by Penny Jordan
Where had it all gone—the love that had once existed between them? Had she been too busy trying to establish a good standard of living for them? Had she been guilty of neglecting Lucy? Maybe, but surely not of loving her too little? It all came back to her reluctance to discuss Lucy’s father with her, Jenna knew, and bit her lip anticipating the questions the police would ask her. They would have to know the truth of course.
Emily stayed with her while they interviewed her. The WPC and the sergeant with her were not unsympathetic, but with every question asked Jenna felt her guilt increase.
It was gone four in the afternoon when they left. Pulling herself together she managed a wan smile for Emily who was watching her with concern. ‘I can’t forgive myself for not telling Lucy something about her father.’
‘In the circumstances I can see why you didn’t,’ Emily sympathised. She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go now. But I could come back?’
Jenna shook her head. ‘No. You’ve done more than enough as it is.’
‘Ring me as soon as you hear anything,’ Emily said to Jenna as she left, and both of them knew that she had carefully avoided saying, ‘if you hear anything’.
With every hour that slipped by, Jenna knew the chances of finding Lucy grew slimmer. London was a big city and one teenage girl could disappear in it all too quickly.
At first it was the commonplace things that tormented her: had she any money? Where would she sleep? Would she eat properly? And then her thoughts became darker and more despairing, thoughts of drugs and prostitution filled her tormented mind, thoughts far too horrible to contemplate.
It was then that Jenna cried, weeping all the tears she had suppressed over the long years since Rachel’s death. She felt as alone and frightened now as she had done then, longing for someone to turn to and share her burdens with.
At first she didn’t even hear the doorbell and then eventually it penetrated her misery. Hope flared inside her and she rushed to answer it, stepping back in mute shock as she saw James standing outside.
He followed her in and closed the door behind him. His face looked dark and forbidding, and Jenna was suddenly conscious of her bedraggled appearance. He would know that she had been crying.
‘Jenna, it’s all right. Lucy’s with me.’
She couldn’t believe it. She stared at him in total stunned disbelief and then a bitter tidal wave of anger flooded over her.
She flew at him, hitting him with her fists, anguished tears pouring down her face as she cried bitterly. ‘How could you do this to me? How…?’
‘Hush. Come on, it’s all right.’
His calm, even voice penetrated her shock. She tensed and then shuddered as his arms came round her, drawing her against the warmth of his body, his hand pressing her head into the curve of his shoulder.
‘She only arrived an hour ago, and at first I didn’t realise she’d run away from school. I would have come sooner, but I had to calm her down and get her settled. I’ve left her with Sarah—they seem to have hit it off…’
For some reason she could not stop shaking; she could feel James’s body absorbing the frantic tremors of hers. His hand was stroking her hair, and he was talking to her, but she was totally unaware of what was being said. Lucy had gone to James. She was still trying to assimilate it.
‘I must go to her.’
‘No.’ He said it gently but firmly. ‘You’re both too overwrought at the moment. Let her stay with me tonight. She’ll be perfectly safe.’
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Jenna cried out despairingly, suddenly hating him. ‘Wasn’t it enough that you’ve ruined my business to get the old Hall? Did you have to do this too?’
She felt him tense and then he was turning her face up so that he could look down at her. She could see the anger glittering in his eyes and flinched from it.
‘Do you honestly think that’s true? Any of it?’ he demanded bitingly. ‘I don’t know what all this about your business is, but I can assure you if it’s ruined, then it’s not because of anything I’ve done. And where Lucy’s concerned…’ His mouth compressed. ‘Come and sit down.’
He led her over to the sofa and pushed her down on to it gently.
‘It seems she’s got some bee in her bonnet about my being her father. Don’t ask me why, something to do with all this nonsense in the papers, probably. She came to see me to ask me if I was. That was why she came to see me.’
Jenna stared at him. ‘Lucy thinks you’re her father?’ She couldn’t take it in. Later she would be relieved and grateful that her niece was safe, but now she was so battered by shock and fear herself that she could barely function.
‘That’s what I said,’ James agreed with fine irony. ‘Look it’s no business of mine, but wouldn’t it be better to tell her the truth?’
Jenna went white. ‘I can’t,’ she told him wildly. ‘You don’t understand…’ To her horror she started to cry again. She tried to stop, and found she could not.
‘Hush…it’s all right,’ James murmured, his arms enfolding her again. ‘It’s only reaction and shock…it will soon pass…’
‘I’ve got to ring Norma Goodman, and the police and Nancy…’ Jenna muttered hectically. ‘I—’
‘I’ll do that in a minute.’
It was wrong to let him take control like this, but how heavenly it was to have the burdens shifted off her shoulders even if it was only momentarily.
Even now she could not believe that Lucy had actually thought James was her father, and her heart ached for her niece.
‘I have a proposition to put to you,’ James told her quietly. ‘Maybe now isn’t the time…’
She pulled away from him, searching for a tissue to dry her face. God, she must look dreadful, eyes all blotchy, hair untidy…
‘If it’s another offer to buy the Hall, then the answer’s no,’ she told him tautly.
‘Not exactly.’ His voice was carefully neutral. ‘What I actually had in mind was that you and I get married.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘MARRIED!’ Jenna stared disbelievingly at him, and then said bitterly, ‘Just what sort of a joke is this?’
‘No joke,’ James assured her coolly. ‘I’ve been giving the matter a good deal of thought lately. You weren’t far off the mark when you said I needed a wife. A London apartment is no place for Sarah at the moment; she needs the type of care and attention that being part of a family unit can provide.’
‘And for your step-sister’s sake you’re proposing to me?’ Jenna thought she must be hearing things.
‘Not entirely.’ He looked at her thoughtfully and then said, ‘I take it you never intend to tell Lucy the identity of her father?’
Jenna shook her head. ‘I can’t…and I can’t tell you either.’
He shrugged powerful shoulders. ‘Well, frankly it’s none of my business, but it has occurred to me that since Lucy is so desperately in need of a father-figure to relate to and since she seems to have already cast me in that role, it would do no harm to allow her to continue to think so.’
What he was suggesting was ridiculous. Jenna frowned. ‘Haven’t you told her you’re not her father?’
‘Not in so many words,’ he admitted. And then added wryly, betraying an odd hint of vulnerability, ‘Would you like to tell an emotional adolescent who’s just cast herself on your chest crying “Daddy!” that she’s got the wrong man? I’m not suggesting that we allow her to believe I’m her father for ever, but certainly until she’s over this present emotional trauma. I believe that given a secure family background for a few years, she’ll find it easier to accept the truth than she would now.’
From Lucy’s point of view what he was saying made good sense, but from her own…She swallowed hard.
‘And you?’ she questioned him. ‘What would you gain from this act of gallantry?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Why the old Hall, of course,’ he responded silkily. ‘Did you need to ask?’
&nb
sp; But of course. She ought to have guessed.
‘Think about it,’ he told her, standing up. ‘I’ll come and collect you in the morning and take you back to my apartment to see Lucy. I’m perfectly serious about this, Jenna. It’s obvious that you won’t sell the Hall to me and if your business is in as fragile a state as I suspect, the bank could go over your head and re-auction it. I’ve got several commitments abroad at the moment and it would be just my luck to lose out again—I don’t want that happening. A marriage between us seems to me to be the obvious solution.’
‘You would think that with your ancestry,’ Jenna flung at him bitterly, remembering the story he had told them about the man in the portrait.
‘The benefits wouldn’t be all on my side, Jenna,’ he reminded her coolly. ‘If you can’t think of any yourself, then think of Lucy. You can’t have it all ways. Either you tell her who her father is, or you allow her the luxury of inventing a substitute. If you don’t the kid’s going to destroy herself.’
Jenna couldn’t deny his accusation.
She pressed tired fingers to her head. ‘I’ll…I’ll have to think about it,’ she told him huskily, too disturbed and overwrought to be aware that she had not, as she had first intended, turned his proposal down flat. She felt so muddled and confused; she had already endured more than enough emotional turmoil for one short day.
‘Give me those phone numbers,’ James told her. ‘I’ll make the calls while you get ready for bed.’
He saw her expression and lifted his eyebrows and, although she wanted to demur, strangely she found it impossible. She showed him the pad where she had written the numbers and heard him pick up the receiver and start dialling as she left the room.
She had thought she would be far too upset to sleep, but with the low, confident murmur of James’s voice reaching her from the sitting-room she found herself quickly drifting off.
He came in to her room before he left and stood at the foot of the bed.
‘You’ll be all right on your own?’
‘Yes.’ What would he do if she said no, Jenna wondered wildly—volunteer to stay with her? She shivered at the sensation her thoughts produced.
‘I’ll come round at ten to pick you up. And I’d like you to have an answer for me by then, Jenna.’
She wanted to protest that he was rushing her, that she couldn’t think straight right now, when all her emotional responses were so drained and flat. It was an effort merely to say yes or no, never mind make a commitment for her entire future.
But would it be for the future? What kind of marriage did James have in mind? A temporary arrangement meant to last until Sarah was better and Lucy was adult? Or perhaps just until he found a way of taking the Hall away from her.
Tension flared along her nerve paths. She sat up in bed, suddenly restless, shivering in the night air.
She was being selfish again, Jenna told herself, putting herself first and not Lucy. Perhaps James was right. Perhaps it was time she started making some sacrifices for Lucy’s sake. She would have to tell James that it would not be a real marriage, that physically they could not be man and wife, but that should hardly bother him. She had little doubt that even married he had no intention of remaining faithful. It would after all be primarily a business arrangement. She would have to find a way of making sure he could not take the old Hall from her, though.
Frowning, she lay down again and tried to go to sleep. Time enough to worry about that in the morning. After all, she hadn’t made her mind up yet, but as she drifted into sleep Jenna acknowledged that she had precious little alternative. She had been given a second chance to put things right with Lucy…and if she threw it away, how long would it be before Lucy ran away from school again? Or from home? She couldn’t watch her all the time. It was wrong to allow Lucy to believe that James was her father, but the deception would be far more acceptable than the truth.
The decision tormented her, even in sleep, disturbing dreams full of unseen stalking fears. One moment her dreams were full of James telling her equably that marriage could be a business arrangement, a logical partnership between two people with something to give each other. The next he had changed into the man in the portrait, determined to subdue her both in mind and body.
She woke up shivering, wondering if her brain was trying to tell her something—if there was perhaps more of his ancestor in James than she had yet recognised. But even she could not see James forcing himself on a woman: he was too suave, too coolly controlled, too cynically convinced that sex was an appetite easily fed by the act of possession to feel any strong desire to possess one specific woman, which surely made it all the more strange that he was so determined to possess the Hall.
Outwardly, James was a cynical, controlled man who treated life with a lazy self-assurance that Jenna found intensely irritating. He gave the impression of never having had to try very hard to get anything; he was the only son of an extremely wealthy man, and wealthy in his own right too. Although he had taken on the responsibility of his step-sister, Jenna had never heard him express any anguish at the loss of his father and step-mother. But, then, why should he to her?
She sat up in bed, wrapping her arms around her knees, her hair falling over her shoulder in a red-gold swathe. In the eyes of the world she would be very fortunate in securing a husband like James, of course, and from every viewpoint she took, there was really little logical alternative other than to accept his proposal. But inwardly she didn’t want to. Buried under all her hostility and dislike of him was a sharply cutting fear that she could neither analyse nor understand. Originally she could have dismissed it as a result of his connection with the Deveril family, but now that was not possible—he wasn’t connected with them by blood at all.
Jenna got up reluctantly and showered. How would Lucy react to seeing her? It had hurt to know that her niece had gone to James, and where on earth had she got the idea that James was her father? It was too late to worry about that now, Jenna thought, putting on clean plain underwear and opening her wardrobe doors.
Most of her clothes were geared for work and she pulled out some toning separates—a peach skirt in a fine wool gaberdine mixture, and a soft figured silk shirt two shades lighter.
The outfit was new and she hadn’t worn it yet. It had a beautifully cut top coat in the same fabric and shade as the shirt to go with it, and while it was elegant it was also slightly more feminine than the clothes she normally chose.
Would Lucy be glad to see her, or would she reject her? Jenna worried over how Lucy would receive her while she played with her breakfast. If she married James Lucy would be pleased, Jenna knew that; she had been drawn to him, even before she had convinced herself that he was her father.
The phone rang just as she was finishing her coffee and she picked up the receiver, pleased to hear Nancy’s down-to-earth Yorkshire tones.
‘James rang us last night to tell us that Lucy was with him, but I thought I’d give you a call this morning to see how you are.’
‘Bewildered,’ Jenna admitted honestly. ‘Did James tell you that she’s decided that he is her father?’
‘Yes. Not that you can blame her,’ Nancy added caustically, ‘with all this nonsense that they’ve been printing in the papers lately. What are you going to do about it?’
Jenna hesitated and then said slowly. ‘James has asked me to marry him, Nancy—oh, it isn’t a romance, don’t think that. He still wants the old Hall and he knows there’s no way I’d part with it. If we married he claims that we’d both gain something from the marriage—for him there’d be the old Hall, and someone to help him share the responsibility of his step-sister, and for me there’d be help with the financial problems I’ve got at the moment, and more important, a father-figure for Lucy. James hasn’t told her yet that he isn’t her father. He says he’s quite prepared to take on the role.’
‘So what’s your problem?’ Nancy asked her drily. ‘You’ve left it too late to tell the lass the truth, Jenna, and you
know it. There’s not many men who would offer to do what James has done.’
‘The advantages aren’t all on my side, Nancy,’ Jenna reminded her, her spirits lowered still further by Nancy’s obvious approval of James’s proposal. ‘James will stand to gain as well.’
‘Aye, I’m not denying that, I’m just saying there’s not many men who would be willing to take on the responsibility of another man’s child, to the extent that he would be doing.’
‘I can see I’m not going to get any sympathy from you,’ Jenna interrupted, adding on a suddenly panicky note, ‘Nancy, it’s such a dangerous step to take—like walking off the top of a high building and praying there’s someone down there to catch you. You know I’ve never wanted to marry. You know——’ She broke off. ‘I know that logically I should agree but——’
‘No buts,’ Nancy told her firmly. ‘Tell him yes!’
She was ready half an hour before James arrived, pacing the floor nervously—not so much at the thought of seeing James but because of coming face to face with Lucy. Would she still be as sulkily cold towards her as she had been over the past few months?
Even though she had been waiting for it, the sound of the bell ringing made her jump.
When she opened the door to James, she felt illogically annoyed that he could look so calm and at ease, when she was torn about by nervous qualms.
‘Ready?’
‘I’ll just get my coat.’
She put it on in the hall and walked towards him, stopping when she saw the way he was regarding her.
‘Very nice,’ he said calmly, his thorough inspection over.
He had judged her as coolly and critically as though she were a piece of bloodstock he was considering buying and it infuriated her, goading her into saying, ‘I’m not your possession yet, James, and I don’t need your approval—for anything.’
He smiled and further infuriated her by saying lightly, ‘Don’t worry. I think Lucy is just as nervous of seeing you as you are of seeing her. I had a long talk with her last night, and she knows quite well that I don’t approve of what she’s done.’