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Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series - Пенни Джордан - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
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Джордан Пенни
Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series
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10
Olivia didn’t drive straight home after she left Saul; instead she drove into Haslewich and parked her car on one of the empty, narrow side-streets just off the main square, unwilling to admit, even to herself, just why she felt so reluctant to return home.
She wanted to see Caspar, wanted to talk to him … needed to talk to him but not just yet, not whilst she was still feeling so … so what? she asked herself as she locked her car and started to walk towards the town square, tucking her hands firmly into the pockets of her coat as she did so.
It seemed strange to be walking through her home town at this time of the evening without any real purpose, rather like a tourist instead of an inhabitant, but had she been a tourist she would have surely had Caspar with her, her arm tucked through his, his dry, witty sense of humour making her laugh as it had done so many, many times in the past.
In the past? But she and Caspar weren’t in the past … were they? Her heart started to beat a little bit too fast, her walking pace increasing. It would be easy to put her own sombre, reflective mood down to Saul’s revelations about his marriage but she knew that wouldn’t be entirely honest.
Her doubts, her feeling that she and Caspar were not, after all, as harmoniously in step with one another as she had so naïvely believed, had not been brought on by the realisation that Saul’s marriage was in difficulty.
She paused, her attention caught by the floodlit façade of the church, its Norman tower standing stoutly square. As she absent-mindedly studied the familiar sight, Olivia couldn’t help contrasting the staunchness of the faith of those long-ago builders not only in their God, but also in themselves and humanity, with the present-day malaise of world-weariness and cynical disaffection.
It was indeed a truly awe-inspiring thought that in an age where merely to reach adulthood was an achievement, and to live much beyond one’s thirtieth year almost a miracle, that men, people, should have committed themselves to the construction of a building that would take not only their own lifetime to complete but the lifetime of their sons and grandsons after them, as well.
Instinctively she shifted her gaze away from the church towards the row of Georgian houses where Ruth lived. As a young girl she had been puzzled by the fact that Aunt Ruth lived alone, that there was no uncle, no children; and later as a teenager she had been initially surprised and then had a vague sense of amusement and a slightly patronising superiority at the dullness of the life Aunt Ruth had chosen for herself compared with the wide horizons that were going to be hers.
Oddly she had never felt curious about Ruth’s life, or her past, simply taking it for granted that she should accept worthy spinsterhood following the death of her fiancé.
Her forehead puckered as she studied the windows of Aunt Ruth’s house. Where did this American, whom Caspar claimed her great-aunt had been involved with, fit into the picture and why had she never heard about him? Head down, deep in thought, she continued walking into the square when a group of noisy teenagers, laughing and tormenting one another, erupted into the square several yards away from her. A couple of them, she suspected from their coal-black hair and familiar features, were members of the semi-notorious Cooke family. One of them saw her watching them and paused to return her scrutiny with a bold-eyed, challenging sexual stare. Olivia grimaced as she looked away. He must be all of fourteen.
She walked on until she reached the building that housed the practice’s offices. They were a world away from the modern hi-tech building where she had worked in London and from the life she would have shared in America with Caspar.
Would have shared. Would still share, she corrected herself quickly. Caspar meant so much to her. She couldn’t bear to lose him and there was, in truth, no real reason for her to lose him, she reassured herself, quickening her pace as she hurried back to her car, suddenly, desperately, anxious to see Caspar, to be with him.
Yes, maybe they did hold opposing views of what was happening here in Haslewich. They were, after all, both strong-minded, intelligent people who couldn’t always be expected to see completely eye to eye on everything. Indeed, sometimes they were bound to think and feel very differently, and the more important the issue, the more intense those differences were likely to be, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be resolved, that a compromise couldn’t be reached. She could quite simply follow Caspar to Philadelphia rather than arrive there with him, and in that time she could stay here and help Uncle Jon whilst Caspar picked up the threads of his life in America. It would only be for a few weeks. They could keep in touch via the telephone, even if they couldn’t …
Her hands were trembling slightly as she unlocked her car door.
There was a light on in her bedroom as Olivia drove up in front of the house and parked her car. Unlocking the front door, she took the stairs two at a time, aching, anxious to be with Caspar; to tell him what she had been thinking. She pushed open the bedroom door and then came to a full stop.
Caspar obviously hadn’t realised she was already in the house. He was standing with his back to her, peering out of the window; his skin still had a damp sheen to it from his recent shower, minute droplets of moisture still edging their way down his spine and gathering in the small hollow at its base.
Olivia’s mouth had gone very dry, her legs felt wobbly and her heart was thudding with so much excitement that it might have been the very first time she had seen him naked, she thought, and fighting down her urge to go up to him and wrap her arms tightly around him, she said his name instead, knowing even before he turned around that the moment he saw her face he would know exactly how she was feeling.
She had never been any good at concealing from him just how much she wanted him, she acknowledged ruefully, as he responded to the soft sound of her voice saying his name.
‘Oh, Caspar,’ she whispered shakily, ignoring his stiff-armed attempt to hold her away from his wet body as she gave in to the temptation to be close to him and wrapped her arms tightly around him. ‘What are we doing to one another? Why are we arguing … quarrelling when …’
‘When what?’ Caspar demanded gruffly.
She could feel the pressure of his hands gripping her upper arms but she was past worrying about what effect his wet skin might have on her clothes now, her only regret being the fact that they had become an unwanted barrier between them.
‘When we could be doing this,’ she told him huskily, lifting her face towards his and sliding one hand behind his head to guide his mouth down towards hers.
For a moment he seemed to hesitate, looking deeply and searchingly into her eyes whilst she looked back at him, her pupils already dilated, her eyes cloudy with longing. Her whole body, her whole being was awash with a soft flood of aching tenderness from the full force of her new-found knowledge that what they felt for one another, what they had together, was far too important, too strong … too vital, to be threatened by any quarrel.
Together they would find a way to reach a happy compromise.
His mouth felt unfamiliarly immobile, cool and slightly dry, almost unresponsive, but even as she started to frown and draw back from him, Caspar reached for her, taking control of the kiss, taking control of her, she realised as his mouth moved firmly on hers, his hands cupping her face, his body …
Eagerly Olivia moved closer to him.
‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ Caspar told her rawly between kisses.
‘Mmm … I know,’ Olivia agreed, but her need to feel his mouth moving against hers, to hold on to their closeness and intimacy made her reluctant to stop kissing him, even for long enough to get undressed, and in the end, what had in recent times become a mundane chore relegated to the end of the day when both of them prepared for bed became instead a deliciously agonizing, passion-building and wickedly sensual extravagance of snatched kisses and caresses interspersed with fumbling fingers and hasty tugs as they both struggled to remove the damp clothes that obstinately clung to her body and cast them aside to lie unregarded on the floor before they finally collapsed onto her bed in a tangle of trembling but blissfully naked limbs.
‘Mmm … you feel so good, taste so good,’ Olivia marvelled in an ecstatic sigh as she licked her way as delicately as a small cat across Caspar’s torso.
‘Feeling good isn’t how I’d describe it,’ Caspar groaned as her tongue stroked tantalisingly below his ribcage and then drew a sinfully erotic circle around his navel. ‘In fact, right now, what you’re doing to me feels like … it feels like … oooh,’ he groaned through gritted teeth as her tongue dipped lower.
Olivia tried to tease him mockingly by demanding huskily, ‘Go on, what does it feel like?’ although in reality she was just as aroused by their love play as he was.
Turning the tables on her, he caught her off guard, picking her up and rolling her easily beneath him as he countered trenchantly, ‘Why don’t I just give you a demonstration, see how you like that kind of torture?’
Only torture wasn’t the word she would ever use to describe the sensual movement of Caspar’s mouth against her body as he lovingly caressed every feminine responsive centimetre of her skin.
‘Caspar, no more,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t wait any longer. I want you. I want you inside me … deep, deep inside me … now.’
Olivia could feel her whole body shudder as Caspar complied with her sensual demand.
Right from the very first time, the sex between them had been so good, so right…. She had felt incredibly good about being so intimate with him, about being so open with him. It wasn’t only the love but, in many ways just as importantly, the trust she had in him that gave her a sense of security, a sense of being protected and safe that made it possible for her to be completely at ease with him sexually and emotionally, to be open with him about her needs as a woman and to be equally responsive to his needs as a man and it was this openness between them, this honesty, that for Olivia made their relationship so special and why she hated the way things had been between them over the past few days.
The sense of closeness, of wholeness, of oneness she felt now in the aftermath of their passionately intense physical lovemaking had brought gentle, vulnerable tears to her eyes, and as she lay in his arms, a feeling of such love and happiness welled up inside her that she wanted desperately to somehow convey to Caspar just how much their love, their relationship meant to her. There was always, she knew, a sentence, a verbal commitment to him that whilst meaningless to others, would show Caspar just how much he did mean to her.
She reached out to trace the shape of his jaw, his mouth, with her fingertips and told him softly, ‘Caspar … I do love you….’
For a moment he looked startled … shocked almost, and then he was hugging her, holding her so tightly that she had to protest laughingly that she could hardly breathe.
‘At last … at last,’ she heard him saying exultantly. ‘Say it again Livvy. Tell me again….’
‘Say what?’ she teased and then happily complied with his demand, whispering the words first against his ear and then against his mouth. When she felt his lips moving against hers as he said the words back to her, the desire she had thought completely satiated started to burn again as they kissed and touched and then kissed and touched some more.
‘Mmm … that was wonderful,’ Olivia sighed blissfully as she snuggled up against Caspar.
‘That!’ complained Caspar mock-indignantly.
‘Very well, then you were wonderful,’ Olivia confided sleepily. ‘I’m so glad we’re not fighting any more,’ she added sombrely. ‘I saw Saul earlier. He seems to think that his and Hillary’s marriage is virtually over.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Caspar said, stifling a yawn.
‘You know?’ Olivia demanded, suddenly alert as she leaned up on her elbow and frowned down at him. ‘How do you know?’
Something about the way he hesitated before replying and then looked away from her made her clench her stomach muscles and watch him warily.
‘I, er, Hillary told me when we had dinner together this evening….’
‘You had dinner with Hillary! You invited another woman out to dinner without telling me?’ Olivia demanded, spacing the words out carefully, all her earlier pleasure draining away as she stared at Caspar in shock. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why?’
‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,’ Caspar answered angrily. ‘For God’s sake, Livvy,’ he expostulated, pushing his fingers irritably into his hair, ‘it’s past two in the morning, and right now the last thing I feel like doing is being cross-examined as if I’m guilty of a major crime. You just said yourself how much you hate it when we fight and yet here you are—’
‘I’m not fighting,’ Olivia interrupted him tersely.
‘No? Then you’re sure as hell giving a fair imitation of it,’ Caspar retorted grumpily.
‘Caspar, we’re lovers, we’ve planned a future together. I wouldn’t go out and have dinner with another man and then not tell you about it.’
‘No, but you’re quite happy to change all our plans and have me looking a fool while you announce that you’re staying here and playing the dutiful daughter and niece, that it’s far, far more important to you than being with me, even though it’s been made plain to you that your sacrifice isn’t either necessary or wanted,’ Caspar came back with angry ferocity.
Olivia sat upright in bed and stared at him through the darkness.
‘Caspar, I explained about that,’ she protested. ‘It will only be for a few weeks … I thought you understood … and tonight …’ She paused and bit her lip before continuing. ‘Tonight, when I told you I love you … I thought—’
‘You thought what?’ he interrupted her savagely. ‘You thought because you’d made the big sacrifice of finally committing yourself verbally to me that that made everything okay. That I’m dumb enough, besotted enough, to go away and wait patiently until you’re ready. Was that what tonight was all about, Livvy?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Was that what all the passion … all the hunger, all the sex was for, to keep me quiet? Well, I’ve got news for you … it didn’t work.’
‘Caspar,’ Olivia protested, but he had already turned his back on her, hunching his body as close to the edge of the bed as he could.
Well, let him sulk if he wants to, Olivia decided wrathfully. She wasn’t the one who had spoiled things between them. Not this time. No, Caspar had done that all by himself. Why hadn’t he told her that he’d had dinner with Hillary? And even worse, would he ever have told her if she hadn’t just happened to stumble on the truth?
Had tonight’s seemingly passionate and intense lovemaking simply been a ploy on his part to make her come to heel … to make her commit herself to him verbally, to give him the words of love he wanted just so that he could use them against her in the kind of emotional power struggle she had so foolishly believed their love meant too much to either of them for them to enter into? And if she had been wrong about that, how much else had she been wrong about, as well? Did Caspar really love her at all? Quietly she, too, lay down, her own back firmly turned to him.
‘Olivia, have you got a minute?’
Uncertainly Olivia looked across the kitchen at Caspar. She had woken early in anticipation of going into the office but Caspar wasn’t there beside her. Even as early as it was, he must have dressed and gone downstairs ahead of her, thus depriving her of any opportunity of talking privately with him in the comforting intimacy of her bedroom.
‘I’ve decided to go ahead and call the airline this morning,’ he told her tersely.
An ominous sense of foreboding gripped Olivia. ‘Call the airline if you like, but I’d hoped we weren’t going to do that until we went back to London.’
‘We weren’t,’ Caspar agreed, emphasising the ‘we’ before adding grimly, ‘But then we weren’t planning to spend more than a few days here saying goodbye to your folks.’
Olivia stared at him in dismay. ‘But, Caspar, that was before my father had his heart attack. Can’t …?’ She dug her teeth into her bottom lip, willing herself to stay calm whilst she begged, ‘Caspar, please don’t do this to me … to us … Caspar …’ Her voice shook so much she had to stop speaking.
‘Livvy … look, it isn’t too late,’ Caspar told her urgently, crossing the space between them and grasping her hands. ‘Tell your uncle you’ve changed your mind … that you can’t stay. I’ll get us seats on the first available flight and we—’
‘No … no, you know I can’t do that,’ Olivia protested, drawing her hands free of Caspar’s grasp. ‘Caspar, why won’t you understand?’ she pleaded, pressing her hands to her aching head. ‘I have to stay.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Caspar countered brutally. ‘You want to stay. You, Olivia, and no one else. Your uncle doesn’t want you here and neither does your grandfather. You want to stay because—’
‘Because it’s the right thing for me to do. My father—’
‘The right thing?’ Caspar laughed bitterly. ‘You already know my views on that subject,’ he told her angrily.
‘I’ve never seen you like this before,’ Olivia protested, her teeth starting to chatter, even though she wasn’t particularly cold. As a child she had never liked ‘scenes’ or ‘quarrels’. One of the things she had liked most about Caspar had been his calmness, his logical approach to things, his ability to bypass the kind of emotional response and overreaction to life’s hazards that had been such a familiar part of her childhood.
‘What you are trying to say,’ Caspar challenged her, ‘is that you’ve made a mistake … committed yourself to the wrong guy. Well, I guess that feeling goes both ways. Maybe I’m not too thrilled to discover that you aren’t exactly the woman I thought you were, either,’ he told her hurtfully.
Olivia stared at him, unable to fully take in what he was saying. ‘Caspar,’ she protested, but as she took a step towards him, he stepped back from her, leaving her standing frozen in disbelief in mid-step as she read the rejection in his body language.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best that we both found out the truth before we got in any deeper.’
The truth. What truth? She loved him … he loved her … wasn’t that all that really mattered? Was it? If she turned round now and told him that she had changed her mind, that she would break her promise to her uncle and return to America with him, was that really the kind of basis she wanted to build her future, their future on? Wouldn’t she in effect be setting a precedent that meant that every time she had to make a decision he didn’t share, that ultimately he would expect her to give in and back down? No matter how small the issue or how large. As a lawyer she knew very well and better than most the danger of setting any kind of precedent. She swallowed painfully.
She had never imagined that Caspar, her Caspar, could be capable of such small-mindedness, such selfishness … that he could quite willingly sacrifice their love. The knowledge physically hurt her and all at once she knew what people meant when they said something felt like a blow to the heart, a heavy weight … a sickening burden. She felt all of those things and more, but at least she had her pride to sustain her, the same pride that had carried her through all the rigours of her legal training without the support and encouragement of her family. She had survived that and she would survive this. Somehow …
‘If that’s what you think,’ she agreed quietly, keeping her voice as low as she could so that it wouldn’t betray her by breaking.
Without waiting for him to make any further response, she walked past him and hurried upstairs. Even though she fumbled for several seconds with the door, he made no effort to catch up with her; to take her in his arms and tell her that he had been wrong; that he couldn’t bear for them to be apart; that he still loved and wanted her.
Perhaps it had all been a mistake, she admitted. Perhaps she had mistaken something far more shallow and ephemeral for love. After all, love—real love, enduring love, the kind of love she believed they shared—surely couldn’t be destroyed so easily.
Caspar watched her walk away from him, her back ramrod straight. He ached to call her back but his pride wouldn’t let him. Listening to Hillary last night as she detailed all her complaints against not just Saul but also his family had underlined for Caspar all the doubts he had felt about the viability of his relationship with Olivia ever since their arrival here in her home town—and if he was honest with himself, reawakened the destructive ghosts of his own childhood.
Here was Olivia telling him he wasn’t important enough to merit her concern, that there was no way she was going to put him first.
To Caspar the obvious emotional closeness that bonded the various members of Olivia’s family together in an acceptance of one another’s flaws and faults in a way that was totally alien to the way his own family network worked was something he instinctively rejected, even found threatening, not just to his relationship with Olivia, but to his deeply held belief that such closeness was at best a self-deluding fiction and at worst a means of control leading to the potential destruction of the individual.
As a child he had seen at close hand how apparently easily the adults around him discarded one relationship to enter into another. From that he had come to believe that human emotions could only be stretched so far, that an individual could only encompass one really meaningful emotional tie at a time. He had seen his father, and his mother, too, form intensely close bonds with their current partners, giving all their emotional support to that partner and the children of that union. Growing up, he had been on the outside of that closeness, excluded from it; as an adult he had no intention of suffering the same fate.
It wasn’t that he was jealous of Olivia’s involvement with her family; it was simply that he could not see the point in wasting his emotions on a relationship with someone who apparently wasn’t prepared to commit herself as fully as he was to it.
Although in returning to America he was returning to his home town and family, the life Caspar had envisaged there for Olivia and himself had involved just the two of them and any children they should have. They would socialise with his family, no doubt, but they would have separate lives and they would not have been allowed to trespass emotionally into Caspar and Olivia’s private life. Just as he had never been allowed to trespass into his parents?
Yesterday when discussing her husband and his family, Hillary had complained that she had never truly felt a part of their lives; that she had always been made to feel different—an outsider. That no allowance had ever been made for the fact that she might have different needs, different desires, different goals from theirs.
‘Saul should have married an English girl, preferably one from Cheshire and even more preferably, one from his own family,’ she had told Caspar bitterly, adding sardonically, ‘Olivia would have been perfect for him, of course.’
Of course. And Caspar had not been oblivious to the look of sensual appreciation and sexual awareness in Saul’s eyes as he watched Olivia.
He went up the stairs and walked past Olivia’s room without stopping.
Inside her room, Olivia released her breath. Let Caspar behave like a spoiled child if that was what he wanted. He hadn’t made any effort to understand her feelings, so why on earth should she kowtow to his?
Jenny tensed as Jon turned over in his sleep and muttered something. She had always been a light sleeper and his restlessness had woken her up. She glanced at her alarm; it would soon be time to get up anyway.
Why had he thrown those bitter comments about Max at her before he went out yesterday evening? Neither of them had ever discussed the deep vein of selfishness and self-interest that ran through Max’s character, setting him so much apart from both of them, but most especially from Jon. Perhaps that was one of the biggest flaws in their relationship—the fact that they did not discuss such things but tended to ignore them. They were both placid, natural peacekeepers preferring harmony to discord, although Jon, she knew, would never shrink from standing up for some moral code he felt was being broken—no matter what the cost of doing so might be to himself.
Jenny not only realised how much stress David’s heart attack had placed Jon under, but she’d also seen how much stress he’d been under before it happened. Did he really think she wasn’t aware of the increased amount of time he was having to spend at work—and couldn’t guess the reason for it? If she had said nothing, it was merely because she knew the futility of embarking on a discussion that might lead to any criticism of David, however slight. And now it seemed that Jon had taken on the role of providing Tiggy with emotional support as well as everything else.
Tiggy. Jenny could still remember quite vividly how wretchedly insignificant and unattractive she had felt beside her the first time they had met. Tiggy had been so glowingly beautiful, the soul of life and enthusiasm, clinging adoringly to David’s arm.
In comparison she had felt lumpish and plain, boringly unsophisticated, a woman who knew nothing of the heady excitement of the life Tiggy and David had lived in London and that Tiggy so obviously still missed.
Even pregnant, Tiggy had possessed that air of fragility and delicacy. She had been dreadfully sick almost throughout her pregnancy and it had been touch-and-go at one stage whether or not she would have to be hospitalised. All of them had been surprised when Olivia had proved to be such a strong, healthy baby. The hospital staff had fussed more over Tiggy than Olivia, Jenny remembered, just as Jon was fussing over her now.
Oh really. She threw back the bedclothes and swung her feet out of bed. Surely she wasn’t silly enough to be jealous. Poor Jon had enough to cope with as it was. It would soon be dawn and she was too wide awake to sleep now, and besides, it wasn’t just Jon who was on her mind.
Max had left for London shortly after his return from his visit to his grandfather yesterday in a mood that Jenny could only describe as unusually euphoric. There had been an air of hostility and excitement about him, a look of secrecy and triumph that had left her feeling edgily suspicious.
It had been so out of character, so unlike him. Max liked to portray himself as someone who was rather hard-done-by, someone to whom life had been slightly unfair. He enjoyed putting others at a disadvantage by making them feel they had misjudged him. He enjoyed manipulating people, Jenny recognised honestly as she padded downstairs to the kitchen.
It was a Crighton family trait, of course, laughably and roguishly charming in Joss, but in Max it had somehow manifested itself as something sour and spiteful, even destructive.
As expected, he hadn’t told her why Ben had wanted to see him and she hadn’t asked him. They didn’t have that kind of relationship. Probably her fault for clouding his birth with her sadness over the earlier birth of the son who had not survived. Who could tell what thoughts, what emotions, the child in the womb absorbed from its mother? And yet he had been a dearly wanted child.
Lost in her thoughts, she started to fill the kettle.
In London Max, too, was awake early, his mind buzzing with plans. He had one hell of a lot to do and time might not be on his side.
As he showered in the bathroom of his fashionable flat, he was quickly sorting through various plans he had made the previous evening on his drive back to London for discovering the identity of his rival and discarding those that were either too time-consuming or too impractical. He had taken the flat on ready-furnished—it had originally belonged to a city whiz-kid who had fallen flat on his face in a currency-market débâcle. Fortunately the bank had discovered the misdemeanour in time, the whiz-kid was fired and his assets disposed of quickly and unceremoniously by his ex-employers.
Max had been lucky enough to hear about the flat on the grapevine and bought out the remaining lease for next to nothing, promising to keep his mouth closed about whatever he knew concerning the potential disaster.
As he shaved, he studied his reflection dispassionately. He had his grandfather’s patrician nose and his father’s and uncle’s height and breadth of shoulder. His hair was dark—not quite black but almost, his eyes an unusual, clear pale grey. He was, in short, damned good-looking. He grinned at himself, revealing even, strong white teeth, then frowned as he returned to contemplating the problem of discovering his competitor’s identity.
It was pointless even thinking about pumping the chambers clerk who loathed him. Most of the other members didn’t like him much more. Max had never seen the point in wasting his time being pleasant to someone unless he felt they could be of use to him, and besides, it was always easier, in Max’s view, to get a woman on his side than a man, which, of course, had potential side benefits, many of which he had investigated over the years.
The only women who worked in chambers were secretaries, two of whom were old enough to be his grandmother and possessed the kind of battleaxe temperament that rendered them totally unsusceptible to Max’s particular brand of charm. He mentally ran through what he knew about the other three.
No point in even trying to worm anything out of Laura, the clerk’s secretary-cum-assistant. She had a mammoth crush on a senior partner and would doubtless go running to him to tell him the moment Max tried to pump her for information. That left the other two: Wendy, the placid, anaemic-looking little blonde with buck teeth and bad breath, and Charlotte, the sultry-looking brunette who had already made it clear to him that he could be a serious contender for her affections, or rather for her determined ambition to become the wife of a barrister, and Max did not intend to make the mistake of misjudging either her determination or her ability to achieve her ambition. She was certainly socially ambitious enough to make a good wife for a barrister, but when he eventually married, Max had his own plans and his own ambitions.
There were barristers and barristers and he knew which camp he wished to be in and a helping hand in the right direction from an influential in-law would certainly not go amiss and neither would a wife with the kind of family money to enable them to mix in the right sort of social circles. But he was not ready for marriage yet, not by a long shot.
These plans had, of course, been laid before he learned that his grandfather had decided to change his will, but there was no harm in doubly securing the future. And there were still plenty of wealthy families with daughters who found considerable appeal in the prospect of a son-in-law who, if he made it to the higher echelons of the legal profession and became a High Court judge, could ultimately be granted a title.
Max, who knew the story of his family history in what to him was excruciatingly boring detail, had often reflected that, in the original Josiah’s shoes, he would have given in to family pressure and allowed them to dictate his choice of wife.
Finished in the bathroom, Max didn’t waste time going into the kitchen. He never bothered eating breakfast. His cupboards rarely contained any food. He either ate out or bought himself something microwaveable. So far, his lifestyle and eating habits had had no discernible effect on his physique.
As he pulled on his suit jacket, he glanced at his watch. He had never seen the point of arriving virtuously early for work when there was no one there to log such virtue, but this morning he had his own reasons for wanting to get there ahead of time.
Had he felt he could get away with it, he would have had no compunction whatsoever about going through the clerk’s confidential files himself, but in order to do so he would have had to ‘borrow’ his keys, a task that taxed even his skills.
No. It would have to be Charlotte.
He grimaced slightly as he caught the smell of the new cologne he had used with deliberate generosity. It had been a gift from his last girlfriend. Charlotte, he suspected, would like it.
It must be something to do with the fact that she was having to stand in the street outside the office waiting for Uncle Jon to arrive that reduced her to the state of a nervous schoolgirl, Olivia decided as she glanced at her watch and then up at the church clock just to check that she had the right time.
She had seen Caspar briefly again before leaving this morning. His manner towards her had been withdrawn and wintry. He had simply told her the time of his flight to London, from where he would eventually return to the States, dashing her hopes that he might have had a change of heart. She wished they could reach a compromise that would allow their relationship to continue. One look at Caspar’s face, though, had warned her of the futility of such an exercise. Caspar didn’t want to compromise.
And so she had left the house without saying any of the things she had so desperately wanted to say and half an hour earlier than she had planned, which was why she had been pacing the pavement outside the offices for so long. She expelled a small sigh of relief as she suddenly saw Jon emerge from one of the myriad side-streets off the square. It was just gone twenty-five past eight.
‘Olivia.’
He didn’t smile as he greeted her. He looked as though he hadn’t slept, Olivia noticed. Her father’s illness had aged him slightly, giving his features a gauntness that made him appear rather intimidatingly austere.
As Olivia waited for Jon to unlock the door, she wondered how Saul was feeling this morning. Was it some kind of omen, some secret twist of fate, that both of them should be experiencing relationship difficulties at the same time?
The shop over which Josiah Crighton had first started his practice had long since disappeared; the family now owned the whole building. But at Ben’s insistence the offices were still on the first floor as they had been in Josiah’s day, the downstairs rooms now having been converted into a reception and waiting area.
As she followed Jon up the narrow, creaky stairs, Olivia remembered nostalgically how exciting she had found it as a child to come here and how fascinated she had been by the rows of old-fashioned, heavily bound law books that filled the shelves of the small gallery at the top of the stairs.
Of the two rooms, her father’s office had always been the larger and Olivia paused a little uncomfortably outside its door, then turned to Jon. ‘If you would prefer Dad’s office …?’ she suggested.
Jon shook his head. ‘No, it’s all right. As a matter of fact I prefer my own,’ he told her as she continued to hesitate. ‘It’s quiet and it gets more light.’
A little uncertainly Olivia opened the door to her father’s office. She frowned as she surveyed the interior; it looked much larger than she remembered. Then she realised that the heavy bank of metal filing cabinets that ran along one wall had gone.
‘Where …?’ she began, staring at the empty space.
‘We moved them into my room,’ Jon explained calmly to her but Olivia could sense that for some reason her question had discomforted him. ‘We’re in the process of putting everything onto computer and since I was the one who attended the induction course, David thought I might as well deal with that side of things.’
A simple enough explanation but Olivia felt oddly uneasy. Something, she didn’t quite know what, didn’t ring fully true about it.
‘It will take me a few days to get into the routine,’ she told Jon. ‘I’ll have to familiarise myself with Dad’s cases and clients, of course, read up the files. I know you deal with most of the conveyancing side of things while Dad handled all the family trusts and wills.’
‘Broadly speaking, yes,’ Jon agreed, but he wasn’t looking at her, Olivia noticed, and once again she was aware of an odd tension in his voice that she suspected wasn’t purely because he hadn’t wanted to accept her offer of help.
She must not be too sensitive, Olivia warned herself. She was here to help not cause more problems.
‘Well, I’m here to do whatever I can,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ll need a list of Dad’s clients and—’
‘Er, I’m afraid we didn’t do things quite so formally,’ Jon interrupted her. ‘It wasn’t really necessary and then we often found we were overlapping interests.’
Olivia frowned. That wasn’t how she had understood the practice was run. She had always been under the impression that the two brothers clearly divided their workload and their fields of operation.
‘Well, if you would give me some keys to Dad’s desk, I’ll go through his diary,’ Olivia suggested.
It was several seconds before Jon produced her father’s keys and Olivia had the distinct feeling that he didn’t really want to give them to her. Heavy-hearted she went into the office and firmly closed the door behind her.
Tiny motes of dust danced in the sunshine streaming in through the room’s windows. Olivia went to open one of them to let in some fresh air. The room smelled of lavender polish and old wood.
Her uncle had mentioned switching from their traditional filing system to computers, but to judge from the way the screen and keyboard had been pushed to one corner of her father’s desk virtually out of reach, she doubted that he had ever made much use of it.
Beneath the window the town was stirring sleepily into life, shops starting to open, one or two people walking through the square.
Determinedly Olivia turned her back on the window and walked over to her father’s desk. It was over a hundred years old, a heavy mahogany partner’s desk with a faded leather top. Her grandfather had used it, and before that, his father; very gently she touched the antique leather. The whole room breathed tradition; it hung heavily in the air so that her shoulders bowed automatically beneath the weight of it. Perhaps if Caspar had come here, seen this, he might have understood.
Caspar … She looked at the telephone. He wasn’t leaving until around noon. There was still time for her to telephone him … go home.
Resolutely she turned her back on the temptation of the telephone as she unlocked her father’s desk. She found his diary easily enough, the drawers surprisingly almost too neat and tidy, as though someone had already been through them … as though …
She sat down and opened the diary. No appointments for today, thank goodness. That would give her time to start doing some reading up. None for tomorrow, either, or the day after. Olivia started to frown as she flicked through the diary and found it empty of any appointments other than the odd half days pencilled in for golf.
Uneasily she started to look back through the diary, her muscles tensing as she studied the empty pages. Perhaps her father had another diary and this was simply one he used to record his golf matches. Yes, that must be it, she decided eagerly as she put it down and started to search through the drawers a second time.
And found nothing. Nothing!
Blankly she reopened the diary and restudied it once again. Earlier in the year there had been a clutch of appointments, but these had gradually tapered off until there were barely more than two or three a week and then even less, which meant …
‘Olivia.’ She stiffened as the door opened and Jon came in. ‘The post has arrived,’ he told her. ‘If you’d like to come into my office we can go through it together … oh, you’ve found your father’s diary,’ he commented unnecessarily.
‘Yes,’ Olivia agreed. She took a deep breath and then forced a smile, remarking, ‘Luckily he doesn’t appear to have any appointments this week, other than a game of golf.’
‘Oh yes, that is lucky,’ Jon agreed, smiling back, but his smile seemed forced, even if he did seem to relax a little bit as she got up to accompany him to his office. Because he was becoming more accustomed to the idea of having her working in the practice, or because she hadn’t made an issue of her father’s virtually empty diary?
In contrast to her father’s office, Jon’s seemed smaller than she remembered, and of course there were the familiar filing cabinets, plus some modern additions to house the computer system. But unlike her father’s desk, his was almost covered in files and papers, and his diary, which lay open next to his keyboard, looked pretty full, as well.
‘So the practice hasn’t become a complete Marie Celeste of the legal world,’ Olivia couldn’t resist saying.
‘Er, excuse me …?’
‘We do still have some clients, Uncle Jon,’ Olivia explained dryly. ‘I had begun to think from the state of my father’s office and his diary that the practice might be completely devoid of them.’
‘Oh … yes. Oh yes … I see. Well, you know how it is. Sometimes one side of things can be busy and sometimes it’s the other….’
‘Mmm. I suppose so. You mean that people don’t die in Haslewich in the summer?’
She was being unfair, Olivia recognised remorsefully as she saw the almost hunted look in her uncle’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘It was just that I had the impression from Tiggy that Dad was very busy.’
‘Oh yes, he was … it’s just … Well, to tell the truth, Olivia, I came down the other day and—’
‘Cleared out Dad’s desk,’ Olivia supplied gently and yet she knew she had made it sound more like an accusation than an acceptance of kind intent.
‘I just wanted to check that there was nothing that was urgent, that was all,’ Jon told her stiffly.
Had he, after all the years of playing second fiddle to her father, both in the family and in the practice, suddenly rebelled and seen … seized the opportunity to assert himself and take over his brother’s role? Guiltily Olivia tried to dismiss such a disquieting thought. Jon, so far as she knew, had never been anything other than fully supportive of her father. But there must surely have been times when he had felt some resentment, some jealousy, some sense of anger at being pushed into second place?
She stole a look at her uncle as he started to go through the post with her, handing her each letter to read and meticulously explaining its origins.
An hour later she decided that there was nothing she need feel too apprehensive about. Most of the letters had seemed pretty straightforward; the practice did not deal with complex litigation cases or even the more complex European and international intercompany legal wranglings that were her particular field.
‘I’m going to have to leave soon. I’ve got an appointment with Lord Burrows at eleven,’ Jon told her. ‘He wants to go through some of the tenancy agreements for his farms.’ Yes, it was a world away from the kind of work she was familiar with, Olivia acknowledged as Jon added, ‘and then I promised I’d go with your mother when she visits your father.’
So far as she could see, her day’s work was going to consist of drafting a new will, chasing authority for some details they needed on a conveyance, clarifying a property boundary and reading through the half-dozen or so files that Jon had entrusted to her. Nowhere near enough to keep her thoughts too busy to stray to Caspar—unfortunately.
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