The Hidden Years (46 page)

What he was sure of was that he had an overwhelming
longing to take hold of her and hold on to her, to keep her safe and
secure, to carry her away with him right now to his bed and keep her
there until…

Lost in his own thoughts, he relaxed his hold on her just
enough for her to break free and whirl round, heading for the door.

He had to let her go. Common sense told him that he
couldn't keep her here by force, and yet as he watched her he felt in
some odd way as though he had failed her. Failed
her
!
Scott was his friend, not Sage. Scott had already made his decision to
return home even before his accident.

At home he would receive the constant
twenty-four-hour-a-day attention he needed if he was going to make a
full recovery, if he was going to come successfully out of his coma.
Sage couldn't give him that kind of attention. She didn't have that
kind of rock-solid, slow, steady ability, she didn't have that kind of
emotional strength. She was a child still in so many ways… A
spoilt, pampered child, who had shown him tonight that coming from a
wealthy protected background did not automatically protect that child
from emotional starvation and hunger.

While Daniel was reliving the past, Sage too was
remembering, shivering a little as she wondered if she was doomed
always to lose those she loved the most.

First David, then Scott, and now her mother lay
ill… She stopped her thoughts abruptly and closed her eyes.

She loved her mother? How could she, when she knew that
love was not returned?

For a moment she felt all the helpless anguish of a child;
not
a
child,
the
child, the
child she had once been, her sense of alienation enforced as she stood
apart from the others at David's funeral, watching them as an outsider,
knowing she
was
an outsider, an outcast, knowing
that she wasn't wanted or needed. She had watched as her mother had
bent over her father's chair, concern darkening her eyes. She had
watched as Faye had drawn closer to her mother's side, she had watched
as her brother's coffin was lowered into its grave, knowing that, if
she walked away now, none of the other three would even notice she had
gone.

It had been while she was in her last year at school,
having taken her A levels, that David had died. Only that morning he
had been talking to her, soothing her after her latest row with her
mother. It was such a needless, wasteful, cruel death. She had often
wondered how her mother had found the strength to bear it. Had David
been
her
child… She shuddered,
acknowledging that it was perhaps in David's death that the seeds of
her own reluctance to conceive lay, her fear that she could never cope
as her mother had done with the death of so dearly loved a
child—and her mother had loved David, far, far more than she
had ever loved her.

By one of those odd quirks of fate they had all been
together when the news came. Sage had been home from school and Faye
and David had been visiting them with Camilla, who had only been a baby
at the time. Sage remembered the jealousy she had felt when she saw
David's obvious devotion to Faye and their child.

David had had a meeting to attend, something connected
with the parish council. He wouldn't be long, he had said, and then he
had gone.

Less than an hour later the police had arrived to tell
them that there had been an accident; that David had swerved to avoid
hitting a child, who had been riding a bike out into the road without
looking first, but that as he'd swerved he had lost control of the car
which had crashed, killing him on impact.

They had all been in her mother's sitting-room. Her father
had been having one of his rare good days. Sage remembered that she had
automatically looked first at her mother and then at her father.

Her mother's expression had been calm,
controlled— but her father's…

She remembered how she had got up from her chair and run
to him, wanting to share his grief, wanting to hold him and be held as
she gave way to her own. But as she reached him he had pushed her away
with so much force that she had fallen, striking her shoulder on the
edge of her mother's desk.

'Get out of here… get out!' he screamed at her.
'Oh, my God, why did it have to be David? It should have been
you… it should have been you,' he had told her, and his
voice had been full of rage and loathing.

It had been worse than if he had physically hit her, far,
far worse. She remembered how she had fought back her tears. She had
always known that he preferred David, of course, but to hear it said,
to see how great the gulf between his love for David and his lack of
love for her actually had been cruelly underlined…

She could remember as though it had just happened the
throbbing pain in her shoulder, and the tearing, agonising pain she
could feel inside.

She remembered her mother coming towards her, taking hold
of her arm. She remembered how she had pulled away, white-faced and
sick, as her mother had quickly bustled her out of the room.

Her mother had been still dry-eyed and calm-faced. 'Go up
to your room,' she had told Sage. 'I'll deal with your
father…'

She had paused as though she was about to add something
but Sage hadn't let her, bursting out, 'Oh, yes, send me to my room,
get rid of me… after all, you don't want me, do you, any of
you? I'm not your precious David… Well, I don't want you
either… any of you. You all wish it was me who was dead and not David. Well, I
don't care… I don't care…'

But she had cared, of course—she had cared
terribly, achingly, devastatingly.

Later Chivers had brought her some tea. She could tell
that he had been crying.

'Your mother said you was to stay up here for a while,
Miss Sage,' he told her uncomfortably. 'She's sent for the
doctor… Major Danvers…'

Sage had stopped listening. She didn't want to hear about
her father, didn't want to know… Just as he didn't want to
know about her…

Upstairs alone in her room, she had cried for her brother
and for herself, and she had vowed that one day there would be someone
in her life who would love her, truly love her.

The funeral had been a nightmare. Faye had collapsed
completely, utterly devastated by David's death. Her father looked so
ill that Sage was surprised their doctor allowed him to attend the
funeral.

Only her mother had appeared unaffected, standing dry-eyed
at the graveside, and then later back at the house, moving with
composure among the mourners.

After they had gone, after it was all over and Faye had
been put to bed, heavily sedated, and her father had shut himself up in
his study, she remembered she had screamed at her mother, 'David
belonged to me too, you know… He was my brother,
my
brother. And he was the only person in this house who ever gave a damn
about me.'

She had told herself that she was glad she was going away
to university. That she didn't care if she never saw Cottingdean
again—and then six weeks after David's death her father
became seriously ill and took to his bed.

His health had always been frail, but after David's death
it was as though he had lost the will to go on.

Once again her mother had been composed and capable. Sage
was the one who had stood outside his bedroom door with tears pouring
down her face, crying out to him in her heart to ask why it was that he
had never allowed her to love him, never allowed her to get close to
him, that he had always rejected and disliked her. Not expecting that
she would ever know the answers to those questions, ever know what it
was within her that made those who should have been the closest to her
turn from her. One short year after David's death, the expected
happened—Edward passed away peacefully in the night.

Faye and Camilla had now been living permanently at
Cottingdean. She had felt more alien and unwanted there than ever. She
had been glad that she was going away to university. Cottingdean held
nothing for her now. Her mother was a stranger to her; a stranger whom
she neither liked nor loved, or so she had told herself then.

She got up and prowled restlessly round the room. And yet
despite that she had taken Scott home here to Cottingdean…
But that was because he had been curious about the house, because he
had wanted to see it.

She remembered that she had deliberately chosen a weekend
when she had thought her mother would be away on business, only when
she and Scott got here she discovered that her mother's business trip
had been completed early.

Naturally her mother had not shown either anger or
surprise that she should choose to bring a visitor home when she was
not there. She had welcomed Scott and quickly put him as his ease.

She had also made sure that the guest-room given him was
well away from her own, Sage remembered wryly.

Scott had quickly fallen under her mother's spell. She had
been jealously conscious of how well the two of them were getting on
together, of how eagerly Scott responded to her mother's interest in
him.

Jealous and protective of her burgeoning love, she had
told her mother as little as she could about him, leaving it to Scott
to explain that his father had sent him to England to get what he
termed 'some polish'.

'McLaren,' her mother had repeated when Scott told her his
surname, causing Scott to hesitate and explain:

'Yes… my forebears were from Scotland, I
believe.'

'Yes, yes, they would have been.'

After that, or so it seemed to Sage, her mother had
virtually monopolised Scott's time, so that Sage had never been able to
be alone with him, and to her irritation and jealousy Scott had seemed
to be quite happy with the situation, only too pleased to answer all
her mother's questions about his life at home.

'Look, why don't the two of you come out and see the
station for yourselves? I'll leave you the address and number,' he had
suggested.

Sage had told him scornfully, 'The last place on earth
Mother would want to go is an outback sheep station, isn't it, Mother?'
she had challenged.

She had been jealous, she had realised later, jealous of
her mother… jealous of the way she had so quickly and easily
charmed Scott, Scott who was hers, hers and hers alone.

She could have sworn that her mother liked Scott, and yet
she had been the one to get in touch with Scott's father, and to put in
train the events which had eventually led to her and Scott being
parted. She had hated her mother for that, especially when she had
discovered the truth: that her mother had actually telephoned Scott's
father to warn him that the relationship developing between their two
offspring was one that neither of them would find advantageous.

She had thought then that it was because her mother had
wanted a very different kind of marriage for her that she had
interfered, and she had decided that, no matter what else she did with
her life, she would never, ever marry a man chosen for her by her
mother.

When she had accused her mother of deliberately setting
out to break up her relationship with Scott, she had not denied it,
simply saying that she believed she had acted in Sage's best interests.

'I'm a woman, not a child,' Sage had answered bitterly. 'I
love him.'

'You love him now or at least you think you do,' her
mother had told her quietly, but she had gone very pale, and looked
unusually strained. 'But he isn't the man for you, Sage. Marriage to
you would destroy him,' she had told her cruelly. 'Is that what you
want? He needs someone gentler, calmer…'

'How do you know what he wants or needs?' Sage had
demanded, white-faced. 'You know nothing about him!'

'And you do? Sage, as always you see only what you want to
see. You need a much stronger man to make you happy.'

'To keep me under control, don't you mean? I'll never
forgive you for what you've done,' she had told her. 'Never…
never… and if you think I'm going to marry the oh, so
suitable Jonathon—'

'Marry Jonathon,' her mother had repeated, and she had
laughed then, infuriating Sage. 'My dear, if you could persuade
Jonathon to marry you, you would be a very fortunate young woman
indeed, but I suspect he has far too much sense for that, and that
he'll find himself a dutiful, biddable wife whom his mother will boss
around, poor girl.'

But Sage hadn't believed her—she knew her mother
and her Machiavellian mind, or at least she had thought she had.

Her mother had been out of the country again on business
when Scott had had his accident. She had obviously taken to Scott,
because even in the depths of her own anguish Sage could remember how
her mother had questioned her about what had happened, about Scott's
chances of recovery. 'Why not ring Scott's father and ask him?' she had
challenged bitterly. 'Just as you did when you rang him to get him to
drag Scott home and away from me. How did you get him to do that,
Mother? Did you use some of your famous charm or did you simply tell
him a sheep station owner's son simply wasn't good enough for a
Danvers?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' her mother had answered coolly,
refusing to discuss the subject.

And yet at the same time—when Scott had gone
back to Australia and she, losing the will to do anything other than
lock herself away in her room in her hall of residence, huddling under
the bedclothes, not eating, not sleeping, not doing anything other than
longing for Scott—it had been her mother, alerted by Daniel
to what was going on, who had taken her home to Cottingdean, and who
had kept her there until her pride, outraged by the knowledge that her
mother, her enemy was witnessing her weakness, had forced her to take
control of her life again, to build for herself a mask behind which she
could hide her pain.