The Perfect Match (18 page)

She had her reward in the look Guy gave Chrissie as he whispered, 'You knew...but...'

'Chrissie, I really think you should sit down,' Laura insisted firmly. She turned her attention back to Guy.

'She's been pacing the waiting-room floor for the past four hours,' she explained. 'I felt exhausted just watching her, which reminds me, there's a phone call I have to make. If you two will just excuse me...'

She was gone before Chrissie could open her mouth to protest. Her heart started to thump very heavily and she turned uncertainly towards the door.

As though he sensed what she was feeling, Guy held out his good arm to her and pleaded, 'Don't go, Chrissie. Please...'

When she turned back in response, he told her quietly, 'The surgeon tells me I'm lucky to be alive.

Another few hours and the septicaemia could have been so bad it would have meant amputation at best and at worst...'

The look in Chrissie's eyes and the small sound she made in her throat told him all he wanted to know.

'Oh God, Chrissie,' he said roughly. 'What have we
done
to each other?
Why
have we made such a mess of things? I can remember thinking last night just before the fever made it impossible for me to think, that if anything happened...you'd never know just how much I love you...just how much I wish this whole sorry business of that damned desk had never come between us, or how much I wish I'd never let my idiotic prejudice against your uncle—'

'Laura told me what he did to you when you were a child,' Chrissie interrupted him huskily, 'how he bullied you. He did the same to my mother even though she was much older than Charlie. She...she told me once that she used to feel so guilty because she hated him so much.'

'Yes, it must have been hard for her,' Guy agreed quietly, 'but not as hard as I've made things for you.'

Somehow or other without Chrissie being aware of how it happened, they were holding hands, their fingers entwined, their body language giving away all the things that logic and suspicion had urged them to suppress.

'You're having my baby,' Guy whispered rawly.

'When the surgeon told me how close I'd been to...

I couldn't bear to think that our child would come into the world without my knowing...without my being there to share the miracle we've created between us. Without my being there to look after and protect the both of you the way... I
want
to be there, Chrissie, not just for our baby, but for you, as well.'

'I want you to be there, too,' Chrissie heard herself admitting as her tears started to fall. Guy, ignoring her protests, heaved himself up in the bed and, using his good arm, drew her down against him, gently kissing her head and trying to comfort her.

'I
know
there are still problems,' he admitted when she finally lifted her head from his chest. He smiled lovingly down at her and smoothed her damp hair back off her face. 'But somehow we'll find a way to work them out.'

'I never meant to keep the truth from you,' Chrissie murmured sadly.

'Shush,' Guy ordered her firmly and she gave him a painful smile. 'It wasn't so much the fact that you were Charlie's niece that bothered me,' Guy explained. 'It was knowing that you didn't trust me enough to tell me...and that hurt. Stupidly because I was hurt...I lashed out unforgivably. Instead of admitting that I
was
hurt and behaving like an adult, I reacted like a child, accusing and blaming you.'

'The reason I didn't tell you was because I loved you too much,' Chrissie responded shakily. 'I was too afraid of losing you and then my mother suggested that I should keep quiet about being related to Charlie and I knew how you felt about him...' She shook her head, then went on quiedy, 'I was hurt, too, you know, when you weren't honest with me about your...your relationship with Jenny.'

She paused and waited painfully to see how he would respond.

'Yes,' Guy agreed after a small pause. 'I wasn't entirely honest with you about that, I know—'

'Because you didn't want me to know how much you loved her,' Chrissie interjected sadly.

'No!' Guy denied her assertion so forcefully that he winced as he tried to catch hold of her and jarred his bandaged arm.

'No,' he reiterated more gently whilst Chrissie fussed over his pain. 'No, the reason I didn't tell you about her was because I was ashamed of myself for...for being weak enough at that particular time in my life to believe that the answer to all my problems lay in forming a relationship with another man's wife, a woman who I already knew in my heart of hearts was quite simply not available to me. I was at an age where I
wanted
to fall in love, to settle down and have a family, but because it wasn't happening, because there was no one around who appealed to me in that way, I convinced myself that I was in love with Jenny, a woman who already had her family and who was so much in love with her own husband that there was absolutely no possibility of her ever falling in love with me.

'I never really loved Jenny at all, Chrissie, and she was wise enough to know as much and that was why I was so reluctant to discuss what happened with you.

I didn't want to expose myself to you as a flawed human being. The truth is that I didn't have a clue what real love was until I met you...until I saw you, and then when I had, when I did, the truth was so illuminating, so blinding, that...' He paused and shook his head. 'I'm very fond of Jenny and I always will be, but
you
are the woman I love. You will
always
be the woman I love.'

'Even though you think I'm lying about the desk?'

Chrissie asked him quietly.

Guy sighed. 'I don't know what to say. I only know the evidence of my eyes.'

'I understand,' Chrissie agreed quietly, disentan-gling herself from his embrace and walking slowly towards the door.

She was just about to open it when she heard Guy calling her name. Thinking that something was wrong with his arm, she reacted instinctively, turning round and running back to his side.

'Guy, what is it?' she demanded. 'What's wrong...

your arm...?'

'My arm's fine,' he replied in a muffled voice. 'But I'm not. Oh God, Chrissie, I don't give a damn about the wretched desk. You're what matters to me...all that matters to me. I can sell my share in the business, we can move, go and make a fresh start somewhere where no one...'

Chrissie stared at him. 'You'd do
that
for me?' she whispered. 'Even though...'

'I'd do
anything
for you,' Guy groaned as he reached for her, pulling her down onto the bed beside him.

'Anything and
everything.
I
love
you, Chrissie, and that's
all
that matters, and just as soon as I get out of this damned hospital, you and I are going to sit down together and make plans...not just for our own future but for our child's, as well,' he promised her firmly as he started to kiss her.

Laura opened the door, saw the couple on the bed, Guy's good arm locking Chrissie to him as he kissed her, and discreetly closed the door again.

'We're going to be so happy together, the three of us,' Guy declared when he finally released her, but although she smiled at him, Chrissie wondered.

It was all very well for Guy to talk of leaving Haslewich and making a new start, but the issue of her family's trustworthiness would always be there between them, no matter how deeply they tried to bury it.

'We've had an official invitation to go round and have tea with Ruth Reynolds, one of my neighbours,' Guy announced as Chrissie walked into his sitting room.

He had been allowed home from the hospital the previous day but only with the proviso that there was someone to look after him.

There was no way
she
could take on the task, Laura had insisted determinedly. Not with her own husband due home in the next twenty-four hours, and the horses to look after, so of course Chrissie had really no option other than to take on the role in her stead.

'Oh, when does she want us to go?' Chrissie asked him.

'Come in, both of you,' Ruth invited warmly as she answered the door to Guy and Chrissie's ring. 'I've invited Jon to join us,' she added unexpectedly as she led the way to her pretty drawing room. 'I feel it's important that he should be here, if only as an informal recorder and, of course, to give corroboration to what I have to say, just in case. But I'm rather jumping the gun. How are you feeling, Guy?' she enquired solicitously.

'Much better than I was,' Guy told her wryly.

'Much better than I might have been if it hadn't been for Chrissie,' he added as he turned towards her and smiled tenderly.

Ruth had, of course, heard about their reconciliation, and as Jenny had said, it was lovely to hear that they had resolved their differences and that their love for one another had proved to be strong enough to overcome them.

'I'm so glad for them both,' Jenny had continued.

'They are so obviously right for one another.'

'Come in and sit down,' Ruth invited. 'Chrissie, if you wouldn't mind pouring the tea, I have a rather interesting story to tell you both.'

She smiled at Chrissie's slightly surprised look as the younger woman dutifully went over to the table and started to pour the tea.

'I've been rather puzzled and concerned,' Ruth began, 'about this problem concerning the true ownership of the desk that was found in Charlie Platt's house. So I've been doing a little bit of investigating.

As Jon is aware, my father had rather a thing about his relatives in Chester, and since he knew that the desk he had copied was one of a pair made as birthday gifts for twin daughters in the Chester family, it seemed to me that it didn't make sense that he should only have had the
one
desk made. That's why I decided to do some research....'

She paused before reaching for the heavy book that lay on the floor at her feet.

'This is the account book for the year when the desk was commissioned, or should I say when the
desks
were commissioned?'

It took some time for her wry words to sink in, but once they had, Guy exclaimed, 'You mean there were
two
desks, but—'

'Yes, there were two desks,' Ruth interjected calmly. 'Two identical desks, just like the pair made for the Chester family.'

'But that still doesn't explain how one of them came into the possession of my family,' Chrissie observed.

'That it doesn't,' Ruth agreed quietly. 'Accounts are simply statements of funds paid out and gathered in.'

'Surely my great-grandfather didn't
buy
one of the desks?' Chrissie questioned doubtfully. 'That would—'

'No, Chrissie, he didn't,' Ruth returned gently before looking at Jon. 'Our father, Ben's and mine, was married twice. Our mother died shortly after my birth and a young girl was hired to help out in the nursery.'

Ruth paused and then continued.

'That girl was your great-grandmother, Chrissie. A relationship developed between her and my father, and when she became pregnant he apparently persuaded her to marry one of his tenant farmers, who was himself a widower with no children.

'It was agreed between the two men that the baby, a son, would be brought up as the farmer's child. He, it seems, was already middle-aged and desperate for an heir. A sum of money also changed hands.' Ruth grimaced slightly. 'That poor girl. I suspect she must have loved my father very much, so much so it seems that she pleaded with him to be allowed to take with her to her new home some memento of what they had shared. He agreed and she chose the desk,' Ruth concluded simply.

Chrissie stared at her in shock before demanding huskily, 'Is this really true? It seems so...'

'Yes, it's really true, Chrissie,' Jon confirmed with quiet authority.

'But
why
hasn't my mother ever said? Why...?'

'I doubt very much that she knew,' Ruth told her.

'I certainly knew nothing about it myself and Ben, my brother, only found out when our father was dying. According to Ben, it was confided to him as a secret that he was sworn to keep. It was only when I challenged him about the fact that there were two desks and threatened to inform the police that he finally admitted the truth to me.'

'I still can't quite take it all in,' Chrissie whispered, tears filling her eyes as she turned to Ruth and confided emotionally, 'You can't know how much I've been dreading having my mother identify the desk.

How much...'

'I think I can,' Ruth corrected her gently.

Guy still hadn't said anything, but his expression gave him away. 'Two desks,' he announced grimly, standing up now and pacing the floor. 'Of course.
Why
didn't
I
guess that for myself? I
knew
there were two originals.'

'There was really no reason why you should have done,' Ruth soothed him. 'You had, after all, only seen the one and no one had ever suggested to you that there might originally have been two.'

'Maybe not, but I should have thought...
questioned...
Chrissie!'

'It's all right,' Chrissie reassured him unsteadily as she reached for his hand. 'Ruth's right. You really couldn't have known and,' she added with heart-warming honesty, 'in your shoes, I would probably have reacted just as you did.'

The look Guy gave her made Ruth bite her lip and look away. Some feelings, some emotions, were just too intense, too passionate, too raw, to be witnessed by any outsiders.

'You're a liar,' she heard Guy saying huskily, 'and a very generous one.'

Chrissie shook her head. She was still feeling too overwhelmed by Ruth's astonishing revelations. 'I can't believe this is happening,' she told Ruth and Jon shakily. 'It seems so...well, it's so unexpected.'

'Well, it certainly helps to explain where Charlie got his rogue genes from,' Ruth commented humorously, explaining wryly to Chrissie, 'Unfortunately there is a certain inherited characteristic in the Crighton ancestry that tends to produce the odd individual who is not only monumentally selfish, but totally lacking in what the rest of us might describe as moral responsibility, as well, which reminds me...'