Stronger Than Yearning. PENNY JORDAN

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      Getting a job had been relatively easy. In those days, secretarial jobs weren’t that hard to come by, and by studying the national papers she had managed to secure an interview with a London-based insurance company without too much trouble. Finding somewhere suitable for herself and Lucy to live in London was a different matter. And who would look after Lucy while Jenna was at work? Her salary was small … not large enough to support both of them, but instinct told her that if she was going to succeed anywhere it would be in London, and not the quiet local market town in Yorkshire. So she had been forced to agree with Nancy’s view that Lucy should stay with them. It had been hard, those first six months in London, saving every penny she could from her salary, living in a dismal but cheap women’s hostel so that she could travel back to Yorkshire every weekend to see Lucy … And then had come the job with John Howard. He had paid her well, delighted to discover that she had an almost instinctive flair for colour and design. It had been at his suggestion that she had attended night school, and she had learned a good deal from him, sensing that he was not a man who represented any threat to her.

      He had not, as many people had suspected, been her lover, but his wife had been suspicious and jealous enough for him to tell Jenna after she had worked for him for two years that he felt it best that she looked for a job elsewhere. She had been stunned, shocked, gripped with a furious sense of disbelief. She had worked hard for him, and for herself, saving, scrimping, putting as much money on one side as she could so that she could move out of her hostel and find a small flat for herself and Lucy. She had it all planned out. Lucy could attend nursery school while she worked. She would find herself a neighbour with small children who would be glad to earn a few extra pounds a week taking Lucy to and from school, and now, all because of a spoilt woman’s wholly irrational jealousy, her plans would have to be changed.

      Sensing how distraught she was, but not knowing the reason why, it was then that John Howard had tentatively suggested that she go into business herself. He would help her financially in the early stages, he had offered awkwardly, and although pride had urged Jenna to refuse his guilt-induced offer — after all, she had done nothing to warrant being dismissed, nothing at all, no matter what his wife might think — caution had whispered to her to wait. How she had hated Marian Howard, she remembered grimly. Although they had never met, she had seen photographs of John’s spoilt, beautiful wife. They had no children, and from what John said Marian seemed to spend her life in a ceaseless round of shopping and socialising. Now, because she was jealous of Jenna, Marian was forcing John to dismiss her … and because of his wife’s insecurity she would lose her chance to have Lucy with her.

      ‘I could put quite a lot of business your way, Jenna,’ John had offered, warming to his idea, unaware of the battle going on inside her.

      Jenna thought rapidly. She knew quite well what business John meant. As an established, socially prominent interior designer, he was often approached by women who wanted to boast that their living-room or bedroom had been designed by John Howard, and yet these same women, when told how much it would cost them to drop his prestigious name into the envious ears of their friends, often had a change of heart; when they did go ahead and commission him they were always difficult to please. Jenna had had the unrewarding task of soothing more than one of them. But it would be a start, a chance to prove just what she could do, an opportunity to establish herself financially, to have Lucy living with her, and although her pride was outraged and demanded that she refuse to be bought off, she heard herself saying coolly that it sounded a good idea.

      Of course it had not been easy. There had been problems … snide remarks … whispered comments that John had backed her financially because she had been his mistress, but she had weathered it all and had long since paid back the small capital John had loaned her, with interest, and now …

      Now she was a successful, prominent interior designer herself, as courted and fěted as John had been. One of the reasons for her success had been her ability to keep ahead of the trends, and now she sensed a mood in people to return to the past — a desire for craftsmanship rather than gimmickry — so she had slowly set about building up a pool of craftsmen and women, each an expert in their own field.

      If she moved to Yorkshire she would have to start again, she told herself later that evening as she prepared for bed. Of course, she could retain many of her contacts but others … A tiny thrill of excitement curled upwards through her stomach. She wanted the challenge of a new venture, she admitted to herself, and more than that she ached to start work on the old Hall: to restore it, to cherish and love it. Half hysterically she reflected that while other women her age had love affairs with the opposite sex, she was embarking on a love affair with a house. But what about Lucy? Guilt and despair mingled inside her. Initially everything she had done had been for her sister’s child, for Lucy, so that she wouldn’t suffer as she and Rachel had done. She had wanted so much for her … had wanted her to have the security of love and money as she and Rachel had not. She had never quite lost the conviction that had Rachel come from a more moneyed background, from a family where there was someone to stand up for her and support her, that Alan Deveril would not have been able to browbeat her as he had, that Charles would not have got away with what had been a violently brutal rape. But instead of protecting Lucy all she seemed to have done was alienate her. How could Jenna explain now to Lucy how she had been conceived … who and what her father had been?

      Lucy was so achingly vulnerable, and although she tried to hide it from her, Jenna was acutely aware of her vulnerability. Sometimes she ached inside for her niece, but it seemed nothing she did could make Lucy happy. She could of course always agree to stay in London. Should she? But London was too full of pitfalls for a young and rebellious teenager. If she gave in to Lucy on this issue, all too soon there would be others. Staying in London was not really the crux of the problem between them: it was Jenna’s refusal to discuss Lucy’s father with her, and at the moment she could see no way of solving that problem without causing her niece pain and possible emotional damage. She drifted off to sleep with a frown on her forehead, still worrying about Lucy.

      When Jenna first opened her eyes, it took her several seconds to remember where she was. She shook her head, wonderingly, a bright skein of hair clouding her vision until she pushed it away. It had been years since she had slept so heavily or so well. Must be something to do with the cool, crisp, Yorkshire upland air coming in through the open bedroom window, she thought wryly.

      It had also been years since she had woken up in the morning possessed by the faintly breathless sense of excitement she was now experiencing. A sense of excitement she suspected most women would equate with the appearance in their lives of a new man. Her mouth curled derisively. Jenna was no fool. She knew that her attitude towards the male sex was an unusual one, just as she knew that in many ways it sprang from what had happened to her sister. She also knew that all members of the male sex were not like Alan or Charles Deveril, but knowing that had never stopped her from freezing off any attempts men made to make contact with her. It wasn’t that she hated the male sex; it was more that she felt nothing for it in terms of sexual responsiveness. Or had trained herself to feel nothing for it, she thought rather wryly.

      What had come over her? It wasn’t like her to be so deeply self-analytical … and that she should be now was faintly disturbing. Unbidden, an image flashed across her mind: a man, tall, with a dark shock of hair and amused blue eyes. The man in the portrait at the old Hall. Quickly she dismissed the image and its disturbing nuances. What was the matter with her? She was as nervous and on edge as a teenager facing her first date. Excitement, that was all, she told herself as she slid out of bed.

      A narrow beam of sunlight barred her body, penetrating the fine silk of her nightgown, making her glance briefly downwards to frown slightly over the slender gold of her body where it was revealed by her nightgown. Her own body was something she rarely gave much attention to. She was as slim and as supple as Lucy, and yet her body was quite unmistakably that of a woman and not a girl, her breasts full, her СКАЧАТЬ