by Penny Jordan
Margaret, of course, had known about his reputation. Her girlfriends had been delighted to tell her, but she hadn’t cared; she wanted Irvine and she was determined to have him, as much to spite her father as anything else, although she hadn’t acknowledged that then… He thought she was unimportant… that James was all that mattered to the family… well, she would show him just how important she was…
Of course, it hadn’t been easy… She grew hot beneath the tight bodice of her dark wool dress, remembering that look on her father’s face when she had challenged him to refuse to acknowledge her marriage to Irvine, telling him that it was already too late and that she was already carrying Irvine’s child.
She had been old enough to marry without her parents’ permission, but she had of course known exactly how her father would feel. She had had the satisfaction of making her father accept what to him was the unacceptable. And then he hated her as much as she hated him.
It was James on whom he lavished what tenderness there was in him, James who was cherished and fěted, James who was the heir, the future earl, while she was nothing… nothing at all… and it was only because she was nothing that he was allowing himself to be manoeuvred into giving public acceptance to a marriage to a man who, he told her coldly, was totally unacceptable to him, and who should have been totally unacceptable to her. How he had humiliated her pride that day! She had never forgiven him for it.
‘By God,’ he had roared at her in a voice loud enough for the entire staff to hear, ‘if you had to behave like a bitch on heat, I’d have rather you’d picked someone from our own stables! At least then it would be honest yeoman blood we’d be getting… Do you know what he is, this man you’re so desperate to call your husband? He’s a gambler and a cheat… he lives off stupid old women whom he flatters into thinking he wants them. He’s worse than a pimp. Very well, marry him, then, but he’ll never be welcome here.’
‘And you’ll continue my allowance,’ she had pressed grimly, hating him with a searing, bitter hatred, because he was telling her what she already knew.
‘Yes. I’ll pay it. Just as long as you keep away from Rothwell,’ he had agreed grimly.
It was Margaret’s good fortune that he had died so soon after her marriage. She had read about the freak sailing accident while she and Irvine were in the South of France, he living with one of his rich old women while she and her young son were forced to endure the privations of a narrow tenement house in the poorer quarter of town, their relationship kept secret from his patroness.
Her parents’ death changed things. Without waiting to consult Irvine she had made her arrangements, arriving at Rothwell in time for the funeral, knowing with that keen instinct of hers that James was not like their father… that he would not find it possible to deny her.
She and Charles had lived off her brother ever since. Charles was a family name; she had chosen it without consulting Irvine. The mad desire that had taken her into his bed and driven her into such a frenzy of need for him that she had had to marry him had gone. They separated without regrets on either side. He was killed in a car accident when Charles was five years old, and by that time, even though James had responsibilities himself, he had grown so used to the necessity of supporting his sister financially that neither of them thought to question it.
But living as a pensioner of her brother wasn’t enough. She didn’t want to live life on the sidelines; she wanted the full glory of centre-stage. And then came the event that could give her the ultimate opportunity to claim it.
Her sister-in-law died, leaving her brother with a very young child to care for.
Naturally she had hurried to his side, offering compassion and soft-voiced suggestions that he should hand the child over into her care.
Already she had it planned… Not yet, but in another year or so, she would gently remind her brother that she was caring for his child… that it was wrong, surely, that his heiress should be brought up in a tiny London house… that she as his sister was willing to forgo the quietude of her widowhood and her small circle of friends and establish herself as the châtelaine of Rothwell… and, once there, she intended to see that she was never removed from that position.
Rothwell… what opportunities it could give her… She envisaged herself as a great political hostess, a powerful figure moving behind the scenes, directing the actions of others.
But the child, the infant who was so vital to these plans, had taken one look at her and started screaming, and had not stopped until her embarrassed and apologetic nurse had removed her from her aunt’s rigid arms.
James had softened his refusal of her offer, pointing out that he could hardly let his sister take charge of his daughter when he had already refused a similar offer from his mother-in-law.
What could she say? The golden future she had envisaged for herself faded into dust. She looked at the child and mentally wished her ill, promising herself that there would come an accounting and that she would pay… oh, yes, she would pay.
All her life, fate had seemed to be against Margaret, letting her hope and then disappointing her, but this time she was not going to be disappointed. Geraldine Frances: that hated child of her brother’s was going to be the instrument by which she regained her rightful place in life.
With Geraldine Frances married to Charles, she would be able to return to Rothwell permanently.
Margaret spared no thought for her niece’s ultimate suffering in a marriage that she knew would destroy her.
At long last it seemed that the pendulum of fate was swinging in her direction, and she intended to make the most of it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SEVERAL years passed, and Geraldine Frances found a dull acceptance of her new life.
Miserable at school, shunned by most of her fellow pupils, too proud and too afraid to confide in her father, she had nevertheless managed to excel scholastically. She had a gift for languages, for science, for maths… She possessed a brilliant mind… an ability to reason on an intellectual level that far outstripped that of her peers.
These were gifts she had received from her father… gifts the years with him had honed and polished… Gifts Margaret resented as savagely as she resented her niece’s existence.
Reflecting that life was after all turning her way for once, and that she had much to look forward to, Margaret gave in to an impulse to wander into Harrods.
Intent on the mental shopping list she had compiled and the dinner party she had planned for the evening, she hurried into the shop and then out, grimacing, irritated by the jostling crowds that filled the wide pavement. There was a long queue at the taxi-rank. Tourists in the main… all of them clutching their souvenirs and waiting patiently for the line to go down. Well she had no intention of waiting. Her eyes were caught by a taxi slowing down on the opposite side of the road and imperiously she stepped off the pavement to summon it, never seeing the motorcyclist sweep round the corner.
It made The Times, a small two-line acknowledgement of the accident, in addition to the entry in the Deaths column.
The funeral was thinly attended; the day blazed with late spring sunshine and promise as the small group watched while her coffin was interred in the family crypt. Charles, sombre and hauntingly handsome in a black suit that really belonged to his uncle. Geraldine Frances, her face blank and strained with the effort of not betraying what she was really feeling. Coupled with her relief that she would no longer be subject to her aunt’s whims was a sense of shock that Margaret’s life should be ended so mundanely and so immediately. She looked at the coffin, unable to accept that her aunt’s body was inside it.
She sensed her father standing behind her and turned to look at him, wondering what he was feeling. Margaret had been his sister, but there were ten years between them… had they ever been close as children? Was that how he was remembering her now, rather than as the cold, autocratic woman she had become?
On impulse she went to him and put her hand on his arm. He looked at he
r, his frown dissolving into a surprisingly warm smile.
Geraldine Frances… his daughter… his child… They had grown apart recently, and that was his fault; there was nothing like death for reminding one how very fleeting life could be.
He looked at her quietly. He had missed her… missed her quick, incisive mind… her purity of spirit… her challenging intensity… He had missed her love, and he cursed the chauvinistic pride that had made him wish so desperately that she might have been a boy.
And now there would be no sons… The ache that knowledge caused never completely died, but there was nothing he could do about it. He looked across at Charles. He had never been particularly close to him. He had too much of his father in him for that… and too much of his mother.
Trust Margaret to want to promote a marriage between him and Geraldine Frances. Outwardly it would be an ideal arrangement, a neat tying-up of any potential loose ends, but he couldn’t forget the triumph and intensity he had heard in Charles’s voice that day when he’d caught him in the long gallery claiming to Geraldine Frances that he would inherit Rothwell.
That was Margaret’s fault. She was the one who had taught him to believe that he was to succeed to the earldom, not knowing that from the moment James had discovered that he couldn’t father any more children he had prepared plans to make a special petition to the Queen so that the title could pass direct through Geraldine Frances to her eldest son. The incident in the long gallery had confirmed that he was right to do so, and James had actually put the plans into action that week.
Margaret had quarrelled bitterly with him over that. And now Charles was subtly but surely laying claim to his cousin’s affections… Was he being over-cynical in suspecting the motivation behind Charles’s attitude towards Geraldine Frances?
He sighed wearily, his eyes blurring, making him frown. He had suffered from this disconcerting inability to focus both his sight and his mind on several occasions recently. There had been brief, terrifying instances when his mind had suddenly gone blank like a black hole materialising out of nowhere, a dizzying, sickening sensation of nothingness… quickly gone, but leaving behind a residue of fear and shock.
It probably meant nothing other than that he was growing older. He put his arm around Geraldine Frances, forcing Charles to step back from her slightly.
‘It’s over,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s time we went home.’
And so, with Charles on one side of her, her father on the other, Geraldine Frances walked over to the waiting car.
Charles smiled inwardly as he joined his uncle and cousin. His mother was dead, but he wouldn’t forget what she had taught him.
Rothwell was going to be his. He looked at Geraldine Frances, overweight and plain, and was glad she looked the way she did. That way, there was no danger of someone else stealing Rothwell from him.
He found himself wishing either that she were older, or that his uncle were less astute. If she were older he could have seduced her and persuaded her into an early marriage, but she was only just sixteen to his twenty-two, and his uncle was too astute not to see what was behind such an action. After all, it was the same one his father had used on his mother…
But somehow he must make sure of Geraldine Frances. She looked shyly at him and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry… about your mother…’
He veiled his eyes so that she wouldn’t see his own lack of emotion and took her hand and squeezed it, watching the hot colour flood her skin with cool detachment.
He was already more than halfway there. Left to Geraldine Frances… He knew his mother had put forward the idea of their marriage to his uncle, and he cursed mentally now that he had not worked harder to gain the latter’s approval, but in the old days he had felt secure in the knowledge that, since his uncle could not have sons, he would inherit from him by almost divine right… the right of succession… the right that should have been his, but for his uncle’s mad refusal to ignore Geraldine Frances’s claims as his daughter in favour of his as his nephew… He felt the old helpless rage roll over him and gripped Geraldine Frances’s hand, not realising what he was doing until she made a soft sound of pain.
He looked down at her, forcing back his feelings.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised softly. ‘I was just thinking of Ma…’
He watched as her eyes turned liquid with emotion. God, she was such a soft touch. Getting her to the altar would be easy… getting her pregnant was a different matter. He felt revulsion for her rather than desire, but desire could be manufactured. And the marriage would have to be consummated… would have to produce a son… He toyed with the possibility of persuading her to disinherit herself in his favour… Impossible while his uncle was still alive, of course, and he was still only in his mid-forties.
All the way back to Rothwell, Charles held her hand. Geraldine Frances was suffused with so much pleasure that she couldn’t speak. Instead she sat in silence, while Charles addressed her father respectfully as ‘sir’, and, almost without being aware of it, she recognised that Charles was setting himself out to win over her father… It bothered her sometimes, this recognition within herself that there was something facile and premeditated about Charles’s charm. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, and so she buried it deep within her subconscious, concentrating instead on the physical delight that being with him brought. Her stomach was quivering with a thousand butterflies… tremulous with delicate happiness… with a joy she felt guilty about feeling with her aunt so newly dead.
Poor Charles. She might not have liked her aunt, but Margaret had been Charles’s mother. Geraldine Frances tried to think how she would feel if it had been her father who had been killed, and her fingers tightened convulsively, causing Charles to frown and glance at her.
James felt tired… Far more tired, surely, than a man of his age should feel, and slightly confused. The fear was back with him; his head buzzed with panic and a clinging, insidious apprehension as he felt his mind start to cloud over. He was only forty-four… Margaret had been ten years older… a full decade between them, just as there was a yawning gap of six years between Geraldine Frances and Charles… Charles… James frowned, not really wanting to think about his nephew, but Geraldine Frances plainly adored him, and that worried him, nagged at him.
They should marry, Margaret had said. James tried to concentrate on why it was that he felt so uneasy about such a marriage, but could only summon an elusive awareness of his feelings and not the reasoning behind them. This wasn’t the first time he had felt some memory slipping away from him.
Now that Charles was on his own, James supposed he would have to do something for him… He was, after all, his nephew… But what?
The answer came to him over dinner that evening, as he watched Charles’s blond head turn towards Geraldine Frances’s russet one, saw the open adoration in her eyes, and recognised Charles’s subtle encouragement of it.
A spell apart wouldn’t do either of them any harm. When dinner was over, he invited Charles to join him in the library.
‘Perhaps this isn’t the most propitious time to discuss your future,’ he began, ‘but now that you’re on your own—I know that, while your mother was alive, your time was fully occupied looking after her affairs—’
It was a sop to good relations between them, since he knew quite well that Charles hadn’t done a day’s work in his life and that he himself had been subsidising both Margaret and her son.
‘However, now she’s gone… I think it might be a good idea for you to go out to Argentina. I have a half-share in an estancia out there, as you know, breeding polo ponies. The manager’s due to retire in a couple of years. It’s a good life out there.’
Charles knew quite well what his uncle was doing, and he fought down the rage boiling inside him.
‘Polo ponies… It’s kind of you, sir… but I’m not sure it’s quite my scene. Could I have some time to think about it?’
To think of a way to get out of going without totally aliena
ting James, Charles reflected half an hour later as he went upstairs.
Argentina… That was the last place he wanted to go. For one thing it would mean giving up his very busy social life in London, and for another, and more important—because after all one could find beautiful and willing women anywhere—it would mean potentially long separations from Geraldine Frances. And those he couldn’t afford, not now. It was too much of a risk…
In the library, James frowned, wondering if he should have been blunter with his nephew… if he should have warned him that he wasn’t entirely happy with the relationship that was developing between him and Geraldine Frances.
Geraldine Frances was so young… too young! Too naïve, and it was his fault for keeping her to himself for so long. Margaret had been right about that if nothing else. He should have sent her to school much earlier, but he had enjoyed her company so much… Now things had changed between them and he knew it was his own fault. How bitterly he regretted letting her see how much her changed appearance had shocked him on his return from Argentina that time. His reaction had driven a wedge between them… caused a rift in their relationship which had meant that their old closeness had been destroyed.
How could he tell her the reason he felt so uneasy about this relationship which had developed between her and Charles without hurting her? How could he destroy the dreams he could see so clearly in her eyes by pointing out to her how highly unlikely it was that a man of Charles’s age and looks should feel the same way about her that she did about him?
No matter how much he himself might suspect Charles’s motives, there was nothing he could do… Other than send Charles away and hope that Geraldine Frances grew out of her crush on him.
Those were the thoughts of the father… the Earl on the other hand thought logically and coldly that a marriage between Charles and Geraldine Frances would have many advantages… but at what potential cost to his daughter?
