The Dilemma by Penny Vincenzi

Author:Penny Vincenzi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2011-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

He arrived twenty minutes later; she ran down the steps, paid off the cab. She was looking very pale, scruffy almost, her dark hair dragged back off her face, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She was obviously very upset. This was good.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Can you manage the steps, do you think?’

‘Oh yes. I got up ours this morning. I’m very nifty with these things now,’ he said, waving one of his crutches. ‘Lead the way.’

‘I still think this is crazy,’ she said, walking slowly beside him into the kitchen.

‘I don’t see why. Who would care? This is my father’s house, you’re my stepmother – what a strange thought that is – and anyway there’s no-one here.’

‘I – I suppose so. Do you want some coffee?’

‘Yes please. Now come on, tell me what the matter is.’

‘Oh – it’s – it’s just – oh God, Liam, this so hard.’

‘Come on,’ he said, fighting down the impatience now, settling on the rather battered old sofa that sat in the corner of the kitchen – he remembered that sofa, he had sat on it with his mother even. ‘I haven’t come all this way for nothing.’

‘All right. Well, I’ve just found out something horrible. Well — ’ she tried to smile, he saw her lip tremble. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just being such a wimp.’

‘You’re not a wimp at all,’ he said. ‘I think you’re very brave. Now what is this horrible thing? Come and sit over here and tell me.’

She told him, and he could see it was indeed an extraordinary, a literally shocking story. And that she was deeply upset and shaken – and with good reason. On the other hand, the crucial thing, Liam thought, was not to seem too obviously on her side. To appear to be taking a balanced view, to be examining both sides of the situation – and at the same time to make sure she knew how he did understand, that he knew all too well how much it must have hurt her. And – and this was crucial – to stress that nobody understood better than he that there was no-one more masterly than Bard Channing at most brutally sweeping the emotions of others aside when he was concerned with his own.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t mind nearly so much if Bard hadn’t known. That’s what hurts most. That he and my mother should have – well, I feel so totally discarded, humiliated, I suppose. Why did they do it, Liam, why? And why didn’t he talk to me, tell me about – about her? Why not do that, why not tell me?’

‘Well,’ he said, carefully truthful, ‘I presume he’d promised your mother. That’s what she said to you, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. But – but I’m his wife. How could he keep something so enormous, so important from me?’

‘Well, I suppose because he was in this instance concerned with this convent place. The latest intrigue. The deal.’

‘Hardly a deal. It’s not going to make him any money.

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