Сара Крейвен – Deceived (страница 2)

‘Nor will you. At least, not at Greystones.’ Lydie found that she was sinking her teeth into her lower lip. She released the painful pressure and tried to speak lightly. ‘He’s the skeleton in the family cupboard, the black sheep of the family. He—left nearly five years ago and hasn’t been heard of since.’

‘You mean he walked out?’

‘Not exactly. There was the most terrible row, and Austin, who’d brought him up ever since his parents died, ordered him out of the house—told him never to darken his door again—the whole bit.’

‘What was the row about?’

‘The usual sordid mess.’ She could still taste blood from her savaged lip. ‘He’d got one of the mill girls pregnant, apparently. I—I was still away at school when it all happened. And the subject was forbidden ground ever after.’

‘And you just accepted that?’ Nell’s gaze was searching. ‘I don’t believe it. You couldn’t.’

‘I didn’t really have a choice,’ Lydie defended herself. ‘Austin had his first heart attack immediately afterwards, and all the blame for that was put on his quarrel with—with Marius.’

I said his name, she thought, and waited for the pain to strike as it always had when she so much as thought about him. As it still did, she recognised in anguish, her fingers tightening round the handle of the carrier until the knuckles turned white. Five years on, and the wound was still deep—unhealed.

‘You’ll never mention him again—do you hear?’ She could still hear her mother’s voice, angry, almost strident. ‘Those are Austin’s orders and they’ll be obeyed. And think yourself lucky, you little fool, that you’re not in the same boat as his other teenage tart.’

‘So, he just vanished—never to be heard of again?’ Nell’s voice brought her, wincing, back to the present. ‘I find that totally incredible—and rather disturbing.’

‘It works both ways, of course,’ Lydie said tonelessly. ‘Marius has never tried to get in touch either—with any of us. He must have accepted that what he did was unforgivable, at least in Austin’s eyes.’

‘Or maybe he was just glad to get out from under the Benedict thumb,’ Nell retorted, her soft voice grim. ‘I wish Jon felt the same.’

She paused. ‘Who was the girl?’

‘Her name was never actually mentioned,’ Lydie acknowledged with difficulty.

‘But weren’t you curious?

‘Yes—naturally.’ And devastated, betrayed, heartbroken. ‘But she disappeared at the same time, presumably with Marius. No one was allowed to ask any questions.’

But you didn’t want to ask, a sly voice in her head reminded her. Because the questions were hurtful enough in themselves. The answers might have destroyed you.

‘Well, it seems extraordinary to me.’ Nell gave a quick sigh, then pointed to the bag. ‘Now let me have a look at the creation. Rub my nose in what I’ll be missing tonight. We may as well close early,’ she added. ‘It doesn’t look as if we’re going to be overwhelmed by a last-minute rush.’

There was a mirror in Nell’s studio at the rear of the gallery. Lydie gently withdrew the dress from its layers of tissue paper, letting the folds of cream silk slide through her fingers.

Her hands were trembling a little. She’d broken the unwritten law by speaking Marius’s name and opened up a real can of worms. Nell’s innate sense of justice had been outraged, and in so many ways she was quite right.

Yet at the time, for Austin’s sake, there’d seemed no choice but to tacitly accept the curtain of silence which had been drawn over the whole affair. He’d had bypass surgery after that first massive attack and, they’d been warned, he had to be kept free from stress.

They owed him too much to take unnecessary risks. That was indisputable.

She even owed him this dress, she thought wryly as she shook it out.

Yet, in spite of Debra Benedict’s pleas to him to slow down, he still went to the mill every day. Nor did he appear to agree with his wife’s view that he should shift more executive responsibility onto Jon’s shoulders.

‘I’ve set the lad on, and promoted him over better men, my dear,’ he’d told her. ‘You’ll have to settle for that for the time being.’

Debra had seized on his closing words, conveniently ignoring what had gone before, convincing herself that the Benco world was just waiting to be Jon’s oyster. She hadn’t been able to persuade Austin to adopt both children in the early days of her marriage, but that was no reason why her husband shouldn’t leave his company and the estate to his stepson. Especially now that there was no one else.

It was an obsession with her, Lydie thought wearily, holding the dress against herself and turning to study her reflection in the mirror.

Forget the past, she told herself. Think about the dress and the party—and about Hugh, who’s probably going to ask you to marry him. Concentrate on that—and the pain will go away. It always has done—eventually. It must now.

Her eyes felt bruised. The cream silk, with its deep square neckline and filmy bell sleeves, looked incongruous against her workaday blue shirt and jeans.

It was almost like a wedding dress, except for the barbaric splash of embroidery across the front of the full skirt—the band of stylised flowers and trailing leaves in gold thread adding a voluptuous element to the purity of the plain silk. A hint, even, of danger.

The neckline was several centimetres short of bridal demureness too, Lydie thought critically. She wouldn’t be able to wear a bra. But what Austin didn’t know wouldn’t grieve him.

All cream and gold, she thought. ‘Like a madonna lily.’

The words flicked out of the past like the bite of a whip, flaying her senses, making the breath catch in her throat.

Don’t look back, she thought feverishly. Don’t let yourself remember. It isn’t safe. Not now—not ever...

She held the skirt out slightly, watching the effect with detachment.

Hugh, of course, would love it.

She conjured up his image in her mind with determination. Tall and even fairer than she was, with an easy smile, Hugh Wingate had been in the army, serving in the Falklands and latterly in the Gulf War. On his father’s death he’d resigned his commission and come home to look after the family estates. Debra had decided at once that the seventeenth-century Wingate Hall would make a perfect background for Lydie and had spent the previous year trying to bring it about.

Jon, Lydie thought drily, was not the only victim of their mother’s manipulative tactics.

But although Hugh had been more than co-operative Lydie had maintained a certain reserve, even though she enjoyed his company and shared a lot of his interests. Many successful marriages, she knew, had been based on far less.

But she wasn’t in love with Hugh and she knew it. His kisses, while agreeable, left her only faintly stirred, and she’d had not the slightest difficulty in resisting his urging her to carry their relationship to a more intimate level. If and when they became officially engaged, the pressure, she supposed, would increase, and she would have to surrender herself.

But maybe that was what she needed, she thought broodingly. Perhaps the only way to erase the past, and the pain, was to commit herself to another relationship. To begin her life as a woman all over again.

She stared at herself. It could be that she was never to know again the same wild intensity of feeling she’d experienced five years ago; that what she felt for Hugh was as good as it was going to get. Well, so be it. Hugh would never feel short-changed anyway, she vowed inwardly. She would make sure of that.

Security, she thought—that’s what matters above all. She could remember only too clearly the various cheap flats, the uncertainty of school holidays, the terrifying fluctuation of finances which had marked their childhood, could understand why Debra, her career in decline, her spectacular looks beginning to fade, had grabbed with both hands at the florid Edwardian comfort of Greystones and Austin’s unstinting devotion.

If Hugh proposed tonight as her mother was sure he intended, then she’d accept. Turn Austin’s birthday into a double celebration.

She turned away from the mirror and waltzed out into the gallery, the dress held against her.

‘I’ll have my hair up tonight,’ she announced. ‘But you’ll have to imagine the rest of it.’

She checked, her hand flying to her mouth in sudden embarrassment. She hadn’t heard him arrive but there was a last-minute customer just the same.

There was a man’s tall figure standing beside Nell near the cash desk.

God, she thought with vexation, snatching the dress away as if it were stinging her and throwing it over her arm. What an idiot I must look.

Flushing deeply, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise anyone else was here.’

‘Don’t apologise.’ The deep voice was husky with amusement. ‘I wouldn’t have missed the performance for the world.’

Poised for retreat, Lydie felt instead as if she’d suddenly been turned to stone. She felt her lips parting in a silent gasp, her green eyes widening endlessly as he moved without haste towards her.

The overhead light shining directly on him showed thick, faintly curling dark hair and a lean, tanned face, against which his grey eyes were as cold and hard as a winter sky.