The Hidden Years (62 page)

The number of replies she received in response brought a
fresh deluge of doubts from Edward. The textile industry was in the
doldrums if not a decline, cloth was being produced far more cheaply
abroad, and, if that was the case, then how on earth could she ever
expect to sell the high-priced wool she was so intent on weaving?

'We'll sell it abroad. America… places where
they do have the money and the desire to buy the best…'

Edward stared at her in stunned silence. What had happened
to the timid, terrified child he had married? The child who had been so
dependent on him, who had needed him… Now he was the one who
needed her and that chafed his sore skin, leaving weeping open sores
that refused to heal.

The history of the factory and its success was so well
known to her, not through her mother, but through those who worked for
her and had been there at its inception, that Sage, who could recite
its story almost as a litany, had found that she was skipping
paragraphs and half-pages in her anxiety to reach the year of her own
conception.

So far, she had discovered nothing at all to make her feel
that her mother, a woman with one child at boarding-school, a husband
in declining health and a shaky new business to run, could possibly
have wanted a second child with the single-minded determination she
must surely have felt to have allowed herself to be used virtually as a
human guinea pig. Because in those days conception via artificial
insemination had been a very advanced and extremely rare process, so
much so that surely only a woman with a very deep-seated need to have a
child would have gone to the lengths of undergoing it?

She had just finished reading a couple of paragraphs
describing David's summer holiday and the progress he was making at
school when the phone rang sharply.

Panic thrilled through her immediately. She knew even
before she picked up the receiver that Daniel would be on the other end
of the line, and yet even so when she heard his voice shock paralysed
her vocal cords… Shock and resentment. How could he sound so
calm, so…so unconcerned, when her whole nervous system,
never mind her emotions, were still in chaos from their encounter at
the Old Hall?

She forced herself to focus on what he was saying and not
on the effect the cadences of his voice were having on her body,
cutting through his polite enquiries as to her mother's condition with
a ruthlessness born of self-preservation. 'Your decision, Daniel,' she
prompted him.

There was a small pause and her heartbeat accelerated to
what felt like twice its normal rate, pumping adrenalin through her
veins as her brain responded to her emotional panic.

'I'm afraid I still haven't been able to make one. I need
more time… at least another forty-eight hours…'

Another forty-eight hours… by then her mother's
operation would be over. By then… By then it might not
matter any more which decision he made. Without her mother she doubted
that there would be any campaign, any strong enough opposition to the
new road.

'Sage, are you still there?'

That couldn't be concern she could hear roughening his
voice and so she clamped down on her own weakness, saying grittily,
'Yes, I'm still here. I wasn't making an idle threat, you know, Daniel.'

'I never thought you were. You forget I know you, Sage.'

She stiffened, wanting to reject his claim but knowing
that she couldn't. Instead she had to content herself with saying
icily, 'You mean you
knew
me, Daniel, but that
was a long time ago.'

He didn't respond, simply saying evenly, 'Forty-eight
hours, Sage, and then I'll be in touch with my decision. I'm not in
this alone, you know. I have a board to consider, to—'

'Very well,' Sage agreed impatiently. 'Forty-eight hours,
Daniel.'

As she replaced the receiver she wondered if she had been
wise in giving way to him, if she had not perhaps lost the advantage
her surprise attack on him had given her.

In his office Daniel replaced his own receiver. She had
given way much faster than he had anticipated. Ruefully he acknowledged
to himself that the speed with which she had acceded to his request had
left him feeling somehow cheated, as though in some way he had been
looking forward to a confrontation between them, to engaging her in a
longer conversation.

His own weakness was like a spectre haunting him.
Yesterday… But what was the use in thinking about that? She
had made it more than plain how she viewed the explosive sexual
chemistry which existed between them, and in all honesty he couldn't
blame her for her reactions.

In her shoes he would have felt the same way, would have
resented the ferocity of his sexual need pared down to its barest
elements as it was without the softening, cloaking tenderness of any
emotional bonding between them. On her part, at least.

As to his own feelings… He smiled grimly to
himself. He had no doubts at all about the way she would react if he
was ever idiotic enough to betray the truth to her. He had heard how
she had treated those men foolhardy enough to admit that they loved
her. And he had no intention of joining that particular little band of
martyrs. Loving her was something the years had accustomed him to, a
painful condition he would rather be without, but something which very
aptly fitted the old saying, 'What can't be cured must be endured.'
Like a sufferer from rheumatism, he found that there were days when the
pain was more intrusive and less easy to cope with, and days when the
ache of loving her threatened to overwhelm everything else. But he had
learned to live with it, even if the learning process had been hard and
painful.

Forty-eight hours. If the rumour he had heard this morning
was true then, potentially, well before he was due to give Sage her
answer her threat against him would no longer be tenable.

He loved her, of course, but with an intensity that went
way, way beyond the immediacy of satisfying a mere sexual need. How
many years ago was it now that he had first recognised that it wasn't
just lust he felt for her but love as well? When had he first known
that? When Scott was in hospital? Or had it even started to happen
before then? Right from the first moment he had seen her, for instance?

But despite his own personal problems he still had a
corporation to run, and he wasn't a teenager to sit helplessly dreaming
of a woman he would probably never be able to have in his life in all
the ways that he wanted her.

Idiotic to think that while he was speaking to her on the
phone he had actually been visualising the children they could have
together.

Shaking his head over his own folly, he turned his
attention to the papers in front of him.

It was almost an hour after she had finished speaking to
Daniel before Sage was able to concentrate fully on the diaries again.
During that time she had used the excuse of wanting a cup of coffee to
pace restlessly in the kitchen, and then in the study, her emotions in
a turmoil. What was happening to her? Why was she allowing herself to
react like this? She was behaving like…like…

Like a woman in love.

Impossible… She gave a deep shudder, closing
her eyes while she fought to deny the wretched betrayal of her own
thoughts.

A woman in love… Ridiculous. Lust…
that was all she felt for Daniel. Lust… That was all she had
ever allowed herself to feel for any man since…

Restlessly she sat down and picked up the diary, and
started to read.

The summer had been a good one for them
.
They were getting a good name as providers of first-class rams, and
under the new manager's skilled tutelage the mill was slowly beginning
to produce woollen cloth of the quality Liz had wanted.

David was doing well at school, and although it worried
Liz at times that he was such a solitary, quiet child, he seemed more
than content. Even Edward's health seemed to have improved a little,
although his possessiveness was putting an increasing strain on her.
Ian Holmes had got him on a pain-killer which seemed to ease the
discomfort more effectively than the others, and Edward had even taken
to spending fine afternoons seated in the garden. As a consequence of
the fresh air and sunshine his skin had lost its sick-room pallor and
Liz knew that she was gradually allowing herself to relax from a mental
and physical tension which had become such a familiar part of her life
that at its first slackening she had wondered a little fearfully what
was happening to her.

It was wonderful not to have to watch every word she spoke
to Edward… not to have to gauge his reaction to everything
she wanted to do, in order to avoid any kind of upset with him. About
the mill she had his confidence, but she knew the thought of other men
still plagued him.

Now that the mill was beginning to be successful, albeit
in a very small way, all those who had been her detractors when she had
first mooted the idea were now full of enthusiasm and praise.

It was several years now since she had first got Edward's
reluctant agreement to go ahead with her plans, and next year, although
Edward did not yet know it, she planned to make her first assault on
the all-important American market.

She had been doing her research carefully and quietly,
making sure of her facts before she presented them to Edward. What she
needed was a representative— someone who knew the American
way of doing business, someone she could trust, someone who had the
same belief in their product as she did herself. She sighed to herself
as she dead-headed the roses… What she really needed was to
be able to travel to America herself, but that was out of the question.

It was with a feeling of calm and contentment that she set
out to take David back to school at the end of the long summer
holidays… a feeling that for the time being at least her
trials and hardships were behind her. She could now even read Vic's
rare letters without that painful pang of 'might have beens', without
that secret sensation of loss, of envy almost of his wife, of faint
yearnings for what might have been in different circumstances.

When Sheila Holmes remarked to her husband that Liz was
making a wonderful success of her new venture, Ian agreed and added
wryly that it was marvellous what the human sex drive could achieve
when it had no natural outlet for its energies.

He liked Liz and he admired her, but he couldn't help
thinking almost chauvinistically that it was a pity that such a woman
did not have a more natural outlet for her sexuality.

Liz took her time driving David back to school, enjoying
these rare hours alone with her son. They stopped for lunch in a
comfortable hotel on the river, and after she had left him she was
surprised to find that she had to stop the car to blow her nose and rid
her eyes of the tears that suddenly filled them. She did not consider
herself to be a particularly maternal woman. She loved David, but then
he was an easy child to love; everyone loved him. Certainly she no
longer—as she had done when she'd first realised she was
pregnant—loved him fiercely and intensely simply because he
was his father's child.

All that was left of her youthful adoration for Kit was
dislike and relief that he was gone from their lives. If anything David
was closer to Edward than to herself, perhaps because of his schooling
or perhaps simply because they were both male and of the same blood.

It pleased her to see them together and to know that
Edward felt no resentment of David because of his birth… to
see how much he loved him.

They were enjoying a brief Indian summer, and in the rush
this morning to make sure that they set off in good time she had left
her hair down instead of putting it up in the neat knot she had begun
to favour since the mill reopened. She felt that it lent her
authority… made her seem more businesslike. Edward didn't
like it and had told her so.

Knowing how important these things were to the male pride,
she was wearing a new dress; a Vogue pattern copied from this season's
Paris couture fashions. It had a fitted bodice with cap sleeves and a V
neck, the skirt semi-circular, emphasising the narrowness of her waist.
She had made it herself, choosing a crisp cotton pique fabric in yellow
and white.

For those rare formal occasions when she needed to dress
up she had bought herself a fashionable white coolie hat in the same
cotton and, extravagantly, a pair of formal elbow-length white gloves.
She wasn't wearing these today, but she had worn the whole ensemble for
David's parents' day and she had been told admiringly by one of her
son's fellow pupils that she looked 'absolutely smashing'.

She smiled to herself. It was indicative of her whole way
of life that she should still be cherishing the idle compliment of a
schoolboy, but then what good would men's compliments be to her? She
was Edward's wife, David's mother… She had led a full, busy
life and had been more than lucky with the way things had turned out
for her. If the price she had to pay for that luck was the suppression
of herself as a woman, then it was a small price to pay. In truth,
whenever she was confronted by a sexually aggressive male, which
thankfully was extremely rare, she felt an immediate
revulsion… a fear almost, plus a far too vivid memory of
Kit's possession of her.

No… There might be times when she saw a couple
embracing, when she witnessed a tender look being exchanged between two
lovers, when she felt an aching emptiness inside herself, but she did
not allow herself to dwell on these feelings. What was the point?

Edward needed her… David needed them, far, far
more than she needed any brief, senseless moment of pleasure with an
unknown man.

As she drove through the village, the warmth of the
September day was settling into late afternoon like a golden cloak of
beneficence.