Deception (29 page)

Her
cheeks were still pink as they walked into the
kitchen. One look
at their faces and both Mrs Murray and
Martha smiled.

Pausing,
with Logan's arm still around her, Thea glanced
up at him
apprehensively. There was still something to be cleared up. She had almost
forgotten about it, but nothing
must be allowed to get
in the way of their future happiness.
Better to confess now
than risk Logan's anger later. Her
smile fading, she began
quite incoherently, 'I have to con
fess I've been here before.'

The
small, rather puzzled silence that greeted her stilted
announcement
was~broken sharply by Martha.

•You
were born here, weren't you? As soon as I saw
you I knew who you
were—which was more than anybody
else seemed to do.'

'You
knew?' Thea felt dazed, moving towards her.

'As
soon as you walked through that door,' Martha in
dicated
the one leading to the hall. 'But I couldn't say any
thing
until you did.' She turned to a starded Mrs Murray.
'Don't
you remember the girl who came here over twenty
years ago, after
her husband had been killed on their
honeymoon, when they ran
away together? This is the
baby she had—the child it almost broke your heart to
part with, when her mother took her with
her when she
left.'

Mrs
Murray whispered, 'Can this be true?'

As
Thea nodded numbly to Mrs Murray's astonished
query, Logan's mother
took her in her arms and kissed
her gendy. 'What Martha
says is quite right,' she smiled. 'I would have liked you for my own daughter.
I'm afraid
I
even begged to be allowed to adopt you. Now I do believe in miracles!'

After
listening to Thea's halting explanations, she hugged
her
warmly again before letting her go. Rubbing happy
tears
from her eyes, she went to the cupboard, declaring
that
the occasion called for nothing less than champagne but they might have to make
do with sherry.

Throughout,
Logan had been silent. Half afraid, Thea
dared at last to turn and look at him. Mrs
Murray had
been so carried away she had
obviously forgotten about
him. To
Thea's surprise and relief she found he was smil
ing, as though content and not over troubled to
have found
the answer to her
mysterious appearance in December.

'Do
you believe me?' she faltered anxiously.

"Come
here, minx,' he teased sofdy, holding out his
arms, taking no
notice of the other occupants of the kitchen.
'I'll believe you, if you can convince me that you'll
never
run away again.'
                            
,

And
she did!

 
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