A Law Unto Himself. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ to anyone else? So she’s been jilted. So what? Her family will find her another husband and she’ll go home and marry him as readily as she was prepared to marry the other one, and you won’t hear another word about this supposed career. Will they?’ he challenged, stepping back slightly so that he could look up the stairs.

      He knew she was there. He had known it all the time… Francesca went rigid with mortification, refusing to move from where she stood in the shadow of the landing. How had he known she was there?

      She heard him laugh sourly and then walk towards the front door.

      By the time Beatrice and Elliott had returned from seeing him to his car, she was safely inside her bedroom with the door closed.

      Never before in all her life had she come up against such a man. He was more powerful, more challenging even than her grandfather, albeit in a very different way. Her grandfather’s autocracy came from generations of ancestors who had believed in their absolute right to do as they wished because of their birth, and to ensure that the family name was upheld as a name to be revered, while Oliver Newton’s arrogance came simply from his own belief in himself. She had never come across anyone like him before, and she shivered as she undressed, remembering the dry heat of his palm against her own; the hardness of the bones beneath the flesh… the lightning sensation of power that his touch had conveyed.

      As she showered she had a momentary and vivid mental image of his hands on her body, and she stood tensely where she was, riveted to the spot, snapping her eyes open to dispel the unwanted vision, ignoring the fierce spray of the shower.

      How on earth had it happened, that fierce surge of awareness so completely unfamiliar to her and yet so shockingly explicit? And she didn’t even like the man.

      Hurriedly she stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel, rubbing herself dry.

      Forget him, she told herself, After all, it was hardly likely that she would see him again. Not if he had anything to do with it, she reflected wryly.

CHAPTER THREE

      ‘I’M SO SORRY, Chessie. I feel terrible letting you down like this, but with Dom not feeling well… Do you mind awfully if we postpone our shopping trip for a few days?’

      Beatrice’s obvious tension lessened a little as Francesca shook her head and reassured her firmly, ‘Of course you must stay with Dom. Actually, it’s such a lovely day, I wondered if you’d mind if I went for a walk?’

      It had occurred to her after Elliott had finished his breakfast and departed for his meeting in London that it might be easier for Beatrice to cope with her fretful and obviously not very well little boy if she didn’t have a guest to entertain at the same time.

      The approving glance Henrietta cast her as she cleared away the breakfast things confirmed that her judgement was well founded. Dom, who had woken his parents during the night complaining that he had a sore tummy, was now asleep in his mother’s arms, but Beatrice herself looked rather pale and tired, as well she might do, Francesca thought sympathetically.

      Even with the loving support of a husband like Elliott and the caring assistance of Henrietta, it still could not be easy taking care of two children under school age, one of whom was still a baby and the other, as Francesca had discovered, a very lively three-year-old with a penchant for mischief and a huge watermelon grin.

      ‘A walk… Oh, yes. There are lovely footpaths round here. If you can hang on for a second, I think we’ve got a little booklet showing some of them. You’ll need to wrap up well, though. There’s a very chilly breeze. Oh, and wear some waterproof shoes or boots if you’ve got a pair.’

      Waterproof shoes. Francesca mentally reviewed the clothes she had brought with her: apart from one pair of plain black satin evening shoes, the others were all high-heeled leather pumps by Charles Jourdan; elegant and indeed very comfortable shoes, but most definitely not waterproof.

      ‘I don’t think I have anything suitable with me,’ she said carefully to Beatrice, not wanting to add to her conscientious and very caring hostess’s burden of worry. ‘Is there a shop in the village where I might buy a pair?’

      ‘Yes,’ Beatrice told her. ‘You’ll find it next to the Post Office. Tell them you want a pair of waterproof walking boots. Get a pair with a fleecy warm lining. I find they’re the best. Would you hold Dom for me, while I go and find that brochure?’

      The sleeping child was a heavy weight in her arms. Francesca considered herself reasonably au fait with children and their care—living at the heart of an Italian family, it was hard not to be—but it had struck her, as she watched Beatrice with her son, as she saw Elliott’s quick frown of concern before he left the house, that the children she was used to seeing were always presented antiseptically clean and beautifully dressed by their nannies; immaculate accessories to their pretty mamas; always well-mannered and schooled.

      She had seen other children, of course, running about the streets, playing games, street-wise children with dark, knowing eyes.

      Holding Dom, it came to her that, if the wedding had not been called off, she would very probably by now have been carrying her first child. She would have had to have had a son, of course… Her grandfather would have permitted nothing else.

      She was not sorry she had not married Paolo, she decided, relinquishing Dom to his mother’s arms as Beatrice returned triumphantly handing her a small leaflet entitled ‘Village Walks’. As she was only just beginning to realise, there were other ways to live than that stipulated by her grandfather.

      She was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t more of her mother in her than she had always supposed. She was finding that she rather approved of the British family life, where husband and wife and later on their children had their own home separate from parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. And she was beginning to appreciate how difficult it must have been for her mother adapting to life at the palazzo.

      Francesca was just setting out from the village when the doctor’s car arrived. Recognising her from the dinner party, she stopped to exchange a few moments of conversation with her and then set off down the drive.

      Drifts of leaves whispered drily round her feet, warmed by the sun, and still crisped with a hint of the frost they had had overnight. The hills in the distance were purple-blue and hazily indistinct, the trees that seemed to stretch right across the countryside to their feet, in irregular masses of gold and bronzes, warm patches of colour against the softer backdrop, their foliage a brilliant contrast to the pale blue of the sky.

      It was colder than she had anticipated; her pleated, kilt-like skirt and its complementary soft wool sweater was moulded to her body by the force of the wind.

      She had brought with her a bright yellow jacket, which picked out the thin yellow stripe on the tartan skirt, fully believing that she would not need it, but now, as she shrugged elegantly into it, she was glad of its protective warmth.

      By the time she reached the village, having stopped once or twice to look curiously inside the shuttered gates of the two large houses she passed, wondering to whom they belonged and admiring the avenues of trees that bordered their drives, her face was glowing pink with the cold, her bare hands tingling.

      She found the shop immediately. The village was only small, little more than a straggle of pretty Cotswold houses, either side of the main road. There were no other customers in the shop; the woman СКАЧАТЬ