The Hidden Years

by Penny Jordan

  She was so thin, so fragile… and yet her breasts still so surprisingly voluptuous that his body was suddenly intensely aware of her and aroused by her.

  Battling against his own conflicting feelings—those of man the primitive ruled by his most basic hungers, and those of man the thinker, the product of millenia of civilisation who had learned to tame and control those hungers and to put other things before them—he held her off from his body, but already it was too late, already he could see the mixed emotions of fury and outrage mingling in her eyes with her recognition of his reaction to her.

  'Traitor.'

  Did she actually spit the word at him, or was he simply imagining it? he wondered ruefully as he held her firmly a safe distance away from his unruly flesh and spoke to her levelly and calmly. 'Sage—'

  'I'm not letting him go… I love him.'

  'Yes,' Daniel heard himself agreeing, 'but you're not sure that he loves you with the same intensity, are you, Sage?'

  He didn't know what made him say it. Scott had never said anything to him to imply that his feelings for her were not just as strong as hers for him. True, Scott's was a different nature, calmer, less passionate, less intense, but Daniel had never doubted the strength of the younger man's feelings, and yet when Sage went limp in his arms, her face suddenly ashen, her mouth trembling with a vulnerability he had cut too deep for her to hide, he realised bleakly that his chance remark had touched a sore spot, an Achilles' heel which he had never known existed.

  'He does love me. He does…'

  She said it like a little girl, the rage, the passion suddenly all gone from her, leaving in its place such an open expanse of self-doubt and fear that Daniel felt his heart turn over inside his chest in compassion and an odd, inexplicable anger, directed not just at her for that vulnerability, but at all those people in her life who had undermined that magnificent pride and arrogance and taught her instead to feel pain and anguish.

  'She has always felt that to her parents, especially her father, she's a poor second best,' Scott had once told him, and he had been amused and a little scornful, refusing to accept that she had ever believed any such thing, comparing the luxury of her childhood with the paucity of his own, her imagined lack of paternal love with his very real one—but now, abruptly, he wasn't so sure.

  What he was sure of was that he had an overwhelming longing to take hold of her and hold on to her, to keep her safe and secure, to carry her away with him right now to his bed and keep her there until…

  Lost in his own thoughts, he relaxed his hold on her just enough for her to break free and whirl round, heading for the door.

  He had to let her go. Common sense told him that he couldn't keep her here by force, and yet as he watched her he felt in some odd way as though he had failed her. Failed her! Scott was his friend, not Sage. Scott had already made his decision to return home even before his accident.

  At home he would receive the constant twenty-four-hour-a-day attention he needed if he was going to make a full recovery, if he was going to come successfully out of his coma. Sage couldn't give him that kind of attention. She didn't have that kind of rock-solid, slow, steady ability, she didn't have that kind of emotional strength. She was a child still in so many ways… A spoilt, pampered child, who had shown him tonight that coming from a wealthy protected background did not automatically protect that child from emotional starvation and hunger.

  While Daniel was reliving the past, Sage too was remembering, shivering a little as she wondered if she was doomed always to lose those she loved the most.

  First David, then Scott, and now her mother lay ill… She stopped her thoughts abruptly and closed her eyes.

  She loved her mother? How could she, when she knew that love was not returned?

  For a moment she felt all the helpless anguish of a child; not a child, the child, the child she had once been, her sense of alienation enforced as she stood apart from the others at David's funeral, watching them as an outsider, knowing she was an outsider, an outcast, knowing that she wasn't wanted or needed. She had watched as her mother had bent over her father's chair, concern darkening her eyes. She had watched as Faye had drawn closer to her mother's side, she had watched as her brother's coffin was lowered into its grave, knowing that, if she walked away now, none of the other three would even notice she had gone.

  It had been while she was in her last year at school, having taken her A levels, that David had died. Only that morning he had been talking to her, soothing her after her latest row with her mother. It was such a needless, wasteful, cruel death. She had often wondered how her mother had found the strength to bear it. Had David been her child… She shuddered, acknowledging that it was perhaps in David's death that the seeds of her own reluctance to conceive lay, her fear that she could never cope as her mother had done with the death of so dearly loved a child—and her mother had loved David, far, far more than she had ever loved her.

  By one of those odd quirks of fate they had all been together when the news came. Sage had been home from school and Faye and David had been visiting them with Camilla, who had only been a baby at the time. Sage remembered the jealousy she had felt when she saw David's obvious devotion to Faye and their child.

  David had had a meeting to attend, something connected with the parish council. He wouldn't be long, he had said, and then he had gone.

  Less than an hour later the police had arrived to tell them that there had been an accident; that David had swerved to avoid hitting a child, who had been riding a bike out into the road without looking first, but that as he'd swerved he had lost control of the car which had crashed, killing him on impact.

  They had all been in her mother's sitting-room. Her father had been having one of his rare good days. Sage remembered that she had automatically looked first at her mother and then at her father.

  Her mother's expression had been calm, controlled— but her father's…

  She remembered how she had got up from her chair and run to him, wanting to share his grief, wanting to hold him and be held as she gave way to her own. But as she reached him he had pushed her away with so much force that she had fallen, striking her shoulder on the edge of her mother's desk.

  'Get out of here… get out!' he screamed at her. 'Oh, my God, why did it have to be David? It should have been you… it should have been you,' he had told her, and his voice had been full of rage and loathing.

  It had been worse than if he had physically hit her, far, far worse. She remembered how she had fought back her tears. She had always known that he preferred David, of course, but to hear it said, to see how great the gulf between his love for David and his lack of love for her actually had been cruelly underlined…

  She could remember as though it had just happened the throbbing pain in her shoulder, and the tearing, agonising pain she could feel inside.

  She remembered her mother coming towards her, taking hold of her arm. She remembered how she had pulled away, white-faced and sick, as her mother had quickly bustled her out of the room.

  Her mother had been still dry-eyed and calm-faced. 'Go up to your room,' she had told Sage. 'I'll deal with your father…'

  She had paused as though she was about to add something but Sage hadn't let her, bursting out, 'Oh, yes, send me to my room, get rid of me… after all, you don't want me, do you, any of you? I'm not your precious David… Well, I don't want you either… any of you. You all wish it was me who was dead and not David. Well, I don't care… I don't care…'

  But she had cared, of course—she had cared terribly, achingly, devastatingly.

  Later Chivers had brought her some tea. She could tell that he had been crying.

  'Your mother said you was to stay up here for a while, Miss Sage,' he told her uncomfortably. 'She's sent for the doctor… Major Danvers…'

  Sage had stopped listening. She didn't want to hear about her father, didn't want to know… Just as he didn't want to know about her…

  Upstairs alone in her room
, she had cried for her brother and for herself, and she had vowed that one day there would be someone in her life who would love her, truly love her.

  The funeral had been a nightmare. Faye had collapsed completely, utterly devastated by David's death. Her father looked so ill that Sage was surprised their doctor allowed him to attend the funeral.

  Only her mother had appeared unaffected, standing dry-eyed at the graveside, and then later back at the house, moving with composure among the mourners.

  After they had gone, after it was all over and Faye had been put to bed, heavily sedated, and her father had shut himself up in his study, she remembered she had screamed at her mother, 'David belonged to me too, you know… He was my brother, my brother. And he was the only person in this house who ever gave a damn about me.'

  She had told herself that she was glad she was going away to university. That she didn't care if she never saw Cottingdean again—and then six weeks after David's death her father became seriously ill and took to his bed.

  His health had always been frail, but after David's death it was as though he had lost the will to go on.

  Once again her mother had been composed and capable. Sage was the one who had stood outside his bedroom door with tears pouring down her face, crying out to him in her heart to ask why it was that he had never allowed her to love him, never allowed her to get close to him, that he had always rejected and disliked her. Not expecting that she would ever know the answers to those questions, ever know what it was within her that made those who should have been the closest to her turn from her. One short year after David's death, the expected happened—Edward passed away peacefully in the night.

  Faye and Camilla had now been living permanently at Cottingdean. She had felt more alien and unwanted there than ever. She had been glad that she was going away to university. Cottingdean held nothing for her now. Her mother was a stranger to her; a stranger whom she neither liked nor loved, or so she had told herself then.

  She got up and prowled restlessly round the room. And yet despite that she had taken Scott home here to Cottingdean… But that was because he had been curious about the house, because he had wanted to see it.

  She remembered that she had deliberately chosen a weekend when she had thought her mother would be away on business, only when she and Scott got here she discovered that her mother's business trip had been completed early.

  Naturally her mother had not shown either anger or surprise that she should choose to bring a visitor home when she was not there. She had welcomed Scott and quickly put him as his ease.

  She had also made sure that the guest-room given him was well away from her own, Sage remembered wryly.

  Scott had quickly fallen under her mother's spell. She had been jealously conscious of how well the two of them were getting on together, of how eagerly Scott responded to her mother's interest in him.

  Jealous and protective of her burgeoning love, she had told her mother as little as she could about him, leaving it to Scott to explain that his father had sent him to England to get what he termed 'some polish'.

  'McLaren,' her mother had repeated when Scott told her his surname, causing Scott to hesitate and explain:

  'Yes… my forebears were from Scotland, I believe.'

  'Yes, yes, they would have been.'

  After that, or so it seemed to Sage, her mother had virtually monopolised Scott's time, so that Sage had never been able to be alone with him, and to her irritation and jealousy Scott had seemed to be quite happy with the situation, only too pleased to answer all her mother's questions about his life at home.

  'Look, why don't the two of you come out and see the station for yourselves? I'll leave you the address and number,' he had suggested.

  Sage had told him scornfully, 'The last place on earth Mother would want to go is an outback sheep station, isn't it, Mother?' she had challenged.

  She had been jealous, she had realised later, jealous of her mother… jealous of the way she had so quickly and easily charmed Scott, Scott who was hers, hers and hers alone.

  She could have sworn that her mother liked Scott, and yet she had been the one to get in touch with Scott's father, and to put in train the events which had eventually led to her and Scott being parted. She had hated her mother for that, especially when she had discovered the truth: that her mother had actually telephoned Scott's father to warn him that the relationship developing between their two offspring was one that neither of them would find advantageous.

  She had thought then that it was because her mother had wanted a very different kind of marriage for her that she had interfered, and she had decided that, no matter what else she did with her life, she would never, ever marry a man chosen for her by her mother.

  When she had accused her mother of deliberately setting out to break up her relationship with Scott, she had not denied it, simply saying that she believed she had acted in Sage's best interests.

  'I'm a woman, not a child,' Sage had answered bitterly. 'I love him.'

  'You love him now or at least you think you do,' her mother had told her quietly, but she had gone very pale, and looked unusually strained. 'But he isn't the man for you, Sage. Marriage to you would destroy him,' she had told her cruelly. 'Is that what you want? He needs someone gentler, calmer…'

  'How do you know what he wants or needs?' Sage had demanded, white-faced. 'You know nothing about him!'

  'And you do? Sage, as always you see only what you want to see. You need a much stronger man to make you happy.'

  'To keep me under control, don't you mean? I'll never forgive you for what you've done,' she had told her. 'Never… never… and if you think I'm going to marry the oh, so suitable Jonathon—'

  'Marry Jonathon,' her mother had repeated, and she had laughed then, infuriating Sage. 'My dear, if you could persuade Jonathon to marry you, you would be a very fortunate young woman indeed, but I suspect he has far too much sense for that, and that he'll find himself a dutiful, biddable wife whom his mother will boss around, poor girl.'

  But Sage hadn't believed her—she knew her mother and her Machiavellian mind, or at least she had thought she had.

  Her mother had been out of the country again on business when Scott had had his accident. She had obviously taken to Scott, because even in the depths of her own anguish Sage could remember how her mother had questioned her about what had happened, about Scott's chances of recovery. 'Why not ring Scott's father and ask him?' she had challenged bitterly. 'Just as you did when you rang him to get him to drag Scott home and away from me. How did you get him to do that, Mother? Did you use some of your famous charm or did you simply tell him a sheep station owner's son simply wasn't good enough for a Danvers?'

  'Don't be ridiculous,' her mother had answered coolly, refusing to discuss the subject.

  And yet at the same time—when Scott had gone back to Australia and she, losing the will to do anything other than lock herself away in her room in her hall of residence, huddling under the bedclothes, not eating, not sleeping, not doing anything other than longing for Scott—it had been her mother, alerted by Daniel to what was going on, who had taken her home to Cottingdean, and who had kept her there until her pride, outraged by the knowledge that her mother, her enemy was witnessing her weakness, had forced her to take control of her life again, to build for herself a mask behind which she could hide her pain.

  She had gone back to university at the start of the academic year, determined to catch up on her studies and determined, too, that no one, no one, would ever hurt her through her vulnerability again, that never again would she allow herself to care so deeply for anyone that they could hurt her.

  She had also gone back to university determined to get her Arts degree and to make herself independent from her mother, to cut herself off from her and shut her out of her life, so that never, ever again could she interfere in it the way she had done over Scott. Daniel by this time had left Alcester, and she had felt relieved that she did not have to see him
again.

  Sage had pushed to the far reaches of her mind her last confrontation scene with Daniel. The wounds from that encounter were still too raw for her to want to risk opening them again by any further contact with Scott's so-called 'friend'.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Daniel hadn't in fact seen Sage again for some days after their last disastrous meeting and it was a telephone call from the hospital that alerted him to what she was doing.

  He frowned as he listened to the message he was given, and then, picking up his jacket and his keys, headed for his car.

  He felt sorry for her, and wondered a little at what manner of man Scott's father was, not to allow her these last few hours with his son.

  As far as he knew he was the only one who had guessed that it was her temper that had provoked the accident; he could well understand that Lewis McLaren would want to take his son home, that he might not particularly have wanted his son and heir falling in love with an unknown English girl, but to banish her from Scott's bedside, especially when within a very short space of time he would be putting so many thousands upon thousands of miles between them anyway, seemed unnecessarily cruel.

  The sister who had rung from the hospital had explained to him that Sage was positively haunting the place, that she had begged and pleaded with them to be allowed to see Scott, even though she knew he was still in a coma and unlikely to respond to her.

  They had apparently had to remove her forcibly several times but even this hadn't deterred her, and now it seemed the hospital staff were becoming concerned for her health.

  Knowing from his visits that he, Daniel, was one of Scott's closest friends, they were appealing to him in the hope that he would be able to make Sage see reason.

  Scott's father had made it plain that Sage was not to be allowed to see his son and, since Scott could not speak for himself as yet, the older man's wishes had to be obeyed.