A Seasonal Secret

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

THE short winter day was drawing to a close as Carl Forsythe cut the Jaguar’s speed, slowing right down as he entered the narrow main street of Lower Bewley village.

Shadows were deepening and the ivy that clothed the stone walls of the ancient church looked black, as black as his mood, he recognised drily, his dark grey eyes brooding beneath clenched black brows.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to come back at all. The first visit to Bewley Hall since his uncle had passed away three months ago would be tough, adding to his sense of failure.

But accepting one of the many invitations from the friends who had stayed loyal to him after he and Terrina had split up hadn’t seemed like a good idea either. He was no fit company for anyone, especially at Christmas time.

Three days to go before the Big Day and the normally sleepy main street was positively throbbing with expectation. Lights blazed from the bow-fronted windows of the butchers and greengrocers, their displays of turkeys and pheasants, piles of oranges and rosy apples, all decked out with festive sprigs of red-berried holly. And cottage windows were brightly lit, each with its own glittering Christmas tree. People burdened with shopping, buggies and toddlers, bumped into each other, grinning. Everyone was happy, stocking up for the coming festivities.

With a grunt of relief he edged the sleek car past the last straggle of cottages and out onto the winding country lane that led to the Hall.

Reminders of Christmas, family togetherness, he could do without.

Today his divorce had been finalised.

Failure.

Love, or even the pretence of it, had been absent for a long, long time. But when he’d made his marriage vows he’d meant them. For better or for worse. So if everything had so quickly fallen apart was it down to him? If he’d been the husband Terrina had wanted she wouldn’t have looked elsewhere.

Or would she? Were his friends right when they said his now ex-wife was a promiscuous tramp? Had he as her husband been the last to know?

Throughout his uncle’s long illness he’d kept the true state of his marriage from him. Kept his lip tightly buttoned on the subject when Terrina had demanded a divorce so that she could marry her French lover. ‘Pierre knows how to have fun,’ she’d told him. ‘He knows how to have real fun. He doesn’t expect me to have children and ruin my figure or spend dreary weekends in the country keeping a crabby old uncle company!’

So today he had told his executive PA that he was taking two weeks off, had locked up his apartment off Upper Thames Street and headed for his old home in Gloucestershire, where he would spend the so-called festive season sorting through his uncle’s personal possessions, and his own which were still in the small suite of rooms that had been his for twenty years—since Marcus has taken him in when his parents had both died in a motorway pile-up when he’d been just seven years old.

His throat clenched as the powerful car snaked along between high, winter-bare hedgerows, the headlights making the bleached, frost-rimmed grass glitter. The next few days promised to be pretty depressing.

The Hall would be empty, unheated. The staff dismissed with generous pensions.

Another failure.

Marcus had never married and had looked to him, Carl, to bring his wife to live there, start a family, carry on the Forsythe dynasty.

The decision to auction the Hall and its contents hadn’t been easy. But Carl had no intention of remarrying. Once had been enough. More than enough. So, no wife meant no children, no continuity. Pointless to keep the place on.

Smoky-grey eyes grew stormy. Guilt piled heavily on top of failure and intensified with a stabbing ferocity as he glimpsed a solitary light in Keeper’s Cottage, beyond the trees that bordered the grounds of the Hall. Obviously the new owners had moved in.

So where was Beth Hayley now? What had happened to her? His heart kicked his ribs. If he knew what had happened to her, knew that she was happy and successful, then maybe he’d finally be able to forget that night—forget how badly he’d behaved, say goodbye to dreams that were threaded through with past scenes, like snatches of a videotape constantly replayed. Her silky blonde hair, her laughing green eyes, the dress she’d been wearing, a shimmering deep green silk that had made her eyes look like emeralds. The way her taut breasts had felt beneath his touch, the ripe lushness of her lips. And the deep shame that had come afterwards…

Eight years was a long time for a recurring dream to last. Too damn long…

In the fading light the sprawling Elizabethan house looked lonely, almost as if it were an animate thing, endlessly waiting for light and warmth, the sound of human voices, laughter.

His mouth tightening, he pushed that thought aside. It wasn’t like him to indulge in flights of fancy. It was time he pulled himself together and started to do what he was good at: getting the job done.

Locking the Jaguar, he took the house-key from the side pocket of his jeans-style cords and mounted the shallow flight of stone steps to the massive front door.

The main hall was almost pitch-dark, the last feeble rays of light struggling through the tall mullioned windows. Turning on the mains electricity was obviously the first priority. Swinging round to go and fetch the torch he always carried in the glove compartment of the Jag, he froze, his spine prickling.

Laughter, childish laughter, echoed from the upper reaches of the house. Disembodied whispers, a burst of giggles. The shadows of the children his uncle had wanted to see and hear? The new generation of Forsythes that would never be?

Get a grip, he growled inside his head. Failing the uncle who had meant so much to him was making him think irrationally for what was probably the first time in his life!

Young tearaways from the village, he decided grimly, taking the uncarpeted oak stairs two at a time.

The sound of his rapid footfalls had struck terror, judging by the breathy gasp, the sudden, frantic scuffling of feet.

He caught the two of them near the head of the stairs. Boys. Younger than he’d expected.

Keeping a firm but painless grip on their slight shoulders, he demanded sternly, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

A beat or two of unhappy silence and then the slimmer, slightly taller of the two said quakily, ‘Exploring, sir. Mum said no one lived here any more.’

‘So you broke in?’

‘Oh, no, sir. We found an open window downstairs. We didn’t break anything. Honestly.’ It was the shorter, heavier child who spoke now, and Carl’s grip relaxed slightly. The boys were well spoken and even called him ‘sir’!

‘Your names?’

The taller of the two answered first, ‘James, sir.’

‘Guy.’ A sniff. A wobble in the young voice.

Both were probably on the verge of tears, Carl decided sympathetically, remembering some of the scrapes he had got into as a child and the avuncular trouble he’d landed himself in. They obviously hadn’t broken in with felonious intent. Just two small boys having an adventure.

‘How old are you?’ he asked gently, and two quavering voices answered in unison, ‘Seven, sir.’

‘And where are you from?’

‘Keeper’s Cottage,’ James supplied miserably—no doubt expecting parental wrath, Carl deduced with a flicker of wry amusement followed immediately by an icy feeling, deep inside his heart, which could be translated, when he really thought about it, as a strange sense of loss.

New owners at Keeper’s Cottage, the former home of his uncle’s head gardener and his wife. A dour couple who had brought up their granddaughter, Beth. None of their dourness had rubbed off on her; she had been all light and laughter, a joy to be with.

During his holidays from boarding school they’d spent a lot of time together, getting into all kinds of scrapes. Then, in his teens, he’d often brought a schoolfriend home with him and they hadn’t wanted a girl tagging along. In a funny sort of way he’d missed her company, although he had seen her around the estate and had found himself red-faced and tongue-tied when they’d actually stopped to talk. Her emerging coltish beauty had made him feel uncharacteristically unsure of himself.

All that had changed on the night of the annual end of summer party Marcus had always given for the estate workers and their families. Eight years ago now, Beth had been seventeen and the loveliest thing he had ever set eyes on. He had been nineteen and should have known better.

New owners at Keeper’s Cottage. He would never see her again, never find out what had become of her, and he would never be rid of the memories that had forced themselves into his dreams, where they had no right to be.

Guilt, he decided grittily, and said, ‘I’ll walk you back home. Go carefully down the stairs.’ It was pitch-dark inside the house now, but outside the starlight in the clear, frosty heavens enabled him to see both boys more clearly. Guy was a stocky kid, built a bit like a tank, with floppy blond hair, while James, taller, was wiry, full of grace, with a mop of dark hair. Both seven. Twins, then? Though assuredly not identical.

‘We’ll walk back through the trees,’ he told them as he fetched the torch from his car and flicked on the powerful beam of light. ‘It will be quicker than taking the car round by the road, and your parents will be worried enough as it is.’

And serve them right! he thought starkly. No boy worth the name would pass up the chance to get into mischief. He blamed the parents. If he had seven-year-old sons he would make sure he knew where they were, what they were doing, at all times. Make damn sure they were home before dark! And as it was his house that had been the object of the boys’ mischief he had the right to make his opinions known!

Putting that aside, he shepherded the boys along the narrow track and was assailed by a memory so sharp and clear it hurt.

Walking Beth back to the cottage before dawn on the morning after the party. Deeply ashamed of himself and knowing that saying sorry wasn’t nearly enough. But he’d said it, anyway, and she’d been—been just Beth. Sweet and considerate. Kind. The way she’d put the palm of her hand gently against the side of his face, the way she’d smiled, the warmth in her voice as she’d told him, ‘Don’t be. Please don’t be sorry,’ as if the taking of her virginity hadn’t been his fault but hers.

He hadn’t taken this four-minute walk since then. Soon after that night he’d left for America, as arranged, to take his place at university to study Economics. He’d written to her shortly after he’d arrived in the States, asking her to keep in touch, to tell him if there had been any repercussions from that night.

He’d heard nothing. The possibility of pregnancy had all been in his mind, obviously. And as she hadn’t replied he’d assumed she’d forgotten everything that had happened, put it out of her mind because it hadn’t been important enough to remember.

When he’d finally returned to Bewley, three years later, his marriage to Terrina all planned and ready to take his place in his uncle’s bank, old Frank Hayley had died and his widow, apparently, never mentioned her granddaughter, never mind her whereabouts. But then Ellen Hayley had always been close-lipped, dour and grudging. All he had ever been able to ascertain was the fact that Beth had returned to the village briefly to attend her grandfather’s funeral.

Chiding himself for thoughts that were beginning to seem much too obsessive—Beth Hayley was the past—Carl pushed open the wicket that led into the back garden. There was a light showing at the kitchen window.

‘We can find our way now, sir,’ James said with a staunchness that belied his tender age, then spoiled the effect by quavering, ‘Mum said we were never to go with strangers. Not ever.’

‘Sound reasoning.’ Carl swallowed a spurt of amusement at the way the boy had regressed from burgeoning adulthood to just a baby in a split second and pronounced, ‘As I found you on my premises I simply assumed responsibility for your safe conduct home.’ He allowed them to swallow that mouthful as he ushered them along the path to the kitchen door, adding with spurious cheerfulness, ‘Time to face the music!’

The old solid fuel cooking stove was doing its job just perfectly, Beth thought happily as she removed a batch of cheese scones from the oven and put them on the stout wooden table next to the Christmas cake she and the boys had baked earlier.

Inheriting Keeper’s Cottage had been a real surprise, considering that Gran had wanted as little as possible to do with her for the last eight years. Her original intention had been to sell up, invest the money as a nest-egg for James. But since waking this morning another idea had begun to form.

James had kick-started it when he’d asked at breakfast, ‘Why don’t we live here, Mum? It’s brilliant here. Guy would have to stay in horrid London, but he could come for all his holidays, couldn’t he?’

St John’s Wood didn’t really deserve the appellation of ‘horrid’, far from it, but Beth knew what her son meant. There was precious little freedom there, certainly nothing like the kind of freedom a boy could experience in the countryside. And as for herself, living in someone else’s home, no matter how elegant or how kind her employers were, wasn’t like having the independence of living under her own roof.

Besides, she had the gut feeling that she would find herself unemployed in the not too distant future.

And living so close to Bewley Hall wouldn’t be a problem, she reassured herself as she placed the last of the scones on the cooling tray. Sadly, old Marcus Forsythe had died a few weeks before Gran had succumbed to pneumonia, and she’d learned from Mrs Fraser at the greengrocer’s in the village that the Hall was to be sold at auction early in the New Year.

So there was no danger of her or, more importantly, James bumping into Carl Forsythe.

Turning to the deep stone sink, she filled a kettle and put it on the hotplate. Time for tea. Way past time, she thought, her breath catching and a frown appearing between her thickly lashed green eyes.

The boys had wanted to play in the garden, making a den in the ramshackle shed right down at the bottom. ‘Just for half an hour,’ she’d told them. That had been three o’clock. A glance at her watch told her an hour and a half had passed since she’d watched them scamper down the path between overgrown fruit bushes and rank weeds, then turned back to her baking.

Her anxiety level hitting the roof, Beth cursed herself for being all tied up with working out how she and James could make the cottage their permanent home while time had slipped dangerously by. She snatched a torch from the dresser drawer and dragged open the kitchen door to be met by a blast of freezing air and Carl Forsythe’s condemnatory, ‘I believe these are yours.’

CHAPTER TWO

GUY put his tousled blond head down and scampered inside, his lower lip trembling, and Carl, the son he didn’t know he had still at his side, said ‘Beth?’ as if he couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes.

‘What—what happened?’ It was as much as Beth could do to get the words out, her throat was so tight. Her panic, followed immediately by bitter self-castigation because the two boys had been out in the dark and the cold for far longer than she’d realised and coupled with seeing Carl Forsythe again after all this time had sent her into shock.

And he was just staring—glints of piercing light in those sexy, smoky-grey eyes, his mouth a tight line, a muscle contracting at the side of his hard jawline. He was mesmerising her; she couldn’t look away. It was James who tentatively broke the stinging silence.

‘We were exploring his house, Mum. We really thought no one lived there.’ His young voice wobbled as he added, ‘He said it was all right to go with a stranger ’cos we were in his house and he had to bring us back home.’

Beth’s eyes misted with pride. Her son was being so brave, confessing to his naughtiness, explaining why he had broken the strict rule of never going anywhere with someone unknown to him.

That this particular stranger happened to be his own father was something only she knew. Even so, she would make sure that she explained the rule far more stringently. Her eyes swept from her son’s face to Carl’s and swiftly back again. They were so alike. She bit her lip. Would Carl see the resemblance? She hoped to heaven he wouldn’t!

‘I’ll speak to you later,’ she warned as sternly as she was able, given the panicky emotions that were replacing her initial shock. ‘Go to your rooms now, both of you. Get washed and then change into something clean. I’ve never seen either of you look so grubby.’

As James walked past her he flicked her a look of mute misery which she made herself ignore, and Guy piped up, ‘There were spiders in that shed. Massive humungous ones. So we can’t make a den until you get them out for us.’ As if that explained and excused everything.

He was sitting on the floor, laboriously undoing the laces of the trainers he wouldn’t be seen dead without. Beth flattened her mouth to stop the smallest flicker of amusement showing and reiterated firmly, ‘Upstairs. Now. Both of you.’ And she watched them scuttle up the wooden staircase that led directly up from the kitchen and felt just a little bit safer.

Then she forced herself to give her attention to Carl. She had tried so hard to forget him in the past, but it had proved quite impossible. How could she be expected to forget him when her darling James was so obviously his father’s son?

Carl had changed, and yet he hadn’t. He was still drop-dead gorgeous, yet his shoulders had widened, and he now wore his thick black hair cropped closely to his head, accentuating the savagely handsome features that were harsher than she remembered. His eyes, the colour of storm clouds, were colder and sharper than they had been before.

Belatedly remembering her manners, she said quickly, ‘Thank you for seeing the boys home safely. I can only apologise for their bad behaviour and for wasting your time.’

And then, because it would look mighty suspicious if she continued to treat him as if he were a stranger to whom she was obligated but of whom she wanted to get rid as quickly as possible, she invited, ‘Won’t you come in?’

She hoped he’d say no.

The lecture on parental responsibility Carl had meant to deliver had disappeared like a footprint covered by a fresh fall of snow. Seeing Beth in the flesh after she’d haunted his dreams on a regular basis had stunned his brain.

Her lovely eyes were wide and troubled, her narrow shoulders tense beneath the soft jade-green sweater she was wearing, and the way she’d scooped her long blonde hair back, coiling it haphazardly on the crown of her head, emphasised the tender hollows beneath her high cheekbones and made her slender neck look achingly young and vulnerable.

How could he lecture her when all he wanted to do was fold her in his arms and comfort her, tell her not to get uptight because boys would be boys as long as the world went round? It was no big deal.

‘It’s been a long time, Beth,’ he remarked softly, and wanted to add, Too long, but didn’t. ‘You were the last person I expected to see. For all anyone knew you’d disappeared off the face of the earth, so I guess I took it for granted that the cottage had been sold after your grandmother died.’

Moving past her into the warm brightness of the cosy old-fashioned kitchen, he sensed her slender body flinch and his throat clenched painfully. Was his presence so unwelcome? Because she didn’t want to be reminded of that one-night stand all those years ago? In this day and age it seemed a bit farfetched.

Unless, of course, her husband was around—the father of the twins. Knowing Beth and her open nature, she would have confessed her past relationships—if one night of out-of-this-world passion could be called a relationship, he amended drily.

She might be embarrassed at the prospect of having to introduce a past lover to her husband. That could be why she was so uptight.

He wouldn’t put her in an awkward position, not for all the gold in Fort Knox, so he’d take himself off, relieve her of his unwanted company. He’d spout a few conventional platitudes first, because it would look weird if he just marched straight back out again, even though she might be hugely thankful if he did just that!

‘Are you and your husband spending Christmas here?’ he asked as casually as he could when she turned from securing the door. He noted with entirely masculine approval the way her jeans clipped the shapely outline of her long slender legs. ‘Keeper’s Cottage would make an ideal holiday retreat, and the twins will love the freedom.’

He was simply making idle conversation to make his planned immediate departure seem less precipitate. The thought of returning to that cold, empty house, leaving the warmth, the homely scent of baking, leaving her, leaving all the questions unanswered, was starkly unappealing.

But his seemingly casual question seemed to have thrown her. She looked as if he’d been speaking in Swahili. Her finely drawn brows tugged together and the green of her eyes deepened as she muttered, ‘Twins?’ and shook her head. ‘Do they look like twins? Guy is my employers’ son. I’ve been his nanny since he was six months old. He and James were brought up together.’ She relaxed just a little, smiling slightly as she confided, ‘Guy’s mother is expecting a new arrival any time now. She wants a home birth, so we all thought it best if I brought the boys away and gave them a proper Christmas here. So it’s just us. I don’t have a husband. James’s father and I never married.’

Then she dragged her lower lip between her teeth and bit it. Hard. Why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut? But the tension she’d read in his face had been wiped away, she noted uncomprehendingly. Because of what she’d said? She had no idea.

The trouble was, she had always found him so easy to talk to. Nothing had changed there. She should have had her wits about her—invented a husband—a father for her son—who was working overseas—and put him off the scent. But lying to anyone simply never occurred to her. Never had and never would.

Her eyes wide and troubled, she watched him pull a chair from beneath the old wooden table and sit down, uninvited, one arm hooked over the backrest, his long legs outstretched. He was smiling that slow, utterly disarming smile of his now, and his eyes were as warmly intimate as she’d always remembered them.

He was wearing a soft leather jacket over a dark polo sweater and sleek cord jeans he might just as well have been poured into. If he’d been a film star he’d have had women swooning in the aisles!

Her stomach squirmed and tightened in a sensation she’d almost forgotten it was possible to experience. Raw sexual attraction, she decided, deploring the fact that he could still have this effect on her.

‘Tell me more,’ he invited smoothly. ‘As I said, it’s been a long time. You and I have a lot of catching up to do.’

‘I—’ Aware that all her nerves were standing to attention, her breathing shallow and fast, Beth made a conscious effort to relax. Behaving like a cat on hot bricks would only make him suspicious. She pulled in a slow breath and offered, ‘I was just about to make tea. Would you like a cup?’

‘Love one. It’s been a long day.’ His eyes narrowed as he watched her turn away to take the now furiously boiling kettle from the hotplate. The girl who had woven herself into his dreams for so many years had matured into quite a woman. Five feet five inches of seductive, enticingly feminine curves. Why hadn’t the father of her son married her? She was lovely to look at and had a nature to match. He couldn’t think of a man on the planet who wouldn’t be proud to call her his wife.