The Hidden Years

by Penny Jordan

  'It seemed to me, when I heard about all you was doing here, that this would be a good billet for me. And then you having the baby put the seal on it, so to speak…'

  He didn't say why, and Liz knew better than to ask. Harriet Fane might have been a rather unlikely fairy godmother, but the gift she had given them in the shape of Chivers was certainly priceless…

  Suddenly life was becoming a little easier. She found she was laughing more, singing when she worked in the gardens. She found there were days, sometimes days at a time when she no longer thought of Kit.

  Her birthday came and went, the occasion marked by a cake baked by Chivers, and by an astounding collection of unexpected gifts.

  And then, one bright sunny morning, just as she was beginning to feel at ease with her new world, she had a second unexpected visitor.

  This one too was female, and she also knocked at the front door. But beyond that she was as different a woman from Harriet Fane as it was possible to be.

  Liz opened the front door, unable to help admiring the soft sheen of the polished panelling, a smile curving her mouth. Her smile vanished into startled astonishment as she saw the woman standing there. Tall and slim, she had a smooth, elegant chignon of dark hair. Her face was perfectly made-up, and if there was a certain hardness around her eyes then Liz charitably pretended not to notice it. She was smoking a cigarette, with quick, impatient movements, and her clothes were obviously new and expensive, as were the gold and diamond wedding and engagement rings she was wearing.

  She looked like something out of one of the magazines which Louise Ferndean sometimes received from her married daughter: expensive, brittle, and very, very out of place in Cottingdean's sunny hallway.

  Behind her, drawn up in the drive, was a huge shining motor car, again obviously new, and as though she sensed Liz's bewilderment she gestured towards it and said almost acidly, 'A gift from my new husband. Nice, isn't it? May I come in? I'm Lillian Chalmers, by the way.'

  Liz was mystified. The other woman plainly expected her to recognise the name.

  'I was engaged to Edward's cousin, before he went and got himself killed…'

  She stubbed out her cigarette almost viciously and said under her breath, 'Probably the best favour he ever did me… Did you know Kit, by the way? I've been in the States for simply ages, and I only got to know of your marriage when I came back. Mummy mentioned it to me, and now that Lee and I are married… Well, I thought I'd come down here before I fly out to New York… for old times' sake, you know. Kit had some pretty wild parties here in the old days. Not that I was invited, of course. They weren't the sort of affairs a man invites his fiancée to, especially when he's only marrying her for her father's money…'

  Liz felt her head spin. An odd sense of deja vu swept over her, an awareness of being dragged into a dark place of pain and despair.

  'I'm sorry,' she said again. 'I'm afraid…'

  This woman had been engaged to Kit, had loved him, she recognised bleakly. Had been hurt by him…

  It was like being frozen into a nightmare from which there was no escape. The other woman plainly had no idea that she herself had ever been involved with Kit; she was not directing her poison, her invective at her personally, Liz realised. She was simply looking for a way of ridding herself of its taint; a kind of emotional cleansing before turning her back on her past and walking forward into her new life.

  'I loved him, you know,' she said bitterly as she followed Liz into the kitchen and immediately lit another cigarette. 'That was the pure hell of it. I loved him. And for a while he allowed me to think he loved me too… Just long enough to get me into bed with him. To him it was all a game. He knew I'd never break it off with him. It amused him to hurt me… to tell me that he was just marrying me for the money.'

  Liz wanted to cry out to her to stop, to tell her that she didn't want to hear, that her words were destroying her own dreams, her precious memories.

  Chivers had taken Edward and David into the village. He had managed to fix an old bicycle basket on to the wheelchair, which enabled him to push them both. It would be ages before they returned.

  'Even knowing what he was… I thought afterwards, when he was dead, that I'd die too. There seemed no point in doing anything else.' Her red-painted mouth twisted. 'I even wished I were having his child. Ridiculous of me. That would have been the last thing Kit would have wanted. There was a time once, when I thought… He was furious…blamed me for it…even though I knew nothing and he was the first.' She bit her lip and stopped, dragging deeply on her cigarette, while Liz fought back her own nausea. She didn't want to hear this. It was too much… She discovered that she was shaking and cold. Why…? Why had this had to happen? Why couldn't she have been left in ignorance?

  'He gave me an address. I went… It was a filthy place… and the woman there…' She gave another shudder. 'Thank God it was all a false alarm. I learned afterwards from a friend that several of the women who had been to her had died…

  'Kit hated women,' she announced. 'Oh, you'd never have known it… he had all the charm in the world, all the right words… but underneath he hated us. He liked hurting people. Edward told me that once, but I wouldn't listen. I thought Edward was just jealous of him—Kit had so much, and Edward so little. Even before he was wounded, he could never compare with Kit. Everyone— every woman who met him adored him. Perhaps that was the trouble. Perhaps he could only despise us for our weakness in wanting him. I don't think he cared about anyone other than himself in his whole life.'

  She grimaced. 'As soon as his father died, he stripped this place of everything of any value in it. Brought his drunken pals and their girls down from London and let them run amok. The couple his father paid to look after the house left. Poor Edward. It must have been more of a burden than anything else when he found he'd inherited. Of course, what money there was in the family went to Kit…

  'You're very young to have married a man like Edward. So badly wounded…'

  The blue eyes weren't friendly, and Liz heard herself saying quietly, 'I knew Edward before… before…'

  'And afterwards, when they sent him back to you, you felt you had to go through with whatever promises you'd made him. How noble of you. What's it like… marriage?'

  Liz stared at her. She was frightened, she recognised. Underneath the paint and expensive clothes she was scared.

  'It's like life,' she told her wryly. 'It's up to you what you make of it.'

  Instantly the hard mask was back in place. 'Really?' she drawled. 'Well, I shall have to see what I can do, then, shan't I? At least Lee is rich enough to provide me with a good settlement if we decided to call it quits and divorce. The boot is now on the other foot, so to speak, you see,' she added with a brilliant, glittering smile. 'My father has lost his money, and I've married Lee for the same reason Kit wanted to marry me. I've shocked you, haven't I? I—I suppose you think that after being treated the way I was by Kit…'

  'It isn't for me to sit in judgement,' Liz told her quietly. How much of her attitude, her hardness had been caused by Kit? How much destruction and pain had he been responsible for?

  Only later would she realise that never once had she questioned the other woman's revelations… never once had any kind of denial of what she was saying risen automatically to her lips… and she recognised that it was almost as though a part of her had known, had always known what Kit was, but that she had clung to her dreams like a child afraid of the dark.

  'I must go—I don't really know why I came down here…'

  'To exorcise a ghost?' Liz suggested compassionately.

  After she had gone, Liz sat for a long time simply staring into space. She had sensed all along that Edward had not cared for his cousin, and because of that, because she was sensitive enough to realise that Edward wanted her memories of his cousin kept in the past, she took care never to refer to Kit. Not even in her most private moments with her son. She already knew how jealous Edward could be.

  She h
ad promised Edward… given him her word that David would be his son, and she had never once broken that word. Now she was glad… glad that her child would grow up in ignorance of what his blood father had been… glad that whatever had guided her life had pushed her in Edward's direction. Glad that she had been fortunate enough to marry him. She shuddered, remembering the other woman's brief but graphic description of the place Kit had sent her to, and she thanked God that she had never been given the opportunity to tell Kit of her own pregnancy.

  As the afternoon wore on and she sat locked in her thoughts, although she didn't realise it she was finally closing a door on her youth… Closing it and sealing it as she vowed that for the rest of her life she would strive to repay Edward for all that he had done for her. David, Edward and Cottingdean… From now on they were the boundaries of her life.

  Kit had already robbed her of her right to her sexuality, although she didn't realise it; now he had destroyed her dream as well…

  Just one final time, and as a punishment not a panacea, she allowed herself to remember each second of time she had spent with Kit… each whispered word…each embrace…but this time she stripped from them her own naiveté and innocence. This time she saw them for what they were and felt sick with self-disgust. How could she have been so deceived? Kit had never loved her… would have laughed in her face if he had ever guessed how she had felt.

  Now her body forced her to remember how it had not been pleasure she had felt at the moment of possession, but pain… pain and fear.

  She felt no regret at the knowledge that her life with Edward would be celibate. She had her son, she had a husband who was compassionate and caring, she had a home which she would one day restore to what it had once been. To cherish and protect these three would be her goal, her destiny.

  She was just nineteen years old.

  The third surprise did not arrive in the form of a visitor, but by letter. A typed letter, addressed to her personally, and which she opened and then read with a deepening frown.

  'Something wrong?' Edward asked her. . They were eating breakfast in the small sunny room which she and Chivers had managed to clean and refurnish from items they had found in the attic.

  The attic was proving to be a treasure-house. Much of the furniture stored there was old-fashioned and broken, but Chivers's magical fingers always found a way of effecting a repair, and Liz was gradually coming to find that she actually preferred the rich patina of these old, often shabby pieces to the modern utility furniture that seemed so ugly in comparison.

  'No,' she replied to Edward's question. 'It's a letter from my aunt's solicitors.'

  Liz had written regularly to her aunt since David's birth but had never received a reply. It was a shock to discover that her aunt was dead, and that, moreover, she had decreed that Liz was not to be told until after the funeral. What came as even more of a surprise was the news that her aunt had willed to her her entire estate: the small house and its contents, and a sum of money that made Liz gasp with shock.

  'Just over a thousand pounds! Well, it's a nice little sum,' said Edward.

  'It's a fortune,' Liz retorted indignantly, but Edward merely smiled and shook his head.

  He was more content than he had ever dreamed of being. His wounds still bothered him, but now he had something he had never had before. Now he had hope… Now he had Liz, he had David and he had Cottingdean, and he loved them all. He had promised himself, though, that he would never burden Liz with his feelings. What was the point? He could never be a husband to her in any physical sense. And yet jealously he watched her, wondering if there might one day come a time when she would yearn for a physical relationship with some other man. When she would fall in love with some other man!

  'What shall we do with it?' Liz asked him. She was thinking of perhaps buying a small car, if they could find one… Something that would make life easier and more enjoyable for Edward.

  But when she said as much he frowned and told her curtly, 'No, Liz, that money's yours. You should spend it on something for yourself—some pretty clothes,' he added vaguely.

  Liz laughed. Pretty clothes… What need had she for anything like that? Even if she could buy them… Men really had no idea, and besides, she had been thinking recently that if she could buy a second-hand sewing machine—she couldn't keep borrowing Louise's—she could utilise so much more of the vast amount of fabrics and clothes stored away in the attic. However, she had already mentioned to Chivers that a sewing machine wouldn't come amiss and when one mysteriously appeared she wasn't surprised. She had stopped asking where he managed to find the articles he produced, and now was merely grateful for them.

  Spend it on yourself, Edward had said, but later on that day as she stood in her garden looking out towards the hills she suddenly knew exactly what she was going to do with her aunt's bequest…

  'But—a ram…' Vic stared at her.

  'Not just any ram, Vic. We want the best, the very best there is. If you could go anywhere in the world to buy him, where would you go?'

  'Australia,' he told her promptly. 'They've been doing some cross-breeding there… I was reading about it a while ago.' He shrugged. 'But it's impossible.'

  'No…no, it isn't,' Liz corrected him.

  It took a great deal of effort to persuade him, and even more to convince Edward, but in the end she had her way. For a fee, a neighbouring farmer agreed to run the flock with his own while Vic was away, and letters were written, arrangements made.

  'It's like Jason looking for the golden fleece,' Liz teased him.

  'Aye… you're not wrong. Gold is what our fleeces will be worth if I can bring one of Australia's finest rams with me. It won't be easy to buy one, though…'

  'No,' Liz agreed, and smiled at him. 'But you'll do it, Vic.'

  Half of her almost envied him the adventure which lay ahead of him, but she had her own world. Cottingdean was her world, and if sometimes it seemed small and enclosed… well, she put those thoughts out of her mind and reminded herself how much she had to be grateful for.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A shadow chased across the face of the moon, and out across the fields the vixen paused, sniffing the air. Her cubs were independent now, but she had grown used to feeding them… caring for them. She was lean with the leanness of a diligent mother, her own hunger coming second to that of her young.

  In her sleep Sage frowned, her dreams jumbled and confused. The diary lay face down on the carpet beside her bed where it had slipped when she'd fallen asleep, too exhausted to read on, and yet so enthralled, so gripped by what she was reading that she had fought off her need to sleep as long as she could.

  In her dreams she was standing in the hallway of the house, but it was not the hallway as she had always known it, mellow and graceful with its polished panelling, its heavy oak antiques, its rich Persian rugs… This hallway was empty, its panelling stained and damp, its halls festooned with cobwebs, just as her mother had described it in her diary.

  Outside the vixen howled, a mournful sound that penetrated Sage's dreams. It was the eternal sound of the female yearning for her mate—for succour…for companionship… for love. In her dreams she wept and then cried out.

  'Scott… no… no, don't leave me…' But the once-familiar face of her lover was already fading, vague, and suddenly its image was overshadowed by those of other men…more men than she cared to remember…so many men that she would not allow herself to remember. Men whom she had taken to her bed, but never to her heart. Men who had served for a little while at least to make herself forget how she had been abandoned… rejected. Men who had been more than willing to share with her the physical pleasures she and Scott had never been allowed to know…

  How easy it had been to fool them, to let them believe that they mattered to her. How stupid they were, how vain.

  All of them. But no… not all of them… there had been one, one who had seen through her, had recognised… Who had rejected her. Who had recognised the false coin she w
as offering and who had thrown it back at her.

  She could see him now, towering over her, furiously angry; so angry that for a moment she had thought he might actually hit her.

  That he hadn't done so had been to his credit and not hers; she had watched as he had battled against his rage, fought it and won that inward battle, and as he walked away from her she'd had a stupid impulse to call him back, to… to what? Apologise?

  In her sleep she moved impatiently, as though seeking an escape from her own dreams, from the knowledge which was shattering the barrier she had always kept between herself and others. And the root cause of the destruction of that barrier was her mother's diary… the new perspective she was getting on her mother, not as a parent, but as a woman, a vulnerable, courageous, likeable woman… the kind of woman she would have welcomed as a friend.

  In her narrow hospital bed Elizabeth Danvers surfaced briefly from the drug-controlled sleep. A nurse, alerted to her awakening, hurried to her bedside. It was imperative at this stage that their patient was kept sedated and calm.

  With quick expertise she soothed the distressed movements of Elizabeth's hands, while monitoring the technological battery of life-saving equipment surrounding the bed.

  Elizabeth opened her eyes, knowing instinctively that she was somewhere alien and unfamiliar…knowing there was something she must do… someone she must see… something important that awaited her attention… but already the nurse was deftly sliding the needle into her skin, injecting the drug, and then watching the ever-wakeful monitors.

  Only when they told her that her patient was once again locked in a calm, protective sleep did she leave her bedside.

  Faye couldn't sleep. It was always like this on the first Monday night of the month, and sometimes for several nights before and afterwards. Sage had given her the first of Liz's diaries. She had started to read it when she came to bed. For a while it had distracted her.