The Master's Mistress (11 page)

A shutter came down over the darkness of Rogan eyes, his expression suddenly totally noncommittal. ‘Sorry?’

Elizabeth gave a rueful smile. ‘Mrs Baines was the one who took the first editions.’

He released her hand abruptly, his gaze watchful. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m not expecting you to confirm or deny it, Rogan,’ Elizabeth assured him huskily. ‘Mrs Baines came over to the house before lunch, and the two of us talked as we prepared sandwiches for the people coming back this afternoon. She told me—explained why she had done it. That at sixty she didn’t think she would find another housekeeping job. That she was frightened of being poor in her old age, and had imagined she could sell the books. That she had heard the two of us talking about the books, how much they were worth, and had thought the burglaries in the area lately would hide the fact that she had stolen them.’

Rogan’s expression was grim. ‘As you said, I have no intention of confirming or denying what you’ve just said.’

Elizabeth nodded. ‘I—I just wanted you to know that I admire the way you dealt with the situation when she made her confession to you earlier this morning. Mrs Baines is so grateful to you for reassuring her that your father arranged a pension for her in his will.’

Rogan nodded abruptly. ‘It was the least I could do in the circumstances.’

Elizabeth smiled, sure that Rogan had been surprised several times today at the warmth and affection in which his father had been held by people. ‘I’m not sure if this is a good time or not, Rogan, but I—I think I should tell you that I have decided to leave Sullivan House later this evening.’

‘What?’ Rogan exclaimed as he turned sharply in his seat to look at her. ‘Because of what happened this morning?’ he bit out grimly.

‘No, not because of that,’ she denied ruefully, the warm colour back in her cheeks. ‘Rogan, whatever differences there were between your mother and father—and those differences were surely personal to them—it’s been made obvious to me today, and to you too, I believe, that other people didn’t see your father the way you did, that they held him in great esteem—’

‘Never heard the saying “street angel, fireside devil”?’ he snapped, stung by the criticism he sensed behind her comment.

‘Yes, I’ve heard it,’ Elizabeth confirmed softly. ‘And that may or may not be true of both your own father and mine. But I can’t forget what you said to me yesterday about dealing with the unresolved issues between my father and myself before it’s too late. The funeral today, with all those
people who have fond memories of your father, has shown me that I need to know, to find out for myself what sort of man my father really is. Before it’s too late,’ she reminded him gently.

Rogan’s mouth compressed. ‘The implication being, I suppose, that
I
left it too late to find out what sort of man my own father was?’

Elizabeth gave him a sympathetic look as she shook her head. ‘Not everything is about you, Rogan.’

He scowled fiercely. ‘I know that, damn it.’

‘Then please try to understand that I have to do this—for my own peace of mind, if nothing else.’

Rogan did understand. He even admired what Elizabeth was proposing to do. He had just been totally thrown by her announcement that she intended leaving Sullivan house later today…

Which was pretty stupid when Rogan already knew he had no intention of staying on there any longer than he absolutely had to. That he would be leaving there himself tomorrow. Or at the very latest the day after that.

But the thought of Elizabeth leaving, of never seeing her again, disturbed him more than he could ever have imagined…

‘Fine,’ he accepted offhandedly. ‘Go. But I hope you’re prepared to accept that your father just may be every bad thing you ever thought he was!’

‘Believe me, I do accept that, Rogan.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘Obviously my mother and father weren’t good for each other. But, as I told you before, I didn’t know until I was old enough to realise that. I remember my father as being full of fun, always laughing, and very loving towards me when he was at home. Possibly because of the lack of love in his
relationship with my mother—I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘But which came first, I wonder? My mother’s drinking? Or my father’s affairs? I was a child, so how could I possibly know or be in a position to act as his judge and jury?’

Had Rogan acted as judge and jury to his own father…? Hell, yes. After his mother had taken her own life, he had most definitely judged his father! But he was an adult now, and not the emotional teenager he had been when he’d left Sullivan House all those years ago. Was his judgement still the right one? Or had it been as flawed as Elizabeth now felt perhaps her own had been of her own father?

Whatever the answer to that question was, Rogan certainly didn’t feel like thanking Elizabeth for putting these doubts in his own mind!

‘Maybe I’ll see my father again and still be filled with the same anger I‘ve felt towards him for so many years,’ Elizabeth continued ruefully. ‘And maybe I won’t…’ Her expression was wistful.

Rogan looked at her thoughtfully. ‘That’s a pretty gutsy outlook.’

‘It may prove to be a very stupid one.’ She laughed softly. ‘But I have to at least try.’

Rogan had to admire her courage.

At least he would have admired Elizabeth’s courage if he didn’t still feel so confused by his own anger at the thought of her leaving here later today.

Leaving
him
!

The car finally pulled up to the house, and other cars with guests who had taken Mrs Baines up on her offer of tea and sandwiches after the funeral were already starting to pull in behind.

Elizabeth looked at him sympathetically. ‘Are you ready to face them again?’ she asked.

‘Not really, but I suppose I’ll have to,’ he replied. ‘Hopefully it won’t go on too long.’ And, with that, he took a deep breath and opened the car door.

‘R
OGAN
?’ Elizabeth said softly.

He made no move to acknowledge her presence as she stood hesitantly in the bedroom doorway. He simply stood as still as a statue in the middle of the room where she had finally found him. He had disappeared straight after talking with his father’s lawyer, once the other funeral guests had left.

‘Rogan, what’s wrong?’ Elizabeth pressed.

His expression was grim, and there was a slight pallor to his tightly etched features. His eyes were so dark and unfathomable that Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel concerned about him.

‘The louse!’ Rogan finally grated harshly, his fingers crushing the letter he held in his hand.

‘What are you talking about?’ she exclaimed.

‘You were right and I was wrong, okay?’ He turned on her fiercely, dark eyes blazing.

She looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Take a look around you, Elizabeth,’ Rogan said. ‘What do you see?’ he prompted angrily, already knowing exactly what she would see. What she couldn’t fail to see!

Photographs. Dozens—no, hundreds of them, on every
conceivable surface in what had once been his mother’s bedroom. Several of them featured Rogan himself, from babyhood to a young man. But most of them were of Rogan’s mother, Maggie. A dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty who smiled so innocently into the camera.

Every family photograph that had ever once adorned the rest of the house and many more that hadn’t were all meticulously framed and arranged. On the dressing-table. The bedside tables. Even the walls! Everywhere he looked, Rogan was presented with likenesses of his happily smiling mother.

The place was like a shrine!

There were even fresh flowers in a vase on the dressing table. Yellow roses. His mother’s favourite blooms. Looking less than their best now. Which wasn’t surprising, considering that the person who had tended them had been dead for over a week now.

Bradford Lucas Sullivan.

Rogan’s father.

Maggie’s husband.

‘How could he?’ Rogan ground out fiercely. ‘All this time I blamed him. Thought—Believed—
Hell!
’ His jaw was clenched so tightly it ached.

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. Or if she should say anything at all.

The bedroom was so feminine, with its lace drapes about the four-poster bed, the floral wallpaper and cream and gold décor, that it had to have been Rogan’s mother’s. Was
still
Rogan’s mother’s, in fact. Every surface was free of dust, and there was a deep blue gown draped across the bedroom chair, as if ready for its owner to slip into. Perfume and make-up bottles stood on the dressing table. Even the hairbrush
had several strands of long dark hair still entangled in its bristles.

This room, the roses, all those framed photographs, were a monument to someone who had been deeply loved.

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘I don’t understand,’ she repeated huskily.

Rogan’s mouth twisted grimly. ‘Neither did I. Not until I read this.’ He held up the letter he had seconds ago crushed in his hand. ‘I told you my father knew exactly how ill he was, and he—he left this letter with his lawyer, for me to read. After his funeral, if I’d bothered coming back for it. Or to be forwarded on to me if I didn’t,’ he added bleakly. ‘Read it if you want.’ He threw the letter down on the bed before striding across the room to stand in front of the window, the rigidity of his back turned towards her.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure that she did want to read the letter that Brad Sullivan had left for his son to read after his death, feeling as if she would be intruding on something very personal between father and son. Too personal, surely, for a third party to become involved in?

Even a third party who had made love with Rogan that morning…!

She grimaced uncomfortably. ‘I’m not sure that I should, Rogan…’

‘Why not?’ He turned and faced her. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know how wrong I’ve been all these years? About everything, it seems.’

He had been wrong about his father. About his mother. Just wrong, wrong,
wrong
!

He strode back to snatch up the letter, smoothing out the creases before beginning to read out loud. ‘“My dear
Rogan…My deepest regret is that you and I have been estranged all these years—”’

‘Rogan, I really don’t think—’

‘“But it couldn’t be any other way,”’ Rogan continued relentlessly. ‘“Not without tarnishing memories of someone we both loved so dearly. Better by far, I decided long ago, that you think badly of me than of her. Your mother was, and always will be, the dearest love of my life. I fell in love with her the day I met her, and be assured I remained in love with her until the day I died. Hopefully the two of us are together again now. I sincerely hope so. These years without her have been harder to bear than you could ever imagine. Harder even than my estrangement from you, Rogan. Perhaps now you’re older you might understand why it had to be this way? I sincerely hope so. For my part, I must take equal responsibility for any difficulties that your mother and I encountered during those years after we relocated in England. I was always so busy working, often not even managing to return to Cornwall for the weekends, and as such left Maggie alone and lonely far too much. In such circumstances, mistakes happen. Faced with the truth of those mistakes, we have the choice of beginning again, of forgiving and forgetting, or relinquishing the one we love most in the world. I chose to forgive and forget.”’

Rogan looked up at Elizabeth. ‘Don’t you see?
He
was the one who chose to forgive and forget what she did, not the other way around.’

Yes, Elizabeth did see. Only too well. And her heart ached for all three of them. Maggie as well Rogan and Brad.

Because, whether he had intended it or not, Brad’s letter revealed that he wasn’t the one who had had an affair
during his marriage. That, although Brad had forgiven and forgotten, it had been Maggie who was unable to live with her own guilt…

The next paragraph of the letter clearly showed that Brad hadn’t intended his son to know that. ‘“But perhaps I have said too much,”’ Rogan continued reading flatly. ‘“My only wish in writing you this letter, Rogan, is to let you know how very much your mother and I have loved you, will always love you, and how proud we are to call you our son. Always, your loving father.”’ Rogan’s voice broke emotionally as he came to the end of the letter. ‘Damn him. Damn, damn,
damn
! Why couldn’t he have told me all this before he died and given me a chance to reconcile with him?’

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. In view of the doubts she had expressed earlier, concerning her judgement of her own father, what could she say that wouldn’t sound like either triteness or possibly another rebuke?

Rogan felt as if he had a vice wrapped about his chest, preventing him from breathing. Preventing him from doing anything but reliving every moment of that last terrible argument with his father fifteen years ago, the accusations he had made, and all the years of neglect and estrangement since.

And he had been wrong. So very, very wrong!

Something he would have to deal with in the same way his father had all these years. Alone.

His expression was bleak as he looked across at Elizabeth and saw tears of sympathy swimming in those deep blue eyes. ‘I presume you’re packed and ready to go?’ he asked.

She looked startled. ‘I…Are you going to be all right, Rogan?’ she questioned concernedly.

It was a concern Rogan didn’t feel able to deal with right now. He had far too much thinking and soul-searching to do first. ‘Why shouldn’t I be all right?’ he retorted. ‘Every belief I’ve ever had has just been shattered into a million pieces—but, hey, it doesn’t matter, does it? As my father said, we all make mistakes, right?’

Elizabeth was well aware that Rogan was being deliberately flippant in an effort to hide the depth of the pain he was feeling at learning the truth behind his mother’s death. That it was his way of shielding his real emotions.

If only things were different between them. If only Rogan loved her as she loved him. Then Elizabeth might have been able to go to him. To take him in her arms. To comfort him. To hold him as he expressed all the grief he must be feeling from learning the truth.

Instead of which they were simply two people, forced together by circumstances, who had been intimate together only once. And Rogan couldn’t have made it any clearer than with that ‘packed and ready to go’ remark that he would rather forget that intimacy had ever happened.

‘Right,’ she agreed hollowly. ‘I haven’t packed yet, but I’m just about to.’ She answered his earlier question before turning away, only to pause and turn back again. ‘If you should decide some time in the future that you want to continue having the library catalogued I can recommend someone…?’

‘It’s too soon at the moment for me to know what I’m going to do—either with this house or the library,’ Rogan said.

He looked so bleak. So much in pain. So alone. It was all Elizabeth could do not to run across the room and take him in her arms. A comfort Rogan was sure to reject…

‘It was just a thought.’ She nodded. ‘Perhaps you would prefer it if I didn’t bother you again before I leave?’

‘Bother me?’ Rogan repeated incredulously. ‘Elizabeth, you’ve
bothered me
since the moment we first met!’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘So am I,’ he said. ‘You’ll never know how sorry!’

There was nothing more to be said, Elizabeth realised heavily.

Rogan was totally preoccupied with his feelings towards his father, and Elizabeth would be leaving shortly.

It was over.

Whatever ‘it’ had been…

‘I’m coming with you.’

Elizabeth looked up from completing her packing to see Rogan leaning against the doorframe into the bedroom that had been hers for the duration of her stay at Sullivan House, both his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his faded jeans. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Rogan straightened to stroll further into the bedroom. A bedroom that was now clean and tidy and totally devoid of any sign that Elizabeth had ever been there. ‘I said I’m coming with you.’

She stared back at him blankly. ‘Coming where?’

‘I have no idea,’ he answered. ‘Wherever it is your father lives, I guess.’

‘What are you talking about?’ She gave a perplexed shake of her head.

As well she might, Rogan acknowledged ruefully. He hadn’t exactly been polite to her an hour ago, when she’d come and found him in his mother’s bedroom. But he’d had
every reason not to be feeling polite at the time! He just shouldn’t have taken out his frustration over a situation that couldn’t be changed on Elizabeth…

Rogan still found it hard to accept what his father had done after his mother had taken her own life fifteen years ago. The secrets he had kept all those years in an effort to protect the wife he had loved so deeply, causing years of estrangement between himself and his son that Rogan could never take back.

But as he had sat in his mother’s bedroom, thinking of all those things, as he had grieved for all those lost years, it had slowly dawned on Rogan that his father hadn’t just been protecting Maggie’s memory by keeping those secrets, he had been protecting Rogan too. He had allowed Rogan to keep his treasured memories of his beautiful mother. At great cost to Brad himself.

Human frailties. They all, every one of them, had human frailties.

His father’s had been to love Maggie so much that he would have done—and had done—anything to protect her memory. Rogan’s had been to put his mother on a pedestal and refuse to admit or acknowledge that she could ever have done anything wrong. Choosing to blame his father for everything rather than ever seeing any fault or blemish in his mother. And Maggie, so warm and charming, had been so guilt-ridden over her own human frailty that she had taken her own life rather than continue to live with it.

Once Rogan had acknowledged and accepted all of those things, he had also realised that Elizabeth might possibly be opening up a can of worms for herself with her decision to go and visit her own father.

‘I’m coming with you to visit your father, Elizabeth,’ he repeated firmly.

Elizabeth blinked. ‘I—But…why?’ she finally managed to ask.

Rogan’s mouth compressed. ‘It’s too much to expect that we’ve both been so wrong about our fathers, and I think someone should be there to help you keep it together if your own father turns out to be as bad as you always thought he was.’

Why on earth would he want to do that for her? Elizabeth wondered. It didn’t make any sense to her—but, then again, when had Rogan ever made any sense to her?

Never, she acknowledged ruefully. But she had fallen in love with him anyway!

She shook her head. ‘I really don’t think that’s necessary, Rogan. My father lives in Surrey now—hours and hours’ drive away from here.’

‘Believe me, at this moment a drive to Surrey sure beats staying here,’ he drawled.

Ah. Rogan’s offer had to do with the fact that he had no wish to stay on alone at Sullivan House, surrounded by memories of his own parents…

‘It’s very kind of you to offer, Rogan—’

‘You were there for me today, Elizabeth,’ he interrupted. ‘I intend returning the favour, that’s all.’

Was that really all his offer was? Elizabeth wondered. Of course it was! Much as she might wish it were otherwise, that Rogan was as loath to part from her as she was from him, she would only be fooling herself if she tried to read anything more into it.

She shrugged. ‘I’m pleased to have been of help to you.’

‘Of course you are,’ Rogan said. ‘Now let me do the same for you, hmm?’

Elizabeth had been alone too long, made her own decisions for too many years, to be able to accept anyone’s help unquestioningly or willingly.

Even Rogan’s? Yes,
especially
Rogan’s! He had breached her defences in a way that no other man ever had. Had made love to her in ways Elizabeth had only read about in books. Better by far to make a clean break from him, and what she felt for him, when she left Sullivan House.

‘Besides, if it’s as far as you say it is, I can do some of the driving for you,’ Rogan added determinedly, as he sensed Elizabeth was about to voice further protest.