work? Did anyone get bitten?’
‘I never get bitten,’ Ben said.
‘Nor me. Hide like a rhinoceros.’
‘Oh, well.’
‘Another brandy, Aunt Laura?’
‘No, thank you, dear. I couldn’t manage another thing. I’m ready for my bed.’
‘I’ll walk you home,’ Ellie said.
‘We both will.’
They saw her to the door. Laura kissed Ben, then Ellie. ‘Come and see me again soon, m’lady. We’ve a lot to talk about.’
Ben took her arm in his. ‘What was that about?’
‘Um…’ Her head was whirling. Clearly Laura knew her secret. Why on earth hadn’t she said something? She looked back. Laura waved from the door, nodded reassuringly.
Come soon.
Very soon…
‘It’s okay,’ Ben was saying. ‘I know she was having a dig at Natasha earlier on.’ He looked down her. ‘And I know you stopped her.’
Grabbing this unexpected lifeline, she said, ‘Why didn’t you go with her, Ben? To New York.’
He stopped. Damn! She’d been so busy paddling backwards that she hadn’t seen the weir until she’d fallen over it. Oh, well, in for a penny…
‘She did want you to?’
He didn’t deny it. ‘It wouldn’t have worked, Ellie. It wouldn’t have been a partnership, two people working towards the same end. We might have occupied the same space, but we wouldn’t have been together. Not in any way that mattered.’
‘But if you loved her…’
‘It wasn’t easy, turning her down. Breaking the connection. Choosing to stay.’ He glanced at her, his smile wry. ‘She said I was a pathetic male who couldn’t handle her success.’
‘She didn’t know you as well as you knew her.’
‘Maybe. Maybe she had a point. I knew I’d have been a spectator in her life instead of living my own. Maybe a bigger man could have handled it. I realise it’s a situation women have had to cope with since the year dot.’
‘She wanted it all,’ Ellie said.
‘It’s her right.’
‘I’m not disputing that. But there’s always a price to pay if you’re a woman.’
‘That’s a very un-PC attitude, Ellie.’
‘Is it? I thought I was just being realistic.’
‘You don’t believe there can ever be true equality?’
‘When men start having babies.’
‘Yes, well, there’s that. If Tasha had stayed here, lived my fantasy, settling down as the academic wife, she’d have soon become restless, bored. She’d have felt trapped by motherhood…’
He let the words die and Ellie wondered if he, too, was thinking about his great-grandmother-the one who’d run off with her poet…
‘I guess the truth is that neither of us was cut out to stand in someone else’s wake, and that’s the ultimate test, isn’t it? Not whether you’d die for someone, the one-time ultimate sacrifice, but how much you’d be prepared to give up for them, day after day after day, for the rest of your life.’
‘Is it?’
Ellie stood there for a moment, unable to think clearly. Or maybe, listening to the unravelling of Ben’s relationship, she was thinking, seeing, more clearly than she ever had before. Because if that was the test, if she’d got it so right, why suddenly did it feel as if she’d got it wrong?
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘THANKS, Ellie.’
‘Um?’
Ben took her arm and they walked on in silence for a few moments, Ellie apparently lost in thought.
‘For a great evening.’
Good conversation, laughter, the kind of evening he’d cut from his life, intimacy between friends a searing reminder of everything he’d lost. It was, he’d found, easier to be alone. Easier to bury himself in work.
Then, realising that she hadn’t responded, ‘Earth to Ellie?’
‘What? Oh, sorry.’ Then, ‘Yes.’
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, although she’d seemed to be having a good time. ‘You’ll be able to cook for your sister without a worry in your head,’ he said.
‘What? Oh, yes.’ Then, ‘I had no idea that Laura was your aunt, Ben. Really. She knew I was living at Wickham Lodge, but she didn’t say a word. If I’d known…’
‘It’s not a problem. I should have made my peace with her a long time ago. Better tonight than coming face to face at the wedding on Saturday, not knowing what to say.’
‘Laura always knows what to say,’ she said.
‘And usually says it, whether you want to hear it or not. You will come? To the wedding?’
‘If that’s what you want,’ she said, but he could see that, despite her effort to engage with him, she had slipped away again, was miles away in her head.
‘Is it going to be that much of a burden?’ he pushed, in an effort to draw her back. Wanting her quick smile, warm laughter.
‘What?’ She turned on him, as if to swat at an irritating wasp, then, focusing on him, she snapped back from whatever dark place she’d been. Found a smile. ‘A burden? Oh, please.’ Her laughter was warm, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘Given the perfect excuse to buy a hat, who could possibly resist?’
‘A hat? That I have to see.’
She gave him a sharp glance. Then, disappointingly, let it go. ‘They only want what’s best for you, you know. Family.’
‘True, but while they may know what’s best, they don’t have to live with the consequences.’ He glanced at her. ‘Why did you really give up art, Ellie?’
‘Who said I’d given it up?’ she said, too quickly. ‘I still draw. All the time.’
‘When?’
‘All the time. Just scribbles…’ They’d rounded the side of the house, entered the courtyard. ‘What a mess,’ she said, pulling free as she saw the abandoned table, picking up a glass, holding it in front of her, using it as a way of distancing herself from him-afraid, perhaps, that, having kissed her once without being rebuffed, he’d assume he’d been given some kind of green light. That it was a short step from there to the bedroom.
Understandable, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.
That he desired her, that his body would give him hell for not behaving like a caveman and going for instant satisfaction, was his problem, not hers.
He needed time to get used to the idea of actually wanting another woman. To deal with the surge of guilt that had followed that single kiss, the sense of betraying not Natasha, but himself. While Tasha had wasted no time in moving on in every way-much as it pained him to admit it, Laura had been right about the lovers-he’d believed in his love.
If it hadn’t been as real, as strong, as he’d thought it, if his body could be roused, his head turned by the first woman who’d managed to get close to him since Tasha had left, how could he possibly trust his feelings?
More to the point, how could Ellie trust them?
He caught her wrist, held it, took the glass from her hand. ‘Leave it, Ellie, I’ll clear up.’
He was close enough to feel the warmth of her skin, smell the familiar herby scent of the shampoo that she
