by Penny Jordan
‘Those puddings smell marvellous,’ Janet told her.
‘Mmm… they do, don’t they?’ Heaven agreed with a small smile that made Janet’s maternal heart beat even more anxiously.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I HOPE you don’t intend to allow him to get away with this.’
Louisa gave her brother an unhappy look as he put down the letter he had just been reading. She had received it from her ex-husband’s solicitor only that morning and had telephoned Jon straight away to tell him what had happened.
‘I don’t want to. If he does insist on refusing to pay the girls’ school fees they’ll have to change school and Belle is already having a few problems following the divorce… but I don’t know what I can do to stop him.’
‘My God, when I think…’ Jon began, and then stopped when he saw the unhappiness on his sister’s face.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Jon,’ she told him. ‘I admit I have only myself to blame for the fact that Harold has made such a fool of me financially. If I hadn’t walked out on him and insisted on an immediate divorce and if I hadn’t been so desperate to let my pride rule my head I could have obtained a much better financial settlement from him.’
‘The fact that he’s depriving not just you but also his own children of the financial comfort you’ve all every reason to expect has nothing to do with your pride and everything to do with his greed,’ Jon told her gently. ‘I just wish I hadn’t been working abroad and away so much when the divorce was going through. I’d give a lot to know just how he managed to convince the divorce judge that he didn’t have the assets to give you what you were fully entitled to.’
‘He manipulated me,’ Louisa admitted grimly, ‘by pretending that he was having an affair with Heaven. He tricked me into walking out on him. I should have stayed where I was. After all, it wasn’t as though she was his first affair—not that they were having an affair, of course,’ Louisa corrected herself hastily. ‘She was just as much a victim of his machinations as I was myself—even more of one, really, when I think what that poor girl suffered…’
‘Have you seen her at all since?’ Jon asked her casually, turning slightly to one side as he did so so that Louisa couldn’t see his face.
‘Only once,’ she told him. ‘Not unnaturally I don’t think she really wanted anything to do with me but we literally bumped into one another in the street. At least I was able to apologise to her. Even now, you know, I’ve still got friends who quite plainly don’t believe that she wasn’t involved with Harold even though I’ve told them that it was all a mistake. Harold treated her almost as vindictively as he did me and I’ve wondered since if he did actually make a play for her and got turned down. That would explain the obvious pleasure he took in deliberately blackening her character…
‘Jon, what am I going to do about this?’ she asked her brother, returning to the original subject of her urgent phone call to him. ‘If I accept this reduced level of maintenance and Harold’s refusal to pay the girls’ school fees, I just don’t know what we’re going to do.’
‘I’m more than happy to cover the cost of the girls’ education. After all, they are my nieces,’ Jon told her firmly.
‘Your nieces, yes, but one day you could well have children of your own, a wife of your own who might not look too kindly on you having to virtually support my children as well as your own.’
‘Any woman who felt like that would never be my wife,’ Jon told her truthfully, and Louisa hugged him.
‘It says in this letter that the reason Harold is seeking to reduce his payments to you is the fact that he is planning to remarry and he and his new wife intend to have their own family…’
‘Has he said anything to you about wanting to cut my maintenance payments?’
‘No,’ Jon told her, shaking his head. ‘I have managed to convince him that I’m more interested in maintaining the friendship I’ve struck up with him than I am in whatever problems you might be facing, but as yet he still hasn’t opened up to me as much as I’d hoped about how and where he’s managed to conceal so much of his wealth. But I am still trying.
‘He’s invited me to a pre-Christmas dinner he’s giving at the end of the week. He faxed me from New York to tell me about it. He’s over there on business at the moment.’
‘A pre-Christmas dinner?’ Louisa questioned.
‘Mmm… his new fiancée is arranging everything, apparently, and it’s being held at the house he’s been having renovated in Knightsbridge.’
‘The house he bought with the profit he made on selling our house,’ Louisa said fiercely.
‘Yes,’ Jon agreed grimly.
‘That poor girl. I hope that, unlike me, she finds out what he’s really like before they get married,’ Louisa told her brother bitterly. ‘Oh, Jon, what am I going to do?’ she asked him plaintively. ‘The parents have offered to help but they’ve already done more than enough, and so has Rory…’
Jon noticed the way his sister’s skin changed colour slightly as she mentioned the old family friend who had done so much to support her both emotionally and practically since the break-up of her marriage. It was no secret to Jon that Rory Stevens loved his sister and Jon suspected that she was now beginning to return his feelings.
‘Do you think Harold believes that you want his friendship and that you approve of what he’s done?’
‘He seems to,’ Jon told her, ‘but I must admit I had hoped by now to at least have some proof for you that he deliberately concealed the major part of his assets in order to pay you far less money than he should.’
‘We already know that he did,’ Louisa pointed out fiercely.
‘We know it, yes, but we can’t prove it,’ Jon reminded her patiently.
Later, as he set off back to his own apartment—a set of traditional and old-fashioned rooms in Fulham which he owned along with a home in the Scottish Borders where he spent as much time as he could, and another large apartment in a renovated Belgian château which he used whenever he had business in Brussels—he was still thinking over his sister’s financial problems.
It infuriated him that a man like Harold could use the law as he had done and he had to admit it was getting harder and harder to keep his real feelings about the man to himself whenever they were together.
He had no idea why Harold should be so keen to pursue their ‘friendship’, unless he felt that in doing so he was somehow or other getting one up on Louisa.
Well, Jon was damned if he was going to let Harold get away with cheating Louisa and more importantly their children out of their financial due a second time, especially when Harold could well afford to be far more generous with them than he had been. At the very least Louisa should have had the family home—would have had it if she hadn’t been manipulated into walking out on him.
When he opened the door of his car Jon froze momentarily as a girl walked into his line of vision, thick dark curls bouncing softly on her shoulders as she hurried down the street wrapped up against the raw December wind in a coat which looked three or four sizes too big for her slender frame.
And then she turned her head and he saw her face. When was he going to stop doing this? When was he going to stop reacting blindly and ridiculously every single time he saw a woman who bore the slightest resemblance to Heaven?
Heaven. What a name… what a woman. He had been attracted to her the moment he saw her, attracted to her, enchanted by her, instinctively aware of the importance of not rushing her… not panicking her by coming on too strong too soon. He could still remember the way her lips had quivered so softly and tellingly under his, still see the way her eyes had opened and widened as she’d looked back at him, unable to conceal what she was feeling.
God knew where she was now, but wherever it was it was obvious that she wanted nothing to do with him. The man whose sister had been responsible for the destruction of her reputation, the man whose brother-in-law had dragged her name through the tabloids, publicly labelling her as hi
s mistress—publicly and completely untruthfully. Jon had known that immediately and instinctively but by then it was too late. She had gone and no one had seemed able to tell him where.
Her parents, when he had approached them, had been polite but pointedly determined. Their daughter had told them quite categorically that she wished to have no contact whatsoever with anyone connected with Harold—no matter who—and they’d been afraid that they could not tell him where she was or how to get in touch with her.
At one point he had actually thought of employing a private detective to find her for him but just in time he had come to his senses and recognised what an appalling intrusion of her privacy that would be—but that hadn’t stopped him searching every even half-familiar face glimpsed in the street just in case…
Did she still have that irrepressible sense of humour, that impish smile? He hoped so. Had she got over the trauma of what had been inflicted on her? Did she ever think of him? Somehow he doubted it.
Grimly he climbed into his car and started the engine. It was pointless now cursing the fate that had led to him being out of the country when the whole nasty affair of Harold’s manipulation of Louisa’s vulnerable emotions had blown up, but of course that didn’t stop him from doing so.
They had only shared one date… a few chaste kisses… and two far more memorable ones that had been anything but chaste… but that had been enough to have him comparing every woman he had been tempted to date since with Heaven and finding them wanting—and finding himself even more wanting for being so emotionally hung up on a woman he had known so briefly and so tenuously.
Thank goodness for that, Heaven puffed, heaving a sigh of relief that the last of the large batch of puddings she had received orders for had been passed over to the post-office clerk for onward despatch.
It was a fine if cold winter’s day, the sky a pale smudgy blue over the steel-grey waters of the Thames as she walked back towards the house. As always the river fascinated her, causing her to stop and look at it.
Had her ancestors, her great-grandparents, who had lived in the house before her, been equally fascinated by the ebb and flow of its tides, the magnificence of it?
The weather forecasters had predicted a heavy frost for the next few days and idly Heaven wondered what it must have been like to be alive when the Thames had actually frozen over. She remembered reading that it had once frozen so deeply and so hard that a fair had actually been held on it complete with burning braziers to warm the skaters and provide the excited crowds who had flocked to enjoy the novel experience of actually walking on the solid surface of the river with tasty snacks. What exactly would they have served? she wondered dreamily.
Eel pie, whelks, whitebait, hot bread and buns, confectionery of all descriptions. She had a much treasured recipe book from the eighteenth century which had been a twenty-first-birthday present from her parents and just reading the lists of some of the ingredients brought forcibly to her a mental image of the merchant vessels which had once thronged the Thames, bringing home their cargoes of exotic and expensive spices and sugar.
This afternoon she was due to meet with Tiffany Simons to go through the menu she had produced for her. With the dinner scheduled for the end of the week that wouldn’t leave her very much time to do her shopping and she still had the kitchen to inspect and to check on.
Her thoughts firmly back in the present, she turned her back on the river and hurried home.
‘Figgy pudding… What exactly is that?’ Tiffany enquired, her forehead crinkling in a small frown.
She and Heaven were seated opposite one another at the table of the kitchen of the house she had explained to Heaven she was going to share with Harold once they were married.
‘My parents are rather old-fashioned,’ she had told Heaven with a small sigh. ‘They wouldn’t be happy about me moving in with anyone before we were married. Mummy didn’t have me until she was forty. They had given up all hope of having a family when she became pregnant with me and so…’ She had paused, but Heaven could guess just how precious she was to her parents and just how protective of her they were—but not apparently protective enough—not if they thought that Harold would make her a good husband.
‘Figgy pudding,’ she started to explain now in response to Tiffany’s question, ‘it is an old-fashioned, traditional and very rich pudding mixture. Men love it,’ she added when she saw the doubt shadowing Tiffany’s pretty soft brown eyes.
Instantly the other girl’s expression cleared.
‘Oh, do they? Well, in that case that’s all right, then,’ she declared ingenuously, adding, ‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook. That’s why Harold said I had to find someone to prepare this dinner.
‘Apparently the people he’s bringing back from New York are some very important new business contacts he’s made. Harold owns his own software company,’ she told Heaven importantly. ‘These Americans want him to sell the business to them. Harold’s brilliantly clever, though,’ she went on, giving Heaven a proud smile, ‘because if he does sell the company to them he’s still going to keep a new software program he’s been working on, although he won’t be able to sell it in America, not at first; but Harold says there’s a huge market for it in the Middle East and Taiwan.’
Heaven had to shade her eyes with her lashes to conceal her true thoughts as she listened to Tiffany’s artless prattle. Knowing Harold as she did, Heaven suspected that the kind of deal he was hoping to pull off with the Americans would not only benefit him financially but would also involve him practising the same sort of deliberate manipulation he had used with his wife, to gain yet another financial victory just as underhandedly as he had Louisa’s divorce settlement.
As she listened to Tiffany enthusing about Harold’s supposed cleverness Heaven couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. The girl really had no idea what Harold was about at all. Heaven, though, could well understand why Harold wanted to marry her. Her naivety would appeal to him almost as much as her undoubted prettiness.
‘So you’re quite happy with the menu we’ve decided on,’ Heaven checked with Tiffany as she started to gather up the notes she had made, giving the kitchen a thorough professional visual inspection whilst she did so. She hadn’t missed the nervous half-whispered telephone conversation Tiffany had had with the kitchen designer halfway through their own conversation, from which it had been obvious that the designers still had to be paid, not just for their own work but for the units and equipment as well. Well, that didn’t really surprise Heaven, not knowing Harold as she did.
‘Oh, yes, it’s perfect,’ Tiffany was assuring her now happily. ‘especially the pudding. Harold adores sweet things.’
The menu Heaven had suggested was simple enough: a thick home-made winter soup followed by a fish course, a sorbet to clear the palate and then the main course, for which she had suggested a rich casserole of red meat with accompanying vegetables, filling but not so filling that Harold’s guests wouldn’t have room for her piÈce de résistance—the figgy pudding on which as Mrs Tiggywinkle she had based her small new mail-order business.
‘And you’ll have everything ready here in the kitchen for me to carry through to the dining room?’ Tiffany checked anxiously.
‘Yes, everything will be ready,’ Heaven told her, adding reassuringly, ‘Don’t worry, no one will ever know that you haven’t cooked everything yourself.’
Quickly she stifled her own uncomfortable qualm at the thought of Harold blaming Tiffany for her wrongdoing—but of course Harold would know that Tiffany hadn’t actually done the cooking. He simply didn’t want to admit as much to his guests—he would, of course, try to discover who had cooked the meal but she would be safely hidden behind the anonymity of Mrs Tiggywinkle.
Tiffany blushed.
‘I wouldn’t normally be so… so deceitful, but Harold says it’s vitally important that we make a good impression on these Americans and apparently there’s nothing they like more than home-cooked food.’
‘You said there’d be eight of you to cater for,’ Heaven reminded her.
‘Yes, that’s right. Harold and me, the three businessmen who are coming back with him, his accountant and his wife and a friend of Harold’s who’s a business consultant.’
A business consultant and his accountant. Heaven might not know the former but she certainly knew Harold’s accountant and his wife, an avaricious, acid-tongued woman whom Heaven had overheard on more than one occasion running Louisa and the children down to Harold. She had even tried to tell Heaven herself how to do her job and had, Heaven knew, been instrumental in spreading the completely untrue rumours about her supposed affair with Harold. She was a thoroughly unpleasant woman whom Heaven had no qualms about allowing to share Harold’s fate. Harold obviously wasn’t taking any chance on letting the big fish he had landed slip away from him, Heaven decided sardonically as she gave Tiffany a small smile and stood up. She found herself liking Tiffany. Somehow she would have to find some way of ensuring that Tiffany herself didn’t eat any of the figgy pudding.
Not that there was anything wrong with her figgy pudding—far from it—at least not when she made it without the addition of the certain extra ingredients she planned to put in the one for this dinner party!
CHAPTER THREE
NERVOUSLY Heaven smoothed her hands down over the crisp white apron she was wearing over the simple short-sleeved black dress she had picked up at a bargain price because of its small size.
It wasn’t any worries about her cooking that were making her feel so jittery, her stomach muscles clenching every time she heard a noise on the other side of the very firmly closed kitchen door. Despite her stalwart assurances to Janet that she knew exactly what she was doing and that her plan was completely fireproof, it was still a fact, as Janet had pithily pointed out to her, that all it would take for her to be run out of the house in very short order would be for Harold to walk into the kitchen and see her.