Читать книгу Bitter Betrayal - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 6

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 apprehension 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 wellbalanced, 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 shadow 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.

‘Mmm…well, there’s no shortage of excellent dress shops in York,’ she said now, ignoring the way Jenneth’s body tightened as though she was mentally preparing for flight. From what? Eleanor wondered curiously, studying her friend while appearing not to do so. ‘I could come with you, if you like,’ she offered. ‘Rachel’s coming in this afternoon—I was going to spend a couple of hours doing the books…’

Jenneth knew when she was being backed into a corner. And, realistically, she could hardly not go to the wedding. Louise would be hurt, and since Luke was not going to be there…Not for the first time, Jenneth wished that fate had seen fit to bestow upon her a nature that was less vulnerable.

‘Petrol tank’s full, tyres and oil are checked…Your suitcase is in the back…’

Jenneth raised her eyes heavenwards as Nick calmly ticked these items off on his fingers. Anyone listening would have thought that she was the twins’ junior and not the other way around. She wasn’t travelling south in the outfit Eleanor had bullied her into buying for the wedding. Instead she had allowed herself sufficient time to go to the Feathers beforehand and get changed.

It was barely seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, the sky a soft blue, hazed over with a mist that promised heat for later in the day. A perfect late June day…

In Little Compton, Louise, who had decided to spend several days at home before the wedding, would probably just be waking up. She had confessed to Jenneth over the telephone that she had succumbed to persuasion and temptation and had bought herself a wedding dress that bid to outshine anything that Scarlett O’Hara might ever have worn…

‘Cream and not white,’ Louise had told her, with her rich, unabashed chuckle.

George was far from being the first man in her friend’s life; Louise wasn’t promiscuous, but there had been several men with whom she had fallen in love, several lovers in her life from whom she had always managed to part on good terms, and it was obvious from what she had said to Jenneth that neither she nor George regretted those previous relationships.

It was going to be a long drive south, and Jenneth had decided to ignore the motorways because of the number of roadworks causing major delays.

By the twins’ reckoning she would reach Little Compton by twelve o’clock at the latest. Louise was getting married at three, and she had promised to be at the house to help her friend get ready beforehand and then afterwards to help her get changed before she and George left for their honeymoon.

‘A kind of unofficial bridesmaid,’ Louise had told her, and Jenneth had winced, remembering how once she had eagerly made Louise promise to perform that office for her.

The drive south was without incident, the roads, although busy, not oppressively so.

She reached the familiar countryside east of Bath just before eleven o’clock. Outwardly very little had changed in the seven years since she had left, although the large number of German marque cars bore witness to the fact that the new motorway was making this part of the country more accessible to those who earned their living in London.

Little Compton itself was just far away enough from the motorway to be unaffected by these changes. As she crested one of the gentle hills that surrounded it, Jenneth slowed down to look down on the untidy straggle of cottages that marked its one main road, the Feathers at one end of it, and the church at the other.

She suppressed the memories that threatened to come storming back…long, lazy summer afternoons spent with Luke, the young Jenneth bemused and thrilled by the almost magical way he had suddenly realised that she was no longer just a friend of his cousin’s but a person in her own right. Down there where the river meandered its lazy course, a glistening, fluid ribbon shadowed by willows, Luke had kissed her for the first time. Without wanting to, Jenneth remembered how her whole body had responded to that kiss, almost vibrating with shocked pleasure like a highly tuned instrument. He had laughed tenderly against her mouth and asked her if she knew what it did to him to feel that kind of response. It had been in that same spot only three months later that he had proposed to her, saying tersely that he knew he was rushing her, but that he was leaving to work in California at the end of the summer and that he wanted to take with him her promise to wait for him.

Later, when she had given him her breathless, almost incredulous answer, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her with a fierce passion that had set her heart pounding and made her totally unable to resist when he had laid her down on the soft grass beneath the trees and, between kisses that turned her bones to liquid, gently unfastened the shirt she was wearing to bare her breasts first to his eyes, then to his hands and, finally, shockingly and blissfully, to his mouth.

If he had pressed her then, they would have been lovers, but he hadn’t and, once the announcement of their engagement had been made, their time alone together had seemed to diminish, mainly because Luke’s mother’s health had started to deteriorate, and Jenneth had fully understood and backed his need to put his mother first.

Shaking her head to dispel the unwanted images shimmering just below the surface of her mind, she put her foot on the accelerator and turned firmly away, driving towards the village.

The landlady of the Feathers welcomed her warmly, and showed her immediately to her room, a comfortably furnished attic with a dormer window, and its own private bathroom…The Feathers had once, long ago in the days of coach travel, been a posting house, and Jenneth’s bedroom overlooked the enclosed courtyard to the rear of the village street.

‘Louise said you’d prefer to be in here,’ the landlady told her cheerfully, and as Jenneth agreed with her calm, slightly remote smile she reflected that it was typical of Louise that she should be known to everyone in the village by her Christian name, even though her visits home were these days limited to flying half-day stays at Christmas and other anniversaries.

The Feathers had changed hands since Jenneth’s day, and the landlady was more interested in talking about the wedding and the amazement it had caused in the village than displaying curiosity about Jenneth herself. Her indifference released some of Jenneth’s tension, and as the landlady left, promising to send someone up with a light salad lunch and a pot of coffee, Jenneth reflected ruefully that she had probably blown people’s reaction to her appearance at the wedding totally out of proportion. This realisation helped to steady her nerves, and when a shy waitress came upstairs with the promised lunch Jenneth felt relaxed enough to pick up the telephone and dial the familiar number of Louise’s family home.

Louise’s mother answered the telephone, recognising Jenneth’s voice immediately and responding warmly to her hesitant enquiries as to the state of the bride-to-be.

By the time Louise herself picked up the receiver, she was ready to dismiss all her fears as simply the working of her own self-indulgent imagination, and agreed readily to go straight round to the house immediately she had changed.

She chose not to drive her car to Louise’s parents’ home, but to walk there instead, not down the main street of the village, but along the path that ran behind the cottages and then skirted the churchyard.

Jenneth had always found it slightly surprising that her outspoken, very modern-minded friend should be the daughter of a vicar, and she knew that, to David Simmonds’ credit, he had never tried to impose his own religious beliefs on his daughter.

He greeted Jenneth warmly as, through habit, she walked round to the back door of the vicarage and he opened it to her knock. Louise’s mother bustled into the kitchen and kissed Jenneth affectionately. A tall, dark-haired woman, she betrayed her physical relationship to Luke’s father and to Luke himself, having the same strong bone-structure and thick, dark hair. Louise, she had always insisted, was a throwback, and certainly her friend’s vivid red hair and pale, creamy skin bore no resemblance to either of her parents’ colouring.

Jenneth was told to go straight upstairs, and found her friend sitting in front of her bedroom mirror, clad in an almost indecently feminine chemise of cream satin and lace while she peered myopically into the mirror and tried to apply mascara to her lashes.

‘Damn!’ she exploded as Jenneth walked in.

‘Let me do it for you,’ suggested Jenneth calmly, taking charge and deftly applying the necessary coats of dark grey colour to the long but sandy lashes, asking humorously, ‘What happened to the contact lenses?’

‘I daren’t risk them,’ Louise replied gloomily. ‘I’m bound to start howling and wash the damn things out…’

‘There’s always your glasses,’ Jenneth told her mischievously.

As a schoolgirl Louise had been obliged to wear the regulation National Health corrective glasses, and now she scowled horribly into Jenneth’s laughing eyes and threatened, ‘You dare mention those…’

The scowl disappeared as they both burst out laughing and, ignoring her perfection of her delicately made-up face and the artfully arranged tumble of red curls that brushed her naked shoulders, Louise stood up and hugged Jenneth affectionately, saying emotionally, ‘Oh, Jen, I’m so glad you’re here…’

Listening to her, Jenneth felt guilty and ashamed of her craven impulse to renege on her promise, and hugged her back in a silent exchange of emotion that held memories of the years and times they had shared.

‘Isn’t this ridiculous?’ Louise sniffed as Jenneth released her. ‘I feel as weepy and emotional as a Jane Austen heroine…’

‘You certainly aren’t dressed like one,’ Jenneth told her forthrightly, eyeing the extremely provocative creation of satin and lace that purported to have the utilitarian purpose of sleeking her friend’s soft curves and supporting the delicate cream stockings she was wearing.

Louise grinned at her, totally unabashed.

‘Like it? George chose it,’ she told Jenneth wickedly, and then drew her attention to the tiny row of satin-covered buttons that fastened down the front.

‘He said that thinking about me wearing this is the only thing that’s going to keep him going through the whole ordeal of the ceremony,’ she added with another grin, and Jenneth was forced to mentally review her opinion of her friend’s husband-to-be. Despite his name, he was obviously far from being the stalwart, sober, almost dull character she had envisaged.

From downstairs, they both heard Louise’s mother call up warningly, ‘You’ve only got half an hour left, Louise…’ and, remembering her supposed role, Jenneth picked up the billowing silk and net underskirt from the bed and presented it to her friend, helping her to fasten the tapes that tied at the back, and then helping her into the frothing creation of raw silk and lace that had swung gently in the breeze from the window.

Stupidly, once the last small button had been fastened, and she was able to walk in front of her friend and survey the finished effect, Jenneth discovered that her eyes were misty with tears and her voice choked with emotion.

‘You look…wonderful…’ was all she could manage, but it seemed to be enough, because Louise hugged her tightly and then swore huskily.

‘Damn! I daren’t start wailing now or my blessed mascara is bound to run…’ And then, more soberly, she said, ‘Jen, this should be you and not me. You’re made for marriage…children…’ A frown touched her face and, sensing instinctively that she was about to mention Luke, Jenneth trembled with relief when the door suddenly opened and Louise’s parents came in with a bottle of champagne and four glasses.

By the time they had toasted the bride and allowed her one glass of champagne to bolster her failing courage, it was time to leave for the church.

Louise had elected to walk there, proudly escorted by her father, and it seemed to Jenneth, watching her from the sidelines, that the whole village had turned out to wish her well.

Louise’s godfather was giving her away, and Jenneth felt tears spring to her eyes as her father handed her over to his cousin before disappearing inside the church where he would conduct the ceremony.

Most of the guests were already inside, and Jenneth hurried to her own place in a pew to the rear of the small, quiet building, just in time to watch Louise drift beautifully down the aisle.

Although she tried not to let it do so, the familiarity of the comfortable church where she herself had once envisaged being married made her ache inside with a pain she had thought she was long ago past feeling.

Her eyes blurred with tears which she readily recognised were not for the awe and mysticism of the service, but, self-pityingly, for herself. Through the blur of them she was distantly aware of someone entering the pew: a young girl with dark, shiny hair, framing an elfin face, and dressed in a pretty, crisp cotton dress, with a dropped waistline and a neat sailor collar. Behind the girl was a man, but Jenneth didn’t look at him, all her concentration fixed on the bride and groom as she willed herself not to give in to the tears burning the backs of her eyes and making her throat raw with pain.

It was stupidity and self-indulgent folly to remember that once she had believed that she would be married here…that she would walk down the narrow ancient aisle to find Luke waiting for her…to have their marriage blessed and sanctified here in the mellow darkness of the church where members of his family had been married for so many generations.

Some memories, though, could not be suppressed…like the one of Luke bringing her in here when he’d given her her engagement ring, and kissing her finger before sliding on to it the narrow band of gold with its brilliant ring of diamond fire surrounding the central sapphire. He had kissed her once, tenderly, chastely…her mouth twisted over her almost medieval choice of word, and yet there was nothing else that truly described the sanctity of that moment…and her body shook, racked by a tremor of anguish as she fought to suppress the memories threatening to overwhelm her and acknowledged inwardly that this had been what she had feared. Not the speculative looks of others, but her own deep inner vulnerability…her own painful memories…her own still aching need to understand just what had motivated Luke to deceive her so cruelly and surely so unnecessarily. Why get engaged to her in the first place if he had known all along that all he wanted from her was a sexual relationship? Why make promises he had no intention of keeping when he must have known she was so fathoms deep in love with him that she would have given herself to him blindly, with the right kind of persuasion?

The tears she was fighting to suppress overwhelmed her, and ran betrayingly down her face. She bent her head protectively, hoping the soft swing of her hair would conceal her face from the other people in the pew beside her, and bit her bottom lip hard to suppress the vast welling of emotion that threatened her. And then, to her astonishment, she felt something soft touch her hand, and a low but insistent little voice whispered urgently to her.

‘You can use my handkerchief, if you like…I brought two because Daddy said that ladies always need them at weddings…’ This last statement was delivered importantly, as though everything that Daddy said ought to be recorded in the statute books, and Jenneth turned her head automatically, unable to resist the confiding voice and gesture. The handkerchief was crumpled and colourful but, because all her life she had loved and understood children, Jenneth took it, and firmly blew her nose on it while she and her rescuer exchanged conspiratorial feminine glances.

‘I wanted to bring some confetti,’ her new friend confided engagingly, obviously deciding that the loan of the handkerchief and its acceptance constituted a basis for shared confidences. ‘But Mrs. Mack wouldn’t buy any for me. She doesn’t approve of weddings.’

In front of them the bridal pair were making their vows. Louise’s father gave the blessing and above them the organ music swelled triumphantly; as though on cue, the church doors were flung open to admit the brilliance of the June sunshine, and high up in the church tower the great bells which had been cast in the same year that St Paul’s rose from its ashes gave joyful tongue to the happiness of the hour.

Automatically, as the light flooded the church behind them, Jenneth turned her head, and then froze with shock as she found herself looking straight into the familiar features of the one person she would have fled to the ends of the earth to avoid.

‘Luke…’

His name was a strangled sound on her lips, the shocked pallor of her face causing the man watching her to narrow his eyes consideringly as he looked from her blonde head to his daughter’s dark one. It had been a last-minute decision to attend his cousin’s wedding, prompted by his daughter’s very obvious but patiently borne disappointment, rather than any desire to see Louise married.

If the news of his appointment had not meant the cancellation of his lecture tour in America less than a week after it had begun he wouldn’t have been here at all. Angelica had expressed herself delighted to learn that she was going to have her father’s company during the long school holidays after all, and had been even more pleased to learn that they would be moving from London to a city called York, which her father had told her she would like very much.

Since she readily accepted her father’s word as being above and beyond that of any other authority, she was envisaging the impending move with a pleasure and excitement that was only in part tinged with the knowledge that their existing housekeeper, with whom she was not always in accord, would not be moving with them.

Angelica didn’t enjoy being the responsibility of a housekeeper. What she wanted was a real mother like other girls had…but to achieve that her father would have to remarry, and she had judiciously over the last few months been casting her eye about in order to supply the need in their lives that her father seemed neglectful in attending to…

For a moment Jenneth actually thought she was going to faint, but then pride came to her rescue, and she forced herself to regain control of her failing senses, wondering bitterly what premeditated cruelty it was that had motivated Luke to choose this particular pew, and to curse her own susceptibility in believing Louise’s assurances that her cousin was not going to attend the wedding.

The bride and groom were coming down the aisle towards them. Angelica, blissfully unaware of the fierce undercurrents seething between the two adults, grasped Jenneth’s hand and demanded, ‘Doesn’t she look lovely?’ Then, without realising it, she acquitted Louise of any blame for Luke’s appearance by adding innocently, ‘We weren’t going to come today, but Daddy had to come back from America because he’s got a new job, and I persuaded him to bring me…’This was accompanied by a wide beam of pleasure, to which Jenneth in her vulnerable and defenceless state found it impossible not to respond.

‘Can we sit with you at the reception?’ Angelica asked eagerly, following up her advantage with innocent swiftness. ‘I don’t have a mummy and I don’t like the way people look at me and Daddy when we’re on our own,’ she confided appealingly to Jenneth, while in the background Jenneth heard Luke snap warningly,

‘Angelica, that’s enough…’

As tears started in the clear green eyes, so like Luke’s that Jenneth acknowledged she ought to have known immediately who she was, she found herself instinctively protecting the child from her father’s anger, saying fiercely, ‘Don’t…’ and then, before she could overcome her own shock, Angelica announced happily,

‘See, Daddy, she doesn’t mind at all. I knew you wouldn’t…’Cos you’re here on your own, too, aren’t you?’ she said artlessly, adding with a childish forthrightness that struck Jenneth to the heart, ‘You aren’t wearing a wedding ring, so that means that you’re not married, doesn’t it? And I expect you don’t want to sit on your own either. It will be fun,’ she finished, beaming up at Jenneth. ‘We can pretend that we’re a real family…’

And, before Jenneth could make the appalled denial that was choking in her throat, Louise and George drew level with them, and she had a moment’s startled realisation that her friend’s husband looked nothing like George-like, and that Louise was wearing a totally unfamiliar look of blissful bemusement that made her own heart ache treacherously.

Somehow or other she discovered that she was outside with the rest of the guests crowding around the newly married couple, and that Angelica had fixed herself firmly to her side, and was clutching her hand with what almost amounted to possessiveness, chattering brightly to her so that Jenneth hadn’t the heart to reject her and quell the happiness in her eyes by telling her that she wanted nothing to do with her.

It was several moments before they managed to break through the crush to reach Louise, and when her friend saw the little girl clinging firmly to Jenneth’s side, her eyes darkened with dismay and she said uncertainly, ‘Jenneth, I promise you I had no idea…’

Before Jenneth could say anything, Angelica clutched even harder at her hand and announced, not just to Louise, but also to the crowd of people within earshot of her carrying, piping voice, ‘Jenneth’s going to be my pretend mummy, Aunt Louise.’

As Jenneth heard the hard male voice say warningly behind her, ‘Angelica,’ she felt the shock of her body’s awareness of Luke’s tall male presence behind her, and her body trembled so visibly that she was not surprised to see the concern in Louise’s eyes.

If she had felt that the day could hold nothing worse than it had already held, she found she was wrong, when she heard Louise’s mother saying firmly. ‘Luke, Jenneth looks as though she’s about to faint…help her, will you?’

Against her back and arm she felt the hands whose touch had tormented her dreams for far too many years, holding her firmly but dispassionately, as Luke briskly obeyed his aunt’s instructions and manoeuvred her out of the crush of people around the church porch and into the privacy of the churchyard.

Now, when she would have given anything to faint and thereby escape a situation which was fast outstripping the very worst of her nightmares, her body remained stubbornly determined not to allow her that escape.

Instinctively she pulled away from Luke, not surprised that he let her go—he must be loathing this every bit as much as she was, but he could only be suffering revulsion, and not the agonising awareness of feelings she ached to be able to deny which were oppressing her.

‘How are you getting back to the house?’ she heard him asking her distantly, and, too surprised to lie, she told him.

‘Walking? In this heat?’ She watched the dark eyebrows draw together, and saw that the years had not been entirely kind to him and that, although nothing ever could diminish his masculinity, there were hard grooves etched either side of his mouth, and tiny lines fanning out from his eyes, suggesting that his life had not been without pain.

That should have made her feel glad, but it didn’t. She had an appalling, impossible impulse to reach out and touch him. To smooth those lines away…to make him smile, the old, familiar, teasing smile that had once made her stomach curl with pleasure and her body ache with desire.

‘My car’s just round the corner. We’ll give you a lift…’

‘No!’The panic-stricken denial was out before she could stop it, leaving them both to look at one another in a silence that was impregnated with an emotional hostility Jenneth could almost taste.

In the distance the photographer was busily at work, and she could hear the hum of conversation, but it was a distant, unobtrusive hum, as though she and Luke were sealed into an intimacy that locked out the rest of the human race.

And then Angelica piped up shrilly and uncertainly, ‘But, Jenneth, you promised that you were going to be my pretend mummy…’

Under the sardonic, bitter eyes of her father Jenneth turned towards the little girl, the words of denial burning her throat until she saw the vulnerable look in her eyes and knew that she just could not do it.