Rafe home?’ Hazel asked breathlessly.
Celia gave a mocking smile. ‘Thank you, Hazel, I’m very well,’ she said dryly.
‘Oh—oh, yes.’ Hazel blushed. ‘Is Rafe home?’
Celia ran her tongue thoughtfully over her heavily painted lips. ‘Well, he hasn’t made a point of staying home to greet you, if that’s what you mean. This isn’t a case of the return of the prodigal, you know. Rafe is out on the estate like he is any other day.’
‘Oh.’ Hazel couldn’t hide her disappointment from this woman, much as she would have liked to. Nothing had changed at Savage House, it seemed, still the same hate from Celia and indifference from Rafe. She had never known which was the worse to bear.
Celia looked bored. ‘Your usual room has been prepared for your stay. Have James take your things upstairs. I’ll be out for the rest of the afternoon, so please yourself what you do. Just don’t go bothering Rafe when he comes in.’
Hazel held herself stiffly. ‘I had no intention of doing so, Celia.’ She halted the other woman as she made a move to leave. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Rafe’s accident?’
‘Tell you what, Hazel? That he’s maimed and no longer the man of your girlhood dreams, but a scarred embittered man who doesn’t want to be bothered by your stupid adoration? Rafe saw no reason to ask for your return,’ Celia added cruelly. ‘He didn’t want you fussing around him in an effort to show him how devoted you are. You aren’t wanted here, Hazel.’
Hazel tried not to flinch at the harshness of Celia’s words. In her three years’ absence she had forgotten just how barbed Celia’s words could be, but she was being reminded very forcefully. ‘I’m going to my room,’ she said stiffly.
Celia wrenched open the door. ‘The guest-room,’ she corrected.
Hazel swallowed hard. ‘The guest-room,’ she agreed dully.
She went slowly up to her room. Celia’s resentment seemed to have grown in her absence, not lessened. The room she referred to as the guest-room had been Hazel’s room for the past eleven years. But what hurt Hazel the most was Rafe’s callousness in not even being here to greet her.
The view from the window was magnificent, the sea pounding against the shoreline, and to the far left a forest of tall green trees. It was among these trees that Hazel, at the great age of fourteen, had built herself a low rambling one-story shack. Rafe had helped, of course, but it had always been her own private place. She had spent a lot of time there during the summer months. Trathen, the name of the village, had only fifty families, excluding the Savages. Each household maintained its own portion of land, but the Savages dominated the area, Savage House standing high up on the cliffs, dominating the whole of the landscape.
Hazel loved the summers here. With her blonde hair she could be expected to burn easily, but she didn’t have the fair skin that would have been normal with her hair colouring. Her skin was olive brown, during the summer months tanning to a deep walnut brown. She was a strange mixture altogether, blonde hair, olive skin, and deep brown eyes, and no one had yet worked out where the latter two derived from.
The blonde hair she had acquired from the mother she had never seen, her life being the price she had paid for her long-awaited child. But as both her parents had blue eyes and fair skins Hazel’s own strange combination could only be put down to one of her ancestors. She could almost have looked like a Savage if it weren’t for this fair hair of hers, both the surviving Savages having raven-black hair.
She smiled at James as he brought in her luggage, standing up to hug his wife Sara as she came into the room with him. ‘Why, Sara,’ she stood back, grinning widely, ‘I do believe you’re more rounded than ever!’
The cook-housekeeper smiled back at her, a good advertisement for her own cooking. ‘And I do believe you’re skinnier than ever!’ The two of them grinned at each other affectionately, their difference in weight having always been a standing joke between them.
Sara was the fat jolly cook of storybooks and Hazel was so slender she appeared wraithlike. And it was true, she was slimmer. Her pay as a doctor’s secretary had been quite high, but then so had the cost of living. Rafe had insisted on paying her a monthly allowance, but she had been determined never to use any of it. She wanted to be like any other working girl, and if that included being broke most of the time then that was what she would be.
And she had been most of the time, not even having enough money to feed herself properly. But this way she had felt like part of the crowd, had forgotten her guardian-cousin was a very rich man, rich enough to buy her anything she had ever wanted. But over the years she had wanted little, not wanting to feed Celia’s unwarranted jealousy any more than was absolutely necessary.
It seemed strange that Rafe wasn’t here to meet her. He must have known of her arrival time, otherwise he couldn’t have sent James to meet her at the airport. So where was he? Out on the estate, Celia had said. But surely he could have spared five minutes just to say hello. There would have been hell to pay if she had acted in the same casual way where he was concerned. And in truth she didn’t like to admit how much his reticence hurt her.
She showered and changed into one of the thin cotton dresses she had bought for her return home. None of the clothes she had had for the summer in Cornwall three years previously seemed to fit her anywhere, for where she had lost weight in most places, her figure seemed to have filled out in others. Some of her colourful tee-shirts looked positively indecent, they were so tight.
She chose to wear a pure white dress, her olive skin and fair hair showing to advantage against its stark colour, leaving her legs bare and donning white rope sandals.
Her hair she brushed until it shone, brushing it up high and securing it with a white ribbon high on the top of her head, leaving her smooth swan-like neck bare and free to the gentle caress of the breeze. America could be extremely hot, but she knew that Cornwall, during the summer months, could sometimes be almost as hot and humid.
The front doors stood open when she came down the stairs and as there didn’t seem to be anyone about to tell of her departure she left the house and went out into the blazing sunshine. She would go down to the cabin, and hope that the memories there wouldn’t be too painful.
The track down to the sea was steep and often dangerous, its rocky steps cracked and crumbling in places. Her movements down the pathway were hurried and shifty; she had been warned time and time again by Rafe not to go this way but take the longer safer path around the back of the house. But Rafe wasn’t here to see her right now and it was quicker this way.
She had forgotten how much she loved this place, loved the sea, the sand, and the sunshine. She took off her sandals, digging her feet into the warm sand and loving its soft caressing feel. She paddled at the water’s edge, alone and yet not alone. It was impossible to feel that way in this paradise; the beauty surrounding her was the only company she needed.
She wished now that she had thought to bring her bikini down to the beach with her. It was no good being able to admire the beauty here and not be able to participate. She had bathed alone here from time to time, this also against Rafe’s instructions, the tides here being dangerous to the lone swimmer. She had mainly done this when Rafe was away on business, but she daren’t do it today, not when he could turn up at any time.
The cabin was getting old now and in a way she dreaded going inside. While the summers could be very hot here the winters could be equally cold, and the
