The Hidden Years
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Copyright

PROLOGUE

JUDGED by the laws of logic, the accident should never have happened at all.

A quiet—or at least quiet by London’s frenetic standards—side-street; a clear, bright spring morning; a taxi driver who prided himself on his accident-free record; a slender, elegant woman who looked and moved like someone ten years younger than she actually was; none of the parts that went to make up the whole was in any way logically vulnerable, and yet, as though fate had decreed what must happen and was determined that it would happen, even though the woman crossed the road with ease and safety, even though the taxi driver had seen her and logged the fact that she had crossed the road ahead of him, even though the pavement and road were free of debris and frost, for some reason, as she stepped on to the pavement, the woman’s heel caught on the kerb, throwing her off balance so that she turned and fell, not on to the relative safety of the pavement, but into the road and into the path of the taxi, whose driver was safely and law-abidingly not driving along its crown in the sometimes dangerous and arrogant manner of taxi drivers the world over, but well into his correct side of the street.

He saw the woman fall, and braked instinctively, but it was too late. The sickening sensation of soft, vulnerable human flesh hitting his cab was a sound he would carry with him the rest of his life. His passenger, a pin-stripe-suited businessman in his early fifties, was jolted out of his seat by the impact. Already people were emerging from the well-kept, expensive houses that lined the street.

Someone must have rung for an ambulance because he could hear its muted siren wailing mournfully like a dirge… He could hardly bear to look at the woman, he was so sure that she must be dead, and so he stood sickly to one side as the ambulance arrived and the professionals took over.

‘She’s alive…just,’ he heard someone say, and in his mind’s eye he pictured the people somewhere who were still at this moment oblivious to the tragedy about to darken their lives.

Somewhere this woman would have family, friends, dependants—she had had that look about her, the confident, calm look of a woman in control of her life and those lives that revolved around her own. Somewhere those people still went about their daily business, unaware and secure.

Her mother, injured in a road accident and now lying close to death in a hospital bed—it seemed impossible, Sage thought numbly; her mother was invulnerable, omnipresent, indestructible, or so she had always seemed.

Vague, disconnected, unreal thoughts ricocheted through her brain: memories, fears, sensations. The Porsche, which had been a celebratory thirtieth birthday present to herself, cut through the heavy traffic, her physical ability to control and manoeuvre the expensive piece of machinery oddly unaffected by her mental turmoil.

There was a sensation in the pit of her stomach which she remembered from her childhood and adolescence: an uncomfortable mixture of apprehension, pain and anger. How dared her mother do this to her? How dared she intrude on the life she had built for herself? How dared she reach out, as she had reached out so very many times in the past, to cast her influence, her presence over her own independence?

She wasn’t a child any more, she was mature, an adult, so why now was she swamped with those old and oh, so familiar feelings of resentment and guilt, of pain and anger and, most betraying of all, of fear?

The hospital wasn’t far away, which was presumably why they had contacted her and not Faye. And then she remembered that she was her mother’s closest blood relative…the next of kin. A tiny tremor of pure acid-sharp horror chilled her skin. Her mother, dying… She had told herself for so long that she felt nothing for the woman who had given birth to her—that her mother’s treachery and deceit had made it impossible for any emotion other than hatred to exist between them—that it was doubly shocking to feel this dread…this anguish.

She turned into the hospital, parked her car, and climbed out of it, frowning, the movement of her elegant, lithe body quick and impatient. A typical Leo was how Liz Danvers had once ruefully described her second child: fiery, impetuous, impatient, intemperate and intelligent.

That had been almost twenty years ago. Since then time had rubbed smooth some of the rough edges of her restless personality, experience gentling and softening the starkness of a nature that weaker souls often found too abrasive. Now in her early thirties, she had learned to channel those energies which had once driven her calmer and far more self-possessed mother behind the wall of reserve and dignity which Sage had wasted so much of her childhood trying to batter down, in an effort to reach the elusive core of her personality which she had sensed her mother withheld from her; just as she had always felt that in some way she was not the child her mother had wanted her to be.

But then of course she was not, and never could be, another David. David… her brother. She missed him even now…missed his gentle wise counsel, missed his love, his understanding. David…everyone who had known him had loved him, and deservedly so. To describe his virtues was to make him appear insipid, to omit due cognisance of the essential sweetness and selflessness of both David the child and David the man, which had made him so deeply loved by everyone who knew him. But she had never been jealous of David, had never felt that, but for him, her mother would have loved her more or better…so the schism between them went too deep to be explained away by a maternal preference for a more favoured sibling. Once it had hurt, that knowledge that there was something within her that turned the love her mother seemed to shower on everything and everyone else around her into enmity and dislike, but maturity had taught her acceptance if nothing else, acceptance and the ability to distance herself from those things in her past which were too painful to confront. Things which she avoided, just as she avoided all but the most necessary contact with her mother. She seldom went home to Cottingdean these days.

Cottingdean: the house itself, the garden, the village; all of them her mother’s domain, all of them created and nurtured by her mother’s will. They were her mother’s world.

Cottingdean. How she had hated and resented the place’s demands on her mother throughout her childhood, transferring to it the envy and dislike she had never felt for David. Too young then to analyse why it was that her mother seemed to hold her at a distance, to dislike her almost, she had jealously believed that it was because of Cottingdean and its demands upon her mother’s time; that Cottingdean meant far more to her mother than she ever could.

In that perhaps she had been right, and why not? she thought cynically—Cottingdean had certainly repaid to her mother the time and devotion she had invested in it, in a way that she, her child, her daughter, never could.

Cottingdean, David, her father—these had been the main, the important components of her mother’s life, and she had always felt that she stood apart from them, outside them, an interloper…an intruder; how fiercely and verbally she had resented that feeling.

She pushed open the plate-glass door and walked into the hospital’s reception area. A young nurse listened as she gave her name, and then consulted a list nervously before telling her, ‘Your mother is in the intensive care unit. If you’d like to wait in reception, the surgeon in charge of her case would like to have a word with you.’

Self-control had been something she had learned long ago, and so Sage allowed nothing of what she was feeling to be betrayed by her expression as she thanked the nurse and walked swiftly over to a seat. Was her mother dead already? Was that why the surgeon wanted to see her? A tremor of unwanted sensation seized her, a panicky terror that made her want to cry out like a child. No, not yet… There’s too much I want to know… Too much that needs to be said.

Which was surely ridiculous given the fact that she and her mother had long ago said all that there was to say to one another… When she herself had perhaps said too much, revealed too much. Been hurt too much.

As she waited, her body taut, her face smooth of any expression, even in repose there was something about her that reflected her inherent inner turbulence: her dark red hair so vibrant with life and energy, her strong-boned face quick and alive, the green eyes that no one knew quite where she had inherited as changeable as the depths of a northern lake under spring skies. The nurse glanced at her occasionally, envying her. She herself was small and slightly plump, a pretty girl in her way, but nowhere near in the class of the stunning woman who sat opposite her. There was elegance in the narrowness of her ankles and wrists, beauty that owed nothing to youth or fashion in the shaping of her face, mystery and allure in the colour of her hair and eyes, and something about every smallest movement of her body that drew the eye like a magnet.

Somewhere in this huge anonymous building lay her mother, Sage told herself, impossible though that seemed. Her mother had always seemed almost immortal, the pivot on which so many lives turned. Even hers, until she had finally rebelled and broken away to be her own person. Yes, her mother had always seemed indestructible, inviolate, an immutable part of the universe. The perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect employer—the epitome of all that her own peer group was striving so desperately to achieve. And she had achieved it against the kind of odds her generation would never have to face. Her mother was a woman thirty years ahead of her time, a woman who had taken a sick man, at one time close to death, and kept him alive for over twenty-five years. A woman who had become the mistress of a sick house and a dying estate and had turned them both into monuments of what could be achieved if one was single-minded and determined enough, if one had the skill, and the vision, and the sheer dogged will-power needed to perform such miracles.

Was this perhaps the root cause of the disaffection between her and her mother? Not that her mother had not loved her enough, but that she had always unknowingly been jealous and resentful of her mother’s gifts? Was she jealous of her mother’s achievements? Was she masking those feelings by letting herself believe that it was her right to feel as she did…that the guilt, the betrayal, the blame were her mother’s and not her own?

‘Miss Danvers?’

Her head snapped round as the impatient male voice addressed her. She was used to the male awareness that momentarily overwhelmed this doctor’s professionalism. It was a dubious gift, this dark, deep vein of sexuality that seemed to draw men to her in desire and need. Desire but not love. Something sharp and bitter moved inside her—an old wound, but one that had never healed.

To banish it she asked crisply, ‘My mother…?’

‘Alive. At the moment,’ he told her, anticipating her question. He was focusing on her properly now, banishing his earlier awareness of her; a tall, thin man who was probably only six or seven years older than she was herself, but whose work had aged him prematurely. A gifted, intelligent man, but one who, at the moment, looked exhausted and impatient.

Fear smothered Sage’s instinctive sympathy as she waited for him to go on.

‘Your mother was unconscious when she was brought in—as yet we have no idea how serious her internal injuries are.’

‘No idea…’ Sage showed her shock. ‘But…’

‘We’ve been far too busy simply keeping her alive to do anything more than run the most cursory of tests. She’s a very strong woman, otherwise she’d never have survived. She’s conscious at the moment and she’s asking for you. That’s why I wanted to see you. Patients, even patients as gravely injured as your mother, react very quickly to any signs of distress or fear they pick up from their visitors, especially when those visitors are close family.’

‘My mother was asking for me?’ Sage queried, astonished.

‘Yes!’ He frowned at her. ‘We had the devil of a job tracing you…’

Her mother had asked for her. Sage couldn’t understand it. Why her? She would have expected her to ask for Faye, David’s wife—David’s widow—or for Camilla, David and Faye’s daughter, but never for her.

‘My sister-in-law—’ she began, voicing her thoughts, but the surgeon shook his head brusquely.

‘We have notified her, but at this stage we have to limit your mother’s visitors. There’s obviously something on her mind, something distressing her… With a patient as gravely ill as your mother, anything we can do to increase her chances of recovery, no matter how small, is vitally important, which is why I must stress that it is crucial that whatever it is your mother wants to say to you, however unlikely or inexplicable it seems, you must try to find a way of reassuring her. It’s essential that we keep her as calm as we possibly can.’

The look he was giving her suggested that he had severe doubts that she would be able to do any such thing. Doubts which she herself shared, Sage acknowledged wryly.

‘If you’d like to follow me,’ he said now, and, as she followed him down the narrow, empty corridor leading off the main reception area, Sage was amused by the way he kept a wider than necessary physical distance between them. Was he a little intimidated by her? He wouldn’t be the first man to react to her like that. All the nice men, the ones with whom she might have found something approaching peace and contentment, shared this ambiguous, wary attitude towards her. It was her looks, of course: they couldn’t see beyond them, beyond the dangerous sensuality they invoked, making them see her as a woman who would never need their tenderness, never make allowances for their vulnerabilities. They were wrong, though. She had far too many vulnerabilities of her own to ever mock or make light of anyone else’s. And as for tenderness—she smiled a bitter smile—only she knew how much and how often she had ached for its healing balm.

‘This way,’ he told her. Up ahead of them were the closed doors barring the way to the intensive care unit.

Sage shivered as he pushed open the door, an instinctive desire to stop, to turn and run, almost halting her footsteps. Somewhere beyond those doors lay her mother. Had she really asked for her? It seemed so out of character, so unbelievable almost, and the shock of it had thrown her off guard, disturbing the cool, indifferent, self-protective shield she had taken up all those years ago when the pain of her mother’s final betrayal had destroyed her reluctant, aching love for her.

She shivered again, trying to recognise the unfamiliar image of her mother which the surgeon had held up for her. Surely in such extremity as her mother now suffered a person must always ask for whoever it was they most loved, and she had known almost all her life that for some reason her mother’s love, given so freely and fiercely to others, had never really been given to her. Duty, care, responsibility…they had all been there, masquerading under the guise of mother love, but Sage had learned young to distinguish between reality and fiction and she had known then, had felt then that insurmountable barrier that existed between them.

As she hesitated at the door, the surgeon turned impatiently towards her.

‘Are you sure she asked for me?’ she whispered.

As he watched her for a moment he saw the self-confident, sensually stunning woman reduced to the nervous, uncertain child. It was the dangerous allure of seeing that child within such a woman that made him say more brusquely than he otherwise might, ‘There’s nothing for you to fear. Your mother’s injuries are all internal. Outwardly…’

Sage glared at him. Did he really think she was so weak, so self-absorbed that it was fear of what she might see that kept her chained here outside the ward? And then her anger died as swiftly as it had been born. It wasn’t his fault; what could he know of the complexities of her relationship with her mother? She didn’t really understand them herself. She pushed open the door and walked into the ward. It was small, with only four beds, and bristling with equipment.

Her mother was the ward’s only occupant. She lay on one of the high, narrow beds, surrounded by machinery.

How tiny she looked, Sage marvelled as she stared down at her. Her once naturally fair hair, now discreetly tinted blonde, was hidden out of sight beneath a cap; her mother’s skin, so white and pale, and so different from her own with its decidedly olive tint, could have been the skin of a woman in her late forties, not her early sixties, Sage reflected as she absorbed an outer awareness of the tubes connected to her mother’s body, which she deliberately held at bay as she concentrated instead on the familiar and less frightening aspects of her still figure.

Her breathing was laboured and difficult, but the eyes fixed on her own hadn’t changed—cool, clear, all-seeing, all-knowing… a shade of grey which could deepen to lavender or darken to slate depending on her mood.

She was frowning now, but it was not the quick, light frown with which Sage was so familiar, the frown that suggested that whoever had caused it had somehow not just failed but disappointed as well. How many times had that frown marked the progress of her own life, turning her heart to lead, shredding her pride, reducing her to rebellious, helpless rage?

This frown, though, was different, deeper, darker, the eyes that watched her full of unfamiliar shadows.

‘Sage…’

Was it instinct alone that made her cover her mother’s hand with her own, that made her sit down at her side, and say as evenly as she could, ‘I’m here, Mother…’?

Mother…what a cold, distant word that was, how devoid of warmth and feeling. As a small child she had called her ‘Mummy’. David, ten years her senior, had preferred the affectionately teasing ‘Ma’, but then David had been permitted so much more licence, had been given so much more love… Stop it, she warned herself. She wasn’t here to dwell on the past. The past was over.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered softly. ‘It’s all right, Mother. You’re going to be fine…’

Just for a moment the grey eyes lightened and mocked. They seemed to say that they knew her platitude for exactly what it was, making Sage once more feel a child in the presence of an adult.

‘Sage, there’s something I want you to do…’ The words were laboured and strained. Sage had to bend closer to the bed to catch them. ‘My diaries, in my desk at Cottingdean… You must read them… All of you…’

She stopped speaking and closed her eyes while Sage stared at her. What on earth was her mother talking about? What diaries? Had her mind perhaps been affected by her injuries?

She stared uncertainly at the woman in the bed, as her mother opened her eyes and demanded fiercely, ‘Promise me, Sage… Promise me you will do as I say … Promise me…’

Dutifully, docilely almost, Sage swallowed and whispered, ‘I promise…’ and then, unable to stop herself, she cried out, ‘But why me…? Why did you ask for me? Why not Faye? She’s so much closer to you…’

The grey eyes seemed to mock her again. Without her knowing it, her fingers had curled tightly round the hand she was still holding.

‘Faye doesn’t have your ruthlessness, your discipline… Neither does she have your strength.’ The voice dropped to a faint sigh.

Beneath her fingers, Sage felt the thready pulse flicker and falter and a fear greater than anything she had ever known, a fear that overwhelmed anger, resentment, pain and even love poured through her and she cried out harshly, ‘Mother…no,’ without really knowing what she was crying out for.

Then she heard the light, quiet voice saying reassuringly, ‘I’m here, Sage. When you read the diaries, then you will understand.’ She closed her eyes, so obviously exhausted that for a moment Sage thought she had actually died.

It was the surgeon’s firm touch on her arm, his quiet words of reassurance that stilled her panic.

‘She wants me to read her diaries,’ she told him, too bewildered to understand her need to confide, to understand…

‘Sometimes when people are closest to death they sense what is happening to them and they dwell on certain aspects of their lives and the lives of those around them.’

‘I never even knew she kept a diary.’ Sage was speaking more to herself than him. ‘I never knew… She made me promise,’ she told him inconsequentially, knowing already that it was a promise she must keep. A promise she had to keep, and yet already she was dreading doing so, dreading what she might read…dreading perhaps confronting the truth and the pain she thought she had long ago put behind her.

As the surgeon escorted her from the ward, she cast a last, lingering look at her mother. ‘Will she…?’

Will she die? she wanted to ask, even while she knew that she didn’t want to know the answer, that she wanted to hold on to the hope…the belief that because her mother was alive she would live.

She had often heard people say that there was no pain, no guilt, no awareness of life passing too quickly more sharp-edged than when an adult experienced the death of a parent.

Her father had died while she was a teenager, his death a release to him and something that barely touched her life. She had been at home then. Her father, because of his poor health, had never played a large part in her life. He was a remote, cosseted figure on whom her mother’s whole life pivoted and yet somehow someone who was distant from her own.

Until today she had thought she had stopped loving her mother over fifteen years ago, her love eroded by too much pain, too much betrayal—and she had decided then that the only way to survive the catalyst of that betrayal was for her to forge a separate, independent life of her own.

And that was what she had done.

She now had her own career, her own life. A life that took her from London to New York, from New York to LA to Rome, to Paris, to all those places in the new world where people had heard by word of mouth of her skills as a muralist.

There were houses all over the world—the kind of houses owned by people who would never dream of wanting them to be featured in even the most upmarket of glossy publications—where one of her murals was a prized feature of the décor. She was sought after and highly paid, working only on favoured commissions. Her life was her own…or so she had thought.

Why me? she had asked, and even in extremity her mother had not spared her. Of course, gentle, tender Faye would never have been able to bring herself to read another person’s diaries…to pry into their privacy. What was it, then, that made it so important that she read them…that they all read them…so important that her mother should insist with what might well be her dying breath that they do so?

There was only one way that she was going to find out.

There was nothing to be gained in putting off what had to be done, Sage acknowledged as she left the hospital. As chance would have it, she was in between commissions at the moment and there was nothing of sufficient urgency in her life to excuse her from fulfilling the promise she had made to her mother, nothing to stop her from going immediately to Cottingdean, no matter how little she wanted to do so.

Cottingdean, the family’s house, was on the outskirts of an idyllic English village set in a fold of the hills to the southeast of Bath. It was a tiny rural community over which her mother presided as its loving and much-loved matriach. Sage had never felt the same love for it that the rest of her family shared—for some reason it had stifled her, imprisoned her, and as a teenager she had ached for wider skies, broader horizons.

Cottingdean: Faye and Camilla would be waiting there for her, waiting to pounce on her with anxious questions about her mother.

How ironic it was that Faye, her sister-in-law, should be able to conjure from her mother the love she herself felt she had always been denied—and yet she could not resent Faye for it.

She sighed a little as she drove west heading for the M4. Poor Faye—life had not been kind to her, and she was too fragile…too vulnerable to withstand too many of its blows.

Sage remembered how Faye had looked the day she and David married…a pale, fragile, golden rose, openly adoring the man she was marrying, but that happiness had been short-lived. David had been killed in a tragic, useless road accident, leaving Faye to bring up Camilla on her own.

Sage hadn’t been surprised when her mother had invited Faye to make her home at Cottingdean; after all, in the natural course of events, David would eventually have inherited the estate. Faye had accepted her offer—the pretty ex-vicarage in the village, which David had bought for his bride, was sold and Faye and her one-year-old daughter moved into Cottingdean. They had lived there ever since and Camilla had never known any other home, any other way of life.

Sage smiled as she thought of her niece; almost eighteen years old and probably in the eyes of the world spoiled rotten by all of them. If the three of them suffered deeply in losing David then some of the suffering had been eased by the gift he had left behind him.

One day Cottingdean and everything that it represented would be Camilla’s, and already Sage had seen that her mother was discreetly teaching and training her one grandchild in the duties that would then fall on her shoulders.

Sage didn’t envy her that inheritance, but she did sometimes envy her her sunny, even-tempered disposition, and the warmth that drew people to her in enchantment.

As yet she was still very much a child, still not really aware of the power she held.

Sage sighed. Of all of them Camilla would be the most deeply affected if her mother… Her hands gripped the wheel of the Porsche until her knuckles whitened. Even now she could not allow her mind to form the word ‘die’, couldn’t allow herself to admit the possibility…the probability of her mother’s death.

Unanalysed but buried deep within the most secret, sacred part of her, the instinctive, atavistic part of her that governed her so strongly, lay the awareness that to have refused the promise her mother had demanded of her, or even to have given it and then not to have carried out the task, would somehow have been to have helped to still the pulse of her mother’s life force; it was as though there was some primitive power that linked the promise her mother had extracted from her with her fight against death, and if she broke that promise, even though her mother could not possibly know that it had been broken, it would be as though she had deliberately broken the symbolic silver thread of life.

She shuddered deeply, sharply aware as she had been on certain other occasions in her life of her own deep-rooted and sometimes disturbing awareness of feelings, instincts that had no logical basis.

Her long fingers tightened on the steering-wheel. She had none of her mother’s daintiness—that had bypassed her to be inherited by Camilla. She had nothing of her mother in her at all, really, and yet in that brief moment of contact, standing beside her mother’s bed, it had been for one terrifying millisecond of time as though their souls were one and she had felt as though it were her own her mother’s fear and pain, her desperation and her determination; and she had known as well how overwhelmingly important it was to her mother that she kept her promise.

Because her mother knew she was going to die? A spasm of agony contracted Sage’s body. She ought not to be feeling like this; she had dissociated herself from her mother years ago. Oh, she paid lip-service to their relationship, duty visits for her mother’s birthday in June, and at Christmas, although she had not spent that Christmas at Cottingdean. She had been working in the Caribbean on the villa of a wealthy French socialite. A good enough excuse for not going home, and one her mother had accepted calmly and without comment.

She turned off the motorway, following the familiar road signs, frowning a little at the increased heaviness of the traffic, noting the unsuitability of the enormous eight-wheel container trucks for the narrow country lane.

She overtook one of them on the small stretch of bypass several miles east of the village, glad to be free of its choking diesel fumes.

They had had a hard winter, making spring seem doubly welcome, the fresh green of the new hedges striking her eye as she drove past them. In the village nothing seemed to have changed, and it amused her that she should find that knowledge reassuring, making her pause to wonder why, when she had been so desperate to escape from the place and its almost too perfect prettiness, she experienced this dread of discovering that it had changed in any way.

She had rung the house from the hospital and spoken to Faye, simply telling her that she was driving down but not explaining why.

Whoever had first chosen the site for Cottingdean had chosen well. It sat with its back to the hills, facing south, shielded from the east wind by the ancient oaks planted on the edge of its parkland.

The original house had been built by an Elizabethan entrepreneur, a merchant who had moved his family from Bristol out into the quiet and healthy solitude of the countryside. It was a solid, sensible kind of house, built in the traditional style, in the shape of the letter E. Later generations had added a jumble of extra buildings to its rear, but, either through lack of wealth or incentive, no one had thought to do anything to alter its stone frontage with its ancient mullions and stout oak door.

The drive still ran to the rear of the house and the courtyard around it on which were the stables and outbuildings, leaving the front of the house and its vistas completely unspoiled.

Sage’s mother always said that the best way to see Cottingdean for the first time was on foot, crossing the bridge spanning the river, and then through the wooden gate set into the house’s encircling garden wall, so that one’s first view of it was through the clipped yews that guarded the pathway to the terrace and the front entrance.

When her mother had come to Cottingdean as a bride, the gardens which now were famous and so admired had been nothing more than a tangle of weeds interspersed with unproductive vegetable beds. Hard to imagine that now when one saw the smooth expanses of fresh green lawn, the double borders with their enviable collections of seemingly carelessly arranged perennials, the knot garden, and the yew hedges which did so much to add to the garden’s allure and air of enticing, hidden secrets. All this had been created by her mother—and not, as some people imagined, with money and other people’s hard work, but more often than not with her own hands.

As she drove into the courtyard Sage saw that Faye and Camilla were waiting for her. As soon as she stopped the car both of them hurried up to her, demanding in unison, ‘Liz…Gran…how is she?’

‘Holding her own,’ she told them as she opened the door and climbed out. ‘They don’t know the extent of her injuries as yet. I spoke to the surgeon. He said we could ring again tonight…’

‘But when can we see her?’ Camilla demanded eagerly.

‘She’s on the open visiting list,’ Sage told them. ‘But the surgeon’s told me that he’d like to have her condition stabilised for at least forty-eight hours before she has any more visitors.’

‘But you’ve seen her,’ Camilla pointed out.

Sage reached out and put her arm round her. She was so precious to them all in different ways, this child of David’s. ‘Only because she wanted to see me, Camilla…The surgeon was worried that with something preying on her mind she would—’

‘Something preying on her mind… What?’

‘Camilla, let Sage get inside and sit down before you start cross-questioning her,’ Faye reproved her daughter gently. ‘It isn’t a very comfortable drive down from London these days with all the traffic… I wasn’t sure what your plans are, but I’ve asked Jenny to make up your bed.’

‘I’m not sure either,’ Sage told her sister-in-law, following her inside and then pausing for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the long panelled passageway that led from the back to the front of the house.

When her mother had first come to Cottingdean this panelling had been covered in paint so thick that it had taken her almost a year to get it clean. Now it glowed mellowly and richly, making one want to reach and touch it.

‘I’ve asked Jenny to serve afternoon tea in the sitting-room,’ Faye told her, opening one of the panelled doors. ‘I wasn’t sure if you would have had time to have any lunch…’

Sage shook her head—food was the last thing she wanted.

The sitting-room was on the side of the house and faced west. It was decorated in differing shades of yellow, a golden, sunny room furnished with an eclectic collection of pieces of furniture which somehow managed to look as though they were meant to be together. Another of her mother’s talents.

It was a warm welcoming room, scented now with late-flowering pots of hyacinths in the exact shade of lavender blue of the carpet covering the floor. A fire burned in the grate, adding to the room’s air of welcome, the central heating radiators discreetly hidden away behind grilles.

‘Tell us about Gran, Sage,’ Camilla demanded, perching on a damask-covered stool at Sage’s feet. ‘How is she?’

She was a pretty girl, blonde like her mother, but, where Faye’s blondeness always seemed fairly insipid, Camilla’s was warm and alive. Facially she was like her grandmother, with the same startlingly attractive bone-structure and the same lavender-grey eyes.

‘Is she really going to be all right?’

Sage paused. Over her head, her eyes met Faye’s. ‘I hope so,’ she said quietly, and then added comfortingly, ‘She’s a very strong person, Camilla. If anyone has the will to fight, to hold on to life…’

‘We wanted to go to see her, but the hospital said she’d asked for you…’

‘Yes, there was something she wanted me to do.’

Both of them were looking at her, waiting…

‘She said she wanted us…all of us, to read her diaries… She made me promise that we would.’ Sage grimaced slightly. ‘I didn’t even know she kept a diary.’

‘I did,’ Camilla told them. ‘I came downstairs one night when I couldn’t sleep and Gran was in the library, writing. She told me then that she’d always kept one. Ever since she was fourteen, though she didn’t keep the earliest ones…’

Ridiculous to feel pain, rejection over something so insignificant, Sage told herself.

‘She kept the diaries locked in the big desk—the one that belonged to Grandpa,’ Camilla volunteered. ‘No one else has a key.’

‘I’ve got the key,’ Sage told her gruffly. They had given it to her at the hospital, together with everything else they had found in her mother’s handbag. She had hated that…hated taking that clinically packaged bundle of personal possessions… hated knowing why she had been given them.

‘I wonder why she wants us to read them,’ Faye murmured. She looked oddly anxious, dread shadowing her eyes.

Sage studied her. She had got so used to her sister-in-law’s quiet presence in the background of her mother’s life that she never questioned why it was that a woman—potentially a very attractive and certainly, at forty-one, a relatively young woman—should want to choose that kind of life for herself.

Sage knew Faye had been devoted to David…that she had adored him, worshipped him almost, but David had been dead for over fifteen years, and, as far as she knew, in all that time there had never been another man in Faye’s life.

Why did she choose to live like that? In another woman, Sage might have taken it as a sign that her marriage held so many bad memories that any kind of intimate relationship was anathema to her, but she knew how happy David and Faye had been, so why did Faye choose to immure herself here in this quiet backwater with only her mother-in-law and her daughter for company? Sage studied her sister-in-law covertly.

Outwardly, Faye always appeared calm and controlled—not in the same powerful way as her mother, Sage recognised. Faye’s self-control was more like a shield behind which she hid from the world. Now the soft blue eyes flickered nervously, the blonde hair which, during the days of her marriage, she had worn flowing free drawn back off her face into a classic chignon, her eyes and mouth touched with just the merest concession to make-up. Faye was a beautiful woman who always contrived to look plain and, watching her, it occurred to Sage to wonder why. Or was her curiosity about Faye simply a way of putting off what she had come here to do?

Now, with both Faye and Camilla watching her anxiously, Sage found herself striving to reassure them as she told them firmly, ‘Knowing Mother, she probably wants us to read them because she thinks whatever she’s written in them will help us to run things properly while she’s recovering.’

Faye gave her a quick frown. ‘But Henry’s in charge of the mill, and Harry still keeps an eye on the flock, even though his grandson’s officially taken over.’

‘Who’s going to chair the meeting of the action group against the new road, if Gran isn’t well enough?’ Camilla put in, making Sage’s frown deepen.

‘What road?’ she demanded.

‘They’re planning to route a section of the new motorway to the west of the village,’ Faye told her. ‘It will go right through the home farm lands, and within yards of this side of the village. Your mother’s been organising an action group to protest against it. She’s been working on finding a feasible alternative route. We had a preliminary meeting of the action group two weeks ago. Of course, they elected your mother as chairperson…’

The feelings of outrage and anger she experienced were surely wholly at odds with her feelings towards Cottingdean and the village, Sage acknowledged. She’d been only too glad to escape from the place, so why did she feel this fierce, protective swell of anger that anyone should dare to destroy it to build a new road?

‘What on earth are we going to do without her?’ Faye demanded in distress.

For a moment she seemed close to tears, and Sage was relieved when the door opened and her mother’s housekeeper came in with the tea-trolley.

Afternoon tea was an institution at Cottingdean, and one which had begun when her parents had first come to the house. Her father, an invalid even in those days, had never had a good appetite, and so her mother had started this tradition of afternoon tea, trying to tempt him to eat.

Jenny and Charles Openshaw had worked for her mother for over five years as her housekeeper and gardener-cum-chauffeur, a pleasant Northern couple in their mid-fifties. It had been Charles’s unexpected redundancy which had prompted them to pool their skills and to look for a job as a ‘live-in couple’.

Charles’s redundancy money had been used to purchase a small villa in the Canaries. They had bought wisely on a small and very strictly controlled development and, until they retired, the villa was to be let through an agency, bringing them in a small extra income.

Sage liked them both very much; brisk and uncompromising in their outlook, they had nothing servile or over-deferential in their manner. Their attitude to their work was strictly professional—they were valued members of the household, treated by her mother, as they had every right to be, with the same respect for their skills as she treated everyone else who worked for her.

Now, once she had informed Sage that her old bedroom was ready for her, Jenny asked how her mother was.

Sage told her, knowing that Jenny would guess at all that she was not saying and be much more aware of the slenderness of the chances of her mother’s full recovery than either Faye or Camilla could allow themselves to be.

‘Oh! I almost forgot,’ Jenny told Sage. ‘Mr Dimitrios telephoned just before you arrived.’

‘Alexi.’ Sage sighed. He would be furious with her, she suspected. She was supposed to be having dinner with him tonight and she had rung his apartment before leaving the hospital to leave a message on his answering machine, telling him briefly what had happened, and promising to try to ring him later.

He had been pursuing her for almost two months now, an unknown length of time for him to pursue any woman without taking her to bed, he had informed her on their last date.

There was no real reason why they should not become lovers. He was a tall, athletic-looking man with a good body and a strong-boned face. Sage had been introduced to him in Sydney while she had been working there on a commission. He was one of the new generation of Greek Australians; wealthy, self-assured, macho, in a way which she had found amusing.

She had forgotten what it was like to be pursued so aggressively. It had been almost two years since she had last had a lover; a long time, especially when, she was the first to admit, she found good sex to be one of life’s more enjoyable pleasures.

That was the thing, of course. Good sex wasn’t that easy to come by—or was it simply that as the years passed she was becoming more choosy, more demanding…less inclined to give in to the momentary impulse to respond to the ache within herself and the lure of an attractive man?

Of course, her work kept her very busy, allowing her little time for socialising or for self-analysis, which was the way she liked things. She had spent too many wearying and unproductive hours of her time looking for the impossible, aching for what she could not have…yearning hopelessly and helplessly until she had made a decision to cut herself off from the past to start life anew and live it as it came. One day at a time, slowly and painfully like a person learning to walk again after a long paralysis.

Sage acknowledged that her lack of concern at Alexi’s potential anger at her breaking of their date suggested that her desire for him was only lukewarm at least. She smiled easily at Jenny and told her that she wasn’t sure as yet how long she would be staying.

Tomorrow she’d have to drive back to London and collect some clothes from her flat, something she ought to have done before coming down here, but when she’d left the hospital she had been in no mood to think of such practicalities. All she had been able to concentrate on was her mother, and fulfilling her promise to her. Her mother had always said she was too impulsive and that she never stopped to think before acting.

After Jenny had gone, she drank her tea impatiently, ignoring the small delicacies Jenny had provided. She admitted absently that she probably ought to eat something, but the thought of food nauseated her. It struck her that she was probably suffering from shock, but she was so used to the robustness of her physical health that she barely gave the idea more than a passing acknowledgement.

Seeing her restlessness, Faye put down her teacup as well. ‘The diaries,’ she questioned uneasily. ‘Did Liz really mean all of us to read them?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid so. I’m as reluctant to open them as you are, Faye. Knowing Mother and how meticulous she is about everything, I’m sure they contain nothing more than detailed records of her work on the house, the estate and the mill. But I suspect the human race falls into two distinct groups: those people like you and me who feel revulsion at the thought of prying into something as intimate as a diary, and those who are our opposites, who relish the thought of doing so. I have no idea why Mother wants us to read the things… I don’t want to do it any more than you do, but I gave my promise.’ She paused, hesitating about confiding to Faye her ridiculous feeling that if she didn’t, if she broke her promise, she would somehow be shortening the odds on her mother’s survival and then decided against it, feeling that to do so would be to somehow or other attempt to escape from the burden of that responsibility by putting it on to Faye’s so much more fragile shoulders.

‘I suppose I might as well make a start. We may as well get it over with as quickly as possible. We can ring the hospital again at eight tonight, and hope that all of us will be able to visit tomorrow… I thought that as I read each diary I could pass them on to you, and then you could pass them on to Camilla, once you’ve read them.’

‘Where will you do it?’ Faye asked her nervously. ‘In here, or…?’

‘I might as well use the library,’ Sage told her. ‘I’ll get Charles to light the fire in there.’

Even now, knowing there was no point in delaying, she was deliberately trying to find reasons to put off what she had to do. Did she really need a fire in the library? The central heating was on. It startled her, this insight into her own psyche… What was she afraid of? Confirmation that her mother didn’t love her? Hadn’t she accepted that lack of love years ago…? Or was it the reopening of that other, deeper, still painful wound that she dreaded so much? Was it the thought of reading about that time so intensely painful to her that she had virtually managed to wipe her memory clear of it altogether?

What was she so afraid of…?

Nothing, she told herself firmly. Why should she be…? She had nothing to fear…nothing at all. She picked up the coffee-coloured linen jacket she had been wearing and felt in the pocket for her mother’s keys.

It was easy to spot the ones belonging to the old-fashioned partners’ desk in the library, even if she hadn’t immediately recognised them.

‘The diaries are in the drawers on the left side of the desk,’ Camilla told her quietly, and then, as though sensing what Sage thought she had successfully hidden, she asked uncertainly, ‘Do you…would you like us to come with you?’

For a moment Sage’s face softened and then she said derisively, ‘It’s a set of diaries I’m going to read, Camilla, not a medieval text on witchcraft… I doubt that they’ll contain anything more dangerous or illuminating than Mother’s original plans for the garden and a list of sheep-breeding records.’

She stood up swiftly, and walked over to the door, pausing there to ask, ‘Do you still have dinner at eight-thirty?’

‘Yes, but we could change that if you wish,’ Faye told her.

Sage shook her head. ‘No…I’ll read them until eight and then we can ring the hospital.’

As she closed the door behind her, she stood in the hall for a few minutes. The spring sunshine turned the panelling the colour of dark honey, illuminating the huge pewter jugs of flowers and the enormous stone cavern of the original fireplace.

The parquet floor was old and uneven, the rugs lying on it rich pools of colour. The library lay across the hall from the sitting-room, behind the large drawing-room. She stared at the door, and turned swiftly away from it, towards the kitchen, to find Charles and ask him to make up the fire.

While he was doing so she went upstairs. Her bedroom had been redecorated when she was eighteen. Her mother had chosen the furnishings and the colours as a surprise, and she had, Sage admitted, chosen them well.

The room was free of soft pretty pastels, which would have been far too insipid for her, and instead was decorated in the colours she loved so much: blues, reds, greens; colours that drew out the beauty of the room’s panelled walls.

The huge four-poster bed had been made on the estate from their own wood; her name and date of birth were carved on it, and the frieze decorating it had carved in the wood the faces of her childhood pets. A lot of care had gone into its design and execution; to anyone else the bed would have been a gift of great love, but she had seen it merely as the execution of what her mother conceived to be her duty. Her daughter was eighteen and of age, and therefore she must have a gift commensurate with such an occasion.

In the adjoining bathroom, with its plain white suite and dignified Edwardian appearance, Sage washed her hands and checked her make-up. Her lipstick needed renewing, and her hair brushing.

She smiled mirthlessly at herself as she did so… Still putting off the evil hour…why? What was there after all to fear… to reveal… ? She already knew the story of her mother’s life as everyone locally knew it. It was as blameless and praiseworthy as that of any saint.

Her mother had come to this house as a young bride, with a husband already seriously ill, his health destroyed by the war. They had met when her mother worked as a nursing aide, fallen in love and married and come to live here at Cottingdean, the estate her father had inherited from a cousin.

Everyone knew her mother had arrived here when she was eighteen to discover that the estate her husband had drawn for her in such glowing colours—the colours of his own childhood—had become a derelict eyesore.

Everyone knew how her mother had worked to restore it to what it had once been. How she had had the foresight and the drive to start the selective breeding programme with the estate’s small flock of sheep that was to produce the very special fleece of high-quality wool.

But how her mother had had the vision to know that there would come a time when such wool was in high demand, how she had had the vision to persuade her husband to allow her to experiment with the production of that wool, let alone the run-down mill, Sage realised she had no idea, and with that knowledge came the first stirrings of curiosity.

Everyone knew of the prosperity her mother had brought to the village, of the new life she had breathed into Cottingdean. Everyone knew of the joys and sorrows of her life; of the way she had fought to keep her husband alive, of the cherished son she had borne and lost, of the recalcitrant and troublesome daughter she was herself…

No, there were no real secrets in her mother’s life. No reason why she herself should experience this tension…this dread…this fear almost that made her so reluctant to walk into the library and unlock the desk.

And yet it had to be done. She had given her word, her promise. Sighing faintly, Sage went back downstairs. She hesitated outside the library door for a second and then lifted the latch and went in.

The fire was burning brightly in the grate and someone, Jenny, no doubt, had thoughtfully brought in a fresh tray of coffee.

As she closed the door behind her, Sage remembered how as a child this room had been out of bounds to her. It had been her father’s sanctuary; from here he had been able to sit in his wheelchair and look out across the gardens.

He and her mother had spent their evenings in here… Stop it, Sage told herself. You’re not here to dwell on the past. You’re here to read about it.

She surprised herself by the momentary hope that the key would refuse to unlock the drawers, but, of course, it did. They were heavy and old, and slid surprisingly easily on their wooden runners. A faint musty scent of herbs and her mother’s perfume drifted up towards her as she opened them.

She could see the diaries now; far more of them than she had imagined, all of them methodically numbered and dated, as though her mother had always known that there would come a time, as though she had deliberately planned…

But why? Sage wondered as she reached tensely into the drawer and removed the first diary.

She found her hands were shaking as she opened it, the words blurring as she tried to focus on them. She didn’t want to do this…could not do it, and yet even in her reluctance she could almost feel the pressure of her mother’s will, almost hear her whispering, You promised…

She blinked rapidly to clear her eyes and then read the first sentence.

‘Today I met Kit…’

‘Kit…’ Sage frowned and turned back the page to check on the date. This diary had begun when her mother was seventeen. Soon after her eighteenth birthday she had been married. So who was this Kit?

Nebulous, uneasy feelings stirred inside her as Sage stared reluctantly at the neat, evenly formed handwriting. It was like being confronted with a dark passage you had to go down and yet feared to enter. And yet, after all, what was there to fear?

Telling herself she was being stupid, she picked up the diary for the second time and started to read.

‘Today I met Kit.’

CHAPTER ONE

Spring 1945

‘TODAY I met Kit.’

Just looking at the words made her go dizzy with happiness, Lizzie acknowledged, staring at them, knowing it was impossible to translate into cold, dry print the whole new world of feelings and emotions which had opened up in front of her.

Yesterday her life had been bound and encompassed by the often arduous routine of her work as a nursing aide: long hours, low pay, and all the horrid dirty jobs that real nurses were too valuable to spend their time on.

She would rather have stayed on at school, but, with her parents killed in one of the many bombing raids on London, she had had no option but to accept her great-aunt’s ruling that she must leave school and start to earn her living.

Aunt Vi didn’t mean to be unkind, but she wasn’t a sentimental woman and had never married. She had no children of her own, and, as she was always telling her great-niece, she had only agreed to take Lizzie in out of a sense of family duty. She herself had been sent out to work at thirteen, skivvying in service at the local big house. She had worked hard all her life and had slowly made her way up through the levels of service until she had eventually become housekeeper to Lord and Lady Jeveson.

Lizzie had found it bewildering at first, leaving the untidy but comfortable atmosphere of the cramped terraced house where she had lived with her parents and grandparents, evacuated from the busy, dusty streets so familiar to her to this place called ‘the country’, where everything was strange and where she missed her ma and pa dreadfully, crying in her sleep every night and wishing she were back in London.

Aunt Vi wasn’t like her ma…for a start she didn’t talk the way her ma did. Aunt Vi talked posh and sounded as though her mouth was full of sharp, painful stones. She had made Lizzie speak the same way, endlessly and critically correcting her, until sometimes poor Lizzie felt as though she dared not open her mouth.

That had been four years ago, when she had first come to the country. Now she had almost forgotten what her ma and pa had looked like; her memories of them and the dusty terraced house seemed to belong to another life, another Lizzie. She had grown accustomed to Aunt Vi’s pernickety ways, her sharp manner.

Only yesterday one of the other girls at the hospital, a new girl from another village, had commented on Lizzie’s lack of accent, taunting her about her ‘posh’ speech, making her realise how much she had changed from the awkward, rebellious thirteen-year-old who had arrived on Aunt Vi’s doorstep.

Aunt Vi knew how things should be done. No great-niece of hers was going to grow up with the manners and speech of a kitchen tweeny, she had told Lizzie so many times that she often thought the words were engraved in her heart.

She had hated it at first when her aunt had got her this job at the hospital, but Aunt Vi had firmed up her mouth and eyed her with cold determination when Lizzie had pleaded to be allowed to stay on at school, telling her sharply that she couldn’t afford to have a great lazy girl eating her out of house and home and not bringing in a penny piece.

Besides, she had added acidly, in case Lizzie hadn’t realised it, there was a war on and it was her duty to do what she could to aid her countrymen. Aunt Vi had made up her mind. The matron of the hospital was one of her friends, and, before Lizzie had time to draw breath, she was installed in the hostel not far from the hospital grounds, in a dormitory with a dozen other girls, all of them working the same long, gruelling hours, although the others, unlike Lizzie, spent their free time not on their own but in giggling, excited groups, vying with one another to present the most enticing appearance for their weekly visits to nearby barracks to attend their Saturday night dances.

They made fun of Lizzie, taunting her because she held herself aloof from them, because she was ‘different’, and not just because of the way she spoke.

Aunt Vi was very strict, and, even though Lizzie was no longer living under her jurisdiction, the lessons she had enforced on her made it painfully difficult for Lizzie to throw off her aunt’s warnings about what happened to girls foolish enough to listen to the brash flattery of boys who ‘only wanted one thing’ and who ‘would get a girl into trouble as soon as look at her’.

Aunt Vi had no very high opinion of the male sex, which, in her view, was best kept at a distance by any right-minded female.

She herself had grown up in a harsh world, where a single woman who managed to rise to the position of housekeeper in a wealthy upper-class home was far, far better off than her married sisters, who often had half a dozen dependent children and a husband who might or might not be inclined to support them all.

Men, in her opinion, were not to be trusted, and Lizzie had a natural sensitivity that made her recoil from the often clumsy and always suggestive passes of the few young men she did come into contact with.

This was wartime and young men did not have the time, or the necessity, to waste their energy, and what might only be a very brief life, in coaxing a girl when there were so many who did not want such coaxing.

The only other men Lizzie met were the patients in the hospital, men who had been so badly injured that it was tacitly admitted that nothing more could be done for them, and so they lay here in the huge, decaying old building, economically and clinically nursed by young women who had learned to seal themselves off from human pity and compassion, who had seen so many broken bodies, so many maimed human beings, so many tormented young male minds that they could no longer agonise over what they saw.

For Lizzie it was different. She had wondered at first when she came to the hospital if she might eventually try to qualify as a nurse, but after a year there, a year when she had seen a constant stream of young men, their minds and bodies destroyed by this thing called war, lying in the wards, when she had seen the hopelessness in their eyes, the anger, the pain, the sheer bitter resentment at their loss of the future they had once anticipated, she had known that she did not have the mental stamina for nursing.

With every familiar patient who left the wards, taken home by a family helpless to cope with the physical and mental burdens of their sons and husbands, and with every new arrival, her heart bled a little more, and she could well understand why the other girls sought relief from the trauma of working with such men by spending their free nights with the healthy, boisterous, whole representatives of manhood they picked up at the dances they attended.

That the Americans were the best was the universal opinion of her colleagues; Americans were generous and fun to be with. There were some stationed on the other side of the village, and once or twice one of them had tried to chat her up when Lizzie walked there to post her weekly duty letter to Aunt Vi.

She always ignored them, steeling her heart against their coaxing smiles and outrageous invitations, but she was only seventeen, and often, once she was safely out of sight, she would wonder wistfully what it would be like to be one half of the kind of perfect whole that was formed when two people loved with the intensity she had envied in her reading.

Lizzie was an avid reader, and a daydreamer. When she had first come to live with Aunt Vi, she had barely opened a book in her life, but, in addition to ceaselessly correcting her speech and her manners, Aunt Vi had also insisted that her great-niece read what she had termed ‘improving books’.

The chance munificence of a large trunkful of books from the vicar’s wife, which had originally belonged to her now adult children, had furnished Lizzie with the ability to escape from Aunt Vi’s strict and sometimes harsh domination into a world she had hitherto not known existed.

From her reading Lizzie discovered the tragedy of the love between Tristan and Iseult, and started to dream of emotions which had nothing in common with the clumsy overtures of the outwardly brash young men with whom she came into contact. Their very brashness, the fact that her sensitive soul cringed from their lack of finesse and from the often unwelcome conversation and revelations of the other girls in her dormitory, made it easy for her to bear in mind Aunt Vi’s strictures that she was to keep herself to herself and not to get up to any ‘funny business’.

By funny business Aunt Vi meant sex, a subject which was never openly referred to in her aunt’s house. As far as Aunt Vi was concerned, sex was something to be ignored as though it did not exist. Lizzie had naïvely assumed that all women shared her aunt’s views, until she had come to work at the hospital. From her peers’ conversations she had learned otherwise, but until now she had felt nothing other than a vague yearning awareness that her life was somehow incomplete… that some vital part of it was missing. She had certainly never contemplated sharing with any of the men she had met the intimacies she heard the other girls discussing so openly and shockingly… Until now…

She stared dreamily at her diary. It had been at Aunt Vi’s insistence that she had first started keeping a diary, not to confide her most private thoughts in, but as a factual record of the achievements of her days.

It was only since she had come to work at the hospital that she had found herself confiding things to her diary that were little more than nebulous thoughts and dreams.

Kit… Even now she was dazzled by the wonder of meeting him…of being able to whisper his name in the secret, private recess of her mind, while her body shivered with nervous joy.

Kit… He was so different…so special, so breathtakingly wonderful.

She had known the moment she saw him. He had turned his head and smiled at her, and suddenly it was as though her world had been flooded with warmth and magic.

And to think, if she hadn’t decided to go and visit poor Edward, she would never have met Kit… She shook with the enormity of how narrowly she had averted such a tragedy.

Edward Danvers had been with them for many months now; a major in the army, he had been badly injured in Normandy… his legs crushed and his spine injured, resulting in the eventual amputation of both his legs.

He had come to them supposedly to recuperate from a second operation, but Lizzie knew, as they all knew, that in fact he had come to them because there was nowhere else for him to go. His parents were dead, he wasn’t married, and privately Lizzie suspected that he himself no longer had any desire to live. He wasn’t like some of the men who came to them: he didn’t rage and rail against his fate; outwardly placid and calm, he seemed to accept it, but Lizzie had seen the way he looked inwards into himself, instead of out into the world, and had known that she was looking at a man who was gradually closing himself off from that world. Willing himself to die, almost.

He never spoke about his injuries. Never complained, as some of the men did, about fictitious limbs that were still there. Outwardly, he seemed to have adjusted well to his amputations, quietly allowing the nurses to get him into a chair, so that Lizzie, or one of the other aides, could wheel him into the gardens.

Lizzie liked him, although she knew that most of the other girls found him poor company, complaining that he never laughed or joked like the other men and that he was a real misery.

Lizzie didn’t mind his silences—she knew that he particularly liked to be wheeled round the gardens. He had told her once that they reminded him of the gardens of his grandparents’ home.

Cottingdean, it was called, and when he talked about it Lizzie could tell that it was a place he loved and that, in some way, the memory of it brought him both joy and pain. Sometimes when he mentioned it she would see the bright sheen of tears in his eyes and would wonder why, if he loved it so much, he stayed here, but she was too sensitive to question him, too aware of the deep, raw pain he kept hidden from the others.

She liked him and discovered, as the months went by, that she looked forward to seeing him, to winning from him his fugitive, reluctant smile.

Like her, he enjoyed reading, and when he discovered that she had read, and now reread, everything the vicar’s wife had donated to her he offered to lend her some of his own books. She refused, worrying about the wisdom of leaving them in the dormitory. The other girls would not deliberately damage them, but they were not always as careful with other people’s property as they might have been.

Gradually, a tentative friendship developed between them and often, on her days off, she would spend time with Edward, taking him out in the garden if the weather was fine, sometimes reading aloud to him when it wasn’t, knowing how much the mere effort of holding a book sometimes tired him.

She made no mention of Edward in her letters home to her aunt. Aunt Vi would not have approved. Edward came from a very different world from her own and Aunt Vi did not approve of any mingling of the classes. It always led to trouble, she had warned Lizzie.

It made her blood run cold now to remember that, on this particular Thursday, she had almost decided against spending her precious time off with Edward. She had woken up in an odd, restless, uncomfortable mood, her mind and body filled with vague, unfamiliar yearnings, but then she had reminded herself that Edward would be looking forward to going out. The rhododendrons were in full flower in the park, and he had been looking forward to seeing them for days. The sun was out, the sky a clear, soft blue… No, it wouldn’t be fair to let him down.

And so, suppressing her rebellious yearnings, she had washed in the cold, shabby bathroom which all the girls shared, allowing herself the luxury of washing her hair, and wondering at the same time if she dared to have it cut. She was the only girl in the hostel who wore her hair in such an old-fashioned style, braided into a neat coronet, which Aunt Vi insisted upon. She wondered idly for a moment what she would look like with one of the shoulder-length bobs worn with such suggestive insouciance by some of the other girls, and then sighed as she studied her make-up-free reflection in the spotted mirror.

The other girls wore powder and lipstick, and cheap perfume given to them by their American boyfriends. They curled their hair and darkened their eyelashes with shoe blacking and, if they were lucky enough to own a pair of the coveted nylons, they deliberately wore their skirts short enough to show off their legs.

As she dressed in the serviceable cotton underwear which Aunt Vi’s strict teachings ensured that she spent her precious allowance of soap scrupulously washing until her hands were almost raw and bleeding, to ensure that it stayed white, she admitted that lipstick and fashionably bobbed hair were not for her.

She knew the other girls laughed at her behind her back, mimicking her accent and making fun of her clothes.

Aunt Vi had practised a lifetime of frugality and, as Lizzie had grown out of the clothes she had originally arrived with from London, the older woman had altered garments from the trunks full of clothes she had been given by her employers over the years to fit her great-niece, and, in doing so, had also turned the exercise into lessons in dressmaking and fine plain sewing.

That the skirt she was wearing now had once belonged to Lady Jeveson would have impressed the other girls in the hostel as little as it impressed her, although for different reasons, Lizzie acknowledged. The other girls would have screamed with laughter and derision at the thought of wearing something which had first been worn by a girl who was now a grandmother.

That quality of cloth never wore out, Aunt Vi declared firmly, and indeed it did not, Lizzie reflected wryly, fingering the heavy, pleated tweed.

It was a pity that Lady Jeveson had not favoured the soft pastel colours more suited to her own fair colouring, rather than the dull, horsy tweeds of which she had apparently been so fond. The blouse she was wearing might be silk, but it was a dull beige colour which did nothing for her skin, just like the brown cashmere cardigan she wore over it.

She had seen the other girls, on their days off, going out in bright, summery dresses, with thin floating skirts and the kind of necklines which would have shocked Aunt Vi, and, while she knew that she could never have worn anything so daring, this morning Lizzie found herself wishing that her blouse might have been a similar shade of lavender-grey to her eyes, and that her skirt might have been made out of a fine, soft wool, and not this heavy, itchy stuff, which was a physical weight on her slender hips.

There were no nylons for her. She had to make do either with bare legs, which the rough wool made itch dreadfully, or the thick, hand-knitted stockings her aunt had sent her for Christmas.

She wasn’t sure what had made her opt for bare legs, what particular vanity had decreed that this morning she would not be sensible and wear the hated stockings, knowing that they made her slender ankles look positively thick, even if they were warm and practical.

The hostel was just across the village from the hospital, and Lizzie cycled there on an ancient bicycle. When they were on duty, the girls ate at the hospital; not the same food as the patients, but meals which the others often angrily derided as ‘not fit for pigs’.

Certainly, the meals were stodgy and unappetising, and not a patch on Aunt Vi’s dishes. Her aunt might almost be bordering on the parsimonious, she might make every penny do the work of two, but she was a good cook, and Lizzie missed her appetising meals, the fresh vegetables and fruit in season which she always managed to obtain by some country means of barter.

This morning, since she wasn’t on duty, there would be no breakfast for her at the hostel, and, since the girls were not allowed to cook food in the hostel, that meant either whatever she could buy and eat on the way to the hospital, or an expensive and not very appetising snack in the village’s one and only café.

Trying not to let herself think about her aunt’s porridge, thick and creamy with the top of Farmer Hobson’s milk, Lizzie told herself stoically that she didn’t really want any breakfast.

All the girls were always hungry; their workload was heavy, and no matter how unappetising they found their food it was always eaten.

All of them were a little on the thin side, Lizzie in particular as she was more fine-boned than the rest, with tiny, delicate wrists and ankles that sometimes looked so frail that they might snap.

As she cycled towards the village, she could feel the sun beating down on to the back of her head and smell the fresh warm scent of late spring, mingling with the tantalising suggestion of the summer still to come.

As she rode, wisps of blonde hair escaped from her coronet and curled in feathery tendrils round her face. At first, the other girls had refused to believe her hair was naturally fair, accusing her of dyeing it.

She chose not to ride through the village but to circle round it, using a narrow side-road which meandered towards the rear entrance to the hospital.

Before the war, the hospital had been a grand house, and the lane she was using had originally been that used by the tenants and the tradespeople.

She was cycling happily down the centre of it when she heard the car, the sound so unexpected that at first she made no attempt to move off the crown of the road. The village saw its fair share of wartime traffic; the squire’s wife still drove her car on Red Cross business and Lizzie was used to the imperious sound of car horns demanding the right of way, especially when they were driven by excitable young men in uniform.

She was not, though, used to them being driven down this narrow little lane which led only to the hospital, which was why, lost in her own daydreams, she did not initially react to the sound of this one until it was almost too late.

The realisation that someone was driving up behind her, that the car was one of those expensive, open-topped sporty models driven by a young man with wind-blown thick black hair, bronzed skin, and the dashing uniform of an airforce pilot, hit her in a series of small shocks as she glanced over her shoulder and saw the shiny dark green bonnet of the car, realised that there wasn’t room for both of them on the narrow little road, tried desperately to turn to one side, and lost her balance at the same time. The young man stopped his car with a cacophony of squealing tyres, protesting engine and angrily bellowed complaints about her sanity.

Lying on the dusty road, her knees stinging with pain and her eyes with tears, Lizzie wished devoutly that a large hole would appear beneath her into which she could conveniently disappear.

Her face scarlet with mortification and embarrassment, she struggled to her feet, at the same time as she heard the car door slam.

‘I say, are you OK? That was a nasty tumble you took… I thought you’d heard me…’

‘I did…but I didn’t realise… Well, no one ever drives down this road…’

She was on her feet now, her face still red, a tiny voice inside her deriding her for her vanity in not wearing the woollen stockings which would have protected her now smarting skin from the road, all too conscious of the appearance she must present to this unbelievably handsome young man who was now standing next to her, towering over her, looking at her in a way which made her loathe and castigate Lady Jeveson for ever being stupid enough to choose such unflattering clothes.

Two bright spots of colour burned on her cheekbones as she realised what was happening to her. For the first time in her life she was experiencing the dizzying, dangerous sensation of falling helplessly in love with a stranger—that sensation, that awareness…that feeling which she had heard so often described by the others.

The unexpectedness of it distracted her momentarily, her mouth half parting at the wonder of it, so that Kit Danvers found his attention caught by her, despite the awfulness of her clothes and the hairstyle that made her look like photographs he had seen of his grandmother.

If one really studied her it was possible to see that she was quite a looker, he recognised with the ease of a master long used to seeking out his quarry in the most unexpected of places.

Finding pearls hidden in dull oysters was Kit Danvers’s speciality—the other men in the mess envied him for it, admiringly, if sometimes resentfully, recognising that when it came to women Kit Danvers had something, some unrecognised quality that the female sex found it impossible to resist.

Lizzie knew none of this. She only knew that as she looked into the laughing blue eyes looking back into hers, as she studied the handsome tanned face with its firm male bone-structure and its warm smile, something inside her melted and uncurled, something completely new to her and yet as old as Eve.

‘You’ve got a smudge on your nose… There, it’s gone.’

She held her breath as he leaned towards her and carelessly rubbed his thumb against her skin. A thousand pin-pricks of sensation were born where his touch had been, an odd yearning constricting her breathing, her body suddenly tense and yet languorous at the same time.

‘Look, you can’t ride that thing now… Why don’t I give you a lift to wherever you’re going…?’

‘The hospital—I’m going to the hospital,’ Lizzie told him breathlessly, scarcely conscious of what she was saying, unable to take her wondering gaze off his handsome, smiling face. ‘I work there.’

‘You do? Now, there’s a coincidence. I’m on my way there too. They told me in the place where I’m staying that this road would get me there quietly and discreetly. Not supposed to be running this job really, you know,’ he told her, patting the bonnet of his car. ‘And she’s a thirsty lady. But when you’re in the forefront of a war you’re entitled to a few perks. Luckily the Yanks aren’t as parsimonious with their petrol as our people, and I know this Yank…’ He broke off and smiled winsomely at her. ‘Boring you to death, I expect. A pretty girl like you doesn’t want…’

A pretty girl… Lizzie gazed adoringly at him. He thought her pretty…her heart raced and sang, and then she remembered all Aunt Vi’s stern teachings and turned her head away from the dangerous potency of that warm smile, saying shakily, as she tried to pick up her cycle, ‘I really must go… I’m sorry I didn’t hear you coming…’

‘Going to be late for work, are you? What do you do up there… nurse?’

‘No, actually, I’m a nursing aide,’ Lizzie told him and for some reason the surprise in his eyes hurt her a little. It had never mattered when other people spoke derisively about the lowly status of her work, but now, suddenly, for this handsome laughing young man, she ached to be able to announce that she did something very important…

‘Well, we don’t want you getting into trouble for being late. Not when it was really my fault. Hop in… I’ll strap your cycle to the back.’

‘I’m not actually working,’ Lizzie told him, hesitating beside the car. It would be breaking all Aunt Vi’s rules and her own to accept his offer of a lift, but she wanted to do so more than she had wanted anything else in her life. ‘I’m going to visit someone…’

Immediately his glance sharpened. ‘Boyfriend?’ he questioned her, making her blush and shake her head.

‘No, it’s one of the patients… I promised him I’d wheel him out to see the rhododendrons now they’re in flower. He says they remind him of his grandparents’ home when he was a little boy…’

‘Sensitive little thing, aren’t you? A no-hoper, is he?’

Something in the careless way he spoke jarred on Lizzie’s tender conscience; even though she knew that for Edward Danvers life could never ever be anything other than painful and lonely, she said quickly, ‘No—no, of course not…’

Perhaps it was the stark contrast between the two men: Edward so pale and thin, old before his time, his body wasted, his manhood destroyed by the same terrible injuries which had necessitated the amputation of his legs.

It had happened in the frantic push to land on the Normandy beaches. He had been helping to organise the disembarkation, standing chest-deep in the icy cold water. Someone had got into difficulty in the water—a young private who couldn’t swim—Edward had dived down to help him, and had been crushed beneath some landing equipment in the rush to get the troops ashore.

Edward’s life had been saved but not his legs, and even now in his nightmares he cursed God for that cruel mercy.

In her mind’s eye Lizzie saw him, so thin and wasted in his wheelchair, and compared him to this man, so fit and healthy, so insolently cheerful and careless of whatever dangers fate had in store for him, and suddenly and unexpectedly she was overwhelmed by a swift surge of protective, possessive fear, by a need to take him to herself and keep him safe… It was the first time she had ever experienced such an emotion and it stunned her, leaving her feeling too vulnerable and weak to object when he insisted on helping her into his car, and fastening her bike across its boot.

The space inside the car was so tiny that when he got in she was immediately conscious of the heat of his body, of its warm male scent, of all the differences of sex that separated them and stirred exciting frissons of sensation in every corner of her body, in her blood, under her skin, a tingling dangerous wave of heat that made her cheeks burn and her heart pound.

He set the car in motion, driving it with a careless recklessness that excited her even while it frightened her.

‘I take it you don’t have any people living locally—any family,’ he enlarged, taking his attention off the road to turn and look at her. She made him feel a rare curiosity about her with her lack of any regional accent, her shyness, her total air not just of being unawakened but also of being completely unaware. He doubted that any man had ever kissed her, never mind…

‘No. No, I don’t,’ Lizzie told him huskily. ‘My…my aunt.’

‘So what brought you to this part of the country, then?’

He was an expert in knowing how to approach a woman, and this one, this woman, child, green as she was, was going to drop into his arms as easily as ripe soft fruit.

All it needed was a little care, a little flattery, a little coaxing.

Lizzie gave him a surprised look. She was not used to people being interested enough in her to ask her questions. A warm glow began to spread through her body, bringing with it a dizzying surge of self-confidence and bravery.

‘My…my aunt sent me here. She knows the matron in charge of the hospital.’

‘Your aunt, you say… You don’t have any other family, then?’

‘No…not now…’ Her voice dropped, her eyes darkening as she relived the shock of hearing of her parents’ death. ‘There was a bomb…’

While he nodded his head and made sympathetic noises, he was congratulating himself on having picked a real winner. No family to speak of apart from an aunt who, by the sound of it, didn’t give a damn and anyway was too far away to be of any concern to him. He had a couple of days’ leave owing to him. There was no reason why he shouldn’t spend them here… Any longer than that and he would be bored out of his mind with her. As he made light conversation with her he amused himself by imagining what she would be like. She would be nervous but malleable; she would give him whatever he asked of her, just as long as he told her he loved her. He smiled cynically to himself. He was well aware of the effect his handsome face had on susceptible female hearts. He had seen that bemused, adoring look in too many pairs of feminine eyes before not to have recognised it.

Women were such fools. Tell them you loved them and they’d give you anything…everything…

‘What a pity we can’t pretend that you don’t have to go in here,’ he murmured softly to her, as the hospital came in sight. ‘Then we could just keep on driving…run away together and never, ever come back. Would you like that, my sweet? Would you like to spend the rest of your life with me?’

Lizzie’s heart thumped frantically with a mixture of shock and delight.

She heard him laugh and knew that she was blushing… knew that he must be able to read her feelings in her eyes.

‘Shall we do that?’ he continued to tease her. ‘Shall I steal you away, take you somewhere where it would be just the two of us…?’

His voice had developed a deep, caressing, almost mesmeric quality. Totally unable to take her eyes off his face, Lizzie discovered that she had virtually forgotten to breathe and that suddenly her lungs were labouring desperately to take in air.

Taking advantage of her bemused state, he allowed the tone of his voice to change, to deepen with regret as he told her, ‘How I wish I could do just that, but I can’t, can I…? There’s a war to be won.’ He allowed his eyes to darken, his whole manner to become subtly infused with purposefulness; he had discovered very early on in the war that if there was one thing women fell for even more than being told he loved them, it was the suggestion that he as a man of honour had to put his country before his feelings. This one, he could see, was no exception.

Lizzie was aching inside. Soon they would be going their separate ways, and she doubted that she would ever see him again, despite what he had said. A tearing, sharp pain splintered inside her, making her catch her breath and lose her colour.

‘I think you’d better drop me off here,’ she told him as they approached the gate. The matron had very strict views about the girls keeping their distance both from the men and from their visitors.

‘Fraternisation forbidden, is it?’ he guessed, understanding at once and stopping the car.

Lizzie couldn’t open the door and she watched breathlessly as he leapt over his own and came round to help her out, not opening the door for her as she had expected, but instead leaning down inside the car to lift her out bodily, so that for a brief, dazzling moment of time she was held against him, body to body, looking down into those teasing blue eyes, feeling her chest tighten and her muscles coil in heady excitement as he slowly lowered her to her feet, holding her tantalisingly and dangerously just off the ground, while he looked at her mouth and whispered to her.

‘Tiny little thing, aren’t you, just made to fit into a man’s arms, with a mouth just made for a man to kiss? Has anyone kissed you before, sweetheart, or have you been saving yourself for me?’

Her heart was pounding so heavily, so noisily that she could barely hear what he was saying. She felt both light-headed and yet at the same time as though everything around her had somehow become dazzlingly clear and sharp, as though she was seeing the whole world with new eyes.

‘You know what’s happening to us, don’t you?’ he pressed. ‘You know that you and I…’ He broke off, his face suddenly tense and fierce, his hands gripping her so tightly that it almost hurt. ‘I’ve got to see you again,’ he told her with an urgency that thrilled her. ‘When will you be free?’

Free… She struggled to hold on to her sanity, to reason, but they had both been swept away and were no longer of any force in her life.

This was what mattered, this sweet sharp bliss, this delirious sensation of floating above the ground, of suddenly living life to the full, of knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt that she had met the man who embodied every single facet of all her yearning daydreams, that she had in fact fallen headily and instantly in love.

‘I…after lunch,’ she heard herself telling him in a thick, unfamiliar voice. ‘I was going to write to my aunt. I write to her every week. She has arthritis and so she can’t always write back…’

‘I’ll pick you up here at half-past two,’ he told her softly, ignoring her flurried, strangled words.

And then, as he lowered her to the ground, his lips brushed lightly against her own, the merest touch—a touch which another and more aware girl would have recognised as deliberate provocation, but which to Lizzie appeared to be a gesture of the deepest reverence and respect, the most chaste kind of embrace, as though he hardly dared to do more than merely allow his lips to touch hers. So, in her reading, had the heroes hardly dared to sully their adored ones with the male carnality of their desires, cherishing their purity, even while they ached to possess it.

Lizzie knew nothing of the real world of real emotions, of the careless urgency with which men like Kit Danvers physically possessed her sex, claiming their compliance as their right as men who daily, hourly faced death.

‘And, sweetheart…’

As she looked up at him, mute and adoring, he touched her braided hair and said, ‘Wear this loose, and something pretty. I like my girls to look pretty…’

Just for a moment a cloud seemed to obscure the sun, chilling her skin. His girls, he had said… She frowned, her dizzying, bemusing dream suddenly darkened with reality, but then he touched her face, tracing the delicacy of its bone-structure, and the clouds were burned away in the intensity of the heat that shook her…

As she waited for him to unstrap her bike, Lizzie found herself wishing that it were already half-past two, that there were no long, tense hours to wait before she could see him again…hours which would be shadowed with fears that he might change his mind…that he might meet some prettier, more appealing girl whom he might favour with his smiles instead of her, and already, though she didn’t know it, she had taken her first step into a dangerous and unfamiliar new world.

She found Edward ready and waiting for her, his face set and tense.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she apologised. Some instinct that was beginning to grow with her own maturity gave her an insight into the feelings of others which she often wished she did not have. It was hardly less painful to be so receptive to the emotional pain of others at second hand than it was for them to experience it themselves. Today she was particularly receptive to Edward’s pain, her own emotional nerve-endings curling back in sensitive reaction to his anxiety.

‘I thought perhaps you’d changed your mind. You shouldn’t be spending your free time with me… Pretty girl like you should be out having fun.’

That was the second time in one morning a man had described her as pretty, but this time she felt none of the soaring joy she had experienced when he had described her thus, only a sharp anguished knowledge of Edward’s own awareness that, while a woman might feel compassion for him, she could never feel desire.

As she wheeled him outside, she saw him lift his face towards the warmth of the sun. His skin had a grey, sickly undertone, the bones slightly shrunken under his flesh. He had lost weight in the long months he had been with them and her heart ached compassionately for him, as she contrasted him again with him.

The rhododendrons were set on a sloping bank just outside the formal gardens, and Lizzie, who had genuinely wanted to foster the tiny spark of interest she had seen in Edward’s eyes the last time she had taken him there, had discovered that they had originally been planted by an owner of the house who had travelled extensively in China before the Boxer uprising. A keen botanist, he had collected various specimens in the wild and created this special area for them.

Where the formal gardens of the house had now gone to make way for vegetable plots, the rhododendrons had been allowed to remain.

Lizzie was slightly out of breath by the time she had pushed the wheelchair up the overgrown path that led to them, but her efforts were well rewarded when she turned a corner and stopped the wheelchair so that Edward could take in the full glory of the scene in front of them.

She heard him catch his breath, and, when she quickly kneeled down to look at him, she discovered that there were tears running down his face.

‘They’re beautiful,’ he told her quietly. ‘So very much like those at Cottingdean… My grandmother adored her garden.’

‘Who lives there now?’ Lizzie asked him, more because she sensed his need to talk about the house he obviously loved so much than out of any real curiosity.

‘No one. It was requisitioned during the early part of the war, but it’s empty now. It’s too remote to be of any real use—on the edge of a tiny village tucked away in the Wiltshire hills. Ultimately, I suppose, it belongs now to my cousin. His father was the elder son, mine the younger. Sometimes during the night I dream that I’m back there…’ A bitter smile twisted his face. ‘Pure escapism. If I do go back, it won’t be as a boy free to run around but as a useless cripple…’

Lizzie bit her lip, wondering if she had done the right thing in bringing him out here…wondering if she had perhaps not been kind in stirring up memories of his childhood.

Without saying a word, she turned the wheelchair round. She knew from experience that when these moods of deep despair came down on him it was best to simply let Edward speak. Rather like letting poison drain out of a wound, only for his particular wound there could never be any total cleansing and healing.

They were halfway back to the hospital when she saw the man walking down the path towards them. She recognised him immediately, her heart giving a tremendous bound of pleasure and shock. He was walking with the sun behind him, so that his dark hair had a golden nimbus, his easy, long-legged stride so male, so unconsciously arrogant that her heart bled a little for Edward, whom she could see gripping the arms of his wheelchair.

Such was her incandescent joy at the sight of him that there was no time, no room in her mind to question what he was doing. All she wanted to do was to fly towards him, to feel his arms tighten around her, his man’s body press close to hers, his mouth find hers to possess and cherish it until the tremulous joy flooding through her burst into a wild surge.

But it wasn’t her he addressed—he seemed not to notice her at all, speaking instead to Edward, saying casually, ‘Ah, there you are, old boy. They told me I’d find you down here somewhere…’

‘Christopher…’

Christopher… His name was Christopher… It suited him somehow… She savoured it silently, tasting it, rolling it around her mouth, marvelling at the foresight of parents able instinctively to choose a name so fitting.

‘I’ll push this for you, shall I?’

Engrossed in her bemusement, she hadn’t seen him move, and now suddenly he was standing beside her, her body instantly aware of his, so that she longed to move closer to him, to bathe in his body heat, to breathe in his special scent.

She tried to look at him and couldn’t, paralysed by unexpected, awkward shyness. In front of her she heard Edward saying, ‘Lizzie…this is Christopher Danvers… My cousin… Christopher, Lizzie is—’

‘I know. Lizzie and I have already met… This morning when I practically ran her down…’

He held out his hand and gripped hers. The pressure of his fingers against her own made her quiver with delight.

‘Call me Kit,’ he told her softly, while his blue eyes laughed dangerously into hers.

She was so bemused, so entranced by him that it wasn’t until several seconds after he had released her hand and she had turned away from him that she became aware of Edward’s tension.

And then, hypersensitive to a point where she almost felt as though she had stepped inside his skin, she could feel the pressure he was placing on his fragile muscles and instinctively moved towards him and then stopped, confused by her own actions.

For a moment she had wanted to place herself protectively between Edward and Kit. But why…? And why to protect Edward…? Kit was his cousin…

She was in love with him. He was wonderful, perfect. She couldn’t understand Edward’s antagonism towards him.

‘You always did drive too damn fast,’ Edward was saying curtly.

‘Well, luckily there was no harm done, and when your ministering angel told me that she was spending her time off charitably entertaining one of her patients I had no idea she meant you.’

‘What are you doing here, Kit?’

The way Edward Danvers asked the question was brusque, almost as though he disliked the other man, which startled Lizzie.

‘Felt I ought to, old chap, now that the old man’s finally gone. Duty. Head of the family and all that. Came to see how you were getting on. What plans you’ve got for when all this is over…’

‘I won’t be burdening you with my presence at Cottingdean, if that’s what’s worrying you,’ Edward said stiffly.

Lizzie was beginning to feel uncomfortable. There was something here between the two men which she felt instinctively should not be aired in front of a third party.

‘I… I think I’d better go,’ she began uncertainly, and appealed to Kit, ‘You’ve obviously got private family business to discuss…’

She started to move away down the path, but Kit followed her, standing between her and Edward and blocking her view of the wheelchair as he bent his head and murmured, ‘You haven’t forgotten about our date, have you? I shouldn’t be too long with old Edward… Half-past two, remember.’

Her heart gave a tremendous thud as happiness burst into a million tiny effervescent fragments inside her.

‘Half-past two,’ she agreed shakily.

Both men watched her walk out of sight, and then Kit drawled, ‘Pretty little thing for a skivvy.’

‘She is not a skivvy, she is a nursing aide… By rights she ought to have done more years at school. She’s far too bright for this kind of work.’ Edward moved restlessly in his chair and cursed bitterly, ‘Damn this war… Damn it to hell…’

‘Steady on, old chap. Can’t say I blame you, though. Tied to that thing and not able to do a thing about it, while you’ve got a pretty little bit like that fluttering round you. Must say, I’d feel pretty frustrated myself.’ He watched in cynical amusement as he saw his cousin’s skin turn dark red.

Edward always had been over-prudish, which was perhaps just as well in all the circumstances when you thought about it. Kit hadn’t been looking forward to this visit. While his father had been alive he had carelessly pushed the thought of his cousin and his plight out of his mind; he had more important things to think about, such as winning a war and in the process laying as many pretty girls as he could… One of the perks of being one of Britain’s bravest. As a pilot, it was virtually expected of him. Not that he found it any hardship… But now his father was dead, and his CO had made one too many comments about Edward’s plight, so that he had felt obliged to drive down here and see how he was doing, and to make it plain to Edward that once this war was over they would both have their own separate lives to lead.

‘You leave her alone,’ he heard Edward saying grimly. ‘She’s still little more than a child. She doesn’t understand the kind of rules you play by, Kit. She’s an innocent…’ He broke off, realising that he was only affording the other amusement, and asked instead, ‘I take it you are still engaged to Lillian?’

‘Of course. All that money, you know… Besides, I don’t have much option, do I?’

‘If you don’t love her—’

‘Love? What a fool you are, Edward. You’ve been spending too much time on your own,’ he added derisively. ‘I need a wife like Lillian, but that doesn’t mean I can’t amuse myself in other directions.’

‘You haven’t changed, Kit. You never did care about people’s feelings and you never will.’

‘While you always cared too much, which is why you’re in that wheelchair. If you hadn’t been so damned heroic, you’d still be a whole man, instead of a helpless cripple,’ Kit taunted him. ‘You’re a fool, Edward, you always were and you always will be… And by the way, old man, once Lillian and I are married, don’t expect to find yourself a billet at Cottingdean, will you? I dare say I shall sell the old place anyway. Lillian wants a flat in London, and I dare say by the time this is over Cottingdean will only be fit for knocking down.’

Kit always had had a cruel streak, Edward reflected silently; as a boy he had been inclined to bully and torment. That hadn’t bothered him then… He suddenly realised how tired and sick he felt, how helpless and vulnerable. He felt his eyes mist with the helpless tears of impotence and frustration, and he wished, as he had wished so many times before, that he had the strength and the courage to put an end to it all.

CHAPTER TWO

‘GOT a date, have you?’

Lizzie flushed, even though the question was asked in a friendly enough way. The moment she had left Edward and Kit, she had collected her bike and ridden back to the hostel.

Mindful of Kit’s commands, she had rifled frantically through her meagre wardrobe, looking in vain for anything that might be described as ‘pretty’. There wasn’t anything, of course, but she could unpin her hair from its braids, brush it until it shined and leave it hanging loose.

That it felt odd and slightly uncomfortable didn’t matter. Kit had demanded it of her, and for him she was prepared to make any sacrifice…do anything that might please him.

Now though, confronted by the amused scrutiny of the other girls who also had the time off from working at the hospital, she felt acutely self-conscious, her face burning as she stammered an assent.

‘Not going to go out wearing that, are you?’ another girl commented, grimacing.

Lizzie blushed harder. She wasn’t used to confiding in others, to encouraging intimacy with them. Aunt Vi always kept her at a distance and had taught her to do the same to others.

‘I…I don’t have anything else.’

It shamed her to admit it. She bent her head forwards, so that her curtain of hair swung across her face.

‘I could lend you something,’ one of the girls offered. ‘We’re about the same size.’

‘Give over, Rosie, you might be the same height, but she’s much thinner than you.’

‘Not that much,’ Rosie protested. ‘She could wear that dress I got from Meg the other week. With a belt round the waist.’

‘Well, I suppose she could try it, only she’s going to need a bit of make-up as well, isn’t she? And some decent shoes. What size do you take, Lizzie?’

Thoroughly bemused, Lizzie stood there while they argued good-naturedly and loudly all around her.

‘It’s a pity you didn’t think to put your hair in rags last night,’ one of them told her. ‘Then it would have a bit of a curl to it. You’re lucky to be so blonde. Men really go for that. What is he? Yank?’

‘No, no, he’s—’

‘Here’s the dress,’ Rosie interrupted. ‘Come on, Lizzie, try it on.’

Suddenly she was one of them, an outsider no longer, but she flinched when they laughed at her sturdy utilitarian underwear.

‘Heavens, just look at it,’ one of them derided as she slipped off her cardigan and blouse to reveal the heavy cotton brassière which, like the rest of her clothes, had been inherited from someone else.

Normally she tried to undress and dress in privacy. Aunt Vi had always made her feel somehow that her body was something she ought to be ashamed of and, even when she had had the luxury of her own bedroom, she had always studiously avoided looking at herself.

Now she blushed deeply as one of the older girls announced cynically, ‘My God, whoever he is, he’s going to get a shock when he sees that. Let’s hope he’s in the artillery. They’re used to dealing with armour plating.’

The other girls laughed, but it was good-natured laughter, Lizzie recognised.

‘You’ll have to take it off,’ Rosie told her decisively, and before she could protest the other girl had stepped behind her and unsnapped the fastener.

She had never stood in front of anyone before clad in only her knickers and she felt a sharp stab of shock ricochet through her system as she realised how easily she was shedding Aunt Vi’s rules.

‘Look at her,’ someone said mockingly. ‘She doesn’t need to wear anything. There’s hardly anything of her.’

‘No, but at least what she’s got is in the right place,’ another girl responded.

Rosie turned to her and said kindly, ‘Don’t pay any attention to Mavis, she’s jealous because her boyfriend says her chest is too big… Poor Mavis. She’s used to them thinking it’s wonderful. She needed taking down a peg or two. The rest of us were sick of hearing about how wonderful her forty inches were… Here you are, get this on,’ she instructed, handing her a flimsy cotton garment.

Lizzie hesitated as she stared at the fabric, its white background rather dingy from too many washings of a poor-quality cloth. The fabric was overprinted with a too-busy design of bright red and yellow flowers that made her feel slightly dizzy, but everyone was waiting and if she refused she would offend Rosie and probably everyone else as well. They were, after all, trying to be helpful.

As she put the dress on and fastened the buttons down the front she realised how much plumper Rosie must be. The dress, which on Rosie hugged the waist, hung loosely on her, and the V-neckline was surely much more revealing on her than it was when it strained across Rosie’s plump breasts.

She tried not to feel relieved as she reached for the buttons. ‘It’s kind of you, Rosie, but it doesn’t look anywhere near as good on me as it does on you,’ she said tactfully.

Although she was loath to admit it she was actually longing to get back to Lady Jeveson’s cast-offs. At least in them she felt she was decently dressed. She had been horror stricken to realise that through the thin fabric of Rosie’s dress it was actually possible to see not only the outline of her nipples, but also the dark shadowing of their surrounding areola.

‘No, keep it on,’ Rosie protested, ‘all it needs is a belt. You’ve got a red one, haven’t you, Jean…? Bring it here and let’s see how it looks…’

Jean Adams was a tall thin girl, with dark hair and dense brown eyes. The belt in question was made of bright red shiny plastic and had been a present from an admiring GI.

Lizzie felt her fingers recoil from contact with the sharp shiny stuff in distaste. The only belts she was familiar with were soft leather, often worn, with the stitching gone in places, and always in dull browns and greys.

‘Give it ’ere, Jean,’ Rosie instructed, obviously enjoying her role as transformer-in-chief. ‘Now breathe in, Lizzie, while I get it fastened… My goodness, you are thin, aren’t you? Even Jean can’t get it fastened on that first notch, can you, Jean? No, you can’t look at yourself yet,’ Rosie told her firmly as she tried to step to one side so that she could see her reflection in the dormitory’s one spotted mirror.

‘What you need now is a bit of colour in your face. Some nice bright red lipstick and a bit of rouge…’

‘And some blacking on her lashes,’ someone suggested. ‘What size shoes does she take?’

‘Threes,’ Lizzie said weakly.

‘So small…well, it will have to be Mary’s white courts, then… You take a four, don’t you, Mary? We’ll have to stuff the toes. Where’s he meeting you, love, outside?’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘On the back lane to the hospital.’

‘She’s not walking all down there, not in my white courts,’ Mary objected indignantly.

‘No, well, she’ll have to wear her own shoes and then change just before she meets him. Leave her own hidden—she can pick them up in the morning.’

Lizzie wanted to object that it wasn’t necessary for Mary to make such a sacrifice. Aunt Vi had always told her that a lady never wore white shoes, but it was difficult to speak with Rosie determinedly outlining her mouth with what felt like sticky paste, and someone else spitting on a cake of mascara ready to attend to her eyelashes.

It was a good half-hour before they were satisfied with their efforts and ready to let her look in the mirror.

When she did, the image confronting her was so totally unfamiliar that she could only stare at it in confused disbelief. She looked so much older, so much more worldly, so…so common, a sharp inner voice derided, but with the circle of expectant faces watching her she could only swallow down her dismay and weakly thank them.

‘Just you remember,’ Rosie warned her, all motherly concern, ‘if he tries it on, you make him wait. Show him that you expect to be treated with a bit of respect. They’re all the same… All after one thing…and they’ll tell you anything to get it…’

She wanted to protest that they were wrong, that Kit was different…but her feelings were too new…too precious to be shared with anyone else.

Someone, she rather thought it was Mary, provided her with a white cardigan to wear over the dress, which mercifully buttoned up to the throat, and then she was being escorted downstairs and outside, so that it was impossible for her to plead that she couldn’t accept their generosity and change back into her own things.

Lizzie couldn’t cycle to meet Kit, not wearing her borrowed finery, and at first she found it disconcerting to feel the freer movements of her breasts as she walked.

That the sensation of her flesh pressing against this cotton was not entirely unpleasant shocked her, as did the sudden illuminating knowledge that when Kit took her in his arms she would be able to feel his body against her own separated only by such a flimsy barrier.

Such thoughts were forbidden, disgusting, Aunt Vi would have said, but it wasn’t disgust that welled up inside her. Far from it. It was the same fizzing, exciting sensation she had experienced when Kit had pressed his lips against hers, the same curling tautness deep down inside her, which made her stop walking and instinctively press the palm of her hand low down against her body, until she realised what she was doing and went scarlet with shock and guilt.

She knew all about what happened between men and women—it would have been hard not to, when the other girls gave such graphic and detailed descriptions of their boyfriends’ prowess or lack of it—but she had never realised until now that the physical intimacies they had described, and which she had found rather nauseating, could be responsible for the kind of delicious ache that was tormenting her body and making her hurry eagerly to meet Kit.

She had set off in plenty of time and, when she reached the arranged rendezvous, she was able to slip out of her own brogues and replace them with Mary’s white shoes, which looked very large and ungainly on her own slender feet.

The only thing she had not been provided with was a pair of the much prized stockings, and she had firmly refused to allow her helpers to draw lines down the backs of her legs in imitation of stocking seams. Her ankles looked very fragile and pale, she decided, eyeing them uncertainly, but her woollen stockings would have looked ridiculous with Rosie’s dress.

Time passed. She seemed to have been waiting for hours. Her stomach tensed and she began to wonder if Kit wasn’t coming after all. She had no watch and no way of telling what time it was. She couldn’t stay standing here for ever, she told herself, thankful that the lane was seldom used so that there was no one about to witness her humiliation.

She could just imagine the other girls’ reactions when she went back and told them that Kit hadn’t turned up. Her eyes stung with tears. It had never occurred to her that this might happen. She had been so certain, so sure that Kit felt as she did…

She was just about to retrieve her shoes when she heard the sound of a car engine. Her heart bounded, her pulses thudding frantically as she froze and waited.

When she saw the familiar bonnet of Kit’s car coming round the corner she almost cried with relief, unaware of how very easily he was interpreting her reaction as he brought the car to a standstill beside her and smiled warmly at her.

Old Edward wouldn’t think her such an innocent now, Kit reflected cynically as he studied her. Quite a transformation.

He looked at her dark red mouth and felt a kick of sensation burst inside him. Sex was like a drug to Kit—the more he had, the more he wanted—and since he had been grounded five days ago for disobeying orders and breaking formation to chase off an enemy plane in a dogfight over the Channel, sex had been the only outlet he had had for the compulsive energy that drove him.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he apologised, jumping out of the car and coming towards her.

Relief shone in her eyes, making them glitter with the tears which had been about to fall.

‘You look wonderful,’ he lied, making her wonder if perhaps after all the other girls had been right and that it was she who had been wrong to have had doubts about her appearance.

‘So wonderful, in fact, that I’ve simply got to do this…’

Kit was no fool. No matter how willing the woman, they still liked all the trappings. And this one was more nervous than willing. He felt her tremble as he took her in his arms and felt his body tense with elation. It gave him an extra thrill to know that he would be the first, that no one else had ever touched her or kissed her. Her mouth beneath his betrayed her inexperience. ‘No one’s ever kissed you before, have they?’ he said, crushing her body against his own, revelling in his power over her, her innocence, her gullibility. He placed his hand on her heart and felt its frantic beat. His fingertips were just brushing the underside of her breast, causing her both to tense and to tremble. His tongue snaked over her glossy red lips, making Lizzie shiver frantically again as his touch caressed her already sensitised flesh. She was so responsive to him, so dizzyingly aware of him. They had looked at one another and immediately she had known without words…without explanation—she had known.

Kit was biting at her mouth now, almost too roughly, but she guessed that it was because he, like her, had been overwhelmed by their love. She felt his tongue press against the closed line of her mouth and obediently parted her lips. She had heard the other girls talking about this kind of kissing, but had never thought that she herself could experience it without intense revulsion. Instead she discovered, as Kit’s tongue penetrated the moist intimacy of her mouth, that the slow caressing thrusts he was making were sending her dizzy with the waves of pleasure which seemed to be rolling over her in ever increasing ferocity.

‘I can’t make love to you here,’ Kit told her thickly. ‘My God, you’re dynamite, do you know that…? You and I are going to be so good together…so very good.’

To Lizzie it was a statement of commitment for their future, an avowal of love. Cynically Kit watched the effect his words were having on her, loving her vulnerability to him, his power over her. Fleetingly he wished he had more time to spend with her. There were things he could show her—teach her. His body grew hot and hard, the intensity of his desire for her catching him by surprise.

‘Come on…let’s go somewhere more private,’ he commanded, picking her up and carrying her over to the car.

As he held her against his body, Lizzie felt the hardness of his physical arousal, and her senses thrilled to the knowledge that she had done this to him. She knew from the other girls’ conversation what that hardness meant; what she hadn’t known before was how exciting it would be to know that she could have that effect on the man she loved, nor how much she would want to press her body against his, to take that hardness deep within her own flesh so that she could prolong and intensify the fierce, aching pleasure being close to it brought.

As he lifted her into the car, either by accident or design, his hands slid up over her body, fleetingly caressing her breasts.

‘Where can we go?’ he demanded. ‘You know this area better than I do… I’d take you back to where I’m staying but the landlady…’

Take her back to his room, he meant… She wasn’t ready for that yet, Lizzie acknowledged. It smacked too much of what she had always considered to be the rather sordid intimacies of the other girls. She wanted this to be different… It was different, of course. She and Kit were in love with one another, and after the war… She took a deep breath, her heart pounding with the heady excitement of anticipating the future…their future, and then hard on its heels came the sharp new fear experienced by every woman whose man risked his life in the defence of his country. What if Kit should die—what if all they had was here and now? What if there was no future, only these few precious hours? It was a thought she could not bear to contemplate—not now—not ever.

‘There is a place,’ she told him huskily. ‘It’s just inside the hospital grounds, but no one ever goes there. We’ll have to walk, though.’

The place she had in mind was a small, neglected summer-house in an overgrown glade, hidden deep in the tangled undergrowth of the neglected grounds. Even the path to it was overgrown with saplings and brambles. She had discovered it by accident and often went there when she wanted privacy. She had half contemplated taking Edward there, knowing he would enjoy it as she had… She had seen the first primroses flower there on the banks of its quiet pool, followed by wild bluebells, but the difficulties of pushing Edward’s chair down the overgrown and soft earth path had made her decide against suggesting such an outing. Now she was fiercely glad, because now it would be their secret place, known to them alone…a sacred temple to their love.

Kit parked his car at the end of the lane. When he lifted her out of her seat Lizzie clung shyly to him, blushing as he looked down at her mouth. The red lipstick was gone now, but her lips glowed with their own colour, softened and swollen from his earlier kiss.

‘Mm…innocent little thing, aren’t you…? Not that I mind.’ His hands slid down her back, past her waist and over her buttocks, squeezing them as he lifted her into his own body and moved urgently against her.

Dizzy with the tumult of sensations inside her, Lizzie could only cling to him, innocently offering herself to him, wanting only to please him.

When he released her, she felt disorientated and bereft.

‘Which way is it…this place?’ Kit was demanding, hoarsely.

As she pointed in the direction of the glade, Lizzy realised guiltily that Mary’s shoes were going to be ruined. They had to cross two fields and then fight their way down the overgrown pathway to get to the glade and Mary’s courts were not designed for such stuff.

Neither, it seemed, were Kit’s flannels and blazer. He frowned impatiently when the brambles caught in the fabric, and complained that she might have warned him what to expect. His irritation jarred a little but Lizzie dismissed those feelings.

The path seemed more overgrown than it had been the last time she had visited the glade a few weeks ago, but at last she could see the glint of sunlight on water through the tangled undergrowth and branches and when at last they broke through into the silence of the sun-dappled clearing she asked breathlessly, ‘Will this be all right?’

‘Well, we certainly won’t be disturbed,’ Kit told her, examining their surroundings, and walking towards the dilapidated summer-house. Personally he would have preferred the comfort of a double bed, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and the woman running the boarding-house where he was staying had made it plain that she did not allow her guests to bring in ‘friends’.

‘Pity you didn’t think to bring a rug,’ Kit added as he studied their surroundings.

‘But it is private, isn’t it?’ Lizzie asked him anxiously, suddenly desperate to placate him and win some word of approval, knowing that she was somehow responsible for that frown of displeasure which had banished the warmth of his smile and hating herself for it.

‘Oh, it is private,’ Kit agreed, and suddenly he was smiling at her again so that her heart and body were flooded with warmth and love. She went eagerly towards him, feeling as though she had stepped into heaven itself when he took hold of her arm and led her inside the summer-house, and then turned her more fully into his arms.

Even with familiarity the sensation of his tongue moving erotically within her mouth didn’t lose its power to make her body ache and melt, Lizzie recognised, thrilled by the way Kit was moving against her, silently telling her how much he loved and wanted her.

‘You know how much I want you, don’t you?’ he told her thickly. She trembled, too full of emotion to speak, tremulously eager to show him how much she loved him…how much she needed him. She was still so bemused by it all, still caught up in the miracle of it all, totally blinded to reality by her innocence and her love.

In the past, a lifetime ago, had she really been a girl who had believed idiotically that the physical aspects of love were its least important, that the physical consummation of love was something unimportant and even faintly sordid, something to be endured rather than enjoyed? If so, she was discovering how ignorant she had been, how blind and unfit to be the recipient of the love of a man like Kit.

That he needed her and that he was so open and urgent in that need touched her with tenderness that bordered on the maternal. When they were apart he would have these memories of her to bring him safely back to her, and as he kissed her and held her against his body she recognised that what she was experiencing now was a world away from her girlish dreams of what love might be.

How could it be wrong to experience such pleasure…such joy…to feel her pulses leap as Kit kissed her face and her throat, as his hands caressed her sun-warmed body through her borrowed clothes?

‘You don’t need this on, do you?’

He was already unfastening the cardigan, exposing the V-neckline of her dress and the softness of her skin. She tensed a little suddenly, made nervous by the way he was looking at her and Kit, who had thought himself long beyond ever allowing his reactions to escape his own control, was almost angered by the sensation that coiled through him as the sunlight slanted across her body and he saw quite clearly through the thin cotton the shape and shadowing of her nipples. He had already known that she was naked beneath her dress, but the unexpected glimpse of her body through it was somehow more erotic, more arousing than if he had been looking at her naked body, and, as he removed the bulky cardigan from her stiff body, he was suddenly possessed by a frenzy of need so sharply intense that almost before he had finished his hands were gripping her waist, his head descending so that his mouth could find the dark-fleshed peak and punish it for its temerity in so arousing him.

Lizzie had never felt a man’s hands on her body so intimately, never mind his mouth, and the sensation of Kit’s teeth savaging her flesh froze her into immobility, and alarm. It was far too much, far too soon.

As he felt her tension, her resistance, Kit cursed silently. For a moment he had forgotten her lack of experience, but now her body was forcibly reminding him of it, causing his own flesh to ache with resentment. He was almost tempted to take hold of her and make her body accept his, but she was so small, so delicately made that he could hurt her easily if he did. There had been an innocent young girl once before; a pretty little thing from the village. That had been before he had learned not to play in his own backyard. Her father had complained to his parents. His father had been furious with him. He had been forced to buy her family off. It was a pity that this one happened to know his cousin.

If she chose to go running to Edward… Not that there was a damn thing that Edward could do about it… Except tell Lillian…

His mouth had grown still on her body. Relief unlocked her muscles into shaky weakness. She felt sick and tremulous. She had known that men enjoyed touching a woman’s breasts, but she had not known…never dreamed…

Despite the sunshine, and the musty scented warmth of the summer-house, she suddenly felt so cold that her teeth had started to chatter.

He still wanted her, Kit recognised, and it wasn’t too late to retrieve the situation. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he told her, murmuring the words in her ear, so that she wouldn’t see the lie for what it was. ‘But you know it really was your own fault.’

When she tensed again, and turned towards him, her eyes dark with confusion, he smiled ruefully at her. ‘Coming out dressed like that…tempting me like that…’

Subtly, cleverly, he shifted the responsibility, the blame, so that Lizzie, who had felt uncomfortable enough about her appearance to start with, now flushed dark red and bit nervously at her bottom lip.

‘I’m sorry if I frightened you,’ Kit told her, smiling at her as he saw her reaction. He could perhaps turn the situation to his advantage.

‘I didn’t know…I didn’t realise,’ Lizzie was apologising abjectly. ‘I—’

‘I know… I know…’ Kit took her back in his arms, stroking her hair. ‘The trouble is I want you so very much, and you don’t have the experience…’

Immediately Lizzie tensed again, hearing the reproach in his voice, wincing beneath the implied criticism.

‘Let’s try again, shall we?’ Kit suggested, and her heart bounded with the relief of knowing that despite her deficiencies he still wanted her.

Shyly she nodded her head, blushing harder when he added, ‘Let’s take this off, then, shall we?’

His fingers were already deftly unfastening the buttons on her dress, freeing her breasts to his eyes and his hands.

He wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time, Kit told himself, and besides, a little holding back now, a little coaxing and persuading, would pay him handsome dividends later. What he had already seen of her body was making him urgently eager to possess her. She felt so small and soft beneath his hands, so vulnerable, her bones so fragile that he could almost believe he could break them. Would she be as small inside as her body seemed to suggest, would she…?

‘Perfect…you’re so perfect,’ he told her thickly as he caressed her bare breasts with his hands, silencing the hesitant protest he sensed she was about to make by kissing her.

As he kissed her the memory of her earlier fear faded; there was, Lizzie recognised tremulously, something sharply pleasurable about the way he was touching her, something which, if she allowed it to grow, she sensed would lead her into a whole new world of experiences and feelings. But what she was doing was wrong, she reminded herself…this kind of intimacy…

As Kit stopped kissing her mouth and started instead to kiss the soft flesh of her throat, her thoughts became muddled and confused, impossible to hold on to in the flood of sensation that swept through her body. This time Kit held his desire in check, caressing her slowly and lingeringly until at last his mouth was once again on her breasts.

Immediately she froze, but he refused to let her push him away, whispering against her skin, ‘Did I hurt you, my sweet? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Here, let me kiss it better.’

She was still too tense, too shocked really to enjoy what he was doing to her, her mind too full of Aunt Vi’s teachings and warnings for them to be totally ignored. And yet…and yet, dimly, distantly, she sensed that there was a pleasure to be found in this shockingly intimate exploration of her body, if only her darling Kit had the patience to lead her to it gently and tenderly.

But tenderness and gentleness, never mind patience, were virtues that were unknown to Kit Danvers—already he was growing impatient, bored with such juvenile caresses. He pushed up her skirt, and put his hand on her thigh, sliding it upwards until he reached her knickers.

Immediately fresh tension gripped her—her upbringing, Aunt Vi’s strictures, warning against the instincts struggling for life inside her.

Kit was kissing her again, and, untutored though it was, somehow her body recognised the selfishness in his touch, the determination and the greed, and her tension increased.

‘If you loved me you’d let me,’ Kit was telling her angrily. ‘I thought you and I had something special.’

If it weren’t that the very innocence that was irritating him so much now was also exciting him, arousing him in a way he had not experienced in a very long time, he would already have lost interest in her and abandoned her, but for all her reluctance, her fear, indeed almost because of them, he felt his desire sharpen.

‘I want you, Lizzie…let me show you how much. Let me show you how good it can be,’ he coaxed her, kissing her again, ignoring her tension, ignoring the tremors that made her thigh muscles quiver.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he told her, ‘I only want to show you how good it’s going to be between us… You do love me, don’t you…?’

What could she say? Of course she loved him.

‘Yes,’ she whispered helplessly.

‘Then let me touch you…let me love you. You’re not one of those women who can’t please a man, are you?’ Kit asked her, abruptly changing tack and making a fresh shiver of fear ice along her spine. Of course she wasn’t what he was suggesting…was she? Confused thoughts jumbled in her brain. She did love him, she knew that; so why did she feel this hesitation…this fear? Why, when she had enjoyed his kisses so much, did she feel this apprehension at his more intimate touch?

She heard the hospital village clock tolling the hour. Four o’clock already, and she was due back on the ward at five.

Mingling with her panic was a sense of relief…of escape almost, as she pushed desperately against Kit’s imprisoning arms and told him huskily, ‘I must go… I’m due back at work at five.’

Cursing beneath his breath, Kit released her. She was proving more of a challenge than he had expected and like green unripe fruit she was beginning to leave a sour taste in his mouth, but he still wanted her; not just because he desired her. Now anger and male pride were also spurring him on. There was something about her. Something about her vulnerability, her naïveté, that made him almost want to reach out and punish her for them.

Not a man given to introspection of any kind, he withdrew from her abruptly, uncomfortable with his own thoughts. It wasn’t in his nature to give in, to back down from a challenge of any kind.

‘I’d better drive you back, then,’ he told her curtly, watching the effect his coldness was having on her, and smiling inwardly as he recognised her pain. Well, it wouldn’t hurt her to suffer a little… It might even teach her a much-needed lesson, and it would certainly make her all the more eager to give him what he wanted the next time he saw her.

He walked her back to the car in a coldly remote silence that made Lizzie ache with misery and regret. Why on earth had she behaved so stupidly? Of course she loved him, and of course he had expected her to allow him to make love to her. He wasn’t a boy; he was a man…a man who was fighting for his country, a man who could walk out of her life today…

She felt the tears clogging her throat and pain and the panic churning inside her stomach. Why had she panicked like that…? Why had she felt that tension, that apprehension? Was there something wrong with her…was she perhaps incapable of pleasing a man as he had suggested, of sharing physical desire?

It was a devastating thought and one that made her face go white with anguish as they finally reached Kit’s car.

When he turned to look at her Kit was pleased to see the effect his silence had had on her. It made him relent a little towards her and cup her face with one careless hand while he demanded softly, ‘When can I see you again, sweetheart?’

Lizzie’s heart leaped with gratitude and relief. He still wanted her, after all. He was actually giving her a second chance—he did love her.

‘I—’

‘Tonight,’ Kit pressed. ‘What time do you finish work? I could pick you up…’

Lizzie shook her head.

‘Not until late.’

‘Then when?’ Kit pressed her. ‘Tomorrow…’

Tomorrow was her day off. Her heart started to pound, as, almost incapable of speech, she nodded her head.

‘Good,’ Kit told her, and then added carelessly, ‘Look, I’ll tell you what. Instead of picking you up, why don’t I meet you at the summer-house? That way…that way we’ll keep it our secret…something special just for the two of us…’

Silently Lizzie nodded her head. She had no idea how she was going to get through the interminably long hours before she could see him again, but one thing she had already promised herself, and that was that when she did see him, when he held her and kissed her, when he touched her and told her how much he wanted her, she was going to behave like a woman and not a child, she was going to remind herself of how lucky she was to have met him, and how precious this time together with him was…how vulnerable their future together when the war could sweep them apart again at any time, maybe only for a short space of time, or maybe for eternity.

She shuddered from head to foot, suddenly so cold that her teeth were chattering.

‘Tomorrow, then…eleven o’clock,’ Kit reminded her before they parted.

‘Tomorrow,’ Lizzie echoed in a whisper, her sight suddenly blinded by weak tears.

She loved him so much. She wanted to reach out to him and to say the words, to be held in his arms. To be kissed by him…to be loved by him, she recognised shakily. So why was it that when he touched her the way he had she had acted like that, tensing against him, rejecting him?

As she watched him drive away from her she shivered again, feeling more alone, more sharply aware of the precariousness of life, more confused by her feelings than at any other time in her life…

Back at the hostel there was her borrowed finery to be returned. When questioned, she kept quiet about her date with Kit in the morning. She still felt too bruised by her own stupidity, by the way she had angered him and jeopardised their love to want to discuss what had happened with anyone, so that when Rosie asked eagerly, ‘Seeing him again, are you?’ she made a non-committal reply, glad that the fact that she had to hurry to get to work on time made it impossible for them to question her too closely.

The evening shift was always a busy one, with the men to be settled for the night, their medication to be given to them, the wards to be cleaned and made ready for the morning.

Lizzie only saw Edward Danvers briefly as she passed through his ward.

As she helped another aide with the blackout cloths, she noticed how grey Edward’s skin looked and guessed sympathetically that he was in great pain. She wanted to go across to him and ask him if he would like some extra medication, but already she knew how touchy his pride was, how he hated any reference being made to the physical agony he often had to endure.

She glanced uncertainly across the ward. The sister on duty was a woman in her late fifties who had little time for the young aides, and Lizzie knew there would be no point in her trying to have a discreet word with her to solicit her help for Edward. She was the kind of woman who genuinely believed that to endure pain was good for the soul. All the junior nurses, and even some of the doctors, were in awe of her. The aides detested her, mercilessly mimicking her and making fun of her behind her back.

‘A sexless old bag,’ was how Lizzie had heard them describe her. Sexless… She grimaced over the word, exploring it apprehensively, her heartbeat quickening with anxiety. Surely she wasn’t like that…surely she wasn’t that kind of woman? No, of course she wasn’t…

Then why hadn’t she been able to respond to Kit’s lovemaking…? Why had she felt so afraid, so tense?

Too young and far too inexperienced to know that the answer lay both in her aunt’s grim upbringing and Kit’s lack of true care for her, she was unaware of the danger of the destructive seeds which Kit had so cruelly sown for her.

Eleven o’clock. Lizzie tensed as she heard the chimes from the church clock. She had arrived at the summer-house over fifteen minutes ago and now, as she waited for Kit to join her, her nervous tension made her stomach ache and her thoughts fly helplessly in a hundred different directions at once.

Before coming out she had scrupulously washed every inch of her skin, wincing at the coldness of the water, and wishing that she had something other than carbolic soap with which to scent it.

The weather had changed, clouds covering the sky, the wind cold, promising rain for later, and today she was once more dressed in her own clothes, or rather Lady Jeveson’s. Perhaps they weren’t as flattering as Rosie’s borrowed dress, but somehow she felt more comfortable in them.

One thing she had done, though, and that was to discard her bulky, unfeminine bra.

At first she had flushed with guilt, half glancing over her shoulder almost as though she had expected Aunt Vi to materialise behind her to chastise her for what she was doing, for her wanton dress, her lack of morals.

There was a small bruise mark on her left breast where Kit had bitten her, and her nipples still felt uncomfortably tender, and yet last night, lying alone in her narrow, cold bed, when she had closed her eyes and daringly allowed herself to remember the later, more gentle touch of Kit’s hands and mouth against her breasts, the tiny thrill of sensation in her stomach had made her tremble with mixed excitement and relief.

Everything was going to be all right, she was sure of it. Today she would be able to show Kit how much she loved him. Today…she took a deep breath…today she would do whatever he asked of her, if only to prove to him that she had not been lying when she had claimed to love him.

And yet she still felt nervous, ill at ease…vulnerable. She tensed as she heard someone coming down towards the pool. What if it wasn’t Kit? What if it was someone else, a stranger, coming unwittingly to destroy their precious time together? But when she looked through the broken window it was Kit’s tall, lithe body she saw striding towards her. Today he was dressed in his uniform and her heart was caught up in a jolt of sharply piercing sensation, a mingling of pride and dread as the reality of their situation swept in on her on an unwanted tide, reinforcing her awareness of how precious their time together was. Kit—who knew quite well how good he looked in his uniform, how very male it made him seem, how very much the epitome of all that an airman ought to be.

He paused as he walked towards her, recognising in her expression her adoration and her fear. A feeling of power, of triumph filled him.

‘Come here,’ he commanded softly as he walked towards the summer-house and then paused on its threshold.

Uncertainly, tremulously, Lizzie did as he instructed, and, as she felt his arms go round her, she lifted her face towards his in blind supplication of his kiss and his forgiveness for her errors of the previous day.

‘That’s better,’ Kit told her approvingly, savouring the soft tremble of her mouth. ‘Much better.’

As he slid his tongue between her lips, he pulled her closer to his body, reinforcing her awareness of his arousal, his hands moving rapidly over her back and buttocks, his own body moving urgently against hers as he sought to impress its sexual message, its need on her still innocent flesh.

When his hand slid up to cover her breast and discovered that beneath her dull sensible jumper she was naked, he told her approvingly, ‘Good girl,’ and then whispered thickly in her ear, ‘I ought to reward you for being so thoughtful, oughtn’t I? What would you like, sweetheart—what would you like me to do?’

Her mind registered the thickening of his voice and sent sharp warning signals darting through her body, so that when she squirmed in his arms it was more with apprehension than excitement, but Kit was in no mood to be patient with her. He had lain awake far too long last night with his body aching and his temper on edge to waste time this morning. He wanted her and he intended to have her.

Fighting against her apprehension, Lizzie reminded herself that this was what she wanted; that only last night she had lain in bed and thrilled to the memory of Kit caressing her breasts as he was doing now, first with his hands, and then with his mouth, and yet she still cried out with pain when he savaged their tender crests with his teeth, wanting to beg him to stop, to protest that he was hurting her, but afraid of doing so in case she angered him, in case it proved that there was something wrong with her, that she was somehow lacking as a woman. There was nothing wrong with her, she told herself despairingly, but the doubt persisted and grew, locking her muscles, and making her feel tense and uncomfortable.

Kit undressed her quickly, roughly almost, she thought, trying not to flinch when his hands almost bruised her sensitive skin, closing her mind to the hesitant but instinctive knowledge that told her that this was not the way it should be, that in some way she was being cheated.

Dark, shadowy thoughts, doubts and fears chased one another across her mind. By Aunt Vi’s standards what she was doing was totally unforgivable…wrong… Her own emotions, so at war with her physical inhibitions, confused her. She shivered, and Kit, sensing her withdrawal from him, cursed under his breath and demanded abruptly, ‘What is it, what’s wrong?’

Lizzie looked nervously at him. He was frowning at her and she shivered again, but her doubts, her fears couldn’t be suppressed.

‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she told him huskily, ‘it isn’t right. I…’

Not bothering to hide his irritation, Kit took hold of her. He was not having her back out on him now. He wanted her too much, ached for her too much.

‘It isn’t wrong, sweetheart,’ he insisted, kissing her. ‘How can it be wrong when we love one another…when we have so little time together? You do love me, don’t you?’ he demanded caressingly.

‘Yes…yes…I love you.’ At least she was sure about that.

‘Then let me love you, sweetheart. Let me have these memories of you to take with me when I’m up there fighting for this country… for us…’

He had used the words so many times before that even to his own ears they sounded like a meaningless repetition of emotions he did not feel, but they were new to Lizzie, new and a frightening reminder of the reality of the war…and as Kit saw the thoughts and feelings reflected so clearly in her eyes he kissed her again and whispered against her ear, ‘Let me love you…let me show you…’ His voice thickened with excitement as he felt the tremor of emotion go through her body, and, taking advantage of her fear for him, he quickly removed the rest of her clothes.

No other human being had seen her completely naked since she had been sent to live with Aunt Vi, and she blushed hotly as Kit looked at her. Did he find her beautiful, desirable, or had she disappointed him? She wasn’t voluptuous with an hour-glass figure, but small with a narrow waist and hips and slender legs. Would he, who was so much bigger, so much heavier, so very different from her, find her too thin, too unfeminine? She blushed again and made a small embarrassed sound of protest in her throat as she tried to conceal herself from him, but he wouldn’t let her, laughing at her as he took hold of her hands and held them behind her back.

She wasn’t sure she liked being held like that; as though…as though she were his prisoner and as though he enjoyed holding her captive.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, old girl,’ he told her thickly as he watched her, and she couldn’t find the words to tell him that his careless scrutiny of her, his whole attitude towards her somehow cheapened their love, cheapened her! She had better not try to back out on him now, Kit thought resentfully. He watched her narrowly as he touched her.

Lizzie tried not to tremble. Without yesterday’s sun it was cold in the summer-house, and she tried to tell herself that it was for this reason that she felt so chilled, so nervous. She couldn’t possibly be nervous of Kit, could she? After all, she loved him and he loved her. So why was she finding the movement of his hands against her skin unnerving rather than arousing; why was her strongest emotion of fear…fear of angering and irritating him?

She tensed a little as Kit pushed her down on to the floor, her eyes wide with apprehension as he covered her body with the heavy weight of his own.

As she watched him he leavered himself away from her, fumbling with the waistband of his uniform trousers, but, instead of removing them and along with them the rest of his clothes, he simply unbuttoned them and then lowered his whole weight against her, pinning her down on the dusty floor, pushing apart her legs.

She did her best to accommodate him as he positioned himself between her thighs, confused by her own inability to communicate to him her tension and afraid of revealing to him her lack of desire.

The floor beneath her was hard and uncomfortable and she flinched as he pushed fiercely into her body and then repeated the jarring movement, cursing under his breath as he met with resistance.

‘Relax, can’t you?’ he muttered as he held her down beneath him.

Her body’s resistance both excited and irritated him, making him both want to drive hard against it, and impatient to be rid of the barrier of her virginity. She was far too tense, far too on edge.

He told her as much, angry with her for spoiling his pleasure, and when he thrust hard into her again Lizzie bit down on her bottom lip, terrified of letting him see how uncomfortable she was. She had heard, of course, that sometimes the first time it could hurt, but she had never imagined it would be like this…never imagined that her body would feel so tense and dry.

‘You should have been a bloody nun,’ Kit growled at her as he finally forced his way past her tense muscles.

He wasn’t even looking at her any more, Lizzie realised as she winced beneath the cruelty of his words and the burden of knowing that she had failed him, that she had failed herself… that as a woman she was in some way lacking.

Although she knew that what was happening should be giving her pleasure, instead she was filled with pain and confusion, both physically and emotionally, so that the harsh sound of Kit’s breathing, the fierce movement of his body within her own, seemed distant and apart from her. She was acutely conscious of them being not, as she had imagined, one perfect whole brought together by the intimacy of their lovemaking, but two very separate individuals.

The physical pain of his possession might have gone, but she was left with a deeper and far more hurtful emotional pain, so that when he finally collapsed on top of her, breathing erratically, she felt no relief, no pleasure, nothing other than a deep welling coldness and a searing sense of panic. She had disappointed him, failed him…she was not somehow a real woman, a sexual woman.

She could see the condemnation in his eyes, feel it in the way he refused to look at her as he moved away from her and kept his back to her as he fastened his trousers.

She was shivering now, her body stiff with cold.

‘Come on, sweetheart, you’d better get dressed. I’ve got to go and see old Edward again before I leave…’

Her hands shook as she dressed herself. She felt numb inside, her throat thick with tears.

‘You’re leaving so soon,’ she stammered, forcing back her tears.

‘Have to, I’m afraid, old girl. Duty calls and all that…’

‘But… I thought…’ She had thought they would have longer together. She had thought there would be more time…

‘Don’t worry… Shouldn’t be too long before I can get a twenty-four-hour pass,’ Kit lied to her. The last thing he wanted right now was a tearful scene.

Already, now that his desire for her was sated, he was beginning to forget how sharply he had wanted her. Soon she would be no more than another memory… another girl to join all the others there had been. It was wartime, and a man like him who lived constantly on the edge of danger was entitled to take what pleasure he could from life.

They made their way back to where Kit had parked his car in silence. Whatever she did, she must not give way to her misery…she must not break down in tears. Men hated seeing women cry, Lizzie knew. And, besides, she must be strong now, she must send him away from her with a smile so that his last memory of her would be a good one.

She ached to plead with him not to go and see Edward but to spend what leave he had left with her, but acknowledged the selfishness of her thoughts. Poor Edward had such an unhappy life. Kit was the first visitor he had had since she had come to the hospital. She must not be demanding…greedy. After all, he had promised her that he would see her again just as soon as he could get a pass…unless of course he was sent into action.

Action. The very word made her shudder with fear. Where before it had simply been another word, a word to terrify other women, now she knew its full horror and bone-chilling danger for herself.

Now she had been admitted to the ranks of those of her sex whose loved ones were at risk and she knew the full anguish and despair of what that meant: the inescapable weight of dread and hope for the life of another human being.

From now on there would be no nights of peaceful sleep for her; never again would she hear planes overhead without her stomach churning with fear. Never again would she know a moment’s peace other than for those few precious hours that Kit could spend with her. Only with him held in her arms would she know he was truly safe. Not until this war was finally over would she know true peace of mind again…the war over and Kit safely with her, the rest of their lives ahead of them for them to share and enjoy, for them to cherish their love, for her to show him emotionally and physically how much he meant to her. Her physical coldness, her inability to respond to him as she had wanted to respond—these were things she must not dwell on now. She bit her lip, wishing for the first time in her life that she had a female confidante, someone she could turn to for advice and reassurance. To listen to the other girls in the dormitory one would assume that sex was a source of huge amusement to them, a careless sharing of their bodies, in return for their lovers’ gifts; from her reading she had learned that it was one of the highest pleasures two human beings could attain together, and yet for her…

She started to tremble. What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she enjoyed it? Why…?

They were standing beside the car now, as Kit moved towards her and told her lightly, ‘Better not give you a lift, sweetheart. Don’t want to set people gossiping, do we…? Don’t want to get you in trouble with that matron of yours.’

‘No. No, I suppose not,’ Lizzie agreed, and then, abandoning her pride, abandoning her restraint, she threw herself into his arms and sobbed, ‘You will write to me, won’t you, Kit…? I’m so sorry I was a…a disappointment to you…’

She held her breath, waiting for him to deny it, to offer her some soothing panacea…but instead he simply shrugged and released himself from her, telling her casually, ‘I expect you’re just one of those women who isn’t any good at sex… Give me your address…it will be better if I write to you first. If I’m sent into action it might be a while before your letters catch up with me. There’s talk of us being posted abroad…’

‘Abroad… but…’

Quickly he shook his head. ‘’Fraid I can’t say any more, sweetheart…shouldn’t have told you that much. All very hush-hush at the moment…’

Lizzie had a small notebook in her handbag and she tore a leaf out of it, her hand trembling as she wrote down her address for him. As he pocketed it, and before he climbed into his car, he told her carelessly, ‘Chin up, old thing, and don’t worry—just as soon as I can get a pass I’ll be back to see you.’

He was a man who never gave much thought to the consequences of his actions. A conscience wasn’t something that bothered him unduly, but now, looking into her face, seeing the love reflected so innocently there, an odd, unfamiliar sensation flickered inside him.

It made him feel uncomfortable and irritated at the same time. Stupid girl, didn’t she realise…? He glanced at her and saw the purity of her profile, the soft naturalness of her blonde hair, the clearness of her skin, and something approaching regret stirred inside him.

She was lovely, her body lissom and tender; his body began to ache and he realised with increasing resentment that he still wanted her. Characteristically he blamed her for it, reminding himself that it was her lack of expertise that had cut short his lovemaking. Even while he was resenting her, wanting to leave her, an impulse he couldn’t control made him lean across to cup her face with his hand so that he could kiss her.

Lizzie’s heart swelled with frantic joy. Just for a moment she had begun to doubt…to wonder…but no, she had simply been foolish. Of course he loved her just as she loved him.

‘I’ll write as soon as I can,’ he told her thickly, knowing that he was lying and that once he was away from her he would soon forget this unfamiliar, unwanted ache she made him feel. Suddenly another thought struck him. ‘Not a word about this…us to cousin Edward,’ he warned her, and then, seeing her face, amended, ‘at least, not yet…’

He was right, Lizzie recognised. Their feelings for one another were too new, too precious to be shared with a third party…

As he drove away she watched until the last of the dust raised by his wheels had finally settled.

Less than a mile down the road Kit suddenly frowned, an unpleasant possibility occurring to him.

It was all very well for Lizzie to have agreed now not to say a word to Edward about what had happened, but, when a few weeks had gone by without her hearing from him, would she still keep that promise?

It wasn’t that he cared one way or the other what Edward thought about him, but what if Edward should attempt to get in touch with his CO on the stupid girl’s behalf? It was just the kind of thing he would do, damn him!

Still frowning, he thought quickly. He had her address—a brief note sent when he got back to camp, telling her that he was being posted abroad and wouldn’t be able either to give her his address or get in touch for some time…yes…yes, that should do it.

The odd letter, two or even three perhaps. He scowled to himself, cursing under his breath, already regretting his involvement.

Damn Edward for the interfering old woman he could be, but he dared not take the chance, however slight, of Edward making trouble for him. He had already received a couple of warnings and the threat that if his CO had to discipline him a third time he would be grounded permanently, and he wasn’t having that.

If Kit loved anything it was flying, flying and the mixture of exhilaration and fear that came with going into action, better by far than any thrill he got from having sex.

Yes, little as he relished the idea, once he was back at camp he would have to drop the damned girl a line, carefully omitting his address, of course…

In Lizzie’s heart was a mixture of joy and desolation. Joy in their finding of one another, in their coming together in a physical celebration of their love—trying to forget her own pain and shock, selflessly thinking only of Kit, of his pleasures, his needs, his satisfaction. And desolation because they had had so little time together.

Her body ached in an unfamiliar way, a faint tenderness between her legs. She placed her hand over her body, wondering uncertainly what it was that drove men so incessantly and violently to perform such an act, and why she had found that all the wonderful, singing pleasure she had been enjoying at the touch of his hands and mouth against her body had disappeared at that moment of physical joining, which should have been so wonderful—the physical completion of their love for one another.

Was there something wrong with her? She started to walk down the lane and retrieved the shoes she had left there the day before, her pace quickening as anxiety tensed her body.

Aunt Vi had always refused to discuss sexual matters; the information Lizzie had gleaned from the other girls’ conversation had been varied and sometimes unappealingly frank, but she had naïvely assumed that, when two people loved, their physical union was blessed with a spiritual leavening which lifted it above the mere physical coupling she had heard described graphically and sometimes very coarsely by her companions.

Now she wondered unhappily why she had not experienced the wonderful magical pleasure of which she had read; why Kit’s possession of her had not transported her to that special plane which belonged only to lovers.

She ached for Kit to be with her, so that she could talk to him, unburden herself of her doubts.

All of a sudden she felt very tired, very alone…very unhappy, her feelings in stark contrast to her earlier elation.

When she returned to the hostel, subdued, with dark shadows under her eyes, she was relieved to discover that she had the place to herself. She was glad to be alone. She didn’t want to discuss Kit with the other girls; their relationship was special, sacred almost.

She had done something which Aunt Vi had always impressed on her that no decent girl did outside marriage, but she felt no guilt or remorse for having done so. These were different times from those Aunt Vi had known. Sometimes a few fleeting precious hours were all one might have. There was a recklessness in the air, a fierce determination to take everything that life offered while life still existed, because no one knew when that precious gift of life might be snatched away.

No, she felt no anguish at having loved Kit, only a terrible aching need to have him with her…close to her…holding her. He was a pilot and he hadn’t needed to tell her the dangers he lived with daily.

She listened to the news bulletins…read the papers…she was an intelligent girl, and, even if she hadn’t already witnessed the devastation and destruction that could be wrought on human flesh by the weapons of destruction created by mankind in her work at the hospital, and experienced in the loss of her parents, she had too vivid an imagination not to be aware that Kit could be killed or maimed every single time he went out on a mission.

That night when she came off duty, and before she went to bed, she prayed as she had never prayed in her life before, ‘Please God, keep Kit safe.’

And even as she whispered the words she knew that she was only repeating what millions of other women over the country were also saying, and that for every man whose life was spared there were others whose lives were not…women whose pain she could already imagine, recoiling from it as though it were her own, frantically trying to push her knowledge of it out of her mind. She must be strong…for Kit’s sake and her own. She must be strong and brave and when she saw him again she must smile and laugh and not allow him to see her fear. Must somehow find a way of ensuring that she did not disappoint him, of hiding from him her growing dread that sexually there was something wrong with her, something that prevented her from enjoying his lovemaking as she wanted to enjoy it.

Just over a week after she had said goodbye to him, Lizzie received Kit’s letter. She touched the envelope with trembling fingers, turning it over and over before opening it, her heart bursting with joy.

If the few scant lines on the single sheet of paper disappointed her, she forced herself to accept that a man on the verge of leaving with his squadron to fight for his country was not in a position to sit down and write a long love-letter.

Avidly reading and then rereading every single word, she soon had them committed to memory.

Just a few lines to tell you that I shan’t be able to be in touch for some time, old thing. As I warned you, it looks as though I shall be taking a ‘holiday’ in foreign parts.

Will write again as soon as I can. In the meantime, sweetheart, think about me as I shall be thinking of you.

With love, your Kit.

Lizzie pressed the final words to her lips, torn between tears and elation; elation because she had at least heard from him and because his letter held no hint of the distance and irritation with which he had left her, and fear because he was going into danger.

She frowned a little when she realised there was no address on the letter, no way she could get in touch with him, and then realised that she would probably have to wait for his next letter, since he himself probably did not as yet know just where he was to be posted.

She refolded the letter and put it back in its envelope, and then put it in her handbag. From now on she intended to carry it everywhere with her. She closed her eyes, trembling a little as she tried to visualise Kit actually writing it…his hand inscribing the words…his dark head bent over the paper.

Oh, dear God, please keep him safe, she whispered. Please keep him safe.

Lizzie and Edward paid two more visits to view the rhododendrons but Edward could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to ask her if something was wrong, but shrank from doing so.

Since he had been wounded, he had become acutely sensitive about his physical appearance, about the destruction of his manhood. He recognised Lizzie’s compassion for him and sometimes at night when he couldn’t sleep he ached bitterly to be a whole man again and not an empty shell of one, incapable of arousing a woman to any emotion other than pity.

Most of the women who worked at the hospital only reinforced his awareness of his physical disabilities—only with Lizzie did he feel anything approaching ease. Her patent innocence meant that she did not look at him with the same mixture of pity and contempt with which he felt the others viewed him.

Now he sensed that she was different, abstracted…lost in some private world of her own, but it didn’t occur to him to associate this sudden change in her with the visit of his cousin.

Edward and Kit had never got on, even as boys. As the elder, Edward had nevertheless grown up knowing that he was the less favoured. Kit was the one who would eventually inherit Cottingdean and not him. Edward was the one who loved it…who ached for it when he was away from it, who begged his parents to be allowed to spend his holidays there…but ultimately Cottingdean would belong to Kit. He had tried not to feel resentful, but perhaps this would have been less hard if Kit had shared his love for the house and its land.

Cottingdean had been in their family since the time of Charles II. Their ancestor—penniless, landless, titleless—had supported Charles throughout his exile, fought and played at his side, and when Charles had been finally placed on the throne he had offered to reward him with a title and the exalted position of a Gentleman of the Bedchambers. Knowing how much it would cost him to maintain such an exalted position, instead of accepting the King’s generous offer, he had asked that instead Charles allow him to marry the widow of a Cromwellian supporter.

The King, suspecting a love-match, had given his consent and had then been astonished to discover that the woman in question was plain and well into her thirties.

Plain she might have been, but she had provided her first husband with five healthy daughters, and the rich and well-tended flocks of sheep that grazed on the lands that had been her dowry from her parents.

Philip Danvers had reasoned that a woman so evidently and bountifully fertile could well provide him with the sons he wanted, and the rich pastures her first husband had carefully nurtured during the years of the Protectorate would yield far more profit than an empty title.

The widow had no option but to accept this second husband with as good a will as she could muster. It was the King’s command that she marry his friend. She was under no illusions; Cottingdean was a rich property to a man who owned nothing but the clothes on his back and the sword at his side. Oh, no, she knew quite well why she was being married, and it was not to provide her lusty new husband with a bedmate.

Thus it came as something of a surprise to discover how attentive her new husband was in bed, and continued to be even after the birth of their first and then their second son.

Philip Danvers had quickly realised that his plain, dull wife, whom he had married for her wealth and for sons, had a sensual gift that many a courtesan would have welcomed and flaunted, and because he was a man with a sense of humour, he laughed to himself sometimes in the privacy of their bedchamber while they rested in one another’s arms, sated and relaxed, and when she asked him why he would tell her that it was because, in giving her to him, the King had given away one of the rarest treasures in his Kingdom.

It was not of his ancestors, however, that Edward was thinking as he sat motionless in his wheelchair, staring into space, but of those generations as yet to come…as yet unborn. Kit would marry and one day produce sons who would inherit Cottingdean, and he hoped they would love and cherish it as he had always longed to have the right to do.

Now, though, he was forced to admit that even if his father had been the elder…even if he had inherited, he would never be able to father sons for the house. Almost violently he clenched his hands and wished as he had wished so often that he might find the courage to end this dull misery that was his life.

Kit had made it plain to him that there would be no sanctuary for him at Cottingdean. He had even talked of selling up, damn him…of living permanently in London, as though Cottingdean was nothing more than a burden he wished to be rid of. How he resented him for that. How he almost hated him for it!

CHAPTER THREE

‘SAGE, I’m awfully sorry to interrupt you, but Alexi is on the phone and he’s insisting on speaking with you.’

Sage stared so blankly at her that for a moment Faye wondered if she had actually heard her.

The large, comfortably upholstered chair which had replaced Edward’s leather chair when Liz had taken over the library had been pushed away from the desk, and when she had opened the door Sage had been curled up in the chair, her knees drawn up into her body, a silky wing of hair falling across her face, so deeply absorbed in what she was reading that for a moment Faye had been reminded of that much younger and far more vulnerable Sage she had known when she herself first came to Cottingdean.

Now, though, as Sage raised her head, the illusion was shattered and Faye wondered to herself if Sage actually knew how very commanding and autocratic she could look when that cool, distant reserve shuttered her expression.

‘Alexi?’ she queried now, almost as though the name meant nothing to her.

She glanced involuntarily at the open diary she was holding and Faye felt a tiny flutter of apprehension stir in her own stomach. What was in the diaries that was so compelling that Sage was still here reading them hours after she had first walked into the room? The fire had burned low in the grate, and, apart from the pool of light cast by the reading lamp on the desk, the room was heavily shadowed; sombrely shadowed, Faye thought, shivering in a faint stirring of unease.

‘Yes. He was most insistent about speaking with you… Oh, and when you didn’t come out for your evening meal—we didn’t like to disturb you—I rang the hospital again. Liz is still holding her own…’

Holding her own… Sage slowly closed the diary, wincing as she felt pins and needles prickling her legs. She had been curled in her mother’s chair in a semi-foetal position for so long that her body had gone numb without her even noticing it.

She glanced at her watch, half shocked to discover it was gone midnight, and remembered that she had intended to ring Alexi at eleven, thinking that by that time she would have had more than enough of her mother’s diaries with their clinical, businesslike description of how she had run her life.

The reality couldn’t have been a greater contrast to what she had expected. In some ways she found it hard to believe that the girl who had written so openly and painfully in the diaries, pouring out her deepest emotions and vulnerabilities, was her mother. Even more astonishing was that her mother had wanted her to read them.

Would she in the same circumstances have been able to sanction such an intrusion into her past, into her life?

Perhaps if she had thought that she might be dying…if this might be her last chance to reach out…to explain.

She shivered suddenly. When Faye had interrupted her she had been so reluctant to stop reading, so very reluctant that initially she had resented her intrusion…but now, sharply, she didn’t want to read any more, didn’t want to…to what? What was she afraid of discovering?

‘Alexi,’ Faye reminded her diffidently.

Poor Faye. No doubt Alexi had been extremely rude to her, demanding that Sage be brought to the phone. Alexi was a very demanding man; despite his veneer, inwardly he still believed that man was infinitely superior to woman and that it was woman’s duty to pander to man’s needs and desires.

‘I’m sorry, Faye,’ she apologised now as she stood up, replaced the diary in the desk drawer and automatically locked it.

As she had anticipated, when she picked up the receiver Alexi was seething. ‘You said you’d ring this evening,’ he challenged her. ‘Where were you?’

Sage had an obstinate streak in her make-up which she herself considered to be a childish flaw and one which she had long ago mastered, but abruptly it resurfaced as she heard the arrogant challenge in Alexi’s voice. Suddenly those things which initially she had found amusingly attractive in him began to grate.

‘I said I’d try to ring you, Alexi,’ she corrected him flatly. ‘As it happens, I’ve been too busy. I’m sorry I had to break our date at such short notice…’

She could tell he was fighting to control his breathing and with it his temper, and she felt a brief resurgence of mocking contempt.

Poor Alexi, he must want her very much if he was prepared to tolerate her defiance. But his tolerance wouldn’t last very long or go very far. She had no illusions; Alexi desired and intended to dominate her, to subjugate her if he could. In bed he would be a powerful, commanding lover, and ultimately a selfish one. He would have no doubts or hesitancy about his prowess; her eagerness for his lovemaking, her desire to please him sexually would be things he would expect as his due. Oh, at first he would be prepared to indulge and coax her, but once he was sure of her…

It was a game she had played so often before…and yet suddenly she was tired of it, sickened by it just as though she had suffered a surfeit of a once favourite food, her nausea tinged with faint self-disgust.

Why? Because of the innocent outpourings of a girl so naïve, so trusting that to read them had brought into sharp focus the girl she herself had once been and the woman she now was?

Or was it simply that the times and their low-key sexual climate, their caution, their emphasis on separate contained lives geared for high materialistic achievement, were at last beginning to have their effect on her?

Whatever the reason, she suddenly knew that she was bored with this game she was playing with Alexi, and with that knowledge came a faint twinge of self-dislike because she knew that she would have gone to bed with him, probably simply to prove to him that in bed or out of it he couldn’t dominate her…certainly not because she was overwhelmed by physical desire for him. Which made her stop and think, and try to remember the last time she had felt like that…the last time she actually wanted the man rather than merely the act of sex, as a means of demonstrating her power over him…and over her mother, and the strict morality with which she had seemed to live her life. Was that what it had been all about…the men, the sexual freedom…? Had it not just been because, having loved so desperately and then lost that love, she had turned herself into a woman for whom sex was simply an appetite which she appeased whenever the need seized her? Was it an outright act of defiance, chosen deliberately to shock and hurt her mother?

‘Sage, are you still there?’

Now Alexi wasn’t bothering to control his irritation. Once that would have made her smile, the small secret triumphant smile that she knew drove her lovers mad, but now she merely dismissed the knowledge that she had annoyed him, as uncaringly as though it meant nothing to her…which it didn’t, she realised tiredly.

Suddenly there was an unpleasant taste in her mouth, a tiredness in her body and her mind, a weariness with her life and everything it embraced.

‘Yes. I’m still here, Alexi,’ she responded. ‘I’m sorry if you’re annoyed. I should have rung you, but—’

‘It isn’t your telephone call I want, Sage. It’s you, you…here with me…filling my bed, the way you’ve been filling my mind. You know I want you, Sage, you know how good we’d be together. Let me come down there now and drive you back to London. Your sister-in-law told me that your mother’s condition is stable. You can do nothing for her down there…here you would be closer to the hospital, in any case. Let me take care of you, Sage. You know how much I want to…’

How caressing his voice was, low and deep, soft as velvet, and how he knew how to use it, she acknowledged absently.

‘No, I’m sorry, Alexi, that’s impossible. I’m needed here.’

Or rather she needed to be here, she acknowledged. Admitting it was like discovering a small piece of grit on an otherwise smooth surface, irritating… challenging… absorbing…so absorbing that she missed what Alexi was saying to her.

Suddenly she was irritated both by him and by herself. She didn’t want him; she had probably never really wanted him. The contrast between her own behaviour and that of the young untried girl in the diaries was sharply painful. Whatever else her faults might be, they did not include self-deception. She was, she realised, measuring herself against her mother, just as she had done so often during her formative years, and once again she was discovering how far she fell short of her mother’s standards and achievements, how far she fell short of her own ideals.

She didn’t want Alexi, so why was she playing this unnecessary and unrewarding game with him?

‘It’s no use, Alexi,’ she told him flatly, ‘I’m not coming back to London tonight, and, even if I were, it would be to sleep alone in my own flat. Find someone else, Alexi. The game’s over.’

She let him bluster and protest, and then when he started to become angry and abusive she simply ended the conversation by replacing the receiver. After she had done so, she discovered that she was shaking. It wasn’t the first time a man had grown angry with her…not the first time she had been on the receiving end of the insults Alexi had just voiced. But it was the first time she had recognised in them a hard core of truth, the first time she had acknowledged that her own behaviour had been responsible for such a reaction.

When she stepped into the hall, it was half in darkness and silent. She paused outside the library door, her hand reaching for the doorknob before she realised what she was doing. If she started reading again tonight, she would probably be up all night. Tomorrow she would have to visit her mother in hospital, call in at her office, make arrangements to have her messages relayed here to Cottingdean. It had been a long day and a traumatic one, which her body recognised, even if her mind refused to admit just how difficult it had all been.

She stepped back from the door. The diaries weren’t going to go away; after all, they had waited for over forty years already. Forty years…how many other revelations did those silent pages hold?

Her mother’s first love-affair, described so rawly…so openly in the pages she had read tonight, had been written so honestly and painfully that it had almost been as though she was reliving… suffering…

She had never imagined…never dreamed… And now there were questions clamouring for answers…questions which she half dreaded to have answered…and the most urgent one of all was why, why had her mother chosen to do this…to reveal herself and her past like this…to open a door into her most private and secret life, and to open it to the one person who she knew had more reason than anyone else to want to hurt her?

It was as though silently, deliberately, she was saying, Look, I too have suffered, have endured, have known pain, humiliation, and fear.

But why now, now, after all these years…unless it no longer mattered, unless she thought she was going to die?

Sage stopped halfway up the stairs, her body suddenly rigid with pain and a frantic, desperate fear.

She didn’t want her mother to die, and not just selfishly because she didn’t want the burden of Cottingdean, or the mill: those would fall on other shoulders anyway; that inheritance was surely destined for Camilla, the granddaughter who was everything that she, Sage, was not.

She wanted her mother to live…she needed her to live, she recognised, overwhelmed by the knowledge of that discovery, overwhelmed by the discovery that somewhere inside her mature, worldly thirty-four-year-old self, a small girl still crouched in frightened terror, desperately yearning for the security represented by the presence of her mother.

She slept badly, her dreams full of vague fears, and then relived an old nightmare which she had thought had stopped haunting her years ago.

In it she was endlessly trying to reach the man she loved. He was standing at the end of a long, shadowy path, but, whenever she tried to walk down it towards him, others stepped out of the shadows in front of her, preventing her from doing so.

Always in the past these others had had familiar faces; her mother’s, her father’s, sometimes even David’s; but on this occasion it wasn’t her love she was striving to reach, but her mother, and this time the motionless figure turned so that she could see her mother’s face quite clearly, and then she started to walk towards her.

In her dream a tremendous feeling of relief, so strong that it almost made her feel giddy, encompassed her, but even as she experienced it the shadows masking the path deepened so that she couldn’t see her mother any longer, and couldn’t move towards her, couldn’t move at all, as invisible bonds held her immobile no matter how much she struggled against them.

It was only when she woke up, sweating and shivering, after some time that she realised that in all the years she had experienced the dream before, out of all those times, never once had her lover turned and walked towards her as her mother had done. It was a simple, small thing, but it was like suddenly being confronted with a stranger in the place of a familiar face. She shivered, recognising a truth she didn’t really want to know. A truth she wasn’t ready to know.

As she sat up in bed, dragging the quilt round her to keep her warm, she wondered if it was reading about her mother’s first love-affair, and recognising in it the raw, painful fact that the man, Kit, had never really loved her mother as she had so naïvely believed, that had made her recognise that she too had made the mistake of loving too well a man who could not match that commitment.

She moved abruptly in mute protest at her own thoughts, her own disloyalty. The two cases were poles apart. Her mother had been callously and uncaringly seduced by a man who had never felt anything more than momentary desire for her.

She and Scott had been deeply, agonisingly in love. Physically that love never had been consummated, which was why… She bit down hard on her bottom lip, a childish habit she had thought she had long ago outgrown.

She had loved Scott… He had loved her… They had been cruelly and deliberately torn apart, and why? Was it because her mother had wanted to put the final social gloss on her own success…had wanted her to marry the only son of a peer? An impoverished peer, it was true, but possessed of a title none the less. And had she wanted that marriage for no better reason than to be able to boast of ‘My daughter, Lady Hetherby’? Sage remembered accusing her of as much, angrily and bitterly, flinging out the words like venom-tipped knives, but as always her mother’s reaction had been calm and controlled.

‘Jonathon would make you an excellent husband,’ she had said quietly. ‘His temperament would complement yours—’

‘Not to mention his father’s title complementing your money,’ she had snapped back.

‘In my view you’re still far too young for marriage, Sage,’ was all her mother had said.

‘In your view, but not in the law’s…which is of course why Scott’s father had him dragged back to Australia… We love each other… Can’t you see…? Don’t you understand…?’

‘You’re nineteen, Sage—you might think you love Scott now, but in ten years’ time, in five years’ time you’ll be a different person. You’re an intelligent girl… You know what the odds are against marrying at your age and having that marriage last.’

‘You married at eighteen…’

‘That was different… There was the war…’

‘Which was virtually over when you married Father… Oh, what’s the use—you’re determined to keep us apart, you and Scott’s father. I hate you, I hate you both,’ she had finished childishly, racing upstairs to collapse in tears of anger and impotent and helpless emotion.

No, Scott might not have been able to stop his father taking him back home, but later…later, surely, he could have got in touch with her…come back for her…?

Now for the first time she was confronting a truth she had sought desperately and successfully to avoid for a long time.

If Scott had loved her, loved her with the intensity and passion she had felt for him, he would have found a way of coming back to her.

Never mind that he was his father’s only child…never mind the fact that he had been brought up from birth in the knowledge that one day he would be solely responsible for the vast sheep station owned and run by his father, and for all the complex financial investments that had stemmed from the profits made from those sheep. Never mind the fact that he had always known that it was his father’s dearest wish that he would marry the daughter of a neighbouring station owner, thus combining the two vast tracts of land. Never mind the fact that until he’d met her, Sage, he had been quite content with this future. Never mind anything that had stood between them. He had told her he loved her and he had meant it, she knew that. He had loved her as she loved him. He had wanted to marry her, to spend the rest of his life with her.

Or had he…? Had he had a change of heart back there in Australia? Had he somehow stopped loving her, stopped wanting her, blocked her out of his mind, started hating her for what she had done? She shuddered, remembering how his father had refused to see her that night at the hospital, how he had also given instructions that she wasn’t to be allowed to see Scott. He had blamed her for the accident, she knew that, but surely Scott, Scott who had loved her, understood her, been a part of her almost, surely he could not have blamed her? Even though…even though she deserved to be blamed!

She knew he had married… Not the neighbour’s daughter, but someone equally suitable from his father’s point of view. The daughter of a wealthy Australian entrepreneur. She ought to have been his wife…the mother of his children. But she wasn’t, and until now she had blamed her mother and his father for that fact. Now, abruptly, she was being forced to recognise that Scott’s love might not have been the all-consuming, intensely passionate, unchangeable force that was her own.

After the nightmare she did not get back to sleep properly and she was awake at seven when Jenny knocked on her door and came in with a tray of tea, served, she noticed, on one of the pretty antique sets of breakfast boudoir china that her mother had collected over the years. When her friends expressed concern that she should actually use anything so valuable Liz always smiled and replied that the pleasure of using beautiful things far outweighed the small risk of their being damaged by such use.

Sage frowned as Jenny put the delicate hand-painted breakfast set on her bedside table, and then said abruptly, ‘Jenny, that Sèvres boudoir set my mother likes so much—I’d like to take it to the hospital with me… I think once she’s feeling a little better she’d appreciate having something so familiar.’

‘Yes. That particular set always has been her favourite. She used to say that that special first morning cup of tea always tasted even better when she drank it from the Sèvres.’

She used to say… Sage felt her stomach muscles clench anxiously. Unable to look at the housekeeper, she said huskily, ‘Has there…? Have the hospital…?’

‘No, nothing,’ Jenny quickly reassured her. ‘And as they always say, no news must be good news. Don’t you fret…if anyone could pull through that kind of accident it would be your mother. She’s such a strong person. Emotionally as well as physically…’

‘Yes, she is,’ Sage agreed. ‘But even the strongest among us have our vulnerabilities… Faye and Camilla, are they up yet?’

‘Camilla is; she’s gone out riding, she said she’d be back in time for breakfast. I’m just about to take Faye her tea. I don’t think she’ll have slept very well… These headaches she gets when she’s under pressure…’

Faye… Headaches… Sage frowned. No one had ever told her that Faye suffered bad headaches… But then, why should they? She had long ago opted out of the day-to-day life of the house and its occupants. Long, long ago made it plain that she was going to go her own way, and that that way was not broad enough to allow for any travelling companions.

It was a perfect late spring morning, with fragile wisps of mist masking the grass, and the promise of sunshine once it had cleared.

The telephone was ringing as Sage went downstairs. She picked up the receiver in the hall, and heard a woman whose name she did not recognise asking anxiously after her mother.

‘We heard about the accident last night, but, of course, we didn’t want to bother you then. And it’s very awkward, really. There’s this meeting tonight about the proposed new road. Your mother was going to chair it… I doubt that we’ll be able to get it cancelled, and there’s no one really who can take her place…’

The action committee Faye had told her about. Sage suppressed a sigh of irritation. Surely the woman realised that the last thing they wanted to concern themselves with right now was some proposed new road…? And then she checked. Her mother would have been concerned; her mother, whatever her anxiety, would, as she had always done, have looked beyond the immediate present to the future and would have seen that no matter how irritating, no matter how inconvenient, no matter how unimportant such a meeting might seem in the face of present happenings, there would come a time when it would be important, when it would matter, when she might wish that she had paid more attention.

‘Faye and I have already discussed the problem,’ she said now, suppressing her impatience. ‘She suggested that I might stand in for my mother, as a representative of the family and the interests of the mill. I believe my mother had files and reports on what is being planned. The meeting’s tonight, you say…? I should have read them by then…’

She could almost hear the other woman’s sigh of relief.

‘We hate bothering you about it at such a time, but your mother was insistent that we make our stance clear right from the beginning, that we fight them right from the start. The Ministry are sending down a representative to put their side of things, and the chairman of the contractors who’ll be doing the work will be there as well… If you’re sure it’s not going to be too much trouble, it would be wonderful if you could take your mother’s place.’

Sage could hear the relief in her voice and wondered a little wryly if her caller would continue to place such faith in her abilities to step into her mother’s shoes once they had met.

‘No trouble at all,’ she responded automatically, as she made a note of the exact time of the meeting and promised to be there fifteen minutes earlier so that she could meet the rest of the committee.

‘Was that the hospital?’ Faye asked anxiously, coming downstairs towards her. If anything her sister-in-law looked even more drawn this morning, Sage recognised, turning to answer her, and even more frail.

Why was it that when confronted with Faye’s ethereal, haunted delicacy she immediately felt the size of a carthorse and twice as robust? And, even worse, she felt rawly aware that as her mother’s daughter she ought to be the one who looked harrowed to the point of breakdown.

‘No, it was a Mrs Henderson; she’s on the committee for the protest against the new road. She was ringing about this evening’s meeting. It’s just as well you’d mentioned it to me, otherwise I shouldn’t have had a clue what she was talking about. I’ve arranged to be there fifteen minutes before the meeting starts. I’m afraid that means I’m going to have to spend the afternoon reading through Mother’s papers and files, which means that you’ll be left to field telephone calls and enquiries.

‘Jenny was telling me when she brought my tea that virtually half the village came round yesterday to ask how Mother is. If you’re finding all this a bit much, Faye, and you’d like to get away for a few days…’

Immediately Faye went so pale that Sage felt as though she’d threatened her in some way and not offered her an escape route from the pressure she was undoubtedly suffering. She was so sensitive that the constant enquiries about her mother’s health, the constant reminders of how slim her actual chances of full recovery were, were obviously proving too much for her.

‘Oh, no…I’d rather stay here…but if I’m in your way…’

‘In my way!’ Sage grimaced. ‘Faye, don’t be ridiculous, nor so self-effacing; this is your home far more than it has ever been mine. I’m the one who should be asking you that question. In fact I was going to ask if it would be too much of an imposition if I moved myself in here for the duration of Mother’s recovery. And, before you say anything, that means all the extra hassle of my clients telephoning here, and I’m afraid I’ll have to sort myself out a workroom of some sort. I can take some time off but…’

‘But if Liz does recover, it’s going to be a long, slow process,’ Faye finished bleakly for her.

‘Yes. I was thinking about that this morning. Last night, in the euphoria of knowing that she was at least alive, one tended to overlook the fact that being alive is a long way from being fit and healthy…’

‘I suppose deep down inside I wasn’t ready to acknowledge then that Liz might not recover. I’ve leaned on her for so long…’ Faye pulled a small face. ‘I wish I could be more like you—independent, self-sufficient… But realising how dangerously ill Liz is brought home to me how much I’ve come to rely on her…’

So that was the reason for her sister-in-law’s wan face—well, there was one issue on which she could reassure her right away, Sage decided, and said bluntly, ‘I can’t promise you that Mother will recover, Faye, but if you’re worrying about the practicalities of life… well, should the worst happen, then please don’t. Cottingdean will always be your home. Knowing my mother, she’ll have done the sensible thing that so few of us do and already drafted her will. I’m quite sure that in it she will have made it plain that Cottingdean will eventually belong to Camilla…’ She saw that Faye was going to object and stopped her. ‘No…please don’t think I should mind. I shouldn’t… If anything, I’m the one who is the intruder here, who doesn’t belong, and, please, if you’d rather I went back to London and left you to manage here without me, don’t be afraid to say so.’

‘That’s the last thing I want,’ Faye told her honestly. ‘I couldn’t possibly cope on my own, and as for this not being your home…’ She went a faint and pretty pink with indignation. ‘That’s nonsense and you know it.’

‘Is it?’ Sage asked her drily, and then concluded, ‘Heaven knows how long you’re going to have to put up with me here, but I want you to promise me that if there are any problems caused by my presence you’ll come right out and tell me. I’m not very good at being tactful, Faye, nor at reading subtle hints of displeasure. If I’m responsible for something happening that you don’t like, just tell me.’

‘I think Jenny’s the one you ought to be saying that to, not me.’ Faye smiled at her. ‘She’s the one who’s really in charge.’

Sage had turned to walk towards the small sunny breakfast-room where Jenny had said she would serve their breakfast, and, as Faye fell into step beside her, the latter asked hesitantly,

‘And Alexi—will he mind that you’ll be living here and not—?’

‘What Alexi minds or doesn’t mind no longer matters,’ Sage told her crisply. ‘And if he rings up and makes a nuisance of himself, Faye, just hang up on him. I’d planned to visit the hospital this morning and then I ought to call in at the office—there’ll be a few arrangements. I’ll have to have my calls and post transferred here… Would you and Camilla like to come to the hospital with me, or would you prefer to visit Mother on your own, now that the doctor says visits are allowable?’

‘No, we’ll come with you, if you’re sure that’s all right…’

They were in the breakfast-room now. It faced south and was decorated in warm shades of yellow with touches of fresh blue.

Outside, Jenny’s husband was already working in the garden. The breakfast-room had french windows which opened out on to a small private terrace with steps leading down to a smooth lawned walk flanked by double borders enclosed by clipped yew hedges that carried the eye down the length of the path to focus on the statue of Pan at the far end of the vista.

When her mother had first come to Cottingdean, neither the borders nor the vista had existed, just a wild tangle of weeds. What faith she must have had in the future to plan this mellow green perfection out of such chaos, and yet how could she have had? Cottingdean had been a decaying, mouldering ruin. There had been no money to restore it, and certainly no money to spend on creating an elegant and useless garden; she had had a husband whose health was uncertain, a baby on the way…no family, no friend, no one to help her, and yet in her first summer at the house she had sat down and planned this view, this garden, knowing that it would take years to mature.

Why? In the past Sage had always attributed her mother’s vision to stubborn pride, to a refusal to let anything stand in the way of her will, and yet now, illuminatingly, she suddenly saw her actions as the kind of wild, impulsive, desperate thing she might have done herself: a fierce battling against the weight of burdens so crippling that one either had to defy them or be destroyed by them.

‘Sage, are you all right?’

As Faye touched her arm in concern, she turned to look at her, unaware of the stark anguish and pain that shadowed her eyes.

‘I was just thinking about Mother’s garden,’ she said shakily, ‘wondering what on earth gave her the faith to believe it would ever come to fruition.’

She could see that Faye didn’t understand: why should she? Faye hadn’t, as yet, read the diaries, and stupidly Sage was reluctant to suggest that she should, not yet… not until… Not until what? It was ridiculous of her to have this sensation of somehow needing to protect her mother, to make sure that… That what? It was her mother’s wish that they all read what she had written…all of them…

‘Here’s Camilla,’ Faye announced, breaking into her too introspective mood. She turned to her daughter as she hurried into the breakfast-room via the terrace and reproached her gently, ‘Darling, I think you ought to have gone upstairs and changed before breakfast, I’m sure Sage doesn’t want to eat hers sitting next to someone who smells of horses…’

‘Gran never minded,’ Camilla said fiercely, as though daring Sage to object.

They had always got on well together, she and this child of David’s, her niece, but now Sage could see in her eyes a shadow of uncertainty and rejection. Because Sage was taking her mother’s place… Because Camilla had known of the lack of love between the two of them, and felt resentful on her grandmother’s behalf. She was such a fiercely loyal child, so deeply emotional and sensitive.

‘Neither do I,’ Sage responded equably, and then asked, ‘Did you enjoy your ride? I rather envied you when Jenny told me you’d gone down to the stables.’

She sat down, taking care to avoid the chair which had always been her mother’s, the one which afforded the best view of the garden.

Without seeming to be, she was aware of Camilla watching her, aware of the younger girl’s faint relaxation as Sage said calmly to Faye, ‘I think you’re going to have to take over Mother’s job of pouring the coffee, Faye. I never did get the knack of doing it without dripping the stuff everywhere…’

‘Gran told me that it used to be a test that would-be mothers-in-law set for their sons’ girlfriends: to make them pour the tea,’ Camilla informed them.

Sage laughed. ‘So that’s why I’ve never managed to get myself a husband. I’ve often wondered.’

They all laughed, the atmosphere lightening a little. Sage left it to Faye to inform Camilla that they were all going to visit the hospital together. While she was doing so, Jenny came in with a cardboard box, full of newspaper-wrapped shapes, which Sage realised must be her mother’s Sèvres breakfast set.

‘I’ve put in a packet of her favourite tea, Russian Caravan, and some of those biscuits she likes so much…’

‘Is that for Gran?’ Camilla asked Jenny curiously.

‘Yes, Sage thought that Liz would enjoy having her tea out of her favourite Sèvres breakfast set and she asked me to wrap it up so that she could take it to the hospital.’

‘Oh, yes… Gran loves that set, she always said…says…’ Camilla faltered, darting a quick, anxious look at her mother ‘…that it makes her tea taste extra specially good.’

‘Well, it will be a long time before she can actually use it,’ Sage warned her, not adding the words all of them felt—a long time, if ever…

‘Sage will want to make an early start,’ Faye informed her daughter. ‘She’s standing in for your grandmother at tonight’s meeting of the action committee and she wants to spend later this afternoon going through Liz’s files, so as soon as you’ve finished your breakfast I suggest you go upstairs and get changed.’

‘And then I think that perhaps from tomorrow you can go back to school,’ Sage suggested quietly but firmly, pretending not to see the grateful look Faye gave her.

When asked for her opinion Camilla had objected to being sent away to boarding-school, and instead had asked her mother and grandmother if she could attend a very good local day school. She was now in her A level year, with a good prospect of getting to Oxford, if she worked hard, and on this subject at least Sage didn’t need to wonder what her mother would have wanted Camilla to do.

‘I know you’ll be anxious about your grandmother,’ she continued, seeing the words already springing to Camilla’s lips, ‘but if you’re honest with yourself, Cam, you’ll know that she’d have wanted you to continue with your school work. She’s so proud of you… Every time I see her she tells me how thrilled she is that you’ll probably be going to Oxford. The last thing she’d want would be for you to neglect your studies—and don’t worry. We’ll make sure that you get to visit her, even if it means my taking you in to London myself.’

‘I wish she were closer to us… Can’t she be transferred to Bristol or Bath?’

‘Not at this stage,’ Sage told her, adding gently, ‘She’s in the best possible place, Camilla… The facilities at St Giles’s are among the most advanced in the country. Perhaps later when she’s recuperating…’

She wondered if she ought to do more to prepare her niece for the visual gravity of the intensive care ward with its machinery and tubes, its high-tech austerity and the shocking contrast of one pale, frail human body among all that alien machinery, and then decided not to do so. Camilla was of a different generation, a generation for whom machinery, no matter how complex, was accepted as a matter of course. Camilla might not necessarily find the sight of the intensive care ward shocking as she had done, but rather reassuring, taking comfort from the knowledge that the most advanced techniques were being used to support the frail thread of life.

∗ ∗ ∗

Sage was driving through the heavy London traffic when Camilla suddenly asked her, ‘How are you getting on with the diaries…? I meant to ask you last night, but I’d gone to bed before you’d finished.’

‘I haven’t finished the first one yet,’ Sage lied, knowing that she was making an excuse for not yet having passed the diary on to Faye as they had arranged.

‘What’s in it? Anything interesting?’

Sage had no idea what to say. Her fingers tensed on the wheel and as she fumbled for words, for something to say, Faye unwittingly came to her rescue by telling her daughter, ‘Liz wanted us all to read the diaries separately…to learn from them individually…’

‘Yes, that’s right, she did.’

‘Will you finish the first one tonight, then?’ Camilla pressed.

It was almost as though she sensed her caution, her reluctance to discuss the diaries, the fact that she was deliberately withholding something from them, Sage recognised.

Only she knew how much she had been tempted to go back downstairs last night to go on reading… As for finishing more of the diaries tonight… She had no idea how long the meeting would go on for, but what she did know was that she would be expected to make copious notes…to record faithfully every detail of what had taken place for her mother’s later assessment, if not for the rest of the committee.

Odd how, now, when her mother could not physically or emotionally compel her to act in the way she considered right and proper, she was actually compelling herself to do so… The details of her own work, her own commitments, she carried around with her in her head, much to the irritation of her secretary—she had never been methodical, never been organised or logical in the way she worked, always taking a perverse and contrary delight in abandoning routine and order to follow a seemingly careless and uncontrolled path of her own.

And yet here she was meticulously planning to follow in her mother’s orderly footsteps, as though in doing so she was somehow fulfilling some kind of sacred trust, somehow keeping the flickering flame of her mother’s life-force alive.

Ridiculous…emotional, idiotic stuff…and yet so powerful, so strong, so forceful was its message within her that she was compelled to listen to it and to obey.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I HADN’T realised—it was almost as though Gran wasn’t there at all.’ Camilla shivered, despite the centrally heated warmth of the hospital.

‘She’s heavily drugged, Cam,’ Sage told her gently. ‘The nurse said that it was to give her body a chance of getting over the shock of the accident and her injuries…’

Camilla swallowed visibly, suddenly a child again as she pleaded anxiously, ‘She isn’t going to die, is she, Sage…? I don’t want her to die…’

Sensing the hysteria lurking beneath the plea, Sage turned to her and took her in her arms. ‘I can’t answer that question, Cam. I only know, as you do, that if anyone can survive this kind of thing your grandmother will do so…’

Sage was wondering if they had been wise allowing Camilla into the intensive care unit. She had seen the compassion in the nurse’s eyes when Camilla had visibly reacted to the sight of her grandmother hooked up to so much machinery, her body still, her eyes shuttered, to all intents and purposes already gone beyond any human help.

‘Please, let’s go… I can’t…’

‘I have to wait to see the specialist,’ Sage reminded her quietly. ‘But you can go and wait in the car if you’d prefer… Perhaps your mother…?’

She turned to Faye, who was if anything even more visibly affected than her daughter, but Faye shook her head and said doggedly, ‘No, I’ll stay with you.’

Handing Camilla the car keys and watching her walk a little unsteadily down the corridor, Sage nibbled ferociously on her bottom lip.

‘I hadn’t realised,’ Faye was saying unevenly beside her. ‘I knew she was very ill, but I hadn’t…’ She swallowed. ‘Oh, God, Sage, I’m so scared… I can’t bear the thought of losing her… I thought…I thought the worst was over and that it was just a matter of time…of recuperation, but now… And I’m being so selfish. She’s your mother and not mine…’

‘And because of that I must love her more?’ Sage smiled grimly. ‘How naïve you can be sometimes, Faye. You know the situation between Mother and me. We don’t get on; we never have. Oh, as a child I wanted her love, craved it almost until I realised I simply was not and never could be the child she wanted—or another David… I don’t blame her for that… After David, I must have come as a deep disappointment to her. I don’t suppose you can understand. The whole world adores my mother…adores her and respects her…’

‘I do understand.’

It was said so quietly that Sage almost didn’t hear it. She turned to look at her sister-in-law and surprised such a look of raw pain in her eyes that she had to turn away again. It was as though she had momentarily opened the door into a private, secret room, and she withdrew from it with the instinctive speed of a nature that hated to trespass or impinge on anyone else’s privacy because she valued her own so much.

‘Sage—’

The fierce urgency with which Faye said her name caused her to look at her again, but just as Faye was about to speak the door opened and the specialist she had seen before, Alaric Ferguson, walked in.

If anything he looked even more exhausted, Sage recognised. He gave her a distant glance before focusing properly on her, saying as he recognised her, ‘Miss Danvers, Sister will have told you that we have had to sedate your mother in an effort to lessen the physical shock of her accident, and until we’re completely happy that that has taken place we won’t be able to do anything further.’

‘Her injuries—what exactly are they?’ Sage demanded urgently.

He paused, looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then said bluntly, ‘We suspect there’s some pressure on her brain—how much we can’t as yet tell. In case you don’t understand the seriousness of this, perhaps I should explain…’

When he did so, outlining in brutal detail the small, very small chance of her mother actually recovering, Sage discovered that she was gripping the inside of her mouth sharply with her teeth to prevent her lips from trembling. Behind her she heard Faye give a low, shocked cry. She reacted to it immediately, spinning round to reach out to her, but the specialist had moved faster and as Sage turned towards Faye he was already reaching out to grip her arm and steady her.

He wasn’t the kind of man who appealed sexually to Sage—oh, he was tall, and probably well enough built if one discounted the exhausted hunch of his shoulders and the stoop that came from working long hours. True, his skin was pale from lack of fresh air, his eyes bloodshot, his dark red hair untidy and badly cut, but underneath his lack of outward physical gloss there was such an obvious aura of male strength and reliability about him that Sage was astounded to see Faye stagger back from him, her face white with deathly fear, her mouth contorted almost in a grimace of atavistic rejection.

Sage knew that her sister-in-law preferred to keep the male sex at a physical distance, but she had never seen her react like this before, never seen her make a movement that was uncoordinated…never seen any emotion across her face as intense and primitive as the defensive rage which now etched it.

For a moment she was too shocked to speak or intervene. The specialist looked as shocked as she felt, and then Sage saw shock give way to a mingling of curiosity and concern as he quickly withdrew from her.

‘It’s perfectly all right,’ he told her quietly. ‘I’m sorry if I alarmed you.’ With that he turned on his heel and left them alone.

In the strained silence of the empty room, the harsh battle Faye was fighting for control of her body and breathing was painfully audible. Sage dared not reach out to her, dared not speak to her, never mind touch her. Her eyes had gone wild, feral almost like an animal’s when the primitive instinct of panic overcame every trace of domesticity. It was almost as though, if Sage did reach out to touch her, Faye might sink into her hand the teeth she had bared in that shocking sharp snarl of rejection.

Her skin, usually so pale, was now burning with colour. She started to shake violently, her eyes slowly focusing on Sage, their brilliance dimming as recognition took the place of rage and then gave way to flat, open despair.

She was shaking so much that she could barely stand up, and very gently, very cautiously, Sage reached out to her and, when she let her take hold of her arm, led her gently over to a chair.

Much as she longed to ask what was wrong, she suppressed the words, knowing by instinct that she wouldn’t get an answer.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Faye was whispering painfully. ‘So very sorry… It was just the shock…’

Of hearing about her mother’s slender chances of recovering, or of being touched by the specialist? Sage wondered silently.

‘He could have broken the news rather less brutally,’ was all she allowed herself to say. ‘It’s just as well Camilla decided not to stay…’

The look of mingled agony and gratitude Faye gave her made her wince inwardly for her own lack of strength. Had she been her mother, there was no way she would have allowed the incident to be passed off like this… She would have insisted on routing out the real cause of Faye’s reactions… Would have told herself that, no matter how much pain talking about it might cause Faye, in the end she would feel better for unburdening herself of whatever it was that had caused such a violent response.

But she wasn’t her mother… She avoided encouraging people to confide in her, to lean on her. Selfishly she didn’t want their problems…their confidences. She was almost glad that Faye had withdrawn from her, that she was keeping whatever it was that troubled her so desperately to herself.

‘I think perhaps I’d better leave calling at my office until tomorrow. It’s been a traumatic visit for all of us. We can’t do anything to help Mother by staying here, no matter how guilty we might all feel about leaving her. The sister said they’d ring us immediately if there was any change in her condition…’

‘If she dies, you mean,’ Faye said bitterly. ‘Have you noticed how even here in a hospital, where they’re dealing in death every day, they refuse to use the actual word? Not at all well…but never, never dying…’

Watching Faye pound her fists helplessly against the arms of her chair, Sage wished she could give vent to her feelings as easily.

She too was frightened, she recognised… No, her fear wasn’t the same as Faye’s… But it was there none the less. Hers was a selfish fear, she thought in self-contempt. Hers was a fear of having to shoulder the burdens her mother had carried… Of having to step into shoes which had never been designed for her… which she knew instinctively would cripple and hobble her. And already it was happening…already Faye was turning to her. How long would it be before she started to lean on her the way she had leaned on David and then on her mother?

Shocked and almost disgusted by the selfishness of her own thoughts, Sage took hold of Faye’s arm and gently pulled her to her feet. ‘Camilla will be waiting,’ she reminded her.

She had always liked Faye, albeit with the same kind of affection she might have felt towards a favourite pet, and it came as a shock to find herself almost close to hating her, to feeling as though Faye had set in motion a trap which was starting to close around her. Faye wasn’t the clinging type in the accepted sense of the word. On the contrary, she visibly and painfully struggled not to be so, and yet one was always aware of her desperate need for the strength of others, for the companionship and caring of others. Why she had never married again was a mystery to Sage. She so obviously needed the strength and devotion of a husband, of another David…but then men like David were hard to find, even if one looked, and Faye did exactly the opposite of that, preferring to shut herself off from the rest of the world rather than go out to meet it.

She couldn’t go on like this, Faye recognised as she followed Sage down the corridor. For a moment there in that small stuffy room she had virtually destroyed everything she had worked so hard to create…for a moment there with that male hand reaching out towards her, she had stupidly, recklessly come perilously close to throwing everything away, everything she had spent her entire adult life trying to achieve.

Why had she been so careless? Why had she over-reacted so dangerously? She could put it down to the shock of realising how very ill Liz was, but that was no excuse.

Thank God Camilla hadn’t been there to see… She swallowed hard, her mouth full of nervous saliva. She glanced sideways at Sage.

Her sister-in-law was far too astute not to realise that it was more than mere shock at Liz’s condition which had made her react so violently, but thank God she had not tried to question her, to dig and delve as others might have done. Surely after all these years she ought to have more command over herself, more self-control? Why had she behaved like that, and to a man so obviously unthreatening, so obviously well-intentioned? How on earth would she ever be able to face him again? She had seen the shock, the concern, the curiosity shadowing his expression as he looked at her, and no wonder… She wished that he weren’t Liz’s specialist, that there would be no occasion for her ever to have to see him again, but how could she refuse to visit her mother-in-law? How could she allow Sage to shoulder the burden of visiting her mother alone? How could she abandon Liz to the cold efficiency of the machinery which was keeping her alive when she owed her mother-in-law so much? How could she put her own welfare, her own needs before theirs? She couldn’t do it… She could only pray that the specialist would accept, as Sage seemed prepared to do, that her shock had been so great that it had led to her idiotic behaviour. A psychiatrist of course would have recognised immediately—but Liz’s specialist wasn’t a psychiatrist, thank God…he would have no inner awareness, no realisation… It was stupid of her to feel this panic, this fear, this anxiety. No one could, after all, compel her to talk about the past. To revisit and relive it…

She ached to be back at Cottingdean, to be safe, protected, within the haven of its womblike walls. By the time they reached the car she was trembling inwardly as though she had been running frantically in flight, a stitch in her side caused not by exhaustion but by tension, by her grimly clenching her muscles until they ached under the strain she was imposing on them.

Running, running…sometimes it felt as though she had spent her entire life in flight. Only with David had she felt safe, protected… Only with David, and with Liz, who knew all her secrets, knew them and protected her from them.

Liz… This was so wrong. She ought to be thinking of Liz, not herself—praying for her recovery, not because she needed her so much, but for Liz’s own sake. Please God, let me be strong, she prayed as she got in the car. Give me the strength I need—not for myself, but for Liz and for Camilla…and perhaps as well for Sage, she added, glancing at her sister-in-law, and wondering if the latter had yet recognised within herself the same fierce will-power that was Liz’s particular gift. And, like all gifts, a two-edged sword which could be honed in use for the benefit of others for the greater good, or sharpened on the dangerous edge of self-interest and used against other, weaker members of the human race.

Thank God for Sage: without her… She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat, physically and mentally exhausted, longing only for escape, for peace of mind, and knowing how little chance she had of attaining either.

‘Did you manage to get through everything in Liz’s files on the proposed motorway?’ They were having tea, produced by Jenny, who stood sternly over them until it was safely poured, ignoring their protests that they weren’t hungry. Even in absentia Liz’s habits still ruled the household. Perhaps all of them in their separate ways were clinging to those habits, in an instinctive need to believe that in keeping them alive they were keeping Liz herself alive, Sage thought.

‘Mmm…’ she answered, responding to Camilla’s question, her forehead furrowing. She had read them, but nothing in them had given her any clue as to how her mother had hoped to prevent the construction of the new motorway. Far from it.

‘You don’t think we’ll be able to stop them, do you?’ Camilla guessed astutely.

‘It’s too soon to say, but it doesn’t look very hopeful. If the road was being constructed near a site of particular archaeological significance, or special natural beauty, then we’d have something to work on, but as far as I can see—’

‘Gran would have found a way,’ Camilla told her, almost belligerently. ‘But then I suppose you don’t really care anyway, do you? I mean, you don’t care about Cottingdean…’

‘Camilla!’ Faye objected, flushing a little. ‘That’s most unfair and untrue…’

‘No, she’s right,’ Sage said as calmly as she could, replacing her teacup in its saucer. ‘I don’t feel the same way about Cottingdean as the rest of you. It’s a beautiful house, but it is only a house—not a sacred trust. But it isn’t just the house that’s at risk; it’s the village as well, people’s livelihoods. Without the mill there’d be no industry here to keep people in jobs; without jobs the village would soon start to disintegrate—but I don’t expect that the planners in Whitehall will be inclined to put the needs of a handful of villagers above those of road-hungry motorists.’

‘Gran has offered them another site on the other side of the water meadows…’

‘Yes, on land which is marshy and unstable, and which will require a good deal of expensive drainage and foundation work on it before it can be used, as well as adding countless millions of pounds to the cost.’

‘I don’t know why you’re going to the meeting, when it’s obvious that you don’t care—’

‘That’s enough, Camilla,’ Faye reproved.

‘I do care, Cam. I just don’t know how Mother planned to persuade the authorities to reroute the road… I’ve no idea what she had in mind, and I can’t find out from what I’ve read in the files. I’ve no doubt she had some plan of action in view, but whatever it is only she knows… The best I can hope for is to use delaying tactics and to hope that somehow or other a miracle will occur enabling Mother to take over before it’s too late.’

Since all of them knew just how much of a miracle would be needed for that, the three of them fell silent.

She wasn’t looking forward to the evening’s meeting, Sage acknowledged later as she went upstairs to change. She was not accomplished at using guile—she was too blunt, too tactless. She did not have her mother’s gifts of subtle persuasion and coercion. She had no experience of dealing with officialdom, nor a taste for it either. She remembered that David had once tried to teach her to play chess and how he had chided her in that gentle, loving way he had had for her impatience and lack of logic, her inability to think forwards and to plan coolly and mathematically. No, the skills of the negotiator were not among her gifts, but for tonight she must somehow find, somehow adopt at least a facsimile of her mother’s mantle.

She recognised with wry amusement how much she was already changing, how much she was already tempering her own beliefs and attitudes—even her mode of dress.

Tonight she was automatically rejecting the nonchalant casualness of the clothes she bought impulsively and sometimes disastrously, falling in love with the richness of their fabric, the skill of their cut or simply the beauty of their colour and then so often finding once she got them home that she had nothing with which to wear them.

Not for her the carefully planned and organised wardrobe, the cool efficiency of clothes chosen to project a certain image…

But tonight she would need the armouring of that kind of image, and as she rifled through her wardrobe she recognised ruefully that the best she could manage was a cream silk shirt worn with a fine wool crěpe coffee-coloured skirt designed by Alaia. If it clung rather more intimately to her body than anything her mother might have chosen to wear, then hopefully that fact would be concealed by the table behind which she was bound to be seated.

An elegant Chanel-style knitted jacket in the same cream as the shirt would add a touch of authority to the outfit, she decided, taking it off its hanger and glancing at her watch.

Seven o’clock…time she was on her way. She thought fleetingly of the diaries, acknowledging something she had deliberately been pushing to the back of her mind all day.

At the same time as she was eager to read more, to discover more about this stranger who was her mother, she was also reluctant to do so, afraid almost… Of what? Of finding out that her mother was human and fallible, and in doing so finding out that she herself was no longer able to hold on to her anger and resentment? Why should she want to hang on to them?

Perhaps because they added weight and justification to her refusal to allow her mother into any part of her life, her determination to sever the emotional ties between them and to keep them severed—to continue to punish her mother. But for what? For failing to love her as she had loved David? For destroying her happiness—for allowing Scott to be taken from her? Or was she simply still inside an angry, resentful child, kicking at her mother’s door, demanding that her attention and her love be given exclusively to her…?

Exclusively… She frowned at her reflection in the mirror. Had she wanted that? Had she wanted her mother to love her exclusively…? Surely not. She had always known that love must be shared. Or had she? Had she perhaps always inwardly resented having to share her mother with anyone else, refusing to acknowledge her right to love others, just as she had refused to acknowledge Scott’s right to share his for her with his father, to feel that he owed his father a loyalty, a duty that went before even his love for her?

They had quarrelled about that, and bitterly, Scott insisting that before they could marry he had to return to Australia and explain the situation to his father. He had wanted her to go with him but she had refused. Why should she subject herself to his father’s inspection when they both knew that he would reject her? Why couldn’t Scott see that there was no need for them to bow to his father’s will, that they could make a comfortable life for themselves away from his father’s vast acres, that they did not need either his father or her mother?

‘But can’t you see,’ he had asked her, ‘they need us?’

She had lost her temper then… They had quarrelled angrily, almost violently on her part. When Scott had slowed down the car, she had reached for the door, surely never really intending to open it and jump out; but in the heat of the moment…her unforgivable, relentless temper had driven her so hard. Ridden her so hard.

Anyway, now she would never know what she might or might not have done, because Scott had reached across her to grab the door-handle and in doing so had failed to see the oncoming car.

Ironically it had been his arm across her body that had protected her from greater injury and prevented him from saving himself, so that he took the full brunt of the collision, so that he suffered the fate which should by rights have been hers…

Oh, God, she couldn’t start thinking about that now… Not now. Hadn’t she paid enough, suffered enough, endured enough guilt to wash away even the blackest sin?

Downstairs the grandfather clock chimed the quarter-hour. Thankfully she abandoned the painful introspection of her thoughts and hurried downstairs.

‘We’ve put you next to the man from the construction company,’ Anne Henderson told Sage once their mutual introductions were over. ‘I don’t seem to have a note of his name… Our secretary’s little boy has been rushed into hospital for an emergency appendix operation…quite the worst possible time for something like that to happen but what can you do…? Fortunately I do have records of the names of the two people from the Ministry. They’re a Mr Stephen Simmonds and a Ms Helen Ordman. They’re all due to arrive together. I hope they won’t be late. The meeting’s due to start at seven forty-five.’

The village hall had been a gift to the village from her mother, or rather from the mill. It was originally an old barn which had been in danger of falling down, and her mother had had it rescued and remodelled to provide the villagers with a meeting place and somewhere to hold village jumble sales and dances.

Meticulous in everything she undertook, her mother had seen to it that the half-gallery of the original building had been retained, and whenever a dance was held the band was usually placed up on this gallery. Tonight it was empty, the stairs leading to it closed off. Glancing round the familiar beamed interior, Sage reflected that a stranger entering it would never guess that behind the traditional wattle and daub lay a modern purpose-built kitchen area, or that one third of the floor space could be elevated to provide a good-sized stage, much prized by the local drama group. Her mother had thought of everything; even the chairs now placed in neat rows were specially made, in solid wood, with comfortable, practical seats.

‘People are starting to arrive already,’ Anne Henderson told her. ‘The vicar’s wife rang to warn me that the vicar might be a few minutes late. He’s on the committee as well. Your mother had hoped to persuade our local MP to join us tonight, but I haven’t heard anything from him.’

The other committee members were a local solicitor and a local GP, both of whom had very strong views about the proposed road, and both of whom were extremely articulate.

They would need to be to make up for her deficiencies in that direction, Sage reflected, as they came in and she was introduced to them.

For tonight at least the most she could hope for was to act as a figurehead, representing her mother’s stand against the new road, rather than contributing any viable arguments to the proceedings.

Her role was rather like that of a regimental standard: there simply to show that the regiment’s strength existed, rather than to take any part in the fight. She was there simply as a representative of her mother…a focal point.

The hall was beginning to fill up, and from the look on the faces of the people coming in it was obvious that they were taking the threat to their rural peace very seriously indeed. Feelings were going to run high, but whenever had emotion been enough to batter down logic? If it had, why had she not been the victor in so many arguments rather than the vanquished?

There was a flurry of activity over by the door and Anne Henderson excused herself, saying, ‘I think that must be the opposition. I’d better go over and introduce myself.’

Sage watched them walk in. A man and a woman: the woman a slender elegant brunette in her early twenties who had dressed in the kind of suit which the glossy magazines and upmarket newspapers were continually pushing as a working wardrobe for the modern woman. Yes, Sage thought drily, provided she could afford to buy the simple and so expensive designer garments they lauded. And this woman, despite the businesslike clothes she was wearing, came across to Sage not as a dedicated career type, but as a sensual, almost predatory female who to Sage’s eyes had dressed herself not so much with the meeting in mind, but for a man. The plain silk shirt that was seemingly so carelessly unfastened just enough to hint at a provocative tempting cleavage. The flannel skirt, short and straight to reveal slender silk-clad legs, the hair and make-up, both elegant and discreet, but both very definitely sensual rather than businesslike. A woman, of course, could recognise such things immediately—men were rather different, and Sage wondered in amusement what on earth it was about the rather nondescript, jeans-and-windcheater-clad man at her side that had aroused such predatory instincts.

At first sight he seemed ordinary enough: average height, mid-brown hair, wearing, rather surprisingly for a Ministry man, the kind of casual clothes that made him seem more like one of the villagers than anything else. He was talking earnestly to his companion as Anne shepherded them towards the raised stage.

Sage stood up as they reached her, shaking hands with both of them and introducing herself. She could see the younger woman assessing her, and hid her own amusement. She really had nothing to worry about—Sage was not in the least interested in her quarry.

The man from the Ministry attempted to take the next seat to her own, but Anne stopped him, informing him, ‘I thought we’d let the chairman of the construction company sit there…’

‘Oh, yes, I ought to have mentioned,’ his companion chipped in, ‘I’m afraid he’s going to be a few minutes late. He suggested that we start without him, as he’s attending the meeting primarily to answer people’s questions about the actual effect of the construction of the road.’

‘Isn’t that rather premature?’ Sage heard herself intervening coolly. Helen Ordman looked coldly at her and waited. ‘You are rather presuming that the road will go ahead, which is by no means certain as yet.’

Stephen Simmonds looked uncomfortable and shuffled his feet, and Sage was surprised to discover how much satisfaction it gave her to see the brunette’s immaculately made-up face darken to a rather unbecoming red.

Sage rather suspected that she was the kind of woman who traded very heavily on her looks, using them to bludgeon those members of her own sex who were less well-favoured into a state of insecurity and those of the opposite sex into helpless submission.

‘Well, the feasibility of the proposed new road is what we have come here to discuss,’ Stephen Simmonds interrupted quickly. ‘Naturally we can understand the fears of the local residents, and, of course, it’s our job to assure them that full consideration has been given to their situation and that the work will be undertaken with as little disruption as possible to their lives.’

‘And after it’s been completed?’ Sage asked drily. ‘Or don’t you consider that having a six-lane motorway virtually cutting the village in half is a disruption to people’s lives? I suppose you could always provide us with a nice concrete bridge or perhaps even a tunnel so that one half of the village can keep in touch with the other without having to drive from here to London and back to reach it—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! Naturally, provision will be made to allow for normal daily traffic,’ Helen Ordman interrupted acidly, treating Sage to the sort of look that suggested that she thought she was mentally defective.

‘I think we’d better start,’ Anne Henderson whispered on Sage’s left. ‘People are beginning to get restless.’

Sage opened the meeting, introducing the guests and then handing over to Anne Henderson, as she was naturally more familiar with the committee’s running of the affair. From her mother’s meticulous research and the minutes of the earlier meeting, Sage did, however, have a very good idea of what to expect.

This one followed much the same pattern: a calm speech from the man from the Ministry aimed at soothing people’s fears and making the construction of the road appear to be a reasonable and unalterable course of vital importance to the continuing existence of the country.

Anne Henderson gave a far less analytical and logical speech against the road’s construction, and it was plain from the audience’s reaction where their feelings lay.

The questions followed thick and fast, and Sage noted cynically how carefully things were stage-managed so that Helen Ordman always answered the questions from the men in the audience, turning the full wattage of her charm on them, as she skilfully deflected often very viable points with the warmth of her smile and a carefully objective response which never quite answered the question posed.

These were early days, the first of a series of skirmishes to be gone through before real battle was joined, Sage recognised. Having studied her mother’s files, she was well aware of how much help could be gained in such cases from the ability to lobby powerful figures for support.

Was that why her mother had been in London? There had been a time when it had been suggested that she might stand for Parliament, but she had declined, saying that she felt she wasn’t able to give enough time to a political career. Even so, her mother had a wide variety of contacts, some of them extremely influential.

Engrossed in her own thoughts, Sage frowned as the hall door opened and a man walked in.

Tall, dark-haired, wearing the kind of immaculate business suit she had rather expected to see on the man from the Ministry, he nevertheless had an air of latent strength about him that marked him out as someone more used to physical activity than a deskbound lifestyle.

One could almost feel the ripple of feminine interest that followed him, Sage recognised, knowing now why Helen Ordman had dressed so enticingly. Not for her companion but for this man walking towards the stage, this man who had lifted his head and looked not at Helen Ordman but at her. And looked at her with recognition.

Daniel Cavanagh. The room started to spin wildly around her. Sage groped for the support of the desk, gripping it with her fingers as shock ran through her like electricity.

Daniel Cavanagh… How long was it since she had allowed herself to think about him, to remember even that he existed? How long was it since she had even allowed herself to whisper his name?

She felt cold with shock; she was shaking with the force of it, the reality of the reasons for his presence immediately overwhelmed by the churning maelstrom of memories that seeing him again had invoked.

Memories it had taken her years to suppress, to ignore, to deny…memories which even now had the power to make her body move restlessly as she fought to obliterate her own culpability, to ignore her guilt and pain—and yet after that one brief hard look of recognition he seemed so completely oblivious to her that they might have never met.

She heard Anne introducing him, was aware of the low-voiced conversation passing between him and Helen Ordman and, with it, the undercurrent of sexual possessiveness in the other woman’s voice, and bewilderingly a sharp pang of something so unexpected, so shockingly unwanted, so ridiculously unnecessary, stirred inside her that for a moment her whole body tensed with the implausibility of it.

Jealous…jealous of another woman’s relationship with a man she herself had never wanted, had never liked even…a man she had used callously and selfishly in anger and bitterness, and who had then turned those feelings, that selfishness against her so remorselessly that her memories of him were a part of her life she preferred to forget.

So many mistakes…her life was littered with them—she was that kind of person—but Daniel Cavanagh had been more than a mistake…he had been a near-fatal error, showing a dangerous lack of judgement both of herself and of him, a turning-point which had become the axis on which her present life revolved.

He was taking his seat next to her, the economical movements of his body well co-ordinated and efficient, indicative of a man at ease with himself and with his life.

Now, without the softening influence of youth, the bones of his face had hardened, the outline of his body matured. He was three years older than she, which made him about thirty-seven.

A faint ripple of polite applause broke into her thoughts. She watched him stand up and recognised almost resentfully that his suit was hand-tailored, as no doubt were his shirts. He had always been powerfully built, well over six feet and very broad.

She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but could hear only the crisp cadences of his voice, stirring echoes of another time, another place, when he had been equally concise, equally controlled, equally clinically detached as he had stripped her pride to the bone, ripped her soul into shreds, destroyed the very fabric of her being and then handed the pieces back to her with a cool politeness which had somehow been even more demeaning than all the rest put together.

‘I pity you,’ he had told her, and he had meant it. He, more than anyone else, more than Scott even, had been responsible for the destruction of the hot-headed, headstrong, self-absorbed girl she had been and the creation of the cautious, careful, self-reliant woman she had made herself become.

Perhaps she ought to be grateful to him… Grateful…that was what he had said to her, flinging the words at her like knives.

‘I suppose you think I should be grateful…’

And then he had turned them against her, using them to destroy her.

All these years, and she had never allowed herself to remember, to think, cutting herself off from the past as sharply as though she had burned a line of fire between her old life and the new.

She was still cold, desperate now to escape from the hall, to be alone, but she couldn’t escape, not yet—people were clamouring to ask questions. Whatever Daniel Cavanagh had said, he had stirred up a good deal of reaction.

She ought to have been listening. She ought to have been able to forget the past, to forget that she knew him…she ought to have been concentrating on what he was saying. That after all was why she was here. Sage closed the meeting without being aware of quite what she had said and the world came back into focus as Anne was saying something about the vicar having suggested that they all went back to the vicarage for an informal chat and a cup of tea. She shook her head, fighting to hold on to her self-control, to appear calm.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’

‘No, of course, you’ll be wanting to get back… Has there been any more news from the hospital?’

Sage shook her head again. It was beginning to ache dreadfully, a warning that she was about to have the kind of migraine attack she had long ago thought she had learned to control.

All she wanted to do was to shut herself away somewhere safe and dark, somewhere where she wouldn’t have to think, to pretend, somewhere where there was no tall, dark man standing at her side making her remember, making her feel.

She was the first to leave the hall after the meeting had broken up, her footsteps quick and tense, her nostrils flaring slightly as she got outside and was able to breathe in the cool fresh air.

Her Porsche was parked only yards away, but she doubted her ability to drive it with the necessary degree of safety. Her stomach was churning sickly, her head pounding… It wasn’t unheard of for her to actually black out during these migraine attacks.

If she had any sense she would telephone the house and ask Jenny if someone could come and collect her, she recognised, but to do that would mean lingering here, and inviting the possibility of having to face Daniel.

Already she could hear his voice behind her, and the softer, almost caressing one of his companion.

Had the woman no pride? she asked herself savagely. Didn’t she realise how obvious she was being, or didn’t she care? Daniel was not your ordinary straightforward male… Daniel knew all there was to know about the female psyche. Daniel…

‘Sage… I hear that, like me, you aren’t able to join the others at the vicarage…’

He was standing next to her—good manners, good sense, demanded that she turn round and acknowledge him, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn her head, couldn’t even open her mouth to respond.

‘Daniel, must you go? There’s so much we need to discuss…’

Thank goodness for predatory women, Sage thought in relief as Helen Ordman came between them, possessively taking hold of his arm.

‘Yes, I’m afraid I must. I’ve got a board meeting in the morning, and a mountain of papers to read through… Sage, I suspect that scarlet monstrosity must be yours. You always were an advocate of conspicuous consumption…in all things…’

He left her as he had found her, speechless and immobile, staring after him with, as she discovered with sick chagrin, eyes that were stupidly filmed with angry tears.

She deliberately waited until Daniel Cavanagh had driven off, in a steel-grey vintage Aston Martin, which she knew quite well had cost far more than her new-model Porsche, before walking away from her own car in the direction of Cottingdean.

The house was only a couple of miles from the village, not far at all, and a pleasant walk on such a warm spring evening. As a teenager, before she had learned to drive, she had travelled those two miles sometimes several times a day and thought nothing of doing so.

Then, though, she had not been wearing three-inch heels, nor had her body been reacting as violently as though it were suffering the most virulent form of viral flu.

What had happened to the life of which she had felt so powerfully in control? When had that control started to disintegrate? With her mother’s accident…with the knowledge that the strictly controlled physical and emotional involvements which were all she allowed herself to share with the opposite sex were designed to appease an appetite she no longer had…

The chain had begun to form long before tonight, long before this unwanted resurgence of old memories, but she couldn’t deny that seeing Daniel Cavanagh again had formed a link in it, so strong, so fettering that she doubted that she could break it open and slip free and safe back to her old life.

She saw the car headlights coming towards her, and instinctively walked off the road and on to the grass verge, only realising when the car swept past her that it was Daniel’s grey Aston.

She could hear it slowing down and stopping. Panic splintered into sharp agony inside her. She desperately wanted to run, to hide herself away from him… Not because she feared him as a man… No, she well knew she had nothing sexual to fear from him. No, it was her own memories she wanted to flee, her own pain, her own self-condemnation.

She heard the car door open and then close, and knew that he had seen her. If she walked away now, if she ran away now… Pride made her stand stiffly where she was, but nothing could make her turn to face him as he walked towards her.

‘I thought you were driving back.’

‘I decided I preferred to walk.’

‘In high heels?’

He always had been far too observant.

‘There isn’t a law against it,’ she told him sharply. ‘Although, of course, if you get your way and you run a six-lane motorway through here, the days of walking anywhere will be over for all of us.’

‘The motorway will run over a mile from here. You won’t even see it from Cottingdean. It won’t interfere with your lives there at all. But then you always did prefer emotionalism to logic, didn’t you, Sage?’

‘What are you doing here, Daniel? You’re on the wrong side of the village for the motorway and London…’

‘Yes. I realise that. I took a wrong turning and had to turn back again.’

She had the odd feeling that he was lying, although what he was saying sounded plausible. Was it because of her knowledge of the man, her awareness that taking a wrong turning in anything was the last thing he was likely to do, that she found it hard to believe him?

He was watching her, she realised, refusing to give in to the magnetic pull of his concentration. His eyes were grey, the same metallic colour as his car, and she didn’t need to look at him to remember how powerful an effect that intense concentration could have. He also had the most ridiculously long curling lashes. She remembered how she had once thought they gave him a look at times of being almost vulnerable. More fool her; ‘vulnerable’ was the very last description that could be applied to him. He was solid steel all the way through.

The sick pounding in her head, which had started to ease a little as she walked, had returned. Automatically she raised her hand and pressed her fingers to her temple.

‘Migraine?’

She stared at him, forgetting her resolve not to do so, surprise momentarily widening her eyes.

‘How did you…?’

The ironic look he gave her made her stop, the swift colour burning up under her skin stripping away the veneer of fifteen years of sophistication and reducing her once again to the girl she had once been.

‘I’ve got a retentive memory,’ he told her drily.

‘You must have,’ she agreed bitterly.

‘I’ll give you a lift. It isn’t safe for a woman to walk alone at night these days… Not even out here.’

‘No, thanks, I’d prefer to walk. I need the fresh air…’

‘So go and walk round Cottingdean’s gardens once you get home. You should be safe enough there…’

His calm assumption that she would allow him to make her decision for her infuriated her. ‘I don’t want a lift,’ she repeated tightly, but he had already taken hold of her arm and was walking her towards his car.

Thankfully the thickness of her jacket muffled the sensation of his fingers on her arm, and his touch, although firm, wasn’t constraining.

It was easier to go with him than to argue, she decided weakly as he opened the passenger door and waited politely until she was safely inside before closing it on her.

‘You really needn’t have done this.’

‘I know,’ he agreed as he set the car in motion.

He was a good driver, careful, controlled.

‘Odd,’ he mused, as the gates to the house appeared, ‘you’re the last person I’d envisage chairing a committee for environmental protection.’

‘I’m not,’ Sage told him stiffly. ‘I’m simply standing in for my mother.’

‘Really? The Sage I knew would have taken that as a heaven-sent opportunity for sabotage rather than a sacred bit of family flag-waving.’

Sage felt herself stiffening. This was what she had been dreading from the moment she had set eyes on him. Being reminded of the past, of its pain, of its shadows…and most of all being reminded of the person she had been…

Was it reading her mother’s diaries which had thrown so sharply into focus the differences between them, made her so sharply aware of her own shortcomings, of her own faults, not just of omission but of commission as well?

‘No comment?’ Daniel asked her softly as he brought the car to a halt.

‘Did you ask me a question?’ Sage challenged him acidly as she reached to open her door. ‘I thought you were simply making a statement. How I live my life has nothing to do with you, Daniel…it’s my own affair.’

‘Or affairs,’ he murmured cynically, making her forget that she was still wearing her seatbelt, so that she pushed open the heavy door and tried to get out, only to discover infuriatingly that she was still trapped in her seat.

‘Still the same old Sage. Impatient, illogical. So damn used to getting her own way that she doesn’t even have the sense to avoid any obstacles.’

He opened his own door, and was round her side of the car almost before she had finished unfastening her seatbelt.

She discovered that she was trembling as she got out of the car, not with dread any longer, but with anger…anger, and something else, something that fuelled her adrenalin and banished the pain from her temples.

‘Thanks for the lift.’

‘You’re welcome.’

His face was in the shadows, but as he turned away from her to walk back to the driver’s door his expression was briefly illuminated by the moon, and for an instant he might have been the old Daniel she had once known so well, only to discover she had not really known him at all.

Daniel Cavanagh… Why had he come back into her life, and now of all times, reopening doors—wounds—she had thought long since sealed?

Daniel Cavanagh… She discovered she was shivering again as she walked towards the house, fighting against the threatening avalanche of memories she was only just managing to keep at bay.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS no use—she wasn’t going to sleep tonight, Sage acknowledged, sitting up in bed. She didn’t want to sleep…she was actually afraid of going to sleep, afraid of the memories which might be unleashed once she was no longer in complete control of her own mind.

She moved restlessly in her bed, and stared at her watch. Two o’clock. She might as well be doing something constructive as lying here like this, trying not to think, not to remember…something constructive such as…such as reading the diaries?

What was she hoping to find there? Or was she simply using them as a panacea, a deterrent, a means of holding her own thoughts at bay?

She went downstairs, the house making the familiar creaks of an old building. She opened the desk drawer and extracted the diary she had been reading, taking it back up to bed with her, plus a couple of apples from the fruit bowl in the kitchen. They were the slightly sour, crunchy variety she had always preferred, different from the soft juicy red fruit both her mother and Faye loved.

Her mother always explained away her sweet tooth by saying it was a result of the war, of being deprived of sweet things. When she made this explanation she was always slightly defensive; it was a small enough weakness in an otherwise very strong woman. Sage felt an unfamiliar twinge of guilt over the way she had often childishly and sometimes cruelly drawn attention to it. Children were cruel, she acknowledged wryly—they had no compunction about using whatever weapons fell into their hands, no guilt, no remorse…especially when driven by a sense of righteousness as she had been.

How old had she been when she had first started to blame her mother for her father’s indifference to her? Eight, nine…even younger. Certainly it seemed when she looked back that she had always been aware of the fact that, while David had always been free to approach their father directly, when she had tried to do the same thing her mother had always come between them, so that all her contact with her father was made either through or in the company of a third party, and that invariably that third party was her mother.

Anger, bitterness, resentment; she had felt the destructive lash of all those emotions, and yet why had her mother felt it necessary to stop her from becoming close to her father? Surely not because she had feared that such a closeness would threaten her own relationship with him?

He had adored her mother, loved her with an intensity which as an adult Sage herself recognised she would have found too possessive. She remembered how her mother had scarcely been able to leave the house without first explaining where she was going and how long she would be.

Sage tensed, her own body automatically reacting to the thought of so much possessive love. Possessive love? She frowned, recognising reluctantly how much she would have resented the burden of that kind of love, how much her freedom-loving nature would have kicked and fought against him. She tried to imagine how she would have reacted to her father’s possessiveness had she been her mother. She would have left him, probably, she recognised grimly. But she was not her mother. Her mother was far too saintly, far too morally perfect to put her own needs above those of someone as dependent and helpless as her husband had been.

Sage’s frown deepened as she realised that this was the first time she had ever looked closely at her parents’ marriage, ever questioned a relationship which for years she had seen enviously as an ideal, feeling both resentful and envious of her mother’s role as the pivot of her father’s life. The first time she had seen it as a relationship which she as a woman would have found both stultifying and caging.

And yet her mother had obviously not done so. She shrugged the thought away—she and her mother were two different women, two very different women. They had nothing in common other than the fact that they were mother and daughter, an accident of birth which had brought them together in a relationship which neither of them enjoyed, even if her mother was rather better at concealing her antipathy than she was herself.

And yet despite that, despite everything that had happened between them, despite her resentment, her bitterness, there was still a part of her that was drawn compulsively towards the girl she was discovering in the diaries.

Which was why she was here at gone two in the morning, turning the pages of her mother’s diary, pushing aside the memories which had kept her from sleeping. Memories stirred up by that unexpected and unwanted meeting with Daniel Cavanagh.

Daniel Cavanagh. For a moment she closed her eyes, trying hard not to feel as though the living, breathing man had somehow or other forced his presence into the room with her.

Daniel Cavanagh, what was he after all? Only a man. Nothing more. Just a man, like so many others.

She opened her eyes and quickly turned the pages of the diary, to find the place where she had previously stopped reading, resolutely pushing away all thoughts of Daniel Cavanagh and the past, and instead concentrating on her mother’s record of her life.

A week passed and then another and still Lizzie hadn’t heard from Kit. Every day she waited hopefully for a letter, but none came, and then one morning when she woke up the world swung dizzily around her, her stomach heaved and a vast welling nausea had her running desperately to the bathroom where she was violently and painfully sick.

That the reason for her sickness didn’t immediately occur to her was due in the main to the prudery which ruled her great-aunt’s life.

Lizzie had been sick before, when she had first come to work at the hospital, when her stomach had revolted against the unappetising diet, and, if she had any time to spare from her aching longing to hear from Kit and her constant daydreams about him to dwell on the nausea which seemed to be plaguing her, she simply assumed that it was a return of that earlier sickness.

That was until one of the other girls heard her one morning and accidentally enlightened her, assuming that she must already know the reason for her sickness.

A baby… No, not just a baby, but Kit’s baby. Hard on the heels of her first thrill of appalled recognition of the fact that in her great-aunt’s eyes she had now joined that unmentionable band of her sex who had ‘got themselves into trouble’, and was therefore now a social and moral outcast, came a tiny pang of pleasure. Kit’s baby. She was having Kit’s baby.

Alone in the dormitory, she sank down on to her bed, trembling slightly, clasping her hands protectively over her stomach. She felt dizzy but not sick any longer. Rather the dizziness sprang from elation and joy.

Kit’s child… A sudden urgency to share her news with him, to be able to marvel with him over the new life they had created together, overwhelmed her. Kit! How much she longed to see him.

She sat staring into space, lost in a wonderful daydream in which Kit suddenly appeared, sweeping her off her feet and announcing that they must get married immediately…that he loved her to distraction.

He would take her away with him in his shiny little green car, and they would be married secretly and excitingly. She would live in a tiny rose-smothered cottage hidden away from the world, but close enough to where he was based for her to see him whenever he was off duty.

She would wait there for the birth of their child…a son, she knew it would be a son, and they would be so blissfully happy…

It took one of the older and far, far more worldly-wise girls in the dormitory to shatter her daydreams with brutal reality.

Donna had been nominated by the others to talk to her. Kind girls in the main, they found Lizzie’s attitude baffling. Had they found themselves in her condition, they wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for Mr Wonderful to turn up and make things right. Didn’t the poor sap realise what had happened? Didn’t she know what would happen to her when the hospital authorities found out about her condition?

Donna Roberts was the eldest of a family of eight, five of them girls; she had seen her mother pregnant far too often to have any illusions about the male attitude to the careless and unwanted fathering of a child, but even she quailed a little when faced with the childish luminosity of Lizzie’s unwavering belief that he, whoever he was, was going to come back and marry her.

‘Look, kid,’ she began awkwardly. She was dating an American airman and had picked up not just his habit of chewing gum, but something of his accent as well. ‘We all know about the fix you’ve got yourself in… I know it isn’t easy, but you’ve got to face up to it… You don’t want to end up like Susan Philpott, do you?’

‘Susan Philpott.’ Lizzie stared at her. ‘But she went home.’

‘Like hell she did,’ Donna told her inelegantly. ‘God knows where she is right now, but she hasn’t gone home. Told me that herself—said her dad would kill her for getting herself in trouble. Of course when the dragon found out it was the end for her here. Probably on the street somewhere now,’ Donna added, explaining explicitly what she meant when Lizzie looked uncomprehendingly at her.

‘He isn’t going to come back. They never do,’ she told her with brutal honesty. ‘And you’re going to have to do something about that…’ she added, gesturing towards Lizzie’s still flat stomach.

‘Do something?’ Lizzie questioned, puzzled, focusing on her, ignoring her comments about Kit. Donna didn’t know Kit… Donna didn’t realise how she and Kit felt about one another, how much in love they were. She had known it the moment they met, had seen it in Kit’s eyes, had felt it, she remembered almost maternally, in the roughness of his possession, his inability to control his passion, his desire for her.

‘What do you mean “do something”?’ she questioned softly.

She could see the pity in Donna’s eyes, feel it in the waiting silence of the others in the dormitory. She could feel their rough sympathy enveloping her, sense their affinity with her, and yet she felt outside their concern, untouched by it, in no need of it. She knew they meant to be kind, and she herself was too gentle, too sensitive to rebuff them directly.

Donna sighed and lifted her eyes to heaven. This was going to be worse than she had thought. Why was it always these idiotic naïve ones who got themselves into this kind of trouble? she wondered. Hadn’t they got the sense…? But she already knew the answer to that question, had heard it often enough in her mother’s slow Dorset voice, as she repeated over and over again warningly to her eldest child, showing her, by the example of her own life, just what happened to girls foolish enough to believe in the lies told by men. She had been sixteen when she had conceived her first child, and at thirty-five, when Donna had left home, she had looked and moved like a woman of twice her age, worn down by too many pregnancies, too much hardship and poverty.

The war had come as a welcome escape for Donna, releasing her from having to follow in her mother’s footsteps, from early marriage and too many children, and she had been glad to go. Glad to leave the damp, insanitary farm worker’s cottage where she had shared a bedroom and a bed with her sisters, glad to escape from the bad temper of her father and the rough manners of her brothers. Glad to cut herself free of too many pairs of clinging hands and too many demanding voices.

‘You’re going to have to get rid of it, aren’t you? Look, I know what you think but he isn’t going to marry you. They never do,’ she said bluntly. Her own life had not given her tact or sensitivity. As far as she was concerned the best thing she could do for the silly little fool was to make her see sense and then, if it wasn’t already too late, to sit her in a bath of near-boiling hot water, and pour as much gin into her as they could get their hands on in the hope that it would bring on a spontaneous abortion.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t… There were other methods, but they were too risky, and anyway, by the looks of it, they were going to have a hard time persuading her to do what had to be done.

She looked so pale and raw, so childlike almost, but Donna wasn’t deceived. That type could have the will of a donkey…and the stupidity.

Lizzie stared at her in shocked disbelief. Get rid of Kit’s child… She recoiled from Donna as though she thought the other girl was going to physically attack her, her arms crossing protectively over her belly.

‘Look, you little fool,’ Donna repeated grimly, ‘he isn’t going to come back for you. They never do, no matter what they tell you. Did he give you his address? Did he tell you anything about himself other than his name? Do you even know that that’s real? You know what’s going to happen to you when it gets out that you’re carrying, don’t you? You’ll lose your job and you’ll be sent back home…’

Sent back home… To her aunt… For the first time fear chilled Lizzie’s heart. She gave a deep shudder, totally unable to accept what Donna was saying to her, and yet at the same time terrified by the mental pictures Donna was drawing for her. Just for a moment she tried to imagine what her life would be like if she did have to return to her aunt, pregnant and unmarried. Her aunt would never have her back—she would turn her from her door, and disown her. She started to shiver, suddenly cold and shocked. But why was she afraid? Nothing like that was going to happen to her. Kit was going to marry her—she knew it. There was nothing for her to fear. All she had to do was to hold on to that truth, to have faith and courage, to remember that Kit loved her.

‘Come on, kid—be sensible. You can’t be that far along…with any luck, we could get rid of it.’

‘No,’ Lizzie told her firmly, and then added with quiet dignity, ‘Even if you are right about Kit not loving me—and I know you aren’t—I still could not destroy my child.’

Donna knew when she was defeated. Muttering under her breath about the folly of her own sex, she withdrew.

Let the little fool learn, then—and she would… It was all right now claiming that she wanted the brat, but let her wait until she was homeless, penniless, disgraced, without a job, without anyone to help her… Then she would sing a different tune. She, Donna, had seen it happen so many times, and to so many girls.

Just for a moment she thought savagely and angrily of the burdens carried by her own sex, and hungered for a time when things would be different, when women would have the right and ability to govern their own lives. But to do that they would have to cast off the emotional shackles they seemed to be born with, to cease loving and depending on men… She herself had no illusions about the male sex. She never intended to marry and she certainly never intended to burden herself with the responsibility and pain of children.

It was many weeks since she had heard from Kit… Weeks during which she had slowly grown accustomed to the fact that she was carrying his child. The end of the war in Europe caused nationwide celebration, but for Lizzie what was happening within her was more important. Kit had not been in touch and she had no way of knowing if victory in Europe had brought him safely home or if he was still in danger somewhere. Until she knew, there could be no celebration for her. Her eighteenth birthday, too, passed without any celebration apart from a card and small present sent by her aunt.

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