The Ultimate Surrender

Only the appalling thought of Marcus actually trying to carry her to the car got Polly there, and she was sure that Marcus must have broken every speed limit there was to get her to the hospital so fast.

By then her contractions were coming so quickly that there wasn’t time for her to do anything other than what she was told as she was whisked from his car onto a trolley and into the labour ward.

Two hours later, when Briony Honey Fraser made her way into the world, Polly opened her eyes to look up into the eyes of the man whose hand she had been gripping onto for dear life all through her labour, and realised, with a bewildering sense of disbelief, that it wasn’t Richard but Marcus. But before she could say anything exhaustion swept over her, and when she eventually woke up to find her adorable new daughter tucked into a little crib at the bottom of her bed and her equally adorable husband sitting beaming with pride and pleasure at her bedside she told herself that she must have imagined that Marcus had been there with her during her labour.

She continued to tell herself until the morning Richard came to take her and Briony home from the hospital and commented happily to her, ‘What a piece of luck that Marcus should have been with you when you went into labour…I’ve told him that we shall definitely want him to be Briony’s godfather. After all, he was there when she was born.’

Polly closed her eyes, her skin burning with embarrassed colour. So it hadn’t just been a dream…a nightmare more like; Marcus had actually been there with her all the time. It had been Marcus who had wiped the sweat from her forehead, who had encouraged her to rest, to push…who had told her in a voice thick with unfamiliar emotion that she had the most beautiful, gorgeous little baby girl…Marcus, not Richard…

No one would ever know just how relieved she was to return to Fraser House to find that Marcus was away on business and that he would be away for almost a month…time enough for all her disturbing memories and feelings about the fact that he had been with her when Briony had been born to subside and be carefully pushed away into a place where they couldn’t cause her any harm.

But there was one disturbing postscript to what had happened. By some odd quirk of fate, baby Briony took one look at her father’s cousin and her mother’s private and unacknowledged bête noire and openly and determinedly, in that way that only babies could do, declared her love for him.

It was Marcus she gave her first smile to. It was Marcus whose name she said first, even if Polly had tried to convince herself that that ‘Ma…Mar’ had been ‘Mama’, and Marcus towards whom she took her first faltering steps.

Richard, typically, didn’t mind in the least, and in fact was only too pleased that his daughter adored Marcus as much as he did himself, and by the time Briony was three years old even Polly had to admit that Marcus’s decision to turn Fraser House into an unofficial very luxurious and comfortable ‘home from home’ for his visiting executives had worked wonderfully well for all of them.

Polly was in her element in her role as Fraser’s chatelaine. Her guests thrived on her warm blend of cosseting and cooking, and Marcus had even remarked dryly to her that his chairman was beginning to complain that he had not, as yet, sampled the delights of a stay at Fraser House, adding that the whole board were unanimous in their decision that this year’s official Christmas boardroom dinner should be held there.

As her confidence grew so too did Polly’s cooking skills. She devoured new recipe books as eagerly and avidly as her guests devoured her gourmet meals, and as the Christmas preceding Briony’s fourth birthday approached Polly was forced to admit that she had never been happier.

Gradually, through his contacts, Richard was getting more work, and he still had dreams of one day being asked to exhibit at the Royal Academy, although privately Polly was beginning to sense that he never would. However, his dreams were precious to him, and she loved him far too much to want to damage them or to hurt him.

The murals he had painted in the house were exciting an enormous number of compliments and bringing in fresh work, but whilst his portraits were technically excellent Polly was beginning to see that his work lacked that spark that would have made him great. Still, he was happy, and if Richard was happy then so was she. But she often wondered what Marcus, who collected modern art in a very small but knowledgeable way, really thought of his cousin’s talent. She suspected that, like her, Marcus loved Richard far too much to want to hurt him.

And then disaster struck. On the way home one night from working on a commission several miles away, Richard’s car was involved in an accident and Richard was killed outright. The police brought the news whilst Polly was tucking Briony up in bed. She was on her own in the house for once, Marcus being away on business, and she knew what she was going to be told the moment she opened the door and saw the policeman’s face.

Richard, her beloved, handsome, boyish, loving husband, was dead, and with him too was that special part of her heart that had belonged exclusively to him.

Marcus had to fly back from Australia for Richard’s funeral, arriving grey-faced and haggard, and not just from jet lag, Polly knew—just as she knew that he had never approved of her, and how much he had loved Richard. But now Richard was gone.

At the funeral her aunt, meaning to be kind, no doubt, told her firmly, ‘Polly, I know this seems like the end of the world now, but you’re young—young enough to meet someone else and fall in love again.’

‘Never,’ Polly told her, white-faced and dry-eyed. ‘I shall never, ever love anyone else,’ she told her passionately. ‘That’s impossible. I love Richard far too much for that and I always will.’

Marcus, who had overheard her gave her an unfathomable look—one which haunted her for a long time after Richard’s funeral. Did Marcus, like her aunt, think that she was so shallow, so immature that she would forget Richard? If so she was determined to prove him wrong.

CHAPTER TWO

AND that was exactly what Polly did, devoting herself to Briony and to her work. So much so that when Briony was seven years old, following a conversation with one of Marcus’s colleagues and his wife, who had announced that they were so impressed with the standard of Fraser House’s comforts and its cook, they were surprised she didn’t consider opening the house as a small, exclusive private country hotel, Polly had taken this idea to Marcus. And, to her surprise, he had agreed.

And so had begun her unexpected career as co-owner and manageress of Fraser House, a small Georgian country house set in its own grounds where the cognoscenti could enjoy a true feast of all the senses—or so the restaurant critic who had visited them had proclaimed in the article he had written following his visit.

The years hadn’t just brought the addition of an indoor swimming pool and luxury gym area to the hotel’s facilities, but a broadening of Polly’s cooking skills as well.

Now Fraser House was listed as one of the country’s most exclusive small country house hotels, its restaurant ranking with the best of the country’s growing stable of to-be-seen-at eateries.

No one as yet might have approached Polly with an invitation to host her own TV cookery series, nor to write a cookery book, but soon after the hotel had opened one of their first clients had asked if it might be possible for their daughter to hold her wedding reception at the house. Then Polly had felt that they had reached a definite landmark.

As joint owner of the house, Marcus had always remained aloof from its day-to-day running, although, to be fair to him, Polly had to admit that he had always been meticulous about giving her whatever assistance and support she had asked for. He was now on the board of his company, one of its youngest directors, and, much to Briony’s dismay, had spent nearly two and a half years away from them living in Russia, to help with the newly emergent oil industry there.

More recently he had been spending a considerable amount of time in China, and Briony had already extracted a promise from him that if she graduated with a First he would treat her to a trip to China’s Great Wall.

Whilst Richard’s death might have deprived Polly of the love and companionship of a husband, Marcus had seen to it that Briony had never lacked the love of a father figure in her life, and Briony adored him in much the same way as Richard had done.

In fact, sometimes Polly felt almost as though the two of them formed a special magic circle from which she, as Briony’s mother, was somehow excluded. Because she knew that Marcus had never really liked or approved of her? Because she felt, for some obscure and irrational reason, that in some way Marcus actually blamed her for Richard’s death?

Since the beginning of her own first romantic relationship with Chris Johnson, Briony had become increasingly concerned about the fact that her beloved uncle Marcus had no permanent partner to share his life with, and to that end she had been taxing her brain to find someone whom she considered special enough to make him the ideal wife.

Now it seemed, from what she was saying to Polly, she had actually found that someone, and certainly, from the way she was describing her, Suzie Howell did sound as though she was just Marcus’s type. Tall, blonde, leggy—the kind of chatelaine who would be perfect for the house Marcus had announced so unexpectedly only six weeks ago that he intended to buy.

‘But why? You’ve always lived here,’ Polly had protested, white-faced, when he had announced his plans to her. ‘This has always been our home. Yours, mine and Briony’s.’

‘Precisely,’ he agreed coolly. ‘But Briony is now at college and, as you were saying yourself only a few weeks ago, you are increasingly having to turn away prospective guests. With my rooms to provide two extra bedrooms…’

Polly wasn’t able to totally take in what he was saying to her. It had never occurred to her that he might move out of Fraser House.

‘I need a home of my own, Polly,’ he told her crisply. ‘A life of my own. And now that Briony is old enough to start making her own life I feel that my duty to her—’

‘Your duty to her?’ She interrupted him, too shocked to be cautious. ‘Is that why you were living here? Because of Briony?’

There was a small, purposeful pause that drove the colour from her face, but it came back again when he told her almost affably, ‘Well, of course; you didn’t think I was staying for you, did you?’

Staying for her? No, of course not! But for him to put into words the enmity she had so often sensed but hoped she had only imagined…

‘No. No, I didn’t,’ she acknowledged in a thick, choked voice. Yet it seemed that with Briony’s departure for college both she and Marcus were unanimous in believing that it was time for Marcus to establish a life of his own away from Fraser House. With a wife and family of his own? That was certainly Briony’s idea…

‘Does Marcus know that you’re planning to marry him off?’ she asked her daughter now, as she stood up straight and dusted herself down.

At thirty-seven she still had the same slender, small-boned body she had had at eighteen, although these days it was healthily honed and toned by her three-times-weekly gym workouts, and her once mousy hair was now skilfully highlighted; only the previous week her stylist had finally persuaded her to allow her to chop her smooth, shoulder-length bob into a far more adventurous and modern style which she had insisted was perfect for her.

‘Too young for you?’ she had demanded when Polly had uncertainly raised her doubts. ‘Polly, you’re thirty-seven, not fifty-seven,’ she had scolded her gently. ‘Thirty-seven is young…’

‘Try telling that to Briony,’ Polly had commented ruefully. ‘She’s eighteen, and she won’t want a mother who looks as though she’s trying to pretend she’s her sister.’

‘Listen to me,’ her stylist had told her firmly. ‘There is no way this style is anything other than absolutely perfect for you.’

As perfect for her as Briony seemed to think this young woman she had met was perfect for Marcus? This young woman. Determinedly Polly reached for a cloth to start wiping out the cupboard she had just emptied.

‘Anyway, what I was going to say to you is…’ Briony reached to the bowl on the table for an apple—one of their own, which had come from the trees in the small orchard behind the kitchen garden, an old-fashioned English variety which it was almost impossible to buy anywhere now but which Polly particularly cherished for its unique sweet-tart flavour. You could have a dinner party and invite Suzi to come and then she could get to meet Uncle Marcus and—’

‘A dinner party!’ Polly interrupted her daughter a little explosively. ‘Briony, this is a hotel and…’

‘And it’s half term, and you are never busy then,’ Briony reminded her. ‘And Suzi could recommend you to some of the people she knows and that way you would get more business,’ she pointed out craftily. ‘After all, when Uncle Marcus goes you’re going to have two more rooms to let…’

Polly gave a small sigh. Organising a formal dinner party at short notice was the last thing she felt like doing right now, but, knowing her determined daughter, she suspected that it might be easier to give in now and thus save the time she might otherwise have wasted in trying to reason with her.

Quite where Briony got her determination, her stubbornness from, she wasn’t really sure. Richard had had the sweetest nature imaginable and, as Briony and Marcus repeatedly pointed out to her, she had no backbone at all when it came to confrontations.