Penny Jordan - The Hidden Years

These were early days, the first of a series of skirmishes to be gone through before real battle was joined, Sage recognised. Having studied her mother’s files, she was well aware of how much help could be gained in such cases from the ability to lobby powerful figures for support.

Was that why her mother had been in London? There had been a time when it had been suggested that she might stand for Parliament, but she had declined, saying that she felt she wasn’t able to give enough time to a political career. Even so, her mother had a wide variety of contacts, some of them extremely influential.

Engrossed in her own thoughts, Sage frowned as the hall door opened and a man walked in.

Tall, dark-haired, wearing the kind of immaculate business suit she had rather expected to see on the man from the Ministry, he nevertheless had an air of latent strength about him that marked him out as someone more used to physical activity than a deskbound lifestyle.

One could almost feel the ripple of feminine interest that followed him, Sage recognised, knowing now why Helen Ordman had dressed so enticingly. Not for her companion but for this man walking towards the stage, this man who had lifted his head and looked not at Helen Ordman but at her. And looked at her with recognition.

Daniel Cavanagh. The room started to spin wildly around her. Sage groped for the support of the desk, gripping it with her fingers as shock ran through her like electricity.

Daniel Cavanagh… How long was it since she had allowed herself to think about him, to remember even that he existed? How long was it since she had even allowed herself to whisper his name?

She felt cold with shock; she was shaking with the force of it, the reality of the reasons for his presence immediately overwhelmed by the churning maelstrom of memories that seeing him again had invoked.

Memories it had taken her years to suppress, to ignore, to deny…memories which even now had the power to make her body move restlessly as she fought to obliterate her own culpability, to ignore her guilt and pain—and yet after that one brief hard look of recognition he seemed so completely oblivious to her that they might have never met.

She heard Anne introducing him, was aware of the low-voiced conversation passing between him and Helen Ordman and, with it, the undercurrent of sexual possessiveness in the other woman’s voice, and bewilderingly a sharp pang of something so unexpected, so shockingly unwanted, so ridiculously unnecessary, stirred inside her that for a moment her whole body tensed with the implausibility of it.

Jealous…jealous of another woman’s relationship with a man she herself had never wanted, had never liked even…a man she had used callously and selfishly in anger and bitterness, and who had then turned those feelings, that selfishness against her so remorselessly that her memories of him were a part of her life she preferred to forget.

So many mistakes…her life was littered with them—she was that kind of person—but Daniel Cavanagh had been more than a mistake…he had been a near-fatal error, showing a dangerous lack of judgement both of herself and of him, a turning-point which had become the axis on which her present life revolved.

He was taking his seat next to her, the economical movements of his body well co-ordinated and efficient, indicative of a man at ease with himself and with his life.

Now, without the softening influence of youth, the bones of his face had hardened, the outline of his body matured. He was three years older than she, which made him about thirty-seven.

A faint ripple of polite applause broke into her thoughts. She watched him stand up and recognised almost resentfully that his suit was hand-tailored, as no doubt were his shirts. He had always been powerfully built, well over six feet and very broad.

She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but could hear only the crisp cadences of his voice, stirring echoes of another time, another place, when he had been equally concise, equally controlled, equally clinically detached as he had stripped her pride to the bone, ripped her soul into shreds, destroyed the very fabric of her being and then handed the pieces back to her with a cool politeness which had somehow been even more demeaning than all the rest put together.

‘I pity you,’ he had told her, and he had meant it. He, more than anyone else, more than Scott even, had been responsible for the destruction of the hot-headed, headstrong, self-absorbed girl she had been and the creation of the cautious, careful, self-reliant woman she had made herself become.

Perhaps she ought to be grateful to him… Grateful…that was what he had said to her, flinging the words at her like knives.

‘I suppose you think I should be grateful…’

And then he had turned them against her, using them to destroy her.

All these years, and she had never allowed herself to remember, to think, cutting herself off from the past as sharply as though she had burned a line of fire between her old life and the new.

She was still cold, desperate now to escape from the hall, to be alone, but she couldn’t escape, not yet—people were clamouring to ask questions. Whatever Daniel Cavanagh had said, he had stirred up a good deal of reaction.

She ought to have been listening. She ought to have been able to forget the past, to forget that she knew him…she ought to have been concentrating on what he was saying. That after all was why she was here. Sage closed the meeting without being aware of quite what she had said and the world came back into focus as Anne was saying something about the vicar having suggested that they all went back to the vicarage for an informal chat and a cup of tea. She shook her head, fighting to hold on to her self-control, to appear calm.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’

‘No, of course, you’ll be wanting to get back… Has there been any more news from the hospital?’

Sage shook her head again. It was beginning to ache dreadfully, a warning that she was about to have the kind of migraine attack she had long ago thought she had learned to control.

All she wanted to do was to shut herself away somewhere safe and dark, somewhere where she wouldn’t have to think, to pretend, somewhere where there was no tall, dark man standing at her side making her remember, making her feel.

She was the first to leave the hall after the meeting had broken up, her footsteps quick and tense, her nostrils flaring slightly as she got outside and was able to breathe in the cool fresh air.

Her Porsche was parked only yards away, but she doubted her ability to drive it with the necessary degree of safety. Her stomach was churning sickly, her head pounding… It wasn’t unheard of for her to actually black out during these migraine attacks.

If she had any sense she would telephone the house and ask Jenny if someone could come and collect her, she recognised, but to do that would mean lingering here, and inviting the possibility of having to face Daniel.

Already she could hear his voice behind her, and the softer, almost caressing one of his companion.

Had the woman no pride? she asked herself savagely. Didn’t she realise how obvious she was being, or didn’t she care? Daniel was not your ordinary straightforward male… Daniel knew all there was to know about the female psyche. Daniel…

‘Sage… I hear that, like me, you aren’t able to join the others at the vicarage…’

He was standing next to her—good manners, good sense, demanded that she turn round and acknowledge him, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn her head, couldn’t even open her mouth to respond.

‘Daniel, must you go? There’s so much we need to discuss…’

Thank goodness for predatory women, Sage thought in relief as Helen Ordman came between them, possessively taking hold of his arm.