A Little Seduction Omnibus (23 page)

As she looked at Ralph she saw the look in his eyes, and instantly a sickening possibility hit her like a blow in the solar plexus.

‘It
wasn’t
an accident, was it?’ she whispered sickly to him. ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

Her voice started to rise as shock and hysteria gripped her. ‘It wasn’t an accident. It was Julian Cox...he did it. He killed him...’

‘Dee,’ she heard Ralph Livesey saying sharply, before turning to the policeman who was still there and telling him, ‘I’m afraid she’s in shock. I’ll take her home with me and give her something to help her calm down.’

Once he had bundled her into his car Ralph Livesey was grimly relentless with her.

‘Whatever
you
might think, Dee, so far as the rest of the world is concerned your father died in a tragic accident. I don’t want to cause you any more pain. I can understand how upset you are, but for your father’s sake you
have
to be strong. To make wild accusations won’t bring him back, and could actually do him a lot of harm.’

‘Harm? What do you mean?’ Dee demanded.

‘There’s already some disquiet in town about...certain aspects of your father’s professional relationship with Julian Cox.’

‘Julian tried to deceive Daddy. He lied to him,’ Dee defended her father immediately.

‘I’m quite sure you’re right, but unfortunately your father isn’t here to defend himself, and Julian Cox is. To suggest that your father might have taken his own life will only exacerbate and fuel exactly the kind of gossip he would most want to avoid.’

‘You mean that Julian is going to get away with
murdering
him?’ Dee protested sickly. ‘But...’

‘I understand how you feel, Dee, but Cox did
not
murder your father. No one did. My guess is that he slipped off the bank whilst he was fishing. We’ve had a lot of rain recently, and the ground is treacherous. He lost his balance, fell into the river, probably knocking himself unconscious as he did so, and whilst he was unconscious, very tragically, he drowned.’

Dee looked at him with huge pain-filled eyes.

‘I
can’t
believe it was an accident,’ she whimpered to him. ‘Dad was a strong swimmer and—’

‘It was an accident,’ Ralph Livesey told her firmly.

‘That is my judgement as a doctor, and I believe it is the one your father would have wished for.’

It was almost a week before Dee was able to leave Rye and return to Lexminster. There were formalities to attend to—formalities relating to her father’s business affairs which, as Dee might have expected, had been left in meticulous order. Meticulous order, maybe, but someone would have to take over the business, someone would have to stand in her father’s shoes. Dry-eyed, Dee had calmly made a brief list of those who might be able to do so, and then equally calmly she had put a cross through them all. There was only
one
person who could be trusted to carry on the work her father had been so dedicated to—only one person who could ensure that his memory was forever enshrined in the hearts and minds of the townspeople with all the respect and love to which he was entitled—and that one person was her.

Once she had made her decision she made it known to her father’s solicitors, now hers, and all those people he had worked most closely with.

‘But, Dee, whilst I applaud your desire to do this, it really isn’t practical,’ her father’s solicitor told her. ‘For one thing you’ve still got your finals ahead of you, and for another...’

Dee closed her eyes, and on opening them looked at him and through him.

‘I’m not going back to university,’ she told him distantly. How could she? How
could
she leave Rye? How could she leave her father’s name and reputation unprotected and vulnerable to the likes of Julian Cox? She had made the mistake of leaving her father unprotected once, and look what had happened. She wasn’t going to do it again. It never occurred to her that she might be in shock, or that her emotions might be warped and twisted by the sheer intensity of what had happened.

She had made her decision.

Hugo would have to be told, of course, but she doubted that he would care very much. If he cared he would be here with her, wouldn’t he? If he cared he would have saved her father, wouldn’t he? But he hadn’t done. Had he?

Two days after her father’s death, and the day before his funeral, she had a telephone call from Hugo.

‘Dee, what on earth...? I’ve been ringing the house for the last two days. What are you doing in Rye?’

‘I had to come home,’ she told him bleakly.

‘Look, I’m not going to be back for another few days. Whilst I was having my interview they told me that someone had dropped out of one of their training programmes, and they asked me if I’d like to take his place. It will speed things up by about six weeks, since they only run these induction programmes every two months, but of course it’s meant that I’ve had to put everything else on hold.

‘They do it here in London, in-house, and they’re putting me up with one of the guys who works for them. Dee, it’s fascinating, but it makes me feel so inadequate. There’s just so much to learn and know. Some of these people are still farming using methods that date back to biblical times, and...’

Still numb from the trauma of her father’s death, Dee was only distantly aware of Hugo’s selfish absorption in himself, and his total lack of awareness of her own need, her own pain and anger—emotions which fused together to make her feel that she had to protect her father, not just from Hugo’s lack of love for him but also from his patent lack of awareness that anything was wrong with her. And so, deliberately, she said nothing—after all, why should she? Hugo quite obviously didn’t care. Somewhere deep inside she knew that somehow this discovery was going to hurt her, and very badly, but right now all that mattered was her father—not her, and most certainly not Hugo and his precious interview!

‘Hugo, I’ve got to go,’ she interrupted him unemotionally.

‘Dee...? Dee...?’ she heard him demanding in astonishment as she replaced the receiver.

The phone rang again almost immediately, but she didn’t answer it. She couldn’t.

Tomorrow her father was to be buried, but Hugo was more interested in the farming methods of people he didn’t even know than in her father’s death and her own pain. Her father had been right to question Hugo’s love for her. And even if he did love her as much as he had always claimed to...as much as she loved him...there was no future for them together now, Dee recognised. How could there be? Her place was here, in Rye. It had to be. She owed it to her father.

Dee closed her eyes. Right now she couldn’t think about where Hugo’s life and future lay. Right now all she could think about was that Julian Cox had destroyed her father...taken his life...and that it was down to her to ensure that nothing else was taken from him, that his reputation remained intact—and not just intact but revered and honoured.

* * *

Hugo tried to talk her out of her decision, of course, but she had remained obdurate. Her refusal to answer the phone had caused him to come straight back to Lexminster, but by then Dee’s resolve had hardened. All that she allowed herself to remember of their relationship was that Hugo had never loved her father and how important his ambition was to him—far more important than her.

‘But, Dee, we love each other,’ he pleaded with her, white-faced and patently unable to take in what she was telling him.

‘No,’ she announced, averting her face from his. ‘I don’t love you any more, Hugo,’ she lied. ‘My father was right; it would never have worked between us.’

She couldn’t tell him why she had to stay. He wouldn’t have understood.

A part of her ached for him to tell her that there was no way he was going to accept her decision, that there was no way he was going to let anything come between them even if it meant giving up all his own plans, but she knew, of course, that he would never do so. His plans meant too much to him—as much as her father meant to her.

‘Dee, let someone else take over your father’s business affairs,’ Hugo pleaded with her.

‘I can’t,’ Dee told him sharply.

‘Why...what’s so damned important about making a few more hundred thousand pounds?’ he challenged her angrily.

Dee shook her head. She could have told him that it wasn’t the money she needed to protect, it was her father’s reputation—but how could she tell him that her father had taken his own life? That he had been on the brink of being branded a cheat and perhaps even worse?

It wasn’t so very long ago that Hugo had been telling her just how important it was that his
own
reputation was above reproach. How would he feel at the thought of potentially being contaminated by the slur on her father’s reputation via
her
? And if she was not there to protect him there was no saying what damage Julian Cox might do to the memory and the name of her father. He hadn’t gone for good, Dee knew that instinctively. He would be back, and who knew what malicious rumours he might choose to spread when he did return?

‘Dee...I don’t understand,’ Hugo was saying helplessly. ‘Is there someone else? I know your father...’

‘Don’t talk to me about my father.’ Dee responded fiercely. ‘It’s over, Hugo. It’s over. If you can’t accept that then I’m sorry... I have to go now,’ she told him stiffly, standing up.

‘You have to go now... Just like that... Just as though we’re two mere acquaintances instead of—’ he began savagely. ‘You and I are lovers, Dee...we planned to marry, to raise a family. You wanted to have my child, my
children
,’ he reminded her grimly, ‘and now you’re acting—’

‘Acting!’

Dee’s body quivered. Hugo mustn’t suspect the truth, mustn’t ever know just what it was costing her to do this, to send him away, but she had to do it. She had to do it both for her father’s sake and his own.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she told him.

He reached for her then, and she read the purpose in his eyes even before his mouth crushed down on hers. She stood motionless in his embrace until he lifted his head, and then she told him in a dry, whispery voice, ‘If you do, now, Hugo, it will be rape...’

He let her go immediately of course. She had known he would. He stormed out of the house, his face white with bitterness and anger.

She didn’t cry then, and she didn’t cry the following day either, when she buried her father.

She remained at the graveside for over an hour after the other mourners had gone, and when she eventually turned to leave she saw Hugo, watching her from several yards away.

He made to come over to her, but she shook her head and walked quickly in the opposite direction, balling her hands into fists in the pockets of her coat, her body stiff with a mixture of fear and rejection. She didn’t dare let him see how vulnerable she felt, or how much she longed for him, how much she wanted him...how much, already, she ached for him and missed him.

It simply couldn’t be. How could it? Her place wasn’t with him any longer.

* * *

At Dr Livesey’s insistence, after the funeral she went to stay with her father’s aunt in Northumberland for several weeks. When she returned there were several notes in her post from Hugo, begging her to get in touch with him. She burned them all. And then, six weeks after her father’s death, she woke up one morning like someone coming out of an anaesthetic or a long paralysis, the pain of her returning un-numbed emotions so intense that the agony of them almost made her scream.

Hugo!

Hugo! What had she
done
? Not only had she lost her father, she had sent away the man she loved, the only man she would ever love.

Hugo!

Hugo!

She dialled the number of his Lexminster flat and then, when there was no reply, she drove over to Lexminster to find him.

The shock of discovering that his flat was empty, and then of learning from a neighbour that Hugo had left for Somalia the previous day, made her reel with sick shock.

He had gone.

She had lost him.

It was over.

Now there was no going back.

Hugo!

Hugo!

CHAPTER NINE

‘W
ARD
, I’
M
WORRIED
about Dee.’

Ward Hunter replaced the financial section of the paper he had been reading and looked across the breakfast table at his wife.

They had been married less than a year, and he marvelled that he could have managed to live so long without her. Just the sight of her pretty face on the pillow in the morning had the power to lift his heart to a degree that left him shaken with the depth of their love.

The fact that she was carrying their child only increased his awe that life should have thought him worthy of such munificence.

‘You mustn’t worry,’ he chided her tenderly, adding a little bit more dryly, ‘Especially about Dee. She’s more than capable of running her own life, and running it extremely well.’

Anna gave a small sigh. Much as she loved her husband, there were some things, some signs, that only another woman could fully appreciate and understand.

Dee was very self-sufficient, very strong and independent, yes, but Anna was an extremely intuitive woman and she was concerned about her friend.

‘What exactly did she say to you about there being a problem with her plans to establish a unit like yours?’ Anna asked Ward thoughtfully.

‘Not much. Just that,’ Ward responded unhelpfully. ‘But that won’t be worrying her. Not Dee. She thrives on having something to get her teeth into.’

‘Mmm...’

Ward had a point, but Anna was still not totally reassured. She made a mental note to telephone Dee, or, even better, to call round and see her.

* * *

Grimly Dee opened her front door and let herself into her house. She had just spent the morning and the best part of the afternoon going round trying to discreetly canvass some support for her plans from the other committee members, but so far their reaction had not been reassuring.

Only the bank manager shared her view on how important it was to make the changes she wanted to make.

As she walked into the kitchen she dropped her files on the table. One of them contained her carefully worked out and detailed proposals for what she wanted to do and the other, which she had taken to discuss with her solicitor, was the original deed which had been drawn up when her father had first instituted the charity.

His depressing but expected advice had been that there was no loophole via which she could push through her proposals without the support of Peter Macauley—in other words, Hugo.

‘I sympathise with what you want to do, Dee,’ he had said, ‘but without the agreement of Peter’s representative on the committee, it just isn’t possible.’

‘I’ve got my own funds,’ Dee had reminded him. ‘If I use them...’

‘I can’t possibly advise you to do that,’ he had counselled her sharply. ‘You’re still only a young woman. You have your own future to think of. You already make a very substantial personal donation to the charity and—’

He had stopped, shaking his head, and Dee had known that he spoke the truth. It was her responsibility to manage the funds in the foundation her father had set up, and to this end, with Dee’s agreement, he had placed most of his personal wealth in that foundation.

Whilst Dee had certainly been left adequately financially provided for by her father, she had not, by any means, been left the vast fortune other people thought. The fact that she was now a reasonably wealthy woman owed more to her adroit financial management of her own assets than to her inherited wealth, and Dee was pleased that it should be that way. But, like him, she preferred to donate most of the money she made to the local charity he had established, rather than amassing it for herself. But no one knew better than she did herself just what her ambitious scheme was likely to cost. There was no way she could fund it by herself—not in the immediate future.

How
could
Peter have done this to her?

She filled the kettle and went to stand by the sink, looking out into the garden as she waited for it to boil. Pointless, though, to blame poor Peter; he was only following the dictates of his conscience.

The doorbell rang. Dee was tempted to ignore it. The last thing she felt like right now was having to be sociable, but, as she hesitated, it rang again.

Squaring her shoulders, she went to answer its summons.

As she opened the front door, initially a beam of bright sunlight semi-dazzled her, so that for a moment she actually thought she must be seeing things. She blinked quickly once, and then once again, but no, she was
not
seeing things. He, Hugo, was actually standing there.

‘Hugo,’ she protested dizzily as he stepped towards her, but it was too late to protest or to deny him admittance because he was already standing in her hallway.

‘What is it? What do you want?’ she demanded sharply as she closed the door.

‘I had to see you,’ he responded. ‘We need to talk.’

The sombreness of his voice and his expression immediately aroused Dee’s anxiety.

‘What is it?’ she repeated as she led the way to the kitchen. ‘Is it Peter? Is he worse? Is he...?’

As she opened the kitchen door and Hugo followed her inside the telephone rang in her study.

Excusing herself to Hugo, she went to answer it.

‘Dee, it’s me, Anna,’ she heard her friend announcing as she picked up the receiver. ‘I thought I’d just ring for a chat. How
are
you? Ward told me about the problems you’re having with the committee—’

‘Er, Anna, can I ring you back later?’ Dee interrupted her quickly. ‘It’s just that...I’m rather busy at the moment.’

Dee didn’t want to offend Anna, but she knew there was no way she could talk to her with Hugo in the house.

‘Yes. Of course. I understand,’ Anna agreed immediately, but Dee could sense that she was a little surprised.

Replacing the receiver, Dee hurried back to the kitchen. As she opened the door she could see Hugo standing by the table holding her file that related to the plans she had hoped to put to the committee. He was quite blatantly reading the file, and angrily Dee demanded, ‘What are you doing? Those are private papers.’

‘Are
these
the proposals you were planning to put to the committee?’ Hugo asked her brusquely, ignoring her angry demand.

Dee glared at him.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact they are. Not that it’s any business of yours.’

Abruptly she stopped, remembering too late just exactly what business it actually was of his, but it was too late now to recall her childish taunt.

A little to her surprise, though, instead of picking her up on it Hugo merely continued to frown and returned his attention to her open file.

‘Your proposals call for a very radical change in direction for the charity,’ Hugo told her.

Through her open study door Dee could hear her fax machine clattering.

Impatiently she looked from Hugo towards the study. The fax could be important. In some of the markets in which she had dealings a delay of only minutes in a deal could mean a financial loss of many thousands of pounds.

Turning her back on Hugo, she hurried back to her study, ripping the printed message out of the fax machine and quickly running her glance over it.

Body found in sea off Singapore identified as that of Julian Cox. Singapore authorities are investigating possibility of murder as Cox known to be a heavy gambler with large outstanding debts. Any further instructions?

The message had been sent via the agency Dee had used to try to trace the whereabouts of Julian Cox, and, although she had always known that wherever he had gone he would sooner or later return to his dishonest, cheating ways, she had not expected to receive news like this.

She closed her eyes, and then opened them again and reread the message. How ironic. How quixotic of fate—if it
was
Julian Cox—that he should be found drowned...just like her father.

Dee started to shiver, a low, agonised moan whispering dryly past her from her taut throat.

‘Dee? Dee, what is it? What’s wrong?’

Dee was vaguely conscious of Hugo coming into her office and taking the fax from her, but the message, coming on top of her recent mental reliving of the events leading up to her father’s death, was having a dangerously traumatic effect on her. She knew that Hugo was there, she knew he had taken the fax from her and she knew too that he had read it, but even though she knew all these things somehow they were not completely real to her. What
was
real...
all
that was real...was that Julian Cox was dead: he had now gone beyond her justice, and beyond any earthly court of law’s jurisdiction. The judge he now had to face...

‘Cox is dead,’ she heard Hugo saying. ‘I didn’t realise he meant so much to you. You never seemed to care very much for him.’

‘Care...’
Dee could feel something splintering sharply inside her, lacerating her so painfully, emotionally
and
mentally, that the agony of what she was experiencing made her want to scream out loud.

‘Oh, yes, I
care
... I care that he cheated and deceived my father. I care that he nearly destroyed everything my father had worked to achieve. I care that he threatened him with humiliation and I care that my father trusted him and believed in him whilst he was cheating him. I care that because of him my father died...I care that he caused my father to take his own life. I care that because of him I lost
the
man—’

As Dee put her hands up to her face she discovered to her own bemusement that it was wet and that she was crying, that her hands were trembling, her body shaking violently. She was, Dee recognised distantly, dangerously close to losing control.

‘Dee, what are you saying?’ she could hear Hugo demanding curtly. ‘Your father and Cox were partners, close friends...’

‘Julian Cox was no friend to my father,’ Dee denied chokily. ‘He threatened him with blackmail... Oh, God...why did I let it happen? Why didn’t I stay with him? If I had, Dad would still be alive today and I...’

She stopped. She would what? She would have been married to Hugo...the mother of his children...?

‘I should have stayed, but I didn’t...I was so selfish...I wanted to get back to you. I never dreamed that Dad would take his own life, that Julian would drive him to take his own life. He must have been so afraid, so alone. I let him down so badly.’

‘Dee, your father
drowned
,’ Hugo told her gently. ‘It was an
accident
.’

‘No... My father drowned, yes, but it
wasn’t
an accident. How could it have been? He was an excellent swimmer, and why would he have gone fishing anyway? He told me that he had a meeting.’

She was shivering violently, her body icy cold but her face burning hot.

‘Dee, you’ve had a bad shock,’ she could hear Hugo telling her softly. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down in the kitchen and I’ll make us both a hot drink? Come on. You’re cold; you’re shivering,’ he told her when Dee started to shake her head in violent denial of what he was saying.

‘I don’t
want
a drink. I don’t want
anything
... I just want you to go.’

It was over. At long last it was over. At long last there was no need for her to pursue Julian Cox any more. Fate had stepped in and taken over, but oddly Dee couldn’t feel relieved. She couldn’t in fact feel anything, only an aching, agonising awareness of how senseless, how wasteful her father’s death had been. For the first time since her father’s death Dee was able to admit to herself that, alongside her pain and her anger against Julian Cox, there was also a sharp thorn of anger inside her against her father—anger that he could have done what he had done without thinking how much it would hurt her, how much she would miss him...how much she loved him. She had always known how important other people’s respect had been to him, how much he’d valued it—but surely not more than he’d valued her?

But he had left her, turned his back on her and her love for him, her need for him, and ended his own life. And she had been left alone to face the consequences of what he had done. Her eyes filled with fresh tears, a searing animal moan of pain escaping her lips. She was shivering, freezing cold, but suddenly she was aware of a sense of blissful warmth and comfort as Hugo crossed the small space between them and took hold of her.

‘Dee, you’re not well. Let me call your doctor.’

‘No,’ Dee protested immediately. Her doctor was still Dr Livesey, and she didn’t want to see him. He had been the one who had insisted her father’s death was an accident.

‘Well, at least let me help you upstairs.’

Dee tried to resist. There wasn’t anything wrong with her, not really. It was just the shock, the relief of knowing that it was over, that Julian Cox wasn’t going to be able to taunt or torment her any longer.

There had been so many times over the years when she had longed to be able to share her feelings with someone else, when she had longed to be able to tell them what had happened, but she had never dared allow herself to give in to that temptation. It was as though in some horrible Faustian way she had struck a deal with the devil—the devil in this case being Julian Cox himself. As though by keeping her silence she was ensuring that he kept his, that he didn’t attempt to besmirch her father’s memory. Although logically, of course, Dee knew that he couldn’t have done so without risk of exposing himself. There had been periods when he had actually lived away from Rye, no doubt practising his deceitful, dishonest ways somewhere else, but he had always returned.

Now, though, he couldn’t harm anyone any more. Not her father, not Beth, not anyone. It was over.

She frowned in bewilderment. She was in her bedroom, but she had no recollection of having walked upstairs. Hugo was closing her bedroom door.

‘Dee, is there someone I could ring—a friend you’d like to have here with you?’ Hugo was asking her.

Immediately Dee shook her head, cringing mentally at the very thought of having to explain to anyone.

‘I just want to be on my own,’ she told Hugo shakily. ‘I just want to be left alone.’