Old Desires/A Stranger's Kiss (2-in-1 edition) (6 page)

The air was so still, so fragile that she knew that if she moved, if she touched them, her whole life, everything she had trusted, known, would disappear for ever.

But it already had. This hidden cache was proof that there was some great secret and that nothing would ever be the same again.

She picked up each item in turn. The violets, the handkerchief, which had somehow absorbed their lingering scent, the theatre ticket, torn in half by some unknown hand years before.

The locket sprang open to her touch to reveal a small curl of light brown hair. Not her hair or Mary’s. It belonged to the man who had fathered her and then simply abandoned them both without a thought.

Finally, the notebook, covered in Chinese brocade, with its own gold pen. A precious thing.

She swallowed and ran the tip of her tongue nervously over her lips before looking up to meet the grave expression on Joshua Kent’s face.

‘Like sticking-plaster?’ she asked shakily.

‘Would you prefer me to read it?’ he asked.

She shook her head. It had been waiting for her and after a last, brief hesitation she found the courage to open the book, written years before and left, like a time bomb, for her to find.

The handwriting was beautiful. Mary had written her thoughts and feelings from the first moment she had fallen in love. They were rare, bright, new and needed all the care she could give them.

It took Holly a long time to read and in all that time the man beside her said not a word. There were so many words. So much joy and so much pain and towards the end the pages had been blotted with tears.

It was only when she reached the postscript, written years after, that finally a great choking sob escaped her and she dropped the book, unable to read through the film of tears. Joshua caught her and drew her close, holding her against him, letting her pour her grief on to his broad chest.

She was barely aware of his soothing words, only that he stroked her hair, enfolding her in his strength, only that here was comfort. His cheek was cool against her temple; his lips brushed the delicate skin there and she raised her tear-soaked eyes to his.

‘Holly,’ he murmured. ‘I’m so sorry.’ For a moment he seemed to hesitate, then, briefly, for the endless space of a heartbeat, his lips touched hers and in that magic she was able to forget everything else. Smiling a little, he brushed the hair back from her face with his fingers and produced a handkerchief to dry her eyes. When he had finished, he asked, ‘Have you got any brandy?’

She shook her head. ‘Unless there’s some left over from Christmas.’ He found a bottle and poured some into a glass which he pressed into her hands. ‘Drink this.’ She pulled a face. She had never much liked brandy. ‘Purely medicinal,’ he said firmly.

‘Medicinal?’

‘It’ll make you feel better.’ She looked at it doubtfully, but she drank it in one swallow and shuddered and coughed as it burned its way down her throat.

He slapped her on the back until she had recovered. ‘I meant you to sip it,’ he scolded, but gently.

‘I don’t like the taste.’ She saw his eyes stray towards the notebook, lying where it had fallen, on the floor. ‘No. Please don’t read it.’

‘I need to know, Holly.’

She closed her eyes. ‘You were right. Mary was my mother.’

‘The birth certificate?’

‘It wasn’t a deliberate deceit. It just happened. She used my mother’s—’ She stopped and carefully corrected herself. ‘She used Margaret Carpenter’s name at the clinic. They always notify the local health authority of births, apparently, and as I was on the records as Holly Carpenter there didn’t seem any point in owning up and putting it right. Apparently, Margaret and Peter were going to adopt me anyway. This saved them the bother.’

He frowned at the sharp bitterness in her voice. ‘I spent a lot of time thinking about it last night and had reached the same conclusion. That Mary had used your mother’s name seemed the only explanation.’

‘She wasn’t my mother,’ Holly said. ‘Neither of them was.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Isn’t it?’ She turned on him. ‘One of them didn’t have me, one of them didn’t want me.’

He grasped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. ‘Nothing’s ever that simple, Holly. When you’ve
had time to think about it, I’m certain you’ll see it differently.’

‘I doubt it.’ She picked up one of the pathetic remnants of the brief affair. ‘This belonged to my father.’ She held out the handkerchief. ‘How would you feel if that was all you knew of your father?’

He saw the hurt, tried
to help. ‘Perhaps I could find out more for you. It shouldn’t be impossible. Even after all this time.’

‘No! He
thought too much of his position in society to risk it for Mary, or to acknowledge my existence. I don’t want to know anything about him.’

‘Not now, perhaps, but one day…’ He shrugged. ‘It’s too easy for me to tell you not to judge them. I have no way of knowing what you’re feeling. Or what they felt at the time.’

‘Not enough apparently.’ Her father might not have wanted her, but Mary... It hurt. The pain was so deep that she thought she could die of it. ‘They should have told me.’

‘Yes, you’re right, they should have told you, but Mary thought you knew. Margaret had promised her that you would be told when you came of age. Presumably that was when she was supposed to give you this.’ He indicated the box.

‘But she didn’t.’

‘Perhaps Margaret Carpenter still thought of twenty-one as that special birthday. Or maybe it was just easier to put it off for as long as possible. She died a few days before your twenty-first birthday, didn’t she, Holly?’

‘Yes,’ she said, choking back a cry as the reason for her mother’s distraction
struck home. The reason she’d stepped out in front of a car. Confessing the truth must have been burning a hole in her mind.

She quickly pushed the memories of old desires back into their envelope in an effort to consign them to the past where they belonged but Joshua reached out and caught her wrist, stopping her.

‘What do you intend to do?’

‘Do?’

‘Come back to Ashbrooke with me,’ he said, drawing her into his arms, but she resisted this new attempt to comfort her. It would be too easy to be comforted by Joshua Kent. He knew all the right words. But then he would go away, back to Lisa Stamford or some other woman like her, and there would be no comfort in the world to make that hurt better.

‘Ashbrooke?’ she asked, then shook her head decisively. ‘It’s too late for that.’

‘Why? There’s the house.’

She refused to meet his eye. ‘Do what you like with it, Joshua. I don’t want it.’

‘Think about it for a while,’ he pressed her.

‘No. I never want to go there again.’ She deliberately made her voice hard.

‘If you’re certain. But you’ll have to decide—’

‘You decide for me, Joshua,’ she said wearily. ‘I have to go to work.’ He frowned. ‘I thought you worked this morning.’

‘Just catching up with paperwork before the end of term. I have a class this evening. My last one.’

‘Of course. You’ll want to say goodbye to everyone.’

‘Goodbye?’

‘Surely you’ll resign now? You won’t carry on teaching?’

‘Why should I do that, Joshua?’ she asked with biting irony. ‘Because my mother — not the one who brought me up, but the new one I didn’t know about, the one who gave me away — has left me all her money as a sop to her guilt?’

His head shot back as if she had hit him and he let her wrist drop, breaking the link between them..

‘Very well, I’ll get on with it.’ His step back put a clear space between them and she felt as if she was being cast adrift. ‘I’ve already had an excellent offer for Highfield — Mary’s house.’ He waited, his face blank, for some reaction from her. Feeling nothing, she offered none. ‘Do you need any money straight away?’

‘No,’ she said. Then she lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Yes…’ He raised a brow in query. ‘I’m going to Italy at the weekend.’

‘How much do you want?’ The question disconcerted her. She had expected him to be angry with her. Had intended him to be angry.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ll transfer five thousand pounds. Give me the details of your bank account and I’ll see to it first thing in the morning.’

* * *

‘Falling asleep in the sun is not wise, Holly.’

The voice came from far away, familiar and yet strange after the weeks in Italy and France. An English voice that sent a ripple of pleasure up her spine. She kept her eyes closed, afraid that she had imagined it. But a shadow moved across her face and blocked out the sun.

‘I’m not asleep,’ she murmured.

‘I know.’ The voice was teasing. ‘You’re simply resting your eyes.’ If she had allowed herself to wonder what Joshua’s reaction might be to her continued absence, she would have assumed that he wouldn’t care. She certainly wouldn’t have expected him to come looking for her, not after their last meeting.

He had arrived unexpectedly on her doorstep the day after they had found the box in the loft, to confirm the details of a transfer of money to her account. She had opened the door and he had been there, grave, courteous, keeping his distance in the face of her brittle temper. It was the only time in her life she had regretted the lack of a telephone. Then he would simply have called her and she wouldn’t have had to bear the watchful scrutiny in his eyes.

He had asked carefully if she was all right, if she had slept and, on her snappy assurance that she was just fine, he had resisted any further enquiries, and had simply told her that he would call again and see her when she returned from Italy.

‘I’d like a little notice, Joshua. I may not be in if you just turn up,’ she warned him.

He’d looked at her hard and she’d thought he was about to say something, but he’d clearly thought better of it, since he’d contented himself with a slight shrug and said, ‘You could come up to the office if you prefer. I’ll drop you a line when everything is settled and you can call me and arrange a time.’ But she hadn’t been there to call him. She’d taken her flight to Florence the next day and, when the three weeks had expired she had not gone home.

She lifted lids so heavy that the effort was almost insupportable, unwilling to face the man who had come to disturb her fragile peace, half expecting him to be dressed in one of those elegant suits, tailored to perfection for his broad shoulders. But he looked equally at home in a fine jersey shirt and tailored shorts, his bare feet pushed into a pair of espadrilles. In fact, she thought, it was almost shocking that one man could look quite so desirable.

And desire was the right word. Because, although Margaret and Mary had been in her thoughts during the past weeks, Joshua had been there too. Not the angry, disapproving man to whom she had opened her door that disastrous afternoon, but a different man entirely — the one who had put his arms around her, holding her close while she had cried her heart out.

A man who had kissed her because her heart was breaking.

Maybe that was why she was unwilling to return. A quite ridiculous complication. He had merely been kind, although kind was not a word she associated with Joshua Kent. And she doubted that he could ever be described as merely anything.

‘I’ve brought some lunch,’ he said, putting down a wicker basket, as if this were sufficient explanation for his sudden appearance, and folded himself up beside her on the hard, dry earth.

Holly forced her eyes up from the pleasurable contemplation of his square shoulders, the strong, tanned column of his neck, to the more dangerous territory of his face, and suddenly she was wide awake.

‘How did you find me?’ she asked.

‘I saw your car parked on the road. They told me what you were driving at the hotel.’

She made an impatient, dismissive gesture. ‘I didn’t mean that. How did you know where to look in the first place?’

‘Were you hiding?’ One dark brow flicked up in apparent amusement at her naïveté. He began to open a bottle of wine dewed with moisture. ‘You’ll have to try a little harder if you’re being serious about it.’

‘Of course I wasn’t hiding, but…’

‘But?’ he asked, an edge to his voice warning her that he expected an answer.

‘But nothing,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t go out of my way to let anyone know where I was. That’s all.’

‘No, but you sent David a postcard from Arles. You hired a car and bought some clothes using a credit card. Finding someone is not so difficult if you know the right computer to ask.’

‘And I’m
sure you know them all personally.’

‘A few,’ he conceded, apparently not at all put out by the irritation in her voice. ‘Try this.’ He handed her a glass of wine and then proceeded to tear hunks of bread off a loaf. ‘Cheese? Or there’s some pate,’ he offered.

She ignored his offer of food. ‘All right, Joshua, you’re proved how clever you are. Now perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly why you’re here?’

‘But you know why I’ve come, Holly.’ He looked up then, his eyes creasing against the fierce sun. ‘I’ve come to take you home.’