The Hidden Years (67 page)

It was certainly loud enough to reach Chivers's ears,
because he came hurrying into the room, giving her an anxious,
uncertain look.

'Who the devil sent for you?' Edward demanded, glaring at
him. 'Get out of here, damn you!'

Liz gave him an imploring look, wanting him to go. She
hated others seeing Edward like this. It hurt her for him and for
herself, even when it was someone as close to them and as understanding
as Chivers. Increasingly it was getting very difficult to prevent David
from seeing what was happening. He had such a good relationship with
Edward, and she didn't want anything to prejudice it. A boy should
respect and admire his father, it was only right and natural, and, to
David, Edward
was
his father. Certainly he had
been a far better father to him than Kit would ever have been. Edward
almost worshipped David… For the first time she was glad
that David was away at school.

'There's a phone call for you, madam,' Chivers was saying
woodenly. A phone call… They had been having some problems
at the mill with one of the machines and the call was probably about
that. She looked apprehensively at Edward, knowing how much in these
moods he resented her involvement with the mill, but he wasn't looking
at her any more—he was staring blankly at the scattered chess
pieces, almost as though he had no idea how they had got on the floor.

Chivers was already starting to pick them up. The storm
had passed… for the moment at least, Liz recognised tiredly.
Later would come the remorse, the tears, the pleas to be released from
his earthly torment, his anguish and fear of losing her, all of which
in their way were, even harder to bear than his unwarranted accusations
and his loss of temper.

Perhaps Ian was right. Perhaps it
would
do them both good if Edward could be persuaded to go to one of the
convalescent places for a little while, but how would she persuade him
to go? He would immediately assume the worst. He would feel frightened,
betrayed, deserted… and much as she felt the need for a
small oasis of calm and peace, she couldn't take it at the expense of
Edward's peace of mind.

When she picked up the telephone receiver in the study,
there was no one on the other end of the line. When she mentioned this
later to Chivers he merely said quietly, 'Wasn't there? They must have
hung up, then, madam.' She suspected that he had deliberately invented
the call in order to help her.

She sighed to herself. Her head ached and there was an
uncomfortable gritting sensation at the back of her eyes. An hour or so
spent working in her garden would ease her tension. No one would
disturb her there.

Only she was wrong in that assumption. Someone did disturb
her—someone who had no right to be in her thoughts at all.
And that someone was Lewis McLaren.

She stopped weeding, her body suddenly trembling. What was
the matter with her? She had no right to be thinking of Lewis McLaren,
no right at all, and even less to be comparing him with Edward.

And yet she couldn't help recalling how when he had
touched her hand her whole body had reacted as violently as though it
had come in contact with high-voltage electricity. Why?

Stop it, she warned herself, you're imagining things. Just
because Edward has invented some fantasy affair between the two of you,
it doesn't mean that…

Her body tensed abruptly and then she started to shake.
She
couldn't
be thinking those kind of thoughts,
couldn't be having those kind of feelings, not about a man she had only
just met, a man she had known for only a handful of minutes—a
man who, moreover, was married…

Married… she sat back on her heels, wondering
why her vision had suddenly clouded and then discovered that she was
actually crying.

Married… she was sure that Lewis McLaren's wife
didn't sleep alone, that
she
didn't carry the
burden of both doubting and fearing her own sexuality, that
she
knew what it was to share physical pleasure with a man, that
she
…

Oh, God… what was happening to her? What was
she doing? What was she thinking? And, besides, if the McLarens had
such a perfect marriage, why wasn't she with him? Perhaps she
was—perhaps she had simply not chosen to visit Cottingdean.
If that was the case…

How much better it would have been if she had. Edward
would have had nothing then on which to base his totally fictitious
accusations, and she… she would what? Not have felt that
extraordinary and disturbing
frisson
of sensation
when he touched her, that deep and vividly clear mental image of him as
a man… a lover. She was crying in earnest now, tears pouring
down her face. She had to stop this, and the only way to do it was
through work, more and more work, until she was too exhausted to be
able to remember that a man called Lewis McLaren even existed, never
mind to indulge in such pointless and dangerous fantasies about him.

For three days she almost succeeded, but it wasn't easy.
Lewis McLaren was a stranger in a very small village, and quite
naturally his presence there caused a good deal of interest and
curiosity. It was known that he intended to spend some time in the
area, and from the comments she overheard it was obvious to Liz that he
had the village's approval.

He had not returned to the house. She told herself that
she was glad, but when she woke up in the night, her body tense, her
skin slick with sweat, and an ache deep inside her that could only
confirm the eroticism of dreams she would much rather have not
remembered, it was hard not to give in to the temptation to let the
shadowy man who partnered her in her dreams take on the form and
features of the real man she knew him to be.

In her weak moments she told herself that it did no harm,
that her dreams, her fantasies were hers and hers alone and yet she was
still tormented by guilt, by her fear of the emotions and needs her
dreams unleashed. Despairingly she longed to return to that time when
she had not known the depths and heights of her own sexuality, when she
had firmly believed that it did not exist.

She tried to tell herself that she was like a foolish girl
daydreaming over a film star, she tried to lose herself in her
work—but, while that might keep her thoughts at bay during
the day, it only seemed to unleash them to torment her even more
intensely at night. What was wrong with her, she asked herself
dejectedly, why was she developing these foolish thoughts, this
dangerous obsession for a man she had only seen once?

Five days after her brief meeting with Lewis McLaren she
woke up and remembered that it was the day of her bi-monthly visit to
see the flock and the shepherd. She dressed sensibly for this exercise
in an old tweed skirt and jumper, putting a pair of brogues on her
feet, and taking with her a warm tweed jacket. The forecast was for
rain later on in the day and it was far from warm.

Since his outburst over Lewis McLaren, Edward had been
very quiet and subdued. Liz was becoming used to these mood swings now:
the fierce outbursts of temper, followed by remorse, followed by a
period of apathy.

As she kissed Edward goodbye she found herself hoping that
it wouldn't be too long before Ian was able to prescribe for him one of
the new drugs he had mentioned, if they could only get Edward to agree
to take them.

It wasn't a long drive up into the downs where the sheep
had their summer pasture and normally it was one which she enjoyed. The
narrow country lanes were virtually free of other traffic, and the rich
contrast provided by the different fields of crops never failed to
entrance her, just as she was always fascinated by the way the sunlight
and shadow moved over the hills as clouds raced across the sun.

There was something about this land, about its
timelessness, about its peace that made her vividly aware of how many
many others before her must have watched as she was watching and
marvelled at the power and strength of nature… and how many
would do so in time to come. It was like being part of an unbreakable
chain, an awareness of how infinitesimal her link in that chain was;
from her it would pass to David and from him to his children and to
theirs after him. She had so much to be grateful for; it was wrong of
her to yearn for something she could never have, something she had no
right to have.

It wasn't possible to drive out to where the flock were
grazing. She had to park her car beside the field gate and get out and
walk the final mile or so, but it was a task she didn't mind. Tying a
scarf over her hair, and pulling on her jacket, she set off. The wind
had momentarily blown the sky clean of clouds and the sun shone warmly.

High above the land a kestrel hovered…
watching, waiting. She paused to watch him swoop downwards into a
cornfield and pitied the tiny creature who was his victim even while
she admired the control and grace of his swoop and the power which took
him up again to hang motionless in watchful prey.

Before turning to resume her climb, she looked behind her
the way she had come and saw that someone else was coming up the hill
towards her, his head bare, his dark hair tousled by the wind.

She knew who it was from the clenching of her stomach
muscles, the instant recognition of her soul and her heart, even before
he called out her name and she recognised the distinctive Australian
accent.

Common sense told her that the worst thing she could do
was to wait for him, and yet that was exactly What she did do, caught
as helplessly in the snare of her own feelings as the small creature
had been in the talons of the kestrel.

'What a coincidence,' Lewis smiled as he caught up with
her, although in point of fact it was no coincidence at all. This was
his second visit to the summer pastures. It had been on his first
visit, during his conversation with the shepherd, that he had
discovered Liz was due to visit them later in the week.

He had warned himself that what he was doing was folly,
that curiosity was one thing, that something to take his mind off
Elaine and Alistair could only be of benefit to him, and yet his
instincts, his senses warned him that it was far more than idle
curiosity that stirred his interest in Liz Danvers. Far, far more.

This morning she looked younger than ever. He knew her
age—five years younger than his own—but today she
looked as though a whole decade could quite easily have separated them,
and as he drew close to her he marvelled at the clear perfection of her
skin, its softness, its paleness, so different from the sun-browned
skins of his own countrywomen… How Elaine had bewailed the
harshness of the outback sun, claiming that it was making her old
before her time. She had hated the outback, hated Woolonga, hated him
sometimes… or so she had claimed. The pity of it was that he
hadn't listened to her, hadn't realised—if he had then
perhaps both she and his son would still be alive today.

Don't blame yourself, Ralph had told him. Don't descend
into the depths of self-pity and guilt—it won't bring them
back. Accept that Elaine was a very highly strung woman, whose outlook
on life, whose mental strength, had become seriously undermined by the
birth of their child. Sometimes it happened like that. He could not,
must not blame himself for what had happened. But how could he not do
so?

She had never wanted to marry him. She had told him as
much, but they had really had no choice in the matter. It had all been
arranged for them by their respective fathers, both of them indomitable
men used to having their every word obeyed, used to the power and
control that came from owning thousands upon thousands of acres of land
and from running on that land thousands of head of sheep. Both men had
been autocrats, both used to ruling their own private worlds as they
saw fit. And they saw fit to unite their vast tracts of land in the
marriage of their son and daughter.

Perhaps if they hadn't both been killed in the same plane
accident, a plane flown by his father… Elaine had adored her
own father, had come close to worshipping him in fact. After his death
she had become very withdrawn; she had blamed Lewis's father for what
had happened and, through him, Lewis himself.

It had been shortly after the news of the accident had
been brought to them that she had miscarried their first child.

After that she hadn't let him touch her for almost three
years. He had tried everything, wondering if she realised that he now
had as little appetite for their marriage as she had herself, but they
were married, divorce was out of the question, and they had to have a
child, an heir for Woolonga. In the end he had been forced to take
matters into his own hands. Even now, he shuddered when he thought of
the way he had deliberately got her drunk, and then carried her
virtually comatose to bed, undressing her and then entering her
unresponsive, flaccid body, summoning every ounce of will-power he'd
had in order to do so.

Afterwards she had rounded on him with a stream of
profanities as she'd cursed him for the death of his father and for the
death of her child.

He had wanted to tell her that it wasn't his fault, that
he mourned their child as much as she, but he knew already that he
would be wasting his time, that something in her had turned away from
him and inwards.

Sometimes the outback affected women like that. It was a
demanding land, a man's land, cruel to those women who dared to brave
its harshness. It took a woman of great strength, great fortitude and
endurance—a woman with a great love for her man—to
withstand its cruelties.

Elaine had not been like that. She had been weak and
vulnerable and it had given him no satisfaction to have compelled her
to resume their physical relationship. He had hoped that perhaps
another child would help her to overcome her grief, her almost
obsessive clinging to the past and her father's death, and when they
had discovered that she
was
pregnant it had
seemed as though his hopes were answered.