“It's brilliant to meet one of Jules’ relatives at last,” she'd confided to Samantha on their first meeting seven months earlier. “I hope we'll become the best of friends.” Half term for Nicola, she'd come to spend her holiday with her parents. She'd rung Julian on the morning of her arrival, and the moment he pressed the telephone receiver to his ear, Samantha had seen which way the wind was blowing and for whom. But she hadn't known how strong that wind was till she met Nicola herself.
The sunny smile, the frank gaze, the shout of pleased laughter, the artless conversation … Although she'd rather more than mildly disliked her, it had taken several meetings with Nicola for Samantha to make a full evaluation of her cousin's beloved. And when she did, the realisation she reached did nothing but add to Samantha's discomfort whenever they met. For she saw in Nicola Maiden a young woman completely content with who she was, offering herself to the world at large without the slightest care as to whether the offering would be accepted. Not for her were the doubts, the fears, the insecurities, and the crises of confidence of the female in search of a male to define her. Which was probably why, Samantha thought, she had Julian Britton so hot and bothered to do just that.
More than once in the time she'd been at Broughton Manor, Samantha had come upon Julian engaged in an act that was testimony to the thrall into which Nicola Maiden drew a man. Hunched over a letter he was writing to her, sheltering the telephone receiver from unwanted eavesdroppers as he talked to her, staring sightlessly over the garden wall at the footbridge that spanned the River Wye as he thought of her, sitting in his office with his head in his hands as he brooded about her, Samantha's cousin was little more than the prey of a huntress he couldn't begin to understand.
There was no way that Samantha could make him see his beloved as she truly was, however. There was only the option of allowing his passion to play itself out, to culminate in the marriage he was so desperate to attain, or to lead to a permanent break between him and the woman he desired.
Having to accept this as her only course had brought Samantha face-to-face with her own impatience, and it accosted her at her every turn at Broughton Manor. She fought her longing to beat the truth into her cousin's head. Time and again she deliberately turned from the appetite for derogation that rose in her whenever the subject of Nicola came up. But these virtuous efforts at self-control were taxing. And the price she was beginning to pay was anxiety, resentment, insomnia, and outright rage.
Uncle Jeremy didn't help matters. By him, Samantha was daily regaled with lubricious innuendoes and direct assaults, all circling or landing upon the subject of Julian's love life. Had she not quickly seen upon her arrival how necessary was her presence at Broughton Manor, had she not needed a respite from her mother's incessant displays of lugubrious mourning, Samantha knew that she would have decamped months before. But she maintained her position and held her peace—most of the time—because she'd been able to see the bigger picture: Jeremy's sobriety, the blessed distraction that a reunion with him would provide her mother, and Julian's gradual awakening to the contribution Samantha was making to his well-being, his future, and his hope of transforming the derelict manor house and the estate into a thriving business.
“Sam?”
She raised her head. So deeply had she been into her attempt to release the tension of having a conversation with her uncle, she'd failed to hear his son come into the kitchen. Stupidly, she said, “Aren't you with the dogs, Julian?”
“Short shrift,” he said in explanation. “They need more but I can't give it to them now.”
“I did see to Cass. Do you want me to—”
“She's dead.”
“My God. Julian, she can't be,” Samantha cried. “I went out as soon as I spoke with you. She was fine. She'd eaten, the puppies were all asleep. I made notes of everything and left them on the clipboard. Didn't you see it? I hung it on the peg.”
“Nicola,” he said tonelessly. “Sam, she's dead. Out on Calder Moor, where she'd gone camping. Nicola's dead.”
Samantha stared at him as the word dead seemed to echo round the room. He isn't crying, she thought. What does it mean that he isn't crying? “Dead,” she repeated, careful with the word, certain that saying it the wrong way would give an impression that she didn't want to give.
He kept his eyes on her and she wished he wouldn't. She wished he'd talk. Or scream or cry or do something to indicate what was going on inside so that she would know how to behave with him. When he finally moved, it was to walk to the work top where Samantha had been chopping the peppers. He stood examining them as if they were a curiosity. Then he lifted the chef's knife and inspected it closely. Finally, he pressed his thumb firmly against the sharp blade.
“Julian!” Samantha cried. “You'll hurt yourself!”
A thin line of crimson appeared on his skin. “I don't know what to call how I feel,” he said.
Samantha, on the other hand, didn't have that problem.
CHAPTER 5