She turned back to see Isabella looking at her strangely. ‘What’s the matter, Fabia?’ the old lady asked quietly. ‘Is there something I should know about?’
‘Of course not.’ Fabia forced an easy smile to her stiff lips.
‘Come and sit by me, then,’ Isabella said regally. ‘I’ve got an old photo album here that might interest you.’ As the afternoon darkened slowly into an ominous dusk her fear became all-consuming. It didn’t help that Alex’s face was staring back at her from the photo album! Alex as a rosy-cheeked baby; Alex looking heartbreakingly vulnerable as he smiled bravely at the camera on his first day at school, painfully smart in his new uniform; Alex in his first long trousers; Alex going to his first dance.
‘Isn’t that Susan?’ Fabia peered more closely at one of the photos that featured a crowd of laughing teenagers grouped round a sports car.
‘Yes,?
? Isabella said calmly. ‘The car was Alexander’s twenty-first present from me. Susan was his girlfriend then, you know.’ She glanced at Fabia sharply. ‘It was just after that that he finished with her, if I remember.’
‘He finished with her?’ Fabia asked slowly, remembering the women’s conversation that night.
‘Hasn’t he told you?’ Isabella asked quietly. ‘He was no fool, my Alexander, even at that age. Susan wanted to marry a rich man and that’s what she did—after Alexander had told her they were friends, nothing more.’
‘I see.’ A sudden gust of wind shook the window and Fabia reared anxiously from the bed. ‘I’ll just see if tea is on the way,’ she said quickly to Isabella as she left the room, ‘and stretch my legs a bit.’
‘Look in on Alexander, would you?’ Isabella called after her. ‘I’d like to see him if he’s awake.’
You’d like to see him? As she walked downstairs she realised it was now pitch-black and he was out there, in the worst storm for years, and she loved him. Strangely the realisation didn’t terrify her, considering she had been fighting it for weeks. He had been gone for over eight hours now and besides that cold fact everything else paled into insignificance. Mary had told her the wood was about an hour’s walk away—on a summer’s day. Even allowing for double the time owing to the weather, and then the return journey, that still left four hours—four hours too long.
He had been mad to go, she had been mad to let him go, the world was mad! Why hadn’t she contacted the police, ambulance, someone? She took a deep breath as her heart began to pound painfully. She loved him and he’d never know. He was dead. She felt it in her bones. Why had she looked at him, even for a moment, in the same light as Robin? Would Robin go out into arctic conditions looking for a human, let alone a dog? She sobbed suddenly into the stillness. This was judgement on her. She hadn’t had the courage to reach out and trust her innermost heart when it had been telling her all along he was different. Maybe he would never love her, maybe she would just be another passing affair to him, but if she didn’t give them the chance she would never know, would she? She ground her teeth in an agony of regret. Physical attraction was a start, wasn’t it? Maybe she could make him love her, building on that?
She paced back and forwards, ignoring the sound of Isabella’s bell overhead, until John appeared in the doorway, his severe face soft in his distress. ‘I’m sorry, but Miss Isabella wonders what’s keeping you,’ he said apologetically as he glanced at her tear-washed face. ‘Shall I tell her you’ll be up shortly?’
‘I can’t, John, not yet.’ She couldn’t endure more small talk when her heart was being slashed into tiny pieces. ‘Tell her I’m having a bath or a rest or something.’
‘What possessed him to go out in this?’ John murmured anxiously, forgetting his stiffness in the face of another crisis in less than twenty-four hours. ‘The dog might have come home by itself. Did MacKay go with him?’
‘Is that the man called Mike?’ Fabia asked quietly and when the old man nodded she nodded herself in answer.
‘Well, he couldn’t have a better man with him for conditions like these,’ John said comfortingly. ‘Knows the area round here like the back of his hand. Mr Alexander will be all right, Miss Fabia, don’t worry.’
Don’t worry! As the old man disappeared upstairs she had the mad impulse to run out into the snow and keep running until she found him. For the first time she felt she knew exactly how the big cats felt at the zoo when they prowled round a tiny confining cage, growling with frustrated rage and helplessness.
When she heard the faint sound of a dog barking in the distance she experienced such a feeling of relief that for a moment everything swam in a dark hazy mist, and then as she lifted her head towards the sound her blood froze. There was just one dog barking. What if Minor had found his way home by himself and the others were lost out there?
She raced into the hall, pulling on her coat as she went and not stopping to slip her feet into boots. Her light shoes were soaked within seconds as she stood at the top of the snow-covered steps and then, as a large bulky figure in thick coat and wellingtons appeared round a corner in the drive with a dog bounding at his side, the feeling of indescribable relief was replaced by hot blinding rage such as she had never known before. She flew down the steps and across the lawns towards him, stumbling in the two feet of snow that had covered everything in a thick white blanket, but righting herself as her fury drove her forwards.
‘You stupid, stupid man!’ she cried over the few yards separating them as she neared his side. ‘How could you have been so incredibly stupid? You could have died out there! Everyone’s been worried to death!’
‘You didn’t tell my grandmother, did you?’ His face was a dull grey colour and he was walking as though each step would be his last, but she was too enraged with painful relief to notice.
‘No, I didn’t tell her.’ She reached his side as she spoke and beat on his chest angrily. ‘But what about me?’ she asked with each blow. ‘How could you do this to me?’
He stared at her silently as she continued in her tirade, hot tears stinging the numbed coldness of her face as she ranted and raved her grief.
‘Come here.’ As he lifted her up into his arms she clung on to him as though she would never let him go, collapsing against his wet body with a little inarticulate cry of relief.
‘I thought you were dead, Alex, I thought you were dead.’ As he carried her towards the house he looked down into her face with a strange smile hovering on his lips.
‘Would you have minded?’ There was no mockery in his voice, just a deep hard question that she answered immediately.
‘I’d have died too.’
He stopped again in the middle of the snow-covered lawns as more lights flashed on in the house when Mary and the others realised he was home. ‘What does that mean? Explain.’ As she buried her head against the roughness of his coat his voice was threaded with wonder as he spoke again. ‘I love you, Fabia. I’ve loved you from the very minute I saw you in the middle of that room amid a crowd of awful people who paled into insignificance beside you. I couldn’t believe it when you turned out to be a Mary-Lou.’ He hugged her to him as he started walking again. ‘And when I found out what sort of a trick you’d played on me I knew you were the only woman I’d ever love. So beautiful, so defiant, so touchingly fierce.’
‘You didn’t mind?’ She stared up into his face.