The name of the boarding school recommended to Lillian was only vaguely familiar to Rebecca. She was sitting in the front passenger seat next to Frazer, and she wondered if he was feeling as tense as she was herself. He must be concerned about the twins and their future, but he hid his anxiety well. In fact of all of them, the only one who was displaying any visible emotion was Rory, who was almost lit up with a mixture of anticipation and triumph that made her own nervousness increase.
It was a long, tiring journey, not made any easier by the heavy holiday traffic and the long motorway delays for roadworks.
Rebecca wondered whether it was because she was still not back to one hundred per cent fitness that she felt so on edge and exhausted, and if she was the only one to be so keenly conscious of the tension within the luxurious car.
Rory had already made one jibe at the difference between his own situation and Frazer’s. He had to drive a cheap rented car, while Frazer owned a new registration Daimler saloon.
If she hadn’t known from a remark of her own mother’s that Frazer had given Rory a very large sum of money indeed on his twenty-fifth birthday, equal to virtually half the value of the estate, because he had felt that the law of primogeniture was unfair, it would have been all too easy, listening to Rory’s conversation, to believe that Frazer had virtually cheated him out of his inheritance.
More than once Rebecca found herself having to clench her jaw to stop herself from flying to Frazer’s defence.
She could well understand why Frazer said nothing, did nothing that might antagonise Rory. Not with the twins’ future at stake.
She wished she knew Lillian well enough to take her on one side and plead with her to at least allow the twins to remain with Frazer, if she and Rory weren’t prepared to either have them with them in Hong Kong or to settle permanently in the UK. A boarding school existence without the leavening of love both she and Robert had received from their parents, without the frequent visits and holidays with them, that she suspected the twins would not have, would leave emotional scars which she felt would never heal.
But Lillian, obviously believing that she and Rory had once been lovers, was openly antagonistic towards her, addressing what conversation she did make to her husband and Frazer and virtually totally excluding Rebecca.
They stopped for lunch once they were south of London and free of its traffic. Even though Frazer did not allow them to linger over the meal, it was gone two-thirty when they eventually set off. Their appointment was at four, and, while Rory congratulated himself on picking a school which was going to be within relatively easy driving distance of the city and the airport, Frazer’s mouth tightened in anger.
Was he thinking as she was, Rebecca wondered, that it would be impossible for him to drive down and see the twins and return in one day, and that that must make it more difficult for him to see them as frequently as he otherwise might?
She came out of her private thoughts to hear Lillian saying, ‘You’ve been so good to the twins, Frazer, but now that you and Rebecca are getting married I agree with Rory that it’s probably only fair that you should be allowed to get on with your lives without them.’
Rebecca ached to say that their marriage made no difference, and that the twins should stay at Aysgarth, but almost as though he knew what she was thinking Frazer shot her a darkly warning look that silenced her.
The school had originally been a small Queen Anne manor house. Evidence of its success and prosperity could be seen in the discreet modern additions to the original building. The prospectus which Rebecca had already read offered facilities that made the place sound more like an up-market luxury hotel than a place of education, but it was unfair of her to dismiss the skills of its staff simply because its prospectus seemed to concentrate far more on leisure activities than education ones, she acknowledged.
Out of good manners, and because, after all, the twins were not her children, Rebecca hung back at the rear, when the four of them were shown into the headmaster’s study, but to her consternation Rory turned back towards her, and with a malicious smile took her arm, propelling her forward before she could object and exclaiming loudly, ‘This is where we’re going to need you, Rebecca my lovely, as the expert, so to speak,’ and, to complete her embarrassment, as the headmaster rose to greet them Rory introduced her, saying, ‘My brother’s fiancée…a fellow teacher, who’s going to tell us whether or not your school is suitable for the twins.’
Mortification caused a hot flood of colour to burn up under Rebecca’s skin as she withstood the headmaster’s coolly appraising look. Rory was deliberately humiliating her, but she could see from both Lillian and Frazer’s faces that they seemed to think that Rory’s behaviour was something the two of them had deliberately planned.
As the headmaster quite deliberately solicitously seated Lillian immediately in front of his desk with Rory at her side, banishing Frazer and of course herself to a very secondary position, Frazer took advantage of her proximity to whisper curtly, ‘If I’d genuinely ever entertained any idea of marrying you, your cold-hearted attitude towards the twins’ future would have given me very strong second thoughts indeed.’
Her cold-hearted attitude! Rebecca gasped audibly and turned a vivid and angry face towards him.
‘It wasn’t my idea to send them to boarding school!’
‘Maybe not, but you seemed keen enough to suggest coming down here with Rory and Lillian last night. What’s the idea, Rebecca? Still hoping for the impossible—that Rory’s going to turn his back on his wife and family?’
The headmaster had already begun to speak. He had a sonorous, mellifluent voice which he used to good effect, Rebecca recognised. He was also distancing himself from them to such good effect that she could not make up her mind what she felt about him. He was highly qualified, the school was well subscribed to, and she suspected probably very fashionable, but whether it was the right place for the twins…
She thought of the old-fashioned boarding school she and Robert had attended, less than twenty miles from Aysgarth—a school where the staff had decades of understanding the problems that children faced. A school close enough to Aysgarth for two lonely and unhappy children to feel that they had at least retained some contact with something familiar.
When they eventually left the school all of them were silent, apart from Rory, who commented blithely, ‘Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m looking forward to a decent dinner and bottle of decent wine. How far is it to this hotel you’ve booked us into?’ he asked his wife as they waited for Frazer to unlock the door.
‘Not far. It’s just outside the next village, apparently. A lot of the parents use it when they come to visit their children.’ Lillian’s face clouded and she said uncertainly, ‘Rory, I’m not sure we’re doing the right thing. It’s so far away from Aysgarth, the children are going to miss it dreadfully—and Frazer.’
‘I’ve told you already, my love, we can’t expect Frazer to play daddy to our two brats, not when he’s all too likely to have some of his own before too long,’ Rory told her.
He didn’t look very pleased that she had voiced her doubts, and Rebecca felt her heart lift a little bit. If Lillian could be convinced that the twins would be better off with Frazer…
Before she could change her mind, she said quickly, ‘Well, I for one would be quite happy for the twins to stay at Aysgarth.’
She saw that the three of them had focused on her, Rory frowning his irritation, Lillian looking surprised, and Frazer…What was he thinking behind that grimly cold look he was giving her?
‘As an ex-boarding school pupil myself, I know how important it is to feel that you’re not completely isolated from your family. We were lucky,’ she added diplomatically, ‘my parents were able to come home at frequent intervals,’ and then, praying that she wasn’t doing the wrong thing, she added, ‘I know I speak for both Frazer and myself when I say we’d love to have the twins staying with us.’ With a mental apology for the l
ie, she added as convincingly as she could, ‘They adore Frazer, and I’ve become so fond of them myself. Of course,’ she went on, all too uncomfortably conscious of the attention now riveted on her, ‘we appreciate that the twins’ education must be one of your first concerns, but there are several very good schools close to Aysgarth.’
Lillian was looking both relieved and surprised.
‘I must admit it would be the ideal solution if the twins could continue to stay at Aysgarth.’ She turned to Rory. ‘I know you feel the same way, darling.’ She gave Rebecca a tentative smile. ‘Rory was saying only last night that he’d prefer to leave the twins with Frazer, but that he felt it wasn’t fair to you to do so.’
Rebecca looked across at Rory just in time to see the look of irritated chagrin cross his face. So she was to have been the scapegoat for his spiteful decision to remove the twins from Frazer’s care, was she?
‘Not at all,’ she quickly reassured Lillian. ‘In fact, we’d love to have them living with us, wouldn’t we, darling?’ she appealed to Frazer, and then, with great daring, walked over to him and slid her arm through his, pressing up against him in what she hoped was a suitably adoring newly affianced manner.
The moment her body touched his, she was aware of his tension. Did he dislike her so much that even such a brief physical contact with her displeased him? And yet it wasn’t so long ago that physical contact with her had been responsible for…but no, she mustn’t think about that. She must concentrate on doing all she could to stop Rory from ruining the twins’ lives. What kind of father was he? she wondered angrily…but then she already knew. Frazer had been right when he’d said that the twins should never have been conceived.
‘If it wasn’t for this promotion Rory’s been offered, we’d probably have made the decision to come home,’ Lillian was saying almost apologetically. ‘But it’s too good a chance to pass over, and Rory is going to need me with him. The promotion involves a good deal of entertaining and socialising. It would be marvellous if the twins could remain at Aysgarth. If you’re sure you won’t mind?’
‘We won’t mind at all,’Rebecca reassured her.
She could almost feel the waves of anger emanating from Rory, and she could see from his face how much he hated being outmanoeuvred, but there was nothing he could do, without admitting to Lillian that the only reason he wanted to send the twins away to school was to get at Frazer.
Now with Lillian turning to him and saying mistily, ‘Darling, isn’t this wonderful? I’m so relieved! I was dreading telling the twins that they’d have to leave Aysgarth.’ She turned to Frazer and Rebecca. ‘We’re so grateful to you. This new post is only for three years, and with any luck then Rory will be sent back to the UK.’
She might hope for that, but Rebecca doubted that Rory did.
She felt drained, exhausted by the effort of out-manoeuvring Rory. Her legs had turned to jelly, and there was nothing she wanted more than to be able to turn to Frazer and to feel the hard warmth of his body supporting and enveloping her.
Instead she said brightly, ‘So that’s all settled, then. The twins will stay with us.’