Beggar Bride (41 page)

It’s a shame she is so immune to the timid advances of sandy-haired, bespectacled Giles, who is far from the wimp he makes out to be. Perhaps, given time…?

The sun was still bright in a clear blue sky when she and Billy went and sat on the beach with Jacob, like all the other normal families, the kind she’d always so longed to be, on holiday, relaxing with their children, with the money to buy them lilos and buckets and spades and sandcastle flags, she was unwilling to let Jacob out of her arms for one second. He was bright and cheerful, quite unaware of the danger he’d been in, they hadn’t hurt him and he’d been away such a short time he’d probably not even missed her… oh God, oh God,
thank you, God…

The first thing Fabian did on hearing that Jacob was safely returned was to persuade the law to leave it at that. This took some doing, he needed all his family influence and promises that the whole episode had been nothing but a misunderstanding, an unhappy response from an overworked and over-stressed employee who had since been taken to hospital and sedated, suffering from a nervous breakdown. And yes, the Ormerod family would certainly pay generous compensation for the expensive police operation.

When the last detective had gone, and carrying Jacob, with Archie tottering alongside, Ange met Fabian again, face to face in his book-lined study. She was agonisingly aware of him watching her with his knowing brown eyes. Their eyes met with an honesty that had never existed between them before.

She stayed with Fabian, so tall, so powerful, so dark, telling him things, talking about things, for over two hours.

It was Fabian who insisted she keep the money she had so carefully saved for herself and her family, a respectable amount by now. Ange hadn’t wanted this, she had seen giving back every penny as the only way she could compensate Fabian for some of the wrongs she had done. But he disagreed forcefully.

The only thing he insisted upon was that they maintain the status quo. ‘I have spoken to Giles about this and he is ashamed of his small role in this abysmal situation. For a while he, like Honesty, was under the influence of that terrible man, Callister, who, by the way, we have now discovered, was born Ryan Bates, and has been a drop-out since childhood. Giles is perfectly aware of the current state of affairs, and content to see Archie inherit Hurleston and all that that entails just as long as Honesty does not suffer in any way from her part in all this.’

What? This is impossible!
‘You want Archie to inherit?’

‘All this is merely practical common sense, Angela.’ Fabian smiled ruefully. He saw the hopeless tears in her eyes and misinterpreted them. If she declared her feelings now he would never, ever believe her. And anyway, what would she say? They are still too new and confused properly to express. ‘You were quite right in your original assumptions. I don’t want the kind of scandalous publicity that this sorry business would undoubtedly attract. I don’t want any of this to come out. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you are my lawful wife, you will carry out such few duties as this title requires, otherwise you will be left to your own devices with your real husband and your two children.’

Oh no. ‘I can’t leave Archie here, Fabian, I’m sorry, but I can’t…’

He looked surprised. ‘I wouldn’t ask that of you. I know how much you care about the children.’

‘But his education?’

‘That must be left up to you.’

‘And you wouldn’t interfere?’

‘Only if you needed my help.’

‘So me and Billy and Tina and Petal and Archie and Jacob are free to leave Hurleston? Is that what you’re telling me?’ But she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay here, with him.

‘Just as long as you promise me you will keep a low profile, revert to your ordinary married name in everyday life, and just so long, Angela, as we two can remain friends.’

‘What can I say?’ She couldn’t even look at him, he shamed her so. She tried. ‘Perhaps in another time, another place? Things could have been so different.’ The only reason they failed in bed was because he was so frightened to trust. She is the last person who can blame him for that. ‘You are amazing, Fabian…’

‘Likewise,’ he said. And then he smiled again,
as if he knew.
‘Who knows how things might have been, and this arrangement will suit me very well. While everyone believes me to be safely married maybe scheming women like you will, in future, leave me alone.’

So yes, this might be terrible, but nowhere near as bad as what Ange has been through already.

‘Why did you write those awful letters, Sandra?
What did you want from me?
And when did Tina tell you the truth?’

Watching the social worker’s broad face crack is like watching a cliff falling into the sea after years of cruel and constant battering. She jerks as she speaks, puppet-like, her words spilling out in a torrent of fury, there is no way, no way she can deny her role.

To the contrary, she is eager to tell it.

‘Tina broke down and blubbed the whole sorry story one day when she was at her lowest. Of course, I knew the truth by then, I had visited Maud Doubleday and realised that by any stretch of the imagination, that woman could not have been my mother. I did some fairly basic digging on my own, discovering quite easily that there was, in fact, this cruel disease, muscular dystrophy, running through Elfrida Ormerod’s family, and from there it wasn’t hard to work out the truth about my birth. The coincidences were too blatant to ignore. Lord and Lady Ormerod have blue eyes, like mine, while Maud’s are brown, like Fabian’s. Whoever heard of two blue-eyed people giving birth to a brown-eyed child? And Lady Elfrida and I share the same heavy build. The midwife in the centre of this was Maud Doubleday’s aunt. Yes, I was born to Elfrida Ormerod and immediately exchanged for the boy Maud gave birth to because it would be preferable.’

Sandra pauses and breathes in deeply. Her fishy blue eyes glitter with malice. ‘More convenient. Unlike so many women in her exalted position Lady Elfrida would not have to go on wearing herself out giving birth until she produced a son. So I was thrown out with the bath water to take my chances in the world. Robbed of my birthright. I was adopted.’

Ange can’t answer. There is nothing adequate to say. The woman she came to accuse seems to be the accuser now.

‘You don’t know, do you, Angela, what it’s like to be born plain? They call you “homely”, they try to find little points to compensate, they tell you you’re sweet-natured, or musical, or you have such lovely long fingers. That sort of thing.’ She stops to consider her own stubby ones. ‘Oh yes, we pretend that a great many other things matter like the hypocrites we women are but nobody is fooled by any of it.’ Sandra goes on, politely and coolly, jealousy sickly sweet in her voice. ‘No, for you it’s been so easy. You were chosen by one set of foster parents after another, everyone found it easy to love you, but what did you do? You threw it all back in their faces.’

Ange sits staring at Sandra, helpless and in total confusion.
‘No, no, you’re wrong, it was never like that…
’

‘You were so sweet, weren’t you, Angela, so pretty and so dainty. But did you show any gratitude for all the help and care you were given by so many well-meaning, kindly people? No, you did not! And when you wanted a man it was so easy for you, wasn’t it? Like falling off a log. You set your cap at him and Billy Harper fell at your feet. Anyone would have done, with your looks.’

‘You never liked Billy. You told me he was a loser.’

Sandra throws back her head and laughs. ‘When I think who you
could
have had, and you did in the end, didn’t you, you won the main prize!’

Won it. And lost it. Angela tries to stay calm and collected. ‘What made Tina tell you, Sandra?’

‘We were on the point of moving Petal to a place of safety.’

‘Because of Ed?’

‘Yes, and because of Tina’s inability to break free from him. The child was in danger.’

‘So you told her this?’

‘We warned her, yes, and that’s when she broke down in hysterics, assuring me that things would be different once she got a job as a nanny in Devon, and gradually everything came out, your part in it, Billy’s role, Archie, whom you passed off as Fabian’s heir. You weren’t only pretty, Angela, were you, but cunning, too, and sly. There are brains inside that head after all.’

Ange interrupts, perplexed and unhappy. ‘But I’ve never hurt you, Sandra, or been unkind, or intentionally let you down.’ She shakes her head. ‘I can understand how bitter you must feel towards the Ormerod family, but why choose me to attack, sending those dreadful letters from Aunty Val? What had I ever done except look pretty, something I couldn’t help, and would have changed anyway if I could?’

Sandra regards her hands again, spreading them out before her, at the lack of rings on her speckled, middle-aged fingers. ‘I only had one chance,’ she says bitterly, ‘one chance at love and marriage and that was when I was forty. We both longed for children.’ She gives a short bark of a laugh. ‘We longed for them too badly. We couldn’t wait until after the wedding. When we discovered that I was pregnant we couldn’t bring the wedding forward because Vernon, my fiancé, was waiting for his divorce to come through. It was me who insisted on taking every medical precaution. It was me who demanded every test in the book and so they discovered this wretched, miserable, rotten thing, this muscular dystrophy—d’you know what it does, Angela?’ Sandra’s smile is icy. ‘I don’t suppose you do so allow me to explain. It’s a rare wasting condition, transmitted by mothers, that appears in early childhood. Progressive destruction of muscle leads to a wheelchair existence by the age of thirteen, and patients seldom live to the age of twenty. You can tell they’ve got it because the child is weak on its legs, clumsy, and has difficulty picking himself up when he falls. No cure exists.’

Angela winces. ‘So you…?’

‘Yes, that’s right, I had an abortion when I realised the child I carried was affected. We disagreed about this and after a quarrel things were said which meant there was no point in carrying on together. I lost him.’ Two great, oversized tears settle uncomfortably in Sandra’s eyes. ‘I had so much time… so much time to work things out after Vernon and I… It didn’t take me long to discover the sickness at the core of the rotten Ormerod family.’ The watery eyes turn sharp, vindictive. The tears disappear, watering memories. ‘Lady Elfrida’s family is warlike, ancient and aristocratic, feudal to this day, there are Bluchers dating back hundreds of years. The owners of great estates, the upper castes, the Junker, they virtually rule the East Prussian state where Lady Elfrida grew up, and it was not hard for me and my friend to discover the truth in that little country churchyard outside Rastenburg.’ Sandra pauses, perhaps bringing back that unforgettable holiday she shared with her friend, Doreen, searching for a painful truth she could not bear to find. ‘All those small gravestones. All those lives ended so prematurely: Konrad, aged fourteen. Anton, Ernst, Rudolph, I could go on, the list is a long one, she must have known,
she must have known
…’

Ange pales. ‘And so you blamed the Ormerods? I can understand that. But why me? Why me? I had a child who was hard to rear. I agonised over Jacob’s future…’

‘But it all worked out so well in the end,’ says Sandra, calmer now, and smiling coldly again, ‘for you. As things always do for people who look like you. But no, the letters from Aunty Val were sent to you but the person I really wanted to punish was my replacement, Fabian. You would have fled sooner or later, indeed, I heard you were thinking of leaving. My plan was working astonishingly well until somebody else came along and interfered. You would have fled with your ill-gotten gains to the Broughtons, Tina to her dream home in Brighton, and the police would have picked you up in no time.’

‘Because you would have told them where we’d gone? And Tina kept you informed of all this?’

‘Precisely. Yes, dear. Tina had no choice in the matter by then. And then I planned to take the children into care, probably offer them for adoption, and Fabian would have come along and demanded to have his child returned.’ Sandra Biddle lifts her brows, there’s still a small smile playing on her face. ‘I would have had to approve the official adoption, write acceptable reports, that would have cost the Ormerod family quite a lot of money. They got one child free forty-eight years ago, let them pay for this one!’

Ange is shocked. She enquires, horrified,
‘You would have sold him my baby?’

But Sandra turns on her angrily. The telling of this clearly gives her some sick satisfaction. ‘Why not? Whyever not? What would you have preferred? That little Archie go to a stranger and take his chance as I did? Or that he be brought up with the kind of privileges Fabian could have given him? Think hard, Angela. It didn’t take Maud Doubleday much time to work it out, given the same opportunity all those years ago she jumped at it. Wouldn’t you have sworn that Fabian was Archie’s father rather than just the offspring of two sordid criminals? No hopers? No, dear, I think you would have kept your mouth shut about the true parentage of your youngest child.’

Ange has to swallow. ‘Possibly. In those circumstances. But why did you never try to take the Ormerods to court once you knew the truth, why did you never attempt to claim your legal rights?’

‘I did try, once, I went to a solicitor and told him everything. But he said it would be a long, drawn out business, and costly, and there’d be no guarantee that I would succeed. And anyway, Angela, you probably don’t understand but that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted the man I loved and the child I carried. I wanted a partner for life, somebody to love me, somebody to come home to.’

‘You are quite wrong. I do understand.’

‘But,’ Sandra Biddle draws herself up, ‘fancy, you’ve been let off scot free. Would you believe it? And rich. How very lucky you all are. Tina will get the house she wanted and you and Billy… However. Now that you know all this, what do you intend to do with it?’

‘Nothing,’ says Angela, getting up, feeling stiff and sore from holding her emotions in such tight check for so long.