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‘This has nothing to do with Neville. I’m talking about his parents, my aunt and uncle. They’ve offered me a home.’
‘But I’m not just offering you a home, Lucy. Think about it. Do you really feel you have the right to reject me on behalf of our child? Children need two parents—I think we both know that. How will our son or daughter feel knowing that…’
He broke off as they both heard the front doorbell.
‘That will probably be my aunt and uncle, Saul,’ she told him tiredly. ‘Dr Ellis said he would call at the Dower House.’ Her mouth tightened as she added, ‘It seems unfair that fate should have brought you back here just at this particular moment. I had no intention of telling you about the baby. Why did you come back anyway? Fanny seemed to think you weren’t going to.’
There was a strange expression in his eyes for a moment.
‘Did you think I’d gone for ever as well, Lucy?’ he asked her, his voice oddly husky.
She turned her head away, unable to bear looking at him any longer. If she did, she was bound to betray her pain, to cry out to him that, despite everything that had happened, she had somehow clung to the hope that he had genuinely cared about her, and that, once his anger had cooled, he would regret their quarrel as much as she had herself.
‘I didn’t really give it much thought,’ she said coolly, punishing herself with her denial of her love.
‘No, I suppose you were too busy telling Summers why his little plan wasn’t going to come off,’ he said harshly. ‘By the way,’ he added as he walked over to the door, ‘I’ve decided to keep this place after all—my mother says she’d like to come back and see it. She did grow up here when all’s said and done, and now that I’m to be a father—who knows, maybe my son or daughter might inherit your father’s obsession with the place. Think about it, Lucy,’ he said softly from the door. ‘Think about all you’ll be denying our child, simply for the pleasure of getting at me. Are you really that selfish?’
It was a low blow, and one it took her several seconds to assimilate. Had he really been offering to keep the Manor as a form of bribery, or had she simply allowed her fevered imagination to run away with her?
Marriage to Saul! Once she would have asked nothing more from life, but how could she marry him knowing that he didn’t love her; that he was simply marrying her because they had conceived a child?
‘You can’t want to marry me.’
She said it so quietly, she thought he couldn’t have heard, but he must have done, because he turned in the doorway and said softly, ‘Can’t I? Maybe not. But I promise you I’ll do anything, and everything, that’s necessary to keep my child away from Summers’ influence.’
As he left her his words sank into her mind, leaving her shaken and trembling from head to foot. She was only just beginning to realise how deep the vein of antipathy between the two men ran. As a child she had known it was there, of course, but now as an adult she saw that the schism was much greater than she had perceived. To say they hated one another was perhaps an exaggeration, but it was no exaggeration to say that Neville loathed and detested Saul; and Saul, it seemed, more than returned his feelings—to the extent that he would marry her himself rather than allow his child to be ‘contaminated’ by any relationship she had with Neville.
Once married to Saul she could see that he would soon put a stop to any relationship between Neville and herself—even a cousinly one. But it was all so futile. She cared nothing for Neville—she didn’t even particularly like him. She had told Saul as much.
But she had also told him that she had plotted against him behind his back with Neville, she reminded herself; she had unwittingly fed the resentment Saul felt towards her maternal cousin, not realising how intensely Saul felt about him.
It was perhaps feasible that Saul should think she cared far more for Neville than she actually did, in view of the crush she had had on him when she was twelve.
Her reverie was broken as the door opened to admit her aunt, her plump face creased into worried anxiety.
‘Lucy, my dear. How are you feeling? Dr Ellis called at the Dower House and told us…’
Saul apparently had opted to stay downstairs.
‘He’s talking to your uncle,’ Margaret told her when Lucy enquired. ‘So you’re quite safe if you want a private chat.’
As always her aunt’s shrewdness caught her off guard. Margaret always looked so naïve that it was a surprise to discover just how on the ball she really was.
‘Did Dr Ellis tell you about this vitamin deficiency he thinks I have?’
