Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ coupled with the flaccid smallness of his penis, was decidedly unerotic. Unlike her, he seemed to have no interest in looking after himself, in keeping his body fit and his weight down. Surreptitiously she touched her own stomach. It felt reassuringly taut and flat. She breathed out in relief and examined her polished nails. One of them was scratched. She frowned. She must have done that last night when … Hurriedly she pushed the thought to one side.

      What had happened last night? What happened on all those dark, frightening nights like last night wasn’t something she wanted or needed to think about during the day. It was over now and best forgotten … a silly habit she had fallen into but which she could break … end … any time she liked. David knew that and she knew it, too. She realised she had been a bit naughty of late, overspending, but David didn’t understand how lonely she felt sometimes. He had his own busy life at work and she was at home here all day on her own.

      Of course, she had her girlfriends … but … she wasn’t like Jenny, the kind of woman who could busy herself with good works, children and cooking. She needed more than that. She was not a country person. David should take her out more … make more fuss of her, show her that he loved her. She might be in her mid-forties but she was still a beautiful and desirable woman. All right, Olivia might be younger than her but she would never be as attractive. Why, when she had been Livvy’s age she could have had her pick of a couple of dozen men even though she had been married to David at the time, and a mother.

      Her dress was hanging up over the bedroom door, a body-hugging shimmer of silver-shot silk that looked like mother-of-pearl when she moved in it. It was a size eight, a perfect fit; she touched her stomach again. She could hear the shower running. David was still in the bathroom. Perhaps she ought to try it on again, just to make sure …

       6

      ‘Anything else I can do?’

      ‘No. I think we’ve just about finished now,’ Ruth assured Olivia as she stepped back to eye the arrangement for the top table, tweaking a couple of stems judiciously.

      ‘The flowers look wonderful.’

      Ruth gave her great-niece a wryly amused smile, hearing the genuine admiration in her voice and guessing what lay behind it. ‘What were you expecting,’ she mocked her gently, ‘or can I guess? Something twee and stilted, overwired flowers that would have looked more artificial than real, poor things?’ She shook her head reprovingly.

      Olivia laughed. ‘Something like that,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Certainly nothing like this.’

      She gestured towards the vibrant tumble of softly natural flowers set in some sort of wire concoction filled with moss—a theme that Ruth had repeated throughout the huge marquee in varying forms. Moss, fruit and even vegetables as well as flowers had all been utilised to create the wonderfully rich falls of cascading colour that Olivia was now admiring.

      ‘No wonder Aunt Jenny was so insistent on plain cream hangings for the marquee,’ she commented to Ruth.

      ‘Jenny and I were both in agreement that we wanted to get away completely from the prettiness of bridal tulle and dainty pastels.’

      ‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Olivia assured her, gently touching the silky petal of one of the vividly coloured geums and poppies Ruth had used to create the harmonising masses of reds, oranges and yellows that were her colour theme for the event.

      On the far side of the marquee, Jenny herself was going round each of the tables checking that everything was in place. The caterers had already arrived and were busy getting themselves organised.

      Ben, who had been generally getting in everyone’s way and grumbling all afternoon, had finally allowed Hugh’s wife, Ann, to coax him back to the house, leaving Jenny free to make her final inspections in peace.

      ‘Caspar seems to be getting on well with Hillary,’ Ruth commented, glancing across the marquee to where the two of them were deep in conversation.

      ‘Well, they are both American,’ Olivia responded neutrally. She had never particularly taken to Hillary without really being able to say why.

      It was Saul, she had noticed this afternoon, who had to take charge of their children, including little Meg, but then, in fairness, Olivia had to admit that she had no idea how much time Saul normally spent with his children, perhaps not very much, and hence Hillary’s determination that on this occasion she deserved a small break from them.

      Saul had taken them back to the house now in order to start getting them bathed and changed in readiness for the evening ahead.

      Her own brother, Jack, like his cousin, Joss, had been dragooned into helping out with the carrying to and fro of Ruth’s flowers and other materials. Was he aware of their mother’s problem …?

      All day long Olivia had been trying to push the events of the previous night to the back of her mind but they couldn’t be ignored for ever, of course. Sooner or later she would …

      She would … She tensed as she heard Caspar laughing. Hillary was standing beside him, her hand on his arm, and as Olivia watched she leaned across him to tuck a discarded cream rose into the buttonhole of his jacket. It was an intimate gesture and one that Olivia instinctively resented, her body stiffening as she watched the way Caspar responded to Hillary, apparently oblivious to her own presence.

      ‘Why don’t you take Caspar home?’ she heard Ruth suggesting gently at her side. ‘There’s nothing else to do here now apart from a bit of clearing up and the boys can help me with that.’

      ‘Aunt Ruth …’ Olivia paused. She desperately wanted someone to confide in, someone to talk to about her concern for her mother and her own shock at what she had discovered, but as strong as that need was, her sense of loyalty to her mother prevented her from giving in to it. Ruth had never really approved of Tiggy and if Olivia told her what was going on …

      ‘What is it, dear?’

      ‘Nothing …’ Olivia backtracked. ‘I’ll go and get Caspar.’

      ‘Flowers all done?’ Caspar enquired as Olivia went across to join him.

      ‘Yes,’ she confirmed as she slipped her arm through his and gave Hillary a cool smile.

      Ostensibly Saul’s wife had come down to the marquee to join the other helpers but so far as Olivia was aware she appeared to have spent most of her time chatting to Caspar.

      ‘We really ought to leave,’ she warned Caspar now as she looked pointedly at her watch. ‘The Chester crowd will be arriving soon and I promised Mum that we’d be on hand to help out.’

      ‘Poor you,’ Hillary butted in sympathetically looking, Olivia was perfectly aware, not at her but instead at Caspar as she turned her body slightly towards him and with an air of complicity that Olivia knew only too well was designed to exclude herself. ‘You must be finding it a little intimidating being engulfed by such a large family. I know I did the first time I met them all. I felt quite alienated and alone—the only American and very much an outsider.’

      ‘That would have been your and Saul’s wedding day, wouldn’t it, Hillary?’ Olivia interrupted her coolly, reminding her, ‘I don’t think you’d met the whole family before then, had you?

      ‘Caspar, СКАЧАТЬ