Return Match

It was a large BMW, and it was stopping right outside the front of the house. A tremor of nerves seized her stomach as she watched the tall, dark-haired man emerge from the driver’s seat.

Saul! Funny that she should recognise him so immediately when for weeks she had tried to conjure up his boyhood features without success.

He was wearing a lightweight pale grey suit and looked, if anything, more European than American; dark enough to pass for an Italian, although perhaps rather too tall.

As she watched, Lucy saw Tara emerge from the side of the house, leading Harriet. The little girl was talking earnestly to the pony, who seemed oblivious to her mistress’s attempts to get her to hurry. In fact Harriet seemed more interested in the juicy grass beside the drive than Tara’s commands.

Lucy saw Saul move warily towards the little girl, the face which had seemed almost grim as he got out of the car softening slightly.

Tara had frozen at the sight of him, clinging desperately to Harriet’s reins. Amused, Lucy watched as Saul’s attempts to make friends were fiercely rebuffed, amusement changing to alarm as she realised that Tara was starting to cry. What on earth had Saul said to her?

Quickly she ran downstairs and out on to the drive, just in time to hear Tara crying out tearfully, ‘You are horrid after all. Very horrid!’

Saul’s hands were on Harriet’s bridle, and Tara was desperately trying to tug the pony away.

As she saw Saul’s face change, Lucy bit her lip. Now, with the amusement gone from his eyes, he looked very cold and alien.

Neither he nor Tara was aware of her until she called out sharply, ‘Tara, that’s enough.’

Tears flooded the brown eyes as they met Lucy’s.

‘Well he is,’ Tara insisted stubbornly. ‘You said he was nice, but he isn’t.’

Saul was looking at her now, and Lucy felt the colour burn up under her skin as she realised what a dreadful picture she must present, her face stained with dust and completely free of make-up, her hair all tangled and untidy.

‘Saul! How lovely to see you.’ Ignoring Tara for the moment, she forced herself to smile the poised, self-confident smile she had learned so carefully, but it faded quickly when she realised he wasn’t smiling back at her, his eyes as cold and grey as the North Sea as he looked her up and down and then without a word turned back to Tara.

‘I wasn’t really trying to take your pony away, you know,’ he told her. ‘I was just trying to make friends with her, that’s all. She’s far too small for me, but she reminds me of a pony I had when I was a little boy.’

Amazingly Tara stopped crying, her eyes widening as she whispered, ‘Did you?’

‘Yup. He lived on my uncle’s farm, and I used to visit him during my vacations.’

His voice hadn’t lost the soft drawl she remembered so vividly. Why on earth had she and Neville made fun of it? It was pleasantly soft and fell easily on her ears, causing her to suffer a momentary pang for her own folly in antagonising him. Instinctively she recognised now that he would have made a far better ally than Neville, that he could even have been a refuge for her to lean on during those difficult months after her mother’s death.

Cross with herself for letting emotion get in the way of reality, she interrupted breathlessly. ‘I’m sure Saul doesn’t mind you taking your pony Tara …’

‘Why should I?’ he interrupted her in that same slow drawl. ‘After all, you’ve already taken damned near everything else. What’s a pony?’

The way he looked at her, the ironic contempt in his voice, stunned her into dismayed silence.

This was not what she had expected at all, this gage flung down at her feet for her to pick up. But what on earth could she say to him in her own defence?

She glanced at Tara. ‘Take Harriet down to the paddock, Tara, and tell your mother that Saul’s arrived.

‘We didn’t expect you quite so soon, and I’m afraid everything’s still rather a mess. However, we’d be delighted if you’d have lunch with us.’

‘My, my … how you’ve changed.’ Again that biting mockery. ‘Or have you? Those are very pretty party manners you’ve got somewhere along the way, Lucy. You certainly didn’t have them twelve years ago.’

His cynicism stung her into replying fiercely, ‘Twelve years ago I was still a child, Saul … And what’s more I had just lost my mother.’

Watching his eyes harden she bit her lip, angry with herself for being so easily provoked. What on earth had happened to all her good resolutions about proferring an olive branch?

Turning away from him to hide the hot tide of colour flooding her skin from his penetrating glance, she mentally derided herself for the sensations engulfing her.

The truth was that she had stupidly expected a more physically adult version of the boy Saul she had remembered, but what she had got was a man who seemed to share nothing other than a name with that boy she remembered.

‘I want you to have lunch with us,’ Tara interrupted firmly, gazing up at him. ‘I want you to tell me all about your pony. What was his name?’

‘Mustard.’

For some reason the slow smile he gave Tara made Lucy feel bleakly excluded and hurt.

‘You’re sure it’s no trouble?’

He was looking at her now, his eyes still cold, smoothly assessing the shape of her body beneath its covering of skimpy T-shirt and ancient jeans, Lucy recognised. Anger flared hotly inside her, her mouth hardening as she turned away from him. As she fought for self-control she reminded herself that Saul had good reason to feel antagonistic towards her; he would after all have based his assessment of her on the girl she had been at twelve, and she could not really blame him for looking for chinks in her armour. Even so, in some strange way it hurt that he should have looked at her like that, dismissing the blood relationship between them, to treat her with a sexual contempt which she had found shatteringly demeaning.

Forcing a smile and ignoring the look he had given her she said calmly, ‘No trouble at all. It will be about an hour or so before it’s ready, but if you like I’ll introduce you to Mrs Isaacs before I go. She and I have just been trying to clean the place up a bit.’

She just caught the look of surprise in his eyes before he suppressed it and suddenly he looked more like the boy she remembered.

‘Rather a demeaning role for you isn’t it? Cleaning? Or were you hoping for a few more pickings?’

A sense of despair engulfed her as she heard the contempt in his voice. How could she have thought that she simply had to extend to him the hand of friendship to wipe out the past? Saul might have left behind the awkward aggression she remembered, but in its place was something far more lethal: a cold hardness that warned her that in his eyes she was more foe than friend.

‘If you’re referring to the estate,’ she told him quietly, ‘my father was entitled to sell what he did.’

She wasn’t going to add that privately she had not been in agreement with her father’s actions, but without raising her voice she added significantly, ‘He did after all have certain responsibilities.’

Saul looked at Tara and then equally softly told her, ‘In the last few months of his life your father raised almost two hundred thousand pounds from selling off everything that was unentailed—that’s an awful lot of money to support one widow and her child … Or are you telling me that you’re included in those responsibilities? Hasn’t anyone ever told you about the pleasure of being self-supporting, Lucy?’

She could feel her face sting, but even if Tara had not been looking on there was no defence she could honourably make. How could she tell him of her promise to her father to keep the family together, to look after not only the children but Fanny as well?

‘I’ll take you to meet Mrs Isaacs.’

She caught the flash of bitterness in his eyes as she refused to respond to his barb, but what else could she do? She had not realised how bitter he would be about her father’s actions, but without betraying the secret of Oliver’s birth there was nothing she could do.

She maintained a cool distance while she introduced him to Mrs Isaacs, hesitating before offering to show him round the house. Mrs Isaacs was a warm-hearted soul, but a devout gossip, and she didn’t want it to get round the village that there was bad feeling between herself and Saul, which would be the conclusion Mrs Isaacs was bound to leap to if she did not make the offer.

‘I think I remember the layout pretty well. And I do have the plans so I don’t think I’ll get into too much trouble. Thanks for the offer though.’

He was dismissing her, Lucy thought irately; making it plain that he had no desire whatsoever for her company—or her presence in what was now his house.

‘I’ll see you at lunch time then.’ Try as she might she could not quite keep the corresponding stiffness out of her own voice, and as he dipped his head in acknowledgment she recognised that he was entitled to the mockingly victorious smile that twisted his mouth.

As she had half expected, when she got back to the Dower House Fanny was still in bed. She wondered what the children had had for breakfast.

Concealing her exasperation, Lucy went up to warn her about their visitor.