Margaret Way - Mistaken Mistress

“Except you’ve got my friend, Owen, spellbound. Anyway, what good’s talk? If you’re coming with me, come. If you’ve got belongings here, get them. I assume if you’re so financially secure you have a good home?”

She flushed, the sheen of tears in her beautiful eyes. “You’re making far too many assumptions as it is, Mr. Forsyth. If you give me a moment I’ll pack what I have. We were to have had dinner with you tonight, instead Fate has stepped in yet again.”

They never spoke a word throughout the fifteen-minute journey to the hospital though Lang found himself watching her continually in case she started to crumble. He even had to stop himself reaching for her hand. Such a slim wrist, a network of delicate blue veins beating there. Two gold bracelets. He knew gold. Both were unmistakably heavy eighteen carat. Patek Philippe watch with diamonds and a mother-of-pearl face. All very expensive items. Had Owen given them to her? He rarely gave Delma presents though he allowed her to buy whatever she liked. For herself. There was a huge difference. He was beginning to feel more and more sorry for Delma. She would take it very badly when she found out about this girl. He was silent under the great surge of anxiety he felt. What if Owen died? God, hadn’t his own father slipped so easily out of life?

“Are you ready for this?” he asked as they made their way to the ward.

Her voice rang with hope and conviction. “I know he’s alive. I’m sure of it. He won’t leave me. Not now.”

“You look like you’re going to faint.” Indeed she was snow-white. Her took her arm as stabs of pity pierced him, his manner at that moment more protective than he realised. She was tall for a woman but beside him she seemed so small.

“I haven’t fainted so far, have I?” Her lips moved.

“You did briefly at the hotel,” he reminded her. “Anyway, we’re here now. Please let me do the talking.”

“Of course.” She didn’t look at him, but she didn’t pull away, either. That had some significance but he didn’t want to look into it now. This was Owen’s young love.

The surgeon was waiting for them, and they briefly shook hands. He needed to scrub up. “Mr. Carter will undergo immediate surgery,” he told them, looking from one to the other as though they were a pair. “For internal injuries. He’s bleeding and has broken ribs and a broken collarbone, but he’s in good shape for his age. He’s conscious at the moment, but he’s been sedated. You can speak to him for just a moment, if you like. Now you must excuse me.”

Even as the surgeon turned away they saw Owen being wheeled out into the corridor.

“Come on,” he heard himself saying to her, upset beyond words at the whole damn business.

Owen’s dazed eyes rested on him first. “Lang!” He put up a hand and Lang took it, feeling the strange chill off Owen’s skin. “We’re here for you, Owen,” he said, allowing his strong feelings to show. “Eden is here, too.” He used her name knowing that he liked it. It suited her.

“Eden?” Owen tried to turn his head, clearly excited, agitated and the medical attendant shook a warning head at them.

She came forward, taking Owen’s other hand, bending over him, her lovely face as sweet and innocent as a Madonna’s.

The expression that blazed out of Owen’s face caused him to look away. This was love. Real love. God! And it was going to last. He knew that now. No one, not wife, not child, not partner, was going to separate them.

Ward Sister came up briskly. “Thank you,” she said with what was clearly a dismissal. “Mr. Carter is due in surgery. You’re waiting?”

“Yes.” He spoke for both of them. “We want to be here.”

Sister nodded. “There’s no telling how long it might be.”

“We’ll wait.” Eden spoke for the first time. “We couldn’t possibly leave.”

But Owen wanted desperately to detain them. “Lang,” he called, his voice weak and slurred.

“Go now,” Sister said. “You’re disturbing the patient.”

“I think he wants to tell me something.” Lang started to move back towards Owen but Sister stepped with authority between them.

“If you don’t mind.” She lifted a hand to signal a medical attendant who wheeled Owen away.

He sat Eden in the waiting room, a cup of coffee in hand before he put through a call to Owen’s home from the privacy of the empty corridor. He had spoken to the Carter housekeeper initially, not filling her in before he had a chance to speak to Delma, but he had left the message for Delma to ring him on his mobile the moment she got in. The housekeeper sensing something was wrong had apologised profusely for not knowing exactly where Mrs. Carter had gone. Mrs. Carter was a busy lady, sometimes she forgot to say.

It seemed an age before Delma’s call came through. He saw the girl’s eyes as he left the waiting room again. She seemed to know intuitively this was Owen’s wife.

Delma didn’t take the news calmly. She was a volatile woman, her cries so despairing they echoed quite stridently over the phone line. It was as though Owen couldn’t possibly pull through. He tried his very best to reassure her but in the end had to fall back on telling her he would ring the instant they had news.

“That was upsetting?” The girl’s eyes flew to his as he took a chair beside her. They were alone. Another couple had been there, but they had left.

He nodded, not surprised by her perceptiveness. “That was Delma. She’s quite distraught.”

“She loves him,” the girl said as though that explained it. As indeed it did.

“I couldn’t convince her she will see him again.” He thrust an agitated hand through his hair.

“It must be terrible to be so far away.”

That incited his retort. “Would you have risked being here had Delma been in the city?”

She looked undismayed. “Of course. But then Owen would have made things clear.”

“That’s childish talk,” he answered, and shook his head. “You truly believe Delma, his wife, would just walk away? Miss Sinclair, you don’t know her. I wouldn’t care to see Delma humbled and humiliated. She wouldn’t react with quiet dignity. She’d turn into a tigress before your eyes. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Certainly for her son, Owen’s heir.”

“Tell me about him,” she invited, speaking in a gentle tranced tone. Perhaps she was in shock. “Robbie. Roberto?” She longed to say “my little brother, my half brother,” but she had given her word to Owen he would be the one to break their grand news.

“My godson,” he said with deliberate irony. “I have another. My sister, Georgia’s, boy, Ryan. Both boys are of an age. Why do you want to know?” He allowed his eyes to move over her face, feature by feature, almost dividing it up into segments like a painter. Above and beyond the physical perfection of her features was a quality that gave her real power. Sensitivity? Mystery? Refinement? Maybe it was all three.

“I want to know everything about Owen,” she said. “He’s told me so much but you have a different perspective. Certainly of me.”

“Can you blame me?” he asked with heavy emphasis. “Owen has a wife yet he’s obsessed with you.”

“Obsessions aren’t uncommon.”

“Especially with women like you.”

Tension fairly crackled in the air around them. “Why don’t you tell me what you think I’m like?” she invited, not avoiding his lancing gaze, but suddenly challenging it.

“I have no desire to make you unhappier than you are.” He kept his voice toneless. “You realise Delma will be flying down to Brisbane?”

“I’m surprised she’s not already on a plane.”

“Then don’t be surprised at all the complications. I assume you’re not going quietly?”