Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

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.