by Penny Jordan
Sighing faintly, she closed the door and went inside. There were a lot of things she was going to have to do, if she was going to be able to go to London and see Sophy. Tomorrow she’d better start making plans.
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU’RE coming to London for the weekend…Mum, that’s marvellous! We’d offer to put you up at the flat, but we’ve only got the one bedroom.’
Kate forced herself to smile into the receiver, not wanting Sophy to suspect that her visit was anything other than a spur of the moment decision, until she was able to be with her and explain everything to her in person.
‘Still, you can come round on Friday to the flat, and then we can take you out for dinner on Saturday evening. How long will you be staying? Where will you be staying?’
‘I’m not sure yet,’ Kate told her quite truthfully, because Joss had simply said to leave everything to him, and she had no idea what hotel he was going to book her into. One that was not too expensive, she hoped.
They spent another half-hour talking about the wedding and the honeymoon. Sophy sounded deliriously happy and Kate crossed her fingers as she replaced the receiver, praying that the news she had for her would not prove too traumatic.
How would Sophy react to the discovery that John’s mother’s cousin was her father? Would she resent him because he had not been a part of her growing up, or would she perhaps resent and blame her because she had brought her up in ignorance of the truth?
Luckily they did not have too many bookings for the weekend, and Lucy was quite happy to cope on her own. Kate had booked herself a seat on the train, and had telephoned the private number Joss had given her to tell him what time it would be arriving.
It had been disappointing to discover that she was speaking into an answering machine. Where had Joss been? Out with his red-headed secretary? His private life was no concern of hers, she reminded herself as she replaced the receiver, her stomach churning tensely at the thought of the weekend to come.
To make matters worse, she had a disastrous week. On Wednesday she had a puncture when she was driving home from cooking and serving an executive lunch at some offices in York, which necessitated her having to unload the car to get at the spare wheel.
The road was a fairly lonely one, and she was very glad to have the wheel changed and the car back on the road after she had been subjected to a variety of comments from passing drivers.
The men calling out to her probably meant no harm, but these days, when there was so much violence against women, she felt uncomfortably vulnerable until she was on the move again.
On Thursday morning there was a power cut just when she was in the middle of baking and freezing a variety of their stock dishes, and on Thursday evening, just before she set out with the food for a very important and lavish silver-wedding party, she had a telephone call from one of the part-timers who helped them with the serving and clearing up on such occasions to say that she wasn’t well and wouldn’t be able to work as planned that evening.
A frantic ring round their other part-timers failed to produce someone to take her place, and, knowing that Lucy was going to be working almost all weekend, Kate heroically refused her offer of help and insisted that she would be able to manage.
She did—just—and it was almost four o’clock in the morning when she eventually managed to crawl into bed.
The jangling of her alarm just after ten made her groan and reach instinctively to silence its imperative call until she realised what day it was.
Cursing mildly under her breath, she got up and had a quick, icy-cold shower, hoping it would stir her sluggish senses into something approaching life.
The sun was shining warmly outside. The only thing she had that was suitable for wearing in London was the silk dress she had bought for Sophy’s wedding, which fortunately was simple enough not to shriek ‘wedding’.
Having drunk a piping hot cup of coffee and thrown a few things into an overnight bag, she decided recklessly that, if she discovered she had forgotten something, then she would just have to buy a substitute while she was in London.
She just made it for the train, arriving at the station feeling hot and flustered, which wasn’t like her at all, and as she sank down into her seat, relieved that she had taken the precaution of going to the expense of booking it when she saw how busy the train was, she acknowledged that a good ninety per cent of her tension was not the result of her frantically busy and disruptive week, but was caused entirely by the thought of seeing Joss again.
As the train picked up speed, she tried to concentrate on how she was going to break the news to Sophy. She would be shocked, of course, but probably very thrilled as well, Kate acknowledged a little wryly. Joss was a father any young woman could be proud of, and he would be doubly precious to Sophy, who had spent all her young life believing that her father wasn’t worthy of her love or respect.
Yes. Sophy would be thrilled, and probably a little sad as well, when she thought of all the years she and Joss could have shared and had not. Already the tie between Sophy and herself had weakened, first when she went away to university and then later, when she went to London and met John, and Kate knew that it was only natural that this should be the case. Now she would be forced to stand to one side and perhaps witness Sophy forming a bond with her father from which she would be excluded.
Logic warred with emotion as she tried to remind herself that it would only be natural that both Sophy and Joss should want to get to know one another. After all, they shared a very special bond. And with Joss in London, he would have far more opportunity to see Sophy than she did herself.
She closed her eyes as she felt the tiny darting spears of jealousy twist her insides.
What was she jealous of? Sharing Sophy with Joss…or the intimacy which would quite naturally spring up between father and daughter and from which she would be excluded.
Her throat had gone dry and tight, and she was relieved when a girl came round with a trolley selling coffee and sandwiches, glad to have something else, however mundane, to focus her attention on.
She chose a sandwich, remembering that she hadn’t had time for any breakfast, but after two mouthfuls, despite the fact that it was fresh and well-made, she found her stomach rolling protestingly so that she had to put it on one side.
To her own despair she recognised that it was the thought of seeing Joss again that was causing most of her anxiety, rather than the knowledge of what she had to tell Sophy.
She must stop thinking about him so obsessively, she told herself angrily. It was ridiculous, behaving like this, focusing all her thoughts and mental energies on him like an adolescent. Just because he had implied that his life had not been an emotionally happy one… Just because he had been angry at her refusal to see herself as a desirable woman; that did not mean…
Did not mean what? she asked herself bitterly. Did not mean that he found her attractive…that he wished things had been different? Was she really idiotic enough to think it might? Surely she was old enough and sensible enough to accept that, while he might have regrets about the past, while he might quite naturally want to include Sophy in his life, that did not mean that he wished to include her in it?
As the train drew closer to London, she warned herself that she must not give in to ridiculous daydreams; she must not allow herself to be seduced by her own wishful thinking, imagining that he could still feel something for her. She shuddered a little, all too easily picturing in her own mind’s eye the pathetic figure she could become if she gave in to the temptation to believe that miracles could happen, and that Joss could feel the same way about her as she did about him.
It had taken her such a dangerously brief space of time to fall in love with him all over again. She had thought herself incapable of experiencing such feelings…had thought herself too sensible, too mature, too worldly wise…and yet after just a few hours in his company she had been reacting just as violently and emotionally to him as she had done as a teenager. The
same thudding heartbeats…the same frantic nervousness…the same sharp, physical pain of need.
It was unfair of fate to treat her like this, she reflected crossly as the train pulled into St Pancras. All around her people started to get up. She picked up her own bag, and inadvertently caught the eye of the businessman who had been seated opposite her.
He gave her an appreciative smile that made her flush a little, and as she turned quickly and awkwardly into the aisle she remembered Sophy saying to her only a few months ago, ‘Whenever a man shows any interest in you, you freeze them off so hard I’m surprised they aren’t turned to blocks of ice on the spot.’
She had denied Sophy’s allegations, but now, as she followed the other passengers off the train, she wondered if there was after all some truth in it.
‘It’s almost as though you feel you have to deny your own sexuality,’ Sophy had added musingly, with the frankness that Kate, with her different upbringing and outlook, sometimes found disconcerting.
She had shaken her head, but Sophy had looked at her thoughtfully and said softly, ‘I suppose it’s because of having me…because you felt you’d done something wrong.’
Her comment had come too close to the truth for Kate to bear it with equanimity. It was true that she did carry a burden of guilt for having conceived Sophy outside marriage and with a man who had commitments to another woman and child. And it hadn’t helped knowing that it had been her weakness, her love, her intense need that had obliterated everything other than her need to be part of Joss in the most intimate way there was. She hadn’t given a thought to the fact that she might conceive…hadn’t even cared…had wanted only Joss’s possession, Joss’s lovemaking…Joss himself.
Well, she had soon learned the price of such wanton selfishness, and she had made sure that she never allowed herself to experience that kind of temptation again.
After Sophy’s birth, she had wanted nothing from life other than the emotional safety of herself and her daughter.
She had, she recognised with a tiny shiver of perception, quite deliberately slammed and barred the door on her own sexuality; that door remained barred, and she had been quite content that it should be…until last weekend.
She stopped dead, oblivious to the irritation of other travellers who almost bumped into her as she forced herself to acknowledge that her increasing tension and sleepless nights all this week had been caused by the shock and apprehension of discovering that she was not, as she had comfortably supposed, totally indifferent to physical arousal; she was just very unfortunate in being one of those women who, while totally unaroused by the majority of men she met, had this intensely strong and deep-rooted responsiveness to one particular man.
It had stunned her that her desire for Joss should have surfaced so quickly and so devastatingly, almost as though the intervening years had never existed. Her feelings were more appropriate to a young girl than a mature woman, she remonstrated with herself, but in vain they refused to subside, and now here she was, standing in the middle of a busy train station, knowing that the safest thing for her to do was to put as much distance between herself and Joss as she could; instead of which, here she was in London, knowing that she was going to be spending at least part of the weekend with him, and knowing equally well that his interest in her was purely as Sophy’s mother. Which only went to show that it was true that there was no fool like an old one, she admitted tiredly, pulling her thoughts into some kind of order, and heading reluctantly for the main concourse of the station.
Joss had said that he would send someone to meet her, and for some reason, once she was through the barrier, she started looking around for a striking redhead.
It was a slight shock therefore to be approached by a uniformed chauffeur, who it seemed had had no difficulty in recognising her, because he touched her lightly on the arm so that she whirled round, and then asked calmly, ‘Miss Seton?’
Kate ducked her head in acknowledgement and was efficiently relieved of her overnight bag and gently escorted out into the sunlight and into the Jaguar saloon which she recognised as belonging to Joss.
Because the traffic was, to her, appallingly heavy and impatient, she refrained from addressing any comments to the chauffeur, not wanting to distract him from his driving.
Only the very central parts of London were in any way familiar to her. The only time she had visited Sophy and John’s brand new apartment in the newly refurbished and very fashionable Dockside area John had picked her up from the station, and she felt very much like a country mouse in a very big and bewildering city as the chauffeur negotiated the Jaguar through the heavy traffic.
When he took an abrupt turn into a narrow street the tall buildings on either side enclosed it so much that Kate almost felt claustrophobic, and it was a relief when the car emerged into a small and almost quiet square.
Tall, early-Victorian houses surrounded the small iron-railed garden with its shadowing trees, and Kate did not need to look at the expensive cars parked outside the houses to recognise the square as a very expensive area.
As they drove down one side of the square she saw that the buildings all had discreet brass plaques outside, suggesting that most of them were now in use as offices rather than private homes, but she didn’t realise until the chauffeur turned in between a pair of opening wrought-iron security gates that led to a private mews parking area that Joss’s offices were housed in one of these elegant buildings.
For some reason she had supposed his offices would be in a very modern high-rise block. Perhaps she should have known better. She remembered that the young Joss had been very passionate indeed about preserving buildings of the past, and it was perhaps only natural that he should opt for offices in an old building rather than a modern one.
Tactfully she waited for the chauffeur to open her door for her, smiling a ‘thank you’ at him as he removed her bag from the boot.
She felt increasingly nervous, not just about meeting Joss, which was bad enough, but about meeting him on his own territory. Something about London seemed to sap her confidence and make her feel diminished. Perhaps it was the sight of so many eager, ambitious young faces…or perhaps it was just that she had lived in the country for too long.
Or perhaps it was the thought of meeting Joss on his own territory; a territory which he and Sophy shared and from which she was excluded.
A tiny shiver ran through her, and immediately the chauffeur frowned, saying quickly, ‘It’s this way. Sometimes the breeze round here out of the sun can be quite chilly.’
She wasn’t used to being treated as though she was as fragile as a piece of spun glass…fragile and feminine, precious and loved… Will you stop this? she demanded angrily of herself as the chauffeur stopped to produce a key to unlock the white-painted rear door. Above it was a fanlight; not as imposing a fanlight as that surmounting the front door, but a very attractive fanlight none the less. The door had a number on it, and opened not, as she had anticipated, into a foyer or corridor such as one might associate with company offices, but into a small, square hallway, decorated more as one would expect a private home to be decorated.
A flight of stairs led upwards, carpeted in thick grey-blue Wilton.
‘Up here,’ the chauffeur directed her, indicating a discreetly concealed lift. ‘Mr Bennett said to take you straight up.’
Straight up where? Kate wondered as the lift swept dizzyingly upwards and then rocked unpleasantly to a halt. She had never liked high-speed lifts, and as she stepped out of this one she felt both light-headed and vaguely oppressed.
She was in another square hallway. This one had a very splendid arched window that overlooked the square and allowed light to spill into the hall and down the stairs.
There was only one door off the hall. The chauffeur produced another key and unlocked it, standing back respectfully for her to precede him.
Uncertainly she did so, tiny prickles of alarm feathering the tiny hairs on her skin as she found herself walking into a r
oom that was most definitely not an office, but rather a very comfortable and private sitting-room-cum-study, complete with an imposing Victorian fireplace and a wall of mahogany library bookcases with a patina that made her catch her breath in envy and long to run her fingertips along their polished surface.
By the time she had resisted the impulse, the chauffeur had disappeared.
She glanced wildly around the room, and then walked uncertainly over to the window. She was right at the top of the building. Down below her, she could see people walking on the other side of the square. Two doors opened off the room she was in. She wondered nervously where they led, and where Joss was.
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. While she was staring out of the window, she heard a door open and swung round tensely.
‘Sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you,’ Joss said easily as he came into the room. ‘A telephone call that went on rather longer than I’d planned. Coffee…or would you prefer me to show you to your room first?’
Her room? Kate stared at him and managed to ask huskily, ‘I’m staying here?’
‘I tried to book you into a hotel, but all the better ones were fully booked. Tourists… I have a spare bedroom here, so I thought… But of course if you’d prefer me to make some other arrangements…’
He was watching her closely, and for some reason Kate felt as though she was being tested, but for what and why she had no idea.
It was ridiculous to feel uneasy at spending the weekend in what was obviously Joss’s private flat; after all, it wasn’t as though he was likely to try and seduce her. Far from it.
‘The room has its own private bathroom…’
‘Are you sure I won’t be in the way?’ Kate asked uncertainly, unable to stop herself from remembering the way his secretary had clung possessively to his arm.