One Chance at Love Read online

  Zach was a man who had lost, to death, the woman he loved; he certainly didn’t need the complication of someone like her in his life. And she, well, she made a point of keeping all complications out of her life!

  * * *

  Dizzy was up early the next morning, for the main reason that she hadn’t been to sleep.

  The milk had done little but fill her up so that she felt uncomfortable. So, instead of going to sleep as she had planned, she had dug to the bottom of her bag and pulled out yet another of her favourite books, and read her way through that until seven o’clock, mindful of the fact that Christi said her uncle usually left the castle at six-thirty to go for his morning walk.

  Christi was still fast asleep when she glanced in on her, lying serenely back on the pillows, not a hair out of place. Even in sleep Christi was beautiful, Dizzy acknowledged ruefully.

  Her own appearance wasn’t quite as neat, her hair once again plaited down her spine, the usual wisps escaping about her face and neck. She wore a different T-shirt from yesterday, although it was just as baggy, and the same patched jeans from the day before. She had noted with rueful acceptance that there were even several freckles across her nose today from her walk in the sunshine yesterday. If Zach had found her childlike the night before, it wasn’t so surprising!

  She was looking for the library, knowing that it was there she would find what she sought. Christi had told her last night that it was there, and the sooner she got the confrontation over, the better it would be. Much better that she should do it alone, too. Maybe, then, she might even be able to start sleeping again.

  Her hands were clammy, her heart beating wildly, as she looked for the book-lined room, even the thought of the books not able to detract from that other ugliness.

  As she passed the corridor leading to the kitchen, she thought she heard a child crying, and felt a shiver down her spine, her memories so vividly disturbing that she knew that haunting unhappiness was once again with her, making her imagine things, that the child she could hear crying was herself, the child deep inside her which had had to die so that she might live.

  But as she heard the cry again she realised it was a real cry, that there was a child in the kitchen, crying as if its heart would break!

  She couldn’t bear the pain behind that cry, and she hurried down the corridor to throw open the kitchen door.

  Seated at the table, her arms about a little girl of perhaps four or five, was the cook, her stricken face evidence that she was greatly disturbed by the interruption.

  Dizzy was too concerned by the little girl’s distress to worry about the middle-aged woman’s feelings. Going down on her haunches, she smiled gently into the most angelically beautiful face she had ever seen, dark hair framing that little face, deep blue eyes tear-wet, a tiny snub nose, and a tiny quivering mouth.

  ‘Hello,’ Dizzy said warmly. ‘I’m very hungry for my breakfast, aren’t you?’ She sat down in the chair on the other side of the little girl, taking over the task of feeding her the toast the cook was having so much trouble with. ‘Could I have some of this lovely toast too, please?’ she requested of the cook, as the wide-eyed little girl took a bite of the toast she held out to her temptingly. Realising that the dumb-struck obedience wouldn’t last once the little girl got over her shyness, she knew she had to distract her attention. ‘My name’s Dizzy, what’s yours?’ She held the little girl’s gaze as the cook slowly got to her feet to prepare more toast.

  ‘Dizzy?’ the little girl echoed sceptically, revealing that she had a slight lisp from where her two front teeth were missing.

  ‘That’s right,’ Dizzy grinned. ‘And I bet your name is something pretty, like Annabel, or Melissa, or—’

  ‘I want Melissa,’ the little girl cried, her lips quivering again as tears flooded and overflowed her eyes. ‘I want Melissa!’ she sobbed in earnest.

  Dizzy put down the toast, turning enquiringly to the distressed cook at the emotional outburst she had provoked.

  ‘She woke up in the night asking for her,’ the other woman said frantically. ‘Her mother—that’s my daughter, was rushed into hospital yesterday, and Kate’s been with me ever since. Her father’s away on business, although he’s going to be back tomorrow. I’ve tried to explain to Kate that she’ll be able to see all her friends again soon, but she still keeps asking for this Melissa.’ She sounded completely frayed.

  ‘Kate.’ Dizzy turned back to the little girl as she buried her fists in her eyes, still sobbing noisily. ‘Your Mummy isn’t well just now, and so Nanny is taking care of you,’ she explained gently. ‘Nanny is very upset you can’t be with your friends just now, but—’

  ‘I want Melissa!’ the little girl wailed.

  Dizzy felt the constriction of her heart at the pained plea, watching impotently as the little girl jumped up and ran from the room.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do.’ The cook sat down wearily in the chair opposite Dizzy’s, looking completely frazzled. ‘Maureen—Kate’s mother, was rushed to hospital with appendicitis. It was all such a panic, but once we knew the operation had been a success I brought Kate back here with me.’ She sighed. ‘There are some children in the house next door to Kate’s, maybe this Melissa is one of them.’ She shook her head. ‘But they live thirty miles away and, what with cooking for the professor and visiting Maureen, I just don’t have the time to take Kate to see her friend.’

  At a guess, Dizzy would have said the little girl’s presence here had something to do with the ‘panic’ in the kitchen the previous evening.

  Poor Kate. She knew herself exactly how traumatic it was to be suddenly separated from your parents, to be taken away from all that was familiar to you. She knew exactly how cruel it could feel, too.

  ‘I could take her, if you like,’ she offered decisively.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t let you do a thing like that!’ The cook looked shocked at the suggestion. ‘You’re a guest of the professor’s, and—’

  ‘Actually, I’m a guest of his niece,’ Dizzy corrected drily, sure that Zach wouldn’t like his staff to think he had invited her to stay. ‘And I have to go into town today, anyway.’ The thought of several more days without pilchards was too terrible to contemplate! ‘So a few more miles on my journey isn’t going to make that much difference. As long as you don’t mind trusting Kate to my care, Mrs—’ She looked at the older woman enquiringly.

  ‘Mrs Scott,’ the cook instantly supplied, looking embarrassed. ‘I am sorry, I should have introduced myself sooner. It’s just—’

  ‘I understand,’ she assured her gently. ‘It can’t have been easy for you, suddenly having a—five-year-old?—thrust upon you.’

  Mrs Scott nodded at the age-guess. ‘My job here doesn’t leave me too much time for visiting my family. Don’t get me wrong,’ she added hastily. ‘I’m not complaining. Work was what kept me going after my husband died, and Maureen had already had a home of her own for several years. But it means I perhaps haven’t spent as much time with little Kate as I should have done, and she’s finding it all a bit strange here now that her mother is poorly.’

  ‘Of course she is.’ Dizzy sympathised with the whole situation. ‘How about if I suggest taking Kate out with me today? You never know, she might have forgotten all about Melissa after we’ve done some shopping together.’

  The cook didn’t looked convinced of that. ‘It’s worth a try, I suppose. As long as you’re sure you don’t mind?’ she added anxiously. She was a small, plump lady with pepper-coloured curly hair, and eyes as blue as Kate’s.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Dizzy smiled encouragingly, standing up. ‘I’ll go and talk to Kate while you finish preparing the professor’s breakfast. That is his bacon you have out to cook, isn’t it?’ she prompted teasingly.

  ‘Oh, my goodness, yes!’ Mrs Scott gave a frantic glance at the kitchen clock. ‘He’ll be back any moment, and here’s me, not even started cooking!’ She hastily got up and moved to the cooker.

  Dizzy c
ould see that the other woman had enough to do without the extra worry about her granddaughter, and she went off in search of the little girl. It wasn’t all that difficult to find her, the gentle sobs were easily discernible through the partially opened bedroom door.

  The staff’s quarters were at the back of the wing, and Kate seemed to be sharing a room with her grandmother, a cot-bed having been brought in and put next to the single bed for her.

  She looked so small and defenceless as she lay curled up in a ball of misery on the cot-bed, her face wet with tears again.

  ‘Kate,’ Dizzy sat down next to her, gently smoothing back the dark tangle of her hair, ‘would you like to go out with me today?’

  Wide blue eyes were turned to her. ‘To go and get Melissa?’ she suggested hopefully, still sobbing gently.

  ‘I have some shopping to do first—but afterwards we could go and see Melissa,’ she quickly added, as the small face began to crumple.

  Kate frowned, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. ‘Why can’t she come back with us?’

  There was a possibility that Kate would be going home with her father when he returned tomorrow, but there was also the possibility that, between his job and visiting his wife in hospital, Kate’s father might think it best if she stayed on with her grandmother for the moment. If that were to happen, it wouldn’t do to lead Kate to believe she could see her friend any time she wanted to.

  ‘Don’t you think she would miss her home if she did that?’ Dizzy said softly. ‘And her Mummy and Daddy would miss her if she came to stay with you.’

  ‘But she doesn’t have a Mummy and Daddy.’ Kate’s frown deepened.

  Dizzy had to admit to feeling a little puzzled herself. Unless… ‘Kate,’ she said slowly, ‘who is Melissa?’

  ‘I told you, she’s my friend.’ Kate was becoming agitated now.

  ‘Is she a big friend or a little friend?’ Dizzy persisted.

  ‘A little friend, of course,’ Kate dismissed impatiently, as if she found the question an extremely silly one.

  ‘Does she have blonde hair or black?’ Dizzy encouraged.

  Kate looked at her consideringly. ‘It’s the same colour as yours,’ she decided. ‘Not as long, but Melissa is awful pretty,’ she defended with that endearing lisp.

  ‘And are her eyes blue or brown?’ With each answer she received, Dizzy became more and more convinced she was right about Melissa.

  ‘Blue, of course.’ Kate was really tiring of all these questions now. ‘All my dollies have blue eyes,’ she reported in a grown-up voice, as if Dizzy ought to have already known that.

  Dizzy hugged the little girl impulsively. A doll, of course Melissa had to be a doll. Children missed their friends when they were away from them, but they didn’t wake up in the night calling for them! She should have realised sooner, should have known Kate’s behaviour was much more serious than being away from a playmate; with her mother in hospital and her father away, the doll had become Kate’s one security. It was obviously the doll the little girl usually took to bed with her. She had forgotten about it until she realised it wasn’t there, and had woken from sleep when she realised that.

  It was all so reminiscent of what had happened to Dizzy when she had been sent away to school, only in her case it had been a tattered, old, lopeared, cuddly toy rabbit that she had had since she was a baby. When her things were unpacked at school, she found that the rabbit hadn’t been included, and had written to her father, asking him to send it on to her. And written to him. And written to him. For a whole term she had dutifully written to him every Sunday, always adding the request about the rabbit at the end of the letter. It wasn’t until she went home for Christmas that she managed to sneak Snuggles back to school in her suitcase. For fourteen long weeks she had cried herself to sleep every night, because her father ignored her request for her childhood friend.

  Her arms tightened about Kate as she realised the suffering the little girl had gone through without the security of her doll, although she knew Kate’s suffering hadn’t been deliberate, as hers had, that Melissa had just genuinely been overlooked in the panic of yesterday.

  ‘We’ll go and get Melissa after breakfast,’ she told the little girl emotionally.

  ‘We will?’ Kate pulled back slightly, her eyes wide.

  ‘We will,’ she nodded, feeling tearful herself at how easy it had been to allay Kate’s suffering—and how easily her own father had found it to ignore her pain. When he had at last found out what she had done that Christmas, he had demanded the return of the rabbit, and told her she was too old for cuddly toys. Maybe she was, but Snuggles wasn’t just a cuddly toy to her, he was so much more. For the first time in her life she had told her father a lie, had told him she had lost the rabbit. It had satisfied him, and she got to keep the one thing she truly loved at the time, but the guilt of that lie lay in the bottom of her backpack upstairs…

  ‘Mummy was in too much pain to think of Melissa yesterday, pet,’ she comforted the child in her arms. ‘And Nanny didn’t know about how important Melissa is to you. Now let’s wash your face,’ she smiled, gently touching the silken cheeks. ‘And then you can go and eat some breakfast with Nanny before we go and get Melissa.’

  Kate scrambled off the bed, hesitating as she reached the door. ‘We really will go and get Melissa?’

  Dizzy swallowed hard. ‘We really will.’

  ‘Oh, great!’ Kate bounced out of the room, wriggling impatiently as her face was washed, eager to get the business of eating breakfast over so that they might leave. ‘I can take Melissa with me this afternoon when we go to see Mummy,’ she was telling Dizzy as they entered the kitchen a few minutes later.

  The kitchen smelt of cooked breakfast, and was noticeably empty of food, so Dizzy could only assume that Zach was now in the dining-room, eating his breakfast. She hoped he didn’t disappear into his office too quickly, for she wanted Christi to ask him for the use of a car so that they could go and get Kate’s doll.

  Mrs Scott looked relieved to see her granddaughter obediently sit down and begin to eat the toast she had abandoned earlier, although she frowned a little at the mention of Melissa going to the hospital with them.

  ‘A blue-eyed, blonde haired doll,’ Dizzy explained in an aside.

  ‘A doll!’ the cook predictably gasped.

  ‘Not just any doll,’ Dizzy told her softly. ‘A very special friend of Kate’s.’

  ‘I understand.’ Mrs Scott looked thankful that that worry, at least, was over. ‘I had no idea…’

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’ Dizzy squeezed her arm understandingly. ‘Kate and I plan to go and get her after breakfast,’ she added.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ the cook said warmly. ‘You don’t even know Kate and me, and yet you—’ She broke off as a bell rang in the room. ‘That will be the professor, wanting his second pot of coffee. I really am grateful, Miss James—’

  ‘Dizzy,’ she invited smoothly, laughing softly as the other woman frowned. ‘It really is my name,’ she said derisively. ‘See you after breakfast, Kate.’ She lightly touched the little girl’s shoulder on her way to the door. ‘Make sure you eat it all up.’

  Kate nodded eagerly, her mouth stuffed full of the toast she had refused to eat earlier.

  Dizzy was still smiling as she left the room, although she sobered as she remembered why she had been in this part of the house in the first place, and returned briefly to the kitchen doorway. ‘The library?’ she prompted, as Mrs Scott turned to her enquiringly.

  ‘Down the corridor and turn right, you can’t miss it,’ she smiled, picking up the coffee-pot to take through to the professor.

  Dizzy wished she could miss it, wished she didn’t have to put herself through this. But it was inevitable.

  It was a beautiful room, a deep red carpet adding a richness to the book-lined room, a fire lit invitingly in the hearth.

  Over the fireplace hung the painting she had come here to see, and she re
luctantly raised her gaze from the orange and yellow flames, gasping as raw pain ripped through her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE background of the painting looked harmless enough. It was a children’s playroom, with every conceivable toy you could think of or imagine either on the thickly carpeted floor or along the shelved walls. It was like an Aladdin’s cave, paradise for any child.

  But not for the child who stood to the right of the foreground as she gazed out of the window before her, the toys obviously meaning nothing to her, her expression one of cold uninterest.

  She was a child of about seven, neat black patent shoes on her feet, her socks pristine white, not a fold of the pink dress and white over-pinafore out of place, her hair tamed into plaits that lay over each shoulder.

  ‘Perhaps you find this Sherman more to your liking?’

  Zach’s habit of catching her unawares was becoming too disturbing by half. Especially now. How could she turn and face him when— She had to turn and face him, she admonished herself, straightening her spine, clearing her face of all expression as she slowly turned.

  He was wearing an equally comfortable and ill-fitting pair of corduroys as he had yesterday, black this time, coupled with a blue jumper that actually revealed the powerful muscles beneath. It was already warm outside, but inside there was still a chill in the air, although not enough for Zach to wear the baggy jacket that yesterday had so successfully concealed how masculine he was.

  With her defences already down, his blatant masculinity was the last thing Dizzy needed just now!

  She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Is this a Sherman, too?’ She pretended surprise, evading a direct answer concerning her feelings for the painting, as she had initially last night about the one of Knollsley Hall.

  Zach nodded. ‘I told you I had others of hers.’ He came further into the room, looking up at the painting appreciatively. ‘This is one of her best, I think.’