by Penny Jordan
She tugged at her bottom lip, worrying at the soft inner flesh.
She had tried her best to make their marriage work, to put the past behind her, to forget… to love him.
She had loved her parents, too, and had wanted to please them out of that love… Had not wanted to disappoint their expectations of her.
And yet once she had come perilously close not just to doing that, but to breaking every moral law they had taught her.
A commitment made to another person was a commitment made for life, they had taught her. Marriage was the ultimate commitment, a vow made that should never be broken. And yet she had broken hers… And was still, within herself, breaking it?
Nick had once accused her of driving him into the arms of other women; of rejecting him not just with her physical inhibitions, her inability to arouse him as they could, but by not loving him.
And yet in almost the same breath he would then announce that she did love him, and that he loved her, that their marriage was important to him; that she was important to him.
How important? Certainly not important enough to stop him from having an affair with Venice.
If he was having an affair with her.
Fern shivered a little, knowing that she could not let the present situation persist for much longer without confronting him with her suspicions, and yet knowing that she was afraid to do so, afraid of the emotional trauma that would follow… afraid not just of his anger, but of her own guilt, the guilt she knew he would throw back at her.
Justifiably?
Tears stung her eyes and she half stumbled against an uneven piece of pavement.
There was no escape for her from the truth, certainly not within her own thoughts or conscience. She had been guilty of the ultimate marital sin. She had broken faith with him, with her marriage vows.
The evening was giving way to dusk. She paused to watch some house-martins sweeping up into the eaves of a house on the other side of the road—nest-building, no doubt.
A small, sharp pain caught at her heart, making her chest and throat feel tight with hurt. Quickly she turned away, bending her head so that she wasn’t tempted to look back at them.
* * *
‘Adam… My dear chap, what a pleasant surprise.’
Adam shook the hand the older man extended to him, noting as he did so the frailty of the bony wrist.
‘I was just driving past and remembered that you thought you might have located the original bills submitted for the wheels made for the earlier Lord Stanton’s curricle…’
‘Ah, yes… now where did I put them?’
Adam waited patiently while the older man searched through the mound of papers on his desk.
It had been a comment he had overhead Fern make which had alerted him to the fact that Lord Stanton felt very much alone since his wife’s death… not a comment to him, of course. He grimaced to himself. It was a rare occurrence indeed for Fern to make any kind of comment directly to him. What did she think he might do? Insult her… assault her? His mouth twisted again. No, he had overheard her saying something to Nick some months ago, and since then he had tried to make a point of calling round to see the older man when he could.
He was always careful to disguise his visits as being for his own benefit rather than his host’s, and now, as he waited for Lord Stanton to unearth the bill, a record of a long-ago transaction between their mutual ancestors, he heard him saying conversationally, ‘Fern was here earlier. You just missed her.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Adam agreed.
‘Ah… you passed her on the lane, did you?’
‘No, I…’
Automatically Adam checked, cursing himself under his breath. It was unlike him to forget, to let down his guard… to make that kind of mistake.
‘I… remembered Nick saying she was coming to visit you,’ he lied, wondering grimly what on earth the older man would have thought had he said that he had known Fern had been here because he could still smell her perfume in the air.
Not that Lord Stanton would have said anything. He was too much of the old school for that. But, even so, a seed would have been sown which could ultimately have resulted in someone leaping to the wrong conclusion… in Fern’s being hurt… His mouth thinned, so that when Lord Stanton turned round and saw his expression he asked with some concern, ‘My dear chap, is there something wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Adam assured him.
‘Actually it’s a pity you didn’t arrive while Fern was here. You could have put her mind at rest.’ He paused and Adam forced his body into tense control, watching and waiting. If Nick had done something, anything to hurt or harm her… but, when Lord Stanton continued, Adam realised that it was not his stepbrother who had upset her but himself.
‘She seemed to believe that Broughton House is to be destroyed, to make room for—a supermarket, I believe she said.’
Long, long ago Adam had thought he had taught himself to accept reality, to live with it and endure it, but now, listening to Lord Stanton, knowing that Fern had judged him guilty of what to her would be an aesthetic crime, and that she had done so without allowing him to defend or explain his actions, caused such a sharp flaring of pain and bitterness within him that he had to clench his teeth to stop himself from betraying what he was feeling.
‘Needless to say, I assured her that she must be wrong.’
‘I am working on a commission for a client,’ Adam told him.
‘You need say no more,’ Lord Stanton assured him. ‘Ah, here it is: “Four wheels for Lord Stanton’s racing curricle, to be painted with yellow spokes and black rims.” There is a family story that my ancestor, who was a notorious gamester, bet ten thousand guineas that he could beat an opponent in a London to Brighton race in the curricle carried by those wheels.’
‘Did he win?’ Adam asked him.
‘Yes. Otherwise I doubt I would be living here today to tell this tale. It was on the strength of winning that bet that he was able to propose to the rich mill-owner’s daughter whose fortune saved the estate. I often wonder what will happen to this place after I am gone. It’s too small to be of any interest to the National Trust. I have no direct heir…
‘In fact, I have been meaning to discuss it with you for some time, Adam. Beavers, my solicitor, seems to think something could be arranged whereby I could leave it in trust to the town. Eugenie would have liked that,’ he added gruffly.
‘That would be a very generous gesture, Lord Stanton,’ Adam told him quietly.
‘Nonsense. Know too well that the burden of all the damned paperwork and the like would fall on your shoulders. Told Beavers you’d already got enough on your plate, without taking on another responsibility. Wouldn’t want to do it, though—unless you could be one of the trustees, Adam. Know I can rely on you to see that it is kept as Eugenie would have wanted. Loved this house, she did… right from being a small girl.
‘Often used to say that it was the house she wanted to marry and not me…
‘Still miss her dreadfully, you know, and won’t be sorry when my time comes to “shuffle off this mortal coil”. Have to keep going, though, for Phillips’ sake.’ He gave Adam a thoughtful look. ‘Hear you’ve been seeing quite a lot of young Lily.’
‘Her father and I are old friends,’ Adam said firmly, adding pointedly, ‘She’s a nice child. Only just nineteen.’
‘My Eugenie was only seventeen when we married.’
‘Well, if Lily were my daughter I should be advising her to wait at least another ten years before she considered that kind of commitment,’ Adam said easily.
Did Lord Stanton really think he could contemplate marriage to a girl… a teenager like Lily? He was thirty-four, almost thirty-five, and there had only ever been one woman whom he had wanted as his wife, whom he had loved enough to want to spend his whole life with.
Had loved?
Beneath the dry old smell of dust and leather books that filled the room, he could still smell quite distinctly the scent of
Fern’s perfume. Her perfume, he admitted tiredly, not the light, flowery scent which she always wore, although he could smell that too.
Fern… Even her name was evocative of fragility, vulnerability, of soft, hidden, secret places, of tenderness and delicacy, like the pale uncurling fronds of the plant after which she was named.
Over the years he had watched… had been forced to watch as his stepbrother cruelly and he was sure deliberately bruised that delicacy with his abrasiveness, his public criticism of her, his unthinking and, to Adam, uncaring attitude towards her. But through it all Fern continued to love him, to see no fault in him, to give him all that she had so plainly never felt able to give Adam himself.
Apart from that one occasion, that one brief moment out of time when she had come to him, turned to him… needed him and appealed to him.
And had later withdrawn from him, rejecting him in horror and disgust, running from him, distraught, refusing to wait, to listen.
Sometimes, despite everything that it had meant to him, he wished it had never happened. It had changed their relationship irrevocably, denying him the friendship they might have shared, denying him the right even to take his place in her life as a member of her family; denying everything but her rejection and his own anguished pain.
Fern… As he took his leave of Lord Stanton and got into his car, he wondered bleakly how anyone could ever imagine that he could possibly find or even want to find happiness with a pretty child like Lily.
There had been women, attractive, intelligent, appealing women—available women—whom he had tried to love, but love was not something that could be forced. It either existed or it did not, and, perhaps because it had been so intense, his love for Fern had burned out of him any ability to feel that same emotion for anyone else.
But Fern loved Nick. Loved him and was married to him, and whenever she saw him, Adam, she treated him as though he were a leper. No… worse… Fern was not the type to turn away from a person who was afflicted in any kind of way. It was not in her nature.
Perhaps because of her upbringing, she had a compassion, a sense of awareness and responsibility towards others that some might see as old-fashioned and out of place, but which to Adam only emphasised all the qualities within her that he had originally fallen in love with.
No, Fern was not the sort to pass by someone in need. Unless that someone happened to be him.
He had a council meeting this evening and if he wasn’t careful he was going to be late, he admitted as he drove back into town.
He lived in a small elegant town house off the main square of the town and in a quiet side-street. It had a long rear garden which stretched down to the river and it was an ideal base for him.
A base, but not a home… not like the home which Fern had made for Nick, even though his stepbrother seemed not to appreciate it, or spend much time in it with her. But if Fern loved him…
If! There was no ‘if’ about it, he reminded himself grimly as he drove homewards.
* * *
‘So, Adam, what’s all this about you being involved in some scheme to pull down Broughton House?’
‘I’m sorry, Anthony, but my clients’ affairs are not something I can discuss with you,’ Adam told his fellow councillor evenly.
Anthony Quentin and he did not always see eye-to-eye on council matters and he suspected the other man’s interest in Broughton House sprang more from the point of view of self-interest rather than out of genuine concern for the community, although he could always be wrong, Adam admitted fair-mindedly.
However, as the owner of the town’s largest privately owned supermarket, Anthony was bound to have a vested interest in any information appertaining to a possible competitor.
The meeting was almost at an end and people were starting to drift away, but Adam stiffened suddenly as he heard Nick’s name mentioned.
A quartet of people standing in front of him were discussing Venice, remarking on how determinedly she was insinuating herself into various aspects of local life.
‘She’s in London at the moment,’ he heard one of them say, and Anthony Quentin, who was standing next to him still and who had also overheard their conversation, winked and dug Adam in the ribs, telling him,
‘And she’s not the only one either, is she? I saw Nick earlier. He said he was leaving for London… Quite a coincidence, eh?’
‘Not really,’ Adam contradicted him coldly. ‘I should imagine that at any one time several inhabitants of the area could quite easily find themselves in London over a similar period.’
‘Hey, come on… I’m not saying anything. I like Nick… always have done. Mind you, I wouldn’t blame him if…’
‘If what?’ Adam asked him freezingly.
He stopped abruptly when he saw the look Adam was giving him and shrugged. ‘Stuck-up bastard,’ he muttered to himself five minutes later as he headed for his car. Of the two of them he always had preferred Nick. It had been good of him to tip him off about Adam’s plans for Broughton House. He had seen what happened to local businesses when these large chains started operating huge hypermarkets on the outskirts of a town. Clever old Adam, to get himself involved. He wouldn’t be surprised if Adam wasn’t hoping to pick up an architectural contract as well as his share of the sale of the land, he reflected acidly to himself as he got into his car.
Just as well that Nick had warned him of what was in the wind and that had been a good idea of his to get up some sort of protest group. Adam Wheelwright wasn’t the only one who had influence in this town, not by a long chalk he wasn’t. Looking down his nose at him like that. Just as though half the damned town didn’t know or guess what Nick was up to. Not that he blamed him. Fern was a nice enough woman… could have been quite pretty if she wore a bit more make-up, dressed herself up a bit… She was certainly a good wife, though… a bit like his own. Good, but dull. Not very exciting between the sheets; but then that wasn’t always a bad thing in a wife. A nice, sensible, loyal wife who knew her place in life, leaving a man free to indulge himself—discreetly of course—with someone who could provide him with a little bit of excitement on the side. Yes, Nick was a man after his own heart, a lucky devil too if he was having it off with Venice. He wouldn’t have minded taking an interest in that direction himself, although Venice was a bit too independent for his tastes, and a bit too fond of making her views and her presence known. That kind of woman couldn’t always be relied on to know her place and to keep to it.
Shrewd, though. She must have been, to get old Dunstant to marry her in the first place, and to leave her all this money.
* * *
So Anthony Quentin thought that Nick was having an affair with Venice, Adam reflected bitterly.
Was he, or was the other man simply trying to stir up gossip? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time that Nick had been unfaithful to Fern.
Did she know? If so, he was the last person she was likely to confide in. He could imagine how hurt she would be, though, and how fiercely determined not to allow anyone to see what she was suffering.
Dear God, how could Nick even think of wanting anyone else when…?
But that had always been Nick’s way. Adam could remember how, from being a boy, Nick would single-mindedly pursue something to the point of obsession, be it a new football or a new friend, only to lose interest in it virtually from the moment he possessed it.
They had never been close, had never really got on. Adam had been almost adult when their parents had married. He had liked and admired Nick’s mother, who had been a friend of his father’s for several years before they had actually decided to marry.
She had adored Nick, and for her sake and his father’s he had made every attempt to get on with him, but he had realised almost from the start that Nick did not want to get on with him, and that in fact he took an almost perverse pleasure in thwarting his attempts to make friends with him.
In fact Adam had very quickly come to realise that Nick actually wanted to foster antagonism
between them and he had discovered that Nick was very quick to run to their parents with exaggerated tales of imagined injustices and slights, which had always cast Adam in the role of aggressor.
The only way to deal with Nick’s hostility was to ignore him, Adam had decided. For their parents’ sake, he had striven to maintain a semblance of some kind of reasonable relationship between them, but he had very quickly learned not to put himself into a position where anything he said or did could be turned against him and used to hurt their parents.
It had taken a little longer for Adam to come to accept that Nick had a warped, defective personality which seemed to take delight in opposing and even actively hurting others.
So far as he could ascertain, there was no reason for this.
His mother adored him, and when he went out of his way to do so he could be so breathtakingly charming that Adam was not really surprised that no one else seemed to share his own view of him.
Neither had he been surprised when Fern had fallen victim to that charm.
He just hoped for her sake that the scales would never fall from her eyes and that she would never, ever see Nick as he saw him, because if she did, he knew it would break her heart and totally destroy her. And that was something he could not bear to contemplate.
He wished now that he had been less abrupt with Anthony Quentin. Who knew what gossip he might inadvertently start to spread? It would have been more tactful of him simply to have listened to what the man had to say and then found a way of defusing it rather than…
Venice… How could his stepbrother possibly want a woman like that when he was married to Fern?
CHAPTER TWELVE
NICK was in a good mood. Fern heard him humming under his breath as he came in. She went to the kitchen door and opened it, walking into the hall.
When he saw her, Nick stopped humming, and started to scowl instead.
Fern could feel her stomach muscles tightening. Ever since Laura Welch had commented innocently in the supermarket the previous day how much she envied Venice the ability to simply drop everything and take herself off to London for an impromptu shopping trip just whenever the mood struck her, Fern had known that Nick’s interest in Venice and hers in him was not merely a fiction created by her own overworked and suspicious imagination, as Nick had implied.