Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

It had shocked and disturbed him to see her looking so different … so … so … desirable and … feminine. She had not looked like the Jenny he was familiar with and an odd sensation had gripped his chest as he realised the trouble she had taken with her appearance; revealing herself as a serenely sensual and feminine woman had not been done for his sake. Never once in all the years they had been married could he ever remember Jenny taking the trouble to dress like that for him.

And there had been no doubt that David had been impressed, and not just David. Jon wasn’t blind. He had seen the way the male guests had looked at Jenny, a quick, startled frown of semi-recognition followed by a much longer and far more sexually appraising study of her feminine attributes.

What had David been saying to Jenny whilst they danced? Had he been telling her how attractive she was, reminding her that the two of them once …? And what had Jenny felt, or did he really need to ask himself? As a teenager Jenny had loved David even if she had sturdily dismissed her feelings as a mere teenage crush when she had accepted his proposal of marriage.

David was his brother, his twin brother, and he had been raised from childhood in the belief that that relationship created a closeness between them, a bond formed on his part by unquestioning love and loyalty and on David’s by a careless affection that must come before everything else and everyone else in his life.

David might now be dying, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was not his brother’s stricken face as he collapsed, but his brother as he danced with Jenny.

Of course he wanted David to live. Of course he did. So why did he feel this hollowness inside, this emptiness, this almost complete and total lack of emotion?

Tiggy was still crying and trembling. Automatically his arm tightened protectively around her. Here at least was someone whose feelings were not tainted, whose sole concern was for David. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Jenny, to see what she was feeling, to read what was in her eyes, just in case …

Jack still had his arm around his mother whilst she clung weepily to him, Olivia noticed. She would have liked the support and comfort of Caspar’s arms around her right now, she reflected, but he’d stayed behind, probably seeking out Hillary for company and support.

‘Try not to worry. I’m sure they’re doing everything they can.’ Saul gave Olivia’s hand a comforting squeeze as he picked up on her tense anxiety.

The waiting-room door swung open and the specialist walked in. He looked tired and grave-eyed as he began to speak in an even graver voice.

‘David is out of immediate danger—for the moment. But …’ He paused and looked round the room, choosing his words carefully as he took in Tiggy’s tear-drenched, pale face and Jon’s equally tense, too rigid one. Ben was holding on to Hugh’s supporting arm whilst Ruth stood slightly behind him, Joss’s hand tucked comfortingly within her own.

Without knowing she had done so, Olivia took a step closer to Saul, glad of the male comfort of his arm and the heat of his body as he drew her closer.

Only Jenny stood alone, somehow positioned so that the specialist was closest to her, and perhaps for that reason he addressed himself more directly to her than anyone else. To an unaware onlooker it might have seemed as though Jenny were the sick man’s wife and Jon and Tiggy the married couple.

‘He’s had a very serious heart attack,’ he continued, pausing briefly as Tiggy sobbed audibly and clung harder to Jon, ‘and in fact he’s very lucky to be alive. But he is alive and …’ He paused again and it was Jenny who stepped into the silence.

‘What exactly is it you’re trying to tell us?’ she asked quietly.

‘David is a very seriously ill man. The next twenty-four hours will be critical. Until then, we won’t know—’

‘You mean there’s a danger that he could have a second attack? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?’ Jenny demanded.

‘It does happen,’ the specialist warned them gravely, ‘but hopefully …’

‘Can … can we see him?’ Jon asked huskily.

The specialist shook his head. ‘No. I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Not at this stage. It’s imperative that he’s kept calm and sedated. In fact, the best, the only thing you can all do for him right now is to go home and try to get some sleep, because …’ As he saw the quick, frowning look Jenny gave in Ben’s direction, he beckoned to a hovering nurse, then took Jenny aside and said reassuringly, ‘I’ll prescribe something for your father-in-law. I know his own heart’s not as strong as it might be.’

‘Tiggy’s very upset, Jenny,’ Jon announced ten minutes later as Saul started to usher everyone back into the corridor. ‘She can’t be left on her own. I think I’d better go back with her tonight, just in case she needs me.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jenny agreed, quietly refraining from reminding him that Tiggy had a house full of Chester relatives to turn to should she decide she needed a shoulder to cry on during the night in addition to her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend.

What would be the point after all? Jon simply wouldn’t understand. He would expect her to accept, just as he had always accepted, that David’s needs and wishes and therefore the needs and wishes of David’s closest relatives must automatically take preference over everything and everyone else.

As she got back into the car, she remembered that he had never commented on her dress. Silly to cry over something as senseless as that when she had so many more important things to cry over. Appallingly selfish of her, too, to even be thinking of her own hurt at Jon’s lack of response to her tonight, to have that at the forefront of her mind rather than, if only momentarily, David’s heart attack.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t concerned for David; of course she was. He was, after all, Jon’s brother and as such … She and Jon hadn’t even managed to have a dance together; she couldn’t, in fact, recall the last time they had danced together. This was so wrong. She shouldn’t be thinking about her own selfish needs when David was so desperately ill. Why hadn’t Jon said anything about her dress? Hadn’t he liked it? Didn’t he …? Stop it, she warned herself. You’re not a teenager any more; you’re an adult.

8 (#ufcc4f2fd-df2c-5918-87db-8cfc05f14296)

‘Well, at least the specialist seems pretty optimistic that David’s over the worst.’

Olivia turned towards Saul.

‘He’s over the worst,’ she agreed, ‘but Mr Hayes has warned us that it’s going to be some considerable time before he’s completely out of danger—they’re keeping him in intensive care until the end of the week but he won’t be allowed home immediately. Mr Hayes says there’s no question of his being able to go back to work for at least three months, and even then …’

‘No,’ Saul returned gravely. ‘It’s going to be hard. What will Jon do, do you think, hire a locum?’

‘I don’t know. No one’s really discussed what’s going to happen with the practice as yet,’ Olivia admitted. ‘We’ve all been too concerned about Dad, but something will have to be done.’

‘Mmm … I wish I could offer to help out myself, but …’ He spread his hands expressively. ‘It just isn’t possible. The company’s heavily involved in negotiating some new contracts with Japan. I can’t go into details, but from the legal point of view it’s proving pretty complex. Hillary’s always complaining that she hardly sees me any more, or rather she used to. I get the impression these days that the less she sees of me the better.’

The bitterness in his voice made Olivia wince. It had become increasingly obvious over the past three days, when Saul had elected to remain in Haslewich with his family until the immediacy of the crisis with David was over, that he and Hillary were no longer happy together. Olivia felt very sorry for him. It was plain that he adored his three children and she suspected that he struggled to make his marriage work more for their sake than his own.

They were in the drawing room of Queensmead along with the rest of the immediate family who had gathered there to hear the latest bulletin from the hospital on David’s progress.

It had been Olivia’s turn to see him today. She and Jon had been taking turns in accompanying her mother to the hospital on her daily visits to see her husband who was now conscious and able to communicate, although still quite heavily sedated and in intensive care. It had been tacitly acknowledged by the family that Tiggy was far too shocked and distressed by her husband’s heart attack to endure the trauma of seeing him without some family support.

Hugh and Ann had remained at Queensmead until the immediate danger was over but had had to return home as Hugh was due to sit on the Bench. Saul, though, had opted to stay on in his father’s stead, telling Olivia wryly that he might as well use up what little holiday allocation he had left.

‘I had hoped we might get away, take the kids on holiday somewhere, but Hillary says the last thing she wants to do is spend any length of time cooped up with them and me. She was talking about flying home to see her family on her own.’

His face had been bleak as he delivered this last piece of information and tactfully Olivia had made no comment. Besides, she had enough problems of her own to worry about.

Caspar had moved into her room following her father’s heart attack and last night … She closed her eyes, not wanting to have to think about the problems that were surfacing in her relationship with Caspar or the mixed-up feelings of panic, resentment and anguish they were causing her.

How was it possible for their relationship to have changed so much? Yes, of course she had been aware of Caspar’s leftover feelings of rejection from his childhood. He had talked quite openly about them, as she had done about her own. She had thought that she understood Caspar and that he understood her and that even whilst he occasionally drew attention to her inability to verbally admit to her feelings for him, he knew that her fear of actually saying the words ‘I love you’ in no way lessened her commitment to him just as she had thought that his own wry awareness of his need to rewrite the emotional history of his childhood by placing himself first in her emotions meant that he had come to terms with it.

Now she was not so sure. It had shocked her to discover that far from being the mature adult she had believed him to be and someone she could lean on and respect and even look up to as she had never been able to do with her father, Caspar was just as capable of behaving emotionally and irresponsibly albeit in a different way. Just as able to be selfish and demanding, just as able to ignore her needs and focus on his own. Just as masculinely capable of putting pressure on her to get what he wanted from their relationship without giving a second thought to what she might want or need. Just as he had done last night …

Tensing, she wrapped her arms around herself. It had been at her suggestion that Caspar had moved into her room. She missed the comfort of his body in bed, his warmth … just knowing that he was there. Dismaying, too, was the knowledge that she had been more disturbed and upset by the discovery that her mother was suffering from an eating disorder than she had been in some ways by her father’s heart attack and shamingly she knew why. A heart attack was something that could be explained, discussed, understood. Her mother’s bulimia …

She had wanted desperately to talk over her feelings with Caspar, to know that he not only understood but sympathised, empathised, with what she was feeling; to see if he realised how torn she now felt. How much on the one hand she longed to be able to simply walk away and escape, to turn her back on the situation here at home and start a completely new life with him in Philadelphia. A life where she would be judged only on her own merits and by people who knew nothing and never would know anything of her family background. And yet on the other how guilty she felt, how compelled to do something to protect and help the vulnerable person she now saw her mother to be.

She felt so confused … so helpless. More than anything she needed Caspar’s understanding … she needed time. But Caspar quite obviously wasn’t prepared to give her either.

Last night, when she had turned to him, wanting to talk … She closed her eyes again and was instantly back in her own bedroom, the faint light of the moon shining through the curtains.

‘Caspar,’ she whispered softly, ‘are you awake?’

‘What do you think?’ she heard him grunt, the bedclothes rustling as he raised an arm, pushed them aside and slipping it around her, his mouth nuzzling the soft, warm skin of her throat. ‘Mmm … I’ve missed you.’

He was apparently too engrossed in enjoying the taste of her flesh to register her tension.

‘Caspar,’ she started to protest, but he ignored her, throwing one leg across her body as he slid his hand along her jaw and turned her to face him, his mouth opening hungrily over hers.

Olivia hesitated a second before she started to respond. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to make love. It was just that right now it was more important to her that they talked. She needed to vocalise what she was feeling and Caspar was the only person she felt she could talk to.