by Penny Jordan
The shocked disgust in Faye's voice irritated Sage.
'For goodness' sake,' she broke in cynically, 'what difference is it going to make to Mother? All I'm suggesting is using a healthy diversionary tactic to prevent Camilla from going into a headlong rebellion which could result in something far more dangerous than sulks and a bout of tears.'
Faye went pale. 'You aren't suggesting that she'd defy me and go to this affair behind my back?'
Was Faye really so naive? Sage wondered grimly. Couldn't she see that by her refusal to find some middle road that she and Camilla could travel together she was virtually alienating her altogether, and that Camilla might see her refusal to accept that she was almost adult and that she had a right to govern her own life, at least in part, as the kind of challenge no right-minded teenager could ignore?
'But she's never done anything like this,' Faye protested, genuinely shocked and disturbed. 'She's always been so well-behaved…'
When Sage remained silent she frowned. 'You think I'm being unreasonable and unfair, don't you?' she said bitterly into the silence. 'Can't you see that all I want to do is protect her? To keep her safe to make sure…'
She broke off, but not before Sage had heard the fierce passion in her voice.
'I'm not trying to criticise, Faye,' she said quietly. 'God knows in your shoes I'd have made every mistake in the book, and I can understand how you feel, but you can't protect her all the time… not without making her so vulnerable that the moment she's exposed to reality she'll be in mortal danger, like a child kept in a totally germ-free environment who is so vulnerable to infection that it could die from a common cold.
'It's only natural that a girl of her age should want to go out and have fun. I'm simply suggesting that if you allow her to have some measure of that fun here in the relative safety of her own home she'd be less at risk than if she did defy you and go off to this party, which I agree with you sounds very suspect indeed.'
'A bit like saying that it's all right for a child to play with matches as long as there's someone around with a fire extinguisher,' Faye suggested sarcastically.
Sage refused to rise to the bait, saying only, 'Something like that, yes. With any luck she'll burn her fingers and nothing else and the shock of that small pain will ensure that she doesn't run the risk of a much bigger and possibly fatal one.'
'I'm not listening to any more of this—' Faye began, her mouth tightening, making her look oddly like her daughter. She stopped as the phone rang imperiously.
Sage, who was closest to the receiver, reached for it, her muscles tensing as she heard a female voice saying crisply that Dr Ferguson wanted to speak with her.
She had to wait several seconds before she was put through; something which would normally have irritated her immeasurably, but on this occasion she found she was holding her breath, mentally praying, Dear God, please let her be all right. Please… please…
'Miss Danvers, I wanted to have a word with you about your mother.'
How on earth did he always manage to sound so exhausted and clinically distant at the same time? Sage wondered as she tightened her grip on the receiver.
'She's holding her own very nicely now, and we think her condition has stabilised enough for us to go ahead and operate…'
Sage tried to speak and found she couldn't. Her mouth had gone dry, her throat muscles locking against the spasm of fear that wrenched through her.
'When?' was all she could croak into the heart-numbing silence. She found herself wishing desperately she could see him. If she could she was sure that by looking into his eyes she would know whether or not he expected her mother to survive, whether he was simply talking about an operation for form's sake, knowing how limited were its chances of success, or whether he really believed her mother had a fighting chance.
'The day after tomorrow.'
Two days… Two days, that was all. After that…
'I… We… Can we see her first? Today?'
'Not today—we've only just got her stabilised. She is conscious though, and the excitement and anxiety of having visitors could destabilise her too easily. You can see her before we operate. I'll get my secretary to get in touch with you and let you know when…'
Sage was just about to hang up when he asked her in a totally different voice, almost as though the question was being dragged from him against his will, 'Your sister-in-law got home safely, did she?'
Sage just stared across the table. Faye must have been able to hear what he was saying because her face, which had been pale and set, suddenly burned with the hot colour that crawled up under her skin.
'Yes… yes, she did,' Sage told him, not taking her eyes off Faye. 'Would you like to have a word with her?'
Faye was making frantic dismissive signals to her, anger sparkling in her eyes.
The faint hesitancy had gone completely from his voice as he denied curtly, 'No, that won't be necessary. Goodbye, Miss Danvers.'
Sage stared at her sister-in-law as she replaced the receiver, waiting for Faye to say something, to make some comment, but to her surprise Faye stood up awkwardly and said only, 'So they're going to go ahead and operate… Oh, my God, I hope they know what they're doing…'
'So do I,' Sage agreed. In the desk drawer there were still several unread diaries, and suddenly she had a fierce urge to read them now, as though there was a compelling need to do so before her mother's operation.
There was plenty of time, she told herself… She could read them tonight while she waited for Daniel Cavanagh to let her know his decision—perhaps he might call today, instead of tomorrow.
Daniel Cavanagh… Odd how she had never realised he had met her mother, but then why should she? She and Liz had not exactly been close confidantes over the years. Enmity rather than love had been the strongest emotion between them. On her part at least… The coldness her mother had always shown her, which had so distressed her during the years of her growing-up, repelled and angered her once she was adult, and yet the Liz she was coming to know so well through the diaries was the exact opposite of the woman she had always believed her mother to be. There was no coldness in that woman; no lack of compassion, of emotion—far from it… So why had she reacted so differently to her? She had heard of some women rejecting a particular child. Was that -what had happened to her? Had her mother rejected her for some reason—was that why she had held her so much at a distance?
As an adult she had tried to analyse why her mother had always been so distant from her, and had ended up persuading herself that it was simply a matter of two personalities that would always clash rather than meld. It could not be that she was the result of an unwanted pregnancy; the mere fact that her mother had gone through what surely, to a woman of her temperament, must have been a comparatively difficult and embarrassing set of procedures to even conceive her had to prove that she had been wanted.
She wondered whose had been the decision to initiate that conception. There was such a large gap between herself and David that she could not have been wanted as a companion for an only child.
For her mother to have even contemplated conception by artificial insemination could only point to a deeply felt need for a second child in its own right. Had it been perhaps that she had wanted another boy?
What was the point in asking herself these questions now? Maybe the diaries would give her the answers. All she could know was that surely both her parents must have wanted a second child to have agreed to the procedures necessary to produce her. She had long ago come to accept that her father most probably had rejected her because it was not his seed which had given her life…another man had supplied that all-important spark, even if anonymously and totally distantly, without any physical contact between himself and her mother.
It seemed ironic to her that she, with her wild, hotheaded temperament, should be the product of something as cold and clinical as conception via the instrument of modern technical science.
Jenny came in while she was absor
bed in her own thoughts, her eyebrows lifting when she saw she was alone.
'No one else hungry?' Jenny questioned, eyeing both Faye's and Camilla's clean plates.
'They had a row,' Sage told her. 'We've had some news about Mother. They're going to operate in two days. It will be very much touch and go. They're going to let us see her beforehand…'
She was surprised when Jenny reached out and hugged her. Women rarely touched her. She had an aloofness about her which, married to her elegance and sexuality, made her own sex unnecessarily wary with her, and now, with Jenny's plump arms around her, she felt an unexpected urge to give in to a surprisingly childish reaction to her comfort by bursting into tears.
'It will be all right, Sage, love. You'll see. Your mother's too strong to give up…'
'I hope so, Jenny, I hope so… Look, I'm going out for half an hour or so. If anyone should ring…' She paused, wondering if Daniel would ring while she was out, suspecting that he might deliberately wait until his forty-eight hours were up before making any attempt to get in touch with her.
'Tell them… Oh, just tell them I've gone out.'
She took the Porsche, driving into the village where she stopped at the post office to buy herself a paper. The small shop-cum-post office was packed. Everyone seemed to know about her mother and wanted to commiserate with her. They also all seemed to have strong and voluble views on the new road, which they also wanted to communicate to her, so that it was almost an hour before she was free to escape.
A restless gnawing urgency, reminiscent of the worst of her teenage moods, seemed to have overtaken her; she didn't want to go back to the house and Camilla and Faye's squabble, and yet she didn't want to be too far away either. Why? In case Daniel suddenly unexpectedly arrived? And what if he did? It wouldn't mean anything other than that he had come to a decision. You didn't blackmail a man like Daniel and suddenly miraculously transform his dislike and contempt both for you and for his own physical desire for you into respect and… And what? What was it she wanted from him?
Nothing, she told herself savagely, climbing into the Porsche and jerkily starting the engine. She didn't want anything from him.
Not even the satisfaction of wiping away the memory of how he had rejected her—not even the satisfaction of supplanting it with another and far more satisfactory reaction. Her body tensed, a wild pulse suddenly throbbing at the base of her throat, her skin tight with heat and shock. Why, why, why did the thought of Daniel finding her desirable…wanting her…being aroused by her have such an immediate and erotic effect on her own senses?
Cynically she answered her own question. If you don't know the answer to that one by now, my girl, then you haven't learned much over the years.
She knew the answer all right, but she didn't want to confront the reasons behind it.
Forget Daniel Cavanagh, she warned herself, and yet she still drove north of the village instead of south, still turned the car down the lane that led to the land Daniel had bought, still parked it there, a showy scarlet monstrosity that suddenly had lost its appeal for her.
What was she trying to prove with it? That she could afford to buy it, that she could drive as well as any man, that she liked danger and excitement—was she really still so immature? She eyed the car with disfavour as she clambered out of it and mentally made herself a promise to replace it. What with, though? Perhaps an Aston Martin. She chuckled to herself at the improbability of her ever being able to afford such a luxury, and she was still smiling as she climbed over the stile and down on to the overgrown path that led to the Old Hall.
Derelict now, it had gates to its drives which were padlocked and bolted. Agnes Hazelby, its last occupant, had lived in it in a state of eccentric stubbornness, refusing to admit that the place was falling down around her.
From the top of the slight hill where she was standing, she had an uninterrupted view of the house. Larger at one stage than Cottingdean, the oldest section had been built at the same time, with a wing being added on by a Georgian owner and another by his Victorian successor.
The Victorian wing had been destroyed by fire; the ancient lathe and plaster mid-section was still standing-just—while the Georgian wing, cursed with the inheritance of sound building principles being sacrificed for outward show, had massive cracks in its walls and was very obviously subsiding beneath the weight of its top-heavy structure on insubstantial foundations.
And yet there was an odd raffish charm about it, a compelling, almost laughable arrogance that demanded recognition and respect.
She was not surprised that Agnes had stipulated that whoever bought the land must not tear down the house, and yet what use was the land to. Daniel if he didn't? The type of people who would buy his expensive, modern executive houses would never tolerate an eyesore like the Old Hall on their doorsteps.
It surprised her that she should feel such sharp and searing pain in the knowledge that he had lied and cheated. She ought to be glad…
Slowly she made her way down the path, not really knowing what she was doing here, why she was bothering, what she hoped to find… or why she should even need to think there might be something to find.
The closer she came to the house, the more obvious its decay became. Distance had lent a veil to its dereliction and she was almost glad when she eventually reached the valley bottom, and the garden wall, with its enshrouding band of tangled overgrown trees and shrubs, hiding everything bar the chimneys from view.
As a child she had been fascinated by this house, something about its derelict and overgrown mystery appealing to her in a way which her own immaculate home never had.
Perhaps she was more like her mother than she had known, she realised. She had seen from the diaries how much a part of her mother had enjoyed the challenge of taking Cottingdean and making it into something that was almost purely her own. Her mother was a builder, she recognised; a creator who enjoyed the challenge of taking the most basic raw materials of life and constructing something for the future from them. Take the way she had seen the potential of the sheep and developed the mill into the prosperous business it was today.
Only someone with vision could have done that. She too, she saw now, had her own share of that vision, her own specific talents… not her mother's talents but her own. So why, when she had come to know herself so well, when she had struggled to come to terms with all that she was and all that she was not, why, when she had told herself that she must accept herself the way she was—that she must like and respect herself before she could expect others to follow suit, that she must find a way of living that allowed her to dwell in harmony and peace with herself—was there still a small part of her that was the child crying and kicking at her father's door, demanding to be allowed in to his presence…demanding to be given his love?
Was it something within her that made it impossible for her to be loved in the way she had once craved? Or was it simply that she had asked too much, wanted too much… that such an intensity of emotion was bound to repel anyone at whom it was directed?
Whatever the case, she had long ago learned to repress and restrain the intensity. After losing Scott she had turned her back on the deeply emotional side of her nature and concentrated on the physical, but all too quickly the efficacy of that pleasure had waned, forcing her to acknowledge that for her there could never be a safe middle road; that she must either opt for physical and emotional celibacy, holding herself aloof and distant from all but the most casual of emotional relationships, or she must commit herself totally and wholly to the fulfilment of the intensity of her need to love so completely and utterly. She had learned enough from her relationship with Scott to be aware of how dangerous that kind of commitment would be.
She found a gate in the wall and pushed it open. The wood was rotting and split, the garden beyond it a wild tangle of overgrown shrubs, knee-high nettles and weeds.
The garden lay under an almost magical veil of forgottenness, like Sleeping Beauty's castle. She smiled bitt
erly to herself as she fought her way through the undergrowth and along the narrow path.
Daniel was no prince to awaken the house to life with loving tenderness. Rather he was its destroyer.
Beyond the trees and shrubs lay what might once have been immaculate lawns but which now resembled an overgrown meadow, the long grass interspersed with wild flowers and weeds.
The grass was damp, soaking through her jeans, but she had come too far to go back now. Her arms were scratched from the brambles, stung by the nettles, and her normally sleek hair had been caught by so many overhanging branches that she lost her patience and angrily twisted it into an untidy ponytail with a piece of string she had found in the pocket of her jeans.
She had approached the house from the side, where the full dereliction of the ruined Victorian wing with its sprawl of weed-cloaked remains and blackened timbers yawned eerily out of the thin whispers of the morning mist.
It was said in the village that, after the fire, those who had come originally to help put it out returned later, pushing whatever carts they could find to remove the best of the undamaged bricks, and that several cottages in the village had sprouted sudden additions.
The sight of the derelict, shattered building always saddened Sage and she hurried past it quickly, turning her face away as she rounded the corner of the building, and walked into the enclosed courtyard to the rear of the house.
Weeds had sprung up between the cobbles of the yard, windows yawned emptily from both the out-buildings and the house itself.
Someone had placed a large and very efficient padlock on the heavy wooden back door. Sage studied it for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders. Quite why she wanted to go inside the house she really had no idea. Something had driven her here this morning—some instinct, some need, and she did not intend to be balked of that need by Daniel Cavanagh's padlocks.
It was a simple matter for her to clamber up to one of the yawning windows; less simple perhaps to slide her body through its narrow aperture, but with some wriggling she did manage it, grimacing a little at the dust marks on her jeans from the stone lintel as she scrambled down on to the uneven stone floor of one of the sculleries.
