Bitter Betrayal

by Penny Jordan

  After they had cleared lunch away and Jenneth had gone across to her studio, Kit looked ruefully at his brother and Nick said defensively, ‘Well, I don’t care what she says; she isn’t happy.’

  * * *

  They weren’t the only ones to think so. Eleanor, asking interestedly the following Wednesday how the wedding had gone, received such a brittle and uncommunicative response that she glanced thoughtfully at Jenneth’s shadowed face and gently changed the subject, asking her if she had heard the news yet about the new appointment at the hospital.

  Jenneth shook her head. Eleanor was involved in several charities, including the one that raised funds for the hospital, and was a fund of witty but never malicious items of local gossip.

  ‘Well, you know that Harry Philips has had to retire…’

  Jenneth nodded. Harry Philips was the chief surgeon at the hospital where she had been commissioned to paint the mural, and was well-liked in the local community. Five years off retirement age, he had suffered a heart attack earlier in the year, and had hoped to be able to go back to work.

  ‘Mmm… Well, he has, and the man who’s taking over arrives next week. He’s fairly young, apparently. A real high-flyer. There’s even a whisper that he’s over-qualified for the job.’

  Jenneth gave her a perfunctory smile. She wasn’t really interested in the hospital’s new appointee, save that he reminded her of Luke. She wondered a little bitterly if he realised the havoc he had caused within her…or cared.

  She had woken up at three o’clock in the morning, with his name on her lips and the taste of her own tears in her mouth, and, as she dragged herself out of the pervading miasma of unhappiness and fought to deny the hopeless sense of loss and pain that had come with the dream, she had remembered how Luke had looked at her in her hotel bedroom. She trembled, trying to deny the vision, so that Eleanor, who was dismayed by the weight she could see Jenneth had lost, and the pain she could see she was enduring, ached to ask her directly what was wrong. But she knew Jenneth too well to do so. One direct question and Jenneth would close up like a clam.

  She had no idea why it was that her friend and partner held the male sex at such a distance, but she had her suspicions, and later on, after Jenneth had left, and her own lover had telephoned to cancel a date they had for the evening, she cursed the male sex under her breath and wondered wryly if the female sex would not after all live happier lives had they been designed by nature as hermaphrodites and not one half of a whole whose completion seemed to cause so much trauma and pain.

  Next morning, Jenneth, who had an appointment with a potential client who had recently moved to York and who wanted Jenneth to design and paint a mural for her small daughter’s room, drove out of York and into the fertile valley of the Ouse. For once the beauty of her surroundings failed to supply balm to her soul… If by some miracle she could have wiped her memory clean of the weekend and Luke, she would gladly have done so.

  Half-way to her destination, she pulled her car off the road and turned off the engine, acknowledging the truth she had been fighting against admitting ever since Louise had voiced it in the privacy of her bedroom.

  She still loved Luke.

  It was a long time before she felt able to restart the car and continue with her journey. Luckily she had some time in hand, and the prospective client turned out to be a pleasant and very friendly woman in her early thirties, who told Jenneth ruefully that she and her daughter were already in disagreement about what form the mural was to take.

  Jenneth was used to dealing with this kind of problem, and the professionalism she had won for herself over the years took over, subduing the anguish of knowing that nothing had changed, that in so many ways she was still that same girl of twenty who had loved so readily and intensely. She acknowledged that she was no more able to cope with the reality of Luke’s rejection now than she had been then.

  She smiled, sympathetic to the client’s plight, and suggested as tactfully as she could that it might be a good idea if she found out exactly what it was her daughter wanted. She had learned over the years that a compromise between the ideas of mother and child normally worked best, and after giving her a relieved smile Mary Andrews bustled away to call in her daughter, returning with a scowling girl of around Angelica’s age, who although physically bearing no resemblance to Luke’s child, brought back for Jenneth all the agony she had endured not just over Luke’s rejection, but in knowing that another woman carried his child, and that that child was so instantly lovable and loving that Jenneth’s envy of her dead mother had instantly increased.

  Emma Andrews announced importantly that she knew just what she wanted. Jenneth made notes, and tactful, gentle suggestions that won grudging approval from Emma, and pleased relief from her mother.

  Promising that she would prepare sketches of the mural and submit them to her just as soon as she could, Jenneth took her leave.

  As she knew from bitter experience, the only way she had of coping with the pain inside her was to immerse herself so fiercely in her work that it and the exhaustion that sprang from it acted as a form of anaesthetic.

  * * *

  The twins and Eleanor watched her anxiously, knowing there was something wrong but unable to breach the defensive wall Jenneth had thrown up around herself.

  On Saturday, despite the twins’ objections, she announced that she was too busy to take any time off, and at nine o’clock in the morning she left for York and the hospital.

  If the week had done nothing else, it had given her some ideas for the mural for the wall in the children’s ward, and she wanted to spend the morning checking the ward and its light sources to see if her ideas would work.

  One of the ideas she had in mind was a cartoon-type mural depicting children like themselves being helped by doctors and nurses. She wanted to show the patients in the mural getting well and healthy, and she wanted to talk over her ideas with the sister in charge of the ward. Were it not for the problems with the rapid turnover of staff, she would have contemplated using the actual features of the nurses and doctors for her cartoon figures, to add to their air of familiarity.

  The sister in charge was a calm, smiling girl in her mid-twenties, who waved aside Jenneth’s apologies for interrupting what was obviously a very busy schedule to say easily that nothing that helped the welfare of her patients, be it physically or mentally, was ever a waste of time.

  Jenneth explained to her what she planned to do, and added that she intended to use the other walls in the ward to display more traditional murals, confessing that what made her task more difficult was the wide variation in ages of the children.

  The discussion took longer than she had expected; the ward was a cheerful place, despite the seriousness of some of the children’s illnesses, and it was gone twelve o’clock when she left.

  The heatwave that seemed to have engulfed the country was continuing, and Jenneth sighed enviously as a sports car overtook her, its hood down, the driver’s hair tousled by the slipstream.

  She had enough material now to start work on some preliminary sketches, and her head was buzzing with what she intended to do as she drove down the rutted lane and then pulled into her own drive.

  The house was only a mile from the village, but because it was set back off the main road it seemed more remote than it actually was.

  The first thing she saw in front of the house was a gleaming and very obviously brand new slate-grey Jaguar car.

  She eyed it a little enviously as she switched off her own engine, surmising that it belonged to the parents of one of the twins’ friends, and reflected that, had it been her car, she would have been a little reluctant to lend so tempting a vehicle to so young a driver.

  She half expected to see the twins and their friend in the garden, but as she walked up the side of the house towards the back door she saw that it was empty.

  The lawn, liberally sprinkled with daisies and buttercups that she couldn’t bring herself to destroy, was half mown, th
e mower abandoned. As she walked into the kitchen she heard male laughter, and grimaced to herself as she saw that the coffee-jug was empty, removing it from its stand and automatically replenishing the filter.

  She heard the sitting-room door open, and through the open kitchen door heard Kit saying warmly, ‘Jen’s back…we’d better go and give her the good news…’ And then the twins walked into the kitchen, closely followed by Luke and Angelica.

  The glass jug for the coffee machine slipped out of her nerveless fingers and splintered noisily on the hard, tiled floor.

  In shocked disbelief she stared over the twins’ heads at Luke, who was standing motionless in the darkness of the doorway, his expression totally unreadable…

  Luke here…why? What did he want?

  While her pulse-rate fluctuated frantically, and Angelica, oblivious to her tension, darted forward to greet her, she dragged her gaze away from Luke’s shadowed, enigmatic expression and automatically moved forward to prevent Angelica stepping on the broken glass.

  Kit, who had already started to clear away the broken shards, berated her mildly for her clumsiness, and under cover of the general hubbub her gaze was drawn back to Luke, a dark, shadowy presence in a formal pin-striped business suit and a white shirt whose cuffs and front gleamed ghostly white in the darkness of the doorway.

  ‘Jen, you never told us Luke’s news…’

  Luke’s news… She focused on Nick’s face, and it was like swimming through heavy seas, against a drowning tide. She seemed to have slipped from reality to a semi-conscious state where only the shock of Luke’s presence was real.

  Angelica wriggled in her arms and told her reproachfully, ‘I wanted to tell you last weekend, but you left…’

  She tried to concentrate on what was being said—on Angelica’s sharp, piping voice, on the twins’ deeper male tones but all the time it was Luke who filled her senses and her perceptions. Her heart was beating far too rapidly, and she was breathing shallowly, as though her chest hurt.

  Her mouth had gone dry and her body was clenched tensely as she tried to fight off the effects of her shock.

  And then, urbanely and calmly, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, Luke told her.

  ‘I’m sorry our arrival is such a surprise, but in view of my predicament, and Aunt Caroline’s suggestion that you might be able to help, I thought it best to come and see you personally…’

  Aunt Caroline? What had Louise’s mother to do with Luke’s presence here? She looked wildly into his face and then heard Kit saying eagerly, ‘It couldn’t have worked out better if we’d planned it, Jen…Luke’s moving up here to work at the Memorial Hospital. He’s taking over there from next week, and he and Angelica need somewhere to stay until he can find himself a house. Louise’s mother suggested that we might be able to put them up here, and of course we’ve told him there’s no problem… After all, we’ve got bags of room, and since you’re here most of the time you’ll be able to keep an eye on Angelica for him… Couldn’t be better, really,’ Kit added, and then he turned to Luke and told him with a grin, ‘Only this week we were telling Jen that she ought to take in lodgers when we go to university. We’re not that far from the village, but neither of us likes the idea of her living here alone.’

  Jenneth badly needed to sit down. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Luke had calmly come up here and somehow or other convinced the twins that she would have no objection to Angelica and him moving in with them.

  ‘Of course, we’ll have to come to some mutually agreeable financial arrangement,’ she heard Luke saying smoothly to her, and then, to Kit, ‘and as for Jenneth taking charge of Angelica…your sister has a very busy career, and I hardly think it fair to inflict the responsibility of my daughter on her.’

  ‘Oh, Jen won’t mind,’ Nick assured him breezily, breaking into the conversation. ‘She loves kids. We keep telling her that she ought to get married and have half a dozen of her own…’

  Angelica, still standing at her side, looked up at Jenneth and said blissfully, ‘Isn’t it the bestest thing ever? I told you last weekend that I wanted you to be my pretend mummy.’ And Jenneth stared helplessly across the length of the kitchen to meet the knowing, amused look in Luke’s eyes, and knew that she was quite helplessly and hopelessly trapped.

  * * *

  It took most of what was left of the afternoon to sort out the details. Luke was to take up his new appointment from the beginning of the month, only a week away. He had no idea how long it would take him to find not just a house but a housekeeper suitable to take charge of Angelica for him, he admitted, watching Jenneth’s reaction with unnervingly astute eyes.

  That was no problem, Kit assured him easily. He could take as much time as he liked, and Angelica, who was already half-way to hero-worshipping the twins, gave him an adoring, gratified look that reminded Jenneth unbearably of her own younger self and her adoration of Luke.

  As she listened to the plans and decisions being made all around her, she kept on asking herself why on earth Luke should want to stay here with them. It was Angelica who unwittingly supplied the answer, by revealing that she had told Louise’s mother how disappointed she was because Jenneth had gone home so quickly, and that it had been Louise’s mother who had suggested to Luke that it might be worthwhile him getting in touch with Jenneth to see if she could help out with his accommodation problems, especially as Angelica had already established such a strong rapport with her.

  Sick with anger and pain, Jenneth thought she could understand all too well what had motivated Luke. He was quite cold-bloodedly using her as an unpaid nanny for his child, and there was not a damn thing she could do about it… The twins were plainly delighted with the arrangement, seeing in Luke’s presence the answer to their fraternal concern… To them, Luke was simply Louise’s cousin… Jenneth doubted that they even remembered that she and Luke had once been engaged, and it was obvious that they had no idea just what they were doing to her by warmly inviting Luke to move in with them.

  She herself was lost for words. She knew that if she looked directly at Luke, if she spoke to him, she would be in danger of breaking down completely, and all the pain and self-betrayal would pour out from her heart and destroy her. She couldn’t bear to reveal to him how very vulnerable she still was, how she still ached from the pain of losing him, of being betrayed by him… How it affected her to see him with Angelica… How simply to look at him aroused such sensations of despair and need within her that she couldn’t endure to stand there a moment longer.

  She wanted to deny the twins’ invitation to him, to break through his implacable expression and make him see the cruelty of what he was doing to her, but to do that would be to reveal that she still loved him, and that was something she simply could not bring herself to do.

  She was trapped and she knew it. Despairingly she turned to Kit and said that she’d take Angelica upstairs and show her her room, but to her dismay Kit grinned at her and said, ‘No need. We’ve been all through that… Luke’s going to have the room next to yours. It’s the only one with a double bed, and there’s no way he’d be able to sleep in one of the singles in the other two rooms…’

  ‘And I’m going to have the little room with the funny window,’ Angelica interrupted importantly before Jenneth could say a word.

  Luke sleeping in the room next to her own…the room which had been their parents’.

  Forcing a tight smile to her stiff face, she said jerkily, ‘I’ve got some work to do…’ And before anyone could argue with her she picked up her sketch-book and fled to her studio.

  Once there she made no attempt to work. How could she? Shivering with reaction, she stood staring out across the fields, wondering how the Luke she had once known—the Luke who had always cared so deeply about other people’s feelings, had had such an awareness of them, such a compassion for others that she had ached to emulate him—could have changed into someone who could so indifferently cause her such pain.
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  Breaking their engagement was one thing… His betrayal of her was something she had made herself accept only by reminding herself that he had fallen in love with someone else, and that in so doing hurting her had been unavoidable, but this…this intrusion into her life…this cool assumption that she would not mind…this callous disregard of any needs other than his own…

  Knowing that she could never truly have known him should have released her from the bondage of loving him, but it didn’t.

  She shuddered under the grip of the emotions that racked her, whirling round, defensively seeking the shadows as the studio door opened, admitting the strong summer sunlight and Luke’s tall, commanding presence.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FOR a moment neither of them spoke, and then Luke said with unforgivable duplicity, since she suspected he must know quite well how little she wanted him in her home, ‘I’m very grateful to you for offering us a roof over our heads, Jenneth.’

  She couldn’t let it go, but neither could she say what was in her heart, so she said tonelessly instead, ‘The offer wasn’t mine,’ and waited, praying that he would give her the opportunity to rescind it.

  But he didn’t, merely lifting a querying eyebrow before coming towards her, pausing in front of the window to say approvingly, ‘A good north light…ideal for your work.’ He stood looking over the countryside, in a silence that for one shocking moment Jenneth almost felt held regret and remorse, but she knew that she was merely projecting on to him emotions that she wanted him to feel. He was incapable of feeling either remorse or regret, and in all probability had even dismissed from his mind how badly he had once hurt her.

  ‘Angelica seems to have attached herself very firmly to you.’

  The abrupt statement surprised her, as did the expression she saw on his face, but then of course he would feel concern for his child…for the child of the woman he had loved in preference to her. Hardening her heart against the vulnerability she had glimpsed in the shadows of his eyes, she said curtly, ‘She’s looking for a mother-substitute…’