quickly. Apart from the circumstances of her return, this northernmost county of England was a far cry from the corner of Brazil that she and Harry had called home. Naturally she’d noticed the change of temperature—in the inhabitants as well as in the weather, she thought ruefully.
She was shedding her coat and the fine calfskin gloves that she had worn to the funeral when Mrs Fraser reappeared to check on the extra staff hired for the occasion. After ensuring that everyone had been supplied with either sherry or whisky—Sara noticed that most of the men had chosen the latter—the housekeeper stopped beside Sara and assured her that Ben was quite settled in the kitchen.
‘He’s having lemonade and shortbread,’ she said. ‘I made the shortbread myself this morning. Now, just you take things easy. We don’t want you falling ill now, do we?’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
A tall shadow fell across them, and Sara had no need to turn her head to identify the intruder. Where Alex was concerned she was discovering that she had a sixth sense. She would have liked to walk away, but politeness dictated otherwise.
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she said, her words addressed to no one in particular, but she was aware that Alex and Mrs Fraser exchanged a speaking look. Dammit, she thought, she wasn’t a child; she didn’t need anyone to fuss over her. And as for asking Alex for help…Well, actions spoke louder than words.
‘I’d better go and see how Alison’s getting on with the salmon,’ declared Mrs Fraser, evidently deciding that her presence was no longer needed. ‘You can tell your mother the buffet is ready, whenever she decides she wants it serving,’ she added to Alex. ‘I just hope there’ll be enough.’ She glanced around the thickening crowd in the hall and grimaced. ‘I’m sure Mr Reed just told me to cater for eighty, but it looks like there’s over a hundred here already.’
A hundred?
Sara glanced about her, realising that many of the people who had thronged St Matthew’s church had come to pay their respects. Because only some of them had gathered at Harry’s graveside she had imagined that they were the only mourners, but now she realised how mistaken she’d been.
She realised also that one of the reasons why Alex had positioned himself at her side was that eventually they would all drift in her direction. At present Harry’s mother and father were doing the honours, but Sara couldn’t expect to remain aloof for much longer.
All the same, she did not need his support…
‘It’ll soon be over.’
His words irritated her for no good reason, and she tilted her head to give him a studied look. ‘For which I’m sure you’ll be very grateful,’ she remarked, aware that she was being ungracious. ‘Tell me, is this one of your flying visits, or can your parents expect you to stay for forty-eight hours this time?’
Alex’s lips thinned. ‘I shan’t be going back to Kashmir,’ he said obliquely. And then, as one of his father’s tenants came to offer his condolences, he added, ‘I don’t think you know Will Baxter, Sara. He and his son run a small printing works in Corbridge.’
For the next few minutes Sara was obliged to shelve any alarm that Alex’s words might have engendered and accept the sympathy offered by a sequence of well-meaning strangers. So many people came to take her hand and offer some personal glimpse of the man who had been her husband that she lost track of names and faces.
But these were Harry’s friends, Harry relations—aunts and uncles and cousins whom Sara had never even met. She had got to know Harry in London, and had visited Edmundsfield only a couple of times before they were married. Harry had told her little about his life here—a fact which her mother-in-law had soon discovered. She was a stranger to these people, just as they were strangers to her.
Perhaps if they’d been married here…she found herself thinking now, and then dismissed the thought before it was fully formed. There was no way that she could have been married in Edmundsfield. For all her brief acquaintance, this village held only unhappy memories for her.
‘And I don’t live here,’ Alex was informing her evenly, and she realised that once again they were alone. Or as alone as any two people could be in such a gathering, she amended silently. But at least his words reassured her. He’d be going back to London if not to Kashmir.
‘I really think I ought to go and check on my son,’ she declared, avoiding any direct answer as he had himself. ‘If you’ll excuse me…’
‘I bought Ragdale,’ he said before she could put enough space between them so that she could pretend not to hear. ‘I’ve left the Press Corps. I decided I needed some security in my old age.’
Sara swallowed, though the effort nearly choked her. ‘How…interesting,’ she said, obliged to say something before she rushed away. But the news was devastating, particularly as the Reeds were bound to want to see their grandson on a regular basis. God, hadn’t fate dealt her enough blows already? Was she now to be expected to treat Alex like a friend? Like a brother-in-law, she thought scornfully. A man she’d grown to hate.
When she returned to the hall a few minutes later it was Robert Reed who captured her attention. ‘We’re about to have something to eat,’ he said, ‘and I don’t want to hear that you’re not hungry. There’s scarcely anything of you as it is. Have you been starving yourself to stay slim?’
Sara managed a faint smile. ‘I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or not,’ she teased, relieved to find that she felt no sense of intimidation with him. Harry had been like his father, she thought: competent but easygoing, never letting anyone rile him, never losing his temper out of hand. Or his head, she appended somewhat painfully, wishing desperately that he were still here. He’d been her friend, her lover, her anchor—the only man she’d ever known who’d thought of others before himself…
DESPITE her best efforts, Sara could only manage to eat one sandwich and the crumbled remains of a piece of Mrs Fraser’s shortbread. Even so, the sugary biscuit stuck in her throat, and she found herself drinking more than was wise to try and dislodge the constriction.
She knew that Harry’s father was concerned about her, which warmed that part of her that his wife had so unfeelingly chilled. And at least Alex hadn’t returned to disturb her, though the sight of him, chatting to a tall, elegant woman in her thirties, wasn’t exactly to her taste either.
She’d recognised the woman earlier, when she and her husband had come to offer their condolences. The Erskines—and Linda Erskine in particular—were old friends of the family. At one time Linda Adams, as she had been then, had been expected to marry one of the brothers, but circumstances had decreed otherwise, and Harry’s mother had informed them in one of her letters that she’d married James Erskine instead.
A great disappointment, no doubt, thought Sara now rather maliciously, remembering the way Linda had hung around Alex when she was here. It had seemed only a matter of time before their engagement was to be announced, and she knew that Harry had been surprised that his brother had ducked the issue. But then, Harry hadn’t known what manner of man his brother was…
Sara pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to think about any of that now—not here, not with Harry dead and Alex playing
