by Penny Jordan
She loved the old Hall with an intensity that sometimes frightened her, but nothing frightened her as much as the desire that James could arouse inside her that was, truthfully, terrifying. It was in an effort to counteract his effect upon her that she accepted so many of Graham’s invitations. She found his company restful and undemanding after James’s. She knew that Graham desired her, and she had even gone as far as to wonder what it would be like to be kissed by him, whether his touch would have the same cataclysmic effect upon her as James’s had. In some ways, she wished it might. She didn’t want James to be the only person to affect her in that way. It made her feel too vulnerable.
In truth, James aroused inside her many emotions she found it hard to come to terms with. Her life seemed to be a constant state of conflict: days during which she genuinely managed to convince herself that she was capable of treating him with indifference and cool contempt, and then nights when he brought her so close to hating herself and the way he made her feel with his clever hands and mouth that she almost felt as though she would prefer not to wake up again in the morning. Sometimes she felt as though she were two completely different people; by day the cool, calm woman she had always been, but by night an unfamiliar wanton creature; a changeling who had somehow relinquished her real self and who wanted…What? she asked herself tiredly. What did she really want?
She got up from her desk, irritably pushing aside the accounts she had been working on. Against her will her thoughts winged their way after James. Did he ever feel torn apart by the way they lived, like she did? Did he regret their marriage? If so, he gave no sign of it to her.
Did he even know how much she hated and resented him? How bitter was her gall at being forced to accept him as her husband and lover? Before they had married she had made herself a vow that she would never live with him as his wife. He had broken that vow for her as easily as he might have destroyed a child’s toy.
A bitter, corrosive anger welled up inside her, bathing her with raw heat, fuelling a restless energy that demanded some physical outlet. James was making her do what he wished her to do, and how she hated him for that. But not as much as she hated herself for letting him.
On impulse she went outside, walking hurriedly through the grounds in the direction of the small ornamental lake. August had faded into September, and today there was just a warning touch of autumn in the air. Jenna shivered a little as she walked alongside the lake. How much more of this life could she endure?
Perhaps once the alterations to the Georgian wing were finished she would feel better. It was too cramped, living as they did at the moment. The contractors had promised her that they would be finished for Christmas. James had suggested that they hold a masked party on New Year’s Eve in the newly decorated ballroom. Where the house was concerned he was unstinting in his praise of what she had achieved. He was a very complex man; more complex that she had ever dreamed, she acknowledged, shivering again as her body forced her to recall how swiftly he could change from the mockingly urbane businessman who discussed finance and business deals over dinner, to the dark, demanding lover who possessed her body during the shadowy hours of the night. Who came to her and used his knowledge of her body and its weaknesses to break through her silent resistance, making her cry out with despair and delight.
An acute feeling of nausea suddenly gripped her and she stopped dead where she was. What if she should conceive his child? The thought of being even more tied to him was intensely intolerable, and yet she had taken no precautions against motherhood.
The practical side of Jenna could hardly believe her own folly and yet she knew inside why she had done nothing…it was because to do something would be to admit that she and James would continue as lovers…to admit that she wanted him, not just on the odd rare occasion, or in a moment of weakness brought on by too much champagne and emotion, but permanently…always…and that was a truth that as yet she was unable to face.
Slowly, she made her way back to the house. If she was going to meet Graham for lunch she would have to shower and get changed. She enjoyed these meetings with the antique dealer. Softer, gentler than James he treated her with an olde-worlde courtesy that she found soothing. But, best of all, Graham did not threaten her. He did not possess James’s particular brand of aggressive masculinity.
She dressed carefully in a new outfit, a softly pleated skirt in pink, with a matching long-line jacket worn over a toning pink and cream short-sleeved sweater. The colour was very striking against her hair which nowadays she normally wore down. James liked her to leave it loose, but James did not like her lunching with Graham. Her mouth compressed slightly over what she considered to be his dog-in-the-manger attitude. He had no emotional interest in her himself and yet he resented any friendships she formed elsewhere. Well, she was not totally his possession, Jenna raged, only too glad to find some way in which she could rebel properly against him. In her heart she knew quite well that her determination to pursue her friendship with Graham Wilde came from her bitter and deep resentment of the sexual hunger James aroused within her, but she fought the knowledge down, telling herself that she had every right to make her own friends, her own life.
She went to check on Sarah before going out for lunch and found her step-sister-in-law, as she had expected, in the Georgian hallway, watching enraptured as the two men worked silently on the high ceiling.
Jenna paused for a moment to watch herself. The allegorical scene was now taking real shape, the painted sky with its white clouds so realistic that one almost wanted to believe in it.
‘Don’t forget you’ve got schoolwork to do this afternoon, young lady,’ she chided Sarah gently, as she went to join her.
An easy, warm relationship had developed between them and Sarah pulled a slight face, which changed to a rather worried frown as she asked, ‘Will you be long? Or is it just lunch?’
Had she imagined the tiny thread of disapproval interwoven into the question? Jenna frowned slightly herself. ‘I’m not quite sure. Graham has been on the look-out for some chairs for me for the dining-room. What I’ve got in mind is a set of Chippendale rococo, but they’re extremely rare.’
Sarah’s expression lightened a little, but then she added cautiously, ‘Is Mr Wilde the only antique dealer you deal with? You seem to see rather a lot of him.’
Telling herself that now was not the time to take umbrage at the faint hint of criticism in Sarah’s voice, Jenna gave a brief shrug. ‘Not the only one, no, but he has been very helpful, and he is very knowledgeable about the period I’m interested in, and about the houses around here.’
‘Mmm. I think he’s fallen for you,’ Sarah told her baldly, flushing a little uncomfortably when Jenna said nothing.
Jenna was quite well aware that Graham was attracted to her, but she had dismissed the knowledge to the back of her mind, telling herself that Graham was perfectly safe. He had never behaved in anything other than a gentlemanly fashion towards her, but now it annoyed her that Sarah should have noticed his attraction and commented on it.
‘He knows that I’m married,’ she pointed out coolly.
She left the hall before Sarah could say anything else, angry because the girl had made her feel guilty, when after all there was nothing for her to feel guilty about. It was hardly her fault if Graham was attracted to her. She had, after all, done nothing to encourage him.
But she had not done anything to discourage him either, Jenna reflected idly a little later that afternoon when she and Graham finished lunch and were sitting companionably over their cups of coffee.
‘Do you have to rush back?’ he asked when he had called for their bill. ‘Only I think I know where you might be able to get your chairs…’
He laughed when Jenna pushed her cup aside, excitement bringing a sparkle to her eyes. ‘I swear you love that house more passionately than——’
He broke off and looked embarrassed and Jenna supplied drily for him, ‘More passionately than I love my husband, were you going to
say?’
For a moment their eyes met and clung and then Graham said quietly, ‘And would I be right?’
A tiny pulse started thudding in Jenna’s throat. She knew she ought to deny Graham’s suggestion and change the subject, but a tiny flaring sense of excitement was born inside her, together with the knowledge as old as Eve that every woman experiences when she knows that a man desires her. Where once she would have backed off, and put Graham down with some coolly cutting remark, now she felt a small reckless voice urging her to…To what? To encourage him to believe that she was not happy with James? So it was true, wasn’t it? that same reckless inner voice demanded. She was not happy with him. But to admit that to someone else, to a man, moreover, who she knew was already too attracted to her…A tiny thrill of fear trembled down her spine at her own thoughts. What was happening to her? Sometimes she scarcely recognised the woman she was becoming…the woman James was making her become, she told herself bitterly, grateful for the interruption of the waiter bringing their bill which meant that she need not answer.
After lunch he took her to see the chairs. She left her own car, which had shown signs of temperament on her earlier drive, in the pub car park and Graham drove her through the flat vale of York and up on to the moors to a thick stone-built house set in its own walled garden. The garden walls and those of the house itself were thick with ivy in places, the whole air of the place one of neglect. The house was old, nowhere near as old or as large as the Hall, but impressive in its own way. The sort of house a rich merchant adventurer who valued his money might have had built.
The house had recently passed into the hands of a young Australian couple, Graham told her as he drove through open, rusty gates and down the short drive. ‘Lisa Fairchild inherited it from her great-grandmother and she and her husband want to make their home here. There’s quite a bit of land with it, and Peter Fairchild’s got a good idea of what he can and can’t do with it, but the house itself, like the old Hall, has been badly neglected and needs a fair amount spending on it. Unlike your husband, however, Peter does not have unlimited funds at his disposal. I got to know him quite by chance through my solicitor, and he got in touch with me the other day to ask me to go and value the furniture they were left with the house. He’s got a set of ten Chippendale chairs there and a table—just what you want, I think, but I might as well warn you, Jenna, he won’t sell them cheaply. In fact, if they didn’t need the money so desperately for the house itself I doubt they’d sell them at all, and I don’t blame them, it’s a beautiful set. One of the finest I’ve seen.’
As they got out of the car Jenna felt her senses quicken. She was absurdly excited about the thought of acquiring the Chippendale set. Far more excited than she had been to discover that Graham desired her, she admitted uncomfortably. What was the matter with her? Was it that she found it easier to love inanimate objects than she did flesh-and-blood people? But that was absurd…she loved Lucy…she had loved her sister, Bill and Nancy…she was coming to love Sarah…but none of those loves were as strong as the hatred and resentment she felt towards James, she acknowledged, shocking herself with that admission. Sometimes at night after they had made love and she was lying alone in the vastness of their four-poster bed, she wasn’t sure which of them she hated the most, him or herself.
‘Hey, come back, dreamer…’ The light touch of Graham’s hand on her arm brought her out of her sombre thoughts. She flashed him a brilliant smile, which faded as she saw the dark colour rush up under his skin and sensed his strong sexual response to her. Before either of them could speak the front door to the house was opened and a pretty blonde woman came out.
‘Graham!’ she exclaimed, holding out her hand to him. ‘What excellent timing, and you must be Mrs Allingham?’ She turned to Jenna and shook her hand, her clasp firm and warm.
‘Please do come in,’ she invited. ‘My husband will be here shortly. He’s gone to see someone about some sheep. We own some moorland grazing,’ she explained to Jenna as the three of them went inside, ‘and Peter is hoping to introduce a new strain of ewe here—a mixture of a proven moorland breed and a strain we found very hardy at home in Australia, especially in less fertile terrain. Will you have tea while you’re waiting?’
Jenna nodded her head, her professional instincts making her study her surroundings as they passed through a panelled hallway and into the drawing-room beyond. A well-proportioned room, it ran the width of the house with windows overlooking both the front and the rear, and smaller ones flanking the chimney-breast. Although it was furnished in a collection of styles and colours, Jenna could see how charming the room could be.
Mentally she stripped the cold blue paint from the walls and replaced it with a soft yellow; the ceiling with its sturdy plasterwork could be picked out in white and gold with a base colour of a slightly deeper yellow than the walls…a mid-blue carpet perhaps, and floral upholstery…she knew a yellow Colefax & Fowler chintz with a pretty design of flowers in mid-blues and white that would be just the thing…
‘Jenna, come back!’
She coloured a little as she realised that their hostess had been speaking and the conversation had gone right over her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I ran an interior design service before I was married, and I was just——’ She broke off, embarrassed by her own implied criticism of her hostess’s drawing-room, but to her relief the Australian girl laughed.
‘Yes, it’s pretty ghastly at the moment, isn’t it? This blue on the walls is far too cold, but we just don’t have either the money or the time to do anything about it as yet. The whole house is crying out for renovation, but we only have so much money and it’s desperately needed for restocking and re-equipping. I don’t know how much Graham has told you about us, but I inherited this place from my great-grandmother. It’s been in our family ever since it was built, and both Peter and I desperately want to keep it. There’s enough land for us to be able to farm competitively and profitably, but only if we are able to start off on an efficient basis. Unfortunately, there was no money to come with the house and so…’ She spread her hands.
‘Graham told us that you were looking for a Chippendale set similar to the one we have here. It breaks my heart to part with it, I have to admit, but unfortunately we do need the money for other things.’ She glanced disparagingly and faintly despairingly round the drawing-room. ‘I’d love to be able to do something with the house itself, but I’m afraid it comes pretty low on our list of priorities.’ She patted her stomach wryly and added, ‘With a baby on the way as well, we’re going to have our hands pretty full in the next few months.’
She excused herself to go and make the tea, and while she did so, Jenna got up to study the view from the back of the house. An attractive shrubbed and lawned garden stretched down to a stream and then beyond it the land rose up to the moors. This would be a good place to bring up a child, she thought absently, a little disturbed by her immediate feeling of envy when their hostess came back into the room accompanied by her husband.
It was obvious that a very deep bond of love and caring existed between them. Jenna was aware of it immediately. It wasn’t the sort of love she had grown to be wary of and faintly despise in her London days, the flashy, ‘Oh darling’ sort of thing that had seemed to her to be patently false, but rather a deeper more enduring caring that for some unknown reason brought a faint sting of tears to her eyes and made her heart ache for something intangible that she knew she would never have. Peter Fairchild was a solid, quiet, fair-haired man, who looked every inch the farmer, and yet when he took the tea-tray from his wife and gently pushed her down into a chair saying that she ought to try to rest, Jenna could see how much he loved his wife…how careful he was of both her and their coming child.
‘Lisa has explained our financial position to you, I believe, Mrs Allingham,’ he said to Jenna when they all had a cup of tea. ‘Reluctant though we are to part with the Chippendale set, we don’t really have any choice.�
��
‘Please call me Jenna,’ Jenna invited. She felt curiously drawn to this couple, which was unusual for her. She felt drawn to them and yet undeniably she envied them. She suppressed a small inner sigh. No doubt they were envying her, thinking how fortunate she was to have no financial problems. She could have told them that there were worse things to bear.
When they had their tea, they took her to see the Chippendale furniture. It was exquisite, and very well preserved. Jenna could see at a glance how much love and care had been bestowed upon it through the years. The rich mahogany glowed softly in the afternoon sunlight, and the matching table top although scratched was beautifully polished. The seats would need recovering, of course: she wanted them done in the same rich crimson silk damask that was to hang on the walls in the dining-room, but that would be no problem.
Sedately following Lisa back into the drawing-room, Jenna sat down and then asked the Fairchilds what price they were asking for the furniture. She saw the glance that passed between husband and wife, and it was left to Peter Fairchild to name a sum.
It was a lot of money, but no more than the furniture was worth, Jenna acknowledged fairly. She looked at Graham and then said quietly, ‘Yes, I think that’s a fair price, and I’m prepared to accept it.’
A mist of tears shimmered in Lisa Fairchild’s eyes. She smiled wryly and apologised to Jenna. ‘Please do excuse me, but I feel as though I’m selling old friends. I’d never seen the furniture before I inherited the house, but my grandmother and my mother told me about it…I know we have to sell it, but even so…’
On impulse Jenna paused as she stood up and suggested hesitantly. ‘Please don’t think me pushy, but how would it be if, in addition to the price we’ve agreed upon, I…I renovated this room for you…’ She saw the words of denial forming on Peter Fairchild’s lips and said quickly before he could speak, ‘No, please let me explain. As I told your wife I was an interior designer before my marriage—I had my own business in London, and I’m hoping to re-establish myself up here, but the work on the Hall, my own home, is taking so long that I haven’t had time for anything else. If you allowed me to do this, it would help me to keep my hand in. It would benefit me as well as you,’ she continued briskly as she saw him wavering slightly. ‘You’re bound to do a certain amount of entertaining—contrary to popular superstition, people of means do live in the north of England. I could get several commissions from people who see your drawing-room and like it…’
