‘NO-O-O,’ Daniel yelled. He flung open his door, tried to clamber out, fell, and Joshua released her, went to get his wheelchair and help him into it.
Daniel wrenched himself free. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he ordered viciously. ‘I trusted you! And you,’ he shouted at Brogan as she fumbled to do up her shirt. ‘How could you? Don’t you know who he is?’
‘Daniel—’ Joshua began, his voice cool and controlled.
‘Shut up! You think I don’t know? I’ve spoken to my mother, you fool! And my mother, as you should know—because you do know my mother, don’t you?—is quite incapable of keeping anything secret!’ Swinging back to Brogan, his face bitter and distorted, he raged, ‘He’s a spy! Sent by my parents to make a little gold-digger let go of their son!’
‘Gold-digger?’ Brogan whispered in bewilderment. ‘Gold-digger?’
‘Yes! He knew what time I’d be back. He was in collusion with Amanda, but she couldn’t go through with it. Told me! A set-up!’ he yelled. ‘Make sure I saw you. A trade-off! He thought you’d go for his wealth instead of mine! Expected me to come back and be surprised, hurt!’
‘He doesn’t have any wealth,’ Brogan contradicted him blankly.
‘Yes, he does! He thought I would pack up, leave, realise what a fool I’d been! Well, I was certainly a fool for believing he was no threat! Certainly a fool for believing he wouldn’t go out of his way to show you how a real man could perform,’ he sneered. ‘He wasn’t crippled, was he? He could make love to you properly! I loved you!’ he yelled. ‘I’ve always loved you!’
‘No…’
‘Yes! You think he wants you?’ he laughed bitterly. ‘You think he was kissing you because he cared? Because you turned him on? Well, go on, ask him,’ he urged.
Feeling sick, faint, shaky, she glanced at Joshua—a still, carved Joshua, who stared back at her with cold, dark eyes.
‘He wasn’t broke!’ Daniel continued viciously. ‘He was bored!’
‘But did need to be in Suffolk,’ Joshua drawled mildly.
‘Yes, it added zest to the game,’ Daniel spat bitterly. ‘You like games, don’t you, Joshua? Like women. He has a whole string of them!’ he shouted at Brogan. ‘You really think he wanted you? Oh, you’re pretty enough, sexy enough, but he likes his freedom, does Josh. Love ‘em and leave ‘emthat’s his motto. And you think he wanted a baby cluttering up his love life?’
His words tumbling over themselves, vitriol spilling forth as though it had been dammed up for weeks, months, he wheeled himself up to Brogan, bumped her knees hard enough to hurt. ‘Sleepless nights? Food dribbled on his expensive suits? I would have given anything—anything,’ he choked, ‘for you and Riffy. I was giving you time! Didn’t want to rush you!’ With a twisted laugh, he derided her, ‘What were you, in bed before I was even out of sight?’
‘No,’ she denied thickly. Staring once more at Joshua, not angry, just sick, she asked quietly, ‘Is this true?’
He didn’t answer, just continued to watch her.
‘But I told you the truth.’
‘You also told me that you knew what to do, that you and Riffy deserved something.’
‘Peace,’ she explained, still quiet. ‘He owed me peace.’
‘You talked about his wealth.’
‘Because if his injuries were psychological then insisting he go might have snapped him out of it, whereas his staying here wouldn’t have done. And the reason I needed to know he had money was so that I could be sure that if he didn’t make it as a designer he would at least have money to fall back on. I couldn’t have let him go just to see him rough it, not have enough to eat, because I knew he wouldn’t apply to his parents.’
‘Rough it?’ Daniel snarled. ‘Peace? You wrecked my life!’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but that doesn’t mean you can live mine. Whatever I did, it doesn’t give you the right to make my choices for me. You allowed people to think Riffy was yours, told Joshua—and how many others?—that I wouldn’t marry you because you were crippled. Didn’t you?’
‘I loved you!’
‘And that makes it all right? Nothing will change what I did. Nothing will take away the guilt. But this is my life, Daniel, and Riffy is my daughter. I’m fond of you, grateful to you—’
‘I don’t want your gratitude!’
‘But I have nothing else,’ she said gently, hurting for him, for herself, shaking so badly inside, feeling so sick, but somehow determined that Joshua would never know it.
She continued, ‘I never gave you reason to believe that I would ever marry you, did I? That I would ever come to love you? You persuaded yourself that it would happen, because you wanted it to, and I was partly at fault because I didn’t know how to tell you, make it plainer without being brutal. After all you had done for me, I thought I owed you peace of mind, thought you would wake up one day, realise what you were doing, what you were missing, that there was a whole life out there waiting to be lived. After your fashion show, I told myself. When you had a job—’
‘But I love you,’ he repeated.
‘No.’
‘Yes! Don’t tell me how I feel! Don’t you dare! I’ve always loved you. Before Andrew died, I loved you. I didn’t expect you to love me back at once. I was prepared to wait. I looked after you, after the baby. It was me who held her, bathed her, fed her. It was me who looked after you.’
‘I know, but—’
‘And then he came, and you lied to me. You don’t even know who he is, do you? Joshua Baynard Renwick,’ he mocked bitterly. ‘One of our most gifted architects. A fervent campaigner for historical restoration. An expert. When I found out what my parents had done, I looked him up. He’s really quite famous, wealthy. And a friend of my father! My father’s little lackey, sent to keep an eye on me! Get me out of the clutches of a mercenary little widow. And do you know what else my dear parents thought? That you were living in my house.’
Joshua made a small, involuntary movement and Daniel swung back to him and sneered, ‘Didn’t know that, did you? You thought it was my house, that she’d dumped herself on me, was pretending to care, living here rent-free. Fools, all of you! Didn’t my sainted parents give me credit for anything? Did they think me stupid? I loved her!’
Dragging in a deep, shuddery breath, on the edge of tears, he continued bitterly, ‘And so he joined your tour group, pretended an interest, and you, you stupid little fool, fell for it. He made you rent him the cottage, and it was all a lie! He came to lure you, away from me, and when he’d succeeded, when I’d left, when he’d shown me what you were really like, he would have dumped you—smiled his nasty smile, and dumped you!’
His face was so anguished, so hurting that she wanted to hold him, comfort him, and she knew that she mustn’t.
‘If it hadn’t been for that motorbi—’ Breaking off, realising what he’d said, he thumped his fist on the arm of his chair in bitter frustration.
‘So you did see it,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Daniel. Why? All this time.’ Eyes bleak, she stared first at Daniel then at Joshua. ‘And how far would you have gone,’ she asked him, ‘in your pursuit of truth? All the way? Such a sacrifice for you. Such a bloody sacrifice.’
Her voice breaking, she took a moment to compose herself, then said quietly and with great dignity, ‘Now please leave. Both of you.’ Throat blocked, eyes burning, she walked inside and up to her room. Closing the door, she locked it—the second time she had ever done so, the second time she had ever been glad that it did so.
Learn your lessons the hard way, don’t you, Brogan? Tears streaming down her face, a hard, painful lump in her chest, she lay on the bed, hugged the pillow tight. She felt used, and cheap, and so unbelievably betrayed.
She could hear them talking through the open window, Daniel bitter, Joshua quiet. And then, moments later, the handle rattled, a knock sounded. She ignored it.
‘Brogan,’ Joshua called quietly.
She ignored him, held her breath, listened to the silence—the silence of someone waiting.
She heard, or thought she heard, a sigh, heard his footsteps retreat, heard his car start up a few minutes later. Heard the van. And only then did she move. Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the ceiling. Unbelievably, it was still light.
You must have known, Brogan. In your heart of hearts you must have known it wasn’t right. The clues had all been there. Hated domesticity—he’d said that. He’d blown hot and blown cold. There’d been the sudden helpfulness when before he’d been cold, unemotional. But you were lonely and vulnerable, wanted to believe, and so, with the first attractive man to come into your orbit, you hung your common sense in the wardrobe and made it easy for him. He excited you, made you feel like a woman again. Gullible.
Tears filled her eyes, overflowed. Never again would she scoff at little newspaper articles about women being duped. Fools, she’d always said, could they not see? How vulnerable had those women been? Had they too looked into a future that seemed bleak, without romance?
Not a nice man, Joshua Baynard. No, even that was a lie. Joshua Baynard Renwick. She could have accepted him keeping an eye on Daniel. Understood. But to deliberately set out to attract her? Even if he had thought her a gold-digger. No, that hadn’t been nice, and it cheapened him, not her.
Stirring, realising that the shadows were lengthening, that soon it would be dark, and not even bothering to wipe away her tears, she walked downstairs to lock up.
Joshua was sitting in the kitchen. Waiting.
She stared at him, felt nothing.
‘What would you have done, I wonder, if I hadn’t been attracted to you?’
‘That wasn’t originally the plan.’
‘Which was?’
‘Won’t you sit down?’ he invited her quietly.
‘No.’
He nodded, accepting, his face as empty as it ever had been. ‘Originally, just as Daniel said, the intention was to see what was going on, ensure Daniel was all right, keep an eye on him.’
‘But you needed an entry, a reason for being here, and when you saw how you affected me you changed the rules.’
‘To my shame, yes. If you were the sort of person that Daniel’s parents had portrayed you to be, thought you to be—’
‘Giving me a taste of my own medicine was no more than I deserved?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I would very much like to know how—if, as Daniel’s father supposedly implied, I would not marry him because he was crippled—I could also be a gold-digger. Surely one cancels out the other?’
‘No,’ he disagreed, still quiet, still—sincere, damn him. ‘It was assumed you were holding out for a bigger slice.’
‘Assumed?’ she echoed softly.
‘Yes—assumed that a settlement was in the offing.!
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘No.’
‘You weren’t unemployed?’
His hesitation was brief. ‘No.’
‘You deliberately played on my sympathy, in fact.’
The hesitation was even briefer before he nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And just out of curiosity,’ she asked, her face uncharacteristically hard, ‘how far would you have taken it?’
‘I wouldn’t have taken it anywhere, or not for those reasons. I was falling in love with you, Brogan…’
‘Love!’ she scoffed bitterly.
‘Yes, love. I was already backing off, wanting to know you—the real you—and if you hadn’t said what you did out by the field. If I hadn’t misunderstood…’
‘Oh, you do agree that you misunderstood?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was a set-up, then?’
He hesitated again, then nodded, eyes still on hers. ‘Yes. I arrogantly decided that Amanda would be a better—companion for him, and so I went to see her, explained about Daniel’s parents, about how worried they were that you were a bad influence on him—even,’ he added with a slightly bitter smile, ‘that you were impeding his recovery. Naturally, she was horrified, and agreed to help me. We decided that if he saw you kissing me—’
‘Oh, not only kissing,’ she said derisively, ‘but half-naked.’
He looked down, gave a gentle sigh, which Brogan chose not to believe was ashamed, he agreed quietly, ‘Yes, but when Amanda had thought it over, remembered that she’d liked you, she told Daniel the plan. We’d arranged a time for her to arrive—’
‘And the rest, as they say, is history.’
‘Yes. And I’m not to be forgiven for misjudging you, am I?’
‘No. Neither are you to be forgiven for—’ Breaking off, she gave a small, bitter laugh. For giving me hope, she silently completed—for giving me joy.
Hurting, her voice husky, she ordered quietly, ‘Go away, Joshua. Right away. Don’t ever come back.’ Turning on her heel, she walked up to her room and locked herself in. All the whys and wherefores in the world would make no difference, would they? No. Only one fact remained: Joshua Baynard had made a fool of her. Deliberately.