Penny Jordan (23 page)

'As your priest friend would say, "Isn't that for a higher authority to decide?'" she chided him huskily. 'I want you to be here with me, David. I want you to stay.'

She wasn't going to say the words, 'I love you'.

What did they mean anyway in this modern world where their currency had become so tarnished and cheapened? Besides, they were far too banal and unimaginative to express what
she
was feeling.

'It must be fate,' she told him thoughtfully instead. 'Our karma.
You
must be
my
fate, David,'

she amended with emotion.

'How could someone so wonderful as you deserve a fate like me?' David whispered unsteadily in return. 'You deserve a prince amongst men, Honor, a knight in shining armour. You deserve a man of courage and strength and virtue.'

'You
have courage and strength,' Honor began, but he stopped her, shaking his head and placing his finger tenderly against her lips.

'Don't say it,' he begged. 'Both of us know it isn't true.'

'It is true, David,' Honor insisted seriously.

'The truth is what is happening now, this moment.

Maybe in the past it wasn't true, but you have been courageous enough to come back. You have shown strength.'

'And virtue?' he asked drily.

'Aren't your motives in returning home virtu-ous?' Honor reminded him.

'I don't know,' David admitted starkly. 'What

have
I come back for?' He shook his head. 'I really don't know.'

'Sometimes life can be like a bend in a river,'

Honor offered comfortingly. 'When you approach the bend, it isn't always possible to see what lies around it, so it's necessary to traverse it with faith and hope.'

"You are my faith and hope,' David said thickly.

Tenderly, Honor reached out and touched his face, her eyes misting with tears when he took hold of her hand and slowly kissed each of her fingers...and then her palm...and then her wrist...and then...

'I
HAVEN'T TOUCHED
a woman since Tiggy and I split up. I haven't wanted to,' David confessed later as Honor lay in his arms. He was holding her as close to his body as he could, as though he couldn't bear not to have her there. 'And for a long time in our marriage...I wasn't...I didn't...

The way I feel about you isn't like anything I've ever felt before. I can't categorise it. Whatever else I might have damaged or tarnished, I want you to know that what I feel for you is the very best of me, Honor.'

'I do know it,' Honor reassured him.

His obvious concern for her, coupled with his bemusement over the strength of his feelings, made her feel very protective towards him.

His past, with its pains and failings, was his past and personally she considered there was something much more laudable about a man who had made his mistakes and honestly regretted them than a man who denied ever making any.

Abigail and Ellen would be appalled, of course, considering her behaviour both impetuous and foolhardy. They would remind her that as a woman of considerable financial means she was an automatic target for men of a certain type, free-loaders who were looking for women to batten on and take advantage of, but Honor knew that David just wasn't like that.

'Tell me about meeting him today,' David suddenly asked her gruffly, almost as though he was embarrassed to reveal the hunger she could hear in his voice. 'What did he look like...what did he say...? Did he mention me or—'

'Your father?' Honor asked. 'He—'

But David stopped her, shaking his head as he said quickly, 'No. No. I meant Jon. You said he was there at Queensmead.'

Jon, his brother...his twin.
Now
Honor knew why he had come back even if David himself didn't yet realize it.

'Yes, he was there,' she affirmed. 'He...' She paused. 'I liked him,' she told him simply. 'He has a wonderful rapport with his son.'

'His son.' David frowned. 'Which one? He has two, Max and Joss.'

'Max,' Honor replied. 'It was Max I saw him with at Queensmead.'

'Max?' David fought against his own envy.

'Max and Jon never used to get on. As a boy, Max was closer to me than he was to Jon.' As he saw Honor's expression, he fought back his feelings again. 'I know that Jon and Max have a much better relationship now. I'm glad for them both.

It was my father, really, who used to say that Max should have been my son and Olivia Jon's daughter.'

Honor didn't say anything. She was quietly digesting what she had just learned.

David's relationship with his twin brother was obviously very important to him. She had heard the anxiety in his voice when he asked about him, but she also suspected that he would refute anything she might say about Jon's being the cause of his return.

Well, that was understandable enough. She had seen with her own girls how very difficult it was for an elder child to admit to needing a younger sibling. Perhaps subconsciously David had always felt that Jon was the stronger of the two despite their father's determination to have it otherwise.

Possibly because of that, David had once welcomed the rift their father had created between him and his twin, using it to keep his feelings at bay.

'Jon won't want to see me, of course,' she heard David announcing tersely. 'In his shoes, I would feel exactly the same, so I can't blame him.

You say they told you that Aunt Ruth repaid the money I took,' he added, closing his eyes. 'I still have nights when I wake up sweating with fear over that, not wanting to accept that I actually did it, dreading being discovered, but at the same time almost wanting to be.

'I only meant to borrow it...just a little money... just for a while. I'd got this hot investment tip, some shares, but the market...' He gave a small shrug. 'I'd been so sure I was going to make a killing that I'd already spent my profit, and then when the share price dropped, not only was I unable to repay the money I'd taken, but I was thousands of pounds in debt, as well. That's how it started. I "borrowed" more to repay the bank.

Tiggy and I were living way above our means, but trying to preach economy to her was like...

Well, she just didn't have a clue. Of course, I can see now what I couldn't see then, what I didn't

want
to see then, that she had an addictive personality and that, through my own selfishness, I drove her...' He stopped. 'I can't make excuses for myself and I'm not going to, just as I can't expect Jon to listen to me.'

'I believe it may be easier than you imagine,'

Honor told him calmly. 'They were very open about how much your father is longing for your return. I think that for his sake if nothing else...'

'Exactly how ill is he?' David asked her quietly.

'Physically, he's really quite strong, but spiritually...' Honor shook her head. 'He's nearing the end of his life, David, and he's carrying a very heavy load of emotional pain.'

'Because of me?'

'No, because of himself,' Honor said firmly. 'In his physical state, a happier person, a man who allowed himself to love both his sons generously, could five another decade, but your father... He wants you back, but he wants you back as the image he created.'

'You remind me more and more of the priest,'

David told her. 'He said much the same thing to me. Perhaps I shouldn't go back. Perhaps I should stay away—keep out of their lives.'

'Stay hidden away here at Foxdean with me.'

Honor laughed. 'Well, I certainly don't object to that.'

'You do realise, don't you,' David asked soberly, 'that I have nothing—that my only possessions are quite literally the clothes I stand up in, that I can never support you financially in the way you have every right to expect?'

'Money isn't important. Not to me,' Honor reassured him. 'You can mend the hole in my roof and repair the fabric of my home. You can also repair the hole in my heart and the damage to the fabric of my emotions,' she added huskily.

'Money may not be important to
you,
but in the eyes of the world—'

'The eyes of the world aren't important, either.

It's what I see with
my
eyes that matters,' Honor told him.

'And what do you see?' David asked with just enough hesitancy in his voice to let her know how important her answer was to him.

'I see
you,
David,' she answered gravely. 'I see a man whose humanity and strength warms my heart, not to mention what your less esoteric and rather more physical attributes do to my body and for my more carnal desires.' She laughed, light-ening the emotional tension she could feel ema-nating from him.

'So it isn't love you feel for me at all, it's lust?'

David asked teasingly.

'Mmm...' Honor tipped her head to one side and pretended to consider the matter. 'I should say it's an excellent blend of both,' she announced eventually, adding in a husky voice as he moved to draw her up against his firm, hardening body, 'a very excellent blend.'

'OLIVIA.'

'Yes,' Olivia responded tersely as she turned away from Caspar, cradling the cup of coffee she was holding defensively in front of her.

'I've booked flights for New York.'

'Flights?' Olivia questioned, her stomach muscles clenching. The last thing she needed was another fight with Caspar. She had had a bad enough day without that.

The wife whom she was representing in a particularly complicated divorce case had burst into tears in the middle of their appointment this afternoon, confessing that she didn't really want to divorce her husband after all. Then, after going without lunch and rescheduling all her appointments, she had managed to rush off early enough to pick up Amelia from her dancing class. The teacher had taken Olivia to one side and told her quite coldly that Amelia had outgrown her existing practise clothes and shoes.

'She has? But why on earth didn't she say something?' Olivia had asked the teacher in irritation.

'Perhaps she felt she couldn't,' the other woman had replied even more coolly. "I understand that you don't have a lot of time to spare.'

Smarting under the teacher's implied rebuke, Olivia had had to drive into Chester, which was the nearest place she knew where the shops would be open late enough for her to buy Amelia some new things.

'Yes,' Caspar replied shortly. 'We fly out a weekend before the wedding and we'll fly back a fortnight later, so—'

'We?' Olivia demanded ominously. Her heart was thumping furiously and she was beginning to feel tense and sick.

'Yes,
we,'
Caspar repeated curtly. 'I've booked seats for all four of us.'

'You can't take the girls,' Olivia warned him.

'I—'

'I don't think you were listening, Olivia,' Caspar interrupted her grimly. 4I said that I've booked seats for
all
of us.'

'You know I can't go. We've already had this out and I don't want to talk about it any more,'

Olivia said. 'If you have to go, then you have to go, but I'm not going with you.'

'Then the girls and I will just have to go alone.'

'You aren't taking them without me,' Olivia insisted furiously.

'They are my children just as much as they are yours, Olivia, and I
am
taking them with me.

Whether or not you come with us is your choice.

I shan't alter the flight arrangements. There will be a seat for you if you change your mind.'

'FANCY GOING INTO CHESTER
this evening?'

Jack hesitated before shaking his head and telling Joss, 'Er, no, I can't...I've got something else planned.'

'Something else? What else?' Joss asked, his curiosity growing as Jack shook his head again, his face colouring a little.

'It's nothing.'

'Nothing...?' Joss began and then stopped.

'This "nothing" wouldn't have anything to do with Annalise, would it?' he guessed, grinning widely when he saw from Jack's expression that his guess had been right.

'I told the boys I'd go round and check up on the fish,' Jack told Joss defensively.

'Check up on their sister, more like,' Joss countered.

'You
LOOK TIRED
. What's wrong?' Max asked Maddy as he walked into the kitchen. He dropped his briefcase onto one of the chairs and started to frown at the weary anxiety in his wife's eyes.

'Has the old man been playing you up again?'

'He has been a bit fractious today,' Maddy replied.

'Where is he? In the study?' Max asked, heading for the door.

'Max,' Maddy pleaded, 'don't. Don't say anything to him. He doesn't mean to be difficult and I can understand that the children must seem very noisy and a bit of a nuisance to him at times. This

is
his home after all.'

'Is that what he's been saying to you?' Max demanded sharply. 'Queensmead may be his

house,
Maddy, but
you're
the one who's turned it into a home. If he's been upsetting you—

Maddy,' he protested with concern as she suddenly started to cry. 'My darling girl, what is it?

What's wrong?'

As he crossed the kitchen and took her in his arms, holding her tightly, Maddy started to cry in earnest—deep, racking sobs that tore at Max's heart. Whatever his grandfather had done to upset her, he, Max, was going to make sure the old man made reparation for it with no allowances being made for his age.

'Maddy. Maddy, please, tell me what's wrong.

If looking after this place and Gramps is too much for you, just say so. We'll move somewhere smaller. What do we need with a damn great barn like this anyway? A decent-sized modern house with four bedrooms and—

'What on earth is it?' he demanded as Maddy suddenly started to shake in his arms. Anxiously, he held her just far enough away from himself to be able to look down into her face. When he did so, instead of still crying as he had expected, she actually seemed to be laughing—if a little hyster-ically.

'We can't,' she was saying tearfully. 'Four bedrooms wouldn't be enough. Not now. We...'

'We...what?' he began, and then stopped as he saw the faint flush of colour staining her face and the almost bashful look in her eyes.