The Return of the Stranger

‘How could anything be the same after so long?’ she demanded, hardening her tone to match his expression. ‘You don’t deserve a welcome after ten years’ absence and silence. To be silent all that time, you can never have thought of me.’

‘A little more than you have thought of me, Miss Katherine.’

Brutal cynicism made a dark mockery of the once respectful way that her brother had insisted that Heath should address her. This Heath, this man who had so obviously made a success of his life, would never now submit to calling her Miss Katherine or the deference that her brother had once so insisted on. This man clearly stood tall and proud, looking the world right in the eye. And the way he used that polite title lashed at her, seeming to scour off a layer of skin, leaving her feeling raw and exposed underneath.

‘Or perhaps I should call you Lady Charlton, now.’ ‘It is my name!’

Nervousness made her toss it at him in a way that even she acknowledged sounded cold and distant. It was a tone worthy of Arthur Charlton himself, and as such it made her wish she’d never spoken. But then it only matched Heath’s own approach tone for tone. If he had not come back as a friend, then he could only be an enemy, and she suddenly felt the need to be very wary of this almost complete stranger. He had prospered, that much was evident. But prospered in what way, in what field?

‘You know about my marriage, then?’

And she could just imagine how he would interpret it. But he had no idea how her life had been since he had left. No idea of the hole he had left in her existence and the ways she had tried so desperately to fill it.

Heath nodded slowly, his dark face set and cold as if carved from the rock on the moor outside; his eyes just shards of flint, opaque and unrevealing.

‘I heard of it and decided that one day I would call to offer you my congratulations. I didn’t think that your husband would have left you a widow before I could do so, and that those congratulations would instead mean that I had to offer my condolences.’

‘Arthur’s death was a shock to us all.’

What else could she say? It was just the truth after all. And the words were the polite fiction she had been hiding behind ever since the day the police had arrived at the Grange with the shocking news. But the real truth was that she had been hiding the reality of her marriage for far longer than that. So much so that the instinct to conceal, not to let anyone see what had been hidden behind the respectable, elegant doors of ‘The Big House’ had become second nature to her now. Her instinctive, fall-back position. The one that protected her from things that were so much worse.

That was what marriage to Arthur had reduced her to. The marriage that the whole of the neighbourhood—the county—had considered the wedding of the decade but had soon proved to be such a bitter lie from start to finish. The marriage she had been hoping to try to move on from when the discovery of just how Arthur had left things had knocked her right back.

‘And it has rather changed things.’

‘It has? How?’

But Heath offered no answer to that question, instead he moved into the room, prowling across the carpet in a way that revived her thoughts of the predatory wild cat of moments before. Standing before the huge windows, he affected an absorbed interest in the scene before him, the wide expanse of the garden, the swimming pool tucked away at the side of the house, and beyond that the range of fields where sheep grazed contentedly in spite of the rain.

Where he stood in the light from the window she could see the marked skin of his cheek, the thin scar that spoiled it, running along one cheekbone. And the memory of how he had come by that, who had put it there, caught at her nerves and tugged them hard. The mark that had been made by the glancing blow of a cast-off horseshoe, flung with deliberate viciousness at him by her brother Joseph in one of his irrational rages. The horse Joe owned and had ridden at a local show-jumping championship had been well and truly beaten by Heath’s own mount, loaned to him by her father. Typically, Joseph had taken out his fury and his jealousy in an act of violence that had horrified her.

Had Heath been to see her brother as well as coming here? Just the thought of the confrontation between them made a sensation like cold footprints slide down her spine, making her shiver in uncomfortable response.

That ‘decided that one day I would call to offer you my congratulations’ scraped painfully against her already too-taut nerves. It implied that he had been planning his return for some time. If he had come back earlier would anything have been any different?

A bitter memory sliced into her mind. That of arriving at the village church on her wedding day not quite four years before, and standing at the back of the aisle, just inside the doors. The organ had already begun the familiar notes of the ‘Wedding March’ but just for those seconds she had paused, looked around. Looking for one dark, harsh but infinitely familiar face. Allowing herself just a moment’s—what?

Hope?

But of course Heath hadn’t been there. Her brother and Arthur had treated him appallingly. There was no way he would want to be there to witness the joining of their two families in marriage. He had been the only one to warn her against the Charlton family. If she had listened to him then she might have spared herself so much heartache.

‘How has that changed things?’ she repeated, her tone insisting on an answer.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

His turn was slow, almost dance-like, pivoting on his heel as he came face to face with her again. ‘You own all of this.’

A gesture of one strong hand took in the whole of the house, the garden and the estate beyond the window.

‘Little Miss Kat has got everything she wanted. The big house, the status, the oh-so-elegant way of life …’

He wielded his words like a rapier, flashing, stabbing, making her wince inwardly. Everything he said revived the memories of the last time she had seen him, the anger that had flared in him then. And later his total rejection of her. The bitter burn of the knowledge of how far she had been from having ‘everything she wanted’ made her lash out in self-defence.

‘Not everything I wanted!’

If only he knew that she had never had any sort of a marriage, not in the real sense of the word. That the man who had been such charming, witty and attentive company through her teenage years, helping to distract her from the empty space in her life where Heath himself had once been, had turned into a petty and increasingly malicious tyrant almost from the moment that he had put a wedding ring on her finger on her twenty-first birthday. That the big house had become a hated prison; the elegant way of life nothing but a lie.

‘My husband died!’

‘I know … But that’s no great loss. Though originally it was your husband that I thought I would have come to see.’

‘Why? What did you want with Arthur?’

‘We had—business to discuss.’

The emphasis on that word ‘business’ sent a shiver of warning down her spine. So many ‘business’ meetings lately had resulted in worse news piling on bad news.

‘What sort of business?’

‘It’s hardly relevant now.’

Heath’s expression deliberately blanked off so that she could have no idea what was going on behind those opaque ebony eyes.

‘I can’t believe that Arthur would ever want to do any business deals with you. He never said anything about it.’

‘Your husband talked about his business with you?’ Was there something else behind that question? Something that put the darker note into his voice? ‘Well—no.’

Arthur hadn’t talked to her about anything if the truth was told. He had issued orders, insisted on how things were to appear. But she had only been a couple of weeks into her marriage when she had discovered that a trophy wife was all her husband wanted. A woman who could look elegant at his side, display around her neck or dangling from her ears the jewellery that was the Charlton heirlooms everyone knew about, and organise the society parties he put so much emphasis on.

Of course she now knew just why those parties were so important to him. The image they had been planned to present to the world while he hid the reality behind a smokescreen. The truth had been that he had never really wanted a wife, not in the true sense of the word. Their marriage had been as fake as the ‘heirlooms’ that were really only paste copies, the originals sold long ago.

‘That—wasn’t Arthur’s way.’

‘I thought not.’

His response caught on her nerves. It took her back to his declaration that he had business to discuss with her late husband. What connection had he had with Arthur’s business dealings?

The question had formed on her lips only to be caught back sharply as the sound of light, hurrying footsteps in the hall gave notice of a new arrival. And knowing who it must be, Kat knew she couldn’t continue her questioning now.

CHAPTER TWO

THE door swung open and the slim, blonde-haired figure of her sister-in-law came into the room. Isobel had obviously been into town on a shopping spree. Half a dozen elegant carrier bags swung from her hands and she had the smug look of someone who had just given her credit cards a hammering.

Inwardly Kat sighed at the thought that she and Isobel were going to have to have a heart to heart about their situation. Obviously the younger woman had not taken in—or had refused to accept—the gravity of their situation. Quite frankly she was amazed that those credit cards hadn’t bounced. They very soon would. Once all their creditors realised the seriousness of the situation there would be a huge number of final demands for payment.

But that was a showdown she didn’t want to have in front of Heath. Isobel was so like Arthur in her determination to go her own way and listen to no one. So she forced herself to keep calm, even to smile at Isobel while inside every nerve was screaming a protest at her sister-in-law’s actions.

‘I’ve had a fantastic time!’ Isobel declared. ‘Lacey’s had their new summer range in and they had some gorgeous stuff. I …’