Bittersweet Passion

When the players strolled back in, she had recovered sufficiently to talk again, a haze of defiant, bone-deep pride pushing her into stubbornly bright smiles while she held her head high.

Had he yet or hadn’t he? She was preoccupied with masochistic and obsessive thoughts on whether Dane was at the outset or in the middle of his affair with the beautiful model. How uncool of him to be making love out on the terrace as if some great intrigue was afoot when really there was no intrigue at all. They had never had a marriage. He didn’t owe her loyalty. He had told her in so many ways of his indifference to her as a woman. It wrenched her with literally physical pain to accept the end of the evening when it came and calmly head upstairs for bed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHAT time it was when she finally gave up the ghost of sleep Claire had no idea. The old house was silent as the grave. Shedding her damp nightdress, she tugged on a silky beach skirt and stuffed her feet into mules. A cotton knit sweater completed the outfit. She left the house by the terrace, heading down the slope to the path that twisted through the trees to the beach. The night air was still warm and balmy, and she crouched down on the sand where the surf whispered almost to her toes.

Dane was with Mei Ling. Of course he was. Normally he called in to say goodnight and tonight he hadn’t bothered. She bowed her head.

‘I saw you crossing the lawn from my room.’ Oblivious to the fact that his stealthy approach had frightened the life out of her, Dane dropped down beside her, his thigh muscles straining against the worn fabric of a pair of disreputable jeans. ‘What are you thinking about?’

Her breath rattled in her throat. ‘Going home,’ she said abruptly.

‘That’s weeks away. Don’t tell me you’re homesick.’

She started to rise but his hand on her wrist prevented her. ‘I suppose I am a bit,’ she lied, for the last trappings of her life in Yorkshire had fallen away. Looking back, she saw lost and wasted years when she might have been out in the world finding the self Dane had somehow found for her. Tell me if you want me. The temptation to do so was incredibly strong when she glanced at his hard, handsome profile and appreciated that she had few such occasions left to her. For with Mei Ling around, she was decidedly superfluous.

‘You’ve changed.’ He threaded a casual hand through her tumbled hair and pushed the vibrant strands back behind her ear. ‘I used to be able to read you like a book.’

She went rigid. ‘Really?’

‘Not any more. You haven’t forgiven me, have you?’ he murmured, holding her eyes with cool challenge, a half-smile shadowing his chiselled mouth. ‘If I hadn’t been so furious I would have realised that you just weren’t capable of that size of a deception. Money’s not that important to you.’

‘It was a misunderstanding.’

‘A farce,’ he contradicted coolly.

‘What changed your mind? You thought I was lying,’ she reminded him ruefully.

‘It started changing the day your bag was turned in. Once I realised Max was fact, my suspicions started to seem quite ridiculous. You were as taken aback as I was when the Press appeared on our wedding day. I’d still like to get my hands on whoever’s responsible for that,’ he grated.

Claire sighed. ‘I thought it might be Sandra or Carter. I dare say we’ll never know. Carter, I think really,’ she reflected. ‘He’s the spiteful one. Still, it hardly matters now.’

‘It mattered one hell of a lot at the time,’ he argued grimly. ‘Have you been in touch with Max? You never mention him.’

And that was worrying him now? Did he really think she could breeze back to another man after living with him? Let him think that she still loved Max. It was what he wanted to think. Indeed, considering how she felt about him, she supposed she was very fortunate that he did think that. She could still look him in the face as long as he believed her impervious to his attractions. That charismatic charm he could unleash at a moment’s notice was basically meaningless. He had used it on her quite unashamedly throughout her stay here to ensure that she relaxed. Or maybe he wasn’t even aware that he did it.

‘I wrote before we left London.’ She gave the lie stiffly. It was suitably fuzzy.

He cast her a derisive glance. ‘Very proper. Perhaps you’d like to see this. The last piece of the puzzle.’ He laid an envelope on her lap. ‘Carter sent it to me in Jamaica. Coverdale had it in his keeping to be delivered as soon as the estate was settled. It confirmed what I’d already worked out for myself.’

She stilled. ‘It’s from …?’

‘Yes, Adam’s last words, calculated to have driven Carter up the wall, had he done what was expected of him,’ Dane completed drily.

Her grandfather’s spidery scrawl was hard to decipher. The gist of his message was one of sanctimonious superiority and her lips compressed bloodlessly as she read.

‘His precious family milked him of his money over the past thirty years. They borrowed constantly off him. He got very bitter about their greed when his remaining investment failed to prosper,’ Dane explained. ‘And in an uncharacteristic spurt of daring he plunged what was left into a silver mine in the Transvaal and lost every penny.’

Her eyes were damp. ‘It’s sad when he was always so careful. What does he mean … “Dane was right"?’ She squinted suddenly at the foot of the page and hastily went on to the next. ‘He’s talking about me and that row you had with him … Good lord, how could it have involved me?’

Dane searched her bemused features wryly. ‘Why not? No one else up there gave a damn about you being used when it took the heat off them,’ he derided. ‘He took you out of school and shut you up to rot with him in that house as a bloody servant. He’d never have treated you that way if you’d been born a Fletcher. He was too m

uch of a snob.’

‘But what did you argue about?’ she persisted.

‘I found out he wasn’t planning to leave you anything in his will. Despite everything you’d done for him, he was still acting as if you weren’t family.’