Penny Jordan (19 page)

It had seemed to him this morning, as dawn broke across the sky and he lay beside Honor in the bed that she had told him gently she wanted him to share with her, that there was something rather extraordinary and ordained by fate about the fact that she and the priest shared a common bond of wanting to help and heal others. They would like one another, he knew, and probably have so much to talk about together that he might well be excluded and forgotten by both of them.

He had wanted to tell her so. But then he remembered the other morning. When he had wanted to tell her the truth about himself, she had stopped him, smiling gently as she placed her fingers against his mouth and shook her head.

'No,' she had told him. 'No confidences, no confessions. Let's just enjoy what we have.'

And then she had reached out and touched him, and everything but the need she was fostering in him ceased to exist.

They had spent the rest of the day in leisurely companionship, working harmoniously together as she showed him how to harvest the herbs she was gathering, laughing as she taught him the correct way to collect them, offering him tantalising snippets of information about them as she did so.

Then later when it grew dark, they had made a meal together and afterwards talked about her plans for the house.

The house David had shared with Tiggy had been decorated in whatever style was currently

'in' and David had been too busy living the life he believed was the one he wanted to bother having any input into it. Significantly, or so it seemed to him now, he had never thought of the house as

'home'.

Home was... Home was a house like Jon and Jenny's, filled with warmth and love.

But when Honor started to talk about her plans for decorating Foxdean, David had discovered that he was as eager and enthusiastic to express his own ideas as she was hers.

'It seems that we both share a love of strong colours,' Honor had acknowledged at one point.

'My daughters both think I'm mad to even consider painting the sitting room a deep ochre. They think it's too dark as it is.' She smiled reminiscently. 'Abigail is frighteningly organised and tidy. She lives in one of those loft spaces where everything is white, wood or chrome.'

'And your other daughter?' David had asked her.

'Well, she's living in a rented flat at the moment. She's a bit undecided about where her future lies. She's thinking of changing her job, which could entail a move, maybe even abroad.'

'I think ochre would look wonderful,' David approved.

A long time ago when he was a child, he had been given a box of paints as a Christmas present by Aunt Ruth. Jon, he seemed to remember, had been given seeds. Knowing what he now did as an adult, he could see that Ruth had probably been trying to encourage them both to develop different sides of their personalities. Ruth was both a keen gardener and artistic. He had loved those paints, enthusiastically creating huge, bright sunbursts of colour, but when his father had seen what he was doing, he had become angry.

'Painting! Arty rubbish! That's for girls,' he had told him, and David had put the paints away, truculently repeating to Ruth the words his father had used when she asked if he was enjoying them.

And yet in Jamaica he had often itched for canvas to be able to capture the vibrant brilliance of the colours all around him.

'This poor house has been left cold and unloved for so long that it needs warm colours to bring it back to life,' Honor had said.

'Yes.' In David's mind's eye he could see the north-facing room where Honor had dumped boxes of books, which, she had informed him, would have to stay there until she had shelves made for them, painted in a warm terracotta.

'I want to decorate the stairs with a huge mural,' Honor had continued. 'All lovely glowing colours.'

'A Tuscan scene,' David had said, smiling. He had seen such murals in some of the villas where he had worked abroad, but Honor had shaken her head.

'No. What I've got in mind is something...'

She had paused and screwed up her eyes in concentration. 'Something unique and special. Only I'm not sure just what.'

'How about copying some of the illuminated scripts that monks used to paint in their herbals?'

David had suggested. 'The colours they used were wonderfully rich and you could create your own personal monastery garden with all the herbs you—'

'Oh! That's a wonderful idea,' Honor had interrupted him excitedly. 'Yes, that's exactly what I want. Now why on earth didn't I think of that?

Oh, you are
so
clever.'

Her almost childlike enthusiasm had made David laugh, but at the same time he had been both thrilled and flattered that she had so obviously liked his suggestion.

They had spent the rest of the evening going through some of the older herbals Honor had collected, jotting down ideas, and then at bedtime Honor had turned to him and very calmly and directly said, 'I'm going up now. I doubt that we're going to have a power cut tonight now that the storm's passed, but you'd be very welcome to share my bed—if you want to.'

She had left the room without waiting for his reply. He had caught up with her when she was halfway up the stairs.

'The way you make me feel, I'm not sure if I can make it as far as the bedroom,' he had confessed frankly before kissing her possessively.

Driving back along the empty roads through the mist-wreathed Cheshire farmlands, David reminded himself of that old maxim: 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth.' In other words, some situations did not profit from over-analysis or too close an inspection.

Once when David had asked the priest in exhausted anguish why people who were so innocent of any crime were punished with the ravages of dreadful and surely needless pain at the end of their lives, he'd admitted he didn't know.

'All I do know is that such things seem easier to bear if one has faith, beliefs, acceptance—call it what you will—if one accepts what is instead of seeking to find an explanation for it.'

To some, such an attitude of mind was a weakness; to others, it was a strength. David wasn't sure any more which side of the argument he favoured. All he
did
know was that on this misty autumn morning as he drove towards a house where a woman of almost magical enchantment waited for him, he was happier, more at peace, more fulfilled than he had ever been in his entire life. Perhaps Honor was right to insist that they live simply for the day. Why complicate or spoil things?

As he parked the car outside the house, he reached over to pick up the bag containing the croissants. They had been fresh from the baker's oven when he bought them.

COULD THERE BE
a more perfect way to spend a lazy morning? Honor wondered happily as she heard David return.

She had had an idea for the decor of the potentially elegant dining room she wanted to discuss with him.

He had looked a little bemused the previous evening when she had commented on what was his very obvious artistic streak. She had to admit she had felt a little bit curious then about the circumstances of his life and why he was not just surprised by her recognition of his talent, but almost seemingly embarrassed and ashamed. Still, she did not intend to allow herself to become too curious about him. He was simply someone who was passing through her life and that was exactly what she wanted. She was perfectly happy as she was. She didn't need or want the complications of a committed relationship. She had so many plans, so many things she wanted to do. Selfish things, perhaps, to others, but surely she had earned the right to do what
she
wished, to be the person she had firmly pushed to one side so that she could be a daughter, a wife and a mother.

Her healing was very important to her. There was so much she still had to learn that she didn't want to feel she had to consider someone else's views and feelings if, for instance, she should decide to study more intensively or maybe even travel.

She had no fixed plans; that was the beauty of being where she was in her life right now, of being
who
she was. Yet there was no denying the extraordinary rapport she had with David or the unexpected pleasure of their shared intimacy.

It had felt totally wonderful to wake up this morning to find his body curved protectively around her own, the strength of his arm comfortingly warm where it lay across her, holding her.

'Coffee smells good,' David told her apprecia-tively as he came into the kitchen.

Honor didn't respond. She had her nose pressed blissfully up against the bag of croissants he had handed her.

'THIS REALLY WAS
an excellent idea,' David told Honor later as he bent his head to lick some flakes of pastry off her skin.

'Mmm...it was, wasn't it?' Honor agreed lazily as she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, arching her body up to the tender rav-ishment of his mouth.

THERE HAD BEEN
a good family turnout for church this morning, Jenny reflected as she discreetly guided Ben out into the thin sunshine. She had to admit that she and Jon didn't attend Sunday services as often as they should although barely a week passed without her walking through the churchyard and pausing for a few minutes by the small grave of her first-born child. She no longer felt the sharp, unbearable grief and despair she had experienced when she lost him, but there was still sadness...for Harry as well as for herself, for all that might have been.

'David was christened here,' Ben told her un-necessarily as they walked slowly towards the gate. 'You could see then what kind of man he would be. He never cried...not once.'

Jenny stiffened a little at her father-in-law's unspoken but implied criticism of her own husband.

'Laurence and Henry were his godfathers—and Jon's—not that either of them ever did very much for him. When David came back from London, they should have by rights offered him a place in chambers, but of course they were jealous that he would outshine their own boys.'

As she listened to him, Jenny forbore from pointing out that the reason Henry Crighton had not offered David a place in chambers was perhaps because David had been dismissed from his in London under something of a cloud.

"This family isn't the same without David,' Ben continued to grumble as Jenny guided him towards the car. 'He knew how to do things. People admired and respected him. He had a presence... an authority. He should have been a QC, you know. He would have been if it hadn't been for that wife of his.'

Jenny, who had heard the same boast allied to the same complaint a hundred or more times before, simply said nothing.

David had married Tania in the same spirit that he had done almost everything else in his life—

because it had seemed the easiest thing to do. At the time it had also given David the kind of boost to his ego that Ben had taught him was his rightful due.

'It's Jon's fault that David isn't here with us now,' Ben suddenly claimed, changing tack.

Jenny stopped in her tracks.

'That isn't true,' she told him with firm dignity.

If anyone other than David was responsible for what had happened to him, then it was Ben, but there was no point in saying so. Ben was an old man and frail, but even so, she was not going to stand there and let him criticise her beloved Jon.

'Oh, you would say that,' Ben returned angrily.

'None of you really appreciated David—not even his own children.'

Jenny had had enough. She was the last person in the world to want to hurt another human being or to encourage an argument, but Ben really was being very unfair.

'No, Ben. You're wrong,' she corrected him determinedly. 'If anything, it was David who didn't appreciate
us.'

'What are you saying?' Ben cried out fiercely.

'David was my son. I knew him better than anyone else. He—'

Jon is
also
your son,' Jenny pointed out pithily.

'Oh, Jon,' Ben dismissed him impatiently.

To Jenny's relief, they had reached the car. She had no idea just what she might have said if the conversation had continued.

'Problems?' Max asked his mother sympathetically as Maddy helped Ben into die car.

'Not really,' Jenny assured him. 'I should be more patient with him, but it makes me so cross when he puts your father down. I know he's in a lot of pain, but sometimes...'

'Maddy's got this herbalist woman coming to see him tomorrow. Oh, which reminds me, I want to have a word with Dad. There's some land coming up for sale on the other side of town and I'm thinking about buying it.' When Jenny raised her eyebrows, he explained, 'It sounds a horrible thing to say, I know, but Ben isn't going to live for ever and ultimately that means that Maddy and I are going to have to look for somewhere else to live.'

'But I thought it was agreed that Ben would leave Queensmead to you and Maddy,' Jenny protested with a small frown.

'Well, yes, he did promise me Queensmead once I became a QC, but he's been dropping a lot of hints recently about believing that the house should ultimately be David's. By rights, of course, it should go to Dad, but Gramps still has this thing about David coming back. Maddy said that when she mentioned to him the other week about some alterations she wanted to make, he told her quite sharply that she had to remember that we are only tenants there. Despite what he promised me, he said that it's a Crighton tradition that the house goes to the first-born son.'

'But that's not fair,' Jenny protested. 'Heavens, you and Maddy have spent a fortune on the house.

You pay all the bills and—'

'And the house belongs legally to Ben,' Max reminded her. 'He's like a bear with a sore head at the moment, Ma, and capable of doing anything, which includes leaving Queensmead to just about anyone. In his defence, I have to admit that it can't always be easy for him, having three small children running around.'

'Without the care Maddy gives him he'd have to go into some kind of sheltered accommodation.

He could never live on his own,' Jenny pointed out.

'Mmm...well, Maddy and I have agreed that there's no use in getting in a state about it. We've already agreed that even if he did leave Queensmead to me, we'd have it valued and make sure that all the grandchildren got an equal share of that value.'