Deceived

Cover “Marius, why have you come back like this?” About the Author What others have said about Sara Craven: Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN Endpage Copyright

“Marius, why have you come back like this?”

His mouth curled in the smile she’d always hated. The smile that mocked without amusement. That did not reach the wariness of his eyes.

He said softly, “Because I received an invitation. An offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“But what do you want?” Lydie’s voice almost cracked in desperation.

“Ah.” Marius was silent for a moment.

“That, I think, remains to be seen.” His gaze met hers in a challenge, like a blow.

“Maybe I’ve come back for you.”

SARA CRAVEN was born in South Devon, England, and grew up surrounded by books, in a house by the sea. After leaving grammar school, she worked as a local journalist, covering everything from flower shows to murders. She started writing for Harlequin Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from writing, her passions include films, music, cooking and eating in good restaurants. She now lives in Somerset.

What others have said about Sara Craven:

TOWER OF SHADOWS:

“Ms. Craven does a magnificent job with this daring story of an obsessive love that destroys all it touches....”

—Romantic Times

THUNDER ON THE REEF:

“Sara Craven plays a powerful game of cat and mouse with readers in this fascinating web of deception, mystery and passion....”

—Romantic Times

DARK APOLLO:

“Sara Craven’s latest effort sizzles with sensual tension and dialogue.”

—Romantic Times

Deceived

Sara Craven

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

LYDIE went up the stairs to the gallery two at a time, the plastic dress carrier bumping against her legs as she ran.

As she pushed open the door, Nell, her partner, turned with an interrogative smile from the ceramics display she was dusting. ‘Well?’

Lydie flourished the pastel-striped carrier. ‘Mission accomplished.’

‘And at the eleventh hour by the sound of it.’ Nell paused. ‘Your mother’s telephoned three times in the past hour, each call more agitated than the last.’

‘Austin’s birthday party always affects her like this.’ Lydie wrinkled her nose. ‘I expect the caterers have brought the wrong-shaped canapes.’

‘Actually, it sounded rather more serious than that,’ said Nell. ‘She was in such a state, she actually forgot to snub me. Maybe you’d better ring her.’

Lydie shook her head. ‘The crisis can wait till I get home, by which time it will probably be over,’ she said drily. ‘Sometimes Mama finds the role of Mrs Austin Benedict rather cramping, so when the chance of injecting some extra drama comes along she plays it for all she’s worth’

‘Well, you know her better than I do,’ Nell said lightly. She nodded at the carrier. ‘Going to show me your costume for tonight’s mammoth production?’

Lydie hesitated. ‘I’ve got an even better idea. Change your mind and come to the party as my guest,’ she urged.

Nell shook her head. ‘Can’t be done, love.’

‘But how the hell are you and Jon going to make up your quarrel if you don’t see each other?’ Lydie demanded on a note of exasperation.

‘We haven’t quarrelled,’ Nell said patiently. ‘We’ve just put our engagement on hold while Jon decides what to do with his life.’

‘In other words, he’s to give up his job at Benco Mill.’ Lydie’s face sobered. ‘I don’t know if that’s possible, Nell.’

‘I think it has to be,’ Nell said gently. She was a tall girl with a serene face and brown hair gathered into a thick plait. ‘He’s an artist, Lydie. He doesn’t belong at Benco and you know it.’

Lydie bit her lip. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know it. But you don’t realise the pressure he’s under...’

‘Oh, but I do,’ Nell said quietly. ‘None better. But Jon’s got to decide whether to fight it or let himself be dragged into some dead-end future where he’ll never be happy or fulfilled.’ Her smile was small and wintry. ‘And if he settles for that he’s not the man for me.’

There was an unhappy silence.

In the eighteen months since they’d started the gallery together Lydie had realised more and more the quiet strength of will which existed behind Nell’s laid-back manner. She’d been delighted when she and Jon had begun seeing each other. Jon had dated a lot of girls in his time, none of them seriously. Now, for the first time, Lydie had seen her brother’s fickle attention focused and concentrated, watched him mature and grow as never before under Nell’s calm tutelage.

Not that it had been roses all the way, she admitted wryly. Nell was gifted and hard-working, and between the pair of them the gallery was managing to pay its way, but her friend had neither the money nor the social background to make her a suitable wife for Debra Benedict’s son. As her mother had made clear from their first meeting.

‘That dreadful girl, wandering around like some kind of hippy,’ had been her icy verdict. ‘If you had to start a business at all, Lydie, couldn’t you have found someone at least presentable as your partner?’

‘Nell asked me to go into the gallery with her, not the other way round,’ Lydie had reminded her levelly.

‘It’s all the fault of that art college,’ Mrs Benedict had gone on fretfully. ‘I knew it was a mistake to let you go there.’

It was probably true, Lydie acknowledged ruefully. Jon should have been the one to receive the formal art training, and she should have taken the degree in business studies to which he’d been harnessed. Except that there would have been no job for her at the mill at the end of it. And, at the time, she’d snatched at art training as she would have at anything that took her away from Greystones Park and its memories.

Her stepfather, Austin Benedict, was an old-fashioned man, patriarchal and autocratic where his business was concerned. No matter what legislation might have been passed in the last twenty years, no woman had ever held an executive position at Benco. And Lydie, it had been made clear, was certainly not going to be the first.

The gallery he saw as an indulgence, something to amuse her until she married. It hadn’t been easy to convince him that for Nell and herself it was an investment—something they were determined to make into a commercial success.

‘I need to justify my existence,’ she’d tried to explain.

‘You’re my stepdaughter.’ He’d glared at her from under his heavy brows. ‘Round here, that’s justification enough.’

Lydie’s mother, Debra Hatton, had reached a crossroads in her acting career when she’d met Austin Benedict. She’d never been in the top flight, in spite of her sultry beauty and distinctive husky voice. She’d been offered only minor film roles, and her theatre career had been on the lightweight side too. She’d had more success with television, landing a role as a neurotic vamp in an early-evening soap, but the meaty parts she’d coveted were being offered more and more to younger women.

She’d been touring in a successful West End comedy when she’d been invited to open a fête in aid of the church restoration fund at Austin Benedict’s home, Greystones Park.

She’d accepted reluctantly for the sake of the fee—a woman with two teenage children couldn’t afford to be too choosy—but it had turned out to be the wisest decision of her life.

Austin, a childless widower for some years, had never shown the slightest disposition to marry again. But Debra Hatton’s wide eyes and slightly ravaged looks had produced a devastating effect on him.

And Debra, looking round at the middle-class solidity of Greystones Park, had seen an end to the struggle and the constant pretence, a finish to the humiliation of having to move out of the limelight and settle for supporting roles, playing women of her own age, or even older. Because to Austin, she’d realised, she would always be the leading lady.

But she didn’t brook rivals lightly, Lydie thought ruefully, especially where her beloved Jon was concerned. He was the apple of her eye, the centre of her universe, and probably not even a wealthy heiress would have fulfilled her expectations where he was concerned.

And Nell, in her handmade silver jewellery and Indian cotton skirts, didn’t even reach first base.

Now Lydie said soberly, ‘Nell—he’s terribly miserable without you.’

Nell shook her head again. ‘No, his basic unhappiness goes far deeper than that,’ she said. ‘His whole life is out of kilter. He’s a square peg in a round hole, trying all the time to be something he’s not—live up to standards he wasn’t responsible for setting. And he knows he’s the heir apparent too,’ she added grimly. ‘And it’s crucifying him.’

She sighed. ‘Oh, why hasn’t your stepfather got some convenient male relative to take over from him?’

Lydie looked at the floor. ‘He did have once,’ she said slowly. ‘A nephew.’

Nell stared at her. ‘A nephew?’ she repeated, her voice sharp with disbelief. ‘I’ve never heard him mentioned before.’

‘Nor will you. At least, not at Greystones.’ Lydie found that she was sinking her teeth into her lower lip. She released the painful pressure and tried to speak lightly. ‘He’s the skeleton in the family cupboard, the black sheep of the family. He—left nearly five years ago and hasn’t been heard of since.’

‘You mean he walked out?’

‘Not exactly. There was the most terrible row, and Austin, who’d brought him up ever since his parents died, ordered him out of the house—told him never to darken his door again—the whole bit.’

‘What was the row about?’

‘The usual sordid mess.’ She could still taste blood from her savaged lip. ‘He’d got one of the mill girls pregnant, apparently. I—I was still away at school when it all happened. And the subject was forbidden ground ever after.’

‘And you just accepted that?’ Nell’s gaze was searching. ‘I don’t believe it. You couldn’t.’

‘I didn’t really have a choice,’ Lydie defended herself. ‘Austin had his first heart attack immediately afterwards, and all the blame for that was put on his quarrel with—with Marius.’

I said his name, she thought, and waited for the pain to strike as it always had when she so much as thought about him. As it still did, she recognised in anguish, her fingers tightening round the handle of the carrier until the knuckles turned white. Five years on, and the wound was still deep—unhealed.

‘You’ll never mention him again—do you hear?’ She could still hear her mother’s voice, angry, almost strident. ‘Those are Austin’s orders and they’ll be obeyed. And think yourself lucky, you little fool, that you’re not in the same boat as his other teenage tart.’

‘So, he just vanished—never to be heard of again?’ Nell’s voice brought her, wincing, back to the present. ‘I find that totally incredible—and rather disturbing.’

‘It works both ways, of course,’ Lydie said tonelessly. ‘Marius has never tried to get in touch either—with any of us. He must have accepted that what he did was unforgivable, at least in Austin’s eyes.’

‘Or maybe he was just glad to get out from under the Benedict thumb,’ Nell retorted, her soft voice grim. ‘I wish Jon felt the same.’

She paused. ‘Who was the girl?’

‘Her name was never actually mentioned,’ Lydie acknowledged with difficulty.

‘But weren’t you curious?

‘Yes—naturally.’ And devastated, betrayed, heartbroken. ‘But she disappeared at the same time, presumably with Marius. No one was allowed to ask any questions.’

But you didn’t want to ask, a sly voice in her head reminded her. Because the questions were hurtful enough in themselves. The answers might have destroyed you.

‘Well, it seems extraordinary to me.’ Nell gave a quick sigh, then pointed to the bag. ‘Now let me have a look at the creation. Rub my nose in what I’ll be missing tonight. We may as well close early,’ she added. ‘It doesn’t look as if we’re going to be overwhelmed by a last-minute rush.’

There was a mirror in Nell’s studio at the rear of the gallery. Lydie gently withdrew the dress from its layers of tissue paper, letting the folds of cream silk slide through her fingers.

Her hands were trembling a little. She’d broken the unwritten law by speaking Marius’s name and opened up a real can of worms. Nell’s innate sense of justice had been outraged, and in so many ways she was quite right.

Yet at the time, for Austin’s sake, there’d seemed no choice but to tacitly accept the curtain of silence which had been drawn over the whole affair. He’d had bypass surgery after that first massive attack and, they’d been warned, he had to be kept free from stress.

They owed him too much to take unnecessary risks. That was indisputable.

She even owed him this dress, she thought wryly as she shook it out.

Yet, in spite of Debra Benedict’s pleas to him to slow down, he still went to the mill every day. Nor did he appear to agree with his wife’s view that he should shift more executive responsibility onto Jon’s shoulders.

‘I’ve set the lad on, and promoted him over better men, my dear,’ he’d told her. ‘You’ll have to settle for that for the time being.’

Debra had seized on his closing words, conveniently ignoring what had gone before, convincing herself that the Benco world was just waiting to be Jon’s oyster. She hadn’t been able to persuade Austin to adopt both children in the early days of her marriage, but that was no reason why her husband shouldn’t leave his company and the estate to his stepson. Especially now that there was no one else.

It was an obsession with her, Lydie thought wearily, holding the dress against herself and turning to study her reflection in the mirror.

Forget the past, she told herself. Think about the dress and the party—and about Hugh, who’s probably going to ask you to marry him. Concentrate on that—and the pain will go away. It always has done—eventually. It must now.

Her eyes felt bruised. The cream silk, with its deep square neckline and filmy bell sleeves, looked incongruous against her workaday blue shirt and jeans.

It was almost like a wedding dress, except for the barbaric splash of embroidery across the front of the full skirt—the band of stylised flowers and trailing leaves in gold thread adding a voluptuous element to the purity of the plain silk. A hint, even, of danger.

The neckline was several centimetres short of bridal demureness too, Lydie thought critically. She wouldn’t be able to wear a bra. But what Austin didn’t know wouldn’t grieve him.

All cream and gold, she thought. ‘Like a madonna lily.’

The words flicked out of the past like the bite of a whip, flaying her senses, making the breath catch in her throat.

Don’t look back, she thought feverishly. Don’t let yourself remember. It isn’t safe. Not now—not ever...

She held the skirt out slightly, watching the effect with detachment.

Hugh, of course, would love it.

She conjured up his image in her mind with determination. Tall and even fairer than she was, with an easy smile, Hugh Wingate had been in the army, serving in the Falklands and latterly in the Gulf War. On his father’s death he’d resigned his commission and come home to look after the family estates. Debra had decided at once that the seventeenth-century Wingate Hall would make a perfect background for Lydie and had spent the previous year trying to bring it about.

Jon, Lydie thought drily, was not the only victim of their mother’s manipulative tactics.

But although Hugh had been more than co-operative Lydie had maintained a certain reserve, even though she enjoyed his company and shared a lot of his interests. Many successful marriages, she knew, had been based on far less.

But she wasn’t in love with Hugh and she knew it. His kisses, while agreeable, left her only faintly stirred, and she’d had not the slightest difficulty in resisting his urging her to carry their relationship to a more intimate level. If and when they became officially engaged, the pressure, she supposed, would increase, and she would have to surrender herself.

But maybe that was what she needed, she thought broodingly. Perhaps the only way to erase the past, and the pain, was to commit herself to another relationship. To begin her life as a woman all over again.

She stared at herself. It could be that she was never to know again the same wild intensity of feeling she’d experienced five years ago; that what she felt for Hugh was as good as it was going to get. Well, so be it. Hugh would never feel short-changed anyway, she vowed inwardly. She would make sure of that.

Security, she thought—that’s what matters above all. She could remember only too clearly the various cheap flats, the uncertainty of school holidays, the terrifying fluctuation of finances which had marked their childhood, could understand why Debra, her career in decline, her spectacular looks beginning to fade, had grabbed with both hands at the florid Edwardian comfort of Greystones and Austin’s unstinting devotion.

If Hugh proposed tonight as her mother was sure he intended, then she’d accept. Turn Austin’s birthday into a double celebration.

She turned away from the mirror and waltzed out into the gallery, the dress held against her.

‘I’ll have my hair up tonight,’ she announced. ‘But you’ll have to imagine the rest of it.’

She checked, her hand flying to her mouth in sudden embarrassment. She hadn’t heard him arrive but there was a last-minute customer just the same.

There was a man’s tall figure standing beside Nell near the cash desk.

God, she thought with vexation, snatching the dress away as if it were stinging her and throwing it over her arm. What an idiot I must look.

Flushing deeply, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise anyone else was here.’

‘Don’t apologise.’ The deep voice was husky with amusement. ‘I wouldn’t have missed the performance for the world.’

Poised for retreat, Lydie felt instead as if she’d suddenly been turned to stone. She felt her lips parting in a silent gasp, her green eyes widening endlessly as he moved without haste towards her.

The overhead light shining directly on him showed thick, faintly curling dark hair and a lean, tanned face, against which his grey eyes were as cold and hard as a winter sky.

‘Cream and gold,’ Marius Benedict said softly. ‘Just like a madonna lily.’ And he smiled at her.

All the breath seemed to catch in her throat. Then she moved, swiftly, clumsily, her hand swinging up in front of her as if to ward him off. And a bowl with a vivid blue glaze went smashing to the floor.

‘Oh, no,’ Lydie wailed, and knelt to pick up the pieces.

‘Careful you don’t cut your hand.’ Nell rushed over to her. ‘And keep your dress off the floor. It’ll mark.’

‘I’m afraid I startled her,’ the deep voice said. ‘You must let me pay for the damage.’

‘These things happen.’ Nell was philosophical. She gave Lydie a swift hug. ‘You pop off home. I’ll clear up.’

‘All right,’ Lydie managed. She got stiffly to her feet, not convinced that her legs would support her.

‘Let me help.’ He walked forward, his hand reaching for her arm.

Lydie recoiled. ‘I can manage.’ Her voice sounded breathless—like a stranger’s.

He halted, his brows lifting. ‘Then can I at least offer you a lift?’

She swallowed. ‘Thank you, but I have my own car.’

‘Of course you have,’ he said softly. ‘How stupid of me. Then I’ll just—see you later.’

She could feel his eyes following her as she walked the endless distance back to the studio. She dragged the heavy curtain over the doorway with a rattle of protesting rings, wishing with all her heart that it were a door she could close—and lock. Then she stood, motionless, among the familiar scents of oil paints and turpentine, feeling like an alien in some strange and dangerous country. Her mouth was bone-dry, her heart pounding like a sledgehammer.

Marius, she thought. Marius back in Thornshaugh after five years of silence. It couldn’t be happening.

Only a few minutes ago she’d broken the taboo and said his name. And now here he was, as if she’d conjured him like a spirit from some vast and echoing limbo.

Speak of the devil, they said, and he’s bound to appear.

With feverish hands she bundled the dress back into its tissue wrapping. ‘Madonna lily’. The words throbbed in her head. She could never wear it now. Never even wanted to see it again,

There’d be something else in her wardrobe—the little black number she’d bought to have dinner with Hugh last week. She could dress that up, somehow. Her mind ran in feverish circles, trying to focus on trivialities and shut out the clamour in her brain.

What—what in the name of God could Marius be doing back here? Thornshaugh was barred to him, so what could he possibly hope to gain by simply—turning up like this?

Unless, of course, it wasn’t that simple at all.

Suddenly, it hurt to breathe.

‘See you later,’ he’d said. Not ‘see you around’. That could have real significance.

She glimpsed herself in the mirror again, and paused. She looked like death. Her face was white and her eyes twice their normal size.

What had he seen? she wondered suddenly. How had she changed? She’d shed every last trace of never very evident puppy fat a long time ago, and her fair hair had been skilfully highlighted, but apart from that there wasn’t much to separate her from the naive, trusting seventeen-year-old he’d betrayed and left behind.

He looked older than his thirty years, she thought, striving for objectivity. The lines beside his mouth seemed to be slashed deeper, but not, she decided, with laughter. His hair was overlong for Thornshaugh tastes. But then, that had always been a bone of contention with Austin...

She cut the memories right there, grabbing up her shoulder bag and turning to the door. Then the curtain was thrust back and Nell came in.

‘It’s all right, he’s gone,’ she said drily. ‘So that’s the prodigal nephew.’

Lydie ran her tongue over her dry lips. ‘What the hell’s he doing here?’

‘Buying that expensive stoneware plate we thought we’d never sell—apparently for a birthday present.’ Nell let that sink in. ‘You obviously weren’t expecting to see him.’

Lydie said hoarsely, ‘Never in this world.’

Nell grinned. ‘Your stepfather’s birthday seems to be turning into a surprise party.’

‘It can’t be true,’ Lydie said, half to herself. ‘There’s been no sign—no word for five whole years. Austin can’t be expecting him—surely he’d have said something to prepare us—warn us...?’

‘You’d think so,’ Nell agreed. ‘But communication doesn’t seem to be a Benedict strong point. Maybe Austin’s just ordered a fatted calf as the centrepiece of the buffet, leaving people to draw their own conclusions.’ She examined a fleck on one of her nails. ‘So—what will your mother have to say—and Jon?’

Lydie swallowed. ‘I—don’t know. At least—Jon won’t mind. He and Marius got on, I think. And Jon was at university when the big row blew up. He—we were both stunned when we found out Marius had—just—gone like that,’ she added with difficulty.

‘At the very least,’ Nell commented caustically.

Lydie looked at the floor. ‘You can’t imagine what it was like,’ she said huskily. ‘Austin was in Intensive Care and Mother was having one fit of hysterics after another and blaming Marius for everything.’

And he did vanish, she thought, without a trace. Without one word of goodbye. With no excuse or explanation from that day to this.