sank into an armchair trying to recover from the great shock of Lang Forsyth’s dramatic entry into her life. The day had started out so well. She had stayed in town with her father rather than return to the “family” home where she no longer felt needed or wanted. These days she only presented a pain-filled reminder to Redmond Sinclair. Her real father, Owen, had turned over the master bedroom of his suite to her while he spent the night on the very comfortable day bed in the main room. He’d left early to inspect a motor yacht he was particularly interested in. It was moored at the Gold Coast, some fifty miles away. She intended to spend the day in town doing some shopping and having lunch with a girlfriend. Owen would be back late afternoon. He had everything planned. At dinner he was going to introduce her to his close friend and partner, Lang Forsyth, a man Owen clearly looked on as “family.”
How the best-laid plans came unstuck. Lang Forsyth had caught up with her many hours before Owen intended, his attitude harshly judgmental. In truth the sight of him at dinner last night, a stranger staring so fixedly at her, darkly handsome and authoritative, an easy elegance to his tall body, his beautiful clothes, had filled her with foreboding. His appearance in Owen’s suite this morning was as momentous in its way as her first meeting with her own father. Even when Forsyth found out who she really was, Eden had the feeling he would always be antagonistic towards her. Maybe that was her destiny. Always to be the outsider.
Eden sank further into her reverie. She and Owen had come a long way since their first meeting. After her mother’s sudden violent end in a car crash, she and Redmond Sinclair had been on compassionate leave from her grandfather’s legal firm, Redmond a full partner, she a recent associate. Owen had approached her one morning as she’d left the house to visit her grandfather. At first she’d been startled to see him again, thinking perhaps he was someone from the press—there had been some speculation her mother’s death hadn’t been an accident, but Owen by his sheer presence overcame any fears and suspicions. He told her he wanted to speak to her about her mother; Cassandra was someone he had known very well when they were young. Could they go someplace quiet and private where they could talk?
Strangely she had gone with him without a moment’s hesitation, his demeanour so gentle and protective it allayed all fear. They had coffee but it was actually when they were seated on a park bench looking at small children playing on the swings that Owen began to relive the past….
“My story, the central tragedy of my life is no means unique, Eden,” he told this beautiful young woman gravely. “It’s a story as old as time. Star-crossed lovers. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks meets and falls desperately in love with the adored only child of a rich man. You know your grandfather. He was, and I suppose remains, a man who had very exacting standards. Penniless young men of no family had no place in his scheme of things. Despite that, for long tumultuous months Cassandra and I were lovers. But in the end the pressure from your grandfather was all too much for Cassandra. She’d been reared like a princess. She couldn’t contend with a run-away marriage to me. I had absolutely nothing to offer her at that time. Save my love.”
“It wasn’t enough?” Eden asked, the tears shimmering in her eyes.
“Your mother did love me, Eden. I want you to know that. But your grandfather and security won out.”
“How sad. My mother was always sad.” Eden stared sightlessly at the playing children. There was more. She just knew it.
“As was I.” Owen sighed deeply. “It has been an unparalleled grief to me all these long years to know my beautiful Cassandra was carrying a baby when she married her store dummy.”
Eden was electrified. “My God, what are you saying?” It came out like a plea. For a long moment she couldn’t speak until Owen put his arm around her shoulders.
“I’m saying, my dearest girl, that baby was you. Had I known your mother was pregnant to me at the time, things would have been very different.”
“You mean she didn’t tell you?” Eden shook her head, shocked and aghast.
“Not for three long years into her marriage. I have a letter to show you. You will know her handwriting. It confirms what I’m saying. The letter was sent to my mother who died without even knowing she had a granddaughter. Cassandra couldn’t trace me. I was mad with grief after she married. I felt crushed by her betrayal. I packed up and left home. I went north of Capricorn to frontier country. My mother always regarded Cassandra with some trepidation. She foresaw what would happen.”
“Yet she sent you the letter?”
Owen’s voice was gentle. “She had great integrity. I never told her about you because I knew she wouldn’t have left things alone. She was the wise one. Your mother begged me in the letter to keep her secret just like the confessional. Though it opened the door to unimaginable pain, I did it. Cassandra could always manipulate me. She convinced me you were happy and secure. So was she. As some kind of sop, probably to diffuse the inflammatory nature of her revelation, she told me she had named you after my mother, of all people. Your grandmother, Eden Carter.”
Eden was silent, trying to absorb her shock. “This is unbelievable,” she managed finally. “I can’t take it in.”
“I understand. I understand all about pain, suffering and shock. Read the letter.” Owen withdrew the yellowed much-read, much-folded pages from his inside breast pocket. He passed it to Eden….
As she read it her eyes became so filled with tears she had to pass it to Owen to finish aloud. How had her mother ever done him such a terrible wrong? Had she no courage? Whatever had persuaded her to remain with Redmond Sinclair? The marriage, so badly foundered, had never been happy but as a highly “social” couple they had maintained a public fiction. She herself had missed out on a father’s love. She could feel it pouring out of this man she now knew to be her real father. Redmond Sinclair had tried hard to find a place in his heart for her but he never could get the portals open. Such love as he had, more like obsession, had been reserved for her mother.
It was a terrible story and they all had paid for it. Even her grandfather had been worn down, she now realised, by a sense of guilt. In persuading his daughter to marry “one of their own kind” he had committed her to a life of unhappiness and unfulfillment. A charade.
“You know there’s been some speculation my mother’s death wasn’t an accident?”
Eden turned her head to look directly into her real father’s fine dark eyes.
Owen looked off abruptly. “Cassandra would never have left you.”
“You didn’t know her all these long years. I expect my mother changed greatly from the girl you knew. She was a sad woman. But so gentle and beautiful, everyone loved her. The man I called Father all my life certainly did.”
Owen’s rugged features hardened to granite. “I’m sorry, Eden. I don’t want to hear about him. Sinclair was the one Cassandra chose over me. From the look of him he hasn’t weathered the years well. He used to have a shock of golden hair. He was very handsome, very eligible, a promising lawyer. I never got past grade ten. I had to leave school before I was sixteen to learn a trade. There was little money in our house to go around. Today’s a different story. I’m a very rich man.”
“Did you ever marry?” Eden asked, thinking of so many broken lives.
Owen nodded. “I have a wife and child. A little boy called Robbie. Robert after my father. My wife, Delma—she has Italian blood—calls him Roberto.”
“Then you’re happy.” She
