Savage Atonement

by Penny Jordan

‘You really think they will once they’ve seen what the beaches of Marbella have to offer?’ Oliver drawled, cocking an eyebrow in the direction of his elder nephew.

  Richard flushed, but Chas Hawley merely smiled at Laurel and went on with his breakfast. Although only a couple of years separated them, Chas was a far more sophisticated specimen. She had the impression that Oliver didn’t like him, and every time he addressed a comment to her, Oliver intervened. Perhaps he didn’t like the thought of the paid help mingling with a guest of his family, she thought bitterly, as she listened to Richard explaining how he and Chas had become friendly at university.

  She liked these younger members of the Savage family, she decided, watching them. Richard was the eldest, but still very boyish, obviously hero-worshipping his uncle, but intent on a medical career like his father.

  After him came the fifteen-year-old twins; boys again, and as alike as two peas in a pod, although unlike the others they were startlingly fair.

  ‘Paul and Robert take after their father,’ Elizabeth told Laurel, as she helped her clear away the breakfast things. ‘Richard and Anna are true Savages, though. How do you like working for my brother, by the way?’ she asked. ‘It can’t be easy—not knowing that temper of his.’

  ‘It’s very stimulating,’ Laurel replied not untruthfully. ‘I enjoy it.’

  ‘Umm—well, rather you than me. As I know to my cost, he can be like a dog worrying a bone when he gets his teeth into something, and never more so when than he’s working on a new book. What’s this one about?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure—no, really,’ Laurel protested when Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose. ‘So far he’s only done the opening chapters, and they are exclusively concerned with the main character—a man who’s suffering the burden of guilt for something that happened in the past.’

  ‘Well, knowing my brother, it will be another runaway best-seller, but he deserves it, he puts something of himself into each one of them. How did you get the job?’ Elizabeth asked curiously. ‘He doesn’t normally employ a secretary.’

  ‘I asked if I could work for him,’ Laurel admitted.

  ‘And I said she could,’ Oliver finished for her, walking into the kitchen and surprising them both. ‘Beth, I’m afraid your offspring are beginning to get bored,’ he told his sister. ‘It’s unfortunate that on the one day you choose to visit me the mistral starts to blow, but if you like we could take a trip into Arles this afternoon.’

  ‘As long as I keep them out of your way this morning?’ his sister suggested dryly. ‘Very well, although I do think it’s too bad of you to work today, Oliver. We don’t see that much of you.’

  ‘Unfortunate, but necessary,’ he told her briefly. ‘Inspiration and all that, my dear sister!’

  He was gone before she could retort. ‘Men!’ she groaned heavily to Laurel, ‘and Oliver is quite the most exasperating example of the breed! Still, I suppose we’d better do as he says. I think I’ll set the kids to tidying up the living room a little bit, that should keep them quiet until lunch time.’

  A little to her surprise Laurel discovered that Oliver had taken his work upstairs with him.

  ‘Oh, he knows what to expect by now when we’re around,’ Elizabeth told her with a grin. ‘He’s never forgiven me for letting the twins eat one of his precious manuscripts when they were babies, so now whenever we descend on him he moves everything out of the way. Good heavens, just look at the dust on these shelves, Laurel! I suppose he banned you from touching them, did he?’

  Laurel nodded. Oliver had made it very clear from the start that as far as he was concerned the living room was strictly out of bounds as far as any tidying up went.

  ‘Well, we’ll start with these. Goodness, will you just look at this!’ she exclaimed as she opened the door of one of the lower cupboards and a mass of typed papers fell out.

  ‘I think I’d better let you sort through that lot,’ she said, passing them over to Laurel. ‘I’ll let the twins do the bookshelves, that should keep them quiet for an hour or so—who knows,’ she added humorously, ‘they might even take it into their heads to open the odd one. At the moment they’re sports mad; I’m hoping they’ll grow out of it.’

  Laurel smiled absently. The bundle of papers Elizabeth had passed to her were dated six years previously. She picked up the first one. It was an article about the Middle East; beneath it was one about the fors and againsts of private education; there were others, but Laurel barely glanced at them, her hands shaking when she eventually came to what she was seeking.

  Yes, this was the one… the typescript blurred as she read her own name. She must have made an odd choking sound before Elizabeth was at her side suddenly, concern in her voice as she asked if she was all right. And then she too looked down at the papers.

  ‘Oh, Laurel,’ she said softly. ‘My dear, I had no idea… you are that girl, aren’t you? I thought your name was familiar. Oh my poor child! So Oliver found you after all.… I can remember it all so vividly. Our parents were still alive then, although our cousin’s death had struck them a bad blow. He was like a third child to them, you see. He was always terrified of his own parents, poor boy. They wanted so much for him.…’ she sighed. ‘That was the tragedy of it, really, if they hadn’t set him such impossibly high standards.…

  ‘Oliver blamed himself for what happened to him. That girl—the one he was involved with—Oliver will have told you about it—she had been a girl-friend of Oliver’s at one time, but unlike poor Peter he had no delusions as to what she was. I believe she actually intimated to Peter that Oliver had seduced her! And of course he believed her, initially at least.

  ‘When Peter died Oliver changed; we all noticed it, and my mother especially worried about it. Journalists possess such power, she used to say to him, and unless they could use it wisely and without bias they shouldn’t use it at all. I think she worried that something might happen—and then of course when it did.

  ‘Did Oliver tell you that she begged him to see you himself and talk to you? She was convinced that you weren’t lying, but Oliver wouldn’t listen. He always was stubborn and headstrong. He was so convinced that he was right, and not even Mother could sway him.

  ‘Of course later, when he did discover the truth, the enormity of what he’d done almost broke him. He swore then that he was giving up journalism. He swore that he’d make it up to you somehow; searched everywhere for you; tried to persuade his paper to print a different story, but they refused—told him that to do so would damage his credibility and with it theirs. Journalists aren’t allowed to admit to mistakes, was what they said to him. He’s always been a very compassionate person, even as a small child. I think he found it almost impossible to live with what he’d done. It seemed to eat into him… but now he’s found you, and.…’ She looked at Laurel thoughtfully. ‘How do you feel about him? Do you resent him?’

  How could she tell Elizabeth the truth? And yet somehow she couldn’t lie to her either. She bit her lip, worrying at the soft flesh her eyes dark with pain.

  ‘I accept that he did what he did in good faith,’ she managed at last. ‘My stepfather was an accomplished liar, even my mother, who had witnessed what happened, preferred to believe him rather than me.’

  The arrival of the twins put an end to their conversation, and while their mother instructed them as to what they were to do, Laurel picked up the articles and carried them up to her room. A compassionate man, and one whose credibility could be destroyed if the truth were ever exposed. Wasn’t that the weapon she was looking for? She trembled, leaning against the armoire. What was the matter with her? Was she such a coward that now that the knife was in her hand she couldn’t use it?

  It had been decided that they would set out for Arles immediately after an early lunch. Oliver had some shopping he wanted to do—some books he needed, he told Laurel, and to her amazement he told her that he wanted her to go with them.

  ‘But it’s a family party,’ she began awkwardly, flushing vividl
y as he looked at her and she remembered the intimacy that party had interrupted. His look seemed to remind her of it too.

  ‘You’re coming with us,’ he told her firmly, and when she said lightly, ‘Another step on the way to womanhood—like last night?’ he looked at her levelly and agreed expressionlessly, ‘If that’s how you want to see it—yes.’

  For some reason she seemed to have annoyed him. He had seemed angry at lunchtime when she chatted to Richard; Laurel frowned over the thought.

  ‘Chas and I have our own car,’ Richard told her. ‘Why don’t you ride with us?’

  She hadn’t realised that Oliver was standing behind them until she heard him say freezingly. ‘Richard, Laurel is my secretary and here to work, not play.’ His swift change of mood startled her, although she managed to conceal it.

  When Richard had disappeared he said to her softly, ‘I thought it was steps you were taking, Laurel, timidly and nervously, not leaps—and certainly not with my nephew,’ he told her with a harsh brutality that stung.

  What was he trying to say? That she was flirting with Richard? Why, it was ridiculous! They had been talking.…

  He saw her heading for the stairs and called after her, ‘While you’re up there will you bring my jacket down for me, it’s on the bed.’

  She entered his room hesitantly. Evidence of his morning’s work lay all round him. He had been using a portable typewriter, and she frowned. She hadn’t realised he could do his own typing. The sheets lay face down on the bed and she picked them up, straightening them. As she did so the first few works caught her eye.

  ‘Physical responses,’ she read, her eyes widening as she took in the import of what she was reading. ‘Excellent when caught off guard; or emotions unlocked, i.e. anger; fear still there, but whether of self or past unknown.’

  There were other notes, notes that made it sickeningly clear that Oliver was, as she had first suspected, writing about her; using her. Her eyes moved swiftly over the typewritten page, but she couldn’t take in any more. She was in no doubt that Oliver intended to use her in his novel. That was why he had brought her here, and she had been right all along. His claim that he intended to restore her to womanhood was simply a cloak for his real intentions, which were to delve into her personality to suck it dry for his book, revealing every vulnerable corner of her mind and heart.

  ‘Laurel!’

  His voice from downstairs reminded her that it would be foolish to let him see that she had guessed the truth. Snatching up his coat, she hurried downstairs, her mind seething feverishly with thoughts.

  What was she going to do? Her initial thought was that she should leave, today—but if she did that she wouldn’t be able to be revenged on him as she had planned. But there must be something she could do. Refuse to participate in any more of his experiments? God, what a fool she had been last night… actually deceiving herself that there was comfort to be found in his arms; that they represented some form of sanctuary, when all the time.… She bit down hard on her lip, almost drawing blood as she tried to banish her boiling hatred from her eyes before she walked into the living room. He mustn’t guess what she had seen.

  ‘You were up there a long time.’

  Her senses, now almost supernaturally attuned to his, searched the words for some hidden meaning.

  ‘I was brushing my hair,’ she lied, turning her back on him. ‘Here’s your coat.’

  She felt sure he was watching her more keenly than usual, but then perhaps she had never noticed before how closely he studied her. After all, that was all she was to him—a specimen; something to be analysed for his precious book. Well, she would show him! If she had hated him before it was nothing compared to what she felt now!

  The mistral blew grittily all the way to Arles. Laurel couldn’t remember when she had last felt so irritable, but then she had good reason, hadn’t she?

  Arles itself was beautiful, shimmering in the sun, rosy glowing pantiled roofs, a painter’s dream. Fortunately it was still too early in the season for it to be busy, and as Oliver parked the Ferrari behind his sister’s Range Rover, Laurel prepared to make her escape. She wasn’t going to have him watching her all afternoon, storing up her reactions, tabulating them as he had done when he made love to her. Made love.… Colour brushed her skin. He hadn’t been making love to her, she acknowledged bitterly. He had been using her, just as he had used her once before.

  She shot out of the car the moment it stopped, determined to make it clear that she intended to spend the afternoon alone.

  ‘Just where do you think you’re going?’

  Oliver’s voice stopped her before she had taken more than half a dozen steps.

  ‘You seem to forget you’re in my employ,’ he told her tersely. ‘If you’d any ideas about spending the afternoon with my nephew and his friend, then forget them. We need to re-stock with food. You can do that for a start, and I don’t suppose my sister would object to someone keeping an eye on Anna for her.’

  ‘So now I’m a housekeeper and nanny as well as a secretary, am I?’ Laurel stormed at him. ‘You seem to forget that I haven’t had any time off since I started to work for you, and if I want to spend this afternoon.…’ ‘Alone,’ she had been about to say, but she paused and substituted instead… ‘doing my own thing, you aren’t going to stop me!’

  ‘Like hell,’ Oliver told her brutally. She backed away from him unsteadily, realising that somehow she had unleashed that temper Elizabeth had been telling her about. She had never seen him angry, really angry, before, but she whipped up her own temper, reminding herself of what she had read, warning herself that she must not allow herself to be bullied by this man.

  ‘Oliver, what on earth’s going on?’ Neither of them had seen Elizabeth approach and she looked at them curiously. ‘You two aren’t quarrelling, are you?’

  ‘To quarrel requires a degree of intimacy Laurel and I don’t possess,’ he told his sister dryly. ‘No, we weren’t quarrelling. I’ve got some errands to do, so I suggest that we all go our separate ways and then meet up again here in the square in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Oh, I thought we could all explore the Roman amphitheatre together!’ Elizabeth exclaimed, looking disappointed.

  Laurel felt dreadful when Oliver announced sardonically. ‘Yes—well, Laurel prefers to make her own explorations, doubtless of a different nature from ours, and as I said, I have some errands of my own, so.…’

  Somehow Laurel discovered that when they did eventually go their own separate ways, Chas Hawley had attached himself to her.

  ‘I thought you would have wanted to stay with Richard,’ she pointed out to him as he suggested that they team up for the afternoon.

  ‘Oh, Rick’s okay in his way.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A little immature, though; and rather too juvenile in his hero-worship of Uncle O. for my taste sometimes. You must get as bored with it as I do. Look, why don’t we make an evening of it? Eat out somewhere, go to a club… a last taste of freedom for me before I start baby-sitting.’

  Laurel wasn’t too sure that she cared for the way he put down Richard, or his family. From what she had gathered Chas had had no plans for his holiday until Richard had suggested he accompany them, and she also suspected that Elizabeth was hardly likely to be the kind of mother who would genuinely expect two young men to look after her younger children. No, she had had the distinct impression that the holiday job was merely an excuse to give both young men a cheap vacation, and she disliked Chas’s way of intimating that he was doing the Turners a favour when she suspected the boot was on the other foot. Still, his company was probably better than being on her own, and she suspected it had annoyed Oliver to see them walk away together. Perhaps that would teach him that she was perfectly capable of making a few experiments of her own, she thought hardily.

  ‘Well, how about it?’ Chas encouraged. ‘We’re not leaving until the morning, we could make quite a night of it.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she hesitated. �
�Let’s leave it until later shall we. You never know,’ she smiled mischievously, ‘you might have had enough of me by the end of the afternoon!’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  She wasn’t sure if she liked the way he was looking at her. It reminded her too much of another look—her stepfather’s look, she acknowledged with a shiver. Were all men like that? Greedy and selfish?

  As though he sensed her withdrawal, Chas didn’t refer to the subject again during the afternoon. He had an irreverent sense of humour which sometimes she found jarring but more often than not made her laugh, and it was only as they returned to the square that she realised she had spent the entire afternoon with a young male she would have run a mile from only a short time ago. Compared with Oliver he presented no threat at all. Compared with Oliver. She stumbled, and trembled a little. Why was she comparing him with Oliver? Oliver Savage meant nothing to her. Nothing! But he had made it possible for her to enjoy the company of a young man for an afternoon without shaking with terror. If he was using her then he had given her something too… she couldn’t deny that!

  They were the last to return to the square. Chas had slipped an arm round her shoulders when she stumbled, and more to prove to herself how much better she was than any other reason, she had allowed it to remain there, so that the first view of the others had of them was the pair of them linked together by Chas’s arm, as they rounded the corner.

  ‘You’re late,’ Oliver announced tersely. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘Only five minutes Oliver,’ Elizabeth interrupted mildly. ‘Don’t get in such a flap! I told you there was nothing to worry about.…’

  ‘That’s right. Laurel’s perfectly safe with me,’ Chas agreed, giving Laurel a proprietorial hug. ‘So safe that she’s going to let me wine and dine her tonight, aren’t you?’

  She was just about to refuse, when her eye was caught by the pile of books on the table. Psychology books. Books that Oliver intended to use to delve even deeper into her mind? she wondered bitterly. Well, he had wasted his money. She wasn’t going to let him.