Season of Shadows Read Free

their relationship— which she had not—then she
had known from their first meeting the futility of it. With Elizabeth
and Robert no longer there, she would, in all probability, never meet
him again after this, and the realisation left her with the curious
sensation that she was in the process of losing something of value.
    'More coffee?' Anton interrupted her thoughts, and she
lowered her lashes swiftly to conceal what was mirrored in the depths
of her deep blue eyes, but she could not conceal the guilty flush that
stole up into her cheeks at the thought of how close she had come to
being caught staring.
    'No, thank you,' she said with frigid politeness. 'No more
coffee for me.'
    'Cigarette?'
    'Please,' she nodded, leaning forward to accept a
cigarette from him.
    Laura seldom smoked, except in moments of stress, and
this, she felt, was one of those moments. She had grown tense with
concern for her niece, and the knowledge that she had to be strong for
the child's sake. The shock of Elizabeth and Robert's deaths had had to
take second place, but she felt it now in every taut muscle as she sat
in Bellavista's luxuriously furnished living-room, smoking her
cigarette in thoughtful silence. She felt Anton's eyes on her, invading
the turmoil of her unhappy thoughts, and she said the first thing that
came into her mind when the silence between them became unnerving.
    'Do you think their bodies will ever be recovered?'
    'I doubt it,' Anton replied without hesitation. 'The sea
nearly always holds on to its own.'
    'It's a distressing thought,' she said unsteadily,
crushing her half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray beside her chair.
    'It's a very appropriate burial ground for two people who
loved the sea as much as they did.'
    'I think I'd like to go to bed,' she said at once, unable
to bear the idea of two such vital people lying fathoms deep somewhere
under the ocean, and Anton rose politely to wish her goodnight, but at
the door she paused and turned. 'I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to
stay until the end of next week. There's Sally's future to think about,
and—'
    'You may stay as long as you wish,' Anton interrupted in
that firm, autocratic voice, 'but Sally's future has already been
decided.'
    Laura felt a new tightness coiling about her insides.
'What do you mean, her future has already been decided?'
    He dismissed her query with an imperious wave of his hand,
but when she stood her ground, he said harshly, 'I think we'll leave
that discussion for the morning when we're both less tired.'
    'But I insist on knowing!'
    Except for a slight narrowing of those heavy-lidded
steel-grey eyes, his granite-like expression remained unaltered, but
Laura knew at once that she had overstepped the mark.
    'You are not in a position to insist upon anything,' he
reminded her coldly. 'It's I who am insisting that you retire to your
room and leave me to the privacy I'm accustomed to.'
    Laura felt very much like a child who had been rapped
severely over the knuckles, and, as the blood surged painfully into her
cheeks, she realised that, despite his hospitality and the generosity
of his efforts to bring her to Sally's side, Anton DeVere still
considered her an intruder. She wished she knew why this knowledge
should hurt so much, but she was not going to hang around to find out
and, muttering a hasty 'goodnight', she managed to find her way back to
the room she was to occupy for the next few days.
    There was no sign of her suitcase, but, to her
astonishment, she discovered that her clothes had been transferred
neatly to the stinkwood wardrobe and dresser in the room. The satin
quilt had been removed from the old-fashioned copper bed, and her thin
cotton nightgown had been folded and placed neatly on the pillows.
    She entered Sally's room quietly and found that she was
sleeping soundly with her one hand curled beneath her cheek. Laura
stood looking down at her with sympathetic concern until a warm
tenderness threatened to choke her and, drawing a