As he opened the bedroom door for her, she wondered bitterly why it was that he, who was so grimly unforgiving of her, could so compassionately and caringly make allowances for the weaknesses of others. Even Rory.
But then she had already given herself the answer in that one word—caring. Frazer cared for those others: the twins, Maud, Rory…He felt nothing for her. Nothing other than a brief physical desire to which her own body had shamed her in its immediate and overwhelming response.
Halfway down the stairs, she turned to him and said hurriedly, ‘This dinner tonight—I don’t think…’
‘We’re going,’ Frazer countered arrogantly, then softened that arrogance by adding, ‘Gayle Chalmers will have gone to a lot of trouble to entertain us. She’s lonely, Rebecca, and very anxious to make friends.’
‘But I shan’t be staying up here long enough,’ Rebecca started to protest, and was silenced by the odd look that flickered in his eyes.
‘She doesn’t know that,’ he told her quietly. ‘She believes we’re engaged. She’ll interpret your refusal of their invitation as a rejection of her personally.’
Rebecca wasn’t listening to his explanation. She stared at him and demanded, ‘But how does she know we’re engaged? No one knows, apart from the family here at Aysgarth.’
For a moment Frazer looked almost uncomfortable, his expression reminiscent of that of Helen when she was trying to be particularly devious. Suspicion stirred in Rebecca’s brain, but she dismissed it immediately as impossible. Frazer would never have volunteered the information himself.
‘Mrs Norton knows…so probably does the doctor,’ he pointed out calmly. ‘These things have a habit of getting around.’
‘But the Institute is twelve miles away from here,’ Rebecca protested.
She knew she was worrying at what was really a relatively unimportant issue like a terrier at a rabbit-hole, but so much had been taken out of her control, so much had happened to her recently which left her feeling vulnerable and on edge, that she was almost desperately clinging to something over which she could exercise her own strength of will.
‘Does it matter how she knows?’ Frazer asked her sharply, suddenly looking very tired. ‘If you won’t come with me tonight, I expect I’ll manage to find some excuse.’ He gave her another brooding look that prickled her nerve-endings, sending a frisson of too familiar sensation burning under her skin. It was ridiculous that she should be so vulnerable to him.
Ridiculous and…dangerous.
‘Besides, the doctor’s due to see you this afternoon, isn’t he? He might not consider you fit enough to go out.’
Contradictorily, instead of clinging to this escape, Rebecca heard herself saying crossly, ‘Of course he will! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me now, Frazer.’
‘No?’ he asked her with fine irony, reaching out unexpectedly to cup her face in his palm and turn her into the light so that he could examine her face. ‘How long is it since you looked at yourself properly? You’re too pale, you’ve lost weight. And if you’re going to tell me that it was the shock of realising you were in my arms and not Rory’s that made you tremble as though you were about to pass out on me not fifteen minutes ago, then forget it,’ he said flatly. ‘We’re neither of us unintelligent human beings, Rebecca.’
His hand dropped away from her face, setting her free as he waited for her to precede him down the stairs.
He had a meeting in the afternoon, he explained to Maud, who met them in the hall, but he would be back later in the afternoon.
Rebecca watched him go with a familiar sense of loss. She was too old, surely, to waste her time mooning over a man who would never want her?
‘Ah, the devoted fiancée!’ taunted Rory, walking into the sitting-room where she was watching Frazer drive away. ‘The perfect ending, isn’t it? But you aren’t married to him yet, Rebecca. My being here is going to remind him of things my lordly, moralistic brother would much rather forget. He’ll find the fact that I was your lover first very hard to stomach.’
Rebecca turned on him, frowning. ‘You know very well we were never lovers!’
‘I know it, and you know it, but Frazer doesn’t know it, does he? He won’t like knowing that I had you first,’ he told her brutally.
‘That’s not true!’
‘Frazer believes it,’ he told her softly, watching her frustrated anger with amused enjoyment. ‘You obviously haven’t been able to convince him otherwise—and of course you can’t prove it to him.’
Couldn’t she? That was what Rory thought! There was one way she could prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that Rory hadn’t been her lover, Rory or indeed any other man, but since Frazer really didn’t care how many lovers she had or had not had, the fact that there had been none, that her love for him had kept her from loving any other man enough to share such intimacy with him, was of no interest to him.
‘Rory, why are you doing this?’ she asked quietly. ‘Why are you trying to destroy our…our engagement? Why do you want to hurt me so much?’
‘Hurt you?’ he gave a bitter laugh. ‘You, my dear Rebecca, don’t come into this other than as something, or rather someone, that my dear brother cherishes. You or any other woman…it’s immaterial. Of course, it helps that it is you, since dear old Frazer so obviously and painfully still believes that we were lovers. Odd, that. I never thought that after all these years…’ Rory stopped and smiled at her, a smile totally without compunction and kindness. ‘Even you, with your naïve outlook on life, must have realised by now that brotherly love is the very last thing I feel for Frazer. Brotherly hate is more like it.’
‘But why?’ demanded Rebecca.
Rory shrugged. ‘Why not?’ And then seeing that she was not to be fobbed off he said curtly, ‘Why don’t you ask my dear brother? God knows, he fought hard enough to stop me from marrying Lillian in the first place.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Perhaps if he hadn’t done so, I wouldn’t have married her. But once I was married and ready to acknowledge that I’d made a mistake, would he help me? No. Suddenly dear Frazer turns all moralistic and announces that I should stay married.’
‘He worries about the twins,’Rebecca told him. ‘But Rory, Frazer can’t force you to stay married.’
‘Can’t he? Much you know! Since our parents saw fit to follow tradition and leave everything to Frazer, with me dependent on him for whatever handouts he feels gracious enough to give, the only way I can maintain my current lifestyle and support an ex-wife and those two brats would be if Frazer put his hand in his pocket and shelled out some of that money he’s so carefully hoarding.’
Rebecca could hardly believe her ears.
‘You expect Frazer to support your wife and family?’
Rory glowered at her. ‘Why not? He can afford it. But of course you’ve got a vested interest in his finances now, haven’t you?’
Rebecca ignored this jibe and said coldly, ‘The only thing that surprises me is that Lillian should want to stay married to you.’
‘She loves me.’ Rory said it without compassion or emotion, and Rebecca suddenly felt desperately sorry for his wife. She had met Lillian, of course, but had never really known her.
‘But you must feel something for her,’ she protested.
He shrugged again.
‘She’s all right as wives go. She stands to inherit a nice sum of money from her parents, provided they don’t will it to those two damned brats. Lillian was OK as a wife, until she got this thing in her head about the twins needing us here in England. Still, she’s coming to see sense now. While she’s with her parents, she’s going to get some info, about boarding schools.’
‘You told Frazer you were thinking of settling here in England to be near the twins,’ Rebecca protested.
‘That was Lillian’s idea. Besides, do you honestly think he’s going to want me here now? A constant reminder that you and I…’
‘He’ll never let you send the twins to boarding school,’ Rebecca told him positively.
Rory laughed.
‘He doesn’t have much option. After all, they are my children.’
‘A pity you only seem to remember that fact when you want to use it as a weapon against Frazer,’ Rebecca said sharply.
Rory was unconcerned by her contempt.