Cruel Legacy (56 page)

'Are you OK back there, Philippa?' Blake asked quietly.

Philippa nodded. Anya had fallen asleep with her head on Philippa's shoulder half an hour after they had resumed their journey after their stop for lunch. Now, as she gently eased her into a more comfortable position, Philippa didn't risk waking her up by speaking.

Her appetite was healthy enough at any rate, she reflected, judging from the way she had demolished her lunch, although Philippa would have preferred to see her eating a healthier diet.

'What am I to call you?' she had asked Philippa politely when Blake had gone to get their food.

'What would you like to call me? My name is Philippa, but you can call me Pip, or Pippa if you prefer,' Philippa had offered.

'Pippa—it's a bit like Nanna, isn't it?' Anya had told her, adding quietly, 'I don't have a grandmother, or a grandfather. They're dead. The secret police killed them...' She'd said it matter-of-factly. 'I don't have anyone else at all now,' she'd added.

'You have us,' Philippa had told her, swallowing down the emotion threatening her.

'Yes, but you don't really belong to me, do you?' Anya had replied levelly.

There was nothing that Philippa could say, no words that could give Anya back what she had lost, she'd acknowledged, and it would be an insult to the child to pretend any different.

She had failed her already, Philippa had thought hol—
k
>wly as Blake had come back with their food, including a huge sweet milkshake for her, which she knew she had not ordered.

'I thought you would like it,' Blake had told her innocently when she'd pushed it away after one taste, but there had been laughter in his eyes as he'd watched her expression and rueful acknowledgement in her own.

'She's really taken to you,' Blake whispered softly now.

'What's that?' Philippa responded drily after checking that Anya was still sound asleep. 'Your professional opinion or wishful thinking?'

'Neither,' he responded promptly. 'If you like, it's just a plain basic male interpretation of the fact that she prefers to be close to you, that she relaxes and lets down her guard with you.. .responds to you in a way that she certainly hasn't shown any signs of doing with me. I'd like you to move in with us as soon as you can. Anya obviously prefers your company to mine.'

'She doesn't seem to have had a lot of contact with her own father,' Philippa told him. 'She's probably just not used to men.'

'You spend so much time protecting others' sensitivities, but who, I wonder, protects yours?'

'Mine don't need protecting,' Philippa responded lightly, but inwardly his perception had jolted her, touching a vulnerable nerve. Once she would have been overjoyed at the thought that he had actually noticed something, anything about her, but now the knowledge that he had been studying her made her feel wary.

What else had she given away about herself to him without knowing it?

She had felt almost relaxed travelling back from Leeds with him, her attention concentrated not on the past, but on Anya, her awareness of how easy it would have been for her actually to enjoy being with him firmly pushed safely out of harm's way.

Anya was a warm, slight weight against her arm, familiar from holding her sons and yet at the same time very different.

'I'll drop you off first,' Blake announced as they reached the outskirts of their town.

They had already told Anya that tonight Philippa would be staying in her own home but that soon she would be moving into Blake's house to take care of her.

Philippa nodded and then froze as she glanced out of the window and saw Joel standing on the opposite side of the road.

He hadn't seen her. He was waiting for the lights to change so that he could cross the road, his attention fixed on the traffic.

Her heart turned over inside her chest, her throat closing on a surge of mixed emotions: her body's instant physical response to the sight of him, her emotional urge
to
reach out to him, her mind's reminder of all the reasons why she could not do so.

She had not loved him, nor he her, she knew that, but the possibility of love developing between them had been there and a part of her still ached with loss for the tenderness of his lovemaking, the sense of being needed, wanted, protected.

Through his driving mirror Blake watched her face. He had seen the man standing on the pavement and her reaction to him, and for a moment the intensity of his emotions had caught him unprepared.

'Want me to stop?' he offered harshly.

Philippa stared at the back of his head, her face flushing as she realised how much she had betrayed.

'No, thank you,' she told him quietly.

'An old friend?' Blake persisted.

Philippa could sense his anger and was confused by it. So he had seen her looking at Joel and guessed.. .something. That was no reason for him to cross-question her...or judge her. She was not ashamed of what she had shared with Joel.

'Not a friend, no...' she said steadily. 'If you must know, we were briefly lovers,. .very briefly...'

As she watched Blake's hands tighten on the steering-wheel she knew that she had surprised him.

'It's over now,' she added quietly. 'What's wrong, Blake?' she challenged him when he remained silent. 'You asked, I told you—or am I not allowed to be truthful? Do you, like my father, prefer me to conform to your values and judgements? Well, I'm sorry, but the only values that matter to me now are my own. I'm not ashamed of what I had with Joel. What
would
make me ashamed would be hiding or denying it. He gave me something that no one else has ever given me, showed me a part of myself I didn't think existed, gave me back a part of myself I thought I'd lost forever.'

'Was that why you took this job with me?' Blake asked her harshly. 'Because your affair with him was over?'

'No,' Philippa told him. 'I took it so that our affair could never get the opportunity to start... among other reasons.'

Somewhere in among the turmoil of jealousy he could feel seething through him there was also awareness and respect, Blake acknowledged.

Awareness, respect, and an overwhelming sense of loss.

Many times over the years he had allowed himself the indulgence of imagining what manner of woman she had become. He had not done her justice, though, he acknowledged tiredly—nowhere near.

'Here, let me take her.'

Philippa tensed as Blake reached into the back of the car to lift Anya's still sleeping body from her arms so that she could get out, but there was no need for that wary tensing of her muscles, she recognised; Blake was scrupulously careful about not touching her, not even by the merest brush of his fingertips, as he lifted Anya away from her.

A sense of forlornness, of aloneness filled her as she relinquished Anya to him. What was it about the sight of a big man with a small child in his arms that tugged so emotionally at the heart-strings?

'Would you like me to come inside with you... make sure...?'

'No... You mustn't wake Anya,' Philippa told him, shaking her head. 'What time tomorrow...?'

'Whatever time best suits you,' Blake told her.

As she turned to walk away, he said quietly to her, 'Philippa, I'm sorry. What I said earlier... your private life is your own affair.'

'I have no private life—at least not in the contest you mean,' Philippa told him steadily. 'But you're right, it is my own affair. I intend that the only arbiter of what I may or may not do or be shall be me. It's
your
choice,
your
right to judge me as you wish, Blake, just' as it's mine to decide whether or not to allow that judgement to have any power over me or any jurisdiction over my life.'

As she walked away from him, Philippa told herself that she had broken free of the shackles which had once bound both her life and her, and that no one, not even Blake, could be allowed to reimprison her in them.

Not
even
Blake.

Why the 'even'? He was no more important, no more special to her than anyone else. Less so, in fact; much, much less so.

Blake felt Anya stir slightly in his arms. It was too late for regrets now, he reminded himself, too late to dwell on what he had lost and denied himself.

But it didn't stop him thinking... remembering, he admitted to himself later when Anya was in bed.

Even without closing his eyes he could still visualise the expression on Robert's face, the afternoon he had told him that his parents—his father—wanted him to leave and why.

'Thing is that Philippa is going through a bit of a difficult stage at the moment. Personally I'm surprised at the old man's patience with her,' Robert had told him, 'and to be blunt with you, old boy, having you here isn't making things any easier. Girls of that age...' He had given a brief shrug. 'Well, you know how it is—it's obvious she's got a bit of a thing about you and for both your sakes really we feel it would be best if you left.

'After all, it's not as though anything could come of it,' Robert had gone on, apparently oblivious to Blake's reactions to what he was saying. 'Philippa is the kind of girl who's going to need to marry someone who'll be able to take care of her properly—I'm sure I don't need to say any more...'

'Oh, but I think you do,' Blake had told him, his voice dangerously low and calm.

Philippa's feelings for him were of course no secret to him but he had been so careful about not using them, about not abusing the position he felt he was in.. .about not taking advantage of her youth and innocence.

As long ago as that first summer he had known what his own feelings were, but she had only been sixteen then, far too young for him to...

Now she was eighteen, and in between worrying about his mother and working and studying he had allowed himself to dream... to imagine.

He would be so careful with her, so slow and tender, so that he didn't frighten or repulse her with the intensity of his desire for her...his love for her.

He had been pleased when she had first shyly confided to him her wish to go to university. He had never liked the way her parents and especially her father treated her; the way they controlled her life.

Michael had been embarrassed when he had raised the subject with him. But Blake had sensed that he agreed with him.

He had felt that it would do Philippa good to get away from her parents, that it would give her a much needed opportunity to mature and become independent. In lots of ways she was very young for her age.

If Blake was honest with himself he would have admitted that he didn't particularly like Philippa's parents, especially her father. Victor Waverly had very fixed ideas and attitudes about life, but most especially about status and wealth.

It was obvious not only that he liked the fact that he was the wealthiest man in the small neighbourhood in which they lived, but that he also seemed to need to be held slightly in awe by others.

The fact that the small business he had inherited from his father had been taken over by a much larger and very successful company and that Victor had been astute enough to negotiate for himself a place on that company's main board—a position that was more of a sinecure than anything else from what Blake had seen—seemed to Blake to have given him an exaggerated idea of his own importance.

That his family should reflect that importance very obviously mattered far more to him than their own personal happiness. Blake had witnessed Michael's unhappiness over his father's lack of interest in his own chosen career in design, and the constant unfavourable comparisons between him and his elder brother, Robert, who was not just his father's favourite but also very much cast in the same mould.

Over the years Blake had seen how Philippa's father treated those whom he considered lower down the social and financial scale than he was himself,
and
those who were above him.

There might not be anything vulgar or ostentatious about the way Philippa's parents displayed their wealth—that would not have fitted in with Victor's image of himself at all—but his desire to overpower and overawe others with what he had and what he owned was still there.

Like the public pride he took in Philippa's prettiness... Blake had marvelled at the quiet calm with which Philippa endured her father's attitude towards her and he was determined that he was never going to allow himself to be trapped by his love for her into trying to manipulate or dominate her in the way her father did.

No, before he even mentioned marriage to her he wanted her to have the freedom that going to university would give, the opportunity to make her own choices, her own decisions. In doing so he might be risking losing her but it was a risk he had to take, for both their sakes.

Now, as he'd listened to Robert, his anger had overwhelmed him.

'I think you need to say a lot more,' he had told him. 'One
hell
of a lot more...'

It had pleased him to see Robert looking flustered and uncomfortable as he blustered, 'Oh, come on, old man. 1 don't want to offend you, but it must be obvious to you that my father would never allow Philippa to become seriously involved with you...'

'What about what Philippa might want?' Blake had asked him. 'Or doesn't that come into it?'

'She's far too young to know what she wants... she can't even make up her mind which dress to buy and has to come home with them both.'

'Is she?' Blake had challenged him softly. 'She's not too young to think she's in love with me.' It was an underhand move, but it was one that Robert had forced him to make.

Blake could see how uncomfortable he had made him, his skin flushing as he'd avoided looking directly at Blake.

'She's far too young to know what love is... Oh, she might imagine she knows, but do you honestly believe those feelings would last five minutes once she realised what she'd be giving up?

'The pearls my father gave her for Christmas probably cost more than you could earn in a whole year. She treats them like glass beads. She isn't a girl who knows the meaning of the word "economy". She has never had to go without anything,.
.anything,'
Robert had emphasised.

'On the contrary,' Blake had told him. 'I believe she's had to go without a great deal.'

It had been Blake who had heard the door open, who had seen Philippa coming towards them. She had been playing tennis and her face was flushed, her skin as soft and clear as the pearls she had asked him to fasten for her two evenings ago—the pearls her father had bought her.