by Anne Weale
‘Maggie said you were here when she opened the door to me. Are you back from Majorca already? I thought you might be there weeks.’
‘I’m going to be; this is just a flying visit. Look, I know it’s a bad time to pick but I have to know what you meant by what you said on the telephone about Nicolas Talbot. It’s important to me, Frances.’
Her sister stopped doing her eyes and gave her a searching look. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for him? There hasn’t been time for that.’
‘There’s been time,’ Cressy said quietly. ‘I knew as soon as I saw him he was someone special.’
‘Oh, God, this is ghastly,’ said Frances. Forgetting the need for haste, she closed her eyes and put her fingers to her forehead, as if she had been hit by a blinding headache.
Frances was rarely fazed, and perhaps she only seemed so now because she had had a tough week topped by a difficult rail trip and was not in the mood for anything but a stiff drink. Or so Cressy hoped.
Then her sister opened her eyes and visibly took a grip on herself.
‘Look, there isn’t time to wrap this up for you. I’m due downstairs any minute and the party will go on till all hours, and tomorrow I’m totally tied up. So I’ve got to give it to you straight from the shoulder.’
She drummed her long nails on the glass top of the dressing table. ‘That man is off-limits, Cressy. You’ve got to forget you ever met him. He’s brought enough grief to this family. When Anna was twenty he had an affair with her. Then he dropped her...leaving her pregnant. She had to have an abortion. She’s never really got over it.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘I DON’T believe it,’ said Cressy. ‘Nicolas wouldn’t do that. He’s too responsible...too kind. I just do not believe it.’
‘You have to. You must. It’s true.’
‘Do Dad and Mum know? Does Maggie?’
‘No, no one but us three...you, me and that bastard Talbot. If you knew what he’d put Anna through you’d never speak to him again. After the abortion she was so depressed and distraught she thought about suicide. I went round to see her unexpectedly, because I was worried about her. We’ve always been very close and I had an intuition something was wrong. I found her in bed. There was a bottle of gin on the night table and a whole lot of pills, including some she’d sneaked from my bathroom cabinet.’
Cressy sank down on the bed. She couldn’t believe she was hearing this horrible, sordid scenario.
‘I thought you were both too clued-up to get pregnant,’ she said, baffled. ‘How could it happen? Wasn’t Anna taking the pill?’
Frances sighed. ‘No contraceptive is a hundred per cent infallible. She’d had a bad tummy upset...sickness and diarrhoea. That can leave you exposed. Anyway she got caught, which wouldn’t have mattered if he had loved her. Not that she wanted a baby, but she wouldn’t have had it aborted if he hadn’t dumped her.’
‘She needn’t have done that anyway. Why did she do it? She could have had the baby adopted, or even kept it. Dad and Mum would have helped her. We all would.’
‘You’re so sentimental, Cressy,’ her sister said impatiently. She began to go on with her make-up. ‘Just imagine Virginia’s delight at having a sleazy story about a fatherless grandchild making headlines in the gutter Press. I’m not saying she wouldn’t have stood by Anna if she’d had to. She might even have managed to make capital out of it,’ she added cynically. ‘But although it would only have been a nine-day wonder in the Press, it would have been a drag on Anna for years. Being a single parent is tough. She made the practical choice.’
‘I’m sure Maggie knows,’ said Cressy. ‘It ties in with something she said to me about enough broken hearts in this family already.’
‘She knows that we’ve both been kicked in the teeth by men. She couldn’t possibly know about Anna’s pregnancy.’
‘What happened to you?’ Cressy asked.
‘Nothing as bad as Anna’s catastrophe. I was more in love with Euan than he was with me. I don’t suppose you remember him. We had a thing going for six months and then he decided to end it. God, I wasn’t expecting to have to rake over all this tonight. Nip down to the den and fix me a drink, will you? I can’t face a roomful of big names without something to perk me up.’
When Cressy returned, with two drinks, Frances was almost ready. She gulped down some vodka and tonic. ‘That’s better.’ Then she looked more closely at Cressy. ‘You look shattered, poor kid. But it’s better to find out now before you become too embroiled. What a louse the guy is, knowing this, to want your scalp on his belt. You haven’t slept with him, have you?’
Cressy shook her head.
‘Thank God for that I think Anna would kill him if she found out he’d been after you. You must never let on to her, Cressy. It’s dangerous to reopen wounds. She was close to a nervous breakdown. It’s left her awfully unstable. I hoped she would meet someone else and put it behind her. But that hasn’t happened...to either of us.’
On Saturday, after a late breakfast, the Vales, their housekeeper and Frances drove down to their weekend place. Cressy stayed behind. She needed to be alone. They would be back before dark the following evening.
On Sunday morning Nicolas rang up to ask the time of her flight on Monday. It was hard not to pour it all out to him on the phone, but she knew she must wait until they were face to face. The hours seemed to drag interminably.
When the weekenders returned, Frances made a point of speaking to Cressy in private before returning to her flat.
‘From what Dad’s been telling me, it seems you’re committed to a rescue operation for Kate. Pity. It may make it difficult to avoid all contact with Nicolas. But don’t let him con you, Cressy. If you ask him, I expect he’ll deny it...claim that Anna was promiscuous, that it could have been anyone’s baby. But it wasn’t. There was no one else. He was the father of it.’
Cressy didn’t argue. She didn’t want to discuss it. Not until she saw Nicolas.
He was waiting for her at the airport. But this time she didn’t fling herself into his arms—nor did he kiss her, but he held out his hand and said, ‘How was your flight?’
‘I came tourist this time, so there were fewer trimmings, but it was fine, thanks. I telephoned Kate before I left home and she said she was being discharged tomorrow.’
Nicolas took charge of the trolley on which, this time, Cressy had a suitcase weighing the maximum allowed.
‘That’s right, and everything’s ready for her. You didn’t see it before, but the wing which juts out on the right of the courtyard is a self-contained granny cottage, organised years ago when my mother thought she might still be living at Ca’n Liorenc after I married. It’s never been used so it needed a major spring-clean. Luckily, for plumbing reasons, the bathroom is on the ground floor, so Kate won’t have to negotiate the rather awkward staircase. She can inhabit the ground floor with you on the floor above.’
If he noticed that Cressy was not very talkative on the drive to Ca’n Liorenc he didn’t remark on it.
When they arrived, she was greeted by Catalina and shown the quarters she and Kate would occupy. And as soon as his housekeeper had left them, he said, ‘What’s the matter, Cressy? What’s happened?’
Although she had spent hours thinking about this moment, and how best to tackle it, she found it hard to begin. ‘What makes you think anything is the matter?’ she asked.
‘I could see it in your face the moment you came through from airside. The night we had dinner at Scotts you looked wonderful. Now you look like a junior doctor who’s been on duty so long she’s at dropping point.’
‘I know how they must feel. I haven’t had much sleep myself.’ She braced herself. ‘On Friday night my sister Frances accused you of something...vile. I know it isn’t true, Nicolas. But if Frances believes it, and Anna swears it’s true, I don’t see how you can clear yourself. Which means I shall have to choose...between our friendship and my family.’
While she was speaking,
his expression had changed. Already serious and questioning, now it was stern and cold. It seemed to her that his eyes had the glitter of arctic ice.
‘What am I accused of?’
‘Having an affair with Anna and, when she got pregnant, dropping her.’
‘I see. But you think I didn’t?’
‘I’m certain you didn’t. I think you might have dropped her if she had begun to bore you, but I don’t believe you’d walk out on a girl who was having your child.’
‘A lot of men have.’
‘I know...but you wouldn’t.’
‘You’re very trusting, Cressy.’
Her answer came from her heart. She didn’t stop to think that it might not be welcome.
‘I love you, so of course I trust you,’ she said impetuously.
Then, with the words irretrievable, she gave a gasp of dismay and felt a deep flush of embarrassment flooding her face from hairline to neck.
‘I love you too,’ said Nicolas. starting to smile. ‘But I wasn’t going to tell you yet.’
He opened his arms to her.
Some time later, after she had burst into tears of relief, making damp patches on his shirt which were now beginning to dry, Cressy gave a long, tremulous sigh and pulled herself together.
‘Sorry to be so emotional, but these last few days have been awful. However much you care for someone, it’s still a major decision to break with your family.’
Looking down at her upturned face, he said gravely, ‘Would you really do that for me?’
‘Of course. That’s what love is...the world well lost.’
‘I hope it won’t be necessary,’ said Nicolas. ‘It seems to depend on Anna being willing to tell the truth.’
‘What is the truth?’ Cressy asked.
He frowned. ‘There’ve been some women in my life, but none that I loved until you turned up. Because of the way I live, I didn’t want to fall in love. It was hard for my mother and it’s going to be hard for you, Cressy. I’m not as likely to get killed as my father was, but inevitably you’re going to have to put up with a lot of long separations. Even for love of you I can’t change the way I am.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to. That’s another thing about love,’ she said seriously. ‘You have to see people as they are and like them that way...not try to alter them.’
‘Not everyone realises that,’ Nicolas said dryly. He let her go and moved away, as if what he had to say was better said from a distance.
‘I was attracted by Anna, but we hadn’t known each other long before I found out she had someone else in her life. I wasn’t prepared to share her. That was the end of it. If she was already pregnant it wasn’t by me. To be brutally frank, if a guy doesn’t want to be landed with paternity problems he doesn’t take a girl’s word that she’s making sure it won’t happen. When I have children, I want them to be planned and welcomed—not inconvenient accidents.’
‘But if it was the other man who was the father, why did she blame it on you?’
‘Only she can answer that. Perhaps he was married,’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps she loved him enough to not want to make trouble for him and was angry with me for walking out on her. It’s a long time ago. I expect she’s grown up and changed. But at the time I knew her her character wasn’t as attractive as her looks. I suspect she was the female equivalent of a womaniser. It’s possible she was running several other lovers, but Euan was the only one I knew about.’
Cressy stiffened. ‘Euan? Are you sure that was his name?’
‘Certain of it. Why?’
‘That was the name of Frances’s boyfriend...the one who dumped her.’
They looked at each other in silence.
‘All is explained,’ said Nicolas. ‘It’s very simple... when you know the answer. Anna couldn’t resist trying her wiles on her sister’s guy, and he fell for her. Then, when she became pregnant, he ran out on them both. She couldn’t tell Frances the truth, and I was a convenient scapegoat. Which wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t met you and fallen in love with you.’
‘The only way out of the impasse that I can see,’ Cressy said slowly, ‘is for Anna to invent another lover who could have been the father. She can never tell Frances the truth. That would put their relationship on the scrapheap for ever, especially as Frances believes there’s a special bond between them.’
‘I expect there’s a solution somewhere,’ said Nicolas. ‘But right now I’m more concerned with our relationship.’
He came back to where she was standing. ‘I was planning to ask you to marry me about six months from now. With the rest of our lives ahead, I felt I could afford to wait until you’d had time to be sure how you felt about me. But now that seems unnecessary. Shall we count ourselves engaged? To be married as soon as our families can be brought together without any awkward undercurrents?’
Cressy put her arms round his neck. ‘To be honest, Maggie is my nearest and dearest, and, after her, Dad. What I feel for my mother and sisters is not much more than affection. We have so little in common. The person whose approval concerns me far more than theirs is your mother.’
‘Perhaps, if there’s room on the yacht, we might propose ourselves and go island-hopping with Mamá and Tom and their brood. Catalina will take care of Kate.’
‘That would be heaven.’
There was a glint in his eyes and a quirk at the corner of his mouth. ‘But only, of course, if there are two cabins to spare so that you can stick to your vow.’
Cressy laughed. ‘My vow was not to hang on to my “long-preserved virginity” until I was safely married—only until I loved someone and knew he loved me. Those conditions being fulfilled, I’m yours for the taking.’
Nicolas crushed her against him. ‘Esta noche, mi vida,’ he said in husky Spanish.
Cressy didn’t need a translation to tell her that tonight she would sleep in his arms in the painted bed.
ISBN: 9781472067531
THE YOUNGEST SISTER
© Anne Weale 2013
First Published in Great Britain in 2013
Harlequin (UK) Limited
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