This morning it was rather a shock to come down and discover that Anna must have beaten her to it, because the kitchen was full of the enticing smell of freshly brewed coffee and toast. Tom was already up, for she had checked his room, so she prepared breakfast for both him and for herself and then carried it through into the small, informal dining-room used for that meal.
As she opened the door, she nearly dropped the tray in her shock at seeing Luke sitting at the table, frowning intently as he listened to Tom’s earnest conversation.
A glass of freshly squeezed fruit juice stood half empty in front of the little boy, and there was a piece of half-eaten toast on his plate.
Something about the two males, so earnestly engaged in discussion, tugged at her heart strings. Her father had never had much time for the little boy. Illness of any kind frightened him, and he had never been able to admit, even to himself, that any child of his could be less than perfect. In his own way, their father had been something of a tyrant, Sara admitted unhappily. She had tried several times to tell both him and Laura that Tom needed their love and attention; that sending him away to a school no matter how excellent, was not the answer, and her view had been confirmed by the specialist Dr Robbins had called. He had told her that one of the underlying causes of the severity of Tom’s asthma could be his inner insecurity.
Tom saw her first, a smile of true pleasure flashing across his thin face.
‘Sara, Luke was just telling me about Australia,’ he told her importantly. ‘He’s seen a real ‘roo… That’s what they call kangaroos over there,’ he explained kindly to her.
There was a dazzled look of hero worship in the little boy’s eyes as he turned his attention back to the now still male figure at his side; it hurt Sara deeply.
‘I’m sorry if he’s been bothering you,’ she apologised stiffly, looking at a point somewhere above the dark head.
‘On the contrary, I’ve enjoyed his company.’ Luke got up and smiled down at Tom. ‘Don’t forget, young man, you and I are going on the river the first fine afternoon we get. Not all of us feel the same way about children as you do, Sara.’
What on earth had he meant by that remark? Sara wondered unhappily as he walked past her.
Anna offered to keep a quiet eye on Tom, while Sara slipped upstairs to see her grandmother. She had fallen into the habit of spending a very pleasant half-hour with her, while the older woman had her breakfast.
‘Luke’s back,’ Alice announced as Sara walked into her bedroom. She was sitting up in bed, studying her post and, looking at her now with sharper, more worried eyes, Sara saw that she did indeed look perilously frail.
‘Yes. Yes, I saw him last night.’
‘He’s such a marvellous man,’ Alice continued happily.
‘It seems rather odd that he should choose to live here when so many of his business interests are in Australia.’
‘Some of them are, but not all,’ Alice corrected, frowning slightly at her. ‘Sara, don’t you like him?’
What could she say? It was plain that her grandmother adored him, and, while she hated to lie… She bit her lip and evaded uncomfortably, ‘I don’t know him well enough yet to form an opinion.’
‘Well, I expect you find him rather formidable. He is a very male animal,’ Alice said with a chuckle. ‘He reminds me very much of your grandfather when I first knew him.’ She sighed, and Sara knew that she was thinking of the husband she had lost. Then her attention focused on her granddaughter, and she said softly, ‘Luke is a very formidable man, I know, but he has been very, very kind to me. When your cousin died…’ She sighed again, and Sara was conscious that her grandmother was remembering a very painful time in her life.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, trying to keep her voice scrupulously free of any shadow of her own feelings. ‘It must have been a terrible blow to Luke. To lose someone you love…’
‘This isn’t the day to brood on past unhappiness,’ her grandmother chided her. ‘Luke told me this morning that it will be some time before he needs to go abroad again. We’re a little bit remote here, and I must confess that I always feel more at ease when he’s at home. Your stepsister is due tomorrow, isn’t she?’
‘She did say she might visit,’ Sara agreed. She felt reluctant to see Cressy. There was an angry resentment inside her that her stepsister could have lied to Luke about her. Cressy had always been adept at tailoring the truth to meet her own requirements, but Sara had never guessed that she would actually lie.
And why? She knew that Cressy always wanted people to see her in a good light, and Luke was exactly the type of man to appeal to her stepsister, but what could she possibly have to gain in lying about her?
‘You don’t sound very happy, my dear. Is something bothering you?’
‘Only the extravagantly large amount of money you insisted on spending on me yesterday,’ Sara fibbed.
‘My dear…’ Alice broke off as someone knocked on her door.
Sara’s muscles froze as Luke walked in. She made to get up and go, but her grandmother motioned her to stay.
‘Luke, I was just telling Sara that she mustn’t mind me spoiling her,’ she announced.
‘Spoiling her?’
A narrow-eyed gaze pinned her guilty flesh.
‘Oh, just a few new clothes,’ Sara heard her grandmother explaining, oblivious to the undercurrent of hostility flowing between the two of them. ‘The poor child was desperately short of decent things to wear.’
‘Strange,’ Luke mused, his eyes hard and watchful, waiting to trap her, Sara thought, panicked by the menacing intent of them. ‘I’m sure Cressida mentioned to me that you’d been given almost an entire wardrobe of designer clothes by a…friend.’
Sara could scarcely believe her ears. The person who’d received the designer clothes had been Cressida herself, and that had been during a rather dubious relationship she had had with a man involved in the media. Cressy had hoped, through him, to break into the extremely lucrative world of TV advertising.
Cressy had told her about the clothes in an unguarded and boastful moment, when she had been unkindly comparing what she termed as the ‘drudge’ of a life that Sara led and her own.
‘Sara?’
Sara realised that her grandmother was looking at her with puzzled curiosity.
‘I think Luke must have misunderstood,’ she said tightly, her face flaming with hot, angry colour. Part of her was furious that he should choose to attack her in this way, and the other part shrank from revealing the truth. She had always had a very strict sense of honour, but she couldn’t allow his remark to go unchallenged. ‘In actual fact, Cressy was the one who received the designer clothes. She’s an actress, you know, and I think she got them in lieu of payment for some work she did.’
She hoped her statement was bland enough not to provoke any more questions, but she suspected, from the shrewd look in her grandmother’s eyes, that the older woman had guessed at much of what had been left unsaid.
Luke waited until they were both well away from her grandmother’s bedroom before attacking her again. She had excused herself and left quickly, hoping to avoid him, but he caught up with her on the stairs, grabbing hold of her so roughly that she winced beneath the pressure he was exerting.
She didn’t like being so close to him; close enough to see the faint shadow where he shaved, and the anger-darkened irises of his eyes.
For a businessman, he was unusually fit, she decided unsteadily, horribly aware of how much physically stronger than her he was.
‘Very clever,’ he snarled at her. ‘Laying the blame on your stepsister… Alice believed you this time, but believe me, she won’t always be so easy to deceive. At the moment, she’s caught up in the euphoria of finding a granddaughter who is so almost exactly what she’s always wanted, so she isn’t functioning in her normal, astute fashion, but that euphoria won’t last for ever.’
Why was he so protective of her grandmother? After all, it wasn’t as though there was a
ny blood relationship between them. And then she remembered Alice saying that he had been orphaned as a child, and had grown up virtually alone.
‘You’re jealous,’ she breathed triumphantly. ‘You’re jealous because my grandmother loves me!’
‘Why, you…’
For a moment, Sara thought he was actually going to throw her down the stairs, and in her panic she clung desperately to the lapels of his jacket, her whole body tensing in fear.
‘My, my, darling! I always knew you were a quick worker…’
Sara hadn’t heard the door open. Her head swivelled round, and she stared down into the hall. Cressy was standing there, her blue eyes sharp with malice.
‘I didn’t expect you to arrive so early,’ she said stupidly, unaware that she was still clinging to Luke’s jacket, or that he was still gripping her shoulders.
He released her so abruptly that she practically fell.
‘Your sister’s come a long way to see you, Sara,’ he told her abruptly. ‘Surely the least you can do is to make her feel welcome.’
Open-mouthed, Sara watched as he went downstairs to greet Cressy, upset by the shaft of resentment she had felt when she looked down and saw her stepsister looking up at them.
She had never resented Cressy in the past, accepting the fact that she was more in tune with her father than she was ever likely to be, so why on earth was she resenting her now?
Because she had lied about her to Luke? What did it matter what he thought of her? And surely she was confident enough of her grandmother’s affection not to fear that she would believe anything either Cressy or Luke said to her?
So then, why?
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS GRATIFYING to find her judgement supported later in the day when her grandmother confided to her, ‘I know Cressy is your stepsister, my dear, but I really cannot like her.’ She sighed and looked concerned. ‘In many ways, she reminds me of your cousin.’
‘Luke’s wife?’
‘Yes. She had that same blonde delicacy that can be so deceptive, and so often hides a will of steel. They share the same innate selfishness as well, I suspect.’
Sara knew that her grandmother was referring obliquely to the fact that, although Cressy had purportedly come to Cheshire to see Tom and herself, she had in actual fact persuaded Luke to drive her to Chester, claiming that she had forgotten to bring her suitcase and therefore needed to buy one or two things.
Sara hadn’t been sorry to see the pair of them leave. Luke spoiled the tranquillity of her grandmother’s home for her. She felt constantly on edge in his presence. She would have liked to have been able to talk to her grandmother about Luke’s misjudgement of her but, knowing how much she thought of him, Sara hesitated to disillusion her.
If Luke wanted to believe Cressy’s fibs, then let him. She suspected he had judged her even before he had met her; and in fairness she had to admit that, given the fact that he was not aware of her reasons for not getting in touch with her grandparents before, on the face of it he did have a good basis for his contempt. But only a basis. Surely he could have given her some small benefit of doubt?
In her view, though, that did not alter the fact that he could have been less hostile towards her; he could, in fact, as her grandmother had done, have invited her to confide in him.
Oh, what was she doing, wasting a beautiful afternoon thinking about him? she derided herself.
She had learned that her grandmother was supposed to rest far more than she did, and she suggested diplomatically now that she take Tom out of her way for an hour or so.
His asthma attack behind him, Tom was now as energetic as any other eight-year-old, all the more so in fact, Sara suspected, through having been used to the quite strict discipline of his boarding-school.
She found him in the kitchen, looking rather downcast, and asked him what was wrong.
‘Luke promised to take me fishing this afternoon, and now he’s gone out with Cressy instead.’
‘Well, I’m sure he’ll take you another time,’ Sara offered palliatively, while mentally condemning Luke’s thoughtlessness in breaking his promise to Tom. It was reassuring to realise that Luke was not as perfect as he liked to believe.
‘Perhaps you could take me instead,’ Tom suggested, brightening slightly.
Sara wished she could, but she knew next to nothing about the sport, and so regretfully she shook her head.
It was very much later, in the evening, before Cressy and Luke returned. Her grandmother had not said anything, but Sara had sensed her disappointment when they did not return for dinner, and her own anger had grown.
Cressy’s selfishness was something she was accustomed to, but for some reason she had expected better of Luke. He must have known surely how much her grandmother was looking forward to his company?
For someone who so quickly and damningly set himself up in judgement on others, he had a very lax attitude indeed where his own behaviour was concerned!
All evening, Sara’s anger had been growing. She was in the kitchen, washing the supper things, when they returned. It was Anna’s evening off, and she saw the sweep of Luke’s headlights as he drove the car into the garage.
She was just walking through the hall when they came in, Cressy flushed and laughing, her small, satisfied cat’s smile very much in evidence as she clung to Luke’s arm.
‘Heaven’s, Sara, what on earth are you doing there?’ she demanded when she saw Sara pausing at the foot of the stairs. ‘Lying in wait for us?’
‘I was just on my way to bed,’ Sara told her, smothering her distaste.
‘Oh, but I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Can’t it wait until morning? I’m rather tired.’
‘Whoops! I think she’s sulking, don’t you, Luke?’
Sara was furious. It was one thing for Cressy to goad her like this in private, quite another to do it in front of Luke.
‘I am not sulking, Cressy,’ she retaliated quietly. ‘If you and Luke choose to spend your time together, that’s entirely your affair. However, I do think,’ she paused and looked directly at Luke, ‘that you might have considered at least warning other people what you intended to do, especially when you’d already made prior commitments…’
‘What sort of prior commitments?’ Cressy demanded sharply, looking from Sara’s white, angry face, to the dark, set one of the man at her side.
‘Goodnight, Cressy,’ Sara told her firmly.
She was shaking when she walked into her bedroom. She hated rows of any kind, but tonight she had been so furious…Her nails dug into the soft palms of her hands. A warm bath would help to relax her, and she was just pulling on her robe for the trip to the bathroom when her bedroom door opened.
She had her back to the door, but instantly she tensed. The last thing she wanted now was a confrontation with Cressy.
‘Not now, Cressy,’ she said tiredly. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’
‘Oh, no, we won’t—we’ll damn well talk now!’
The unexpected male voice grated against already raw nerves. Sara spun round, gaping at Luke as he determinedly closed her bedroom door.
‘You can’t walk in here like that! This is my room…’
He ignored her shocked protest, walking towards her, his eyes and mouth bitter.
‘Now, perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain that remark you made downstairs. And don’t try pretending that it wasn’t directed at me. I know that it was. What promises am I supposed to have broken, and to whom?’
‘Tom,’ she told him huskily, her chin tilting as she braved the inimical look he was giving her. ‘You promised to take him fishing.’
‘This weekend. Yes, I did. But the weekend isn’t over yet…’
Sara felt her face flame with a mixture of chagrin and temper.
‘Tom thought you meant this afternoon. And Grandmother expected you back for dinner.’
‘I fully intended to be back, but circumstances dictated otherwise.’
; ‘Oh, yes. Too busy getting Cressy to tell you all about my murky past to remember the time, were you?’
Sara was horrified with herself. No one had ever provoked her to such rashness before.
‘Why, you…’
She panicked as he caught hold of her, terrified by the violence she could see in his eyes. She kicked out at him wildly, frantic with primeval terror as she felt the strength in his hands. He could break her neck as though it was nothing more than a matchstick.
‘Stop it! Stop panicking.’ The anger in his voice only served to increase her fear. She lashed out wildly, almost as shocked as he was when her hands made contact with his skin.
There was a faint red mark along his jaw where the blood throbbed angrily, and she couldn’t drag her terrified gaze away from it.
Almost as though it was happening in slow motion, she heard Luke’s feral snarl and caught the furious glitter of his eyes. His grip had changed somehow, and he had pinned her arms out of the way, so that she had no way of stopping the downward descent of his head.
She knew instinctively how he was going to punish her, and at the last moment tried to turn her head aside in frantic horror, but his hand cupped it, inflicting such pressure on her jaw that she couldn’t move without causing herself pain.
The hard, angry pressure of his mouth was every bit as punishing as she had feared. She started to tremble violently and, as though her fear excited his anger, she felt the pressure of his mouth increase.
Sara had never been kissed like this, and every sense she possessed reacted to what she was experiencing. Luke shifted his weight somehow, so that she fell heavily against him. She could feel the hard imprint of his body against her own, in angry defilement. She wanted to move away, but she couldn’t. She made a small, whimpering sound of protest beneath his mouth that echoed her confusion and shock, but, when she tried to evade him, his teeth nipped warningly at her bottom lip.
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