A Little Revenge Omnibus (29 page)

‘Tell me,’ Dee repeated softly.

Slowly, haltingly at first, Anna started to explain what had happened.

‘He did what?’ Dee demanded flatly in disbelief when Anna explained about the mistake at the hospital and how she had assumed that Ward was her lover.

‘He...this man, this stranger, who less than twelve hours previously had been threatening you...actually allowed you to believe that you and he were lovers...?’

The furious outrage in Dee’s voice made Anna bite her bottom lip.

‘I’ve been thinking about it over and over again,’ she told Dee in a low voice. ‘I was the one who assumed that we were lovers. I’m to blame for that and—’

‘You were suffering from amnesia,’ Dee reminded her grimly.

‘He knew perfectly well what the real relationship—if it can be called a relationship—was between you. He should never...’ She stopped, her eyes flashing with contempt. ‘Of all the underhanded, conniving...’

‘I thought he loved me,’ Anna told her shakily, ‘but all the time he actually hated me, loathed me...’

Closing her eyes, she placed her hand over her mouth to silence the sobs of emotion she could feel rising in her throat.

‘I never suspected anything; I truly believed...’

Dee watched her silently. She didn’t want to upset Anna by questioning just how far the deception had gone. It appalled her to know that Anna had been victimised, and in such a cruel and dangerous way, and she could well understand why her friend felt that she didn’t want to return to her own home where she would be on her own.

‘What I don’t understand is how on earth anyone could possibly justify such behaviour,’ Dee breathed furiously when Anna had eventually told her everything. ‘What possible motivation could he have had?’

‘He wanted his half-brother’s money back,’ Anna told her quietly.

She was beginning to feel slightly more in control now. Telling Dee what had happened, painful though it had been, had had a cathartic effect on her, helping to ground her a little better and make her feel more like her normal self instead of as though some unfamiliar stranger was inhabiting her body and her emotions.

‘He did that to you for money?’ Dee demanded savagely.

‘No, not just for money,’ Anna told her, shaking her head. ‘I think there must have been a certain degree of revenge and punishment in it for him...’

‘What? How could anyone...?’ Dee began, but Anna shook her head, giving Dee a small, painful smile.

‘We did,’ she reminded her dryly. ‘Or at least we tried to with Julian...’

‘Oh, yes, but that wasn’t the same thing at all,’ Dee protested quickly. ‘There’s no way anyone could compare you with Julian. You weren’t in any way responsible for Julian’s scams...’

‘You and I might know that, but Ward...’ She paused, and had to swallow hard before she was able to continue speaking. ‘Ward thought I was.’

‘But to deceive you like that. To...’

‘To pretend that he loved me? Take me to bed?’ Anna gave a brief mirthless laugh. ‘He did actually try to insist that we had separate rooms. I was the one who...’ She stopped again.

‘Oh, Dee,’ she wept. ‘I feel so...so degraded, so...so—’ She broke off. There were some things that were just too painful to discuss.

‘Well, at least you’re back and you’re safe; that’s the main thing,’ Dee told her briskly. When she saw Anna’s face she touched her arm a little awkwardly and told her gruffly, ‘I know you won’t think it possible right now, but eventually time will soften... You’ll feel...it won’t seem so bad as it does right now. After all, you’re over the worst, you’ve experienced that already, so, logically, things can only get better.’

Anna gave her a small wry smile.

‘What did he say when you confronted him, when you told him that you knew the truth?’ Dee asked her. ‘Did he express any kind of remorse, try to make any kind of explanation or apology...?’

‘No...’ Anna began, and then, when she saw Dee’s outraged expression, she told her shakily, ‘I didn’t confront him. I...I just left him a note saying that I’d remembered everything; that I knew... I couldn’t bear... I just wanted to get away, Dee,’ she told her. ‘You see...’ She paused and a single tear rolled betrayingly down her pale face. ‘You see...’ Despairingly she twisted the damp tissue she was holding in her fingers. ‘I really thought I loved him; I really believed... He seemed so...so right,’ she told Dee helplessly. ‘Being with him felt so right... It was as though...it was as though he filled in all the missing pieces of my life, as though he completed it and me in a way that I’d never dreamed I could be complete. It was as though he... Even now I can’t really believe... It all seems like a dream...’

‘Nightmare, more like,’ Dee told her angrily as she leaned over to take her in a protective hug.

Anna smiled sadly. It was crazy, humiliating and dangerous, she knew, but deep down inside she knew that a part of her was always going to ache and long for him, that that part of her which he had touched so vibrantly and brought to life so immediately and intensely was always going to yearn for him. No amount of righteous anger, of bitterness and contempt, or logical emotional response to what he had done, was ever going to completely wipe out of her memory the sweetness of what they had shared, even though she now knew it had been a poison-tipped sweetness.

But that was her secret, her cross to bear for the rest of her life.

‘I’d love to have him here right now to give him a piece of my mind,’ Dee told her with angry contempt. ‘To do something like that, to you of all people...’

She saw that Anna’s eyes were filling with tears again.

‘Come on,’ she told her gently. ‘Let’s get you upstairs and in bed. You look exhausted.’

‘No. I’m fine,’ Anna protested, but she still obediently followed Dee towards the stairs.

* * *

‘S
O
HOW
IS
Anna now?’ Kelly asked Dee anxiously. ‘What did the doctor say? Is she...?’

‘She’s fine,’ Dee assured the other girl, tucking the telephone receiver under her chin so that she could stroke Missie, who was as anxious about Anna as the rest of them were. ‘The doctor has given her the all-clear medically; he said, though, that she needed to rest as she’s obviously undergone a tremendous amount of trauma.’

At Anna’s specific request, Dee had kept the details of Ward’s role in what had happened to her to an absolute minimum. So far as Kelly and Beth knew, Ward was simply someone who had stepped in to help her after her accident and subsequent loss of memory—a good Samaritan, so to speak, even though it had practically choked Dee to have to refer to him as such.

‘Did she say why she went away—or where?’ Kelly asked Dee curiously.

‘Oh, she just felt like a few days away,’ Dee responded airily and, she hoped, dismissively enough not to further arouse Kelly’s curiosity, but despite her outwardly relaxed manner inwardly Dee was seething with fury over the way Ward Hunter had behaved towards her friend. How could he possibly have thought she was the kind of woman who would get involved in anything even vaguely underhand? Anna was the type of woman who panicked if she couldn’t get a parking ticket out of the machine and instead left a message plus an IOU for the car park attendant—and, even if he had thought she was involved in some kind of criminal activity with Julian Cox, to have done to her what he had done...

Dee closed her eyes as she replaced her telephone receiver after Kelly’s call. Why, why were they the way they were? For every man like her own father and Kelly’s Brough there were ten—no, a hundred—who seemed to deliberately go out of their way to hurt the woman they professed to love. Dee carried her own scars from the war she believed existed between the sexes, but that was another story.

A little ruefully Dee admitted that she had perhaps been rather heavy-handed, in more than one sense, with the large brandy she had insisted on Anna drinking earlier in the evening, but it had had the desired effect and now Anna was getting some much needed sleep. The trauma of her temporary amnesia was something that anyone would find difficult to come to terms with, never mind the added misery and anguish Anna had been caused, Dee reflected as she checked that Anna’s pets were secure in their new temporary home.

She still had some financial reports to read before she went to bed. The responsibility of handling her father’s complex financial empire was one she took extremely seriously. His death had been totally unexpected, and it had thrown her head-first into relatively unfamiliar work, but Dee had felt she owed it to him to become familiar with it and to ensure that his business interests generated enough money to service his varied philanthropic activities.

The only changes she had made were such that his financial generosity to the various charities he had helped had been made public, so that other people would know, as she had known, just what a very special and caring man her father had been.

There were times when she still missed him very badly. If he could see her now, would he be disappointed in her? she wondered. He had been a little old-fashioned in some ways, and she knew he would have wanted her to marry and have children. But how could she do that? There was enough of him in her for her to know that she could only make that kind of commitment to someone if she truly loved them and was loved by them in return. And how could that ever be possible when she didn’t believe that love, the kind of love she had dreamed of as a young girl, actually existed? Love was simply a word used to cloak far more practical and less ideological emotions. Love, or rather the promise of it, was just a weapon men used against women.

‘I love you,’ they said, but what they meant was, ‘I love myself.’

‘You’d better watch it,’ she mocked Whittaker playfully. ‘There aren’t many males brave enough to come into this house!’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘H
OW
IS
HE
?’

Ward put down the article he had been reading as his mother came out of his stepfather’s hospital room, closing the door behind her.

Instantly his mother’s face broke into a relaxed smile.

‘He’s feeling much better. The specialist just wants to have a few words with him and then he... He saw the specialist this morning and he’s confirmed that it wasn’t a heart attack after all. They’ve got all the test results back now and he thinks the pain was caused by anxiety.

‘You know how your stepfather is, and he’s been worrying about this trip Ritchie is planning to make to America...’

Ward made a small, explosive sound before getting up and reassuring his mother.

‘There’s no need for him to worry about anything...’

‘I know that, dear, but you know what he’s like. He feels it isn’t fair that you’re having to finance Ritchie through university when you...’

She stopped and Ward gave her a wry look.

‘When I what? When I had to work my own way through life? Ma, for heaven’s sake, surely he doesn’t think I begrudge Ritchie the chance—’

‘No. No, of course he doesn’t,’ his mother reassured him quickly. ‘He knows how fond you are of Ritchie, Ward,’ she told her elder son, placing her hand on his arm. ‘We both do. You’ve done so much for all of us. I just wish... You really ought to marry again, you know,’ she told him gently. ‘Have children... I know that...’ She stopped and then looked at him intently.

‘You’ve met someone, haven’t you? Don’t deny it, Ward. I can see it in your eyes...’

Ward was too taken aback to deny her maternal perception, stating curtly, ‘I don’t want to talk about it, and anyway—’ He broke off, his mouth hardening.

Perhaps it wasn’t really surprising that his mother had guessed about Anna. After all, he had barely stopped thinking about her from the moment he had read her note. Even in his most anxious moments for his stepfather, Anna had still been there in his thoughts, tormenting him, haunting him.

He had tried telling himself that everything he had done had been justified; that he had owed it to Ritchie and her other victims to do what he had done, but, instead of being able to focus on her crime, all he had really been able to do was remember how she had felt in his arms, how she had smelled, tasted, been, and how much he was missing her, how damnably much.

‘Tell me about her,’ his mother insisted with firm maternal authority.

Ward glanced towards his stepfather’s closed hospital-room door, but it was obvious that no help or rescue was going to come from that area.

‘There isn’t anything to tell,’ he informed his mother brusquely. ‘Oh, you needn’t look at me like that.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking; it’s no match made in heaven, Ma, far more like one made in hell.’

His skin darkened slightly as he saw the look of mingled despair and compassion in his mother’s eyes.

‘She’s a liar and the next damned thing to being a thief,’ he told her baldly. ‘By rights there’s no way I should feel about her the way I do, but...’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘And, even if she felt the same way about me, which now that she knows...’ He stopped again.

‘Tell me,’ his mother repeated.

‘You won’t like it,’ he warned her grimly.

Twenty minutes later, when he had finished, his mother’s face was pale.

‘You’re right,’ she told him in a strained voice. ‘I don’t like it. Oh, Ward,’ she burst out painfully. ‘How could you do such a thing? That poor girl. What must she have felt?’

‘That poor girl?’ Ward exploded. ‘Ma, she’s the one—’ He stopped, pushing his fingers into his hair. ‘If anyone needs your sympathy then...’

‘Ward, she must have been so hurt and shocked. To have believed you loved her as much as she obviously loves you...’

‘Hang on a minute... What makes you think she loves me?’ Ward demanded sharply.

‘But it’s so obvious,’ his mother replied gently. ‘If she didn’t love you she would never have... Ward, of course she loves you,’ she told him severely.

‘Ma, you’re behaving as though...’ He hesitated and shook his head in frustration. ‘I told you. The reason I went to see her in the first place was because...’

‘Because she cheated Ritchie out of five thousand pounds,’ his mother agreed serenely. ‘Yes, I know. But, Ward, have you thought she could have had a reason for her behaviour? There could have been mitigating circumstances...’

‘For what’s damn near fraud?’ Ward demanded scornfully. ‘Ma...’

‘Is it really so important what she did, Ward?’ his mother asked him quietly. ‘You’ve as good as said yourself that you love her. I know that she must love you.’

‘Of course it’s important,’ Ward told her harshly. ‘If a person is inherently dishonest, how can you have a trusting relationship with them? How could I ever...?’

‘Ward, I’ve never told you this, but when I first knew your stepfather there’d been a spate of thefts from the school—only small amounts of money were involved, but they were thefts nonetheless. I knew and so did your stepfather that all the circumstantial evidence pointed to me being the thief. Your stepfather had every reason to believe that I was a thief, but he still put his feelings for me and the fact that he had fallen in love with me above all the logical facts that indicated that I was responsible for taking money from the school.’

‘But you weren’t the thief,’ Ward pointed out grimly, ‘and Anna...’

‘Ward, you aren’t listening to me,’ his mother told him
gently. ‘Just as you aren’t listening to your heart. You should do. Sometimes it gives a much truer message than one’s brain.

‘Go and see her,’ she counselled him. ‘Go and see your Anna, Ward, and tell her what you’ve told me. Tell her that you love her.’

He wasn’t going to, of course. What was the point? He had already made a complete fool of himself over her once, telling her that he loved her, but fate had intervened, giving him a second chance to get his life back under his own control, giving him a second chance to listen to the logical, analytical messages of his brain rather than the emotional ones of his heart.

No, he wasn’t going to pay any attention whatsoever to what his mother had said, to what he himself was feeling...

So why, just as soon as he had assured himself that his stepfather was on the mend, was he driving far too fast along a motorway which would not take him home to Yorkshire but instead to Rye?

Because his mother was right, that was why. Because he loved Anna and he couldn’t let her go without at least seeing her one more time.

One more time. Just who was he kidding? Ward asked himself with grim black humour.

He loved Anna, and he loved her so deeply and so intensely that... That what? That he was prepared to abandon his principles and his beliefs for her? That he thought he could totally suspend reality and pretend that she had not done what they both knew she had done?

And what of Anna herself? What if she did not want to change? What if she enjoyed cheating and deceiving? What if he took her his offer of amnesty and a completely new beginning and she threw it back in his face?

But somehow Ward could not imagine the Anna he had come to know and love so intimately ever behaving like that. She had shown such tenderness and compassion, such concerned awareness for the feelings of others, that it would, quite simply, be totally out of character for her to do that kind of thing.

But had he actually known the real Anna? Perhaps her blow on the head had affected more than just her memory. What was he trying to persuade himself to believe? Ward asked himself scornfully. That Anna had undergone a complete personality change? Now he was venturing into the realms of fantasy.

But still, when the opportunity came half an hour later for him to switch motorways and drive straight home, he made no attempt to take it.

* * *

‘Are you sure you really feel well enough to be home?’ Dee asked Anna sternly as they stood in Anna’s kitchen.

‘Dee, I’m fine,’ Anna responded gently.

Dee had tried every argument she could think of to persuade Anna to change her mind and stay on as her guest instead of going back to her own house, but Anna had remained obdurate and Dee had finally been persuaded to drive her home.

‘I have to get my life back to normal some time,’ she had responded with a brisk lack of self pity when Dee had suggested that perhaps she needed more time to come to terms with what had happened, before returning home where she would be on her own.

‘I think it is much better that I should get back into the swing of things sooner rather than later,’ Anna insisted now. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate all that you’ve done for me,’ she told Dee warmly. ‘Without you...’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘It’s made me feel so much better just having someone to talk things over with, and I’m grateful to you as well, Dee, for keeping what I’ve told you between the two of us. It’s bad enough that I’ve made such a complete fool of myself anyway...’

‘I’m sure that Kelly and Beth would have understood,’ Dee told her quickly and truthfully.

‘Yes. I know they would, but... Beth seems to be over Julian but she’s changed...she’s different. There’s something on her mind, something that’s worrying her, but whatever it is she just doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.’

‘Mmm... I must admit I have noticed that she does seem to be rather preoccupied lately,’ Dee agreed, ‘but I’d put that down to the problems she seems to be having with this stuff she ordered when she was in Prague.’

‘Oh, dear, has she still not received that order?’ Anna asked her. ‘Poor Beth; I hope it arrives soon. I know she was counting on it to boost her sales.’

‘Mmm... Well, she’s got time yet,’ Dee reminded her.

‘You’ve been such a wonderful friend to all of us, Dee,’ Anna praised her. ‘You’ve helped us all and—’

‘Helped you?’ Dee interrupted her dryly. ‘Have I? I was responsible for nearly turning Kelly and Brough against one another, and now it’s because I involved you in lending Julian money that this Ward Hunter has behaved so badly towards you...’

Anna looked quickly at Dee. There were still times when she tended to forget that Dee was actually younger than her, times when all of them tended to lean on her, but Anna recognised that Dee too had her moments of insecurity, her moments of vulnerability.

‘You are a good friend,’ she reiterated softly now. ‘A very good friend, Dee. I just wish...’ She stopped and looked searchingly at her. ‘I don’t want to pry but...this thing between you and Julian Cox. There’s more to it than you’ve ever told any of us, I think...’

Anna waited, holding her breath, wondering if Dee would take the opportunity she was trying to give her to confide in her as Anna had done in her, and, for a moment, she thought her patience was going to be rewarded as Dee began hesitantly, ‘Yes, there is, and...’

‘And...?’ Anna encouraged.

Dee looked away from her.

‘I can’t... It isn’t anything really,’ she told her dismissively, and Anna knew that there was no point in trying to press her any further. She knew something else as well, she acknowledged a little sadly as Dee announced that she would go out to the car to bring in the rest of Anna’s things, and the shopping they had just bought. She knew that Dee was lying to her.

She couldn’t make Dee confide in her, but what she could do, Anna decided as she gave in to Dee’s insistence and agreed that, yes, perhaps she would go upstairs and rest on her bed for a while, was to make sure that if Dee did ever need her—for any reason—she was there for her.

‘Look, I’ve got to go and do some supermarket shopping,’ Dee told her. ‘If there’s anything that you want I could get it for you and we could perhaps have lunch here together...’

Anna hesitated before accepting Dee’s offer. She was perfectly well enough to go and do her own supermarket shopping now that she was home, but if she was honest she knew that if anyone were to ask her the kind of questions she could not bring herself to answer... It was still too soon, her emotions still too raw.

‘I shan’t be long,’ Dee assured her, heading for the door.

The last thing she felt like doing was sleeping, Anna admitted after Dee had gone, but nevertheless she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, opening them quickly a few minutes later as the telephone beside the bed rang. Reaching for the receiver, she said, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello,’ she heard a woman’s voice responding warmly. ‘Am I speaking to Anna Trewayne?’

‘Yes, you are,’ Anna confirmed. ‘But who—?’

‘My name is Ruth. I’m Ward’s mother...’

Ward’s mother! Anna nearly dropped the receiver; her heart was thudding frantically, her immediate instinct being to replace the receiver and blot out the woman’s soft, warm voice. But as though she had guessed what Anna was thinking Ruth begged her, ‘Please listen to me, Anna. Please...’

Dazed, Anna did as she had requested.

Ward’s mother, as Anna soon discovered, had a very good understanding of her son, his bad points as well as his good ones.

‘I’m not trying to make excuses for him, and certainly do not intend to make his apologies for him,’ she told Anna firmly. ‘But what I do want to say, Anna, is that he loves you very much.’

‘He didn’t love me at the hospital when he allowed me to believe that we were lovers,’ Anna countered quietly.

‘No,’ his mother agreed immediately. ‘He didn’t love you then, but, after all, he didn’t know you then.’

‘He deliberately and callously took advantage of my vulnerability,’ Anna pointed out remorselessly.

‘Yes,’ his mother conceded, without attempting to defend him. ‘And the fact that he believed you had done the same thing to Ritchie in no way excuses that behaviour,’ she added firmly.

On her end of the line Anna smiled rather ruefully at that quick and very sure maternal thrust.

‘Why are you telling me all of this?’ she asked Ward’s mother eventually.

‘Because I’m a woman as well as a mother,’ she came back immediately. ‘And I know that as a woman you need to know that your own instincts and feelings didn’t betray you. That what you and Ward shared was real and that he does love you.’