Authors: Sara Craven
which will need to be disposed of.'
Something in Sabine recoiled from the idea.
She said, 'I suppose — a charity shop.'
'By all means. But surely there will be keepsakes— small pieces of
furniture, perhaps, that you will wish to have?'
Sabine shrugged. 'Just Maman's jewellery. She stated in her own
will it was to come to me when Dad died.' She paused. 'I'm not
sure he would have wanted me to have anything else. There were
times during these last couple of years when I felt he hated me.
That's why, in the end, I stayed away.'
Mr Braybrooke looked pained. 'But you were Mr Russell's only
child, my dear, and you must not doubt that he loved you, even if
he didn't always make it perfectly apparent.'
Sabine sighed. 'Be honest, Mr Braybrooke. He left the house, his
only tangible asset, jointly to my aunt and myself. I imagine you
had to fight like a tiger to secure me even that half of his estate.'
She looked at him, brows lifted. 'That's so, isn't it?'
His expression changed to embarrassment. 'I really cannot reveal
private discussions with a client.'
Sabine nodded. 'I knew I was right,' she said calmly. 'It's all right,
Mr Braybrooke. I've managed to come to terms with it all. I think
Dad was the kind of person who could only love one person in his
life. He loved Maman, and when she died she took everything. I
must have been a constant reminder of her, and he couldn't bear it.'
Mr Braybrooke looked at her for a long moment. Then he said
gently, 'I don't think, my dear, that your father was always very
wise.'
Standing silent in the hall now, Sabine let herself feel once more
the pain of Hugh Russell's rejection of her. Her hands curled
slowly into fists, the nails scoring the soft palms until she winced,
and let them relax again.
Then squaring her shoulders, she crossed to the drawing-room
door, and threw it open.
'So you came.' Aunt Ruth was occupying the wing chair beside the
empty grate, her hands busy with the inevitable piece of knitting.
Across the room, Sabine could sense her hostility, and wondered
how much influence she'd exerted over her brother in those last
years.
She said quietly, 'Not by choice, but the house has to be cleared. I
see that. When is the sale due to be completed?'
'On Friday.' Ruth Russell's lips were compressed into their usual
taut line. 'I've prepared an inventory of the furniture, and ticked
those pieces to which I'm particularly attached.'
'That's fine. We can send the remainder to a saleroom.'
Miss Russell stared at her. 'There's nothing you want?'
Sabine glanced round the once familiar room. She had her own flat
now, light and bright and filled with the things she herself had
carefully chosen. She had her own life. She wanted no hang-ups
from the past to shadow the future. And yet. . .
She said, 'Only Maman's jewellery, thank you.'
'That absurd name.' Miss Russell's face showed a sudden,
unbecoming flush. 'Take her trinkets. I don't want them.'
'No,' Sabine said meditatively. 'You never liked her, did you?'
'Hugh could have married anyone.' This was clearly an old and
bitter theme. 'Instead he chose a foreigner —a girl with no
background — no class.'
'The French had a revolution once,' Sabine pointed out mildly. 'It
was supposed to wipe out that kind of thinking, and replace it with
liberty, equality and brotherhood.' She looked pointedly at the busy
hands. 'A lot of knitting went on then, too.'
'You are—insolent.'
'Yes,' Sabine agreed wearily. 'But I tried being polite for a long
time, Aunt Ruth, and it got me nowhere. Your dislike for Maman
was handed down to me, wasn't it? I often wondered why. I was
your brother's child, after all.'
'Oh, no, you were not.'
The words were uttered with such venom that Sabine's head jerked
back in shock. She felt as astonished as if the older woman had got
out of her chair suddenly, and struck her across the face.
She said, faltering a little, 'What did you say?'
'I said you were not my brother's child.' The words seemed
squeezed between the compressed lips. They were staccato with a
violence and bitterness which Sabine, stunned, guessed had been
suppressed for years. 'Your mother—that precious Maman you
speak about with such reverence—was nothing but a common slut.
She was already pregnant when Hugh met her. She was living as
au pair
with the Drummonds — such a nice family —and he went
there to dinner. Mrs Drummond was distraught when she realised
Isabelle's condition. She turned her out of the house, and rightly so
— contaminating innocent children.' Her breath rasped harshly.
'She was over six months gone, when he married her,' she went on.
'I begged him on my knees not to do it, but he was besotted with
her. He'd never shown the slightest interest in any other woman —
any decent woman. Oh, no, he chose her. And everyone knew —
everyone was laughing about it.'
Sabine found it difficult to breathe. She tried to speak calmly.
'You're lying. I know you are. I've seen my birth certificate. My
father was Hugh Oliver Russell, however much you may wish to
disown the connection.'
'Of course, his name is there. He registered the birth. He claimed
you —took responsibility for you. There was no one else to do so.
He'd married her, so he accepted the shame of you. She made him
do it.'
Sabine's legs were weak suddenly. A chair, she thought. She had to
get to a chair otherwise she would collapse on to the floor. She
walked somehow to the other side of the fireplace and sat down.
There was no point in argument and denial. She knew that now.
Because Ruth Russell was speaking the truth at last, with a furious
conviction that left no room for doubt. And although she felt she
was being torn apart inside, at the same time the older woman's
brutal candour was welcome, because it finally answered so many
unhappy questions.
She'd thought she'd failed Hugh Russell in some way, or that she
was intrinsically unlovable. Now she knew it wasn't so. It hadn't
really involved her personally at all. It was what she represented to
him.
Perhaps he'd always secretly resented giving his name to another
man's child, she thought sadly. Maybe the fact that she'd remained
the only one had rankled with him too.
She said, 'I wish he'd told me this himself.'
'He never would. He was too loyal to
her.'
Sabine lifted her chin. 'Did he know —who my real father was?'
Ruth Russell shook her head. 'She would never say. In all those
years, she refused to speak about it—to give even a clue.'
'Although I'm sure you never hesitated to badger her about it,'
Sabine said evenly.
'We had a right to know whose bastard we were fostering.'
'That's certainly one way of looking at it,' Sabine agreed. She took
a breath. 'In the circumstances, I presume you want me to remove
all Maman's things from the house.'
'I wanted him to do it after she died. To get rid of everything—
every trace of her. But he wouldn't. In spite of what she'd done—
even when she was dead — he went on loving her —the blind,
stupid fool.' Tears were running down Ruth Russell's face.
'I know,' Sabine said gently. 'And for that reason I shall always
love his memory.' She got to her feet. 'I'll make a start upstairs.
Goodbye —Miss Russell. There's very little reason for us to meet
again.'
'None at all.' The tone was like a knife, severing any tenuous bond
that might remain between them.
Sabine wryly decided against any attempt to shake hands, and left
the room.
She was still dazed by the revelations of the past half-hour as she
went up the stairs. She'd come to perform an unpleasant but
routine chore, and suddenly, virtually in the twinkling of an eye,
her entire life had been turned upside-down, and all its certainties
challenged.
If she shared no blood tie with Hugh Russell, she found herself
debating the morality of claiming any part of his estate at all. She
would have to talk to Mr Braybrooke about it.
But she wouldn't think about that now. She would concentrate on
the job in hand instead, and get it done as quickly and cleanly as
possible.
During Isabelle Russell's lifetime, she and her husband had shared
the big front bedroom. After her death, he'd moved out into one of
the back rooms, and Aunt Ruth — although she supposed she'd
have to stop thinking of her in that way— had taken the other.
Fourteen-year-old Sabine had remained in the roomy attic which
had been hers since nursery days. It had always been a much loved
and private domain. Often, in those anguished and bewildered days
as Miss Russell began to impose a new regime, it had become a
sanctuary.
Eventually, Sabine had been glad to escape altogether to
university, where she'd read Modern Languages. Vacations had
proved such a strain that she stopped going home at all in the end,
applying for any holiday jobs which offered accommodation. After
obtaining her degree, she decided against teaching, opting instead
for a career as a freelance translator. So far, she hadn't regretted it.
She was thankful too that she'd struggled to exist on her grant, and
what she earned in vacations, without making too many extra
demands on Hugh Russell. She'd been well aware that Ruth
Russell grudged her every penny.
To her I was always an outsider —an interloper, she thought, as
she opened the door of the master bedroom. At least I know why
now.
Miss Russell had a morbid fear of sunlight fading carpets and
furnishings, so the curtains were half drawn as usual. Sabine
wrenched them apart, and opened the windows for good measure,
letting the brightness of the June day flood into the room. Then she
looked around her.
It was like taking a step back into the past, and for a moment a
little shiver ran down her spine. The bed had been stripped, of
course, but apart from that everything seemed much the same. Too
much the same. She could almost imagine the door opening and
Isabelle coming in to sit down at the dressing-table with its pretty
antique tortoiseshell and silver toilet set, humming softly as she
loved to do.
What was the song which had always been her favourite as a
child? Sabine hummed the tune, then sang the words under her
breath. '
Aupres de ma blonde, il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon Aupres
de ma blonde, il fait bon dormir.'
A most unsuitable thing to teach a child, Miss Russell had always
said disapprovingly. But it had just been part of Isabelle's patient
determination to make Sabine as bilingual as possible.
'You have French blood. You must take pride in speaking our
beautiful language,' she had told the little girl more than once. And
songs, even faintly
risque
ones about blondes, had been part of the
learning process.
Isabelle had been blonde herself, of course, her eyes as dark as
brown pansies, in startling contrast to her pale hair and creamy
skin.
Sabine had inherited her mother's fair hair, and wore it sleekly cut
in a similar straight bob, swinging almost to her shoulders. She
was the same medium height too, with the lithe slenderness which
had also characterised Isabelle. But her eyes were greyish-green,
and her oval face had charm, rather than the outright beauty which
her mother had possessed.
She had always tried to emulate Isabelle, too, in buying the best
clothes she could afford, and keeping them in pristine condition,
making sure she was well-groomed at all times.
Ruth Russell had claimed her sister-in-law had no class, yet
Isabelle could achieve the kind of casual chic which made every
other woman around her look dowdy. Probably that had been one
of the things which Aunt Ruth, who had little dress sense, so
disliked about her.
She stood absently fingering the jars and brushes on the dressing-
table. Even when Hugh Russell's attitude towards her had begun to
change it had never occurred to her to doubt her parentage for a
moment. She'd always believed in the strength of her parents'
marriage, the power of its mutual affection. Now she had to face