In Need of a Wife
‘Yes.’
‘What does it say?’
‘It’s too deeply personal for anyone but Mary Ester Dawson,’ Sasha said quietly.
A flash of pain sharpened Hester’s eyes. ‘You know that’s me.’
‘I guessed.’
‘Show it to me.’
Sasha lifted the photocopy out of her briefcase. The old lady’s hand shook as she took the letter written over seventy years ago. She read it slowly, devouring every word, going back to the beginning, trying to comprehend.
Sasha felt intrusive. She got up and strolled along the veranda, pausing to look down at the lush tropical garden below. The frangipani trees were in full bloom. They were called love flowers, pink yellow, cream, so richly scented, growing everywhere. It made the place look exotic and warm and tended and cared for. Yet for over seventy years Hester Wingate had believed her life had been ruined by Seagrave Dunworthy. But for a careless oversight in a solicitor’s office...
She heard Hester cough and turned around. There was a different look about her, a lifeless look. Her skin was like old parchment, her mouth withered, her eyes colourless.
‘I misjudged him, didn’t I?’ she said bleakly.
‘Yes.’
‘Too late.’
‘Not too late to tell the truth about him,’ Sasha suggested, walking back to be with her.
A fleeting smile softened Hester’s lips. ‘He
is Nathan’s great-grandfather. He was my lover. He was the father of my child. And there was never another man to match him.’
‘The items in the will, the rent for example...’
‘It was to compel me to live in his house. It would never be economical to rent it out, and it couldn’t be sold. It didn’t work with me, of course. I’ve never put a foot inside that house. Ever.’
‘Always to be spoken well of? Because of the gossip and calumnies and detractors?’ Sasha prompted.
‘He tried to make amends,’ Hester acknowledged, ‘but it was too late. I had him thrown out of the house. Took all his horses from him first, though. When I married George Wingate it wasn’t much of a love match, but we did breed some of the finest thoroughbreds in the country.’
‘It was Seagrave Dunworthy’s love of horseflesh that made him put the rent in guineas.’
‘We had so much in common. The day he died...that was the day I married George. When I heard about it, I told myself I was glad. Savagely glad. It made me free of him. But I wasn’t free of him...’
‘He loved you,’ Sasha said gently. ‘Deeply and passionately. He tried to do the honourable thing and marry you. There’s a ring of desperation in that letter he sent to the solicitor. He might have been breaking the law, but it wasn’t to hurt anyone. It was to set matters right. When needs must...’
A solitary tear formed in Hester’s eye and it trickled a lonely path down her aged cheek. ‘He never made me cry. Never.’ Then, brokenly, ‘When needs must...’
Sasha curved her arm around Hester’s frail shoulders. ‘He loved you. There is no dirt.’
‘I need to be alone. How is it that...’
‘Yes?’
‘...it took that old fool seventy years to make me cry?’
‘I guess grief takes many forms,’ Sasha said, aware that her bitter grief over the wasted years with Tyler had made her question the wisdom of her instinctive responses to Nathan. But not any more.
Life was too short to put off what she knew she wanted because of a set of irrevocable circumstances. Nathan might not fall off a horse tomorrow, but who was to say how long they would have together? It was stupid to brood over Nathan’s paper marriage to a woman who had no rights to anything but a piece of paper in return. Sasha resolved not to let that stand in the way of what she and Nathan could have together.
She gave his great-grandmother an impulsive hug, then withdrew to pack away her papers and leave the old lady alone with her memories. She had walked to the end of the veranda when Hester called out. She paused and looked back. Hester was on her feet and hurrying after her.