Payment Due. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ asked anxiously, dropping down on to her knees and gathering her daughter close in her arms, cradling her there.

      Where her own hair was conker-red, Lucy’s was a slightly lighter colour, more the shade of new chestnuts, silky and burnished, and, unlike her own, Lucy’s eyes were grey rather than tawny. Now those grey eyes looked apprehensive and guilty, and as she looked over her daughter’s shoulder, Tania saw the scattered shards of china on the kitchen floor.

      ‘I’m sorry. I was just trying to help …’

      Tania bit her lip as she recognised one piece of china. As a special treat she had recently given in to a reckless whim and bought a pretty set of breakfast crockery, a real luxury to her since in the past all she had ever been able to afford had been cheap seconds, bought on market stalls.

      ‘I was just trying to make you a cup of tea,’ Lucy told her tearfully, ‘but the teapot just sort of slipped.’

      The teapot. It would have to be that, of course, the most expensive item of the set. But at least it hadn’t been full of scalding hot water when Lucy dropped it.

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said as comfortingly as she could. ‘Everyone has accidents.’

      And yet, even as she comforted Lucy and told herself that it was after all only a piece of china, she couldn’t help grieving for the waste of money its destruction represented. It wasn’t that she was mean or penny-pinching, it was simply that she couldn’t afford … She sighed faintly to herself. Perhaps it was her own fault … Lucy was just at that stage when she adored ‘helping’ and being grownup. She ought to have recognised the danger, ought to have waited a little perhaps before giving in to the impulse towards such extravagance.

      It was a day which seemed destined to be fraught with small difficulties and snags, nothing to do, of course, with her own underlying tension and the knowledge that, before it was over, she would once again by confronted by James Warren.

      After all, why should she feel apprehensive … ? Apprehensive … She laughed bitterly to herself; sick with fear would be a more accurate description of her feelings. Not that she intended to allow him to see it. Hateful man. No, he was the one who should be suffering, not her.

      She even toyed with the idea of purposely disappearing for the afternoon, but acknowledged this was a cowardly and pointless exercise. She was not playing a point-scoring game against the man. All she wanted was for the situation to be sorted out and the truth revealed so that she could get on with her life and her business, without his unwarranted threats hanging over her.

      When after lunch Susan Fielding called round to ask importantly if Lucy would like to go back to her house with her so that they could both watch her daddy making her new stencil, Tania was almost relieved to see her daughter go. Not because she didn’t want her company, but she certainly did not want her on hand to witness any confrontation between herself and James Warren.

      When three-thirty came and went without any sign of him she told herself with relief that Nicholas must have revealed the truth and, like the bully that he undoubtedly was, James was too embarrassed by his own error to come round and acknowledge the wrong he had done her.

      Well, that suited her fine. The last thing she wanted was to see him again. She still felt inwardly bruised and battered from their previous meeting.

      It was just gone four o’clock. She was just about to sit down and make herself a cup of tea to wash down the tablets her still-aching head demanded when she heard the shop doorbell ring.

      Immediately she knew who it was, but, even knowing, couldn’t stop the tension invading her stomach as she walked towards the door and saw James Warren standing on the other side of it.

      For a moment she was tempted to leave it locked, but then she noticed that one of her neighbours was watching curiously from the opposite side of the road and so reluctantly she unlocked the door and stepped to one side so that he could walk in.

      ‘Very sensible,’ was his jeering comment as he followed her inside. ‘Well?’ he demanded closing the door behind him. ‘I do hope you’ve made the right decision, because, as I warned you yesterday, I am not prepared to stand by and watch you destroy my sister’s marriage.’

      Tania stared at him, and then her heart sank. Nicholas hadn’t told him the truth—either that or he had told him and he had simply chosen not to believe her.

      Tightening her lips, she told him coolly, ‘There is no decision for me to make, since I am not having an affair either with your brother-in-law or with anyone else. I don’t have affairs, Mr Warren, and, especially, I don’t have affairs with married men.’

      ‘No?’ His eyebrows rose, his voice dripping with cynicism as he retorted, ‘I might be more inclined to believe you if you hadn’t already provided the proof of your own dishonesty by the fact that you have an illegitimate child, father unknown—or so you apparently claim.’

      The cruelty of it, the sheer ruthless brutality left her breathless and speechless, her shocked expression alone betraying to him just how much damage his words were doing.

      When her frozen vocal cords relaxed enough for her to reply to him, she did so as unemotionally as she could, her voice low and uneven as she told him, ‘Lucy was conceived when I was eighteen years old. A very foolish eighteen years old. Eighteen-year-olds can sometimes be foolish and naïve. Unfortunately, when they’re female, that folly can often have consequences that affect the rest of their lives.’ She ached to be able to throw in his face her knowledge that his own precious sister had been carrying a child before she married Nicholas, but she told herself that she was not going to demean herself, that she was not going to lower herself to his level, and, as she held her head high and stared bitterly at him, she had the satisfaction of seeing him frown and check before he smiled dangerously at her.

      He said softly, ‘I see. Nicholas has been doing a lot of unburdening of himself to you, hasn’t he? What is it exactly that you’re after, Ms Carter? His money? Without my backing, without the business I put his way, he’d barely scrape a living. His lifestyle? Again, without my help he couldn’t afford that lifestyle.’

      His cynicism stunned her and she reacted to it instinctively, demanding huskily, ‘Couldn’t it simply be Nicholas himself that I want? Just because your precious sister seems to hold him in such contempt, it doesn’t mean that I feel the same. In fact, I can’t imagine why she’s involved you in this at all. After all, she’s scarcely been giving the impression of a devoted wife, has she? It seems common knowledge that she prefers your company to her husband’s, that it’s to you that she turns for advice, for companionship, and, of course, for money,’ she added sweetly.

      She had the pleasure of seeing his whole face harden with rage and distaste as he listened to her taunts.

      He didn’t like what she was saying to him; he didn’t like it one little bit, but then why should he expect to be able to stand there and insult her as much as he wished, without her doing a single thing to retaliate? Let him see how he liked being insulted, being accused, being humiliated.

      ‘What exactly is it you’re implying?’ he demanded savagely, so savagely that immediately Tania panicked, fear swamping her as he took a step towards her. She could see the violence in his eyes, feel it in the heat coming off his body.

      ‘I’m not implying anything,’ she told him shakily. ‘Nor am I relying on one person’s idiotic assumptions and mistaken beliefs to make accusations which are totally false. The whole town knows that your СКАЧАТЬ