by Penny Jordan
He seemed to hesitate before responding to her question, causing Jessica to frown as she saw the faint shadows darkening his eyes.
‘Necessity,’ he told her at last, and then leavened the starkness of the word with its undertones of past unhappiness with a wry smile. ‘I don’t regret it now. I find the world of finance intensely fascinating and seem to have discovered my métier there.’
Jessica wondered if he would go on to explain in more detail, but hesitated to press him, not wanting to intrude on memories he might prefer to keep private. His hand on her shoulder guided her along a disused and overgrown footpath, and he stopped to examine a broken stone urn which looked as though it should have been one of a pair. It guarded a set of stone steps which led down to what must once have been a south-facing lawn surrounded by herbaceous borders and enclosed by a traditional yew hedge. Now all that remained was a tangled mess. The yew hedge had reached proportions that threw ominous shadows more suitable for a graveyard than a garden. Idly, Jessica used her imagination to project a mental picture of what it might once have been, believing the subject of Daniel’s past closed, and then to her surprise he said abruptly, ‘Do you mind if we walk for a few minutes? I find it easier to talk that way.’
She wanted to tell him that she didn’t mind what she did as long as she did it with him, but such extravagant teenage idolatry was something she felt it wiser to suppress, and so instead she shook her head, allowing him to draw her closer against his side and to keep her there as he matched his pace to hers.
‘You already know something of my background,’ he told her. ‘What I didn’t tell you was that when I was sixteen my mother’s sister and her husband were killed in a car crash. They had three children, all of them under seven; the youngest, Gemma, was only eighteen months old. My aunt and uncle were only relatively young. They hadn’t been able to make any financial provision for the children in the event of their deaths.
‘My parents made the decision to take responsibility for them and to bring them up as they had done us. I was taking my O levels at the time. In my imagination, I’d already decided on my future: university, including training with a firm of high-ranking architects. I didn’t just want to be any architect. I wanted to be articled to the best there was. I wanted to travel—Italy, Greece, the old world and then the new, to learn all that was best in my field. My father had to explain to me that, with the added responsibility of three more children, it just wasn’t going to be possible for him to finance me in the way that we’d planned; architecture is a seven-year course, you see.
‘Of course, I could have gone ahead with my plans, worked my own way through university, got my degree and then built up my skill and reputation. It would just have taken a bit longer, because I wouldn’t have been able to devote all my time to studying. But in those days I believed less in the value of ability and the will to succeed, and far more than I should have done in my right to an unhindered education.’
‘But it’s not too late,’ Jessica counselled quickly, remembering her own misery when compelled by duty and love to try and turn herself into the person she believed her parents wanted her to be. He could still qualify, set up in practice…
‘I no longer want to,’ Daniel told her, and added, ‘You’re missing the point, which is that I wanted my success to be handed to me, that I believed I had a right to expect my parents to make it possible for me to succeed. I wanted to be an architect because it seemed to me to be a glamorous, potentially high-profile life-style. My love of design and buildings came second to my love of self.’
‘It must have been hard for you,’ Jessica murmured. ‘To have all your hopes and plans dashed like that…’
‘Maybe, but it taught me a great deal, and I like to think that I’m a better person from what I learned. You see, initially I behaved extremely badly—in the ways that only a spoiled teenager can behave badly. I let my schoolwork slide. I sulked and complained and generally made life unpleasant all round, culminating with the failure of my A levels. I was at a private school, and fully expected my father to pay for an extra year’s schooling so that I could resit them. I hoped through my bad behaviour to pressure him into financing my career as an architect—and I deliberately blinded myself to the fact that, in financing that, he would have to deprive my cousins of the same kind of education he had given us. It came as a grim shock when he told me that, far from paying for an extra year’s schooling for me and wasting several more thousands of pounds, he was going to use the money instead for my cousins’ education, considering that they deserved it far more than I did.
‘At first I thought he was simply making an idle threat. As the eldest, despite the fact that both my parents ensured that I took my turn with chores at home, I had somehow or other during my growing-up process collected the chauvinistic belief that as a son, and the eldest child, my needs and desires somehow ranked higher than those of my siblings and cousins. My father very quickly dispatched this error.
‘Instead of going on to university, I had to leave school and find myself a job.’
He saw her face and smiled.
‘It wasn’t as harsh as you seem to think, and taught me several salutory lessons, through which I discovered my flair for matters fiscal. I also discovered how much more self-appreciation one’s achievements bring when one has earned them for oneself.
‘I had to go to night-school to get the qualifications to enable me to go on to university, and by that time I had discovered my hitherto unsuspected skill with figures, so I opted to take a degree in economics.’
‘And your parents?’ Jessica questioned.
‘Unfairly proud of my achievements, so the others tell me. The youngest of my cousins is now sitting her A levels. Like my father and sister, she wants to go into medicine. She’s utterly dedicated to the ideal of doing all that she can to work for the improvement of world health, especially in the Third World countries. When I think that through my selfishness I might have deprived her of the opportunity to fulfil that ideal, I can only thank God that my parents were wise enough and loving enough to stand firm with me. That’s why…’
He stopped walking and turned to face her.
‘Jessica, I have to tell you,’ he began earnestly, frowning as he looked down at her, his eyes shadowed and dark so that suddenly her heart missed a beat, her mind already braced as though for a blow, already anticipating that he was about to tell her something she wasn’t going to like, and then before he could speak they both heard something travelling along the drive.
Daniel cursed and released her.
‘That will be my ex-builder. I told him to meet me here so that I could pay him off and make it clear to him just what I think of his shoddy workmanship. I think it might be an idea if you wait for me here,’ he added purposefully. ‘I suspect this isn’t going to be pleasant.’
* * *
He was gone for just over half an hour, and when he returned he looked so grim and remote that Jessica found it impossible to ask him what it was he had been about to say to her when they were interrupted.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TWO days later, prowling edgily around her workroom, Jessica acknowledged how much she was missing Daniel.
He had had to go to London the previous morning, and wouldn’t be back until this evening, and already his absence was eating into her like a canker.
Her phone rang and she raced to answer it, subduing her disappointment when it was not Daniel on the other end of the line.
In fact it was someone from the National Trust, with which she had had dealings before, wanting to make arrangements for her to travel up to Northumberland to look at and potentially do some repair work on a tapestry so fragile that it had to be worked on in situ.
Jessica knew the tapestry, having been asked to inspect it on a previous visit. Her discussion with Jane Robertson, who was in charge of that section of the National Trust’s restoration department, was a long one. She agreed to travel up to Northumberland and to stay t
here overnight so that she could make a thorough study of and report on the tapestry.
‘We can put you up in the house itself,’ Jane told her. ‘We’ve got a couple of rooms which we keep for visitors. One of them has the most marvellous parcel-gilt four-poster bed. It’s been restored, of course, and we’ve had new silk hangings woven. It’s terribly romantic.’
Listening to Jane enthusing about the bed and its restoration, Jessica wondered wistfully if it would be possible for Daniel to go north with her. She tried not to allow herself to be tempted by images of the two of them sharing the watery bluey-green intimacy of the silk-hung bed. When she eventually replaced the receiver her palms were damp and her heart was pounding. She was so shockingly aroused by the power of her own thoughts that she knew if he were to walk into the house now…
As though deliberately on cue, someone rang the front door bell. The shock of it pierced her, sending a tiny message of excitementcum-panic thrilling through her.
She positively raced downstairs, flinging open the front door, her face flushed and her eyes fever-bright with anticipation.
Only it wasn’t Daniel who was standing there. It was Emma. She stared at her cousin, her smile dying, to be replaced by bitter disappointment.
‘Emma,’ she said dully, standing to one side so that her cousin could come in. ‘What brings you here?’
Her cousin, as always, was dressed in the very latest designer-label fashion, her face perfectly made-up and her hair immaculate.
She raised her eyebrows as she stalked in—no other word could adequately describe the hauteur with which she moved, the very definite ‘look at me’ aura she deliberately invoked.
‘A duty visit to my godmama.’ She pulled a face. ‘I thought I might as well call in and see you on my way back,’ Emma told her smoothly. ‘You don’t look very pleased to see me, though. Perhaps you were expecting someone else,’ she added archly as she followed Jessica into the kitchen-cum-living-room, grimacing faintly as she did so, and saying, ‘Honestly, Jess. I can’t understand how you can live somewhere like this. It’s so small and ordinary. When I think of Uncle James and Aunt Harriet’s house in Kensington…’
She gave a delicate shudder and then turned to Jessica, giving her one of her brilliantly unkind smiles, so that Jessica felt her toes curling in anticipation of one of Emma’s more cruelly acid jibes.
‘Still, it won’t be for very long, will it?’ Emma said softly. ‘Aunt H. is cock-a-hoop about the whole thing. A summer wedding next year—just nice time to get everything organised. I expect the engagement will be announced at the usual family Christmas shindig. Quite a feather in your parents’ cap. And, of course, so clever of darling Uncle James to keep it all in the family, so to speak. I must say, though, that I was surprised.’
Eyebrows raised, mouth pursed, eyes cold as winter ice, she turned to Jessica and said sweetly, ‘Do you know, darling, I always thought that if you did get married, it would be someone frightfully worthy and intellectual. I never imagined for one moment that you’d fall in so easily with your parents’ plans. Not after all the fuss you made when you decided to leave the bank. Of course, your father had to put a brave face on it at the time, and I know the whole family were rather miffed when he didn’t take Cousin John’s Paul into the bank in your place, but then I suppose he’s always had something like this in mind. Finding himself an ambitious man, clever enough to take into the bank as a partner, and ambitious enough to actually accept such an archaic condition. It’s all so frightfully Victorian, isn’t it? And I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised about Daniel’s decision to go along with your father’s plans. After all, he is frightfully hard-edged and ambitious, and he’s never made any secret of the fact that money is very important to him, but you…well, my dear, you have surprised me,’ Emma told her, folding herself elegantly into a chair and crossing her legs so that she could admire the silken elegance of their slenderness.
A smile of pure catlike pleasure curled her mouth as she removed one of her leather gauntlet-style gloves and drew her slender, long-nailed fingers along one slim calf.
‘There’s always something about black silk stockings, don’t you think?’ she said to Jessica and then smiled again. ‘Oh, but then I forgot, since you became so independent and bucolic I don’t suppose your budget stretches to such luxuries. Personally I’d rather die than wear those appalling nylon things you see so many people wearing—even with quite good clothes. You can’t imagine the number of people who simply have no idea of real style.’ She raised her head and studied Jessica’s paper-white face with apparent surprise.
‘Jess…what on earth’s wrong? Have I said something I shouldn’t? I must say I was surprised when I heard the news, but I didn’t think you’d react like this to my knowing. Heavens, Uncle and Aunt seemed delighted. Uncle James opened a bottle of champagne when Daniel told him, and not just any champagne either. Vintage and absolutely delicious.’
Her small pink tongue touched her heavily glossed mouth as though remembering the taste of that very expensive champagne.
Something moved sluggishly and sickly in the pit of Jessica’s stomach. She wanted to scream at her cousin to go away and leave her—leave her to come to terms with what she had just learned, leave her to rationalise all the disjointed information Emma had just given her—but Emma wasn’t waiting for her reply, she was pouting and saying with a frown, ‘And to think I was the one who introduced Daniel to your father.’
‘You know Daniel?’
Jessica wasn’t aware of speaking the words until she heard them resounding hollowly and painfully into the room.
Emma’s eyebrows rose.
‘But of course…I met him at Meriel Faber’s divorce party. Meriel was furious when he took me home. She’d got her own eye on him. You’ll have to be very careful, darling,’ Emma warned Jessica. ‘He’s frightfully attractive, and very, very sexy…but then, it isn’t as though you’ve fallen madly in love with one another, is it? So clever of Uncle James to offer to make Daniel a partner in the bank. I mean, there’s no other way he could ever have achieved that kind of status off his own bat, and with the added promise of his son inheriting the whole lot…I promise you that will really put Cousin John’s nose out.’
Jessica knew that if she stood there listening to much more she was going to be sick, no longer caring about anything other than the appalling ache burning inside her, the sick shock which had turned her skin clammy and her brain to papier mâché.
‘Darling, you look so pale.’As Emma glanced at her watch, Jessica had the feeling that her cousin was secretly laughing at her, as though she knew. But how could she?
‘I’m so sorry I can’t stay longer, Jess, but I’ve got a date this evening.’ She made a brief kissing noise in Jessica’s direction, and pulled on her glove, her smile faintly malicious and triumphant as she paused by the door to say, ‘Oh, and one word of warning, darling—don’t be silly enough to fall for Daniel, will you? He’s a real heartbreaker, or at least he was. I suppose he’ll have to reform now that he’s about to be a married man. Well, at least you’ll be sure of one thing—you’re getting a husband who’s an excellent lover.’ She was almost purring, and Jessica felt her nausea increase.
She waited until she was quite sure that Emma had driven away before staggering upstairs to her bedroom. Once there she crawled into the middle of the bed and lay there, her eyes burning and dry, her stomach still churning nauseously, her mind wrestling with the enormity of her own stupidity.
Daniel had not approached her as a stranger, but as part of a deliberate plan—a plan no doubt set up with her parents’ approval, a plan to deceive her in the most cruel and destructive way there was.
And for what? So that her father could have his grandson, and so that Daniel—Daniel whom she had admired, whom she had liked, whom she had loved—could have a partnership in her father’s bank.
She closed her eyes, aching to have the power to send herself back to a time before sh
e had known Daniel. How gullible she had been! How stupid! There was no chance that Emma could have made up what she had told her. It had all rung too true. And yet…
She opened her eyes and stared at the telephone beside her bed.
It would be so easy to pick up the receiver and telephone her mother, ask her—ask her what? If she and her father and Daniel had deliberately deceived her? She started to shake, and curled herself up into a small ball of agonised misery.
What a fool she had made of herself, listening to him, believing him, opening her most private self out to him, loving him, and all the time he had been lying to her, letting her believe that he loved her.
When had he intended to tell her? After he had made love to her? she wondered cynically. After he had made sure of her, after he was confident enough of her to believe that she would accept his deception? Maybe he wouldn’t even have told her until after he had married her—but no, that would have been impossible. He would have had to tell her beforehand…How sure of her he must have been.
Too sure. Much too sure…
Thank heaven she had found out the truth before it was too late.
A small voice mocked her inside, taunting her with the knowledge that it was already too late, but stubbornly she refused to listen to it. She and Daniel had not yet been lovers. She had still not given him that final commitment, and now she never would. Never. Never…
* * *