No More Lonely Nights (18 page)

She slept very late next day, and only woke up when hammering started in the garden. At first, Sian wove the noise into her dreams and made it the crash of her heart in panic as she ran from some nebulous terror; then, as she began to wake, she thought her head was thudding as it had just after the accident. It was only when she opened her eyes and saw the strange room that she fully surfaced to remember where she was and what had happened. She lay there, staring around, one hand going up to her forehead to finger the bandage. Her head no longer hurt. She felt quite normal—except that she was saturated with sleep, heavy and stupid with it. She had been dreaming all night; fragments of strange dreams littered her memory, but when she tried to make sense of them she failed.

Cass had been in them. That much she was sure about. Cass had been in them all!

She pushed that aside hurriedly; she didn’t want to think about Cass. Getting slowly out of bed, she stretched, lazy as a cat, then went to the window. Pulling the curtain aside, she warily peered out, but there was no sign of Cass or any of his family. There were people in the garden, all strangers, workmen in overalls and dungarees, in shirt-sleeves and jeans. They were putting up a giant green canvas tent on the billiard-table smooth lawn. Others were erecting stalls nearby. The hammering came from one big man without a shirt at all who was driving the tent-pegs into the ground, wielding a hammer as big as himself.

Sian dropped the curtain back into place and went to run a bath, then looked through the clothes she had brought in her case. She laid a choice out on the bed and went into the bathroom to take a leisurely soak in the foamy water. It was half an hour before she emerged, smelling of musk and flowers, her naked body wrapped in an enormous pink bath towel.

She opened the door to find herself face to face with Cass, inches away from her. He grinned, eyes mocking as they drifted downwards to view the whole of her.

‘I was just about to knock!’

‘What are you doing in my room?’ she bristled, flushed.

‘I brought you some breakfast!’

She followed the gesture of his hand and saw the tray on her bed, biting her lip with self-irritation. ‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘I thought it was time you woke up,’ he drawled, shooting back his cuff to show her the face of his watch.

‘Gone eleven! I’d no idea it was that late! I’m sorry, you should have woken me!’

‘You needed the sleep. Did you sleep well?’

She nodded, self-consciously aware that her shoulders were bare and the towel a very inadequate protection against roving eyes. It had become damp now, and clung to her body like a second skin.

‘What’s under the silver cover?’ She bent to lift it from the plate on the tray and felt her stomach clamour at the sight of food. ‘Oh, gorgeous! Bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes… I mustn’t let it get cold, so I’d better dress quickly and start eating!’

He grinned at her, grey eyes teasing. ‘Is that a hint?’

She smiled back drily. ‘Well, what do you think?’

He strolled to the door. ‘OK, when you’ve eaten, come down and meet some of my friends, will you?’

Sian threw a look of consternation after him, but before she could answer he had gone, closing the door after him. Some of his friends? she thought with a sinking in her stomach. What was he up to now?

She was so perturbed that she had no real appetite once she sat down to eat the breakfast he had brought up. She tried some of it, ate some toast, drank some orange juice and some coffee, then she finished doing her make-up, her hands not too steady.

She had chosen a dress of pleated cotton with a tight waist, scooped neckline and full, swirling skirt. The misty lavender-blue shade suited her, and she loved the plaited silver belt. She had picked plaited silver sandals to match it, and had given her eyelids a lavender shadow with the same silvery sheen as that on a moth’s wing.

She ruefully considered herself reflected in the dressing-table mirror. The soft romanticism of the dress, the belt, the silver shoes, were hardly sexy or exciting. Men weren’t going to stop in their tracks or gasp, were they?

‘So what?’ she asked herself. ‘Who are you trying to bowl over?’ Then she turned away hurriedly and made for the door, before stopping and going back for her breakfast tray.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she met a young girl in a green wrap-around overall who smiled, said cheerfully, ‘Morning!’ although it must almost be midday by now, and then took the tray from her.

‘Thank you,’ Sian said, and would have gone on to ask where she could find Mrs Cassidy, but at the sound of her voice Cass himself appeared in the doorway of a room across the hall.

‘Ah, there you are! Come and meet my family.’

In some trepidation, Sian slowly joined him, flushing at the way his grey eyes wandered over her.

‘You look lovely,’ he said softly, and she lowered her eyes because she didn’t want him to know the compliment had taken her breath away.

It was a while before she could say huskily, ‘Thank you.’ She had been paid many compliments before, by all sorts of men, for all sorts of reasons, from the terse, ‘Not bad work!’ she sometimes got from Leo, and treasured, to the practised insincerity of the office flirts telling her they really fancied her when they didn’t, but merely wanted to coax her out on a date because they knew she would turn them down and that made her a challenge they couldn’t pass by. No other man had ever made her feel weak inside at the way he looked at her, or made her feel she could walk on air because of something he had said.

I’m in love with him, she thought, then angrily told herself she was crazy: how on earth could you be in love on such short acquaintance?

He somehow had a strange power over her reactions, that much she couldn’t deny. He caused all sorts of weird things to happen to her body; to her heart and lungs, her pulses and nerves, the blood circulating in her veins, her very skin. He was a drug to which she was wildly susceptible; just a little of him and she was having some dangerous symptoms, but that didn’t add up to love, or to anything long-term, let alone permanent.

He held out his hand with a faintly imperious gesture. ‘Come in, then! You aren’t shy, are you?’ She should have ignored both his hand and his teasing voice, but while she was deciding what to do he caught hold of her and pulled her into the room.

Sian’s nervous eyes flashed around, receiving an impression of green and ivory: cool, light, springlike. The sitting-room was spacious and sunlit, with comfortable furniture, gently faded brocades at windows, a deep, soft carpet underfoot. This was both an elegant room and a family room—there were valuable and pretty porcelain figures everywhere, but also silver-framed photographs of children and dogs; an antique French clock stood next to a vase of wild flowers obviously crammed into place in a haphazard fashion, both of these standing on what Sian suspected to be a priceless Chippendale table.

It wasn’t the room that made her nervous, though; it was the people in it, all staring at her with what she felt were hostile eyes.

Mrs Cassidy at least, smiled, patting the sofa she sat on. ‘Come and sit next to me, my dear. How do you feel this morning? Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Sian, walking a little unsteadily as she crossed the room, because those unfriendly eyes were unnerving. There were four other people in the room—two strange men, an unfamiliar but very attractive girl, in a pink dress—and Magdalena.

It was Magdalena who radiated hostility, of course, and as Sian sat down she made herself look at the other girl, challenging her, the way she would have stared back at a threatening dog in her path. Sian wasn’t going to be scared off or put down by Magdalena, but she was puzzled by that overt hostility. What had she ever done to Magdalena, for heaven’s sake, that warranted these black looks?

Cass interrupted her thoughts by introducing the others. ‘Sian, I don’t think you’ve met my brother, Malcolm, have you?’

‘Hello,’ she said as the thin, dark young man smiled at her. He had a certain resemblance to Cass, but he lacked that visible aura of power. He seemed quiet and shy and a little unsure of himself, although he was quite attractive in his way, and the girl with him was very pretty indeed.

Cass introduced her, too. ‘Andrea Hill, a friend of Malcolm’s.’

Sian smiled; Andrea half smiled back, but with reserve. Sian got the impression that she knew all about the situation, and was firmly on the side of the Cassidy family. Andrea had possessive eyes and a determined jaw; she slid her hand into Malcolm’s arm as if to make it clear he was her property. Malcolm, interestingly, looked startled; a bird taken by surprise by a cat.

‘You know my sister, of course,’ Cass murmured. Before Sian could look at Magdalena, he added, ‘And this is her husband, Robert Shaw.’

Sian switched her smile to the third man, who began to smile back, then stopped as his wife turned angry eyes on him.

‘Magda!’ Cass said ominously, and she looked at her brother, biting her lip and scowling like a sulky child.

‘Magda has something to say to you,’ Mrs Cassidy chimed in suddenly, but Magda seemed in no hurry to say it.

‘Malcolm, why don’t you and Andrea go and check on the workmen?’ Cass suggested. ‘They should have finished by now, but I can still hear hammering.’

Andrea was in no hurry to be dragged away from this interesting conversation, but under those cool grey eyes she didn’t quite have the nerve to stay. Cass was a very different proposition from his brother, and Malcolm was already on his way to the door, so Andrea had to go with him. When the door had closed behind them, Cass looked back at his sister encouragingly, one brow raised.

Magdalena swirled round suddenly to face Sian; she shot one look at her, then looked down. Very flushed, she burst out, as if in accusation, ‘It was me driving the car, not Cass!’

‘Oh, I see,’ Sian said, not knowing quite how to respond, then there was a silence.

‘And…’ prompted Cass in a firm voice, watching his sister, not Sian.

‘And I apologise,’ Magda said through her teeth, looking up then, and eyeing Sian with hatred.

‘Magda!’ Cass said, but this time she ignored him. Turning on her heel, she ran out of the room, slamming the door.

Her husband sighed. ‘I’ll go and talk to her.’ He looked rather sheepishly at Sian. ‘Sorry about this, she shouldn’t have…she has this temper, and when she loses it she does stupid things.’

He went out and Mrs Cassidy groaned. ‘What are we going to do with that girl? Cass, should I go too? Poor Robert can’t handle her, he gives in to her too much.’ She got up without waiting for an answer. ‘I’ll make her come back and do it properly this time?’

‘No, please don’t,’ Sian said, appalled at the idea.

‘Oh, I think she should,’ Mrs Cassidy insisted at the door. ‘She really must learn not to do such dreadful things. She thinks she can get away with anything, and one day she may do something really terrible. She could have killed you. I’m sure she didn’t mean to, and I’m sure the whole episode has frightened her, but she can’t be allowed just to get away with it. Not this time. She must face up to what she did.’