Joined By Marriage

‘Rebecca was my client—’

‘Rebecca is dead,’ Brianna coldly cut into Peter Landris’s protest. ‘I appear to be your client now—and I would rather hear this from Nathan.’ He, at least, appeared able to talk about all of this unemotionally.

‘Father?’ Nathan glanced at the older man.

‘Go ahead,’ his father invited dully. ‘I—Seeing Brianna, the likeness to—It’s been a shock...’

‘Have a cup of cold coffee and a rapidly curling sandwich.’ Brianna poured the coffee for him, before turning back to the younger man. ‘Nathan?’ she pressed again, his father forgotten.

Nathan sighed, pulling up another chair and sitting down on the same side of the desk as Brianna, his pale blue eyes strangely compassionate. ‘We have to start with your grandparents—’

‘Rebecca’s mother and father?’

‘This will be much quicker if you don’t interrupt after every statement,’ Nathan told her sharply.

Much quicker. Although she had pushed the need to return to work firmly to the back of her mind, time was still passing rapidly. ‘Sorry,’ she ventured.

He acknowledged her apology with an arrogant nod of his head. ‘Your grandparents—Joanne and Giles. Joanne was the daughter of a very rich man; Giles was a local farmer. But, nevertheless, the two of them apparently fell in love and married. A year into the marriage Joanne gave birth to Rebecca. There were to be no more children.’

This was much better, much easier for Brianna to deal with emotionally.

‘Despite its apparently romantic beginning—’ Nathan couldn’t seem to help the cynical twist to his lips that accompanied this statement ‘—it wasn’t a particularly happy marriage. Giles came to quickly resent the fact that it was his wife who held the purse-strings, and he didn’t care for his daughter, or the pull she had on her mother’s time and love.’

‘It should have read “broken heart” on Joanne’s death certificate too,’ Peter Landris muttered harshly.

Nathan glared his father into silence. ‘At the age of eight, Rebecca was sent away to boarding-school,’ he continued evenly. ‘Her mother, it seems, never got over the loss.’

‘But there must have been holidays—’

‘Giles always made sure they were out of the country for those.’ It was Peter Landris who answered her. ‘Leaving Rebecca in the care of a housekeeper when she was at home. Joanne rarely saw her daughter during the next three years.’

‘I—But that’s inhuman!’ Brianna protested. ‘How could anyone be so cruel?’

‘If I could just continue?’ Nathan cut in icily, his brows raised as he waited for Brianna’s attention to return to him.

‘But this is all so—it’s like something out of a Victorian novel.’ Brianna shook her head dazedly. ‘I can’t believe anyone could get away with treating his wife and daughter in that way less than forty years ago!’

‘Can’t you?’ Nathan said bleakly. ‘Then perhaps you should see some of the cases that come to court nowadays!’

She had seen some of the battered wives and children that were brought into the hospital. ‘But Joanne was the one with the money.’ She frowned. ‘Surely that gave her a certain amount of—freedom?’

‘Giles was Rebecca’s father—a fact he never let Joanne forget,’ Peter Landris put in baldly. ‘I can assure you, Joanne was by no means a weak woman, but she did have a weakness. And that weakness was her child.’

Not physical cruelty, Brianna realised, but emotional blackmail—who could say which was worse?

‘Go on,’ she invited gruffly, wondering what other horrors she was going to hear about her family; perhaps Rebecca had done her the biggest favour of all by keeping her well away from them!

‘When Rebecca was thirteen, her mother died.’ Nathan was now the one to continue. He shot his father another censorious look as he added, ‘In a car accident. But her death left Rebecca with only her father.’

‘He didn’t take her out of boarding-school?’ Brianna said worriedly, beginning to care about Rebecca in spite of herself. Her own childhood had been such a happy one, with parents and a brother who loved her, she simply couldn’t bear the thought of the loneliness Rebecca must have endured as she was growing up.

‘No, he didn’t do that.’ Nathan gave the ghost of a smile in reassurance. ‘Rebecca continued to stay at the boarding-school; her father continued to be absent when she came home for the holidays. But there were no letters or telephone calls from her mother to sustain her. As was to be expected, Rebecca became desperate for love, for someone to care about her. As she got older there were—relationships. The majority of them with totally unsuitable men. But in this Giles had no say. What could he have threatened Rebecca with?’ Nathan stated frankly. ‘He had never given her anything he could possibly take away from her.’

Brianna was watching Nathan closely, questioningly. ‘You liked my mother,’ she said slowly, realising there was a warmth in his voice as he spoke of her.

Emotion flashed briefly in those pale blue eyes behind the glasses, and then it was gone, replaced by that mask of professionalism she was used to. ‘Rebecca, despite her unorthodox upbringing, was impossible not to like. She was full of life, and laughter, and beauty. Perhaps too much of the latter,’ he added wistfully. ‘It left her prey to the—attentions of men.’

Brianna frowned. ‘Are you saying my mother was promiscuous?’

‘Certainly not,’ he snapped, his mouth a thin line. ‘I’m saying she didn’t always love wisely.’

‘As she didn’t where my father was concerned. Did he happen to be married to someone else?’ Brianna guessed shrewdly.

‘We don’t know,’ Nathan said flatly. ‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged those broad shoulders. ‘Perhaps her letter to you will explain all that to you,’ he added gruffly, glancing briefly at his father.

Brianna looked at him sharply, disbelievingly. She had learnt so much of Rebecca’s background in the last few minutes. Her father, she believed, had been a despot who denied his wife and daughter their love for each other. Rebecca had been the emotionally deprived child of that union, a child who had grown to young womanhood craving love, and not always finding it in the places that she should have.

Brianna had listened to all of this, had felt pity for her grandmother and her mother in an abstract way, even a little for the grandfather who must have been a very insecure man to have ruled his family in the way that he had. She had listened and had felt sorrow for such unhappiness, but it was a story of someone else’s life—a life unrelated to her own.

But a letter... A letter written to her by her mother was so much more...

She didn’t want it.

Didn’t want it.

Couldn’t read it...

CHAPTER THREE

‘GENTLEMEN.’ She stood up. ‘I thank you for your time, and the information you’ve given me today. Now I have more of an idea of what my natural mother and her family were like.’ She turned to leave.

‘Where are you going?’ Pete Landris sounded bewildered by her dismissal.

She turned back only slightly. ‘I have to get back to work now.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll drive you.’ Nathan had moved silently to her side.

‘But we haven’t finished,’ his father protested behind them. ‘There’s so much more. Rebecca’s death. Brianna’s inheritance—’

‘And Brianna has had more than enough already today for her to cope with,’ Nathan told him harshly, before turning back to Brianna. ‘I’ll drive you wherever you want to go,’ he offered gently.

‘I’m sure you’re very busy,’ she refused vaguely, needing to be away from these offices, away from the two Landris men. ‘I can get a bus. Take a taxi.’

‘I’m not busy at all,’ Nathan said firmly, lightly grasping her arm as they went out into the corridor. “The buses are incredibly irregular around here. And a taxi would be an unnecessary expense when I’ve already offered to drive you wherever you want to go.’

Brianna didn’t argue any more, standing silently by while Nathan informed Hazel of his departure, taking no interest in the brief conversation he had with a grey-haired man passing through Reception, although she sensed the other man’s interest in her as she left with Nathan. Not another one who recognised her as Rebecca’s daughter...! It was a very strange feeling to know she looked so much like someone she had never even known—and would never know...