Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘Maddy … Oh … I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you had a visitor.’

The girl who came in was everything that Madeleine was not. Slender, elegantly narrow-boned and just exactly the right kind of height. Her hair was shoulder length, thick and naturally wavy and a deep rich brown with honey gold highlights around her face, which was smooth-skinned and perfectly shaped, her eyes a deep sea green and her mouth the kind of mouth that automatically made Max think of sex.

‘Oh, Claudine … this is Max … Max Crighton … Max … this is Claudine … my friend.’

‘Max Crighton.’ There was a certain quick, sharp assessment in her eyes as they studied him, a very definite sense of cool withdrawal and hesitation, which Max countered by looking pleasantly through her rather than at her.

She was the kind of woman who took for granted that her looks would make her the focus of any male attention, he decided, and that air of cool withdrawal was no doubt a trick she employed to increase her desirability. Well, in this instance, she was wasting her time, and ignoring her, he turned back to Madeleine.

‘I’ll see you on Thursday,’ he told her warmly. ‘If I pick you up here around seven-thirty …?’

‘Yes, yes, that will be fine,’ she agreed huskily.

* * *

Claudine waited until he had gone before tackling her friend. ‘Max Crighton … you know who he is, don’t you?’ she warned Maddy forthrightly.

‘Yes … Yes. I know,’ Madeleine agreed quietly. ‘But Claudine …’

‘What was he doing here?’

‘He … I know his cousin …’

‘You never said anything.’

‘No … I didn’t think …’

‘You’re sure you want to see him again, then?’

‘Yes … yes, I’m sure …’

‘Be careful, Maddy,’ Claudine warned her. ‘You know he—’

‘I like him, Claudine,’ Madeleine interrupted huskily, turning her back so that Claudine couldn’t see her betraying expression. It was all right for Claudine; men fell for her on sight, and she never felt shy or awkward in their presence. She never had to sit in a corner and feel excluded, unwanted, unattractive. She didn’t have to bear the burden of knowing that her parents were disappointed by her lack of good looks. But Max had made her feel special, different … and he hadn’t even looked properly at Claudine. She knew—she had been watching him, holding her breath, waiting for the familiar male reaction to her friend’s loveliness, only it simply never came. Max just hadn’t seemed to notice how stunningly lovely Claudine was. Instead he had focused on her and it was her he had invited out.

Frowning, Claudine studied her friend’s tense back, torn between wanting to voice her suspicions and warn her friend and knowing that if she did so, she would risk hurting her by implying that Max Crighton could have some ulterior motive in seeking her out.

Madeleine had been a good friend to her and Claudine felt intensely protective towards her; despite all her material and social advantages, she was essentially a rather lonely and shy girl who had allowed others to bully and dominate her.

‘He was nice to me, Claudine, kind …’ Madeleine continued in a muffled voice without turning round.

Claudine stifled her doubts and said bracingly instead, ‘I should think he jolly well ought to be,’ then couldn’t resist double-checking, ‘Who exactly is this cousin of his, by the way? Why haven’t I heard you mention him?’

It was quite depressing how easily and quickly one slipped back into the familiar routine, Guy decided gloomily as he set out for the shop the morning after his return from holiday.

Three weeks sailing in the Greek islands had given his skin an even deeper colour and toned up those muscles that didn’t get daily use in his job.

Well, he might have been away for three weeks but he doubted anything would have changed in Haslewich; it simply wasn’t that kind of town. He was glad, though, that today was one of Jenny’s days in the shop. He had thought about her a lot whilst he was away, but then, what was unusual about that?

He knew there were a lot of people who would have been astonished at the strength of his feelings for her. Sometimes he warned himself about it. After all, she was a woman some years his senior, placidly and happily married, a woman, moreover, who was simply not the type one connected with intense and unrequited feelings of love and lust.

There was a trade fair coming up soon and he wondered, as he had on many similar occasions in the past, what his chances were of persuading her to attend it with him. An overnight stay in some secluded, romantic little hideaway might just … Who the hell was he kidding? he taunted himself as he reached the shop and felt in his pocket for his keys.

He frowned as he started to insert them in the lock and then realised that it was already open. Turning the handle he walked in, his frown deepening as he saw Jenny come through from the back room.

She looked different somehow, thinner, frailer, and she wasn’t smiling her usual warm, generous smile. Instead she looked tired, strained and distinctly on edge.

‘Jenny,’ he exclaimed fondly, ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here before me. I thought you’d be glad of the opportunity to have some time off after three weeks of covering for me,’ he joked.

‘I had to come into town to drop Joss off for the school bus,’ she told him tersely. ‘So I decided I might just as well come straight here.’

Guy watched her thoughtfully. When Jenny couldn’t drive Joss all the way to school, Jon normally dropped Joss off for the bus, not Jenny.

She had turned away from him and proceeded to dust a small, delicate china figurine, her face averted from him.

‘Did you have a good holiday, Guy?’ he asked himself conversationally, his gaze on her down-bent head. ‘Why, yes, Jenny, I did, thank you.’

He had only meant to tease her a little. It was so unlike her not to make the enquiry, not to be genuinely and keenly interested in others, but instead of laughing and apologising as he had expected, her hands fumbled with the figurine, causing it to slip through her fingers and smash down onto the floor, breaking into several small pieces.

Immediately Guy dropped to his knees to pick them up and then stopped as he looked towards Jenny and saw that she was standing motionlessly beside him, an expression of mingled shock and despair in her eyes as they welled with tears.

Guy contritely rose to his feet and put his hand out to comfort her. ‘Hey, it’s only a piece of china,’ he reminded her gently, ‘and not even a particularly valuable one at that.’ He smiled reassuringly at her. It was so unlike Jenny to be clumsy. He couldn’t remember her ever fumbling with anything before, never mind actually dropping something. She was always so careful and deft.

She was crying now, silent tears flooding down her cheeks. As he watched in distress, she lifted her hands to cover her face, her shoulders heaving as the tears slid through her fingers. Such grief couldn’t possibly be caused by the simple loss of an ornament, Guy knew.

‘Jenny, what is it? What’s wrong?’ he asked.

For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to tell him. The sight of her grief, all the more shocking because of its very silence, as though the pain was so great that she couldn’t endure the added agony of giving it voice, made his own stomach muscles clench in angry helplessness. Automatically he moved closer to her, wrapping both arms around her.

He was right. She had lost weight; he could feel her bones through her skin. She seemed tiny and fragile, frighteningly so.

‘Jenny,’ he urged, wanting to hold her even closer and yet afraid to do so in case he hurt her.

‘All right,’ she acquiesced, misunderstanding the reason for the pleading, questioning way he said her name. ‘If you must know, Jon has left me.’

Guy felt his whole body stiffen in surprise and disbelief. ‘Jenny,’ he muttered huskily, totally unable to voice his stunned emotions.

‘Jenny what?’ she demanded tearfully.

‘Jenny, it can’t be true….’

‘Oh, but it is true. You’ll hear all about it soon enough.’

He couldn’t see her face, but he sensed that she had stopped crying although she was trembling in his arms as though her body was unable to contain the intensity of her pain and outrage.

‘The whole town’s been talking about it … and who can blame them? If they think they’ve got something to talk about now, just wait until they find out why he’s gone.’

She began crying again. Great noisy, gulping sobs this time. Guy held her tightly.