After she had left her father's apartment, Tara headed blindly and
instinctively for her own flat and Ryland.
Despite the fact that it was a relatively warm day, she was literally
shivering with shock and reaction, her mind, her emotions, still barely
able to take in what she had just learned. It was impossible for her
to analyse or assess her feelings, impossible almost for her to even
begin to comprehend the enormity of what she had been told.
Impossible even to imagine that someone as close to her as her
mother--no, Claudia--could have managed to keep something so important
a secret from her for so long.
While she had been growing up, all those times when she cherished the
closeness, the bond that she believed existed between them, no doubt
Claudia had secretly been remembering that she was not really her
child; that she was doing the charitable, the right thing, in giving a
home. respectability to her husband's bastard baby. the baby he had
fathered on one of life's losers, a junkie and a prostitute, a woman
who sold her body to men for. "No!" Almost screaming the word as the
tears poured down her face, Tara clenched her fists, oblivious to the
shocked and curious stares of other pedestrians.
All those years Claudia had claimed, pre tended, to love her. How
could she have loved her? Tara closed her eyes in pain. That was what
hurt her the worst. Knowing that Claudia could not possibly have loved
her in the way she had always believed. How could she? She wasn't her
child.
"I loved you the moment I saw you," Claudia had claimed. But of
course, Tara knew better than to believe her.
"There was a special bond between us."
What special bond? The fact that Garth, her husband, was her father?
Some bond. And her mother, her real mother, how had she felt about the
fact that she was pregnant? Had she felt any thing at all or had the
baby simply been an un wanted inconvenience?
"She wanted me to take you," Claudia had said.
"She knew she was dying," she had added gently.
"She wanted you to be safe, to be loved."
Had she? Tara doubted it. How could she believe anything that Claudia
and Garth told her now after what they had done, the way they had
concealed the truth from her?
All those years and she had never guessed, never suspected. All those
years when they had known and she had not. She hated them, despised
them, and she never wanted to see them again. The sooner she and
Ryland left for America, the happier she would be. There she could
have a fresh start, put the past. "Ry... Ry..." She was crying his
name as she unlocked the door and hurried into the flat.
The smell of his shower gel still hung tantalisingly in the air.
Eagerly, Tara hurried through the empty sitting room and into the
bedroom. She came to an abrupt halt as it slowly began to dawn on her
that the flat was empty.
Blinking back her tears, she returned dejectedly to the sitting room,
then frowned when she saw the note he had left her. Her hand was
trembling as she picked it up and started to read it. By the time she
had put it down, her face was ashen, fresh tears welling up in her
eyes.
Ryland wasn't here. He had gone. summoned home by his father.
He had left her a number to ring. Frantically, she started to dial it,
then stopped and replaced the receiver.
Ryland had been summoned home by his family and that family included
his aunt. Everything that Ryland had said to her about his aunt
abruptly came back to her, including his own rueful admission that she
had very strong views on the type of woman she wanted him to marry.
Numbly, she sat down. How would she feel when she discovered the truth
about Ryland's prospective bride? How would his mother, his parents,
feel? Did Tara really need to ask herself? Painfully, she swallowed
the hard lump threatening to close her throat. She couldn't put Ryland
in a position where he was forced to choose between them. She loved
him too much for that, knew too well that if she allowed him to choose
her, there would be a part of him that would always feel guilt at
having to let his family down and she didn't want their marriage to be
marred by guilt or regrets. She wanted it to be whole and healthy,
perfect, but how could it be like that now? How could anything ever be
the same again?
Her mother, a prostitute and a drug addict.
Helplessly, Tara started to rock herself to and fro, her arms hugging
round her knees in a timeless gesture of self-comfort. But there was
no escape from what she had learned as she mentally relived the recent
meeting with her parents.
"Since you didn't see fit to tell me before, why have you decided to
tell me now?" she had challenged Claudia, demanding bitterly at one
point, "Did you just suddenly decide you were bored with playing the
role of loving mother, wanted a change, a different way of life? You
wanted me out of your life, is that it?" she had accused wildly,
watching as Claudia's eyes filled with tears.
Claudia had turned helplessly towards Garth before saying brokenly,
"I... I was afraid that there might be a problem with Ryland's aunt,
that she might somehow discover the truth. Your visa--when it didn't
come through immediately, I didn't want ... I wanted you to be
prepared."
"It didn't come through because the computers were causing problems...
not because they had discovered your lies," she had told her coldly.
A part of her wished that they had left her in ignorance, that they had
kept their secrets to themselves. But why should she expect Claudia to
consider her feelings? It wasn't as though she really meant anything
to her. She wasn't really her child . her daughter.
Clambering to her feet, Tara picked up the note Ryland had left her
with his number in Boston and, before she could give in to the
temptation to redial it, she tore the paper into pieces and threw it
into the waste-paper basket.
She couldn't stay here. Not now. She didn't have the right. She
wasn't the person to whom this flat had been home any more. She was
someone different, a stranger who, as yet, she didn't even really know.
The child of a stranger. She felt she had no home, no past, no
future, no real identity.
Even the belongings around her, the clothes in the wardrobe, suddenly
seemed alien to her. She was completely alone now. She had nothing.
no one. Shaking her head to banish the tears she could feel
threatening to flood her eyes, she stumbled towards the door of the
flat. She had no clear idea of what she intended to do, only that
everything that comprised what she had thought of as her life had
suddenly been taken from her. Her belief in herself as a person had
proved to be a fiction, a falsehood, a sham. She was not and never had
been the person she had always believed. She was. nothing.
With her hand on the door handle, she stopped and turned around.
Walking back towards the telephone, she pulled from her finger the ring
Ryland had given her shortly after he had declared his love.
A single tear splashed down, but Tara didn't notice. With the removal
of Ryland's ring, she was distancing herself from the Tara she had
previously been. She was no longer that person. How could she be?
And how could Ryland or anyone else, including herself, love or want
the Tara she had become? The Tara who carried in her genes the blood
of a stranger. What had she been like, her mother, the mother who had
taken money from men in exchange for the use of her body?
Quickly, before she could change her mind, Tara headed back to the
door, not daring to turn round and look at what she was leaving behind
just in case she weakened and changed her mind.
"Have you thought any more about what I said?" Estelle frowned as she
looked into Blade's sleep-softened face. He had turned up late the
previous evening high on drugs, insisting on being let in and, for
once, satisfying his sexual appetite had not been the focus of all his
attention.
He had given her some garbled tale about being in trouble with 'the big
man' as he called him, and Estelle's heart had sunk as she listened to
him. That he both used and dealt in drugs was no secret to her. She
had used them with him herself--harmless recreational stuff that had
given an added edge to their sex. She could see nothing wrong in it
just so long as you knew what you were doing--and what you were
taking--but she had noticed recently that Blade was becoming
increasingly involved in the drug scene.
Now he was pushing her again, demanding to know if she had found
another girl yet that they could have sex with--someone classy enough
to command a high price from the punters once he and she had trained
and taught her.
"Straight three-in-a-bed stuff isn't what the kinds of guys I'm talking
about are interested in," he had told her when they had just discussed
the subject.
"They've done all that. No, they want something special, something
really hot."
"Like what?" Estelle had asked him, intrigued but also, she surprised
herself, irritated at the same time.
There were occasions, increasingly lately, when she felt not just
irritated and, yes, bored by Blade's obsession with sex, but also
almost actively repulsed by it--but she had learned to quickly dismiss
such thoughts. They were too dangerous, too frightening. She had to
stay loyal to Blade because without him she had nothing-was nothing!
"Oh, you know," he had answered her.
"They want something... someone... exciting, original. Someone
discreet and fresh. They don't live in this country and they want to
take home with them some video souvenirs to remind them. They're
willing to pay very well, very well indeed, but they're beginning to
get impatient. You must know someone we could use. They don't want
the usual stuff you can buy on the street. They don't want some jaded,
overused hooker who's just going through the motions."
"Well, if it's a virgin they're looking for..." she had begun
dismissively, but he had shaken his head.
"No, not that. They want someone who understands, enjoys pain. You
understand and enjoy pain, don't you?" he had whispered to her, his
libido returning as the effect of the drugs he had taken started to
wear off.
"You understand and enjoy it very, very much."
He had laughed as she started to evade him, playing the game she had
played with him so many times before, her senses responding as they
always did to the sharp thrill of fear that went through her as he
overpowered her.
With Blade there was always this delicious edge of not quite being sure
how far he would take things, how much he would frighten and hurt her,
how much she dare trust him.
"You've been having someone else," he had told her once he secured her
wrists to the bed head.
"No/ she had denied, flinching as he knelt astride her and tugged
painfully on her hair be fore biting sharply into her breast.
"Don't lie to me he had warned her.
"I can smell him ... taste him on your body. What did he do to you?
Did he do this?"
She had cried out sharply as he tugged pain fully on her nipple, using
his teeth on the gold ring he had given her as a birthday present along
with the visit to the body piercer.
"What we need is someone new and... adventurous," he had reminded her,
continuing to arouse and tease her body.
"These men are close friends of the big man and they've ex pressed an
interest in seeing an extra-special performance he added as he tugged
sharply on her nipple ring.
"It won't be easy finding someone for that," she warned him.
"You'll have to," he insisted.
"These men are major league players and they're beginning to get
impatient. There's no way I can disappoint them. Do you understand
what I'm saying?"
She had understood all right. There had been an occasion in the past
when she hadn't been able to supply him with what he wanted. She
hadn't seen him for almost ten weeks. She shivered now, remembering
how much she had missed him. How much she had ached for him. No other
man ever came anywhere near as close to satisfying her sexually in the
way that he could. No other man would.
Til do my best," she promised him now. Her body ached all over from
their sex session and the last thing she felt like was going to work.
But it was her work that provided her with the opportunity to meet the
kinds of men who were prepared to pay generously for the
extracurricular activities she provided, and besides, it gave her a
fierce fris son of pleasure to relate to Blade just what they had done
to her, these men she had found for herself rather than men he had sent
to her. After all, she didn't get paid for the ones she serviced for
him and the money was extremely important to her, almost as important
as the sex.
"Make sure you do," he ordered, adding warningly, 'and remember, these
guys want somehing with class, the kind of woman who looks and acts
expensive. They won't be satisfied with some cheap tart. "
Someone classy and expensive--and where the hell was she supposed to
find someone like that who'd be willing to do what his clients
wanted?
In the past, when she had found girls for him, she had done so by
scouring the clubs where she had known she would find the kind of girl
he was looking for. What Blade was demanding that she provide now was
a completely different ball game and one she wasn't quite sure she
wanted to get into, Grimly, she finished getting ready for work.
As she removed her rings from her sore and swollen nipples, she
flinched. Blade had been rough this time, even for him. She was going
to set up an appointment later on this afternoon with one of the
company's clients. If she didn't wear a bra, he would be able to see
her swollen nipples quite clearly through the silk shirt she was
planning to wear. She pursed her lips. He was only relatively small
fry and she wasn't sure she wanted to waste her time dangling any bait
in front of him. On the other hand, she still had the monthly payments
to meet on her BMW, and Blade had probably emptied her purse of all her
cash before he left.
She could tantalise him a bit without committing herself. It never did
any harm to keep a bit of something in reserve. Soon it would be time
for her to start looking around for a new job. She had suspected
recently that Garth was on to her and he wasn't a man who would take
too kindly to her using his business and his clients in the way she had
been doing.
Pity, really. Had he been a different type, she could have quite
enjoyed adding him to her client list and even offering him a specially
reduced rate, but she had realised within weeks of joining the
partnership that he was one man who was not open to the kind of sex she
put on offer although that didn't stop her hoping she might find a way
to change his mind.
He probably never does it any other way but the missionary position,
she had decided witheringly when he had brushed off her first discreet
attempt to interest him. But deep down inside that vital female part
of her, she had known that while Garth might not be interested in the
kind of sadomasochistic sex that Blade had taught her to enjoy, he was
very definitely a man who knew how to arouse and satisfy a woman,
albeit with rather more tender and gentler methods than she was
accustomed to. Her father had been on the phone again but she had no
intention of ringing him back. It pleased her to think of how he would
feel--how he would react--if he discovered how she really lived. That
would be something for him to tell his precious Rebecca about. Just
for a second, her eyes gleamed with pleasure at the thought of
procuring her for Blade, but she quickly dismissed the idea as
unworkable. A pity, she would have loved to have seen her father's
face if she had been able to involve her.
It was fortunate that the other girl she shared her small office with
was away on leave, Tara acknowledged shakily as she started to open the
drawers in her desk and remove her personal belongings. Beside her
computer was the framed photograph she had had enlarged from the
Christmas before last, showing her with her mother and both sets of
grandparents. Her fingers trembled betrayingly as she reached for it,
turning it face down as she rammed it into the nearly empty drawer and
slammed it shut. It had no place in her new life. How could it?
Outside her half-open office door, it seemed strange to see the normal
activity of the office go on around her despite the traumatic change
that had taken place in her life. There was no sign of her father. No
doubt he was still with her. Claudia.
How ironic that after all the time she had spent, or rather, wasted,
believing that her parents ought to be together, now that they quite
obviously were, it meant so little to her.
As she opened another drawer, quick, helpless tears filled her eyes and
splashed down onto the desk.
Estelle paused as she walked past the open door and saw Tara bent over
her desk, tears running down her cheeks. Curious, she pushed it open
even farther and walked into the office. After firmly closing it
behind her, she went up to Tara and placed her hand comfortingly and
restrainingly on her arm, asking her, Tara, what is it? What's wrong?
"
The shock of realising that her distress had been witnessed by someone
else robbed Tara of the ability to do anything other than shake her
head in silent misery as the tears kept filling her eyes.
Using Tara's silence and obvious loss of composure to seize control of
the situation, Estelle put her arms around her, holding her close,
firmly ignoring all Tara's attempts to break free of her 'comforting'
embrace. All her instincts told her that she might just have found the
answer to her problems.
"Oh, you poor thing," she murmured mock n tenderly, her sharp eyes
quickly noting the fact that Tara wasn't wearing her customary ring.
Personally, had she been Tara, she would have insisted on being given
something far more expensive and show-of fable than the tiny heart
shaped diamond Tara had seemed so happy to wear.
"Come on, you have a good cry. Men! They're all the same." As she
had anticipated, this female empath ising resulted in Tara's body
heaving with fresh sobs.
Estelle smiled triumphantly to herself. It worked every time. Show a
vulnerable overemotional sister a bit of sympathy, and before you knew
where you were, you had bonded for life. From the evidence in front of
her, though, Tara was taking things a bit too far. Being reduced to
tears by the loss of a man was one thing;
being reduced to clearing out your office desk was quite another. To
Estelle's experienced eye, Tara's office bore all the hallmarks of a
woman who was on the point of running away.
Tara's next words confirmed her thoughts as she heard her hiccuping,
"Please let me go. I've got to get away... I've--' " Of course you
have," Estelle soothed, her mind working quickly.
"Here, let me help you with all of this."
Before Tara could either stop her or refuse, she had started to neatly
stack all the small personal possessions Tara had removed from her
desk.
"Look, let me help you out with these," she suggested.
"You can't carry them all yourself."
Before Tara could protest, she was opening the office door, her arms
piled high with Tara's belongings as she martial led her protectively
in front of her, keeping her from any close inspection by anyone in the
outer office as she shepherded her towards the lift.
Tara's car was parked in the underground car park and listlessly she
allowed Estelle to take the keys from her and open the boot.
"Look, where is it you were planning to go?" Estelle asked her,
adding, when Tara made no response, "I can't let you drive anywhere in
this state. It would be on my conscience for ever. Look, I've got an
idea. I'm due to break for lunch, so why don't we go somewhere quiet
and...?"
Immediately, Tara shook her head. She and Estelle had never been
particularly close; there had always been something about the other
girl that made Tara feel slightly repelled by her, an air of sexuality
and knowingness that, without understanding why, Tara had always found
off- putting. There had been rumours in the office about Estelle's
supposedly slightly unorthodox sex life, but Tara had always firmly
dismissed as envy and office gossip any suggestions she had heard that
Estelle used her undoubted sex appeal to boost her more conventionally
earned income.
"I'm not taking no for an answer," Estelle told her firmly.
"There's no way I'm letting you go anywhere like this. Your
father..."
Tara flinched, the colour fading from her face. The last thing she
wanted was for any kind. any kind of contact at all with Garth.
"Yes... all right... FU come with you," she agreed.
When she saw the slightly nervous and very betraying look Tara gave
over her shoulder, Estelle smiled cynically to herself before urging
Tara into the passenger seat of her car, telling her determinedly,
"I'll drive. It'll be safer that way."
Tara, who had been assuming that they would walk to wherever it was
they were going to have lunch, simply couldn't find the energy to argue
with her. She felt totally overwhelmed by the other girl's tenacity.
All she really wanted to do was to get in her car and drive and keep on
driving until she found somewhere no one knew her and where she knew no
one, somewhere where she could start afresh, where she could be
herself. The last thing she wanted or needed right now was some
tedious lunch with a woman she barely knew, but to tell Estelle so
would take too much effort, use more strength than she had left. It
was easier, simpler, to just go along with her.
Leaning her head back, Tara closed her eyes and let Estelle manoeuvre
her car out of its parking space.
As she watched Tara's eyes close, an idea was beginning to form inside
Estelle's brain, an idea so challenging and dangerous that to think of
it made her shudder deliciously inside with a mixture of fear and
excitement.
"They want someone with class... style..." Blade had told her, and
Tara had both of those and much, much more. Oh, she couldn't wait to
see her face as she lay there spreadeagled await and Betraying the
entrance of her torturer. She wouldn't cry or scream, not at first,
but that would only heighten the delicious anticipatory sexual pleasure
of the onlookers who were there to watch her and often to pleasure
themselves in orgiastic release at seeing her vulnerable naked body
being subjected to the placement of the pretty but oh, so deceptive
gold rings that the piercer would decorate her naked body with.
Those delicate gold rings weren't just ttiere for ornament, not even
for the teasing play of a lover; they could be used as a means of
constraint and imprisonment threaded through with fine thin wires.
Estelle started to smile and then to laugh. She had found Blade
exactly what he had asked her for and more besides. She couldn't wait
to see his face when he realised what she had brought him. It wasn't
going to be easy, of course, but there were always drugs that could be
used to soften and weaken a person's resistance and who knew better
where to get them than Blade.
They were out of the car park now, Tara's eyes still closed. Estelle
thought quickly. If she could pump her with enough to drink at
lunch-time, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to get her to agree
to go back to her flat, and once there. To take her straight there now
as she was tempted to do could be a bit tricky, though. No. Lunch
first, and then. In the seat beside her, Tara was too absorbed in her
pain to pay much attention to what was going on around her.
Ryland. What would he think, what would he do when he came back and
found her gone? He would contact her parents, of course, and then they
would tell him. She swallowed hard. What would they tell him? That
she wasn't fit to be his wife. to be the mother of his children. that
she. A hot tear ran down her face, followed by another.
Seeing these signs of her grief, Estelle gleefully laughed inwardly to
herself. Stupid bitch. Well, she'd soon learn what real pain was all
about. Very soon, no doubt, if Blade had anything to do with it. Some
people might consider him to be warped but Estelle didn't. She knew
what motivated and drove him. Pain. Pleasure. Call it what you
would, it was the only sure thing in life. Far more sure and reliable
than a lover's promises or a parent's--especially a parent's!
liis father was the first person Ryland saw as he came through the
arrivals gate and he hurried to greet his son, embracing him fiercely
when he reached him.
His father, Ryland recognised with a sudden sharp stab of concern, had
aged in his absence. He looked greyer, shorter somehow, his body, his
whole stance, now that of an older man. His face anxious and furrowed,
he took Ryland by the arm and hurried him towards the exit.
Tops, what is it, what's happened? " Ryland demanded.
Shaking his head, Jed advised him, "Wait until we're in the car,
son."
The freeway was already busy with traffic as they pulled onto it, his
father's concentration apparently given to his driving, leaving Ryland
edgily irritated.
"Look, Dad..." he began. His body was starting to suffer the effects
of the long journey, that and the shock of being summoned home so
dramatically.
"I'm sorry, son," Jed apologised, recognising his growing impatience,
'it's just. well, it's all been such a. such a shock. "
"What's been a shock?" Ryland demanded to know.
"There's been an accident on the island... a fire. By the time the
fire department got out there--' " A fire, but what . how. "
His father shook his head.
"When we get home," he replied sombrely.
"But who, who was there? Are they...?" Ryland stopped and swallowed,
still unable to take in fully what his father was saying.
The small island off the New England coast that had come into the
family with his aunt on her marriage to his uncle had been the scene of
many happy family holidays for him while he was growing up. Even after
her husband's death off its coast in heavy seas in his racing yacht,
his aunt still continued to visit the island.
There was a tradition that the whole family spent Labour Day there, and
this year he had hoped that he and Tara. He swallowed again.
"Margot was there... and... and Lloyd," his father told him gruffly,
going silent for a moment before adding quietly, 'and your aunt Martha
was there, as well. It was the housekeeper's day off so at least Esme.
"
"And Margot, Lloyd and Aunt Martha...?" Ryland started to question him
but the words were sticking in his throat as though deep down inside he
already knew the answer.
Jed's hands tightened on the wheel, then he told him thickly, "All
gone. The fire chief says it's more than likely that the smoke--'
"The smoke? But surely they must have known, had some warning ... had
time to get out?"
"I don't know, son. There is evidence that... The fire department and
the police are still investigating. It seems likely that the fire
started late at night and if they were all asleep..."
"I can't believe it," Ryland whispered, his voice cracking.
"I just can't..."
"I know, son. I know," his father consoled him.
"Let's wait until we get home to talk about it properly. Right
now..."
"It's okay. Dad, I understand," Ryland told him.
They were off the freeway now, taking the familiar road that led to the
small New England town where Ryland had grown up. It seemed so ironic
now that while he had been living in London, he had believed that the
next time he made this trip it would have been with Tara at his side,
his mood one of jubilation and excitement at the thought of introducing
her to his family as his wife-to-be. He had pictured the smiling,
happy faces of his parents, his siblings;
he had visualised even his aunt's stern stiffness melting beneath the
warmth of Tara's natural charm and loving nature. He had, he realised
now, very much wanted his aunt to meet Tara and to see in her eyes the
belief, the conviction that in Tara's hands and in the hands of the
children she would give him, the future of the business and, more
important by far, the future of the family would be safe.
Tara might not be happy when she knew about the constraints that so
much money would place upon her children but she had, beneath her outer
softness, Ryland realised, a certain steely strength that was a
combination of all of her mother's and her father's best
characteristics, and he knew she would be steadfastly loyal, not just
to him and their love, but to the concept believed wholeheartedly by
his aunt that great wealth brought with it a responsibility to use such
wealth wisely and for the benefit of mankind.
Tara. God, but he needed her desperately beside him right now. He
needed her strength, her warmth, her compassion, but most of all he
needed her love.
It was that time of the year when summer was beginning to end but fall
had not yet properly begun, the green leaves of the trees listless and
tired-looking, worn out, rather like his father, he acknowledged as he
took a sideways glance at the older man.
The New England countryside never looked its best at this time of the
year, Ryland considered. m these last days of summer, it always had an
air of weary waiting and dullness before the burst of colour as the
leaves turned in the fall. The pretty clapboard New England house that
his great-great-grandfather had built for his bride and set in its own
grounds overlooking the lake just outside the town looked as it always
did around now, he noticed as his father swung the car into the drive
and the house came into view--in need of a coat of paint. Painting it
was something of a family tradition, a chore his father always carried
out himself and one that ever since he could remember, Ryland had
always got roped into helping him out with.
As a boy, his task was simply to stand at the bottom of the ladder, but
the last summer he had spent at home, he had been the one to clean and
paint the gutters while his father painted the lower portion. It
struck him as he studied the house that his progression from the bottom
of the ladder to the top was very much in line with the progression his
aunt had been taking him through vis-H-vis his role in the business,
but of course his aunt was now no longer around to guide and support
him. Soberly, he focused on the house.
Even before his parents and the girls had moved into the family
home--in the days when first his maternal grandparents and then after
his grandmother's death when his grandfather had lived here alone--his
father had still spent the last weeks of every summer repainting its
large, rambling exterior.
It was a comfortable family house, if perhaps a little on the large
side for modem-day living, but Ryland had already visualised, lying in
bed beside Tara in her cramped London flat, the two of them buying a
similar type of property close by that of his parents. He, too, would
spend the last days of summer painting it with the help of his and
Tara's sons and daughters--Tara would insist on that. Briefly, he
smiled--just thinking about her warmed his heart and was almost as
comforting as though he had been able to reach out and take hold of her
hand.
His aunt had a large, grand house in Boston's Back Bay, but he knew
even before they discussed it, that Tara, like him, would prefer the
quieter environment of the New England town in which he had been
brought up.
As his father stopped the car, Ryland could see his mother standing
outside the house waiting for them, his sisters by her side,
startlingly grown up now even though it was only just over twelve
months since he had last seen them, their expressions betraying the
sense of shock and disbelief he himself was experiencing.
"Oh, Ry, son, I'm so sorry you've had to come home to this," his mother
told him as she hugged him tightly.
"I hope your Tara will understand and forgive us for calling you home
like this."
Ryland hugged her back. His mother didn't need to explain to him that
when his family met Tara, she didn't want that meeting to be
overshadowed by the tragedy they were now having to face.
"Fortunately, your grandfather is away visiting an old friend," his
mother told him as he glanced automatically towards the path that led
to the smaller adjacent house where his maternal grandfather lived.
"He thought a lot of Martha. They used to argue politics together
and..." His mother's voice trailed away.
"Come on, let's get inside. Police Chief Amory has been on the
telephone, Jed," she told Ryland's father as the whole family headed
for the house,
arms wrapped comfortingly around one another in instinctive support.
"I told him that you'd gone to pick Ry up from the airport and that
you'd call him back just as soon as you could. Why don't you take Ry
into your study and tell him what's been happening while I go make both
of you some hot coffee?"
Ryland's father waited until his mother had brought them both a large
pot of coffee and quietly closed the door behind her before beginning
to talk.
"I didn't want to start discussing this in the car, Ry, but it seems
like the fire that killed... According to the evidence that's already
been examined, it seems like it must have been started deliberately."
"Deliberately?" Ryland stared at his father.
"Are you trying to say that this was the work of an arsonist... someone
who...? But why... and how the hell did they get on the island in the
first place?"
Tiredly, Ryland ran his fingers through his hair.
"I guess because of her wealth. Aunt Martha could have been a target
for... I know there was a time when Margot was a baby that kidnap
threats were made against her."
"This didn't have anything to do with Martha's wealth, Ry," his father
countered quietly.
"It's..."
Ryland waited as his father stopped speaking to pour them both a cup of
coffee. His hand shook, Ryland noticed, and beneath his healthy tan
his skin had a pinched grey tinge of shock and grief.
"It looks very much as though the fire was started by ... by Margot."
"Margot!" Ryland almost dropped the cup of coffee his father was
handing him.
"But that's im- possibleV " It's no secret in the family how Margot
felt about Lloyd," his father started to explain painfully.
"Personally, I can't condone what... the relationship they shared, but
I...1 can't totally condemn them for it, either. I just thank God that
I've never been in that position.
I've loved your mother from the moment I set eyes on her. I know it
was the same for your uncle and Martha. I guess as a family we're just
kinda made that way. "
Ryland said nothing. Now was not the time to tell his father how
instantly and completely he had fallen in love with Tara; that kind of
father- and-son bonding and sharing was not something he wanted to be
overshadowed by the horror of the black tragedy his father was
beginning to reveal to him.
"How do any of us know how we would have reacted had we, like Margot,
fallen in love with someone too close to us in blood? I guess we all
like to think that we'd have seen the danger signs in time and removed
ourselves from the situation, turned aside from it. Margot..." He
paused and shook his head.
"Margot made Lloyd the centre and the focus of her whole life. He was
her whole life."
Ryland frowned. His father wasn't telling him anything he didn't know
already.
"Lloyd felt the same way about her he reminded his father.
"Otherwise he wouldn't--' " Lloyd loved her, yes his father hastened to
agree.
"But his feelings were never as intense, as compulsive if you like, as
Margot's, and I suspect that in many ways he continued with the
relationship because he was afraid of what Margot might do if he
didn't... I don't actually know that that was the case," he stressed.
"I'm simply saying that with hindsight... Well, after it had been
confirmed that Lloyd had perished in the fire with Margot and Martha, I
got in touch with our UCLA office." He stopped and shook his head.
"A couple of hours later, we had a telephone call from a... a college
professor whose book Lloyd had been going to publish. She asked if she
could fly down to see us." He paused again and poured himself a second
cup of coffee, then offered Ryland another one. Ryland shook his
head.
"From what she had to tell us," his father continued after taking a
sip, 'it seems that she and Lloyd had become very close. close enough
for them to be talking about having a future together. He'd told her
about Margot, and it seems he'd also told her that he was going to tell
Margot that. that the physical side of his relationship with her had
to end.
"Lloyd and Jamie Friedland had only known one another a matter of
weeks, from what Jamie told us--and I have no reason to doubt her. She
isn't a girl but a very mature and intelligent woman--they both felt
strongly enough about one another to believe... She told us that Lloyd
had said he was in love with her, and I've no reason to suspect that
that wasn't the truth.
"She also said he'd told her that he owed it to Margot and everything
they'd been to one another to tell her what had happened and to spend a
little time with her, helping her to come to terms with the change he
wanted to make in their relationship.
"She did say that Lloyd had confessed to her that his feelings for
Margot had changed over the years and that while he still loved her
very much as his cousin, he no longer felt the same physical passion
for her that she still felt for him.
"Additionally, according to Jamie, Margot had been deluging Lloyd with
pleading phone calls begging him to return to the island and demanding
to know what or who was delaying him. She also said that some of the
calls had ended acrimoniously and that Margot had, on more than one
occasion, threatened to take her own life if Lloyd did not return.
"She told me that she had begged Lloyd to be very careful about what he
said to Margot and that she had even suggested he try to persuade her
to see a trained counsellor.
"None of us is ever going to know exactly what happened or what Lloyd
did or did not say to Margot. All we do know from the evidence that's
been found is that someone, more than likely Margot herself,
deliberately started the fire.
"From the forensic evidence and... and the autopsies, it's also pretty
clear that both Margot and Lloyd had been drinking and that they were
very heavily drugged with barbiturates. Margot had a prescription for
sleeping pills. The police thought at first that their deaths might
have been a mutual suicide pact--given the nature of their relationship
that certainly could have been a... a possibility. I guess people had
an inkling about what was going on between the pair of them and I
guess, too, that out of sympathy, folks ktnda turned a bit of a blind
eye to it.
Your aunt Martha was very well thought of in the area. She's done a
lot of good there.
"The chief of police told me that when they interviewed her
housekeeper, Esme, they had to as good as tell her that they knew about
the relationship between Lloyd and Margot before she would open up to
them about it.
"My reckoning is that knowing Lloyd was about to leave her, Margot
spiked both their drinks with the sleeping pills, having previously
gathered together everything she needed to start the fire."
"But Aunt Martha ... surely Margot didn't...?"
"I don't know, son," his father told him sorrowfully, shaking his
head.
"None of us will ever know. According to Esme, she had left a cold
supper ready for Margot and Lloyd, who had gone out for a walk.
Lloyd had arrived on the island only that morning and Esme told the
police that he seemed on edge and anxious. Margot had driven down to
the harbour to pick him up, but she said that when they came back to
the house there was a lot of tension between them.
"It was Esme's day off and she was just about to leave the house--Lloyd
and Margot had already set out for their walk--when the phone rang.
When she took the call, it was Martha announcing that she had decided
to come out to the island a couple of days ahead of the weekend but
that Esme was to go ahead and take her time off. She told Esme to
drive the Jeep down to the harbour and leave the keys in it for her,
which was exactly what Esme did."
"So Margot might not necessarily have known that her mother was in the
house?"
"Possibly not. We know that she and Lloyd ate the supper Esme had
prepared for them. Presumably, Lloyd had told her about Jamie and his
plans for the future during their walk. Whether that was when Margot
decided to do what she did, or whether she made that decision later, no
one will ever know.
"All we do know is that at some stage she took a large can of kerosene
from the generator room into her room. She emptied her closet and, we
think, soaked her clothes and the room with the kerosene.
"We know that at some point she must have gone with Lloyd to his room,
which is where they drank the barbiturate-laced wine. Perhaps she made
a last-ditch attempt to persuade him to change his mind. Anyway, while
they were there, Martha must have arrived but went straight to her own
room without letting them know she was there.
"Having failed to convince Lloyd to change his mind--and according to
the police report, both Lloyd and Margot must have been feeling the
effects of the wine and the barbiturates by that time--Margot left
Lloyd to make her way back to her own bedroom. Once there..." He
stopped and bowed his head.
"The police doctor said it would have been over very quickly. The
smoke alone..."
"Oh, my God," Ryland breathed, expelling the words on a long sigh.
"It doesn't bear thinking about. Do you think Margot actually knew
what she was doing or...?"
"Who knows? She wasn't always easy to understand. It was as if there
was a part of her nature that had just swung that little bit too far
over the edge, made her just intense enough to be dangerous. I always
felt very sorry for her, but I have to confess I felt more sorry for
your aunt Martha.
"I'll never forget the look on her face when Margot told her that she'd
never have children, that she'd been sterilized. We were all there. It
was one Labour Day weekend and you kids were down on the beach. After
Margot had run out in tears, Lloyd went after her to comfort her. Your
mother and I were alone with Martha.
'"What have I done?" " she asked us. '" Where have I failed? " We
tried to tell her that she wasn't to blame ... that Margot was just..
Margot."
There was a long silence while the two men looked at one another.
"He's yet to confirm it officially to me, but from what the chief of
police has told me privately-and as nothing can be proved, since none
of us knows exactly what was in Margot's mind, whether she actually
intended to kill herself and Lloyd or whether, in fact, she even knew
consciously what she was setting in motion-Margot's death will be
recorded as a suicide and Lloyd's and Martha's deaths as accidental.
"It was always your aunt Martha's wish that she be interred in the
family crypt in Boston to be with your uncle."
"And Lloyd and Margot?"
His father shook his head.
"Perhaps the kindest and best thing we could do would be to arrange for
them to be buried with Aunt Martha--it is after all a family crypt and
that way at least they could be together."
"In death if not in life," Ryland said quietly.
"Yes, your mother said the very same thing," his father returned, then
clearing his throat, he went on, "I'm not sure yet how long it will be
before we can go ahead and make the necessary arrangements. I've
already been in touch with Martha's attorney. There'll be a formal
reading of the will, but as you already know, you are Martha's heir.
There are various charitable donations and gifts, of course, but as far
as the bulk of her own private fortune is concerned and the shares she
inherited from your uncle in the business, they go directly to you.
"
"The girls?" Ryland began thinking of his sisters, but his father
immediately hastened to explain.
"The girls will receive substantial bequests to be held in trust for
them, but I'm afraid that the main burden of your aunt's assets and
wealth falls on your shoulders, Ryland." Placing a consoling arm
around his son, he tried to comfort him.
"At least you'll have your Tara to share it with you."
Ryland gave his father a bleak look.
"What is it?" his father asked in concern. Tara doesn't know yet,
about. about the money.
I.
haven't told her.
I.
was going to but I was just waiting. " he began as he saw the worry in
his father's eyes.
"I should have told her, I know," he admitted.
"I guess I didn't want to risk spoiling things between us. She won't
like it, Dad. Not for herself, but for our kids.
She'll--' "She'll like it even less that you haven't been up front with
her," his father warned him quietly.
"I know," Ryland agreed sombrely. It was too late now to regret that
he hadn't found--made--the opportunity to discuss what lay in the
future for him and Tara, the future that was now the present. He
closed his eyes, flexing his tense shoulders.
He could almost feel the heavy weight of his aunt's millions pressing
down on them already.
"I should have told her," he admitted to his father.
"But I guess I was afraid of putting her off. I thought I'd have time
to prepare her.
I told myself there were years yet before Aunt Martha. Hell," he swore
under his breath as the full reality of what his aunt's death meant
began to hit him.
"I can't tell her over the phone, and the business--' " Yes, I was just
about to come to that," his fan ther agreed.
"I hate to put more pressure on you, son, but right now we do need you
here. The company's attorney needs to see you as well as your aunt's.
I've set up meetings for tomorrow in Boston. And a formal company
announcement will have to be made to the effect that you'll be taking
over from your aunt."
As his father continued to talk about the problems his aunt's death was
causing in the day-today running of the company, Ryland felt his
attention and his thoughts beginning to drift.
Tara. Why hadn't he looked into the future and foreseen that something
might happen to his aunt? Why had he waited so long--left it so
late?
1 ara woke up abruptly, feeling totally disorientated. There was a
sour tell-tale taste in her mouth and her head felt as though it was
filled with a mass of gritty wire wool. She was lying on an unfamiliar
sofa in an unfamiliar flat.
She tried to sit up and then stifled a small groan as the room swam
giddily around her. The clock on the wall showed that it was half past
four in the afternoon.
She had a vague memory of being in a restaurant with one of the girls
from work who kept on insisting that she have another drink.
She tried to sit up again and this time she made it. From the room on
the other side of the slightly open door, which opened off the small
living room, she could hear quite plainly the sound of a couple having
sex.
Grimacing to herself, she swung her feet to the floor. The events
leading up to her inebriated agreement to return with Estelle to her
flat were slowly beginning to come back to her now.
She shuddered. Heavens knows how many glasses of wine she had had to
drink. Too many, that was for sure. It had certainly been a mistake
to come back here with Estelle. She had never particularly liked the
other girl and she had liked t even less the gossip she heard about her
at work. t During lunch, Estelle had talked quite openly c about her
sex life, even boasting about the men t she had had, and Tara had
gained the distinct 1 impression that it had not been love or even lust
i that motivated her to be with them, but rather i money.
i "Oh, come on," she had taunted when Tara gri- i maced over a
particularly distasteful incident she was relating to her.
"Don't tell me that you haven't been tempted to try something like
that." ^ "Bondage isn't my scene," Tara had responded ] quite
truthfully.
( Not her scene perhaps, but no doubt it had ] played an important part
in her mother's, her real j mother's, repertoire. All the time Estelle
had , been boasting about how easy it was to get men to pay for the use
of her body, Tara had been writhing inwardly, wondering if it was
because there was something inherent in her, something she had perhaps
inherited from her birth mother J that made Estelle aware. that made
her talk to her so openly. Which was, no doubt, why she had gone on
drinking even after she knew she had reached her limit, Tara
acknowledged miserably.
"You should give it a try. You might even find you like it," Estelle
had goaded her.
"No, never...1 couldn't. Tara had shuddered in genuine revulsion.
' Listening to her even through her increasingly drunken dizziness,
Tara abruptly had known deep within her soul and with unquestioning
certainty that there could only be two reasons for her ever having sex,
both of which were based on love--one being the love she might have for
her sexual partner and the other being the love she had for whomever it
was she was trying to protect by having sex with a man she did not
love. To have sex for money as her mother had done was simply not an
option she could ever envisage herself taking. There were, after all,
other ways to earn money.
And with that knowledge had come the first small lifting of the black
cloud of despair that engulfed her when she had learned the truth about
her parentage.
She might be Katriona's child, but she was her own person. Katriona
might have earned her living by selling her body, but Tara knew that
she could not, would not, ever do the same.
Shakily, she got to her feet, picked up her bag, which was lying on the
floor at her feet, her shoes and jacket, which were on a chair, men
quietly tiptoed towards the door so as not to disturb the occupants of
the bedroom.
As she stepped out into the street, she saw her car was parked outside
the flat even though she had no knowledge of having driven it there,
and she certainly didn't feel she was in any fit state to drive it
anywhere now, she acknowledged. Out of the corner of her eye, she
spotted a cruising taxi and immediately hailed it.
"Where to?" the cabbie asked her laconically as he stopped for her.
Just about to give him the address of her own flat, for no reason that
she could think of, Tara heard herself saying instead, "I want to get a
train to Dorchester, but I'm not sure which station I need."
"Dorchester. You'll want Waterloo, then, luv," the cabbie told her,
swinging the cab around in an illegal U-turn with a screech of tyres
that made her aching head thud sickeningly.
Nervously, Tara sat back in her seat, her heart pounding and her
stomach churning in a way that had nothing to do with the wine she had
drunk earlier in the day.
"Your mother originally came from a small village close to Dorchester,"
Claudia had told her quietly when she demanded this information.
"Her father, your grandfather, was a schoolteacher at a public school
there."
Claudia had protested that she loved Tara for herself, but Tara felt
that wasn't the truth. How could it be? If that had been, would
Claudia have gone to such lengths to keep her true parentage a secret
from her? If she hadn't been ashamed of who Tara's mother had been,
then why had she said nothing?
"I love you," Claudia had told her in tears and perhaps she had. but
only as a second-best, a make-do-and-mend. How could any woman love
another woman's child as much as she could love her own? How could a
woman like Claudia love the child of a woman like Katriona?
No, Tara had convinced herself that Claudia loved her because she had
had to. She just wasn't sure which of them had hurt her the most--her
birth mother for being what she had been or Claudia for being someone
she wasn't.
How was Ryland going to feel when she had to tell him? There was
suddenly a frighteningly empty space in her life where the person she
had always assumed herself to be had been but where now there was only
a stranger. She was a stranger to herself, she admitted forlornly as
the taxi pulled into the station.
Estelle grumbled mildly in complaint as Blade pushed her away and
started to get off the bed.
"Come on," he ordered her, "I think it's time we went and woke up your
little sleeping beauty, don't you?"
"She's going to need careful handling," she warned him.
"She's not some homeless kid, Blade. She's got friends, family and--'
" Don't worry, by the time we've finished with her, complaining to her
friends or her family is going to be the last thing on her mind, and
just in case she does get awkward, I've brought something with me
guaranteed to make her do as she's told. "
Estelle started to relax. Getting Tara drunk had been easier than she
expected, and after making sure she was fast asleep, she had telephoned
Blade to tell him what had happened.
"I'm coming right over," he had told her with that purring note in his
voice that told her he was pleased with her, 'and if she's as good as
you're telling me, I'm going to be very pleased with you. Very pleased
with you indeed. "
After getting off the bed, he pulled on his jeans and opened the
bedroom door. Abruptly he tensed, slamming the door closed as he
wheeled round to face her.
"What is it... what's wrong?" Estelle asked him uneasily, struggling
into her dress.
"She's gone, you stupid bitch, that's what's wrong," he shouted,
cursing her as she opened the door to stare in disbelief at the empty
living area.
"She can't have," she protested, half-stammering.
"She was out cold, she--' " Christ, but you're stupid," she heard him
saying, moving too fast for her to dodge the blow that caught her on
the side of the head, sending her reeling back against the headboard.
Her head exploded with pain, and as he hit her a second time, she bit
through her tongue, the blood spurting into her mouth. She tried to
scream, to fight back, but he held her down on the bed, imprisoning
her.
It had been a long time since he last punished her like this. Violence
did not arouse him sexually, but he knew how to hurt her and where, the
pillow he was holding over her face silencing her screams.
"Stupid, stupid bitch," he swore savagely at her as he hit her.
"You stupid, stupid bitch..."
"Just coffee, please," Tara told the girl as she came round with the
*******ment trolley. She felt completely sober now, but her stomach
was churning too nervously for her to be able to eat.
The train was surprisingly full, but she had managed to find a seat at
a table opposite a young woman in her early thirties who smiled warmly
at her as she, too, merely ordered a coffee.
"Do you live in Dorchester?" Tara asked her. She was feeling slightly
calmer now that she was over the shock of what she had done. It had
been an impulsive decision to go to Dorchester and one she was already
beginning to regret. What was she expecting to find? Not her mother,
not even her grandfather; they were both long dead and. "No, but my
parents live there," the other woman was answering with another
smile.
"I'm going to collect my daughter. She's been staying with them. The
first time she's stayed with them on her own and we've missed her
horribly."
The very way she had spoken about 'my daughter' had struck Tara like a
blow. There had been so much love and pride in the words and it was
politeness rather than any genuine interest that led her to ask, "How
old is she?"
"Eight. Would you like to see a photograph of her?" she
volunteered.
Suppressing a faint sigh, Tara nodded her head. After all, what else
did she have to do to pass the journey?
"She looks like you," Tara offered when she had dutifully studied the
snapshot she was handed of a pretty brown-haired little girl.
The other woman's smile broadened.
"Every] one says that she agreed, 'which is ironic, really, } because
Gemma is adopted."
; Tara's whole body went stiff, the colour draining from her face.
Quickly, she picked up her coffee-cup, her hands trembling. This was
taking coincidence too far and if she had any sense , she'd end this
conversation right here and now. She could almost see and feel the
dark shadow of fate looming over her.
"I didn't find out until after we'd been married several years that I
couldn't have children. I was devastated. We both were. We tried
everything." She paused and shook her head.
"Conceiving a child, my own child, became the most important thing in
my whole life. Even, in some ways, more important than my husband in
the end.
"Well, David gave me an ultimatum. He wanted a normal life, he told
me, a life that wasn't totally focused on my getting pregnant. We'd
put our names down for adoption early on when we knew I couldn't
conceive, but we never really had any hopes of getting a baby.
"Then totally out of the blue, we got a call to say there was a baby
for whom the agency thought we would make suitable parents. I couldn't
believe it, and there are still some days when I have to pinch myself
just to make sure that it's all true, that Gemma is ours. We've been
so lucky, so blessed..."
The woman's eyes had started to fill with tears, and as she drained her
now cold coffee, Tara blurted out, "But it can't be the same as having
your own child. You can't love her as much as though..."
The other woman was staring at her.
"Gemma is my own child," she told her with quiet dignity.
"Yes, another woman carried her in her womb, but Gemma was six weeks
old when she came to me. She was undernourished and underweight
because she had not been feeding properly. Her mother, a teenage girl,
already had two other toddlers by different fathers, and at first the
paediatrician thought that Gemma might have suffered some small degree
of brain damage during her birth because she was so slow to feed. The
moment I held her and looked at her, though, I knew she just needed
someone to love her properly.
"It's not something you can explain to someone who hasn't experienced
it. People assume that you need to physically give birth to a child to
love it, but that's not true. If it was, then there wouldn't be any
abused or unloved children, would there?" she observed with a sad
smile.
"Does she... does Gemma know she's adopted?" Tara asked her,
dry-mouthed.
"Oh, yes, she knows that her mother simply wasn't able to look after
her and that because she loved her, she wanted her to be with someone
who could. We talk about it quite often. To tell you the truth," she
added, her face instantly softening, 'if anything, I love Gemma more
because I didn't give birth to her. To me, to us, she is our most
precious and wonderful gift and she knows that no matter what happens
in her life, the bond of love I feel for her will never be broken.
When she's old enough, if she feels she wants to seek out her birth
parents, then that is her right, and David and I have both agreed that
we would do everything we could to help her. "
"Aren't you afraid that she might--' " Love them more than she does us?
" the other woman supplied gently for her.
"Yes, of course I am, but at the end of the day, as any adoptive mother
would tell you, what matters most is not that your child loves you but
that you love him or her."
"But you must feel concerned about... about what she might have
inherited from her birth parents," Tara persisted, her questions far
more intense and personal than those she would normally have asked a
stranger because they were due to her own very intense and personal
feelings.
"No child is born good or bad," the other woman told her positively.
"Gemma's birth parents were a couple of teenagers who had sex without
any real thought of the consequences. Gemma's mother ran away from
home to escape an abusive stepfather. She was pregnant with her first
child at fifteen, had her second at sixteen and Gemma herself a year
later. That doesn't make her bad. The only thing that makes it bad is
the system, the society that failed to love and protect her.
"Gemma is her own special self and we love her because of her
individuality. David, my husband, loves animals, and Gemma is like him
in that. The pair of them are always bringing home injured creatures
they find, but although neither David nor I have ever had any special
talent for it. Gemma is becoming a very good rider. She has a natural
ability, her riding school has told us-something she must have
inherited through her parents.
"Having an adopted child is so very special in so many ways. Every day
is an adventure full of new discoveries. You have no preconceptions
and it's your responsibility to give your child the emotional
nourishment to help them reach their full potential.
"Gemma knows how special she is to us and she will carry that knowledge
with her wherever she goes in her life. Every adopted child shares
that special ness
"But what would have happened if you'd gone on to have a child of your
own?" Tara asked her forthrightly.
The other woman frowned and then responded gently, "I don't think you
understand. Gemma is my own. It is impossible, inconceivable, that I
could love her any more than I already do."
Her frown was deepening now and Tara could see that she was perhaps
beginning to regret having spoken to her.
"I'm sorry," she began to apologise.
"It's just that--' Before she could finish her sentence and explain
about her own past, the guard was announcing that they would shortly be
arriving in Dorchester and her travelling companion was All ready
getting her things together and looking tot wards the window in eager
anticipation.
^ Tara saw her again briefly after they had both 1 left the train. She
was holding out her arms to a i small, pretty, dark-haired little girl
who came ] flymg down the platform to fling herself against i her,
crying out, "Mummy... Mummy..."
1 Tears filled Tara's own eyes as she watched them. Had she perhaps
been wrong to accuse Claudia of claiming that she loved her because she
had had no other choice? Because it had been ] either her or nothing?
But even if she had been i wrong, Claudia had still hidden the true
facts of : her birth from her. Had she done it because she ;
was ashamed and afraid of what she had done, of being found out and
losing her, as she had i claimed to Tara? Or because, as Tara
believed, she was ashamed of who Tara really was and afraid that she
would turn out to be like her biological mother?
The receptionist at the hotel Tara booked into was far too well trained
to show any curiosity at her lack of luggage and vagueness about the
length of her stay. But how could Tara answer that question when she
didn't know the answer herself, when she still didn't even really know
what she was doing here in Dorchester?
As she turned to walk away from the reception desk, she paused and
turned back, saying, "Ex and Betray 423
cuse me, but I wonder, do you happen to know if there's a village
locally that has a public school? "
The girl frowned.
"Well, there's Wheatly Park down the road, and Darlington, of course,"
she informed Tara, 'but. "
Tara thanked her and turned away. It was going to be impossible trying
to trace her unknown family without more detailed information. She had
been an idiot to come rushing down here like this. There was a public
telephone in the foyer. Determinedly, she headed for it, then picked
up the receiver and dialled the number of her father's apartment,
telling herself that Claudia might not even still be there, never mind
be willing to answer her questions.
When she heard Claudia's voice on the other end of the line, she almost
lost her courage and replaced the receiver. Instead, taking a deep
breath, she said rustily, "It's me, Tara...."
Standing in Garth's living room, Claudia wound the flex of the
telephone receiver nervously round her ringers, her heart thumping
frantically. When Tara had rushed out of the apartment, she had felt
as anguished, albeit in a different way, as she had done when she
learned that her baby was stillborn. The only difference was that this
time the pain was even more acute, a searing agony that felt as though
her heart was being ripped mercilessly out of her body.
"Leave her," Garth had cautioned her.
"Give her time." Now it seemed that he had been right.
"Tara darling... where are you ... are you...?"
Tears choked her voice, preventing her from going on.
"I... need to know something," she could hear Tara shakily demanding,
her voice almost youthfully defiant, bringing back memories of a much
younger Tara resolutely standing her ground as she enlisted Claudia's
aid for whatever philanthropic project she had impulsively
undertaken.
During the years Tara was growing up, their home had often become a
sanctuary for whatever and whomever Tara was currently championing, be
it animal or human.
"I need to know my mother's surname... and... where she came from,"
Tara told her abruptly.
Claudia's heart sank. She felt instinctively that Tara was not ringing
because, miraculously and no doubt on her part undeservedly, she had
changed her mind, but simply because Claudia was the only point of
contact she had with the woman who had given birth to her.
Silently, Claudia swallowed, blinking back her tears. Well, it wasn't
as though she didn't deserve Tara's rejection and she had no one but
herself to blame for what she was suffering. But Tara was also
suffering, and that, too, was her fault, her responsibility.
"Your mother's name was Katriona Spencer," she responded quietly.
"She was brought up in a village called Upton Villiers. It's near--' "
Dorchester, yes, I know," Tara acknowledged curtly, her palm so wet
with nervous sweat that she had to wipe it on her jeans before she
could write down the information Claudia had given her.
Tara darling, I know how upset you are," Claudia sympathised, but
please, darling, you must believe me. I love you so much, Tara, so
very, very much," she went on brokenly, 'and I can't bear to think
that. that you would ever feel that I hadn't loved you. You were
never in any way second-best to me and I have never thought of you as
anything other than. than the most precious, wonderful thing that life
could possibly have given me. "
Claudia's heartfelt words virtually echoed the words the woman on the
train had used to describe her feelings for her adopted daughter. Tara
had to fight hard to resist the overwhelming temptation to run home to
London and to Claudia just as fast as she could, fling herself into her
arms, knowing they would close safely and lovingly around her as her
travelling companion's had around her much younger daughter. So
overwhelming was it, actually, that she was just on the point of giving
in to it when she reminded herself of the reality, of the fact that
despite the love she claimed to have for her, Claudia had deliberately
deceived her.
"I have to go," she told her abruptly, then immediately replaced the
receiver before she could change her mind.
As she heard Tara cut the connection, Claudia's eyes welled with tears.
Garth had gone into the office, promising her that he would be back as
soon as he could, and she wished desperately that he had been here when
Tara had telephoned. He would have dealt with the situation so much
better than her.
It was amazing how easily and naturally she had slipped back into the
role of being his, of how easily the years of their being apart had
melted away, of how frighteningly quickly she had come to depend on him
again.
No doubt her own life, her own affairs, her business, all needed her
attention, but how could she concentrate on them. on anything, while
all she could think about, all that really mattered, was Tara's
happiness?
After she had ended the conversation with Claudia, Tara simply stood in
a daze beside the telephone for several minutes, her hand clenched
tightly over the piece of paper on which she had written the
information Claudia had given her.
She needed a change of clothes, a map, a hire- car. It was already
early evening.
The receptionist was able to suggest an out- of-town shopping mall that
stayed open until late in the evening, and at Tara's request offered
her a taxi to take her to it, promising to have the paperwork ready for
her to complete on her return to enable her to rent a car.
Angrily, Estelle stiffened her body against Blade's grip. He was
holding her too hard, hurting her too much, his hands locking round her
throat as he shook her violently. Instinctively,
she fought back, raking her nails down his arm and then gouging them
into his face as he refused to let her go.
Her dress was twisted up around her body, but as he swore at her,
removing one hand from her throat to reach out and grab hold of the
hand she had raised to claw him, twisting it painfully behind her,
Estelle recognised that this time his anger wasn't being fuelled by
sexual desire.
"Bitch, stupid, useless bitch," he swore at her, punctuating the words
with a series of blows to the side of her head that left her reeling.
"Stop it," she demanded thickly through her swelling mouth.
"Stop it, you're hurting me."
"Good," he snarled.
"I want to hurt you. You deserve to be hurt."
As he raised his hand to hit her, Estelle managed to wriggle free,
catching him off guard. She had never known him to act like this
before, and suddenly she was afraid, overcome with a fear that had
nothing whatsoever of the usual thrill of sexual excitement she had
experienced along with such fear. That fear was hot and arousing,
enticing; this one was cold and foreboding. After struggling off the
bed, she made straight for the door of the flat, pausing only to snatch
up her jacket as she did so.
Behind her. Blade was pursuing her, still cursing her. She could see
Tara's car parked outside the flat where she had left it; the keys were
still in her pocket. Acting instinctively, she ran to it, jumped in
and started the engine, ignoring Blade's shouts for her to get out.
Then racing dangerously away from the curb and into the traffic, she
left him standing on the pavement, watching his face contort with
savage fury.
Her heart was pounding with the adrenalin- fuelled instinct for
flight.
She started to shiver and reached out to switch on the car's heating
system. God, but she hated him sometimes. Hadn't she always done
every thing he asked? Given him everything he wanted? It wasn't her
fault that he had got him self in so deep with the drugs scene.
If he needed to buy people off, pay them off, then that was his
problem, not hers. Why the hell should she offer to help him out?
What the hell had he ever done for her?
Narrowly missing a pedestrian crossing the road, she put her foot on
the accelerator and cursed him. She had no idea where she was going
but the sensation of speed, of power, was giving her an outlet for her
fear and making her feel that she was strong and in control.
Deliberately she aimed the car for the small gap she could see coming
in the traffic ahead of her, laughing as she ignored the right of
another driver to take it, her sense of urgency and excitement
increased by the challenge of narrowly making it through the space.
The sense of danger- She could drive like this all day. It made her
feel good and it made her feel even better remembering the way she had
left Blade standing impotently behind her on the pavement. Let him
wait. Let him curse.
She wasn't going to go back until she was ready. And she wasn't ready
yet . no, she wasn't ready yet.
o the apartment.
"But she wouldn't tell me where she was it was a public phone
somewhere. She wanted to know Katriona's surname and where she had
come from. Garth. Garth... what is it?" she demanded anxiously when
she saw his expression.
Garth sat down, reached out and took hold of both her hands. There was
no easy way to tell her what he had to say or any way to keep the
information from her, either.
"When Tara left here earlier, she went straight to the office and
cleared her desk. I've checked her flat. There's no sign of her
there, just a tom- up message from Ryland saying that he's been
summoned home urgently by his father."
"She's cleared her desk7' Claudia stared at him with huge, haunted
eyes.
Oddly, contrary to what he might have expected the trauma of what was
happening had, instead of ageing her, somehow or other made her look
endearingly youthful and vulnerable, like the Claudia he remembered
from their shared younger days, a Claudia who needed and valued him and
who had no qualms about showing it.
"She... perhaps she's followed Ryland to America," she suggested
eagerly.
"She could have phoned from the airport."
Garth hated to disappoint her but he knew he had to.
"I doubt it he told her regretfully, shaking his head.
"I've phoned the main airports."
Claudia bit her lip.
"Have you spoken to Ryland... asked him...?"
"Not yet. I thought I'd phone him from here. Did she say anything to
you about...?"
"No," she replied unhappily.
"She was only on the phone for a few minutes and she rang off before I
could really ask her anything. Oh, Garth held her as she wept.
"She just needs time," he said, repeating what he had told her earlier,
but then he'd been assuming that Tara would spend that time safely with
Ryland and that Ryland would help her come to terms with what she had
learned.
The discovery that he was in Boston had disturbed Garth more than he
wanted Claudia to guess. The thought of Tara dealing with the painful
discoveries the day had brought with Ryland was one thing; the thought
of her having to deal with them alone was quite another.
"Her car's gone," he told Claudia sombrely.
Silently, they looked at one another. Then Claudia asked him bitterly,
"What are you thinking, Garth? That she's gone to look for her mother,
her real mother?" She started to shake with harsh, racking sobs that
tore at her throat and Garth's heart.
Try not to worry he counselled her.
"Right now, Tara will be feeling antagonistic towards both of us, and
no doubt she's also feeling rather afraid and alone, and curious, too,
about Katriona--that's only natural. Give her time, Clo... give her
time."
/! know you're right," Claudia agreed.
"I just wish..."
"It's eleven o'clock," Garth said.
"Let's go to bed. If Tara does ring again, there's a phone in the
bedroom."
"Tomorrow I must go... go home," she told him huskily.
"Yes, I know." Very gently, he touched her neck, brushing her skin
with tender lover's ringers.
"I'd like to go back with you, but under the circumstances--' " No, you
mustn't," Claudia broke in quickly.
"Tara might ring and--' Firmly, Garth took her in his arms.
"Perhaps this isn't the best of times to say this, but there's no way
I'd want to change what's been happening between us, Clo. No way at
all. It might be an arrogant thing for me to say but ... you and I
were meant to be together. Vfefit together, belong together, and I'm
putting you on notice that from now on I want to be very much a part of
your life."
Lifting her head to look at him, Claudia declared simply and
truthfully, "You are my life, Garth, you and Tara. Oh, I know I've got
my friends, the business, my charity work, a busy and fulfilling life,
and I'd be lying if I pretended that they don't mean a lot to me, but
giving love, being loved by those closest to me... " I've missed you,"
she admitted bravely, 'and although you may not understand this, it's
actually because I loved you so much that I had to end our marriage
once I knew you were Tara's father. You see, I simply couldn't live
with the knowledge that, as I then thought, you'd betrayed me with
another woman--any other woman, but most especially Tara's birth
mother. I hated Katriona so much then. You were mine and I felt that
she'd taken you from me. You don't know how many nights I've lain in
bed torturing myself by imagining the two of you together, imagining
you telling her how much more desirable, how much more sexy, how much
more of a turn-on she was for you than me."
Claudia could see from Garth's expression how much her admissions had
stunned him.
"It was never anything like that," he protested.
"I never--' " I know that now," Claudia assured him.
"But then..."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Garth groaned, drawing her closer.
"When you said you wanted a divorce, I thought it was because you were
completely disgusted and revolted by me... that discovering I was
Tara's father was simply the last nail in the coffin for our
marriage.
I'd felt for so long that you were irritated by me and tired of me.
mat I was simply someone who came between you and Tara, demanding your
time and attention when you wanted to give them all to her. I thought
discovering that I was Tara's father was simply giving you an excuse to
end our marriage. I thought you wanted me to go. "
"I did," Claudia agreed, 'and yes, I know there was a time when I was
guilty of. of neglecting you and our relationship. I don't honestly
know why. All I do know is that a good many other young women in their
early thirties with young children come to me for counselling saying
much the same thing. They complain they just don't have the time, the
space, the energy to be both good mothers and loving wives. Perhaps
it's because nature has designed us to put our children first when they
are young. Young children need that love and protection from their
mothers in order to survive, to flourish. But I never stopped loving
you. Garth, and once you were gone--' "Why didn't you say something...
tell me...?"
"How could I? You seemed more than ******* with your new life. I even
began to ask myself if you were relieved that I had asked you for a
divorce, if I had simply preempted a step you yourself had been wanting
to take. My pride wouldn't let me tell you how I really felt.
In fact, it wasn't until I was sitting outside our old flat reliving
the past that I finally admitted openly to myself what I had known deep
down inside for years. I told myself I was coming to see you for Tara,
but--' "It doesn't matter why you came," Garth whispered as he looked
lovingly into her eyes.
"All that matters is that you did... that you're here and that we're
together, now and for always. Come on, let's go to bed. We've got a
lot of time to catch up on," he reminded her wickedly.
"I wonder where Tara is now?" Claudia remarked sadly as she let him
guide her towards the bedroom door.
Tara thanked the receptionist for her help and took the keys she was
handed for the rental car she had organised for her.
It was just gone nine and still relatively light. Common sense urged
her to wait until morning when she was properly rested after a night's
sleep.
Hearing Claudia's voice over the phone had disturbed her more than she
expected and she told herself it was crazy to feel concern for someone
who had deceived her so heartlessly, and yet when she heard the tears
in Claudia's voice, her instinct had been to try to comfort her.
In the taxi back from the hypermarket, she had studied the map she had
bought, quickly finding the village where Claudia said Katriona had
been brought up. It was less than twenty miles away, that was all, a
relatively short drive.
Her hire-car was by coincidence the same make and colour as her own
car. An omen? Maybe, but of what? What was she expecting to find?
What did she want to find? Not Katriona. How could she? Katriona
was dead, she're n minded herself fiercely as she unlocked the car door
and got in.
Though sturdily built, the car hadn't been designed to be driven
recklessly round sharp bends at high speeds, especially not by a driver
whose mind was not really on her driving.
By the time she realised she had misjudged the sharpness of the bend
and her own speed, it was too late. The car was careering out of
control, skidding at a frightening speed towards the line of mature
trees that marked the edge of the road.
The elderly couple who lived several yards away from the bend heard the
sound of the car hitting the tree when they opened their door to let
their equally elderly dog out. They telephoned the police immediately,
but as the grave-faced traffic officer informed them, even if they had
gone out to the car there would have been nothing they could have done
for its sole female occupant.
"She must have died instantly," he told them. What he didn't tell them
but what his accident report would was that she had not been wearing a
seat-belt. Whether having done so at the speed she must have been
driving would have made any difference was academic now. She had had
nothing to identify her but he had radioed in the number plate of the
car.
Since it was registered to an owner living in London, it would not fall
to him to go and see them. London was Met territory and they were a
relatively small country force.
* * *
Garth was just about to take Claudia a tray of tea and toast when the
constable from the Met arrived, his grave expression at odds with his
youth.
After Garth had let him in, he asked him formally, "I wonder if you can
tell me, sir, if you are still the owner of a vehicle registered
J850 AYG?
"
"Yes, that's my daughter's car," Garth replied. The car was registered
in Garth's name simply because the partnership paid a contribution
towards the running costs of both of their cars since they used them
for work.
The constable looked away from him and then back before clearing his
throat and telling him, "I'm afraid I have to tell you that the car has
been involved in a ... fatal accident. You say the car belongs to your
daughter? The young woman who was driving had no identification on
her, and in the circumstances, I'm afraid, I'm going to have to ask you
to identify the body."
"Garth, I heard the door ... is it Tara?"
Claudia checked the doorway of the living room, the hope dying out of
her eyes as she saw the policeman.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she began, apologising and backing away, but then as
though something in the fixed stances of both men alerted her, she
suddenly froze in her tracks. Turning to Garth, she demanded, "What is
it... what's happened? It's Tara, isn't it? Something's happened to
Tara." As her voice started to rise, her whole body seemed to crumble,
the blood draining from her face as she clutched the doorway.
"There's been an accident," Garth was forced to tell her. "I ... I
have--' " Where is she? Which hospital? " Claudia demanded
immediately of the policeman while he looked at Garth.
Going to her. Garth placed his hand on her arm, almost unable to form
the words.
"She isn't... Tarais..."
As he watched her absorb and interpret his message, he could see in her
eyes a reflection of the pain and disbelief he knew were in his own.
"You stay here," he advised her gruffly.
"I'll go with the officer."
"No... no... I'm coming, too," Claudia told him fiercely, struggling to
suppress the avalanche of emotions threatening her self-control.
Tara dead. No! It couldn't be true. She would have known, sensed.
But the grave expression on the face of the young policeman and the
shocked anguish in Garth's eyes persuaded her that it was true.
She felt as though she had opened the bedroom door and walked into a
nightmare. Tara dead. It wasn't possible.
"Where...?" she began to ask, dry-mouthed, as Garth guided her towards
the door.
"How...?"
Garth touched her arm.
"Later' he whispered.
They sat silently side by side in the back of the police car, frozen
into immobility by the sheer weight of their loss, feeling almost as
though by not moving, by not breathing, they could some and Betray how
keep the news they had been brought from actually becoming reality.
The hospital morgue was at the end of a long, seemingly endless
corridor. Their footsteps echoed hollowly as they slowly made their
way to the door at the end. Garth couldn't help remembering the time
so many years ago when he had looked upon the face of his stillborn
child. Painful though that had been at the time, it had been nothing
like this.
They both hesitated outside the door to the morgue, but the police
constable pushed it open and stood back to allow them to pass.
The girl lay on a long table, the empty, body- length drawer open in
the wall behind her making Garth shudder as he looked away from it. As
a former army officer, he had seen death before, but this was
different. This was his own flesh and blood.
Tears filled his eyes. He turned towards Claudia and to his shock
heard her saying in a firm, dear voice, "That isn't our daughter.
That's not Tara. "
Garth shook his head. He had known, of course, how hard this would be
for her, and for her to deny the facts was perhaps not unexpected. But
to do so this positively, this determinedly. His tear-distorted glance
swept over the dark head and the pale, lifeless arm that lay across the
covered body.
"Clo..." he began beseechingly.
"Darling, I know--' It isn't Tara," Claudia interrupted him, pulling
away. Before he could stop her, she walked quickly towards the table
and around it.
"It isn't Tara, Garth/ she repeated more gently, her own eyes filling
with tears as she stood facing him across the body, her gaze fixed on
the face that he still hadn't had the courage to identify.
"Come and look," she invited him as tenderly as if he were a small
child.
"I promise you it isn't her."
Reluctantly, he did as she said, grasping the hand she held out to him,
feeling its warmth and reassurance, too grateful for its comfort to
question the fact that she was the one giving support and he the one
taking it.
"Look, darling. It isn't Tara," Claudia repeated once more, her
expression turning sombre as she confounded him completely by brushing
her fingertips over the dead girl's face in a gesture of loving comfort
and then bending down to kiss her cold cheek.
"Poor child. I don't know who she is but I'm profoundly sad for her
and her family."
As he blinked away his tears. Garth forced himself to look at the dead
girl for the first time. His expression must have given him away, he
realised, because immediately the constable was asking him, "Do you
recognise her, sir?"
"Yes, yes, I do," he confirmed, turning to Claudia.
"It's Estelle. She works for us." Garth tried to gather together his
scattered thoughts.
Estelle might not be his daughter, his child, but she was someone's,
some man's, a man who as yet had no awareness, no knowledge, of his
daughter's fate; a man who, if he was any kind of a father, would
grieve terribly for her once he learned the truth. And Garth felt that
it behoved him as a man, as a fellow human being, to allow a few
seconds of respect both for Estelle and for that unknown man even in
the midst of his own dizzy relief that the body before him did not
belong to his own precious Tara.
"You say she was driving my daughter's car," he remarked, looking at
the younger man.
"I don't know how..."
"Perhaps Tara lent it to her," Claudia suggested.
It was a possibility. Garth acknowledged, but from what he had heard
on the grapevine about Estelle, he suspected that the reality was more
likely to be that the other girl had 'helped herself to the car.
Perhaps in her furious rush to clear her desk, Tara had forgotten her
keys, or perhaps while rejecting her parents, she had also decided to
reject the car that had been a birthday gift to her and simply left the
keys on her desk where Estelle had found them.
"If you could tell me her full name," the police constable suggested
patiently.
Dazed, Garth did so. To have gone from being told that Tara was dead
and then discovering that she was not--all within the space of an
hour--had left him feeling in very much the same frame of mind as he
recalled once feeling in Northern Ireland when a companion had been hit
by a sniper's bullet, leaving him still standing. Relieved, and yet at
the same time, both disbelieving and guilty.
As they walked back to the police car. Garth saw that Claudia was
crying, the tears pouring silently down her face.
Hugging her, he told her, "It's just the shock. I know how you
feel."
Claudia shook her head.
"No... I'm not crying for that. I'm crying for that poor girl in the
morgue and for her mother," she explained tearfully to him.
"When I saw her and I knew she wasn't Tara, Garth, I realised that the
worst thing that could happen to me isn't losing Tara's love and
trust--the worst thing that could happen would be if Tara had been that
girl.
"Maybe Tara never will forgive me for what I've done, maybe I'll have
to live the rest of my life without her, but at least I'll know that
she's living, that she has her life.
"I knew, you know," she told him then as they got into the waiting
car.
"I knew even before I saw her. Tara's life couldn't end without my
knowing something, without my feeling something. It just isn't
possible."
"Mother love?" Garth teased gently.
"For me, Tara is my child," Claudia told him fiercely.
"My love for her is the love of a mother. She is a part of me in a way
I simply can't explain. I knew it the moment when I held her as a baby
and she looked straight into my eyes. I couldn't love her more if I
had actually given birth to her. Garth."
"I know that," he assured her, 'and so deep down inside does Tara. "
The police had asked him to supply them with what details he could of
Estelle, so after drop and Betray 443
ping Claudia off at the apartment and telling her that he would call
her in the evening after she had returned to Ivy House, he went back to
the police car.
Sophie saw the police car first, hesitating just those few vital
seconds before calling out to John, who was in another room.
Instinctively, she knew if not what the news was that somehow it was
bad. As the car stopped, it seemed to be enveloped in an ominous
stillness, a darkness.
The policeman broke the news as gently as he could, but Sophie could
see in John's eyes how ill-prepared he was for the shock, his eyes
blank, his mouth trembling slightly as he mouthed the words.
"No. Not Estelle.-she can't be... it can't be..."
Immediately, Sophie reached out to grasp his hand and held it
tightly.
Through his tears, John looked at her, his expression dazed.
"It shouldn't have come to this," he told Sophie brokenly.
"She shouldn't have come to this. My poor Estelle.-my poor, poor
girl."
Too late now to wish that they had tried harder, acted sooner, done
something to repair their broken relationship with her, Sophie
recognised, and knew as the thoughts formed that what she really meant
was that it was too late now to save her.
"Rest in peace, Estelle." She sent up a silent prayer to her
stepdaughter.
"Be at peace now wherever you may be."
n * *
Tara was already awake before she received her wake-up call. Halfway
down the country road that led to her destination last night, she had
abruptly changed her mind and turned round.
Because she had listened to the voice of good sense and reason
advocating that her quest could best be accomplished in daylight or
because she had suddenly become afraid of what she might actually
find?
What was there that could possibly be worse to discover than what she
already knew? Katriona, brought up by an elderly distant father, had
run away when he had refused, failed to recognise, that her bad
behaviour was an unspoken plea for him to give her the love and
attention she craved. And having run away, she had turned to
prostitution to finance the drug habit she had developed.
It was, after all, almost a drearily mundane story, a modern cliche
almost too commonplace to merit more than a dismissive shrug from any
outsider learning of it, but she wasn't an outsider. And then there
was Ryland.
Ryland. How was he going to feel when she had to tell him what she had
discovered? Ryland loved her, she knew that, and her reaction
yesterday to the kind of life Katriona had lived made it more than
plain to her, if she had needed any kind of confirmation, that her
mother's way of life could never be for her.
From Claudia she had learned to feel compassion for others and to make
allowances for their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but she knew that
no amount of hardship would persuade her to abandon the ideals she so
fervently believed in.
Because, through her un stinting love, Claudia had given her what
Katriona's parents had never been able to. Quite simply, she knew she
was loved, Tara acknowledged. By her parents, by Ryland and, most
importantly, by herself.
Very shortly she got out of bed. The sky beyond her bedroom window was
a soft, clear blue, the sun shining warmly, no cloud on the horizon to
disturb the promise of a perfect day. If she wished, she, too, could
dismiss the clouds on her horizon by merely turning round and going
home.
Like Claudia, if she wished, she could choose to carry the burden of
her real parentage in secret. Nothing need be any different and Ryland
need never be put in a position where he would feel honour bound to
disclose it to the world, to his own family. The choice was hers, but
she knew she simply didn't have that kind of strength, that she would
never be able to keep her silence.
Tara left the hotel around mid-morning She found the village easily
enough, then parked her car and got out to walk its length. From her
map, she had discovered the whereabouts of the school where her
grandfather must have taught. It was a few miles outside the village,
a large old house set in its own grounds, the headquarters of some
multi-national organisation now apparently, the school having closed
over a decade ago.
Tara tried to visualise her mother living in the village as a child,
although Claudia had told her that she had actually lived at the school
with her father. Had she made friends here in the village, been a
happy, well-adjusted part of the community as Tara had been in her own
home town? Or had she been an outsider, rejected by the other
children, not really one of them?
The church was at the end of the village street, set back from the
cottages and separated from them by a pretty stone-built rectory. It
was the kind of church that brides dreamed of, small, its stone walls
softened by time and its lych-gate crying out for artistic floral
decorations.
Tara walked up to the church door, opened it and stepped inside. The
church felt cold although light flooded in through the stained-glass
window beyond the altar. Around the walls, other stained-glass panels
bore the names of those who had donated them to the church.
Her mother had known this church, might perhaps have stood where she
was standing now, Tara reminded herself, but instead of feeling the
rush of emotion she had expected, all she actually felt was a rather
detached sense of curiosity. The photograph Claudia had given her,
which she had taken from Katriona's file, depicted a pretty,
dark-haired young woman. Try as she might, though, Tara could not
imagine her as flesh and blood, could not breathe warmth and life into
her. And most tellingly of all, as her mind had formed the words 'my
mother', the image flashing across her brain had not been of Katriona
but of Claudia.
A graveyard lay beyond the church. Slowly, Tara made her way towards
it, tensing as she saw the familiar back of the woman crouching on the
grass beside one of the gravestones.
When she had left Garth's apartment, Claudia had not intended to drive
down to Dorset, even though she suspected it might be where Tara had
gone. She had no right, she realised, to be part of Tara's life now.
Tara herself had made that more than plain to her, but Claudia had been
irresistibly drawn towards the village and not just because of The
woman in the small florist's shop had smiled at her in recognition when
she walked in. After all, she had been a regular visitor to the
village for a good number of years, always taking care and time over
the flowers she chose. Today, though, she had seemed more preoccupied
than usual, less inclined to stop and talk, the shop owner noticed as
Claudia paid for her flowers and left.
Unlike Tara, Claudia did not linger in the village or go inside the
church but instead headed straight for Katriona's grave. It was in a
far corner of the graveyard, protected from the wind by a yew hedge
that separated it from the countryside beyond it and close to the
graves of her parents.
The headstone was cream, decorated with dancing, fat-cheeked cherubs,
and had inscribed on it:
Katriona Spencer Daughter of Robert and Patricia Mother of Tara Rest in
Eternal Love
As Claudia arranged the flowers in the small vase at the foot of the
stone, filling it first with the ice she had bought from the florist,
the movements of her fingers deft and swift, she paused to brush her
fingers over Katriona's name.
"I never meant to lie to her or deceive her, Kat/ she told her.
"But she's right. I was afraid of losing her, of losing her to you,
just as I felt I had lost Garth. I always felt so dull and stupid
compared with you. You had an air of excitement and I envied you that.
Tara has that special magical quality, too. She would have been
fascinated by you.
"She was wrong to say that she was second- best, though. Tara could
never be that. You know how it was. That first time I held her, you
said then that you could see how much I loved her and I did.
"She has been the most precious gift that life has ever given me.
Loving her has been the easiest, the most natural thing I have ever
done. All those years when I fussed and worried protectively over her,
when she was growing up, you know what I mean. I told you, didn't I,
that time when I thought she had pneumonia, and then again when she had
to have her tonsils out.
"You laughed at me then. I knew you would. Just as you laughed when I
worried about her teenage desire for independence.
"Let her grow up, you told me. She needs to have her freedom. All
those years when I tried to protect her, and yet now I'm the one who
has damaged and hurt her.
"I should have told her. I know that, and by not doing so, I've
cheated you both. She's right. She had a right to know about you, to
make you a part of her life, and I've denied her that right because I
was jealous of you, jealous and afraid that she might love you more
than she did me. I could almost hear you mocking, saying to me, " Yes,
but I am her mother. "" "But she isn't. You're my mother."
Claudia knocked over the vase of flowers as she stood up clumsily, her
face flushing. Tara, I didn't know. How. "
"I saw you here when I came out of the church," Tara said.
"I've been listening to you."
Claudia bit her lip and looked away.
"You have every reason to be angry with me--' " Yes, I have," Tara
agreed, cutting her off.
"Every reason, and I am angry, but..." Now it was her turn to look
away.
"I... I do understand and I'm sorry for what I said about your not
loving me as much, about my being second-best. I know that isn't
true."
"Oh, darling," Claudia told her shakily, 'if only you knew how much it
isn't and never could be true. "
"What else have you told her about me?" Tara asked Claudia, nodding in
the direction of the headstone.
"Everything," Claudia replied simply after a small pause.
"I told her when you started to walk, and how your first word was "
pretty" but how I couldn't be upset that it wasn't " Mum" because you
said it to me. I told her that she was the one who really deserved
that description.
She was, you know, Tara, she was the most. she was very like you," she
declared emotionally.
"But you have a different nature. Katriona was like a diamond, sharp,
brilliant " Hard," Tara suggested wryly.
"You are more like an emerald, deeper, richer, full of warmth and
light."
"While you are like a pearl," Tara returned softly.
"Warm, pure, lustrous, glowing with inner beauty. Did she deliberately
try to conceive me with Dad?" Tara abruptly asked her, watching her.
Claudia took a deep breath. This time she wasn't going to lie.
"I'm not really sure. She was a creature of moods. I doubt that was
in her mind when she broke into the flat, but when she found Garth
there..."
"Do you mind talking about it?" Tara asked her.
"Not now." Claudia shook her head.
"When I thought that Garth had been unfaithful to me with her, then,
yes, I would have minded. I couldn't bear to think that, like you, he
would have preferred her to me."
"Why should I have done that?"
"She was your mother. I was just... a substitute."
"But you told me yourself that love does not depend on genetics," Tara
reminded her.
"You said that when we looked at one another, you and I, woman and
baby, we bonded with one another, loved one another. The way you
described it, you made it sound like a two-way exchange."
"Yes, it was," Claudia agreed.
"You gave me this look, this old knowing look as if you just knew. It
seemed you were willing me to pick you up and hold you and when I
did--' " Perhaps I knew instinctively that you would give me the
mothering I needed," Tara suggested.
"I've always liked to think so." Claudia gave a small sigh.
"But that doesn't alter the fact that what I did was wrong. I never
meant it to happen. I genuinely intended to hand you over to the
authorities. Only you were there and... I couldn't help myself, and
once I had taken you home... Tara, I can't ask or expect you to forgive
me but what I do ask is that you at least try to accept that you truly,
truly are loved by me as my most dearly loved child. I cannot believe
that it would be possible for me to love a child from my own womb any
more than I love you because, quite simply, it just isn't possible."
T do accept it," Tara asserted gravely, and as she said the words, she
knew she meant them.
Listening to Claudia as she talked to her mother, she had seen
illuminatingly just how much she was truly loved.
"Did you come in your car?" she asked Claudia now.
"Yes, I did," Claudia replied, giving her a puzzled look.
"Why?"
"Good. Can you give me a lift back to London? On the way you can
explain just what you've been doing these past few days sharing a
bedroom with a man," she added mock-severely.
Smiling, Claudia took a step forward, then stopped, hanging back.
Gravely, Tara watched her. Suddenly, feeling immeasurably moved, she
closed the space between them, hugging Claudia as though she were the
mother and Claudia the child.
"It's all right. Everything's going to be all right," she reassured
her quietly.
But as they walked back through the churchyard, Claudia noticed sadly
that Tara was unconsciously putting a slight distance between them
instead of holding on to her arm as she normally did. And she noticed,
too, that Tara had not called her Ma as she always so affectionately
had before.
they're boarding my flight," Ryland told his parents, turning to hug
first his mother and then his father.
"I'll be back just as soon as I've spoken to Tara."
His aunt's funeral had taken place and yesterday he had spent most of
the day in meetings with various legal and financial advisers following
the reading of her will and the confirmation that she had indeed left
the bulk of her estate to him.
As he got on board the plane and settled in his seat a little guiltily,
Ryland admitted that his thoughts were not on what he was leaving
behind but on what or rather whom he was going back to. He had missed
Tara like hell, all the more so because he had not been able to even
reach her by phone. The discovery, via her mother's assistant, that
Claudia was away for a few days had caused him to guess that Tara must
have taken advantage of his absence to spend a few days with her
mother.
If he was honest, he was occasionally just a little jealous of the
closeness that Tara shared with Claudia. Not that he wasn't close with
his own parents, but he wasn't an only child. Tara shared a special
bond with Claudia that in no way was that of an overly possessive
parent for a much loved child. Claudia, it was obvious, both expected
and encouraged Tara's independence and Ryland knew that she liked him
and welcomed their relationship. It was just that the two of them had
something that was so damned special.
They would be able to return to England for frequent visits, though,
and have Claudia over to stay with them whenever she wished.
Claudia. She was one sassy, independent lady with her own business to
run and, from what he had observed, not much free time to fill. His
own mother would like her and enjoy her company even though, in many
ways, they were very different.
Tara. Ryland closed his eyes and settled down to while away the few
remaining hours that separated him from her. How was she going to
react to what he had to tell her?
It had been relatively late when Tara got to bed. Her parents had
taken her out to dinner, her father insisting that he wanted her there
as a witness when he formally proposed to her mother. She was pleased
about the way things had turned out for them, of course, but it had
been hard. As she watched them, she had been wondering bleakly how she
was ever going to fill the empty space in her life where Ryland should
have been.
She could accept now just how much Claudia loved her and even to some
extent understand why she had done what she had done. Claudia, on her
part, had suggested gently that she might want to join a support group
of other adopted adults, where she could freely discuss her feelings of
pain and betrayal, but Tara had refused, not wanting to add to
Claudia's obvious guilt by telling her that very soon she was going to
be called upon to deal with a pain potentially even more devastating
than discovering that Claudia had not given birth to her.
She was certain that Claudia would blame herself, but she hoped that
she would understand the reason why she had to end her relationship
with Ryland. She simply couldn't bear to be the cause of a rift
between Ryland and his family. His aunt and Ryland, too, belonged to
the elite of Boston society--a society that she had heard attached
great importance to family background. How would they feel about
Ryland marrying her? Tara already knew the answer. That Ryland loved
her, she didn't for one moment doubt, but sometimes love was just not
enough.
She hadn't dared allow herself to ring him in Boston, frightened that
if she did he might hear what she was feeling in her voice and demand
to know what was wrong. When she told him, she wanted it to be in
person. She wanted, if she was honest, to hold him, to be held by him
one last time before she revealed the truth. She wanted. She wanted
Ryland, she admitted, closing her eyes on the pointless tears she knew
she was going to shed.
* * ii- It was gone three in the morning when Ryland let himself into
Tara's flat. There had been a delay at Heathrow before they could land
and then another with the luggage, but finally he was here--home.
Dropping his case and his jacket, he picked his way through the
darkness of the sitting room and opened the bedroom door.
Tara was lying star fashion, arms and legs outstretched, across their
bed, her eyelashes ridiculously long against her sleep-flushed skin,
her hair curling wildly in glorious abandon around her head, one
deliciously rounded breast exposed where the duvet had slipped away
from her body.
Ryland discovered that his throat had suddenly gone dry in the flood of
aching arousal that gripped him. He had noticed Tara's breasts the
first time they met, noticed them and wondered . wished. He started
undressing without taking his eyes off her. He couldn't take his eyes
off her; he was afraid if he did she might disappear, a mirage conjured
up by his intense longing for her. One pink foot had escaped from
under the duvet. Grinning to himself, he bent towards it.
She hated his touching her feet, she always claimed. She was so
sensitive, they were so ticklish, that even his breathing on them sent
her into paroxysms of giggles.
Very, very carefully he kissed one pink digit. In her sleep, Tara's
lips parted as she gave an al and Betray 457
most soundless soft sigh, her mouth starting to curl upwards.
Smiling himself, Ryland cupped her foot and slowly started to suck on
her toe.
"Mmm..." Ryland could feel the shiver of pleasure that curled her toes
and tightened the muscles in her leg as she responded to the sensuality
of his embrace. He stroked the bare skin with his fingertips and
sucked a little harder.
"Ooooh..." Tara shot up in bed, her eyes wide open as she stared in
disbelief at Ryland.
"Ry! Ry ... oh, Ry, when did you get back?" she demanded, flinging
herself into his arms, torn between tears and laughter.
"Just now," he told her mock-complainingly.
"Why did you have to go and wake up? I was just beginning to enjoy
myself."
"No, you weren't, you fibber. You were trying to torment me," Tara
said, giggling.
"Mmm... talking of torment," Ryland murmured in between the hotly
passionate kisses they were sharing, 'have you any idea just how much
I've missed you? "
"Missed me, have you?"
"Mmm... want to know how much?"
Their kisses were growing longer and deeper, the words that separated
them shorter and more breathless until they weren't talking at all, the
only sound to break the silence of their bedroom the heightened tension
of their breathing and the soft sound of their mouths meeting and
fusing.
Tara shivered in delight as Ryland cupped her face to kiss her more
intently and then broke away to look into her eyes before kissing her
again, watching her this time as she was watching him. Her eyes closed
only when his hands started to lovingly stroke the full length of her
body.
She loved it when Ryland made love to her like this, slowly and oh, so
thoroughly, taking his time, making her wait, making them both wait.
She gave a small, soft groan as his hands cupped her breasts, his
thumbs rubbing sensuously against her tight nipples, her stomach
muscles already tensing in expectation and anticipation.
"Ry ... Ry ... I can't wait any longer," she moaned as she reached out
for him.
"I've missed you so much. I want you so badly... so very, very
badly."
Later, holding her tightly, watching the dawn break across the sky,
Ryland took a deep breath. It couldn't be put off any longer.
"No, Ry, please let me speak first. There's something I have to tell
you."
The tension he could feel in her body even more than the anxious
uncertainty he could hear in her voice alerted him immediately, causing
his own stomach muscles to clench on a sharp sensation of doom.
Although he had firmly pushed such thoughts to one side, the fact that
she had not rung him while he had been in Boston, coupled with his own
inability to reach her, had caused him to feel uneasy and concerned, to
worry that she had somehow already discovered the truth. Despite the
fact that the lovemaking and intimacy they had just shared had been so
intensely close and special that it had almost moved him to tears, he
was suddenly conscious of Tara's distancing herself from him. Not so
much physically--she was still lying close within his arms, her body
resting against his--but emotionally. He could virtually feel her
withdrawing herself from him.
"Tara..." he began, but she shook her head firmly.
"No, Ry, please don't say anything. Just listen to me," she begged.
"This is going to be the hardest thing I have ever had to do, the
hardest thing I have ever had to say, and I need you to listen and to
to understand."
She had rehearsed this conversation over and over inside her head so
many times these past few days, but she still stumbled over some of the
words, still had to pause and hesitate, to search for what she wanted
to say, all the while avoiding looking directly into Ryland's face,
knowing that if she did, once she did. that if she should see the
morning light illuminating his beloved face, she could never, would
never. Taking a deep breath, she began.
"Oh, God, Tara. I should have been here for you," Ryland burst out,
interrupting her at one point as she was telling him what she had
learned.
"Please don't hate me too much for not being here. If I had
known..."
"I don't hate you, Ry, I could never hate you,"
she assured him, her voice choked with tears as 1 she mentally added to
herself, but soon you'll ^ hate me.
She could sense the different quality to his silence when she revealed
just what kind of person i her mother had been, but to her relief he
made no attempt to interrupt her or say anything.
Tor a little while, I really hated Claudia for what she had done, but.
I think I understand her now. There was this woman on the train when I
was going to Dorchester. It was so odd. fate, really, I suppose. She
turned out to have adopted a little girl herself, and listening to her,
I. " She stopped, hesitant. She was waiting, deliberately putting off
the moment she was most dreading.
"I've done a lot of thinking while you've been away, Ry and..." Her
head dipped down as she turned her face completely away from him.
"I... I can't marry you, not now... not after what I've learned. It
wouldn't be fair to you. Oh, I know you'll say that it doesn't make
any difference, that it's me you love and that I'm still the same
person no matter who gave birth to me, and if there was just you and me
to consider then it would be different, but there's not. There's your
family and... and the business. I'm not the kind of woman they would
want you to marry--to have in the family."
"Tara, Tara. My God, don't you know that you ... you are far, far more
important to me than anything, anyone, else," Ryland declared
passionately.
Even though she couldn't bear to see his face, Tara could hear the
anguish and the love in his voice.
"You are the woman I love, the only woman I will ever love, and I don't
give a damn about anything or anyone else!"
"You say that now," Tara countered, finally turning to face him, 'and I
know you mean it, but I know, as well, how much your family means to
you, and I can't stand the thought that one day you might come to
regret marrying me. Your aunt--' "My aunt's dead, Tara," Ryland told
her heavily.
"She was killed by her own daughter."
He hadn't meant to tell her quite so abruptly and he could see from her
expression just how much he had shocked her.
"That was why I had to go home so unexpectedly." He quickly explained
what had happened while Tara listened in loving concern and dismay.
"Oh, Ry, how awful for all of you," she exclaimed.
"There's something else, something I should have told you weeks ago...
months ago," Ryland said slowly.
Tara could feel her heart starting to race with sick apprehension.
Whatever he was about to disclose, she knew it must be serious. What
was it? Had he been married before and never told her. had a previous
serious relationship. a child. children. ? Frantically, her mind
raced.
"Ryland..." she began, but he shook his head.
"You've just told me about... about the circumstances of your birth,
Tara, and I truly meant it when I said that they don't make the
slightest difference to the way I feel. You are the one I love. yom.
And you are the same person you have always been to me. I love you for
yourself, not because of your family background. You could have told
me that your parents were criminals of the worst sort and it still
wouldn't change my feelings, my love, for you," he told her
emotionally.
And as she looked into his eyes, Tara knew that he was speaking the
truth. The knowledge that he loved her so profoundly, so deeply, so
all- encompassingly, was like a cool, soothing balm being applied to a
rough, sore place. She reached out to touch his face, but he caught
hold of her hand, stopping her.
"No. You haven't heard everything I have to say yet," he said
roughly.
"When you were talking about Katriona, you said that what hurt more
than anything else was that Claudia had deliberately concealed the
truth about a very important part of your life from you." He took a
deep breath.
"There's a very important truth about myself that I have kept a secret
from you; Tara. Not because... I wanted to tell you... fully intended
to tell you, but... but I was so afraid that it would make you turn
away from me, that I would lose you."
"What is it ... what are you talking about?" Tara asked him, her mouth
dry and her heart pounding.
"We've talked about the fact that I would take over the family business
when my aunt retired," Ryland began quietly.
"Yes," Tara agreed.
"You told me that when you said that you were over here to study the
British publishing industry, but I don't see--' " What I omitted to
tell you was that in addition to inheriting my aunt's controlling share
of the business, I also knew that ultimately I would inherit the bulk
of her personal estate. "
When he saw that she was frowning at him in bewilderment, he explained
quietly, "My aunt was a very wealthy woman in her own right, Tara.
She. she inherited a good deal of family money and she is. was.
We're not talking here about a comfortable inheritance we could tuck
away to give to our kids. We're talking. " He took another deep
breath.
"My aunt's estate runs into many millions of dollars."
"Millions of dollars?" Tara stared at him in disbelief before
repeating shakily, "Millions of dollars. You mean... is that why she,
your family...? Is that why... she wouldn't have wanted you to marry
me?" she asked uncertainly.
"Not--' " The money had no bearing at all on her concern about whom I
might ultimately marry," Ryland interrupted her firmly.
"She simply wasn't like that. What worried her... well, she was
worried because of Margot, because of Margot's compulsive and dangerous
love for Lloyd.
Margofs problems hit her very hard and hurt her very badly and I guess
I've kinda grown up feeling that I owed it to her to try to make it up
to her by--' "Marrying someone she would have approved of," Tara
supplied quietly for him.
"She would never have approved of me, Ryland."
"You're wrong," he told her fiercely.
"She would have loved you."
Tara looked away from him, her eyes full of tears.
"No... no, she wouldn't," she argued, 'and you must have had doubts
about. about me yourself. If you hadn't, you would have told me.
about the money.
Why didn't you, Ry? Did you think I might turn out to be a
gold-digger, that I might--' "No... don't be silly," he protested
quickly.
"Quite the opposite.
You'd talked a lot about your childhood and about how much you wanted
your own children, our children, to grow up the way you had done, so I
knew. Tara, we live in a very dangerous world. Sometimes, in order to
protect our children, we have to curtail the amount of freedom we are
able to give them. When I was growing up, I was lucky. My parents are
well off rather than rich, but for us, you and me, it will be
different. My aunt was an exceedingly rich woman. "
"And now you are an exceedingly rich man."
"Yes," Ryland agreed sombrely.
"I wanted to tell you," he assured her, 'but at the same time I wanted
to protect you, to protect our love, to give it a chance to grow. "
Tara blinked away the tears she could feel threatening her, weakening
her.
"What is it about me that makes people... you, my parents... feel that
I need to be protected? Do you really see me as so weak... so naive...
so stupid that I can't be trusted to make my own judgements and my own
decisions, to protect myself?"
"It isn't your vulnerability that motivates us," Ryland told her
huskily.
"It's our own fear... our fear of losing you," he explained when she
looked questioningly at him.
"We're the ones who are vulnerable because of our love for you. It's
our awareness of the wonderful uniqueness of you, the irreplaceability
of you, that makes us afraid of not being worthy of your love. We are
afraid of not being good enough for you, Tara, not the other way
around."
As she listened to him, Tara could see that he meant every word he was
saying.
"I was afraid of telling you the truth in case it drove you away from
me," Ryland admitted quietly.
"I was afraid to tell you the truth because I thought I might lose
you," her mother had said, and for both of them Tara had the same
answer, she recognised now.
"How could you? How dare you even begin to think, to doubt that my
love is any less strong and less enduring, any less whole and freely
given, than yours?" she challenged Ryland chokily.
"I love you ... you, the person, Ry ... and I'll always love you. I
don't care about the money, and right now I don't care too much,
either, about the problems we might have to face in the future because
of it.
"No, I don't want my children, our children, to grow up in a protective
glass bubble that separates them from the rest of the human race--you
were right about that--but neither do I want my children to be fathered
by any man who isn't you. Somehow we'll find a way to give them some
freedom, to let them learn and grow, to value themselves for who they
are, not the money they will one day inherit."
Her voice had grown stronger and more passionate with every word she
spoke. Now flushed with emotion, Tara declared heatedly, "End it all
between us because of my background if you must, but not to protect me
or because you think I'm not strong enough, that my love isn't strong
enough to endure."
"End it? Oh, my love, my dearest love, that's the last thing I want to
do," Ryland responded fervently, then he reached out to gather her into
his arms and held her tightly in a rib-crushing, breath-stopping hug.
Tara raised her head, intending to speak to him, but discovered instead
that what she was actually doing was kissing him.
"I love you so much," he told her thickly as he kissed her back.
"So very, very much." He kissed her again and one kiss led to another
and then another.
"Try telling me now that you don't love me," Ryland challenged her when
he eventually held her still-dewy, relaxed body in his arms.
"You were the one who doubted my love..."
Tara started to remind him before checking herself and saying
tentatively, "The money..."
"Forget the money," Ryland said fiercely.
"I'd rather give it all away than risk losing you, Tara, but I do have
a responsibility to my family, the business, my aunt..."
"We could buy some land perhaps, a farm, with some of the money," Tara
suggested sleepily as she nestled closer to him.
He was right. She did find the thought of so much money hard to deal
with, but her love for him was such that she knew that being with him
was more important to her than any potential problems his wealth could
cause.
"And we could stay there with our children. That way they could have
some freedom and--' she lifted her head and looked at him '--we could
give some of it to... to others... charities...?"
"Of course we could," Ryland confirmed promptly, adding warningly, "My
aunt had several pet charities of her own and I think you'll find that
you'll be approached by them to take her place on their fund-raising
committees."
"I thought perhaps one for... for women... girls who--' " I thought you
might be thinking along those lines," Ryland anticipated her gently,
'and the answer is yes, of course. But first things first, and the
first and most important thing we need to do now, at least as far as
I'm concerned, is to get married just as soon as we can."
"My mother will want me to have a traditional wedding," Tara warned
him.
"Yours and mine both," Ryland agreed.
"The church in Dorset where she.-.Katriona is buried is very pretty,"
Tara told him softly.
"I
can't think of her as my mother--Claudia will always be that--but. but
she ;s a part of me, of my past, my history. "
"We can be married wherever you wish," Ryland assured her gently before
taking her back in his arms and starting to kiss her with tender loving
relish.
An hour later as they ate an impromptu meal off their laps, they went
through the post that had accumulated during their absence.
"Uh-huh, looks like this one is for you," Ryland told Tara, tossing her
an envelope with an American embassy stamp on it.
"My visa," Tara guessed before starting to laugh.
"I expect we'll have to reapply now that we're getting married, won't
we? Just think, if this hadn't been delayed, Ma would probably never
have told me about Katriona. She was so desperately afraid that the
delay was because they were querying the registration of my birth.
Apparently, she's always been worried that some day it might be
questioned. At first I almost wished that I hadn't had to know, but
I'm glad now. In some odd kind of way, it's brought us closer, made me
see Ma as more vulnerable and put us more on a par--one adult woman to
another adult woman--but please... no more secrets," she told Ryland
lovingly.
"Not one single one, not ever."
"No more secrets," Ryland agreed, closing his eyes in mute gratitude.
There was no way he could ever condone what Margot had done. He knew
he would never in a million lifetimes want to deprive Tara of the right
to love someone else, or of life itself, but he knew, too, that it
would take the heart and soul of his life out of him to lose her.
Thankfully, fate and Tara herself had spared him that.
Epilogue
As she left the doctor's surgery and walked back to her car through the
bright spring sunshine, Tara patted her stomach, her mouth curled into
a hugely triumphant little-girl grin.
She drove home carefully, mindful of the new life she was now
responsible for. She had known about the baby already, of course, but
having her doctor's confirmation made it fully official.
As she let herself into the pretty New England house she and Ryland had
bought in the same small town where his family lived, there was only
one thing on her mind, one person.
Eagerly, she picked up the telephone, her mouth still curved in a wide,
happy smile, then quickly punched in the numbers.
When she heard the voice responding at the other end of the line, she
burst into immediate excited speech, exclaiming, "Guess what... I'm
pregnant! I wanted you to be the first to know." She started to laugh
as she heard the other person's response.
"I couldn't wait to tell you... Grandma!" she told Claudia, chuckling
as her mother replied enthusiastically.
"Not even Ry knows officially yet. I wanted to be sure you were the
first to know," she repeated softly, her own eyes filling with
emotional tears as she heard the huskiness in Claudia's voice.
"And I want you to be here for the birth," she declared warmly.
In the background, she could hear her father demanding to know who was
on the line and then he, too, came on, congratulating her and reminding
her that it would only be a matter of days before they flew over to
Boston to see them.
"I know that, but I couldn't wait that long," she said simply.
"I
wanted you to know now. "
She was still beaming five minutes later when she replaced the
receiver.
The rift that had threatened to destroy the relationship between her
and Claudia was completely healed now and, if anything, Tara felt
closer to her mother than ever before. Her work with deprived
youngsters through the charity she and Ryland had established in his
aunt's name had given her a deeper insight into the problems that could
afflict children when they were deprived of parental love, and she had
now seen for herself what could happen when drug- addicted mothers,
however much they might love their children, quite simply put the needs
of their habit first.
Tara had settled easily and comfortably into the life of small-town New
England.
"Why shouldn't I?" she had asked Ryland lovingly when he had commented
on this fact. Her home was within herself, encompassed by the love
they shared. She missed her family and friends, of course, especially
Claudia, but in the eighteen months of their marriage, she and Ryland
had travelled back to the UK for several visits and had had her parents
over to visit with them, as indeed they were due back again at the end
of the week.
She and Ryland had spent their first Christmas together as man and wife
in Britain with her parents.
Garth and Claudia had remarried one another in a quiet ceremony three
days before Christmas, and Claudia had been glowing with love and
happiness as Garth slipped her old wedding ring back on her finger.
Quick tears momentarily filmed Tara's eyes as she remembered the day of
her own wedding.
She and Claudia had been together in her bedroom. She had been
standing in her wedding finery while Claudia fussed nervously around
her.
"Ma, I still haven't thanked you for all of this," she had told her,
her gesture encompassing not just her dress but all the formidable
organisation that had gone into making her wedding possible despite the
short notice that Ryland's impatience had demanded.
"And I... I haven't told you, either, how much. how much I love you
and how very, very glad I am that you are my mother."
She had seen Claudia shaking her head and guessed instinctively what
she was going to say. She turned to hug her fiercely, ignoring her
protests that she might spoil her dress.
"Don't say it. You are my mother, the best mother anyone could ever
have and the only mother I could ever want. You are my mother and,
even more so, I am your child. You're the one who has nurtured me,
loved me, taught me, shown me. You are my mother."
Later in the day as she emerged from the church, she had overheard one
of the onlookers who had gathered outside the gate telling her friend,
"Oh, look, there's her mother. They look so alike, don't they? You
can tell immediately that they're mother and daughter."
Instinctively, she had looked across at Claudia to share the moment
with her, her eyes brimming with a tearful mixture of love and
laughter; the same love and laughter she could see filling Claudia's
own.
"So it's official, then?" Ryland asked, kissing Tara's still-flat
stomach.
"Yes," she confirmed.
"I rang Ma the moment I got back from the surgery. I wanted her to be
the first to know. I want her to be here for the birth," she warned
him.
"Of course," Ryland agreed tenderly.
"After all, she is your mother."
"Yes," Tara agreed.
"She is ... she is!"
04-10-07, 04:59 PM
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