‘When it’s our honeymoon?’ he finished ironically.
Flushing a little, she reminded him, ‘It was you who first mentioned the word.’
‘That was before you ran away for the second time.’
So it was still foremost in his mind, still bothering him.
Firmly, she said, ‘Well, I’m here now, and you won’t find it easy to get rid of me.’
‘You’re starting to sound just like a wife.’
Rattled by the open mockery, she retorted, ‘I am a wife.’
‘However temporary?’
‘You were the one who suggested that we stayed together until the fever had run its course.’
‘Would you prefer it if I insisted on a lifetime commitment? Somehow I doubt it.’
Suddenly defeated, she bit her lip hard. This wasn’t how she’d wanted it to be. Lifting her chin, she met his caustic gaze, and, her grey eyes filling with tears, despite all her efforts, said huskily, ‘I’d prefer it if we didn’t quarrel.’
His face softening, he apologized. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve tried to make the evening special, and I’m being an absolute swine to you.’ Reaching across the table, he took her hand, and lifting it to his lips, kissed her palm. ‘Forgive me?’
Trying not to blink, she managed a tremulous smile. ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’
‘Generous woman. But you may not feel so charitable when I tell you where I went after I’d left you.’
‘Where did you go?’ she asked curiously.
He refilled their wine glasses, before answering, ‘To your old college, to see Peter Carradine.’
‘I don’t mind in the slightest,’ she assured him. Then she said anxiously, ‘I hope he’s still there?’
‘Yes. He’s now head of the history department. When I explained who I was, he said how sorry he’d been to hear of my father’s death. I asked if he recalled an ex-student of his going to work for Henry. He said, “Yes, Jo Merrill. I remember it well.” But your story and his don’t quite tally.’
‘But they must do!’ she cried. ‘It was the truth.’
‘It’s certainly true that Henry went to him when he was looking for a secretary-cum-historian. However, it isn’t true that Carradine mentioned your name to him.’
White to the lips, she cried, ‘But that’s what he told me.’
‘He agrees he told you that, but it wasn’t what really happened.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said weakly.
‘It seems that Henry had been making his own enquiries and already knew about you. He asked Carradine to get in touch with you, say that he had recommended you, and virtually offer you the post.
‘When Carradine asked why he didn’t approach you directly, Henry said he considered that you were more likely to take the job if the offer came via a tutor you knew and respected.
‘Carradine admitted that he’d felt uneasy about even such a mild deception, and said if he hadn’t known Henry so well he would have thought twice about it.
‘He wanted to know how things had turned out. I set his mind at rest by telling him that you and Henry had got along extremely well.
‘It seems he’d thought very highly of you. He said that, despite a rather grim home life, you had been a sunny-natured girl. A girl who had had sense and courage and a rare honesty. Then he went on to ask if I knew what had become of you. When I told him you were my wife, he shook my hand and told me I was a lucky man.’
Elizabeth’s hands, which had been clenched into fists, relaxed. ‘So at least you know I wasn’t lying about what happened.’
‘What I don’t know, and what puzzles me, is what Henry was up to. I don’t believe for one minute the excuse he fed Carradine.’
Feeling almost light-headed with relief, she queried, ‘After all this time, does it matter?’
Shrugging, he answered, ‘Probably not.’ But somehow his expression belied his words.
Unable to worry about what she saw as unimportant, Elizabeth removed the remains of the casserole, and brought in the apricot fool.
His lean, attractive face preoccupied, a little frown drawing his black brows together as though he was deep in thought, Quinn ate in silence.
When their bowls were empty, she pushed back her chair and rose.
Coming out of his brown study, he offered, ‘I’ll clear away and get the coffee. You sit in front of the fire and relax.’
Obediently she moved to the settee, and watched him deftly gather together the dishes, before disappearing kitchenwards.
It was warm and comfortable and, staring into the flames, she was soon blinking, drowsy as a cat.
By the time he returned with a tray of coffee and took a seat by her side, in spite of her late morning she was having to stifle her yawns.
Handing her a cup, he said, ‘I haven’t yet thanked you for a delicious dinner.’ Quizzically, he added, ‘I didn’t know I’d married a woman who could cook.’
‘At one time I couldn’t. I took a cookery course when I got tired of eating microwave meals for one.’
Soberly, he observed, ‘If you really were alone all those years it couldn’t have been much fun.’
‘I was, and it wasn’t. Though one can get used to being alone.’
‘What about your parents? Didn’t you keep in touch with them? I gather from what Carradine said that they were somewhat strict and narrow-minded, but surely they would have provided some support?’
‘They’d always done their best for me, but we’d never been very close. In any case, by that time they were both dead.
‘When did they die? Before or after you’d started to work for Henry?’
‘After. In fact just a week or so before my twenty-first birthday.’
‘How did they die?’
‘In an accident. My mother was accompanying my father—who’d had another heart attack—to hospital, when the emergency ambulance they were travelling in went off the road and rolled down an embankment. I learnt later that it had had a front tyre blow when they were doing a very high speed.’
Quinn grimaced. ‘So you really were all alone.’ Then he said violently, ‘Damn Piery!’
Startled, she objected, ‘It’s hardly Piery’s fault. He only did what he thought was right.’
‘Don’t imagine he was being altruistic. He did what he did for totally selfish reasons.’
‘How can you say that, when he was so kind?’
‘Did you ever ask yourself why he was being so kind?’
‘I think he was concerned about me and—’
‘Concerned be damned. He was responsible for the whole sorry mess.’
She felt moved to protest. ‘How can you think such a thing?’
‘I don’t just think, I know.’
Helplessly, she said, ‘But all he did was—’
‘I don’t just mean showing you my letter. It was Piery who started the ball rolling; he set out to cause trouble, and quite deliberately.’
As she began to shake her head, Quinn said flatly, ‘Earlier this evening, he admitted as much.’
Her sleepiness fled. ‘Then you’ve talked to him?’
‘After I’d left Carradine I went to see him. I made it clear that I wanted the truth, and I was prepared to beat it out of him if necessary. I felt like breaking his neck anyway.’
‘But why? I don’t understand.’
‘Haven’t you ever wondered what brought me over to England in the first place?’
Light beginning to dawn, she breathed, ‘You mean Piery…?’
‘Exactly. It was Piery who first wrote and warned me that “some pretty little nobody of a secretary” was trying to get her hooks into Dad…
‘I was extremely busy at the time and I didn’t pay too much attention. Then he wrote again sounding really panicky, telling me about you visiting Henry’s room late at night, and taking both money and gifts—’
‘That’s a lie!’ she burst out furiously.
As if she hadn’t spoken, Quinn went
on, ‘He said that Henry had fallen for you hook, line and sinker, and that when he’d tried to “talk some sense” into the old man he’d been sent off with a flea in his ear. He added that if I didn’t do something quickly we’d end up with a twenty-one-year-old stepmother…’
‘And you believed everything he told you!’ she cried hoarsely.
‘Enough to be concerned,’ Quinn admitted. ‘That was when I took a few days off and I came over to see for myself how things stood.
‘It was immediately clear that Piery was right—there was a great deal more between you and Henry than any normal secretary-boss relationship.
‘I watched you together. I saw the way you smiled at him and put your hand on his shoulder. I saw how his face lit up when you came into the room, and how he seldom took his eyes off you…
‘But the bank was under threat from a hostile takeover bid and I was forced to return to Boston for a while. That was when I wrote to Piery.
‘I came back to Saltmarsh as soon as I thought the bid had been defeated, and my earlier conviction—that Henry was besotted and you were leading him on—was, if anything, intensified…’
‘I can see what it must have looked like,’ she said helplessly, ‘especially when you were expecting the worst. But you have to believe there was nothing other than fondness on either side.’
Quinn’s shoulders moved in a slight shrug. ‘Whether or not that’s the truth, Piery seemed to genuinely believe that Henry was in love with you, and he was desperate to break things up. He didn’t want you for a stepmother.’
‘You mean he was afraid I’d get Henry’s money?’
‘That’s what I always thought,’ Quinn admitted, ‘but there was a lot more to it than that.
‘When I found you knew why I’d married you, I presumed that Henry must have learnt the truth from Piery and told you out of jealousy. But once I discovered it was Piery himself who had “blown the gaff”, so to speak, it didn’t make sense.
‘You see, if the money, or saving Henry, had been his only concern, once you were married to me you would no longer have posed a threat.
‘He knew I was under no illusions about what kind of woman you were, and well able to take care of myself, so why had it been necessary to show you my letter and encourage you to leave me?
‘When you told me exactly what had happened, I knew there could only be one reason. And tonight he admitted it…’
Her eyes fixed on Quinn’s dark face, she waited.
‘Can’t you guess?’
She shook her head.
‘He was head over heels in love with you… You’d left Henry, and he wanted you to leave me. He was hoping you’d fall into his arms…’
Once it was put into words, she felt instinctively that Quinn was right. It explained both Piery’s attitude and her own faint, inexplicable sense of unease…
‘He’d been mad about you from the start, and when you virtually ignored him and showed every sign of preferring Henry it made him as jealous as hell. He was desperate to stop Henry from marrying you; that’s why he involved me. Though he hadn’t visualized the results…
‘And of course he paid for his interference in more ways than one. When you disappeared, and Henry discovered what had been going on, the balloon went up and he threw him out.’
So it had all been Piery’s doing, Elizabeth thought dazedly. He’d turned all their lives upside down without a single qualm…
As though reading her mind and disagreeing, Quinn went on, ‘Your disappearance, and the effect it had on everybody, shook Piery. He admitted that later, when he’d got over you, he was sorry for what he’d done.
‘He realized our relationship had mattered a lot more than he’d first thought. That was why he tried to make amends by sending me that photograph of you and Beaumont…’
‘If only he hadn’t meddled in the first place,’ she said sadly.
‘I have to say that Piery wasn’t wholly to blame. If there’d been no real truth in his tales, I would have dismissed them out of hand—’
‘But there wasn’t!’ she broke in urgently. ‘Everything he told you was either distorted or outright lies. I wish you’d believe that Henry and I were fond of each other, nothing more or less.’
‘He left you half his fortune,’ Quinn reminded her ruthlessly.
‘I don’t know why. I didn’t want him to. And I certainly never took either money or gifts from him.’
‘Tonight, when I pressed him, Piery confessed he’d made that part of it up to get me to come.’
‘But you believed every word,’ she pointed out indignantly. ‘That’s why you thought Henry had given me the earrings.’
‘Are you still saying he didn’t?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
Sounding as if he was holding on to his patience with an effort, Quinn said, ‘It no longer matters, so why don’t you tell me the truth?’
‘That is the truth.’ With a gesture that showed her frustration, she went on, ‘I know they’re special, and, as you said, not the kind of thing one could buy from a market stall, but I can’t understand why, now you know Piery lied, you should still be convinced they came from Henry.’
He sighed. ‘Look, even if Piery had never suggested such a thing, I know Henry must have given them to you.’
‘Well, you know wrong. He didn’t.’
‘Not even as a one-off present?’
She jumped to her feet. ‘Not even as a one-off present!’ Bitterly, she added, ‘Nor did I take them.’ That he could suspect her of being a thief still rankled.
‘Listen to me,’ he said evenly. ‘I don’t care if you took them. They’re beautiful; I wouldn’t blame you if you had been tempted—’
‘How kind of you.’
‘I just want you to admit—’
‘There’s nothing to admit. I wasn’t tempted, and I didn’t take them.’
One look at his face told her she was wasting her time. Going down on her knees by his side, she put a hand on his knee and, in a last desperate appeal, begged, ‘Oh, Quinn, please believe me.’
‘I want to believe you.’ In a tortured voice he added, ‘But there’s just no way I can.’
Head bent, feeling helpless and defeated, she knelt like some supplicant who had been denied.
Almost roughly, he said, ‘There’s no need to look quite so—’ Breaking off abruptly, he got up and, putting his hands on her shoulders, urged her to her feet. ‘Come on, you look all in; it’s time you were in bed. I don’t think you’ve fully recovered from the stress of yesterday.’
His arm around her waist, as though he feared she might collapse, he began to lead her towards the stairs. ‘Before you get settled, I’d better fetch those pillows and blankets.’
‘Pillows and blankets?’ She glanced up at him. ‘Whatever for?’
‘I presumed you’d want me to sleep on the couch.’
All she wanted was for him to believe her. But if she couldn’t move him she’d just have to live with it. She’d chosen the course she wanted to take, and there was no way she was going to give up now, or allow pride to come between them.
‘No,’ she answered levelly, ‘I don’t want you to sleep on the couch.’
CHAPTER TEN
ELIZABETH stirred and opened her eyes. It was still barely light, but a sparrow was chirping with cheerful persistence, and a moment later a blackbird began his morning hymn of praise.
She was stretched on her back, the weight of Quinn’s arm lying just beneath her breasts, his year-round tan dark against her creamy skin.
Her decision not to let pride come between them had brought its own reward, and from a mind still sluggish and drugged with sleep came the remembrance of his lovemaking and the joy it had brought.
Moving her head cautiously, she contemplated her sleeping husband. He was lying on his side, his face turned towards her.
The bone structure was strong, and the face an undeniably tough one. But with the ironic eyes close
d, and the confident mouth relaxed, his rumpled hair and the sweep of dark lashes gave him a look of vulnerability.
A look that filled her with a poignant love, and a longing for what might have been. As she continued to stare at him, as though the sheer intensity of her feelings had disturbed his sleep, he opened his eyes.
Her face full of unconscious warmth and tenderness, she smiled at him. Just for an instant his eyes held the look she’d always wanted to see in them, then they became veiled, as though he’d remembered things he would rather not have remembered.
Shaken, she fell back on practicalities, and, her voice as steady as she could make it, asked, ‘What are your plans for the day?’
He pushed himself up on one elbow before answering, ‘I still have Henry’s safe and some notebooks to look through, so after breakfast I propose to go back to Saltmarsh.’
‘You said I. Does that mean you intend to go alone?’
‘It means there’s no need for you to come if you would prefer not to. You can always stay here.’
‘I’d rather come.’
‘Very well.’ It was impossible to tell whether he was pleased or sorry.
She asked the question that had been at the back of her mind. ‘Have you decided what you’re going to do about the house?’
‘In what way?’
‘You indicated you might be thinking of selling it.’
‘And you don’t want me to?’
‘Henry wouldn’t have wanted you to.’
‘Then perhaps he should have left it to Piery.’
‘I think he guessed Piery would sell it.’ Carefully, she added, ‘But I don’t think he expected you to.’
‘Are you trying to make me feel bad about it?’
About to say no, she changed it to, ‘Yes.’
Wryly, he asked, ‘Decided on absolute honesty?’
‘Up to a point.’
Quinn’s face lightened, and laughter-lines appeared at the corners of his eyes. ‘Then tell me something: do you really dislike eating in bed?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether I’m alone or not. What about you? Do you like eating in bed?’
‘I can think of better things to do.’
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