The Perfect Sinner. Penny Jordan

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      ‘I do not know how you put up with him,’ Olivia had told her vehemently only the previous week. She had called to see Madeleine, bringing with her Christmas presents for Leo and Emma, and she had brought her two small daughters, Amelia and Alex, with her.

      ‘Daughters! Sons, that’s what this family needs,’ her grandfather had sniffed disparagingly when she had taken the girls in to see him. ‘It’s just as well we’ve got young Leo here,’ he had added proudly as he gazed fondly at his great-grandson.

      ‘I will not have him making my girls feel that they are in any way inferior to boys,’ Olivia had fumed later in the kitchen to Madeleine as they drank their coffee.

      ‘He doesn’t mean anything by it,’ Madeleine had tried to comfort her, pushing the plate of Christmas biscuits she had baked that morning towards Olivia as she spoke.

      ‘Oh, yes he does,’ Olivia had told her darkly as she munched one of them, ‘and I should know. After all, I heard enough of it when I was growing up. He never stopped making me feel … reminding me … that as a girl I could never match up to Max, and my father was just as bad. Sometimes I used to wish that Max had been my father’s child and that Uncle Jon had been my father….’

      ‘Jenny’s told me how dreadfully Gramps spoiled Max when he was growing up,’ Madeleine remarked quietly.

      ‘Spoiled him is exactly right,’ Olivia had agreed forthrightly, momentarily obviously forgetting that Madeleine was Max’s wife. ‘Anything Max wanted he got, and Gramps was forever boasting about him to everyone else. Whenever we had a get-together with the Chester lot, there was Gramps singing Max’s praises, and woe betide anyone who tried to argue with him.

      ‘I hate to think what it would have done to Gramps if Max hadn’t got a place in chambers. I know that it was touch-and-go for a while, and of course, the fact that your father is so influential obviously helped in the end.’

      ‘Yes,’ Madeleine had agreed. She knew Olivia far too well to suspect her of any kind of malice or unkindness. She was simply stating what she saw as the facts, and her opinions were quite naturally tainted by her dislike of Max. She had always been completely open with Madeleine about her feelings for her cousin, explaining that they went back a long way, and that much as she liked Madeleine herself, she doubted that she could ever pretend to feel anything other than wary acceptance of Max.

      Did Olivia know that the only reason that Max had married her had been to further his career? Madeleine hoped not. Olivia was basically very kind-hearted, and Madeleine knew she would never have deliberately hurt her by raising the subject if she had known the whole truth.

      ‘Gramps is going to be putting an awful lot of pressure on Leo to follow in Max’s footsteps,’ she started to warn Madeleine, but Madeleine stopped her, shaking her head calmly.

      ‘Leo isn’t like Max,’ she told Olivia quietly. ‘I think if he takes after anyone, it’s Jon, and I suspect that if he does go into the law he will be quite happy to follow Jon into the Haslewich practice.

      ‘To be truthful, I think if any of the babes are destined to be real high flyers, it’s going to be your Amelia….’

      Olivia had smiled lovingly at her elder daughter.

      ‘She is very quick and very determined,’ she had agreed, ‘but life doesn’t always turn out as we expect it to. Look at Louise. We all thought that she was going to be a real career girl, and look at her now. She and Gareth are so very, very much in love, and Louise is already talking about having a family and putting her career on hold. Now it’s Katie, whom all of us have always thought of as the quiet twin, the one who would probably settle down the first, who looks as though she’s going carve out a career for herself.’

      Olivia didn’t say anything to her about the fact that she, Madeleine seemed to have no interest in anything outside her domestic life and her children, she noticed rawly.

      ‘Mmm … these cookies are delicious,’ Olivia had suddenly confounded her by saying. She added, ‘You could cook professionally, Maddy. I’m not surprised that you manage to coax Gramps into eating so well.’

      Madeleine had said nothing, just as she had said nothing about the kitchen cupboards that were brimming with the fruits of her labours over the long summer and autumn—literally. She enjoyed gardening as well as cooking, and with Ruth’s expert tuition and assistance when she was in Haslewich, Madeleine had resurrected Queensmead’s neglected kitchen garden, with its espaliered fruit trees and its newly repaired glass house along its south-facing wall. She was presently cosseting the peach tree that had been Ruth and Jenny’s birthday present to her and that she hoped might bear fruit next summer.

      Since moving into Queensmead, she had quietly and gently set about bringing the old house back to life—dusty rooms had been cleaned and repainted, furniture mended and waxed. She had even made the long trip north to Scotland to persuade her maternal grandparents to part with some of the sturdy country furniture not deemed grand enough for the lofty, elegant rooms of their Scottish castle and currently housed in its attics, but which she had known immediately would be perfectly at home at Queensmead.

      Guy Cooke, the local antique dealer with whom Jenny had once been in partnership, had whistled in soundless admiration when he had visited Queensmead and been shown the newly revamped and furnished rooms.

      ‘Very nice,’ he had told Madeleine appreciatively. ‘Too many people make the mistake of furnishing houses like Queensmead with antiques that are far too grand and out of place, or even worse, buying replicas, but these … you’ve definitely got an eye, Maddy.’

      ‘It helps having grandparents with attics full of furniture,’ Madeleine had laughed as Guy turned to examine the heavy linen curtains she had hung in one of the rooms.

      ‘Wonderful,’ he had told her, shaking his head. ‘You can’t buy this stuff now for love nor money. Where …?’

      ‘My great-great-grandmother had Irish connections,’ Madeleine had told him mock-solemnly. ‘I found it …’

      ‘I know, in the attics,’ Guy had supplied for her.

      ‘Well, not exactly,’ Madeleine had laughed again. One of her third cousins had apparently been aggrieved to discover that Madeleine had made off with the linen from one of the many spare bedrooms, having earmarked it for some expensive decorating project herself.

      ‘I’m so looking forward to Christmas this year,’ Jenny suddenly said to her. ‘You’ve done wonders with Queensmead, Maddy, and it’s going to make the most wonderful venue for the family get-together. That’s one thing that the Chester family doesn’t have that I suspect they rather envy….’

      ‘Mmm … Queensmead is a lovely home,’ Madeleine agreed.

      ‘Jon’s had a word with Bran,’ Jenny told her, ‘and he’s arranged for the tree to be delivered the day after tomorrow. I’ll come round if you like and give you a hand decorating it.’

      ‘Yes, please,’ Madeleine accepted with alacrity. The Christmas tree that was to go in Queensmead’s comfortably sized entrance hall was coming from the estate of Bran T. Thomas, the Lord Lieutenant and a close friend of the family. Elderly and living on his own, he had been invited to join the family for Christmas dinner. Madeleine liked him. He had a wonderful fund of stories about СКАЧАТЬ