Penny Jordan (27 page)

'Is that the time?' David suddenly remarked.

'I'd better go. Honor will be waiting...wondering...'

'Honor...' Jon began, but David was already looking towards the door and didn't seem to have heard him.

'I'll see you out,' Jon offered. As they reached the front door, David turned to his brother. Wordlessly, they embraced one another.

'I'd better tell Dad that you're back,' Jon reminded him.

'Yes,' David agreed. 'And there's Olivia...'

Olivia. Jon's heart sank. He started to warn David, then stopped, suppressing a sigh. But what had to be said had to be said.

'Olivia...things haven't...things aren't easy for her at the moment. She's under a lot of pressure and she... Don't expect too much,' he advised David cautiously.

From where she was parked on the lane, Honor could see the house and she watched tensely as she saw the yellow rectangle of light that was the open front door. David was standing with his back to her, talking with his twin. As Honor watched, she saw them embrace and a small, soundless breath of relief eased the constriction in her chest.

'How did it go?' she asked David anxiously as he opened the car door.

'I talked to Jon and Jack,' he told her. 'Jack was angry with me as he has every right to be and—'

'Jon—how was Jon? What did
he
say?' Honor interrupted.

'Jon was Jon,' David said quietly. 'He was more magnanimous than I deserve. He said he missed me,' he added emotionally.

'Did
you
tell him how much you've missed him?' Honor asked gently.

David gave her that slow, sweet smile that turned her heart over. 'Yes,' he admitted. 'I did.'

Suddenly, more than anything else in the world, he needed the security of her love. He wanted to take her home and make love with her, lose himself in her, with her, ease the suffering he was feeling—and causing—in the balm of her acceptance.

'It isn't going to be easy,' he confided. 'Jon said as much himself. Jack seemed to think that I've come back to claim Queensmead.' He shook his head sadly. 'I can't blame him for thinking of me as someone avaricious and self-serving. After all, that's just what I was. But at least it doesn't look as though I'm going to be drummed out of town—' he smiled wryly '—even though I might deserve to be.' He hesitated for a moment.

'Will you tell your family...your daughters... about what I did?' he asked. Honor looked judiciously at him as she started the car and turned it.

'Would it bother you if I did?'

'For your sake, yes,' David acknowledged, 'but then, if they were to hear the story from someone else... I suspect they'll be reluctant enough to accept me as it is—a vagabond of no fixed abode with no means of financial support.'

'You aren't a vagabond, you're a Crighton,'

Honor corrected him in amusement. 'You have a fixed abode, namely Foxdean, and as for your financial support... Would it offend your male pride very much if I told you that I have more than enough, and to spare, to support us both and that I am more than happy to do so?'

'There's so much we can do, David,' she declared enthusiastically without waiting for him to respond. 'The house—but that's just the beginning. I need a partner, not just in my bed but to share everything, my life. The herbs I can grow here barely scratch the surface of what nature has provided. I want to travel... learn... and I want you with me. Will you come?'

David wasn't answering her. Anxiously, Honor looked at him. Did he perhaps think her foolish with her excitement, her plans, her hopes, that were in many ways so wildly idealistic, at least as far as her daughters were concerned?

'David...' she began uncertainly.

He stopped her, shaking his head and saying,

'My turn first. Yes, I'll come. Will
you
marry me?'

'Marry
you, David?'

He had mentioned it before, but she hadn't been certain that he was serious.

'If I accept, you realise that the girls are going to want us to sign a prenuptial agreement, don't you?' she half teased him.

4I don't care
what
I have to sign just as long as I have you,' David told her softly. 'I don't want your money, Honor. I want
you.'

'I'd like to be married on a mountain top,' she murmured dreamily. 'Somewhere high and spiritual, somewhere remote and peaceful. Just us and our vows to one another.'

'I know the very place,' David promised her.

'In Jamaica,' she guessed.

'In Jamaica,' he agreed.

'JENNY, WHAT'S WRONG?'

Quickly, Jenny shook her head. 'Nothing,' she denied. 'It's just been a very eventful day.'

'Yes, I know,' Jon said as he sat on the side of the bed, pausing in the act of removing his socks.

His back was to Jenny, who was curled up on her own side of the bed facing away from him so that he couldn't see the fear in her eyes.

'Did I tell you how different David looked? He
is
different, Jen,' he enthused. 'I could see it, feel it. It's odd, you know, but I've never really believed very strongly in all this intuition that's supposed to exist between twins, but tonight...

now...'

Jenny's heart sank as she listened to him. It was happening just as she had feared...dreaded. Already he was back in thrall...back under David's spell.

'You only spoke to him for a little over an hour, Jon,' she reminded him. 'And he hasn't really explained why he's come back. Oh, I know what he told you, but how do we know that's the truth?'

'Jenny!' Jon expostulated. 'At least
try
to give him the benefit of the doubt. What's wrong?' he persisted. 'It's not like you to be so antagonistic.

You're normally the first to counsel compassion and forgiveness.'

What could she say? She didn't want to remind Jon that David had already come close to ruining their marriage and destroying their love, not once but twice. When he left, it had been as though a dark cloud had lifted from their lives.

'I can't believe how easy it was to talk to him.

How
close
I felt to him,' Jon was explaining.

Jenny bit the inside of her mouth to prevent herself from crying out in protest. She felt as though David was coming between them, as though somehow
he
was more important to Jon than she was.

'I'm going to have to tell Olivia what's happened, of course.'

'She won't like it,' Jenny warned him.

'Not initially,' Jon agreed. 'But I'm sure she'll feel differently when she's seen David and spoken to him.'

David...David...David. Jenny was already tired of the sound of his name. Why...why did he have to come back?

'JACK...JACK
...' Frowning, Jack turned in Annalise's direction.

'I'm sorry,' he apologised. 'What did you say?'

He had arrived as arranged, but far from his trying to smooth-talk her into bed, Annalise discovered that he seemed oddly preoccupied, his thoughts very much elsewhere. On another girl?

she wondered jealously.

'What is it? What's wrong?' she demanded.

'My father's come back,' Jack said simply.

'Your father?' Annalise stared at him. Like everyone in Haslewich, she knew that David Crighton had disappeared without leaving any explanation of where he was going or why.

'Yes, I saw him last night. He rang Uncle Jon and then came round and... Come on. I'm supposed to be giving you some tuition, not talking about my father.'

'No. I want to hear more,' Annalise argued. She had often wondered how she would react if her mother were to come back. Not that
she
had disappeared. Not in the way that Jack's father had done. No, she had simply abandoned them to go and live with someone else.

'No. I'm here to help you work, remember?'

Jack chided her sternly.

An hour later, Annalise shook her head dispiritedly and said, 'It's no use. I'm getting worse, not better.'

'You're trying to push yourself too hard,' Jack comforted her. 'You'll get there. You just need more time and a few more lessons.' He started to frown. 'I've got to head off for university next week, but...' He paused. 'I'll be home again at Christmas. I'll have more time then.'

'You don't have to help me,' Annalise countered.

'No, I don't have to,' he agreed, 'but I do
want
to:

'Why?' she challenged.

'Why do you think?' he answered huskily.

He was looking right at her mouth, Annalise realised as her heart started to beat frantically fast.

'I'm not going to go to bed with you,' she warned him hastily. 'And—'

'No, you're not,' Jack affirmed with surprising sternness. 'For one thing, you're not yet ready and for another...'

Annalise stared at him. His stern response was the last thing she expected.

'You don't want to,' she gasped, too surprised to be cautious. 'But—'

'I didn't say I didn't
want
to,' Jack corrected her grimly. 'I just said we aren't going to...at least not yet.'

'Not yet...' Annalise hadn't thought it was possible for her heart to beat any faster, but apparently it could.

'No, not yet,' Jack repeated. 'Not until...' He paused. 'Will you write to me, Annalise?' he asked urgently.

Write to him... Bemusedly, she lifted her eyes to his, searching them to see if he was simply trying to make fun of her.

'It won't be too long before the Christmas break, and then—'

'Aren't you going to kiss me?' she asked in a shaky little voice.

'If I do, I don't think I'll be able to stop,' Jack replied, shaking his head, then, as tiny shivers of excitement quivered openly over her skin, he gave a small groan and pulled her into his arms.

Kissing someone and being kissed
by
them when they made you feel as Jack was making her feel was a world away from your everyday ex-perimental childish snogging, Annalise discovered dizzily.

'Oh, Jack,' she whispered in awed delight when he finally released her mouth.

'Oh, Jack what?' He gave her a tender smile.

'Do we really have to wait?'

'Yes, we
do
,' he told her firmly, quickly releasing her, then demanding thickly, 'Promise that you
will
write to me.'

'I promise,' Annalise declared fervently.

'Livvy,
HAVE YOU GOT
a minute?'

'Only just, Uncle Jon,' Olivia responded tersely as her uncle stopped her on the way to her office.

'What is it?' she demanded as he put his hand on her arm and started to guide her towards his own office.

She had hardly slept the previous night. Caspar and the girls were leaving for America the day after tomorrow, but there was no way she was going to go with them, no way at all. He was wrong if he thought he could pressurise her, blackmail her, into changing her mind.

'Livvy, there's no easy way of telling you this,'

she heard Jon saying emotionally. 'Your father's back.'

'My
father
.' Olivia looked blankly at him. 'No, he
can't
be. He would
never
show his face in Haslewich again. He wouldn't
dare.
Not after what he's done. He'd be too afraid of ending up in prison where he deserves to be.'

'Olivia, please listen to me for a moment,' Jon begged her. 'I know how angry you were about what David did. I felt the same way, but—'

He stopped abruptly when he saw the look on his niece's face as she stared not so much
at
him but, much more frighteningly, right through him.

'Livvy, come and sit down.'

Jon took her gently by the arm. Beneath his touch her body felt rigid and cold and his heart sank even further. Allied to his anxiety was his understanding of why she was reacting the way she was and his love and compassion for her.

Even as a child Olivia had been inclined to be sensitive, her pride easily bruised, retreating into herself as she fought desperately to try to conceal her hurt feelings from others. But she wasn't a child any more, and much as his instinct was to hold her tight and encourage her to cry out her shock and pain, he knew that any attempt to coax her to do so would result in her retreating into herself even more.

'I don't
want
to sit down,' she was telling him in a tight-lipped, strained voice now. 'I just want to know what the hell is going on. He can't come back just like that. He...'

She took a deep breath and Jon saw with concern that the effect of drawing it in ran like an electric shock right through her body. She had lost weight, he noticed.

'He came back because—'

'Because he needs money, is that what you're trying to say? What's gone wrong, Uncle Jon?

Has he run out of frail old ladies to steal from?'

She was becoming agitated, dragging her arm from his grasp, pacing his office, her face as flushed as earlier it had been pale, her eyes full of passionate resentment.

'What is he expecting from us? To be paid to go away again? Is that what he's planning to do, to blackmail us? Has anyone told Ben he's back yet?'

Jon couldn't remember exactly when Olivia had stopped calling his father Gramps as the other grandchildren did. Jenny seemed to think it had been just after the birth of her and Caspar's second child, another daughter, when Ben had deri-sively pointed out that Max had been the first to present him with a great-grandson.

'No, I'm going to see Ben later,' Jon told her quietly. 'He'll be thrilled, of course, but too much excitement at his age...'

As he spoke, a warm, caring smile curved Jon's mouth, and looking at him Olivia burst out bitterly, 'How
can
you take it so calmly after what my father did? He nearly ruined your life,
all
our lives. He came close to destroying everything you've ever worked for. But for him, my mother—'

'No, Olivia,' Jon interrupted sternly. 'Your mother's...problems may have been exacerbated by the trouble within their marriage, but we know from what her parents and the doctors told us that Tania had already been suffering from her eating disorder as a teenager. In those days, such things weren't recognised for what they are—'

'Uncle Jon, I don't know how you can stand there so calmly and talk about what's happened like this,' Olivia exploded, her whole body trembling with angry emotion. 'My father has no right to just walk back into our lives and he certainly
isn't
walking back into mine. Did he tell you where he's been, what he's been doing, why he left?'