Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ her master’s and couldn’t take time off and that was why...’

      Bobbie stopped.

      ‘That was why what?’ Luke asked suavely.

      ‘That was why I had to come on my own,’ Bobbie answered shakily, disturbed by how easily she had almost betrayed herself.

      ‘Had to,’ Luke repeated incisively. ‘Surely your trip could have been postponed until after her college work was finished or fitted in during her vacations.’

      ‘Maybe it could,’ Bobbie agreed, ‘but I wanted to come to Europe.’

      ‘Without your sister, your twin, even though you’ve just told me how close you are and how much you miss her? What exactly are you doing here in Haslewich, Bobbie, and why all the interest in my family?’

      Bobbie drew in a sharp breath. ‘What is it exactly you’re trying to imply?’ she demanded. ‘I’m here in Haslewich because I’m working for Olivia, and as for my interest in your family...’ She paused.

      ‘Yes,’ Luke encouraged grimly.

      ‘I was just interested, that’s all,’ Bobbie fibbed weakly, giving a small shrug. ‘It’s not against the law, is it?’

      To her relief they were almost in Haslewich; another ten minutes or so and she would safely be back at Olivia’s.

      ‘That all depends, doesn’t it,’ Luke answered as he turned into the road that led to the house, ‘on what it is you’re really doing here. I know you’re lying to me, Bobbie,’ he told her as he brought the car to a stop on the drive and turned to look at her. ‘What I don’t know as yet is why you’re lying and what it is you’re trying to conceal ... what it is you’re really doing here, but I promise you that I intend to find out...’

      Bobbie climbed out of the car and shut the door firmly.

      

      ‘Wasn’t that Luke’s car?’ Olivia asked as she let Bobbie in.

      ‘Yes, I bumped into him in Chester and he brought me home,’ Bobbie told her.

      ‘Oh, why didn’t he come in?’ As she looked into Bobbie’s face, she asked gently, ‘Oh dear, you two haven’t had a fight, have you?’

      To her own consternation, Bobbie suffered the indignity of feeling her eyes start to fill with tears. If there was one ultimate folly in a woman of six foot plus, it was surely crying in public.

      ‘Oh, Bobbie, don’t worry,’ Olivia soothed her as she gave her a quick, firm hug. ‘I’m sure the two of you will soon make it up.’

      ‘I don’t want to make it up,’ Bobbie declared defiantly, sniffing. ‘I hate him.’

      ‘Oh dear,’ Olivia commiserated. ‘That bad, was it?’

      

      ‘That’s right, take it out on the weeds,’ Bobbie heard Ruth’s amused voice telling her the next day as she tugged viciously at the weeds in Olivia’s herbaceous border whilst Amelia slept peacefully in her stroller nearby.

      Hot and grubby, her face flushed and her hair tousled, Bobbie hadn’t heard Ruth arrive and now she turned round, her mouth forming a startled ‘Oh’ of surprise.

      ‘I used to do very much the same thing when my father or brother were being particularly chauvinistic and difficult,’ Ruth confided to Bobbie as she walked across the grass towards her, ‘and I’m afraid I even used to give vent to the most undaughterly and unsisterly feelings beneath my breath, which was a most unacceptable thing for one to do in those days.’

      When she saw the way Bobbie was looking at her, she explained gently, ‘You see, I grew up in an era where one was obliged to accept that one did what one’s parents, especially one’s father, thought best. His word was law. My mother was very much the old-fashioned type of wife and my father rather steRN and autocratic, very decided in his views and opinions.’

      Her face clouded a little. ‘In many ways our lives were over-restricted and limited, the brief taste of freedom we were given during the war when we were needed all too swiftly snatched away again once our usefulness was over, and yet I suspect there was a certain security in knowing what was expected of us.

      ‘Luke, I know, can seem rather autocratic and severe at times. Like all of us, Luke, too, has suffered from being a victim of this family’s overriding need to prove themselves worthy of being a Crighton. It’s a handicap that has been passed down from generation to generation, from father to son, as the virtues and achievements of past Crightons are extolled from babyhood almost and the growing child informed that it is his duty to prove himself worthy of following in the same footsteps.

      ‘Fortunately things are changing. Jon’s children, while they all are determined to take up the law as a career, are also resilient and have a sense of independence, of self-worth, a belief in themselves, which hopefully will free them from the expectations that controlled earlier generations’ lives. Apart from Max, who unfortunately is cast in a very different mold... Perhaps marriage to Madeleine will change him. I hope so for her sake.’

      ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Bobbie asked her uncertainly.

      ‘Why?’ Ruth tilted her head on one side and studied Bobbie for a moment. ‘Perhaps because I like you and I hate to see you looking so unhappy. Luke may not be perfect but I do believe that the handicaps that come with being a Crighton could be very much alleviated in him, given the right encouragement. It isn’t always easy to say why we should be so instantly drawn to one person and not to another,’ Ruth added gently.

      ‘In fact, for most of us, it’s very hard to accept, never mind admit, that we have such feelings, that we’re capable of such instant and illogical, emotional reactions. Why I should be so specifically drawn to you, Bobbie, I can’t say. All I can say is that I am, in much the same way that out of all my great-nieces and nephews, Joss and this young lady here have a special place in my heart. It doesn’t mean that I love the others any the less, merely that I love these two just that little bit more. How is your mother by the way?’

      Bobbie’s hand jerked as she lost her grip on the weed she had been trying to work loose, glad that Ruth couldn’t see her face as she replied in a choked voice, ‘I...she’s still not very well. Her... her doctor has suggested that she should consider going into analysis,’ Bobbie elaborated reluctantly.

      ‘It isn’t analysis Mom needs,’ Samantha had denied passionately when she had been telling Bobbie this latest piece of family news. ‘It’s—’

      ‘I know what it is, Sam,’ she had responded, ‘but we can’t give it to her. No one can.’

      ‘Maybe not, but at least we can have the satisfaction of knowing they haven’t got away with what they’ve done, that they’re being punished, too.’

      ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, Sam,’ Bobbie had remonstrated gently to her sister, but Sam, as she had known she would, had refused to accept such a point of view.

      Sam would never have got herself in the situation she had managed to get herself in, Bobbie acknowledged. She knew that Sam was expecting her to make use of the family gathering on Sunday to reveal her true identity, to speak out and make the denouncement СКАЧАТЬ