Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘If you really want to know more about its history, Ruth is the one to talk to. Which reminds me, I’ve got some books she loaned me and I really ought to get back to her. Could you possibly return them for me tomorrow, Bobbie, when you’re out with Amelia?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Bobbie agreed.

‘I’d take them back myself, after all she only lives a few minutes away from the office, but I’m in court in Chester tomorrow and possibly for the rest of the week, as well.’

‘Oh and, Cas, before I forget, we’ve all been summoned to Queensmead for lunch on Sunday. Apparently, Max is home and Gramps has issued a royal summons. You’re included, too,’ she told Bobbie, adding ruefully, ‘Not that it’s likely to be a particularly relaxing occasion, not with Max around.’

‘You’d have thought that marriage would have mellowed him a bit,’ Caspar grumbled.

‘The only thing that’s ever likely to mellow Max is a large helping of humble pie,’ Olivia responded forthrightly, ‘and he’s certainly not going to be fed that by Madeleine, who worships him.’

‘Mmm...I’ve noticed,’ Caspar agreed wryly. ‘Hardly a healthy foundation on which to base a marriage and it can’t but lead one to suspect that Max’s motivation for marrying her—’

‘Poor Madeleine,’ Olivia broke in, ‘I feel so sorry for her. She doesn’t work and she’s prepared to devote herself to Max and then to their children when they come along and, of course, she genuinely is a very lovable and kind-hearted person.

‘And although Luke doesn’t normally put in an appearance when he knows Max is going to be around, I suspect that we’ll be seeing him at Queensmead this Sunday,’ Olivia told Bobbie with a teasing smile.

Fortunately Amelia distracted them, freeing Bobbie from the necessity of making any reply, although she was uneasily aware that in refusing to correct Olivia’s misconception that she and Luke were romantically involved, she was potentially risking tangling with an unstable situation, but, she told herself firmly, it was Luke’s responsibility to tell his cousin exactly why he had virtually forced himself into her room, and not hers.

She was thinking about Luke again the following day as she wheeled Amelia through the sunshine and into Haslewich’s pretty town square on her way to return Ruth’s books. It was an unfathomable mystery to her how such a man—the type of man she would normally have sidestepped past with the same kind of politically correct disdain with which she would have avoided some offensively rabid right-winger spouting his views at a Washington dinner party—could have such a deep and profound impact on her at the deepest level of her emotional and physical self, especially when there was so much else that was far more important to occupy her thoughts. It must be because she disliked him that she was spending so much time thinking about him, she decided hastily, but the analytical and fiercely sharp streak of hard-hitting perseverance and brutal self-honesty she had inherited via her father from his Puritan forebears refused to allow her such an easy way out. If she disliked him so much, how come he had the kind of physical effect on her body and her female desires that she couldn’t remember having had so strongly or so bewilderingly activated since junior high?

So she was as vulnerable as the next woman to the kind of raw sexual energy that Luke positively exuded. So what? She knew otherwise perfectly sensible and intelligent women who went glassy-eyed over Brad Pitt and only admitted to it in the privacy of dark, sheltered wine bars after at least half a bottle of good wine.

Perhaps because she was thinking of Luke and therefore in defiance of her thoughts and his suspicions, she decided to wheel Amelia through the church walk instead of going straight across the square.

The walk ran along one side of the square and down to the gated church close that housed Ruth’s home. All of the four benches were already filled, mainly with the town’s more elderly residents, Bobbie noticed as she smiled in response to their admiring comments about Amelia. From the walk she could see the churchyard, and the temptation to visit it a second time proved irresistible. Amelia gurgled happily as she reached out to try to grab a handful of the pretty wild poppies that had seeded themselves in the grass verge and it was whilst Bobbie was gently detaching her from them that she heard someone calling her name.

Looking round she saw Ruth coming towards her. She was carrying an empty flower trug and explained, as she reached them, that she had been to do the church flowers.

‘We were just on our way to see you,’ Bobbie informed her quietly. ‘Olivia asked me to return some books she borrowed from you and I thought that we’d take a small detour through the church walk,’ she explained a little uncomfortably.

But to her relief Ruth didn’t seem to share Luke’s suspicious objections of her behaviour and simply replied, ‘Yes, there’s something fascinating about old churches. They always seem to hold such an air of peace and tranquillity. We can cut through here,’ she added, indicating by waving her hand in the direction of the churchyard. ‘It will save us walking all the way back.’

‘It was here that I first met Joss,’ Bobbie offered conversationally as they followed the path that meandered between the gravestones.

‘Yes, I know,’ Ruth returned. ‘He often comes here. Jon and Jenny lost their first baby,’ she explained quietly. ‘He’s buried here and Joss often comes to bring flowers and to talk to him. He’s that kind of boy.’

‘Yes, he is,’ Bobbie agreed, suddenly discovering that there was a lump in her throat and that her eyes were filming with tears. Without really thinking about what she was saying, she murmured emotionally, ‘That must just be the hardest thing...to lose a child...a baby....’

There was a long silence before Ruth replied and when she did Bobbie could hear the tension in her voice as she responded, ‘Yes, it is.... Here we are,’ she said in a more normal voice, indicating a small gate set into the neatly clipped hedge that separated the churchyard from the close. ‘We go this way.’

Ruth’s home was everything that Bobbie had expected and a good many things she had not The antique furniture, the Persian rugs, the smell of polish and flowers, the family heirlooms and photographs. She had known those would all be there, but the other things... A carefully chosen and displayed collection of polished stones and pebbles that were of no material value at all, other than the fact that someone—probably Joss—had found them and lovingly polished them to give to her, children’s toys suitable for nephews and nieces of different ages; a book of modeRN flower arrangements and a rather racy novel along with several political biographies that Bobbie would never have thought of as typical reading for a spinster living in a quiet rural backwater.

On the bookshelves as well, though, were some very well-worn copies of Jane Austen’s novels plus several leather-bound volumes of poetry.

Amelia, it was obvious, was delighted to be in the company of her great-great aunt and Bobbie was compelled to admire the very practised and confident way in which Ruth changed the baby’s nappy, covering the little girl’s face with kisses as she re-dressed her.

Angry with herself for her own emotional reaction, she had to turn her head away to hide tears as she watched the loving rapport between Amelia and Ruth. Bobbie, too, had great-great aunts but they were nothing like Ruth.

‘It will be interesting to see if this young lady follows family tradition and chooses a career in law,’ Ruth commented as she knelt back and looked from Amelia to Bobbie.

Bobbie took a deep breath. Here was her chance and she trembled in her shoes; Sam would not have sidestepped it and neither must she.

‘Joss told me a little about the family’s history. He said that the Haslewich branch was started by someone from Chester who broke away from his own family....’

‘Yes,’ Ruth agreed. ‘Josiah was the youngest of three sons. He quarrelled with his father over his choice of a wife and was in effect disinherited. As a result he began his own practice here in Haslewich and, I suspect, because of the reason behind the split, there has always in the past been a distinct degree of rivalry between the two branches, more keenly felt in my observation by our branch than the family in Chester.’ She gave Bobbie a friendly smile and asked, ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

Bobbie hesitated briefly before replying. ‘I have a brother and a sister,’ she said carefully, keeping her voice as neutral as she could before adding, ‘As a matter of fact, my sister and I are twins. She’s called Samantha.’

‘Twins ...’ Ruth raised her eyebrows. ‘What a coincidence. Of course you know by now, that twins feature very heavily in our genealogy and in fact...’

Bobbie’s heart was thumping just a little bit too heavily as she listened to Ruth talk about the occurrence of twins in the Crighton family. But she was also obviously interested in finding out more about Bobbie’s parents.

‘Olivia mentioned that your father was a politician...?’

‘Yes, he is,’ Bobbie confirmed and felt pressured to add as Ruth waited patiently, ‘My father’s family are from New England—that’s where Sam and I grew up. But he and my mother spend a lot of time in Washington.’

‘Does your mother have a career?’

‘No...not now.’ Bobbie bit her lip as she heard the curtness in her own voice. ‘She...we... My mother hasn’t been very well lately,’ she said quietly. ‘And we...my...my father... No, she doesn’t have a career.’

Ruth eyed her young guest thoughtfully, sensing not just Bobbie’s reluctance to talk about her family and in particular her mother, but also her unexpressed concern and anguish over her mother’s health, remembering how she had felt when she had lost her own mother, her only support in a household that was ruled by her father and his prejudices—prejudices that to a great extent had been backed up and continued by her brother.

‘You’re obviously very concerned about your mother,’ she said with gentle sympathy. ‘If you’re worried about using Olivia’s telephone to ring home, I’m sure if you explained the situation to her, she’d be only too glad for you to do so. If she isn’t, which I can’t imagine, then you must certainly feel free to come over here and telephone from here.’ When Bobbie stared at her, she added quietly, ‘I do know what it’s like to be separated from someone you love, you know. How it feels to worry about them, to imagine all manner of horrid things happening to them when you aren’t there to help, to be with them.’

‘My mother had a serious operation last year and she still hasn’t fully recovered.’ Bobbie swallowed back the tears she could feel thickening at the back of her throat. What on earth had come over her?

The nature of her mother’s illness—the change in her from a positive, warm, happy person to someone who could, at times, be so desperately low—had shocked and frightened them all. It was regarded as a family secret they had all instinctively and automatically chosen to keep closely hidden in order to protect not just their mother, but their father, as well. Normally Bobbie would no more have dreamt of discussing her mother’s health with someone outside their immediate family than she would have taken off her clothes and walked naked through the streets of her home town. And now, feeling that she had not just broken some sacred rule but also, and even more distressingly, betrayed her mother into the bargain, she found it hard to both understand why she had mentioned her mother’s health at all and to forgive herself for having done so.

‘I must go,’ she told Ruth, standing up and picking Amelia up as she did so. ‘Caspar will be back soon and he’ll wonder where we are.’

‘I expect I shall see you on Sunday,’ Ruth said as she escorted her to the door, and then, to Bobbie’s shock, as she turned to leave, Ruth reached out and touched her arm lightly. ‘Try not to let your very natural concern for your mother make you over-fearful. I’m sure if there was anything you should know that your sister would tell you. It’s easy enough for me to say, I realise,’ she added ruefully, ‘but I was once your age and I do know how it feels to ... to worry about someone you love....’

As she spoke she looked down at Amelia and said inconsequentially, ‘Babies always seem so very vulnerable....’

‘Perhaps because they are,’ Bobbie returned curtly. ‘After all, they have no control over how they’re treated, have they? They’re totally dependent on the adults around them for everything. Protection...nourishment ... love!’

Bobbie’s head was aching by the time she had returned to Olivia and Caspar’s. Tonight was one of her evenings off and she intended to drive into Chester, ostensibly to call at the Grosvenor to check if there were any messages for her but, in reality, in order to telephone her sister.

At the Grosvenor the receptionist remembered her and greeted her with a warm smile. There were no messages but Bobbie hadn’t expected any, and fortunately the lobby was relatively empty as she went to use the pay phone.

Samantha answered her call so quickly that Bobbie guessed she had been waiting impatiently for her to ring. After giving her the pay phone number, Bobbie waited for her to call back, glancing around the foyer as she did so and then freezing as she spotted Luke on the opposite side of the room, standing by the entrance to the restaurant. Fortunately he had not seen her, and as the telephone rang, Bobbie turned her back on him and made herself as inconspicuous as possible, praying that he would not do so. He had been talking to another man, and Bobbie kept her fingers crossed that the pair of them were on the way to have dinner in the restaurant.

On hearing about the family gathering on Sunday, Samantha excitedly said that that would be the perfect time for Bobbie to stand up and say what they had rehearsed. She was quite adamant that the time for retribution had arrived.

‘I know,’ Bobbie agreed steadily, ‘but—’

‘But me no buts,’ Samantha insisted fiercely and then, relenting, Bobbie heard her twin saying in a softer voice, ‘Love you, Bo bo....’