The Secret Daughter. Catherine Spencer

she gave birth to?”

      “Really, Imogen!” Suzanne set the sterling teapot on its stand with a decided clatter. “I find this conversation most upsetting and, to be perfectly frank, in very poor taste.”

      “Yes,” Imogen said, dismayed to find her mother could still hurt her. “I can see that you do. Perhaps I was wrong to think we could make amends. Perhaps there are things neither one of us can ever really forgive the other for.”

      Agitation lent a hectic flush to Suzanne’s cheeks. “That isn’t so, at least not on my part. I’m happy to see you. If it’s possible for us to start over, I’m willing to try. But I warn you now that it won’t happen if you insist on harping on matters best left alone. That whole business is a closed book.”

      “But it isn’t for me! How can it be, when I never even saw my baby? One day I was pregnant, could feel her kicking inside me, and the next she was dead and gone, and I was expected to behave as if she’d never existed. Well, that isn’t how it works, Mother. Before you and I can resume any sort of worthwhile relationship, I need to find closure, too.”

      “Imogen, I’m begging you!” Ashen-faced, Suzanne put down her cup and saucer and raised ruby-tipped fingers to her temples.

      Her mother looked ill, Imogen realized with sudden compunction. The late afternoon sun slanting cruelly across the fine patrician features revealed a pinched unhappiness about the eyes and mouth, the kind brought about by recurrent pain.

      Fortunately, the maid came in. “Will there be one more for dinner, madam?”

      “I’m afraid not,” Suzanne said. “I feel one of my headaches coming on. I’m sorry, Imogen, but I’m going to have to go and lie down with a cold cloth over my eyes.”

      “Of course. Is there anything I can get for you? An aspirin, perhaps?”

      “No, thank you. I have special migraine medication to take when this happens. Molly will help me.”

      The visit was clearly at an end. Collecting her things, Imogen prepared to leave. “Then I’ll let myself out and call you tomorrow, if I may?”

      “Of course.”

      Imogen hesitated, again tempted to embrace her mother. But when Suzanne got up from the sofa, she swayed on her feet, and it was obvious she really was in pain. Imogen touched her gently on the hand and said, “I’m sorry if my coming here has brought on this attack, Mother.”

      “I’ve brought it on myself, I’m afraid” She twisted the rings on her fingers and knit her finely arched brows as though wrestling with a dilemma. At length, she let out a long, defeated sigh, lifted her head and said in a low voice, “Won’t you stay here while you’re in town, Imogen? I’d really like it very much if you would. I’ve...missed having a daughter all these years.”

      It was the last admission Imogen had expected to hear. She could not believe how it moved her, or how, with so few words, so much healing could begin. Overwhelmed, she said, “I don’t want to put you out, and the Briarwood is very comfortable.”

      “But it’s not your home, and if we are to find our way back to each other, surely the place to start is here under this roof where things went so terribly wrong to begin with.”

      It was so much what she had hoped for that Imogen’s throat ached. “Yes,” she whispered, overcome. “Thank you, Mother.”

      She was smiling as she drove from the house and humming by the time she drew up outside the hotel. “I’m checking out,” she told the young man at the front desk. “Please have my bill ready and send someone for my luggage in half an hour.”

      The clerk looked anxious. “Nothing’s wrong, I hope, madam? No problem with our service?”

      “No,” she said, still all smiles. “Things couldn’t be better.”

      But they could deteriorate rapidly, she soon discovered. When a knock came at her door some twenty minutes later, she opened it, expecting it to be the bellhop arriving early. Instead, Joe Donnelly stood there, the light of battle sparking in his eyes.

      “I’d invite me in, if I were you,” he said, when she made no move to let him inside the room. “I don’t think you’re going to want the entire floor to know why I’m here.”

      If she hadn’t been taken so completely by surprise, Imogen would have told him she wasn’t interested in finding out the reason for his unannounced visit, either, and shut the door in his face. Common sense demanded that, at the very least, she tell him to wait for her downstairs in one of the public rooms. Sheer self-preservation told her to refuse to see him at all. And ordinarily, Imogen listened to her instincts. But one look at Joe’s face told her this was no ordinary occasion.

      Last night, dusk had hidden what the clear light of day revealed. He had lost his old devil-may-care expression a long time ago. Any vestige of softness his mouth might once have shown was gone. His eyes, though as vividly blue as ever, possessed a wariness Joe Donnelly at twenty-three hadn’t known.

      He had always been ready to take on the world, secure in the belief that he was invincible, but the arrogance of youth had given way to a cynicism ready to flare into anger at the slightest provocation. And somehow, she had provoked him to anger now.

      “What do you want?” she asked, backing away from him, allowing him into the room.

      He followed, closing the door behind him. “Looks as if I got here just in time,” he said, ignoring her question and jerking his head at the suitcase lying open on the bed. “I see you’re getting set to run away again.”

      “I’m not running anywhere, Joe Donnelly. I’m staying with my mother for the rest of the time I’m here—not that I owe you any explanations.”

      “Oh, but you do, Imogen,” he said, stalking her across the room until the backs of her knees hit the edge of the bed and made further retreat impossible. “And you can start by telling me why you skipped town so hurriedly just weeks after we had sex, the year you graduated from high school.”

      We had sex. Even though she’d flung the same callous words at him the night before, having them hurled back at her now stung worse than salt in a newly opened wound. On the other hand, given his present mood, what else did she expect? That he’d couch his anger in euphemisms?

      “I’m waiting,” he said, looming over her. “Why the rapid exit from Rosemont, Imogen?”

      “That’s none of your business.”

      He folded his arms across his chest and planted his feet more firmly on the carpet, a statement that he’d allow nothing to deflect his purpose. “As of right now, I’m making it my business.”

      She didn’t like the way he seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air. Even less did she like the way he intimidated her. There was something almost sinister in his velvet tone of voice, so at odds with the hard line of his mouth and the absolute coldness in his eyes.

      “I’m waiting,” he said, still with chilling softness.

      She swallowed, scrambling to find an answer that would satisfy him and put an end to the inquisition. “I went to Switzerland for a year,” she said, stretching the truth by a few months. “To school.”

      He moved suddenly, circling her wrists with his long, strong fingers and hauling her to her feet. “Liar! You had a baby. My baby.”

      The blood drained from her face, leaving her lightheaded with shock. The Joe Donnelly she’d known and worshipped would never have cornered her so mercilessly, but this man was a stranger.

      “Didn’t you?” Imprisoning both her wrists in one hand, he grasped her chin in the other and forced her to meet his scrutiny.

      Mutely, she stared at him, her silence an admission of guilt. There was a time she’d have welcomed being held by him, so close she could see the faint stippling of new beard growth on his jaw. But not like this, with his eyesblazing