A Little Revenge Omnibus (26 page)

The passage it opened onto was narrow and dark, stone-flagged and icy cold. Anna shivered as she waited for Ward to switch on the light. When he did she could see that, whilst the walls and the floor were meticulously clean, they presented an appearance of unwelcoming austerity. Only one door led off the passage into a large, well-equipped kitchen. Anna looked with relief at the well-made wooden units and the large burgundy Aga. The room was large enough to hold a good-sized oak table and the stone floor had been softened by a couple of rag rugs.

‘This is lovely,’ she told Ward appreciatively.

‘My mother’s choice,’ Ward informed her. ‘She said I’d never get anyone up here to cook or clean for me if I didn’t provide them with a decent kitchen.

‘I’ll show you over the house and then we’d better have something to eat.’

They had stopped for a snack on the way to Yorkshire but Anna had been too excited at the thought of seeing Ward’s home to eat very much.

Half an hour later her excitement had faded, to be replaced by a mixture of complex emotions. Seeing Ward’s house—she could not call it a home—had almost been like studying a blank canvas. None of the rooms Ward had shown her, not even his own bedroom, betrayed anything of his character. Even the room where he worked was as austere as the rest of the house.

There was nothing wrong with the house itself. Its rooms were well proportioned, its views awesomely stunning, the furniture sparse but of good quality. It was just that the house was so sterile. It had no life, no warmth...no heart, and as she looked at Ward Anna suddenly felt unbearably sad for him. The house was so...so loveless. Had it been hers...

Anna allowed herself to daydream for a few minutes. That huge master bedroom he had shown her needed softening with fabrics that were sympathetic to the age and character of the house, not pretty chintzes, of course, but there were other fabrics—damasks, rich velvets in ruby-reds, imperial blues, warm golds, cool linens in sky-blues and watery greens—that would complement the landscape.

The single ceiling lights needed replacing with lamps and wall lights. The large plain white bathroom needed thick, fluffy towels. The dull brown carpet needed replacing with something lighter and richer. The big double bed needed a rich, dramatic cover; the sofas in the television and drawing rooms needed heaping with piles of cushions. The bare walls cried out for paintings, the empty surfaces of the furniture for bowls of flowers and family photographs.

Family photographs!

That was what this house needed, what it lacked. It lacked a family. It lacked love, as perhaps Ward had lacked it before they had met one another. A huge lump filled Anna’s throat. She loved him so much, ached for him so much. She only had to see this house to know that there must have been a time in his life when he had felt very unloved.

As Ward watched the expressions chasing one another over Anna’s face, he realised that he had seen them before. His mother’s eyes had held that same look of loving compassion when she had gently tried to persuade him to move closer to her and his stepfather.

‘I like it here,’ he had told her stubbornly.

‘But, darling, it’s so...so bleak,’ she had sighed.

Ward had shrugged away her criticism. It might seem bleak to her. To him it felt merely private, secure...safe.

‘I’ll take your things up and put them in the guest room; it’s got its own en suite bathroom and if you want to have Missie and Whittaker up there with you...’

The spare guest bedroom. Anna looked at him in surprise. She had naturally assumed that she would be sharing his room, his bed.

Ward could see what she was thinking but this time he was prepared. He had had the long drive north to think about the situation and he had decided what he must do—and say.

‘Ecclestone is a bit old-fashioned,’ he told her, ‘and I wouldn’t want Mrs Jarvis to get the wrong idea about our relationship.’

It was, after all, the truth. He certainly didn’t want his cleaner carrying tales back to the town that he and Anna were a couple. His mother still had contacts in the area, and sooner or later the news would get to her ear, and when it did...

It was no secret to Ward that his mother very much wanted him to marry again and have a family—not for her sake, as she was always quick to reassure him whenever she raised the subject, which was virtually every time she saw him, but for his own. If she thought for one moment that there was a woman in his life she would move heaven and earth to keep her there—permanently!

It was, though, also true that Ward did not relish the thought of being the subject of local gossip. He had endured enough of that when his marriage had broken up. But that, of course, was not the real reason why he wanted them to have separate bedrooms!

It was sweet of Ward to want to be so protective and chivalrous, Anna acknowledged, but she would still rather...

‘We are both mature adults,’ she reminded him gently. ‘And both free to...to choose what we do with our lives.’ She looked at Ward gravely but she could sense that he wasn’t going to change his mind.

It would, she knew, be relatively easy to persuade him to change it. If she went over to him now, for instance, and started to coax him, touch him, seduce him... But she simply wasn’t that kind of woman. She wanted Ward to want her, to be proud of desiring her, to want her love so recklessly that he simply didn’t care what other people thought. And, after all, if he really felt so strongly about other people’s views and about her, then he could always ensure that no one had any reason to gossip about them. There was nothing to stop them from making public vows of the commitment they had surely already made to one another privately.

Maybe they had not known one another very long, but it must be long enough for Anna to be very sure of her feelings, long enough for her to know that if Ward were to ask her to marry him she would say yes.

* * *

‘W
HAT
WOULD
YOU
like to do tomorrow? We still haven’t been to Lindisfarne, and then there’s—’

‘Couldn’t we just stay here?’ Anna asked Ward gently. She had been in Yorkshire for three days now and every day Ward had insisted on taking her out.

They had spent a day in York, which she had loved, and another in Harrogate. Ward had driven her miles through the Dales, delighting her both with his knowledge of his home county and the sights he had shown her. They had eaten magnificent Yorkshire high teas in York and in Harrogate’s famous tea shop, and delicious lunches in traditional village pubs in the small Dales villages, sumptuous dinners in restaurants boasting many prestigious awards. But all Anna really longed for was to be alone with Ward, with a simple meal of nothing more exotic than bread and cheese washed down with a bottle of wine, and with the knowledge that he wanted and loved her. That was what she wanted.

Yesterday, after a delicious lunch, they had walked, climbing the moorland track until they found a sheltered spot to rest surrounded by empty moorland and out of sight of any curious eyes. Anna had longed for Ward to take hold of her, kiss her, make love with her, the way he had done in Rye, and for a second she had thought he would. She had stumbled on a piece of stone and he had reached out to steady her, asking, ‘Are you all right?’

When she had nodded she had seen the way his gaze slid to her mouth and stayed there. Her heart had started thumping, her body quivering with longing for him. He had moved closer towards her so that she could feel the warmth of his body, and her mouth had become dry with arousal and tension. Automatically she had licked her lips. Immediately Ward had released her, turning away from her, but as he had done so she had thought she heard him groan.

Now Anna longed for the courage to be bolder, to be able to express her longing for him openly, but it simply wasn’t her nature. She was finding her loss of memory increasingly frustrating; without any proper knowledge of the history of her relationship with Ward to guide her she had no idea how to deal with the present situation.

He didn’t want people to gossip about them, he had told her, and, naturally, it had pleased her that he should be concerned for her reputation, but she was beginning to feel as though their relationship existed in some kind of vacuum. It had no past, or at least none that she could remember, nor did it seem to have any future, or at least not one which Ward wanted to discuss with her.

Anna shook her head, trying to disperse her uncomfortable thoughts. Perhaps it was the bad dreams she had been having these past two nights that were making her feel so on edge and uneasy. None of her dreams seemed to make any sense; they were a confusing mixture of images, faces, scraps of conversation, untidily woven together with her own emotions of despair, fear and anger. In them she could hear Ward’s voice, raised and angry, but the words he was speaking to her made no sense, nor did her frantic anxiety over money, her desperate physical searching for it.

All in all, Anna was beginning to question whether she had made the right decision in agreeing to come north with Ward.

* * *

T
URNING
HIS
BACK
on Anna, Ward walked over to the sink and looked out of the window. His heart was thumping heavily, too heavily; keeping Anna at arm’s length was proving even more difficult than he had imagined.

Yesterday on the fell he had been so tempted to take her in his arms and kiss her, so very, very tempted, and he had seen from the baffled, hurt expression in her eyes that she couldn’t understand why he had not done so.

He was growing tired of having to remind himself just why he had brought her here. After all, what was five thousand pounds to him? He could easily afford to lose ten times that amount of money. It was his own stiff-necked pride that had brought him to this impasse. If he hadn’t been so determined to make her repay Ritchie, he wouldn’t be in this situation now.

If he had any sense he would get the car out and drive her home right now. After all, she had friends, a god-daughter, who could look after her until she recovered her memory. It wasn’t his responsibility to take care of her. What did he actually owe her? Nothing. She was the one who owed him...five thousand pounds.

But, despite the logic of his thoughts, Ward knew that he did have an obligation towards her. He should never have allowed her to believe that they were lovers and, if he hadn’t been so furiously angry with her, so determined to make her admit that she had lied to him when she had denied being Julian Cox’s partner, he would never have done so. His own deceit was going to cost him an awful lot more than a mere five thousand pounds. It was going to cost him a lifetime of pain and guilt and regret, Ward acknowledged.

‘Ward?’

He stiffened as he heard Anna’s voice directly behind him. Anna took a deep breath as she waited for him to turn round. She knew what she had to say, what her pride demanded that she say, but that wasn’t going to make it any easier.

‘Ward, I think it’s time I went home,’ she announced quietly.

Somehow Ward managed to suppress his instinctive cry of denial, his instinctive refusal to allow her to go...to leave him.

‘Very well,’ he heard himself saying harshly. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It is,’ Anna lied.

Through the kitchen window she could see the courtyard. It was raining, a dull, steady downpour from clouds which had masked the tops of the hills she could see from her bedroom, cloaking the landscape in mist.

‘I’ll go upstairs and pack,’ she added, stepping away from Ward and turning her back to him.

‘The car needs petrol; I’ll go down into town and fill the tank whilst you’re packing,’ Ward told her shortly.

Anything, anything, to put a safe distance between them. If he stayed, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from begging her to change her mind.

They were treating one another like strangers, Anna thought despairingly as he picked up his keys and headed for the door. But then, in many ways, wasn’t that what he was to her? A stranger and her lover. But he hadn’t been her lover these last few nights. He had kept her at a distance, in a separate room.

* * *

H
ER
CASE
WAS
packed but Ward still hadn’t returned. Anna tutted as Whittaker jumped out of her arms and through the open door into Ward’s study.

Irritably she followed him inside, calling him back. There were some papers on Ward’s desk. He had been working the previous evening after their return from dinner. He had been in a quiet mood all evening, uncommunicative with her, and distant, and eventually she had gone to bed without interrupting him.

Whittaker jumped up onto Ward’s desk, refusing to come to her. Tiredly Anna scolded him as he sat down on Ward’s papers.

‘You are a bad cat,’ she told him ruefully as she leaned across the desk to pick him up. Absently she glanced at the papers he had been seated on, more to check that he hadn’t left them covered in paw-prints than for any other reason, then she froze as a name leapt off the printed page in front of her.

Julian Cox!

Anna ignored Whittaker’s miaow of protest as she gripped him tightly. The room spun round her, going dark, dissolving in a terrifying vortex of fractured images and memories.

Julian Cox.

She could see him, hear his voice. She started to tremble with reaction and fear. She had lost Dee’s money to him, her fifty thousand pounds. He had frightened her with his constant phone calls, asking her when he could have the money she was supposed to be investing with him. There had been something almost unbalanced and dangerous about him, as though he was a man close to going totally out of control.

Anna had wanted to tell Dee how she felt but she hadn’t wanted to let her down, so she had suppressed her anxiety, with disastrous results. Perhaps if she had spoken up Dee would still have her money.

The black mist was starting to clear, Whittaker’s plaintive miaows bringing her back to reality. What she had just experienced had been a flashback and resurgence of her missing memory, Anna recognised as her body shook with cold and reaction. Her skin felt clammy, drenched with an icy sweat; she felt nauseous and her head ached.