Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘As things stand, David, as my eldest son, will inherit Queensmead and the bulk of my personal assets,’ Ben began solemnly. ‘I have, of course, left certain personal bequests—your allowance is one of them. At least until …’

Max gritted his teeth. He knew all this, they all did, so what was the point in the old boy’s going over it again now? Was he going senile or something? Had David’s heart attack affected his brain?

‘However, your uncle’s heart attack changes everything.’ Ben spoke slowly, reluctantly, almost as though the words were physically painful to him. ‘I can’t ignore the fact that David might not …’

He stopped and Max watched dispassionately as Ben tried to control the way his hand shook as he picked up his will. The old man was getting frail. How old exactly was he?

Max was beginning to relax now that he knew Ben hadn’t sent for him because he had found out about the potential problems with his tenancy in chambers. His stance eased, becoming indolently nonchalant as he leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets.

‘I can’t ignore the fact that David could die before me. In the normal course of events, Queensmead would pass to Jack, but the boy is only ten and his mother … well, in my opinion, women and property don’t mix. They never have. It would only take some smooth-talking scoundrel to come along and Queensmead could pass out of the family for ever. I can’t take the risk of that happening.’

‘David isn’t dead yet, Grandfather,’ Max pointed out.

‘No,’ Ben agreed. His eyes suddenly filled with tears as he cried out in a muffled voice, ‘My God, what is it about this family? Why must we lose those … have the best taken from us …? When my father died, I made him a promise that one of my sons would be called to the Bar and fulfil the ambition that was denied to him.’

Max impatiently shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He knew all about Ben’s promise to his father; he had heard the story more times than he cared to remember. The old man really must be going senile to start repeating it all over again.

‘David should have made good that promise for me. His circumstances changed and he couldn’t, but you can. I intend to change my will,’ he told Max abruptly, ‘and leave Queensmead and the bulk of my estate to you, on condition that you are a fully practising barrister at the time of my death.’

Max had difficulty in controlling his shock—and his elation. My God, and to think when he had come in here he had expected … Hastily he pulled himself together. Ben might be suffering from the shock of David’s heart attack at this point, but he was still an extremely shrewd old man; it wouldn’t do for him to guess what was going through his own mind right now, especially his plans for Queensmead once it actually became his.

His grandfather might view the house and its land as some kind of sacred cow, but he most certainly did not. Haslewich was growing and one day Queensmead’s farmland could be a prime development site.

My God. Max could feel the elation singing through his veins. It would make him millions. Forget any paltry potential barrister’s fees. Abruptly he checked himself. Queensmead could be his but first he had to fulfil that one vital condition. He knew his grandfather well enough to know that it would be there, written into the will in an unbreakable clause that could not be got round or overset. He was starting to sweat again.

If securing the tenancy had been important to him before, it was nothing to what it meant to him now. That girl … that female, whoever she was, would have to be removed from the picture and he didn’t care what means he used to make sure she was. He had to have that tenancy; he couldn’t afford to waste any more time. David could have a second fatal heart attack tomorrow. His grandfather could die just as easily.

Swiftly he lowered his head, not wanting Ben to see his expression just in case it betrayed him. ‘That’s very generous of you, Grandfather,’ he said quietly, forcing a solemn expression into his eyes as he lifted his head and looked squarely at him, ‘and I promise you that I’ll do my best to live up to the … trust you’re placing in me.’

‘You’re a good lad, Max,’ Ben told him emotionally. ‘Another David.’

Oh no, he would never be another David, Max determined, exulting as he listened to his grandfather outlining exactly what he planned to do. He would never let himself get trapped the way David had done, his whole future destroyed.

‘Right now I’d give anything to be able to trade places with Olivia and stay on here … be on hand …’ he told Ben untruthfully, ‘but I don’t have that choice, that freedom.’ Cleverly he managed to imply that in having it, Olivia was somehow less dedicated to her career than he was himself, that she was somehow slightly feckless and irresponsible in not having the commitment of a job to return to.

It was a skill of his and one he had honed to perfection over the years, using it ruthlessly whenever he felt the need—and sometimes, if he was honest, just because of the pleasure it gave him to do so—as he did now. He had never really liked Olivia. Miss Goody-goody. Well, if she thought that she was going to impress the old man with what she was doing …

‘I have to go back to London.’ Too right he did and the sooner the better. The sooner he found out just who this woman competing with him for the tenancy was, the better. ‘Queensmead will be safe with me, Grandfather,’ he lied as he clasped the older man’s hand. ‘I can promise you that.’

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

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.