The Longest Pleasure. Anne Mather

meeting with Melanie Forster had come at a time when she had seriously begun to question the sense in what she was doing. It was January, and having just been home to Castle Howarth for Christmas, Helen had been made acutely aware of the shortcomings of the life she had chosen to lead. Everything at home had been so warm; so familiar; returning to her poky, one-roomed flat in Kensington, she had been sorely tempted to abandon her bid for emancipation.

      A few years older than Helen, Melanie was another ex-pupil of St Agnes, and that had been sufficient reason for their friendship to develop. Unlike Helen, Melanie was a Londoner, born and bred. Her mother was dead, and her father was a politician, struggling against a failing economy to sustain the life he had always led. In no time at all, their house in St John’s Wood became a second home to Helen, and she was always welcome, whenever she chose to call.

      It didn’t take long for Helen to discover that Melanie was looking for someone to help finance a business venture she was considering. She owned the lease of a small shop in Beatrix Street, and she wanted to use the shop to sell antiques. Looking back, Helen occasionally wondered whether Melanie’s insistence that they should be friends had been as innocent as it had at first seemed. Certainly, as Lady Sinclair’s granddaughter, she must have seemed like a gift from the gods. Melanie needed finance, and after some persuasion on Helen’s part, her grandmother had agreed to advance her the money. After some initial hiccoughs, Pastiche had opened, and right from the beginning, their gamble had paid off.

      The success of the shop had exceeded their wildest dreams. The combination of Melanie’s shrewdness and Helen’s instinctive feeling for old furniture and paintings had proved effective, and the position of the shop made it a focal point for tourists. It was also true that Helen’s striking appearance and forthright manner had disarmed some of the toughest dealers in the trade, but it was their mutual skill in business which had made the venture a success. If Melanie’s talents were best employed in selling, Helen had found her niche in uncovering items of value in the most unexpected places. Because she was young, and feminine, old people tended to trust her, and she acquired a reputation for honesty and fair dealing. She had patience, and compassion, and although the shop’s turnover couldn’t match the larger of their competitors, their profits pleased their accountant.

      Of course, her grandmother had known of her success. Helen had been unable to hide the pride with which she had returned her grandmother’s investment to her—with interest. Besides, she had since admitted that she had also wanted Rafe to hear what she had done. Knowing Nan, as she did, she felt pretty sure he would hear of it, one way or another. And this awareness, in its turn, assuaged a little of the bitterness she felt every time she thought of him.

      Tom Fleming’s death had been, she supposed, the final contributory factor to the breakdown of her relationship with her grandmother. At the time, she had thought no more of it than she would of the death of any of her grandmother’s employees. It was sad. He had been comparatively young—only fifty-seven—but these things happened. It was the way of the world. She had not attended his funeral but, once again, her grandmother had not expected her to. She had sent condolences to his widow—and, reluctantly, to the family—but that was all.

      The first inkling she had had that Rafe had come back to Castle Howarth had come a few weeks later. Helen had driven home for the weekend and, after parking her car in the courtyard, she had walked nonchalantly into the house. It had been a dull November day, she remembered, and she had been anticipating warming her hands over the open fire in her grandmother’s sitting room. Nan had always kept an open fire in her sitting room, even though the other rooms were heated by rather ancient radiators.

      The sight of Rafe Fleming, lounging in the armchair opposite her grandmother, taking tea, had caused a feeling much like a body blow to Helen’s midriff. It wasn’t so much seeing him—although it had been some years since she had done so; it was the apparent intimacy of his relationship with her grandmother; the cosy way Nan was sharing her tea with him, and Rafe’s evident ease in these familiar surroundings.

      Of course, the impact of his presence had twisted like a knife. The hatred she still felt for him had never faltered. What shocked her most was the ability he still had to strip her of her defences, and although her anger sustained her, she was shaken to the core.

      And, as always, her frustration had turned on her grandmother. Had she no conception of what it meant to her to come home and find him—the usurper—occupying her place? she demanded wordlessly. Didn’t she know what he was like? Couldn’t she see the kind of man he was?

      But, of course, only the bitter voice inside her answered. No, it said, her grandmother had no conception of Rafe’s real character. She didn’t know how he had teased and tormented her granddaughter over the years. She didn’t know of his sexual exploits, or of the near-rape in the long meadow, which had left Helen wary of any man, good or bad. So far as Nan was concerned, he was almost family; the son she had never had. And Rafe took damn good care not to jeopardise their relationship by showing her his darker side.

      To his credit, Rafe had not lingered long after Helen’s arrival. With the sinuous grace that had always come so naturally to him, he had risen to his feet at her entrance and offered her his seat. The fact that she had refused it didn’t seem to trouble him. The cool green eyes she remembered from her nightmares were as enigmatic as a glacier. The polite words that moved his lips gave no inkling of what he was really thinking, but he must have made the right noises because her grandmother had noticed nothing amiss.

      For her part, Helen had barely glanced at him. After that first visual confrontation, she had avoided looking at him: but for all that, she had been unable to prevent his image from imprinting itself on the insides of her eyelids. She recalled thinking that Tracy would have been impressed to see him now. He had fulfilled all her girlish fantasies, and the slim, good-looking boy had become a lean, attractive man. He was different, though; she sensed that. His face was still familiar, but it was tougher; harder. Evidence of the life he had been leading, she had assumed, her lips curling contemptuously when she was unwillingly reminded of how slavishly she had once hung on his every word. What a fool she had been, she thought wryly. Thank God she had had the good fortune to find out what he was really like, before it was too late.

      But the news Nan had had to impart had driven all other considerations out of her head.

      Rafe had apparently offered to take his father’s place on the estate. As Helen was absorbing this unbelievable piece of information, Lady Elizabeth had gone on to say, with evident satisfaction, that he was doing it for her! In a pig’s eye! Helen had thought furiously, but her grandmother would hear no dissent. If Rafe was willing to leave an apparently secure position with Chater Chemicals and return to Castle Howarth as her agent, she was grateful, and there was no one else she would trust implicitly.

      Of course, Helen had been unable to hide her disapproval, and the weekend had been an unmitigated disaster. Helen had returned to London on Sunday afternoon, and that was the last time she had visited her old home. The few subsequent occasions when she and Nan had met had been in London, and although at Christmas, particularly, she had felt a sense of loss, Adam’s entry into her life had filled the empty space.

      It was strange, she thought now, her hands involuntarily seeking the tail of her braid and spreading the hairs between her fingers; Rafe had been the cause of the rift between her and her grandmother, and yet they had never actually talked about it. Oh, she had grumbled about him when she was younger, just as she had when she was four, but Nan had never allowed a discussion on the subject. Even that last weekend at Castle Howarth, when the news of his appointment as agent had been the most obvious talking-point of all, Rafe’s name had seemed taboo. Why? Why wouldn’t her grandmother listen to reason? Had she really been indifferent to his faults, or had Rafe actually seemed a paragon to her? Whatever her reasoning, she would never know now, Helen reflected with bitter acceptance. But when she drove down to Wiltshire in the morning, she would assume her role as Castle Howarth’s mistress, and nothing Rafe said or did could change her opinion of him …

      Helen left the motorway at Basingstoke and took the A30 to Salisbury. It would have been quicker to go via Andover, but she was chary of crossing Salisbury Plain in the worsening weather