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CHAPTER 7
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2024-10-29 19:42:56They had covered the ground floor of the house, walked the length of the elegant gallery, with its windows overlooking the parkland and the distant vista of the Derbyshire hills, and were just inspecting the enormous ballroom which opened off it, when Veronica acknowledged inwardly that Sasha might have been right to advise her to wait until after she had rested to inspect the house.
Elsinore Hall’s rooms might not possess quite the vastness of the palazzo’s marble-floored rooms, nor the fading grandeur of the Prague palace, but Veronica had already lost count of the number of salons and ante-chambers they had walked through on the lower floor.
The gallery felt as though it stretched for miles, and as she studied the dusty wooden floor of the ballroom her heart sank at the thought of inspecting
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Veronica was sitting upright now, ignoring the pounding pain in her head as she glared belligerently at Sasha.“You don’t know what you’re talking about! J.J. doesn’t... he isn’t...” She stopped, shaking her head. How could she explain to Sasha of all people, about the thing that drove her, the memories and the fears? As a teenager, she had done so many foolish things and even let down the people who had loved and supported her. Her involvement with Wayne was something she knew she would always regret. She hadn’t known at the time, of course, just what he was. In her innocent naiveté, Veronica had never guessed that he was anything other than someone who had bought a handful of recreational drugs to pass on to people at rave parties.
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Hard on the heels of the acute envy, Veronica had felt when she had first seen the exterior of the house came to a pang of sadness for its inner neglect. Oh, it was clean enough, if you discounted the air possessing a sharp, almost chemical smell that made Veronica wrinkle her nose a little, but it was a long, long way from the home she had so lovingly mentally created. She heard Sasha moving around in the hall behind her.“Let’s go… I’ll take you up to your room,” he told her. “Have you got something for your headache?”“Yes, I have, but they’re in my luggage… which is in my hire car… That you left behind…” Veronica told him grimly. In the excitement of seeing the house, her headache had abated slightly, but now the strong smell in the hallway had made it return and… with interest. She
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Instinctively her free hand went to her body to check just how far up her T-shirt had ridden.“What is it?” Sasha asked her, his attention caught by the movement of her hand.“Uh… You’re heavy, Sasha. You’re still on top of me and you’re hurting me,” Veronica told him, not entirely truthfully. She tried to bury herself in the night’s cloaking shadows, but it was too late and she could see from the sudden narrowing of his gaze as it followed the action of her hand that he realized, as she had just done herself, that her wretched T-shirt had ridden up far enough to expose the lower curve of her breasts. The last thing, the very last thing Veronica wanted was for Sasha to study her body in any way at all. So why, in God’s name?... Why,
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“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Sasha demanded ominously quietly, his expression as well as his voice betraying his outrage. “Listen, Veronica, I don’t like what you’re trying to suggest,” he told her sharply. She shook her head and replied thinly.“Neither do I, Sasha. But the facts speak for themselves.”“Do they?” His mouth twisted bitterly.“I rather think it’s your overheated imagination that’s doing the ‘speaking’ through your totally mistaken interpretation of them,” Sasha added through gritted teeth.“You can say what you want at this point… But you can’t deny the evidence of this report,” Veronica reminded him sternly.“What evidence?” Sasha demanded. “This is
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The fact that he was just shrugging on his jacket as she came down the stairs allowed Veronica to have an unwanted glimpse of the lethal maleness of the muscles in his torso and made her hesitate betrayingly just for a second before continuing walking down the stairs. He had changed his clothes simply to have dinner with her… Why? Because Sasha knew very well the effect his appearance would have on any susceptible woman and because he intended to use that fact to distract her, to confuse her when she needed all her attention, all her concentration to ascertain the truth about what he did? Or was she letting her imagination run away with her again? Was the woman he had dressed so elegantly her or was it…? Was he perhaps seeing the other woman after their meeting had finished?“We&r
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Wearily, Veronica looked at the luminous face of her watch. Half-past one in the morning. She had been awake for the last hour, stubbornly evading sleep, angrily refusing to allow her thoughts to take control, to force her to remember. She was too hyped up for sleep, too afraid to sleep just in case she... In case she did what? Dreamed of Sasha? Veronica looked across at the desk in front of the window. One of the small pleasures of living in the depths of the country was that one didn’t need to close the curtains at night. There was nothing she liked more than being able to see the night sky. When her mother had first married Henry’s father and they had gone to live in his ancestral home, Veronica had been overwhelmed at first by the darkness of the huge house.&
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She was still in bewilderment, but he was really there, holding her, kissing her, pledging his love to her… After all those years, after all the pain, after all the hurt, finally Veronica was in Sasha’s arms, basking in his love.“I’m here with you and still can’t believe it...” she added, brushing white rose petals off his arms. “It’s... it’s still so... unbelievable. It’s less than an hour since I thought that I’d be driving away from Elsinore… and you, forever. What made you come back? What…?”“You did, sweetheart,” he told her promptly, and then relented when he saw her face. “Mollie talked to me... made me think... see...”“Mollie? But she never said a word when she called me…” Veronic
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Sasha closed his eyes. The last thing he needed right now was to start thinking about… to start remembering. Forcing himself to suppress the thoughts, the memories, and the emotions which were running riot inside him, Sasha stopped to pick her up, intending to lay her down on the bed. But as he did so, a dog fox out in the woodland beyond the garden, howled to his mate. The sound carried into the bedroom on the still night air, forcing him to stand still and waking up Veronica almost immediately.“Sasha...what...?” He could hear the shocked anxiety in her voice as she stared around his moonlit bedroom.“Ronnie… Uh… You were sleepwalking,” he tried to reassure her. “I heard a noise... and I… I found you on the landing...”&n
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“We’ll have to call at the Rectory first,” Veronica warned J.J. as she drove north. “I don’t have the keys to Elsinore Hall with me.”“That’s fine by me,” J.J. assured her. “How are you and Sasha getting along, by the way?”“He’s a client of the Trust,” Veronica pointed out severely.“So, you haven’t fallen in love with him, then,” J.J. teased her. Somehow, Veronica managed to force a responsive smile. J.J. had no guilt in this, she tried to remind herself. He meant no harm. He took a paternal interest in her and often told her, only semi-jokingly, that it was time she fell in love. He had no idea about the real state of affairs between her and Sasha, the real state of her heart, her emotions.“I have to say, this is a really b
