by Penny Jordan
‘Jenneth…’ He said her name on a husky groan, thinking of all the ways he wanted to please her and all the reasons why he must not.
It would be so easy to take her now, to lay her down and to silence the soft, exciting little noises she would make.
While he trembled between need and necessity…holding her shivering body against the warmth of his own, so that her breasts were pressed against the hardness of his naked chest, her face tucked into the angle of his throat…the bedroom door suddenly opened and Angelica walked in, saying crossly, ‘Jenneth, I can’t find my daddy, and I’ve got a tummy ache…’
And then she stopped dead and stared from her father to Jenneth, her eyes going round with surprise.
‘Daddy, why are you cuddling Jenneth?’ she asked him suspiciously.
Jenneth, who had been nuzzling his skin, suddenly realised that they weren’t alone, and raised her head to look at Angelica, confusion and alcohol still dimming her perceptions.
‘Jenneth hasn’t got any clothes on,’ Angelica added accusingly, and Luke, knowing that there was no way he was ever going to be able to silence the inquisitive child, gave up battling against fate and took the opportunity he was being handed, saying calmly to her,
‘Angelica, Jenneth and I are going to get married…’
Jenneth heard him and stared at him. Several confusing events were taking place in her dream; odd, unexpected events that were causing her stomach to flutter nervously.
‘Does that mean that Jenneth will be my real mummy instead of a pretend?’ Angelica asked complacently.
When Luke nodded, she gave a whoop of delight, watching as Luke deftly eased Jenneth beneath the bedclothes and tugged the covers up around her, ignoring her slurred protests that this wasn’t like any of her dreams at all and saying firmly to Angelica, ‘Jenneth needs to go to sleep, and I want to know what you’ve eaten to give you a tummy ache, my girl.’
* * *
Jenneth woke up reluctantly with an appalling taste in her mouth, and a pounding headache that refused to allow her to lift her head off the pillow.
To make matters worse, splinteringly bright sunlight was pouring in through her bedroom window, and as she groaned and tried to close her eyes against it she heard Angelica’s excited piping voice exclaiming, ‘Jenneth, please wake up! I want to talk to you about when you’re my real mummy…’
A disjointed series of half-remembered events crashed through her stunned brain, and Jenneth sat bolt upright in bed, ignoring the queasy protests of her head and stomach until she realised that she was virtually naked.
Subsiding equally speedily beneath the bedclothes, she shuddered sickly and prayed that none of her dreadfully disturbing memories of last night had any bearing on reality.
She focused unhappily on Angelica, and was just about to remind her that it was unlikely that she would ever become her mother when her bedroom door opened and Luke walked in, saying firmly, ‘Angelica, I told you that you weren’t to disturb Jenneth…’
‘But she’s awake now,’ Angelica protested, and the sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach increased as Jenneth realised that she simply could not lie there with her eyes closed for the rest of her life, cravenly wishing that Luke would go away.
She opened them briefly and groaned.
‘Classic hangover symptom,’ she heard Luke saying cheerfully. ‘Not to worry… We’ll soon have you feeling more human.’
‘Well…how’s the bride-to-be feeling this morning?’ Nick asked from the doorway, and while Jenneth looked wildly from her brother’s amused face to Luke’s unreadable one, certain horrid convictions began to spring up in her mind with the rapidity and hardiness of the dragon’s teeth of legend.
‘I was the first to know,’ said Angelica importantly. “Cos I came in and found Daddy kissing you,’ she told Jenneth, adding with an innocence that at any other time Jenneth might have found touching, but which right now made her shudder with self-revulsion, ‘and you didn’t have any clothes on and Daddy wasn’t wearing his shirt…’
Jenneth gave a low moan, and for once in her life abandoned her fierce, stoical pride and pulled the bedclothes up over her head, saying thickly, ‘Go away, all of you…’
She heard Nick laugh, and then Kit say, ‘Too late now, sis… I’m afraid you’re going to have to make an honest man of him. Luke’s explained everything to us,’ he added gravely.
What had Luke explained to them? Jenneth wondered bitterly. And why on earth had he told Angelica she was going to be her mother?
She dropped the sheet and pushed it away from her face, looking at her brothers suspiciously.
‘You and Luke getting married…’ Kit marvelled.
As she opened her mouth to tell her brother just how wrong he was, Luke said casually, ‘I thought it best to give them our good news, darling, especially in view of the fact that Angelica beat me to the breakfast-table and had already regaled your brothers with her description of how she had interrupted us last night…’
There were a dozen things she ought to say, but none of them seemed to fit around her tongue. Her head was pounding fit to burst, and the last thing she felt capable of coping with was explaining to the twins that although Angelica had apparently found her as near as damn it naked in Luke’s embrace, that did not mean that there was any reason for Luke to marry her. She looked at Luke, her expression conveying anger, pain and confusion, her mouth dry and tasting bitter, and she realised that Luke had no intention of helping her to explain the truth.
One hand on Angelica’s shoulder, he smiled at Jenneth and he said calmly, ‘A cold shower, some breakfast and a gentle walk around the garden and you’ll feel much better… However, seeing as this appears to be your first hangover, I think we’ll cosset you a little and allow you a cup of tea first…’
And then he marshalled everyone out of her room, leaving her to brood miserably on the idiocy of her own behaviour, while her skin alternately burned and chilled as her memory provided vivid and very unwanted footage of just what she had said and done, and of how Luke had cruelly let her humiliate herself.
A cup of tea… She took advantage of her momentary reprieve to walk unsteadily into her bathroom and to lock the door firmly behind her while she tried to understand why Luke was allowing this farce of their getting married to continue.
Surely there must have been an easier way of explaining the situation? Like what? her conscience derided. Like telling everyone you were seducing him?
She shuddered sickly and leaned against the bathroom door, letting tears of anger and humiliation slide down her face. How could she have done it? How could she have betrayed herself to that extent?
And how could Luke have let her? Why on earth hadn’t he stopped her? He must have realised…must have known—must surely have been able to forestall her… So why hadn’t he done so?
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVEN with the generous amount of space provided by a large, rambling Victorian house and its equally large and rambling garden, it was remarkably difficult to avoid any other human contact, Jenneth reflected bitterly as she took refuge in her studio, for the first time in her life stooping to what she privately considered to be the cowardly subterfuge of putting a ‘Keep out work in progress’ sign that the twins had once bought her as a Christmas present on her studio door.
As she hung it there, nervously glancing over her shoulder in case either one of the twins or Angelica had managed to track her down, she inwardly railed impotently against Luke, who surely was responsible for this whole fiasco.
Why on earth had he deemed it necessary to escort her to her bedroom in the first place…? Her hand left the worn oak door of the studio as though the wood had scorched her, ashamed colour firing her skin as she slunk back inside and closed the door, wishing it was as easy to close her mind against the horrid images of Luke picking her up and carrying her upstairs.
She made a small, despairing sound in her throat and shuddered.
How could
she have been so stupid, especially when she knew she had no head for alcohol? She tried to remember anything she might have done or said during the dinner party that might cause her embarrassment, but the only thing that stuck in her mind was the shock of Luke’s arrival.
It was his fault that she had had so much to drink. It had been because…
Because it had been the only way she had had of escaping from him, she acknowledged with self-irony. Some escape!
She still couldn’t understand what quixotic motive had led him to announce that they were getting married. Unwillingly she remembered Angelica’s almost incoherent joy, the way she had flung herself into her arms the moment she appeared downstairs, chattering excitedly about weddings and bridesmaids and having a real mother…
Even the twins had been pleased. No doubt they saw her marriage to Luke as a good way of offloading the responsibility of her on to another pair of male shoulders, she decided with unaccustomed bitterness.
She heard a car pull up outside the house and then its door slam, and curiosity drew her up to the window, too late to dodge out of sight when her visitor caught sight of her and waved enthusiastically.
Jenneth sighed. Meg Lawson was a chatterbox and almost as much of a gossip as Laura Gosford, but there was nothing malicious in her curiosity about the lives of people around her. She was well liked in the village, and worked tirelessly for several local charities.
Jenneth guessed that she was probably collecting for one of them now, and, knowing that she could hardly remain barricaded in her studio now that Meg had seen her, she reluctantly opened the door.
Meg beamed at her, pausing to catch her breath, and as Jenneth went towards her Luke and Angelica suddenly emerged from the house.
‘There she is, Daddy,’ Angelica crowed triumphantly, letting go of Luke’s hand and darting across to Jenneth’s side.
‘I heard you had visitors,’ Meg told Jenneth, her eyes darting from Jenneth to Angelica, and then across to Luke, who was strolling over to join them.
There was nothing Jenneth could do, other than stand there with a sickly smile pinned to her face.
Meg was asking Angelica her name. Jenneth took her attention off the little girl and her neighbour, unable to stop herself from watching Luke.
He gave her a faint smile; a compassionate smile, she might have thought in other circumstances.
‘And Jenneth is going to be my new mummy, ‘cos she and my Daddy are getting married…’
Jenneth stiffened as she heard Angelica proudly deliver this important statement, her eyes unwittingly imploring Luke for help as she registered the full measure of the disaster which had just occurred.
Meg was looking both pleased and excited, as well she might with such a juicy item of gossip to take home with her, Jenneth thought bitterly.
‘Jenneth, my dear…how exciting! Have you known one another long?’ she added.
It was Luke who answered her, not, as Jenneth had prayed, by refuting Angelica’s statement, but by standing at Jenneth’s side and putting one arm around her and the other round his daughter, so that the three of them were posed as a close-knit trio.
‘Almost all our lives,’ he replied easily, and then, turning to Jenneth, he gave her a slow, warm smile that made her eyes widen incredulously in disbelief that he should be able to manufacture so blatant and totally fictitious an expression of almost fatuous adoration.
And then, before Jenneth could stop him, he had reached for her hand and raised it to his mouth, kissing the softness of her palm, and then curling her fingers around it.
Her heart seemed to pound double-time, her body reacting to him so intensely and so quickly that her face flamed with the heat that washed through her.
‘So romantic,’ Meg sighed. ‘When do you plan to marry?’
Again it was Luke who answered.
‘Just as soon as it can be arranged,’ he told her. ‘In fact, Jenneth and I plan to call on the vicar tomorrow…’
‘You’ll be marrying here in the village? How lovely! Well, I mustn’t keep you—you will be busy…’
And she was gone, almost running back to her car, before Jenneth could either deny Luke’s monstrous lies or remind her that she hadn’t explained the purpose of her visit.
Mindful of Angelica’s presence, Jenneth said with as much control as she could muster, ‘You realise that everything you’ve told her will be all round the village by teatime?’
Luke shrugged, giving her a lazy, teasing smile. ‘Well, it saves putting a notice in the local paper…and now that I’m about to be a married man, one has to think of these small economies…’
Dear heaven, what was he trying to do to her? He was so relaxed about the whole thing… so…uncaring. No, not uncaring, she realised on a sharp, disbelieving stab of awareness. He was actually behaving as though he was pleased. As though… Her mind balked at the words forming in her brain. How could he possibly be pleased? He had rejected her… broken their engagement…
She turned away from him blindly, instinctively seeking the security of her studio, not seeing the wistful look Angelica gave her, nor Luke bending towards his daughter and saying calmly, ‘Angie, you go back in the house for a few minutes. I want to talk to Jenneth…’
She didn’t even realise he had followed her into her studio until she turned to close the door and saw him standing framed in it.
Her heart leapt and thudded frantically: the adrenalin of anger, and something else, something hopeless and unwanted; something that transported her back across the years to the tremulously eager girl she had once been, and fired her blood.
‘How could you do that?’ she demanded, shaking with the intensity of her own emotions. ‘How could you stand there and deliberately tell her that we’re getting married?’
‘Because we are,’ he responded calmly. And then, before she could speak, he added grimly, ‘Did you really think we had any choice…after last night?’
It was like having an already painful sensitive area of flesh flicked with a whip, the pain instant and stingingly raw, so that she almost winced physically beneath it.
‘That could have been explained.’ She couldn’t look at him. Her lips had gone very dry, and she licked at them nervously.
‘Could it?’ Luke demanded harshly. ‘How?’
‘I’d had too much to drink,’ Jenneth protested despairingly.
‘And weren’t responsible for what you were doing? Is that really what you’d have preferred me to tell the twins?’
She flinched beneath the sarcasm in his voice, chewing miserably on her bottom lip.
‘They’re very protective of you, Jenneth,’ he told her flatly. ‘Very protective and very, very proud. Have you any idea what it would do to them to learn that their sister had so much to drink that…?’
‘Don’t!’ she cried out in anguish, covering her face with her hands. ‘Don’t.’
She couldn’t bear to look at him…hating him for seeing her like this with her defences down, her pride broken and trampled…hating herself for allowing him to see her like this. Not once, but twice… She shuddered, remembering how she had broken down when he ended their engagement, sick with the pain that pounded in her heart and the nausea that churned in her stomach, neither of them alcohol-induced, but caused by the tension that was gripping her mind and body.
‘Do you really think I had any alternative?’ Luke demanded witheringly. ‘I have Angelica to think about, Jenneth. It isn’t easy for a man alone to bring up a daughter, especially one as vulnerable and impressionable as mine. Like the twins, she’s inclined to put you on a pedestal…’
‘Me?’ She dropped her hands staring at him in disbelief.
‘Surely you knew that?’ he derided her. ‘I don’t think she’s spoken a single sentence that doesn’t contain the words “Jenneth says…” since we got here.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ Jenneth demanded, resenting the additional burden of guilt he was making her carry. ‘I didn’t invite you
to move in here.’
‘No.’ Luke agreed blandly, ‘But the twins did, and in their way they’re just as vulnerable as Angelica…’
He paused, watching her as the words sank in. He was right and Jenneth knew it; had he turned down the twins’ invitation they would have felt rejected and hurt.
‘Quite the amateur psychologist, aren’t you?’ she said bitterly.
His mouth twitched; the very fact that he could be amused when all she could feel was pain and despair incited her to demand fiercely, ‘So what do you suggest we do now? We’re going to have to tell them that we’re not getting married…’
There was a long pause, during which for some reason the hairs on the back of her neck rose and prickled warningly.
‘Not necessarily.’ Luke said carefully at last. He walked past her towards the window and stood staring out at the garden. ‘In fact, I think it would be a very good idea if we did get married…’
‘What?’ Jenneth couldn’t believe her ears. ‘What are you saying, Luke?’ she demanded stiffly. ‘You made it plain enough eight years ago that you didn’t want me as your wife.’
‘That was eight years ago.’
He turned round and looked at her, his face cold and remote, no suggestion to be read there that this was any kind of joke.
‘Luke, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing—’ Jenneth began weakly.
‘No game,’ he interrupted her. ‘You and I are going to be married, Jenneth…make no mistake about it.’
Going to be married… She blinked and looked disbelievingly at him, tensing as she saw what was in his eyes.
‘You intended this to happen all along, didn’t you?’ she accused shakily. ‘But why…why? You don’t want me as your wife, even if Angelica wants me as her…’ She blenched, her voice arrested as the truth exploded into her mind.