Deception (17 page)

'Of course,' she even
managed a weak smile. 'I'll be down soon to get your dinner. And remember your
grandmother will be here tomorrow.'

'I don't think I care
for Granny as much as you,' he replied flatly. 'Although she is nice.'

In her room she sent
him away. She would have a wash, then lie down, she said.
 
      
'
     

Jamie looked doubtful
but did as he was told. If Martha was making tea, he would bring her some up,
he said.

Jamie's obvious
concern touched Thea so much that when he was gone she was conscious of a
curious choking sensation. Without bothering to wash she fell on her bed,
burying her face in her pillows. Her temple, which she had caught against the
steering wheel, throbbed, the ache going through her whole head.

A moment later the
door opened and Logan walked in.
Thea,
scarcely able to see for pain, jerked upright. She knew
she must look a
sight, but she didn't care. Nothing seemed to matter any more. She was aching
and she felt miserable. 'What do you want now?' she cried bitterly.

'An explanation,' he
replied unfeelingly, his hands just as unsympathetic as he swung her feet to
the floor, forcing her to sit on the side of the bed.

'An explanation?' The
room swung around, but when she involuntarily clutched his arm to steady
herself, he jerked his arm away.

'Pull yourself
together, Miss Andrews,' he ground out, 'unless you want me to do it for you. I
don't believe anyone as capable of
 
as you are has many weak spots, not even physically.'

'I...' She made a
great effort to do as she was told, although the brilliance of his burning
eyes almost scorched her. 'The car came straight at me, Logan, straight out of
the road end. I couldn't do a thing ...' Suddenly, in the small, weighted
silence that followed, she realised this wasn't the explanation he was after.
'What are you trying to say?' she whispered apprehensively.

'I saw the police,' he
enlightened her.

Painfully, Thea
nodded. 'I—I suppose they would be there, but it wasn't my fault.'

'They know that. The
evidence was clear enough,' he paused, his eyes ruthless on her white face.
'They had to check your driving licence.'
 
     

Again
she nodded numbly, staring, in bewilderment,
back at him, as he went on harshly.

'I
found it in your handbag, which was lying on the seat
beside
you. You were in no condition to show them any
thing
and I thought it would save you any farther worry if
they looked at it
there and then.'

'Yes,
of course.' It made sense. It was standard pro
cedure,
she supposed, in most cases, and she always carried
her
driving licence with her. Then, as he waited grimly, she gasped at him in
horror, 'My driving licence ... Oh,
no!'

'It's
quite in order,' his dark face contorted savagely.
'Quite in order.'

There
was a low vibrancy in his voice as ruthlessly he
grasped hold of
her shoulders. He seemed to be hiding
some powerful emotion.
Terrified, Thea suddenly sagged,
wondering if he knew, or
if she could bluff her way out.
'Why are you mad, then?'

'Mad!'
his grip tightened cruelly. 'I'm so mad, Thea, I'd
like
to say things not fit for your ears. How old did you
tell me you were?'

The
fight went completely out of her at that. 'You mean,
you saw? You know?'

He
didn't spare her. 'Your passport was there, too. I
only
needed to glance at that, but it all added up to you.'

Unable
to look at him, she felt shocked and ill, but she
knew
she had been wrong to deceive him. 'The—the
police?' she
whispered, her lips trembling.

'Oh,'
he laughed harshly, 'they'll be discreet enough, but
how
long, do you think, before the news gets out? Before
the
whole district knows that the new housekeeper at Drumlarig is little more than
twenty years old?'

'I'm
sorry, Logan,' his terse anger was frightening, 'but
are
you sure anyone will take much notice? After all, I'm
only an employee.'

"This
afternoon, half the village must have heard you
calling me Logan, as I carried you into
the doctor's.' 'I couldn't have known what I was saying.' 'Well, I do—and
so do they,' he cut in curtly. 'You appeared to think it would give the
wrong impression if I carried you, but you probably did that yourself by
gabbling my name.'

She couldn't keep
repeating that she couldn't have
realised
what she was saying. Her eyes fixed on his, clouded
with misery, a
silent misery which was eating away at her heart.

'You knew, of course,
that if I'd had any idea of your true age I'd have thrown you out that first
day! You're full of tricks, aren't you? Instead of a down-and-out little brat
on the run from God knows what, you posed as someone old enough to know what
they were doing.' 'But—I—we haven't done anything.' He ignored her
tearful bewilderment. 'I've had several housekeepers, Thea, that I'll admit,
but not one. of them a day under forty. If they didn't stay long, with the
majority it was because the isolation and various other aspects of the house
didn't suit them. Maybe I was unlucky, but they all went. That's why I decided
to take a risk with you. Thirty was still too young, but not unforgivably so.
And, as far as Jamie was concerned, the situation was getting desperate.'

Hesitantly Thea
swallowed. His voice was so curt and cold it made her shiver. 'I may as well
confess, Logan, I didn't come to Scodand with the specific intention of looking
for any particular sort of work. When I came here you were ill and I liked
Jamie. He was like the young brother I would have liked but never had, or
perhaps,' her cheeks coloured faintly, 'the son I hope to have one day. I knew
you wouldn't let me stay if I told you I was twenty, even almost twenty-one,
and one lie seemed to lead to another.'

'As always,' he agreed
harshly. 'Tell one and you find you have to tell a hundred others.'
 
   

Not quite, she wanted
to say unhappily, not daring to risk being forced to explain anything else. Not
at the moment. 'I suppose you'll want me to leave immediately.'

He smiled grimly, a
smile which Thea didn't find reassuring, although suddenly a, lot of his
anger seemed to leave him. Broodingly, his eyes rested on her. 'Unfortunately
it won't be possible for you to leave immediately. I'm afraid you'll have to
stay until after Christmas. My mother's coming in the morning, remember, and
she won't be prepared to take over at a moment's notice. But more important,
you'll stay a little longer for Jamie's sake. I won't have his Christmas
ruined. He's going to be heartbroken enough as it is.'

Steeped in misery,
Thea stared down at her hands. For Jamie's sake and his mother's, but not his.
In spite of her growing love for Jamie, she had a hysterical desire to refuse
to stay. Yet even as she opened her mouth to do this, she found herself
surrendering to something she didn't understand, the pressure of Logan's
will over her own. 'If you really want me to stay,' she found herself murmuring
weakly, 'I will. As I said, I have nowhere else to go.'

'Yes, that's what I
want.' He spoke so grimly she was startled, but when she looked up quickly his
eyes were on the window.

A cold, damp wind was
blowing, making the thin cotton curtains tremble at the edges. With an
impatient sigh Logan strode over to close the window, drawing the curtains
across it, his frown deepening, as if he had just realised their obvious
inability to keep out the December cold. 'There's an electric fire somewhere,'
he glanced back at the shivering girl. 'It's like a morgue in here, which can't
be good for you. If you wait a few minutes I'll see what I can find.'

As he left the room,
Thea continued to shiver, but it wasn't wholly from cold. A lot of it stemmed
from the thought of having to leave Drumlarig. Her reprieve was
only to be of a short duration. Apprehensively
she gazed at
the door through which
Logan had disappeared. He was a
strange
man, with his varying moods which could change
so rapidly from cold anger to kindness, but she loved him.
More than anyone or anything. The knowledge of
this love,
hitting her like a blow,
left her trembling. She couldn't mistake it. It was something she had never
experienced
before and never would
again, for anyone but Logan Murray. Love for him moved through her, making her
alive, in a way she would never have believed
possible, but
very vulnerable. She
might feel she was suffering now, but
she
suspected there was worse to come, as Logan would
never see her as a
desirable woman.

When
she went back to London, she would meet other men, men who weren't all villains
like Jerry Banks. A girl
who lived in a luxury penthouse was not
usually lonely for
want of attention. There were men who could
keep her in
style compared with Logan Murray, but he was
the only
man she could ever marry. It was his love that she
wanted,
his passion. She wanted to have his children, as well as
wanting
to look after Jamie. There was room for any num
ber
of children at Drumlarig. Jamie needn't ever be lonely
again.
Above all there was Logan, but unhappily he had no
time for her. Nothing
she could do now was going
to alter the bad
opinion he had formed of her. It would
probably be a waste of time even
to try.

When
he returned, carrying a large portable fire, she was
still
sitting where he had left her. As he plugged in the fire and a glow of instant
warmth began penetrating the room,
she was startled when he
smiled at her. True, it was a
smile which didn't give much away,
but to Thea, with a
strange hunger in her breast, it was better
than nothing.

'Can
you manage to get undressed and into bed?' he
asked, his mouth
tightening, as he noticed the extreme
paleness of her face.

"I
have to get dinner...'
 
  

'Not
tonight.' He came nearer again, but now the hand
on her shoulder
was gentle. 'Thea, I'm sorry. I didn't intend
hurting you. It
was the shock of learning your true age, on
top of the shock of your
accident. I should have guessed about your age, but I never did care for being
deceived.'

His
apology surprised her. Intuitively, she guessed it
had
surprised Logan as well, as he seemed for a moment
faintly
disturbed. 'Logan...?' she began hesitantly.

'No
more, Thea.' He wouldn't allow her to go on, 'Let's
forget
about it until after Christmas, shall we? A homeless
waif
doesn't always act sensibly, I suppose, and I'd almost
forgotten
what it's like to be down to nearly my last penny.' - Closing her eyes, Thea
felt guilt of another kind swamp
ing her. Was there to be
no end to it? She must tell him
everything. She might be
an orphan, with no one who really
cared for her, but she
certainly wasn't a penniless, homeless
waif. And she should be
ashamed of herself for letting him
continue to think so!

 
CHAPTER
SEVEN

Searching
around, her wide anxious
eyes eloquently ex
pressing much of her inner torment, if not the exact source of it,
Thea almost jumped when Logan's hand tightened on her shoulder.

'No more tonight,
Thea, there's a good girl. Here,' he bent down, 'take your dressing-gown to the
bathroom and see if you can manage to wash that mud off. I'll wait here until I
see you're safely in bed. Then Jamie and I will bring you something on a tray.
Martha can stir herself for once, it won't do her any harm.'

Hopelessly Thea held
back the flood of explanations which he left her in no doubt he wasn't prepared
to listen to. It was there in the firm implacability of his face as he stood,
his arms folded now, watching her.

'You don't have to go
to all this trouble,' she protested weakly.

'I want you to feel
better in the morning, Thea.'

So she would be quite
able to look after his guests! Next morning, as she climbed stiffly out of bed,
Thea thought she saw the purpose behind Logan's kindness of the night before.
His mother was coming today and he wanted her visit to proceed smoothly. It was
important
 
to him that no
domestic crisis should be there to interrupt his normal routine. If he was
willing to bring his housekeeper her supper on a tray it was because his day's
work was over.