She stepped back into the shadows of the garden as someone else came out on to the balcony, still not feeling up to seeing anyone just yet. The shadow of another person approached, and the first person let out a gasp of dismay.
‘Go away, Danny!’ Marie could be heard saying.
Danny? Sara instantly became alert. The other day Marie had been about to say Dan—something. Could this be the Danny she had been talking about?
‘Marie—–’
‘Leave me alone!’ She pushed him away from her. ‘You know you shouldn’t be out here with me.’
‘You knew I’d follow you,’ the man protested, his voice strangely familiar to Sara.
But why was it familiar? She didn’t know anyone called Danny in England.
‘Marie, we have to talk,’ he went on. ‘This marriage to Nick just isn’t on.’
Nick, this man called Dominic Nick! She had met only one person who did that, the man she had met in Soho. That must be the reason his voice was so familiar.
‘You’re wrong, Danny,’ Marie told him firmly. ‘My marriage to Dominic is very much on. In fact, he’s the only man I would marry.’
‘Last year you wanted to marry me,’ the man reminded fiercely.
‘I made a mistake. Every girl is entitled to make one,’ Marie said lightly. ‘You were mine. But I’m over that now, and I’m going to marry Dominic.’
‘I won’t let you!’ Danny pulled her into his arms. ‘I love you, Marie, and you love me.’
Sara was embarrassed at being a witness to this conversation, but it was too late to move now.
Marie emerged from Danny’s suffocating kiss. ‘Let me go, Danny,’ she ordered coldly. ‘My sister’s out here somewhere. She’s the reason I’m out here at all—I came to look for her.’
At the mention of her Sara’s foot accidentally knocked against one of the flower-pots standing along the verandah, and she moved back into the shadows.
‘I heard someone,’ Marie whispered, pushing Danny away from her. ‘Please, you have to go. That could be Sara, and I don’t want her to see me with you. Please, Danny!’ she pleaded as he still didn’t move.
‘All right!’ he accepted angrily. ‘But this isn’t the end of it. I won’t let you marry Nick.’
Even from this distance Sara could see Marie’s eyes flash, her chin thrust out in challenge. ‘Try and stop me,’ she hissed. ‘Just try it, Danny. I’ll never come back to you. Never!’
‘We’ll see!’ he snapped before turning around and going back into the house.
Sara heard her sister’s ragged sigh, giving her a few minutes to collect herself before making her presence known. Even in the gloom she could clearly see Marie’s paleness, her wide distressed eyes.
But all this was quickly masked as she saw Sara, her smile on the shaky side. ‘How are you feeling now?’ she asked concernedly.
‘A lot better,’ Sara replied, remembering the headache she was supposed to have. ‘I—Shall we go back inside?’ She wished she could show Marie that she knew of her distress, but without revealing her eavesdropping she couldn’t very well do that.
They rejoined their father and Dominic, and Marie was the one who looked ill. Dominic’s arm came about her protectively.
‘I think it’s time we went,’ he said softly. ‘You’re looking tired, Marie.’
‘I—I think maybe I am,’ she agreed hesitantly. ‘It must be the—the heat.’
Or her rather heated meeting with the young man called Danny! Sara was in utter confusion about her newly acquired family. So many secrets, past and present, that she just didn’t have access to.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARIE threw herself wholeheartedly into the preparations for their own party, or perhaps wholeheartedly was the wrong description; mindlessly fitted better. She was like a butterfly, flitting from one arrangement to another, never seeming to stop long enough to think, let alone plan anything.
And then mid-week she fell prone to one of her migraine attacks. Sara heard her moving restlessly about her room in the middle of the night, and at first she stayed awake in case Marie began sleepwalking. Then she realised that the frenzied walking was due to something else. Marie was in pain of some sort, whether physical or mental she didn’t know, she only knew her twin was in pain.