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  ‘No,’ he agreed heavily. ‘Perhaps you’re right and love is not enough. I can’t blame you for the way you feel about Clarissa.’

  ‘And I can understand your need to protect her. Perhaps if I had a more generous nature…’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No. And you do have a generous nature.’ He turned her hand over in his own and lifted it to his mouth, feathering her palm with his lips as he muttered hoarsely, ‘The most generous nature.’ And then he took her in his arms, holding her tightly against him while he told her rawly, ‘Oh, God, Tania. I don’t think I can bear this. To have waited so long, to have found you and then…’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed tonelessly. ‘It might almost have been better, kinder if we had not—’

  ‘No,’ he denied savagely. ‘No. I can never regret having known you, having loved you… Last night… Oh, my God, Tania. Last night, I didn’t use any precautions. I even hoped that you might conceive my child. I thought it would bind us closer together.’

  A terrible pain gripped her. James’s child… If she had conceived… But what was the point in looking for loopholes? Even if she had conceived James’s child, what good would it do her? What good would it do any of them? All it would do was add to their existing burdens, to Clarissa’s uncontrollable jealousy, and she would have another life to worry about, another burden of fear to carry. But James’s child… Her stomach clenched and ached unbearably almost as though her womb were actually crying out for that conception.

  Outside the door she could hear Lucy’s voice. She pulled away from James, unable to look at him as he released her. Unable to look at anyone.

  She knew that her eyes were betrayingly damp, that her whole face gave away her misery and anguish. She got up clumsily and walked over to the window, barely seeing the lovely scene outside.

  Why, why had this had to happen to her? It seemed so unfair. It was so unfair.

  The remainder of the day was sheer agony for her. She acquitted James of doing it deliberately; in truth she could see that he was fighting desperately hard not to respond to Lucy’s obvious pleasure in his company, but to have rejected her open and eager adoration of him would have been to hurt and confuse her. Tania could see that, and yet she could not help wishing that Lucy had disliked him, had resented and rejected him. That way…that way at least only one of them would be hurt. This way they were both going to suffer.

  When she tried gently to suggest leaving early, Lucy had looked so disappointed that she hadn’t had the heart to insist, and so in addition to the anguish of knowing that there could be no future in loving James she had the added pain of having to acknowledge that he would have made Lucy a wonderfully caring and loving stepfather.

  If only… If only what? she derided herself over the meal which Jane Williams had prepared and which she was totally unable to eat. If only Clarissa might somehow disappear in a puff of smoke. Hardly likely, and even if it were she couldn’t escape the knowledge that James genuinely loved and cared about his stepsister and that anything that injured Clarissa must also injure him.

  At half-past six she announced that it was time for her and Lucy to leave, and, while Lucy babbled excitedly all the way back to their own home, she remained tensely silent.

  This time she had firmly seated herself in the back of the car next to Lucy, not able to trust herself not to break down and start wailing her grief, her anguish, her love, like a small child, if she gave in to the temptation of sitting next to James.

  She hadn’t intended to invite him in. After all they had said everything that needed to be said, everything there possibly was to be said.

  He loved her, she knew that. She loved him, but as she had told him that wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough, but Lucy it seemed had other ideas. James had promised he would read her a bedtime story.

  While Tania hesitated James gave her a helpless, defeated look and she knew that she had no option other than to invite him in.

  She sent Lucy for her bath, made James and herself a cup of tea which they drank seated well away from one another in a strained, uncomfortable silence, and then while James read Lucy her story she busied herself in the kitchen, trying not to let herself dwell on the fact that after this evening she would only ever see him again as a stranger—as Clarissa’s stepbrother, she told herself bitterly.

  Quite when she started to cry she had no idea. She was numbly conscious of washing and rewashing the same mug over and over again, of tensing her body against her anguish as she heard James walk into the kitchen behind her and say jerkily, ‘She’s asleep. I’d better be off.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed brokenly.

  She thought he was actually leaving until he gripped hold of her shoulders and demanded harshly, ‘Is that all you can say? Is that all…?’

  And then he saw her tears and through the frantically loud thudding of her heart she heard him curse and then she was in his arms, wrapped tightly within their protective custody while he kissed her damp face with fierce despair, telling her over and over again that he loved her, telling her there must be a way…

  They both knew there wasn’t, but that didn’t stop them from spending what was left of the evening making frantically intensive love to one another, as though there was a whole lifetime of loving to be crammed into far too few short hours. As indeed there was, Tania reflected hazily as she looked down the length of her shadowed body to where James lay against her, his hand against the sharp curve of her hipbone, his mouth exploring the satin softness of her skin.

  ‘I love you,’ he told her almost angrily. ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she protested, her voice thick with tears. ‘Please don’t,’ and then she shuddered deeply as the pleasure of how he was loving her broke through her grief at the parting to come and she begged him to love her so much that she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else but this moment, so that she would have these memories to comfort her, all the rest of her life.

  Later still, when she was loving his body as intimately as he had done hers, she told herself that she was surely entitled to this, that in sharing this intimacy they were hurting no one other than themselves, deliberately barring her mind to the knowledge that she could already have conceived the child who would have to grow up without a father, and who would be hurt by this selfish, reckless, dangerous but so wholly necessary intimacy they were sharing.

  It was just gone midnight when the telephone beside her bed rang. She reached for the receiver automatically, tensing at the unexpected sound of Nicholas’s voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Tania, it’s Nicholas,’ he told her. ‘I’ve just rung Dove Court. Is James still there with you? Only we’ve got a bit of an emergency down here at the clinic. Clarissa isn’t responding at all well to her medication. She keeps asking for James and I…’

  Silently she handed the receiver to James, her eyes dark and haunted. Already it had started. Already Clarissa was coming between them, invading their most private and precious moments. Already…

  Silently she slid out of her bed and found her dressing-gown, trying not to listen to James’s terse voice.

  He hung up after a few seconds and apologised in a tight voice, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to leave.’

  She had known it already, of course. Had thought she was prepared for it. Had already told herself she knew he would have to go, but she was not prepared for the pain of losing him so quickly, so abruptly, now while her body was still full of the sensation of his within it, now while she was still warm from their shared bed, while the scent of him still clung to her skin. Now when she wanted nothing more than to go to sleep in his arms, to…

  But he was waiting for her to speak, to…to what? Give him permission to leave…? He didn’t need her permission. To make it easy for him to go. She swallowed the savage, bitter words that clamoured for utterance inside her and said, as calmly as she could, ‘Yes, yes. Of course.’

  He was coming towards her as h
e dressed. Automatically she wrapped her arms around her body, rejecting him, moving back from him. She saw him hesitate, grief and pain darkening his eyes. Across the few feet of space that separated them they looked at one another and then Tania turned her back on him and said huskily, ‘I’d better go in and check up on Lucy. You know the way out.’

  * * *

  This time she waited until she was sure he was gone. She wasn’t being a coward. She was simply doing what was best for both of them. She could not have borne to watch him go, to know that it was over between them.

  Over… It had barely started… She grieved for their love as she might have done for a lost early pregnancy, grieving for its right to life, to the denial of that right, as well as grieving for the life itself that would never be.

  CHAPTER TEN

  QUITE how she got through the following weeks, Tania really had no idea. She saw nothing of James, and heard on the grapevine that Clarissa had been flown to see a specialist in America who ran a clinic that had a spectacular record of success with her particular type of problem.

  But cured or not, it made no difference. Clarissa would never really accept any other woman in James’s life, and most of all not her. For as long as she was involved with James, she would never feel that Lucy was truly safe, and despite all that he had said about his stepsister she had noticed that James himself had not denied this.

  Her moods alternated between ones of deep and bitter despair and frenetic bouts of energy during which she refused to allow herself to even remember that she had ever known anyone named James Warren.

  Inevitably her health suffered and even more inevitably others noticed. Ann in particular, who tackled her one grey October evening when she had called round on the pretext of wanting to consult her about Susie’s coming birthday.

  With Lucy safely asleep in bed, Tania had no alternative but to confide in her friend when Ann asked her bluntly what was wrong.

  ‘You’ve given him up…because of Clarissa!’ Ann stared at her as though she couldn’t understand what she was hearing. ‘But that’s crazy. Clarissa is a grown woman, a woman, moreover, with a husband and children of her own.’

  ‘She’s almost completely emotionally dependent on James,’ Tania told her flatly, pushing her hair off her pale, too-thin face. ‘But it isn’t just that. I’m not putting myself through all this simply out of female jealousy. There’s Lucy to consider. Don’t you see, Ann? I might, just might be able to put up with Clarissa’s presence in James’s life if it was only myself I had to consider, but there’s Lucy as well.’

  ‘You think she might try to harm Lucy again?’ Ann asked her sympathetically.

  ‘It would always be there in a corner of my mind.’

  ‘Yes, I can understand that, but perhaps if James were to agree to—’

  ‘To what? Cut her out of his life? How could I ask him to do that, Ann? I couldn’t. We’re adults, not children. I can’t say to him, You say you love me, so send her away. It wouldn’t be fair, and besides I couldn’t live with myself if I forced that kind of decision on him. He loves Clarissa, and, let’s face it, if he was willing to abandon her—well, would you want to love a man who could do that, would you trust him? I certainly couldn’t.’

  ‘No. I can see what you mean, but there must be a way.’

  Tania shook her head sadly.

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve searched for one, over and over again? If Clarissa were less emotionally unbalanced, if it were possible to talk with her… But, well, even if she recovers this time, there’s always the risk of another breakdown.’

  ‘Oh, Tania.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Tania agreed shakily, ‘and I’m afraid there’s more.’

  ‘More?’ Ann stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I think I’m pregnant.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  Once she got over her shock, Ann demanded anxiously, ‘You have told James about this, haven’t you? I mean, he has a right to know.’

  ‘No, I haven’t told him,’ Tania interrupted her. ‘I haven’t even got as far as having things confirmed yet.’

  ‘But you will tell James,’ Ann insisted.

  Tania closed her eyes wearily.

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. I just feel so tired, Ann. I feel as though I want to run away and hide from everything that’s happening to me.’

  Already she was regretting having told her friend so much. She wondered what Ann would say if she had also told her that virtually every single night she woke up with tears on her face and James’s name on her lips.

  She knew quite well that if she got in touch with him and told him she was pregnant he would move heaven and earth to get her to change her mind, and sometimes in her weakest moments she was so desperately tempted. After all, she had a right to happiness too, didn’t she? Her child, their child had a right to the love of both its parents. Lucy had a right to have the loving care of a stepfather who would adore and spoil her.

  But with those rights went danger. She didn’t want her children exposed to Clarissa’s jealousies, her paranoia and yet neither could she bear to live with the knowledge that her own happiness was built on Clarissa’s misery, as it would have to be if she asked James to cut himself off from his stepsister.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, at Ann’s insistence, she made an appointment to see her doctor and had her pregnancy confirmed.

  Common sense told her that as soon as Clarissa’s treatment was over and they were all back in England James was bound to discover that she was carrying his child and that if she really wanted to protect them both she ought to be making plans now to sell her shop and start a new life somewhere far away.

  James had rung her several times, but on each occasion she had kept the call short.

  Clarissa was responding well to her treatment, he had told her and he was managing to combine his enforced stay in America with some outstanding business he had over there. She saw Nicholas briefly on a couple of occasions and knew that he was spending all his free time either with his sons or in America with Clarissa.

  Sometimes she couldn’t help reflecting bitterly on how very fortunate the other woman was: a devoted husband, and an equally devoted stepbrother.

  It all seemed so unfair.

  And then she heard that James and Clarissa would be returning home for Christmas.

  It was Jane Williams who told her. She happened to bump into her in the supermarket one afternoon when she had dashed in to do some last-minute shopping. The older woman’s face lit up when she saw her, although like everyone else who knew her she exclaimed in some concern over Tania’s too-slender frame and her pallor. If she suspected that these had anything to do with James’s absence she was far too kind to say so.

  Yes, Clarissa was responding well to the innovative American treatment, she told Tania happily, and she had received a long letter from James telling her that the whole family would be coming home for Christmas.

  It was only later on her way back to her car with her shopping, when she had to stop because of the mist obscuring her vision, that Tania realised she was crying.

  She was still crying hours later when Ann brought Lucy back from school, and her friend took one look at her, and then told her severely, ‘Tania, Clarissa isn’t going to be the only one having a breakdown.’

  ‘I know,’ she agreed, blowing her nose. ‘I really must pull myself together.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it. You must get in touch with James. Look at yourself…and it isn’t just yourself you have to consider now, is it? There’s Lucy and the new baby.’

  ‘I know. I ought to be making arrangements to sell the shop and move away, but I don’t seem to have the energy to do anything. Christmas is less than a month away and—’

  ‘Move away?’ Ann was plainly aghast. ‘You can’t do that. And why would you want to? I thought you liked it here? The business is doing well.’

  ‘I can’t stay here now. Once James comes back�
�’

  ‘You have told him about the baby, haven’t you?’ Ann asked her suspiciously.

  Tania averted her head.

  James had already asked her if she was pregnant and she had lied to him, knowing that if she told him the truth nothing would stop him from insisting on marrying her.

  ‘Tania, you must tell him.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know.’ She swayed suddenly, feeling cold and faint, tensing herself against the wave of weakness engulfing her as she heard Ann’s shocked gasp.

  ‘Look at you,’ Ann expostulated as she helped her into a chair. ‘You can’t go on like this. You’re losing weight, despite the baby. You look so frail. You’re killing yourself, Tania, and if you won’t consider your own health then you must consider the baby’s. Unless of course you’re trying to destroy it.’

  Ann’s cruelty made her eyes swim with fresh tears, but it also made her realise very sharply and painfully that Ann was right. She suddenly felt desperately cold. The last thing she wanted to do was to harm James’s child, the very last thing. After all, he or she was going to be all she would ever have of the man she loved.

  When Ann saw the effect her words had on her, she smiled grimly at her. ‘Now you are going to get your coat on and you and Lucy are coming back with me, and you’re staying with me, until I’m convinced that you’re taking proper care of yourself. Otherwise…’

  ‘Otherwise what?’ Tania challenged shakily.

  ‘Otherwise I shall have to tell James about the baby myself,’ Ann told her quietly.

  Tania stared at her, her hands crossed protectively over her stomach as she whispered pleadingly, ‘No, Ann, please. You wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to,’ Ann corrected her, ‘but you can’t go on like this.’

  In the end Tania was forced to give way to her friend’s motherly bullying, and she and Lucy spent a week under the Fieldings’ roof, occupying their newly decorated spare-room, and using the elegant new bathroom which Ann had recently installed and on which she had practised her clever painting techniques, to marvellous effect.