by C F Dunn
Guy froze as he realized that Matthew already knew. He interrupted before Matthew could go any further, or I could explain. “It’s true, Ellie, I’m as much to blame…” he began.
“Yes, you are,” I hissed. “Don’t try to take the moral high ground; it’s a heck of a way to fall.”
She gave a violent shake of her head. “At least he had the decency to tell me.”
“He left it a bit late,” I retorted.
Guy wiped his mouth and threw the folded napkin on the table. “I’m sorry, Ellie, you weren’t supposed to find out this way. I seem to have rattled a few skeletons. Emma’s never forgiven me for what I did and I can’t say I blame her, although it was a long time ago. But then she always did harbour grudges – it runs in her family. I’ve let you down; I won’t call again.”
She raised her face from Matthew’s shoulder, blotchy and wet with tears. “What do you mean? You can’t go!”
Guy rose from the table. “I think it’s best if I leave now.”
“Yes, it is.” Matthew barely contained his anger, but she pulled away from him. “Ellie, no, let him go.” Too late, she already clung desperately to Guy.
“No, don’t leave me! I don’t care what you’ve done.”
He stroked her hair as he looked at me over the top of her head. “But Ellie, how can you forgive me after all this?”
“Of course I do,” she whimpered. “I forgive you everything.”
“He’s playing with us,” I observed glumly, resting my chin in my cupped hands. The remains of the glass lay in a jagged mess on the table’s glossy surface, my discarded napkin stained red. Matthew unsheathed the rapier and cast his eye down the length of its steel blade.
“He is.”
I remembered the hope in the girl’s face as she and Guy left the house together. “Ellie’s going to get hurt.” The rapier sliced through the air, catching the failing light.
“Probably.”
“Guy’s never forgiven me, has he?”
“No.” The sword became an extension of his arm, a moving point I strained to follow.
“You heard what he said about your accent, Matthew.” He didn’t answer but did a practice lunge into the heart of the fireplace. “That’s not all; did you notice the comment about your name? He specifically mentioned it came from our region. How does he know? It’s hardly common knowledge and it wasn’t a random error. He knows something, Matthew. I don’t know how, but he does. I’d stake my life on it. Guy doesn’t make mistakes like that.”
As if by an invisible hand, a gerbera’s head spilled into the air as the sword severed it cleanly from the stem. He caught it and laid it in front of me. “Neither,” he said, “do I.” And he sheathed the sword, in a single, precise movement, and suspended it on its brackets above the fireplace.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He smiled darkly and said, “If nothing else, one thing is clear: Guy Hilliard came to Maine neither seeking your forgiveness, nor offering it.”
CHAPTER
26
Entrenched
If there was one mistake I thought Guy might make it would be that, in his arrogance, he would fail to recognize how seriously Matthew perceived the threat to his family to be and the lengths he would go to to protect them.
I didn’t see Ellie again for days, but when I did, she made it clear it was under duress. Matthew wanted me to tell her exactly what happened in Cambridge. Dan asked if I would mind him being there too and, as I explained the full circumstances, he listened with increasing concern. Tight lipped and expressionless, Ellie sat on the sofa as I described the protracted corruption of my youth, the way Guy isolated me from my friends and played to my intellectual vanity. I made no bones about my part in it; I fully accepted my guilt in the seduction. Matthew said nothing until I skirted around the evening of my nineteenth birthday.
“He raped her,” he said bluntly, and I shrank inside as I watched them recoil. Ellie didn’t believe him.
“Guy wouldn’t do that! He knows he shouldn’t have had an affair with a student, but he was under a lot of pressure at the time and he admits he made a mistake.”
I could imagine him saying it and convincing her lie by lie. “Guy doesn’t make mistakes like that, Ellie. He knew precisely what he was doing then, and he knows what he is doing now.”
“He’s different with me. Whatever mistakes he made with you, he’s changed.” I wondered what other lies he had told her about me in the aftermath of his confession.
Dan rubbed his earlobe. “I have to admit I don’t like what I’ve heard today, El. I think it would be as well to listen to Emma; she’s known him for a lot longer than you have. Guy turned up out of the blue and this sudden affection he’s declared for you seems rather…” he struggled for a word.
“Calculated,” Matthew completed. “Whatever you decide to do, Ellie, you need to remember the unique situation you’re in with regard to any relationship you choose to have. It could have consequences far beyond your own happiness. Guy mustn’t be given any indication we are different from other families.” Her eyes slid towards him and away. “Have you said something already?”
“No! Of course not, Matthew, but he has to know at some point.” She wavered, and then in a single breath rushed, “He’s asked me to marry him.”
“Ellie, no, he’s married!” I cried in dismay.
Was that triumph in her face? “He was married, Emma – he’s getting a divorce.”
I shook my head. “He won’t; he’s Catholic and he believes absolutely. Ellie, I know him…”
“But I know him better. I told you he’s changed. He had to after what you did to him.”
Matthew’s eyes sparked and his voice took on a hard edge. “That’s enough, Ellie. Emma’s right. If Guy gives any credence to his faith he can neither divorce nor remarry. He remains married unless there are grounds for annulment – which seems unlikely – or he or his wife dies.”
Crossing her arms, she became stubbornly mute. Dan put his arm around her shoulder and tried another tack. “Look, Ellie, this man is over twenty years older than you. He’s married, he has children – three, didn’t you say, Emma?” I nodded. “He’s had a good portion of his life already. You have yours ahead.”
“I didn’t think an age difference mattered in this family,” she whipped. “He’s the same age as you and Mom and that’s not old. It’s not fair: there’s one rule for Emma, but another for Guy. Matthew gave Emma a second chance.” That was neither a wise thing to say nor true, and as soon as it left her mouth she regretted it. “Sorry, Emma,” she mumbled under Matthew’s scrutiny. It was no use; she had become so entrenched that her position was inviolable. I knew all the signs from my own battles with my father: the more he tried to undermine my foundations, the deeper I dug them. Nothing would change her mind now other than a fundamental shift in her thinking from within her emotional fortress, and what – heaven only knew – would initiate that?
Matthew appeared to have reached the same conclusion as he made a last attempt to breach her defences. “I understand that this must be your decision but, whatever you choose, protect your family at all costs. We are dependent on your discretion. Guy cannot know anything about us until he has earned our trust. Do you agree?”
She looked at him from beneath lowered lashes and saw that he was asking – not telling.
“OK,” she said. “Just give him a chance.”
We left it for the time being, but later, when Ellie had gone back to the Stables, Dan pulled up a chair in our kitchen and sat down wearily. He rubbed his knuckles over his eyes, looking more drained than I had seen him before, and nearer the mid-forties he was supposed to be than the thirty-something he usually looked. I placed a mug in front of him. “How is she, Dan?”
“I left her with her mother, sobbing her eyes out. I’ve been given the cold shoulder for siding with you. At least, that’s how they see it.” He raised the mug to his mouth and grimaced. “Thanks for this er…
tea.”
I smiled an apology. “Matthew’s banned even the coffee jar from the house. He thinks I might be tempted to try something to get at Guy.” I might well have done if I thought it could work.
Dan raised a tired smile. “I think we’ll have to find another solution rather than put your life on the line. He’s a slippery so…” He raised a hand in apology. “Sorry, but I don’t like what I’ve seen or heard so far. The trouble is, Jeannie’s as enamoured as El. I can’t get through to her, and without her support it’s like battling the three hundred.”
“Guy has that effect on susceptible women,” I said.
“It’ll pass,” Matthew commented quietly. “It always passes. Time will see to that.” He left the table to close the shutters against the world outside. “In the meantime,” he said, coming back to the table and sitting with us in the pool of light cast by the low lamp, “we need to take some sensible measures. Emma thinks there’s more to him being here than her or Ellie, and whatever that might be, we can’t take chances.”
Dan nodded slowly. “OK. Do you want me to contact Joel?”
“I think it might be time.”
“Joel?” I queried later once Dan reluctantly went home to what he ruefully referred to as his den of vipers, and we were making our way upstairs.
“He has access to information that would be difficult to get otherwise. It’s just precautionary, my love, don’t worry.”
Which meant that I should.
CHAPTER
27
Heart of Steel
It had been nettling me ever since he said it. I zipped my cross backwards and forwards on its sturdy chain and went through what Guy had said, for the umpteenth time. “She always harboured grudges – it runs in her family.”
Did I?
“Do I harbour grudges?” I asked Matthew as we pulled into the staff car park. The engine stilled.
“No, you don’t. That was a comment intended to get under your skin. Don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it worked. Ignore it.” Easier said than done. For more than a decade I’d struggled against the bitter tide that stemmed from years of conflict first with my father, and then with Guy. I had found some sense of peace through my faith – a spiritual release as potently physical as the pain of rejection and betrayal from which I fled – but recent events prodded old bruises, and they hurt. Matthew leaned over and kissed me. “I’ll meet you for lunch. I’ve a departmental meeting at eleven and it should be finished by twelve-thirty, but if it isn’t, I’ll call you.”
I stared blankly through the window at the heat haze developing in the distance. “OK.”
“Emma?”
“Mmm?”
“Did you hear what I said? Lunch at twelve-thirty in the staff dining room.” He frowned when he should have been smiling, his eyes starless. He had been keeping tabs on my food intake and making sure I didn’t skip meals. Where hunger should have filled my stomach, Guy’s presence had become a constant irritation that sapped my appetite and curdled my happiness. Within the awkward confines of the car, I pressed my cheek against his.
“I’m sorry; you didn’t need all this…” I couldn’t think of a better word, “… complication.”
He smiled at the reference to our early days together, soothing the lines between my eyes. “This is nothing, my love. In a few weeks Guy Hilliard will be no more than a bad dream that will fade. Even the deepest wounds can heal with time.” He pressed his lips against my wrist where the ribbon of silvered skin was all that remained of Staahl. I stretched my fingers to touch his hair, so unbelievably gold that even the strength of the early summer light could not fade its vitality, and then my eyes dropped to the slash across his collarbone, just visible in the open collar of his shirt.
“There are some hurts that will always leave a scar. I didn’t know how much until I saw him again.”
“I understand, but although they leave their mark, scars don’t always need to hurt, do they? And they are a reminder that we can survive and, in doing so, we are stronger.
‘In steel I fashion my heart,
Fire forged,
Broken, yet stronger still.’”
“Um,” I said doubtfully, “I’m not sure if I like the thought of a heart of steel.”
“No, well, I was going through a particularly challenging period at the time I wrote that. And that’s the point, I – and my heart – survived to go on to better things.” He kissed the tip of my nose and reached into the back of the car, pulling his jacket and tie from the back seat. “Now, onwards. We have work to do; I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Twelve-thirty,” I confirmed, content to see his eyes were a more vibrant blue and to know he considered his heart healed.
I pushed all thought of Guy to one side for the rest of the morning, hammering him into oblivion with random tracks on my iPod so he couldn’t creep in around the edges. I made a last-ditch effort to put my room in order before the conference, piling books and papers in stacks like brown pillars of salt, ready to be boxed and taken home for the summer. I then sought to bury myself in my work.
In a lull between tracks, I heard the door reverberating to impatient fists. Checking my watch, I groaned as I opened the door to Matias. He breathed heavily, and sweat gleamed on his brow and from beneath the collar of his shirt.
“Is that all the thanks I get for rescuing a man’s wife from starvation? Your husband waited until past one but he had an emergency call and couldn’t wait any longer. I said I was on my way to fetch Elena; otherwise he would have come himself and let the bloke die on the slab. Why didn’t you answer your cell? And what’s that awful racket?”
I turned the iPod off and switched on my mobile. It fired a rapid succession of beeps as the backlog of incoming texts registered my neglect. “Oops.”
“That wasn’t quite how Matthew put it. I’ve been charged with frog-marching you to the nearest purveyor of food and ensuring you consume a reasonably balanced diet of a suitably high calorific content.”
“Golly, did he really say that?”
“No, that was the shorter, repeatable version.” Negotiating his way through the piles of books, he scanned the quad through the window. “Have you seen Elena?”
“I didn’t think she was in today. Have you tried David or Jess?” I selected some papers I needed to complete my presentation, saved my work to the memory stick, and closed the laptop.
“They haven’t seen her and she isn’t answering her cell, either. She said she wanted to get some work done.” He nosed an errant book into line with the side of his shoe. He didn’t look very happy.
“Perhaps she’s gone to get something to eat, Matias.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.” He studied my series of posters. “These give me the creeps. I don’t know how you live with them.” He grimaced. “Are you ready?”
I heaved my bag onto my shoulder and tucked my laptop under my arm. “I honestly don’t need a chaperone if you’d rather find Elena.”
He smiled ruefully. “And how would I explain your emaciated form when I next see Matthew? Anyway, I owe him one.”
“You do?”
“Here, let me take that bag.” He took a step forward, but tripped, his arm colliding with the edge of the desk. He swore in Finnish; I didn’t need a translation.
I dropped my bag and put out a hand to steady him. “Are you all right? I should have warned you.”
“I’m fine,” he said, his tanned face colouring maroon. “I’m used to being made to look like a blundering fool. What the heck was that, anyway?” He looked around accusingly and picked up the small, battered leather case that had drunkenly tumbled.
Taking it from him, I smoothed dust from its mottled surface. “It belonged to my grandfather; I meant to take it home. Sorry.”
He grunted and rubbed his elbow. “Nothing a quick drink won’t cure. Fancy one?”
“In this heat? I’ll buy you one as recompense, but I’ll stick to iced tea, thanks.”
&nbs
p; We crossed the quad to the cloister on thin-patched grass browned by the early summer heat. A groundsman wrestled with an automatic watering system. Matias glared up at the featureless blue of the sky. “Blasted heat; it shouldn’t be this hot so soon. It can’t last.”
The cloisters provided welcome shelter from the sun. I waved to one of the porters sweltering in the stuffy atrium as we passed. “What did you mean earlier when you said you owe Matthew one?”
“Oh, that, well, er, he passed on some information – buddy to buddy – you know.”
I didn’t. He shifted my bag to his other hand as we neared the staff dining hall, and shouldered the door ajar. “He said to keep an eye on that bloke who’s been hanging around lately, the one you saw on your birthday – Hilliard, wasn’t it? Dating his niece, Matthew said. Got the feeling he wasn’t too happy about it. Elena said you knew him once back in the UK?” The bag thumped against his hip as he attempted to fill a plate with something indescribable, and waited while I browsed the counter. The salad looked pretty good for once, but he twitched noticeably until I augmented the leaves with an overstuffed pepper, its bulging flanks shining with oil. “So you knew him?” Matias dug. “What’s he like?”
I could supply the diplomatic, mature, professional answer, or the truth. “Why do you want to know?”
Instantly recognizable high-pitched laughter cut across the subdued hubbub in the dining hall. Matias followed the sound with a quizzical expression bordering on the comic. He stopped short. Sitting on the far side of the dining hall, her hands in animated conversation, Elena talked to someone obscured by another diner. The obstruction moved.
“That’s why,” Matias said. “She’s been mentioning him a lot lately.” Guy said something and Elena’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle a squeal followed by a giggle.
“Yes, I’ll tell you, Matias,” I said quietly. “I’ll tell you everything, but first you need to make your presence known.”
