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‘Well, well if it isn’t Miss Goody Two Shoes,’ Caroline mocked. The nickname was a throw-back to their schooldays, and Jaime managed to hold back the humiliating scald of colour she could feel rising up under her skin.
‘No need to ask what you’re doing here,’ Caroline continued tauntingly. ‘But what happened to the cavalry?’
‘If you mean Charles, he’s had to go to Dorchester to a meeting,’ Jaime responded evenly. ‘Caroline, surely it can’t be true that you intend to sell the Abbey to a developer?’
‘Why not?’ Caroline asked carelessly, ‘After all, it’s mine to do with as I choose.’ Without inviting Jaime to sit down, she drifted elegantly over to one of the uncomfortable-looking modern chairs, crossing her legs at the ankle, sure of herself as a woman in a way that Jaime felt she could never emulate.
‘But it is a listed building,’ Jaime reminded her quietly. Caroline shrugged. ‘So what.… If you feel so strongly about it, you can always put in a more attractive bid. The current one is £250,000.’ She laughed unpleasantly at Jaime’s expression.
The sound of Fern’s excited voice interrupted Jaime’s thought flow. She could see her daughter in the garden, walking towards the French windows, chattering animatedly to the man at her side.
Jaime’s heart seemed to do a somersault and then stop beating as she stared disbelievingly at the dark head bent towards her daughter’s. She started to shake, her sight blurring, the two heads of dark brown hair so similar that they merged into one. Caroline got up and opened the French doors.
‘Blake, darling, there you are. I thought you were writing.…’ There was malice in her eyes as she directed a contemptuous look at Jaime’s white face. ‘You seem to have given poor Jaime rather a shock, didn’t you let her know you were coming?’
As she watched the dark, hawklike profile of her husband turn in her direction, Jaime struggled to retain some composure.
‘Jaime and I aren’t exactly on intimate terms these days.’ The indifferent tone of his voice, the cool aloofness in his green eyes, both combined to increase Jaime’s feeling of nausea. She could scarcely believe that this handsome distant man had once possessed her body; had fathered her child.
‘I agree.’
‘Umm, it seems hard to believe that you were ever that,’ Caroline drawled, ‘but of course there is Fern.’
Fern! Trying to control the shudders of shocked reaction coursing through her, Jaime looked into her daughter’s shining eyes.
‘This is my Daddy,’ she told Jaime importantly, ‘I found him in the garden. He was looking at some flowers. I told him my name and he said that he was my Daddy.’
‘Fern, it’s time to go home.’ How weak and faint her voice sounded. ‘Go and say thank you to Mrs Marsh for your gingerbread and then we’ll go.’
‘I’m sorry about the interruption, Blake,’ she heard Caroline apologising as she hurried Fern away. ‘It’s Mrs Marsh’s fault, she should never have let the child loose in the garden.’
Blake’s response was an indistinct blur that Jaime didn’t stay to hear. Why should she? She already knew how Blake viewed his daughter; in much the same light as he did his wife; as an encumbrance he would prefer to do without.
CHAPTER TWO (#uce995a19-b83d-5dfd-a6f5-4056c5d37c6a)
‘YES, staying up at the Abbey he is… writing a book or supposed to be.…’ The voice faded away as Jaime entered the small post office and her face burned as she recognised who they were talking about. It was as impossible to ignore Blake’s presence in the vicinity as it was the sympathetic glances that seemed to follow her everywhere she went these days. Even at the studio she was aware of the faint air of sympathetic concern that surrounded her.
‘It’s horrible,’ she complained to her mother that night. ‘I feel as though I’m being treated as the victim of an incurable disease.’
‘It’s only because people don’t want to hurt you,’ Sarah sympathised. ‘If you talk to them openly about it, they’ll soon accept the situation.’
‘Why on earth did Blake have to come here?’
‘Presumably for the reason Caroline gave you. He needs somewhere to write.’
‘Or because he wants to flaunt his affair with Caroline in front of me.’
‘Why should he want to do that?’ Her mother’s glance was calmly shrewd. ‘You haven’t seen him for four years, and if he wanted to have an affair with Caroline, there’s nothing to stop him, although I doubt that she’s his type.’
‘But why should he need somewhere to write…?’ Frustration edged up under her voice, giving it a husky note of impatience.
‘Jaime, I know as little about his motives as you do yourself. If you really want answers to all these questions, you must ask him yourself.’
‘But to tell Fern that he’s her father!’ Why must her mother always be so reasonable and fair-minded? Why couldn’t she simply side with her without question? Her impartiality was frustrating and, in some strange sense, vaguely threatening.
‘He is her father,’ Sarah pointed out mildly. ‘One of your criticisms of him has always been his lack of interest in her. Try to be consistent, Jaime, my love. What do you want of the man? Or is he just to be a whipping post?’
‘I don’t believe for one moment that he’s come down here simply for Fern’s sake.’
‘Jaime, I really can’t see the point in discussing him with you while you stay in this frame of mind. I can understand why seeing him should shock and even upset you, but for Fern’s sake you must try to set aside your own dislike of him, and remember that he is her father. Must he be damned for ever, because you quarrelled with him?’ she asked quizzically. ‘Perhaps he’s changed, people do you know,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t rush to meet trouble head on, Jaime. I personally can’t believe for one moment that Blake is staying with Caroline simply because he wishes to flaunt any relationship they might have in front of you. He isn’t that type of man. Now, I’m going shopping this afternoon. I need to restock my wardrobe for Rome, but I should be back for tea.’
On Wednesday afternoons Jaime closed the studio and usually spent the afternoon with Fern. She had just collected her from playschool and was making a drink when she heard a car stopping outside. Her mother’s cottage was the middle one of a row of three with a long front garden and a pleasant, sheltered back one. The kitchen-dining room in which Jaime was standing had windows at either end, and her heart skittered to a standstill as she saw Blake unfold his lean frame from the low-slung black Ferrari she had seen entering the Abbey’s drive earlier in the week, and unlock the garden gate.
‘Mummy, you’re daydreaming again,’ Fern criticised sternly. She wanted to run but where was there to run to? And besides, she had left that sort of childish reaction behind her when she left London.
As she opened the door to him, he seemed to tower menacingly over her, dark and forbidding, his jean-clad figure familiar and yet totally alien. He had always affected her in this way; the maleness in him calling out to her deeply feminine core so that her pulse rate quickened and her stomach ached.
‘Sensible of you,’ he commented when she let him in. His eyes were derisive as he added, ‘Knowing you as I do, I half expected to have to break the door down to get in. You always did have a taste for the dramatic.’
‘Not to say farcical,’ Jaime agreed, watching the faint surprise replace the derision. ‘We do have a back door,’ she pointed out, ‘and it is open.’
‘We have to talk.’
‘Do we? I can’t think what about.’
‘Well, there’s Fern for starters.’
‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ It was her turn to sound derisive. ‘Forgive me for not recognising your concern for your daughter straight away, won’t you?’
‘You know the reason I haven’t shown any interest in her before.’ His voice was clipped, and if she had not known better she could have imagined there was a trace of angry pain in it.
‘What, besides Fern, brings you down here?’
‘You heard what Caroline said. I need the peace and quiet to write.’
‘A new departure isn’t it? You always seemed to manage quite well at the flat.’
‘With you for inspiration?’ His mouth twisted. ‘They were articles, this is a novel—my third to be exact.’
Her heart missed a beat and then hammered painfully. It hurt much more than she could say that there had been such drastic developments in his life and that she had known nothing about them.
‘I started the first one just after you left me, after I got back from El Salvador.’
She didn’t want to talk about the past. It held far too many unhappy memories. Fern heard their voices and came running out of the kitchen, launching herself at Blake with unabashed enthusiasm. ‘Daddy.…’
‘I’d like to take her out for the afternoon.’
‘No… Wednesday is the only afternoon I have her all to myself.’
‘Then come with us.’ It was a subtle challenge, reminding her of the many other challenges he had given her in the past and the often childish manner in which she had reacted to them. Fern’s smile widened and Jaime knew that if she refused the little girl would be disappointed.
‘Very well,’ she agreed coolly, suppressing wry amusement as she saw disbelief flicker briefly in Blake’s eyes. Had he expected her to refuse? She shrugged aside the thought. What did it matter what he had expected? She wasn’t going to leave Fern alone with him, at least not until she knew why he was making this attempt to get to know his daughter. Nor was she going to allow him to provoke her as he had done in the past. With a slight start, she realised she was experiencing none of the tongue-tied anxiety she had previously felt in his presence. Somehow the gulf she had always felt between them seemed to have narrowed, and she no longer stood so much in awe of him. Not that she underestimated him for one moment. Fern was already showing incipient signs of being dazzled by him and her heart ached for her daughter, the pain followed by a fierce wave of protective mother love. Blake would never hurt Fern the way he had hurt her.
‘How about the New Forest?’ Blake suggested blandly. Jaime bit her lip. They had once spent a weekend there shortly after they were married. Blake had overruled her protests at dinner and, as a consequence, she had drunk rather more wine than was her normal habit. Later, alone together in their room, he had made full use of her intoxicated state to coax from her a physical response to his lovemaking which still held a vivid place in her memories.
‘Fine,’ she responded lightly. ‘Fern will love the ponies.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, if we’re going to make it there and back in the day, we’d better start out soon.’
He was right, but Jaime suppressed a mental sigh. She had looked forward to a little time on her own from which to draw enough strength to face the prospect of the rest of the afternoon with him.
Fern accepted his presence with her normal placid good sense, although she did comment to Jaime, thankfully while Blake was out of earshot, ‘I like my Daddy; he’s much nicer than Charles isn’t he?’
It didn’t take long to get ready. Blake waited for them in the sitting room, commenting admiringly on Fern’s new pale pink boilersuit when they rejoined him, although it was on Jaime’s slim shape in her faded jeans and soft T-shirt that his eyes lingered.
‘I hear you’ve opened a dance studio,’ he remarked, as he opened the front door for them, ‘and that it’s doing very well.’
‘Surprised?’ Her voice sounded nastily bitter.
‘Why should I be? I always knew you had it in you to make your own way in life, Jaime. That air of helpless desperation is very deceptive. You’ve made it more than clear to me that you want neither my emotional nor financial support.’
As they were walking down the garden path, Charles’ Ford drew up outside, Charles himself emerging from inside it, his eyes going from Jaime to Blake and then back again. Charles had met Blake at the wedding and, as he came towards them, Jaime could almost see the questions hovering on his lips.
‘Templeton,’ Charles greeted Blake stiffly. ‘Quite a surprise.’ He looked at Jaime as he spoke, his face taut with disapproval. ‘I suppose you’re here to discuss the divorce.’ His gaze switched back to Blake and Jaime felt her heart lurch precariously. Of course! Stupidly that was something she hadn’t thought about. Did Blake want to institute divorce proceedings? If so, he need hardly discuss them with her. They had been separated for longer than the statutory period necessary for an uncontested divorce. ‘I’m Jaime’s solicitor, and the right thing to do would have been for yours to get in touch with me,’ Charles was saying stuffily. ‘In fact, your divorce will be quite a simple procedure.…’
‘Always supposing we want one.’ Blake’s drawl was calm but something about the way he spoke warned Jaime that he was annoyed. Why? Because Charles had pre-empted him?
‘And besides, what makes you think we’re discussing divorce? We could be contemplating a reconciliation.’
If she hadn’t been so stunned, Jaime might almost have laughed at Charles’s expression. His eyes met hers, but before she could answer the question in them, Blake’s hand was on her arm, guiding her towards the car. He opened the door and helped Fern into the back, never once releasing Jaime’s arm from his grip.
When he finally put the Ferrari in gear and drove away, Charles was still standing mute, watching them.
‘Uncle Charles looked like one of the goldfish at playschool,’ Fern commented, watching him, as they drove off. Blake’s laughter released Jaime from her stupefied incredulity… ‘Why did you say that to him?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Why did you intimate that we might be considering a reconciliation?’
The powerful shoulders shrugged, his profile turning briefly towards her. ‘Why not?’ he asked blandly. ‘It’s as likely to be true as his comment about a divorce. At least on my side. Are you contemplating divorce proceedings?’
‘Are you?’
He made a small, exasperated sound in the back of his throat. ‘You know damn well if I was, you’d be the first person to know about them—via me, not some solicitor. The only reason I can think of for divorcing you would be because I wanted to marry someone else. As that doesn’t apply, I’m quite happy with the present status quo. Apart from anything else, it acts as a pretty good deterrent.’
‘You mean it gives you the freedom to have affairs without giving any commitment,’ Jaime commented bitterly.
‘It gives you exactly the same freedoms,’ Blake pointed out. ‘Why was Thomson coming to see you?’
His abrupt change of subject startled her for a moment. For some reason he obviously didn’t want to talk about a divorce between them. But men, as he had so cynically commented, he had no reason to divorce her. He had the best of both worlds; the protective status of marriage, and the freedom of a single man.
‘Charles? Oh, I expect he wanted to know how I got on at the Abbey.’
‘Ah, yes, Caroline waxed most indignant after you’d gone about your plans to stop her selling the place.’
‘Not to stop her selling it, it’s the fact that she’s planning to sell it to a property developer, who will probably pull it down, that we’re objecting to.’
‘It’s a listed building, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but when did that stop anyone?’
‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you. Always a fault of yours. You always did enjoy painting the blackest picture possible.’
They drove some miles in silence before Fern piped up with several questions. Blake answered her with a calm assurance that Jamie found surprising, listening to him tailoring his replies so that the three-year-old would find them easily comprehensible. This was a side of him she had never seen before. Perhaps her mother was right. Perhaps, where Fern was concerned, he had had a change of heart and genuinely wanted to get to know his daughter. How would she be able to cope if Blake came back into her life as Fern’s part-time father? She had learned today it was easier to cope with never seeing him than with these brief exchanges, excruciatingly painful after the intimacy she had once shared with him.
With Blake’s powerful Ferrari it seemed no time at all before they reached the outskirts of the Forest. Fern laughed excitedly when the powerful car splashed through one of the fords, the jolting throwing Jaime against Blake’s hard shoulder. One hand left the wheel as he steadied her, his fingers resting against her body just below the full curve of her breast. She jerked convulsively against his touch as though it burned, watching the mocking arch of his eyebrows.
‘Once when you did that it was because you couldn’t wait for me to make love to you,’ he murmured softly, watching her.
The way she had craved his lovemaking almost as though it were a drug was one of the things that sickened Jaime most about her behaviour during their brief marriage, and, in a way, his physical possession of her had been a drug. In his arms, she could forget all her doubts and insecurities and convince herself that he loved her as much as she loved him.
‘Now, it’s because I can’t endure the thought of you doing so,’ she responded crisply, hoping that he couldn’t tell that she was lying. The proximity of him brought back memories she would much rather have suppressed. She had been shy and naive when they first met, but that had not stopped her from responding to Blake’s lovemaking with an ardency that had surprised her. If he turned to her now and took her in his arms—suppressing the acutely erotic images tormenting her, she shook her head, and turned round to talk to Fern.
Blake brought the car to a halt in one of the small clearings. Half a dozen mares and foals grazed peacefuly several yards away, Fern’s eyes widening with delight when she saw them. Jaime had taken the precaution of bringing a bag of stale bread with her, and Blake took it from her, demonstrating to Fern how to offer it to the ponies. When one finally deigned to take the bread from her small quivering palm, her serious little face was suffused with an expression of pure bliss.
Jaime caught Blake looking at her, something approaching pain darkening his eyes. An emotion stirred inside her, refusing to be quelled, and just for a moment, she gave in to the urge to make believe that they were a contented family unit; that she and Blake were still together.
‘She’s very much your child,’ she said softly to Blake, acting instinctively, wanting to banish the look of pain in his eyes.
‘Physically, yes, but in other ways she reminds me of your mother. She’s very self-sufficient. Don’t look at me like that,’ he added sardonically. ‘I’ve no intention of trying to deny paternity. Even if she didn’t look like me, I’d still know she was my child. You were so physically responsive to me, there couldn’t have been anyone else.’
Jaime’s face burned at the implications of his remark, and trying to change the subject, she demanded curtly, ‘Why have you come to Frampton, Blake? I don’t believe it was simply because you want to get to know Fern. Especially as you’re staying with Caroline.’
‘In point of fact, I’m not staying with her. I’m renting a cottage from her. The old Lodge—I didn’t even know it belonged to her until I answered the “ad” for it in The Times.’
‘Are you saying you did come to Frampton purely because of Fern?’
Some of her anxiety must have shown in her face because he said lazily, ‘I’m not going to attempt to wrest her from your maternal arms, if that’s what’s worrying you, but she is my child.…’
‘A child you never wanted me to conceive,’ Jaime reminded him hotly, glad that Fern was still engrossed in the ponies. ‘She’s three years old, Blake.…’
‘Which means she and I have three years to catch up on. You say she’s at playschool during the day. How about if I pick her up in the afternoon and have her with me until tea time?’
It was plain that she wasn’t going to get an explanation for his change of attitude towards Fern, and Jaime sighed, knowing the impossibility of getting Blake to talk about something when he didn’t want to. Part of her wanted to demand that he went away and left them alone, but did she have the right to deprive both Fern and Blake himself of their natural relationship?
‘She is my child, Jaime.…’
‘I’ll have to think about it.’
His mouth curled sardonically, ‘Well, when you have done, come and give me your decision. I’ll wait until Friday.’
‘Two days!’
