Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘Why has he gone, Jen?’ he questioned gently, as gently as though he were speaking to a child, somehow knowing that this was what she needed, that possibly for the first time in her life she needed to be allowed to behave instinctively and emotionally instead of sensibly and logically, to put herself first instead of others.

‘He’s fallen in love with Tiggy—Tania,’ she admitted painfully, pushing herself away from him slightly and looking up into his face, her eyes full of misery and despair. ‘And who can blame him? You only have to look at her …’

‘She’s nowhere near the woman that you are, Jen,’ Guy told her roughly. ‘My God, if he’s left you for her, then he’s a fool.’

‘No, not a fool. He’s just doing what he’s always been taught … trained to do. All his life he’s been taking responsibility for David and now that David is so ill, what could be more logical than taking responsibility for David’s wife, as well?’

She started to laugh a wild, dangerous laugh, one on the edge of hysteria, that made Guy’s heart ache unbearably for her.

He wanted to be able to offer her some form of comfort and reassurance but he suspected that there was none that she would accept—or at least not from him. He had always known how much she loved Jon and he assumed that Jon felt the same way about her, yet despite his awareness of her suffering, he could not help wanting to take advantage of the opportunity that fate had given him.

‘Look, why don’t we close the shop for an hour? We aren’t normally that busy on Monday morning. We’ll go and have a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it.’

‘Oh, Guy.’ Fresh tears started to fall. ‘I still can’t really believe that it’s happening, that Jon has actually gone. A temporary separation, to give him time to think, that’s what he’s calling it. The children, everyone else, thinks …’ She bit her lip. ‘Everyone else thinks it’s because of David … the shock of his heart attack and that Jon is … that he will—’

‘That he’s having a mid-life crisis accelerated by David’s illness,’ Guy supplied for her. ‘Perhaps he is.’

Jenny shook her head. ‘I don’t know … I don’t know anything any more,’ she told him painfully.

‘It could just be a temporary thing,’ Guy felt bound to comfort her. ‘You’ve been married a long time and—’

‘Jon married me because he felt he had to, not because he loved me,’ she broke in tensely.

Guy stared at her.

It was the first time in all the years he’d known her that she had referred to the fact that she was pregnant when she and Jon had married.

There had been a certain amount of gossip at the time, of course. He, as a schoolboy, had overheard something about it without being particularly interested in what it meant and later he had assumed that the subsequent death of the child shortly after his birth had been so painful that the subject was simply never referred to. It had never occurred to him to question the happiness of the marriage.

‘The two of you may originally have married because you were carrying Jon’s child,’ he agreed, ‘but—’

‘No.’ Jenny shook her head, her eyes darkly sombre as she looked not so much at him as through him, he realised, as though she was looking back into the past. ‘No,’ she continued, ‘I wasn’t carrying Jon’s child. It was David’s….’

Guy willed himself not to betray his shock or to ask her any questions. Instead he simply took one of her hands and, holding it gently between his own, said quietly, ‘Come on … let’s go and have that cup of tea.’

She went with him as docilely as a small child, watching whilst he locked up the shop and then allowing him to guide her down the street.

He knew exactly where he intended taking her—the only place where they could be guaranteed the degree of privacy he knew they, she, needed—but cautiously he took a circuitous route towards it. Generation upon generation of Cookes had learned to value the habits and instincts of stealth and caution and to stake their lives on them. Now it wasn’t so much his life that was at stake as Jenny’s reputation. This was still very much a small country town after all and Jenny was now in the highly invidious position of being a ‘single’ woman.

He felt her tense slightly as he led her along the maze of narrow back streets and then out onto the road that led to his own house, but she didn’t say anything as he drew her arm through his own and walked her towards his home.

‘I’ve never been inside your house before,’ she commented as he led her through the small front door.

‘No,’ he agreed.

He wondered how she would react if he told her how often he had pictured her here, and not just here downstairs in his little living room, but upstairs in the huge old oak four-poster that virtually filled the open-plan upper storey of the house. When he had initially bought the bed he found he had to have the small existing bedrooms knocked into one to accommodate it and a small extension built out over the kitchen to house the bathroom.

The bed had at one time come from the local castle, or so local rumour had it, although how on earth it had ever actually been moved from its original place, Guy had no idea. He had bought it from a farmer’s wife who had complained that she was sick of the huge, ugly old thing. He had had to employ someone to take it apart and rebuild it again but it had been worth it.

From his neat and compact kitchen he could watch Jenny as she stood in the centre of his living room, slowly taking in her surroundings. Did she realise yet what she had told him? Had she meant to tell him or …?

The kettle boiled, he made the tea, poured two cups, put them on a tray and carried it through to the living room.

‘Now,’ he instructed, ‘sit down and tell me everything.’

‘I’ve already told you,’ Jenny said heavily. ‘Jon’s left me, he’s in love with Tiggy….’

‘Where is he living? Has he actually moved in with her?’ Guy frowned, trying to imagine old Ben’s reaction to the news that Jon had usurped his brother David’s place in his own marital bed.

‘No … no, he’s renting somewhere … a house … Oh, he keeps pretending that it isn’t because of Tiggy—he keeps saying that—but I know the truth,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I know it’s just a matter of time before …’

‘What about David? Does he know … is he …?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘No … I don’t think so, unless Tiggy’s told him. He’s out of hospital now but he isn’t at home. He’s staying in a nursing home at the moment. The specialist felt that he needed to rest and avoid any kind of strain, and of course Tiggy agreed. Well, she would, wouldn’t she?’ she added bitterly.

‘So it isn’t just Jon who …? Tiggy feels the same way, does she?’

Guy hated himself for asking such a question when he saw the way Jenny winced and bit down hard on her bottom lip.

‘Yes,’ she agreed hoarsely. ‘Yes … she seems to be as much in love with Jon as he is with her.’

‘Jen …’ Guy paused delicately. ‘In the shop you said that … at least you implied—’

‘That when Jon married me I was pregnant with David’s child,’ she finished tiredly. ‘Yes, it’s true, I was.’ She looked up at the ceiling, trying to control the tears she could feel threatening to fall. This morning the last thing she had intended to do was confide in Guy like this; in fact, she had been dreading his return, passionately wishing that he wasn’t coming back. She had grown unexpectedly adroit at avoiding people recently, at refusing to allow them to get close enough to her to ask questions and offer sympathy. Even Olivia and Ruth had met with a firm rebuff when they tried to sympathise with her.

She didn’t want sympathy. What she wanted was to have her husband back and her life restored to normalcy and no amount of commiseration was going to achieve that for her. She even found, to her shame, far from welcoming people’s concern, she almost actively resented them for it. It made her feel like … like a beggar forced to accept the charity of others and be openly grateful for it.

And she had certainly never intended to tell Guy about David’s baby. She started to shiver slightly. She still had no clear idea of why she had done, apart from the fact that now Jon had gone, there seemed no real point in keeping it a secret any longer. It was as though the guilt and shame she had felt, both then and all through the years of their marriage, not in having conceived David’s child, but in having allowed Jon to sacrifice his own life in order to protect all three of them—herself, the baby and, of course, most importantly of all in Jon’s eyes at any rate, David himself—had finally been forced to a head, which had burst this morning like a suppurating wound expelling its poison.

‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded fiercely as she saw the way Guy was looking at her. ‘Have I shocked you?’

‘No, it’s not that,’ Guy denied quietly. ‘It’s just that I never imagined … you aren’t …’

‘I’m not what … not the type?’ Jenny smiled bitterly. ‘No, I don’t suppose I am, but that doesn’t make it less a fact.

‘David and I had been dating for some time when I found out that what I’d thought was love was in reality nothing more than a silly teenage crush on my part and just a way of passing the time before going to university on David’s. We went our separate ways without any animosity, David to university and me back to school.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘My mother had been unwell for a while and then we discovered that her illness was terminal. I was needed at home to help take care of her. Jon and I were … friends, nothing more … just friends. When I found out I was pregnant …’ She paused and bit her lip a second time.

‘You told him because he was David’s brother …?’

‘Something like that,’ Jenny agreed. ‘Although it was more him who told me. I fainted one day while he was up at the farm. It never occurred to me that I might be pregnant but Jon guessed straight away. When he suggested that we should get married, I was so relieved to have someone take the responsibility off my shoulders, that I agreed.’ She looked at Guy. ‘I know what you must be thinking, that I was selfish … that I used Jon … that I deserve to lose him now, but—’

‘No, I don’t think any of those things,’ Guy assured her gravely.

How old must she have been? Seventeen, eighteen at the most, a very young and very frightened girl whose mother was dying and who had no one she could turn to.

‘I knew that Jon didn’t love me … how could he? But he convinced me that it was the right thing to do, that the baby, David’s baby, had the right to be brought up amongst his own blood relatives. He told his parents that he was the father when his father tried to stop our marrying. I think … I always felt that perhaps their mother knew, but if she did, she never said anything. Sarah was very kind to me throughout and she …’

Jenny swallowed and forced back the aching burn of the tears searing the back of her eyes.