CHAPTER TEN
ANNIE, weak to her bones, leaned against the sink. What had she done, said, to give herself away?
A tear trickled onto her cheek and as she palmed it away she knew. He’d responded to her not as a national institution but as a woman and she’d wept with the joy of it. Ironic, really, when she’d spent her entire life keeping her emotions under wraps.
Tears were private things.
Before the cameras you kept your dignity, looked the world in the eye.
But with a lover you could be yourself. Utterly, completely…
A long shivering sigh escaped her but the years of training stood her in good stead. She took a deep breath, straightened, told herself that George had every right to be angry.
What man, on discovering that what he’d imagined was a quick tumble in the metaphorical hay had the potential to make him front-page news, wouldn’t be absolutely livid?
She might be inexperienced, but she wasn’t naive.
Sex exposed two people in a way that nothing else could. It wasn’t the nakedness, but the stripping away of pretence that took it beyond the purely physical. Without total honesty it was a sham, a lie.
She knew how she’d feel if he’d lied to her about his identity. But he’d laid it all out while she hadn’t even been honest about the way her parents had died.
She had abused his trust in the most fundamental way and now she would have to leave. First, though, she carefully turned out the cake and left it to cool. Washed the cake tin. Put away the soup bowls.
Straightened the rag rug.
When all trace of her presence had been erased, she went upstairs and threw everything into her bag. Then, because she couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Xandra, she walked along the hall, opening doors, searching for her room, and found herself standing in the doorway of the room in which George Saxon had grown up.
The cashmere sweater he’d been wearing the day before was draped over the wooden chair. She touched it, then picked it up, hugging it to her as she looked around at what had been his boyhood room.
It was sparse by modern standards, with none of the high-tech appliances that were the essential requirements of the average teen’s life. Just a narrow bed with an old-fashioned quilt, a small scarred table he’d used as a desk and a bookcase. She knelt to run her fingers over the spines of the books he’d held, read. Physics, maths, computer languages.
The car maintenance manuals seemed out of place, but keeping ahead of his father must have required more than manual dexterity, although personally she’d have given him a starred A for that.
She stood up, holding the sweater to her face for a moment, yearning to pull it over her head and walk away with it. Instead, she refolded it and laid it back on the chair before leaving the room, closing the door behind her.
Xandra’s room was next door. Large, comfortable, a total contrast to her father’s childhood room, it was obvious that she spent a lot of time with her grandparents.
She had a small colour television, an expensive laptop, although the girlish embroidered bed cover was somewhat at odds with the posters of racing drivers rather than pop stars that decorated the walls.
There was paper and a pen on the writing desk and a note to Mrs Warburton ready for the post.
She picked up the pen, then put it down again. What could she say? She couldn’t tell her the truth and she couldn’t bear to write a lie. Better to leave George to make whatever excuses he thought best.
Downstairs, she’d looked up the number of a taxi firm and made the call. She’d catch a bus or a train; it didn’t matter where to, so long as it was leaving Maybridge.
‘It’s a busy time of the day,’ the dispatcher warned her. ‘It’ll be half an hour before we can pick you up.’
‘That will be fine,’ she said. It wasn’t, but if it was a busy time she’d get the same response from anyone else. As she replaced the receiver, the cat found her legs and she bent to pick it up, ruffling it behind the ear as she carried it into the study to wait in the chair where George had fallen asleep the night before. Self-indulgently resting her head in the place where his had been.
The cat settled on her lap, purring contentedly and she closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself rerun images of George’s body, his face as he’d looked at her, the taste of his skin, his lips, the way he’d touched her. Fixing it like a film in her memory so that she would be able to take it out and run it like a video when she needed to remind herself what it was like to just let go.
‘Annie!’
She woke with a start as the cat dug its claws into her legs before fleeing.
It took her a moment for her head to clear, to focus on George standing in the doorway. ‘Sorry, I must have fallen asleep. Is my taxi here?’
‘Were you going to leave without a word?’ he demanded.
‘What word did you expect? I can’t stay here, George. Not now you know who I am.’
He didn’t bother to deny it. ‘Where are you going?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘You think?’ He moved so swiftly that she didn’t have time to do more than think about moving before his hands were on either side of her, pinning her in the chair. ‘Do you really believe I’m going to let the nation’s sweetheart wander off into the wild blue yonder by herself with a fistful of money stuffed down her bra?’
He was close enough that she could see the vein throbbing at his temple, the tiny sparks of hot anger that were firing the lead grey of his eyes, turning it molten.
‘I don’t think you have a choice.’
‘Think again, Your Ladyship. I’ve got a whole heap of options open to me, while you’ve got just two. One, you stay here where I know you’re safe. Two, I take you home to your grandfather, His Grace the Duke of Oldfield. Take your pick.’
‘You’ve been checking up on me?’
‘You’re not the only one with a fancy Internet cellphone.’
Obviously he had. Searched for her on the Net instead of asking. Maybe he thought that was the only way to get straight answers. Her fault.
‘And if I don’t fancy either of those options?’ she asked, refusing to be browbeaten into capitulation. ‘You said you had a whole heap?’
‘I could ring around the tabloids and tell them what you’ve been doing for the last twenty-four hours.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’ He’d hesitated for a fraction of a second before he’d spoken and instinctively she lifted her hand to his face. His cold cheek warmed to her touch. His eyes darkened. ‘You wouldn’t betray me, George.’
‘Try me,’ he said, abruptly straightening, taking a step back, putting himself out of reach. Pulling the shutters down, just as he had with Xandra. Anything could happen to you out there. Use a little of your famous empathy to consider how I’d feel if anything did.’
‘I’m not your responsibility.’
‘You can’t absolve me of that. I know who you are. That changes everything.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Prove it.’
‘By going home or staying here until the seventeenth?’
‘The seventeenth?’ He looked hunted, as if the prospect of a whole week of her company appalled him, but he said, ‘If that’s your time frame, then yes. Take your pick.’
‘It’s a long time to put up with a stranger.’ And a long time to spend with a man who despised you. ‘If you let me go I’ll be careful,’ she promised.
‘Would that be reversing-into-a-farm-gate-in-the-dark careful?’
‘I’ll use public transport.’
‘That’s supposed to reassure me? You stay here or you go home,’ he said. ‘It’s not open for discussion.’
‘What would you say to your mother if I stayed?’
