Remember (20 page)

She stepped over to the bookshelves, where the large television set was housed, turned it on and went back to the sofa.

The initial coverage was the local New York news, and Nicky paid scant attention to this. She picked up Time magazine from the coffee table, flipped the pages to the section on the press and began to read, listening with only half an ear.

A short while later, at the sound of the familiar music, the splendid, rather grand theme that heralded ATN’s nightly national and international news, Nicky lifted her head.

There sat Mike looking as wonderful and as reassuring as he always did.

Like Peter Jennings of ABC, Mike was extremely

good-looking and glamorous, but also a superb journalist. Peter and Mike were two of the best in the business as far as she was concerned. First-rate reporters who got the point, were informative and reasonable, and for those reasons they took all the ratings.

Only vaguely listening to Mike giving the headlines of the world news, she continued to read the Time piece, and went on reading it as he gave more in-depth details of the national news.

But when she heard the voice of her channel’s Rome correspondent, Tony Johnson, Nicky looked up, suddenly more attentive.

She listened carefully as he told of a shooting incident at a political rally outside Rome. Several people had been hit when a gunman had gone berserk and fired a machine gun into the crowd.

Tony said there was speculation that the incident had really been an assassination attempt by the opposition party.

As the camera moved away from Tony, and slowly panned around, it lingered for a moment on a group to the left of the speakers’ platform, then settled briefly on a face in the crowd.

Suddenly Nicky sat bolt upright, and stared in shock at a face on the screen. “Charles!” she said. “It’s Charles!” But how could it be?

Charles Devereaux was dead.

Charles Devereaux had killed himself two and a half years ago, just a few weeks before their wedding. How could he be in Rome, larger than life? No, it can’t be Charles, Nicky thought. Charles had drowned off the English coast.

It was true, however, that his body had never been found.

Suddenly Nicky knew, yes, it was he. Charles Devereaux was alive.

But how could that be? Why had he disappeared from her life? And what was she going, to do about it, if anything?

l _ I PART THREE.

the house where Anne Devereaux lived was old, very old, a venerable place of historical significance as well as of singular beauty.

Pullenbrook was its name, and it stood on a low plateau of parkland in a dell beneath the rolling hills of the South Downs.

Cradled deep in the heart of the Sussex countryside, it was unusually secluded for a great house of its kind. Because it was hidden in the folds of the pastoral land, the tips of its chimneys became visible only at the very last moment of approaching it. Then, unexpectedly, the manor could be seen through the lush green foliage of the high trees that fringed the edge of the park, and the view never failed to take one’s breath away.

Built in 1565 by an ancestor of Anne’s, it was a Tudor house of exceptional distinction, typical of the Elizabethan period, with

its gray stone walls, half-timbered gables, soaring leaded windows, square-cut bays and many tall chimneys. Clustered around the main house were the outbuildings, the stables, a small church and two walled gardens, flaring out on either side and running along the front facade was the lovely park where fallow deer grazed as they had for centuries.

A house of unchanging appearance, it had remained much the same since it was built by one Sir Edmund Clifford, a magnate and warrior knight in service to Elizabeth Tudor, the queen of England. The lands of Pullen were granted to Sir Edmund by the queen in gratitude for services rendered to the Crown, later she showered him with more royal favors when she elevated him to the peerage by creating him Earl Clifford of Allendale, and giving him Castle Allendale and additional lands in Sussex.

Edmund, his eldest son, Thomas—who became the second earl—and his subsequent descendants divided their time between the manor and the castle. But by the end of the seventeenth century the Cliffords were residing permanently at the castle, which had grown in size and magnificence over the years, and in consequence the manor house was used only part of the year. However, it had always been kept in good repair and its outer structure and interiors were unimpaired over the centuries.

Fortunately, because the Clifford family lived mostly at Castle Allendale for the next few hundred years, Pullenbrook had been saved from certain and perhaps excessive modernization, and so it had retained its purity of architecture and Tudor character.

It was Anne’s grandfather, the ninth earl named for the first, who preferred to live at the manor rather than at the great castle, and thus, in 1910, Pullenbrook once again became the main residence of the Cliffords. His son, Julian, the tenth earl and Anne’s father, followed this tradition and resided at the manor house until his death.

Anne Clifford Devereaux’s entire life had been spent at Pullenbrook.

She was born there on April 26, 1931. As the daughter of an earl she had the honorary title of lady, a title that was retained even after marriage. She was raised in the ancient house, married from it in 1948, and three years later she had returned to live there as a young widow with a small son. At this time in her life she had needed to be in the bosom of her family, rather than alone in the grand London town house her late husband, Henry Devereaux, had left her.

When her brother, Geoffrey, had inherited the Clifford earldom, estates and lands, after their father’s death in 1955, he had chosen to make Castle Allendale his home. And understanding how much his sister cared for the manor in West Sussex, he had suggested she continue to live there for as long as she wished, and whether or not she remarried.

Thirty-four years later she was still in residence, cha^telaine of the house for her brother. To say that Anne loved Pullenbrook was something of an understatement. In a sense, she revered it, and much of her life revolved around it, because it gave her constant succor and comfort. She felt safe and protected within its familiar walls, and derived much pleasure from its ancient and stately beauty, its timelessness, the continuity of family line and history it represented.

There were times when she wondered what she would have done without the house, for it had seen her through many hours of unhappiness—sadness, loneliness and heartache, grief, sorrow and illness. Its very existence over so many centuries seemed to reassure her that she too could, indeed would, survive.

Now on this Saturday morning in August Anne came into the Great Hall, her step light, her high heels clicking sharply against the stone floor. Carrying a bowl of roses, she stood poised in the doorway, marveling at the hall’s peaceful beauty, as she so frequently did. It never failed to cast a spell over her.

Thousands of dust motes rose up in the shafts of trembling light that slanted in through the leaded windows, but otherwise there was no motion whatsoever in the room. It was all stillness, filled with bright sunlight that burnished the ancient wood pieces, gave them a mellow glow and brought into focus the old paintings of her ancestors by such master portraitists as Lely, Gainsborough and Romney.

A fleeting smile crossed her face. Every aspect of the house gave her immense pleasure, but this room in particular was a special favorite.

Moving toward the long refectory table, Anne placed the roses in the center of it, stepping back, she eyed them critically. The head gardener had picked the flowers earlier that morning and they were beautiful. In various shades of pink, they looked perfect in the silver bowl engraved with the family crest that gleamed against the ripe old wood of the table. The roses were full blown, and several petals suddenly fell off. She was about to pick them up, but changed her mind—she left them lying where they were, thinking how natural they looked next to the silver bowl.

Anne went back through the heavy carved-wood door leading into the private quarters of the house, which were not open to the public.

The flower room, where she had been working, was off to one side, across a small stone-flagged foyer, and Anne went in, lifted the last vase of flowers from the old deal worktable and took it down the corridor to the drawing room. This was a wonderfully spacious room with a series of soaring leaded windows set in a square-cut bay, a huge stone fireplace and a high coffered ceiling. The room had been decorated mostly in shades of green, such as celadon, which were repeated in various upholstery fabrics and in the Aubusson carpet on the floor, some of the greens were so pale they were almost a silvery gray. Fine Georgian antiques and paintings graced the room, which, like the Great Hall, had an air of timelessness and tranquillity about it.

After placing the tall crystal vase of white roses on an antique fruitwood table in the center of the room, Anne hurried out to the small parlor she used as an office. Cozy and comfortable, this seemed full of sunshine because of its yellow walls, a raspberry-colored carpet stretched across the floor, and a loveseat covered in a raspberry-and-white striped fabric was placed in front of the fireplace. The most important piece of furniture in the room was the Georgian walnut desk where Anne now sat going through the morning mail.

After reading it all, she picked up the menus she had written out for Pilar, the cook, and glanced at them again. Then she looked over the list of things to do, which she had scribbled the night before, and systematically began to check off those chores she had already accomplished.

At this moment a shadow fell across the doorway, and lifting her head, she smiled warmly when she saw Philip Rawlings standng there.

“Am I disturbing you, Anne?”

“No, darling, not at all. I’ve just been checking my list, and I’m happy to tell you that I’ve done everything I had to do. I’m now as free as a bird—and all yours.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that,” he said and sauntered into the room. A slender man of medium height, with intelligent gray eyes in a pleasantly attractive, somewhat boyish face, Philip looked much younger than his fifty-six years, despite the silver wings in his dark hair.

This morning he wore a wine-colored paisley-patterned cravat with an open-necked pale blue shirt, dark gray slacks and a gray-checked sports jacket, and his appearance was more like that of a country squire than an important member of the British Foreign Office.

“I thought we might have a stroll before lunch,” Philip went on, smiling.

“And why not? Actually, I’d rather like it,” Anne said. “I was going to come looking for you, to suggest the very same thing.

So, come along, let’s go to the coat room, where I’ll change these shoes, put on a pair of flats, and then we can stroll up Sweetheart Hill. That’s a pleasant walk, and not too long, either.”

“Splendid,” Philip said.

Anne glanced at her watch as she rose, and went on, “We have about an hour. Plenty of time for the walk and a drink before lunch. Inez is going to serve Pilar’s cheese soufffle promptly at one. She’s making it especially for you, you know.”

Philip put his arm around Anne’s shoulders as they walked out into the corridor together. “The problem in this house is that you all spoil me,” he murmured genially, kissing her cheek.

Anne looked at him and began to laugh. “You’re worth spoiling, my darling,” she said, her pretty eyes mirroring the love and affection in his.

Sweetheart Hill rose behind the house, and it was an extraordinary vantage point with spectacular views of the countryside for miles around.

Several hundred years before, in 1644, during the illfated reign of Charles I, one of Anne’s female ancestors had climbed the hill every day for months. Lady Rosemary Clifford had hoped and prayed to see her sweetheart returning from the Battle of Marston Moor, during the bloody Civil War that had racked England at that time.

A stone bench had been built on top of the hill for Lady Rosemary so that she could sit and watch and wait in comfort. She had waited in vain, as it turned out. Her Royalist sweetheart, Lord Colin Greville, had been killed by the Roundheads—Cromwell’s men—and had never returned to claim her as his bride. Eventually she had recovered from her sorrow and had married some other young nobleman, but the place where she had so devotedly waited had been known as Sweetheart Hill ever after.

Anne and Philip now sat on that bench, enjoying the mild air, the splendid views of the great Tudor house and the surrounding country on this glittering summer’s day.

“You’re glad Nicky is coming for the weekend, aren’t you?” Philip said, breaking the silence that had settled between them after their climb up the hill.

Anne turned her face to his, and nodded quickly, her blue eyes lighting up. “Oh yes, very happy, Philip. I’ve missed her terribly— but then you know that. I can’t wait to spend these few days with her. Nicky has always been unusually special to me.”

“I know, and I’m delighted she phoned from London, and that she more or less invited herself down here.” He smiled at Anne and remarked, “Actually, I have to admit I’m looking forward to seeing her myself.

There’s no one quite like Nicky Wells.”

“Wasn’t it lucky we went to Tarascon?” Anne did not wait for an answer, but hurried on, “And to think that we almost didn’t go to stay with the Norells.”

“Not only that, if we’d listened to them we wouldn’t have gone to Les Baux for dinner that evening. Remember how they kept telling us it was a tourist trap in the summer months?”

“Yes. But it was meant to be—that we ran into Nicky the way we did.”

Philip did not say anything. He put his arm around her and brought her closer to him, and after a moment he said softly against her hair, “There is something else that is meant to be, Anne.”

She swung her head to look at him, her eyes questioning.

“Marry me, Anne. Please.”

“Oh, Philip,” she began, and was about to reject him, but her voice faltered as she looked into his face. There was such an earnest plea in his eyes, and his expression was so loving, she felt her breath catching in her throat. As far as she was concerned, there was no one who could hold a candle to Philip Rawlings. He was a man of great kindness and generosity, and he had been inordinately loyal and a source of great strength to her over many years. He had asked her several times to marry him during the past six or seven years, and always she had refused.