The Hidden Years

by Penny Jordan

  She forced herself to focus on what he was saying and not on the effect the cadences of his voice were having on her body, cutting through his polite enquiries as to her mother's condition with a ruthlessness born of self-preservation. 'Your decision, Daniel,' she prompted him.

  There was a small pause and her heartbeat accelerated to what felt like twice its normal rate, pumping adrenalin through her veins as her brain responded to her emotional panic.

  'I'm afraid I still haven't been able to make one. I need more time… at least another forty-eight hours…'

  Another forty-eight hours… by then her mother's operation would be over. By then… By then it might not matter any more which decision he made. Without her mother she doubted that there would be any campaign, any strong enough opposition to the new road.

  'Sage, are you still there?'

  That couldn't be concern she could hear roughening his voice and so she clamped down on her own weakness, saying grittily, 'Yes, I'm still here. I wasn't making an idle threat, you know, Daniel.'

  'I never thought you were. You forget I know you, Sage.'

  She stiffened, wanting to reject his claim but knowing that she couldn't. Instead she had to content herself with saying icily, 'You mean you knew me, Daniel, but that was a long time ago.'

  He didn't respond, simply saying evenly, 'Forty-eight hours, Sage, and then I'll be in touch with my decision. I'm not in this alone, you know. I have a board to consider, to—'

  'Very well,' Sage agreed impatiently. 'Forty-eight hours, Daniel.'

  As she replaced the receiver she wondered if she had been wise in giving way to him, if she had not perhaps lost the advantage her surprise attack on him had given her.

  In his office Daniel replaced his own receiver. She had given way much faster than he had anticipated. Ruefully he acknowledged to himself that the speed with which she had acceded to his request had left him feeling somehow cheated, as though in some way he had been looking forward to a confrontation between them, to engaging her in a longer conversation.

  His own weakness was like a spectre haunting him. Yesterday… But what was the use in thinking about that? She had made it more than plain how she viewed the explosive sexual chemistry which existed between them, and in all honesty he couldn't blame her for her reactions.

  In her shoes he would have felt the same way, would have resented the ferocity of his sexual need pared down to its barest elements as it was without the softening, cloaking tenderness of any emotional bonding between them. On her part, at least.

  As to his own feelings… He smiled grimly to himself. He had no doubts at all about the way she would react if he was ever idiotic enough to betray the truth to her. He had heard how she had treated those men foolhardy enough to admit that they loved her. And he had no intention of joining that particular little band of martyrs. Loving her was something the years had accustomed him to, a painful condition he would rather be without, but something which very aptly fitted the old saying, 'What can't be cured must be endured.' Like a sufferer from rheumatism, he found that there were days when the pain was more intrusive and less easy to cope with, and days when the ache of loving her threatened to overwhelm everything else. But he had learned to live with it, even if the learning process had been hard and painful.

  Forty-eight hours. If the rumour he had heard this morning was true then, potentially, well before he was due to give Sage her answer her threat against him would no longer be tenable.

  He loved her, of course, but with an intensity that went way, way beyond the immediacy of satisfying a mere sexual need. How many years ago was it now that he had first recognised that it wasn't just lust he felt for her but love as well? When had he first known that? When Scott was in hospital? Or had it even started to happen before then? Right from the first moment he had seen her, for instance?

  But despite his own personal problems he still had a corporation to run, and he wasn't a teenager to sit helplessly dreaming of a woman he would probably never be able to have in his life in all the ways that he wanted her.

  Idiotic to think that while he was speaking to her on the phone he had actually been visualising the children they could have together.

  Shaking his head over his own folly, he turned his attention to the papers in front of him.

  It was almost an hour after she had finished speaking to Daniel before Sage was able to concentrate fully on the diaries again. During that time she had used the excuse of wanting a cup of coffee to pace restlessly in the kitchen, and then in the study, her emotions in a turmoil. What was happening to her? Why was she allowing herself to react like this? She was behaving like…like…

  Like a woman in love.

  Impossible… She gave a deep shudder, closing her eyes while she fought to deny the wretched betrayal of her own thoughts.

  A woman in love… Ridiculous. Lust… that was all she felt for Daniel. Lust… That was all she had ever allowed herself to feel for any man since…

  Restlessly she sat down and picked up the diary, and started to read.

  The summer had been a good one for them. They were getting a good name as providers of first-class rams, and under the new manager's skilled tutelage the mill was slowly beginning to produce woollen cloth of the quality Liz had wanted.

  David was doing well at school, and although it worried Liz at times that he was such a solitary, quiet child, he seemed more than content. Even Edward's health seemed to have improved a little, although his possessiveness was putting an increasing strain on her. Ian Holmes had got him on a pain-killer which seemed to ease the discomfort more effectively than the others, and Edward had even taken to spending fine afternoons seated in the garden. As a consequence of the fresh air and sunshine his skin had lost its sick-room pallor and Liz knew that she was gradually allowing herself to relax from a mental and physical tension which had become such a familiar part of her life that at its first slackening she had wondered a little fearfully what was happening to her.

  It was wonderful not to have to watch every word she spoke to Edward… not to have to gauge his reaction to everything she wanted to do, in order to avoid any kind of upset with him. About the mill she had his confidence, but she knew the thought of other men still plagued him.

  Now that the mill was beginning to be successful, albeit in a very small way, all those who had been her detractors when she had first mooted the idea were now full of enthusiasm and praise.

  It was several years now since she had first got Edward's reluctant agreement to go ahead with her plans, and next year, although Edward did not yet know it, she planned to make her first assault on the all-important American market.

  She had been doing her research carefully and quietly, making sure of her facts before she presented them to Edward. What she needed was a representative— someone who knew the American way of doing business, someone she could trust, someone who had the same belief in their product as she did herself. She sighed to herself as she dead-headed the roses… What she really needed was to be able to travel to America herself, but that was out of the question.

  It was with a feeling of calm and contentment that she set out to take David back to school at the end of the long summer holidays… a feeling that for the time being at least her trials and hardships were behind her. She could now even read Vic's rare letters without that painful pang of 'might have beens', without that secret sensation of loss, of envy almost of his wife, of faint yearnings for what might have been in different circumstances.

  When Sheila Holmes remarked to her husband that Liz was making a wonderful success of her new venture, Ian agreed and added wryly that it was marvellous what the human sex drive could achieve when it had no natural outlet for its energies.

  He liked Liz and he admired her, but he couldn't help thinking almost chauvinistically that it was a pity that such a woman did not have a more natural outlet for her sexuality.

  Liz took her time driving David back to school, enjoying these rare hours alo
ne with her son. They stopped for lunch in a comfortable hotel on the river, and after she had left him she was surprised to find that she had to stop the car to blow her nose and rid her eyes of the tears that suddenly filled them. She did not consider herself to be a particularly maternal woman. She loved David, but then he was an easy child to love; everyone loved him. Certainly she no longer—as she had done when she'd first realised she was pregnant—loved him fiercely and intensely simply because he was his father's child.

  All that was left of her youthful adoration for Kit was dislike and relief that he was gone from their lives. If anything David was closer to Edward than to herself, perhaps because of his schooling or perhaps simply because they were both male and of the same blood.

  It pleased her to see them together and to know that Edward felt no resentment of David because of his birth… to see how much he loved him.

  They were enjoying a brief Indian summer, and in the rush this morning to make sure that they set off in good time she had left her hair down instead of putting it up in the neat knot she had begun to favour since the mill reopened. She felt that it lent her authority… made her seem more businesslike. Edward didn't like it and had told her so.

  Knowing how important these things were to the male pride, she was wearing a new dress; a Vogue pattern copied from this season's Paris couture fashions. It had a fitted bodice with cap sleeves and a V neck, the skirt semi-circular, emphasising the narrowness of her waist. She had made it herself, choosing a crisp cotton pique fabric in yellow and white.

  For those rare formal occasions when she needed to dress up she had bought herself a fashionable white coolie hat in the same cotton and, extravagantly, a pair of formal elbow-length white gloves. She wasn't wearing these today, but she had worn the whole ensemble for David's parents' day and she had been told admiringly by one of her son's fellow pupils that she looked 'absolutely smashing'.

  She smiled to herself. It was indicative of her whole way of life that she should still be cherishing the idle compliment of a schoolboy, but then what good would men's compliments be to her? She was Edward's wife, David's mother… She had led a full, busy life and had been more than lucky with the way things had turned out for her. If the price she had to pay for that luck was the suppression of herself as a woman, then it was a small price to pay. In truth, whenever she was confronted by a sexually aggressive male, which thankfully was extremely rare, she felt an immediate revulsion… a fear almost, plus a far too vivid memory of Kit's possession of her.

  No… There might be times when she saw a couple embracing, when she witnessed a tender look being exchanged between two lovers, when she felt an aching emptiness inside herself, but she did not allow herself to dwell on these feelings. What was the point?

  Edward needed her… David needed them, far, far more than she needed any brief, senseless moment of pleasure with an unknown man.

  As she drove through the village, the warmth of the September day was settling into late afternoon like a golden cloak of beneficence.

  She noticed as she drove that the blackberries were ripening fast, black and luscious, and regretted that the fact that she was wearing her one and only good dress meant that she dared not stop to pick some. With some of the early apples they would make a lovely apple and blackberry crumble for Edward's supper.

  She was halfway down the drive and in sight of the house when she saw the unfamiliar car parked outside. A new Ford, with bright, shiny paintwork that made her old Morris look even more tired and shabby than it already was.

  She frowned as she saw it, wondering to whom it belonged. They so rarely had unheralded visitors that the sight of the car caused a faint frisson of apprehension to run through her.

  Quite without knowing why she entered the house through the front door instead of the kitchen, knowing that their visitor could only be with Edward.

  As she approached the open library door she could hear male voices, Edward's tired and slightly strained, the other vigorously male and yet quiet in tone, with an accent she initially found hard to place.

  As she walked into the library she saw that Edward was looking tired, his thin frame and grey hair in stark contrast to the powerful whipcord build of the man with him.

  Vivid green eyes studied her as she walked towards them, not as a man studies a woman, she recognised, but in a distant, remote way, an indifferent way almost.

  'Darling, this is Lewis McLaren,' Edward told her. 'He's over here from Australia and he thought he'd call on us and see how his ram is doing.'

  Lewis McLaren… Vic's Australian boss… owner of Woolonga, who had first bred the wonderful ram which was providing her with her valuable fleeces of top quality wool.

  'Mr McLaren.' She looked uncertainly at him, her eyes guarded, unfriendly almost. Once that would have made him curious about her. Once… His intellect registered the fact that she was an extremely beautiful woman, his brain acknowledging his surprise at this fact.

  He had heard about her, of course, from Vic, and from Beth; had registered Beth's dislike and resentment of her, and Vic's silence. He had heard too about Edward Danvers, and had been prepared to find him an invalid. An invalid—but he was still a man with a wife and a son.

  His mouth twisted bitterly, and Liz, noting it, stiffened, wondering what it was she had done to cause the grimness in his eyes. He had extended his hand towards her, more out of politeness than anything else, she was sure. She touched it briefly, reluctantly almost, tensing as she felt its calloused hardness. A shock of sensation seemed to run through her, a sharp poignant awareness of his maleness, his healthiness in contrast to Edward's infirmity, but immediately she pushed the comparison away from her.

  She was tired and on edge, that was all. Tired of having to tread so soft-footedly around Edward's increasing moods of depression and violence.

  'You got David safely back, then,' Edward was asking her, and without waiting for a reply he turned to their visitor and told him proudly, 'David is our son. A fine boy…'

  His love for David, his pride in him touched her heart as always, reminding her of how much she had to thank him for.

  'Do you have a family, Mr McLaren?' Edward enquired.

  'No… No, I don't.'

  The words were bitter, savage, accompanied by a grim flexing of his mouth, a betraying pulse of the muscle in his jaw.

  Liz frowned. She was sure she could remember Beth and Vic mentioning in one of their recent letters that the owner of Woolonga was married and that his wife was expecting a child, but it was obvious from his expression that his private life just wasn't something that Lewis McLaren wanted to discuss with them.

  Tactfully she changed the subject, taking great care to keep a formal distance between herself and their visitor.

  It wasn't very difficult. He was polite to her, but she had the feeling that he was not really seeing her as a woman at all.

  She was relieved about that. She was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with Edward's jealousy.

  Only the previous week he had lost his temper with her, accusing her of growing tired of him, of their marriage. Increasingly these days, whenever these black moods overtook him, he would rage furiously against his fate until he was too exhausted to continue, and then he would break down in tears and weep as helplessly as a child, clinging to her, begging her never to leave him.

  These scenes were slowly taking their toll of her, and heaven alone knew what they must be doing to Edward himself.

  Sage put down the diary, staring blankly into space. Lewis McLaren! But he was Scott's father. It had never ever occurred to her that her mother might actually know him. But then, why on earth should it? They lived thousands of miles apart. She had known, of course, that her mother had obtained her first ram from Australia, but even in her earlier reading of the diary she had never connected Woolonga with Scott, never realised it was Scott's home. He had always referred to it simply as 'the homestead'.

  And yet her mother had never said a word
to her about knowing him, not even when she had taken Scott home and introduced him to her. The shock of it was making her heart beat faster, reminding her of old pains, old betrayals.

  It was like turning a familiar corner and, instead of seeing a well-known and recognised view, discovering that everything had changed, had become distorted and in some way alien.

  'Sage, Sage! Oh, thank goodness you're here. Can you come…? Ma's just come back and she's in the most terrible state…'

  Sage frowned, focusing reluctantly on Camilla as her niece rushed up to her, her face flushed, her eyes bright with tears of fear and shock.

  What was Camilla saying? Something about her mother—about Faye. Automatically Sage got up.

  'She came in and rushed straight upstairs. She was crying, really crying, and she never cries, not like that.' Panic was sharpening Camilla's voice.

  'Sage, you've got to do something…'

  Do something… What could she do? Had her mother been here, she would have known what to do, she would have… But she wasn't here, Sage recognised dully. And she was. She was…

  She stroked Camilla's hair as she stood up, smoothing the tangled curls, surprised by the odd shaft of emotion she felt as she stroked its youthful softness; a nostalgic sensation that was half pain and half wry self-knowledge—for a briefly betraying moment she had recognised that if Daniel had made love to her all those years ago she too might now have a child… his child.

  All her adult life she had sworn that children were not for her; that she had neither the inclination nor the need to fulfil woman's most basic and to her most unfulfilling role; and yet here she was experiencing physical regret that she had not had a child by a man who had never fully been her lover. Simple biology…or something more?