Buch lesen: «Man Of Stone»

Man of Stone
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Concept Page

About the Author

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

End Page

CHAPTER ONE

‘SO THERE’S NO money, then; no money, no house, no anything.’

Her stepsister’s light voice had hardened fractionally, and Sara winced as she looked up and saw a matching hardening in Cressy’s pale blue eyes.

This was so difficult for Cressy, she acknowledged painfully. She herself had been more prepared. Her father had warned her only a few months ago about the precariousness of his financial position.

Once a fashionable and sought-after painter, he had no illusions about himself or his talent. In the days when he had commanded large sums for his paintings, he had spent lavishly. Now those days were gone, and it seemed that even the Chelsea house had not actually been owned by him, but was on a lease from someone else.

With his death that lease was cancelled, which meant… Which meant that from the end of the month they would all three of them be homeless, Sara recognised bleakly.

For herself, she could perhaps have managed. Although she had always been the one to run the house, to do her father’s books and take charge of the household, she had had a secretarial training that, with a little polishing, could equip her to earn her own living. But there were other things to be taken into consideration.

‘So what are you going to do about Tom?’ Cressy asked her in a hard voice. ‘There’s no way I can take charge of him, and he won’t be able to stay on at school. There won’t be any money for private school fees now.’

Tom, the eight-year-old half-brother born of the marriage between her father and Cressy’s mother. Tom, with his delicate constitution and his tendency towards asthma attacks. Tom, who, she had known since they first gave her the news of the accident, would be her responsibility.

It was pointless wishing that Cressy was different; Cressy was Cressy.

She looked across the kitchen at her beautiful stepsister and sighed.

‘I never understood why on earth my mother married your father,’ Cressy complained. ‘Mother was so beautiful. She could have married anyone.’

By anyone, Cressy meant a man with money, and Sara neglected to point out that when they had first married her father had been comparatively wealthy. Instead, she said softly, ‘They were in love, Cressy.’

‘Oh, love…’ She tossed her head, making shimmering beams of light dance off the carefully lightened curls. ‘Who cares about that? When I marry, it will be to a wealthy man. You’ll have to take charge of Tom, of course.’

Sara didn’t question her abruptness, nor the hard determination in her voice. She knew Cressy too well. Others were so easily deceived by Cressy’s sugar-sweet façade, she thought sadly. They saw the blonde hair and the blue eyes, the fragile bone structure and the deliciously curved body, and they didn’t look any further.

It wasn’t that she was jealous. Well, at least, not totally, she admitted painfully, unable to deny that it would have been rather nice to look as femininely precious as Cressy. She felt that she was plain in comparison, five foot four, with hair the colour of polished hazelnuts when the sun shone on it, and at other times a rather dull brown. Likewise, her eyes reflected the chameleon quality of her personality, green one moment, hazel another.

She was a quiet, rather shy girl, used to effacing herself, used to standing in the shadow of her far more self-assured stepsister, even though Cressy was her junior by two years.

Cressy’s father had been an actor, and Cressy was determined to follow in his footsteps. She had just left drama school, and had actually been cast in a very minor role in a West End play.

They had all gone to see it. Even Tom, who had been home from the private boarding-school he attended in Berkshire. Cressy had been very good. Her father had been very proud of her, Sara remembered with a faint tinge of loneliness.

There were times when she had thought that her father wished that Cressy had been his daughter, rather than herself. She took after her mother, apparently, but she had no real way of knowing if this was true, because Lucy Rodney had died when Sara was born.

She had got on well enough with Laura, Cressy’s mother. She and her father had been a well-matched pair, both of them enjoying the luxurious and rather fast-paced life that James Rodney embraced.

That was one of the reasons that there was no money. Her father must have thought himself immortal, Sara thought wryly. He had certainly never thought to make any provision for a tragedy such as the one which had just overwhelmed them.

She had read about the avalanche that had buried an alpine village in her morning paper. It had been lunch time before she learned that her father and Laura had been killed in it.

Now there were just the three of them; an odd and very disparate family unit, consisting of two young women and one half-grown child. But Cressy was already making it plain that she was going to opt out of that unit, and so it would just be the two of them. Tom and herself.

Sara wanted to protest, to remind her stepsister that Tom was their shared responsibility, but she thought of Tom’s strained, pale face, and the way he always shied away from the often acerbic Cressy and instead she said quietly, ‘Perhaps that would be best.’

She had to turn away to avoid seeing the relieved satisfaction in Cressy’s eyes.

‘Well, it is the most sensible solution, darling. After all, looking after a small and rather sickly child is hardly my scene, is it? Besides, I may get a chance at a role in an American soap. I could hardly take Tom out to California with me. Not with his asthma.’

Sara forbore to comment that, on the contrary, the hot, dry climate would probably do their half-brother a world of good. She had far more weighty things on her mind than Cressy’s selfishness. For one thing, where on earth were they going to live? Without the house, the small salary she could bring in was hardly going to provide comfortable accommodation for a young woman and an eight-year-old child.

‘Darling, I must fly. I’m due out tonight…’

‘Cressy, we still haven’t discussed where we’re going to live,’ Sara protested. ‘We lose this house at the end of the month.’

‘Oh, haven’t I told you? Jenneth has a spare room in her flat, which she offered me.’ The blue eyes hardened. ‘Look, Sara, be practical for once in your life. Why on earth don’t you get in touch with your mother’s family?’

‘My mother’s family?’ Sara repeated stupidly. ‘But…’

‘Oh, come on, darling. Use your head. Your mother came from a wealthy Cheshire family. We all know that! All right, so they refused to have anything to do with her when she defied her parents and ran away to marry your father, but that’s years ago now. If you turn up on their doorstep, destitute, with a small child in tow, they’re bound to take you in.’

‘Cressy!’ Sara was horrified, and it showed. She was also bewildered. From the pat way Cressy was voicing it, it was obvious that this wasn’t the first time that such a solution had occurred to her stepsister. She herself had never for one moment thought of contacting her mother’s family. She didn’t even know how to. She had heard the story of her parents’ run-away marriage so often that she simply accepted it as one might a fairy story.

‘Cressy, we don’t know that my mother’s people are wealthy. Dad could…’

‘They were… they are,’ Cressy interrupted her grimly. ‘I’ve been checking up on them.’ She ignored Sara’s gasp of shock. ‘I’ve been thinking about this ever since the funeral, Sara. It’s the ideal solution. You can’t stay in London. How could you support yourself, never mind Tom?’

‘My secretarial training…’

‘Oh, that!’ Cressy brushed her stammered words aside. ‘That wouldn’t bring in enough to keep you both. Face it, darling, the parents used you as a drudge. You kept house for them and answered Pop’s post, but that was about all. You’d never get a proper job with those qualifications. Really, darling, you don’t have any alternative… You have to contact your mother’s family. Look, I’ll even drive you up to see them,’ Cressy offered magnanimously.

‘To see them? But, Cressy, if I do get in touch with them… surely a letter would be more…’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t have time to get involved in letters. You need somewhere to live, Sara. Tom needs somewhere to live,’ Cressy pointed out.

Tom… A tiny shaft of fear shook Sara. There were times when Tom seemed such a fragile, delicate child. She thought of him being cooped up in a tiny London bedsit, and her mouth went dry.

But what Cressy was suggesting was so… so… so calculating, she admitted unhappily. There had been no contact between her father and his first wife’s family from the date of their marriage. Even after their daughter’s death, they had evinced no interest in their grandchild.

‘Look,’ Cressy interrupted, ‘what have you got to lose? What alternative do you have?’

‘They might not want me,’ Sara told her through stiff lips.

She missed the hard, rather unkind look her stepsister gave her.

‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure that they do, won’t we? We’ll collect Tom from school on Monday, and then I’ll drive you straight up there. I might as well have Dad’s car,’ she added, carelessly appropriating the one asset that remained. ‘You won’t need it…’

Sara opened her mouth to object, and then closed it again. She felt too tired, too emotionally weary to quarrel with Cressy. Besides, she was probably right.

But the car could have been sold, a tiny voice reminded her, and that money… But there were other more important questions that demanded answers, and she voiced them uncertainly.

‘Cressy, my mother’s family… You seem to know so much about them…’

All her doubt and distaste of the venture her stepsister was suggesting was there in her voice, but Cressy ignored them.

‘Well, one of us had to do something. Actually, Pop told me all about them. It seems they offered to take you off his hands when he and Ma married, but you were such a clinging little thing, he knew you wouldn’t want to go.’

How could one describe such sensations? Sara thought wanly as she struggled to come to terms with the shock of her stepsister’s revelation. She felt betrayed, abandoned, almost; she had never even known that her father had had any contact with her mother’s family, that he had even been approached by them. She had always had the impression from her father that her grandparents hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with her.

‘Heaven knows why he didn’t let you go,’ Cressy said carelessly. ‘And I suppose Ma would have farmed me out, too, if she could. To be honest, you’d probably have been better off if he had sent you to them, Sara,’ she added cynically. ‘They’re very well off. I suppose it was always at the back of Pop’s mind that he could turn to them if things ever got really desperate.’

Sara wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. She had received so many crushing blows recently and survived them, so why was it that this, the lightest of them all, should have such a paralysing effect?

She had always known that her father’s love for her was at best lukewarm. If he genuinely loved any of them, it was Cressy. Cressy, who made him laugh, who flirted with him and teased him, Cressy, who was exactly the sort of vibrant daughter he would have wanted.

‘It wasn’t hard to get old Hobbs to do some discreet checking up,’ Cressy continued.

Sara stared at her.

‘You asked Dad’s solicitor to do that?’

‘Why not?’ Cressy demanded carelessly, ignoring Sara’s distress. ‘Oh, come on!’ Suddenly she was impatient and showing it. ‘What other options do you have, Sara? You’ve always claimed to love Tom. Are you going to deny him the one chance he has of living a reasonably comfortable life? Starving in noble poverty is all very well in theory, but in practice…’

Sara knew that Cressy was right, and yet her pride recoiled instinctively from the thought of throwing herself on the mercy of the family who had so cruelly abandoned her mother. And as for Cressy’s suggestion that she and Tom just turn up on their doorstep, so to speak…

‘Don’t you want to hear what Hobbsy found out?’

Cressy had always known how to torment her. It was almost as though she actually knew of all those lonely childhood nights when Sara had lain awake, imagining what it would be like to have a real mother, a real family. That had been before her father married Laura, of course. But, kind though Laura had been, she had never come anywhere near to filling the empty space inside her, Sara acknowledged.

It was a shock to discover that her grandparents had actually offered to have her, and even more of a shock to know that her father had kept this information from her. Why? And then, unkindly, she was reminded of how, whenever she suggested that it was time she left home to train properly for a job, her father would remind her of all the small tasks she performed which were so essential to the smooth running of the household. Tasks which no single employee could ever be asked to perform. She was allowing Cressy’s cynicism to infect her, she thought miserably. Her father had loved her, in his way, but Cressy, being Cressy, hadn’t been able to bypass an opportunity to torment her. She had always been like that. Loving and affectionate one minute, and then clawing and spitting spitefully the next. It was difficult for Sara to know what motivated her; they were such very different people.

‘My little Martha,’ her father had sometimes called her, and she shivered in the coldness of the unheated kitchen, remembering that the words had not always been delivered kindly.

The trouble was that she had always been too pedestrian, too ordinary to appeal to her larger-than-life parent.

‘Sara, you aren’t listening to me,’ Cressy complained, dragging her back from the melancholy of her thoughts. ‘I was going to tell you about your relatives. They live in Cheshire—your father met your mother when he was visiting Chester. Hobbsy didn’t know much about their property, other than that it had been in the family for over three hundred years.’ Cressy made a face. ‘God, can you imagine? No wonder your mother ran away. Your grandmother’s still alive, but your grandfather died four years ago. Hobbsy says that your aunt and uncle lived in Sydney, and that your cousin Louise married an Australian. Your uncle and your cousin were killed in a car accident over there.’

Sara sank down into one of the kitchen chairs. Her brain felt numb, assaulted by far too much information for it to take it all in at once. She had a family. Strange, when for so many years she had longed and ached to know more about her mother and her grandparents, that now that she did there was this curious emptiness inside her.

‘So that’s all you’ve got to face, Sara. One old lady.’

She took a deep breath and swallowed.

‘Cressy, I know you mean well, but I just can’t dump myself on them… her. You must see that?’ Sara appealed frantically.

The younger girl’s eyes were hard and calculating.

‘So what do you intend to do? Stay here until you’re forcibly evicted? How do you think that will affect Tom? I’m leaving for the States at the end of the month, Sara, and nothing’s going to stop me.’

Why on earth did she feel that her stepsister had delivered a threat rather than a warning? Sara wondered miserably, concealing her shock at the swiftness with which Cressy had made her arrangements.

‘I can’t think,’ she protested. ‘Cressy, I can’t just go up there. I’ll write to them first.’

She knew without looking at her that Cressy was furious with her. How could she make the younger girl understand that she still had her pride, that she just could not throw herself on her grandmother’s charity? And yet, hours later, when Cressy had stormed out in a vicious temper, telling her that she was being criminally stubborn and selfish, she found herself standing in her father’s book-lined study in front of the shelves containing all his maps and reference books.

Her hand seemed to reach automatically for what she wanted. She lifted the book down and flicked through it, stopping when she reached Chester.

She read what was written there, and tried to subdue the tiny flicker of emotion that touched her. It had been so long since she had felt anything other than weary exhaustion, that it took her minutes to recognise it as hope.

She studied a map of the county, wondering just which part of it her family inhabited. As a child, a natural reticence and over-sensitivity for the feelings of others had stopped her from questioning her father about his in-laws. She had assumed that he found talking about her mother painful, and therefore that any mention of her parents must be doubly so. And yet, apparently, he had discussed them quite freely with Cressy.

Pointless now to feel cheated, to feel that something very precious had been denied to her.

Her family had lived in the same house for three hundred years, her father’s solicitor had discovered. What sort of house? Again that curl of sensation, this time aligned to a quivering inner excitement that brought a soft flush to her too-pale face.

The strain of the last few weeks had robbed her of much-needed weight. Unlike Cressy, she was not fashion-conscious, and her clothes had started to hang loosely on her slender frame. Even her hair, which was her one real claim to beauty, with its shiny, silky texture, seemed to have become dull and lifeless.

Suppose she was to write to her grandmother and that lady proposed a visit? The excitement grew. She felt like a child again, confronted with the beginnings of an especially exciting adventure. Her eyes sparkled, her air of plain dowdiness dropping away from her as hope took the place of misery.

There was no way she could do what Cressy was suggesting and simply inflict herself upon her grandmother, but a letter, explaining what could be explained without betraying her father…

The tiny seed of hope grew, and for the first time in weeks she slept peacefully and deeply.

Cressy believed in very late nights, and mornings that did not begin until close to twelve o’clock unless she was auditioning.

Sara took her a light breakfast tray at eleven, and wondered a little enviously how on earth her stepsister managed to look so good, even with most of last night’s make-up still round her eyes and her forehead creased in a bad-tempered frown.

‘God, my head’s splitting this morning! Whoever said that you couldn’t get drunk on champagne was a liar. What’s this?’ she demanded, grimacing as she saw the tray. ‘Breakfast? Oh, for God’s sake, Sara, don’t be such a fool. Phone’s ringing,’ she added unnecessarily. ‘If it’s for me, take a number and say I’ll ring back.’

It wasn’t, and, when she had listened to the voice on the other end of the line, Sara felt that tiny seed of hope wither and die.

She walked back to Cressy’s room slowly.

‘Who was it?’ Cressy demanded carelessly.

‘Tom’s school. Apparently, he had a very bad attack of asthma yesterday. Dr Robbins was very kind about it, but he feels that Tom’s health is too precarious for him to continue to stay on at school. We must go and see him, Cressy—now!’ She was shaking so much, she had to sit down, but Cressy ignored her obvious shock and said angrily, ‘Now?’

It was only an hour’s drive to the small, well-run prep school Tom was attending.

They were shown immediately into the headmaster’s study. Dr Paul Robbins was a tall, confidence-inspiring man in his late forties and, a little to Sara’s surprise and Cressy’s obvious resentment, it was Sara whom he led to the chair in front of his desk, and to whom he addressed his remarks, leaving Cressy to take a very much disliked back seat.

Paul Robbins wasn’t particularly impressed by pretty faces. He had enough experience of them to know they weren’t worth very much without something to back them up. The pretty, pouting blonde he had recognised as one of the world’s takers straight away. The other one, the quiet, hesitant girl, with the air of fragile vulnerability, she was the one who would be burdened with the care of the young boy at present lying in one of the ‘San beds’, being worriedly cared for by his wife.

‘How is he, Dr Robbins?’ Sara asked without preamble. ‘Can we see him?’

‘He’s doing quite well now that the attack’s over,’ he assured her. ‘And you can see him later. I wanted to have a talk with you… with both of you first. I’m afraid that the loss of his parents has had a very bad effect on Tom. We’ve taken the advice of a specialist on asthma and related problems, because this isn’t the first attack he’s had in the last few weeks. Of course, it’s only natural that Tom should feel insecure and vulnerable at the moment, and that this vulnerability should lead to asthma attacks, but in Tom’s case our specialist feels that Tom needs the security of his family around him. Some boys just do not take to a boarding-school life. Tom hasn’t been unhappy here, but he has always been a little withdrawn. This withdrawal has increased since his parents’ death, and we feel that, for Tom’s sake, if nothing else, he would be better off at home.’

He looked down at his blotter and fiddled with his pen.

‘I believe at the moment you live in London?’

The question was addressed to Sara alone, as though he was well aware that it was she and not Cressy who would bear the burden of Tom’s welfare.

‘Yes,’ Sara agreed weakly.

He looked gravely at her. ‘One of the reasons Tom was sent here to school was because it was thought that city life was not good for his health. Our specialist has corroborated that view. He feels that Tom would fare best in a quiet country environment, at least until he is old enough and strong enough to combat his asthma with other means. I don’t need to tell you, I know, that he is a very frail little boy.’

Made frailer by the fact that he had received so little attention from his parents, Dr Robbins acknowledged, without saying as much. He knew quite well from his talks with Tom that it was his sister to whom the child most readily related, a sister who, by the looks of her, was almost at the end of her own fragile reserves of strength.

Sara’s body tensed, her heart beating rapidly. Was Dr Robbins trying to tell her… to prepare her… He saw her face, and instantly reassured her.

‘No… no, on this occasion, I assure you that he has pulled through the attack very well, but you know how weakening they are, how severely they restrict his life. Tom needs a quiet, secure background, Miss Rodney, at least for the next few years.’

He offered them tea, but Sara refused it. She was desperately anxious to see Tom and to assure herself that he was not more seriously ill than she had been told.

The little school sanatorium was bright and cheerful, but that could surely not lessen the loneliness for the little boy who was its sole occupant, Sara thought achingly as they were taken to see him.

He was sedated and drowsy with medication, but the smile he gave her made her heart turn over. He was her brother, and yet in many ways he was also her child. His parents had loved him in their careless way, but he was like her, vulnerable and in need of much more than the casual affection that was all they had time to give. She kneeled to kiss him, her throat closing up with love and fear. He was so thin, so pale, so much smaller surely than other boys his age.

They weren’t allowed to stay with him for very long. Dr Robbins had arranged for them to see the specialist, who merely repeated what he had already told them. By this time, Cressy was exhibiting obvious signs of impatience and, when they were finally free to walk out to the car, she complained irately, ‘Honestly, there was no need for him to go through it all again! I’m going out tonight, and now I’m going to be late.’

Sara couldn’t speak. She was too shocked and worried. How could Cressy even think about going out when Tom… She bit into her bottom lip, unaware that she had torn the tender flesh until she tasted blood.

‘It’s just as well you’ve got your grandmother to turn to,’ Cressy said casually as she started the car. ‘There’s no way you could stay in London now, is there?’

Hard eyes locked with Sara’s pained, bewildered ones, and all the objections she wanted to voice died unsaid.

‘I’ll write to my grandmother tonight,’ she said quietly, but Cressy shook her head and stopped the car.

‘Sara, don’t be such a fool. There isn’t time for that. You heard what that fool Robbins said. He wants to get rid of Tom. He wants you to take him away. And I thought you loved him,’ she added cruelly. ‘If you really did, you wouldn’t hesitate. Is your pride really so much more important than Tom’s health?’

There was nothing Sara could say. Numbly, she shook her head, while one part of her cried out in desperation that she could not simply turn up on her grandmother’s doorstep without an invitation.

She tried to reason, even to argue with Cressy, but the other girl wouldn’t listen.

‘Look, we’ll drive down and collect Tom on Friday, and then go straight up to Cheshire.’

Sara was too exhausted to protest. All she could think of was Tom’s white face; all she could hear was the specialist’s dire warnings about the necessity for a quiet, secure country life.

If her grandmother wasn’t wealthy, if there had been some past contact between them… But what was the point of ‘ifs’? She was caught in a situation not of her own making, and the strong sense of loyalty and responsibility bred deep in her wouldn’t allow her to abandon Tom now, when he needed her most.

‘Almost there.’

For the first time in weeks, Cressy sounded cheerful. Sara averted her head and stared blindly out of the window. She felt sick with nerves, desperately afraid of what was to come, and she wished she had done anything other than agree to Cressy’s plans.

She had even suggested telephoning her grandmother, but Cressy had forced her to concede that a telephone call was not the best way to introduce herself to a grandmother whom she had never seen.

In the back seat, Tom was humming cheerfully. Even today, she might have found an alternative but, when they arrived at the school to collect Tom, Dr Robbins had detained her to tell her than Tom’s school fees had been paid for the year, and that there would be a refund to come to her. It was as though he knew how desperately short of money they were, Sara had reflected unhappily.