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Honor winced. One paragon to contend with had been depressing enough to contend with...but two? At least she no longer had to worry about her sister being a rival. Adam was not one to pine helplessly over lost opportunities. If he had really wanted to contact Helen he would have had no hesitation in asking Honor for her address!
‘Oh, Honor, there’s really no delicate way of telling you this, is there?’ he said, taking a brooding slug of his own drink before continuing bluntly, ‘As far as I know, those old letters were up in one of the attics here somewhere, in a suitcase along with a lot of my other happy memories.’ He looked down at her fist, white knuckles clenched around his monogrammed handkerchief. ‘She made a point of giving them back to me, you see...so I would never be able to forget what it had felt like to first fall in love. As if I would or could! Anyway, they...well, you can understand what they meant to me...they were a very precious part of my personal history.’
Oh, yes, Honor could understand all right. She knew exactly what it meant to cherish a dream.
‘When Malcolm told me you were cleared and showed me the letter he’d taken off you, I couldn’t believe it! I rushed back here and hunted through the attic like a wild man, and when I couldn’t find them—well, I can’t describe how I felt. That’s why I burst in on you like Attila the Hun. If you had them then for my own peace of mind you had to be guilty of something...anything! But, instead of getting answers, all I found were more questions. You didn’t have all the letters for a start. And, in case you didn’t notice, almost all those you were sent seemed carefully selected to preserve a kind of anonymity on both sides—no names or addresses...’
‘Oh, I noticed all right...too late,’ said Honor grimly.
‘It was just a wretchedly unfortunate coincidence that it came to a head at the same time as this other thing.’ Adam tipped her chin with his hand, forcing her to meet his earnest gaze. ‘You can see that I had to keep you here, can’t you? I had to find out if you had the others, if it was just a silly charade or a conspiracy...’
Honor jerked her head away from his touch. ‘Well, it wasn’t!’
‘I realised that in fairly short order,’ he said wryly. ‘But that only made things worse as far as I was concerned. It meant I had to look closer to home for the culprit. Reasoning it out from the postal dates on the envelopes, the first switch occurred not long after I moved in here, after Zach’s death. It had to be someone who had access to the attic and the opportunity to pull the necessary switches—lift my regular outgoing correspondence to you and substitute the fake letters. Not only that, but they would have to intercept your replies, otherwise I would realise something was going on.’
Honor blanched at the thought of her love lying bleeding in the hands of some psychologically disturbed individual. But not a stranger. This was nothing to do with Adam’s company, this was very, very personal. Therefore it stood to reason that it had to be someone personally very close to Adam. That was the reason for his solemn calm.
‘But what possibly could be the motive?’ she cried, not wanting to believe that anyone he trusted could betray him so viciously. ‘A practical joke? Surely not? Who would want to be so unbearably cruel...not just to me but to you?’
Adam remained silent, watching her as she groped towards the consciousness of what he had already guessed.
Honor could only think of one person who resented her badly enough to want to hurt her.
‘I don’t...surely Tania wouldn’t—?’
‘Tania?’ Adam shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her deliberately to cause a few letters to go astray if it suited her purposes, but go to all that trouble to generate a potentially violent awareness between us? I think not.’ Adam’s hand slid over both of hers, trapping their restless mangling of his handkerchief. ‘If she wanted to throw a spanner into our relationship, why would she make a meeting between us inevitable by encouraging you to believe that I was in love with you? I presume in your letters you referred to mine?’ She nodded, colour returning in a rush to her cheeks, and he studied her with glinting satisfaction. ‘That’s why I wasn’t allowed to receive any replies. It would have given the game away too soon. You nee
ded to be convinced first...’
‘But why?’ Honor still couldn’t conceive of a motive for a plan of such pointless complexity.
‘Perhaps for the best reason in the world. Love.’
‘Love?’ Honor’s exclamation made it sound as if she’d never even heard of the word.
He smiled crookedly at her confusion. ‘Perhaps someone who loved me was worried about me. Maybe they thought that I was urgently in need of a love-life—even if it was of the mail-order kind—to rescue me from emotional limbo.’
Honor sucked in a startled breath. ‘Your mother...?’
‘I think it’s the most likely possibility, don’t you think?’
She remembered the way that Joy had welcomed her into the house, declaring that she knew how special she was to Adam.
‘Have you asked her?’
‘Not outright, no.’ His smile took a downward trend as he admitted ruefully, ‘It’s a pretty tough assignment—accusing your own mother of theft and forgery when you don’t have a shred of proof. If I’m wrong she could be terribly hurt. And if I’m right...well, I was worried that it might mean Mum is getting as bad as Tania’s been suggesting.’ He stroked his thumb absently over her knuckles as he chuckled. ‘But then I realised the opposite was true; no one in a state of mental confusion could possibly have succeeded in carrying out such a complicated, machiavellian scheme. Hell, I doubt even I would have been able to pull it off half so well!’
‘I think you’re actually proud of her,’ Honor murmured wryly. It was fine for him, but she was in a far less enviable position. ‘I don’t care about where the rest of your letters are, but what has she done with mine?’
‘Ah, yes, the sober, sensible replies to my intoxicated ramblings.’ He slid his arm along the back of the couch, dislodging his damp jacket, his other hand covering both of hers as he leaned teasingly towards her. ‘What will you give me if I promise to get them back for you?’
‘I don’t have to give you anything,’ she said breathlessly as he loomed closer. ‘You’ve already promised to give them to me, with no strings attached.’
‘Oh, yes.’ His eyes sank to her parted lips. ‘That night when you flirted into my bedroom in your silky, see-through nightshirt...’
‘I didn’t flirt...and it wasn’t see-through,’ she said weakly, leaning further and further back as his mouth leisurely approached. He was going to kiss her and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it—unless she got up and left the room, of course...
‘Enticed, then...and that’s funny, because when I’m alone at night, tossing and turning in my lovely bed, I’m haunted by this vivid memory of your breasts in my hands and my mouth—’
