Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘You really are the most ridiculously biased man,’ she told him forthrightly. ‘People are individuals, Ben, no matter where they come from. A hundred or so years ago you’d have been the sort of man who objected to his daughter marrying someone from outside the Cheshire border. Olivia loves Caspar and her relationship with him is a far different affair from mine … I … I made a mistake,’ she countered tautly, ‘but that doesn’t mean that all Americans are—’

‘Lying cheats,’ Ben supplied angrily for her. ‘What about Saul’s wife, then, going off like that and leaving three children? What kind of woman does a thing like that, deserting her own children?’

Ruth winced. ‘Sometimes a woman doesn’t have any option,’ she answered quietly. ‘And the fact that Hillary is American has no bearing whatsoever on her decision to leave Saul. He wanted to keep the children, as you well know. They were all born here, this is their home, and no doubt in leaving them here with Saul, Hillary is trying to put their own interests first.’

‘Rubbish,’ Ben snorted. ‘They’re all the same, the whole lot of them. Young Olivia will soon find out the truth … just like you did.’

‘I hope not,’ Ruth returned. She wouldn’t wish what had happened to her on anyone else, least of all someone like Olivia. ‘The fact that Grant lied to me when he pretended that he wasn’t married, that he was free to …’ She stopped and swallowed fiercely before forcing herself to continue. ‘The fact that he deceived me had nothing at all to do with his nationality. Any man, whether English, Welsh, Scots, French, Polish, Dutch, any man could have done the same. Grant just happened to be American.’

‘They were all the same,’ Ben argued angrily. ‘Coming over here, lying and cheating, seducing innocent young girls, turning their heads … Don’t think I don’t know.’

‘But you don’t know, Ben,’ Ruth contradicted him gently. ‘You see, originally I was the one who chased Grant, not the other way round.’ She smiled sadly as she saw his face. ‘Oh yes, it’s true. I know how much it offends that steely Crighton pride of yours to hear it, but I wanted Grant and I wanted him very badly. He was like a breath of fresh air, an irresistible magnetic force … he was just so different from anyone else I’d ever met….’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ Ben remonstrated gruffly. ‘You were still grieving for Charles.’

‘No,’ Ruth told him firmly, shaking her head. ‘I did grieve for Charles, yes, but as a friend, not as a woman. Oh, I know we were engaged but that was just because it was the done thing. I was young and, I suppose, rather silly. I got caught up in the urgency of the whole war thing. Charles was going away into danger. He wanted the security of having someone to come back to, of reassuring himself that he would come back. I gave him the security, but that was all I gave him. I was sad when he was killed, of course, but I never mourned him as a lover. I never mourned him in the way I did Grant,’ she added under her breath.

‘He seduced you,’ Ben insisted fiercely.

‘No,’ Ruth corrected him with gentle determination. ‘If you must know the truth, Ben, I was the one who seduced him.’ Her mouth curved in a tender, reminiscent smile. ‘He was the one who was reluctant, responsible….’

And he was also the one who was committed to someone else, who was married and not just married but had a child, as well. He’d never told Ruth that, not then, when she had pushed him back into the sweet-smelling long grass of the water meadow and teased him with the soft shape of her breasts, breasts, which they both knew were bare beneath the flimsy covering of her frock, nor later when she had lain beneath him, crying out her joy at the feel of him inside her, surrendering herself to it and to him. No, he had not told her then, nor had he mentioned them at any other time.

It had been left to her father and brother to tell her the truth. For a long time she had thought that the pain of losing him would never leave her, but eventually it had, the sharp agony of her original grief softening to a dully monotonous ache, and that ache, over the years, fading to an occasional twinge of pain whenever she allowed herself the dangerous pleasure of thinking about him. And anyway, by then she had other pains to bear, other hurts to hide. Grant. She had no idea if he was even still alive, and she did not want to know, either, she told herself firmly.

She could see Ben massaging his bad leg. She knew how much David’s heart attack had upset and frightened him and she was filled with remorse for having argued with him. It was not his fault that he was the way he was. He reminded her sometimes of a great, lumbering, clumsy and anachronistic primeval beast on the edge of extinction, bewildered by the fact that he no longer had the power or strength he had taken for granted for so long. To Ben the Crighton name was sacrosanct, the upholding of it a sacred trust. Ruth smiled sadly to herself. He was so badly out of step with the times, it was almost laughable, but somehow she didn’t feel like laughing.

On her way home she intended to call round and see Jenny to find out if there was any real substance to Joss’s fears. Distasteful though the idea of prying into someone else’s private life was to her, she felt she owed it to her great-nephew to at least take his fears seriously enough to make some attempt to alleviate them. If they could be alleviated.

13

Madeleine Browne. A triumphant smile curled Max’s mouth in cynical satisfaction as he looked down at the name he had doodled. In the three relatively short weeks since he had first discovered her name, Max had found out rather a lot about her.

First and foremost, and the most serious hurdle, in his eyes at least, to his ousting her from the race to gain the chambers vacancy was the fact her grandfather on her mother’s side was one of the country’s most prominent Law Lords and her father was a senior High Court judge; moreover, she was not merely Madeleine Browne, but Madeleine Francomb-Browne, although apparently during her time at university she had decided to drop the first half of her double-barrelled surname.

She lived, very appropriately, in a small house in Chelsea down by the river, which belonged to her father and which she shared with a friend—a ‘girl’ friend, her circle of friends predictably in the main ‘girls’ she had been at school with. She was, in short, a typical product of an upper-middle-class background, the type of girl who thirty or even twenty-five years ago would never even have dreamt of having any kind of career other than the pursuit of a suitable husband and Max heartily wished that she had chosen that option now.

However, in the midst of all the unhelpful and predictable information he had gathered about her from various sources, there was one fact that glittered as brilliantly as a cut and polished diamond. And that was quite simply, God alone knew for what reason, that she had, during one summer’s vacation while she was studying, taken a part-time job, no doubt as some kind of general dogsbody, at the chambers headed by Luke Crighton in Chester. Max had no idea why on earth she had chosen to work there when, thanks to her family’s influence, she could have worked anywhere—if indeed she had needed to work, which seemed highly unlikely—but what he did know was that it was a golden nugget of good fortune, which he fully intended to turn into the maximum advantage for himself.

He had done all his homework, checked and double-checked all his information, plotted his strategy carefully and meticulously, and now it was time to put his plan into action.

He left work at his normal time, went home, showered and changed, and then set out for Chelsea. It didn’t take her long to answer the door to his knock. She might have all the social advantages, Max decided chivalrously as he studied her, but she was certainly nothing very remarkable to look at.

Plain brown hair cut into a neat bob, brown eyes, a small round face to go with her equally small and gently rounded body. As she saw him studying her, she flushed deep pink and looked shyly self-conscious.

‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised, giving her his most charming and winning smile, the one that revealed the delicious dimple in his chin and made him look even more raffishly attractive than he had any right to be, as an adoring ex-girlfriend had once told him. ‘Luke told me that you were only a tiny little thing, but I hadn’t thought …’

‘Luke?’ she questioned, looking both flustered and curious, and reacting to his opening gambit just as he had planned and intended that she should.

‘Yes, Luke Crighton, my cousin,’ he explained, conveniently leap-frogging the interfamily complexities that in reality made Luke something like a fourth or fifth cousin rather than the much closer connection that referring to him as his cousin implied.

‘Luke Crighton?’ She was frowning slightly now and looking both embarrassed and confused.

Max took a couple of steps towards her, causing her to retreat into the house and allowing him to follow her inside. It was a simple enough manoeuvre to master and one he had used to good effect many times in the past.

‘There,’ he explained mock-ruefully, ‘I told Luke that you probably wouldn’t remember him. You worked in chambers with him in Chester some time ago. His father, my uncle was …’

‘Oh yes …’ Her face cleared. ‘Of course, Luke …’

Her colour deepened and she looked both flattered and self-conscious and Max knew perfectly well why. He resisted the temptation to laugh. Did this plain, dull-looking little thing really believe that Luke was likely to have remembered her?

‘So you’re Luke’s cousin … er … please come in.’

A little awkwardly she ushered him into a very Colefax and Fowler furnished sitting room, which Max guessed, as he cast a brief eye over it, probably cost more to decorate than he was likely to earn in a full year, and as for the value of the antiques he could see scattered around the room … Its whole ambience shrieked family wealth and family status and his resentment against her grew. Why the hell couldn’t she have been satisfied with what her type did best? Living in the country and breeding, that was what she was designed for. You only had to look at those softly rounded hips….

‘Er, can I get you a drink?’

‘Thanks,’ Max accepted easily. ‘Dry sherry if you’ve got any.’

She had, of course, and it pleased him to notice that her hand trembled noticeably as she handed him a glass.

‘So, how is Luke?’

‘He’s fine, still based in Chester, of course. I saw him when I went home for a family celebration a few weeks ago. We were both reminiscing about our misspent youth and he happened to mention you and suggested that I call and pass on his regards.’

‘Oh … I see … how kind. I’m surprised he even remembered me, really,’ she told him guilelessly. ‘I was only there the one summer and we didn’t keep in touch. I hadn’t realised … And what do you do?’ she asked him politely.

‘I’m in pupillage at the moment,’ he told her. ‘Or rather, I’m waiting for a vacancy.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘I could move straight into chambers in Chester, of course, but I prefer to be independent, to make it on my own rather than rely on family patronage.’ He gave her a crocodile smile and waited.

‘Oh yes,’ she agreed, stammering slightly, ‘I … I couldn’t agree more.’

‘Mmm … good sherry,’ he commented, pointedly studying her legs as she quickly responded to his hint and took his glass away to refill it.

She had the kind of neat, delicate ankles that plumpish girls often had and they looked as though they were rather nicely tanned beneath her sheer stockings.

‘What about you?’ he asked her, accepting his newly filled glass and the comfortable easy chair she indicated. As he slid nonchalantly into his seat, he noticed the way she perched uncomfortably on the edge of hers. ‘Luke mentioned that you were planning to study for the Bar yourself after university.’

‘Did he? I didn’t realise he knew … I didn’t think …’

Max held his breath as he heard the note of uncertainty enter her voice. He was really going to have the ground cut from under him if she came out with some comment about not having made up her mind what she was going to do when she worked in Chester. Max had always preferred the bold manoeuvre over the cautious, preferring to gamble for high stakes rather than low and he guessed that with her family background, her choice of career would be automatic and unquestioning, just like her acceptance of his lies about Luke’s remembering her.

‘Well, yes … I’ve taken my Bar exams and have been in pupillage,’ she acknowledged, allowing him to start to relax, ‘but I’m not sure … that is, as yet I haven’t quite … Mummy and Daddy thought I might like to take a year off before …’ She bit her lip and looked acutely self-conscious.

‘Mummy’s on the committee of a charity that helps homeless children all over the world and she wants me to go with her on her next tour. I’d like to but … Well … I’m the only one, you see, and I feel I owe it to Daddy to … to preserve the family tradition. He and my grandfather would never say anything, of course. They’d never push me, but one does feel that one has some kind of obligation.’

‘Sounds rather like my people, especially my grandfather,’ Max responded with another crocodile smile. ‘It must be something to do with the way they were trained.’

‘Oh … what does he do?’

‘He’s retired now,’ Max told her smoothly. No need to mention at this stage that the elderly man had only made it as a country solicitor. ‘But I do understand what you mean about upholding a family tradition. As a Crighton, it’s expected that one will become involved with law one way or another. As you say, one feels a sense of responsibility and duty.’ He gave her a complacent look, which was rewarded by a shy smile.

‘It’s nice to talk to someone who knows … who understands …’ she started to confide. She broke off and said instead, ‘It isn’t always easy, is it? One seems to be sort of caught in the middle of things, caught between one’s family and—’

‘And those who think that because of your family, your history and connections, that everything is so much easier for you,’ Max suggested sympathetically.

She gave him another smile. ‘Yes, yes, exactly that, and yet in many ways it can be harder because one feels that …’ She spread her hands and admitted, ‘I feel guilty myself sometimes, especially when I see how hard other people have to work. I even feel guilty about … well, it isn’t easy to find a place in chambers, and there are people with outstanding qualifications who just don’t …’

She stopped again and looked at him. She had a habit of leaving her sentences unfinished and waiting for someone else to finish them for her—an indication of the fact that there had always been someone around to complete life’s more mundane chores for her, Max decided resentfully. But he kept that resentment hidden, the expression on his face benignly and deceptively understanding.

‘My … my friend, Claudine, who shares here with me, she has the most wonderful qualifications but because she doesn’t have any family background in the law she has been finding it most awfully difficult to get a place in chambers and yet I know she would make the most wonderful barrister.’

‘Perhaps your father could help her,’ Max suggested carelessly. He didn’t have the remotest interest in her friend, whoever she was, and even less in her problems in getting a toe-hold on their very slippery and steep career ladder. Why the hell should he? He had enough problems of his own.

‘Well, yes …’ she agreed, looking awkwardly uncomfortable. ‘Daddy could do something but …’

But he probably felt disinclined to use his undoubted power for the advancement of someone who was not ‘family’. That was, after all, how the system worked, how life worked, Max acknowledged cynically, but he kept those thoughts to himself, glancing with apparent regret at his now-empty glass and getting to his feet, telling his unsuspecting hostess, ‘I really must go. I’ve taken up more than enough of your time. I hope I haven’t held you up, delayed you on your way out?’

‘No … not at all … I wasn’t going out and … and I really enjoyed talking to you,’ Madeleine told him shyly. ‘Please … please remember me to Luke when you next see him.’

‘Oh no,’ Max told her softly, moving in for the kill. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’

She gave him a startled look.

‘I’ve enjoyed … talking, as well,’ he continued in that same soft, meaningful voice, not giving her the opportunity to speak or question. ‘In fact, I’ve enjoyed it so much that … will you have dinner with me one evening?’

‘Oh … oh yes, I’d like … Yes, that would be very nice,’ she amended quickly.

Got her, Max crowed in silent triumph. Not that he had had any doubts. She wasn’t his type, of course. Too plain, too dull, too ‘nice’. If he could make her blush and tremble simply by looking at her and talking to her, it didn’t say much for her sexual experience, and naïvely awkward, properly brought-up virgins held no sexual appeal for Max. But then, it wasn’t her virginity he was interested in taking from her, was it?

‘Yes … it will be,’ he agreed softly. ‘Very, very nice.’

Whilst she was still blushing and looking confused, he told her, ‘I’m free on Thursday if you are.’

It was only two days away but he didn’t want to give her any time to start having doubts and asking questions and he certainly didn’t want her thinking that he was free at the weekend.

‘Thursday? Yes … yes … that would be lovely.’

Max smiled. ‘Thursday it is, then.’ He frowned as he heard someone opening the door.

‘Maddy … Oh … I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you had a visitor.’

The girl who came in was everything that Madeleine was not. Slender, elegantly narrow-boned and just exactly the right kind of height. Her hair was shoulder length, thick and naturally wavy and a deep rich brown with honey gold highlights around her face, which was smooth-skinned and perfectly shaped, her eyes a deep sea green and her mouth the kind of mouth that automatically made Max think of sex.

‘Oh, Claudine … this is Max … Max Crighton … Max … this is Claudine … my friend.’

‘Max Crighton.’ There was a certain quick, sharp assessment in her eyes as they studied him, a very definite sense of cool withdrawal and hesitation, which Max countered by looking pleasantly through her rather than at her.

She was the kind of woman who took for granted that her looks would make her the focus of any male attention, he decided, and that air of cool withdrawal was no doubt a trick she employed to increase her desirability. Well, in this instance, she was wasting her time, and ignoring her, he turned back to Madeleine.

‘I’ll see you on Thursday,’ he told her warmly. ‘If I pick you up here around seven-thirty …?’

‘Yes, yes, that will be fine,’ she agreed huskily.

* * *

Claudine waited until he had gone before tackling her friend. ‘Max Crighton … you know who he is, don’t you?’ she warned Maddy forthrightly.

‘Yes … Yes. I know,’ Madeleine agreed quietly. ‘But Claudine …’

‘What was he doing here?’

‘He … I know his cousin …’

‘You never said anything.’

‘No … I didn’t think …’

‘You’re sure you want to see him again, then?’

‘Yes … yes, I’m sure …’

‘Be careful, Maddy,’ Claudine warned her. ‘You know he—’

‘I like him, Claudine,’ Madeleine interrupted huskily, turning her back so that Claudine couldn’t see her betraying expression. It was all right for Claudine; men fell for her on sight, and she never felt shy or awkward in their presence. She never had to sit in a corner and feel excluded, unwanted, unattractive. She didn’t have to bear the burden of knowing that her parents were disappointed by her lack of good looks. But Max had made her feel special, different … and he hadn’t even looked properly at Claudine. She knew—she had been watching him, holding her breath, waiting for the familiar male reaction to her friend’s loveliness, only it simply never came. Max just hadn’t seemed to notice how stunningly lovely Claudine was. Instead he had focused on her and it was her he had invited out.

Frowning, Claudine studied her friend’s tense back, torn between wanting to voice her suspicions and warn her friend and knowing that if she did so, she would risk hurting her by implying that Max Crighton could have some ulterior motive in seeking her out.

Madeleine had been a good friend to her and Claudine felt intensely protective towards her; despite all her material and social advantages, she was essentially a rather lonely and shy girl who had allowed others to bully and dominate her.

‘He was nice to me, Claudine, kind …’ Madeleine continued in a muffled voice without turning round.

Claudine stifled her doubts and said bracingly instead, ‘I should think he jolly well ought to be,’ then couldn’t resist double-checking, ‘Who exactly is this cousin of his, by the way? Why haven’t I heard you mention him?’

It was quite depressing how easily and quickly one slipped back into the familiar routine, Guy decided gloomily as he set out for the shop the morning after his return from holiday.

Three weeks sailing in the Greek islands had given his skin an even deeper colour and toned up those muscles that didn’t get daily use in his job.

Well, he might have been away for three weeks but he doubted anything would have changed in Haslewich; it simply wasn’t that kind of town. He was glad, though, that today was one of Jenny’s days in the shop. He had thought about her a lot whilst he was away, but then, what was unusual about that?

He knew there were a lot of people who would have been astonished at the strength of his feelings for her. Sometimes he warned himself about it. After all, she was a woman some years his senior, placidly and happily married, a woman, moreover, who was simply not the type one connected with intense and unrequited feelings of love and lust.

There was a trade fair coming up soon and he wondered, as he had on many similar occasions in the past, what his chances were of persuading her to attend it with him. An overnight stay in some secluded, romantic little hideaway might just … Who the hell was he kidding? he taunted himself as he reached the shop and felt in his pocket for his keys.

He frowned as he started to insert them in the lock and then realised that it was already open. Turning the handle he walked in, his frown deepening as he saw Jenny come through from the back room.

She looked different somehow, thinner, frailer, and she wasn’t smiling her usual warm, generous smile. Instead she looked tired, strained and distinctly on edge.

‘Jenny,’ he exclaimed fondly, ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here before me. I thought you’d be glad of the opportunity to have some time off after three weeks of covering for me,’ he joked.

‘I had to come into town to drop Joss off for the school bus,’ she told him tersely. ‘So I decided I might just as well come straight here.’

Guy watched her thoughtfully. When Jenny couldn’t drive Joss all the way to school, Jon normally dropped Joss off for the bus, not Jenny.

She had turned away from him and proceeded to dust a small, delicate china figurine, her face averted from him.

‘Did you have a good holiday, Guy?’ he asked himself conversationally, his gaze on her down-bent head. ‘Why, yes, Jenny, I did, thank you.’

He had only meant to tease her a little. It was so unlike her not to make the enquiry, not to be genuinely and keenly interested in others, but instead of laughing and apologising as he had expected, her hands fumbled with the figurine, causing it to slip through her fingers and smash down onto the floor, breaking into several small pieces.

Immediately Guy dropped to his knees to pick them up and then stopped as he looked towards Jenny and saw that she was standing motionlessly beside him, an expression of mingled shock and despair in her eyes as they welled with tears.