Читать книгу Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 13

‘Anything else I can do?’

‘No. I think we’ve just about finished now,’ Ruth assured Olivia as she stepped back to eye the arrangement for the top table, tweaking a couple of stems judiciously.

‘The flowers look wonderful.’

Ruth gave her great-niece a wryly amused smile, hearing the genuine admiration in her voice and guessing what lay behind it. ‘What were you expecting,’ she mocked her gently, ‘or can I guess? Something twee and stilted, overwired flowers that would have looked more artificial than real, poor things?’ She shook her head reprovingly.

Olivia laughed. ‘Something like that,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Certainly nothing like this.’

She gestured towards the vibrant tumble of softly natural flowers set in some sort of wire concoction filled with moss—a theme that Ruth had repeated throughout the huge marquee in varying forms. Moss, fruit and even vegetables as well as flowers had all been utilised to create the wonderfully rich falls of cascading colour that Olivia was now admiring.

‘No wonder Aunt Jenny was so insistent on plain cream hangings for the marquee,’ she commented to Ruth.

‘Jenny and I were both in agreement that we wanted to get away completely from the prettiness of bridal tulle and dainty pastels.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Olivia assured her, gently touching the silky petal of one of the vividly coloured geums and poppies Ruth had used to create the harmonising masses of reds, oranges and yellows that were her colour theme for the event.

On the far side of the marquee, Jenny herself was going round each of the tables checking that everything was in place. The caterers had already arrived and were busy getting themselves organised.

Ben, who had been generally getting in everyone’s way and grumbling all afternoon, had finally allowed Hugh’s wife, Ann, to coax him back to the house, leaving Jenny free to make her final inspections in peace.

‘Caspar seems to be getting on well with Hillary,’ Ruth commented, glancing across the marquee to where the two of them were deep in conversation.

‘Well, they are both American,’ Olivia responded neutrally. She had never particularly taken to Hillary without really being able to say why.

It was Saul, she had noticed this afternoon, who had to take charge of their children, including little Meg, but then, in fairness, Olivia had to admit that she had no idea how much time Saul normally spent with his children, perhaps not very much, and hence Hillary’s determination that on this occasion she deserved a small break from them.

Saul had taken them back to the house now in order to start getting them bathed and changed in readiness for the evening ahead.

Her own brother, Jack, like his cousin, Joss, had been dragooned into helping out with the carrying to and fro of Ruth’s flowers and other materials. Was he aware of their mother’s problem …?

All day long Olivia had been trying to push the events of the previous night to the back of her mind but they couldn’t be ignored for ever, of course. Sooner or later she would …

She would … She tensed as she heard Caspar laughing. Hillary was standing beside him, her hand on his arm, and as Olivia watched she leaned across him to tuck a discarded cream rose into the buttonhole of his jacket. It was an intimate gesture and one that Olivia instinctively resented, her body stiffening as she watched the way Caspar responded to Hillary, apparently oblivious to her own presence.

‘Why don’t you take Caspar home?’ she heard Ruth suggesting gently at her side. ‘There’s nothing else to do here now apart from a bit of clearing up and the boys can help me with that.’

‘Aunt Ruth …’ Olivia paused. She desperately wanted someone to confide in, someone to talk to about her concern for her mother and her own shock at what she had discovered, but as strong as that need was, her sense of loyalty to her mother prevented her from giving in to it. Ruth had never really approved of Tiggy and if Olivia told her what was going on …

‘What is it, dear?’

‘Nothing …’ Olivia backtracked. ‘I’ll go and get Caspar.’

‘Flowers all done?’ Caspar enquired as Olivia went across to join him.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed as she slipped her arm through his and gave Hillary a cool smile.

Ostensibly Saul’s wife had come down to the marquee to join the other helpers but so far as Olivia was aware she appeared to have spent most of her time chatting to Caspar.

‘We really ought to leave,’ she warned Caspar now as she looked pointedly at her watch. ‘The Chester crowd will be arriving soon and I promised Mum that we’d be on hand to help out.’

‘Poor you,’ Hillary butted in sympathetically looking, Olivia was perfectly aware, not at her but instead at Caspar as she turned her body slightly towards him and with an air of complicity that Olivia knew only too well was designed to exclude herself. ‘You must be finding it a little intimidating being engulfed by such a large family. I know I did the first time I met them all. I felt quite alienated and alone—the only American and very much an outsider.’

‘That would have been your and Saul’s wedding day, wouldn’t it, Hillary?’ Olivia interrupted her coolly, reminding her, ‘I don’t think you’d met the whole family before then, had you?

‘Caspar, we really ought to be going,’ she repeated without waiting for Hillary’s response.

‘That was a little bit harsh, wasn’t it?’ Caspar commented critically once they were in the car and out of Hillary’s hearing.

He felt slightly on edge and irritable and was still smarting from Olivia’s sexual rejection the previous evening even though he was loath to admit it even to himself.

‘What was a little harsh?’ Olivia queried even though she knew exactly what he meant. The day would have been stressful enough with only the tension of working so hard to get everything just right for tonight without the added burden of worry and anxiety she was having to carry of the discovery she had made about her mother. The last thing she needed now was any kind of disharmony between her and Caspar. But it irked her that he didn’t seem able to see what kind of woman Hillary was, and if she was honest, it had annoyed and hurt, yes, hurt her, too, that he had seemed content to spend so much of the afternoon with Hillary. It still rankled that he hadn’t been more understanding last night.

‘You know what,’ Caspar countered as she started the car. ‘That comment you made just before we left.’

‘Really?’ Olivia challenged him, changing gear too quickly, the raw, grating sound of the clashing gears further exacerbating the already irritated and edgy state of her nervous system. ‘I don’t think so, Caspar. In fact, if you want my honest opinion, I find it rather odd that Hillary should have made such a statement at all, but then she’s the type of woman who never misses an opportunity to grab any male interest and sympathy she thinks might be available.’

‘Aha!’ Caspar responded, his face suddenly relaxing into a teasing smile. ‘I understand. You’re jealous and—’

‘No, I am not jealous,’ Olivia denied angrily. ‘I just don’t happen to like Hillary very much, that’s all. She’s a very predatory woman, very cold and calculating and far too—’

‘American,’ Caspar finished for her, his voice suddenly hardening as his smile disappeared. ‘No wonder she feels so isolated and alienated if that’s the way your family treats her,’ he continued, his voice grim with contempt.

‘Is that what she told you … that she feels isolated?’ Olivia demanded, suddenly beginning to lose her temper. She knew she was handling the situation badly, allowing it to balloon into something far more important and potentially dangerous than it should have ever been allowed to be, but she still felt afraid and hurt from last night’s discoveries and from Caspar’s refusal to share her feelings over them.

‘We did discuss how difficult she was finding it to adjust to life in this country,’ Caspar agreed evenly in a tone of voice that warned Olivia that she wasn’t the only one fast losing patience with their conversation. But she was too wrought up, too on edge—too much in need of the very large helping of TLC he seemed to have been unable to give her the previous night but that he appeared to have had no trouble at all in handing out generously to Hillary this afternoon—to apply logic and restraint to her thoughts and emotions—or her reactions.

‘Oh, did you?’ Olivia demanded angrily. ‘Well, she certainly seemed to be getting a very sympathetic hearing from you, judging by the way she was all over you,’ she fumed, ‘and she was certainly getting far more understanding from you than I got last night. But then I suppose the two of you are on a compatible wavelength, being fellow countrymen,’ she finished sarcastically.

‘It certainly helps to create a bond,’ Caspar agreed calmly, ‘and I have to say, Livvy, that she seems to be dealing far more responsibly with the threatened breakdown of her marriage than you are with—’

‘The threatened breakdown of her marriage,’ Olivia interrupted him, shocked. ‘What are you talking about? There’s nothing wrong with her marriage to Saul. In fact—’

‘No?’ Caspar countered grittily. ‘And how would you know that? According to Hillary, none of you has made the least attempt to welcome her into the family or to find out why she’s so unhappy or to help her to adjust to a different way of life.’

Olivia discovered she was shaking slightly as she turned into her parents’ drive and stopped the car. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing any of this. If Hillary feels that we’ve neglected her—in any way—then I would suggest that the fault, if there is one, lies more with her than with us. What else did she tell you?’ she demanded.

‘Not an awful lot other than the fact that there’s a history of antagonism and dislike towards Americans in the family.’

‘What?’ Olivia stared at him in disbelief. ‘Now I know she’s been lying to you. What on earth made her say a thing like that? It’s completely untrue. She’s the first American to marry into the family and—’

‘To marry into it, maybe. But not the first to be involved with a member of it,’ Caspar interrupted her grimly. ‘There was Ruth’s affair with an American major during the war and—’

‘Ruth’s what?’ Olivia couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice and she saw Caspar frown as he recognised it.

‘We’d better go inside,’ he muttered, turning to open the car door.

Olivia stopped him, grabbing hold of his sleeve, her eyes passionately alive with anger and hurt as she told him, ‘Oh no, you can’t leave it there, not after saying something like that. I know nothing about Ruth’s having an affair with anyone. She was engaged during the war to a British airman who was killed in action.’

‘Well, according to Hillary, who I gathered heard the story from Hugh, she was involved with an American major who was stationed locally, but when your grandfather and her father found out about the relationship they reported the major to his superiors and insisted that the relationship had to end. Apparently an American, in those days at least, wasn’t good enough to marry into their family! And Hillary says that kind of prejudice does tend to be passed on from one generation to the next.’

Appalled and confused, Olivia could think of nothing constructive to say. It was bad enough having to be forced to admit that she knew nothing of any relationship her great-aunt may or may not have had with an American but what was even worse was feeling that a barrier of doubt and mistrust had somehow sprung up between them. Caspar now seemed to believe that her family had some deep-seated dislike of Americans. Troubling, too, was her own inability to be able to do anything to convincingly refute it and thereby undo the damage that Hillary had so carelessly inflicted.

‘But you know how I feel about you, Caspar,’ she offered weakly. It was all she could think of to say as she touched him appealingly on his arm.

‘Do I?’ he responded unforgivingly. ‘I wonder why you’re going out with me, exactly. Is it because I’m American perhaps, because I’m a way of getting back at your grandfather?’

Without giving her a chance to reply, he got out of the car and loped towards the house, leaving Olivia with no option other than to follow him. She knew that once they were inside they would have no opportunity for any private conversation, not with the house soon to be full of visitors and the party only a matter of a few hours away. Yet she desperately wanted them to resolve their argument and make their peace with one another. She must convince him to retract his unjustified accusation about the basis of her feelings for him.

It was both unfair and illogical of him to throw that kind of accusation at her and then walk away without allowing her to defend herself from it. It left her feeling almost as though he had wanted to pick a fight with her; as though … As though what? But if so, then why? It was so unlike him, so alien to the maturity and the deeply grounded sense of himself she so admired and enjoyed in him.

Dispiritedly Olivia followed Caspar into the house. Behind her on the drive she could hear the sound of cars arriving—the Chester ‘lot’ no doubt! Squaring her shoulders she firmly put her own thoughts and fears to one side.