Return Match

It was not as though, by inheriting, he had deprived her of anything after all—she had known very early on in life that the Manor was entailed; but Oliver, whom her father had spoilt dreadfully, seemed to be finding it difficult to adjust.

Privately Lucy thought the adjustment would do him no harm at all. In the last couple of years she had begun to detect signs in him that her father’s spoiling and his mother’s complete inability to institute any form of discipline were changing him from a pleasingly self-confident little boy into an unpleasant, self-centred preteenager.

Fortunately she was fond enough of her half-brother and sister for her father’s charge that she look after them not to be too onerous a burden. Fanny, however, was another matter. Although they got on well enough, there were times when Lucy found it exasperating to have a stepmother who behaved more like a dependent child.

‘I don’t want to go to the Dower House.’

Tara’s bottom lip wobbled again, tears glistening in the dark brown eyes.

Physically both Tara and herself took after their father’s family, Lucy thought, eyeing her half-sister sympathetically. Both of them had the deep brown Martin eyes and strikingly contrasting blonde hair. And the elegant profile, which family rumour said had led to an eighteenth-century Amelia Martin being propositioned by the Prince Regent. It was because she had turned him down that the family had never received a title, or so the family story went, but how much truth there was in it, Lucy did not know. Perhaps, when she had researched a little more of the family’s history, she might find out.

Eighteen months ago she had started to sift through the family papers, trying to make some order of them, and it was then that she had first conceived the idea of writing a novel based loosely on her family’s history. Now, that one novel was threatening to develop into three or four, and next week in fact she was due to go to London to talk about this possibility with the publishers who had expressed an interest in her initial manuscript.

She had been lucky there—there was no doubt about that; her mother’s family had connections in the publishing world. Her cousin Neville was a partner in a firm of publishers—not the one she was dealing with, but his father had made the recommendation for her, much to Neville’s disgust; he was no doubt hoping she would fall flat on her face, if she knew Neville, Lucy thought wryly.

She had got over her crush on her cousin many years ago, and all that was left was a healthy wariness of the man he had become. Occasionally he indulged himself in light-hearted flirtatiousness with her—more to see exactly how vulnerable she might be to him than for any other reason. Neville was extremely conceited and never liked losing an admirer. His father and her mother had been brother and sister, and Lucy retained a deep fondness for her uncle and his wife.

‘Tara, please stop that noise … My head …’

Fanny’s protest broke through her reverie, making her realise that Tara was crying in earnest now, while Oliver scowled and kicked disconsolately at one of the packing cases and Fanny pressed a fragile hand to her forehead.

‘Lucy, I must go and lie down … My poor head …’

Knowing that she would make faster progress with her stepmother out of the way Lucy made no demur, summoning a smile and a few words of sympathy, while at the same time producing a handkerchief for Tara’s tears and warning Oliver not to ruin his shoes.

‘Come on, it won’t be that bad,’ she comforted Tara when Fanny had gone to her room. ‘You’ll like the Dower House.’

‘Yes, but what about Harriet?’

Harriet was Tara’s exceedingly plump little pony, and for a moment Lucy frowned, not following the thread of her half-sister’s conversation.

‘Well I’m sure Harriet will like it, too,’ she told her. ‘She will have that lovely paddock all to herself.’

‘But Richard says that we won’t be able to keep her. That you won’t be able to afford it …’

Richard was the junior partner in her father’s firm of solicitors and Lucy frowned at the mention of his name. For several months now he had been making it plain that he wanted more from her than the casual relationship they presently enjoyed.

Only the other week he had mentioned marriage, adding that the fact that her father had left the Dower House to Lucy in her sole name would mean that on marriage she would have a very comfortable home to share with her husband.

The reason her father had left the house to her was that he didn’t want any gossip to arise from the fact that he was leaving the bulk of the money he had realised, from selling everything that wasn’t entailed, in trust for Oliver and Tara, with the income to go to Fanny until the children reached their majority. Lucy had been less than impressed that Richard should choose to mention marriage only when he realised what her father had left her.

She wondered if Richard was also aware that she had as good as promised her father that both children and Fanny would have a home with her as long as they needed it. Richard did not like children, and neither Oliver nor Tara liked him. Anyway there was not the remotest possibility of her marrying him. To put it bluntly, sexually he left her stone-cold. As did most men. So much so that she had reached the grand old age of twenty-five without a single passionate affair to look back on. Was that the fault of her lifestyle or her genes?

There had been a time, just before her father married Fanny, when she had made a bid for freedom, suggesting that she leave the newly married couple alone and move to London, but Fanny had pleaded with her to stay.

Almost from the moment of her mother’s death Lucy had run the house—not through choice but through necessity—and Fanny had claimed that the thought of taking over from her totally overwhelmed her. And so, despite her misgivings, she had stayed, trying not to feel too guilty about the waste of a perfectly good degree and the loss of her personal independence.

Since then her life had been busy rather than fulfilling. There were certain responsibilities incumbent on living in the Manor, certain local charities her mother had taken an interest in and helped, and this mantle had now fallen to her.

Her decision to try and write had been born of the mental starvation she suffered from, Lucy suspected, and certainly the hours she spent alone in the library on her research had been among the most fulfilling she had experienced since leaving university.

Now, though, she was likely to lose all that, unless Saul allowed her to use the library.

He was such an unknown quantity, she wasn’t really sure what to expect. Her memories of him were clouded by the animosity which had sprung up between them almost from the word go and when she pictured him mentally, it was with a truculent scowl on his face.

In looks he didn’t resemble the Martins at all, being very dark, almost swarthily so, his eyes grey and not brown, his transatlantic accent adding to his alienness.

Looking back on that disastrous summer, Lucy felt a twinge of sympathy towards him.

Poor boy, it couldn’t have been easy for him—thrown upon relatives he did not know, who moreover spoke differently and had a different set of rules to live by. That scowl, that stubborn indifference to all that the Manor had to offer, must have been defensive rather than aggressive, but of course at twelve she could not see that, and had only seen that he mocked everything that she held dear, while all the time reinforcing his own Americanness. The brash superiority had just increased her own dislike of him, so that she had willingly joined Neville in his tormenting of him.

Neville … so smooth and sophisticated to her then, so excitingly male and aloof, and yet undeniably a part of her world in a way that the American intruder was not. When Neville spoke, it was in the same way as her father, his accent public school and clipped, unlike Saul’s American drawl.

Even the way he dressed was different … alien … And how she and Neville had tormented him when they watched the way he rode! She had been unkind almost to the point of being cruel and had since regretted it deeply because it was not part of her nature to inflict hurt on others.

Poor Saul. How did he remember her? she wondered wryly. Well, she would have ample opportunity to make restitution for her sins once he arrived. Neville might speak slightingly of the Manor passing into American hands, but now she did not encourage him.

Tara had stopped crying and was watching her hopefully. ‘We won’t be too poor to keep Harriet,’ she told her firmly. ‘Richard was quite wrong.’

‘Are you going to marry him?’

That was Oliver, eyeing her truculently.

‘No.’

Relief showed briefly in the brown eyes before he turned away. Oliver had been closer to their father than any of them, something she had not really thought about before she knew the truth, and Oliver was the one who would miss his male influence the most. Perhaps Saul might be induced to take an interest in him. Perhaps he was married now with children of his own.

It was a shock to realise how little she knew about him. In all the anxiety and tumult of her father’s death, she had had little time to spare to wonder about Saul; little time to give to him at all apart from overseeing the sending of a telegram to advise him of what had happened.

She had half hoped he would attend the funeral and had been almost hurt when he had not. Towards the end her father had complained that Saul had never made the slightest attempt to learn anything about his heritage, but fair-mindedly Lucy had pointed out that he had scarcely been given much chance.

Certainly her own memories of Saul weren’t happy ones, but like her he had no doubt matured and mellowed, and probably also, like her, knowing the close proximity to one another in which they would be living, he would want their relationship to be an amicable one.

Despite all these sensible thoughts Lucy could not quite stifle the apprehension burgeoning to life inside her. As yet they had no idea when Saul would arrive, but she was being meticulous about vacating the Manor just as quickly as she could. She was also being meticulous about what she took with her—only the furniture which had been her mother’s and nothing more.

Fortunately the Dower House was furnished, although somewhat haphazardly as up until quite recently it had been tenanted, but no doubt the furniture that had been her mother’s would make it seem more like home.

With the help of Mrs Isaacs, their daily, Lucy had already cleaned the house from top to bottom. Nearly all the rooms needed redecorating and she had promised herself that this was a task she would tackle just as soon as she had time. With the income from the trust funds her father had established for Oliver and Tara they would be able to manage financially—just about. Oliver’s school fees would take a large slice of these funds, but Fanny had been adamant that her son must go to prep school at the start of the new term, as had been planned.

The school which had been chosen was George Martin’s old school, and even though privately Lucy thought it was almost an extravagance to pay out such a large sum of money annually just so that Oliver could be educated at her father’s old school, she had not had the heart to oppose Fanny.

It was her opinion that of the two of them Tara was the cleverer and inwardly she was determined that when the time came Tara would somehow be given the same opportunities as her brother. Fortunately at the moment that was one problem which could be shelved, unlike the jumble of packing cases now littering the ballroom floor.

She and Mrs Isaacs had brought them here mainly because of the large area of empty floor space, and tomorrow morning Mr Isaacs and his two large sons were going to drive up from the village with their van and spend the day transporting the cases over to the Dower House.

From the ballroom window it was possible to look right across the park that surrounded the house and Lucy caught her lip between her teeth as she glanced at the view. They had almost the same view from the Dower House, which was surrounded by a very pleasant garden.

With hindsight Lucy could recognise that her father’s decision to divorce the Dower House and a certain amount of land from the main house had probably originated with Oliver’s birth; even then he must have been planning to do everything he could for his illegitimate child, she thought wryly. But, in doing so, there was no getting away from the fact that he had stripped the Manor of anything that might usefully have been sold to provide its new owner with funds. The farmlands had now all gone, the last few acres having been sold just prior to her father’s death.