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Sinful Nights(7)

By:Penny Jordan


Blake had thought  …  Blake had said  …  Bitterness welled up inside her  coupled with a fierce jealousy as she acknowledged something she had  always kept hidden even from herself. Her father would have preferred a  son  …  a male to continue the family line and although he loved her, it  was to Blake that he had always confided his innermost thoughts, Blake  who he thought of as a son  …  Blake who he turned to when he needed  someone to lean on and not her.

There, sit down and cry it all out,' Mary said gently. It must have come as a shock to you.'

Is it true that  …  that my father  … ' Sapphire couldn't go on. Tears were  streaming down her face and she dug in her jeans pocket for a  handkerchief. He's been a very sick man,' Mary said compassionately,  her eyes sliding away from Sapphire's. His heart isn't too strong and  this bout of pneumonia, but having you home has given him a real  fillip.'

I never knew how he felt about the divorce until tonight.' Sapphire  almost whispered the words, saying them more to herself than Mary, but  the other woman caught them and smiled sympathetically. Blake means a  lot to him,' she agreed, he thought that your marriage protected both  you and Flaws land.'

He worries a lot about the land doesn't he?' Sapphire's voice was unconsciously bitter.

And about you,' Mary told her. The land is like a sacred trust to him  and he has a strong sense of duty and responsibility towards it.'

Strong enough to want to see Blake and me back together again?' Sapphire asked bleakly.

Mary said nothing, but the way her eyes refused to meet Sapphire's told her what she wanted to know.

You obviously know my father very well,' she said quietly at last. He confides in you far more than he ever confided in me.'

I'm a trained nurse,' Mary told her, and that is how I first came to  know your father. When he was first ill he needed a full-time nurse. Dr  Forrest recommended me, and your father asked me to stay on as his  housekeeper-cum-nurse. The relationship between patient and nurse is one  of trust. It has to be. I can't deny that your father, like many people  of his generation, doesn't wholly approve of divorce, and he does feel  that the land would be properly cared for by Blake, and  … '

And that if Blake and I had a son that son would inherit Flaws Farm and would also be half Bell.'

Sapphire sighed, suddenly feeling intensely tired. Too much had happened too soon, and she couldn't take it all in.

There was a phone call for you,' Mary added, an Alan. I said you'd ring back in the morning.'

Alan! Sapphire started guiltily. She had almost forgotten about him, and  even more unforgivably she had forgotten about his car. The BMW was  Alan's pride and joy and he wouldn't be too pleased to hear about her  accident.    

 



 

Tomorrow, she thought wearily as she climbed into bed. Tomorrow she  would think about what had happened. Somehow she would have to convince  her father that there was no chance of her and Blake getting together  again. Selfish, Blake had called her. Was she? Her father had very  little time left to live  …  six months or so  …  if she re-married Blake  she would be giving her father a gift of happiness and peace of mind  which surely meant more than her own pride and freedom? She wasn't  seventeen any more, held in thrall by her adoration of Blake. She could  handle him now as she hadn't been able to do then. A six-month marriage  which would be quickly annulled-six months out of her life as payment  for her father's peace of mind. What ought she to do?





CHAPTER THREE


GOOD MORNING.' Mary smiled a warm welcome at Sapphire as she walked  into the kitchen. I was just about to bring you up a cup of tea.'

Yes, I've overslept disgracefully,' Sapphire said wryly. Time was when  she had thought nothing of getting up at half-past five with her father.

You were exhausted, what with the accident and all. Oh that reminds me,  Blake rang. He said not to panic about your luggage. He's bringing it  over later when he comes to see your father. He calls in most days,' she  added, plugging in the kettle. Your father looks forward to his  visits, Blake keeps him up to date on how the farm's running.'

May I go up and see my father?' Sapphire didn't want to think about  Blake right now. He had occupied far too many of her thoughts already.

Of course.' Again Mary smiled warmly. Would you like to have your breakfast first?'

Just a cup of coffee will be fine,' Sapphire assured her. I'll go up  now.' Before Blake arrives, she could have added, but didn't. Somehow,  quite how she didn't know yet, but somehow she was going to have to find  a way to explain to her father that she and Blake were parted for good.  Even now she could still remember that agony of those first months in  London, of having to come to terms with the truth about her marriage;  about Blake's feelings for her. He had tolerated her because he wanted  the farm. He had never loved her, never desired her and knowing that she  had not seen these truths had diminished her self-esteem to such an  extent that she had felt somehow as though everyone who saw her or spoke  to her, must share Blake's opinion of her. The only way she could  escape had been to shut herself off mentally from the rest of the world.  There had been days when she felt like dying; days when she would have  given anything simply not to wake up in the morning. But all that was  past now, she reminded herself. She had overcome the trauma of Blake's  rejection; had put the past and all that it held, safely behind her. But  she couldn't forget it, she acknowledged. She still occasionally had  those terrible dreams when she was forced to witness Blake making love  to Miranda, when she had to endure the sound of their mocking laughter.  How she had hated herself; everything about herself, from her height to  the colour of her hair, torturing herself by imagining how many times  Blake must have looked at her and put Miranda in her place. The only  thing that surprised her was that Blake hadn't married. Those love  letters she had found had obviously been meant for Miranda.

No-one, not even Alan knew how totally Blake had rejected her;  physically, mentally and emotionally. And facing up to that knowledge  had driven her almost to the point where she lost her sanity. But she  had emerged from it all a stronger person. Being forced to come face to  face with the truth had made her re-evaluate herself completely. No man  would ever hurt her now as Blake had done. She allowed no-one to come  close enough to her to do so.

If Alan did propose to her she would probably accept him. She wanted a  family; she and Alan got on well. She would never feel for him what she  had once felt for Blake, but then he would never look at her body,  imagining it was another woman's, he would never lie to her, or look at  her with contempt. Blake was an arrogant bastard, she thought bitterly  as she stood at the top of the stairs, poised to enter her father's  room. After what he'd done to her, she didn't know how he had the nerve  to suggest what he had.

Sapphire.' Her father greeted her happily, from his chair by the  window. The cold March sunshine picked out with cruel clarity the signs  of wasting on his face, and Sapphire was overwhelmed with a rush of  emotion.

Dad.' She went over to him, hugging him briefly and then turning away before he could see her tears.

What's this?' Her eye was caught by the heavy, leather bound book on  his lap. Don't tell me you're actually reading something, other than a  farming magazine,' she teased. Never once during her childhood could she  remember seeing her father reading. He had always been an active,  physical man more at home in his fields than in the house. It saddened  her unbearably to see him like this. Why  …  why? she cried bitterly  inside.    

 



 

It's the family Bible.' His smile was as she had always remembered it.  I haven't looked at it since your mother wrote your name inside.'

After her, her mother had not been able to have any more children. Had  she too, like Sapphire, sensed how much her father felt the lack of a  male heir? Had that in part contributed to the break-up of their  marriage? Questions she would never know the answer to now, Sapphire  thought dully, watching her father open the Bible.

His hand trembled slightly as he touched the old paper. This Bible goes  back as far as 1823, and it lists the birth of every Bell since.' He  gave a faint sigh and closed it. I had hoped I might see the name of  your's and Blake's child added to that list, but now  … ' He turned away  dejectedly.

The words Sapphire had intended to say died unspoken. A tight knot of  pain closed her throat. She reached out her hand touching her father's  shoulder, Dad  … ' He turned to look at her, and as though the words were  coming from another person, she heard herself saying shakily, Blake  and I are going to try again. I  …  we  …  we talked about it last night.'  She looked out of the window without seeing the view. Could her father  honestly believe that what she was saying was true? Perhaps not, but he  would accept it as the truth because he wanted to believe it so  desperately; just as she had once desperately wanted to believe that  Blake loved her.