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‘Am I what?’ she asked.
‘Are you having a relationship with my brother?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘But you’d like to?’
Fran sighed. ‘S
ome people might find your line of questioning intrusive, Maddy—for all that he’s your brother. Is there a reason for it?’
Maddy fingered the patchwork coverlet on the bed. ‘I just don’t want to see him get hurt.’
Fran’s first reaction was to laugh aloud. But she didn’t. ‘Sam’s a big boy now,’ she said, almost gently. ‘Who can take care of himself.’
Maddy nodded. ‘I’m not talking about that woman Rosie—’
‘Before you say anything else I’d better tell you that she’s my friend,’ warned Fran.
Maddy shrugged. ‘Maybe she is. Anyway, she’s got nothing to do with it.’
Resisting the urge to mention the time again, Fran sat down on the chair next to the dressing table and sat facing Maddy. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Just that Sam was hurt once. Badly. And I think it’s made him wary of women ever since—’
‘We’ve all been hurt, Maddy,’ Fran pointed out. ‘I’ve been through a divorce myself.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘At least you went through the marriage bit and all the passion that went with it. Okay—so if it burnt itself out, it burnt itself out. Sam never got that far.’ She bit her lip. ‘He was engaged…didn’t you know?’
Fran felt as though a chasm was yawning open at her feet. And she felt like someone forced to look down into it. Someone who was terrified of heights… ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, I didn’t know that. What happened?’
‘She died!’ Maddy looked up then, defiant tears burning bright in her eyes. ‘We all loved her, and then she died. Sam nursed her almost to the end. She was lovely. Absolutely lovely. Accomplished. Perfect for Sam. Even when she was ill she used to sew things, embroider things. She gave them all to Sam.’ She pointed to the sunflower tapestry which hung over the bed. ‘She made that.’
‘It’s beautiful.’ Fran remembered the cushion she had picked up on her very first visit here. The bruised look of pain in his eyes. So that was why he lived this lonely, bookish life—because he had never got over the woman who had died. It was like being given a piece of something corrosive to eat just after a huge meal, but Fran kept her face carefully composed. ‘I’ve seen other things that she’s done,’ she said quietly, feeling glad she had sat down. She suspected her knees might have buckled if she had stayed standing, and yet the information distressed her far more than it had any right to. ‘Why are you telling me all this, Maddy?’
‘Because he likes you—’
‘I don’t think so!’
‘Yes, he does. I can see it in his eyes! He’s different with you. There’s something about the way he looks at you.’
Fran gave a smile which was almost wistful. ‘Believe me when I tell you that you’re mistaking affection for good old-fashioned lust. I think he finds me sexually attractive, and I think that what adds to the attraction is the fact that I’m not all over him like a rash. Which is what he’s used to.’
‘He can’t help the effect that he has on women! It isn’t contrived, you know, it’s inbuilt. And he doesn’t deserve what that woman—your friend—has been saying about him!’ said Maddy bitterly. ‘It makes him out to be something he’s not!’
‘I don’t know about that. All I do know are that the facts about Rosie and Sam are indisputable—Sam admitted that himself,’ said Fran steadily. ‘But what I let happen at the ball shouldn’t have happened. I can see that now. It started out as a simple prank—so I thought—and then it just gathered momentum, like a train running down the side of a mountain. But people will forget, they always do. And Sam will forget, too.’
‘Yes, he will. So I can’t understand why you’re still here,’ said Maddy.
And neither, to be perfectly honest, could Fran. The story about showing her that he was a good guy at heart didn’t quite ring true. I mean, why bother, she thought? Surely hers was the last opinion he valued.
‘After the Valentine ball, I owed him,’ she told Maddy. ‘It’s a simple repayment of a debt, that’s all.’
But Fran found that she had to pay attention not to ogle Sam as she and Maddy went along to join the others in the sitting room. But while she saw him in a new light, learning about his fiancée made her feel even more confused. Maybe that was the reason he was considered cold and indifferent—because, at heart—he was cold and indifferent. And the reason for that could be that the only woman he had ever loved had been cruelly and prematurely taken away from him. Some people never got over something like that.
But she put it out of her mind in order to concentrate on the birthday dinner. They started with champagne, when they not only toasted Helen, but Sam’s late father and Fran felt her eyes growing stupidly bright as she sipped from the crystal flute Sam had filled for her.
‘What’s the matter, dear?’ asked Mrs. Lockhart softly, who had noticed.
