A Perfect Family. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ the church flowers—’

      ‘The church flowers,’ Ben interrupted, snorting dismissively, then shaking his head when he realised that Jenny wasn’t going to allow him to agitate her but instead was simply listening serenely.

      That was the trouble with Jenny; she was too damn serene at times and too damn clever.

      ‘Young Olivia’s coming home, I hear, and bringing some American or other with her.’

      ‘Of course she’s coming home,’ Jenny agreed. ‘After all, she is David’s daughter—and Tiggy’s.’ But it was Jenny, her aunt, whom she had telephoned to tell her in the strictest confidence that she had decided to move in with Caspar, and Jenny whom she had contacted to sound her out about the wisdom of bringing Caspar home with her.

      ‘Exactly who is he, then, this American?’ Ben demanded, changing tack, having recognised that Jenny wasn’t going to rise to the bait he had originally been dangling and rush to defend his sister. They were having a particularly hot summer and since his accident the heat bothered him. It got into his broken joints and made them ache so much that the pain made him irritable.

      ‘He’s Livvy’s boyfriend,’ Jenny returned.

      ‘Boyfriend.’ Ben frowned at her under his heavy silver eyebrows. Like his sons he, too, had a good thick head of hair, although where theirs was still blond, his was now silver. ‘According to David he’s in his thirties—hardly a boy. Serious between them, is it?’ he demanded, shooting her a penetrating look.

      ‘That’s something you must ask Livvy,’ Jenny told him.

      It was certainly serious enough for Olivia to tell her mother that the two of them would be sharing a room even though David apparently had put his foot down and said no.

      ‘David’s right, of course,’ Tiggy had told Jenny when relating the details of their conversation to her. ‘Father would not approve at all and we’d never hear the end of it for allowing it and really, it will only be for a few days….’

      ‘Mmm … at that age a few days can seem an awfully long time. What does Livvy say?’

      ‘We haven’t told her yet. David said it was best not to until she arrived. You know what she can be like. She’s so strong-willed at times….’ Tiggy pulled a small face. ‘You remember what it was like when she decided she wanted to study law. Of course, we all knew it was only because David and her grandfather had both told her that they really didn’t think it was a good idea and after all, she is—’

      ‘Female,’ Jenny had supplied dryly.

      Personally she thought the views of the males of the Crighton family were decades out of date and that it was high time that someone challenged them. Olivia might be the first female of the family to do so, but she wasn’t going to be the only one.

      Jenny knew that her own Katie already, at sixteen, had very strong views as to where her future lay. It was to be the Bar or nothing, she had told her parents emphatically. Louise, her twin, was less single-minded; she still hadn’t totally given up all hopes of becoming a film star. Failing that, she might well opt to study law, she had said judiciously.

      ‘But I wouldn’t want to stay here,’ she had told her parents.

      ‘No, neither do I,’ Katie had agreed. She was always the one who took control, and Louise, like her father before her, seemed quite happy to good-naturedly let her do so.

      Jenny, however, had been determined from the moment they were born that there was not going to be a favoured child and a second best; that both of them were going to grow up knowing they were of equal importance, equal value.

      ‘I know,’ she had told Louise. ‘We’ll go to Strasbourg. That’s where all the important legal decisions are made on human rights….’

      ‘Does your father know that?’ Jenny had murmured sotto voce to her husband. ‘I sometimes think he has a hard time grudgingly acknowledging that even Chester has more impact on the legal world than Haslewich.’

      ‘Mmm … Dad is fiercely parochial,’ Jonathon agreed. ‘He inherited that from his own father, of course. Aunt Ruth says that their father, Josiah, never really got over being sent away from Chester in disgrace and that he always remained bitter about the way his family treated him.’

      ‘Well, your father certainly believes in keeping the old rivalries going,’ Jenny had agreed. ‘I was quite surprised when he insisted on inviting the Chester side of the family to your birthday do.’

      ‘Oh, that’s just because he wants to impress them and—’

      ‘Just like Max wants to impress Grandad and Uncle David,’ Katie had interrupted scathingly, tossing her sixteen-year-old head in sisterly contempt of her elder brother.

      Over that head Jenny had looked warily at her husband. It was no secret that Max was very much the apple of his grandfather’s eye and that of his uncle David’s.

      ‘That boy should have been David’s son, not yours,’ Ben had once infamously remarked at a family gathering.

      Jenny had never forgotten hearing him say it. Neither, unfortunately it seemed, had Max.

      Much as it pained Jenny to admit it, her son had a streak of vanity and, yes, weakness in him that she felt had been exacerbated by his grandfather’s indulgence.

      ‘Max will never be called to the Bar,’ Katie had announced scathingly the day of Max’s twenty-first when their grandfather had beamingly made the announcement of his grandson’s career intentions and presented him with the keys to a Porsche Carrera that both Jonathon and Jenny had pleaded with Ben not to give him.

      Max had finished his pupillage the previous year when he was twenty-three but so far had been unable to find a place as a junior in a set of chambers in London.

      It would be left no doubt to Joss, their youngest child, to take his father’s place in the family business in due time, just as his cousin Jack would take David’s, but that lay well into the future. Jack was only ten and Joss an even younger eight.

      As she walked back with her father-in-law across the lawn, Jenny paused to admire the outline of the house.

      Originally a large farmhouse, it was built in a traditional hall house shape with the main central block from which two wings projected one at either end.

      The rear of the property they were facing was the older portion built in the traditional Cheshire farmhouse style of huge oak beams infilled with wattle-and-daub panels. The front was a more modern seventeenth century instead of fifteenth in softly tinted locally quarried stone.

      There had been those who had raised their eyebrows a little when Ben’s father had moved into the large farmhouse, wondering how on earth he had come to inherit such a valuable property. Valuable not so much because of the house, but rather because of the fertile Cheshire farmlands that went with it. And it had belonged to a lonely widow, as well.

      One day, following the rules of primogeniture to which they all knew Ben intended to rigidly adhere, David, simply by virtue of the fact he had arrived into the world ten minutes ahead of Jon, would inherit Queensmead, but Jenny didn’t envy the inheritance. She was perfectly happy with their own much smaller house on the other side of town. СКАЧАТЬ