Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

Not that she minded; indeed, she positively enjoyed the challenge of doing battle with her formidable father-in-law. Conversely, she knew that whilst in public he paid lip-service to the conventional view that Tiggy, on account of her looks, must take precedence in his affections and approval, privately, she was the one who had his respect.

Oh yes, men respected her, liked her, trusted her, turned to her for advice and comfort, but they did not flirt with her or see her as a desirable, sexual woman, a situation easy enough to smile over now, but not so easy when younger.

Jenny could still remember how she had felt the first time she had met Tiggy. She and Jon had been married for four or five years at that time and had been trying for a baby without success for the last two. The sight of Tiggy blooming with David’s love, basking in both that and her discreetly evident pregnancy had caused Jenny more than one pang of pain and self-pity. She had hardly been able to bring herself to look at Jon, and when she had, the withdrawn look in his eyes as he deliberately avoided looking at Tiggy’s pregnant body had made her bite her lip in a mixture of guilt and despair.

Jenny’s heart had sunk when they had received the telephone call summoning them to Queensmead to meet David’s new bride officially. It had been one of those sticky hot summer days when even the air they breathed had seemed heavy and tainted and somehow lacking in life-giving oxygen.

The partnership had been going through a rather lean time and Jon had quietly accepted his father’s decision that he should draw only a very small salary. David’s allowance was a large drain on the partnership’s profits but Jenny knew that Jon didn’t begrudge it any more than his father did. Luckily she was a careful housewife, scrupulously saving money where she could, especially when it came to spending money on herself, and she certainly had nothing in her wardrobe remotely suitable for the garden party-cum-belated wedding breakfast Ben was insisting on throwing for the newly married couple. In the end, having stubbornly refused Jon’s tentative suggestion they use some of their savings to buy her a new dress, she decided to make her own.

‘Get yourself something pretty,’ Jon had tried to coax her, but she had shaken her head, stubbornly folding her lips into a tight line, which he had interpreted as disapproval but which, in fact, had been her defence strategy against the tears she had been fighting not to let fall as she reacted to the unsubtle message his suggestion had concealed—that she was so plain that she needed to wear something eye-catching enough to draw attention away from that plainness and, even worse, that Jon was embarrassed by it.

She felt she was letting him down not just by her homely appearance but by the fact that she had not conceived another child. After all, she had fallen pregnant easily enough to David but that was something she refused to allow herself to think about even in her most private thoughts and it was certainly not something she could ever say to Jon. How could she? It would look as though she was comparing the two of them and finding Jon wanting. It didn’t need much intelligence to know that in the eyes of Jon’s family, and she suspected almost everyone else, David and Tiggy would be very much the golden couple whilst she and Jon were very much the dull also-rans.

Both of them had already been treated to a lengthy outpouring of praise from Ben about Tiggy’s exceptional beauty. So it had been with a feeling of tense trepidation plus the disadvantage of a bad tension headache and the disaster that was the home-made dress she had run up herself from a piece of fabric she had bought in the market that she had reluctantly pinned an unconvincing smile on her face and tried not to look as though she minded when she was finally confronted with Tiggy’s breathtakingly leggy, lithe and oh so slim reality.

Tiggy herself hadn’t quite been able to stop herself from betraying what Jenny had known humiliatingly was likely to be everyone else’s reaction to the difference between them, and her eyes widened just a little before she looked guiltily away from Jenny, obviously unable to meet her gaze as David introduced them.

David, too, managed to avoid meeting her gaze. David was clearly bursting with pride over the reaction Tiggy was causing amongst the male guests. They milled enthusiastically around her and barely had time to do much more than say a very brief hello not just to her but to Jon, his twin, before Tiggy caught hold of his arm and demanded to be told the names of all the men who were so eager to talk with her.

As she reached out to David, she had tilted her face up towards him, throwing her head back and laughing. The sun gleamed richly in the heavy thickness of her glossy hair, and the bones in her shoulders revealed by the cutaway neckline of her brief cotton minidress seemed as fragile and delicate as those of a bird. Jenny had watched her, mute with misery, contrasting her own flushed, shiny, wholesomely plain face with the fine-boned, high-cheeked beauty of Tiggy’s.

Everything about David’s new wife, from the polished tips of her fingernails to the artfully applied fake eyelashes—which, unlike her, Jenny was absolutely sure that Tiggy had little need of—spoke of someone who took it for granted that she was loved and desired. And why shouldn’t she? David was so obviously besotted with her, so completely in love, he couldn’t bear even to let go of her hand, never mind leave her side.

Jenny had felt her eyes start to well up with betraying and self-pitying tears as she watched them. Even Jon, quiet, slightly shy Jon, was watching Tiggy with a bemused and indulgent smile on his normally serious face.

‘Jenny, could you come and give me a hand with the food?’

Reluctantly Jenny had dragged her attention away from the group of enthusiastic admirers thronging round Tiggy and turned to look at Jon’s Aunt Ruth, answering automatically, ‘Yes, of course …’

‘Tiggy is very pretty, isn’t she?’ she had commented quietly to Ruth as they walked across the lawn together. Jon hadn’t even noticed her leaving. He was standing next to David but slightly behind him, slightly in his shadow. Was he wishing that like David he had married someone beautiful and lively, someone who was fun to be with, someone who other men envied him being married to and not …? Her throat, already uncomfortably dry, had become even drier as she added, ‘She and David look so right together and they’re obviously very deeply in love.’

‘Indeed they are,’ Ruth had agreed, but her voice had been wry rather than warm, carrying more of a hint of cynicism than the outright approval that Jenny had been expecting. When Jenny had looked uncertainly at her, Ruth had explained lightly, ‘David and Tiggy are in love, Jenny, but I suspect that both of them are rather more in love with themselves than they could ever be with anyone else. Perhaps I’m wrong … I certainly hope so.’

Jenny and Jon had left Queensmead and gone home shortly afterwards. She hadn’t been feeling very well, the oppressive heat making her feel sick, and she had felt guilty about dragging Jon away especially when she had seen the look of pity that Tiggy had given them both as they said their goodbyes.

As they walked away, she had heard Tiggy saying to David, ‘I can’t believe that you and Jon are twins. He looks older than you but then I suppose that’s because his wife is so frumpy and plain.’

Frumpy and plain. Tiggy hadn’t meant to be unkind, of course; she hadn’t even realised that Jenny had overheard her….

‘I think I’d better go and ring them again, just to check that they have sent my shoes. It will be a complete disaster if they don’t arrive.’

‘Mmm?’ Jenny murmured, coming back to the present.

‘My shoes, Jenny,’ Tiggy repeated irritably. Heavens, Jenny could be so dull and boring at times. She hadn’t even mentioned what she was going to wear for the ball. Tiggy had offered to go shopping with her, help her choose something suitable, but predictably Jenny had shaken her head and said that she was too busy … that she would find ‘something’.

Tiggy just hoped that the ‘something’, whatever it was, wouldn’t prove to be too horrendous. Her own dress, of course, was a dream by one of her favourite designers. David had baulked a little at the cost but she had soon talked him round.

The cream of Cheshire society had been invited after all. David’s people, through the Chester side, were extremely well-connected and when one included some of their long-standing county clients …

It was a pity that the house didn’t have its own ballroom … a marquee was all very well in its way but … She had been a little bit cross when Jenny had refused to agree with her that a black-and-white theme would be marvellously chic. As well as setting off her own colouring, black always looked good on blondes.

‘It’s too restricting, too dramatic, Tiggy,’ Jenny had argued in that quiet, calm voice of hers. ‘Not everyone will want to keep to the theme and wear black or white. We must be practical.’

Typical of Jenny, practical should have been her middle name. She was a dear, of course, frightfully worthy and good-natured and, oddly enough, she was more attractive now than she had been when she was younger. She had kept her figure, even if she was a good size twelve compared with her own delicate size eight and her hair was still a rich, glossy brown and naturally curly, even if it could do with a proper styling.

Tiggy had seen the way Jonathon looked at the two of them sometimes, no doubt comparing her elegance and Jenny’s lack of fashion sense. Jenny really ought to take a bit more trouble with her appearance. Jonathon was a very attractive man, though not quite as startlingly good-looking as David. The wheat blond of David’s hair was slightly less extravagantly film starrish in Jonathon. His was tinged with a soft caramel brown, but the twins shared the same impressive height and the same broad shoulders. Curiously it was Jonathon’s slightly more spare frame that seemed to carry the years well now; David had begun to develop a paunch, although he denied it vigorously and loathed any reference to it.

‘Ah, there you are….’

Jenny smiled as she saw their mutual father-in-law approaching them. He was in his seventies now, a widower, and he walked with a slight limp, the legacy of a bad fall three winters ago when he had dislocated his hip and broken his leg.

‘Have a few things I want to talk to you about,’ he announced as he reached them.

‘Father, you look wonderful,’ Tiggy told him, darting forward to give him a quick hug and to kiss him delicately on the cheek. Even with her father-in-law she still could not resist the impulse to flirt, Jenny realised.

No, not to flirt, she amended mentally. What Tiggy did, what she wanted, was to reassure herself that she was still desirable, still wanted. Poor Tiggy. Jenny wondered briefly what it must feel like to have one’s whole self-worth invested in the frightening transitoriness of one’s physical features. No wonder at times Tiggy seemed so brittle, so insecure.

‘Tania, I—’

‘Darling, I must fly. There’s so much I have to do….’

Their father-in-law was one of the few people who used Tiggy’s proper name and Jenny hid another wry smile as she watched Tiggy detach herself from him. She knew quite well why Tiggy wanted to avoid being questioned by Ben.

‘She does too much,’ Ben commented as they both watched Tiggy hurry round the side of the house to where her car was parked. ‘She’s never been very strong. Ellie tells me these marquee people are due to start work tomorrow.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Jenny agreed. Ellie was Ben’s housekeeper. ‘They’re due to arrive about lunch-time and most of the work should be completed by early evening.’

‘Mmm … Well, let’s just hope they don’t make too much of a damn mess of the lawn. Ruth tells me she’s doing the flowers,’ he added, referring to his unmarried sister. ‘Should have thought you’d have got somebody professional in to do that.’

‘Aunt Ruth is better than a professional,’ Jenny told him calmly. ‘When she does the church flowers—’

‘The church flowers,’ Ben interrupted, snorting dismissively, then shaking his head when he realised that Jenny wasn’t going to allow him to agitate her but instead was simply listening serenely.

That was the trouble with Jenny; she was too damn serene at times and too damn clever.

‘Young Olivia’s coming home, I hear, and bringing some American or other with her.’

‘Of course she’s coming home,’ Jenny agreed. ‘After all, she is David’s daughter—and Tiggy’s.’ But it was Jenny, her aunt, whom she had telephoned to tell her in the strictest confidence that she had decided to move in with Caspar, and Jenny whom she had contacted to sound her out about the wisdom of bringing Caspar home with her.

‘Exactly who is he, then, this American?’ Ben demanded, changing tack, having recognised that Jenny wasn’t going to rise to the bait he had originally been dangling and rush to defend his sister. They were having a particularly hot summer and since his accident the heat bothered him. It got into his broken joints and made them ache so much that the pain made him irritable.

‘He’s Livvy’s boyfriend,’ Jenny returned.

‘Boyfriend.’ Ben frowned at her under his heavy silver eyebrows. Like his sons he, too, had a good thick head of hair, although where theirs was still blond, his was now silver. ‘According to David he’s in his thirties—hardly a boy. Serious between them, is it?’ he demanded, shooting her a penetrating look.

‘That’s something you must ask Livvy,’ Jenny told him.

It was certainly serious enough for Olivia to tell her mother that the two of them would be sharing a room even though David apparently had put his foot down and said no.