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But her grandmother’s gaze had drifted away, settling on some indeterminate point ahead of her. Flavia lifted her veined hand, and squeezed it gently, looking down at her grandmother, lying there in her double bed—the same bed she’d slept in for over fifty years, since coming to Harford as a young bride. Her heart contracted as she felt the pity of it all. Yet there was a kind of mercy in it, too, she knew. It had been the death of Flavia’s grandfather that had first set her off on this journey into a darkening land. Had she lost the will to take part in life once the man she had lived with and loved for so long, had gone?
Flavia smiled sadly as she left the room. What would it be like to love a man so much that you no longer wanted to live once he was not at your side any more? To her it was unimaginable. She’d never been in love, fond though she’d been of former boyfriends. There had never been any great depth of feeling for them, and whilst she’d found them attractive there had never been anyone to arouse a storm of passion in her breast.
Of desire.
Her expression changed, and the memory she’d been banning since getting back home leapt vividly in her head. Instantly, helplessly, she was back in Leon Maranz’s arms …
Passion and soft, sensual arousal that teased and laved and melted, so that the breath quickened, the pulse surged, and the body arched and yearned towards the source of it. His mouth warm on hers, pliant and tasting, taking hers with his, and heat starting to beat up through her body, like a dissolving glow …
No! With sheer effort, she dragged her mind away. It was madness to let herself remember. She had spent the whole train journey down to Dorset trying to shut it out, trying not to let it play over and over again in her mind like some impossible video loop she could not turn off.
But now, safely back at Harford, with her grandmother again—back in her real life, a cosmos away from her father’s world and the darkly dangerous man who moved therein—surely she was safe from that disastrous memory? If she could just put it completely behind her, write it off as some appalling, unforgivable misjudgement, a lapse that she must never think of again.
This—here, now—was her real life.
As she walked downstairs, heading for the kitchen, she made herself look about her, see the safe, familiar walls enclosing her, the safe, familiar paintings, the safe, familiar furniture and décor, the same now as it had been all through her childhood. Her home, her grandmother’s home—her safe place to be.
She went through into the large stone-flagged kitchen with its huge, ancient Aga and massive scrubbed wooden table centre stage, and repeated the reassuring litany of familiarity and safety. Everything here was as it had always been, and that was what she wanted.
She busied herself making her grandmother’s supper—just something light: soup and scrambled eggs on toast and a mashed banana. She would eat the same, in her grandmother’s bedroom, once she’d bade goodbye and thanks to the stalwart Mrs S, and paid her for her extra time. Then, when her grandmother had settled for the night and slipped over into sleep, she would settle down in the armchair by the table by the window, with a low-lit lamp for light, and read. The only sound would be that of her grandmother’s gentle breaths and the occasional hooting of an owl outside, sweeping soundlessly over the gardens. Later she would make herself a cup of tea, read a little longer, then head for bed herself, leaving the door to the landing open so she would hear if her grandmother proved restless in the night.
It was a long-familiar routine. Just as the routines of the daytime were. Getting her grandmother up, helping her downstairs, settling her in the sunny drawing room while she got on with the housework, and then, after lunch, if the weather were clement, opening the French windows to the gardens and getting some gardening done while keeping an eye on her grandmother at the same time.
Sometimes the occasional visitor would come and pay a call on her grandmother, though the conversation was always with Flavia herself, and one of the district nurses or healthcare workers would make a daily phone call to check on things. Twice a week they would come and look after her grandmother while Flavia drove into the nearby market town to buy groceries and any other necessary shopping.
A familiar, routine way of life. Quiet, safe, and very dear to her.
Too safe, too quiet …?
The disquieting thought flickered through her synapses. Restlessly she pushed it aside. Yes, of course anyone might tell her that living quietly in the country as she did, looking after an elderly, frail grandparent, with nothing else in her life at all but that and housework and gardening, was no life for a woman in her twenties! But there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she wanted to do about it.
Even as she formed the thought memory licked again, and it was as if she could feel the pressure of his mouth on hers, feel the surging of her body, her breast straining against the sensuous palm of his hand shaping her. Involuntarily she felt her breasts tightening.
No! It was no good—no good at all letting herself think about that kiss, that embrace. It had been a terrible mistake, a disastrous weakening of her resolve, yielding to an impulse that was impossible—impossible! She’d gone through all the reasons why it had been impossible—what was the point of reiterating them? She was home now. Home and safe …
Gratitude filled her that she was safely back here again, where she loved to be, and where the only person in the world who loved her was. The only person she loved.
Her heart tightened. Seeing her grandmother again after a space of several days had brought home to her just how much frailer she was, how her body was steadily giving up the will to stay alive, how she was drifting ever deeper into the mists that were calling her.
How long would it be before she slipped away entirely? Body as well as mind? The doctor, on his regular visits to check her over, always said that it was impossible to know for sure, but Flavia knew that now it really could not be that long. Months, perhaps? If that? Or would she still be here this time next year?
Resolutely she put aside such pointless speculation. All that was important—essential—was that her grandmother would live out her days here, at Harford, with her beloved granddaughter, and that was that. Nothing could change that, and Flavia would allow nothing to endanger it.
Her thoughts moved on, becoming more troubled. Here in the familiar surroundings of Harford’s comfortably old-fashioned kitchen, as she cracked eggs into a bowl and set the soup to heat, it was as if she had never been away. But she had—and this latest compulsory visit to London had been incredibly disturbing. She could use all the mental discipline she liked to try and shut out what had happened, but it
could not shut out that it had happened. That she had encountered such a man as Leon Maranz—and that he had had such a devastating impact on her.
And she had fallen into his arms …
But I ran! I ran just in time! Got back here.
Apprehension webbed about her. What if she had to encounter him again, when her father next summoned her? If her father were going to do business with him she might well have to see him again.
I can’t! I can’t risk seeing him again—I just can’t!
That disastrous, debilitating embrace in his limo had shown her just how terrifyingly vulnerable she was to the man. If she had to socialise with him again, and if he still wanted to amuse himself with her, would she find the strength to resist his advances?
Bitterly, she knew the truth.
