Levelling the Score

by Penny Jordan

  'Not yet, Jenna. We have to talk. My mother obviously now believes that we're lovers.'

  'Yes.'

  'This puts an entirely different complexion on our engagement, don't you agree? We can hardly break it off now.'

  Jenna stared at him.

  'What do you mean? We've got to, some time or another…and I suppose your mother must have assumed that we were lovers, anyway…'

  'Assuming it is one thing. Being confronted with the reality of it is quite another,' Simon told her firmly.

  'What are you saying?' She was thoroughly confused and slightly afraid.

  'I'm suggesting that we bring this phony engagement to an end…'

  Her relief was short-lived as he added calmly, 'And make it a real one, followed by a real marriage... '

  'But… but… but that's impossible,' she protested.

  His mouth twisted. 'You're not very flattering, are you? Why should it be? Why shouldn't a marriage between us have just as much, if not more chance of success than any other?'

  'Because we don't love each other.' She looked at him in bewilderment. 'Simon, you can't want to marry me.'

  'Why not? I consider that we're highly compatible. We have similar backgrounds, similar views and interest, sexually…' He smiled mirthlessly as the colour flooded her face.

  'But that isn't enough. There must be something more.'

  'Like what?'

  'Like… like love… emotion… ' She spread her hands. 'Nobody marries simply because…

  'Look, why don't you think about it?' he interrupted firmly. 'OK, at the moment you're not in the right frame of mind to make any sort of decision, but I meant what I said, Jenna. I think a marriage between us would be a very good thing.'

  But for whom? Jenna wondered bitterly later. What sort of marriage was Simon envisaging? One where he continued to have his life and loves in London while she remained discreetly tucked away in the country? Was that what he had in mind?

  Oh, why was she even considering it? It was ridiculous, preposterous. Surely she wasn't such a pathetic fool that she hoped that if she did marry him he might eventually come to love her?

  It seemed to Jenna that evening that dinner was a rather subdued affair, whether because she herself had so much on her mind, or because Susie and John had gone, or because Simon's mother was still bothered by the pain in her side, she didn't know.

  While Simon made up a fourth at cards, she kept herself busy in the kitchen, knowing she was acting out of cowardice, but unable to stop herself.

  Susie rang at nine o'clock to say that they had been lucky enough to make all their arrangements and that the wedding was to take place in exactly three weeks' time.

  'John's parents will fly over,' she told Jenna when she spoke to her. 'And then we shall all fly back together. We're going to spend our honeymoon in a very quiet resort John knows, and his family want the parents to come over for Christmas. And that invite includes you and Simon and your grandmother as well, Jen.'

  'Oh, I don't think—' Jenna began to demur, but Susie wouldn't let her.

  'Please think seriously about coming. After this Christmas things will be different. John and I want to start a family as soon as possible… We've wasted too much time already.'

  Hearing Susie—scatter-brained, feather-headed Susie—talking so seriously and earnestly about having children brought on a bitter wave of loneliness.

  As teenagers, she had been the one who wanted a husband and a family… and now… And now she was desperately in love with a man who only wanted to marry her because she fitted into the slot in his mind he had entitled 'wife'.

  It wasn't enough, and it would never be enough—not for her, and she had to tell him as much.

  CHAPTER TEN

  « ^

  It was easier said than done. Every time Jenna tried to intimate that she wanted to speak to Simon alone, he managed to avoid her—deliberately so, she was sure. Well, if he thought she would give in by default, he would soon learn he was wrong. There were a dozen or more excellent reasons why she shouldn't marry, but as far as she was concerned, the most important one of all was the one she could not divulge to him.

  In less than a week they would all be going home, and what would happen then?

  Since the afternoon when Simon had made love to her, she had avoided her old spot by the river. Simon's mother had all but got the wedding planned.

  Six months ago, she would have said it was inconceivable that Simon would choose to marry and settle down, especially for such a mundane reason, but these last few weeks, viewing him from an adult stance rather than an adoring teenage one, she had come to see that he was a man to whom family and tradition mattered strongly.

  They were having lunch with the Le Bruns, and guessing that it would be a rather formal affair Jenna returned to the farmhouse to change.

  She had just had a shower and was about to put on clean underwear when she heard the knock on her door. She went to open it, wrapping a towel round her still damp body.

  For some reason she had expected to see her grandmother outside, but it was Simon, and he took advantage of her momentary surprise to walk past her and into her room.

  'Simon, you can't come in here. What do you want?'

  'You've been dropping broad hints that you want to talk to me for the last few days and now that I oblige, you want to know what I want?' His eyebrows rose mockingly as he challenged her to repudiate his statement'.

  'You know quite well why I wanted to talk to you… We've got to put an end to this engagement… '

  She kept her back to him, hugging the towel more firmly round her body, wishing that he would go away, and yet conversely wanting him to stay:

  When he made no response she turned round and looked at him..

  'Has there really been no man in your life? No lover?' he said abruptly. 'When I see you like this I can't believe it… '

  She could have told him that her childish infatuation with him hadn't left room for anyone else,: but she restrained herself, suddenly aware of the intimacy and the danger of her situation.

  'Maybe I'm just not very highly sexually motivated,' she responded lightly, trying to banish the tension enclosing them.

  She realised instantly that if was the wrong thing, to have said!

  There was a look in his eyes as he came towards her that made excitement kick sharply through her body at exactly the same time as she shivered with fear.

  'I could very easily prove that that's just not so, and take the greatest pleasure in doing so,' he said softly.

  Instantly her body went weak with longing. 'No!'

  'Jenna, we're leaving in ten minutes,' Simon's father called as he walked downstairs.

  'Saved by the hand of fate,' Simon mocked her. 'But not for ever, Jenna…'

  'I'm not going to marry you, Simon, and if you won't tell everyone, then I'll tell them myself.'

  She felt better once she had said it, stronger.

  'What is it you're afraid of? Marriage, or me?'

  'Neither,' she told him as calmly as she could. 'It's simply that when I do marry I want to marry for love.'

  She turned her back on him abruptly, hardly able to believe it when she heard her bedroom door open and close quietly behind him.

  Now that he was gone she was shaking with reaction—and regret? Why on earth couldn't she be more pragmatic… more… more adult? Why couldn't she take what he was offering and be happy with it?

  Quite simply because she was not that sort of person. Had she been, she would have forgotten her teenage infatuation with Simon much earlier, supplanted it with someone else…

  She found the silk suit she was looking for at the back of her wardrobe and pulled it on hurriedly.

  She had bought it the previous year in the sale at Harvey Nichols, and it was strikingly different from anything else she had in her wardrobe; a short, straight, deep yellow silk skirt topped with a subtly subdued 'Dynasty' style jacket in a vivid array of colours on the same deep
yellow background as the skirt.

  She swept her hair back off her face, securing it with a pair of antique combs she had found in a small antique shop, and made up her face discreetly.

  She arrived downstairs just ahead of Simon. Like herself he was dressed formally, and it came as a shock to see him thus attired after the casual wear of jeans and shirt he had been wearing for the last few weeks.

  It took her back to the night he had arrived at her flat looking for Susie.

  'Simon, when are you going to get Jenna an engagement ring?' his mother enquired. 'Susie rang this morning to say that John had bought her the most beautiful star sapphire.'

  'Jenna's will be ready when we get back to London. I've had it specially designed.'

  Jenna looked suspiciously at him. Was he lying? She sincerely hoped so, because if he wasn't he was going to have wasted his money.

  They set out for the Le Bruns in both cars. Jenna tried to suggest that Simon take his mother as his passenger, but she demurred.

  'Simon's car's far too racy and uncomfortable for me. You go with him.'

  The Le Bruns had several other guests for lunch, all of them extremely elegantly dressed. Simon and Jenna were introduced to them as a couple, and it was frightening to Jenna how much she enjoyed being paired with him.

  But not for much longer. She was determined that just as soon as this holiday was over the engagement was going to be broken, even if she had to write herself to Simon's parents to tell them.

  Perhaps it was cowardly of her to break the news by letter, but then it was not through her doing that the 'engagement' had come into being in the first place.

  Jenna already knew that the French treated lunch as their most important meal of the day. At precisely twelve-thirty Madame Le Brun ushered them all into her elegant dining-room. Crystal and silver glittered on the highly polished table with its centrepiece of flowers. French windows were open to the light breeze. Jenna was not seated with Simon, but with the son of the local doctor and his wife, who had just returned from Africa where he had been working for one of the famine relief agencies. A tall, almost painfully thin man with a shock of curly hair, he had spoken passionately before lunch of the work the agencies were doing.

  He had an almost missionary zeal about him, a commitment to his work that no one could doubt.

  Madame Le Brun had whispered to Jenna in an aside that he had been sent home because of his own health, which had suffered in the months he had been working in the famine relief camps.

  Despite his almost monastic air he was still very much a Frenchman, instinctively gallant and complimentary, Jenna noticed with amusement, although in Jenna's case his compliments were reserved not for her person, but for her interest and knowledge in his work.

  'In Paris they give lunches and balls to raise; money for the hungry, but the talk is all of the latest affair, or the latest government scandal…' He shrugged bitterly. 'They cannot conceive what it is like to be so hungry and weak that to take the merest sip of milk is a feat to compare with climbing Everest. And yet they walk for mile after mile to come to us… mothers with children… sisters with brothers. It is the tragedy of our time, a scourge as bestial as any medieval disease…'

  Jenna let him talk, sensing that he needed an outlet for the anger all dammed up inside him.

  Every now and again she was conscious of Simon watching her, but whenever she glanced in his direction he seemed deep in conversation with his partner, a woman in her late forties, who had been introduced to them as Monsieur Le Brun's widowed sister-in-law.

  To start the meal they had been served with Tourin Périgourdine, a vegetable soup that was a speciality of the region, and, as small helpings of pâté de foie gras embellished with cèpes, the fine delicate mushrooms of the Dordogne, were put before them, Jean glanced at his with a faint grimace of distaste.

  'I am a Frenchman,' he said to Jenna, 'and yet when I know that my countrymen allow the goose who provides this delicacy for us to eat until its size is completely distorted, and consider themselves epicureans for doing so, while all the time their fellow human beings are starving, I wonder at the wisdom of what we are pleased to call civilisation.'

  Jenna sympathised with him, but she suspected from the look his mother had just given him that she had overheard his comment and disapproved of it, especially when voiced at someone else's table.

  She agreed diplomatically with what he had said, and then gently tried to change the subject. Jean was somewhere about her own age, but he looked older—older in some ways than Simon.

  A main course followed the pâté—lamb with accompanying vegetables and a special sauce—and then a fresh, delicate sorbet.

  Jenna had refused any dessert, and when Jean suggested a walk round the Le Bruns' extensive gardens, to offset the effects of their lunch, she agreed.

  She glimpsed Simon frowning slightly as they walked outside, but reminded herself of exactly what the realities of their situation were. He didn't love her and he never would. He wanted to marry her simply because he thought they got on well enough together. That might be enough for him, but it wasn't enough for her.

  Although she listened dutifully to all that Jean told her about his work as they toured the gardens, her attention was only peripheral. Deep down inside she was thinking about Simon… thinking about life without him…

  When she heard him call her name it startled her. He was hurrying towards them, down the long allée of poplar trees, and her heart leaped with pleasure as, just for a moment, she allowed herself to think that the anxiety in his voice and face was for her.

  She was soon disillusioned.

  'It's Ma,' he told her abruptly. 'She's not well. The Le Bruns offered to call their doctor, but I think it would be better if we drove her straight to the nearest hospital… '

  'What…?'

  'I think it might be appendicitis. Apparently she's been having pains on and off for some time, but hasn't done anything about it. It's only this last few days that they've become more acute.

  'Pa will drive her there and your grandmother will go with them, since she speaks good French. I offered to go, but your grandmother suggested that we go back to the farmhouse and wait there for news. It makes sense, really. We'd only be in the way at the hospital.'

  As he spoke he was hurrying back to the house, and Jenna almost had to run to keep up with him.

  When they got there they found that his father had already left. The Le Bruns were very anxious and concerned, but once Simon had assured them that they would be in touch the moment they had any news, they were allowed to leave.

  'I'm sure she'll be all right.'

  Instinctively she reached out to touch him in a gesture of both compassion and reassurance. His grip on her fingers as he looked at her made her wonder how on earth she had ever thought him invulnerable and removed from all real human emotion.

  They didn't speak on the drive back to the cottage, and the first thing Simon did once they were inside was to ring the hospital.

  The news was reassuring. It was appendicitis, his father told Simon, but thankfully it had been caught in good time.

  'They're going to operate this afternoon. Harriet and I have booked into a small hotel here, and we'll be staying the night, just in case we're needed. Harriet has just gone out to buy your mother a nightdress and one or two things. Don't worry, we'll ring you just as soon as the operation's over.'

  Simon was holding the receiver so that Jenna could hear what was being said.

  After having confirmed that his mother was not in any immediate danger, he told his father that they would stay at the farmhouse until they heard from him again.

  Somehow as he replaced the receiver, his right arm slipped round Jenna's shoulders, holding her against him.

  Sensing his need, she didn't move away, knowing instinctively that the comforting intimacy of their body contact was something he needed.

  'You heard everything?'

  Jenna nodded her head, moving
away from him. 'Yes. I'm sure she'll be all right…'

  'I'd better ring Susie and let her know.'

  He sounded preoccupied, almost distant, their earlier shared concern banished, leaving Jenna feeling almost deserted.

  'I suppose I ought to go upstairs and make a start on the packing—your parents will probably want to go straight home from the hospital, and we would have been leaving anyway in a few days…'

  Simon nodded, but Jenna felt that his mind was elsewhere. He was probably worrying about' breaking the news to Susie in a way that would not have her rushing over to France on the first available flight.

  Jenna did her own packing first, leaving out just enough things to get her through the few remaining days, and then she did her grandmother's.

  Both her grandmother and Simon's father would need a change of clothes if they were staying in a hotel overnight, a fact which she felt she ought to mention to Simon.

  He was standing staring out of the sitting-room window when she went down.

  He frowned as he listened to her.

  'Yes. You're right. Could you pack a few things for them? I'll drive to the hospital and leave them there.'

  It didn't take her long, and although she knew it was only sensible that one of them remained behind to take any phone calls, nevertheless Jenna felt very alone as she watched him drive away.

  By the time he came back, she had answered a concerned telephone call from the Le Bruns, and almost completed all the packing. She had just started to clean out the kitchen cupboards when she heard his car.

  He looked a little happier than he had done when he left, but he was still frowning, and she couldn't help but notice how he stepped back from her as though avoiding her touch when she went to the door to let him in.

  'How's your mother?' she asked, ignoring the pain caused by his withdrawal.

  'In the operating theatre. There aren't any complications, and as Pa said they caught it just in time. Your grandmother is masterminding everything for him; the fact that she speaks such good French has made it all a lot easier… They're going to stay on to be near the hospital for a couple of days, and then they're going to make arrangements to go straight home from there. Dad said to leave the keys and their luggage, and they'll pick them up on the way…'