One Reckless Night (19 page)

 
She sent him a glittering smile. 'Very unwise, Mr- er-Lantrell, or whatever current identity you're using.' She took another look round. 'I presume you have another purpose in bringing me here?'

 
'I have a purpose. But I'm not sure any more if there's a point. You've got a closed mind, Suzannah. You're not prepared to make any kind of concession, are you?'

 
'I might have listened,' she said. 'That night in Emplesham. But you seemed to want a different kind of concession then.'

 
His mouth tightened. 'I've already told you how much I regret that. Do you want me to grovel? Or shall we agree it was a combination of too much wine and moonlight, and write it off as a mutual mistake?'

 
'Mutual?' Her head went back, challenging him.

 
'Entirely,' he came back at her, with emphasis. 'You wanted me as much as I wanted you, so don't try and pretend otherwise.'

 
Aware she was on shaky ground, Zanna switched tack. 'You didn't think you should have mentioned that we were related?'

 
'Not to any degree that mattered.' He paused. 'Nor was it my secret to tell. You and your father were still together, personally and professionally, and I could say nothing without consulting Susan-getting her permission.'

 
'Was that really so necessary?'

 
'Yes,' he said levelly. 'Oh, yes.'

 
He moved over to one stack of canvases and, kneeling, began turning them over. 'Now, come and look at these.'

 
Reluctantly she knelt beside him. Then, 'They're all Church House,' she said, surprised. 'All the same picture, over and over again.'

 
'Look more closely,' he said. 'And you'll see they're all marginally different.'

 
'Yes.' Zanna peered, frowning. 'Yes, I see now.' She pointed. 'In this one there's a pram in the garden. And in the next there's a child: a little girl in a blue dress, playing with a dog-and then the same child, on a pony...' Her voice tailed away as she absorbed what she was seeing. What she was saying.

 
He said gently, 'And in this one she's in school uniform. And here she is all grown up.'

 
'No,' she almost shouted. She sat back on her heels, wrapping her arms defensively round her body. She said, 'The child in all the pictures-it's me, isn't it?'

 
'Yes,' he said. 'It was the only way she could keep close to you-by imagining you at every stage in the life she'd lost out on.' His voice deepened. 'There wasn't a day she didn't think about you or want you. You have to know that-to believe it.'

 
'Then why did she go?' she whispered thickly, through the tightness in her throat. 'If she had to leave, why didn't she take me with her-her own child?'

 
'She tried,' Jake said quietly. 'When she couldn't bear it any more-the bullying, the humiliations, the continual denigration-when she realized her sanity was on the line, she knew she had to go. So, she packed as much as she could, put you in a carrying cot and left the house one morning as soon as it was daylight. She left your father a note telling him she couldn't go on and she'd give him a divorce.'

 
He paused. 'She was trying to get to Grace Moss's house, going across country, using minor roads. But he tracked her somehow, caught her near a patch of woodland-forcing her car off the road.'

 
Zanna cried out, a hand going to her appalled face as she registered what he'd said.

 
'The car hit a tree and she blacked out for a moment. When she recovered consciousness she could hear you crying. He was standing by the car, looking in at her, holding your cot.'

 
He shook his head. 'Susan says she'll never forget his voice-the look in his eyes. Or his words. She's repeated them so often, I know them by heart. He said, ' 'You can go, Susan, and be damned to you. As a wife, you're no use to me. But you're not taking the child. You got off lightly this time because she was in the car, but if you ever come near either of us again I'll destroy you, and that's a promise. From this moment on, you're a dead woman anyway.'"

 
'Oh, God.' Zanna found she was rocking backwards and forwards. 'Oh, no, how could he?'

 
But she already knew what her father was capable of. She'd seen his self-obsession and ruthlessness. Felt its ruinous effects on her own life. Wasn't that why she was here now-for good or ill?

 
Jake went on, 'She watched him drive away, taking you with him. She was dazed, but she still couldn't have moved-couldn't have stopped him-because she knew he meant every word. She was just too frightened to stop him, and that's what she's blamed herself for ever since. That's the guilt he's made her live with. That she was too much of a coward to risk everything-to fight him for you.'

 
Her lips moved painfully. 'It wasn't cowardice, it was self-preservation. Believe me, I know.'

 
Jake took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. 'What made you split from him, Susie?'

 
His touch made a thousand sensations coruscate inside her. The bright air seemed to swirl around them, charged and alive with a strange energy into which the distant cooing of the doves added an extra rhythmic dimension. She felt the radiance, the pulsation quivering in her veins, tingling on her nerve-endings. If she had not been kneeling, she thought, she might have fallen to the ground.

 
She stared up into the dark face, remembering how it had been with them during the long intensity of that night together. Remembering his mouth warm and sensuous on her heated skin. Remembering his eyes, heavy with passion, then lit with a sudden flame as he lost control.

 
No passion, now, in his gaze, but an infinite tenderness which reached into her inmost being, lighting the darkness there, warming the deathly cold she carried like a stone.

 
It would be so easy to tell him about the baby-here, at this moment. To put her mouth on his and take his hands and draw them to her belly.

 
So easy-and so impossible. It was the last news on earth that he would want to hear at such a time. Or ever, for that matter.

 
She shrugged deliberately, making him relax his hold, release her. 'Oh, a combination of things.' She paused. 'Maybe I'm more my mother's daughter than I knew, and I needed to save my soul.'

 
Jake watched her expressionlessly for a moment, then got to his feet. He said, 'I hope you have a speedier salvation than Susan's. It took a long time before my father could persuade her that she was safe-that she could afford to love, to trust. And that she herself deserved to be loved and trusted in turn. Give her a chance, Susie,' he added quietly. 'Don't hurt her again. And give yourself a chance too.'

 
She didn't want to meet his gaze. She couldn't afford to expose herself to that tenderness, that concern again. It was too dangerous. That same tenderness had beguiled her once with disastrous results. She couldn't let it happen again, however great the temptation, however burning the need to let his arms close round her, to sink into his embrace and feel her body trembling against his.

 
She looked past him. Her voice was light, almost brittle. 'You keep mentioning your father, but he doesn't seem to be around.'

 
Jake sighed swiftly and harshly. 'He's been in Paris. But he'll be back this evening.'

 
She nodded brightly. 'I shall look forward to meeting him. Now, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to be on my own for a while.'

 
He said tonelessly, 'Of course.'

 
She heard him descend the wooden stairs, then there was silence.

 
For a moment she stayed very still, her eyes shut so tightly that brilliant sparks danced against her lids.

 
Then, very slowly, she began to go through the canvases again, examining and re-examining all the tiny changing details that had made up her imagined childhood. Trying to understand what had been going through her mother's mind as she constantly recreated for her lost daughter the timeless safety of that sunlit garden where she herself had been happy.

 
Perhaps, thought Zanna, she felt it would keep me safe. And maybe it did, at that.

 
Her attention was alerted by the faint rustle of silk, a fragrance of lilies and jasmine in the air, and, glimpsed out of the corner of her eye, a flash of indigo.

 
She turned abruptly to find Susan standing a few yards away. She was wearing a kaftan, exquisitely embroidered with butterflies, and she looked equally as fragile and ephemeral.

 
Zanna scrambled to her feet, still clutching one of the canvases, feeling an intruder.

 
She said awkwardly, 'Jake brought me here-he showed me...'

 
Her mother nodded. 'I know. He said you wanted to be alone, but I wondered-I hoped...'

 
Across the space that separated them, across the lonely years, Zanna saw the crippling uncertainty, the tense fear of rejection. She held out the canvas she was holding. The one with the child on horseback.

 
She said, 'There was a pony. His name was Solomon and I loved him. My father got rid of him too.'

 
She saw the taut face crumple, felt her own rigidity drain out of her. The picture fell unheeded to the floor as she took one step, then another, until she reached her mother's arms.

 
CHAPTER ELEVEN

 
DINNER that night was a festive occasion.

 
Zanna and Susan had spent two hours sitting on the floor of the studio together, talking, laughing and crying too, because there was pain to share as well as happiness.

 
To Zanna's relief, her mother had not probed too deeply into the reasons behind her breach with Sir Gerald, accepting Zanna's explanation that she had come to see him, finally, for what he was, and had not been able to bear it.

 
Which, Zanna thought wanly, was not so far from the truth. She had also given her mother a brief and drastically expurgated version of her meeting with Jake.

 
In return, she'd learned that on her eventual arrival at Grace Moss's house Susan had suffered a nervous collapse and spent months in hospital. When she'd recovered she had gone abroad, visiting firstly an old school-friend who had settled in Portugal.

 
'Veronica and her husband were wonderful,' Susan said simply. "They convinced me I had a reason to go on living-and they started me painting again. I thought, with everything that had happened, I might have lost it.'

 
She lifted her head proudly, 'Instead I realized I had a means of earning my living, if nothing else. I sold landscapes to tourists and took private painting classes- anything that would earn money.'

 
She drew a breath. 'And, as soon as it was legally possible, I divorced Gerald without his consent.'

 
'So how did you meet Mr Lantrell?' Zanna asked carefully.

 
Susan laughed. 'During one of my classes. I was working in France and I'd been asked to teach a course at Aries. I'd taken my group to one of the local markets to sketch and Gordon was walking past. He came over to look at some of the work, and-that was it.

 
'He had incredible patience,' she added tenderly, 'because I was determined not to get involved. I suppose I knew as soon as I saw him, but fought my feelings for him every step of the way. But in the end he won. He always does.' She smiled. 'It's a trait Jake shares.'

 
'Yes.' Zanna picked up one of the canvases and studied it with minute concentration. He wouldn't win this time, she promised herself fiercely. She wouldn't allow it.

 
By the time Madame Cordet arrived to say scoldingly that monsieur had returned from Paris and dinner was being served-on the instant-the studio was full of evening shadows.

 
Gordon Lantrell was waiting at the door for them, the laughter lines beside his mouth deepening tenderly as he surveyed his radiant wife.

 
He was, Zanna realized with a pang, exactly what Jake would be in another thirty years. Tall, and still lean, with his mane of dark hair graying at the temples. Dynamic, humorous, and still heart-stoppingly attractive.

 
Only she would not be there to see it, she reminded herself, pinning her smile on ever more firmly. And no one but herself knew how agonizingly short-lived this entire reunion was going to be.

 
But she wouldn't think about that now, she told herself, coming back to the present as a champagne cork popped and her glass was filled. Tonight she would enjoy herself. Tomorrow she would consider ways of extricating herself from this impossible situation.