Candle in the Wind Read online

  When Mike came in five minutes later she was still sitting there and looked up quickly, but he shook his head.

  'The priest is out at the moment, but they're sending a boy to fetch him. It shouldn't take long.'

  'Can we look at the register while we're waiting?'

  'I'm afraid not, he keeps it locked up.' He came to sit beside her and put his arm along the back of the pew. 'Does being here bring anything back to you?'

  'No.' Sam shook her head. 'For a moment I—I felt that there was something, but I think it was more the atmosphere of the church that was familiar rather than the place itself or anything that happened here.' She looked down at her hands. 'I'm sorry, I know it sounds ridiculous.'

  His hand dropped on to her shoulder, warm and strong. 'It's a start, Sam. You're doing fine. Maybe more will come with time.'

  Terribly aware of him so close to her, Sam said rather unsteadily, 'Are you—are you living on the boat you bought in St Vincent?'

  'No, I let the deal fall through when you—when you left. I needed to get back to Barbados quicker than a boat could take me. I have a room at the Miramar Hotel further up the Platinum Coast from your father's place.'

  'Oh, I see.'

  It seemed an incongruous kind of conversation to have in such a place and Mike must have felt it too, because he turned to her, his face serious, and began, 'Sam, there's something I have to know,' but was interrupted when the church door opened and the priest, a European, came in.

  Mike looked at him in some surprise. 'I'm sorry, they must have sent the boy for the wrong person. It was the Reverend Mr Maddox we wanted to see.'

  'You're just too late for him, I'm afraid,' the priest said as he came forward to shake hands with Mike. 'He left a few days ago to go back to England. I'm taking over the parish until a new priest can be appointed.'

  'Went back to England?' Mike said sharply. 'But why? Why did he go back?'

  The priest looked at him, surprised at his urgency, but said goodnaturedly, 'Something to do with a family matter, I believe. It was all a bit sudden, you know. But I think you said you wanted to look in the register. I can at least help you there.' He took a key from his pocket and led them towards the tiny vestry.

  Slowly Sam followed, with Mike, his face gone suddenly tense, close behind her. The priest found the book for them and Mike told him the date they wanted. He opened it and put on a pair of glasses to find the place, his fingers fumbling and slow. At last he straightened up.

  'Doesn't seem to be anything here for that date, I'm afraid. Nothing in that month except a baptism on the nineteenth.'

  'There must be. Here, let me look.' Impatiently Mike took the book from him and examined it, turning several of the pages. Then he looked at it more closely and his face grew grim. 'A page has been cut out of here with a razor blade,' he said harshly.

  'What? But that's most irregular.' The priest looked and had to agree with him. 'I must report this to the bishop at once,' he muttered, and locked the book up again before hurrying away and leaving them alone.

  Sam had been standing silently by while they had been talking, but now she turned on her heel and started to walk out of the church.

  Mike caught her arm and spun her round. 'Sam, wait.'

  She stared at him, her face white and tense. 'Why, so that you can think up another load of lies to tell me? Did you really think I would fall for all this, Mike? A priest suddenly called away, a page cut out of a book? I may have lost my memory; but that doesn't make me an idiot!'

  She went to pull away from him, but his grip tightened. 'Think about it, Sam. Who would want to hide all traces of our marriage?'

  'You're not trying to say it was my father? He wouldn't go to those lengths to ..

  'Oh, yes, he would, Sam. Your father is the kind of man who's ruthless enough to go to any lengths to get what he wants.'

  'You're crazy! How could he have a clergyman recalled to England?'

  'It's simple enough if you have sufficient money to hire a detective agency to find out about his relations and then send a telegram saying that one of them is ill and needs him.'

  Sam gazed at him in disbelief. 'You know something, Mike, you have a warped mind. My father didn't even know where we were supposed to have got married. And I couldn't have told him, because I didn't know exactly where myself.'

  At that Mike's voice began to grow angry. 'There's no supposed about it. You told him we got married before we left Barbados, didn't you? All he had to do was to have enquiries made at all the likely churches until he found the right one, then cut out the page in the register and get rid of the priest. Easy enough when you have absolutely no scruples.'

  Sam's eyes glittered angrily in her pale face. 'And just as easy for you to find a church where the priest was recently called away and for you to cut a page out of the book and pretend it was the one with our names on! You're the one without any scruples, Mike Scott!'

  She tried to break free of his grip, but he pulled her roughly against him and held her by both wrists.

  'What about the newspaper clippings I showed you, doesn't that prove I'm telling you the truth?'

  'About my past, yes, but not about the interpretation you put on it. It doesn't have to have been my father's fault that I got engaged to the wrong man or—or had my name linked with others. I might have been that type of person, someone who couldn't settle down until the right man came along. And that man could have been Paul. There was nothing to prove that my father put him up to it. I have only your word for that—and just what is that worth?' she added nastily. 'The word of a kidnapper and a rapist!'

  Mike's face had grown suddenly pale under his tan. 'I ought to knock your head off for saying that,' he said fiercely.

  But Sam hardly heard him as she swept on, 'And if my life with my father was so terrible why did I stay with him, live in the same house—answer me that?'

  He glared down at her. 'Because you loved him, of course. Because he kept telling you he only wanted the best for you, that you were all he had. And you kept making excuses for him and hoping he'd eventually give up on you and let you lead your own life. And it wasn't until you found out that his jealousy and ruthlessness had driven your mother to her death that you finally realised he'd never change. And that near enough broke you up.'

  His voice softened, but Sam refused to listen. 'You have no proof of that, just as you have no proof that I even knew you before you took me away from my father. You've bent all the facts to suit your own story. You're trying to make me so confused and mixed up that I won't know who to believe. But all your lies have had the opposite effect to what you wanted, because I like Paul and if he asks me to marry him again I shall!'

  A look of absolute fury came into Mike's eyes and he gripped her wrists painfully hard as she struggled to get free. 'And our baby?' he said savagely. 'Are you going to let him believe it's his?'

  Sam suddenly became very still. All the angry colour drained from her cheeks leaving her ashen-faced. 'You —you knew about that?' she whispered.

  'Of course I knew. I can count as well as you can.' He waited for her to speak, but when she didn't he said more gently, 'I've been waiting for an opportunity to talk to you about it, make plans. We'll have to decide on somewhere to live and…'

  'No!' She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.

  'All right, if you don't want to discuss it here, but….’

  'I won't want to talk about it at all. There's nothing to discuss,' she said abruptly.

  'What do you mean?' A sudden flame of savage anger came into his eyes and he yanked her round to face him, his fingers biting cruelly into her flesh. 'Are you trying to tell me that you killed it? That you destroyed our baby?' He began to shake her violently. 'Answer me, Sam. Answer me!' he yelled at her.

  'Yes, they gave me some pills to take, but I…' But he was shaking her so hard that her teeth rattled.

  'You let them do a thing like that to you? You let them kill it?"

  'I didn't kno
w. I didn't realize!' She had to shout to make herself heard above his fury and suddenly she found that she was crying, great racking sobs as tears poured down her cheeks.

  And then she was in Mike's arms and he was holding her very tight. 'It's all right, Sam. It's all right. I'm sorry. I know you wouldn't deliberately do a thing like that. Oh, God, what a hell of a mess!'

  He buried his face in her hair and held her close against him. Sam closed her eyes tightly and just let herself take in the wonderful feeling of being back in his arms. Here for a moment she found the security and comfort she so desperately needed. His strength and warmth were like a shield that could guard her from all the doubts and fears that beset her. If only she could believe in him, know for sure that he was telling the truth. She looked up and saw the tender light in his eyes, but then her own eyes dilated as she saw a hand bring a gun butt savagely down on Mike's head. He gave a spasmodic jerk and then fell unconscious at her feet.

  Sam stared in stunned horror as the bodyguard she thought she'd lost in Bridgetown again brought his gun down on Mike's head and a bright trickle of blood began to spread over the stone floor.

  'No! Leave him alone I' She threw herself forward as he pushed Mike over with his foot and went to bring the weapon down to smash his face. The gun landed on her arm and she gave a cry of pain, but the next minute she was pulled off Mike by the other bodyguard who began to drag her outside. Immediately Sam started to struggle and scream at the top of her voice and the man with the gun gave a curse and came to help quieten her. They half carried her down the slope to their car and thrust her inside just as the priest came running out of his house. She tried to call to him, to tell him to go to Mike, but one of the men put his hand over her mouth and pushed her down into the seat while the other started the car and they drove away.

  They had gone some distance before the man let her go and then she sat up and glared at him furiously. 'How dare you manhandle me? I'm going to tell my father about you and get you thrown out!'

  He looked at her jeeringly. 'It wasn't our fault if you got knocked about a bit when we were trying to save you from being kidnapped again.'

  'He wasn't trying to kidnap me,' she retorted indignantly.

  'No? Then perhaps your father would be interested to know that you deliberately gave us the slip again so that you could go and meet him,' the man said leeringly.

  Sam gazed at him in consternation, then bit her lip and looked away as he laughed scornfully. But after a while she said, 'How did you know where to look for me?'

  He shrugged. 'We thought he might try to take you back there.'

  'Oh, why should he do that?' Sam tried to keep her voice indifferent, but he must have realised where her questions were heading and rudely told her to mind her own business.

  Sam sat back against the cushioned seat, trying to work out if they'd gone to the church because they knew that Mike might take her there to try to bring back her memory—if they had really been married there—in which case the men themselves might have been there before to cut out the page from the register. Her head began to pound as she tried to sort out fact from fiction, but it was all too much of a muddle and she eventually gave up, leaning against the seat exhaustedly. Worriedly she wondered if Mike had been badly hurt; the man had hit him so hard. She remembered his white face and the blood staining the stones and a cold feeling of fear and helplessness swamped her. She had to know how he was, but how to find out when she was watched the whole time? But then she realised that the clergyman would know, she had only to telephone him when she got back to the house and he would be able to tell her how Mike was.

  That thought gave her some comfort and she sat quietly until they drew up outside the house, then she ran in without a backward glance and hurried up to her room. There was an extension telephone there, but even as she went to pick it up she realised that she didn't know what number to ring or how to get hold of the operator to find the number for her. She had a quick search round the desk in her sitting room but couldn't find any directories. Darn! Sam bit her fingertip in perplexity and then thought that she would probably find what she wanted in her father's study, so she hurried downstairs again.

  The directory was in the drawer of his desk and Sam sat down to search for the number. She supposed it would be under the name of the Reverend Mr Maddox. But as she searched she was surprised to hear her father's voice as he came into the adjoining drawing-room, the connecting door to which was standing open. He was speaking to Mrs Gregory, the housekeeper, and Sam expected them to be discussing some domestic matter and so she was amazed to hear the woman say, pleadingly, 'James darling, you haven't come to me for three nights now. Promise me you'll come tonight. You know how much I need you.'

  Her father laughed. 'You can never get enough, can you? But you knew from the start that you wouldn't be the only woman in my life. If I choose to go elsewhere for my entertainment, that's my business.'

  'Oh, James, you're so cruel to me. You know I love you. When will you let me get a divorce so that we can be married?'

  'I thought your husband refused to give you a divorce?'

  The housekeeper's voice was eager now. 'He would if you paid him enough, I know he would. He only wants more money.'

  'Oh, sure. There isn't anyone who won't do what you want if you pay them enough—except one,' he added, his voice thoughtful.

  'Then you'll do it?'

  'No.' His tone was decisive. 'I've already told you that I won't contemplate marriage or even acknowledge you as my mistress until Samantha is safely married. I don't want even the breath of any more scandal to mar her chances with the Comte de Lacey. He's already…'

  But what he was about to say was cut off as Mrs Gregory said petulantly, 'Oh, Samantha! It's always Samantha. She always comes first. Nothing's ever allowed to harm her even though she threw everything you've done for her back in your face by run… Oh!' Sam heard her give a sudden exclamation of pain. 'James, don't, you're hurting me!'

  'Then leave my daughter out of it. You're not fit to even clean her shoes. I don't know why the hell I keep you around.'

  'Yes, you do.' Her tone was soft and honeyed now. 'You keep me here because there's no one else who can give you what you want as well as I do. Come to me tonight and I'll prove it to you. Like this…'

  Her voice trailed off and Sam quietly slipped the directory back into the drawer, then went to the door and opened it and then closed it again, making as much noise about it as she could, and at the same time calling out, 'Daddy? Are you there?'

  Immediately her father replied from the drawing- room. 'I'm in here, Samantha. Be with you in just a minute.'

  Sam turned to look out of the window and heard the door of the drawing-room softly close and then her father came into the study, smoothing back his hair.

  He smiled. 'Hello, my dear, what can I do for you?'

  Sam looked at him steadily. 'You can talk to me, please. You can tell me all the things I've wanted to know about myself ever since you brought me back here.'

  'Oh?' He eyed her warily. 'What did you want to know?'

  He sat down at his desk and Sam came to stand in front of it, her hands gripping the edge. Tersely she said, 'I want to know how my mother died. And I want to know how you allowed me to be engaged to a drug addict and when he died tried to marry me off to further your business interests. And I want to know whether you're paying Paul de Lacey to—to court me now. But most of all,' she leaned forward to emphasise her words, 'most of all,' she repeated, 'I want to know the truth about Mike Scott.'

  Her father stared at her. 'Who's been talking to you?'

  'That doesn't matter. Now it's you who's going to do the talking—and I want the truth, the whole truth.'

  For a moment longer he gazed at her, then he sat back, apparently at ease. He gave a rather tired sigh. 'All right, Samantha, if that's the way you want it, although I must confess that I'd hoped to keep all this from you.' He steepled his fingers together and began slowly, 'Your mo
ther died from drowning; it was purely accidental, but there was some nasty, malicious gossip at the time because, I'm grieved to have to admit, we had been going through a bad patch in our marriage. But we'd got over that and everything was fine again. Her death was a terrible shock, to both of us, and that's why I moved out here, to get away from unhappy memories—and from the gossip,' he added bitterly.

  'As for your first boy-friend, you met him when you were at college in America and you refused to listen to all reason and went ahead and got engaged against my wishes. You are—or rather you were—an extremely headstrong person, young lady. You seem to have changed quite a bit, and for the better, I might add.

  And as for trying to marry you off———!' He laughed.

  'Trying to make you do anything against your will was worse than bashing my head against a brick wall. No; you naturally met many of my business associates at parties and other gatherings and the gossip columnists seized on even the most unlikely people as the next candidate for your hand. Admittedly you made mistakes, you got engaged a couple of times more, but they didn't last long, as soon as you realised that half the attraction was my money you dropped them out of your life. It was only natural, Samantha, and I was partly to blame, I was so wrapped up in my work that I didn't give you enough of myself, and without a mother to guide you…' He shrugged expressively.

  'And Paul, you haven't told me about him? Is he a fortune-hunter?'

  Her father laughed. 'Hardly. He's got a pedigree that goes back into the beginnings of history and he owns a large estate in France with a huge and ancient chateau. And he's connected to half the wealthy and noble families in France either by blood or marriage. No, Samantha, it's the opposite way round. He came over to learn a bit more about big business politics from me and only intended to stop a couple of months before going back to Paris, but then he met you and stayed on. He doesn't need money, and he's one of the most eligible bachelors in Europe.' He looked at her quizzically. 'Have I answered all your questions now?'