Potential Danger
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘HOW much longer, Mum?’

Kate Seton looked down into her daughter’s face, alive with the excitement and impatience of a ten-year old, on the threshold of a much promised treat, and wishing the miles of their journey away because of it.

Once, she too had been impatient of this long journey from London to the Yorkshire Dales, but her anxious need had been to travel away from the Dales, not to them, and she had been eighteen and not ten.

That she had also been pregnant and terrified was something she preferred not to think about today. The journey home was not just a treat for Cherry; it was also something of a fence-mending exercise with her own parents. She sighed faintly and closed her eyes, blotting out the familiar landscape of summer greens.

They had travelled through the once great industrial heartland of the country and had emerged into the tranquil greenery of a land that bore its scars of age and hardship proudly.

Like its people. Like her parents.

‘Mum, will my grandfather really be there to meet us?’

All the anxiety of a child who had learned not to expect too much from the adult world was in Cherry’s voice, and it hurt Kate to hear that uncertainty.

‘Yes, he will,’ she assured her.

And he would. If her father said he would do something, do it he would. It was a trait inherent among the farming community of the Dales, bred into them by their environment and necessity.

She watched Cherry while her daughter stared excitedly out of the window. She had named her Cherry because she had been born in the month of May when the cherry trees were in blossom. It had been for Cherry’s sake that she had left the Dales, and it was now, ironically, for her sake that she was returning.

‘And we really will be staying with Granny and Grandpa for all the summer holidays, won’t we?’ Cherry asked her anxiously, diverted from the study of the unfamiliar scenery to question her mother.

‘Yes,’ Kate answered her calmly, but inside she was far from feeling calm. How would her parents react to this grandchild they had never seen?

Eighteen, unmarried and pregnant, she had left home in disgrace after announcing her pregnancy to her parents.

Her father had a very strict, unbending moral code; it had driven David, Kate’s elder brother, to leave home at seventeen and to roam the world before finally settling down in Canada. She had been twelve at the time that David had left, and her father had seen his son’s departure as a desertion of his duty to follow him on the farm.

Setons had farmed in Abbeydale since the days of the Reformation, clinging to their upland pastures with the same tenacity as the sheep they bred, and to John Seton it was unthinkable that his only son should want to break away from a tradition that had endured for many hundreds of years.

With the hindsight of adult perception, Kate could see how her father’s crippling disappointment in David’s desertion had tainted his life and coloured his attitude towards her.

He had been a strict father, but not oppressively so; after school she had been expected to help out around the farm, sharing her mother’s chores of raising chickens and selling eggs, cultivating the kitchen garden in the walled lea of the house where they grew fresh fruit and vegetables, but she had hated the restrictiveness of her existence.

Perhaps that was why she had worked so hard at school, knowing that the opportunity to go to university would be her only means of escape.

If there was one thing her father respected, it was education, and so when the time came, albeit reluctantly, he had driven Kate down to the station to see her off on the journey that would take her away from the farm for ever.

How lonely and terrified she had been those first few weeks at Lancaster University; how very different the reality from her imaginings. The other girls were so much more sophisticated than her; she felt excluded and alone.

And then she had met Silas.

‘Mum, did my father come from the Dales?’

Her head snapped round, the dark green eyes she had inherited from a Scottish ancestress wide and vulnerable.

By what uncanny mental telepathy had Cherry picked up on her thoughts and asked her that question?

Cherry rarely mentioned her father. She knew that she was the result of a brief liaison her parents had shared while at university, and she accepted the fact that her father had no place in her life, nor wanted one, without any apparent concern. So many of the children she was at school with were in the same position that it was barely worthy of comment.

How different things had been ten years ago when Cherry was born. How her father had ranted and railed against the shame an illegitimate grandchild would bring to their name. Such things didn’t happen to Setons… To be sure, there had been the odd rushed marriage in the family’s history, the odd seven-months child; but in those days modern mores had not yet reached the Dales, and there had been no way Kate could have stayed at home and kept her child.

And so she had taken the only option open to her. She had walked from the farm to the local station, half blinded by her own tears; terrified beyond belief by what she was doing, but urged on by the inherent stubbornness that was part of the Seton heritage. She was not going to give up her child.

She realised with a start that she hadn’t answered Cherry’s question and that her daughter was regarding her curiously.

’No… no… he didn’t,’ she told her truthfully, and then added in warning, ‘Don’t mention him to your grandparents, Cherry, will you?’

‘Did they know him?’ Cherry asked her, obviously puzzled by her instruction.

Kate shook her head. ‘No.’

And it was true. Her parents had never met Silas. She had been planning to take him home with her at Christmas. They had been going to announce their engagement, or so she had believed. God, she had been a fool… But what was the point in thinking about that now? She had been a fool as so many naïve girls were fools and would go on being fools. It was impossible to change human emotions, and girls would continue to fall in love and give themselves in the intensity of that love, to men who were simply using them to satisfy the immediacy of their sexual urges.

She reached out and pushed her daughter’s thick, dark hair back off her face. Cherry’s hair was a legacy from Silas. It had that same raven’s wing sheen, and her eyebrows his expressive lift.

She had the green Seton eyes, though, set in a face whose delicate heart shape promised to mirror her own, once the softening influence of childhood disappeared.

Her own hair was a dark, rich red and thickly curly. It vibrated with its own electric intensity, and Silas had often teased her that she was so small and tiny because all her strength went into her hair.

That was one way in which she and Cherry were not alike. Cherry promised to be tall like her father. One day, her daughter was going to be an extremely beautiful woman, Kate reflected, and it was Silas’s loss that he would not be able to witness the wonder of that woman emerging. Kate was determined that her daughter would be a woman of the eighties—feminine, warm, intelligent, honest, self-reliant—and she wondered briefly and treacherously how she would compare to Silas’s other children: those two dark-haired boys whose existence she had never even guessed at in the days when she had been drunk on love and pleasure, and believing that Silas belonged to her alone.

Heady days; days which would have been little more than a memory, perhaps, if it hadn’t been for Cherry.

It seemed odd now to remember that she had ever been such a creature of passion and intensity that she had conceived a child.

Those fires had long ago burned out, smothered by layer upon layer of panic, pain, confusion, and the sheer hard work of building a life for herself and her child.

‘I wish Aunt Lydia could have come with us, don’t you?’

Aunt Lydia was in fact Kate’s godmother; the true fairy-story kind of godmother, who had taken her in as a homeless, terrified eighteen-year-old, stood by her through Cherry’s birth, supported, advised and, most important of all, loved them both. And now, finally she had been the active force in breaking down the barriers of the eleven-year-old silence between Kate and her parents.

Knowing quite well that Cherry’s comment sprang from a sudden surge of nervousness at meeting the grandparents she had never known, Kate responded carelessly, ‘Aunt Lydia hates the countryside, love, you know that. Can you honestly see her in wellies and muddy fields?’ she asked mischievously.

Lydia was a town creature, all brittle, elegant bones and long, polished nails, her outward appearance belying her kind nature.

How she and her mother had ever become friends in the first place, never mind kept that friendship alive for over thirty years, was a mystery to Kate, but somehow they had.

They were really in the Dales now, travelling through long upland valleys, green with pastures, and the odd stand of trees, dotted with small, clinging, stone farmhouses.

Cherry was fascinated, almost glued to the carriage window.

Kate had lost count of the number of times her daughter had asked her about Abbeydale and her grandparents since that Christmas telephone call.

Initially, she herself hadn’t wanted to come; she was frightened that doing so would arouse too many painful memories. But Lydia had reminded her gently that there were others whose feelings must be considered, Cherry in particular.

‘She’s a Seton, Kate,’ she had pointed out quietly. ‘She loves the countryside. Times have changed. Illegitimacy isn’t the slur it was. Your father was wrong in behaving as he did, but he and your mother both miss and love you.’

‘Cherry wants to be a vet,’ Kate had responded illogically, and she had seen Lydia smile, that secret, pleased smile that showed she knew she had won a victory. And so here they were, within minutes now of the meeting she had been secretly fearing ever since it had been arranged.

The train slowed down, crawled through a tunnel and emerged into the golden sunlight of the July afternoon.

The small station was bedecked with hanging baskets and flowering plants, its name picked out proudly in fresh paint, but, as Kate got up to collect her things and usher Cherry towards the door, she saw no sign of her father on the platform.

Then, if she could have done so, she would have turned round and gone right back to London. That was where she belonged now. That was where her life lay, teaching as she had done ever since she had qualified.

She enjoyed her work; it held a multiplicity of challenges that constantly re-energised her; she loved the children themselves and she loved teaching them.

The train stopped. She paused before opening the door. No one else got out, and she had a sensation of stepping back in time, of being eighteen again and newly home from university.

And surely that was Mr Meadows waiting to take their tickets?

He had seemed ancient to her at eighteen, but he was probably only in his sixties now, Kate recognised as she handed over the slips of paper with a smile.

‘Your dad’s waiting for you in the car park,’ he told her, eyeing her with friendly recognition. ‘And this is the young ‘un, is it? Spit of your ma, isn’t she?’

‘Am I like Grandma?’ Cherry asked her curiously as they walked through the booking hall.

‘A little…’

Only in that she was like herself, Kate suspected. Her parents were second cousins, Setons both; both spare and wiry, and in some ways very physically alike. Her mother’s hair had never been as red as Kate’s, and it had certainly been nothing like Cherry’s polished waterfall of straight ebony.

There was only one vehicle in the car park, an ancient Land Rover, with a man standing beside it.

Kate felt the apprehension curl through her stomach. In addition to rearing and breeding sheep, her father trained prize sheep-dogs, and throughout her childhood there had never been one of these animals far from his side. There was one at his feet now, a quiver of intelligent black and white fur, the sight of which transfixed Cherry to the spot in delighted disbelief.

While her daughter studied the dog, Kate studied her father. He had aged—but then, hadn’t they all?—and working in a climate like the Dales, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, took its toll on the human frame, even one as hardy as her father’s.

He returned her look a little defensively, and then, ridiculously, she felt tears prick her eyes and she did something she had never intended to do, practically running across the car park to hug him.

He returned her embrace awkwardly, uncertainly, like a man unused to demonstrations of physical caring, and then released her to say gruffly, ‘Aye, she’s a proper Seton,’ and Kate could have sworn there was just a suspicion of moisture in his eyes as he looked at her daughter.

‘The man at the station said I was the image of my grandma,’ Cherry told him importantly.

Instantly he scowled. ‘That Tom Meadows always had a fancy for your mother,’ he told Kate irefully.

‘Grandpa, is it all right for me to stroke your dog?’ Cherry asked him formally.

Again he scowled, and Kate, well acquainted with her father’s view that dogs were working animals and best treated as such, was astounded to see him suddenly bend and fondle the silky black and white coat with gentle fingers. His hand was gnarled. An old man’s hand, she recognised shockingly.

‘Aye, I don’t see why not. His name’s Laddie.’

Lassie, Laddie, Meg, Skip—those were always the names her father chose for his dogs. A dog trained by John Seton was always in high demand, but for as long as she could remember Kate had never known her father sell a dog to a man he didn’t like.

As Cherry bent down to stroke the dog, crooning happily as his tail beat on the dusty ground, Kate asked, ‘Will you be working him in the county show, Dad?’

‘No, not this one. He’s not much good as a worker.’

He saw the astonishment on her face and added gruffly, ‘Your mother took to him, though, and I couldn’t get rid of him. Sleeps in the house an’ all, he does.’ He scowled horribly. ‘Ought to have had him put down. Dog’s no good if it can’t work…’

Had she not seen with her own eyes the love in her father’s face as he stroked his pet, Kate might almost have believed him.

How many times in the past had she been too ignorant or too immature to see that his gruff manner hid real emotion? She had thought him a cold, hard, man, and so she had run away from him and from her home, convinced that if she stayed he would make her hand over her baby for adoption.

And yet now, as he looked at Cherry, there was pride as well as grief in his eyes; love as well as regret.

‘We’d better get on, then. No use standing about here giving folks cause to gossip. Besides, your ma will be waiting.’

The village hadn’t changed at all. There was still the same bench outside the post office’s wistaria-draped front wall, a meeting-point for the older members of the village. During the day it was normally occupied by the women, but in the evening it was the preserve of the men. Opposite the post office was the village’s single pub, the De Burghley Arms. A rather grand name for a very small and homely building. It took its name from the follower of William the Conqueror who had once owned these lands; a family which had distant connections with Queen Elizabeth the First’s famous minister.

The last de Burghley had left the village just before Kate, in the funeral cortège taking him to the family vault within the walls of their local parish church.

One of his ancestors, robed in the stone mimicry of his Crusader uniform, lay at rest within the church itself; and the church’s stained-glass windows gave testimony to the many de Burghleys who, over the centuries, had given their lives in what they considered to be just causes.

It was her father’s proud boast that there had been Setons in the dale for as long as there had been de Burghleys, if not longer. There was even a story in the family that the first Seton had been a wild raider from the Scottish borders who had tried to steal away one of the de Burghley daughters to hold for ransom, but who had ended up falling in love with her instead, and who had received from his new father-in-law, as the price of her dowry, the lands which the Setons had farmed ever since.

If that was the case, the dowry had not been an overgenerous one, Kate reflected as the engine note of the Land Rover changed and they started to climb the ribbon of grey road between its darker grey borders of dry stone walling.

Her family’s acreage, though large, comprised not the rich pasture lands of the dale bottom, but the unproductive uplands fit only for sheep.

Once vast flocks of sheep had roamed the Seton lands, and in the Middle Ages the Setons had grown wealthy from their profit, but two World Wars and the death of her grandfather had reduced the flocks to a handful of worthless animals.

It had been her father who had had the foresight to see that the future lay in selective breeding, in producing not the world’s wool, but the rams that would produce the flocks which would produce such wool.

Seton rams were famous and prized the world over, but, as Kate knew from her childhood, those early years of establishing their reputation had been hard ones for her parents, with long separations between them while her father travelled, mainly to South America, Australia and New Zealand, doing his own marketing. Her mother remained at home, in sole charge of the farm: her children, the livestock and her husband’s precious ewes and lambs.

Through it all her parents had worked as a team, each selflessly working for the other. They had a relationship which now was considered old-fashioned, with her mother making her husband the pivot of her life.

The farm and their lives together here in the Dales; that had been the total sum of their ambitions. No wonder her father had been so disappointed when David had announced he wanted to be an engineer.

Kate had kept in sporadic touch with her brother and knew that he was married, but as yet had no children. Was that what had motivated her father to mend the breach between them? The fact that Cherry, her daughter, was the only member of the next generation?

Cherry was chattering to her grandfather as though she had known him all her life. Already there was a rapport between them completely unshadowed with the awe in which Kate herself had always held him.

Listening to Cherry talking knowledgeably to him about the sheep—throwing out snippets of facts she could only have picked up from her, Kate recognised—she was both amused and saddened by her daughter’s grave, slightly old fashioned air. Cherry was such a contained, adult child in many ways, and yet in others she was so heartbreakingly vulnerable. This visit meant so much to her; she had talked of nothing else for months, ever since Lydia had dropped her bombshell at Christmas, by announcing that she had been in touch with Kate’s mother and that her parents wanted her to go home, if only for a visit.

Kate ached to remind Cherry that a visit was all it could be, but was reluctant to cloud her daughter’s happiness.

Cherry was a country child and bloomed in a country environment. She herself had ambivalent feelings towards the Dales. She loved them; they were her heritage and no one of any sensitivity, having known them, could cut that knowledge from her soul without destroying it.

But London had been good to her as well. London had provided her with a job, with independence, with a home for Cherry, where no one expressed surprise or curiosity over her lack of a father.

With Cherry herself she had been totally honest, explaining that she had fallen in love with her father, and that, having done so, she had only discovered too late that he was married to someone else.

What she had not told Cherry was that Silas and his wife had two children. She had not wanted to burden her daughter with that knowledge. It was enough that she carried it.

Thank God that was something her parents had never known, especially her father. They had simply believed that she had ‘got herself into trouble’ with someone at university, and that that someone, once he had realised she was pregnant, had turned his back on her. And she had let them think that it was as simple as that.

They were crossing what was de Burghley land now; the great house hidden from them by the trees planted all around it. As they passed the gates, Kate noticed a large notice-board attached to the wall, and the uniformed security guard standing outside the lodge house.

‘What’s happened to the Hall?’ she questioned her father curiously.

De Burghley land ran alongside theirs, which no doubt had given rise to that old story about a Seton having married a de Burghley daughter.

‘Government’s bought it,’ her father told her abruptly. ‘Started up some kind of monitoring unit there, where they do all kinds of special tests. All very hush-hush it is, and no one allowed inside the grounds, or on to the land for that matter, without permission. Opened up about twelve months ago. The man who runs it is a reasonable sort. Keeps himself to himself, but there’s some locally say that it can only cause trouble…’

‘What kind of trouble, Grandpa?’ Cherry asked curiously.

Kate saw her father frown.

‘The sort I don’t know much about, lass,’ he told her heavily, adding for Kate’s benefit, ‘Been a lot of ewes aborting this last year, and then all that business from Russia.’

Having correctly interpreted his remarks as a reference to the Chernobyl disaster which Kate knew from newspaper reports had badly affected lamb and cattle sales for meat, it was Kate’s turn to frown.

She knew, of course, about the nuclear fall-out which had been rumoured to have affected some parts of the area, and of course no one could live in these times and not be aware of the fears caused by such places as Windscale, but to see the concern in her father’s eyes brought the reality of it home to her.

‘You’re not saying that you’ve been affected by nuclear fall-out up here, Dad, are you?’ she questioned him, immediately worried for Cherry, for who knew what effects even minute amounts of radiation could have on growing children?

‘We’re not told. But why else open this research station… and why keep it all so secret? There’s a lot of concern in the village about it, I can tell you. Protest meetings and the like.’

‘And the man who’s in charge of the place—what does he say?’

‘Says there’s nothing to worry about, and I, for one, believe him.’

Because he wanted to believe him, Kate recognised. It would break her father’s heart if anything happened to contaminate Seton land. She heard the pride in his voice as they rounded a turn in the road and passed the boundary that divided the de Burghley acres from their own.

‘Now, lass,’ he told Cherry, ‘you’re on Seton land. What dost tha think o’ un?’

Cherry looked as though she were about to burst with pride and delight, and before Kate could stop her, and regardless of the fact that her father was driving the Land Rover, Cherry flung her arms round his neck and said ecstatically, ‘Oh, Grandpa, I’m so glad that we’re here.’

‘Now… now enough of that…’

But her father was careful not to hurt her as he disengaged himself, Kate noticed, and she also noticed the surreptitious way in which he blew his nose only seconds later.

They entered the family farmyard to a cacophany of barking from the dogs, mingling with the cackle of her mother’s hens and the bleating of half a dozen or so huge fat lambs, plainly those which had been hand-reared during the spring and which were now proving reluctant to return to the flock, Kate reflected, recognising the familiar pattern of her childhood.

‘Watch out for the bantam,’ her father warned them as he stopped the Land Rover.

‘What’s a bantam?’ Cherry demanded.

‘A small hen,’ Kate told her, ruefully remembering her mother’s affection for her bantam silkies and the ferocity of the minute males who lorded it over their harems.

‘Don’t tell me that Ma still keeps geese,’ Kate groaned as she heard the familiar alarm sound. In her childhood, even her father had not been safe from the sharp beaks of her mother’s geese, always excellent watchdogs. Their main fault was that it was impossible to teach them to discern between friend and foe.

And then the back door was opening and her mother was standing there. Not really changed at all. Her hair still neat and braided, her diminutive, wiry form still clad in a neat skirt and blouse, covered by an old-fashioned apron.

Across the yard Kate saw the look her parents exchanged, and she was at once a part and yet not a part of a magic circle that concentrated its love on the girl standing uncertainly on one foot as she stared round the unfamiliar yard.

‘I’ve brought them then, Jean, love…’

And suddenly her mother’s arms were open and both she and Cherry were caught up in them. Odd how so much strength could come from such a slight form. As she released them, Kate heard her mother saying tearfully, ‘My, but she’s the spitting image of you, John. A real Seton.’

And for the second time that day she was aware, as she had never been aware as a child, of the great love between her parents; for Cherry certainly looked like neither of them, since her features were hers, Kate knew, and her colouring and build was completely her father’s.

But there was no time to reflect any more on Cherry’s physical heritage, because she was crossing the familiar threshold into the the large square kitchen of her childhood, and the years were rolling back. She almost felt she could be Cherry’s age again, just home from school, waiting for David to finish his chores so that they could sit down and eat.

‘It’s grand to have you home, lass.’

Quiet words, but full of emotion. Kate looked at her mother.

‘It’s lovely to be here, Mum. I don’t think Cherry has talked of anything else since Christmas.’

‘Cherry… what kind of name is that to give the child?’ her father snorted.

And it was Cherry herself who answered him saying brightly, ‘But Mum called me that because the cherry trees were in blossom when I was born.’

They had tea in the large, panelled dining-room that overlooked the gardens at the front of the house. Originally built as a minor hall, the house was much larger than the other stone farmhouses that populated the dale. It had a sunny drawing-room that overlooked the dale itself and, although the ground was barren and the winter winds icy, in the protection of the walled garden countless generations of Seton women had cultivated not only fruit and vegetables, but flowers as well.

The drawing-room was only used on formal occasions, its oak furniture lovingly waxed and its parquet floor polished.

Normally they ate in the large kitchen; and in the summer, as Kate remembered it, their evening meal had often been as late as eight or nine in the evening so that her father could make the most of the long hours of daylight.

Tea was the word used to describe the evening meal in the north, and not dinner, and on this occasion her mother had baked all the things for which she was justly famous in the dale: scones light as feathers from her bantam chickens, bread, still slightly warm from the old-fashioned bread ovens either side of the new Aga and still used by her mother, currant slices, lightly dusted with sugar, summer pudding made from some of the early fruits, the kind of salad that had never dreamed of seeing the inside of a supermarket but came straight from her mother’s garden, and tiny new potatoes, and home-cured ham. All the old-fashioned things she remembered from her childhood, and yet, as she sliced into her mother’s bread, Kate saw that it had been made with wholemeal flour, showing that even up here people were not totally immune to the power of the Press.

Despite the excellence of the food, Kate wasn’t hungry. Cherry was, though, tucking into her food with the healthy appetite of the young.

Already Kate thought she could see a change in her—an opening up, a stretching out and growing—as though somehow she had been cramped in their city life.

Throughout the meal she chatted to her grandparents, telling them about her school and her friends, leaving Kate alone with her own thoughts.

It was disturbing how much Silas was occupying them. She supposed she ought to have expected it and been prepared for it, for, although Silas had never visited her home, the emotional trauma of her own leaving of it was bound to have left a lingering resonance for her sensitive nerves to pick up on.

And yet she had barely thought about him at all in years. He was part of her past, and for Cherry’s sake she could not regret having known him, but the discovery that he had deceived her, that he was married with children, had totally killed her love.

And she had never allowed herself to fall into the same trap again.

Oh, she had dated—fellow schoolteachers, friends of friends who shared her interest in the theatre and with whom she had enjoyed pleasurable evenings—but there had been nothing like the intensity of emotion she had known with Silas.

Why not? She was emotionally and physically capable of that emotion, and yet, for some reason, after Silas she had had no other lovers, no man in her life who was more than a friend.

Was it perhaps because she had been afraid? Afraid of the vulnerability such a commitment would bring?

In the early years, of course, there had been Cherry. Most men shied away from a woman with a young child, and Kate’s life had been too exhausting to allow her to do anything other than care for her child and complete her education. Without Lydia’s help and love, even that much would not have been possible.

‘I’ve put Cherry in your old room.’

Her mother’s quiet words cut through her introspective thoughts.

Her old room. Tiny and cosy, up under the eaves, with its uneven walls and sloping ceiling.

‘You’re quite close to her… in the guest room. It’s got its own bathroom now, and I thought you’d prefer that.’

A guest room with its own bathroom. Nostalgia touched her with melancholy fingers. Even here, after all, things changed. She had noticed that her parents had also had central heating installed. A new innovation, indeed. She remembered vividly the arguments when her mother had first tentatively broached the subject. Then her father had flatly refused to even consider it.

But times obviously changed. People changed.

CHAPTER TWO

LATER on that evening, as she took Cherry up to bed, sitting in the familiar bedroom with its rose-patterned wallpaper, Kate listened half-heartedly to her daughter’s excited chatter, while part of her couldn’t help remembering how she had thrown herself on this very bed and wept with grief and fear, unable to believe that she was actually pregnant… that Silas was actually married… that her father was refusing to allow her in the house.

‘And Grandpa was saying that it will soon be the Dales Show. I wish I had something I could show. Mum, are you all right?’

Kate gave her a faint smile. ‘Fine…’

‘Were you thinking about my father?’

Green eyes met green, and Kate wondered at the perception of this child of hers, who could be so gravely and heart-breakingly mature.

And there was no doubt at all about where she got that perception from. It was one of the first things she had noticed about Silas… That and his almost overpoweringly male good looks.

She realised she was drifting helplessly back into the past and that she had not answered Cherry’s question. Walking over to the window, she looked out at the familiar scenery of the dale. Below them, her father’s sheep were gathered in the lowland pastures. These would be the ones that would soon need shearing.

Keeping her back toward Cherry, she said quietly, ‘No. No, I wasn’t thinking about your father. I was just remembering when this was my room.’

It was the first time she had lied to Cherry, and the small deception hurt, but coming home had stirred up too many memories, had brought to the surface of her consciousness feelings and thoughts she couldn’t share with anyone.

Thoughts not just of Silas, but of David, her childhood, her parents and her own suddenly altered perceptions of past events; it was almost as though she had turned a corner and found herself confronted with an unfamiliar view of a territory so intimately well-known that the shock of the unexpected forced her to examine what she thought she had known.

‘Time for bed,’ she told Cherry, turning to smile at her. Whatever else she might think or feel, nothing could change her love for this child she and Silas had made together.

She kissed her, hugging her briefly.

‘Happy to be here, Cherry?’

‘Oh, yes… It’s even better than I hoped.’ She turned serious green eyes to her mother. ‘If I lived here, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave.’ And the sombre look she gave the view from the window made Kate’s heart tremble with apprehension.

The last thing she wanted was for Cherry to become too attached to this place. There was no way they could make their lives here on a permanent basis. Jobs in teaching in this part of the world were bound to be scarce, and where would they live, other than with her parents?

Seeing Cherry settled into bed, Kate went downstairs, automatically heading for the kitchen.

To her surprise only her father was there, engaged in the homely task of making a pot of tea. An unfamiliar sound caught her ears and she traced it to a dishwasher discreetly concealed by an oak panel that matched the rest of the kitchen.

‘Your mother’s not getting any younger,’ her father said gruffly, noticing her astonishment. ‘Time was when I hoped that David would change his mind and come back, but it looks like your mother and I will be the last Setons to live here, and I don’t want your mother dying before her time through overwork.’

Kate could scarcely conceal her astonishment. What had happened to the stern, unyielding father who had never allowed either of his children to see any hint of what he might think of as weakness?

‘Times change, lass,’ he said heavily, as though he had seen into her mind. ‘And sometimes they bring hard lessons. I was wrong to say to you what I did. Driving you out of your home like that… Hasty words spoken in the heat of the moment, and both of us too proud to back down, eh?’

Kate had never thought of it like that, never seen in her own refusal to risk rejection by getting in touch with her parents a mirror-image of her father’s notorious pride, but now she saw that he was, in part, right.

‘It took your mother to make me see sense, and thank goodness she did. Yon’s a fine lass you’ve got there. It will do your mother good to have someone to fuss over besides me and the shepherds.’

As he finished speaking Kate heard a whine outside the back door, and to her astonishment her father opened it to let in the dog who had accompanied him to the station.

‘No good in the open, this one,’ he told her slightly shamefacedly. ‘I should have got rid of him, but I hadn’t the heart. Spoiled him to death, your mother has.’

But Kate noticed, when her father carried the tea-tray through into the sitting-room, that it was at his feet that the dog lay.

With Cherry in bed, Kate felt oddly vulnerable and uncomfortable. She had left this house in fear and misery eleven years ago, and now she was back, but how could those years be bridged?

It proved to be astonishingly easy. It became apparent to Kate that there was scarcely a single feature of her and Cherry’s lives that Lydia had left untold, and that her mother was almost as familiar with the regular pattern of their lives as she was herself.

Lydia had been a good friend to both of them, Kate recognised.

Quite what she had hoped to achieve by her precipitous flight to London she didn’t really know, but after two terrifying days and nights of living rough she had suppressed her pride and gone to see her godmother.

Lydia had not, as she had dreaded, insisted on Kate going home, or even agreed with her parents that her pregnancy must be hushed up and her child adopted. Instead she had offered Kate and her baby a home with her for just as long as they needed it.

A career woman with no ties, she had adapted remarkably well to the responsibility of a pregnant teenage girl, Kate thought. It had been Lydia who had encouraged her to go back to her studies and complete her degree, who had insisted on sharing the care of Cherry with her so that she was free to do so, and who had also encouraged her to buy her own small flat once she had finally got a job, thus giving both her and Cherry their independence.

Not once had she ever asked about Silas, and not once had Kate mentioned him. So why start thinking about him now? What was the point?

Her mother hadn’t been wrong to remind her of her father’s habit of early rising, Kate reflected ruefully the next morning when the sound of her father whistling to his dog woke her from her slumbers.

Without even going to the window, she could picture the scene in the yard below: her father in his ancient tweed jacket, crook in one hand, as he summoned his dog for the start of their day’s work.

On a summer morning like this he would be working the fells, checking on his sheep and preparing his dogs for the Dales Show.

As she lay there, other sounds penetrated her consciousness; the muted baaing of the wool-sheep in the paddock on the far side of the house; the cackling of her mother’s hens and then the impatient roar of her father’s voice as he called his dog to order.

They hadn’t had a sheepdog yet unable to resist the temptation of trying to round up the hens, and Kate grinned to herself as she burrowed deeper under the blankets. As a teenager she had cherished every extra stolen moment in bed in the mornings, but this morning she couldn’t recapture that teenage pleasure. Instead she found she was thinking about her mother, who would be busy downstairs.

Groaning at the extra burdens of conscience that adulthood brought, she started to get up, pausing by her window and frowning as she heard Cherry’s excited voice floating up to her from the yard.

‘I’m up, Grandpa. Can I come with you?’

‘You’ll have to ask your mother about that,’ she heard her father growl. ‘And you’ll need something inside you first.’

‘But you will wait for me, won’t you?’ Cherry persisted, and Kate found that she was holding her breath, praying that her father wouldn’t hurt Cherry’s feelings by refusing her request.

Half of her was already prepared for it when he said brusquely, ‘The fells are no place for someone who doesn’t know them,’ but then, to her surprise and relief, he softened his refusal by adding more gently, ‘You go in and speak to your mother and have your breakfast, and then later on you can come and watch while I put Laddie through his paces in the paddock. Not that it will do the stupid creature the least bit of good. Never make a champion… Too soft, that’s what he is.’

Kate was downstairs by the time Cherry came in, her small face alight with excitement.

‘Mum, I’m going to help Gramps train Laddie,’ she told Kate importantly.

And because she loved and understood her, Kate overlooked the small exaggeration and said instead, ‘Are you, indeed? Well then, you’re going to need something to eat first, aren’t you?’

Cherry had always had a healthy appetite, but already the upland air seemed to have sharpened it, and Kate saw the pleasure touch her own mother’s face as Cherry devoured the meal Jean had made for her.

‘You should have let me do that, Mum,’ Kate protested quietly, when Cherry had gone upstairs to clean her teeth. ‘You’ve got enough to do already.’

‘It’s no trouble. It’s a long time since I’ve had a young one to cook for,’ she added quietly, and somehow her words underlined the loneliness of their lives, making Kate guiltily conscious that she could and should have done more earlier to heal the rift between them.

For too long she had retained her childhood perceptions of her parents and her father’s anger, and now it hurt her to acknowledge that she might have been guilty of deliberately holding on to her own anger and resentment. They were both so patently thrilled with Cherry, and she made up her mind there and then that she would see to it that she made it up to both Cherry and her parents for all the times together they had missed.

When her father came back later in the morning, Cherry rushed out to join him.

Watching her daughter skipping happily at her grandfather’s side with the black and white collie, plumy tail waving happily from side to side as it followed them, Kate felt an unexpected prickle of tears sting her eyes.

She was standing in the kitchen at the window, and behind her her mother said quietly, ‘I’m glad you came, love. Your dad’s missed you…’

‘And David,’ Kate acknowledged, blinking away her tears. ‘He was always his favourite.’

‘No, you’re wrong,’ her mother insisted. ‘If he had a favourite, it was you. Some men are like that. Real softies when it comes to their daughters. Thinking the world of them, and nothing too good for them. It was like that with your dad. That’s why…’ She sighed and broke off, but immediately Kate knew what she was thinking. That was why her father had been so shocked and so bitterly angry when she’d announced her pregnancy.

How easy it was to understand his feelings now, and how very, very difficult it had been at the time.

‘There’s some letters to post. Why don’t you take the Land Rover and drive down to the village?’ her mother suggested, and Kate wondered if she had sensed her sudden, aching need to be on her own to sort out the confusion of her own thoughts.

It had been a long time since she had driven a four-wheel-drive vehicle, but it was a skill that, once learned, was soon remembered, and by the time she had reached the village she was feeling confident enough to reverse the vehicle into a spot almost right opposite the small post office and general store.

Susan Edmonson, the postmistress, recognised her immediately, beaming a warm smile at her. Susan’s dark hair was generously flecked with grey now and she was plumper than she had been, but she still possessed the same intense curiosity about her fellow human beings that Kate had so resented as a child, but which now she found oddly warming.

After the impersonal, couldn’t-care-less attitude of the busy shops in London, it was almost pleasant to be in a place where one was known and welcomed.

‘Hear you’ve brought your daughter back with you. A right bonny girl by all accounts. And her dad…’

‘Cherry’s father isn’t and never has been a part of our lives,’ Kate told her firmly. She had never lied about the circumstances of Cherry’s birth, and she wasn’t going to start now.

She almost felt the rustle of speculation run round the small, enclosed space, but she refused to give in to the urge to turn her head and see how the other people in the queue behind her had received her information.

‘Aye, well, there’s many a woman who would like to be able to say the same thing,’ Susan Edmonson replied placidly, adding with a wryness that brought several chuckles from the other women waiting to be served, ‘And some days it’s easy to see why.’

Since her own husband was one of the most henpecked males in existence, Kate herself only just managed to stop herself from smiling.

She left the post office, head held high, feeling as though she had just emerged triumphant from an ordeal.

Times had changed, of course. Even up here there were now girls rearing their children alone, but even so, for her parents’ sake if nothing else, she wanted to re-establish herself creditably in the village.

As she turned to close the door behind her, she heard Susan Edmonson murmuring confidingly to her next customer, ‘Clever girl she was, too. A schoolteacher now. Still, these things happen. And what I always say is that it’s the innocent ones that get caught out.’

This latter comment was added in a virtuous tone that made Kate grin a little.

The sun had come out, and she had to shade her eyes from its glare as she made to cross the road and return to the Land Rover. She was thirsty; the heat of the sun was penetrating the sweatshirt she was wearing and making her wish she had put on something cooler. The pub beckoned, but she suspected that up here in the Dales it was still not totally accepted for a young woman to walk into a pub on her own, and so she contented herself by promising herself a glass of her mother’s home-made lemonade once she reached the farm. She herself had remembered the recipe and made the drink for Cherry, but somehow it never tasted quite the same.

Sighing faintly, she stepped out into the road, only to come to an abrupt halt as a Range Rover swept round the corner, surely travelling at a faster speed than was safe. She had a momentary glimpse of the driver: a hawkish male profile, set mouth that looked rather grim, thick, very dark hair, a brown forearm emerging from the stark whiteness of a short-sleeved shirt, and then the world spun dizzyingly out of focus, and she barely registered the dark blue paintwork or the initials of the government body stamped boldly on the Range Rover bodywork in white, because time had spun backwards and she was left feeling as though she had suddenly walked into the past.

That man driving the Range Rover had been so like Silas. An older Silas, of course. A harder Silas. She shivered, reproaching herself for her carelessness in stepping off the pavement and her idiocy in allowing her memories to have such a powerful effect upon her that she was actually seeing Silas in the features of a stranger.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.