For a moment Rebecca was too stunned to speak. As a child she had liked Rory well enough in a distant, half-hearted fashion; he had never been anything more to her than a second cousin and Frazer’s brother; it had been on Frazer that she had focused the intensity of her adolescent emotions, but now she looked at Rory and saw him without the veiling sentiment of their growing-up years, and what she saw she didn’t like.
She got up and told him firmly, ‘The twins are your responsibility, Rory, and quite frankly, the only reason I could think of for sending them to boarding school would be to protect them from the emotional pain of discovering the truth about their father!’
As she prepared to leave, he reached out and took hold of her wrist in a surprisingly painful grip.
‘Rebecca, wait,’ he begged urgently, with far more emotion in his voice than their recent exchange had led her to believe he could feel.
She focused on him, puzzled both by his intensity and by the sudden pleasure she could see in his eyes.
She had her back to the open door, but Rory was facing it.
‘Please,’ he said huskily, ‘let me explain.’ He tugged on her wrist, as though trying to pull her down to him—almost as though he was going to kiss her, Rebecca realised in sudden angry confusion.
‘Lunch is ready.’
The icy coldness of Frazer’s voice silenced the words of complaint she had been about to utter. She swung round, at the same moment as Rory released her, guilt flushing her skin as she remembered Frazer telling her that she was to stay in her room, unaware of the very different interpretation he might put on her flustered apprehension until she heard Rory saying emotionally, ‘Oh, God, Rebecca, I’m sorry!’ and then to Frazer, ‘Look, Frazer, don’t jump to any conclusions. Rebecca and I go back a long way. It’s only natural we should have some loose ends to tie up.’
Rebecca couldn’t believe her ears. Rory’s behaviour had gone beyond a joke…if that was what it was intended to be. She had thought this morning, when he taunted Frazer with is own supposed relationship with her, that he was taking pleasure in trying to hurt his elder brother, but this…this deliberate attempt to sabotage their ‘engagement’…
She looked helplessly at Frazer, and found herself almost stammering, ‘Rory wanted to ask my advice about boarding schools for the twins,’ while Rory looked on and smiled almost boyishly, cautioning her,
‘It’s no use, my sweet. Somehow I don’t think Big Brother is going to be convinced,’ and then, before either of them could speak, he added insouciantly, ‘I wonder if Mrs N. has remembered how much I like her gooseberry pie.’
He was whistling as he walked out of the room. Rebecca looked helplessly at Frazer, then said nervously, ‘I know how it must have looked, but I promise you all we were talking about was the twins.’
Some of her own feeling of bewildered disbelief coloured her voice, adding a conviction to her statement she herself wasn’t aware of. Frazer frowned.
‘We can’t discuss it now. Mrs N. has enough to do without trying to keep meals hot.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Rebecca agreed, stepping through the door he was holding open for her. ‘I offered to give her a hand earlier, but all she would say was that you’d said I was to stay in bed. I’m not an invalid, you know, Frazer, and she has more than enough to do as it is. It wouldn’t be any hardship for me to take some of the chores off her shoulders. After all, I did come here to work.’
‘That work’s still there,’ he told her, surprising her.
‘But now that Rory is here, the twins…’
‘Will probably be as neglected by him as they are in his absence.’
Rebecca made a shocked sound of rejection.
‘Haven’t you discovered yet that fatherhood isn’t exactly something Rory relishes?’ he asked her caustically, and she knew from the way he said it how much his brother’s lack of care for his children angered him.
Even though she shared his views, she found herself saying palliatively, ‘Perhaps if Rory hadn’t been so young himself when they were born…’
‘You always defend him, don’t you? You even defended him when he threw you to the wolves and named you as his lover. What would it take to make you see the truth about him, Rebecca? You say you don’t love him.’
‘I don’t,’ she told him quickly, wishing the words unsaid when she realised how self-betraying they might be. After all, what should it matter to her what Frazer believed?
* * *
LUNCH WAS A SUBDUED affair, with the twins suddenly looking very small and vulnerable as they sat huddled together, putting as much distance between themselves and their father as they could.
‘When do you expect Lillian to arrive?’ Frazer asked Rory when they had all finished.
‘She said a couple of days.’ Rory looked across the table at Rebecca and invited, ‘How about coming out with me tonight, Becca? We could have dinner somewhere.’
Before she could speak, Frazer intervened, saying quietly, ‘Rebecca and I already have a dinner engagement this evening.’
Immediately Aunt Maud frowned.
‘You never said anything about going out this evening, Frazer.’
‘I didn’t know we would be until this morning. A colleague has invited Rebecca and me to have dinner with him and his wife. They’re quite new to the area and I think his wife is anxious to make some local friends. It won’t be anything formal,’ he told Rebecca cooly, then added softly, ‘Wear that blue dress if you’ve brought it with you—the one you were wearing the night I proposed. The one that turns your eyes the colour of wild hyacinths.’
Even the twins were listening, their eyes round with curiosity and speculation—and no wonder! Rebecca thought wrathfully, wishing her fair skin did not flush so easily.
‘If you’ll excuse us, Aunt Maud,’Frazer stood up and reached for Rebecca’s hand, ‘Rebecca and I have one or two things we need to discuss.’
Her heart sinking, Rebecca allowed him to lead her out of the room, waiting until they were out of earshot to demand angrily, ‘Why did you pretend we’re going out tonight?’
‘I wasn’t pretending. We are,’ Frazer told her quietly, ignoring her anger. He paused outside the study door and looked at her. ‘No, not in there. This way.’
Mutely she followed him, frowning as he headed for the stairs.
He waited for her to catch up with him, then led her along the corridor, pushing open one of the bedroom doors. She didn’t realise it was his room until she was inside and the door was closed behind them.
Instinctively she turned back towards it, but Frazer was standing between her and the door, blocking her way.
He smiled grimly when he saw the way her skin paled and then darkened, then said grittily, ‘Cut out the acting, Rebecca. You’ve nothing to fear. I’ve brought you up here simply so that we can make some uninterrupted privacy.’
‘And so that Rory will assume that we’re making love!’ she challenged.
His eyebrows rose.
‘Will he? I’ve already warned you that I’m not prepared to tolerate a resurgence of your affair with him, and yet when I walked into the study earlier—my study—it was very apparent that…’
‘He took me there to discuss the twins’ education,’ Rebecca broke in heatedly, then frowned. ‘I don’t understand him. One minute we were on the verge of having a row because I’d told him how selfish he is, and the next, he suddenly started behaving as though…’
‘You were lovers,’ Frazer supplied with dry irony. He looked at her for a long time, then said quietly, ‘Isn’t it obvious that he’s jealous?’
‘Jealous? What of?’
A look crossed Frazer’s face which she found hard to define. It was almost as though in some way her words had hurt him, then his mouth hardened and he said curtly, ‘Of me, of course. Of the fact that you and I are engaged…of the fact that I’ve supposedly taken his place in your life and in your bed.’
For a moment Rebecca was too wrapped up in th
e tingling sensation of shocked pleasure that ran through her at the images he was conjuring up—images that made her catch her breath and fight to still the ache growing inside her. Frazer her lover…but that was fantasy. Reality was this idiotic, agonising, stupid situation she had got herself into. Reality was…
‘But Rory and I were…’
She stopped abruptly, realising what she had been about to say.