Rebecca shrugged. ‘Frazer made it plain to me that my presence wouldn’t be welcome at Aysgarth in the future. Nothing he’s ever said or done has contradicted that impression.’
‘And now you’re being summoned up to Cumbria to look after his brother’s brats in his absence,’ Kate supplied wryly. ‘Well, I wonder what he’s going to say when he finds out about that.’
‘Do you think perhaps I oughtn’t to go?’ Rebecca asked anxiously.
Despite her stunning good looks and her undoubted intelligence, not to mention her skill with her pupils, Rebecca had a sometimes disconcerting lack of self-worth, something which had always puzzled Kate, but which she now suspected she knew the reason for.
‘On the contrary,’ Kate told her firmly. ‘I think you ought to go,’ and then, as she saw relief lighten her friend’s features, she added softly, ‘I suppose it never occurred to you that you could tell him the truth?’ She watched as the colour left Rebecca’s face and added, as though unaware of it, ‘After all, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t now, is there? As you said yourself, the relationship with the girl in question petered out. Why haven’t you told him, Rebecca?’ she pressed.
Rebecca turned her back on her, fidgeting with some papers on her desk.
‘Why should I? There’s no reason to. If he wants to believe the worst of me, then let him.’
‘Well, it certainly provides a very effective barrier to hide behind,’ said Kate obliquely, watching in compassion as the telltale colour ran up under her friend’s fair skin. It was an unusual combination, that blonde, silky fall of hair and that pale Celtic skin. Unusual and very, very attractive.
Kate had lost count of the number of men she had introduced to her flatmate, who had promptly all fallen head over heels with her air of fragile, almost haunted vulnerability. As far as she knew, Rebecca had never even come close to returning their feelings. She had often wondered why her friend appeared so immune to the male sex. Now she suspected she had found the answer.
‘I can’t do it,’ Rebecca suddenly burst out despairingly. ‘I can’t go up there!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Kate told her dampeningly. ‘Of course you can, and so you should. You’ve already told your aunt you will. It would be unfair to let her down. What are you frightened of, Rebecca?’ she probed gently. ‘Even if this Frazer should return home early and find you there, he’s hardly going to physically throw you out, is he? I think in your shoes,’ she mused thoughtfully, ‘I should rather enjoy the opportunity to make him indebted to me.’
Rebecca gave her a despairing look. She didn’t know Frazer. She had no idea that Frazer of all people was the very last person to relish being indebted to anyone, and especially to her.
‘But then, of course, he’s already indebted to you, isn’t he?’ Kate added almost as though she had read the course of her thoughts, and when Rebecca stared at her she added softly, ‘You sacrificed your good name and feelings to protect that of his girlfriend and his feelings,’she pointed out wryly. ‘You’re not frightened of him, are you, Rebecca?’ she asked curiously, knowing full well the effect her question would have.
‘Of course I’m not,’ Rebecca denied robustly.
‘Good. Then there’s nothing to stop you fulfilling your promise to your aunt, is there?’
For a moment Rebecca was silent, then she agreed hollowly, ‘No. Nothing at all.’
CHAPTER TWO
KNOWING that and actually believing it were two very different things, as Rebecca quickly discovered as she made her preparations to leave for Cumbria. Instead of worrying about Frazer and his all too likely reaction to the discovery that she was installed in his home, it would be far more profitable for her to spend her time worrying about how she was going to control the twins, she reflected as she packed her small car for the journey north.
The class of ten-year-olds she taught were in the main intelligent and well-disciplined children. All the reports she had heard of Rory’s twins suggested that, although they might possess intelligence, they certainly did not possess any self-discipline, and by all accounts resented any attempt to impose it on them. Remembering her own and Robert’s feelings when their parents had to constantly go away without them, Rebecca wondered privately if their unruliness did not perhaps spring more from a desire to capture parental attention rather than from any inborn disruptiveness.
Great-Aunt Maud possessed not only an Edwardian bosom, but in addition an Edwardian attitude to life, and at her behest Rebecca had promised that she would try to be at Aysgarth for four o’clock in time for afternoon tea.
‘That will give you an ideal opportunity in which to meet the children,’ Aunt Maud had informed her, and Rebecca, suddenly remembering from her own childhood her great-aunt’s ability on occasions to put aside her vagueness and apparent fragility and reveal all the assets of a master tactician, wondered a little uneasily why it was that Maud required her assistance in managing the twins. After all, as she remembered very well, Great-Aunt Maud had had no difficulty at all in keeping both her and Robert under control.
That had been almost twenty years ago, though, when her aunt had been in her fifties. Now she was in her seventies, and it was hardly to be expected that she could keep a watchful eye on two energetic and by all accounts extremely difficult eight-year-olds.
Aysgarth was on the more distant side of Cumbria, far away from the popular Lake District, in what Rory had on more than one occasion disconsolately described as the back of beyond.
Rebecca, despite the fact that she had lived and worked in London for well over six years, did not share his views. In London she had a lifestyle she enjoyed and a job she loved, but, given freedom of choice, she knew that she could quite easily adapt to a more rural lifestyle.
It surprised her to see how far the motorway system had now penetrated into Cumbria, giving her the advantage of gaining a good half-hour on her estimated journey time. With that half-hour in mind, a couple of miles away from Aysgarth and halfway down a very narrow country lane that led not only to the house but to the several farms beyond it, she pulled her car in to the side of the road and got out, locking it.
Fifty yards or so down into the valley lay one of the favourite spots of her childhood and teenage years. The river ran through the valley, dammed at one end to form a small pool from which it spilled over a weir, dropping quite a formidable distance into the far end of the valley and beyond that the valley below it.
The valley was wooded, shadowy with trees and their secrets. Underfoot the ground was springy and resinous with pine needles and roots. Despite the fact that the weather forecasters had promised them a good summer, so far there had been very little evidence of it, and as Rebecca made her way down the steep-sided valley she saw that the river below was flooded from the heavy spring rains.
Down below her in the valley bottom, a movement caught her attention. She focused on it abruptly, frowning as she saw the two small jean-clad figures hurrying in the direction of Aysgarth House. The twins. She would have recognised them through their similarity to their dark-haired and dark-visaged uncle anywhere, and she mused ruefully on the oddity of heredity and the fact that it should be Rory’s children who had inherited so much of Frazer’s dark colouring. Rory himself took after his and Frazer’s mother, being fair-haired and blue-eyed, whereas Frazer took after their father, possessing the dark-haired, grey-eyed, hard-chiselled look which had always been formidably recognisable as Aysgarth features.
It was not their similarity to their uncle that brought a frown to Rebecca’s forehead, though; it was the fact that the two children, barely eight years old, were apparently free to wander the countryside at will. She could remember herself how very strict not only Aunt Maud but also Frazer himself had been about her liking to wander here in this remote and beautiful valley. How he had drummed into her the danger of going too near the weir, or being tempted to even think about swimming in the pool, which was extremely deep and possessed dangerous hidden curr
ents.
It was true that the twins had not been swimming, but she seemed to remember she had been well into her teens before Frazer had lifted the ban that stipulated that she was never ever allowed to come down here on her own.
As the twins approached, some instinct made her draw back into the shadow of the enclosing trees. The path they were on ran several yards away from her, and as she knew, turned abruptly several yards away to veer in the direction of Aysgarth House. As they passed her she could hear Peter saying anxiously to his sister. ‘Are you sure it’ll work, Helen? Are you sure it’ll make her go away?’
Rebecca stiffened, knowing instinctively that they were discussing her own arrival.
Frowning fiercely, Helen Aysgarth was a minute replica of her formidable uncle.
‘Maybe not at first,’ she allowed judiciously, ‘but it won’t take long.’
‘Why did Aunt Maud have to send for her anyway?’ Peter muttered bitterly. ‘A schoolteacher! As if we didn’t have enough of schoolteachers when we’re at school!’
‘We’ll soon get rid of her,’ Helen comforted her twin. ‘After all, we got rid of Carole, didn’t we?’