Penny Jordan (21 page)

'Carnivores need red meat,' Honor counselled him firmly, 'and when they can't catch it and kill it, they die. Human beings are rather more fortunate.'

She saw to her amusement that that silenced him, but she suspected it wouldn't be very long before he launched another offensive against her.

She glanced discreetly at her watch. It was almost eleven o'clock. Before she went any further, she could do with talking to Maddy Crighton to see what alterations could be made with immediate effect to his diet.

'Go and tell Maddy that it's eleven o'clock,'

he told her rudely. 'I want my tea.'

Calmly, Honor stood up just as the door opened and Maddy came in carrying a tray.

'About time,' Ben greeted her belligerently.

'I thought you might like to have your tea in the kitchen with us,' Maddy told Honor with a smile.

'Us?' Ben questioned, frowning.

'Yes. Jon's here. Max wanted to see him.'

'Huh, some son. Doesn't even bother to tell me he's coming round or to come and see me even though this is
my
house. If it had been David...'

Hastily, Maddy guided Honor out into the hallway. 'I'm sorry about that,' she apologised. 'Ben can really be dreadfully rude at times. Jon is my father-in-law, by the way, and Ben's son. David...was...is his twin brother,' she told Honor by way of explanation. 'Do you think you can do anything to help?' she asked anxiously as she led the way to the kitchen.

'I hope so,' Honor confirmed cautiously. 'But to what extent I
can
help depends very much on your grandfather-in-law.'

'Oh dear,' Maddy sighed. 'I rather thought you might be going to say something like that. He flatly refuses to take the pills our GP prescribes for him and—'

'And he's told me that there's no way he intends to give up red meat or have his food mucked about with, or drink some hocus-pocus stuff that will probably kill rather than cure him,' Honor added.

'Oh dear, he said
that
to you, did he?' Maddy sympathised as she pushed open the kitchen door and called out, 'Max, Gramps has been truly hor-rid to Ms Jessop.'

As Honor followed her into the kitchen and saw the two men standing together by the table, she came to an abrupt standstill.

'Honor, are you all right? You look rather pale,' she heard Maddy commenting anxiously.

She stared at the man who, for a split second, she had actually thought was the same man she had been sharing her home with for the past few weeks—the same man she had been sharing her bed, herself, with.
No\
Not the same man—almost but not quite. There were some differences, the sort you might naturally expect in adult identical twins. Twins—David was this man's twin brother, which meant...

Disciplining her rioting thoughts, she acknowledged the introductions Maddy was making. Jon Crighton, son of Ben, her reluctant patient, and brother of David. Hadn't Maddy said the name with a distinct note of disapproval and sharpness in her voice almost as though just saying it brought a bad taste to her mouth?

During the years of her marriage, both for her own survival and for the sake of her children, Honor had learned not to betray what she was feeling. She was glad of that self-discipline now as she immediately forced herself to produce a smile and shake her head, reassuring Maddy, 'I'm fine.'

It was incredible just how alike the two men were, but when he shook her hand, she knew immediately that, were she blindfolded, she would know which of them was which simply by touch alone.

Even so, she couldn't quite stop herself from asking as Jon released her hand, 'You have a twin brother?'

'Yes,' Jon agreed with a smile.

'And therein lies the crux of Gramps's main problem,' Maddy admitted ruefully, casting a quick look at both Jon and Max before explaining,

'I know from what you said to me when we spoke on the telephone that you believe in a holistic approach to treating your patients, and because of that...' She paused and took a deep breath.

'We've agreed that we should perhaps fill you in on a little of our family history.'

Honor listened attentively as Maddy sketched out the events leading up to David's disappearance and the effect his absence was having on his father.

'Ben misses him dreadfully,' Maddy explained,

'and I think that if anyone were to tell him that David isn't going to come back, he would just give up.'

'No, he wouldn't,' Max said robustly. 'He would simply refuse to believe it. Personally, I don't think that David ever will come back.'

'Not even though he has a family here?' Honor asked quietly. 'A daughter, you said, and a son, as well as his father and—'

'A daughter and a son whose lives he walked out of,' Max reminded her sharply. 'Neither of them would welcome him back, especially not Olivia. She will
never
forgive him for what he did.'

Silently, Honor digested what he was saying. It was an odd sensation sitting here with David's family, listening to them talk about him. The man they had described, though, was a stranger to her.

His shallowness, his conceit, his selfishness, all of which came through so strongly in what they said about him, were not aspects of his personality that she could recognise.

Where was his humour, his humility, his humanity, the warmth and compassion
she
had sensed so clearly in him?

'This money you say he took...' Honor began, but Jon shook his head somewhat impatiently.

'The money isn't the issue,' he exclaimed, surprised at how much the family had opened up to this woman who, he believed, genuinely wanted to help his father.

'Dad,' Max protested. 'Of course it is.'

'No, it isn't, not now,' Jon denied. 'Yes, what he did
was
wrong, very wrong, but that is between him and his conscience. Thanks to Ruth's generosity, a potential disaster was successfully averted.'

'Look,' Max told him, 'if anyone should be defending Uncle David, it should be me. After all, it was always
me
he favoured over and above Olivia, even though she was his daughter.'

'He was just repeating the lessons he learned from our father,' Jon said. 'Sons are of more value than daughters.'

'And some sons are more valued than others,'

Max cut in drily. 'You needn't do him any favours, Dad. After all, when did he do any for you?

He knew when he walked away from the mess he'd caused that you'd be the one left carrying the can.'

'He
probably didn't see it that way,' Jon chided Max gently. 'Whatever his weaknesses, David was never knowingly malicious.'

'Do you miss him?' Honor heard herself asking Jon.

'I don't miss his actual presence,' Jon admitted cautiously as though he was weighing his words.

'We were never close either as children or adults.'

'No, Gramps saw to that,' Max interjected and was silenced by a brief shake of Jon's head.

'But what I
do
miss is some sense of knowing that he's there. It's hard to explain, but it's as though...as though in an odd way that some part of
me
is incomplete. Yet my life has never been more fulfilled or fulfilling.'

'You've never said anything about this before,'

Max said in a slightly chagrined voice.

'I've never really thought about it much before,' Jon reassured him, 'and to be honest I don't really know why I feel the way I do now. Perhaps it has something to do with a conversation your mother and I had a little while back about the closeness of twins.'

Turning to Honor, he told her wryly, 'We had been discussing Ben's health and his desire for David's return, and Jenny suggested that I might try to contact him telepathically. We have twin daughters of our own, and as she reminded me, they
do
have a way of somehow knowing when one of them needs the other. Mind you,
they've

been like that since they were children. David and I never were.'

'Are you trying to say that you've been taking what Ma said seriously?' Max asked him in some astonishment, exchanging stunned looks with Maddy. 'You never said—'

'Because there wasn't anything
to
say,' Jon responded, adding in exasperation, 'It isn't as though I've been sitting around willing David to make some kind of telepathic contact with me. It's just...well, I just can't help thinking about him.'

'He won't come back,' Max insisted again.

'There wouldn't be any point. His marriage is over. Tania has divorced him. Jack is far happier with you and Ma than he ever was at home. Olivia makes no secret of the fact that she never wants to see him again. Who, apart from Gramps, is there for him to come back for? And if Gramps knew what he's done, how close he came to destroying the family reputation that he's so obsessive about, I doubt even he'd welcome him!'

'I think you're wrong, Max,' Maddy intervened gently. 'Parental love is very strong, very forgiving.'

'Yes, it is, as I have good cause to know,' Max agreed, looking warmly at his father. 'But Gramps doesn't love Uncle David. All right, all right, I know,' he conceded when both Maddy and Jon started to object. 'But think about it. It's true.

What Ben loves so single-mindedly about Uncle David is the fact that to him he's the twin brother he himself lost. I doubt if he's ever actually seen David as he really is or if he'd want to.'

Jon gave a small sigh as he listened to Max.

Little as he liked to admit it, he suspected that his son was probably quite right.

'Well, be that as it may,' he commented quietly, 'I think we've probably bored Ms Jessop enough already with the sorry tale of our family history.'

'I'm not bored,' Honor said truthfully. 'But I can see what you mean,' she confirmed to Maddy,

'and I agree that your grandfather-in-law's health is quite likely being affected by his emotional unhappiness.'

'So given that we can't bring David back for him, is there
anything
you can do to help?' Maddy asked.

'I'll do what I can,' Honor replied, standing up.

She desperately wanted to be on her own, to digest what she had just learned. David had lied to her about his surname. David Lawrence...it had suited him somehow.

LORD ASTLEGH'S
estate manager was just as help-ful as Honor had told David he would be, inviting him to take whatever he might need from the estate stores.

'I was told to tell you that Lord Astlegh's happy for his cousin to have whatever she might need,' he told David. 'In the old days he'd have been able to send down a team of men to put the house in order, but we just can't afford to carry that kind of workforce these days. When we do need extra men, we hire them in.'

'Ms Jessop has been talking about updating the house's central heating system,' David told him,

'and she wants to open up the original fireplaces.'

'Does she? Well, we've got some original ra-diators that were ordered when central heating was first put in the Place and never used. Are you planning to do the work yourself?'

'It all depends,' David said. 'I'm certainly not a qualified plumber, but she was telling me that there's some kind of problem getting men to work on the property.'

'Yes, I believe so. I'm not from round here myself, so I don't know that much about it, but I understand that Lord Astlegh had trouble himself in the past getting anyone local to work there.'

'One thing she does need,' David confided, 'is a generator. The power supply to the house is liable to interruption.'

'That shouldn't be too much of a problem,' the manager assured him. 'In fact...what kind of car have you got? If it's an estate—'

'I didn't come by car. I walked,' David answered promptly.

'You walked!' The other man looked surprised.

'OK, well, I'll check out a generator for you. I've got some fencing to take care of close by the house this week and I'll bring it for you then.'

'Excellent,' David said, thanking him.

Ten minutes later as he walked back towards the cart track, he took a detour through the recently established workshops Honor had told him about, curious to see what had been done. It had occurred to him that if there was a cabinet-maker amongst them, he could ask for some replacement window frames to match the originals.

As he crossed the cobbled courtyard, two boys emerged from one of the units, both of them tall, but it was only one of them whom David really saw. Stiffening, he stared. His heart stood still and he could scarcely breathe. Shock coursed through his body like icy water, immobilising him.

Greedily, he drank in every tiny detail of his son whilst at the same time retreating out of their line of sight. In a series of flashbacks he compared Jack as he was now with the child he had been.

He ached to go over and hold him in his arms, to run his hands over him—flesh of his flesh—his child, his son. Tears scalded his eyelids. How could he ever have been foolish enough to throw away the love they could have shared?

Jack had grown taller since his visit to Jamaica and broader, too. He was laughing at something the other boy had said. Jon's youngest, Joss, David guessed. They looked similar enough to be brothers, Jon's and his own features stamped dis-tinctively on their faces.

As he watched, David saw Jack punch Joss playfully on the arm, shaking his head as though in denial of something Joss had said. They were walking towards him and David cursed a little, moving deeper into the shadows.

'OK, so I took her the fish tank. She wasn't even there. She was still at work. So what,' he heard Jack saying.

'So what? Why did you go round in the first place if you don't fancy her?' Joss demanded with a grin. 'You said yourself that she was the one you preferred.'

'I might have said that, but that doesn't mean...

Come on, I'm starving. I hope that Aunt Jenny has some of her game pie for lunch.'

To David's relief, they changed direction and began moving away.

Jack... his son... A fierce shock of raw emotion speared through him. He hadn't any right to Jack's recognition. He hadn't any right to anything. After all, what had he cared for Jack's right to his love and protection, his fathering, when he had walked out of his life? Nothing. Nothing at all, but it still hurt like hell having him so close, knowing he could have reached out and touched him.