” Stella asked. Hugh Saunders had told her once Cate was going to go to “the very top”!
“That’s what Hugh wants,” Cate replied. “It would mean a trip to the island. It would mean a day or so in the company of the man who betrayed me.”
“See you don’t let it happen twice,” Stella warned, sharply. “I’d go mental if you did. You’ve never got over him.”
It was a flat-out accusation. “Maybe not,” Cate said, wincing at the harshness of Stella’s attack, “but I’m over the torment. I’m my own woman. And I have you and my beautiful boy. He mustn’t see Jules.” Cate heard the fear in her own voice.
“All you have to do is keep calm,” Stella urged, though she too had gone white.
“Not that Jules resembles him—”
“Except for the eyes,” Stella was swift to point out. “I went to school with a relative of his, Penelope Stewart, as I’m sure I’ve told you.”
“God, that’s a breakthrough!” Cate only half joked. “I’m equally sure you haven’t. I would have remembered. I have a photographic memory, you might recall. You’ve always carried your past in your head, Stella. Locked it up and threw away the key.”
“I’m sure I told you.” Stella decided to hold firm, when she knew perfectly well she hadn’t. Her past life was deeply private, even from Cate. Let the secret life be the secret life was her motto. “Penelope’s brother, Rafe, was another one madly in love with Annabel.” She dropped an involuntary snippet, her tone suggesting that was a very bad thing.
“Really?” Cate was taken aback. “Another thing you’ve never mentioned before. Tell me, Stella, is this a kind of paranoia you have, this difficulty with speaking about the past?”
“Maybe it is.” Stella wasn’t about to talk it over. “But the past is past. It’s no longer important.” She shrugged off what could well have been of grave importance.
“Now that’s where you’ve got it all wrong,” Cate murmured sadly. “The past is never past. It follows us around like our shadow. We can’t hit the delete button and whoosh it’s gone.”
“May I contradict you there?” Stella said with an odd expression.
“I was expecting you to. But my view is, we’re never free of the past, Stella. Especially when much of it is desperate to get through.”
Stella gave an ironic smile. “You’re referring to Annabel.”
Cate nodded. “Annabel, my mother. She certainly got around.” Cate sounded both sad and deeply disillusioned. “One wonders who my father was...is? He could still be alive and well.”
Stella said nothing. She was a little tired of Cate’s truth seeking. She pressed her two hands together. Jules’ beautiful blue eyes always came as a jolt. So did Cate’s golden colouring and green eyes. The past was where so many bad things happened. No wonder she had shut it down.
Cate shook off a prickling sensation at her nape. She continued to stare at her aunt. Of the two of them Stella appeared to be more devastated by the news Julian Carlisle was in town, almost on their doorstep as it were. How come? “Could it have been this Rafe?” she abruptly asked, feeling an element of shock.
Stella bit hard on her bottom lip, then surprisingly gave a sour laugh. “I have no idea, Cate. Truly. Annabel never breathed a word. I asked her and asked her. All she ever said was, Please don’t, Stell. After a while I gave up. She never told me even on the day she died.”
Many things were starting to occur to Cate. Unanswered questions asserting themselves strongly. “Maybe she didn’t know?” Her laugh had a tremor in it.
“She never wanted to hurt you, Catrina,” Stella said, as though Cate really should get her act together.
“But she hurt you. She must have been incredibly selfish, self-centred. She fooled you, about a lot of things. She not only fooled you she practically forced you and Arnold to emigrate. You gave up the life you had known. You sacrificed yourself for your promiscuous little sister.”
Stella appeared in no rush to refute it. “It was no great sacrifice,” she said. The only trouble was it came out unexpectedly virtuous. “I never thought my parents would say, Please don’t go, Stella, though they gave me a huge wedding. Expected, you know. But look, Cate, you more than made up for it. Arnold and I took you to our hearts on sight. I was never able to bear a child. I don’t think it was my fault, rather poor old Arnold’s. But we were happy.”
“Were you?” Cate flicked her aunt a sceptical glance.
“Well, not exactly happy, but good enough. We left our burdens behind. We loved this country, the freedom and the climate. Most of all we had you. Have you any idea what a joy that was? You are my own blood, Cate.”
“Well, you jolly well could have told me,” Cate said, thinking the hurt would never go away.
Stella had long since formed the habit of shrugging off her sins of omission. “So you’re always going to blame me?” she asked, as though questioning Cate’s capacity for forgiveness.
Cate shook her head when she wasn’t at all sure. “I love you, Stell. Let’s not talk blame. Things happen in life. But for now, we both know it’s not safe for Wyndham to catch sight of Jules.”
“God, no!” Stella shuddered.
“It’s possible he’ll spot a resemblance.”
“Bound to,” Stella said, as if that would be the horror of horrors. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? He could acknowledge him?” Stella’s slim body tensed up at the thought. She loved Jules. He could have been her own grandchild.
“How do I know?” Cate exclaimed. “Times have changed. Fathers, even of high social standing, are acknowledging children they never knew they had all the time,” she said sharply. “For all I know he might have a couple of daughters. We now know the firstborn to British royalty male or female can inherit the throne. Which I think is as it should be. I don’t know about entailed inheritances that always went to the male. There’s even a possibility Wyndham and his Marina split up. I could’ve found out if I’d wanted to.”
“But you’ve never wanted to,” Stella said. “And I had my own grief, of course.” Grief she had openly expressed. “Only Annabel attended my father’s funeral. I was told to keep away. Don’t come. Please don’t come, Stell. It’s not as though he will know, but questions will be asked. She pleaded and pleaded with me, my self-centred little sister. She was absolutely terrified. As usual I gave in, coming once more to Annabel’s rescue. It wasn’t as though I didn’t have more pressing concerns. You’d returned home from England sunk in despair, however hard you’d sought to hide it. It hadn’t taken all that much longer to be faced with the reason. You were pregnant. Then of course it all came out.”
Julian bloody Carlisle! The Radclyffes, the Carlisles and Others.
Cate’s voice snapped Stella back to the present.
“I had to turn my back on what had happened to me,” Cate was saying. “It was the only way to survive.”
Stella’s reaction was on the instant. “You had me. There’s no reason for Carlisle to come near the house?”
“This is going to further amaze you.” Cate gave a hollow laugh. “We’re having dinner tonight.”
Stella tapped her forehead so hard she could have cracked it open. “Wh-a-a-t?” Nothing would ever be the same again. She was sure of it. “Is it the anniversary of your split?” she asked, a real bite in her voice. She was terribly perturbed about Julian Carlisle’s re-entry into Cate’s life. Cate had had to work super hard to take up her life. They had built a life together. They had Jules. They didn’t need anyone else. It would be terrible if Cate thought differently. Cate was, after all, a beautiful young woman living without a man. Cate could rebel. That fact wasn’t lost on Stella.
Cate rose to her feet, her golden hair and her luminous skin drawing in all the light. “I’m okay, Stella,” she said, bending down to kiss Stella’s cheek. “Don’t worry. Hugh more or less forced this one on me. He doesn’t want to lose Wyndham. Dinner is in the nature of a business call. He wanted to pick me up but I assured him it would be easier for me to pick him up at his hotel. I don’t want him anywhere near the house.”
“Dear, oh, dear!” Stella looked at her in extreme agitation. Her hands were starting to shake. “Hang on a second, would Hugh Saunders have mentioned at any stage you have a son?”
“I don’t think he’d want to get tangled up with all that,” Cate said, with a sudden frown. “I have to go, Stell. I need to see Jules, then I have to shower and dress.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Stella implored, jumping up. “Someone is bound to tell him. That dreadful Murphy Stiller perhaps? You’re a single mother and all that.” She knew Cate withheld a great deal of information about herself. A well established family trait.
Cate’s green eyes were glittering like gems. “If need be I can come up with a convincing story. Anyway, it’s none of his business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Cate,” Stella said, her fine features drawn tight. “You’ll see if he ever finds out.”
It was a possibility neither of them could afford to ignore.
* * *
In the end she chose a dinner staple, the little black dress she felt confident in. She enlivened it with the right jewellery. She wasn’t out to make any statement. This wasn’t a dinner date. This was business, albeit agonising. He had always loved her hair long and loose so she pulled the mass of it back from her face, arranging it in a modern update of the classic chignon. Her only concession was her satin heels. She had to have her heels. Anyway, he was so tall. Gave him a natural advantage.
“You look beautiful, Mummy,” Jules pronounced when she went downstairs for inspection. “How come this man isn’t picking you up?” His mother’s male friends always picked her up at the house, not the other way around.
“Easier this way, darling.” She put her hand on his squared little shoulder. No sloping there. “Bedtime nine o’clock. What are you going to do?”
“Watch a video with Nan. Happy Feet.” Jules looked up at Stella. They were great friends. “This man, he’s a lord?” Jules asked with interest. “I bet he’s a big snob?”
“Only on his mother’s and father’s side,” Cate replied, ruffling his thick hair.
Both Jules and Stella laughed.
“I’ll walk you to the car,” Jules said, taking Cate’s hand. Cate had left the BMW out on the driveway lined on one side by beautiful flowering hydrangeas.
“Thank you, darling.”
“I’ll wait up for you,” Stella whispered urgently when they reached the front door.
“No need.”
“I won’t get a wink of sleep if I don’t.” Stella was in no mood to take no for an answer.
* * *
In the car their bodies were very tense. The whole situation felt indescribably dangerous. He didn’t say a word other than murmur a taut, “Good evening.” She nodded a silent reply. Things went very quiet after that. It all spelled out a kind of fraught hostility. Surely that was entirely reasonable for her, the abandoned one? What on earth was his problem? She was angered by the sheer irrationality, the injustice of it all. She drove on without speaking.
It had to be her day for finding parking. There was just one spot left in the restaurant’s private car park beside a very impressive Maserati. She knew who owned it, a very flashy playboy who had taken an awfully long time to take a firm no for an answer.
Inside the elegant dining room with its floor-to-ceiling windows, all was soft opulence, under gleaming down lights. Tonight’s palette was palest gold. Floor-skimming gold tablecloths covered the circular tables, with matching steepled napkins. Gold-rimmed wine glasses. A glass vial held a perfect single yellow rose. The comfortable chairs surrounding the tables were upholstered in an aubergine silk velvet that blended in with any number of the colour changes that occurred with the settings. Cate had been to the restaurant countless times before. She was well known to the staff and maître d’.
“Buona sera, Ms Hamilton, how lovely to see you.”
“Buona sera, Carlo.”
Such a lovely smile. A man would do anything to be the recipient of such a smile. A seasoned giver of compliments, the Italian maître d’ meant what he said. He wasn’t surprised to see Ms Hamilton with an extremely handsome male escort. Unknown to him, which was unusual. He thought he knew just about everyone in society. But such a beautiful woman would naturally be accompanied by a man of distinction. This one he totally approved of. He had a veritable stile di un principe. The way he held himself! He stood a full head over Ms Hamilton, who was wearing stunning stilettos. They were an eye-riveting pair: the young woman so blonde, the man, so tall, with a fine head of hair gleaming like jet but with extraordinary blue eyes. Almost the electric blue of the male peacock’s plumage, the maître d’ thought fancifully. At any rate they looked so arresting they turned heads.
* * *
A bottle of white wine was settled on. No thought of champagne. No lively conversation. This wasn’t a celebration. No romantic little interlude. The handsome young Italian waiter in his cropped white jacket sped away.
“So?”
“I do not want to talk about the past, Julian,” she said, sounding ultra-controlled. This wasn’t the incredibly exciting, incredibly passionate Ashe she had known. Even the beautiful, maddeningly upper-class English voice had hardened into tempered steel. Shades of his dear mother. Even men could turn into their mothers.
“Of course you don’t,” he conceded. “They tell me you have a child, a boy.”
She swallowed down the flare of panic. Surely Hugh hadn’t told him that? “Yes I do,” she said. Her voice sounded perfectly normal.
“But no husband?”
“I’m fascinated you’re interested. What about you? Wife, children, an heir to the title, noblesse oblige and all that?”
“My life is my business, Catrina.” He looked straight at her.
“And so is mine,” she said sharply, drawing back a little. “Shall we leave it at that?”
“How old is your boy?” His intense gaze pinned her in place. It didn’t make him happy to see she had grown even more beautiful over the years, confident, polished, beautifully dressed, understated, perfect. A very assured woman.
Cate drew breath. There was no option but to lie. “Five,” she said, holding his gaze, but a rose glow had entered her cheeks. “He’s the love of my life.”
“What about the father?” He continued to study her, this enigma that was the girl he had fallen crazily in love with. Love made such fools of people. The great and the good. It ruined careers, damaged lives, sometimes irrevocably. He hadn’t really known that girl. Nor the woman. “What was he?” he asked. “Live-in lover?”
She didn’t answer.
; “Live out, then? With your boy. You had to consider him?”
“Hard to say what he was really.” She shrugged a nonchalant shoulder. “He didn’t pass the test at any rate. Look, the waiter is returning with the wine.” Her gaze shifted over his shoulder.
“That sounds like the truth.” He gave a brief laugh. “It’s mythology in a way. Suitors being required to pass a series of tests. I’ve never figured out which one I failed,” he said, openly contemptuous. “She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone!” He crooned it, low voiced, like a melancholy love song.
Her physical reactions were involuntary, unstoppable. Dopamine, she thought. The brain’s motivational chemical. The sight and sound of him gave her enormous pleasure, an erotic rush. She wasn’t entirely responsible. The man was devastating. Devastatingly handsome, devastatingly charismatic, devastatingly rich and important. Devastation all round. She knew now she had never been healed. What she had to do was push her memories further and further behind her. “Can we drop this?” She looked the picture of perfect confidence, but she was churning inside.
Cool it! her inner voice warned her.
God, she was trying to but she was using up every scrap of control.
“I don’t like talking about it either.” He was perilously close to bluntness, but at just the right moment he had to turn in his chair to acknowledge the waiter, who made a little business of showing the excellent Australian Riesling. It rated high on a world list. A little was poured for sampling. Cate was never sure if the ritual was absolutely necessary.
Consequently she took no notice. It was a relief to study the menu, although stress had robbed her of all appetite. Same old lethal sexual attraction; same old primitive physical responses. Could nothing kill them? If she knew nothing could—as in outside anyone’s control—she might feel a little better about herself.
But her brain decided to kick in. You’re pathetic. She sought to whip up a degree of self-disgust. One would have thought betrayal would have been a huge incentive. Betrayal killed every time. Only it was impossible for them to be strangers. He was the father of her child. Their lives were mired. Cate turned her face away, acknowledging a female acquaintance who was staring over with avid interest. Dinner dates were a very public matter in city society. No hand-holding with this one. No melting glances across the table.
