The Longest Pleasure. Anne Mather

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘Sooner?’ Rafe sounded incredulous. ‘I rang you as soon as I could. It wasn’t my fault you weren’t at either of the addresses I found in the old lady’s bureau.’

      ‘You looked in—in Nan’s bureau!’ Helen was incensed. ‘How—how dare you?’

      ‘How else was I supposed to find you?’ he retorted flatly. And then: ‘Anyway, I didn’t make this call to get into an argument over the rights and wrongs of how I found you! The old lady’s dead, for God’s sake! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

      ‘Of—of course it means something to me.’ Helen was furious to hear the tremor in her voice. ‘But—I just don’t understand why you didn’t reach me. I’ve been either here or at the shop all day. At least——’

      She broke off again, remembering with despair the hour she had spent in the reference library before going to the shop. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘You must have spoken to Melanie then.’ So why hadn’t she told her?

      ‘I spoke to some old guy who said you were both out,’ declared Rafe wearily. ‘I was going to ring you back, but I just didn’t have the time. It’s been pretty hectic here, one way and another. Paget sent the telegram.’

      ‘Miss Paget?’ echoed Helen faintly, and Rafe swore.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, impatient now. ‘Well, I guess that’s——’

      ‘Wait!’ Glancing anxiously at the steaks, which were starting to spit under the grill, Helen moistened her lips. ‘I—can you tell me how it happened? I mean——’she chose her words with care ‘—had she been ill?’

      ‘I’m tempted not to answer that question,’ responded Rafe harshly. ‘You should know.’

      Helen quivered, her knuckles white as they gripped the receiver. ‘Rafe, please——’ She despised herself for begging, but she suspected she wouldn’t get much sleep until she knew the truth.

      There was another ominous silence, and then he made a derisive sound. ‘No,’ he said, after a moment. ‘She seemed perfectly all right yesterday evening. Your conscience needn’t trouble you. Not on that score at least.’

      Helen replaced the receiver without answering him. Uncaring at that moment what Adam might think of her behaviour, she moved almost automatically towards the grill, pulling out the pan and flipping the steaks over. She needed the reassurance of accomplishing so familiar a task to give her time to recover from Rafe’s attack, but even so her hands shook abominably.

      Adam let her attend to the steaks without comment, but when she moved towards the fridge to take out the salad, his voice arrested her. ‘I assume that was a call from Wiltshire,’ he remarked quietly. ‘Is something wrong? You seem—distraite.’

      Summoning all her composure, Helen took a deep breath before turning to face him. ‘I’m just—in shock, I suppose,’ she murmured, hoping he would not probe. ‘That—that was my grandmother’s agent. I’m afraid he and I have never seen eye to eye.’

      ‘Ah.’ Adam inclined his head. ‘Well—I shouldn’t let anything some old peasant says upset you. You know what these rustic types are like. Unless you keep them in order, they get an inflated idea of their own importance. And they’re so used to dealing with pigs, they begin to sound like one!’

      The graphic portrait Adam described brought the ghost of a smile to Helen’s lips. The image of Rafe as some hoary old farmer, deep in pig-swill and manure, with brutish features and a straw dangling from his mouth, was so far from the truth as to be laughable. But she didn’t contradict him. The chances of the two men ever actually meeting one another were negligible, and Rafe’s behaviour had only reinforced her determination to get rid of him as soon as possible.

      ‘That’s better,’ said Adam now, seeing her smile. ‘Come on, darling. It’s not the end of the world. Oh, I know it’s a shame that the old lady died so suddenly. But isn’t it better? From her point of view, at least? You wouldn’t have wanted her to be in pain.’

      ‘No.’ Helen felt an involuntary shiver prickle her spine. But Adam was right. Nan could not have suffered for long. With a determination born of desperation, she put all thoughts of her grandmother—and Rafe Fleming—aside. ‘You know,’ she added, ‘I think I would like that bottle of wine after all. Would you mind?’

       CHAPTER TWO

      AT TWO o’clock Helen gave up the struggle to try and sleep, and got out of bed. Pulling on a beige silk wrapper over the lacy folds of her nightgown, she padded out of her bedroom and into the kitchen. Switching on the light, she opened the fridge and took out a pint of milk. Then, taking down a copper-bottomed pan from the rack above the drainer, she poured half the milk into it.

      A few moments later she trailed into the living room carrying an earthenware mug of hot milk. It was chilly in the large room, the heating having been turned down before she went to bed. Helen adjusted the thermostat before crossing to the windows to draw back the heavy curtains, and then sank down into an armchair close by. Whenever she couldn’t sleep, she always opened the curtains. It was so reassuring to know that other people were not sleeping either.

      Far below her, London still breathed, like a beast reclining after making its kill, she thought fancifully. Yet, to someone unused to its wakeful vigilance, the fairylike brilliance of its lights must have seemed an alien phenomenon. For herself, she was used to it. Seven years of living in the capital had given her a sense of identity with its busy streets, though she still remembered the peace of Castle Howarth with a nostalgia undiminished by time.

      Castle Howarth! Her tongue appeared to lick a smear of milk from her lips, and she felt the same constriction in her throat she had fought earlier. It was just as well Adam couldn’t see her now, she reflected wryly. He had thought she was over the worst, and so had she. But she wasn’t. The inescapable fact that her grandmother was dead was the reason she was sitting here now. She would get over it; eventually. But not without some heart-searching; not without some remorse.

      Adam didn’t understand, she knew that. His was a logical brain, to which an excess of emotion was self-indulgent. He couldn’t conceive why she should be so distressed over the death of an old lady she had seen only a handful of times in the last three years. Helen shook her head. Undoubtedly, he had a point. It was self-indulgent and hypocritical to display such grief when she had done so little to warrant it. As far as Adam was concerned, she was behaving illogically—and just a little egotistically—expecting him to comprehend her feelings when they were so uncharacteristic of the young woman he thought he knew.

      The evening had not been a success. In spite of the heady bottle of claret Adam had produced, Helen’s behaviour had thrown them both off-key, and she was relieved when he agreed she should still have the early night she had planned. Even so, he had made one final offer to go with her, and her taut refusal had not repaired the situation.

      ‘I think you’re allowing this whole affair to assume unreasonable importance,’ he said, after observing his fiancée’s attempt to swallow a mouthful of her steak. ‘I’m trying to be patient, Helen, but I honestly don’t understand why you’re so upset. I assume you must be blaming yourself in some way, though how you can be held responsible for the death of someone who, on your own admission, was almost eighty, is beyond me!’

      Helen СКАЧАТЬ