Her distressed eyes dropped to the floor and she shook her head in anguished bewilderment.
‘Carolyn, look at me...’
His voice was so unexpectedly gentle that she was impelled to look up, only to be lanced by a look of such incredible warmth and apology that she was stunned. His regretful gaze washed over her, totally defusing her anger, making her melt inside.
Panic clutched at her stomach. Dear heaven... she would have to be very very careful with this man.
‘I shouldn’t have said that quite so bluntly,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry. Look, your mother was a lovely woman. Very lovely. But very, very lonely. She needed a man in her life. I was just... there. I never led her on and I never told her I loved her. She came to me, not the other way around. I don’t blame her and neither should you.’
‘I don’t,’ she bit out, shaking inside with indignation. ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not about who started what, but you’re lying about not having told Mum you loved her. You did. I know that for a fact!’
An electric silence descended on the pair of them with her vehement accusation.
‘Then I suggest you check your facts,’ he said at last in a low, tightly controlled voice. ‘If your mother thought I loved her then it was all in her mind, certainly not because of anything I ever said or did. I would quite willingly swear to that on a stack of bibles!’
Her belief in his treachery wavered under this intense denial. Could he be telling the truth about everything? Had her mother’s mind already been affected so much that she’d started imagining he’d said words he hadn’t? Carolyn supposed it was possible, given the obsessive nature of her mother’s feelings for him.
What was the truth? she agonised. He claimed Isabel had been lonely... frustrated...
Carolyn supposed that could have been true. For not in all her growing-up years could she recall her mother going out with a man, or having a man in the house. Isabel had always insisted she’d loved Carolyn’s father far too much to ever look at another man. As an innocent child, she had accepted this as a wonderful, romantic concept. Now she could see that such loyalty to a dead man must have been hard on a normal healthy woman in the prime of her life.
But none of that changed the fact that her mother had believed Vaughan loved her. No one could doubt that if they’d heard her piteous ravings that day. Besides, it was the only reason that made sense of her breakdown. Isabel had been a strong woman, not a dreamer. So why had she believed Vaughan loved her if he’d not actually said so?
Carolyn lifted her pale face to stare at him across the desk. The answers had to lie in this man’s sexual power and prowess, in his ability to bewitch women and make them mad for him without having to say the words women always wanted to hear.
I love you... I love you...
The words seemed to ring aloud inside her head again and again and she wanted to clasp her hands over her ears to stop them. As it was, the blood drained from her face as an appalling thought hit her. What if he bewitches me too? What if...?
‘You look upset, Carolyn,’ he said abruptly, and stood up. ‘I’ll get Nora to make us both a cup of coffee. Then we’ll try to sort this out, come to a compromise that will ease your mind. Perhaps I could telephone your mother when she gets back and——’
‘Don’t you dare!’ she burst out, so savagely that he sat down again, looking stunned.
‘You... you don’t understand,’ she added, her voice trembling. Oh this was dreadful. Simply dreadful. She had to get a hold of herself.
‘Then perhaps you could enlighten me?’ he asked quietly.
‘I... my mother had a nervous breakdown,’ she blurted out. ‘The day after you left. Her doctor put her in a hospital for a while. Even when she was allowed out, she took a long time to get better. In fact she’s still very... fragile.’
Vaughan was looking at her as though she were mad. ‘Isabel had a nervous breakdown? Isabel? Over me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe it!’
‘It’s only too true,’ she insisted wretchedly, thinking that she would never forget the pitiful scene she’d encountered soon after Vaughan had left. She’d found her mother curled up in a little ball in a corner of the kitchen, talking to herself, totally unaware of Carolyn’s presence.
‘He swore he really loved me,’ she’d raved over and over. ‘Why else did he think I started sleeping with him, even though I knew it was wrong? And what did he do in the end? Told me it was only sex, said he was leaving me. All lies... Nothing but lies... Lies, lies, lies! I can’t bear it any more... I can’t!’
And she hadn’t been able to bear it. The rantings had finally dissolved into tears and she hadn’t been able to stop. Uncontrollable hysterical tears. Racking her. Tearing her apart.
In tears herself, Carolyn had rung their local doctor and the nightmare had begun...
Remembering what had really happened brought fresh doubts. Could Vaughan be still lying? Had he, in fact, both seduced Isabel and told her he loved her? She only had his word for it that he hadn’t. Carolyn lifted her eyes to those seemingly sincere brown ones and didn’t know what to believe any more.
‘Perhaps some of it was in her mind,’ she conceded in confusion. ‘The bit about you having said you loved her. But she believed it enough to crack up over your leaving. Ten years ago or not, I don’t intend risking my mother’s mental health by your seeing her again. If you’ve got a shred of decency in you, Vaughan, you’ll keep as far away from her as you can.’
He said nothing for several seconds, his face undeniably disturbed. ‘I can’t say I appreciate the way you put that, but in the circumstances I suppose I’ll have to do as you ask.’
He rubbed his chin again in what was obviously an habitual expression of agitation. ‘Hell... it’s all so damned incredible. I still can’t take it in. Isabel was always such a together lady. I admit I was taken aback when she started saying she loved me that day. But I talked to her about it and she seemed to agree with me in the end that it was only a physical thing that had unfortunately got out of hand. I thought it was a mutual decision that I leave straight away. I would have been leaving in another week or so anyway, since I’d finished my exams the day before. She must have been only pretending she didn’t mind. She was rather unusually quiet...
‘Poor Isabel,’ he sighed, grimacing before looking up again. ‘And poor little Carolyn... I know you didn’t have any family in Sydney. How on earth did you cope?’
‘I managed,’ she said, her susceptibility to this unexpectedly sympathetic Vaughan making her curt. But he’d certainly been very convincing with his version of the story.
‘But where did you go? What did you do?’
‘After Mum came out of hospital a cousin let us live with him for a couple of years on his farm in the country. But he couldn’t let us stay forever. Things were very bad for farmers at the time, what with the recent floods and the economy. When his wife became pregnant with her fourth child, I took Mum back to Sydney to live. She had an invalid pension and I left school and got a job.’
‘But you must have been only about sixteen!’ He seemed appalled. ‘Good God, Carolyn, you were always such a bright kid. You should have finished school and gone to college! Damn it, if only I’d known. Perhaps I could have done something.’
What? she thought bitterly. Paid us back the board money?
‘We managed perfectly well, thank you,’ she retorted, not wanting this man’s pity, or anything else! ‘I have a very good job now. I’ve never regretted not going to college. I’m happy and Mum’s happy. I just want to make sure things stay that way.’
She glared