Penny Jordan - The Hidden Years

Only she knew how much she had been tempted to go back downstairs last night to go on reading… As for finishing more of the diaries tonight… She had no idea how long the meeting would go on for, but what she did know was that she would be expected to make copious notes…to record faithfully every detail of what had taken place for her mother’s later assessment, if not for the rest of the committee.

Odd how, now, when her mother could not physically or emotionally compel her to act in the way she considered right and proper, she was actually compelling herself to do so… The details of her own work, her own commitments, she carried around with her in her head, much to the irritation of her secretary—she had never been methodical, never been organised or logical in the way she worked, always taking a perverse and contrary delight in abandoning routine and order to follow a seemingly careless and uncontrolled path of her own.

And yet here she was meticulously planning to follow in her mother’s orderly footsteps, as though in doing so she was somehow fulfilling some kind of sacred trust, somehow keeping the flickering flame of her mother’s life-force alive.

Ridiculous…emotional, idiotic stuff…and yet so powerful, so strong, so forceful was its message within her that she was compelled to listen to it and to obey.

‘I HADN’T realised—it was almost as though Gran wasn’t there at all.’ Camilla shivered, despite the centrally heated warmth of the hospital.

‘She’s heavily drugged, Cam,’ Sage told her gently. ‘The nurse said that it was to give her body a chance of getting over the shock of the accident and her injuries…’

Camilla swallowed visibly, suddenly a child again as she pleaded anxiously, ‘She isn’t going to die, is she, Sage…? I don’t want her to die…’

Sensing the hysteria lurking beneath the plea, Sage turned to her and took her in her arms. ‘I can’t answer that question, Cam. I only know, as you do, that if anyone can survive this kind of thing your grandmother will do so…’

Sage was wondering if they had been wise allowing Camilla into the intensive care unit. She had seen the compassion in the nurse’s eyes when Camilla had visibly reacted to the sight of her grandmother hooked up to so much machinery, her body still, her eyes shuttered, to all intents and purposes already gone beyond any human help.

‘Please, let’s go… I can’t…’

‘I have to wait to see the specialist,’ Sage reminded her quietly. ‘But you can go and wait in the car if you’d prefer… Perhaps your mother…?’

She turned to Faye, who was if anything even more visibly affected than her daughter, but Faye shook her head and said doggedly, ‘No, I’ll stay with you.’

Handing Camilla the car keys and watching her walk a little unsteadily down the corridor, Sage nibbled ferociously on her bottom lip.

‘I hadn’t realised,’ Faye was saying unevenly beside her. ‘I knew she was very ill, but I hadn’t…’ She swallowed. ‘Oh, God, Sage, I’m so scared… I can’t bear the thought of losing her… I thought…I thought the worst was over and that it was just a matter of time…of recuperation, but now… And I’m being so selfish. She’s your mother and not mine…’

‘And because of that I must love her more?’ Sage smiled grimly. ‘How naïve you can be sometimes, Faye. You know the situation between Mother and me. We don’t get on; we never have. Oh, as a child I wanted her love, craved it almost until I realised I simply was not and never could be the child she wanted—or another David… I don’t blame her for that… After David, I must have come as a deep disappointment to her. I don’t suppose you can understand. The whole world adores my mother…adores her and respects her…’

‘I do understand.’

It was said so quietly that Sage almost didn’t hear it. She turned to look at her sister-in-law and surprised such a look of raw pain in her eyes that she had to turn away again. It was as though she had momentarily opened the door into a private, secret room, and she withdrew from it with the instinctive speed of a nature that hated to trespass or impinge on anyone else’s privacy because she valued her own so much.

‘Sage—’

The fierce urgency with which Faye said her name caused her to look at her again, but just as Faye was about to speak the door opened and the specialist she had seen before, Alaric Ferguson, walked in.

If anything he looked even more exhausted, Sage recognised. He gave her a distant glance before focusing properly on her, saying as he recognised her, ‘Miss Danvers, Sister will have told you that we have had to sedate your mother in an effort to lessen the physical shock of her accident, and until we’re completely happy that that has taken place we won’t be able to do anything further.’

‘Her injuries—what exactly are they?’ Sage demanded urgently.

He paused, looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then said bluntly, ‘We suspect there’s some pressure on her brain—how much we can’t as yet tell. In case you don’t understand the seriousness of this, perhaps I should explain…’

When he did so, outlining in brutal detail the small, very small chance of her mother actually recovering, Sage discovered that she was gripping the inside of her mouth sharply with her teeth to prevent her lips from trembling. Behind her she heard Faye give a low, shocked cry. She reacted to it immediately, spinning round to reach out to her, but the specialist had moved faster and as Sage turned towards Faye he was already reaching out to grip her arm and steady her.

He wasn’t the kind of man who appealed sexually to Sage—oh, he was tall, and probably well enough built if one discounted the exhausted hunch of his shoulders and the stoop that came from working long hours. True, his skin was pale from lack of fresh air, his eyes bloodshot, his dark red hair untidy and badly cut, but underneath his lack of outward physical gloss there was such an obvious aura of male strength and reliability about him that Sage was astounded to see Faye stagger back from him, her face white with deathly fear, her mouth contorted almost in a grimace of atavistic rejection.

Sage knew that her sister-in-law preferred to keep the male sex at a physical distance, but she had never seen her react like this before, never seen her make a movement that was uncoordinated…never seen any emotion across her face as intense and primitive as the defensive rage which now etched it.

For a moment she was too shocked to speak or intervene. The specialist looked as shocked as she felt, and then Sage saw shock give way to a mingling of curiosity and concern as he quickly withdrew from her.

‘It’s perfectly all right,’ he told her quietly. ‘I’m sorry if I alarmed you.’ With that he turned on his heel and left them alone.

In the strained silence of the empty room, the harsh battle Faye was fighting for control of her body and breathing was painfully audible. Sage dared not reach out to her, dared not speak to her, never mind touch her. Her eyes had gone wild, feral almost like an animal’s when the primitive instinct of panic overcame every trace of domesticity. It was almost as though, if Sage did reach out to touch her, Faye might sink into her hand the teeth she had bared in that shocking sharp snarl of rejection.