Sara Craven - Dark Summer Dawn

She said between her teeth, ‘How readily you reduce everything to cash terms. You know what you can do with your bloody money!’

‘Spare me the righteous wrath,’ he drawled. ‘I know quite well Chas has been paying out handsomely for the honour of keeping you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed. I can’t stop him, of course, but perhaps you should remember that there’ll come a time when the gravy train will stop permanently.’

And on that day, Lisa thought savagely, it would give her immense satisfaction to return every unspent penny.

She said with assumed lightness, ‘You disappoint me. There was I thinking I was set up for life. I shall have to take care I don’t lose my looks.’

‘I should just take care generally,’ he said gently. He put down the pottery mug and stood up. ‘Thank you for the coffee. I’m driving back to Yorkshire tomorrow. I’ll pick you up around midday.’

‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said. ‘I have arrangements to make, and there are trains.’

‘So there are,’ he agreed. ‘But Chas at least would think it strange that we didn’t travel together. I don’t deny your attractions, but I’m sure there are other models in London.’

‘Plenty,’ she said flatly.

‘Then let’s have no more excuses about arrangements.’ He gave her a long dispassionate look. ‘Play this my way, Lisa, and I’ll see to it that you aren’t bothered in future. You can come back here after the wedding and live whatever kind of life takes your fancy. I’ll see you tomorrow, and don’t keep me waiting.’

He didn’t seem to expect her to show him out, and she was glad of that because she didn’t think her shaking legs would support her. She remained on the sofa staring at the door which had just closed behind him and trying to make sense of the last teeming half hour.

In a moment, she told herself, she would wake up and find she’d been having a bad dream. Whenever there had been nightmares, it had always seemed as if Dane was part of them hovering there somewhere on the fringe of her subconscious.

She hoped very much she would wake up soon. She moved restively and her hand caught her undrunk mug of coffee and spilled it across the hearthrug, and she stared for a moment down at the resultant mess, forcing herself to face reality.

Somehow, without knowing quite how it had happened, she was going back to Stoniscliffe to help with Julie’s wedding. She sank her teeth into her lower lip. It was no wonder Dane was such a success in business. No object remained immovable for long under the pressure of his irresistible force. She loathed him!

She cleaned up the spilled coffee while her mind ran round and round like a small animal trapped on a wheel. She could always vanish, she supposed. She had done it once two years ago, and she could do it again. But to do so would be to hurt Julie who didn’t deserve it, and more importantly, it would grieve Chas.

Lisa caught her breath at the thought of him in a wheelchair. He had always been such a strong, positive man. This new weakness would irk him terribly, she knew, and found herself wondering exactly when it had happened.

At the same time, she told herself fiercely that she wasn’t to feel guilty. If her disappearance from Stoniscliffe had had even a remote connection with Chas’s stroke, then Dane would have mentioned it. A mirthless smile curved her mouth. Boy, would he have mentioned it! So she wasn’t to blame herself, although she knew that her conscience would trouble her. Chas had been ill and needing her, and she hadn’t known. Why hadn’t Julie told her? she asked herself almost despairingly, and then shook her head at her own foolishness. Julie would have been obeying orders.

Chas would have wanted her to return to Stoniscliffe under her own steam, at her own wish. He wouldn’t take kindly to any sort of pleading on his behalf from anyone. Not even from Dane.

So that was yet another secret she had to keep, because Chas had never known the real reason why she had left Stoniscliffe in the first place, and that was the most important secret of all. No one knew the truth except herself, and the man who had just left her crouched, trembling like a child, in a corner of her own sofa.

She went across to the telephone and dialled Jos’s number. Myra answered almost at once, and her voice bubbled down the phone as she recognised Lisa.

‘Did you enjoy the trip? Are you worn out? Come to supper tomorrow night and tell me your version.’

‘I’d love to, but I can’t.’ Lisa hesitated. ‘Is he in a good mood, Myra?’

‘Fair to middling. Why, is there something wrong?’

‘In a way. I have to go away for a few weeks, that’s all.’

‘That’ll be enough,’ Myra said blankly. ‘What’s happened?’ She paused. ‘You’re not—ill or anything?’

Lisa guessed the real question behind the tactful words. ‘No, nothing like that. I have to go up north to organise a family wedding. My stepsister is getting married, and there’s a panic on.’

She could hear Myra talking to someone at the other end, her voice muffled and then Jos spoke.

He said sharply, ‘What is all this, Lisa? Myra says you’re going up north. You have to be joking!’

‘I wish I were.’ Lisa rapidly explained about the wedding. ‘But there’s more to it than that,’ she went on. ‘I’ve just found out that my stepfather had a stroke at some time, and that he wants to see me.’

‘Oh, hell!’ Jos was silent for a moment. ‘You realise that all this couldn’t be happening at a worse time.’

‘Please believe that if I could get out of going, I would,’ she said unhappily. ‘But they’re all the family I’ve got, and I owe them a great deal. Certainly I owe them this.’

‘Then obviously you must go, but for heaven’s sake get back as soon as you can. They have short memories in this game,’ he said grimly. He paused. ‘You said they were all the family you’ve got. Wasn’t there a brother as well? I seem to remember Dinah mentioning him.’

‘There was and there is,’ she said. ‘But I don’t regard him as a brother. It was Julie I grew up with.’

‘Lucky Julie,’ Jos commented. ‘Tell the stepfather he did a good job. And phone me as soon as you get back.’

‘That’s a promise,’ Lisa said, and replaced her receiver. Her hand was sweating slightly and she wiped it down the skirt of her dressing gown.

She would have to write to Dinah and she could pay Mrs Hargreaves and give her any necessary instructions in the morning. There was no great problem there.

The towering, the insuperable, the shattering difficulty was getting through, firstly, tomorrow, and then the days after that. If it hadn’t been for the wedding she might have been able to do a deal—to say to Dane, ‘I want to go back. I want to see Chas, to spend some time with him, and I’ll do it on the understanding that you go and stay far away from Stoniscliffe while I’m there.’

But because of Chas’s paralysis, Dane was going to give Julie away. He had to be there, and so there was no bargain to be struck.

Not that Dane struck bargains anyway, she thought. He made decisions and carried them through to his own advantage. If he negotiated, he expected to be on the winning side, and generally was. She had never seen him bested by anyone, although at one time she had dreamed dreams of doing it herself. But not any more. He had shown her brutally and finally that against him, she could not win, and she still had the emotional scars to prove it.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She couldn’t let herself think about that because otherwise she would turn tail and run away somewhere—anywhere, and Dane would know then exactly what he had done to her, and triumph in his knowledge.