fire away.’
‘Firstly, I shall expect you to have meals with me—expect you both to have meals with me—when I’m around. I don’t intend to slink through my own house like an intruder just to satisfy your bizarre preference for solitude. Admittedly, my work takes me abroad quite a bit, and my social life can be a bit disruptive as well, but there will be times when I’m around, and your presence might pave the way for a slightly smoother relationship with my daughter.’
She caught that slight edge of defensiveness in his voice again and bit down the feeling of sympathy. Emily must be the one crack in his suit of armour which he could not hide. His feelings snaked into his voice, almost of their own accord, and he seemed unaware of it. Probably he was so accustomed to controlling people, situations, events, that he was quite wrong-footed by the one situation, the one person, over whom he had no control.
Rebecca nodded but did not commit herself to agreeing with any such plan.
‘And—’ he stood up, finally, taking his time and slipping on his jacket ‘—just one more thing…’ He gave her a slow smile that made her pulses race. ‘I’d just like to say that you’ve changed.’
Rebecca’s mouth fell open.
‘I know you recognise me.’ He moved over to her and it was all she could do to hold her ground and not scuttle away to the side of the room in alarm. ‘I could see it the minute you set eyes on me. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it, Rebecca?’
Rebecca could think of nothing to say.
‘Did you think that I didn’t remember you? You did. I can see the answer in your eyes.’ His voice was as soft and smooth as melted chocolate. It made her dizzy, a response which she immediately put down to confusion. ‘You haven’t got the sort of face that’s easily forgotten. You look more or less the same. In fact, you seem to have aged very little over the years, but your manner’s changed. If I remember correctly you were so full of life, so eager to please.’
His voice had sunk to a husky whisper, and she could feel her cheeks aflame with colour as she raised her eyes to his. Did he imagine that his syrupy charm was going to have her wilting obligingly? Or was that syrupy charm all part and parcel of his persona, something that manifested itself in every word he spoke?
‘Our paths crossed years ago for a matter of a couple of weeks.’
‘Why didn’t you acknowledge me?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
He shrugged carelessly. ‘I figured you had your reasons. Anyway, it was incidental to what was being discussed. After a while, I became intrigued to see whether you’d slip up, which you didn’t. You still haven’t lost that urge to say exactly what’s on your mind, though, have you? I could see you bursting to condemn me before I’d even sat down!’
So he had known all along. She felt a complete idiot.
‘Why did you run out on me all those years ago?’ he asked. ‘You never bothered to explain. The last I saw of you at that party was with your back turned, laughing, with a glass of champagne in your hand, and then no more contact after that. Every call I made politely declined.’
‘I can’t think that that’s preyed on your mind all this time,’ Rebecca told him, plucking every ounce of self-control at her disposal and immeasurably grateful for the fact that teaching had given her an invaluable discipline as far as her emotions went.
‘Whoever said that it had?’ His eyes narrowed, and not altogether pleasantly, on her. ‘Although…’
‘Although what?’
‘I saw you there, in that room, and the past crossed my mind; it’s as simple as that. And with the past came a bucketful of questions that you never answered when you decided to do your vanishing act.’
‘And they won’t be answered now!’ she flared back at him. ‘And that’s another condition! I do my job, I do what I shall be paid handsomely to do, but there’s to be nothing personal between us.’
He gave her a leisurely, dangerous smile. ‘I suggest you tell yourself that every morning when you wake up,’ he said silkily, ‘because I can feel the heat radiating from you like a furnace. If I laid a finger on you right now, I bet you’d just go up in flames. Poof! Just like that. You’re even trembling, and don’t bother to deny it. But still, nothing personal. At any rate, I’m involved, in case you’d forgotten.’
He stalked across to the door and stayed there for a few seconds, looking at her, his hand resting lightly on the doorknob. ‘See you in a few weeks’ time, Rebecca. And I don’t expect you to back out because of our past little liaison. I’m sure you’re grown up enough to realise that it would be a vast disfavour to my daughter if you did. For the wrong reasons.’
With that, he was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
THE station was packed. Rebecca rarely travelled down to London. Year after year, she promised herself a treat—told herself that she would vanish to London for a week or two during the summer holidays and catch up on all those exciting things a girl of her age should be enjoying: theatres, shopping, mingling with the teeming crowds, perhaps even a nightclub, if she could drag a friend down with her. Unfortunately, whenever she tallied up the prospective bill for any such jaunt, she would feel the familiar shudder of horror at the thought of spending huge sums of money to stay in a hotel for a fortnight, eat out and go to the theatre, not to mention shopping.
And the idea always evaporated. Spain for two weeks during the summer holidays was a cheaper, more reliably hotter option. And Cornwall to visit her cousin and her three boisterous children held even more appeal.
So now, with swarming crowds around her, she felt hopelessly lost, as though she had wandered accidentally into another country.
She’d managed to commandeer a trolley and she pushed it along the platform, at which point she was obliged to abandon it so that she could lug her two hefty suitcases up the escalator and out of the station.
By the time she was outside, with a freezing wind gusting around her, she felt thoroughly deflated.
This was all a horrendous mistake. She had been manoeuvred into doing something she basically didn’t want to do. She had had the whole of Christmas to think about it in Cornwall, and, however much she had lectured to her cousin on what a splendid and altruistic gesture it had been to commit herself for an indefinite period of months to a private tutoring job, she couldn’t erase the niggling unease that had settled at the back of her mind like a heavy stone.
‘Why are you looking so worried if you know you’re doing the right thing?’ Beth had asked her one evening. ‘I can’t really see what’s bothering you. You’re going to be paid more than I could ever hope to get in a month of Sundays, and the school is going to keep your job open for when you return.’ Which had shamed Rebecca because Beth worked like a carthorse, looked after her three children in the absence of a husband, and rarely complained.
‘I don’t much like her father,’ Rebecca had said, omitting to mention that they had once briefly known one another several centuries ago.
‘Why not?’
‘He’s a bit autocratic.’
Beth
