I ever done to you? Tell me that. You walked out on me, remember? You’re the one who split, who ran away without telling anyone where you were going! My God, I nearly went out of my mind! You’re the one who quickly found some other man to take my place, so don’t talk to me about hurting people!”
Rachel’s lips curled. “You don’t understand, do you, Joel? Even now, you haven’t the first idea what I’m talking about.” She shook her head almost pityingly. “Joel, Sara is not two or three years old. She’s five. Five! Do you realise what that means?”
Joel’s hands on her shoulders slackened, and his brows drew together causing deep lines to etch his forehead. An awful sick feeling was invading his stomach, and he was hardly aware of her staring at him, gauging his reactions, enjoying his shattering sense of horror and disbelief. Then his thoughts found coherence in denial.
“What are you saying?” he demanded thickly.
Rachel’s triumph was short-lived, and she moved her shoulders helplessly. “I shouldn’t have told you,” she murmured dully.
“Shouldn’t have told me? Shouldn’t have told me what?” Joel was recovering fast. “Are you saying this child — this Sara — is my daughter?”
Rachel looked up at him almost defeatedly. “Whose else would she be?”
He moved his head confusedly. “Gilmour’s, your husband’s!”
“I had no husband, Joel. I’ve worked for Colonel Frenshaw for the past five years.”
Joel almost flung her away from him, reaching grimly for the ignition key. “What are you doing?” Her white face was startled.
“What do you think I’m doing?” he retorted, breathing unevenly. “I’m taking you back to the Hall. I’m going to see my daughter — if she is my daughter!”
Rachel stayed his hand, gripping his arm tightly for a moment. “Oh, no,” she said. “You can’t do that—”
“Try and stop me!”
“I will. I’ll do everything in my power to stop you,” she declared. “I’ll even go to the papers if I have to.”
That momentarily stalled him, and he turned to look at her scornfully. “Why? Why shouldn’t I see my daughter? Are you afraid for me to see her? Are you afraid I might find you out in your lie?”
“It’s no lie.” Rachel sighed, “Let me explain, Joel, just let me explain.”
“What can you explain?”
Rachel shook her head. “Why do you want to see her? You don’t like children, Joel. You always said so.”
“But it seems I have one, doesn’t it?”
“And you think that entitles you to call Sara your daughter?” Rachel was incredulous now. “My God, Joel, you’ve got a nerve!”
Joel raked his hands through his hair. He couldn’t take in all this. He couldn’t believe what had been said. It was some trick, some ploy on Rachel’s part to make him squirm. It had to be.
Trying to remain calm, he said tautly: “All right. So I admit — children don’t play any part in my life style. I’m a painter, Rachel, not a nursemaid!”
“Exactly.”
“And do you think that opinion entitled you to keep my daughter’s existence a secret all these years?”
Rachel plucked nervously at a strand of her hair. “Think back, Joel,” she said jerkily. “Think back. Can you imagine what your reaction would have been six years ago, if I’d come to you then and told you I was expecting your child?”
Joel shifted restlessly. Six years ago he had still been making his way, six years ago ambition had been a driving force within him. It still was — but in a different way. And in any case…
“It should never have happened,” he muttered. “You should have taken precautions —”
“I should have taken precautions? Oh, that’s rich, Joel, that’s really rich! I should have taken precautions. I should have made sure that because of your carelessness, nothing happened! Not you! Nothing should mar your pleasure! My God, Joel, you’re a selfish swine! You are and always will be! Might I remind you that I had no way of knowing what you intended to do? I trusted you, Joel. I thought you loved me. I didn’t know that sex was all you wanted all along —”
“That’s not true, Rachel!” Joel was grim. “I loved you. I really loved you. And what happened — what happened — happened because we both wanted it to happen.”
“No!” She put her hands over her ears again.
“Yes!” he muttered savagely. “I wanted to share my life with you, Rachel —”
“Share your life? Live with you, you mean!”
“Perhaps I did mean that initially,” he conceded harshly. “But sooner or later —”
“— you’d have found someone else!”
“No, damn you. Sooner or later, I should have married you.”
“How gallant of you!”
“Rachel, marriage wasn’t among my plans at that time!”
“And children were among your plans at no time!”
Joel ran a hand round the back of his neck. He felt disorientated, confused. He didn’t know what to think right now.
“Situations alter cases,” he muttered.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if — and I still say if — Sara is my daughter, I shall have to change my plans.”
Her eyes widened incredulously. “What are you talking about?”
“We must get married, of course.”
“Get married! Get married!” Rachel almost laughed in his face. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth. My God, how conceited can any man be! Do you honestly suppose I’d marry you now?”
Joel grasped her forearms in a vice-like grip. “You don’t have a lot of say in the matter,” he snarled.
“Don’t I? And what is your father going to say about this?”
For a second Joel had forgotten his reasons for being here. “I don’t care what my father says,” he retorted. “If the child is mine, she’s mine.”
“She’s not a possession, you know, Joel. She’s a person. A very special person in her own right. And those rights do not owe anything to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Sara is my child. You may have played some subsidiary role in her conception, but you can’t prove that.”
“Doesn’t she look like me?”
Rachel’s lips twisted. “Very much, as a matter of fact.”
Joel’s stomach muscles tightened in a most peculiar way. He found he desperately wanted to see this child — Sara.
“Then I should have quite a case,” he said.
Rachel shook her head. “I’d deny it. I could always say she — she was — James’s child.”
Joel almost struck her then. The temptation was so great he had to thrust open the car door, and get out in the rain, taking great breaths of the cool, damp moorland air. That she should dare to taunt him with pretending the child was his own father’s! It was some minutes before he dared to trust himself to get inside with her again.
When he did so, he was immeasurably