by Penny Jordan
‘Too much. Stupid, aren’t I?’ Sylvie said shakily, reiterating urgently, ‘Lloyd, I hate letting you down, but I can’t stay here—not now.’
‘You aren’t letting me down, honey. Your happiness means an awful lot to me. I guess I kinda think of you as the daughter I’ve never had. If I didn’t have this meeting I’d wait to take you back with me.’
‘No. No, you can’t do that. I’ll tie up all the loose ends I can whilst Ran’s away. The least I can do is to leave everything in order for whoever takes over from me here.’
‘See you in New York, then, hon,’ Lloyd told her before taking her in his arms and hugging her.
A little later he had gone. Soon she would be gone too...
Her throat tight, Sylvie blinked away her tears.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘IT’S a beautiful spot here, isn’t it?’ Mollie commented as she walked across the grass to join Ran where he stood studying the pool in the centre of the small treefilled glade.
Once, before her marriage to Alex, this glade had been the scene of disturbing desecration when it had been taken over by a band of travellers, eco-warriors, led by the drug dealer Wayne, who had convinced a then idealistic and innocent Sylvie that his sole object in travelling was to assert the rights of the homeless.
It had been Sylvie who had brought them to this pretty glade on her stepbrother’s land, and ultimately Sylvie who had played a major part in the drama which had unfolded when she had realised just how dangerous and unsavoury a character Wayne actually was.
It had taken months to restore the glade to what it had once been. Now it was a favourite spot for local visitors. In the spring it was filled with the colour of hundreds and hundreds of bluebells, but now they were over and the trees were just beginning to show the beginnings of the turn of colour which heralded the end of summer.
‘It’s hard to believe now just how much this place has been transformed,’ Mollie remarked as she stood at Ran’s side.
‘I wish I’d seen Sylvie the day she fell into the mud when you were cleaning out the lake and you had to pull her out... How old was she then, Ran?’
‘Seventeen,’ he responded immediately, causing Mollie to give him a swift, thoughtful look.
‘Mmm... When we were talking the last time Sylvie was home she mentioned how upset she was when her mother insisted that she had to leave Otel Place. She wanted to stay on here with Alex after his father’s death, but her mother wouldn’t permit it.’
‘She was a young girl on the verge of womanhood. A bachelor household just wasn’t the place for her.’
‘Even though one of those bachelors was someone she loved very deeply, someone she has never stopped loving...someone she still loves very deeply?’ Mollie suggested.
‘Alex felt that it was best that she stayed with her mother,’ Ran told her doggedly.
‘I wasn’t referring to Alex,’ Mollie returned gently. ‘It was because of her love for you, Ran, that Sylvie wanted to stay here.’
‘She was a child,’ Ran told her angrily, turning away from her so that she couldn’t see his face. ‘What did she know of...love? She was so young, Mollie, and I was just her brother’s manager; I couldn’t afford...’
‘To let her see that you loved her back?’ Mollie suggested softly.
Ran turned round and looked angrily at her.
‘What I intended to say was that I couldn’t afford to give her the kind of lifestyle she was used to, and even if I had been able to do so she was too young, for God’s sake, a child still...’
‘She wasn’t a child at nineteen,’ Mollie reminded him, adding more meaningfully, ‘And you didn’t treat her as one either, Ran. You and she were lovers,’ she told him directly. ‘You were her first lover, but you left her, let her—’
‘No! She was the one who left me,’ Ran told her fiercely. ‘She told me herself that the only reason she’d given herself to me was because Wayne didn’t want a virgin...and...’
‘And you believed her?’ Mollie derided him quietly.
Ran looked at her.
‘She was saying goodbye to him when I arrived and if you’d seen her with him...’
‘Looks can be deceptive,’ Mollie pointed out. ‘People can go to extraordinary lengths to conceal what they really feel if they believe that exposing those feelings could lead to them being rejected and hurt.
‘After all,’ she added quietly, ‘you’ve concealed the fact that you love Sylvie from her, haven’t you?’
Immediately Ran tensed, his jaw tightening.
‘Alex told you?’ he demanded. ‘That was supposed to be—’
‘Alex hasn’t told me anything,’ Mollie assured him. ‘He didn’t need to tell me, Ran; I guessed.’
‘How?’
‘By knowing the kind of man you are and subtracting that from the way you behave towards Sylvie, and coming up with a figure that just doesn’t add up, not unless you add another ingredient to it,’ she told him with a small smile. ‘Why don’t you tell her how you feel...?’
‘She knows,’ Ran told her shortly. ‘Look, Mollie, I appreciate your concern,’ he said. ‘Maybe once, as a child, a young woman, Sylvie did love me, but that’s all changed now. She’s not a young girl any more, she’s an adult. There’ve been other men in her life, men who—’
‘What other men?’ Mollie challenged him, and then added boldly before he could answer, ‘You are the only lover Sylvie has ever had, Ran, the only one she’s ever wanted...’
‘No...that’s not true,’ Ran denied, but Mollie could see the way he changed colour, his face paling beneath his outdoor tan. ‘She and Wayne were lovers and now she has Lloyd.’
‘No,’ Mollie denied firmly, and then added more gently, ‘No, Ran. Wayne and Sylvie were never lovers. She told me that at the time and I know it was the truth. She’s said very much the same thing since, very recently.’
‘How recently?’ Ran pounced, and then shook his head. ‘This isn’t about other men, other loves. I would still feel the same way about her no matter how many other men there’d been in her life, but I can’t, won’t impose either myself or my love on her. She loves Lloyd.’
‘Yes, she does,’ Mollie agreed, ‘but she loves him as a friend, Ran, not as a man.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d heard her talking to him on the phone as I did, pleading with him to see her...’
Mollie took a deep breath. Before following Ran out here to talk with him there had been certain limits she had imposed on her revelations, certain boundaries she had told herself she must not and would not cross, certain confidences she would not share, but now she knew that she was going to have to break that self-imposed sanction.
‘Pleading with him to see her because she wants to be taken off the Haverton Hall project,’ Mollie told him quietly. ‘She’s desperately afraid, Ran, afraid of the way she feels about you and afraid of... She told me herself that she just doesn’t think she can take any more. She said it was impossible for her to do her work properly when all she could think about was you. She wants Lloyd to allow her to work on something else, something that doesn’t involve her in any kind of contact with you... It’s up to you, Ran,’ she told him simply, ‘If you love her...’
‘I saw the way she reacted when Lloyd left her to go to London with Vicky,’ Ran told her tersely.
‘Lloyd has never been her lover, Ran,’ Mollie reasserted. ‘She doesn’t love him in that way, but if you doubt my word, if you really want to know the truth, there’s only one person you need to talk with, isn’t there? If you don’t believe me, Ran, then think about this: why should a woman, any woman, not just allow but encourage a man to make love to her when she has been deliberately celibate for years and when she believes that he cares nothing for her? Why, unless it’s because her own emotions are so strong, so powerful, that they are outside her own control? Very few human emotions come into that kind of category, Ran.
‘Oh, and by the way...’ Mollie paused and tur
ned round as she started to walk away from him. ‘I nearly forgot. Sylvie telephoned last night. She’s spoken to Lloyd and he’s agreed that she can leave Haverton whenever she wishes. She’s booked on a flight from London tomorrow.
‘Sometimes, for a woman, just being loved isn’t enough.
Sometimes we need more than an act of faith and sometimes we need to be told, shown, to see it, to hear it, touch it, taste it.’
‘What’s the matter with Ran?’ Alex asked Mollie curiously half an hour later as he walked into her sitting room. ‘I’ve just passed him on the lane; he said he was going back to Haverton. He said something urgent had come up.’
‘Mmm...did he...?’
‘Mollie...’ Alex said perceptively. ‘What’s been going on? What have you—?’
‘Oh...’ Putting her hand to her mouth, Mollie got up and raced for the door.
Morning sickness—what a euphemism, Alex decided. Poor Mollie suffered from it all day. Sympathetically he went to follow her.
Her bags were packed, a note left for Ran explaining that someone else was going to take over her work, her files were all in order; there was nothing left for her to do other than get into her hire car and drive it to the airport. Still Sylvie couldn’t quite bring herself to go.
Irresolutely she made her way upstairs, pausing outside Ran’s bedroom. She had the house to herself. Mrs Elliott had left for the day. Impulsively she opened the door and went inside. The room was just as she remembered it from that single night she had spent here. She went over to the bed, smoothing a trembling hand over the pillow which had been Ran’s.
Tears burned behind her eyes but she refused to shed them. Instead she walked determinedly towards the door and through it.
Outside the air was warm with the heat of the late summer sun. She could see the lavender which grew in huge drifts alongside the drive.
Silently she turned to give one last look at the house. Where Haverton was a mansion, this was a true home. Very gently she touched the warm mellow brick before wheeling round and hurrying unsteadily towards her hire car. She had booked herself into a London hotel overnight ready for her morning flight to New York. It was time for her to leave. There was, after all, no reason for her to stay.
All the way north as he drove, Ran told himself that he was a complete fool, that Mollie was wrong.
‘If Sylvie does love me, there’s nothing to stop her saying so,’ he had told Mollie sharply.
‘Nothing, apart from the fact that she believes you don’t love her,’ Mollie had agreed.
Did she believe that? How could she? Only the other night, holding her in his arms, he had indirectly referred to his feelings for her.
His body ached with tension and the sense of urgency which had driven him north, not allowing him to pause or stop. The hills basked in the heat of the late afternoon sunshine as he drove the last few miles home.
He saw the Discovery before he saw her, his heart giving a huge leap of relief when he saw that it was still there, that she was still there. And then he saw her.
She was wearing the smart cut trouser suit and carrying her document case. Instinctively he pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator.
Ran was travelling at such a speed that at first Sylvie couldn’t make out the shape of the car, never mind the driver, for the clouds of dust that surrounded it, but instinctively she knew it was Ran and immediately, for some idiotic reason, her first impulse was to get away before he saw her. But as she tugged frantically at the huge Discovery’s door Ran was already bringing his car to a swerving halt in front of her, blocking her exit. He got out of the car and strode towards her, his face grim and unreadable.
‘Ran... I...I was just leaving... I—’
‘Why?’ he demanded, cutting across her husky, nervous words.
‘Why?’
‘Why are you leaving, Sylvie? Is it because of Lloyd? Because he’s your lover and you can’t bear to be away from him...?’
Sylvie was too shocked to prevaricate.
‘No!’ she exclaimed immediately. ‘Lloyd isn’t my lover.’
‘Then why the hell were you so upset when he took Vicky off to London with him?’ Ran exploded.
‘I... She... It was obvious what she was doing, how mercenary she is, but you defended her, you encouraged her to flirt...you praised her...you...’
‘I couldn’t wait for her to take Lloyd out of the way so that you could see just how undeserving of you he is,’ Ran finished quietly for her.
Sylvie stared at him. The sun was shining down hotly on her head, which must be the reason she was feeling so peculiar, she decided dizzily. There could be no other explanation for the look she had just imagined she had seen in Ran’s eyes.
‘You can’t really have thought that Lloyd and I were lovers,’ she told him shakily. ‘He’s my friend. I like him... love him, yes, as a person, but...’ She stopped and wet her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
‘Don’t do that, Sylvie,’ she heard Ran demanding rawly. ‘Come with me,’ he commanded, suddenly reaching out and taking hold of her hand before she could stop him, hurrying her across the gravel and into a part of the garden she had not explored as yet, down a yew-enclosed alleyway.
Through a doorway in the yew hedge Ran guided her into a small secluded garden which was entirely planted with white roses, so many of them that their scent made Sylvie feel light-headed.
‘My great-uncle planted these roses in memory of the only woman he loved. She died of pneumonia shortly before they were due to be married and this garden and his memories were all that he had left of her.
‘I don’t want memories to be all I ever have of you, Sylvie. I love you,’ he told her rawly. ‘I have always loved you and will always love you. I haven’t told you before because I didn’t feel I had the right... First you were too young, then there was Wayne, and then...’
‘You love me...?’ Sylvie stared at him in disbelief. ‘But only the other night you told me that you didn’t, couldn’t...’ she reminded him. ‘You said that you knew how painful it was for me to love you but that—’
She stopped as she heard the sharp explosive sound he made.
‘No,’ he corrected her. ‘What I was trying to say was how painful it was for me to love you knowing that you didn’t love me back.’
For a moment they stared at one another in silence and then, uncertainly, as though she was afraid to believe what she was hearing, Sylvie lifted her hand to his face, her fingers shaking as they touched his skin.
‘You love me, Ran? I didn’t... I can’t... I’m afraid to believe it just in case...’ She stopped and pressed her lips together, trying to stop them from trembling.
‘Oh, God, Sylvie, what have I done—what have we done?’ Ran demanded hoarsely as he reached for her. ‘I loved you when you were sixteen, when I had no right to have the kind of feelings I had for you; I loved you when you were seventeen and you almost drove me crazy with what you were so innocently offering me. I loved you when you were nineteen and you flung your virginity at me like a gauntlet, giving me your body but denying me your love.’
‘I thought you hated me,’ Sylvie whispered. ‘You were so angry with me when I came to Otel Place with Wayne and the travellers.’
‘That wasn’t anger, it was jealousy,’ Ran told her dryly. ‘You’ll never know how many, many times the only thing that kept you out of my bed was that “anger”. It was either alienate you or...’
‘Why didn’t you...? Why didn’t you take me to bed then? You must have known how much I wanted it, how much I wanted you,’ Sylvie said.
‘No. No, I didn’t. Oh, yes, I knew you’d had a crush on me at one stage, but when I saw you with Wayne, when you told me that you wanted him...’
‘I thought you were rejecting me. I had my pride, you know,’ Sylvie told him ruefully. ‘You’d pushed me away so many times before—’
‘For your own sake,’ Ran interrupted her. ‘As your mother had already pointed ou
t to me, I had nothing to offer you.’
‘Nothing...?’ Sylvie protested emotionally, her eyes shining with suppressed tears. ‘You had everything, Ran, were everything to me...still are everything.’
As he took her in his arms and kissed her, white petals from the roses drifted down onto them both.
‘Like confetti,’ Ran said softly when he finally, reluctantly lifted his mouth from hers. ‘Traditionally we should be married from the private chapel at Haverton Hall, but it’s badly in need of restoration and I can’t wait that long.’ As he kissed her again he whispered against her mouth, ‘Perhaps our first child can be christened there.’
Immediately Sylvie opened her eyes.
‘You know...about that,’ she guessed. ‘You...you felt it too...’
‘Yes,’ Ran acknowledged. ‘How could we have been such fools, Sylvie, so blind? Surely that alone should have told us both, shown us both. What we shared that night, what we created, could only have come from mutual love.’
‘Yes,’ Sylvie admitted huskily. ‘I still can’t quite believe it...’ she added, brushing white rose petals off his arms. ‘It’s...it’s still so... It’s less than an hour since I thought that I’d be driving away from Haverton and you, for ever. What made you come back? What—?’
‘You did,’ he told her promptly, and then relented when he saw her face.
‘Mollie talked to me...made me think...see...’
‘Mollie? But she never said a word when she rang me—’ Sylvie began indignantly, and then stopped. ‘Oh, Ran,’ she whispered, ‘I can’t bear to think how close we came to...to not having this...not having one another.’
‘It wouldn’t have ended here,’ Ran comforted her.
‘I don’t know what Lloyd’s going to say when I tell him that I’ve changed my mind and I want to stay at Haverton...’
‘For ever,’ Ran told her.
‘For ever,’ Sylvie agreed.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Ran said abruptly, ‘I want to hold you...make love with you...show you how much I love you...how much I need you.’
