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‘There are one or two possibilities,’ he told her cautiously, ‘but one always has to be aware as a foreigner that the locals might be trying to gain an advantage. How do you really feel about losing this place, Lucy?’ he asked her abruptly. ‘You must feel some attachment to it.’
‘Yes, but probably only in the way that you do,’ she agreed mildly. ‘After all it isn’t as though it really belongs…’ She broke off, appalled by her near indiscretion. How close she had been then to blurting out the secret of Oliver’s birth. She risked a look into Saul’s face, anticipating his curiosity, but instead his expression was curiously blank, his arm instantly slackening to release her.
As he turned away from her he said evenly, ‘How delightfully British you are at times, Lucy. I see that you do after all consider me something of an interloper here.’
She was horrified by the way he had misinterpreted her words. ‘No… no, Saul,’ she appealed to him. ‘You’re quite wrong. I don’t see you as an interloper at all.’
‘But neither do you see me as the rightful owner here, is that it?’
What could she say? Legally he was the rightful owner, but she knew he did not have the soul-deep feeling for the place that her father had had and which he had passed on to Oliver, in whom she sensed the same emotion, young though he was. But how could she break the promise she had made to her father and tell Saul this? And what good would it do anyway? Saul might even think she was trying to manipulate him into doing something for Oliver.
When she was silent he laughed shortly, turning round to glare at her as he said harshly, ‘What a pity you didn’t fulfil your father’s hopes for you, Lucy, and marry money.’ He saw her expression and jeered softly. ‘Oh come on, surely you aren’t going to tell me you don’t know? Even my mother knew, although she flatly refused to help him when he asked her to launch you on the American season and introduce you to a few potential millionaires. The days are gone when they were willing to part with their money in exchange for an aristocratic wife. No doubt he was hoping that your wealthy husband would buy this place from me after his demise, thus securing it for his grandchildren.’
Lucy was completely stunned by what he was saying. He was making it up, he must be; her father had never once said a word of this to her.
‘You think I’m lying don’t you?’ Saul demanded almost savagely. ‘Well I’m not—ask my mother. I think you were about seventeen when your father made his first approach.’
Seventeen! Lucy thought back weakly. Fanny had still been married then. And who knew? Perhaps her father, who had always had a penchant for crazy schemes, had dreamed up something along the lines Saul was suggesting.
‘I don’t think you’re lying Saul.’ She said it quietly so that he wouldn’t mistake the conviction in her voice. ‘It sounds just like the sort of thing my father would do. If I seemed disbelieving it was because he never mentioned any of this to me. I know he hoped Fanny would give him a son; and as you say he was almost obsessed with the idea of keeping the house for his own heirs.’
‘Almost?’ Saul derided bitterly.
‘Very well then, totally.’
A certain bleakness shadowed her eyes as she remembered how she had suffered from her father’s obsession. A sensitive child, it had not taken her long to recognise that she was not the child he had wanted—not a son.
As though he knew her thoughts Saul gave a kind of groan and came towards her, taking her in his arms, holding her fiercely.
‘Forgive me. I had no right to say any of those things to you. The plain fact is that I’m jealous—jealous of the loyalty you give your father—and half scared to death that I’ll have to go home before I can persuade you to come with me.’
His admission soothed away the hurt. She turned her face up eagerly, her lips parting in soft invitation.
It was a long time before he released her, his voice faintly shaky as he asked, ‘Do I take it that that means that you would come?’
‘Anywhere—with you,’ Lucy told him, sighing the words against his throat, her eyes closing in bliss as she tasted the masculine flavour of him. It was true. She would follow him to the ends of the earth if he asked it of her. It was too late for pretence now. She was deeply, crazily in love with him—he was the only thing that mattered and if he left her now she thought she might go crazy with the agony of losing him. It was a novel sensation for her, and one that would once have terrified her, but which she now revelled in, knowing that she wasn’t alone, that he shared her feelings.
