Heiress on the Run (Harlequin Romance) (14 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

W
ITNESSES
. S
HE
WAS
worried about witnesses. Dominic supposed that he should be grateful she wanted to take the conversation out of the public domain, but instead all he could think about was what on earth she had planned she didn’t want witnesses for.

Or perhaps she was more afraid of what he might do. His list of questions rose up in the back of his mind but, in the end, the moment the balcony door swung shut, the first thing he said was simply, ‘Why?’

Leaning back against the balcony rails, too high up above ground for Dominic to really feel comfortable with her lounging over them, Faith raised an eyebrow. ‘Why what? Why did I leave? Why did I lie? Why am I here?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He wanted answers to all of them. He also wanted to know how he could be so furious with her and yet so desperate to kiss her at the same time, but he suspected she wouldn’t have the answer for that one.

Besides, fury was winning by a comfortable margin.

‘You ran away,’ he said, the words hard in his mouth. ‘I was going to fix this. I could have stopped all of...this.’ He waved an arm at the expanse of windows between them and the ballroom, where a host of well-connected people in evening dress were barely even pretending not to be watching them any more. ‘All you had to do was stay put and—’

‘And let you fix my life?’ Faith’s voice was cool, colder than he thought he’d heard it before. As if she thought she had some right to be angry with him, after everything that had happened. ‘No thank you. My life, my problems, my solutions.’

‘Solutions? Since when did running away solve anything?’

Faith tilted her head as she looked at him, and Dominic couldn’t tear his eyes away from the lovely line of her neck above her dress. ‘That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You’re mad at me for leaving you.’

His gaze jerked back to her face. ‘No! I’m furious because you lied to me. You risked my reputation and you ruined a deal I’ve been working on for years.’

She stilled, and for a brief moment he thought he saw something like guilt in her face. ‘The Americans didn’t sign?’

‘Not yet. They want to see where we are when things have “settled down”.’

Faith winced. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘
That’s
the thing you’re sorry for?’ He laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. ‘Of course. The job always meant more to you than I did.’

‘No.’ Her eyes jumped up to meet his and for a second he almost believed her. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth. But I knew how you’d react, what would happen if it got out. I couldn’t risk it.’

‘Because you needed me. You needed the job.’

‘Yes.’ Her gaze dropped to her shoes. ‘I didn’t know who you were either, when I met you. Not when I first asked for the job. And even then...it wasn’t until later that I realised what me being, well, me, could do to you. And by then, things between us had become...more.’

Dominic pushed away from the wall and paced across to the edge of the balcony. From there, he could see all over London, all the places he’d never again be able to look at without thinking of her. But it was still better than looking at her face. ‘It was never more. The first sign of trouble you ran away, like you always do.’

‘I went home.’

‘I know.’ He shook his head, leaning against the rails as he stared down at the street below. ‘Letting me help you was such a terrible prospect that you ran straight to the place you’d been trying to get away from all along.’

‘I didn’t have a lot of options.’ There was an edge in her voice now. Good. She should be angry too. Between them, they’d messed this up good and proper. And even if it was all her fault, he wanted her angry. Wanted her to hate the way their one night had ended.

He shouldn’t be the only one being eaten up by the fury.

He couldn’t show it anywhere else. To the rest of the world, he needed to be the same in control Lord Beresford he’d always been. This couldn’t be seen as more than a tiny blip on his life radar.

But to her...she knew. And so she was the only person he could tear apart.

‘You had my credit card,’ he pointed out. ‘You could have gone anywhere in the world if you’d really wanted.’

Faith gave him a scornful glare. ‘You think I’m a common thief, now? Gosh, you really don’t have any respect for people outside your social sphere, do you?’

‘But you’re not outside it. You’re Lady Faith.’ He spat out the last two words. ‘And I’ve learned a lot about what that means in the last three weeks.’

‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ she said, as if it were a joke. As if it were even the slightest bit funny.

He turned to face her. He needed to see her reacting to this one. ‘Maybe not. But a picture is worth a thousand words, don’t they say?’

There. A tremor of something, under the bravado. But still, she tried to excuse herself. ‘Like the picture of us?’

‘We can’t deny what happened just before it, however much we might want to,’ he said. ‘And it seems like it wasn’t your first time in that particular situation.’

That was it. That was the line that got to her. Her whole body, usually so kinetic and full of energy, stopped cold. The only time he’d ever seen her so still was in his hotel room, just before she ran.

Dominic half hoped she might just run again. But she didn’t.

* * *

‘You mean Jared,’ Faith said, proud that she could even find her voice. Did he truly think this was the same? That she had some habit of causing scandals for guys and then skipping town?

She’d hoped he knew her better than that. Apparently her real name wasn’t the only thing he hadn’t realised.

‘I heard the poor guy left his wife and kids for you, before you ran. Guess I should be grateful that all I had to lose was my reputation.’

‘Funny. I always thought that was all you cared about anyway. If it wasn’t, maybe you’d have the wife and kids already and would never have to have worried about me at all.’ Ouch, that hurt. It hurt her, and she was the one saying it. But if he honestly believed everything they printed about her...well, a little insult was nothing, surely.

And Dominic wouldn’t let her see, even if it did sting. His expression was back to that robot look of the early days, the one that didn’t let anything show. The one that had almost convinced her that he wasn’t interested in her, didn’t want her the way she wanted him.

But she knew better now. She knew him, even if he’d never really known her.

He drew back, leaning away from her against the railings. He wasn’t going to rise to the bait. Of course not. As much as she’d love a knock-down drag-out fight with the guy, just to get it all out, to clear the air, maybe even let them start afresh...Dominic would never let go like that. And he’d certainly never do it where they had an audience. Through it all, he’d kept his voice low, his hands clenched at his sides or holding the railings. No outward sign of the fury burning in him.

Well, the crowd behind the glass might not be able to tell, but Faith knew. She knew he was every bit as angry as she was. And she knew he’d never let himself show it.

‘So. What are your plans now? Will you stay at Fowlmere as the happy heiress?’

‘You mean, will we be required to make polite conversation at every social function until the end of time?’ Faith shook her head. ‘Thankfully for both of us, no. Dad needs a little help setting up a new project, something to get the estate running properly again, and then I’ll be on my way. Fowlmere is only ever a temporary stop for me.’

‘You’ll be running away again, then. Of course.’

Faith bristled at that. ‘I’m not running
from
anything. I’m running
to
something new. My new life. A life where I don’t have to answer to people like you.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘People like me?’

‘Yes, people like you. And them!’ Faith swept an arm out to encompass their audience, just a window pane away. He was the only one on that balcony who cared if they knew they were talking about them. ‘All you care about is what other people think about you, what they say. Your precious reputation.’

‘What’s left of it now you’re done with it,’ Dominic muttered and grabbed her arm, trying to keep her calm, undemonstrative. Docile.

Ha!

Faith wrenched her arm away. ‘Why does it matter to you so much what people think? So your mother left. That’s her story, not yours! So you slept with a scandalous runaway heiress. Who cares? And what makes it any of their business anyway?’

‘You cared,’ he pointed out. ‘Or are you trying to tell me that when you ran away the first time it wasn’t because of what people were saying about you and Hawkes?’ He shook his head. ‘All that time I wasted trying to figure out what dreadful secret had made you leave Italy, when all the time I should have been trying to find out why you left Britain in the first place.’

‘It wasn’t because of Jared,’ Faith said, remembering how it had felt, then, to be on the receiving end of that media fever. At least this time she’d actually slept with the guy. ‘Not entirely, anyway. I just wanted to be somewhere—someone—else. I wanted people to not care what I did, to be able to live my own life.’

‘Without caring what you left behind.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said, but she knew he was never going to understand. ‘And you never answered my question. Why does your reputation matter so much to you?’

His lips curved into a cruel smile. ‘Didn’t you say it yourself? It’s all I have.’

‘No, it’s not.’ She looked up at him, willing him to understand this one thing, even if everything else between them would forever be a battleground. ‘You have so much more. I saw it, that night in London. The real you. You’re more than just Lord Beresford. You’re Dominic, too. And you’re denying the real you just to keep up a façade in front of people who don’t even matter!’

‘Whereas you don’t even bother with the façade,’ he snapped back. ‘You just run away when things get hard. You pretend to be anyone except the person you really are. Don’t talk to me about denying my true self,
Lady Faith.
I doubt even you know who you really are any more. But it sure as hell isn’t this woman in pearls and evening dress.’

* * *

Faith’s skin burned pink above the fabric of her gown, and Dominic took a perverse pleasure in knowing he could still affect her that way. ‘Maybe not. But I know something else I’m not. I’m not going to be your scapegoat any longer. I’m not taking the blame for this. Life is risk. You fail. People leave. And until you take that chance, you’ll never be happy. You wanted one night with me, and you got it.’

‘And you always told me you were going to leave,’ Dominic said. ‘At least that was one thing you didn’t lie to me about.’

‘What, you expected me to stay? As your events co-ordinator, right? No thanks.’

‘I might have wanted more if—’

‘If I weren’t such a scandal? An embarrassment?’

‘That’s not it,’ he said, but even he knew he was lying.

‘Yes. Yes it is.’ Faith shook her head and reached for the balcony door. The buzz and noise of the ballroom filled his ears again as she stepped through. They were talking about them again. It seemed to Dominic they might never stop.

‘Goodbye, Dominic,’ Faith said, and he had to grip onto the railings to stop himself hauling her back, from making her finish this. He needed her to understand what she’d done to him, what it meant...

He watched as she made her way back into the crowd. Saw her put on her smile, the one that looked completely different to the quick, bright grins he’d seen when she was just Faith Fowler. And nothing at all like the slow, secret smiles she’d given him between kisses, on that last night.

He studied her a little closer. The tension in her shoulders, the slant of her head. The desperation in her eyes. All things he’d never seen before she became Lady Faith again.

She looked as if the walls were closing in on her, bricking her up alive. How hadn’t he seen that before? This life, here, was killing her. And he didn’t know how to live anything different.

No wonder she’d only ever wanted one night.

‘You know,’ Sylvia said, sidling up to him, ‘that wasn’t entirely what I meant when I said “be boring”.’

‘Faith doesn’t know how to be boring,’ Dominic said.

‘No,’ Sylvia agreed, staring out across the ballroom at Lady Faith Fowlmere, too. ‘I always liked that about her.’

‘Me too,’ Dominic admitted.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘S
O
. T
HAT
WAS
an interesting little show you and Lord Beresford put on for us all.’ Faith scowled out of the taxi window at her father’s words. Bad enough that the whole of London society had been watching through the glass. She didn’t need to deconstruct the misery with her father, too.

‘It wasn’t meant to be for public consumption.’ It should have just been her and Dominic, working things out. Making sense of everything that had happened between them. Not just trying to hurt each other without anyone else noticing.

‘Wrong venue then, buttercup.’ He patted her knee. ‘Come on. You know people are fascinated by you. By all of us, really. But especially by you.’

‘Maybe that’s why I left.’

‘And here I thought you didn’t care what people thought about you. Wasn’t that always what you used to say, when your mother would complain about another photo of you showing your knickers outside a nightclub?’ He spoke the words lightly, as always, but Faith thought perhaps there was something harder underneath this time.

‘I’m not that girl any more.’

‘No, you’re not.’ Her father smiled at her. ‘After all, you came home this time.’ He stretched out his legs as far as the taxi seats would allow and folded his hands behind his head. ‘So, are you ready to tell me why you did leave? Really, this time?’

Faith shrugged. ‘Nothing complicated. I wanted to be myself, and I felt I couldn’t be that with the title round my neck and everyone watching my every screw-up.’

Except Dominic had been right about one thing. She would always be Lady Faith, however much she pretended otherwise. Maybe she really was no better than him. Hiding from her true name wasn’t very different from hiding behind a reputation.

‘And now?’ her dad asked. ‘Now you’re back. What do you want to be now?’

‘Still myself,’ Faith replied, because that was always, always going to be true. But... ‘Lady Faith, I guess. Whoever she turns out to be.’

‘Well, if you really want to find out, seems to me the best place to learn is Fowlmere Manor.’

‘I suppose it is.’ Could she stay? Should she? Not just for a quick pit stop, but long enough to figure out what it really meant to be Lady Faith Fowlmere, here and now.

‘I’ve got a meeting with Jack tomorrow. We’re going to be talking about some of the plans for the estate. You should come with me.’

Was she ready? Getting involved with Dad’s scheme...that wasn’t something she could just run away from. If she committed to it, she’d have to see it through. Not doing so would mean leaving her parents in the lurch, more than ever before.

Was she ready to take on the responsibility she’d always avoided? Yes, maybe her parents had been responsible for running down the estate. But did that mean she shouldn’t help build it back up?

‘There’ll need to be some changes...’ she said.

‘I know, I know.’ He gave her a self-deprecating smile. ‘I know I haven’t always done right by you. Or your mother. But we’ve been trying, you know. When you left...things were bad for a while. But we’ve turned a corner, I think. And having you home...maybe we can all make it work. Together.’

She’d heard it before, plenty of times. But something in her wanted to believe it was true this time. ‘How do I know you won’t gamble it away, or get bored and find something better to do?’

‘You don’t.’ He took her hand and squeezed it lightly. ‘But, buttercup, what you do know is that it’s a lot more likely I’ll make a mess of it without you.’

That was true.

Maybe this was something she could do. Something she could be good at.

Maybe, against the odds, the place in the world she’d been searching for, the space she needed to feel at home was, actually, home.

Faith bit her lip. Then she said, ‘Give me the guy’s number. I’ll call and tell him I’m running the project with you now.’

Her father beamed, and Faith hoped she wasn’t making a colossal mistake.

* * *

‘You really should talk to her,’ Sylvia said, and Dominic sighed into his paperwork. Was even the office not safe now?

‘I can’t help but feel we’ve had this conversation before,’ he said, shifting a pile of folders to the middle of his desk, making a wall of filing. ‘Don’t you have a tea room to run, or something?’

‘Russell is taking care of it for the day.’ Sylvia dropped into his client chair and kicked her feet up on his filing wall. ‘Which leaves me free to bother you.’

‘How wonderful and special.’ Dominic reached for the next folder in the stack. He had no idea what it contained, or what he might need it for, but if it meant not talking to Sylvia, he was all for it.

Except she was still sitting there. Watching him. Waiting for him to crack.

‘What do I have to do to get rid of you?’ he asked.

‘Talk to Faith,’ she replied promptly.

He sighed and put down the file. ‘What on earth could I possibly have to say to her that wasn’t already covered, in excruciating public detail, at the event last month?’ And in the gossip rags the next day. Everyone was speculating about their mythical on-again, off-again romance. Some even dared to speculate that Faith had spent the last three years in their private love nest on the Continent.

If only they knew the truth, he thought. They’d be so disappointed. Not unlike him.

‘That doesn’t count,’ Sylvia said, which made no sense at all.

‘Trust me. It was the most honest conversation we’ve ever had. Possibly the only honest one.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s anything left for Faith and I to say to each other.’

‘Except that you’re in love with her.’

For a moment it seemed so obvious, so profound a truth, that Dominic couldn’t speak. Then reality reasserted itself.

‘Of course I’m not,’ he said, grabbing another handful of files. Where did all these bits of paper even come from? And what happened to them normally, when he wasn’t using them to help him ignore his sister?

‘Oh, Dominic.’ When he looked up, Sylvia was shaking her head sadly. ‘Are you really
that
stupid? I mean, I always knew I got the brains in the family. But really?’

‘Hey,’ he said, a little sharper than he intended.

‘Well, right now you are being officially stupid!’ Leaning forward to rest her wrists on her knees, Sylvia stared at him so intently he felt obliged to put down the files. ‘Listen. She’s great. She’s honest—fake identity notwithstanding—bright, efficient, gorgeous. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in a woman.’

‘She’s a liability,’ he countered because he couldn’t exactly claim that any of the above weren’t true. ‘She’d ruin us.’ Just like their mother almost had.

‘How? By speaking her mind?’ Sylvia shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t want a docile miss who never said what she was really thinking. It would drive you crazy, trying to figure out what she wanted.’

‘She’s a scandal,’ he offered. ‘She was caught having an affair with a married man. A drug addict. No one knows where she was for three years. There are all sorts of stories...’

‘You know where she was,’ Sylvia pointed out. ‘Does any of it bother you?’

Yes, Dominic wanted to say. The idea of Faith being with another man, living with him. Loving someone who wasn’t him. But he couldn’t help but think that might bolster Sylvia’s argument more than his own.

Which only left him with the truth.

‘She’d leave, Syl. It’s what she does.’

Sylvia’s face fell, her eyes suddenly very wide. ‘Oh, Dominic. You can’t possibly think that’s true.’

‘I don’t need to think,’ he said, shuffling his files again. ‘I know. And she’s already done it once! You saw her at the gala last month. She hates that sort of thing. She hates our whole world. Why else do you think she ran away?’

‘But she came back,’ Sylvia pointed out. ‘She’s at Fowlmere right now. It’s been weeks and she hasn’t left. So maybe she changed her mind?’

He shook his head. If only it were that easy. ‘She told me herself, Syl. As soon as she sorts out the mess her father’s made of the estate, she’s out of there. She’ll be back in Florence, or India, or Australia before you can speak. She’s not the staying kind.’

‘Maybe she just hasn’t found something worth staying for yet,’ Sylvia suggested in a small, quiet voice.

He gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Yeah, well. I think she’s made it pretty clear that’s not me. Don’t you?’

* * *

‘Faith? It’s Sylvia.’

Faith didn’t bother asking how Sylvia had got her number—she just assumed she’d stolen it from Dominic’s phone. It seemed like a Sylvia thing to do. So, instead, she motioned to Jack to keep walking the hedgerow between the lower and upper fields without her. He knew what they were looking at, and looking for, far better than she did anyway.

‘Sylvia. What can I do for you?’

‘Oh, I was checking in, see how you’re getting on. You’re still at the old homestead, I understand?’ Sylvia spoke airily, as if it was a matter of no consequence, but Faith knew that if she’d spoken to her brother at all, she had to know that it was.

And yes, she was still at Fowlmere. And, against the odds, actually enjoying being there for the first time she could remember. Which wasn’t to say that her parents weren’t still capable of driving her crazy at times, but working towards something, as a family, seemed to be making a difference. Even her mother was hard at work pulling out long lost heirlooms and trying to restore them to their possible former glory. Maybe all they’d needed all along was a shared goal.

Maybe that was all she had needed, too.

‘I’m still here,’ she told Sylvia. ‘Actually, it looks like I’ll be staying for a while.’

‘Helping your father with the estate, I understand?’ Faith wondered where she’d heard that. Well, news got around, she supposed. Even when it was a lot more boring than scandalous nights in hotels and missing heiresses.

‘Trust me, he needs the help,’ she joked.

It was never going to be Beresford, but Faith was discovering that Fowlmere had its own charms, and its own opportunities to shine. To her surprise, she was even excited about them, far more so than planning a tour of some foreign land. This was her home, her heritage, at last. And, for the first time, she wanted to share that with other people.

‘So...you think you’ll be staying, then?’ Sylvia asked.

Suspicion started to prickle at the back of Faith’s neck. ‘Yeah, it seems like it. Look, Sylvia, not that it’s not lovely to hear from you, but was there something that you actually wanted?’

Sylvia sighed down the phone line. ‘He’s miserable without you.’

‘No. He’s safe without me. Respectable. Just like he wanted.’

‘He was wrong.’ Hope tugged at her heart at Sylvia’s words, but Faith stamped it back down.

‘I can’t imagine him saying that.’ Or even admitting it to himself.

‘Maybe not. But I’m his sister. I know these things. So, you know, bear it in mind.’

Bear it in mind? What did that even mean?

But then a car pulled up on the driveway, just across from the field where she stood, and Faith knew, even before he got out of the car, exactly who the driver was.