She heard him knocking on the door but she refused to answer it. It seemed like hours rather than minutes before he eventually gave up and went back to his car.
* * *
It was a long time before Livvy got to sleep that night. She lay in bed, her mind churning over and over, and when, just as the birds began to sing the dawn chorus, she fell into a drugged, heavy sleep, it was only to dream of Richard…Robert…and awaken with red, dry eyes and a leaden weight pressing down on her chest.
Groggily she crawled out of bed and listlessly made herself a slice of toast and a strong cup of coffee. Silence surrounded her, and she sat for what seemed like hours, staring into space, the toast untouched on her plate in front of her.
Eventually she remembered that she had unplugged the phone last night. Her first reaction was to shrink from replacing the connection—but that was just cowardice, she recognised wearily as she went to reconnect it. Much as she might want to, she couldn’t hide from the world forever.
It rang, as she had known it would, within ten minutes.
‘Livvy?’
‘I don’t want to talk to you, Gale.’
‘Oh, Livvy, look, I know how it seems…’ Her cousin sounded really worried, but Livvy wasn’t feeling in a forgiving mood.
‘I didn’t want to see him again, Gale, and you knew that. You knew all the time you were telling me about George’s wonderful, wonderful boss what he had done. You knew as well that if I had known who he was there was no way I’d have been at that party last night.’
‘Livvy, please…’
‘Don’t waste your breath, Gale. I left the farmhouse to get away from Richard Field…or rather, Robert Forrest, and no matter what the man calls himself, I still don’t want to see him. You might consider that you misjudged him, Gale, but I, on the contrary, believe that my assessment of him was too generous.’
‘Livvy, please try to understand.’
‘Oh, I do understand. He apparently went to a good deal of trouble to protect your marriage and you’re grateful to him for that. I do understand that. But what I don’t understand is why protecting your marriage necessitated him lying to me, pretending to be someone he
wasn’t…’
‘He only wanted to help George,’ Gale protested. ‘To prevent him from falling into the same trap he’d been caught in. His wife tricked him into marriage by pretending she was carrying his child. She wasn’t pregnant at all, but she had hatched up a plot to force Robert to marry her so she could then divorce him and get a large divorce settlement out of him. She knew the type of man he was and that he would never desert his child.
‘He said that the moment he set eyes on Sandra, George’s secretary, he recognised that she was the same type as his ex-wife. Apparently she even tried to make a play for him, but he gave her short shrift and sacked her. He tried to warn George, but, as George himself admits now, he was infatuated with her and refused to stop seeing her.
‘That was why Robert sent him away so much. He was trying to keep them apart.’
‘And why he lied to me about who he was…and threatened you with buying the farmhouse?’ Livvy suggested sarcastically.
Gale paused. ‘I…I can’t explain about that, Livvy. You’ll have to ask him those questions yourself.’
‘I don’t want to know the answers,’ Livvy told her curtly. ‘I already know as much about him as I want to know…more. He doesn’t like our sex, you know, Gale. He’s one of those despicable men who have to boost their own egos by putting women down…’
‘That’s not true,’ Gale protested. ‘He’s been so concerned about you, Livvy. He came straight back to England after you left, you know, and there hasn’t been a day since when he hasn’t either rung or come round to see if you’d been in touch.
‘A man doesn’t behave like that unless he cares, Livvy…’
‘No? Try substituting “cares” for “a guilty conscience”,’ Livvy suggested.
‘Livvy, I hate to see you like this. Won’t you at least see him…let him explain?’
‘There isn’t anything for him to explain,’ Livvy told her fiercely. ‘And if he thinks that I’m going to let him manipulate me just so that he can ease his conscience… I don’t want to see him, Gale, and that’s final. And if that means that I don’t see you either, well, then, so be it.’
Livvy could tell from her cousin’s silence how much she had shocked her, but she hardened her heart. Gale couldn’t know just why she was so determined never to see Richard…Robert Forrest again. It was obvious that she had no idea how Livvy really felt about him. Of course she wanted Livvy to allow Robert to explain and to have everything smoothed over and sorted out, but she couldn’t see him, Livvy knew painfully.
She couldn’t willingly or voluntarily subject herself to that kind of hurt.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ONE more day and then she would be back at work.