Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘I feel almost guilty in a way that we should feel like this—have so much,’ Jenny whispered huskily to Jon several minutes later after he had finished kissing her. ‘Poor David and Tiggy … What do you think will happen?’

‘I don’t know…. Jen, there’s something I haven’t yet told you.’

Quietly she waited.

‘It’s David. He’s been taking money from a client’s account.’ Briefly he explained as Jenny listened in appalled silence.

‘Oh, Jon,’ she whispered in shock once he had finished. ‘How could he have done such a thing? What will happen? There’s no way we could pay it back even if we sold everything and—’

‘I know, I know,’ Jon agreed, reaching out for her and wrapping her in his arms. ‘There was a message waiting for me when I got back from Chester this afternoon to say that Jemima Harding had died early this morning. The accountants will have to be told now, and the bank.’

‘Oh, Jon …’ Jenny pressed her hand to her mouth. ‘Has David said …?’

Jon shook his head. ‘We haven’t discussed it. I couldn’t, not when …’

‘And your father?’

Again, Jon shook his head.

‘Oh, Jon,’ Jenny repeated sadly as she leaned her head against his chest.

It seemed to be a recurring pattern over the years that their moments of the most intimate shared joy were always overshadowed by David. But this time, he wasn’t merely casting a shadow over their lives; he was threatening to ruin them. Jon may not have said so, spelled it out in so many words, but she knew all the same. David might have been the one who had stolen the money, broken a trust, but it was Jon who would have to pay. It always was….

Obligingly Olivia broke off another piece of her sandwich for the bird watching her. She hadn’t been hungry anyway, she acknowledged glumly as she scattered the crumbs on the grass in front of her. It was a warm, sunny day and she had come into the square to have her lunch but she had no appetite for it.

The doctor had reported back to them this morning that her mother was stable and that she would be transferred to the clinic later in the afternoon. He would advise, he had added firmly, that at least for a few days, her mother not have any visitors.

‘She really isn’t up to it and sometimes it can be very distressing, both for the patient and the family.’

Jon had told her this morning about Jemima Harding’s death. A tear trickled down her face followed by a second. She bent her head protectively over her unwanted lunch as she fumbled in her handbag for a tissue.

‘Olivia?’

She tensed as she heard Ruth’s voice, but it was too late; her great-aunt had seen her tears.

‘Oh, Livvy my dear, I heard about your mother. I’m so sorry,’ Ruth began saying compassionately as she sat down next to her on the wooden bench and put an arm around her.

‘No, that’s not it, not why … I’m not crying for Tiggy. I’m crying for myself,’ Olivia told her miserably. ‘I miss Caspar so much. I hate myself for saying it but part of me wishes that I’d never offered to stay … that I’d just gone with him.’

‘Oh, Livvy … it’s not too late,’ Ruth responded consolingly. ‘You could—’

‘No, he doesn’t want me any more. He believes that loving someone means putting them first, you see, and he thinks that I don’t love him. At least not enough, because according to him I didn’t, and even though I do love him, I’m not sure that I can live like that … with that … I would always feel that it was hanging over me. I …’

She started to cry again, her throat aching from the effort of trying to suppress her tears.

‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t go now … not with Dad …’

‘Your father’s over the worst and, by all accounts, well on the way to recovery. He’ll be back at work within a month and then … Olivia my dear, what is it?’ Ruth asked in dismay as Olivia buried her head in her hands and started to sob in earnest.

‘Oh, Aunt Ruth …’

‘Olivia, what is it …? What on earth’s wrong? What have I said …?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ Olivia replied tearfully. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything … I …’

‘Of course you can tell me,’ Ruth admonished her robustly. ‘You can and you must, and I’m certainly not leaving this bench until you do. Neither one of us is.’

Olivia gave her a watery smile.

‘That’s better,’ Ruth encouraged. ‘Now tell me what’s wrong.’

Hating herself for being weak enough to give in to the temptation to unburden herself, Olivia did just that. Ruth let her speak without trying to interrupt her and when the younger woman had finished, Ruth looked across the small pretty square in silence.

‘I … I shouldn’t have told you. You’re shocked and—’

‘No, I’m not shocked,’ Ruth countered lightly. ‘I’m not even particularly surprised. Now I’ve shocked you. I’m sorry, Olivia, but then, you see, I rather think I know your father slightly better than you do. You find it hard to accept that he could do something so … dishonest. A child needs to be able to trust and respect its parent, so that’s no bad thing.’

‘Except that I’m not a child.’

‘Maybe not, but it isn’t always easy to cast off ingrained modes of behaviour and beliefs … ideals. Perhaps that’s why it’s easier for me to accept than for you.

‘You see, to me, your father always has been and always will be the self-willed and rather selfish little boy who always so skilfully shrugged aside his responsibilities and used his charm and his father’s unfortunate tendency to spoil him to his own advantage, leaving Jon to be his whipping boy.’ She sat quietly for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. ‘Has Jon actually seen the accountants yet?’

‘No, not yet,’ Olivia told her tiredly.

‘Good.’ Ruth turned round and looked across the square to Jon’s office window. ‘I’d better go and see him, then,’ she said purposefully, a smile warming her face.

‘Go and see him …?’ Olivia frowned. ‘But—’

‘Do you know what I think you should do, Livvy?’ Ruth interrupted. Without waiting for Olivia to respond, she continued, ‘I think you should go and ring that young man of yours. You do love him,’ she reminded Olivia when she saw her expression. ‘All right, he may not be perfect, you may have problems to resolve, but tell me this. Which is the worst alternative, living your life with him, problems and all, or living your life without them and without him? Don’t waste your life in useless regrets, Olivia my dear. Not like … Go and ring him. I insist.’

‘Ruth …?’ Jon stood up as his secretary ushered Ruth into his office. She might only live across the square but he couldn’t remember the last time she had actually come to the office.

‘Sit down, Jon,’ she told him crisply. ‘We need to talk. Olivia has told me all about David,’ she announced forthrightly. ‘I take it that as yet no one outside the family knows what’s happened?’

‘As yet, no,’ Jon agreed heavily.

‘Good. Now tell me, how much exactly did David borrow from Jemima Harding?’

‘Borrow …?’ Jon gave her a dry look. ‘David didn’t borrow anything. David stole—’

‘No, he did not,’ Ruth corrected him authoritatively. ‘David, rather unprofessionally to be sure, asked Jemima for a loan. Or rather, I should say, a series of loans. The informal arrangement being that he would repay her on demand. Now with her death he naturally feels that the time has come to repay these loans, even though no specific repayment date was originally put on them.’

Jon shook his head. ‘If only … David can’t pay back that money. We both know that.’

‘David can’t,’ Ruth agreed, pausing before adding calmly, ‘but I can.’

Jon stared at her. ‘Ruth,’ he explained patiently, ‘it is really generous of you to make such a suggestion, but David took two million pounds from Jemima’s trust fund.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she acknowledged coolly.

Jon stared blankly at her. ‘You haven’t got two million pounds.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ she allowed. ‘I think at my last count it was closer to five million.’

‘Five million! You’ve got five million pounds!’

‘Jon, please don’t take offence, but if I were you, I really wouldn’t let my jaw sag like that. It really isn’t very flattering, not at your age,’ Ruth chided her nephew in a kindly voice. ‘And no, I haven’t gone senile.’ She gave him an amused smile. ‘I really do have the money, though I must admit I find it rather irksome to have to use it to save David’s skin, but then it isn’t just David’s skin that’s at risk here, is it?’ she asked Jon gently. ‘You and Jenny and most especially Joss are very special to me … most especially Joss. At my age one is allowed to have favourites and there is no way I would want to see his life and future marred by David’s weakness and stupidity.

‘I was left a quite substantial sum of money by my mother’s sister,’ she revealed with a smile. ‘No, not five million pounds, nowhere near anything like that, but this was many years ago, and I discovered rather to my own surprise that I seemed to have a talent for the stock market. You’ll have to see the bank and the accountants, of course. We can’t leave that to David. You can explain to them about David’s private arrangement with Jemima—’

‘They’ll never believe that Jemima agreed to lend David the money.’

‘Privately, maybe not,’ Ruth concurred, ‘but I think you probably will find that they’ll be as keen to see the whole affair sorted out as discreetly as we are. It won’t do anything to improve their professional standing if it gets out that David was raiding Jemima’s account right under their noses, will it?’ she asked Jon practically.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ Jon asked his aunt quietly after a brief silence.

‘What?’ Ruth gave him a quizzical look.

‘I owe a duty to my family, Ruth, but I also owe a duty to my own profession. I am honour bound to report David for—’

‘No,’ Ruth interrupted firmly. ‘You may be honour bound to report your suspicions but that is all they are, Jon. You do not, after all, have any proof, do you, that David did not have some private arrangement with Jemima?’

‘Ruth …’ Jon protested.

‘Have you?’ she persisted.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘but we both know—’

‘We both know that David borrowed money from Jemima and that is all we know. I do understand, Jon,’ she went on more gently, ‘but while I might applaud the moral strength that makes you sacrifice your own career and life, I can’t say the same about what the prospect of your exposing David will do to the new generation. All of them will be tainted by it.

‘And besides, we can’t know what private arrangement David and Jemima may or may not have had,’ she repeated. ‘Jemima is now beyond answering any questions and as for David … Well, I wouldn’t like to say what effect it might have on his health if he were to be subjected to a rigorous questioning.’

‘Ruth, don’t do this to me,’ Jon begged her wearily. ‘You know—’

‘I know that you’re an honest man, Jon, and that’s all I need to know. I’m going home now to speak to my brokers and I want you to get in touch with the bank and the accountants and explain the position with regard to David’s loans as you feel that your professional code of conduct requires you to do. You will, of course, also tell them that arrangements have been made within the family to repay the loans even though there is no legal recourse or obligation to cover their repayment. I think you will find that both the accountants and the bank will be so relieved at having been spared the necessity of investigating the matter and escaping all the attendant publicity that they will be only too happy to accept your version of events, publicly at least. And as for David … Well, it goes without saying, he can never be allowed to work again either here or anywhere else. I think it would be best if he decided that in view of his heart attack it would be wiser for him to take early retirement.’

Jon looked at her sombrely. ‘Ruth, I just don’t know what to say….’

‘Then don’t say anything. I generally find it is the wisest course,’ Ruth told him with a smile.

Olivia closed her eyes and gripped the telephone receiver hard. She had rung the number she had for Caspar and asked for him. What would he say when he heard her voice? What would he do? Would he speak to her or simply hang up? Was she now just a part of his past life, one he only wanted to forget?

She heard a voice at the other end of the line but it wasn’t Caspar’s.

‘I’m sorry,’ she was advised, ‘but I’m afraid he isn’t available.’ Olivia’s heart sank.

‘Is he …? Could I …? When will he be available?’ she asked desperately.

‘I really couldn’t say. He’s away at the moment on private business and I have no idea when he’s going to come back.’

‘I … I see…. You don’t … you don’t have a number where I could reach him, I suppose?’ Olivia asked.

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’

Quietly she replaced the receiver.

Well, at least she had tried. Oh, Caspar, where are you? She could feel the hurt building up inside her in a low, slow surge of agony. Whoever had said that time and distance healed all wounds was wrong. They didn’t. They just made it worse.

‘Oh, Max … I didn’t think you’d be here. The clerk said something about your being in court this morning.’

‘The case was cancelled,’ Max told the senior member of chambers as he stood awkwardly in the doorway of Max’s office looking both irritated and self-conscious. Someone was standing behind him, and when he moved slightly out of the way, Max saw who it was. He frowned. What the hell was Madeleine’s housemate doing here?

‘Well, since you are here,’ the senior member began saying fuzzily, ‘I suppose I’d better introduce you. Claudine, this is Max Crighton. Max did his pupillage here and he’s currently waiting to find a vacant tenancy.’

‘Yes … so I’ve heard.’

She was smiling as she extended her hand towards Max. He took it reluctantly. He hadn’t liked her the first time he met her and he still didn’t. He also had a suspicion that she had tried to warn Madeleine about him, which made him like her even less.

‘Max—’ the senior member’s voice was just a shade too hearty, his smile just a touch forced ‘—Claudine Chatterton will shortly be joining us as a junior barrister. She’ll be taking over Clive Benson’s place when he retires.’ He turned to smile at her, but she wasn’t looking at him; she was watching Max, her mouth curling into a smile of knowing amusement.

For once in his life, Max knew that he was in a situation over which he had no control and no power. It hadn’t been Madeleine who was his rival, he recognised in a surge of white-hot fury; it had been this woman, this woman who was standing there smiling mockingly … tauntingly at him. Knowing …

And Madeleine must have known. The stupid little bitch, why the hell hadn’t she said something? He stood up, ignoring the nervous look of mingled dislike and distaste the senior member was giving him, then shouldered his way past both him and Claudine, almost pushing them out of his way as he made for the door.

‘Oh dear,’ he heard Claudine saying smilingly as he grimly left the office, ‘have we done something to upset him?’

Something to upset him? She knew perfectly well, the bitch…. The bitch! Charlotte had been grossly mistaken in her information. Well, someone was going to pay for making a complete fool of him, for lying to him … cheating him out of what was rightfully his. And he knew exactly who that someone was going to be.

Madeleine looked startled as she opened the door to him, her surprise turning quickly to dismay as she saw his face. ‘Max, what is it, what’s wrong …?’

‘You know damn well what’s wrong!’ he shouted, hurling the words at her like blows. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that Claudine was up for the tenancy?’

‘I … I thought you knew….’ Madeleine replied nervously, adding pleadingly, ‘Oh, Max, please don’t be angry. I know how disappointed you must be … how much you wanted to … to prove yourself by your own efforts, but even Daddy admits that to get into the really top sets of chambers, it isn’t enough simply … well, you just have to have the right connections and that’s why—’

‘The right connections! And just where the hell are her right connections, or can I guess? Did Daddy put in a good word for her? Why? He’s fucking her, is he?’

‘Max …’ Madeleine’s face had gone white with shock. ‘Please, I know how you must feel.’

‘Do you … do you …?’

Max grabbed hold of her wrists and began shaking her like a rag doll, ignoring her frantic pleas to let her go. God, when he thought of the time he’d wasted to no purpose, when all along …

‘I suppose you thought it was funny, did you, the pair of you?’ he demanded as he released Madeleine so forcefully that she almost fell against the wall.

As she struggled to keep her balance, she tried surreptitiously to ease the soreness out of her bruised wrists.

‘Max, it wasn’t like that…. I know you’re upset, but please, please listen to me….’

‘Listen to you … listen to you!’

‘I’ve spoken to Daddy,’ Madeleine desperately tried to tell him, ignoring the searing contempt she could hear in his voice, avoiding looking directly at him and frantically trying to pretend that everything was really all right, that this wasn’t really her Max…. Maybe once he had calmed down, things would be different and she would forget that he had ever been like this … frightened her like this….

‘I … he … he wants us to have dinner with him and Mummy tonight. He … he says there may be a vacancy coming up at another set of chambers.’

She told him the name and Max stared at her in furious disbelief. It was one of the most exclusive sets of chambers in the Inn and he had as much chance of being considered for a vacancy there as he had of flying to the moon.

‘Daddy knows the senior member there … he’s had a word with him and … well, Daddy said, since he doesn’t have a son, it would be rather nice if he could have a son-in-law to follow in his shoes….’

Madeleine swallowed … and then added miserably, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Claudine but, well, she begged me not to. Oh, Max …’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s been so horrid listening to you talking about it, knowing how much it meant to you and not being able to say anything, but I promised, and … please don’t be cross with me … I know you didn’t want me to say anything to Daddy … that you wanted to do it on your own but …’

Max’s head was spinning. A place in one of London’s top chambers … the patronage of one of the country’s most senior judges … He looked consideringly at Madeleine, her head bent low, her eyes down-cast. It was all there for the taking … with one proviso.

Son-in-law … That meant marriage. Marriage to Madeleine. Last night he had been anticipating the moment when he would tell her just exactly what he thought about her, the moment when he would walk away from her, and now …

‘Stop crying, Maddy, my sweet, devious, wonderful Maddy,’ he crooned as he took her in his arms. ‘Of course I’m not cross with you. Well, not very much,’ he amended lightly. ‘It was naughty of you to go to your father.’

‘I did it for you … for us,’ Madeleine whispered, her mouth trembling. ‘So that we could be together….’

‘Yes, I know,’ Max agreed, gentling his tone. ‘But I wanted to earn the right to tell your father I want to marry you … not to feel—’

‘Oh, Max, don’t,’ Madeleine pleaded. ‘I was just trying to help. I just wanted—’

‘I know exactly what you wanted,’ Max began murmuring silkily, his voice changing, ‘and I know exactly what I want, too….’

‘Oh, Max, we can’t,’ Madeleine whispered breathlessly, ‘not now. It isn’t even lunch-time and … Oh, Max …’

‘What time are we having dinner with your parents?’ he asked as he slid his hands under her top to caress her breasts.

His mind was working overtime, racing ahead…. He would get his place in chambers and his grandfather’s money and if the price he had to pay was a few years of marriage to Madeleine, then so what? In three and even four years’ time he would still only be in his late twenties. He would have to secure his position financially, of course. Make sure that when they did divorce he didn’t lose out and he would have to make sure, as well, that there were no children. There was no way he was going to be forced to support a couple of brats he had never even wanted.

‘I’ll have to take you home to meet my family,’ Max was promising her as he guided Madeleine upstairs. ‘They’re going to love you.’ But as he took her in his arms and started to kiss her, it wasn’t Madeleine’s small round face he could see, but the amused, mocking expression in Claudine Chatterton’s eyes as she stood in the doorway of his office.

It wasn’t over … not yet … not by a long shot …

Caspar paused before turning the car into the drive that led to Olivia’s parents’ house.

He had no idea how Olivia was going to react to his arrival. Initially when he had left her, his mood fuelled by a lethal cocktail of affronted male ego, hurt pride and sense of injustice, he had told himself that in ending their relationship and distancing himself from her, he was simply saving himself the bother of the pointless trauma of trying to pretend that they still loved one another when quite patently they did not.

It had taken him a week of expecting her to contact him coupled with an emotional backlash that began with self-righteous anger and ended with the bitter realisation that she was not going to telephone to make him understand just what he had done and—even more painfully—accept why he had done it.

It had never worked as a child, trying to bring his inattentive parents to heel or to command their attention and concern to evoke their parental love, so why the hell had he thought it would work this time and with someone like Olivia, especially with someone like Olivia?

He could now plainly understand how she must have felt—that he had let her down by not sympathising with her need to step into her father’s shoes.

The truth was that he had been jealous, jealous of the fact that anyone other than himself could be important. He had visited some old friends whilst he was at home and had sat politely listening to the woman complaining tiredly that her partner was jealous of their two-year-old child.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ she had told Caspar wearily. ‘Ricky is his son, and that’s part of the reason that I love him—because he is Gerry’s child—as well as for himself, but Gerry can’t or rather won’t see that. He only sees that Ricky is another male taking my attention away from him. I just can’t seem to make him see that the reason Ricky clings more to me is because he senses Gerry’s rejection of him. Ricky needs Gerry’s love.’

Caspar had at first thought she was exaggerating, but it had only been later, turning the conversation over in his mind when he was alone, that he had begun to ask himself if he, too, would turn out to be the kind of father who was afraid of the love his partner had for their children, the kind of man who resented it and actively tried to punish both the child and the mother because of it, the kind of man his own father had been….

Dusk was settling as he drew up outside the house, his arrival activating the security lights. He got out of the car and paused in thought before heading towards the entrance. He had been unnecessarily hard on Olivia, especially with regard to her mother, he acknowledged. As a child he had had no one to protect him from the realities of his parents’ chaotic lives. Was that in part why he had refused to give Olivia the escape route of believing that her mother’s obvious problem was simply a minor abberation?

He still didn’t feel that it would serve any useful purpose to try to deny that Tiggy had a problem, which so far as he was concerned needed professional treatment, but he could have handled the situation differently, been more cautious, more circumspect, in his appraisal and his comments, he conceded as he rang the doorbell and then stood back to wait.