‘Wow!’ breathed Gareth, staring at Susie. ‘That had an effect!’
Clara tensed, aware that Jared had gone very still and silent all of a sudden. He hated weddings, marriage—and for good reasons. Just because he’d finally unburdened his soul to her with that confession it didn’t mean his feelings about marriage would change.
‘Say it again,’ Gareth whispered, desperate for anything that might wake Susie up. ‘Only say it yourselves this time, and with lots of feeling.’
Clara looked at Jared. His face was tough, unreadable.
‘Please!’ urged Gareth on a hoarse whisper. ‘If you really don’t want to get married for real afterwards, at least say it to make her wake up!’
Jared’s dark eyes turned to Susie, then to Clara. He stared at her in absolute silence for a long time. What must he be thinking? she wondered, but of course she knew. He didn’t want to be a husband. He was afraid that if he ever became some woman’s husband he would end up cuckolded, humiliated and with his brilliantly constructed ‘new’ identity in ruins. He had very good reason to fear that because of his father’s terrible experience. But Clara was not Lily. They had not met as unsuited teenagers. And Clara knew their marriage would not end up as his parents’ marriage had. It was just that she could not prove that to him without actually marrying him. And he would never marry her until she did prove it.
‘Susie.’ Jared suddenly seemed to reach a private decision without consulting Clara. ‘It’s true.’
Breathless, Clara stared up at him in stunned silence. He did not meet her eyes.
‘Watching you and Gareth get married has changed my mind,’ Jared said deeply, making Clara’s heart beat faster with incredulous hope until he continued with, ‘I haven’t actually asked Clara to marry me yet, and I doubt if I will just yet.’ Her heart plummeted as he said that, but she managed to remain smiling—just—as he went on. ‘At least, not until I’ve had time to think things through away from Wales. But I am beginning to look at marriage with different eyes. And I have you to thank for that, Susie. Please wake up soon so I can tell you how you’ve changed everything for me.’
It was a compromise, and a clever one at that. He hadn’t lied to Susie, or even to Clara. He’d just found a route out of a difficult situation, and, although Clara’s heart sank as she saw the clever side-stepping, she nevertheless admired him for it. At least he had not lied blatantly. Somehow that was important to her.
Gareth took the compromise and embroidered heavily upon it. ‘You see, Susie? If you don’t wake up, Jared won’t be able to discuss it with you and then Clara might never get married!’
She could have slapped him. Feeling a fool, she had to sit there with a tense smile, trying not to show how rattled she was while she helped these two men to wake her best friend without once discussing the feelings they had both just helped to hurt.
‘Everything’s going to be all right now, Susie,’ Jared was saying. ‘All you have to do is wake up.’
‘That’s right,’ Clara said through gritted teeth. ‘Jared and I are going to be very happy, and we want you to share our happiness by waking up.’
But she didn’t.
Time ticked slowly on. It was four in the morning, then five.
‘All our problems are solved now.’ Gareth was still excited by the belief that she’d wake up any minute now. ‘When Clara and Jared are married, we’ll be able to make up foursomes with them all the time!’
Susie’s eyelids flickered again at five-fifteen. They all leaned forward again, breathless.
‘She’s got to wake up!’ Gareth whispered, clutching her hand. ‘Please, God, let her wake—’
Suddenly the eyelids flickered open. Susie blinked once, twice. They were all incapable of movement, staring at her open-mouthed. She glanced round slowly at them all.
‘Susie?’ Clara whispered in shocked disbelief.
‘Hello…’ Susie said with a weak smile.
Once the rush of tears and laughter was over, Susie was moved to an observation ward. The doctors pronounced her well enough for normal hospital life but wanted to run tests, keep an eye on her and monitor her recovery inch by inch. They also didn’t want her overtired. So, although they let Jared, Clara and Gareth stay for an hour after she woke up, they eventually ordered them home.
‘Mrs Llewellyn is now on the road to recovery,’ the doctor told them after shooing them all out into the corridor. ‘Her other injuries are coming along and will be healed soon. Obviously the broken leg and fractured skull will take longer, but I don’t anticipate any problems for her. She should be back to normal within three months.’
‘Just as beautiful and agile as she was before the accident?’ asked Gareth anxiously.
‘Possibly even more so. A brush with death tends to give a new lease of life in the long run. Meanwhile, however, I want to make sure that there are no relapses. She’s to have complete bed-rest for the next few days. That means no visitors except at normal times.’
‘But I’ve been seeing her all day every—’ Gareth began.
‘As for you, Mr Llewellyn, I want you to go straight home to bed, get plenty of sleep and do not return until eleven tomorrow morning.’
‘But, Doctor, I—’
‘No arguments. I don’t want you to have a nervous breakdown.’
‘But—’
‘I’ll give you a lift home, Gareth,’ Jared intervened suddenly.
Clara did a double-take. ‘A lift with Harrison?’
‘No.’ Jared took care not to look at her, and she knew it wouldn’t have done any good if he had looked at her, because his eyes were unreadable.
‘We’ll both see him home. Harrison can drive.’
Astonished, she walked along beside him to the hospital exit, incapable of speech. Didn’t he realise they would be dropping Gareth at the Manor? Now that she knew the full extent of what had happened in that old house, she couldn’t quite believe Jared was ready to go there so soon. But what choice did she have? He clearly wanted to give Gareth a lift home, and she wondered briefly, as they left the hospital building, if he just wanted to postpone being alone with her. That conversation about marriage must have upset him, as it had her. He might very well just be trying to avoid talking about it privately with her.
Dawn had fully broken as they walked out into the open air. Gold light streaked the sky, a faint mist gave the morning a fresh scent and the sea, just visible in the distance, was clean blue as it broke gently on the dark rocks of Rhossana Bay.
‘Oh, no!’ Gareth checked his jeans pockets as the limousine slid up beside them. ‘I left my mobile phone in there. Shan’t be a sec…’ He sped off in his trainers back into the hospital building.
Jared’s dark blue eyes met Clara’s. He gave a defensive smile. ‘What are you staring at?’
‘Darling…’ She bit her lip, wondering how to phrase it. ‘I do understand that you only wanted to help Susie wake up. I won’t hold you to anything you said about marriage. I just—’
‘Let’s not discuss that right now,’ he said thickly, and looked away.
She knew better than to argue with him when he used that tone. It always meant he would become angry if pushed. And the reason was that he refused point-blank to confront or discuss emotions he was not ready to deal with. It meant he had not yet reached a decision. That was what it meant, she thought, heart thudding faster. And if he hadn’t reached a decision yet…
Her breath caught. Was he seriously considering marriage? It wasn’t possible! She was scared to believe it in case it wasn’t true, because if it wasn’t true then she’d build up false hopes only to have them dashed—which would be too painful to bear.
Their eyes collided, broke apart. She felt her heart race and her stomach clench with excitement, fear, love…
Talk about something else! she thought in a panic. And for heaven’s sake think about something else. Don’t start having romantic daydreams about him going down on one knee and proposing marriage, becaus
e it’s too fantastic to dream of, too dangerous to pretend.
Remembering that they were going to the Manor, she heard her shaky voice say, ‘Are you sure you want to go to the Manor?’
Jared looked down at her briefly. He was wary too. Excitement and some other indefinable emotion glittered in the back of his eyes. ‘Why not?’ he demanded, and his voice was rough.
‘It’s still so fresh in your mind, darling. I know you may think you can look through those double doors again and cope with it, but—’
‘I want to look at it. I want to walk up the steps. I want to go in.’
‘Inside? You mean inside—you don’t mean inside the—?’
‘Inside the hall, Clara.’
That stopped her excitement about the possibility of marriage in its tracks. She could not believe he seriously meant to go into that hall so soon after his first conversation about it in a lifetime—a whole lifetime. He was motionless, not looking at her. A cool breeze blew strands of black hair back from his forehead. He looked out across the grey rooftops towards the distant sea.
A seagull cried in the crisp morning air. Other than that there was silence. The village was still asleep and would not stir for at least an hour. Perhaps that was just as well, she thought, for Jared must have no witnesses to this, his first real visit to the Manor. If he really meant to do it, that was. And she could scarcely believe he did.
But what if he really was ready? And some instinct told her that he might just be ready. Maybe he’d been ready for some time. The fact that she was the first person ever to hear his whole tragic story should have been clue enough as to how ready he had been when he did finally tell her. They’d been living together for two years, after all. Jared must have thought many times about telling her during those two years. It was just that he’d needed that one last nudge before he finally made his confession—the nudge which had come in the form of this enforced and very much surprise visit to Rhossana Bay.
Eventually, she said, ‘You need to be sure.’
‘Well, I’m not.’ He gave a cool laugh. ‘Not completely. It could be a mistake. But I don’t feel it is.’
‘You’ve only just broken the silence of decades, Jared. Don’t rush yourself. You might need more time than you think.’
He studied the distant sea. ‘I don’t think I do. I no longer feel the way I did about it. The house, the hall, the whole thing. Something’s changed. Something’s…’ His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Something’s…different.’
‘You’ve been up all night. That may be all that’s different.’
‘Hey, I’m thirty-seven years old.’ He looked round at her with eyes that blazed full of acceptance and real forgiveness. ‘I know how it feels to stay up all night. But no matter how many times I’ve stayed up late, being in love with you or reflecting privately on the past…I never felt as free as I do right now.’
She was silent, respecting his words and not wishing to intervene.
‘It won’t get much better than this,’ he said deeply after a moment. ‘I feel as though a ten-ton weight has suddenly lifted off my neck. I can’t understand why I carried it alone for so long. I want to face the house. I want to, Clara. I’d rather do it with you by my side, but if I have to face it alone—I will.’
She sighed lovingly and slid her arms around his strong waist. He smiled too, as though he understood how she felt and read the unspoken thoughts in her mind. Then he leaned back against the car, his arms around her. He looked years younger. Despite the lines etched around his eyes and mouth, he did look more free. His face seemed cleansed for ever—or was it finally?—of any trace of anger and bitterness. Just as the brightening dawn sky was cleansed by daylight of all its darkness.
‘You know,’ he said as he held her against his chest, ‘you may have been right. Telling someone the whole story was probably what I needed.’
Her hands curled on his back. Yet she kept her voice steady, for all that she loved him more with each passing minute than she had ever thought she could love another human being. ‘Let’s reserve judgement until you see the house again. Until you step into that hallway.’ In silence, she drew back to study his face, worried for him. He’d sounded so sure, so confident that he was right to do this so quickly. But what would happen if he was wrong?
‘Okay,’ she said softly. ‘Whatever you want to do, I’ll stand by you and your decision—just as I have all along.’
‘You’ll come in with me?’
‘Of course.’
He was silent for a moment, studying her, his face very serious and his eyes filled with love. Then he bent his head to kiss her. The heat of his lips was sweetly at odds with the cold morning air surrounding them, and Clara wrapped her arms around him, kissing him back with tender passion as they locked into their loving embrace. Kissing in the car park at dawn, still in evening clothes, they looked precisely what they were: a couple in love who had just stayed up all night together.
‘Got it!’ Gareth came racing out of the hospital.
Startled, they broke off the kiss to look round. Jared grimaced, Clara’s eyes flicked to his, and they smiled in private understanding of just how intrusive Gareth had inadvertently been.
As they drove away minutes later, Clara’s hand nestled in Jared’s and she thought about marriage with deep longing. It was sometimes so hard to stay quiet when your feelings were bubbling to the surface. She was so sure that he had begun to consider marriage, but what if she was wrong? And even if she was right, she had no business intervening in his private thought processes. If he really had begun to change his feelings on marriage, he would tell her when he was ready and not before.
The Manor rose up against the dawn sky—it looked almost threatening. It made Jared’s whole body tense beside Clara in the back of the car. Only she knew how he must be feeling at this moment. Her hand closed over his and she looked up at him, worried for him.
But he returned her gaze steadily. He wasn’t afraid. Or, if he was, he’d rather die than show it. And meanwhile the car was crunching gravel on the drive as it pulled up slowly in front of the fading steps.
‘Are you coming in?’ Gareth appeared to be blissfully unaware of the emotional time-bomb he was inviting with those casual words. ‘I’ll get some coffee for us all.’
‘Thanks,’ Jared said in a rough voice, and a second later was out of the car, standing in front of the Manor.
He stared up at it with justifiable trepidation. But as Clara stood beside him she saw the determined thrust of his jaw and recognised that steely look—she had seen it a thousand times before, every time he had a big deal going on, was about to take a crazy gamble and knew by instinct alone that he would win.
‘Come on!’ Gareth halted at the top of the steps to look back at them in surprise. ‘This way.’
‘On second thoughts,’ Jared said with restrained emotion, his voice slurred as he stared at the open double doors, ‘hold the coffee. I’d like to be alone in the hallway with Clara for a few minutes. Would you mind?’
Gareth frowned, perplexed. ‘Sure, okay…’ Gareth gave a wry shrug. ‘Why not? Just come along to the dining room when you’re ready.’ He went away, dismissing his curiosity as he started whistling.
When the hall was empty, and all they could hear was the rush of the sea and the cry of gulls, Jared said, ‘I didn’t look when we were here before. I couldn’t look. I looked away. I looked at the sea. I looked everywhere but through those damned doors…’
His whole life had been leading to this moment, since the violence and tragedy had erupted, destroying his childhood, setting him on the road to fame and fortune—then bringing him full circle back to the place where it all began.
‘I don’t know how best to go in,’ he muttered thickly, then looked down at Clara, and before she could reply suddenly swept her off her feet.
‘Oh…!’ Her arms went around his neck as he carried her up the steps and over the threshold like a bride.
‘Can’t thi
nk of any other way but to carry you in!’ he drawled, and then they were in the great hall.
They stood in the centre. Cavernous dusty walls rose all around them. The breeze whispered in through the open doors, just as it had for decades, and the chandelier tinkled softly in greeting, as though it had been waiting for Jared Blackheath to return.
‘Just a hall. Just a house,’ Jared said under his breath, and his voice echoed softly as he stared up at the ceiling.
His black evening suit was afire with the blaze of her long red gown as he stood rigidly, holding her like a bride in his arms. Clara remained silent, watching his face as she kept her arms around his neck, waiting until he felt safe enough to put her down.
‘This is where I stood when I first came in,’ Jared said deeply. ‘It all looked so much bigger then. Twenty times the size of this. I felt dwarfed by it. More helpless than I can ever remember. Overpowered completely by this house, this hall…’
‘You were a little boy,’ she said gently. ‘And you were in a state of extreme shock.’
‘I feel as though I’m still in shock. Nothing seems real. And at the same time—it’s all horribly real.’
Slowly, he set her down on her feet. Then he walked towards the stairs, started to climb them one by one, each step measured. Retracing the past, every inch of it, he was determined to confront the ghosts of childhood full in the face.
Clara picked up the skirt of her long red gown and ran to join him. They climbed the rest of the stairs together. The minstrels’ gallery loomed long and dusty before them. Footsteps echoed on the stone floor below. Jared stopped, and they both looked down to see Owain Llewellyn walking into the hall from the dining room.
Owain had not seen them. He did not turn his silver head to look up at the minstrels’ gallery until he reached the centre of the hall. Jared and Clara presented a strong, united front to the old man. They shone with beauty, glamour and power. Gone were the young lovers, both vulnerable, and in their place stood a tycoon and a famous actress.
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