Without Trust

She had stopped to chat to one of the men, and then later on had offered to help him with his weeding. The hard physical work had helped her over those initial, dark, early days when she had first discovered that Crichtons intended to prosecute her. One thing had led to another, and within a matter of weeks she had found that she was helping several of the elderly men work their plots. None of them knew who she was or what she was involved in, and there had been a certain kind of relief to be found in tugging up the weeds and digging the rich, moist soil.

Lark had discovered that she enjoyed gardening. Neither her aunt nor uncle really bothered much with the small, neat suburban garden that surrounded their house. Someone came in twice a week to mow the lawns and keep the beds tidy during the summer months, and once a month during the winter.

Her aunt and uncle preferred the small, select dinner parties they attended, the bridge games with their small coterie of friends. Their lives were very regimented, Lark now realised. It was something which she hadn’t really been aware of before, but then, of course, she had been living away from home for some considerable time, first at university and then later in her bedsit.

Gary, too, had moved out of the parental home, but unlike her he had found a job in the local market town where his parents still lived. Crichtons had opened up there several years ago, with brand new offices, all based on computer technology, and Gary had soon found a niche for himself there, with his skill as an advanced computer operator. Quite where and when he had met Lydia Meadows, Lark didn’t know.

When she had asked her aunt and uncle about Gary’s relationship with the other woman, they had denied vigorously that he had ever known her, but that seemed improbable because Lydia was a local girl, albeit one who was several years older than both herself and Gary. Even so, Lark remembered reading several years ago in their local newspaper that Lydia won a nationwide beauty competition. She had gone from there to modelling, her name cropping up regularly in the local paper.

Her marriage to Ross Wycliffe, a local businessman, had been widely publicised. Ross was many years her senior, a widower with grown-up children of his own. He also had a reputation for being very shrewd and hard-headed in business. He was reputed to be a millionaire. Certainly the photographs that Lark had seen of Lydia showed a very soignée young woman dressed expensively in furs and jewellery. How on earth had Gary got involved with her, if involved he had been? He had been in love with her, that much had been obvious on the one occasion when Lark had seen them together.

She had gone home unannounced for the weekend, wanting to collect some books that were still in her bedroom at her aunt and uncle’s. Her visit had just happened to coincide with a time when her aunt and uncle themselves were away on holiday, and so she had gone round to Gary’s to ask him if she could borrow his key to his parents’ house.

His car had been parked outside. When no one had responded to her knock, she had gone round to the back of the small, semi-detached house. Neither of the participants in the passionate embrace she had witnessed through the window of Gary’s dining-room had been aware of her presence for several seconds. Indeed, she herself had been so stunned that it had taken her that length of time to realise that she was intruding, and she was just about to whisk herself away when Lydia Meadows had turned around and seen her.

Neither of them had been very pleased by her presence, and initially she had put that down to the fact that she had interrupted them. It wasn’t until later that she realised exactly who Lydia was, and why she would not be too happy about someone seeing her making love with a man other than her husband.

She had tried to talk to Gary about it, knowing how his parents would feel about his involvement with a married woman, but their relationship was such that they had never been close, and he had brushed her off with a curt refusal to discuss the matter.

It had been obvious that he had loved Lydia, but had she loved him in return? And had it been for her sake that he had been stealing money from his company?

Sighing faintly, Lark reminded herself that it was pointless going over and over this old ground again and again, that nothing was to be gained from living in the past. It was over, and she would have to find a way of putting it behind her. She could never go back. Her aunt and uncle would never forgive her for what had happened. Both of them blamed her for Gary’s death—perhaps in their shoes she would have felt the same, although she hoped she would have had more compassion, more insight into other people’s feelings.

Over the years there had been many, many occasions when she had desperately longed for her own parents, but to long for them so desperately at twenty-two, when she was supposedly an adult, seemed rather ridiculous. But long for them she most certainly did.

Her thoughts switched abruptly from her cousin to James Wolfe. It was odd the way she couldn’t get him out of her mind, couldn’t quite prevent herself from thinking about him in unguarded moments, remembering the cool timbre of his voice, the reasoned logic of his arguments, the overwhelming, overpowering and illogical emotional turbulence he had aroused in her. Her passionate outburst in the court room still had the power to make her flinch inwardly, and to wonder at the way he had broken through her defences.

She had sworn to herself that she would never betray herself in that way, and yet, with a few well-chosen words, he had caused her to forget that promise and to cry out to the world how badly she felt it was treating her. Did he ever feel the guilt and compunction he had accused her of not feeling? Did he ever wonder what happened to the victims of his savage cross-examinations? Victims who, like her, could quite easily have been innocent. No, of course he wouldn’t. Men like him never did, did they? Men like him … She shivered slightly.

There had been very few men in her life, and certainly none like James Wolfe. So why was it that the very thought of him caused this frisson of sensation to race across her skin, almost as though in some primitive way she feared him on a level that had nothing to do with their meeting in court? On a level that was purely emotional, and had to do with her being a woman and him being a man.

She told herself that she was being ridiculous, that she had allowed the atmosphere in the court to disturb her far too deeply, and that was why she was still so vulnerable at the mere thought of the man. But somehow the excuse didn’t quite ring true.

James Wolfe had made an impression on her which no amount of stern self-lecturing could entirely dismiss. There had been something so male and vigorous about him, something that aroused and piqued her feminine curiosity. That was what one got for being a virgin at twenty-two, she mocked herself. Idiotic fantasies about strange men.

CHAPTER TWO

LARK was still thinking about James Wolfe when she walked from the tube station to her solicitor’s office on the morning of her interview. A chance sighting of a dark-haired man sitting in an expensive car at the traffic lights caught her attention, and it wasn’t until he turned his head to return her look that she realised that it wasn’t James and that she was staring at him quite blatantly. She blushed and walked on, angry with herself; angry and disturbed.

It was time she put James Wolfe out of her mind. There was no point in dwelling on what had happened. No point in reliving the torment of those long minutes in court.

Oddly, it didn’t help much telling herself that he was the one who had been vanquished. Over the recent months her solicitor’s offices had become as familiar to her as her own shabby bedsit. They were up three flights of stairs in an ancient building that didn’t possess a lift other than one that rather reminded Lark of a creaking, terrifying cage.

She had lost weight; the need to economise had meant that she had cut down on her food. It was quite frightening to realise how lacking in energy she was by the time she reached the third floor.

Her solicitor himself opened the door to her, which rather surprised her. Normally, she was made to wait a good fifteen minutes before being shown into the inner sanctum. But today the outer office was empty. The secretary had gone to lunch, he told her, noticing her curious glance.

‘Lunch, at eleven o’clock in the morning?’ Still, it was hardly any business of hers, although she did notice that her solicitor seemed rather flustered and uncomfortable. She had had that effect on him ever since Crichton International had decided to pull out of the case, and she wasn’t quite sure why.

‘Sit down,’ he told her, beaming at her and picking up a pile of manuscripts from the chair opposite his desk.

She did so unwillingly, wondering what on earth it was he wanted to discuss with her. By rights she ought to be out looking for another job. Only this morning she had happened to see her landlord, who had reminded her that the next quarter’s rent was due.

With accommodation in London being so hard to come by, he was able to charge more or less what he wanted for her appalling room, and she knew that if she didn’t produce the money within a very short space of time he would have no compunction at all in evicting her. She had the money but, once it was gone, what would happen to her then? She could manage this quarter, possibly the next quarter’s rent, but after that …

Her solicitor was clearing his throat nervously and playing with the papers stacked untidily all over his desk. A cloud of dust rose from some of them, and Lark grimaced faintly. The office looked as though it could do with a good clean; there was grime on the windows and a film of dust on top of the filing cabinet.

‘Er … I asked you to come in this morning, because I’ve been … er … approached by …’ He stopped talking and fiddled again with the papers, ducking his head as though he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say.

‘Yes?’ Lark prompted him.

‘Yes … an old client of mine, a widow whose husband has left her very, very comfortably circumstanced … She … um … she’s the chairwoman of a small private charity, and she’s looking for a young woman to help her with her paperwork. She wants somebody who would be prepared to live in. She’s based in London, but spends some time in Boston. She is herself actually an American who was married to an Englishman.’

Lark frowned, not quite sure what the point of his long, rambling statement was, until he looked at her and said rather nervously, ‘It occurred to me that such a position might suit you, Miss Cummings. I know you … er … had to leave your previous post.’

Lark stared at him, unable to believe her ears. Here she was worrying about how on earth she was ever going to find another job, and right out of the blue she was being offered one which, by the sound of it, also included accommodation. Or perhaps she had misunderstood him. She looked at him and said firmly, ‘Are you sure about this? Would she want me under the circumstances, or doesn’t she know?’

‘Oh, yes, yes, she knows all about you,’ he hastened to reassure her. ‘Yes, she seemed most keen to interview you. She said you sounded just exactly what she had been looking for.’

It sounded too good to be true. Lark didn’t move in the sort of circles where elderly ladies still employed live-in companions, but she was widely read and knew all about the pitfalls of such employment. Perhaps she would be expected to work twenty-four hours a day for nothing more than a pittance and her food. Before she could actually voice these fears, her solicitor went on hurriedly, ‘The salary is excellent—really, very generous, and of course there will be no living expenses. All those will be included. Mrs Mayers always travels first class, and she assured me that when she travels you will travel with her.’

Lark raised her eyebrows and asked enquiringly, ‘And does the charity pay for all this first-class travel?’

Her solicitor looked shocked. ‘Oh, no, no, certainly not! As I’ve already told you, Mrs Mayers is independently wealthy. She’s charming, quite charming, and you really are a very fortunate young woman in being offered such a post.’

Lark frowned, a little puzzled by his attitude. Initially she had gained the impression that he had been the one to recommend her for the job, and yet now it sounded as though he had doubts about her suitability. She was just about to question him further when his telephone rang. He picked it up, covered the mouthpiece and pushed a piece of paper over to her.

‘That’s the address,’ he told her. ‘I’ve arranged an interview for you for two-thirty this afternoon, although I don’t think you’ll have any problems. Mrs Mayers is quite convinced that you’ll suit her.’

He turned away from her when he spoke into the telephone, making it plain that he expected her to leave. Feeling rather bemused, Lark did so. When she had come to see him this morning, the very last thing she had expected was the offer of a job—especially not one that sounded almost too like a fairy-tale, and too good to be true.

It probably was too good to be true, she admitted as she walked down three flights of stairs and out into the cool air. Although officially it was spring, it was still almost cold enough to be winter, the trees barely in bud. She shivered beneath the cold wind, wishing she could afford to go and sit somewhere warm and order herself a decent meal.

No cooking was allowed in the bedsits, but in reality all the tenants had their own small gas or electric rings. Hers was tiny and only really fit for heating up a can of soup or the odd tin of beans, neither of which was particularly tempting at the moment.

She was hungry, but lunch was a luxury she could no longer really afford. Would this Mrs Mayers really want to employ her? The salary her solicitor had mentioned had indeed been generous, far more generous than the amount she had been receiving with the PR company.

She had tried to ask him what her duties would be, but he had been very vague on the subject, saying that Mrs Mayers would explain everything to her. She felt oddly reluctant to go for the interview, which was ridiculous under the circumstances. Had the ordeal of the last few months scarred her so much that she was actually afraid of meeting new people? Afraid of seeing in their eyes the dislike and contempt she had already seen in so many people’s eyes, including those of James Wolfe?

James Wolfe—there he was again, back in her thoughts. How on earth had he managed to get there, and how on earth was she going to get rid of him?

He had absolutely no right to keep on pushing his way into her life, into her mind, into her thoughts, she thought distractedly as she hurried down the street. It was barely twelve o’clock; two and a half hours before she needed to attend her appointment, but it was on the other side of London in St John’s Wood …

Lark stood outside a pretty little Victorian villa that some rich man had probably built for his mistress. There was a time when St John’s Wood had been notorious for such dwellings. Now, of course, it was eminently respectable and an area to which only the extremely wealthy could aspire.

Her particular destination was set behind a high wall. Lark tried the gates and then realised that they were locked. A discreet metal plaque set into one of the brick pillars startled her by bursting into speech.

‘Do come in, Miss Cummings. We’ve unlocked the gates for you now.’ The woman’s voice was late middle-aged rather than elderly, pleasant, with more than just a hint of warmth. Had she heard it in any other circumstances, Lark would have felt immediately drawn to its owner. As it was she felt too nervous, too on edge to do anything than give a startled glance at the gates and then try them again.