strong enough to break free. Why wasn’t I?” she agonized. “I’ll tell you why!” Sibella had to hold down her wrath. “We’re talking about a tyrannical man here. Control was a compulsion. Here was a man who made tough competitors crack. It would have been easy to strip my daughter of all her confidence. She should never have married him, but she wanted him at the time. He was very cunning, determined to win her, whatever the cost. Kathryn, as a girl and a young woman, had a wonderful inner contentment and her own strength. That was the sad part. Yet, within a few years, your father had drained it. Stripped her of her happiness. You children were everything to her.”
Zara felt such a wave of pain that she hid her face in Miranda’s fragrant bouquet. “Dad robbed me of my confidence as well. He pretended—he was so convincing and I was thrilled he was even paying me attention—he was acting in my best interests. He convinced me no way would I fit into Garrick’s way of life. He told me I simply wouldn’t be able to handle any future role as Garrick’s wife and mistress of Cooranga. He pointed out to me that Mummy had felt pushed to the limit, having to assume the role of wife and partner of an important industrialist like himself. That’s what was responsible for the breakdown in the marriage, he said.”
“Not Leila, then,” Sibella commented bitterly. “Dalton was in all areas of his life a control freak.”
“He couldn’t control Corin.”
Sibella nodded with understanding and pride. “Not my Corin. But don’t forget, my darling, there was a marked contrast in how Dalton treated Corin and how he treated you, his only daughter. You were too young to lose your mother. Kathryn acted as the buffer between you children and your father. You in particular because you shared her gentle nature. She angled herself between you and Dalton. We lost her, Zara, but she never meant it She would never have deliberately left you.”
“No!” Zara nodded when she didn’t really know at all. Some questions would forever remain unanswered. But no way was she going to add to her grandmother’s grief.
Sibella spoke very quietly. “She’s here today, you know.”
“I’ve felt her,” Zara said in an equally quiet voice. “Corin told me he did too.”
“Every day of my life I pray for her and for you, Zara. You are so much like Kathryn, it’s as though she’s still with us. Now, I want you to do something for me. Garrick is standing only a few feet away. The two of us are going to stroll over for a chat. Garrick and I always did get on well. He might be smiling at that very frisky girl in the lovely blue dress, but I know where his thoughts are. You must try for a reconciliation, Zara. Too many years have been wasted.”
Beneath the silk of her beautiful bridesmaid’s dress, her heartbeat was urgent. “I’ve told you, Nan. He hates me.” Her grandmother had long since pried out of her her short-lived love affair with Garrick and its disastrous end.
“Garrick is a proud man.” Sibella glanced once more in Garrick’s direction. Garrick Rylance, so tall, bold, bronzed, vividly handsome! He could not have been more striking. His brilliant blue eyes framed by thick sooty lashes any girl would die for. A challenging man was Garrick. Never a devil like her late son-in-law, Dalton. “Garrick has it firmly in his head you threw him over, no matter how often you tried to explain. But I’ve caught him watching you. Garrick might still be angry with you, my darling, but hate you? Never! Neither of you has settled for anyone else, I notice, when both of you could have just about anyone. I find that very telling, don’t you?”
Garrick knew Zara and her grandmother were coming his way. There had scarcely been a second when he hadn’t been aware of Zara, despite the audacious attentions of several young women so hell-bent on flirtation one would have thought their lives depended on it. The one he was with now fitted the bill. She was a real stayer. The sad thing was, he only had eyes for Zara. That was his bitter fate. Being anywhere near her was like being electrified. She looked so beautiful in that pink silk gown, her long dark hair falling like a bolt of shining silk down her back. He loved the exquisite pink roses that dipped in under her ear. It had been a monumental effort trying to keep his eyes off her.
You’re totally messed up, Rylance. He’d told himself that repeatedly. Didn’t do much good. His feelings for Zara would never die. They wouldn’t even die down and it was years later. Maybe he ought to arrange a session with a really good shrink, he thought with a flash of humour.
How to cure obsession—for one particular woman.
He had already spoken to Sibella, of course. He greatly admired her. Zara was very much like her in appearance. Sibella De Lacey, nearing seventy, remained a beautiful woman. She looked after herself and dressed superbly, no doubt aided by the fact that she had retained her slender figure. He knew Sibella liked him. He knew that if Sibella could wave her magic wand she would make everything come right between himself and Zara. That was if Sibella could ever find her lost magic wand.
Zara, still holding Miranda’s lovely bouquet like some magic charm, drew a deep breath. Said a silent prayer. Perhaps she and Garrick could never get back to what they had had, but she had to try.
Her time was running out.
Celebrations continued on into the night, with couples dancing on the rear terrace to a great band who were enjoying themselves as much as anyone else. Others roamed the extensive gardens, which were lit by thousands and thousands of white fairy lights that decked the trees. Flirtations aplenty were going on. A lot of tender hand-holding. Delectable kisses stolen in the scented semidark. One overeager, overenthusiastic young male guest for a bit of fun launched himself into the swimming pool with its flotilla of big beautiful hibiscus blooms, but further silliness on the part of others was swiftly discouraged by an unobtrusive security man, dressed like the other guests, who hauled him out.
Older guests retired to the house, agog at the wonderful renovations. They flowed through the main reception rooms and the library, chattering and exclaiming, coming to settle into the opulent sofas and armchairs to go over the great day in detail and catch up on all the latest news and gossip. Many who had thought of her often that day went to gaze with a moment’s sadness at the life-size portrait of Kathryn Rylance. It hadn’t been seen for quite a while. Certainly not during the reign of the second wife, Leila. Recently it had been taken out of storage, cleaned, reframed and it now hung above the splendid white marble fireplace.
“In its rightful place!” murmured one of Kathryn’s friends to another.
Kathryn Rylance had been such a beautiful gracious woman! How sad that she couldn’t have been here on this day of days, the wedding of her only son. All agreed that Zara was the image of her, both in looks and in manner. All had decided Miranda had deliberately thrown her bouquet to her sister-in-law. Didn’t that declare to the whole world that the two young women were very close? No one had seen such happiness in the Rylance household for far too long.
The King is dead. Long live the King!
By one o’clock in the morning the last of the guests departed in chauffeured limousines that stood waiting for them. This service had been planned well in advance, the thinking being that, very few would be in any condition to drive their own cars. One woman guest was so grateful and maybe so tipsy she started to cry.
“How enormously thoughtful!” she gushed as the chauffeur opened the door for her and her husband.
Her husband, an eminent barrister, agreed. “We’d never get home otherwise, my dear.”
“God bless you, Corin, old son!” another male guest yelled at the top of
