Stronger Than Yearning

‘I can’t move in to the Hall — not yet. Far too much needs to be done, but on the other hand it’s going to be hard work supervising everything from London.’

‘Why not stay with us?’ Bill suggested.

Jenna shook her head. ‘No. It wouldn’t be fair on you and Nancy,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be coming and going all the time, using the telephone. One of the first things I’ll have to do when I get back is to find out if any of my craftsmen have contacts up here.’ She would also need a good architect, she reflected, and a sympathetic builder. Until she knew the Hall was hers she hadn’t allowed herself to think too much beyond the auction but now the auction was over and …

‘And Lucy?’ Bill questioned, watching her.

‘I took her out of school to bring her up here with me. She’s due back next Monday.’

‘She won’t like it,’ Bill warned her.

Jenna nibbled worriedly at her bottom lip. ‘I know she won’t, Bill, but what else can I do? A London day school is out. I’ve seen what those kids get up to, you haven’t. The way she’s behaving at the moment I couldn’t trust Lucy not to get in with some wild crowd.’

‘Perhaps that’s what’s wrong,’ Bill suggested quietly. ‘Perhaps you should trust her, Jenna.’

He watched her shrug and persisted. ‘Yes, I know you only want to protect her, but can’t you see? In her eyes, by refusing to talk to her about her father, by refusing to listen to her grievances, you’re refusing to believe her worthy of trust, and her views worthy of being respected.’

Bill had taught teenagers for many years, Jenna recognised, and she could also see that what he was saying made sense.

‘I don’t know, Bill. Perhaps at the end of this term, in the summer … There’s nothing I want more than to see her happy, but she says she hates Yorkshire. More to spite me than anything else, I suspect. At least at school she has her friends. I just don’t know what to do.’

She was more worried about Lucy than she wanted to admit. The way her niece had sprung to champion James Allingham had reminded her that Lucy was balanced very precariously between childhood and womanhood. With the problems that existed between them at the moment it would be all too easy for Lucy to decide to throw off the yoke of childhood and seek solace for her grievances in open rebellion.

‘She lacks a man’s presence in her life. You both do, Jenna.’ Bill’s quiet criticism wounded her, and she put down her mug, getting up and pacing angrily up and down.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Bill,’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t you start! What am I supposed to do? Go out on the streets and grab the first man who walks past?’

‘Don’t fly up at me,’ Bill chided her. ‘Sit down and we’ll talk about this calmly.’

Unwillingly she did so.

‘You know I’ve never interfered in your life, Jenna, but I hate to see what’s happening to you. You should have a husband and children of your own. I …’

‘Bill, the days are long gone when a woman wasn’t complete without a man at her side. I don’t want a husband, and as for children … I have Lucy. For heaven’s sake, at Lucy’s school more than half the girls are from single-parent families. It means nothing nowadays.’

‘Does it?’ She could feel Bill watching her.

‘Perhaps to you, Jenna, but not to Lucy. If you’re not careful she’s going to start looking for a father substitute for herself and I hate to think where that could lead. Look, I’m not suggesting you marry the first man who comes along simply for Lucy’s sake, I am telling you that she needs a male influence in her life that she can identify with, whether that man is her actual father or someone else, and the person best equipped to provide her with the right sort of male influence right now is you. I know that what happened to Rachel hurt you badly, Jenna, but all men aren’t like that.’

‘I know that.’ She got up again, pacing tensely. ‘I’m not a complete fool, Bill, it’s just that … well, I’ve never met any man who I would want to give up my freedom for. Sometimes I wonder if I’m capable of sexual love,’ she added bleakly.

She heard the scrape of Bill’s chair as he got up, and then the weight of his arm round her shoulders. ‘With that hair, and your temper ..!’ His eyes were laughing at her. ‘You’re capable of it all right, but somehow you’ve managed to train your mind to tell you that you’re not.’

Three days later, back in London, Jenna found that she couldn’t get what Bill had said out of her mind. On Sunday she was taking Lucy back to school, and although Jenna had tried on several occasions to talk seriously to her niece, Lucy had proved extremely unco-operative. Every time Jenna asked her if she had a moment to spare, Lucy was either on the point of going out, or she had to speak urgently to a schoolfriend, or there was something else of equal importance she had to do. Jenna was no fool, she knew that Lucy was deliberately punishing her because of her refusal to discuss her father, but what could she do? As she waited for the coffee to perk, Jenna heard the newspaper plop through the apartment’s outer door. It was Thursday and she had several appointments that morning, most of them connected with the Hall in one way or another. Richard had proved a marvellous help, taking all the work on hand off her shoulders so that Jenna could concentrate on organising the initial work on the Hall.

Harley had proved at first disbelieving and then disapproving when she told him how much she had paid. Like Lucy, he was sulking with her. Sighing faintly, Jenna opened the kitchen door and called out to Lucy. The younger girl was spending the day with a schoolfriend who, coincidentally, had also been off school, and they were going shopping together.

Jenna’s first appointment of the morning was with the firm of architects she normally used for any major reconstruction work required by her clients; she was hoping they would be able to recommend a Yorshire-based firm of architects to her. She had already unearthed a professional guide that listed builders qualified to work on restoring period buildings, and she was slowly going through it, writing down the names of those within reasonable travelling distance of West Thorpe.

‘Lucy, come on, you’re going to be late!’ she called again, pouring out a cup of coffee and walking into the small hallway to get the paper.

The front-page headlines were familiarly depressing and Jenna glanced at them briefly before turning to the gossip column. The previous evening she had attended a party thrown by one of her clients to show off her new décor, and her hostess had told Jenna that she had invited several society columnists. The moment she opened the paper on the society page a photograph caught Jenna’s eye. She stared blankly at it for several seconds before reading the caption beneath it. ‘Millionaire James Allingham returns to Britain following the deaths of his father and step-mother in car crash!’

There was no mistaking the dominatingly masculine features of the grim-faced man in the photograph, even with his expression stripped of all emotion save for a certain dark bleakness.

Several days ago James Allingham flew to New York, following the tragic news that a car driven by his step-mother, Lorraine, had been involved in a multiple pile-up on a New York freeway. Allingham, who was in Yorkshire at the time, arrived in New York just in time to see his father before he died. His step-mother, Lorraine, died later in hospital, his step-sister, Sarah, being the only survivor of the accident. A millionaire in his own right, James Allingham shares an inheritance from his father of the latter’s large art collection and a chain of hotels throughout the Caribbean. Allingham’s own fortune was founded on the holiday and marina complex he developed on the Caribbean island of St Justine which he inherited from his grandfather when he was twenty-one. Since Allingham is not married, and has always led a somewhat peripatetic life, it will be interesting to see if he now succumbs to the blandishments of one of his many female ‘friends’ and takes the plunge into matrimony. His step-sister, Sarah, who is fourteen years old was severely injured by the accident, and it is rumoured that James Allingham is her sole guardian. However, he has returned to his Knightsbridge house alone.

Grimacing with distaste Jenna put the paper down. So now she knew why James Allingham had left the auction so abruptly. She shivered slightly. No matter what she felt about him personally, she couldn’t help but be torn by compassion for his step-sister. The speculatively coy tone of the article sickened her, with its covert intrusive curiosity and she pushed the paper on one side in disgust, getting up to call Lucy yet again.

Her niece appeared several seconds later, touslehaired and still sulky, her answers to all Jenna’s too-bright questions monosyllabic to the point of rudeness.

‘I’m going now, Lucy.’ Jenna made herself sound cheerfully unaware of Lucy’s attitude. ‘I’ll be back about five.’ On a sudden impulse she hesitated and added, ‘Look, how would you like to go out to dinner tonight? Just the two of us, we’ll go somewhere glamorous and ——’

‘I’m eating at Janet’s.’

Recognising that she had been snubbed, Jenna pressed her lips firmly together. ‘Well, perhaps another time then,’ she added brightly. ‘Have a nice time.’

It was ridiculous that a woman who could run her own business successfully should quail beneath the resentment of a fifteen-year-old, Jenna told herself wryly as she stepped outside. Even though she hated to admit it to herself, it would be a relief in a way when Lucy was back at school. At the moment having her in the house was like living with a time-bomb. But simply because Lucy was back at school didn’t mean their problems had disappeared, Jenna reminded herself. Somehow, she and Lucy were going to have to find a common meeting ground. Without knowing why, she found herself thinking about James Allingham. How was he coping with his step-sister? Compared with him, her problems were minimal, Jenna told herself, but, then, no doubt man-like, he could hand over the care and comfort of his step-sister to others without any of the guilt she as a woman had to endure for abandoning her allotted female caring role.

On several occasions during the day Jenna found her thoughts returning to James Allingham. Each time she made a conscious effort to dismiss him from her mind, blaming his intrusiveness on the intense antipathy she had felt towards him. But now that antipathy was tempered with compassion, especially for his step-sister.

Jenna had been too young to remember anything about her own parents — her father had worked for one of the major oil companies and both he and her mother had been killed during a tribal uprising when he was working in a remote desert area. She had had to rely on Rachel’s dim memories of their parents to form an impression of them. Her aunt had never spoken about them, grimly dissuading the two sisters from doing so as well. Jenna had grown up with the uncomfortable feeling that, for some reason, her aunt had disapproved of their parents. Although their father had been her sister’s only child she had never talked to the girls about his childhood or his parents. If she hadn’t had Rachel …

Abruptly, Jenna came to a full stop in the street, appalled to realise the parallels that could be drawn between her aunt’s attitude and her own. But she would gladly have talked to Lucy about her parents if it had been possible …

But how was Lucy to know the reason why she was so evasive about her father? Shaking off the chilly sensation of despair running down her spine, Jenna straightened her shoulders and hurried on. It was pointless regretting her omissions of the past now. Lucy was far too vulnerable at the moment to accept the truth.

As she stepped into the building which housed her architects Jenna remembered Bill’s suggestion that she marry and provide Lucy with a substitute father-figure. Her mouth compressed slightly, her body instinctively shrinking from the thought of the sexual intimacy marriage would bring. No matter how much she analysed her own emotions or how logically she tried to look at things, Jenna was forced to admit that what had happened to Rachel had left its scars on her too. In some way that went deeper than logic could she was frightened of committing herself to a sexual relationship with anyone. She had seen what had happened to her sister, and even though she knew quite well that all men were not rapists the effect of Rachel’s death had been so traumatic that it had somehow frozen her ability to grow to full womanhood. Inside she was still a frightened teenager, Jenna told herself as she stepped out of the lift, and the only way she could ever contemplate marriage would be if it were merely a business arrangement, excluding any form of physical contact.

She closed her eyes briefly in a surge of mental torment as she imagined the reaction of the men who knew her in her business life if they were ever to discover the truth. She would instantly lose all her credibility and be demoted to the role of ‘frigid spinster’. That was the reason why she had always been at such pains to cultivate the glamorous sophisticated image she had been surprised to find herself labelled with when she first started working for John Howard. It made a very safe barrier to hide behind and she had played the part for so long now that it was almost second nature.

The receptionist behind the desk greeted her with a respectful smile and buzzed through on her intercom as Jenna sat down. She wasn’t kept waiting long, and as she was shown through into the partners’ office Jenna noted that it was Craig Manners, the senior partner, who held open the door for her and pulled out her chair.

‘Jenna … what can we do for you?’ he asked her once his secretary had poured their coffee.

‘Not an awful lot on this occasion,’ Jenna told him, crossing one slim leg over the other as she watched him quickly mask his disappointment. In the past, she had put several good contracts their way. Sometimes her clients wanted more than mere interior redecoration and once they started talking about structural alterations Jenna was always firm about insisting they sought qualified advice. She herself was no architect or builder and while design-wise she could often help her clients to crystallise their somewhat vague ideas, she was scrupulous about telling them that she had no qualifications in those other fields.

‘I was hoping you might be able to supply me with the name of a good architect in Yorkshire,’ she told him.

‘Yorkshire — rather far afield for you, isn’t it?’

Briefly she explained the situation to him.

‘So you intend moving your business up there as well?’ He frowned slightly. ‘Are you sure that’s a wise move in these recessionary times?’

‘I will be keeping on an office and staff in London,’ Jenna informed him, half resenting his almost paternalistic criticism.

‘Well, you know best …’ His hurried backing-off made Jenna suppress a faint smile. ‘And as to giving you the name of an architect, quite by coincidence an old friend of mine has a partnership in York.’ He jotted down a name and address on his notepad and handed it to Jenna.

‘They’re a first-class firm, and they have a department specialising in restoration work. They should be able to find you a good builder — but if you have any problems …’

Jenna got up shaking her head. ‘No … I …’

Craig got up too. ‘Before you leave London, Jenna, we must have lunch together … or dinner,’ he added speculatively.

‘That would be lovely, but I doubt that I’ll have the time, I’m afraid,’ Jenna replied diplomatically, avoiding his eyes. She was always wary when male colleagues proffered dinner invitations, and had a rule that she always refused them unless they included other people.

Why was it that even the most domesticated of the male species could never seem to resist trying their luck? Was it male instinct to pursue almost every unattached female that crossed their path?

She had several more meetings that morning, culminating in lunch with her bank manager. This was the appointment she was most dreading. She could, with patience and charm, just about manage to persuade Harley and her accountants that she had sound business reasons for what she was doing, but Gordon Burns was another matter.

She had used the same bankers right from the start of her career, although it was only more latterly, since her business had been successful that her branch’s most senior manager, Gordon Burns, had taken charge of her banking affairs.

He was a stooping, grizzled Scot, with an extremely shrewd mind and a dry sense of humour, which she enjoyed, and Jenna suspected he would prove far more difficult to convince than Harley had been. She had already endured one rather uncomfortable telephone call with Gordon Burns when she had had to increase the amount of her proposed loan. He hadn’t turned her down, but Jenna had sensed a cautious note of censure in his voice when he reminded her of the heavy financial burden she would be taking on.

He greeted her warmly enough, taking her coat and smiling at her. In his late fifties with a wealth of banking experience behind him, he always treated her with an olde-worlde masculine courtesy that was something of an anachronism, and yet, strangely enough, out of all her male colleagues and advisers he was the only one, who, when it came down to business, treated her exactly as he might another man.

Once they were seated he got briskly down to business, shaking his head a little as he studied the computer figures spread out on his desk. ‘Your turnover for the past couple of years,’ he told Jenna indicating the figures to her, and shaking his head slightly. ‘You don’t need me to tell you just how finely you’re cutting things, Jenna, and I won’t mince matters with you, I don’t like it.’

‘But you still gave me the loan?’

He grimaced faintly. ‘From the bank’s point of view it’s good business. The money’s out on loan to you at an extremely profitable rate of interest to us, and it’s well secured by the deeds on your London apartment and the old Hall itself. No, my concern isn’t for the bank’s money,’ he told her rather grimly, ‘but for your ability to repay it. You’ve taken on one hell of a burden. The interest repayments alone are going to amount to …’ He named a figure that made Jenna wince. ‘I know you’re doing very well at the moment, but what you’re talking about doing now is virtually to start again and new ventures are notorious for swallowing up money — oh, I’m not saying you won’t be successful in the North, only that you might find yourself with a cashflow problem and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you could lose the lot.’

It was no more than Jenna knew herself, but to hear it said out loud so pragmatically made her stomach clench and her throat close up.

‘What monies are you likely to have coming in over the next six months?’ He turned to some cashflow forecasts Harley had drawn up for her and studied them thoughtfully.

‘Umm … not too bad, but I’d like to see at least a couple more large, guaranteed contracts.’ He frowned, and tapped thoughtfully on his desk. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Jenna. On paper it looks viable but my banker’s nose warns me against it.’

Jenna felt her heart sink. Bankers were notoriously cautious, she comforted herself a little later over lunch, and yet she knew that Gordon Burns had paid her the compliment of being honest with her, and that if she were wise she would listen to what he had to say. But she was committed now, she reminded herself. It was too late to change her mind, even had she wanted to do so. Just for a moment the image of James Allingham’s grim face rose up before her. He would probably buy the house from … But no! She wasn’t going to sell it. She didn’t want to sell it, least of all to him!

By the time their lunch was over she had managed to persuade herself that the picture was not as black as Gordon Burns had painted it. True, financially she would be rather stretched … but she would survive. It was in a mood of optimism that she returned to the empty apartment later in the afternoon. Lucy was still out, and after making herself a pot of tea, Jenna settled herself at her desk and gave herself up to the pleasure of planning out the restoration to its former glory of the old Hall.

Because it had two wings it would easily adapt to the dual purpose she had in mind of business premises and home. The Georgian wing would be her business showcase, with the older part of the building restored and adapted as a home for herself and Lucy. Once she had started, enthusiasm gripped her, and it was the growing dusk that eventually made her stop, massaging her cramped fingers as she put down her pen.

She glanced at her watch. Nearly nine. Where was Lucy? Frowning slightly, Jenna went to the phone and looked up the number of her friend’s parents, quickly dialling it.

It was several seconds before it was answered, a brief spasm of time during which Jenna tried hard not to dwell on how late Lucy was and all the dreadful fates that might have befallen her.

When the phone was answered and she spoke to Janet’s mother she learned that both girls had gone to a party being held by the daughter of one of their neighbours.

‘Didn’t Lucy ring you?’ Emily Harris asked. ‘She said she was going to?’

‘She may have tried to. I was out until four o’clock,’ Jenna told her, thinking though that Lucy had not tried very hard to get in touch with her. Lucy was old enough to be aware of how much she worried about her, and Jenna wondered if Lucy was still deliberately trying to punish her. She sighed as she replaced the receiver, her earlier optimism banished. Her head had started to ache slightly and suddenly she was overwhelmed by a desire to breathe in the clean, cool air of the moors. Funny how, until now, she had never realised how much she missed the solitude and peace of Yorkshire.

Was she being entirely fair to Lucy in uprooting her? But she wasn’t being completely uprooted, Jenna reminded herself. Many of her schoolfriends lived out of London; indeed they came from all parts of the country. Lucy could invited them to stay with her during the school holidays and could visit them in turn. Jenna had always been scrupulous about not being over-possessive with Lucy, encouraging her to make friends and spend time with them, worried that as an only child she might grow up lonely and introverted without company of her own age.

And yet now, as far as Lucy was concerned, nothing she could do was right. Her head really aching now, Jenna wandered into the kitchen to make herself a drink, suddenly aware of a deep sense of depression. What was she going to do to put things right between herself and Lucy? Perhaps it was just as well that Lucy was returning to school on Sunday, although Jenna was loath to part from her in her present mood. Maybe it would do them both good to be away from one another for a while?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘YOU’RE early.’

Jenna grimaced at Maggie Chadwick, her secretary, and gestured to the large pile of mail already on her desk. ‘With good reason so it seems.’

‘Mmm. Things did rather mount up while you were away.’

Maggie was an excellent secretary and had been with the company for the last three years. Watching her frown, Jenna wondered if something was troubling her. She knew that she was deeply involved in an affair with a foreign news correspondent for one of the national papers and also that their relationship was an extremely stormy one. Thinking perhaps that her secretary’s lack of good spirits might be the result of a quarrel, she enquired gently, ‘Maggie, is something wrong?’

Almost immediately the other woman’s forehead cleared. ‘Well, I know it’s none of my business,’ she began, ‘but we do seem to be having problems with cashflow at the moment. Some of our clients are being very slow to pay.’ She gnawed worriedly at her bottom lip. ‘I know I don’t have any right to say this, but —’

‘But what Maggie?’ Anxiety sharpened Jenna’s voice, her conversation with Gordon Burns still very fresh in her mind. There were always clients in this business who jibbed at paying their bills: some of them, those with the reputation and standing to do so, even got away without paying them at all, but they were in a minority and Jenna was meticulous about investigating the reliability of those clients with whom she took on large contracts. Only the previous month she had turned down a contract from a Greek millionaire to revamp his huge London apartment because she had discovered by discreet enquiry that he was not over-zealous about meeting his bills.