She took a deep breath without thinking, trying to steady rioting emotions, and gasped out loud as pain clutched her lungs and compressed her chest.
Instinctively she fought for breath, Frazer virtually forgotten as she raised herself up on her pillows, fighting against the iron pressure gripping her body, her panic now far greater than it had been when she was in the water and had had a goal to aim for.
And then miraculously someone was helping her, telling her calmly to breathe slowly, easing her body into a position that relaxed the vicious grip on her chest, allowing the life-saving air to fill her lungs.
It was several seconds before she was stable enough to recognise that the soothing hands and voice belonged to Frazer. He was still standing beside her bed, his face unexpectedly tense as he watched her.
‘Does that happen often?’he demanded tersely.
Rebecca managed a weak smile.
‘Only when I go in swimming in unheated pools,’
She saw that he wasn’t amused, and that if anything he looked even more tense.
‘You had asthma as a child,’ he said, frowning at her, the words almost an accusation.
‘Very mildly,’ she agreed calmly. ‘And only for a very short time.’
But he didn’t appear to be listening to her. He was pacing the floor, and he turned to fling at her,
‘Asthma, pneumonia…and you still go virtually drowning yourself in water which you know damn well comes straight down off the mountains and is ice-cold! What are you, Rebecca?’
‘Forgetful,’ she hazarded, but her attempt at humour met with no response other than a fiercely frowning look.
‘You realise that if I hadn’t been there you could easily have…’
‘…drowned,’ she supplied drily for him, suddenly too exhausted to keep up a pretence any longer. ‘Don’t try to pretend you’d have mourned me if I had,’ she said bitterly. ‘What was it you said to me when you told me what you thought of my relationship with Rory? That hanging was too good for me.’
To her surprise she saw that her words must have caught Frazer on a raw spot, because a dull surge of colour burned briefly along his cheekbones.
At eighteen she had thought him invulnerable, invincible, had looked on him more as a god than a man. Now she realised her perceptions were sharper, more mature…now she could see him without the deceptive veils of adoration and youth.
So much had changed in the years they had been estranged. She had changed, and so perhaps had he…but one thing had not changed, she acknowledged unhappily. One thing remained fixed and indestructible. Her blind adoration of him might have gone, but the feeling that had been at its core, the pain she had called love—that was still there.
She shivered, looking not at him, but past him, her grey eyes suddenly sad and pensive, unaware of how vulnerable and fragile she looked. Her normally sleek shoulder-length blonde hair curled softly round her make-up-less face. Her skin, always pale, now looked virtually bloodless; only her mouth was full and soft, betraying a rich colour starkly at oddness with her paleness.
‘I was furious, both with you and with Rory.’ She heard the words and focused on Frazer’s face ‘For God’s sake, Rebecca, no matter what you felt for him, you knew he was a married man!’
She could hear the anger in his voice, feel the vibrations of it almost just as she had done so long ago. Exhausted, and suddenly desperately anxious to be alone, she turned her head away and said threadily, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No, you never did want to face up to reality, did you?’ Frazer accused. ‘You always were a daydreamer, living more in your imagination than in reality. What did you tell yourself, Rebecca? That Lillian simply didn’t exist? Or didn’t you even care that much?’
‘Why accuse me?’ she suddenly fired up, using her last precious reserves of energy. ‘I wasn’t some seductress, deliberately enchanting Rory away from Lillian. It does take two…’
‘Yes,’ he agreed heavily. ‘But I thought that, even at eighteen, you had the intelligence and the perception to be aware of Rory’s weaknesses.’
‘If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else,’ she told him quietly, wondering if he would hear beneath her words her plea to him to let the past die.
If he had he was ignoring it, because he replied harshly, ‘Maybe, but it was you. Can’t you understand…?’
He broke off as the door opened and Aunt Maud came in.
‘Forgive me for interrupting, Frazer dear, but I was anxious to hear what the doctor had to say.’
‘He says I’m fine,’ Rebecca assured her before Frazer could speak. ‘And now that Frazer’s back, I might as well leave.’
‘Not yet,’ Frazer contradicted her flatly. ‘Not until the doctor has agreed that you’re well enough to do so.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Aunt Maud looked unhappy. ‘I feel this is all my fault. If I hadn’t asked for your help…’
‘It isn’t your fault at all, Maud,’ Frazer reassured the older woman before Rebecca could speak. ‘Rebecca is perfectly well aware of the dangers of the weir pool.’
He put his arm around his aunt’s shoulders, at once both protecting her and guiding her towards the door, and Rebecca felt her eyes stinging with ridiculous tears for her own envy and vulnerability.
As they reached the door, Aunt Maud had rallied enough to say firmly, ‘There was no need for you to come home, you know, dear. Rebecca and I were managing perfectly well. That girl had no right to get in touch with you.’
‘On the contrary, she showed exemplary responsibility and forethought,’ Frazer continued crisply. ‘Which was exactly why I employed her in the first place. Why exactly did you dismiss her?’
Maud dismiss her! Rebecca pricked up her ears. According to the story she had been told, the girl had resigned; left of her own free will almost overnight.
Aunt Maud was making some vague and totally confusing response and, as he opened the door, she heard Frazer asking briskly, ‘Well, never mind, we’ll discuss it later. By the way, can you remember what we did with that camp bed we used to have?’
Rebecca had no idea what on earth Frazer could want with a camp bed, and she was too tired to really care. Her emotions had been seesawing up and down ever since his arrival. She felt so drained emotionally that she was almost thankful that he had gone, even though in leaving he had robbed her of the secret agony of allowing her senses to drink in the physical reality of him. Odd that, while she had remembered some things so clearly, like his anger and his contempt, she had forgotten others, like the way his mouth curled when it was softened with compassion…like the way he moved, lithely and very malely; like the way he smelled, clean and yet at the same time subtly erotic.
He must have been very concerned indeed to have broken his tour, she mused as she lay there. No doubt once he had evicted her from Aysgarth, he would find another governess to take charge of the twins and return to America.
She had a very strong suspicion that were it not for the doctor she would have already found herself on her way home.
Pride urged her to make as fast a recovery as she could so that she could leave of her own free will. She looked longingly at the wardrobe that held her clothes and suitcase, wondering if she had the strength to get up and pack. She need not go very far. There were enough places within half an hour or so’s drive that let rooms on a bed and breakfast basis, surely, for her to get a bed for the night.
Once the thought was born it wouldn’t go away. The pleasure of outmanoeuvring Frazer, of leaving before he could demand the removal of her presence, was too tempting for her to resist.
She got out of bed, pleased to discover that she was more steady on her feet than she had expected, even though it did take her rather a long time to cross the ridiculously small space to the wardrobe, and she had to stop once to ease the pain in her chest.
Once there she did feel oddly weak, but she refused to allow that to deter her. She opened the wardrobe and removed her
suitcase, then laboriously started packing.
She had removed less than half a dozen items when her chest suddenly became ominously tight. She tried to stand up and found she couldn’t. Mentally telling herself not to panic, she tried to breathe slowly and deeply, trying not to think of the fact that she was completely alone and that through her own folly had put herself in a very dangerous position indeed.
The pain gripping her lungs refused to ease. She could only draw in cautious sips of air. When her bedroom door opened slowly and cautiously, she forgot about controlling her breathing, and consequently, when the twins came in, they found her fighting for breath, and the sight and sound of her struggles was enough to send them running to find Frazer.