A Lost Love

Jocelyn's cottage—she doubted she would ever be able to think of it as anything else!—faced away from the main house towards the river, its setting beautiful among the old oak trees, surrounded by a small neatly kept garden, wild roses trailing up and along the walls in a kaleidoscope of colour.

It was beautifully peaceful, far removed from the formality of the main house. Jocelyn had lived alone here until the last few months before her death, when Rafe had insisted she have one of the maids from the house to do the cleaning and cooking. Brooke had decided she would remain here alone herself, so the maid was back in the main house now, her own days being long and empty enough for her to take care of herself. After the accident, in which one of her legs had been broken and retained a weakness, dancing had been out for her, and with the money she had left from Rafe's more than generous settlement on her after the separation, she had no need to work anyway, aware that if she did she would stand little chance of seeing Robert. Rafe had never placed a lot of importance on money—probably because he had so much of it!—and as far as she knew he had never enquired what had happened to her fortune after her death. As far as she was aware he hadn't given her a second thought after that!

The cottage was as charming inside as it was out, olde-worlde, with chintzy furniture and curtains. Brooke felt as if she had come home after a long time away, and she put down her suitcases to look about her appreciatively, sure that she was going to be happy here.

Although the vase of yellow roses on the coffee-table struck a note of unease, and she walked over to read the card tucked among the blooms, dropping it again as if it had burnt her as she read the message written there. ‘Welcome to Charlwood, Rafe'. The message differed in only one word from the one that had accompanied the red roses that had been placed in her bedroom when she came back to Charlwood a new bride, but then Rafe had added ‘love’ before his name. The emotion had proved to be as false as the man himself, and taking the vase of yellow roses she threw them into the bin in the kitchen, feeling no remorse for the perfect yellow blooms, the fragments of the ripped card scattered on top of them.

‘Hello?’

She turned sharply at the sound of that soft query, leaning back against the unit as she saw her son standing at the doorway he had quietly opened. Pain stabbed at her heart that she couldn't pick him up and hold him the way she wanted to, but she knew that would only distress him—their acquaintance had so far been casual in the extreme. Although she intended changing all that, and as soon as possible.

‘Hello, Robert,’ she greeted lightly, closing the cupboard door firmly on the discarded roses. ‘You know who I am, don't you?’ she prompted gently as he still looked a little uncertain of her, his eyes as blue as her own, the only feature he had inherited from her as far as she could tell, the rest of him being all Rafe. But at least he didn't have those cold grey eyes.

‘Brooke,’ he nodded shyly. ‘You visit Aunt Jossy sometimes.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘She's gone away, you know,’ he spoke with a maturity far beyond his three years. ‘Nanny Perkins says Aunt Jossy has gone to see God, but Connie says she's dead. What's dead mean?’ he frowned his puzzlement.

Brooke knew that Maureen Perkins, a woman of fifty, looked after Robert in the position of nanny, and that Connie Roberts, a girl of twenty, helped out in the nursery. They had both been waiting at the house the day she brought Robert home, and although her dislike of them wasn't personal she still couldn't bring herself to like or accept the fact that two other women were bringing up her son.

‘It means that that person has gone away,’ she explained gently, ‘and that they will never come back.’

His still-babyish face creased into a frown of concentration. ‘Does that mean my mummy is dead?’ he asked, his shyness evaporating quickly as curiosity took over.

Her breath caught in her throat. She didn't want to lie to her child, would give anything to be able to tell him she was alive and that she loved him very much. But she was under no illusions, knowing that Rafe would never allow her to be Robert's mother, that if he even guessed who she was he would once again take Robert away from her.