style="font-size:15px;"> There was a mirror in Nell’s studio at the rear of the gallery. Lydie gently withdrew the dress from its layers of tissue paper, letting the folds of cream silk slide through her fingers.
Her hands were trembling a little. She’d broken the unwritten law by speaking Marius’s name and opened up a real can of worms. Nell’s innate sense of justice had been outraged, and in so many ways she was quite right.
Yet at the time, for Austin’s sake, there’d seemed no choice but to tacitly accept the curtain of silence which had been drawn over the whole affair. He’d had bypass surgery after that first massive attack and, they’d been warned, he had to be kept free from stress.
They owed him too much to take unnecessary risks. That was indisputable.
She even owed him this dress, she thought wryly as she shook it out.
Yet, in spite of Debra Benedict’s pleas to him to slow down, he still went to the mill every day. Nor did he appear to agree with his wife’s view that he should shift more executive responsibility onto Jon’s shoulders.
‘I’ve set the lad on, and promoted him over better men, my dear,’ he’d told her. ‘You’ll have to settle for that for the time being.’
Debra had seized on his closing words, conveniently ignoring what had gone before, convincing herself that the Benco world was just waiting to be Jon’s oyster. She hadn’t been able to persuade Austin to adopt both children in the early days of her marriage, but that was no reason why her husband shouldn’t leave his company and the estate to his stepson. Especially now that there was no one else.
It was an obsession with her, Lydie thought wearily, holding the dress against herself and turning to study her reflection in the mirror.
Forget the past, she told herself. Think about the dress and the party—and about Hugh, who’s probably going to ask you to marry him. Concentrate on that—and the pain will go away. It always has done—eventually. It must now.
Her eyes felt bruised. The cream silk, with its deep square neckline and filmy bell sleeves, looked incongruous against her workaday blue shirt and jeans.
It was almost like a wedding dress, except for the barbaric splash of embroidery across the front of the full skirt—the band of stylised flowers and trailing leaves in gold thread adding a voluptuous element to the purity of the plain silk. A hint, even, of danger.
The neckline was several centimetres short of bridal demureness too, Lydie thought critically. She wouldn’t be able to wear a bra. But what Austin didn’t know wouldn’t grieve him.
All cream and gold, she thought. ‘Like a madonna lily.’
The words flicked out of the past like the bite of a whip, flaying her senses, making the breath catch in her throat.
Don’t look back, she thought feverishly. Don’t let yourself remember. It isn’t safe. Not now—not ever...
She held the skirt out slightly, watching the effect with detachment.
Hugh, of course, would love it.
She conjured up his image in her mind with determination. Tall and even fairer than she was, with an easy smile, Hugh Wingate had been in the army, serving in the Falklands and latterly in the Gulf War. On his father’s death he’d resigned his commission and come home to look after the family estates. Debra had decided at once that the seventeenth-century Wingate Hall would make a perfect background for Lydie and had spent the previous year trying to bring it about.
Jon, Lydie thought drily, was not the only victim of their mother’s manipulative tactics.
But although Hugh had been more than co-operative Lydie had maintained a certain reserve, even though she enjoyed his company and shared a lot of his interests. Many successful marriages, she knew, had been based on far less.
But she wasn’t in love with Hugh and she knew it. His kisses, while agreeable, left her only faintly stirred, and she’d had not the slightest difficulty in resisting his urging her to carry their relationship to a more intimate level. If and when they became officially engaged, the pressure, she supposed, would increase, and she would have to surrender herself.
But maybe that was what she needed, she thought broodingly. Perhaps the only way to erase the past, and the pain, was to commit herself to another relationship. To begin her life as a woman all over again.
She stared at herself. It could be that she was never to know again the same wild intensity of feeling she’d experienced five years ago; that what she felt for Hugh was as good as it was going to get. Well, so be it. Hugh would never feel short-changed anyway, she vowed inwardly. She would make sure of that.
Security, she thought—that’s what matters above all. She could remember only too clearly the various cheap flats, the uncertainty of school holidays, the terrifying fluctuation of finances which had marked their childhood, could understand why Debra, her career in decline, her spectacular looks beginning to fade, had grabbed with both hands at the florid Edwardian comfort of Greystones and Austin’s unstinting devotion.
If Hugh proposed tonight as her mother was sure he intended, then she’d accept. Turn Austin’s birthday into a double celebration.
She turned away from the mirror and waltzed out into the gallery, the dress held against her.
‘I’ll have my hair up tonight,’ she announced. ‘But you’ll have to imagine the rest of it.’
She checked, her hand flying to her mouth in sudden embarrassment. She hadn’t heard him arrive but there was a last-minute customer just the same.
There was a man’s tall figure standing beside Nell near the cash desk.
God, she thought with vexation, snatching the dress away as if it were stinging her and throwing it over her arm. What an idiot I must look.
Flushing deeply, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise anyone else was here.’
‘Don’t apologise.’ The deep voice was husky with amusement. ‘I wouldn’t have missed the performance for the world.’
Poised for retreat, Lydie felt instead as if she’d suddenly been turned to stone. She felt her lips parting in a silent gasp, her green eyes widening endlessly as he moved without haste towards her.
The overhead light shining directly on him showed thick, faintly curling dark hair and a lean, tanned face, against which his grey eyes were as cold and hard as a winter sky.
‘Cream and gold,’ Marius Benedict said softly. ‘Just like a madonna lily.’ And he smiled at her.
All the breath seemed to catch in her throat. Then she moved, swiftly, clumsily, her hand swinging up in front of her as if to ward him off. And a bowl with a vivid blue glaze went smashing to the floor.
‘Oh, no,’ Lydie wailed, and knelt to pick up the pieces.
‘Careful you don’t cut your hand.’ Nell rushed over to her. ‘And keep your dress off the floor. It’ll mark.’
‘I’m afraid I startled her,’ the deep voice said. ‘You must let me pay for the damage.’
‘These
