Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘Oh dear,’ Olivia broke in ruefully. ‘I suspect that must mean that Joss has been telling you tales about how certain members of the Crighton clan have in the past been chauvinistically anti-American. I can remember how shocked I was when Caspar told me that he’d heard about it, but that’s all in the past now, Bobbie,’ she said reassuringly. ‘If it ever really existed.’

‘There was a certain amount of local resentment and male jealousy of the American forces stationed here during the Second World War,’ Ruth supplied quietly, ‘but that was all a long time ago and I believe what ill feeling there may have been has been exaggerated into a bit of a shaggy-dog story.’

‘Mmm... Uncle Jon seems to feel that it was your father who first started the whole anti-American thing,’ Olivia commented. ‘Something about some argument he’d had with someone in authority on the American side...’

Bobbie wondered if she was being over-sensitive in thinking that Ruth hesitated just that little bit too long before replying and that her voice was not quite so naturally or warmly pitched as it had been before as she responded, ‘That may very well have been the case. Your great-grandfather had his own very decided views on things and he certainly wasn’t too happy with the way the Ministry had appropriated land—especially when it was his land—for war use and I believe there were certain quarrels and petty arguments over his belief that he still had a right to walk on what he considered to be his own land while the authorities viewed that he was trespassing on what was now military property.’

Olivia laughed and, as she bent down to scoop up her small daughter who was now beginning to object to the lack of adult attention, told Bobbie, ‘Well, you can rest assured, Bobbie, that Americans are more than welcome in this household. You will stay for lunch, won’t you?’ she turned to ask Ruth as the older woman started to straighten her skirt.

‘I wish I could, but it’s the Simmonds’ wedding this weekend and I promised I’d help with the flowers for the church today,’ Ruth answered, turning away from Olivia and smiling gently at Bobbie as she added, ‘It’s been lovely to meet you. Perhaps Olivia will bring you over to see me before you leave.’

‘Bring her over to see you... How formal.’ Olivia pulled a face.

Without waiting for Bobbie to reply, Ruth turned back to her small great-great-niece, her eyes alight with tenderness and love as she bent her head to kiss her.

‘Ruth is wonderful with children,’ Olivia told Bobbie ten minutes later after Ruth had driven off.

‘Yes ... yes, I can see that she is,’ Bobbie agreed flatly. The day had suddenly started to turn sour on her. She had the beginnings of what promised to be a very bad headache, and for the first time since she had come to Britain, she missed her twin so much that she positively ached with the pain of wanting her.

‘Bobbie, what is it? Are you feeling all right?’ Olivia asked her anxiously. ‘You weren’t upset by what we were saying about Americans, were you? It was thoughtless of me to bring it up. It’s just that you’re almost bound to meet Gramps and, well, depending on what kind of mood he’s in and how much his hip is paining him, he can be rather...tactless. He’s rather behind the times, I’m afraid, and his outlook is very blinkered. You’d never believe that he and Ruth are brother and sister. She’s so modern and so forward-thinking. I know that Gramps is older than her but sometimes you’d think he’s got stuck in some kind of time warp, whereas Ruth—’

‘You obviously think very highly of her,’ Bobbie commented abruptly.

Olivia gave her a thoughtful look.

‘Yes ... yes ... I do,’ she agreed gravely. ‘You see... Well, let’s just say that if it wasn’t for Ruth, I doubt very much that Caspar and I would be together today and I certainly wouldn’t have you, would I, my wonderful, precious, naughty little one?’ She smiled, hugging her gurgling daughter.

‘In many ways, Ruth and Jon’s wife, Jenny, have been the true mother figures in my life, the people I’ve turned to for help and advice and, yes, for the definition of myself as a woman. My own mother...’ She gave Bobbie a sad look. ‘It’s no secret and you’re bound to hear about it sooner or later, so I may as well tell you myself. My mother, Tania, suffered very badly from...from an eating disorder. So badly, in fact, that even now, although she’s in recovery, she still needs help.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Bobbie commiserated, genuinely moved to compassion, not just for Olivia but for her unknown mother, as well.

‘Yes, so am I,’ Olivia agreed, ‘which is just one of the reasons why I’m so determined that this tittle madam gets a very different kind of mothering.’

‘And your father?’ Bobbie asked hesitantly.

‘Who knows?’ Olivia returned dryly. ‘He ... he disappeared shortly after my mother became ilt—he’d been recovering from a heart attack in a nursing home and he just walked out. We’ve tried to find him but...’

‘And you’ve heard nothing from him?’ Bobbie asked her, shocked.

‘Two postcards, one from Italy and the other from South America, but we still haven’t been able to trace him.’ Olivia gave a small shrug.

‘As Amelia grows up, Jenny and Jon will be her maternal grandparents and Ruth... Ruth, I hope, will always be Amelia’s special person and be there for her as she was for me when I was a child and as she is now for Joss. She’s convinced that, of all of us, he’s the one who will fulfil all of Gramps’s ambitions, and she’s probably right. Mind you, Joss is going to have a long way to go before he matches Luke’s awesome courtroom manner,’ Olivia noted, smiling.

‘Yes. I can imagine,’ Bobbie agreed grimly. ‘He must be a ruthless prosecutor.’

‘Prosecutor!’ Olivia stared at her. ‘Oh, but Luke specialises in defence, didn’t he tell you? That’s his forte.’

‘Whom does he defend?’ Bobbie muttered cynically, trying not to betray her discomfort. ‘Murderers and rapists?’

She could see from Olivia’s expression that she had gone too far and inwardly cursed her runaway tongue’s impulsiveness.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised guiltily. ‘It’s just...’

‘It’s all right,’ Olivia assured her. ‘You don’t have to explain to me. Caspar and I had some pretty horrendous fights in our time.’

Whilst Bobbie stared at her, she added illuminatingly, ‘I’m afraid that Fenella wasn’t too discreet in giving vent to her feelings about discovering the pair of you together. I don’t intend to pry,’ she declared firmly. ‘But, well, let’s just say that it’s pretty obvious that there’s a certain something smouldering away between you, and my experience is that when something smoulders, sparks can fly,’ Olivia finished more light-heartedly.

Bobbie didn’t say a word. How could she? She was too busy trying to grapple with the latest complication in her life. She doubted that Luke would be too pleased at discovering that at least one member of his extended family and possibly others appeared to think that they were something of an ‘item’. Well, he only had himself to blame, and unpleasant though she might find the thought of being linked romantically to him, she at least would soon be walking away from the situation—and from him.

For now, though, she was caught in something of a cleft stick. She either allowed Olivia to continue thinking that there was some kind of romance going on between herself and Luke or she told her that there wasn’t and left her believing that she had simply spent the night with him. Of the two, the second option was certainly the more unpalatable, Bobbie acknowledged, and besides, she rather suspected that Luke would find it much more difficult to explain his way out of a supposed romance than to dismiss a mere one-night stand, and if he was busy doing that, he would surely have far less time to indulge his suspicions of her. In fact, the more Bobbie thought about it, the more advantages she could see in allowing the fiction that she and Luke were attracted to one another to continue.

For a start, it would allow her to be far more openly curious about Luke’s family background than she could allow herself to be as a mere substitute nanny and for another thing... Well, she admitted that she wouldn’t have been human if she wasn’t enjoying the prospect of seeing Luke wrong-footed and discomforted and she certainly knew exactly how he would feel at the idea of having her for a ‘girlfriend’.

And then another thought struck her.

‘I hope you didn’t offer me this job because...because of me and Luke,’ she asked Olivia uncomfortably.

‘Certainly not,’ Olivia reassured her immediately. ‘No, Caspar and I had already talked about approaching you on the night of the party. Which reminds me, could you hold Amelia for a moment, please, while I go and ring Caspar and find out what time he’s coming home?’

Left alone with her new charge, Bobbie smilingly returned the baby’s curious, round-eyed stare, enjoying the soft, warm feel of her in her arms, and instinctively started to talk to her.

When Olivia returned, Amelia was smiling hugely in Bobbie’s arms whilst Bobbie herself...

Some women just had a natural mothering instinct, Olivia believed, and Bobbie, whether she knew it yet or not, was definitely one of them.

Twenty-four hours later, even Bobbie herself was surprised at how easily she had fitted into the household. Caspar and Olivia treated her more as a friend than an employee, and as for Amelia...

She was delicious, Bobbie had happily and wholeheartedly told a grinning Caspar. Yummy, delicious, delectable and definitely the most intelligent and aware eight-month-old who had ever existed.

‘You’re almost as bad as Luke,’ Olivia teasingly scolded her later that evening. ‘He’s the most besotted godfather that ever was.’

‘And a far better choice than Saul would have been,’ Caspar chipped in, adding dryly, ‘He would have been more interested in making eyes at Amelia’s mother than at Amelia.’

‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned him.

‘Saul’s my father’s cousin,’ she explained to Bobbie. ‘You may have met him at the birthday party.’

‘He was the one Louise was desperately trying to impress,’ Caspar supplied helpfully, ‘but she’s wasting her time because Saul—’

‘Caspar...’ Olivia warned a little more firmly this time. ‘Saul’s much too old for Louise,’ she explained. ‘He’s well into his thirties now and Louise is only eighteen.’

‘He’s also getting divorced, has three children and is still half inclined to believe himself in love with you,’ Caspar interjected.

‘Saul was never in love with me,’ Olivia refuted firmly. ‘He may at one time have thought...felt... Oh, I’m sure Bobbie doesn’t want to hear all this ancient family history,’ she told her husband, then continued to explain to Bobbie, ‘As a teenager I did have a bit of a crush on Saul, and then when his marriage broke up and Caspar and I were estranged, Saul provided a welcome cousinly shoulder for me to cry on. His wife was an American, by the way. In fact, it’s rather ironic, given Gramps’s insistence on being so anti-American, that two of us have married across the Atlantic, as it were.’

‘If you ask me, a good deal of your grandfather’s antipathy towards us springs from Ruth’s mysterious relationship with her army major,’ Caspar conjectured.

‘Caspar, please,’ Olivia objected even more sternly this time, and good manners precluded Bobbie from asking any questions. Instead, Olivia tactfully changed the subject and talked about how Haslewich had developed as a town. Her enthusiasm was infectious, but she admitted her knowledge was limited.