he gave a small smile back, but his eyes didn’t quite meet hers.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke,’ he apologised quietly. ‘I just wanted to check for damage.’
‘That’s all right. How bad is it?’
‘Bad. The “front”, as it’s being called,’ he murmured humorously as he shrugged out of his jacket, shook it and draped it over a chair, ‘cut a swathe through the south of England about a mile wide. Anything in its path was either uprooted or destroyed. Fortunately, it seems to have missed any major towns. I don’t suppose the true extent of the damage will be known for a few days. Certainly the electricity won’t be on for a while. Did you sleep all right?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Never one to pussy-foot around, she said bluntly, ‘I haven’t seen Helena.’
He looked away, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. ‘No,’ he agreed quietly. ‘She isn’t here.’
‘Oh.’
Sounded like a sensitive subject, best avoided, perhaps, and she was disgusted with herself for the rush of hope she felt that they might have split up. Returning her attention to the garden, she observed lightly, ‘The storm will have put your landscaping plans back.’ When he didn’t answer, she turned to look at him, curiosity in her dark eyes. ‘No landscaping?’
‘No.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’
One hand on the back of the chair where he’d tossed his jacket, he said quietly, ‘I tried to keep it separate.’
‘Sorry?’ she asked in confusion.
‘The house and the conference centre. I tried to keep them separate.’ His back to her, he walked across to the Aga and put the kettle back on to boil.
Thoroughly bewildered, she asked lamely, ‘Why?’
‘Because it was easier.’ Turning to face her, he gave a grim smile. ‘Helena is missing.’
‘Missing?’
‘Yes. She walked out one day and didn’t come back.’
‘Didn’t come back?’ she echoed in amazement. ‘But why on earth didn’t you tell me? No,’ she corrected herself with a little grimace. ‘Why should you? It wasn’t any of my business, was it? And you wanted to keep the conference centre and your private concerns separate.’ Which was why he’d never invited her to the house. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was because something was between them that wasn’t allowed to be between them.
‘Yes.’
‘She left without telling you she was going?’ Just because it was none of her business, that didn’t stop her being curious.
‘Yes.’
‘Because of the row?’
‘No,’ he denied simply.
‘Because of a lover?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And no one knows where she is?’
‘No.’
‘How long…? I mean, when did she…?’
‘Leave? Two months ago. She didn’t take anything with her. Not her passport, her clothes, any money. Or her car.’
When he said nothing further, she persisted, ‘And?’ Because there had to be an ‘and’, didn’t there?
‘And the police dug up the garden.’
Flicking her eyes to the window, then back to him, a very hollow feeling inside, she whispered in shock, ‘They think you—killed her?’
‘Probably not, but her father insisted that she wouldn’t have just walked out. And the police have to cover all possibilities, don’t they?’
‘That’s what they said?’
‘Yes.’
A frown in her eyes, she returned her attention to the garden. ‘Why would her father think she wouldn’t walk out?’
‘He doesn’t like me, and he didn’t think I was good enough for her. He thinks me cruel.’
‘No,’ she denied without hesitation. Whatever else he might be, she would have staked her life on the fact that he wasn’t a cruel man. And how on earth could she not have known that all this was going on? People gossiped, started rumours… ‘Does everyone believe it?’ she asked. ‘That you killed her?’
‘I don’t know if they believe it or not, but mud sticks.’
‘But there’s no evidence—is there?’
‘No.’
‘But until she’s found…’
‘I’m under suspicion, yes.’
Genuinely concerned, she said, ‘I’m so sorry, Beck.’
With a deep sigh, he finished making his coffee. ‘I’ll see if I can find you somewhere else to stay until the roads are open.’
‘Why?’
‘I just told you why.’
Watching him, she gave a disturbed smile. ‘For my reputation, or yours?’ she asked softly.
‘Yours.’
‘Oh, I think my reputation can stand it. More to the point, does anyone else have a wood-burning stove?’
His mouth smiled. His eyes didn’t. ‘No, but you can’t stay here.’
End of discussion? He spoke so quietly, impassively, with no sign of the strain he must be under, and her staying here had nothing whatever to do with reputations.
‘Afraid I might ravish you?’ she asked huskily.
‘No, Carenza, I’m not afraid you might ravish me.’
‘I’d like to…Sorry,’ she apologised hastily, her face pink. ‘I sometimes have a very big mouth.’
‘To go with being a big girl?’
‘Yes.’ Being tall and rather generously made was the bane of her life. She’d always yearned to be tiny. Like Helena. No, not like Helena. Sigh deeper, she continued her contemplation of the ruined garden. ‘She was very beautiful,’ she murmured, and she had been. She’d only seen her the once—and once had been enough, she thought with a twisted smile. And no greater contrast to herself could ever have existed. Helena had been small and slender, perfection personified. Shoulder-length blonde hair that waved in exactly the right places. Wide blue eyes, a perfect nose…She’d watched from the window of the conference centre as Helena had tucked her hand into Beck’s arm, smiled at him. A
