The Forbidden Innocent (16 page)

The cab arrived twenty minutes later and she slid onto the back seat.

‘Where to?’ questioned the driver as he looked at her in the rear mirror.

Ashley swallowed. Where to? Where could she run to and seek refuge? London, she guessed. She had friends there and it was big enough and anonymous enough to lose herself if Jack should try to find her.

She leaned forward to speak to the driver while
outside the sun struggled to break through a heavy grey sky and nothing but an empty future seemed to lie ahead of her.

L
ONDON
looked different and it felt different, too. After the wildness of the moors and the pure, clean air the city seemed to crowd in on her. As she alighted from the train Ashley could see people everywhere—and she wondered if they could read the bitter heartache written on her face.

She had friends in London—friends who would have willingly taken her in and given her a sofa to sleep on. Who would have opened a bottle of wine—or two—and told her that there were plenty more fish in the sea and she would soon get over Jack Marchant.

But Ashley knew it wasn’t as easy as that. Just as she knew that she couldn’t face any of her friends—no matter how well intentioned they might be. Her grief was too big and intense and personal to allow anyone else to intrude on it. And her feelings for Jack were too complicated by love.
She
might silently curse him for having broken her heart—but she wouldn’t allow other people to do the same.

So she checked into one of the small hotels which
could be found tucked away in the less salubrious parts of every city, and there she curled herself up in a soulless room, on a narrow bed. For two days, she alternated between fitful sleep and tears, and existed on cups of hot, sweet tea made on a hissing little kettle which sat next to the TV.

By the third day, she knew she needed strength and went out to buy herself food—forcing herself to go to a café, where she ordered a plateful of bacon and eggs and hot, buttered toast. It was comfort food—and it had the desired effect. She ate every mouthful, knowing that afterwards she would feel better. Because Ashley was an old hand at recovery. She’d had setback after setback many times in her life, and every time she had managed to bounce back. It took effort—a big effort—and never had it seemed as difficult as it did this time. Her heart and her spirit had never felt this shattered before—but what choice did she have? To fade away and cease to exist? To become a shadow of a woman, letting her doomed love affair ruin the rest of her life?

No. She would never forget Jack and she didn’t want to—but she had strived too hard in the past to allow herself to cave in now.

It was tempting to find a brand-new employment agency and to start all over again—but she’d worked for Julia at Trumps since she’d left school and she had a proven work record with them. And so she risked paying the office a visit. Would Jack have contacted them? she wondered. Told them that she’d behaved unprofessionally by walking out without giving notice—knowing
that she would probably never dream of telling them the reason why?

But he had done no such thing. Her salary had been paid in full—right to the end of the contract—and he had even provided a glowing reference without being asked. And wasn’t there a part of Ashley’s spirit which sank when Julia passed on this particular piece of news? She had told him that it must end and that she didn’t want to be contacted—but hadn’t she thought that he might at least
try?

And then what? Put herself through the torture of having to send him away—and make her heart break into a thousand pieces all over again?

Trumps Agency lived up to its name and quickly found her a live-in post, working for the general manager of a smart boutique hotel in a small Dorset town in the south of England. It was a pretty little place and the countryside was fairly tame when she compared it with the wild and rugged beauty of the moors. But Ashley wanted that. Maybe she needed that. She didn’t need an untamed wildness which reminded her too poignantly of Jack. And this time she had the sea—with its ever-changing beauty and the endless sound of the waves, which soothed her troubled heart.

Two months into her new job and she discovered to her surprise that her smiles felt much less of an effort than they had done in those first early days of leaving Jack. But she’d known how important it was to keep smiling. If you didn’t smile then people asked you questions.
They wanted to know if you were miserable—and then why, and she hadn’t wanted to answer that.

Ashley knew that life had to go on—and that time healed. She had to put her faith in all the old clichés which had always comforted people in times of trouble. So she did her new job as best she could. She was calm and efficient and her work seemed to please her boss—and at least spring had come at last. It brought with it all the fresh, bright bulbs bursting through the bare earth and filling the warm air with their delicate fragrance. And surely that boded well for her future? In time, wouldn’t the changing of the seasons wash away more and more of the pain she felt at being parted from Jack?

She joined a French evening class and started taking swimming lessons at the local pool, and slowly began to make friends. Her life felt quiet and uneventful—but that was exactly what she wanted.

And then two things happened which changed her world. The first was that a lawyer contacted her through the employment agency and Julia said no, she didn’t have a clue what it was about, but that there was a phone number for Ashley to ring.

Cautiously, Ashley did so—withholding her number and prepared to hang up if it was anything to do with Jack. But it was not. It was to do with her mother—or, rather, the family of her late mother who had decided that her neglected offspring must be traced.

It was strange, thought Ashley—as she sat opposite a well-spoken lawyer in his London office one
afternoon—how death could sometimes help heal the quarrels of the living. Her maternal grandmother seemed to have been struck by a death-bed bout of guilt and remorse and had amended her will accordingly. She was determined in some small way to compensate the granddaughter she had failed to acknowledge during her lifetime. In fact, she was more than generous—and extremely wealthy. It transpired that Ashley had inherited a substantial amount of money—as well as an extended and scattered family who were curious to meet her.

The money was enough to ensure that Ashley could banish some of her uncertainty about her future. She would certainly need to keep working—but at least now she was going to be able to buy a property of her own. For the first time in her life she could afford a roof over her head—her own place at last. It was her first real experience of security and she discovered she liked it—and that it went a long way in helping her shake off some of her ingrained feelings of inferiority.

Her habitual reserve initially made her baulk at the thought of getting to know a whole batch of newly discovered relations—but the aching hole in her heart left by the end of her affair with Jack made her make a tentative move towards meeting them. A large family party followed—a confusing and noisy affair which left Ashley feeling faintly bemused. But to her surprise, she was welcomed into the fold and she quickly began to know and to love her little nieces and nephews. Her weekends now began to include occasional trips to Gloucestershire, where many of them were based—and
having her own family gave her another unfamiliar taste of security, and of roots.

But the second thing which happened rocked Ashley’s world far more than an unexpected inheritance. Another phone call arrived from the agency—with Julia moaning that she felt like her personal secretary—telling her that Christine had been in touch and was pleading with Ashley to ring her, urgently.

Ashley hesitated for only a moment because she knew that Jack wouldn’t dream of asking his housekeeper to intervene on his behalf. He was much too proud for that—he could have tried himself through the agency and he hadn’t done. So why was she wanted? Some instinct made fear swell up inside her stomach and grip at her throat. She stood in a quiet alcove at the boutique hotel as she gripped the phone, while a shaky-voiced Christine told her that there had been an accident.

‘What kind of an accident?’ demanded Ashley.

‘A fire. A terrible fire. Ashley.’ There was a kind of gulping sound, the sound of someone swallowing their tears. ‘Blackwood has been destroyed.’

Ashley’s knees buckled. The world threatened to cave in around her. ‘And Jack? Was he hurt?’

There was a silence—a terrible, gathering silence.

‘He was,’ said Christine, her solid voice sounding precariously close to breaking. ‘Badly hurt. He’s blind, Ashley. Mr Marchant’s blind.’

Blind? Her beloved Jack
blind?
Only some inner strength she didn’t know she possessed stopped Ashley from falling to the ground—and from railing at a God
who was clearly not listening. Sucking in a ragged breath, she steadied her breathing enough to ask, ‘And where is he? Where is he now?’

‘He’s living in one of the other properties on the other side of the estate. You know the old Ivy House?’

‘I do.’

‘He’s there. I still work for him. I go in most days now and he has… well, he has a couple of carers living in who help look after him.’

Carers?
Her brave, strong Jack—the man who had been commended for bravery in all the active service he had seen—was being looked after by
carers?
Ashley swallowed down the acrid taste of horror as she tried to imagine the reality of his life. How on earth would such an independent man cope with having to rely on others for his very existence?

‘Christine,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m coming to see him—but you must not tell him. You must not. That is imperative. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Ashley. I understand.’

Ashley went into the office to speak to her boss. He was a fair man who she hoped would let her go with his blessing—though she knew that she would leave without it, for she had no choice. ‘I need to go urgently to see a dear friend who is very sick,’ she said, in a low voice—the irony not escaping her that this was the second time she had failed to give adequate notice to her employer.

‘And are you planning on coming back?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly—for wasn’t honesty the only thing she had ever been able to rely on?

Something in her face made him treat her kindly, as though she herself were some kind of invalid, and Ashley made the long journey back north with nothing more than an overnight bag. The journey took hours—punctuated by delays at two railway stations and a train which seemed to rattle like a sack of bones. Her stomach was so churned up that she couldn’t bear to eat anything—sipping only at weak, warm tea and unable to settle until at last the train drew into Stonecanton station.

She jumped into the waiting taxi and gave the driver directions and, if he looked at her curiously, she was too tired and too scared to satisfy his curiosity with any kind of explanation. Ivy House was on the western side of the estate but the taxi took her past Blackwood and, on an impulse, Ashley made the driver take the car up the long drive so that she could have a look at it.

From a distance, it all looked the same as the first time she’d seen it. The same imposing and beautiful structure which had so impressed her—straddling the edges of the stark northern moorland she’d grown to love. But as the car drew closer she could see that the façade was nothing but an illusion. She told the driver to stop and she got out, her heart as heavy as a stone. Much of the building had crumbled and was lost—and at the back were just blackened remains where once a home had stood. A grim ghost of a place with pane-less windows and no roof or chimney. Jack’s beloved Blackwood was nothing but a fragile shell with all the life blown away from it.

Hearing something was not the same as seeing it for yourself and the reality of the destruction made her feel sick. Tears threatened to burn her horrified eyes—but there was no time for tears and she climbed back into the taxi, taking one last forlorn look out of the window. The lawns were wild now and the shrubs badly in need of pruning and with every second that mounted Ashley could feel the painful acceleration of her heart as the car took her towards the Ivy House.

What would she find there? Would blindness and disfigurement have changed Jack beyond recognition?

A woman she didn’t know opened the door, and she looked at Ashley with a question in her eyes.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m… a friend of Jack’s. I heard about his accident and I’ve come to see him.’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid Mr Marchant isn’t seeing any visitors.’

‘Please. I think he’ll want to see me.’ But as she said the words she realised their bitter irony. If Jack was blind then he wouldn’t be ‘seeing’ anyone.

There was a pause while the woman studied her and maybe something in Ashley’s plea touched her because she opened the door wider and stepped aside.

‘You look harmless enough—and it might do him good to talk to someone for a change. But not for long, mind,’ she warned. ‘Come this way.’

The woman led the way along a long corridor to a door right at the far end, and she opened it to let Ashley step through and then shut it behind her.

The room was gloomy, the light from the fire its only illumination, and Ashley was trembling as her eyes took in the scene in front of her. Because there, sitting in front of the fire—his head bowed in a way she had never seen it bowed before—sat the blinded form of her lover. His tall frame was still striking but all the energy and vitality seemed to have been sucked from him—as if, just like Blackwood, he were nothing but an empty shell. By his feet sat Casey, who looked up as she entered. The dog’s ears pricked and, with a little yelp, he jumped up and ran towards her.

‘Down, boy,’ said Ashley softly and she saw Jack start.

‘Who’s that?’ he demanded, putting his head to one side—as if to listen more keenly. ‘Is that you, Mary?’

‘No, it is not Mary. Don’t you know who it is?’ She swallowed. ‘Casey does.’