Ruth's cheeks lost what little colour they had left. 'Do you think it would be all right if I made myself a cup of coffee?' She looked very unattractive, damp hair clinging to her scalp, face puffy and blotched with crying. 'I don't want to be a nuisance.'
Jack returned to his painting so that she wouldn't see the flash of irritation in his eyes. Self-pity in others invariably brought out the worst in him. 'As long as you make me one, too. Black and no sugar, please. The coffee's by the kettle, sugar's in the tin marked 'sugar,' milk's in the fridge and lunch is in the oven. It will be ready in half an hour so, unless you're starving, my advice is to skip breakfast and wait for that.'
'Will Dr. Blakeney be here for lunch?'
'I doubt it, Polly Graham's gone into labour and as Sarah agreed to a home-birth, she could be there for hours.'
Ruth hovered for a moment, then turned to go to the kitchen, only to change her mind again. 'Has my mother phoned?' she blurted out.
'Did you expect her to?'
'I thought-' She fell silent.
'Well, try thinking about making me a cup of coffee instead. If you hadn't mentioned it, I probably wouldn't have wanted one, but as you have, I do. So get your skates on, woman. This is not a hotel and I'm not in the best of moods after being relegated to the spare room.'
She fled down the corridor to the kitchen and, when she returned five minutes later with a tray and two cups, her hands were shaking so much that the cups chattered against each other like terrified teeth. Jack appeared not to notice but took the tray and placed it on a table in the window. 'Sit,' he instructed, pointing to a hard-backed chair and swinging his stool round to face her. 'Now, is it me you're frightened of, the boyfriend, men in general, Sarah not coming home for lunch, the police, or are you worried about what's going to happen to you?'
She shrank away from him as if he'd struck her.
'Me then.' He moved the stool back a yard to give her more room. 'Why are you afraid of me, Ruth?'
Her hands fluttered in her lap. 'I'm-you-' Her eyes widened in terror. 'I'm not.'
'You feel completely secure and at ease in my presence?'
'Yes,' she whispered.
'You have an odd way of showing it.' He reached for his coffee cup. 'How old were you when your father died?'
'I was a baby.'
'Since which time you've lived with your mother and your grandmother and, latterly, a bevy of women at boarding school.' He took a sip of coffee. 'Am I right that this Hughes character is the first boyfriend you've ever had?'
She nodded.
'So he's your only experience of men?'
She stared at her hands.
'Yes or no?' he demanded, the words whipping out impatiently.
'Yes,' she whispered again.
'Then you obviously require lessons on the male of the species. There are only three things to remember. One: most men need to be told what to do by women. Even sex improves when women take the trouble to point the man in the right direction. Two: compared with women, most men are inadequate. They are less perceptive, have little or no intuition, are poorer judges of character and, therefore, more vulnerable to criticism. They find aggression immensely intimidating because they're not supposed to and, in short, are by far the more sensitive of the two sexes. Three: any man who does not conform to this pattern should be avoided. He will be a swaggering, uneducated brute whose intellect will be so small that the only way he can give himself a modicum of authority is by demeaning anyone who's foolish enough to put up with him, and, finally, he will lack the one thing that all decent men have in abundance, namely a deep and abiding admiration for women.' He picked up her coffee cup and held it under her nose so that she had to take it. 'Now I don't pretend to be a paragon, but I'm certainly not a brute, and between you, me and the gatepost, I am extremely fond of my irascible wife. I accept that what I did was open to interpretation, but you can take it from me that I went to Cedar House for one reason only and that was simply to paint your mother. The temptation to capture two generations of one family was irresistible.' He eyed her speculatively. Almost as irresistible, he was thinking, as the temptation to capture the third generation. 'And if my much-put-upon wife hadn't chosen that precise moment to expel me, well,' he shrugged, 'I wouldn't have had to freeze on. your mother's summer-house floor. Does all that set your mind at rest or are you going to go on quaking like a great jelly every time you see me?'
She stared at him with stricken eyes. She was beautiful after all, he thought, but it was a tragic beauty. Like her mother's. Like Mathilda's.
'I'm pregnant,' she said finally, exhausted tears seeping on to her cheeks.
There was a moment of silence.
'I thought-I hoped-my mother-' She dashed at her eyes with a sodden tissue. 'I don't know what-I ought to go-I shouldn't have told you.'
Somewhere in the recesses of his heart, Jack blushed for himself. Was the self-pity of a child under intolerable stress so despicable that he had to savage it? He reached across and took her hand, drawing her off the chair and into his arms, holding her tight and stroking her hair as her father would have done had he lived. He let her weep for a long time before he spoke. 'Your grandmother once said to me that mankind was doomed unless he learnt to communicate. She was a wise old lady. We talk a lot but we rarely communicate.' He eased her off his chest and held her at arm's length so that he could look at her. 'I'm glad you told me. I feel rather privileged that you felt you could. Most people would have waited until Sarah came home.'
'I was going-'
