Penmort Castle (56 page)

Trevor then
melted away and Cash’s hand came to her waist as his mouth went to
her ear.

“James is at
the door. I have to speak with him,” he murmured.

Abby turned her
face to his. “Why is James here?”

Cash touched
his nose to hers and whispered, “I’ll explain later.”

He pulled away
and looked at Kieran.

“If Nicola
leaves this room, you get Abby to safety. Our room upstairs is
closest,” Cash ordered, Kieran nodded and Cash looked back at Abby,
his voice gentling when he finished. “I won’t be a moment,
darling.”

Then Abby
watched him saunter away, his long legs carrying him across the
room swiftly, his gait powerful, his strides wide and everyone he
passed glanced at him with unconcealed admiration.

Abby
sighed.

“Girlfriend, we
need to talk,” Jenny muttered in Abby’s ear and Abby looked down at
her friend.

Jenny was
staring at her, eyes serious, the set of her face determined.

“What? Why?”
Abby asked as Jenny took her hand, made their excuses to Mrs.
Truman and Kieran at which both of whom scowled but, Abby thought,
both for different reasons. Kieran, Abby suspected, because he knew
what Jenny was going to say. Mrs. Truman, Abby guessed, because she
did
not
.

Then Jenny led
Abby to a large window that faced the tor at the side of the
castle. It was quiet, secluded and felt somehow removed from the
busy hall.

Once there she
turned Abby so that Abby faced her and Jenny’s back was to the
room.

“It’s not a
good time but it’ll never be a good time and it’s looking like the
sooner the better,” Jenny started ominously and Abby blinked at
her.

“What’s not a
good time?” Abby enquired.

“I’ve been
thinking about this since it happened, wondering if I should say
something, thinking I shouldn’t but I can’t help but think I
should,” Jenny stated and Abby looked down at her friend, confused
at her words and the tone of her voice which shook with
emotion.

“Since what
happened?” Abby asked.

“Since Cash and
I had our little chat,” Jenny answered.

Abby stared at
her friend, stunned.

Her voice was
breathy when she enquired, “Cash and you had a chat?”

Jenny nodded
and went on. “That night all the girls came to dinner, he and I
talked. It wasn’t pleasant,” Abby sucked in breath at this news as
Jenny carried on, “I can see it…” she hesitated and switched from
nodding to shaking her head, “you, I can see you… I can see it
happening.”

Concerned, Abby
moved closer to her friend, a woman who rarely couldn’t find the
words to express herself.

“Jenny, you
aren’t making any sense,” she said softly.

“You’ve fallen
in love with him,” Jenny blurted and Abby felt her eyes round.

“With who?” she
asked stupidly.

“With Cash!”
Jenny replied on a muted shriek then looked over her shoulder to
see if anyone had heard to find that only Mrs. Truman had her
eagle-eyes on them. Jenny turned back. “You’ve fallen in love with
Cash.”

Abby felt her
heart start beating faster but she went into denial. “Jenny, I’ve
known him three weeks.”

“The night Ben
brought you home from your first date you phoned me, woke me up and
told me you were going to marry him. A year and a half later I was
your maid of honour,” Jenny reminded her.

This was
true.

It was also
true that the minute she laid eyes on Cash in that pub, she’d had a
feeling that she’d only felt once in her life. It was the same
feeling she had when Ben’s eyes caught hers when she was standing
at a coffee bar ordering her latte and Ben was standing at the end
of it waiting for his.

Except with
Cash that feeling was infinitely stronger.

Abby felt like
someone threw a bag of bricks at her and it landed heavily against
her belly.

“Jenny –” she
started.

“Get out,”
Jenny talked over Abby, her eyes reading Abby’s thoughts, her voice
now urgent. “Get out now.” She came closer and her fingers curled
around Abby’s. “Abby, honey, it kills me to tell you this but he
doesn’t feel the same way.”

Abby felt her
body jerk as if she’d been struck at the same time the room started
spinning. She heard Jenny’s voice come at her from far away asking
if she was okay. Abby blinked several times and with a good deal of
effort, she focused on Jenny.

“How do you
know?” she whispered.

Jenny got even
closer and whispered back, “He all but told me, Abby. He cares
about you, that’s obvious. He wants you to be happy, he even told
me that. But he isn’t in this for the long run, he told me that
too.”

Abby felt that
bloom in her heart start to wither. “He mentioned something but
–”

Jenny gave her
fingers a squeeze, cutting off her words. “Then you’ve got to get
out now, before it’s too late.”

Even though the
hope she’d been feeling started to fade away, Abby still whispered,
“I can’t.”

“You
have
to Abby,” Jenny’s other hand grabbed Abby’s and she
held their hands tightly together between them. “He’s a… I don’t
know. He’s a
force of nature,
” she said. “You’re going to…
hell, you’re already caught in his magnetic field. When he cuts you
loose, you’re not going to want to be let go but you won’t have any
choice. Abby,” she shook their hands between them, “it’ll destroy
you. You know it’ll destroy you,” she paused and her voice went low
before she finished, “again.”

Abby closed her
eyes and looked away.

She could try
to fool herself that his behaviour meant they were developing
something deeper.

What she
couldn’t do was ignore the fact that Cash told her best friend of
all people that their relationship was finite.

He would never
do that.

Unless it
was.

Even though she
knew she was living on borrowed time, she’d been unconsciously
holding onto that hope in her heart, wanting more, wishing the
magic was real.

Instead of yet
another path that led to heart wrenching despair.

But Abby knew
better than that. She’d been taught that lesson time and again.

And every time
Jenny had picked up the pieces.

She squeezed
her eyes tight and clenched her teeth tighter as the pain of the
dying dream of years filled with anguish ending in a life filled
with magic seared through her soul.

She opened her
eyes and looked at her friend’s concerned face.

“He told me
earlier tonight we had to talk about our future,” she confided, her
voice aching, her throat burning. “He’s very astute. I’m guessing
he’s cottoned on to how I feel and wants to remind me where we
stand.”

“Abby –” Jenny
started but Abby kept talking as she squeezed their hands.

“Don’t worry
Jenny,” she whispered. “Please, don’t worry.” Then she said out
loud what she knew she had to do to guard her heart before, as
Jenny surmised correctly, it was too late. “After tonight, it’s
over.”

The word “over”
came out in a croak as tears clawed their way up her throat and
Jenny let go of their hands and got even closer.

Her friend put
her cheek to Abby’s and in her ear, she murmured, “I’m sorry, Abby,
so sorry. I started this and now here you are. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your
fault,” Abby replied, gulping back tears, succeeding, in an extreme
effort of will, at fighting them back before a single one was
shed.

Jenny leaned
back and her fingers curled around Abby’s upper arm. “It is but we
won’t argue that.” Her hand tightened and she looked deep into
Abby’s eyes. “You’ll get through this, girlfriend. You always do. I
don’t know anyone on this planet who’s stronger than you.”

At that Abby
laughed but there was not even a hint of humour in it.

Before more
could be said Mrs. Truman descended on their tête-à-tête.

“What are you
two whispering about?” she demanded to know.

Jenny turned to
Mrs. Truman but caught Abby’s hand. “Nothing.”

Mrs. Truman
eyed Jenny then she looked at Abby assessingly. “It doesn’t look
like nothing to me.”

“It’s nothing,”
Abby lied.

“Well,” she
said on an angry-to-be-left-out humph, “you two were so absorbed,
you haven’t noticed that something’s happening.”

Abby and Jenny
looked into the room to see people were coming from all corners of
the house, squeezing into the large space, making it small.

As she looked,
Abby saw Cash arrive. His eyes scanned the room and for the first
time in her life Abby wished both that she wasn’t so tall and that
she wasn’t wearing a pair of elegant, expensive high-heeled shoes
when Cash’s eyes easily found her.

She watched as
his powerful body wended its way through the crush toward them and
he arrived at the same time as Kieran.

Jenny dropped
her hand as Cash got close, his arm moving along her waist, his
chin dipped and she saw his brows draw together as he examined her
face.

Then he asked,
“What’s wrong?”

Abby swallowed
then lied, forcing her voice to sound cheerful, “Nothing.”

His eyes
shifted to Jenny for a mere moment then came back to her. They
narrowed, his fingers dug into her waist and he started, “Abby –”
but people were tinkling their champagne glasses and Abby tore her
gaze from him to glance over the crowd.

They were all
looking in one direction and she could see Nicola and Alistair
standing in front of the fireplace, a small pocket of space in
front of them.

Honor, Fenella
and Suzanne were at the edge of the crowd closest to Nicola and
Alistair.

As Alistair
lifted his hand for silence, conversation in the room died
away.

“Thank you,
thank you,” Alistair’s voice boomed pompously from his position as
lord of the manor, the smile on his face even at Abby’s distance
not only looked false, it did not reach his eyes. He went on, “We,
Nicola and I, thank you for coming. We thank you for being here to
celebrate this, our special anniversary.”

“Hear, hear,”
someone shouted and Alistair bowed his head in a farcical attempt
at noble.

Abby turned her
attention to Nicola who didn’t look thankful in the slightest. She
looked pale, she looked tense and she looked weirdly expectant.

Alistair
continued, lifting his glass. “Now, everyone, I hope you’ve charged
your glasses so you can join us in toasting twenty-five years of
–”

“One second,”
Nicola’s voice cut in. It was pleasant as usual however it was also
raised and it carried across the expanse.

Alistair
hesitated and looked down at his wife who did not meet his
eyes.

“I would also
like to thank you for coming,” Nicola declared, “for it is, indeed,
a special day.”

There was
shifting of feet and smiles but something about the way Nicola
looked, her tone, put Abby on edge.

Nicola kept
talking. “I’ve been married to this man at my side for twenty-five
years,” she announced unnecessarily, “twenty-five extraordinarily
unhappy
years.”

There were some
chuckles and murmurs as many thought Nicola had flubbed her
speech.

Abby, however,
did not. Nor, she could tell by the way he tensed at her side, his
arm curling her closer, did Cash.

“There wasn’t
abuse, not overtly,” Nicola went on, Abby felt Cash’s body jolt and
the chuckling and murmurs stopped immediately as the room grew
silent. “Mostly neglect. And, on occasion, cruelty. Not only to
myself, but to my daughters.”

“Oh dear,” Mrs.
Truman muttered as the feeling in the room turned uneasy.

Alistair’s
face, magnanimous a moment ago, had soured, indicating without
words the veracity of Nicola’s awful speech.

His hand came
up to curl around her arm and he muttered, “Dearest –”

She yanked her
arm free and gave him a cold look.

“I’m not, nor
have I ever been, your dearest,” she informed him and then looked
back to the crowd. “I asked you all here tonight not so you could
celebrate twenty-five years of a very,
very
bad marriage.
But instead so I could publicly apologise to my daughters for being
weak and not protecting them the way I should. For desiring for
them a life without want and sacrificing a home filled with love in
order to do it. And now what I ask of you is to lift your glasses
in a toast, not to the continuation of that bad marriage, but to
the end of it,” she turned back to Alistair and finished, “because,
dearest
, tomorrow morning, my daughters and I are moving
out. I want a divorce.”

There were
shocked gasps, excited murmurs and a good deal of uncomfortably
shifting feet.

Except Mrs.
Truman who was chuckling.

She turned back
to Abby and Cash and muttered loudly and with authority, (even
though she had none), “Met him and was in his presence for about
two seconds. Didn’t like the look of him. Just deserts, I say.”

Jenny’s gaze
shot to Abby’s and even with their heartbreaking conversation of
moments before, they both emitted short, shocked but entirely
unamused giggles.

Their giggles
stuck in their throats and their eyes flew back to the fireplace
when they heard Alistair’s voice vibrating with fury, demand, “How
dare you!”

Nicola ignored
him and lifted her glass, shouting, “A toast! To the end of the bad
and heralding the beginning of the good!”

But she didn’t
get her glass to her lips.

Alistair’s
fingers closed around her wrist and he jerked her hand down, the
champagne spilling all over Nicola’s throat, chest and down the
front of her elegant, black, strapless, bias-cut gown.

There were more
stunned gasps but Cash didn’t gasp. The instant Alistair’s fingers
curled around Nicola’s wrist he moved, pushing forward through the
crowd toward the couple on display.