The Tender Flame (18 page)

She had already guessed that David was not Stephanie's true father. She thought that when he came to Willowbridge after Annabel's death he had been kind to Stephanie out of compassion, but in a miraculously short time he had come to love her as his own. Danielle had mentioned Mrs. Grant. Was she some
threat
to David's chances of being allowed to keep Stephanie? Had Mrs. Grant decided to come out in the open and publicly claim Stephanie as her grandchild? Danielle had also said something about adoption. Was David negotiating to adopt Stephanie? But if so, why? As Annabel's husband, David would automatically have been registered as Stephanie's father. She wasn't well up in these matters, but surely by the law of the land, on paper at least, David was Stephanie's father.

On parking the car, David nodded his head towards The Retreat. ‘Do you mind stepping into my den for a moment? I see the light is out in the cottage, which means your parents are in bed. I'd prefer not to run the risk of one of them coming down for something. I want to say what I have to without fear of interruption.'

Jan conceded with a cold little nod. David looked grim about the mouth as he inserted the key in the lock and pushed the door open for her to enter.

Her cool manner had got through to him, and as she made to pass him he gripped her arm and said with a flash of anger: ‘It would have been better if I'd got in first before you got a garbled half-account from Danielle. But I don't know what you are getting uptight about. You knew there were things I had to tell you.'

There was a well of tears behind her eyes
that
at all costs must be suppressed. Her chin lifted spiritedly. ‘How could I know?'

‘Because I told you. When I proposed I said that I was putting the cart before the horse.'

‘Strange as it may seem, I thought you meant you should have courted and cosseted me first and then proposed.'

The flashing sparks did not leave his eyes, but were joined by a look of compunction. ‘Of course,' he said, and he sounded just a tiny bit incredulous.

He mustn't be allowed to go tender on her. She couldn't bear that. Such things shouldn't be prompted.

She walked away from him. He didn't try to hold her. She walked over to the Sheraton desk, stroking a finger across its smooth surface. ‘I never looked, you know. I'm not the prying sort. But if I had, what would I have found?'

‘It's not exactly what you would have found in there. It's more what you wouldn't have found.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘If you'd looked among all the important documents, you would have spotted one omission. You wouldn't have found a marriage certificate. I wasn't married to Annabel.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘The wedding never took place,' David said. All emotion was expunged from his voice. His face, quite devoid of expression, was held in such rigid control that Jan thought something must crack.

And still she couldn't take it in.

‘But Stephanie carries your name,' she protested. ‘Annabel introduced herself to me as Mrs. David Spedding.'

‘Anybody can be known by any name they choose.'

‘She told me that she was married to you.'

She was battering him down with futile dissension. She knew she must let him tell it in his own way, but it was difficult to keep her mouth buttoned up. Especially when he said: ‘She told everybody that. I didn't refute it.'

Why? her mind screamed, but she kept her mouth closed.

‘The preparations for the wedding were made—' He allowed himself a slight grimace here—‘Such as they were. Annabel wanted a quiet wedding, she said. Surprising, really, because she was such a flamboyant person. Being the type who does not like a lot of fuss, I was too relieved to question her choice, or look for a hidden motive. As far as she was concerned, it turned out to be one of her
better
decisions. Nobody paid overmuch attention to the fact that a quiet wedding had not taken place. Annabel herself must have propagated the lie that the car she and Stephen were travelling in crashed on the way from the church to the reception, and that I was in the car with them. Who would have thought there was an old-fashioned streak in her that, because of the coming child, would make her want to appear married? It didn't strike anybody as odd that I walked out of an accident, without a mark on me, that left one person badly injured and proved fatal for the other. I was never in the car, of course. But I wonder what they thought?' His eyes on Jan were keen and penetrating. ‘That the devil looked after his own, perhaps?'

It was too near her own thoughts for Jan not to blush as she stammered: ‘So you're not a widower?'

‘No, I'm not. When you marry me it will say bachelor of this parish on the marriage certificate, or whatever the wording is.'

Ignoring his presumption that she was still going to marry him, Jan said: ‘If she wasn't your wife, why did you make yourself financially responsible for Annabel and . . . Stephanie?

The pause before saying Stephanie's name was too significant to be missed.

His eyes narrowed. ‘Just because I wasn't married to Annabel does it automatically
follow
that Stephanie couldn't be my child?'

‘Of course it doesn't,' Jan said gruffly. ‘I only know that she isn't. You're not Stephanie's father.'

‘Perhaps you know who her father was?'

It was revealing that he said was and not is, and confirmed her suspicions.

‘Yes. It was Stephen.'

‘Would you care to tell me how you know?'

‘Because of the family likeness. Oh, I never met Stephen, of course. I mean the likeness to Stephen's mother, Mrs. Grant. Stephanie's got her eyes. And it accounts for her interest in Stephanie. She must know that she's her granddaughter?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you . . . ?' She bit hard on her lip, sealing in the question.

‘Ask me. It's natural for you to be curious.'

It was unnatural of him to be willing to feed her curiosity. She hesitated, then plunged. ‘I was going to ask if you knew that Annabel was having an affair with Stephen?'

‘I'll answer that gingerly. I didn't know it had gone as far with them as it had. I was intoxicated with Annabel, can you understand that? To give him his due, so was Stephen. But he had a better head for such things. We met Annabel through my godmother. As I remember it, Stephen and I were dragged, much against our will, to one of those parties to launch a new beauty product. Annabel was
there
because she did a bit of modelling for Linda's firm.'

‘Was she a model? She never said what type of work she did before, but I had wondered if it was something to do with fashion or beauty. Even as she was, she retained her poise, and she was very beautiful.'

‘Yes, her training stood her in good stead. She was beautiful, and we were bored. The party wasn't our line of thing at all. It was inevitable that we both made a play for her, and then found her exciting enough to want to continue seeing her afterwards. The sense of rivalry made both of us that much keener.'

‘I'm trying to fit the time thing in. Where was Danielle while all this was going on?'

‘Around. Stephen was engaged to Danielle,' David answered explicitly. ‘He had no intention of giving her up. Yet he wouldn't let the little matter of a fiancée spoil his fun. The field was by no means clear for me. In fact, if my ego hadn't had blinkers on, I would have known he was the hot favourite. When Annabel turned my first two marriage proposals down, I wasn't unduly put out because I thought it was traditional. When she said yes at third try, I thought it was because she'd teased me long enough, and not because she'd come unstuck with Stephen.'

This was one of the things Jan had never been able to understand. Too-loving, naïve little girls might still get themselves into this
sort
of scrape, but not someone with Annabel's high sense of self-preservation. No, it hadn't ‘just happened' to Annabel. She was born with ancient wisdom.

David continued where her thoughts left off. ‘I'm inclined to believe that the baby was a deliberate slip. She was too cute to have been caught out. When it came down to it she wasn't as wise as she thought. He refused to break with Danielle to marry her. And so she decided to settle for me, a nice, handy scapegoat.'

‘But you found out, and called the wedding off?'

‘No, I didn't find out. Not until afterwards. I didn't call the wedding off. I was on the point of setting out for the church, when word was brought to me of the accident. You're wondering what Annabel was doing in a car at that time with Stephen?'

She wasn't. She'd assumed that Annabel had decided not to hire a taxi for the purpose and that Stephen was driving her to the church. It was a bizarre thought, but then the situation didn't exactly conform to convention.

‘She didn't believe that Stephen would let her go through with it. Up to the last moment she hoped Stephen would change his mind. It was always Stephen, never me. She used me to bring him up to scratch.'

‘You can't know that for sure,' Jan said, hating to see this proud man's ego so cruelly
crushed.
She could have saved her breath.

He replied grimly: ‘I can. Annabel told me. She was in the car with Stephen when it crashed, because she was making a last desperate bid to bring him round to her way of thinking. They started to row, and in the heat of the moment Stephen lost vital moments of concentration and the car slammed into a brick wall. I believed her because it was the only way it could have happened. Stephen was a very competent driver.'

‘I'm so very sorry, David. Sorry for misjudging you,' she added hastily in case he thought she was giving him pity which he would hate. ‘I . . . like everybody else . . . thought you'd deserted Annabel, whereas you settled her in a house, supported her and allowed her to take your name even though she had no right to it.'

‘I had my reasons. But I'd question that they are the praiseworthy ones you are crediting me with. We once had a discussion on the subject of pride, do you remember?'

‘Yes. How Annabel's pride must be upheld.'

‘Sometimes, when I'm in a benevolent mood, I like to think I did not correct the lie of our marriage to keep Annabel's pride intact. But when I'm in an honest mood, I know it was to preserve my own. It's not a very pleasant admission to make, but I took on the responsibility of Annabel and her child so that people wouldn't know what a fool I'd been.'

‘Oh?'
Jan queried gently. ‘And is it pride that makes you want to hold on to Stephanie now, because if you let Mrs. Grant have her everybody would know?'

‘What other reason could I possibly have?'

‘You've grown fond of Stephanie, you know you can do better for her than Mrs. Grant can. David, you're a fraud. Admit it to yourself, even if you won't admit it to me. It wasn't pride that sent you back out in the driving rain to retrieve her disreputable toy bear from the woods when you had stated categorically that you wouldn't go.'

‘I backed down on one occasion. Every man is allowed one moment of weakness.'

‘One moment? Just one occasion? It wasn't pride that made you humble yourself sufficiently to sneak the bear up to Stephanie while we were staying with Linda, after you'd put him in solitary for breaking Linda's cold frame. That wasn't pride. That was kindness and caring and compassion.'

In that moment of loving him more than she'd ever thought it possible to love anybody, she knew she couldn't marry him. It had to be the heights and depths, or nothing at all. She knew that it could never be the same for him as it had been with Annabel. He wouldn't want it to be. Why couldn't the difference be for the better? The same bitter-sweet, fever-pitch enchantment, but a different girl adding the extra piquancy.

She
knew she couldn't be his second best. It would be heartbreak and humiliation to love him this much, and not occupy first place in his heart. She was shocked by the power and depth of her feelings for him. He had liberated the woman locked in the little girl. To look at him was to want him. She dare not meet his eye in case he saw the invitation in hers. She dare not allow him to touch her because she knew that if she did there would be no holding back and she would give herself to him completely.

Woman's primeval urge in a difficult situation is to run. That's what she must do. She must get right away from him. More urgently now, at this moment, she must go before she weakened and did something silly. And then tomorrow she must make plans to effect a complete break. When her parents left, she would go with them.

But what about Stephanie? It was a question without weight to it. Her heart was looking for an excuse to stay. Her mind was hammering it home that with David around, Stephanie was in the best possible hands. The strongest hands. He would fight a dozen Mrs. Grants; he would climb every rung of the law, propping the ladder at the highest level of the country to keep Stephanie. The most sensible hands. He would be firm, but just. He would discipline with tolerance and commonsense, and his judgement would be tempered with
warmth
and humour. The most loving hands. Dare Jan dwell on the gentle love he would have for a child? Or the passionate love he would have for a woman? He would know when a woman desired to be swept into submission by force, and when she needed to be pampered with patience and given lots of time and endless reassurance. He would always be tender.

He made a movement, a sort of scuffing noise on the carpet with his foot, and she was terrified that he was going to come over to her. Her throat was tight and hot with emotion, and her hands were as shaky as her voice.

‘It's terribly late. I should go.'

‘I don't want you to, but I must agree with you. There's tomorrow . . .' She could hear the smile, the lazy indulgence in his voice. ‘I'll tell your parents,' he said on a deeper, authoritative tone. ‘Your father first. It will be a nice touch to ask for permission to marry his daughter.'