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‘I’m not sure yet, Malcolm,’ he answered easily, his gaze firmly fixed on Merry.
‘I understand,’ her father nodded. ‘Don’t be too hard on him, pet,’ he advised Merry before leaving the room.
Colour flooded her cheeks at the assumption her father had made that Gideon Steele was the man from her ‘first unhappy love affair’, and her blushes deepened as she saw the derision in Gideon Steele’s eyes.
‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped ungraciously.
He shrugged and sat down again, perfectly relaxed. ‘I told you I’d be back once I was sure of my facts.’
Her breath caught in her throat. ‘And now you are?’
‘I’m sorry, Merry, but yes, I am.’
There was no doubting his sympathy, or the look of regret in the deep blue eyes, and the emotions sat strangely on such a harshly determined man.
He stood up to pace the room, having discarded the empty beer can in the bin. ‘I went back to Harrington, told him to check on all the facts. They led straight back to you, Merry. I really am sorry,’ he repeated deeply. ‘I gather you haven’t spoken to your father?’
‘No! And I’m not going to,’ she added fiercely.
‘But you do believe me?’ he prompted softly.
She wetted her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue, wishing she could say no, but knowing it would be a lie. A man like Gideon Steele was unlikely to be wrong once, let alone twice! If he said she was adopted, that her mother was really his stepmother Anthea, then she had to believe him. But it changed nothing for her, made no difference to the love she felt for her parents. Anthea Steele had given her up when she was a baby, so she had no claims on her now, moral or otherwise.
‘Yes, I believe you,’ she answered in a cold voice.
‘So you’ll come and see Anthea?’
‘No.’
‘Good God, girl—–! She’s your mother!’ he ground out, his mouth a thin angry line, the tautness of his body telling her of the control he was exerting. ‘She brought you into the world—–’
‘And just as soon deserted me, by the sound of it!’ Her eyes glittered deeply green in her own anger.
‘She was very young, she’s only thirty-eight now—–’
‘I don’t care how old she was. She gave me up, she can’t come along twenty years later and try to claim a family love. It would be disloyal to my father to even acknowledge her existence.’
Gideon Steele shook his head. ‘I’m sure you’re doing your father an injustice. He seems a very reasonable man.’
‘Whether he is or not is not a subject for discussion.’
‘Drop that haughty act with me, Merry—–’
‘It isn’t an act, Mr Steele,’ she snapped. ‘I am not interested in meeting your stepmother, because as far as I’m concerned that’s all she is. My own mother paced the floor with me as a baby, fretted for me when I started school, worried about me when I was ill, encouraged me through my exams, waited up for me on my first date, celebrated with me when I got into drama school. Can your stepmother do any of that?’ Her scorn was unmistakable.
Gideon Steele drew in an angry breath, a pulse beating erratically in his lean cheek, his shirt pulled tautly across his chest as he thrust his hands into the back pockets of his trousers. He looked lean and powerful in that moment—a man far from beaten in this argument.
‘I’m not suggesting you welcome her with open arms,’ he rasped. ‘Or that she could ever take the place of your adoptive mother—–’
‘She never could!’
He looked impatient with her vehemence. ‘As I said,’ he drawled hardly, ‘I’m not suggesting that. What I am saying is that maybe you could be friends. Anthea would like that,’ he added softly.
Merry studied his softened expression with suspicion. Could he possibly feel more than a maternal love for his stepmother? He said Anthea was thirty-eight, that made her only four years older than he was, and it also made his father a lot older than his wife.
‘Did she marry your father for his money?’ she asked suspiciously.
His mouth tightened. ‘What sort of question is that?’ Anger oozed out of him.
Her head went back. ‘Did she?’
‘They’ve been married for twelve years,’ he revealed abruptly. ‘I think my father would have realised by now if that were the case.’
‘Twelve years?’ she repeated softly. ‘Then she’s had all that time to think about wanting to know her daughter, so why now? Why doesn’t she just have another child and forget all about me?’
‘I’m beginning to think she would be better doing that myself!’ he rasped.
Merry flushed at his rebuke. ‘I’m sure she would.’
‘And will you forget her too?’ he taunted harshly. ‘Don’t be stupid. Merry. Now that you know of her existence it would be impossible to ignore her. As for why she would want to see you now, I can tell you that she’s always wanted to see you, but that she tried to be fair to you and not interfere in your life while you were still a child.’ His derisive expression showed that he still thought that was so. ‘Last year, when she was in hospital, she told us about you. I think she just wanted us to know that she had a daughter, a daughter she loved.’
‘In hospital?’ Merry repeated sharply. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Why are you interested?’ he mocked.
Merry glared at him. ‘I’m not—–’
‘She had a nervous breakdown,’ he cut in steadily. ‘She’d been living on her nerves for years, and she just suddenly folded up. We finally discovered it was because of you, because of the guilt she still felt for giving you up.’
‘But that was last year?’ she frowned. ‘Surely she’s well now?’
He sighed. ‘Surperficially, yes. But she’s been on pills ever since, and my father fears that she’ll have another breakdown.’
Her mouth twisted. ‘Wouldn’t producing me give her rather a shock? You said she knows nothing of your search for me?’
‘I wish I could believe your concern for her was genuine,’ he snapped angrily. ‘But I know damn well it isn’t.’ He took a card out of his breast pocket and wrote on the back of it. ‘If you ever find yourself with a little compassion to spare call me at this number. But don’t call me otherwise,’ he rasped. ‘Anthea couldn’t cope with your derision and hate. Now walk me to the door, like the polite little girl you’ve obviously been brought up to be,’ he derided hardly, throwing the card down on the coffee table and following her out of the room.
Merry faced him awkwardly at the door, his contempt for her not missing its target.
‘Think it over carefully, Merry,’ he turned to warn her. ‘You could be turning away the love of a woman who needs you, much more than you realise.’
‘She has your father, she has you,’ she told him coldly. ‘I can’t see any possible reason for her needing me, a child she hasn’t seen for twenty years.’
His eyes were glacial. ‘Can’t you?’ he rasped coldly. ‘Then your adoptive parents have failed you.’
‘How dare—–’
‘They haven’t taught you forgiveness,’ he cut into her anger. ‘Goodbye, Meredith. I hoped it wouldn’t be like this.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’
She closed the door as he left, but she didn’t move herself. She knew that his regret hadn’t been because he had come here to confirm what he had told her four days ago, she knew it was because he was disappointed in her lack of maturity in accepting what he had told her.
‘He’s wrong, isn’t he, Merry?’ her father questioned quietly behind her.
She spun round, guilty colour flooding her cheeks as she saw her father sitting down partway up the stairs. ‘You heard …?’
‘All of it,’ he nodded. ‘I came back for some papers I’d forgotten. I overheard—I couldn’t help but listen.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Is it true?’
Again he nodded. ‘He was wrong, wasn’t he, Merry?’ he persisted. ‘Your mother and I did teach you forgiveness, didn’t we?’
It was a double-edged question, and she knew he was asking for forgiveness for himself as much as for Anthea Steele. ‘Oh, Dad!’ She ran to him, the tears falling unchecked down her cheeks as she threw herself into his arms.
For a moment he just held her, letting her cry, stroking her hair as he had done when she was a child and needed comforting. ‘It’s all right, baby,’ he finally spoke to her, his own voice thick with emotion. ‘And you are still my baby, Merry, no matter who brought you into this world.’
She looked up at him with shadowed eyes. ‘Why …?’
‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘We should have told you when you were still a child, but we kept putting it off, and putting it off, keeping you as our very own little girl, I think. Then we decided that your eighteenth birthday would be time enough to tell you, when you were old enough to understand that we loved you even though we hadn’t managed to conceive you. But you know what happened just before your birthday,’ he added sadly.
‘Mummy died,’ Merry said shakily, the memory of the horror of that night three weeks before her eighteenth birthday still as vivid. Her mother had been knocked over by a car and killed.
‘Yes,’ her father acknowledged heavily. ‘After that I couldn’t tell you, didn’t have the courage to without your mother. But you are still our daughter, Merry,’ he told her firmly.
‘That’s what I told Gideon Steele—–’
‘But you do have a real mother,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And right now she sounds as if she needs you. Your mother did all the things for you that you claimed she did, and that forged a bond of love between you that’s so strong it will never be broken. But she didn’t bring you into the world, that was left to some other woman—to Anthea Steele.’
‘But—–’
‘Let me finish, Merry,’ he spoke strongly. ‘Your mother and I love you, you know we always will. Gideon’s stepmother, your real mother, could only have been seventeen when she became pregnant with you. Seventeen, Merry! Do you remember what you felt like at that age—imagine the trauma of expecting a baby when you were no more than a child yourself?’
She thought back to when she had been seventeen, to when she had been in her last year at school, taking her ‘A’ levels. She couldn’t have coped with a baby at that age.
‘You see?’ her father prompted gently as he watched the different emotions flickering across her face.
Merry remained adamant. ‘Then she shouldn’t have got pregnant! She—–’
‘If she hadn’t your mother and I would never have had you to love,’ he pointed out softly. ‘Your mother had every test possible, and she couldn’t have children of her own. Adoption was our only way of ever having a child then. If it weren’t for Anthea Steele, we would never have had you as our daughter.’
Hurt still warred with reason, her pain reflected in her deep green eyes.
‘I think Mrs Steele needs you, Merry,’ her father said softly. ‘I think she’s needed you for some time, for her sanity.’
Fresh tears flooded her eyes, falling softly down her pale cheeks, confusion, and also a reluctant curiosity, reflected in her eyes.
Her father was quick to note the latter emotion, and nodded slowly. ‘No matter what happens you’ll always be our daughter,’ he assured her intently. ‘But I don’t feel it would be disloyal to me to see your real mother. In fact, I’d feel rather proud if you did.’
‘P-proud?’ she repeated shakily.
He smiled. ‘If I do say so myself, we’ve done rather a nice job of bringing you up. I’d like Mrs Steele to see that her sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.’
Merry frowned once again at his choice of words. ‘Sacrifice?’
Her father nodded. ‘You don’t think she found it easy to give you up, do you? Because it wasn’t,’ he shook his head. ‘No woman could give her child up without causing herself pain. And it’s a pain that has obviously never left Anthea Steele.’ He stood up, taking Merry with him. ‘Think about it, darling,’ he advised. ‘I’m not pressurising you to see her if you really don’t think you could cope with it, but I would be very pleased if you could. All right?’
‘All right,’ she nodded tearfully, once again thinking what a wonderful man her father was.
He smiled, wiping away her tears. ‘The stairs is a ridiculous place to have had this conversation,’ his smile deepened to a grin, ‘but I’m glad we’ve had it.’
‘So am I,’ Merry said, and meant it, giving him a quick kiss and a hug before running up the stairs to her bedroom.
A few minutes later she heard the front door close, and knew that her father had gone to work as usual. She could hear the local children playing outside as usual, the occasional car as usual. Only she seemed to have changed. She was no longer just the daughter of Sarah and Malcolm Charles, she was also the daughter of Anthea Steele, the stepdaughter of Samuel Steele, and stepsister to Gideon Steele. Just knowing that changed the whole fabric of her life, made her want to know exactly who she was, and what Anthea Steele was really like.
But she didn’t run headlong into meeting her real mother. She gave herself time to think, to consider the consequences of such a meeting, for them both. For herself she didn’t feel she would be too deeply affected if such a meeting didn’t work out—after all, she still had her father, no matter what. But if Anthea Steele were in the emotional depression her stepson claimed she was then it could have a disastrous effect on her.
Finally it was the curiosity that made her seek out Gideon Steele at the telephone number he had given her. It turned out to be a hotel, and it took several minutes to put through to his room. When there was no answer the hotel telephonist came back on the line.
‘Could I take a message for Mr Steele?’ she offered politely.
Merry chewed on her bottom lip, not sure she would be able to find the courage to call Gideon Steele again. ‘Could you tell him Miss Charles called,’ she said breathlessly.
Now if he still wanted her to meet his stepmother it would be up to him to contact her! Nevertheless, she made the concession of turning down the invitation Vanda passed on about a party at one of their friends’ flats. After all, there was no point in leaving a message that she had called him if she then went out for the evening herself.
By ten o’clock she was beginning to wish she had gone with Vanda; the lateness of the hour seemed to indicate that Gideon Steele had gone out for the entire evening too.
She was in the process of changing to go to the party after all when the doorbell rang. She zipped up her skin-tight red velvet trousers as she ran to answer the door, her red and gold interwoven top also figure-hugging.
Her eyes widened as she found Gideon Steele standing outside the door. Once again his suit was superbly tailored, blue this time, contrasted with a lighter blue shirt, and there was a weary look’ about his eyes and mouth as he raised dark brows at her appearance.
‘Mr Steele …’ she said weakly.
‘You called me—–’
‘I expected you to call back, not just turn up here!’ She was instantly on the defensive, something about this autocratic man making her feel that way whenever she met him. ‘I was just on my way out.’
‘And I thought the outfit was for my benefit,’ he drawled.
Merry flushed. ‘Hardly!’
He gave an impatient sigh, his face darkening to a scowl. ‘Could we talk about this inside?’ he snapped.
She opened the door to him warily, taking her time about closing it again, allowing herself time to collect her thoughts together. Why couldn’t he have just telephoned her? It would have been so much easier talking to him on the telephone, to have agreed to meet Anthea Steele if she hadn’t had to speak to him face to face. She wouldn’t put it past this arrogant devil of a man to know that, after all, he must know the reason she had called him. There could only be one reason!
He was waiting for her in the lounge, his impatience barely concealed as he tapped his fingers on the old stone fireplace that now housed an electric fire, drawing attention to the artistic sensitivity of his hands.
‘I’m to take it you’ve changed your mind about meeting Anthea?’ He finally spoke, impatient with her silence.
Dull colour flooded her cheeks at his directness. ‘Yes,’ she bit out.
