A Kind Of Madness. Penny Jordan

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СКАЧАТЬ for her sentimentality and the weakness of allowing her emotions to rule her head; not for her the folly of falling in love, of submitting herself to the pain of allowing another human being to become so important to her that he was the focus of her whole world. No, she preferred to put her faith, her trust in something far more dependable—like her work. Of course she wanted to marry, to have children, and in Peter she considered she had found the perfect mate: someone who felt about life exactly as she did.

      They considered themselves an established couple, even though she wasn’t wearing an engagement ring, even though they were not as yet lovers. Peter was old-fashioned in such things, and she was glad of it. These days, when one heard and read of the appalling consequences of sexual freedom and promiscuity, it was reassuring to meet a man who considered his health more important than the satisfaction of physical desire. There had been one previous serious relationship in Peter’s life, a girl at university, but that was in the past. And as for her…

      Elspeth moved uncomfortably in her chair. Her virginity was something she preferred not to dwell on. It had been the source of enough mirth among the other girls she had flat-shared with when the local office of her bank had first transferred her to London, and she had been too hurt and too proud to explain to the others that it was very difficult to enter into a purely physical fling with the careless abandon they seemed to favour when one lived and worked in a small country town, where everyone knew everyone else, and where at the first sign of her attempting to do any such thing the gossips would be having a field day.

      And then by the time she had moved to London she had felt too shy, too self-conscious to remedy things. After Sophy—strange how she always thought of her life as before Sophy and after Sophy—she had curled up into herself, not trusting herself to form any new relationships with anyone, male or female.

      But now there was Peter, and if she sometimes found his insistence that they did not sleep together, his reluctance to touch her at all except to give her the odd very chaste and brief kiss, somewhat lacking in passion, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she would have found a man who was far more openly and demandingly sexual very off-putting indeed.

      No, Peter was right for her, and once they were married of course things would be different. As it was, their careers took up so much of their time that it was hardly surprising that Peter wasn’t keen to rush on their marriage. After all, as he had pointed out to her recently, the terrible events of the autumn of ‘87, when the markets had fallen so drastically and so many of their peers had lost their jobs, had had a disastrous effect on the property market, which had still not recovered, and it would be foolish for them to make marriage plans and to sell their flats until it had done so.

      She had agreed wholeheartedly with him, but it had niggled her none the less the last time her mother had rung up to have had to explain that no, she and Peter had not made any wedding arrangements as yet.

      It was the purpose of that phone call which was the subject of their lunchtime discussion today.

      Her mother had been thrilled about the planned holiday, but she had been concerned about leaving her menagerie. ‘Fortunately, Carter has offered to take over and look after things for us…You remember Carter, don’t you, Elspeth?’

      She did, but wished she did not. Carter MacDonald was her aunt’s stepson, but he had already been an adult when her aunt had married his father, and his visits to the farmhouse had consequently been very rare. What she did remember about him was that she had found him rather overpowering. Almost eight years her senior, she had first met him the summer her aunt had married his father. He had just finished university at the time and had been waiting to hear if his application to work in scientific crop research for Third World countries had been successful. Her feelings towards him had been so ambiguous that when her mother had mentioned his name alarm bells had started to ring wildly in her cautious brain, especially when she couldn’t seem to explain what Carter was doing in Cheshire when he was supposed to be working in America.

      Gently she had tried to caution her mother against leaving a man who was after all almost a stranger to them in charge of the smallholding because, for all her own objections and fears, she had had to admit that her parents were making an outstanding success of their venture, with the vegetables they produced being in constant demand from prestigious local restaurants and hotels. Indeed, so successful was it becoming that they were being pressed to expand, to erect more greenhouse tunnels and to buy more land. Their accounts, when they had proudly shown them to her, had stunned her. She had had no idea it was possible to make so much money from producing organically grown food.

      When she had said as much to Peter he had lectured her reprovingly, pointing out that with the move to a far more ‘green’ environment it was obvious that her parents’produce would sell well.

      And now they were jeopardising the whole thing by lightheartedly taking off for two months and leaving their precious business in the hands of a man about whom they knew virtually nothing at all.

      Not so, her mother had objected when she had pointed these facts out to her. In the past few months they had got to know Carter very well indeed. It was true that initially he had merely been looking them up out of good manners, having returned to England after a spell working in America. But it seemed that now for some reason he was seriously considering settling in Cheshire and that, moreover, he had plans to enter a similar line of business to her parents’, so that he had both the experience and the inclination to take over the running of the business while they were away.

      Elspeth had found all this highly suspicious. Her memories of Carter were of a tall, thin male with a shock of overlong dark hair who had seemed very adult to her teenage self, someone who had made her very aware of her own immaturity. Her mother was even talking enthusiastically about him buying a small farm due to come up for sale next to their own land, so that the two ventures could be run as one, but her parents were so innocent…so naïve. They couldn’t see what Peter had been quick to point out to her—something she had not realised at first herself—that it might well be that Carter did intend to start up a business, a business which would be in direct competition to their own—and what better way to get a head start than by destroying their business while they were away and he was in charge?

      Of course, she had known immediately it would be useless to point this out to her mother. For one thing, she knew that her mother would only laugh and dismiss Peter’s suspicions as unthinkable.

      She had talked the whole thing over with him and he had pointed out further aspects of the situation which had not occurred to her: namely, that not only might Carter not take adequate care of her parents’ venture, but that he might actually deliberately try to undermine everything they had built up. ‘After all, if he is serious about setting up in competition to them…’ he had gone on.

      Shocked, Elspeth had initially demurred, but Peter had insisted he was right. She had immediately wanted to warn her parents, but had known that they would not take her warning seriously. They seemed to have taken Carter to their hearts, almost as though he were a long-lost son, not someone who was barely related to them at all if one discounted her aunt’s marriage to his father.

      A sensation which she had refused to admit as jealousy had struggled for life inside her—a sensation which she had immediately squashed. But then had come her boss’s announcement that she must take some leave, and she had immediately suggested to Peter that it might be as well for her to kill two birds with one stone by taking her leave and by spending it in Cheshire, where she could keep a firm eye on any Machiavellian attempts by Carter to undermine her parents’ business.

      Peter had immediately agreed with her decision. She had rung her parents that evening, announcing that she had some leave due and that she was free to stand in for them while she was on holiday.

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