‘Just like he was when he took you to bed,’ Mollie suggested wryly. ‘Have you ever asked him how he feels about you, Sylvie?’
For a moment Sylvie was too shocked to answer.
‘No! No, of course not—I couldn’t. How could I? Would you have asked Alex that?’
‘Perhaps not,’ Mollie acknowledged. ‘But Alex’s and my relationship is very different to yours and Ran’s. We hadn’t known one another very long. Whilst you and Ran...’
‘The difference is that you and Alex love one another, whilst Ran and I... I have to go, Mollie. I just can’t talk about it any longer,’ Sylvie told her emotionally.
As she ended the call she prayed that Lloyd would get here soon. God and Lloyd willing, she could leave Derbyshire before Ran came back.
As though on cue she saw the lights of a car drawing up outside the house, sweeping across her bedroom window. Lloyd at last...
Taking a deep breath, she went downstairs to meet him.
Half an hour later, after she had told Lloyd everything, he gravely handed her a handkerchief and asked her, ‘You really love him that much?’
‘Too much. Stupid, aren’t I?’ Sylvie said shakily, reiterating urgently, ‘Lloyd, I hate letting you down, but I can’t stay here—not now.’
‘You aren’t letting me down, honey. Your happiness means an awful lot to me. I guess I kinda think of you as the daughter I’ve never had. If I didn’t have this meeting I’d wait to take you back with me.’
‘No. No, you can’t do that. I’ll tie up all the loose ends I can whilst Ran’s away. The least I can do is to leave everything in order for whoever takes over from me here.’
‘See you in New York, then, hon,’ Lloyd told her before taking her in his arms and hugging her.
A little later he had gone. Soon she would be gone too...
Her throat tight, Sylvie blinked away her tears.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘IT’S a beautiful spot here, isn’t it?’ Mollie commented as she walked across the grass to join Ran where he stood studying the pool in the centre of the small treefilled glade.
Once, before her marriage to Alex, this glade had been the scene of disturbing desecration when it had been taken over by a band of travellers, eco-warriors, led by the drug dealer Wayne, who had convinced a then idealistic and innocent Sylvie that his sole object in travelling was to assert the rights of the homeless.
It had been Sylvie who had brought them to this pretty glade on her stepbrother’s land, and ultimately Sylvie who had played a major part in the drama which had unfolded when she had realised just how dangerous and unsavoury a character Wayne actually was.
It had taken months to restore the glade to what it had once been. Now it was a favourite spot for local visitors. In the spring it was filled with the colour of hundreds and hundreds of bluebells, but now they were over and the trees were just beginning to show the beginnings of the turn of colour which heralded the end of summer.
‘It’s hard to believe now just how much this place has been transformed,’ Mollie remarked as she stood at Ran’s side.
‘I wish I’d seen Sylvie the day she fell into the mud when you were cleaning out the lake and you had to pull her out... How old was she then, Ran?’
‘Seventeen,’ he responded immediately, causing Mollie to give him a swift, thoughtful look.
‘Mmm... When we were talking the last time Sylvie was home she mentioned how upset she was when her mother insisted that she had to leave Otel Place. She wanted to stay on here with Alex after his father’s death, but her mother wouldn’t permit it.’
‘She was a young girl on the verge of womanhood. A bachelor household just wasn’t the place for her.’
‘Even though one of those bachelors was someone she loved very deeply, someone she has never stopped loving...someone she still loves very deeply?’ Mollie suggested.
‘Alex felt that it was best that she stayed with her mother,’ Ran told her doggedly.
‘I wasn’t referring to Alex,’ Mollie returned gently. ‘It was because of her love for you, Ran, that Sylvie wanted to stay here.’
‘She was a child,’ Ran told her angrily, turning away from her so that she couldn’t see his face. ‘What did she know of...love? She was so young, Mollie, and I was just her brother’s manager; I couldn’t afford...’
‘To let her see that you loved her back?’ Mollie suggested softly.