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It was shock, she told herself numbly as she sought to dress herself and control her palsied limbs, shock that made her shake like this and believe that it was all a bitter dream. He could not have said those things to her—not Saul. But he had… smashing her dreams and her life, and it would do no good to tell him that he was wrong, so wrong about her feelings for Neville because he would never believe her now. And even if he did… He had come near to falling in love with her, he had said, but she didn’t believe that. He had suspected her right from the start; he had been waiting for her to make a mistake; and he had deliberately allowed her to think… to think that he cared about her, while all the time he had been waiting to trap her.
She was dressed. All she had to do was to walk out. It was the longest walk she ever made, and for ever afterwards she never knew how she managed to get back to the Dower House.
Once there she curled up in a chair downstairs, too shocked and distraught to even think of sleep. On her skin the scent of Saul remained elusive and tantalising, but she didn’t even have the energy to go upstairs and wash. She would never see him again. She was determined on that. She had too much pride… and too much fear, she acknowledged weepily. If she stayed, how could she stop herself from begging him to believe the truth? She loved him, but he had never loved her, she reminded herself. He had pretended to, yes, but that was all it had been: a pretence. Perhaps he had even come over here with the deliberate intention of hurting her, of getting back at her for his own pain all those years ago.
At last, exhausted and muddled by increasingly miserable thoughts, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘BUT Lucy, what do you mean, you’re going away?’
She and Fanny faced one another across the drawing-room carpet. Fanny had returned from her holiday that morning, looking glowingly tanned and relaxed. In contrast she looked pale, and almost ill, Lucy recognised, but that scarcely mattered. What did was that she had to get away… from this house… from its too-close proximity to Saul, who fortunately she hadn’t seen since that disastrous evening ten days ago.
‘I mean I’ve decided I want to have a chance to write,’ Lucy told her. ‘I need peace and quiet to work, Fanny, and that’s impossible living here with you and the children.’
As she had anticipated Fanny looked both affronted and hurt, but she wasn’t going to allow herself to be dissuaded; she knew exactly what she was going to do.
She hadn’t wasted the days before Fanny’s return. A phone call to Beverley explaining that she wanted to be in London the better to do some research on her second novel—some of which was to be set in the city—had elicited the information that Beverley knew of a senior editor with another firm who had been seconded to New York for twelve months and who was desperately looking for the right sort of tenant for her flat—and one who would be willing to look after her Siamese cat.
A quick dash up to London and lunch with the other woman had convinced them both that they had found exactly what they were looking for. Lucy had enough money of her own to be able to live in the flat, if only frugally, without touching any of her capital—she was a first-rate typist and if need be could always augment her income in that way since she was determined not to touch a penny of Oliver’s or Tara’s.
She had even been to see Mr Patterson to explain her intentions to him, telling him quite firmly that she could not spend the rest of her life looking after two children who already had a mother.
If it turned out that Saul intended to keep the Manor House, which in view of his revelations about his wealth was entirely possible, then she was going to sell the Dower House, but she was keeping this to herself for the time being.
One telephone call which had given her a good deal of pleasure had been the one she had made to Neville to tell him crisply and concisely exactly why his own plans were doomed to failure. He hadn’t been pleased, but his bile had barely touched her. She was beyond feeling almost anything now… beyond even the pain of Saul’s cruel rejection.
‘But Lucy… we need you,’ Fanny wailed.
‘No you don’t,’ Lucy responded reasonably. ‘You could always employ an au pair to keep an eye on the children, Fanny. Oliver starts school in the autumn and Tara’s no trouble.’
‘But this place is so isolated. I’ll be lonely.’
‘Then buy something closer to town,’ Lucy said reasonably. ‘I’m sure if you approached Mr Patterson he’d release enough of Oliver’s capital for you to do that.’
‘But Lucy, you don’t understand. Your father wanted Oliver to stay here… in what is his rightful home.’
