Alice held her away from her, and looked deep into her daughter’s eyes. Kate prayed she couldn’t see the guilt and shame there.
“I don’t fancy that’s all there is to it, girl, and your face don’t look too chirpy, but at least you know the place to come to when you’re in trouble.”
“There’s no trouble, Mother,” Kate said huskily. “I had a bit of a fall last week and hurt my face, and I’m sorry to have frightened you and the girls.”
Brogan and Donal arrived home soon afterwards, their faces a mixture of astonishment and delight at seeing her. Somehow the awkward moments passed, even though Kate knew that Alice’s female intuition told her there was far more behind this visit than a healthy young girl needing a rest.
“Did you bring us anything, our Kate?” Maura said.
“Not this time, pet. I only decided to come home on the spur of the moment.”
“Leave your sister alone and let her catch her breath. She can’t always be bringing you presents,” Brogan said, glad enough to see her, although by now he had registered her guarded eyes.
He might not be the brightest of men, but he also guessed there was more behind this visit, and that Kate would tell them in her own good time. But she looked so exhausted now, that they all knew they’d get nothing more out of her.
Only Donal pursued her up the stairs when she pleaded with them to let her get a good night’s rest, and that she’d feel more like talking tomorrow. Not that she expected to sleep.
“Why are you here, Kate?” he said at her door.
“Aren’t you glad to see me then?”
“Don’t talk daft, of course I am, but I know you better than the old ’uns do. Has your man been giving you trouble?”
She didn’t pretend not to know what he meant, and her eyes scalded, knowing what a champion Luke had always been, and still would be, given the chance. She put her hand on Donal’s arm.
“Luke’s never been anything but a gentleman to me, Donal. It’s got nothing to do with him.”
She bit her lip, knowing it had everything to do with him, but she couldn’t tell her brother any of it. Nor could she imagine what Luke might be thinking of her now, if Walter had carried out his threat and betrayed her again. She gave a convulsive shiver, knowing she had lost everything.
“I can’t talk any more, Donal. I’ve got a terrible headache after the train journey, and I can’t even think straight at the moment,” she said.
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But Katie, whatever it is, you know you can rely on me.”
She knew that, and it was the reason she was here; she knew she could rely on her family, even if she couldn’t tell them why. They were family, and families could always be counted on in a crisis.
If she had expected it to be easy to slip back into her old life, she very quickly found out how wrong she was. The girls went off to the village school next morning, and the men went to their work. Nobody roused her, assuming she needed to sleep, although she had tossed and turned half the night. When she finally went downstairs, there was only her mother and herself, and the atmosphere between them was as stiff and awkward as it had ever been.
“I’m sorry to have landed myself on you like this, Mother,” Kate said, over a cup of tea and a thick wedge of dripping toast.
“This is your home, the same as it’s always been, and when did a daughter ever have to excuse herself for coming home?” Alice said crisply.
But it wasn’t the same home for her as it had been when she was a child or an adolescent, and they both knew it. She was a woman now, and she had inevitably grown away from them, and the old saying that you could never go back was never more poignant to Kate than now, when she and her mother simply couldn’t find anything to say to one another. Home had seemed the only place to go, but right now she felt as though she didn’t belong anywhere.
By the time the interminable morning had ended, and they had eaten a scrappy midday meal together, Kate decided to go for a walk. The futile attempts at conversation had led nowhere, and she began to feel more upset than ever, totally in limbo and adrift. She struck out across the fields without any real sense of direction, but well away from the village. She needed to be alone, and to think. Eventually she arrived at the old sea wall that held back the high tides of the Bristol Channel, and sank down on one of the grass-covered banks that had always been her favourite haunt.
How long she stayed there, sitting with her arms clasped around her knees, she didn’t know. The sun was warm on her head, and the sea was tranquil. This place had always calmed her, but she was too immersed in trying to sort out her own tangled emotions to notice any of it. If only she had told Luke everything from the start, and taken her chance on whether or not he would have turned against her. Many men would, but she had never given him the chance…
She felt a sob rise in her throat and dashed the mistiness from her eyes as she stood up to turn back. Unsteady for a moment, she wondered if she was seeing a mirage as a tall figure came striding across the fields towards her. Her heart surged uncomfortably. It couldn’t be him. He was back in London, where he belonged.
When Luke reached her, he pulled her into his arms without ceremony and gave her a none-too-gentle shake.
“What in God’s name do you think you’re playing at?” he said angrily.
Kate stared at him, thoughts milling around in her head so fast she almost stumbled as she tried to get out of his embrace, but he wasn’t going to let her go. He must have been to the cottage, and her mother would have told him of her old favourite haunt for thinking. She felt physically sick, knowing there could be no more secrets between them now.
“You know, don’t you?” she whispered. “Walter did what he threatened and told you everything. Well, now you know the kind of girl I am, and the kind of home I come from. I wonder why you even bothered to come after me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Luke said, still angry. “I came after you because I love you, and because of this American deal that involves us both.”
“What American deal?” Kate said faintly, thrown completely off balance now.
“I tried to tell you God knows how many times, but I got cold feet.” He gave a short laugh. “Funny, isn’t it? I faced death a thousand times in the trenches, but I was too afraid to ask you to marry me and come to America, because I couldn’t bear the thought of your refusal.”
Kate couldn’t speak. She could only look at him dumbly, trying to register what he was saying. But Luke’s mind was also working, and he slowly pulled her down beside him on the grassy bank and held her hands tightly.
“I don’t know why you thought I should give a damn what kind of home you came from. And what does Walter have to do with it? I thought he was out of the picture for good. If he’s not, don’t you think it’s about time you told me what it is that keeps holding you to him?”
“Haven’t you seen him, or heard from him?” she said.
He stared at her, and then gently touched her bruised eye and ran his finger down her cheek. “He did this to you, didn’t he? Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”
“How could I?” Kate said, suddenly brittle. “I was hardly proud of the fact that my ex-lover thought so much of me that he could hit me and try to rape me!”
“Your ex-lover?” Luke said.
She felt angry and defensive now. “Are you going to make me spell it all out for you in all the gory detail? I thought Walter would have done that already!”
“Kate, I’ve never seen the man in my life, and I’ve no intention of moving from this spot until you tell me what the hell has been making you act like a frightened virgin since the day we met.”
She flinched again, knowing she had been hardly that. But Walter’s threats had all been empty after all, and there had been no need for her to run away and hide. If all Luke said was true about the deal that was being offered to him in America, they could have gone there together and started a new life. But she knew it could n
ever have happened like that. When she began to speak, the words came out in a gasping rush.
“I’ve never been honest with you, Luke. There are a lot of things about me that will shock you, and I can’t even pretend I’ve wanted to tell you many times before, because I never wanted to tell you at all, nor anyone else. I wish none of it had never happened, but it did, and I can’t change it.”
“Try me. You’ll find me pretty unshockable.”
“Please don’t be kind to me before you know the truth, because I can’t bear it. Just listen, and then make up your own mind about the kind of girl I am.”
It was the hardest thing in the world to tell him, but she knew she had to do it. She told him about her head being turned by Walter, and loving him so recklessly, and innocently believing he would marry her when she became pregnant. And then about the horror of that morning when his cruel letter came telling her he was already married.
“You’re not the first girl to get into that situation, Kate,” Luke said quietly. “The man was a rat and you’re well rid of him. And since I presume you were mistaken about being pregnant, you can thank God for that.”
She closed her eyes. Beads of sweat trickled down her back and between her breasts. Now was the moment she had always dreaded, and she shook her head slowly.
“I was pregnant, Luke, but I lost the baby very early on. By then, the wedding was going ahead, and I was too frightened to stop it.” She swallowed thickly. “So I never told Walter I had lost the baby. He betrayed me, but I was as much to blame for trying to deceive him into marrying me. Now do you see why a decent man like you shouldn’t have anything to do with me?”
When he didn’t say anything, she knew she had lost him.
“But then he sought you out you again,” he stated.
“He wanted to see the baby he thought I must have had by now,” Kate said in a high, cracked voice. “After the way he jilted me, it seems incredible that he’d even care about it, because I’m damn sure he never really cared about me.”
“But I do.”
She had been gazing out to sea, not wanting to see the derision in Luke’s eyes, but now he forced her to look at him.
“Kate, what’s past is past, and I know we can’t change it. You had a terrible experience, but you came through it, and in the year that we’ve known one another, do you think I don’t know the sweet girl you really are? What happened in the past doesn’t have to ruin the rest of our lives, unless you let it. We can have a wonderful future together in America, if you’ll just say you’ll marry me and come with me.”
She gave him the first small smile she had been able to smile that day, trying to tease him as her voice wobbled. “Are you sure you don’t just want me to be your model on the advertising commissions?”
“I’m damn sure what I want you for,” he said, masculine and arrogant. “I could always get another model, but there’s only one girl I want for my wife. So what do you say? Do we take America by storm, sweetheart?”
She moved closer into his arms, loving him so much, and pressing her mouth to his in a long, sweet kiss that gave him all the answer he needed.
A Note on the Author
Jean Saunders (1932–2011), née Jean Innes was born in London, but lived in the West Country for almost all of her life. She was married to Geoff Saunders, her childhood sweetheart, with whom she had three children.
After the publication of her first novel, Jean began a career as a magazine writer and published around 600 short stories. She started to publish gothic romance novels under her married and maiden name in the 1970s. In the 1980s, she wrote historical romances under what would become her two most popular pseudonyms, Rowena Summers and Sally James. In 2004, she began to use the penname Rachel Moore.
In 1991 Saunders’s novel, The Bannister Girls, was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award. She was elected the seventeenth Chairman (1993–1995) of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and she was Vice-Chairman of the Writers’ Summer School of Swanwick. She was also a member of Romance Writers of America, the Crime Writers’ Association and the West Country Writers’ Association.
Discover books by Jean Saunders published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/JeanSaunders
A Different Kind of Love
The Bannister Girls
With This Ring
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1998 by Severn House Publishers Ltd
Copyright © 1998 Jean Saunders
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eISBN: 9781448210459
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