Lily's Scandal

by Marion Lennox

  Should they both stay here?

  If he stayed here he’d be either pacing the hospital with nothing to do or he’d be pacing the apartment. With Lily.

  So … Farm?

  Would she come?

  How did you persuade a stranger?

  But she wasn’t a stranger, he told himself grimly. She was his lover for a month.

  Including farm time.

  ‘John says you’re going to the farm for the weekend. Oh, that’s lovely. What’s it like? He never tells us anything about it. He keeps everything so quiet. He’s kept you so quiet.’

  To say Lily was bewildered was putting it mildly. She’d opened the door, hoping the doorbell signalled a delivery or something equally innocuous, and an immaculately groomed woman with eyes darting everywhere swept right in.

  ‘I’m Ginnie Allen. My husband’s a clinical psychologist at the Harbour. We live in the apartment on the next floor up. I’m so happy to meet you. Oh, he’s wicked, your Luke, fancy keeping you to himself. Has he told you Teo’s having a party this weekend? Everyone’s aching to meet you but he says you’re going to the farm. He always goes to the farm. Surely you’d prefer the party?’

  Lily clutched her bathrobe round her. Actually, it was Luke’s bathrobe. Big and black and masculine, it fell to the floor and made an ungainly train.

  She’d just woken. Her hair was ghastly. She was wearing no make-up. The woman before her looked like she’d just stepped out of Sporting Vogue.

  To say she felt at a disadvantage was an understatement.

  ‘And you’re Lily …?’ Ginnie waited for her to complete the name.

  ‘Yes,’ Lily said discouragingly, backing away slightly. ‘And I’m sorry, but I’ve been ill. If you could excuse me …’

  ‘Oh, of course, you tuck yourself straight back into bed and we’ll talk there. Would you like me to make us both a nice cup of tea?’

  Tea had suddenly lost its appeal. ‘I’d rather—’

  ‘Coffee? No, dear, tea’s much better. And toast? You need to keep your strength up if you’re going to spend the whole weekend with Luke.’

  ‘Hi, Ginnie.’

  Luke. He stepped out of the apartment elevator in his suit and tie, with his briefcase in hand. Doctor coming home from work—to be greeted by the little woman in his bathrobe, and her new best friend, Ginnie.

  ‘Luke!’ Ginnie gave a crow of delight and hugged him before he had a chance to defend himself. ‘Oh, wow, congratulations. You and Lily … I had no idea.’

  ‘We’re hardly announcing diamonds,’ Lily said dryly, thinking she’d better nip this in the bud. ‘Are you congratulating Luke on sharing his bathrobe?’

  ‘I’ve no intention of sharing,’ Luke said, and looked across Ginnie’s head to smile at Lily.

  And that smile …

  Oh, that smile. She really was her mother’s daughter, she thought, suddenly feeling frantic. If Luke had been the vicar …

  She thought suddenly of the vicar, and for some stupid reason the thought made her want to chuckle. And wince. How could her mother fall for someone like the vicar when there were men like Luke in the world? Men who owned bathrobes like this. It must be cashmere, she thought. It was a caress all on its own.

  His smile was a caress all on its own.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re not coming to Teo’s party,’ Ginnie said reproachfully, letting Luke go and regarding him with huge disappointed eyes—and Luke’s expression became a bit hunted.

  He always goes to the farm … Lily wasn’t sure what was happening here, but he didn’t look the least bit like he wanted to go to any party. Well, neither did she. She didn’t know what was going on but he’d lent her his bathrobe. He’d lent her his bed. Maybe she could afford to be generous.

  He always goes to the farm …

  ‘I’m not a city girl,’ she told Ginnie. ‘That’s why I’ve only agreed to come and stay here for a month. That’s why Luke and I can’t be … as together as we’d like. But now I’ve been ill I’m—’

  ‘Pining,’ Luke finished for her, his smile still lurking. ‘For the fjords.’

  She cast him a look that was meant to put him in his place. ‘For fresh air,’ she told him. ‘For the smell of … sheep.’

  ‘Horses,’ Luke said.

  It was becoming more difficult to be generous. Especially when he was still smiling.

  ‘Especially for the smell of horses,’ she amended. ‘Eau de horse will cure me faster than anything.’

  ‘You like farms?’ Ginnie sounded incredulous.

  ‘What’s not to love?’

  ‘Well, horses for a start,’ Ginnie said, and shuddered. ‘They bite.’

  ‘Not my horses,’ Luke said.

  ‘Well, we wouldn’t know,’ Ginnie said, suddenly waspish. ‘We’ve been practically next-door neighbours for four years and not one invite. You know we’d all love to see your farm. It’s like you’re keeping it a secret. It’s like you’ve been keeping Lily secret.’

  ‘It’s because I know you hate horses,’ Luke said blandly. ‘Lily loves horses. She rides ‘em to the manor born.’

  Lily blinked. She loved horses?

  Actually … she did.

  A farm with horses. She thought suddenly … what was being proposed here? A couple of days on a farm with horses.

  She might even put up with Luke Williams for that.

  ‘Well, I think you should stay here,’ Ginnie said crossly. ‘Look at her.’ She motioned to Lily-In-The-Bathrobe. ‘She looks sick.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ But she was wobbly.

  ‘My car’s lovely,’ Luke said reassuringly. ‘Aston Martin, deep leather seats, pure luxury. And Lily even managed to protect them with her paper bag,’ he told Ginnie. ‘She’s a heroine, my Lily. I’m thinking she can sleep all the way there.’

  My Lily. The words hung.

  This was getting out of hand, Lily thought, starting to feel hysterical. She’d agreed to this, why?

  ‘How long have you guys been an item?’ Ginnie demanded of Lily. ‘Have you been to his farm?’

  Was now the time to back away? Lily wondered, hysteria growing. Pack and leave for Brisbane?

  It’d have to be Brisbane. She couldn’t go back to the Harbour after confessing this lie.

  Luke had started the lie. Not her. She glanced at Luke, who glanced right back. Their eyes locked. His gaze was … almost a challenge?

  Are you about to tell the truth?

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, why should she? she thought. What right did this nosey woman have to the truth?

  Whatever, she decided. Go with the flow.

  But maybe … not lie unless she had to?

  ‘Merrylegs is my very favourite horse,’ she said, tangentially.

  ‘Merrylegs?’ Ginnie blinked.

  ‘She’s given me years of joy,’ she said and somehow, between Ginnie’s prurient interest and Luke’s bland withdrawal, she found herself remembering her first and one true love. ‘She’s beautiful. I know her so well she’s almost part of me, and I wish I could be riding her now.’

  ‘She’s on Luke’s farm?’

  ‘All my horses are on my farm,’ Luke said, sounding suddenly … wicked. ‘Even though Merrylegs is Lily’s favourite, all my horses are her horses.’

  ‘How long have you two been an item?’ Ginnie demanded.

  ‘Years,’ Luke said. ‘Like Lily said.’

  ‘How many years.’

  ‘Three?’ Luke said. ‘I think. Isn’t that right, dear?’

  ‘Have you been staying on Luke’s farm for three years?’ Ginnie was almost speechless. ‘That’s not even a year after Hannah died.’

  ‘I never met Hannah.’ Lily faced Luke’s wickedness head on. What had he called her? Dear. She lowered her voice, talking respectfully about her lover’s deceased wife. ‘Would Hannah have loved Merrylegs?’ she asked Luke. ‘Dear?’

  ‘Hannah was more a cat person,’ Luke said. The smile behind his eyes was challenging. Danger
ous.

  She rose to meet it. Challenging right back.

  ‘You never talk to me about Hannah. I think you should.’ She turned back to Ginnie. ‘He never talks to me about Hannah,’ she said, sounding aggrieved. ‘I think our relationship would be better if he let it all out.’

  ‘That’s what John says,’ Ginnie managed. ‘So …’

  ‘So, farm,’ Lily said, trying hard to sound brisk when, in fact, all she wanted to do was retreat to Luke’s bed and pull pillows over her head. ‘We can pack pillows,’ she told Luke. ‘Your beautiful car might even be comfortable enough to sleep in. Mind, I’m more accustomed to the farm truck,’ she confessed to Ginnie. ‘But when in the city, act like a city girl, that’s what I say. You might like to pack some more paper bags … sweetheart.’

  ‘I guess we’d better start packing,’ Luke said faintly. ‘Darling.’

  ‘You start packing,’ Lily said tartly, long-term-lover-like. ‘I’m poorly. Ginnie, would you like to help? Maybe you could make me that toast you were offering?’

  ‘Are you offering to make us dinner?’ Luke asked, full of hope, and Ginnie backed out as if burned.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it. We’ll miss you tomorrow night. Come back better, Lily. We’ll have a lovely long chat on Monday.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Lily muttered as Luke closed the door behind her. ‘I just can’t wait.’

  To say the silence was loaded was an understatement. Luke closed the door carefully and then snibbed it, as if even now Ginnie might return.

  Lily backed to the closest dining room chair and sat. Whatever energy she’d had had been spent.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she said at last, trying hard to breathe so she didn’t gasp, ‘that communication seems to be lacking. So we’re a couple. Congratulations are in order. We’ve been dating for years. We’re about to leave on a romantic weekend to some farm I’ve never heard of.’

  ‘Where you ride a horse called Merrylegs.’ He seemed just as winded as she was. ‘I believe two of us are playing this game.’

  ‘It’s not a game,’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ he said, and suddenly he wasn’t. All this time he’d been holding his briefcase. Now he set it down, carefully, like it might explode.

  That’s what the atmosphere felt like, Lily thought. Loaded.

  ‘I’m feeling a wee bit trapped,’ she said, and hauled his bathrobe tighter round her.

  ‘That’s the part I don’t understand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The trapped bit. You’re an agency nurse. You could pack up and leave.’

  ‘If I break my four-week contract.’

  ‘I understand it’d make it hard to find another agency to take you. But there are other cities.’

  ‘I don’t have enough money to move to another city.’

  ‘Would you like to tell me why you’re in trouble?’

  ‘No,’ she said. She thought about it, thought about all the conclusions he might be jumping to, thought that maybe hiding any more conclusions wasn’t a good idea. ‘My mother’s maxed out my credit card,’ she said. ‘She’s done … well, let’s just say savings I thought were in my account no longer are. She’s taken a lover. We live in my tiny two-bedroom apartment and the walls are thin.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Her lover’s the local vicar, husband of a prominent citizen, I’m a scarlet woman by association.’

  ‘Double ouch.’

  ‘Lighthouse Cove is too small.’

  ‘I can see it might be.’ He looked at her, not so much sympathetic as interested. Doctor inspecting patient. Looking at strange symptoms. ‘So why not Adelaide? You trained there. You could get a job there.’

  ‘And my mother would be on my doorstep within days, weeping, asking for money, needing support. Or worse, walking into the ward where I’m working, weeping, asking for money, needing support. She’s done it before and she’ll do it again.’

  ‘So Sydney.’

  ‘For as long as I can manage,’ she said wearily. ‘For as long as I can get by until I need to go home and face the mess. I hadn’t counted on running into a mess myself.’ She sighed, and looked longingly at the bed. ‘I’m really very tired.’

  ‘You are,’ he said, gently this time, as if the physician had made his diagnosis and was moving to treatment phase. ‘But this apartment block is almost an extension of the hospital. We’ll be watched all weekend. The farm is best.’

  ‘I don’t want to move,’ she admitted.

  ‘It’d be better if I went to the farm and you stayed here,’ he conceded. ‘Only you’d get visitors and questions. At the farm you can sleep for three days straight. So what I suggest is that you sleep now for a couple of hours while I finish some patient notes, then I’ll tuck you into my car and you can sleep all the way to Tarrawalla.’

  ‘Tarrawalla?’

  ‘It’s where my elderly uncle lives,’ he said. ‘And the phantom Merrylegs.’ He smiled. ‘And the rest of my horses, all of which you ride like the wind.’

  That smile …

  She shouldn’t.

  Shouldn’t what? Go to his farm? Sink into that smile?

  No, she thought wearily, but her body was caving in.

  ‘You’re beat,’ he said softly, and before she could guess his intention he lifted her and carried her to the bedroom.

  ‘Put me … put me down …’

  ‘Of course I will,’ he said softly. ‘I won’t do anything you don’t like, Lily Ellis. We’ve been unwise enough. Now’s the time to be sensible.’

  She didn’t feel sensible. She felt … she felt …

  Like Luke Williams was carrying her to his bed and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

  Travelling in Luke’s car was almost like travelling in his arms. She lay back in her glorious leather seat, padded with pillows, ensconced in a soft cashmere blanket and felt … cherished.

  ‘I feel like your ancient grandmother, being taken on a nicely padded outing,’ she told him as he negotiated his way up into the hills north-west of Sydney. It was well past dusk. They were driving into the night and the passenger compartment was a pool of luxurious intimacy.

  Luke’s face was a focused profile against the moonlight shining through the driver’s window. His face had such strength … He’d been hurt, Lily had decided after a few covert glances at him. Even if she hadn’t known his wife had died, his face told her that. It looked … forbidding.

  She was fighting an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch his hand on the steering-wheel, as a lover might, as a wife might.

  Or an ancient grandmother ensconced in woolly cashmere.

  ‘My grandmother wouldn’t have been seen dead under a cashmere blanket,’ he said, and she blinked.

  ‘Past tense?’ she said cautiously. ‘Your grandma?’

  ‘She died young; cirrhosis of the liver. Too much champagne.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’re worse ways to go. She was the society matriarch of Singapore.’

  ‘Is that where your family live?’

  ‘Yes.’ Blunt and hard. The meaning was clear. Don’t go there.

  She wouldn’t. But he had family. The thought jolted her. He’d seemed isolated.

  He still seemed isolated.

  And … he’d mentioned an uncle at the farm. Maybe it was time she learned more, even if she couldn’t ask directly about his parents.

  ‘So why aren’t you in Singapore?’ she ventured.

  ‘I was sent to Sydney to boarding school when I was ten and I’ve stayed. A couple of visits home were enough for me, to be honest. My uncle did all the caring needed. He left Singapore when he was twenty as well, pleased to be shot of them.’

  ‘So the Harbour is your de facto family,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘No wonder they matchmake.’

  ‘They won’t any more.’

  ‘Because I’m the match.’ She retreated under her cashmere and watched the car eat white lines. ‘So after
I leave … will you go back to being heartbroken?’

  ‘I haven’t decided.’ He sounded amused. ‘But I’m thinking I won’t give up on you. You’ll be heading into the sunset to find yourself and I’ll be faithful for years, waiting hopelessly for you to return.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Like Miss Havisham, sitting in a pool of mouldy wedding dress.’

  ‘That’ll be me,’ he said, sounding cheerful. ‘So your family. One nutty mother. Who else?’

  ‘Not a sausage.’

  He shook his head. ‘Everyone has a sausage.’

  ‘Nope. My parents were both only children of elderly parents. My dad died when I was twelve. There’s just been me and Mum ever since.’

  ‘Cheap on birthday gifts,’ he said, cautiously.

  ‘Not so much. This year Mum’s self-administered birthday gift was a trip to Paris for her and her vicar. She’s disgusted because apparently I didn’t have as much in my bank account as she thought. That’s why she’s still stuck in Lighthouse Cove, until her vicar finds the extra money—or her vicar gets tired of her.’ She grimaced. ‘It’s a merry-go-round. I’ll put more safeguards in place next time.’

  ‘Next time … You’ll go back?’

  ‘I promised my dad I’d look after her and I will, but I need a break for a bit.’

  ‘Of course,’ Luke said, cheering up. ‘For now you’re my lover, or my ancient grandmother. But it doesn’t matter. My farm’s a haven Tom and I have created, a place with no obligations at all. My farm’s for being whoever you like.’

  Whoever she liked.

  His lover or his grandmother?

  Hmm.

  She snuggled under the cashmere and thought, This could be a very long weekend.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE farmhouse was tiny, remote, perfect.

  Lily gazed in awe at the moonlit valley; at the tiny house set high above a creek meandering through bushland. Mountains loomed in the background, blue-black in the moonlight.

  A trail of smoke wisped from the chimney and a warm glow of light spread from the veranda.

  ‘Who lives here?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But … the fire … the light …’

  ‘My uncle lives in the big house. He likes his privacy. I bought the adjoining land so this is mine. Tom knows when I’m coming. He’ll have brought in supplies, lit the fire, got the place warm.’