The Tender Flame (5 page)

Sleep became a luxury, and towards the very end even cat-napping in a chair was denied her, but she never lost sympathy with Annabel's pride. The pride that had given her the courage and seen her through the earlier
traumas
of being confined to a wheelchair, never wavered, and from the respect she couldn't deny Annabel, an unlikely bond had been forged. The loyalty Jan had given to Annabel then, held good now.

She rounded on David with blazing eyes. ‘Didn't you know your wife at all?'

He took an involuntary step towards her and Jan's chin tilted forward to challenge his raised hand. Whatever his first intention, the hand carried on up and swept through his dark hair. Had he really been going to strike her and then had second thoughts?

‘My . . . wife,' he said tonelessly.

Did he find it difficult to reconcile Annabel in his thoughts as his wife? Of course he'd never lived with her after going through that sham marriage ceremony. In sickness and in health hadn't meant very much to him, she thought in bitter condemnation.

He said loftily: ‘I have no intention of defending my actions. I don't care what you think of me.' And then his tone took on a musing note, it was as if he wasn't talking to her at all but raking through his own painful thoughts. ‘Annabel's pride. Ah . . . yes! Even in death that must be protected irrespective of what suffering it causes or to whom.' His eyes flicked back to hers again and although savouring of sarcasm, there was a look in them that didn't so much repel as have her biting on her breath in sympathy for him. ‘I owe you an
apology,
Jan. It was wrong of me to call you a little idiot for going to ridiculous lengths at personal cost to protect Annabel's pride. I should be the last to pass judgement. I, too, have gone to extremes to protect that pride.'

What a strange thing for him to say. What did he mean? What had he done? He'd dipped his hand in his pocket to pay her excessive bills, and Jan didn't doubt that he would have paid for her to have a private nurse if he'd been approached, but that wasn't the same as being with her. She had been wrong in accusing him of not knowing Annabel. He knew about her pride.

‘I would also like to apologise. I was wrong in thinking you didn't know Annabel.'

‘No, you were right. I thought I knew Annabel once. But when it came down to it, I didn't know her at all.'

‘You knew about her pride. At the end, that was all she had left. I cared for her by myself, because she was too proud to let anybody else see her.'

David stopped frowning into the distance and roused himself to say: ‘I ought to say a few words about Linda, to prepare you. Then she won't come as so much of a shock.'

Intrigued, Jan said: ‘Presumably Linda is the lady who has been looking after me.'

‘Yes. At times she entertains some weird notions. And she is too outspoken, as you are about to find out,' he said as the door opened
and
in walked a youthful-looking, but not young, smiling woman.

‘Hello, Jan. Good to see you sitting up and taking notice. I'm Linda Brookes. Hugh, my husband, and David are work colleagues. But you'll know all about that and just what I am to David. How clever of him to find you.'

Jan saw what David meant about Linda having weird notions. She corrected: ‘He didn't find me. I was foisted on him, much to his regret.'

‘That's very coy of you, Jan, and I don't believe a word of it.'

Jan sighed. ‘Anyway, thank you for looking after me.'

‘Not too much gratitude, please, or I shall feel guilty. Hugh made me come. He said it was my duty to rally round, but it's been my pleasure. You've been a delight to look after. But I dread to think how my dear husband is getting along. He's a genius in the lab and takes things in his stride that turns my hair white at the thought, but in its own mundane way the kitchen can be a deathtrap to a man whose head is filled with—'

The look David sent Linda effectively shushed her. Yet, somehow, at the same time he managed to combine the deference her age, or possibly social standing, demanded. Not that Linda Brookes was the type to be intimidated by the likes of David.

As she returned his look, her head tilted
elegantly
on her long, swan neck, accentuated to look more swanlike by the severely short haircut which only someone with the advantage of ultra feminine features could take. At twenty she must have been breathtaking, at fifty or thereabouts, she could still raise a gasp of envy in Jan's throat. Not, strictly speaking, because of her pretty features, but for the affectionate way she admonished David.

‘I get enough of Hugh going on, without you starting. I've no intention of giving anything away that Jan shouldn't know. Anyway, it might be the most fascinating thing on earth to you, but from a feminine slant of things it's frankly boring. So there! And if that hasn't put you in your place, let me tell you that neither Jan nor I are the type to gossip indiscriminately. Right, Jan?'

Because he was listening, Jan would have blushed at that anyway and David didn't need to send her a prolonged and doubting look.

Her hair gently slapped her cheeks as her chin went from side to side. ‘Speak for yourself. My track record isn't so hot.'

The gleam of gentle humour in Linda's eyes was not replaced by rue as she obviously thought it was something or nothing. Her apology was blatant lip-service. ‘Sorry if I've edged you on to delicate ground, Jan.'

She hasn't a clue, thought Jan. She thinks I'm on safe ground with David.

‘Is
he in a mood? Shall I tactfully make myself scarce and then you can distract him out of it? In any case, I'd better pop down and see what Stephanie is doing. That little one is a boxful of tricks. I left her having breakfast, which reminds me. Fancy some yourself? A lightly coddled egg on toast?'

‘A cup of tea would go down better,' Jan admitted.

‘I'll do the egg on toast and if you really can't face it, I won't complain if you don't eat it.'

When she'd gone, David said: ‘You must start eating again. Try for Linda's sake.'

‘I will. She's nice.'

‘I think so, and have thought so for longer than I can remember. Her husband, Hugh, is my boss. They've only been married just over a year. Before that Hugh was married to his work, he's one of our most distinguished research chemists, and I'm honoured to be on his team. Linda was a highly paid “ideas woman” for a cosmetic firm, or house as she calls it. She says she was always too busy supplying the bait for other women's traps to bother about snaring her own, but when she met Hugh she had all the tricks of her trade at her fingertips and the poor man didn't stand a chance.'

Jan laughed. ‘Linda hinted at some tie between you and her. Are you related?'

‘She's my godmother. A position which, she
feels,
gives her certain privileges. She can be very stubborn when she gets a bee in her bonnet about something.'

‘Judging by your expression, she's buzzing something up for you at the moment.'

‘I really ought to spare your blushes by not telling you. Remember, you did ask. She's so happily married herself that she thinks everybody else should follow suit. Me in particular.'

She wondered if David's romantically minded godmother had her matchmaking eye fixed on anybody special. What did David mean about sparing her blushes? Oh no! Linda couldn't think there was anything like that going on between her and David! It was too preposterous.

‘Are your pillows comfy?' David asked innocently.

‘Not very.'

She wasn't feeling comfortable at all, but it wasn't the fault of her flattened pillows.

She twisted sideways, as if to plump them up, not realising that David was bending forward with that same intention in mind. The collision was unavoidable.

‘Sorry,' David said, automatically grasping her by the shoulders to steady her.

It was like being hit by a thunderbolt. She willed her body to remain detached as her heart leapt at the feel of his fingers through the demure cover-up of her bedjacket. His
hands
let go so quickly that she thought he must know of her heart's shame. Never before had she had to bolster her resistance against any man's advances, and David's innocent steadying touch couldn't be called that. It was heinous of her to respond with such vital insistence. Yet was the blame wholly hers? Hadn't David started it by telling her that Linda hoped to see him happily married? Sold on marriage herself after years of indifference, she wanted her godson to meet and fall in love with a nice girl and know the bliss of a happy union, something he hadn't experienced in his marriage to Annabel. And that's where Linda's kindly thoughts went sour. It was too soon after Annabel's death for David's possible interest in another girl to be in anything but the most deplorable taste. She could believe the worst of David, but it was difficult to endow Linda with the same low standards. Linda had struck her as being a person of faultless propriety and unimpeachable taste.

‘Permit me,' David said, and deftly plumped up and rearranged her pillows, this time making sure not to touch her. He then requested formally: ‘When you've had breakfast, is it all right if I bring Stephanie up to see you? I promise I won't let her stay long enough to tire you.'

‘Of course. I'm longing to see her. She must think I've deserted her.' Oh dear, surely she
could
have worded it a bit more tactfully than that.

A look of pain pierced David's eyes so briefly that Jan wondered if she'd imagined it. Certainly now his eyes expressed only coldness as he said: ‘As I deserted her and Annabel?' He made it sound like a question, as if it were not an established and unarguable fact. ‘What was it about Annabel that inspired such loyalty, I wonder?'

There was no ready reply on Jan's lips and a confusion of thoughts in her head.

‘Please excuse me,' he said. ‘I'll be back presently with Stephanie.' His smile, though slight, had a gentleness about it that seemed to encompass Jan's numb heart.

The click of the door as it closed behind him activated her thoughts. Whose loyalty had he been referring to? Hers? Of course hers! He hadn't been referring to his own. He'd shown none. And yet she found herself recalling David's words about her going to ridiculous lengths at personal cost to protect Annabel's pride. What else had he said? ‘I, too, have gone to extremes to protect that pride.' The words became an abrasive on Jan's memory. She put them from her, but they scratched their way to the surface again, as if she was missing a significance that was vital to her understanding of him. But what was there to understand? He'd married a beautiful and vivacious young woman, who just happened to
be
pregnant with his child, but on their way to the wedding reception the car they were travelling in met with an accident. The driver of the car, Stephen Grant, a family friend, died instantly, and Annabel suffered terrible injuries which confined her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. A crippled wife was not in his reckoning—so exit David. She was a fool to sift his words in search of something, she knew not what, that might put a different light on the situation. There was only one possible explanation. David was a rat.

One favoured with above average looks, who had been given an extra helping of charm to make up for not having a heart.

But how could she say that he didn't have a heart after the thoughtful way he had taken care of her? Indisputably he had charm to spare, no grounds for argument there. It crept into his eyes and settled on the wayward lift of his smile. And although it was a commodity he had in abundance, he was cunning enough to use it sparingly, so that when he did it knocked her legs from under her.

She could hate him, but she couldn't help herself from falling under the spell of his fatal fascination. That was it! He had cast a spell over her. Could she resist it? It was a question she must answer truthfully and if the answer was no then she'd do herself a favour by getting out of his life as fast as she could.

But if she did, what about Stephanie, the
little
girl so recently bereaved of her mother? Because of his initial desertion, her father was a stranger. Children don't like changes, they are more at home with that which is familiar. They like to feel safe. Jan was the obvious link between her old life and the new one which faced her. Stephanie had to be the one to sever that link, not Jan. She had to do it by herself and in her own good time, and that wouldn't be until she felt a lot more secure than she did now.

Linda came in with the breakfast tray. The egg was superbly cooked, the toast was temptingly trimmed of its hard crust, but Jan's valiant best amounted to only a mouthful.

‘I'm sorry, Linda.'

‘That's all right. Perhaps you're not an eggy person. Can I get you something else?'

‘No, really. I'm just not hungry.'

‘Oh well, you'll come to your corn when you are. You look heaps better this morning. Almost perky enough for me to think about going home to my Hugh. I've missed him,' she said reflectively. ‘Does that sound sloppy?'

‘Of course not. It sounds rather nice. People in love should want to be together.'

‘That's true. When you get to my age the span of life starts ebbing faster. I begrudge all the years I've spent without my beloved Hugh. And yet it makes me value the time we have now more than if we had a lifetime ahead of us to fritter away. I'm so happy myself, that I
want
everyone else to be happy. Because he's always had a special place in my heart, I want David to be happy. He's had more pain and misery in his life than most his age, and precious little happiness these last few years. I don't know if David is for you or you are for him, but if you are, Jan . . . Oh it is difficult, when I can't say what I think should be said. Let me put it another way. Let your inherent good sense guide and influence you. Don't be fooled into thinking that something is true because enough people say it is. Always remember that silence isn't necessarily an admission of guilt.'