by Penny Jordan
It was too late now to wish she had not made the commitment to attend the wedding, even if Luke was not going to be there…there would be other people there who would remember…
What? That she and Luke had been engaged, eight years ago, for the space of less than six months? That that engagement had been broken and that Luke had married someone else, and that subsequently they had had a child? So what? It was only in her own mind that the spectre of Luke’s rejection loomed so destructively…
Sometimes she suspected that Louise saw more than she said, even though her friend had accepted her explanations at face-value when she’d come home to discover that the engagement was over and that Luke was married to someone else.
It had been Louise who had given her the news some years ago that Luke’s wife was dead…a postscript added to a birthday card that had shocked her into a week of nightmare dreams of such intense reality that she had woken from them sweating and crying, shivering under the burden of knowing that even now Luke had the power to affect her intensely both emotionally and physically.
That had been the year Louise had coaxed her to go home with her for Christmas, and because the twins had pleaded with her to accept the invitation she had given way, never expecting to find that Luke was also at home, visiting his aunt and uncle.
His father lived in America now, and Luke, who had followed his father into medicine, was a consultant at one of the large teaching hospitals.
The sight of him, so familiar and once so desperately dear, had frozen her to the floor of Louise’s parents’ hallway. The twins, walking in behind her, had bumped into her… Someone had made the necessary introductions, she couldn’t remember who, and under cover of the general noise and confusion she had found herself confronting Luke, while her insides cringed with remembered anguish and misery, and she masked her face with the cool, remote smile she had perfected.
He had had his daughter with him, a bright, mischievous three-year-old, who plainly adored her daddy, and looked so like him that Jenneth had felt as though someone had slid a knife into her heart and turned it.
For some unfathomable reason she still didn’t understand, and which had seemed unreasoningly cruel of fate, Luke’s daughter had chosen to attach herself both to Jenneth and the twins, following them everywhere, watching them with Luke’s dark green eyes, smiling at them with Luke’s smile, but Jenneth had resisted the aching, yearning need within her to respond to the child’s overtures, to pick her up and cuddle her, to open her arms to her and hold her as she so plainly wanted to be held, with something approaching Luke’s proud, contemptuous disdain of her.
She remembered how Luke had walked into the sitting-room one day while she was there alone with Angelica, desperately trying to withstand the child’s very obvious desire for feminine affection. He had picked his daughter up, plainly recognising both the withdrawal and rejection in Jenneth’s refusal to touch his child, his mouth grim with dislike of her where once it had been soft with desire and love…or so she had thought. But that of course had just been an illusion.
She hadn’t realised how he had interpreted the twins’ adolescent teasing about the fact that she had very recently ended a brief relationship with one of her clients; nor that he had assumed quite wrongly from her brothers’ totally erroneous description of that relationship that she and Christopher Harding had been lovers, but the barbed comment he had made to her about the dullness of his aunt and uncle’s home without the presence of her lover to enliven it for her had been something she had seized gladly upon to bolster her shaky pride, smiling insincerely back at him as she said lightly, ‘It’s only for a week…’
And Luke had responded jeeringly, ‘And you can live quite easily without him in your bed for that length of time, is that it?’
And then, with a rush of anger she could only regret later, she had retaliated rashly—and thoroughly untruthfully—saying, ‘Christopher and I have been lovers for quite some time,’ and then from somewhere she had produced a feline smile, and added, ‘He goes away on business quite a lot, and when he does…’
‘You replace him in your bed with someone else,’ Luke had finished for her, totally misunderstanding what she had been about to say, which was that when Christopher was away she coped quite adequately without him. Before she could correct him, he had continued bitterly, ‘How you’ve changed. And to think that—’
He had stopped speaking as the twins came bursting into the room, and after that they had each studiously avoided the other, Luke taking good care to make sure his small daughter came nowhere near her.
She had told herself that she had been glad…glad that she had finally shown him that she was a woman and desirable to others, even if not to him…glad that she had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him or with his child…glad that she had finally and irrevocably broken away from the old Jenneth, who had adored him to the point of lunacy, who had loved him just as intensely…and who had gone on loving him long after he had made it plain that he most certainly did not love her.
And that had been the last time she had seen him.
CHAPTER TWO
AS THE date of Louise’s wedding drew closer, Jenneth found herself regretting more and more that she had agreed to go. It was not that she didn’t want to see her friend married and wish her and her new husband good luck; she did, and, had Louise chosen anywhere but Little Compton as the venue for her wedding, Jenneth knew that she would have been anticipating it with a glad heart, and more than a touch of delighted curiosity about the man who had so radically changed her old friend’s determined stance on the joys of the single state.
As it was, even with Louise’s reassurance that Luke would not be attending the wedding, she was increasingly conscious of the fact that there would be other people there who remembered her younger self, and her love for Luke; they would remember their engagement and Luke’s subsequent marriage to someone else; and then, in the manner of village people the world over, they would look at her ringless hands and speculate among themselves as to the reasons for her unmarried state.
Standing in her studio, she gave a tiny shudder of revulsion at the thought of their curiosity and pity, wishing that she had the courage to telephone Louise and tell her firmly that she could not attend the wedding. There were, after all, half a dozen genuine reasons she could conjure up for not attending, and one of them was in front of her now on her desk, she acknowledged ruefully, frowning over the preliminary sketches she had been asked to prepare for a large mural to cover the walls of the children’s ward in one of York’s large hospitals.
The commission had come to her via a client of hers, who had spearheaded a campaign to raise funds to support the specialised ward, which had been in danger of collapsing.
An exceedingly large donation from a millionaire local businessman had resulted not only in the ward being fully re-equipped with several vital pieces of advanced technology, but there had also been sufficient money left over for her ex-client, who was chairwoman of the fund-raising committee, to announce briskly that they could afford to do something about the almost institutionalised drabness of the ward’s emulsion-painted walls.
She had approached Jenneth, who had been delighted to accept the commission, which she had offered to do at much less than her normal rates, and in return she had virtually been given carte blanche with the design.
The problem now facing her was what to choose to catch the imagination and attention of children suffering so desperately, and of such very disparate ages.
Her lack of concentration in favour of worrying about the ordeal of Louise’s wedding didn’t help, and she was still frowning over the vague notes she had scribbled down when the studio door opened and Kit came in.
Jenneth watched him walking towards her with the familiar loping stride that both he and his twin had inherited from their father, her heart as always caught up in a wave of mingled love and apprehension… Love because they were both so very dear to her, and apprehe
nsion because guiding two exuberant and very high-spirited boys through their teenage years had not always been easy.
Their A levels now behind them, and the long summer holiday just begun, Jenneth realised anew with almost every day that passed that they were now virtually adult. Certainly both of them were emotionally mature and well-balanced, something for which she modestly refused to take the credit, putting it down to the fact that their parents had provided them all with a stable and loving background during their early years.
Kit grinned at her as he advanced towards her and asked, ‘Any chance of borrowing your car? I’m playing tennis over at Chris Harding’s this afternoon, and Nick’s taken the Metro.’
The rather battered but roadworthy Metro that Jenneth had bought them as a joint eighteenth birthday present had done sterling service in the six months they had owned it, but, although they were twins, her brothers enjoyed different hobbies and had different sets of friends. So far she had ignored the broad hints she had been given about the necessity for another car. The hints had been good-humoured, both boys being well aware that, although their father’s insurance policies had provided a roof over their heads, and a small but steady income, any luxuries had to be paid for out of Jenneth’s commissions.
Since they were both sensible and very good drivers, she had no qualms about loaning them her own car when she wasn’t using it, but on this occasion she shook her head with genuine regret and explained, ‘I have to go in to York with some paintings for the gallery, and I promised Eleanor I’d do it this afternoon. I could drop you off on the way, if you like,’ she offered obligingly.
‘Only if you let me drive,’ Kit countered with a grin. It was a standing joke between them that Jenneth, inclined to daydream, especially when her work engrossed her, was sometimes rather an erratic driver. She blushed even now to recall the occasion on which she had been so deeply involved mentally in the mural she was working on that she had driven down the narrow lane that led from their house to the main road and straight into a ditch, necessitating an anxious call to their nearest neighbour, a local farmer, who obligingly came out with his tractor to haul her sturdy Volvo estate car back on to the lane.
Kit and Nick knew all about Louise’s forthcoming wedding and, although she hadn’t said so to them, both of them were also aware of Jenneth’s reluctance to attend, just as they were both also fully aware of her inner withdrawal whenever the subject of Little Compton and its inhabitants came up.
Both of them were far too fond and protective of their sister to probe, but both of them were also curious. Although Jenneth herself was unaware of it, they had taken on bets on whether or not she would attend the wedding, and Kit, who had bet his twin that she would, intended to make use of the drive to his friend’s house to ensure that she did.
Not very long ago he and Nick had put their heads together, and decided that before they left for university they would have to do something about their sister’s future.
‘She needs to get married,’ Kit had announced, causing Nick to lift his eyebrows and jeer ‘chauvinist’ at him. But Kit had shaken his head, and replied, ‘I don’t mean it that way… Sure, financially she can support herself—after all, she’s supported us for long enough—but don’t you sometimes think that it’s almost as though there’s a part of her missing somehow? She needs a husband and a family.’
‘To take her mind off what we’re getting up to?’ Nick suggested with a grin.
Although physically identical, emotionally they were very different, but on this occasion both of them had agreed that they had somehow or other to sort out their sister’s life for her, so that when they left she would not be on her own.
To this end they had conducted an exhaustive survey to find a man they considered suitable to become Jenneth’s husband, and their brother-in-law.
Their hopes had risen to a high-water mark after the incident of Jenneth’s accidental journey into the ditch; Tim Soames was virtually their next-door neighbour, single, comfortably off, the right age—a pleasant, easygoing man, with broad shoulders and a ruddy face.
He obligingly assisted them by asking Jenneth out, but after a couple of dates and several visits to the house he had suddenly stopped calling and, when pressed, Jenneth had told them calmly that although she liked him she didn’t want to get involved.
That was the whole trouble, Kit reflected, darting a quick glance at his sister as she slid into the passenger seat beside him. She didn’t want to get involved. But she needed someone in her life…someone who would care for her and protect her. Someone who would see beneath the calm surface to the real person below.
They had the car windows open because of the heat; the countryside was in a rare spate of perfect June weather, and the draught caught at her hair, tangling its silky smoothness. Jenneth lifted her hand to push it out of the way, reflecting irritably that she really ought to have it cut and that shoulder-length hair on a woman of twenty-nine was an absurd and foolish clinging to a youth long gone.
Watching her, Kit grinned to himself, remembering a jealous girlfriend of Nick’s who had bitterly refused to believe that Jenneth was their sister, having seen her and Nick out together, and been convinced that Nick was two-timing her; and it was true that no one who didn’t know them would ever guess that there was over ten years between them.
‘I suppose while you’re in York you’ll be looking for an outfit to wear for Louise’s wedding,’ announced Kit, with male superiority for the female of the species’ preoccupation with clothes, something which must surely be instilled in the male psyche at conception, Jenneth reflected crossly, because he certainly hadn’t learned that male disparagement of her sex’s vanities from her.
She took the bait as Kit had known she would, reminding him sardonically that it had been less than four months ago that he had virtually retired to his bedroom in a sulk, and all because Nick had borrowed his treasured original 501s. She was totally unaware of the fact that she was already the victim of the opening salvo in Kit’s battle to win his bet.
After she had dropped him off at his friend’s house, Jenneth continued her journey to York, wryly admitting that clothes for the wedding had been the last thing on her mind, and equally acknowledging that it would be perceived by the other guests as an insult to Louise if she did not turn up dressed accordingly.
Eleanor Coombes, her partner in the gallery, a brisk, cheerful widow in her mid-forties with a married daughter and one small granddaughter, welcomed her warmly when she parked her car at the rear of their small premises just inside the city wall.
It didn’t take them long to unload the canvases; in addition to Jenneth’s own work they sold work by other local artists, mainly watercolour landscapes, and offered a framing and restoration service, which was Eleanor’s contribution to the business.
Eleanor came from a wealthy background; she had met her husband while in Italy on a post-university course in the restoration of paintings, skills which she had not used during her marriage. However, after her husband’s death, finding herself virtually alone in the huge, gaunt house twenty miles outside York, her daughter working away in London and time hanging heavily on her hands, she had been introduced to Jenneth at a party given by a mutual acquaintance. Their friendship had grown, and ultimately Eleanor had approached Jenneth with an offer to finance a gallery in partnership with Jenneth, suggesting that she should take care of the day-to-day running of the business, leaving Jenneth free to spend more time painting. She also acted in part as Jenneth’s unofficial agent, and since their partnership had begun Jenneth acknowledged that her commissions had almost doubled.
‘Something wrong?’ Eleanor asked her, noticing her absorbed manner and slight frown.
Jenneth shook her head. ‘Not really… An old friend—my best friend, actually—is getting married next weekend, and she wants me to go to the wedding…’
‘And you haven’t a thing to wear,’ guessed Eleanor with a grin, tactfully not commenting on the wary s
hadow that darkened her friend’s eyes. She had learned over the years to allow Jenneth her privacy, but she, like the twins, although with a good deal more experience of life and far more maturity, often reflected that it was an appalling waste that a young woman so obviously designed by nature to nurture and mother should have so firmly turned her back on any relationship that would have allowed her to fulfil that role.
Eleanor was no misty-eyed romantic. Her own marriage had not been easy; her husband had been almost twenty years her senior and very demanding, but they had loved one another and had gradually come to understand how to make allowances for one another’s needs and prejudices. She genuinely missed his companionship and mourned his death, even though she had been a widow for over seven years. Unlike Jenneth, though, her life wasn’t devoid of an emotional and sexual relationship. She had a lover: a divorced man whose relationship with his wife had left him wary and bitter; she was wise enough and mature enough to accept the pleasure and happiness that the relationship gave her, without needing or wanting more than John was able to give. She had reached an age where she prized her own independence… which she had no intention of relinquishing in order to take on the potential problems of a second marriage to a man with two very possessive and sometimes aggressive teenage daughters, and a whole host of emotional problems of his own that could not be solved by the pleasure they gave one another in bed.
Jenneth’s case was different, though. Jenneth was born to be a mother…and if the more feminist of her peers felt it necessary to take her to task for such a view, then let them. There was nothing wrong in being a woman who was emotionally designed first and foremost to fulfil that role, and it was her view that by suppressing it, Jenneth was destroying an intrinsic part of herself. She whole-heartedly shared the twins’ view that Jenneth should marry.