Remember (26 page)

Nicky sat up on the garden seat and reached into her pocket for her sunglasses. As she put them on she felt dampness on her cheeks, and she realized with a little jolt that she had been crying. But she was not going to shed any more tears for Charles Devereaux. She had used them up years ago.

Pushing herself to her feet, she walked down the path between the parterres, endeavoring to shake off the past, to quench the memories.

Climbing the steps, she turned the handle of the old door and went out of the garden.

Pullenbrook soon came into view. She could not help thinking how extraordinary it looked, bathed in the late afternoon light. The sunshine brought a warmth to its old gray stone, the many windows glittered and winked, and it was like a living thing to her. Anne had spoken the truth when they had discussed the house the other day, she had loved Pullenbrook from the moment she had first set eyes on it.

On that fateful Friday I’ve just been remembering, she thought, gazing up at the great Tudor edifice so steeped in English history and the history of the Cliffords, I was snared by a man, by a woman and by a stately family home. Yes, she had fallen in love with them all.

Instantly. She still loved Anne and the house. As for Charles, her love for him had died three years ago.

Inside the house, the Great Hall was eerily quiet and filled with pale sunshine when she entered a few minutes later. The family portraits that hung on the fireplace wall caught her eye, and she stood staring up at them thoughtfully. Then she scrutinized the others as she traversed the length of the huge room.

Suddenly, she thought, Charles Adrian Clifford Devereaux was descended from a great line of noblemen, magnates and warrior knights in service to the Crown of England. He was a true aristocrat, and in the best sense of that word. Honor and nobility were bred in the bone, justice and fair play were inculcated from birth. He was a good man, a decent man. I could not have loved him the way I did had he been otherwise.

Certainly I could not have loved a man capable of shoddy behavior, a man who could coldbloodedly fake his own death for reasons of his own, a man who could callously bring pain and heartache to me, the woman he loved, and to his mother. I would never have wanted to marry a man like that. Never. Never.

The sound of footsteps caused Nicky to swing around.

Anne was walking toward her with a look of concern on her face.

Coming near, she took hold of Nicky’s arm. “Are you all right, darling?”

Nicky nodded and gave her a half smile.

“You rushed off, were in such a hurry to escape, I’ve been worried about you. I hope you’re not angry with me, or with Philip?”

“Of course not, just the opposite.” Nicky cleared her throat before continuing, “I’ve been thinking about Charles, remembering things this afternoon, and I’ve come to a conclusion. You’re right, Anne, I don’t think he faked his death. Very simply, he wasn’t capable of being devious. I recognize that now. I agree with you and Philip that the man my network filmed in Rome merely bears a remarkable likeness to Charles.”

Anne appeared startled, but quickly recovering herself, she said, “This is quite an about-face—you’re not just agreeing with us to make me feel better, are you?”

“No, I’m not. Surely you know me better than that. I’m my parents’ daughter and a stickler for the truth, just as they are.

Not only in my work but in my private life. In all things, in fact.”

Anne began to walk toward the door leading to the private quarters of the house without answering. Nicky caught up with her and slipped her arm through Anne’s. She said, “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, truly, truly sorry. It was never my intention to cause you pain by coming here—with my story and the photographs.”

“I know that, and you did the only thing you could, under the circumstances .”

“I hadn’t meant to blurt it out today,” Nicky said, shaking her head.

“I really hadn’t. I was going to tell you tomorrow, because I didn’t want to spoil your engagement. But I was so terribly worried this morning, after a restless, sleepless night, and unfortunately the words came out before I could stop them.”

“No harm has been done, and I’m glad you had the confidence to come to me …” Anne smiled. Her face was full of love. “At least it’s brought you back into my life, Nicky.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

Now Anne said softly, “I feel absolutely certain Charles committed suicide. Why he did we will never know, he had everything to live for.

Over these past few years I’ve come to believe that he must have been ill. Physically ill, I mean, with some sort of fatal disease—cancer, a brain tumor, leukemia, something dreadful like that, and which he never told us about, of course. I think he took his life in order to save us the pain of his eventual suffering and death from that fatal disease. To me, this is the only possible explanation.”

“Charles’s death will always be a mystery,” Nicky murmured, almost to herself.

After Nicky had gone upstairs to rest before supper, Anne returned to the Great Hall, where she locked and bolted the front door. Retracing her steps across the hall, she hurried through into her own wing of the house.

Earlier, she and Philip had had tea in the drawing room, and she had left him there when she had gone in search of Nicky. Glancing through the open door, she saw that he was no longer sitting there.

Perhaps he’s also gone to his room to rest, she thought, and she headed down the corridor. She was making for the library, wanting to rescue the magazine sections of the Sunday newspapers before Inez scooped them up and threw them out.

The door was ajar, and faintly she heard Philip’s voice. He was

obviously speaking on the telephone, and she increased her pace, anxious to tell him about Nicky’s unexpected about-face.

Pushing open the door, she saw that Philip was sitting on the edge of the desk with his back to her. Before she could announce herself, she heard him say, “.

. . and won’t let go. Like a dog with a bone …” There was a short pause as he listened, and then he exclaimed, “No, no! Rome. ” As Anne entered the room she exclaimed, “Philip, I’ve something to tell you.”

Startled, he swung around, and she knew from the expression on his face that she had caught him unawares.

He gave her a little nod of acknowledgment and said into the receiver, “Look, I’ve got to go now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow— better still, I’ll see you tomorrow,” then he hastily hung up.

Anne walked over to the desk, frowning slightly. “You were obviously talking about Nicky, Philip . Who were you speaking to?”

“My son. I was speaking to Timothy, my dear,” Philip said with a smile, and without missing a beat.

“About Nicky?” Anne sounded incredulous.

“Yes. When I was on the phone with Tim the other evening, just after he’d returned from Leipzig, I sort of halfpromised I’d go back to town tonight. To have supper with him. I just begged off. He wanted to know why I wasn’t coming up, and I was simply explaining about Nicky, and her weird story about the man in Rome.”

“Why did you beg off? You didn’t have to, you know. You could have gone up, I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Darling, don’t you see? I didn’t want to leave you alone this evening,” Philip said. “You’ve been somewhat upset by all this-fuss.

I felt I ought to be here with you, wanted to be with you. I can see Tim tomorrow.”

“I see,” she murmured, and gave him an odd look.

On Monday night Nicky caught the last flight to Rome.

Once the plane was airborne and she was well settled in her seat, she took out her notebook and scanned the notes she had made in her suite at Claridge’s Hotel earlier in the day. After a couple of seconds of studying them, she slipped the notebook back into her handbag, then reached for the glass of white wine that the flight attendant had brought to her a short while before.

She took a few sips, endeavoring to relax, but her mind continued to turn as rapidly as it had for the last few days.

Despite her discussion with Anne and Philip at Pullenbrook this past weekend and their opinions, her gut instinct told her that the man accidentally captured on the ATN news footage was none other than Charles Devereaux. And because her father had

always said she should rely on her gut instinct, this was exactly what she was doing now.

Putting her wineglass down on the flat section of the armrest, she reached into her bag again. This time she pulled out the photograph taken from the news footage by Dave, the studio technician. Frowning, she gazed at it intently, as she had done quite frequently since last Wednesday. However many times she tried to convince herself she was wrong, she always came back to her first conclusion, the man was Charles Devereaux.

Yesterday, at Pullenbrook, she had begun to waver in this belief, no doubt influenced by the house and the history it represented, by the prestige of the family and, not unnaturally, by Anne Devereaux herself.

If Anne said that the man in the picture was definitely not her son, then who was to argue otherwise with her?

And so on Sunday afternoon she had done that sudden and unexpected volte-face, had agreed with Anne, somewhat to her own surprise as well as her friend’s.

But then this morning, when she arrived at Claridge’s, she had reversed herself and come back to her original opinion.

I suppose there’s nothing quite like the cold light of a drizzly Monday morning in London to bring one to one’s senses, Nicky now thought, putting the picture away. Anne and Philip had said that the man in Rome merely had a look of Charles. She could not agree, the resemblance was much stronger than that. If the man in the picture was not Charles after all, then he was his identical This morning at the hotel in London, as she had sat ruminating on everything that had happened, she had asked herself how his partner would react if she showed him the photograph. Christopher Neald and Charles had been friends for years, as well as being in business together, and they had always been exceptionally close-since their twenties, in fact.

On the spur of the moment, she had picked up the phone and called Chris at Vintage Wines, only to be informed by his new secretary, Michael Cronin, that Chris was away on holiday. She had pressed for more information, had been told that Mr. Neald was “island-hopping in Polynesia,” and was therefore quite unreachable, and would not be back in England until the middle of September. Disappointed, she had said she would phone again next month.

It was then that she had decided to go to the source of the film footage—the ATN bureau in Rome. Maybe Tony Johnson, the Rome bureau chief, could help her in some way, perhaps there was additional footage, which had not been transmitted by satellite to New York, footage that might give her some leads.

In any case, here she was on a plane en route to Rome, and she could not help wondering if she was on a wildgoose chase. How did you go about finding a man who had so cleverly and effectively disappeared three years ago? A man who obviously did not want to be found, and whose presence in Rome was known to her now only because of a fluke, an accident, chance, fate, call it what you will. If the ATN cameraman covering the story with Tony that night hadn’t picked up a face in the crowd on film, and if she hadn’t been watching the news intently at that precise moment, she would have been none the wiser. A million-to-one chance, she thought, remembering how that face was on and off the screen in a flash, in a matter of seconds. How easily she could have missed it if she had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water, or if she had been on the phone and not paying attention.

But then life was like that—full of flukes and coincidences. It was meant to be, she said under her breath, and shivered involuntarily.

But looking for Charles Devereaux would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Nicky shifted in her seat, glanced out the window at the dark

night sky and wondered, suddenly, why she was continuing to pursue this matter, why she was persisting with it. Naturally, she came up with the answer immediately, given who and what she was as a person, as well as a journalist, she simply had to know the truth, needed to know it.

That trait had been nurtured in her since childhood. Also, there was another thing—she wanted to finally close that chapter of her life that had once been centered on Charles Devereaux. It was not that she harbored any emotional feelings for him, those had been well and truly killed off long ago. But she certainly had no desire whatever to continue to be haunted by the specter of him.

After all, there was Cleeland Donovan now, a very special man, one who had grown more and more important to her in the last couple of months.

Clee represented a new beginning for her. There was the most wonderful chance to make a life with him if they could work it out, given all the logistics involved. Lately she had come to believe that they probably could, with a little giveand-take on both sides.

Clee was the future. Her future. Therefore, she must not permit any shadows from the past to hang over her or them. The fact was, she wanted and needed to be truly free in her heart and mind and soul—to be free for Clee, with no encumbrances from the past.

As often happened these days, her thoughts now settled on him, and as always she felt a lovely warmth spreading through her.

Having Clee in her life, knowing he loved her, made her feel good, even when he wasn’t with her. Fortunately, she had managed to reach him at the Kempinski in West Berlin late this afternoon, before setting out for the airport. She had wanted to tell him she was off to Rome on business for a few days.

Because of the nature of their work, he had not been unduly surprised, nor had he found it unusual that she was suddenly flying off somewhere.

“What’s cooking?” he had asked, laughing, and had then added, “I guess you’ve just had a brainstorm, Nick, dreamed up some sort of exotic special.”

Quickly, concisely, she had explained that it was not one bit exotic, that she was considering doing a piece on the European Common Market and the changes that would take place when all the frontiers came down.