Stranger from the Past & Proof of Their Sin

by Penny Jordan

  Sybilla shuddered, unable to stop herself, causing him to go very still and demand huskily, ‘Are you sure he didn’t hurt you…threaten you?’

  Sybilla shook her head. ‘No. I’m fine. Please…just leave it, will you, Gareth? It won’t happen again. Not now that I’ve decided to—’

  She only just stopped herself in time. Another few seconds and, in her vulnerable and over-weak state, she would have told Gareth about her plans to leave.

  ‘Not now that you’ve decided to what?’ he asked her.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. It’s kind of you to offer me a lift, but I could have managed on the bus.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,’ Gareth told her as he closed the door and then walked round to the driver’s door, opening it.

  Sybilla felt the car rock slightly as he slid into his seat and reached for the seatbelt. Despite the generous width of the seats, she was acutely conscious of how little room there was between them. As he adjusted his belt his shoulder touched hers. She stiffened immediately, shivering a little as she caught the fresh clean scent of his skin, the soap he used somehow subtly emphasising the musky male warmth of him, so that she had a shockingly erotic and unwanted mental image of him without his clothes, his body lean and male, alien and exciting, arousing as he leaned towards her in the shadowy half-light surrounding the bed on which…

  This time when she shuddered Gareth noticed, demanding curtly, ‘What’s wrong? And don’t tell me “nothing”. If Lewis—’

  ‘No. No, it’s nothing. I’m just a little bit cold,’ she fibbed.

  Why on earth had she ever allowed herself to accept his offer of a lift? If she hadn’t been so panicked, so frightened by Ray Lewis she would never have done so. Everything that she was feeling now…everything she was experiencing and enduring was reinforcing her awareness of how dangerous it would be for her to continue to live here. She had to leave. She really had no option.

  Lost in her own thoughts, it was only when she saw the familiar line of cottages which ended in her own coming into view and realised that Gareth wasn’t decreasing the speed that she turned to him and said anxiously, ‘Gareth, stop. You’re going past—’

  ‘I’m taking you back home with me,’ he told her calmly. When she started to protest, he added, ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all week…’

  Her heart leapt, her whole body seized by a surge of delight and confusion until he added prosaically, ‘You still haven’t collected the Dresden, and besides, despite your protests, I think Lewis upset you rather more than you want to admit. You really ought to report him to the police, you know.’

  ‘For what?’ she asked wryly. ‘Wanting to have an affair with me?’ She shook her head, and then realised in angry consternation that while Gareth had been talking to her they had covered the distance between her home and his and that he was now turning into the familiar drive to the Cedars.

  It was too late now to demand that he stop the car. She should have done that earlier.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t collected the china,’ she apologised stiffly to him as he brought the car to a halt outside the house. ‘I had meant to, but…’ She gave a tiny shrug, unable to admit to him just why she hadn’t felt able to come up to the house while she knew he was there.

  ‘Gramps always intended you to have it,’ Gareth told her. ‘Hang on,’ he added as he unclipped his own seatbelt. ‘I’ll carry you inside.’

  ‘No, please,’ Sybilla protested, quickly unclipping her own seatbelt and reaching for the door. ‘I’m fine now, really. It was just…just the shock.’

  ‘What about your foot?’

  Her foot? She stared at him for a moment and then flushed wildly, realising what he meant. She had almost forgotten the discomfort of her blistered heel.

  ‘Oh, that. Oh, it will be fine. The plaster should protect it.’

  It did, but only partially; the constant earlier friction must have resulted in the skin on her heel swelling, so, despite the plaster, she was still aware of pressure from her new trainers rubbing painfully against her flesh as she limped towards the house.

  Gareth unlocked the door, and as she stepped into the familiar parquet-floored hall it was a bit like stepping backwards in time.

  Nothing had changed here: the same curtains still hung at the windows, the same polished oak table was still there, the same rugs, the same air of solid Victorian dependability and sturdiness.

  The Cedars wasn’t pretty, but it was a strong, well-built house; the kind of house that immediately made you feel secure…warm…safe.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Gareth suggested, but Sybilla stopped him, shaking her head as she said quickly, ‘No, please. I’ve already taken up more than enough of your time, Gareth. I’ll just collect the china and…’

  ‘It’s upstairs in Gramps’s room,’ he told her.

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten for the moment.’ Tom Seymour had had the old-fashioned china display cupboard moved upstairs into his bedroom because, as he had once told Sybilla, when he couldn’t sleep at night he liked to lie in bed and imagine that the delicate china figures were about to come to life, to go about their bucolic pursuits.

  She knew the way as well as she knew the way up her own stairs, but a certain diffidence made her hesitate and glance enquiringly at Gareth before she turned towards them.

  ‘Not forgotten the way, have you?’

  A sudden constraint seemed to be oppressing them both, as though for some reason Gareth too was reluctant to move towards the stairs.

  What on earth did he think she was going to do, she wondered bitterly—pounce on him and have her evil way with him?

  ‘If you’re worried about going into Gramps’s room…’

  The quiet, almost hesitant words shamed her. She felt tears of guilt sting her eyes and she shook her head, unable to look at him as she told him huskily, ‘No. I…I saw your grandfather the evening before he died. He seemed so well…so relaxed…and that’s how I’ll always remember him. And he was happy, Gareth,’ she added, taking an impulsive step towards him, suddenly wanting to reassure him that, while the shock of his grandfather’s fatal heart attack had been traumatic for those who loved him, Tom Seymour himself had enjoyed his life right up until its end.

  ‘Yes, I know. I spoke to him on the phone myself only hours before…before he died. If he had any awareness, any premonition of what was to happen, he certainly didn’t betray it to me, but that doesn’t lessen the sense of guilt, the sense of failure…the belief that I should have been here with him.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Sybilla told him in a low voice, admitting, ‘I felt the same thing. I used to call round most evenings, but on that particular evening I’d been to a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce that ran particularly late. I’ve often thought since that if only I had come round as normal…’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference,’ Gareth assured her. ‘The attack came in the early hours of the morning, and was so severe that he probably died without even waking up, the doctor told me. I still miss him, you know,’ he added, his admission surprising her a little. ‘Oh, I know I didn’t see much of him…didn’t come home as often as perhaps I should have, but he understood… and—’ He stopped abruptly, and said almost roughly to her, ‘Heaven knows why I’m burdening you with all this maudlin stuff. I’ll come up and give you a hand with the china. I managed to find a box and some tissue-paper, and if I hadn’t been able to get in touch with you this week I had intended to pack it all up and bring it round to your place and leave it in your garage.’

  She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t done that anyway, but the brief shared moment of intimacy and memory was over, and he was as distant from her as he had been ever since the morning she had discovered how much he resented her childish adoration and the burdens it placed on him.

  She wanted to tell him that she could manage on her own, but it was, after all, his house and not hers, even though once
she had run in and out of these rooms as though they were indeed her home.

  As she walked up the stairs emotional tears blurred her eyes a little, making the traditional pattern on the red carpet waver. The curved wood of the banister rail felt smooth and warm beneath her fingertips, the light flooding in through the window halfway up the stairs where there was a small half-landing.

  The house wasn’t overly large for a house of its age: six very large bedrooms, and three smaller ones which had all now been converted into extra bathrooms, an attic floor where she had roamed happily as a child, and four large square comfortable rooms downstairs in addition to the kitchen and pantries.

  All in all a very good-sized family home, and one where she was sure Gareth’s wife and children would enjoy living when he… She stopped on the stairs, her body caught in the vice-like grip of a pain so intense that she couldn’t move.

  Behind her she heard Gareth say her name, freeing her from the paralysis of her pain, enabling her somehow to move groggily upwards.

  At the top of the stairs he caught up with her, placing his hands on her shoulders. Another moment and he would have turned her round and would be able to see the grief…the pain…the torment…she was trying so hard to hide from him.

  ‘Look, if this is too much for you…’

  He knew. The breath seized in her lungs as wild panic flooded through her. She started to turn towards him and then heard him saying, ‘I know how much you loved Gramps, Syb.’

  The panic subsided. She was able to step away from him and turn towards Tom’s bedroom.

  He had thought it was her love for his grandfather, her memories of him that were affecting her so emotionally, when in reality…

  He moved ahead of her, opening the door, ushering her inside, watching her anxiously.

  Everything in the room was as it had always been, none of the furniture had been moved, but Tom’s familiar articles of clothing…his hairbrushes, his old dressing-gown…these were gone, so it was just a room, furnished with heavy old-fashioned furniture, with a double silver-framed photograph of a tense-looking and very young couple posed in their wedding finery standing on top of one of the oak chests, and against one wall, where it could be seen clearly from the bed, was the china cabinet.

  Sybilla walked towards it slowly, her whole body trembling as she kneeled on the floor and turned the small key in the locked glass doors of the cabinet.

  Inside, the delicate pastel colours of the Dresden figures blurred as her eyes filled with tears. They were a valuable as well as an emotional bequest…something she would treasure for all of her life.

  Behind her she heard Gareth saying huskily, ‘He always used to say that the shepherdesses reminded him of you…that you possessed the same delicate fragility…the same delicacy of complexion. He loved you very dearly…’

  ‘As I did him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Look, let me go downstairs and make that cup of tea. We both need it, and then we’ll tackle this lot.’

  Sybilla was about to shake her head and refuse when the phone rang downstairs.

  ‘I’d better go down and answer that. That was one thing Gramps always refused to do, wasn’t it? To have an extension installed upstairs.’

  The telephone was in the hall, and with the bedroom door open, even though she wasn’t deliberately eavesdropping, Sybilla soon realised that the call was from the factory and, from the sound of it, it was going to last for quite some time.

  She stared at the Dresden figurines and reached into the cabinet to pick up one of them. Her hands were shaking as she wrapped it in tissue-paper. She mustn’t break it…mustn’t damage it. She hadn’t realised how very emotional coming into the house was going to make her, partially because of her memories of Gareth and partially because of Tom himself, whom she did very sorely miss.

  They had been good friends, despite the age gap between them. She had loved him and he had loved her, and she suspected that he had perhaps always known exactly why she had deliberately avoided being in town whenever Gareth was due home.

  As she stood up she realised how dark it had gone outside, the wind whipping up black storm-clouds of rain.

  Without intending it to happen, she wandered out on to the landing. A shared bathroom separated Tom’s room from the room which had always been Gareth’s.

  How often as a child had she come bounding up the stairs, knocking briefly on Gareth’s door before flinging it open and rushing inside! It had once been as familiar to her as her own bedroom at home.

  She hesitated for a moment on the landing. Downstairs, Gareth was still speaking into the telephone receiver. Slowly she walked towards his bedroom door. It was already half open; all she had to do was give it a small push and then walk inside.

  Nothing had changed; the familiar battered posters still adorned one wall, not of pin-up girls, but of huge blown-up photographs of various star systems, reminding her of Gareth’s late-teenage fascination with the night sky. She smiled reminiscently as she looked at them, remembering the very first time her mother had allowed her to stay up late enough for Gareth to show her her first lunar eclipse. She had fallen asleep on his bed afterwards…he had woken her up with cocoa and biscuits.

  She looked at the bed now and, as though drawn by a magnet, walked unsteadily over to it.

  Gone was the teenage duvet with the Harley Davidson motorbike pictured on it, and in its place a set of crisp white linen.

  If she touched it the linen would feel heavy and old. It had originally been a wedding present to his great grandmother, and Mrs Cooke, who had been Tom’s daily for years, used to complain that it was the devil’s work starching and ironing it. When she’d retired, and a new daily had had to be found, Tom had been persuaded to send the linen to a local laundry.

  Every item was embroidered with the bride’s initials. Who these days prepared for marriage like that? No one bought linen that would last through several lifetimes these days. Why bother, when often the marriage itself didn’t last much longer than it took for the bright colours of modern manmade fabrics to grow dull and faded?

  Telling herself she was being unfairly cynical, she tried not to look at the bed, tried not to imagine Gareth’s dark head against the whiteness of the pillows, his skin tanned…silky… warm to the touch.

  She discovered that she was actually stroking her fingers against the linen, smoothing it as though she were actually stroking Gareth’s skin.

  She snatched her hand away, trembling with shock and guilt, as she heard Gareth saying her name quietly.

  When she swung round she saw that he had closed the door and was leaning against it, an odd expression in his eyes.

  Over-burdened by guilt and emotional strain, she reacted instinctively, ignoring the fact that there was no way she could get through the closed door with him leaning against it and almost stumbling in her frantic haste to escape, her fingers trembling as she tried to grab hold of the door-handle and instead discovered that she was being held between Gareth’s hands, his fingers biting into the bones of her shoulders.

  He was angry with her because he had found her in his room, invading his privacy, she thought in confusion. If she apologised…explained he would let her go and then she would be safe. Once he had stopped touching her everything would be all right…everything would go back to normal…she would be safe.

  ‘Gareth, p-please,’ she started to stammer, but he cut ruthlessly through her intended apology, stunning her with the raw emotion in his voice as he mimicked,

  ‘Gareth, please…what? Gareth, please kiss me…Gareth, please touch me…Gareth, please love me?’

  She felt sick with shame…with humiliation, with a hundred and one other painful negative emotions, but even as she tried to pull away from him, instinctively trying to conceal her vulnerability from him, he pulled her hard against his body, his hands sliding down over her back, locking in the small of her back as he swung her round, imprisoning her against the door with the weight and bu
lk of his body, even while his hands protected her, cushioned her from any painful contact with the hardwood.

  As she raised her head to plead with him, to beg him to cease this torment and let her go, he lowered his own.

  The realisation that he was going to kiss her came too late for her to take evasive action. Her mouth softened…opened slightly on a breathless gasp of disbelief.

  She felt the hard demanding pressure of his mouth against her own; her brain almost stupefied by the belated realisation that this was a kiss of intense passion, of intense desire, a kiss of the kind of intimacy shared only by established acknowledged lovers, a kiss that couldn’t be refused or rejected even if she had been able to do so, even if she had been physically able to stop her lips clinging to his mouth, to stop them opening, softening, swelling eagerly as they returned the intimacy he was offering them, the intimacy to explore the outline of his mouth with her tongue-tip, to stroke its moistness, to tug wantonly on the fullness of his bottom lip with the tender sharpness of her teeth and to submit in shivering excitement and arousal to the deep thrust of his tongue within her mouth, while his hands caressed her back all the way down to the soft curves of her buttocks in time with the slow building rhythmic penetration of his tongue within the receptive moistness of her mouth.

  It was a dream; totally unreal; totally impossible; a fantasy beyond even her wildest imaginings, impossible to resist or reject.

  When Sybilla found the strength to open her dazed, desire-drugged eyes Gareth was looking back at her.

  Why had she never realised that grey eyes could look so hot, that desire could make their coolness smoulder and burn so that she almost flinched beneath that heat?

  His mouth left hers and she ached from its loss, unconsciously sighing and focusing on it, touching her bereft lips with the tip of her tongue, so unaware of what she was betraying that the shock of his reaction to it, as he groaned and pushed her back against the door, his hands framing her face, holding her head still, made it impossible for her to do anything to control the wild jolt of sensation racking her body when his mouth covered hers for a second time.