Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ she began, but Jon shook his head.

      ‘The girls are upstairs doing their homework and Joss has gone round to see Ruth.’

      ‘Oh, well, I’ll just put the kettle on and—’

      ‘Jenny …’

      The stifled impatience in his voice stopped her.

      ‘I … I can’t stay here any longer … I need to be on my own…. This house, our life …’

      You, he might just as well have said, Jenny acknowledged as she listened to him in anguished silence.

      ‘They … I …’ He stopped and shook his head.

      ‘What is it you’re trying to tell me, Jon?’ Jenny asked as calmly as she could. ‘That our marriage is over, that you want a divorce?’ Despite all her good intentions, her voice cracked painfully over the last few words and Jon winced as he heard her pain.

      ‘No … not that. Not a divorce—a separation.’

      ‘What about the children?’ Jenny protested.

      ‘They’ll manage. They won’t need us much longer,’ Jon told her, guilt driving him into anger. ‘And anyway, they’ve always related more to you than they have to me.’

      Jenny bit her lip. ‘What are you trying to say … that I’ve been too possessive with them, that …?’

      ‘No,’ Jon denied wearily. ‘Jenny, I don’t want us to argue. If we’re being honest with one another, we both know …’ He paused. ‘I know we married for the best motives but—’

      ‘But?’ Jenny pressed him determinedly.

      Let him say it. Let him say what she had always privately known … feared, but he obviously couldn’t. His glance slid away from hers. He edged closer to the door … to his exit … his escape.

      ‘Where will you go?’ she asked him and then regretted her question. Now it was her turn to be afraid of what her eyes might reveal, to look directly at him. She knew, of course. He would go to Tiggy, but when he answered, it seemed she was wrong.

      ‘I … I don’t know. I’m going to look for somewhere to rent. It’s for the best, Jenny,’ he said almost plaintively. She could hear the pleading note in his voice and her heart ached not just for herself but, ridiculously, for him, as well. She wanted to hold him, much as she might have done one of the children, to comfort him and reassure him that she understood, that he was forgiven, but how could she when that wasn’t what she felt at all?

      ‘When—’ she moistened her dry lips ‘—when will you go?’ she asked him quietly.

      ‘I don’t know. Just as soon as I can arrange something. There’s no point in drawing things out…. I’ll move my things into the spare room in the meantime.’ He saw the look she gave him and winced a second time.

      ‘The children,’ she whispered. ‘What are we going to tell them?’

      Jon shook his head. ‘I don’t know….’

      ‘I could tell them that … that it’s just a temporary thing,’ she suggested huskily. ‘They might find that easier to accept.’

      ‘Tell them whatever you think best,’ Jon replied. He was looking at her almost pityingly, Jenny recognised as she felt the first stirring of something other than pain and shock, the first awareness of the mortality of the blow struck not just at her heart but also at her pride.

      You’re the one who’s doing the leaving, she was tempted to say. You explain it to them. But instinct and habit urged her to stay silent. She felt oddly weak and light-headed without either the energy or the will-power to fight or argue with him. ‘I’d better get on with supper,’ she heard herself saying mundanely. ‘Did Joss say what time he would be back?’

      She was behaving like someone out of a bad play, she decided as she fought down a near hysterical desire to break into laughter. The stupid, dull, boring, soon-to-be-cast-off wife, too unaware, too caught up in the events of her monotonous daily routine to realise what was happening.

      ‘No, no, he didn’t,’ Jon was answering her.

      She didn’t watch him as he opened the door and walked into the hallway. She couldn’t.

      * * *

      Max drummed his fingers impatiently of the top of his desk. It was almost seven o’clock, well past the time when he would normally have left chambers, but when five-thirty had come and gone with no sign of Laura getting ready to leave, he had gritted his teeth, cursed his grandfather under his breath and sent Charlotte a warning look when she had started to pout.

      ‘Still here, Charlotte?’ Laura had commented with a wintry look. ‘That’s not like you.’

      ‘Charlotte has agreed to work late to finish some typing for me,’ Max had cut in.

      ‘Really?’ Laura had responded in an even frostier tone. ‘You do surprise me.’

      Only by reminding himself of what was at stake had Max been able to prevent himself from retaliating. In the end it had been nearly half past six before she had finally and, he suspected, reluctantly gone.

      ‘Wait,’ Max had cautioned, shaking his head warningly and taking hold of Charlotte’s arm to restrain her when she would have rushed over to the other woman’s desk virtually the moment she left.

      ‘Give her another ten minutes,’ he instructed Charlotte, ‘just in case she decides to come back.’

      She hadn’t returned, but even so Max had retreated to his own office whilst Charlotte produced her unauthorised set of keys and proceeded to unlock Laura’s desk.

      Now it was nearly seven o’clock and she still … Max stiffened as his office door opened.

      ‘I think I’ve found what you want,’ Charlotte told him. ‘The senior partner has had lunch with a certain Ms Madeleine Browne, that’s Browne with an e, of course. Three times in the past two months and he’s also written her initials in his diary next to the time of the committee meeting.’

      Madeleine Browne … Swiftly Max scanned his memory to see if it held any trace of the name and found it didn’t.

      ‘Oh, and by the way,’ Charlotte informed him with obvious relish, ‘there’s something else you should know. This Madeleine Browne—’ she paused importantly ‘—she only just happens to be the head’s goddaughter. Now,’ she added briskly, ‘about the ball …’

      The head of chambers’ goddaughter, he might have known. Max fumed as he made his way back to his flat. Well, at least he now knew who his adversary was. The thing he had to do next was to find a way of eliminating her from the contest, and the easiest way to do that would be to discredit her in the eyes of the committee. As yet he wasn’t sure just how this was going to be accomplished, but there was bound to be a way. There always was—and he would make damn sure that he found it.

      It would be essential to find out as much as he could about her. What her strengths were, and her weaknesses, and he did not necessarily СКАЧАТЬ