‘He wouldn’t do it anyway,’ Peter told her defiantly.
Rebecca laughed and agreed. ‘No, I don’t think he would!’
Her laughter defused the situation, the tension going out of both small faces, but for how long? Rebecca wondered as she excused herself, saying that it was time she got ready.
Neither she nor Frazer could give any promises on Rory’s intentions. If he decided to send them to boarding school in spite of his brother…She shivered a little and wondered if there was any point in appealing to their mother.
She was now firmly convinced that, whatever he might have told Frazer, Rory had no intention whatsoever of settling down in England and providing a home for his wife and children. If Lillian wanted to keep her husband, she would be obliged to go back to Hong Kong with him, and that would mean leaving the children here at Aysgarth, or sending them away to school.
An hour later, when she rejoined Frazer downstairs, Rebecca was still worrying about the children’s future.
Like her, he had changed, and she hesitated on the bottom step of the stairs, caught off guard by her reaction to the sight of him in a dark formally tailored suit and a crisp white shirt, brilliantly light against the darkness of his skin and hair.
He swung round, and frowned when he saw her halting in mid-step, demanding harshly, ‘Not going to change your mind, I hope?’
Change your mind? About what? Rebecca felt dizzy with the shock of the feelings burning her flesh—the compulsion to stretch out and touch him, to smooth her hand over the dark fabric of his suit and feel the hardness of the muscled body it sheathed, to reach up on tiptoe and place her mouth against his, feeling its hardness soften and then harden again in passionate response to her caress.
‘Rebecca?’ She caught the sharp note of enquiry in his voice just in time and pulled herself together.
‘No, I’m not going to change my mind,’ she told him, striving to appear calm.
He was looking at her now, and she wondered what he saw. A small, perhaps almost too thin blonde woman, with grey eyes that sometimes looked blue, and a face that must almost be as familiar to him as his own. Certainly there was nothing in the sight of her that could unleash within him the feelings now tormenting her, and the reason for that betraying tightness in his jaw could only be her own tardiness in getting downstairs a few minutes later than she had said.
That had been because she had been unable to resist the impulse to go into the twins’ rooms just before she left. Both of them were in bed. Frazer had already been in to read them a story, Helen had announced truculently. The implication was clear enough. They neither wanted nor needed her, and yet as she turned back to the door she had surprised in Helen’s eyes a fear that made her hesitate, wanting to reassure her that she was not going to take Frazer away from them, and yet knowing that nothing she could say would carry the kind of conviction that Helen needed.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she apologised to Frazer. ‘I called in on the twins on my way down.’
Now she saw that she had surprised him.
‘What will you do if Rory insists on sending them away to school?’ she asked him as he opened the front door for her.
‘What makes you think he might?’ he countered. ‘Unless of course you’ve been discussing the subject with him.’
The hostility in his voice made her sigh, wishing there was some way she could push aside the past and talk to him simply as another human being, who was equally concerned about the twins’ future.
It was cool outside, a very unsummery breeze blowing off the hills. It raised goosebumps on her skin as she walked over to Frazer’s car. She hadn’t brought a suitable evening jacket with her; the anorak she had brought was hardly suitable for wearing over her elegant designer suit.
She saw Frazer frown as he unlocked the car door, and wondered if he was dreading the evening ahead as much as she was herself. Hardly. What, after all, was there for him to dread, apart from several hours spent in her unwanted company?
‘Does your colleague live very far away?’ she asked him politely as he started the engine.
‘Six miles the other side of the Institute,’ he told her. ‘They lived in Hampshire before coming up here and, as I said, it’s a big adjustment for Gayle to make. She’s not much older than you.’ He frowned again. ‘The work Alan does is very demanding—demanding enough to put a strain on the best of marriages. We’re desperately understaffed at the Institute at the moment, and Government cutbacks don’t help. Alan told me that Gayle had been complaining about the hours he’s been working. Naturally, if it came to a choice, he’d have to put her first. I don’t want to lose him.’
‘Naturally?’ Rebecca couldn’t resist questioning, her eyebrows lifting. ‘There aren’t many men these days who would put their wife’s loneliness before their own career prospects. After all, that hardly goes with the high-powered, geared-for-success image we’re all supposed to project these days. He must love her a great deal.’
She wondered if her envy showed in her voice, but she couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be loved like that…and by Frazer.
‘He does, but I’m probably being unfair to Gayle. I doubt very much if she’d ask him to choose between her and his job, but she is lonely and unsettled.’
‘Do they have a family?’ asked Rebecca, interested despite herself.
‘Not as yet. There was to have been a child, but Gayle had a miscarriage.’
Rebecca made a small sound of sympathy.
‘In Hampshire she worked part-time for a friend who owned a dress shop. I suspect she finds time hanging too heavily on her hands up here, although Alan says that there’s a lot of work to be done on the house they’ve bought. I think you’ll like her,’ Frazer added unexpectedly.
Rebecca’s eyebrows rose. ‘Does it matter one way or the other? After all, I’m hardly likely to be around for very long.’
‘No, you’re not, are you?’ Frazer agreed evenly, and as she subsided into silence, Rebecca wondered what had prompted her own remark: an idiotic hope that he might stop the car and tell her passionately and unbelievably that she was wrong and that he never intended to let her go? Idiotic indeed. That might be the stuff of romances, but it was not the fabric of real life.
They drove along roads familiar to Rebecca from her childhood, growing up in the area; past the gates to the Institute and through the small pass where the road started to drop down towards the village where Alan Chalmers and his wife lived.
* * *
FRAZER HAD BEEN right when he’d predicted that she would like their hostess, Rebecca acknowledged halfway through the evening. The other woman had a vulnerability about her that Rebecca recognised and responded to. Gayle was ruefully honest about her loneliness since coming to Cumbria.
‘I expect if I hadn’t lost the baby I was expecting, things would have been much better,’ she said frankly when she and Rebecca were alone. ‘We’ve been told to wait a few months before trying again.’ She pulled a face. ‘Nothing should go wrong this time, but I feel guilty because I know how much Alan is worrying about me. This job is a good career move for him, and I’d hate to do anything to prejudice his success in it.’ She pulled another face. ‘I never dreamed when we first came up here that I was going to feel like this. I even miss my mother,’ she added ruefully. ‘The village is lovely but lonely.’
Rebecca sympathised with her, and found herself agreeing warmly to Gayle’s suggestion that they have lunch together one day, and then wishing she had not been so impetuous. She hated lying like this, deceiving people, letting them believe that she and Frazer were really engaged.
‘What’s wrong?’ Frazer asked her when they were on their way home.
She looked at him in the darkness of the car and frowned.
‘Why should anything be wrong?’
‘I don’t know, but you’ve been sitting there ever since we left the Chalmers’ looking as though you’ve all the cares in the world on your shoulder
s.’
‘I hate deceiving people,’ she told him crossly. ‘I hate being in such an invidious position, lying…’
Frazer gave a short bitter laugh.
‘That’s rich, coming from you! You didn’t seem to mind the lies and deceit when you were Rory’s lover.’
There was nothing she could say to that, even though she was tempted to fling the truth at him. What good would it do now? And wouldn’t he be bound to want to know why she had made such a sacrifice?