Return Match

She grimaced faintly as she stepped into the kitchen. This was one room she would not miss. Large and old-fashioned, it was ill-lit and ill-equipped, unlike the kitchen at the Dower House which had been installed by one of their tenants.

After her father’s death, in an attempt to cut back on costs, Lucy had been obliged to let Mrs Jennings, who had acted as their cook-cum-housekeeper, go. She had been eager to retire and more than happy with the generous cheque Lucy had given her, but Fanny had not stopped grumbling, complaining that it was too much to expect her to provide meals for all of them.

Because of this Lucy had discovered that she was the one doing the cooking, something which in other circumstances she might not have minded, but which in addition to all her other responsibilities had the effect of making her heart sink every time she entered the kitchen.

Tonight they would have to make do with beans on toast, she decided ruefully, anticipating Oliver’s objections to this meagre fare. Tomorrow night she would make it up to them, she decided, but for tonight a snack would have to do. She wanted an early start in the morning and was already far too tired to start preparing a large meal.

This physical and mental exhaustion was something which seemed to have dogged her since her father’s death, exacerbated by the discovery of Oliver’s true parentage. In many ways it shocked her that her father should have been so imprudent, and what of Oliver himself? Telling herself that now was not the time to start worrying about the future, she started laying the table.

Tara came in just as she was finished.

‘Mummy says she’s got a headache,’ she informed Lucy, ‘and she wants to have her supper in her room.’

Stifling the exasperated sound springing to her lips, Lucy said nothing. She tried to be patient with Fanny, telling herself that after all her stepmother had lost a husband, while she had merely lost a father who had not been particularly close to her. She could still remember the acute devastation of losing her mother, whom she had truly loved, and if Fanny was experiencing just one tenth of the anguish she had experienced then, then she did indeed deserve her sympathy and patience.

Fanny wouldn’t want beans on toast anyway. Perhaps if she boiled her a couple of eggs …

‘Go and tell Oliver to wash his hands and come down to eat, will you, Tara?’ she instructed the younger girl. ‘I want you both to have an early night tonight because we’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.’

‘Yes. I’ve already told Harriet all about her new paddock,’ Tara responded importantly. ‘Do you think she’ll really like it there, Lucy? She’ll miss Cinders, won’t she?’

Cinders was the small tabby cat who lived in the dilapidated stables; suppressing a smile, Lucy said seriously, ‘Oh, I think we can take Cinders with us.’

‘But you said that we couldn’t take anything that belonged to the Manor.’

So she had, but privately Lucy could not see that her cousin was going to object too much to the removal of one small cat, and, as Tara had said, her pony was very attached to the little animal.

‘Is he really horrid, Lucy?’

‘Horrid? Who?’

She turned away from what she was doing, her attention concentrated on the little girl.

‘Your cousin. The one who’s coming to live here.’

‘Good heavens, of course he isn’t horrid. Whatever gave you that idea?’ Heavens! The very last thing she wanted was for the children to take an anti towards Saul, and she had better nip that idea of Tara’s very firmly in the bud.

‘Oliver said he was,’ Tara told her determinedly, ‘and Neville told him.’

Mentally cursing her maternal cousin, Lucy said airily, ‘Oh I expect Neville was just joking. I promise you Saul is very nice.’

Behind her back she crossed her fingers. Tara’s scowl relaxed. ‘And he won’t take Harriet away from me?’

‘Of course not. Now go and tell Oliver to come down for supper.’

CHAPTER TWO

IT was another three very hectic days before they were able to actually move into the Dower House, and as she surveyed the now empty ballroom Lucy reflected that she was more tired than she had ever felt in her life.

Fanny had alternated between bouts of weeping, shutting herself away in her bedroom, and an almost frenzied desire to have her children beside her.

Both of them were unsettled by their mother’s half-hysterical behaviour, especially Tara, but, now that they had actually physically left the Manor, Lucy was hoping that Fanny would start to make a recovery.

An odd kind of melancholy engulfed her as she wandered through the familiar rooms, stopping every now and again to touch some familiar item of furniture. She loved the old house, but felt no possessive desire to live in it. She had grown up after all knowing that it was entailed and would never be hers. A small smile curled her mouth as she thought back over the years, remembering that Neville had been more upset than she was herself when her father had curtly explained to both of them what the entail involved.

That had been the year before Saul had spent the summer with them. Up until then Neville had always claimed that when they grew up he intended to marry her. Even as a child Neville had had a keen eye for the main chance, she thought, wryly amused that she could ever have been taken in by her cousin’s shallowness.

How long would it be before Saul arrived? A familiar sliver of tension spasmed through her stomach and she pushed it aside, annoyed with herself. What was there to feel apprehensive about? Her ownership of the Dower House was secure enough after all and, even if he wished to do so, Saul could not dislodge her. But why should he want to? The fact that they had not got on as children could hardly influence his attitude towards her now … could it?

It was disconcerting to realise how little she knew about him. Her aunt, his mother, had left home just after the war to marry her American. Much against their parents’ wishes, her mother had told her once when Lucy had pressed her for more information about her aunt who lived so far away.

About Saul’s father she knew very little, only that his mother had divorced him. It struck her uncomfortably that her father had been rather remiss in not making any attempt to get to know the nephew who would succeed him, but, knowing her father as she had done, Lucy recognised that he had probably hoped right up until the end that somehow he would be able to prevent the inevitable and pass the Manor on to Oliver.

In his own way her father had been as much of an ostrich as Fanny. Still, it was too late to regret her father’s omissions now. Even to her accustomed eyes, the house looked shabby. She hoped that Saul wasn’t expecting too much of his inheritance. She remembered he had not allowed himself to be overly impressed with it on his one visit, grimly ignoring all her heavily embellished boastings about secret stairways and haunted rooms.

As she walked past the giltwood mirror over the drawing-room fireplace she saw that her face was streaked with dust, her hair curling wildly about her face. Her hands and clothes were filthy, too. She needed a bath. There was nothing left for her to do here apart from locking up. Tomorrow she and Mrs Isaacs could set about cleaning the place properly.

As she slipped out into the courtyard at the back of the house she remembered that she had promised to feed Harriet, who was still in her stable. They had been too busy as yet to take her down to her new home in the paddock. Thank goodness it was summer and they would have time to build her a new stable in the paddock before winter came.

The fat little pony whickered a greeting as Lucy opened her door, Cinders winding herself sinuously round her ankles. She dealt quickly with the feed before wandering disconsolately back to the Dower House.

The next morning she was awake early, disturbed by the unfamiliar pattern of the sunlight across her face. Groggily she opened her eyes and then winced as her stiff muscles made their protest. At least here in the Dower House she would not have to coax a sulky range into life before she could have any breakfast.

It was too early to wake the others and, once showered and downstairs, Lucy found herself enjoying the unfamiliar solitude. The kitchen, so airy and well equipped after the Manor’s, made her spirits lift slightly, and as she sipped her fragrant hot coffee she went over her plans for the day. She had arranged to meet Mrs Isaacs up at the Manor at nine, which meant that for once Fanny would have to get the children’s breakfast. Shrugging away a faint feeling of guilt, she reminded herself that after all Fanny was their mother.

By eleven o’clock the clean jeans and T-shirt she had come out in were streaked with dust and grime. Her skin felt hot and sticky, her body was aching.

‘I think we’ll take a break,’ she suggested to Mrs Isaacs.

‘A good idea. I’ll go down and make us both a cup of tea.’

Mrs Isaacs had been gone for about five minutes when Lucy heard the car, the shock of the unexpected sound drawing her to the window.

It was a large BMW, and it was stopping right outside the front of the house. A tremor of nerves seized her stomach as she watched the tall, dark-haired man emerge from the driver’s seat.

Saul! Funny that she should recognise him so immediately when for weeks she had tried to conjure up his boyhood features without success.

He was wearing a lightweight pale grey suit and looked, if anything, more European than American; dark enough to pass for an Italian, although perhaps rather too tall.

As she watched, Lucy saw Tara emerge from the side of the house, leading Harriet. The little girl was talking earnestly to the pony, who seemed oblivious to her mistress’s attempts to get her to hurry. In fact Harriet seemed more interested in the juicy grass beside the drive than Tara’s commands.

Lucy saw Saul move warily towards the little girl, the face which had seemed almost grim as he got out of the car softening slightly.

Tara had frozen at the sight of him, clinging desperately to Harriet’s reins. Amused, Lucy watched as Saul’s attempts to make friends were fiercely rebuffed, amusement changing to alarm as she realised that Tara was starting to cry. What on earth had Saul said to her?

Quickly she ran downstairs and out on to the drive, just in time to hear Tara crying out tearfully, ‘You are horrid after all. Very horrid!’

Saul’s hands were on Harriet’s bridle, and Tara was desperately trying to tug the pony away.

As she saw Saul’s face change, Lucy bit her lip. Now, with the amusement gone from his eyes, he looked very cold and alien.

Neither he nor Tara was aware of her until she called out sharply, ‘Tara, that’s enough.’

Tears flooded the brown eyes as they met Lucy’s.

‘Well he is,’ Tara insisted stubbornly. ‘You said he was nice, but he isn’t.’

Saul was looking at her now, and Lucy felt the colour burn up under her skin as she realised what a dreadful picture she must present, her face stained with dust and completely free of make-up, her hair all tangled and untidy.

‘Saul! How lovely to see you.’ Ignoring Tara for the moment, she forced herself to smile the poised, self-confident smile she had learned so carefully, but it faded quickly when she realised he wasn’t smiling back at her, his eyes as cold and grey as the North Sea as he looked her up and down and then without a word turned back to Tara.

‘I wasn’t really trying to take your pony away, you know,’ he told her. ‘I was just trying to make friends with her, that’s all. She’s far too small for me, but she reminds me of a pony I had when I was a little boy.’

Amazingly Tara stopped crying, her eyes widening as she whispered, ‘Did you?’

‘Yup. He lived on my uncle’s farm, and I used to visit him during my vacations.’

His voice hadn’t lost the soft drawl she remembered so vividly. Why on earth had she and Neville made fun of it? It was pleasantly soft and fell easily on her ears, causing her to suffer a momentary pang for her own folly in antagonising him. Instinctively she recognised now that he would have made a far better ally than Neville, that he could even have been a refuge for her to lean on during those difficult months after her mother’s death.

Cross with herself for letting emotion get in the way of reality, she interrupted breathlessly. ‘I’m sure Saul doesn’t mind you taking your pony Tara …’

‘Why should I?’ he interrupted her in that same slow drawl. ‘After all, you’ve already taken damned near everything else. What’s a pony?’

The way he looked at her, the ironic contempt in his voice, stunned her into dismayed silence.

This was not what she had expected at all, this gage flung down at her feet for her to pick up. But what on earth could she say to him in her own defence?

She glanced at Tara. ‘Take Harriet down to the paddock, Tara, and tell your mother that Saul’s arrived.

‘We didn’t expect you quite so soon, and I’m afraid everything’s still rather a mess. However, we’d be delighted if you’d have lunch with us.’

‘My, my … how you’ve changed.’ Again that biting mockery. ‘Or have you? Those are very pretty party manners you’ve got somewhere along the way, Lucy. You certainly didn’t have them twelve years ago.’

His cynicism stung her into replying fiercely, ‘Twelve years ago I was still a child, Saul … And what’s more I had just lost my mother.’

Watching his eyes harden she bit her lip, angry with herself for being so easily provoked. What on earth had happened to all her good resolutions about proferring an olive branch?

Turning away from him to hide the hot tide of colour flooding her skin from his penetrating glance, she mentally derided herself for the sensations engulfing her.

The truth was that she had stupidly expected a more physically adult version of the boy Saul she had remembered, but what she had got was a man who seemed to share nothing other than a name with that boy she remembered.

‘I want you to have lunch with us,’ Tara interrupted firmly, gazing up at him. ‘I want you to tell me all about your pony. What was his name?’

‘Mustard.’

For some reason the slow smile he gave Tara made Lucy feel bleakly excluded and hurt.

‘You’re sure it’s no trouble?’

He was looking at her now, his eyes still cold, smoothly assessing the shape of her body beneath its covering of skimpy T-shirt and ancient jeans, Lucy recognised. Anger flared hotly inside her, her mouth hardening as she turned away from him. As she fought for self-control she reminded herself that Saul had good reason to feel antagonistic towards her; he would after all have based his assessment of her on the girl she had been at twelve, and she could not really blame him for looking for chinks in her armour. Even so, in some strange way it hurt that he should have looked at her like that, dismissing the blood relationship between them, to treat her with a sexual contempt which she had found shatteringly demeaning.

Forcing a smile and ignoring the look he had given her she said calmly, ‘No trouble at all. It will be about an hour or so before it’s ready, but if you like I’ll introduce you to Mrs Isaacs before I go. She and I have just been trying to clean the place up a bit.’

She just caught the look of surprise in his eyes before he suppressed it and suddenly he looked more like the boy she remembered.

‘Rather a demeaning role for you isn’t it? Cleaning? Or were you hoping for a few more pickings?’

A sense of despair engulfed her as she heard the contempt in his voice. How could she have thought that she simply had to extend to him the hand of friendship to wipe out the past? Saul might have left behind the awkward aggression she remembered, but in its place was something far more lethal: a cold hardness that warned her that in his eyes she was more foe than friend.

‘If you’re referring to the estate,’ she told him quietly, ‘my father was entitled to sell what he did.’

She wasn’t going to add that privately she had not been in agreement with her father’s actions, but without raising her voice she added significantly, ‘He did after all have certain responsibilities.’

Saul looked at Tara and then equally softly told her, ‘In the last few months of his life your father raised almost two hundred thousand pounds from selling off everything that was unentailed—that’s an awful lot of money to support one widow and her child … Or are you telling me that you’re included in those responsibilities? Hasn’t anyone ever told you about the pleasure of being self-supporting, Lucy?’

She could feel her face sting, but even if Tara had not been looking on there was no defence she could honourably make. How could she tell him of her promise to her father to keep the family together, to look after not only the children but Fanny as well?

‘I’ll take you to meet Mrs Isaacs.’

She caught the flash of bitterness in his eyes as she refused to respond to his barb, but what else could she do? She had not realised how bitter he would be about her father’s actions, but without betraying the secret of Oliver’s birth there was nothing she could do.

She maintained a cool distance while she introduced him to Mrs Isaacs, hesitating before offering to show him round the house. Mrs Isaacs was a warm-hearted soul, but a devout gossip, and she didn’t want it to get round the village that there was bad feeling between herself and Saul, which would be the conclusion Mrs Isaacs was bound to leap to if she did not make the offer.

‘I think I remember the layout pretty well. And I do have the plans so I don’t think I’ll get into too much trouble. Thanks for the offer though.’

He was dismissing her, Lucy thought irately; making it plain that he had no desire whatsoever for her company—or her presence in what was now his house.

‘I’ll see you at lunch time then.’ Try as she might she could not quite keep the corresponding stiffness out of her own voice, and as he dipped his head in acknowledgment she recognised that he was entitled to the mockingly victorious smile that twisted his mouth.

As she had half expected, when she got back to the Dower House Fanny was still in bed. She wondered what the children had had for breakfast.

Concealing her exasperation, Lucy went up to warn her about their visitor.

‘What’s he like?’

‘Tall dark and handsome,’ Lucy responded flippantly, and then realised that it was quite true; and more than that there was a masculine strength about him that she found inordinately appealing.

Appealing? Nonsense! She was letting the fact that the responsibility for Fanny and the children weighed heavily on her shoulders get to her.

It took her almost half an hour to persuade Fanny that she ought to join them for lunch.

‘You’ll have to meet him sooner or later,’ she reminded her stepmother. You don’t want people to talk.’

It was a good ploy and one that brought a petulant frown to her stepmother’s forehead.

‘How on earth are we going to feed him, Lucy?’ she demanded. ‘These Americans are used to eating well, you know.’

‘And so he will,’ Lucy responded tartly. ‘We’re having asparagus from the garden, fresh salmon, and strawberries and cream.’

The salmon had been a gift from one of their neighbours, a retired colonel who had been a close friend of her father and who lived alone.

‘I suppose the salmon was from Tom Bishop?’ Fanny shook her head. ‘That poor man. You know, he really should marry again Lucy … Living all alone in that huge house, spending all his time fishing …’

∗ ∗ ∗

At one o’clock on the dot Saul rapped on the front door. Lucy, who had been working nonstop from the moment she walked in the house, determined that there was no way he was going to be able to look as slightingly on her meal as he had done on her person, paused in the hallway and then called to Tara to let him in.

‘Take him into the drawing-room to your mother,’ she instructed the little girl, ‘and then go and tell Oliver to come downstairs.’ Oliver was in his bedroom, organising his possessions.

She had been so busy she hadn’t even had time to change, but now, from the safety of the kitchen where she was checking on the light sauce she had made to go with the salmon, she heard the drawing-room door and judged it was safe to dash upstairs and do something about her appearance.

Her wardrobe wasn’t exactly bursting with fashionable clothes, her lifestyle didn’t require them, but the few clothes she did have were good, carefully chosen and well cared for. Before her death her mother had once remarked approvingly that Lucy had inherited her own eye for colour and design, and the dress she hurriedly selected, a soft wrap-over style in pastel hued silk with pleats falling from the hip, was both elegant and feminine.

The soft peachy pink fabric with its pattern of muted greys and blues emphasised her summer tan, at once making her hair seem fairer and her eyes darker.

There was no time for her to bother with make-up and, quickly running a brush through her shoulder-length hair, she slipped on a pair of high-heeled sandals and hurried out of her room, almost colliding with Oliver at the top of the stairs.

He was, she saw with a sinking heart, looking oppressively sulky, his expression so like her father’s that she wondered that she had never realised the truth.

‘What’s wrong?’

He glowered at her. ‘I don’t want any lunch … I don’t want to have to talk to him … I don’t want him here, Lucy.’

‘Maybe not, but he is here and he has every right to be here,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘Oliver, I do understand how you feel, but you must try to realise how he feels as well. You don’t want everyone to think you resent the fact that he’s inherited the Manor do you?’

He shook his head slowly ‘I suppose not.’

‘Good. Now come down and have your lunch. It’s salmon. The colonel gave it to us.’

‘Did he?’ His face lit up. ‘I wish I’d been there when he came. He might have told me some more about during the war.’

Lucy laughed, relieved to see his sulks banished.

‘Well, there’ll be plenty more opportunities to talk to him I’m sure.’ Deliberately she didn’t let him go into the drawing-room alone, propelling him slightly ahead of her as she opened the door.

Fanny was sitting in one of the armchairs facing the french windows and to her astonishment Saul was standing close beside her, one arm casually draped over Tara’s shoulder as they all looked at something on her knee.

‘Oh there you are, Lucy dear …’ Fanny looked slightly flustered. ‘I was just showing Saul the photographs of our wedding. How pretty you look. It isn’t often we see you in a dress. That must be for your benefit, Saul.’ She smiled coyly up at him, blushing a little, while Lucy mentally seethed. She knew her stepmother to be completely innocent of any charge of guile, but nevertheless it was extremly galling that Saul should think she had dressed especially for him.

‘Well I could hrdly sit down to lunch in my work clothes,’ was all she said, but she was conscious of the mocking scrutiny in Saul’s eyes as she crossed the room with Oliver, and introduced him to the older man.

She was pleased to see that instead of talking down to him Saul shook hands with the boy, gravely treating him very much as the man of the house. Oliver visibly relaxed and Lucy gave a mental sigh of relief. Oliver could be extremely intractable and sulky when he chose—the result of too much laxity and spoiling, which she tried to counteract as best she could, all too conscious that once Oliver went away to school he would find that discipline was imposed upon him whether he liked it or not. Here again she blamed her father for not taking a firmer hand and not realising what a traumatic shock it could be for Oliver to go straight from his mother’s spoiling to the rigours of boarding school.

‘Darling, I think we’d better go into the dining-room for lunch.’ Fanny suggested. ‘Will you bring it in?’