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Frank whistled when she told him what she wanted him to do. ‘I told you not to tell him. You can’t trust people when it comes to children. Any ideas?’
‘Try Mrs Bennet, Mrs Philip Bennet. She used to live in Epsom—I’m almost certain it was Owens Road. She’s the grandmother. Oh, and can you give me the name and address of that solicitor you were recommending— the one who specialises in family law.’
‘Yup.’ He didn’t say again that he’d told her so, but she heard it in the monosyllable.
She scribbled down the name and address he gave her, said goodbye and hung up, then turned to look around her. The room was small and sparsely furnished in motel style, with furniture that didn’t fit her long legs and body. The rush of adrenalin that had sustained her so far faded slowly, leaving her melancholy and thoughtful.
Setting her mouth, she went out into the street and called into the florist’s shop. They weren’t busy so the woman made her a posy of cottage flowers while she waited, looking at her curiously when she thought she was unobserved.
After Perdita had paid for them she said in a rush, ‘You know, you look awfully like that model—the Adventurous Woman.’
Perdita gave her a warm smile. ‘I’m retired, now,’ she said.
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘You came from around here, didn’t you?’
‘I used to spend holidays here with my cousin.’
‘Mrs Dennison at Pigeon Hill.’ She sighed. ‘That was a tragedy. She was a lovely lady.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, well, you must be noticing quite a few changes in the last ten years.’
Perdita smiled again. ‘Quite a few. The place has grown.’
‘Are you planning on living here?’
Until that moment the thought had never occurred to Perdita. She said vaguely, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ but as she walked out of the shop the idea took root and on the way down the hill to the cemetery it flourished. Nothing would give her greater pleasure than to live close to her daughters.
But would it be fair to them?
And how would Luke deal with that? At the thought of his reaction her skin prickled. He was a bad enemy.
The little graveyard had served the district well for over a hundred years. Perdita walked across newly mown grass sheltered by the huge old puriri and totara trees that made a dense barrier around the perimeter. It was very quiet and still.
Natalie’s headstone was plain and austere. With wet eyes Perdita read that she was the beloved wife of Luke, loved mother of Olivia and Rosalind, aged thirty-seven years.
Stooping, Perdita put her flowers with the others there. Death was so final, so impersonally unfair, when it carried off those who were young and good and happy.
She turned away, only then seeing through the sparkle of tears the tall, powerful figure of the man who had made Natalie so happy. Damn, she thought, suddenly exhausted by emotion. Why did he have to come here now?
Head held high, chin tilted, she waited beside the grave. He’d see the results of her grief, but she wasn’t ashamed of it.
His face was set in lines of harsh restraint. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
She said, ‘I brought flowers.’
He closed his eyes as though she couldn’t have said anything more painful. On a note of bitterness she finished, ‘I loved her too, Luke.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said heavily, looking down at the bunch of cottagey flowers, bright cornflowers and spray carnations in a froth of white gypsophila.
‘She was so kind to me,’ Perdita said.
He jerked his head away but she saw the flash of naked emotion in his pale eyes. Gripped by compassion, she touched his arm. He had rolled up his sleeves, so her fingers were pale and slender against the tanned forearm with its light dusting of hair. The heat of his skin burned through barriers she hadn’t been aware of. Something moved deeply inside her. Snatching her fingers away, she had to resist the temptation to cool them in her mouth.
Hastily she went on, ‘She taught me how to dress and how to behave, that I wasn’t strange because I liked to read. In a funny sort of way she gave me my career. If she hadn’t taken me to Clive’s that Christmas to buy my clothes he wouldn’t have recommended me to the model agency. My life would have been as narrow and circumscribed as my mother’s. Natalie gave me everything, and she did it with such grace and empathy. She never made me feel that I was a gawky nothing.’
‘She groomed you to take her place,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘I wonder what she’d have thought of that.’
His words drove every vestige of colour from her face. Instinctively she stepped back, casting a swift, horrified glance at the mute grave.
His mouth curled into a mirthless, wolfish smile. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She can’t hear you. She’ll never know that you betrayed her love by seducing her husband. She’ll never know that the children she adopted and loved so much were yours and mine. She’s dead, Perdita, and you and I are left to wonder just what would have happened if she hadn’t died. Because you’d have come back just the same, wouldn’t you?’
Perdita’s lips trembled. ‘Yes.’
‘And created even more damage than you did when you crawled into my bed that night.’
She shook her head, but he went on relentlessly, ‘Why did you do it?’
‘I told you. I was asleep when you came to bed. I didn’t expect you home that night,’ she said indistinctly.
The sun summoned auburn fire from his hair. His eyes were as cold as his laugh, as completely lacking in amusement.
‘Even though it was the bed Natalie and I slept in every night?’ He let the pause linger for endless moments, then brought it to an end by saying smoothly, ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’
She had slept in their bed because Luke was due back from three days spent in Wellington, and Natalie had decided to go halfway to Auckland to meet him at the house of friends.
‘He’ll be tired after three days’ arguing with the government,’ she’d said. ‘I’ll meet him at the Gardiners’, and we’ll stay there, then come back tomorrow after he’s had a good night’s rest. You won’t mind staying here, will you?’
Of course Perdita didn’t mind.
‘Just in case you’re nervous, why don’t you sleep in our room?’ Natalie suggested. ‘The phone’s right by the bed. Oh, and if you find it difficult to sleep in a strange bed my sleeping pills will be in the drawer. They’re quite harmless. They don’t knock you out, they’re more like calming pills than sleeping pills, really.’
‘I won’t need them,’ Perdita said.
Natalie hugged her. ‘What it is to be young and able to sleep on the head of a pin! I’ll leave one there just the same. Right, now that that’s organised, I’ll go and ring the hotel so he knows about the change of plans.’
But the anonymous someone in Luke’s hotel in Wellington hadn’t handed on the message, and Luke had driven all the way home, to find Perdita, slightly drugged with the pill because lying in Luke’s bed had given her too much of a secret, forbidden thrill, asleep in the innocent abandon of childhood. She hadn’t heard him come in, hadn’t realised until she woke in his arms that he had thought she was Natalie. And by then she had been unable to think…
But she couldn’t tell him that now. After it happened she had tried to explain, and he had refused to believe her, cursing her for stealing something that had been Natalie’s, exiling her to Auckland and her mother, who didn’t want her and had never forgiven her for driving her father away.
‘It’s a bit late to be putting flowers on her grave,’ Luke said curtly. ‘You repaid Natalie by betraying her.’
The words were like fiery arrows, tearing Perdita’s composure to shreds. Stung, still racked by guilt, she flung back, ‘As you did!’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘You don’t have to try to make me feel guilty, Perdita. I’ve never been free of it since that night.’
‘It wasn’t your fault you thought I was Natalie,’ she said. It had been Natalie he’d held in his arms, Natalie who was the recipient of his savage tenderness, Natalie…
“That’s no excuse,’ he returned with raw self-contempt.
There was no answer to that. It was no excuse, and neither was the fact that she hadn’t been intent on seduction that night. She could have kicked and screamed and forced him to realise that she wasn’t Natalie, but when she woke it was too late—her sleeping body had been seduced by his practised caresses, and she had yielded without protest, without making a sound.
He said abruptly, ‘You can see the children.’
She turned a radiant face to him, but before she could speak he went on, ‘On one condition. I want you to sign a document saying that you won’t tell them who you are, and that you have no claim to them.’
Perdita hesitated and he said evenly, ‘No document, no visit.’
She understood his caution. Nodding, she agreed, ‘Yes, all right.’
‘Right. Be at the solicitor’s office at four this afternoon.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_0fc840d6-eb4a-56b4-80b0-781f360d4390)
PRECISELY at that time Perdita presented herself at the solicitor’s office. She had already contacted the expert in family law in Auckland, and been warned to sign nothing that might prejudice her chances of access to the girls.
Actually, he had suggested very strongly that she forward any documents to him for scrutiny, but Perdita had almost made up her mind to sign. She didn’t want to take her daughters away from the only home they had known; she merely wanted to make sure that they were happy.
And perhaps when Luke realised that she wasn’t a bad influence he would allow her to get to know them properly. Although his accusation still rankled, there was, she had to admit, some cause for it. Gossip columnists had had a field day with one or two of her supposed lovers.
The legal document, short and to the point, was waiting for her. She agreed not to tell the children that she was their birth mother, and she agreed that this meeting constituted no claim to further access or custody.
That seemed fair enough. Ignoring the elderly solicitor’s somewhat censorious attitude, she signed, then got gracefully to her feet.
He said, ‘I would urge you to think of the welfare of these children, Ms Gladstone.’
She gave him a cool, remote glance. He had come out to Pigeon Hill occasionally to parties, seeming older then to a teenaged girl than he did now. Their slight acquaintanceship gave him no right to imagine that he could influence her. He, and everyone else who had known her then, would have to realise that the child who used to stay at Pigeon Hill during the holidays, the recipient of her cousin’s charity, had grown up.
‘I don’t think this is any of your business. Goodbye,’ she said calmly, and walked across the room, ignoring the faint sputtering from behind her.
She had just reached the door when the telephone rang. Stepping through, she closed the door behind her, only to re-open it swiftly when her name was called from inside the room.
‘Yes?’ she asked aloofly.
He put the receiver down. “That was Luke,’ he said with stiff precision. ‘He wants to see you out at Pigeon Hill. Now.’
Her brows shot up. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
As she turned to go once more he said, ‘Take some advice from an old man, Perdita. Luke can be ruthless, especially where those children are concerned. They were all that kept him sane when Natalie died. He is intensely protective of them.’
A tight smile barely moved her mouth. ‘Thank you,’ she said sweetly, and left.
Whether or not he meant it kindly, she preferred to treat it as such. Not that he needed to tell her anything about Luke Dennison. She knew all about him, including the fact that he was a superbly tender lover.
But she, too, could be ruthless. First Natalie, then her life as a model, had taught her that she had to stand up for herself, fight for what she wanted and believed in.
And there was nothing she wanted more than to see her children.
What did his summons to the station mean? Were the girls there? Her heart thudded as she got into her car and set it in motion, concentrating on keeping to the left. Where there was other traffic it was simple, but once she got on to the no-exit road to Pigeon Hill she found her attention wavering, and a couple of times had to head back on to the correct side.
As before, Luke met her at the door, his angular face without expression. ‘They’re in the morning-room,’ he said.
Now that the ambition that had sustained her for ten long years was about to be realised, Perdita found she didn’t dare move. Instead, she stared at him as though she had never seen a man before. His image wavered and blurred. Colour leached from her skin as the floor tilted beneath her feet.
‘Perdital’ he said sharply.
Shivering, she was swept up in his arms and carried across the hall and into another room. He put her down on a sofa and ordered, ‘Don’t move. I’ll get you some brandy.’
Perdita closed her eyes. Almost immediately she heard whispering, and lifted heavy lashes to see the two girls coming across the room to her.
She’d always known they weren’t identical; what she hadn’t expected was for them to be quite so different.
One was a willowy creature with long limbs and a face whose bones had come straight from her mother, whereas her sister was small and sleek and—seeking the right word to describe her, Perdita could only find merry. Her eyes twinkled, she smiled with heart-lifting brightness, and her expression was alert and alive and vital, a contrast to the grave thoughtfulness of the other girl. The taller of the two had blue eyes whereas the other’s, Perdita was shaken to see, were the same green as hers; both had hair that was gloriously, unashamedly red, but the taller had straight, shoulder-length locks and the shorter’s curled around her piquant face.
‘Hello,’ Perdita said, smiling at them. Her heart clattered noisily, almost suffocating her. The last time she had seen them they had been seven days old, and she had been numb with despair, her throat raw from weeping. Something of the same agony of spirit racked her now, desolation and a sense of bitter deprivation, of loneliness so intense she’d had to repress it to be able to bear it.
‘Hello,’ they chorused, then looked at each other, said, ‘Tennyson,’ and linked little fingers, shutting their eyes as they made a wish.
The age-old ritual soothed something in Perdita’s heart. She said, ‘I hope your wish comes true.’
‘So do we,’ the shorter one said cheekily. She looked Perdita over with open interest and said, ‘Don’t you feel well?’
‘No, I—’
‘She almost fell at my feet.’ Luke appeared with a small glass of brandy. ‘Here, drink it down,’ he said.
‘I feel much better already.’
‘Drink it.’
She opened her mouth and the girls giggled. ‘You’d better do what he says,’ the shorter advised. ‘Mummy used to say when he gets that note in his voice he means to be obeyed.’
Perdita knew their names, even knew that the taller one was Olivia and the shorter Rosalind, but until Luke introduced them with the same austere courtesy he used for adult women she had always thought of them as Tara and Melissa. By the time she had adjusted to this they were all sitting down and the girls were looking at her with interest and a certain astonishment.
‘I know who you are,’ Rosalind said eagerly. ‘You’re a model, aren’t you? You’re the Adventurous Woman.’
A famous, old-established firm of cosmetic makers had rejuvenated its rather stuffy image with an advertising campaign that had aroused an enormous amount of interest. The Adventurous Woman concept had boosted sales to delirious, unexpected heights, doing wonders for the bank balances of the company, the advertising agency and Perdita.
‘I used to be,’ she said, setting the barely tasted brandy down on the small side table. “Not any more. I’m retired.’
She didn’t look at Luke but she felt his keen attention; her skin tightened.
Rosalind laughed. ‘You look too young to be retired. Didn’t you like being a model?’
‘Some of it was fun,’ Perdita admitted. ‘But a lot of it is pretty boring, just flicking your head around for photographers. And it was very hard work. Still, I didn’t go to university and get qualifications, so I had to take what I could get.’
They had Natalie’s exquisite manners. They talked freely and pleasantly, of their grandmother, of school, they asked questions about places she had been to, and Perdita found herself telling funny little anecdotes, absurdly thrilled when they laughed and commented. Occasionally she had to prompt them, but they were infinitely more confident than she had been at the same age.
