hands curled into tight, tense fists. Was that what he thought had happened to her?
‘I hadn’t anticipated her running off to New Zealand—let alone changing her name—like someone determined never to be found.’
Perhaps she had been, Alex thought with a sudden, swift dart of anguish that caused her eyes to darken, but, picking up on his words, quickly she said, ‘Her? You mean me.’
An eyebrow tilted as he murmured silkily, ‘Of course,’ but the scepticism was still mirrored in his eyes. Obviously her claim to be his second cousin had thrown him more than she had anticipated. ‘It took three months of searching before I’d even picked up a trace.’
But somehow, with the help of that expensive missing persons bureau, he had assumed a link between Alexia Masterton and Auckland television programme researcher Alex Johns and acted upon it.
‘Full marks for enterprise, York.’ Another little shudder ran through her that was to do with more than just the bitter morning. ‘But then you always were resourceful.’
His mouth quirked. ‘How do you know? We only met once.’
Was he testing her again? She drew herself up to her full height, which, tall as she was, still left her feeling strangely overshadowed by his dominating stature.
‘Twice,’ she corrected him. ‘The first time for little more than a week. The second a year later—after Shirley died—when you came to ask—no, demand—that I came home.’
The subtle movement of an eyebrow was his only acknowledgement of that sudden little burst of rebellion. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ he said. ‘You ran away instead.’ His eyes seemed to dissect her before he smiled superficially. ‘Full marks for remembering, Alex. Or are you simply as resourceful as I am?’
She swallowed, looking up at him, a wariness clouding the deep sapphire of her eyes. God! He would be lethal to anyone who imagined they could make a fool of him, she thought, but said only, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Beneath the expensive coat a broad shoulder lifted in casual dismissal, so that she breathed, ‘Are you honestly saying you’re actually doubting who I am?’
The lean contours of his face tightened before he sent a glance over his shoulder as doors were thrown closed on the gleaming black saloon cars outside the church.
‘You wouldn’t be the first to turn up laying claim to being Page’s long-lost granddaughter. Since he died we’ve had reporters lying in wait like a pack of starved wolves, hoping for news of the elusive Alexia, morning, noon and night. Thanks to my cousin’s determination to hurt her father—even down to that last act of killing herself—this family’s affairs are no longer granted the anonymity they should be—in private matters at any rate!’
‘So you think I’m one of them? One of these…fallacious claimants?’ she uttered, indignant at the callous way he had referred to his cousin’s death, though those sharply honed edges of his intellect were stripping her nerves bare. ‘Anyway, don’t you think my mother told me everything there was to know about you that I didn’t know already?’ she appended brittly. ‘You and Page?’
‘Your mother? Shirley?’ A cynical smile played around his lips. ‘Whatever she told you—for whatever reason—I needn’t ask if it was all bad, need I?’ he said. ‘My cousin had a talent for spreading untruths about her family—her father in particular—that was second to none. She was nothing but a single-minded, mendacious little tramp.’
Alex caught her breath at the smouldering animosity in him. How was he expecting her to react? With hot retaliation and bitter protestations? Perhaps he was thinking that if she were really Shirley’s daughter she would.
‘That’s just your opinion, York,’ she responded, with a calmness that surprised even her. ‘She was independent, yes—she had to be to bring up a child singlehanded. But I never had any reason to doubt that everything she told me was true.’
‘No?’ he sneered. ‘Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?’
He was trying to needle her, she realised, but said quietly, ‘Obviously not.’ And when he looked at her quizzically, as though half expecting her to come clean and admit to being the impostor he suspected her of being, she added quickly, ‘Anything she said about either of you, you deserved.’
Too well she knew how Page Masterton had totally governed his daughter’s life, preventing her from marrying the man she loved. ‘It’s not every woman who’s lucky enough to have a father who thinks so much of her that he shows it by threatening to call in a debt and bankrupt her fiancé’s family if the boy dares to even consider marrying into his. Only she was pregnant, but Page didn’t tell him that. He just arranged for a convenient job for him abroad.
‘And when Shirley rebelled by leaving home—when he couldn’t break her into being the adoring daughter he wanted her to be—he tried to get even by attempting to separate her from her own daughter on the only occasion she did come back—and with your help! Perhaps this isn’t the time or the place to say it, but Page ruined her life—and you know it.’
His gaze lifted briefly as a rook took off with a distracting cry across the churchyard, and his smile was frozen—like the grass—as he drawled, ‘My dear, you really have been misguided.’
‘Have I?’ Alex’s hood slipped back, freeing soft silver waves as she tossed her head indignantly. ‘But then you would stand up for him, wouldn’t you?’ she breathed in a bitterly censorious voice. ‘He wanted a son and you filled that role quite adequately, didn’t you?’
The firm lines of his mouth twisted in mocking disdain. ‘Hardly!’
‘No wonder she felt pushed out.’
‘Pushed out?’ His laugh split the air with a cloud of warm breath. ‘My dear young woman, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he rasped. ‘By the time she’d made her bed I was little more than ten—scarcely old enough to have had any influence on the path of selfdestruction she was already headed down and you know it. And you’re right—anger tightened the muscles of his chest beneath the pristine shirt ‘—this isn’t the time or the place.’
She would have liked to tell him that she knew exactly what she was talking about, because, above all else, in the beginning, before the rot had set in—before circumstances had driven her into the reckless lifestyle that had killed her—Shirley had been her closest friend.
His last remark, though, had effectively silenced her—which was just as well, she realised, because two elderly women were approaching, one of them stopping a polite distance away as the taller of them singled York out.
‘York, I’m going back to the house in Brigette’s car so you’ll not need to be worrying about me. The service was beautiful, wasn’t it?’ she added approvingly, before her interest settled on the slim young woman at his side.
His smile for the older woman was warm, none of his animosity towards Alex allowed to show through the exterior charm, so that only she sensed the scorn behind it when he suddenly said, ‘Mother, would you believe that this confident, silver-haired creature is the long-lost Alexia?’ And then he added startlingly to Alex, ‘You remember my mother?’
Studying the grey-haired lady in the elegant dark wool suit, Alex felt all her composure deserting her.
