at the other two as he said, ‘I think Miss Carr and I need to talk privately for a few minutes. If you’ll excuse us? We won’t be long.’
‘Annie?’ Tom glanced at her, his face concerned.
‘It’s all right, Uncle Tom.’ She had risen to her feet and now she smiled at the solicitor and Crystal. ‘Order for us if the waitress returns, would you? I’ll have the butter bean bruschetta with toasted wholegrain bread followed by the tarragon chicken with green beans and new potatoes.’ She didn’t think she’d be able to eat a thing but she was blowed if she was going to let Rafe Steed know that.
She glanced at him, waiting for him to express his choice, and for a second she thought she caught a glimpse of something which could have been admiration in the blue gaze. It was gone in an instant as he turned to Tom. ‘The same.’
She didn’t want him touching her again and so she quickly retraced her steps to the lounge bar. There she stopped long enough to glance over her shoulder and say, ‘I suggest we go through to the garden. It’s more private there,’ before continuing on.
Once in the grounds of the inn she realised the tables and chairs scattered about the big lawn were full, which she hadn’t expected. Normally, apart from the six weeks in July and August when the schoolchildren were on their summer vacation and even more holiday-makers flooded into the area, there was always a table or two to be had outside.
‘My car’s in the car park.’
Now Rafe did take her arm again; too late Marianne realised she should have been content with talking in the crowded lounge bar. The last thing she wanted was to sit in his car with him. Far too cosy.
As he led her out of the little side gate and into the large drystone-walled car park, Marianne was attacked by a number of conflicting emotions. His height and breadth made her feel very feminine, almost fragile, and it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. He smelled nice. Not so much the scent of aftershave but more the faint perfume of a lime or lemon soap on clean male skin—or perhaps it was aftershave? She didn’t know but it was attractive. The set of his face told her she had been right in her suspicions that there was more to this than met the eye; furthermore, she wouldn’t like what she was about to hear, and apprehension curled in her stomach. The sun was hot on her face and, as they reached a low silver sports car crouching in the far corner of the car park and he opened the passenger door, the smell of leather hit her nostrils.
Once she was seated he shut the door and walked round the bonnet of the car, sliding into the driver’s seat as he said, ‘I’m aware you have just lost your parents suddenly, which has been a great shock. If you would rather we had this conversation some other time that’s fine.’
‘Because I won’t like what you say to me, Mr Steed?’ Marianne asked steadily, refusing to be intimidated.
‘Exactly.’ He turned to face her, one arm along the back of her seat. ‘And what I have to say doesn’t alter the current proposal so it really isn’t necessary to voice it.’
‘I disagree.’ Marianne folded her arms, wishing they weren’t alone like this. ‘I noticed at the funeral you had to force yourself to be civil to me and just now, when you mentioned Seacrest, there was something…’ She swallowed hard. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain exactly how you feel?’
‘Very well.’
It was said in a tone of you asked for this and Marianne’s stomach turned over. Since she was a child she had always disliked confrontation but if and when it came she had invariably met it head-on.
‘You know your father and mine grew up together, that they were boyhood friends?’ said Rafe evenly.
‘Yes.’ Marianne nodded. ‘Not until the funeral, though, but you already know that.’
‘The three of them—your father, mine and Tom Blackthorn—were very close through their teenage years and then, when they turned twenty, something happened. Or someone.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Marianne stared at him. He was speaking in a steady controlled voice but she knew he wasn’t feeling calm inside.
‘My father met a girl—a young woman. She’d recently moved to the area with her family. Your father and Tom had gone abroad for the summer—they had comfortably well-off parents, unlike my paternal grandparents, who were fisher-folk. My father’s parents couldn’t afford to send him to France and Italy to see the sights. He was expected to work on the fishing boat once he was home from university. They’d had to sacrifice much to allow him to go in the first place.’
He looked away from her, staring through the windscreen. His profile might have been sculpted in granite. The clear forehead, the chiselled straight nose, the firm mouth and strong square jaw. He really was a very good-looking man, Marianne thought vaguely, but disturbing. Infinitely disturbing.
‘The two of them fell in love, my father and this young woman. He was besotted by her. He couldn’t believe such a beautiful young girl had fallen so madly for him. They had a wonderful summer together. She would wait each evening for him to return from fishing so they could be together. They had barbecues for two on the beach with the fish he’d caught, walks through the countryside, evenings sitting in the gardens of village pubs, things like that. She had golden-blond hair and the bluest of eyes, my father said. In that respect—the eyes—you are not like your mother.’
She had been expecting it, realisation dawning slowly as he had talked, but it was still a shock. Licking her lips, she said, ‘Your father fell in love with my mother?’
‘Not just fell in love with her—he always loved her. He still does. And my mother knew. She knew there was a girl in England he was trying to forget—a girl who had broken his heart and left only a small piece for anyone else. But my mother loved him enough to take what was left and make it work. They had a good marriage on the whole, even though she knew she was second-best.’
The bitterness in his voice broke through for a moment and Marianne watched as he took a deep breath, gritting his teeth. When he next spoke his voice was steady again, unemotional. ‘Your father and Tom came back from their travels one week before the university term began. By the end of it your mother had switched her affections from the son of a poor fisherman to a man who had wealth and power in his family, the son of a successful businessman who owned a big fine house which would one day become his.’
Marianne’s throat constricted. She cleared it, then said tightly, ‘If you are insinuating my mother married my father for his wealth and property, you are wrong. They loved each other.’
He ignored this. ‘The three of them—my father, yours and Tom—had one year left at university. On the eve of my father’s graduation his father and brother were drowned in a storm and the fishing boat lost. My grandmother went to live with her widowed sister some miles inland. At the same time your father and mother got engaged. There was now nothing to hold my father here. A mixed blessing in the circumstances. Certainly I don’t think he could have stood seeing your parents settling into married bliss.’
She stared at him, colour burning in her cheeks and her hands clenched in her lap. How dared he say these things about her mother? How dared he? ‘I don’t know what went on all those years ago, Mr Steed, and neither do you, as it happens. You only have your father’s side of things. But I do know my mother and she would never have done what you’ve suggested. If she cared for your father as you say I’m sure she was in turmoil when my father came on the scene and she realised what she felt for him was the sort of love that
