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In her father’s eyes she would always be branded by Katie’s birth. Who knew how many other men might feel the same way, might feel that she was sexually available and easy, because of that?
Because that was what her father had been trying to say to her, even though he had been too embarrassed to put it quite so plainly. As the mother of an illegitimate child, she had a reputation. Men approaching her would only be doing so because of that reputation, because they wanted sex from her. And even if that was not true, she could not risk hurting and upsetting her father again by inviting what he would see as speculation and gossip about her morals.
She reminded herself that she was very fortunate, very lucky in that her father was prepared so generously to house and support her. That without that support her precious Katie would never have had the lifestyle she now did. A lovely home, the security that was provided by her grandfather’s money, the lovely surroundings in which she was growing up. Without her father to provide these things for them, their lives would have been so very different. Hazel wasn’t sixteen any more. She knew quite well how difficult life was for other single mothers, how very fortunate she was. The least she could do was to repay her father by respecting his wishes. And, after all, were they so difficult to live by? All right, so there was no man in her life, no lover, no husband … but she had her precious Katie. She had her father, she had her lovely home, and she was slowly making new friends.
And if sexually she was still as unawakened as she had been when Katie was conceived, well, was she really so very bothered? She could barely remember what it had felt like when Jimmy made love to her. What she could remember was that she had not been particularly enthralled by the experience; that she had not had a physical desire to repeat it. What she had enjoyed, though, was the closeness it had brought between her and Jimmy, the tenderness with which he had kissed her afterwards. But these were very dim memories now, the memories of a child, not a woman … and if the price she must pay for Katie’s security and her father’s peace of mind was her own celibacy, well, so be it.
Over the years she had kept in contact with Jimmy’s family, who had all accepted Katie as his daughter. She and Katie had spent several holidays with Jimmy’s mother, who was now divorced from Jimmy’s father, and as the rest of the family grew up, married and produced children, Hazel made sure that Katie knew her aunts and uncles and her cousins.
She didn’t want Katie to suffer as she had done through being too isolated and over-protected. She didn’t want Katie to repeat her mistakes, to yearn, without knowing she did so, for contact with her peers to such an extent, to yearn for love so much that she mistook a healthy male teenager’s natural desire to express his sexuality for that love and responded to it with the same disastrous results as she, Hazel, had done.
But Katie wasn’t her, as Katie herself had gently pointed out to her when she had first started going out on dates. Guiltily Hazel had acknowledged that she was glad in many ways that her own father had died before Katie had reached this stage in her life, because she would not have wanted him to inflict on Katie the mental and emotional taboos he had inflicted on her. It would not be right for her own sins to be visited upon her precious daughter. All she could do was to pray that Katie was strong enough, mature enough, happy enough not to need to make an intense emotional commitment to a member of the opposite sex until she was old enough to handle any potential sexual consequences.
So far she had been lucky, she acknowledged, restlessly smoothing another cushion. So far none of Katie’s relationships with the opposite sex had been remotely serious. But she herself had an almost morbid fear of Katie repeating her mistakes.
She didn’t want Katie’s freedom, Katie’s joy, Katie’s life curtailed in the way in which her own had been curtailed. For Katie, she wanted everything she had not had herself.
For Katie, she wanted the very best that there was: a good education; the strength and self-confidence that came from knowing she could support herself.
A sad smile crossed her face. Art had been her own best subject at school. She had once hoped to go on to college to study it further, but Katie’s arrival had put paid to that. Nevertheless, she had found a way of using that talent, even if she had discovered it rather late in life.
After her father’s death, and because she had felt so guilty, so uncomfortable in the now empty house during the day, she had started taking adult education classes.
Her art teacher had been so impressed with her skill that she had recommended her to an agency she knew who specialised in supplying illustrators for writers.
For the last two years, Hazel had worked exclusively for one particular writer, supplying all the illustrations for her very popular younger children’s books.
Had she discovered this talent when she was younger, who knew what might have happened. Given the freedom of financial independence, she might have felt able to go out more, to meet people, to perhaps even meet a man … But then what would have happened to her father? After his stroke he had never fully recovered. He had needed her then as she had needed him after Katie’s birth and she had always been grateful that fate had given her the opportunity to show him her love and her gratitude.
Now financially and physically she was free, but she was thirty-six years old: far too old to be thinking of romance, of love. And besides these days when she looked around, when she looked properly at the men around her, she saw with distaste that many of them, while smiling and flirting with women who were not their partners, were hurting those partners and seemed not to care that they were doing so. That many of them were weak and vain; that others were like dependent children, greedily taking everything their women had to offer and giving precious little back; and she had come to the conclusion that, for every happy couple she knew, she knew three who were not, and that perhaps after all fate had not truly been punishing her in denying her the right to her sexual and emotional fulfilment as a woman.
The very firm distance she had initially learned to keep between herself and the male sex, to please her father, had become a defence mechanism behind which she retreated for safety, causing Katie to tell her sternly that she was behaving more like a woman of seventy than one of half that age.
‘You’re really attractive, Mum,’ Katie had told her fondly. ‘Far too attractive to be living on your own.’
‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might want to live alone?’ Hazel had retaliated. ‘Lots of women do. Take Jessy Finlay, for instance.’
Jessy was a forty-year-old redhead, who owned a small cottage on the outskirts of the village, and who worked as a freelance reporter for a local TV station. She was outrageously extrovert, and very popular with all the local men, if somewhat less popular with their wives.
‘Jessy might live alone, but she does not sleep alone,’ Katie had informed her mother brutally, softening a little to add quietly, ‘It’s not natural, Ma. I know there isn’t any man in your life. I know you don’t have a discreet lover tucked away somewhere. Has there ever been anyone apart from Dad?’
Much as she longed to tell her that that was none of her business, Hazel had found herself admitting that there had not. What Katie did not seem to realise and what she had no intention of telling her was that she herself was the result of her own single and unmemorable sexual experiment. And, uncomfortable though it made her feel to contemplate it, Katie at eighteen probably had a good deal more sexual experience than she had at nearly twice that age.
Although she had always been scrupulous about making sure that Katie was as well informed on sexual matters as she could be, Hazel had always felt lamentably aware of her own inability to convey to her daughter that, exciting though sexual experimentation might be in one’s teens, true fulfilment, true sexual pleasure was something one could only truly appreciate with maturity.
All she had felt able to say to Katie was that she must always do only what felt right for her; that it was her own feeling of self-worth, her feeling of self-respect that was important, far more important than giving in to peer pressure or the importunings of some callow boy.
But how could she discuss with her daughter adult sex, adult emotions, a woman’s emotions, a woman’s needs, when she herself had no knowledge of these things?
Since Katie had left school at the beginning of the summer, Hazel had gradually begun to feel that she was the child and her daughter the parent. Katie now seemed so grown-up, so mature, so much better able to handle herself than Hazel.
Hazel had watched in awe and pride as Katie parried the over-fulsome compliments of the older men among their acquaintance, who were suddenly claiming that she was becoming very grown-up, and very, very attractive. Firmly but pleasantly Katie had let them know that she considered their interest to be avuncular. Firmly she had made it clear that she was not interested in their heavy-handed flirtation. And she was just as adept at dealing with her own peers.
Hazel had seen her off for university with a heavy heart, acknowledging that the child had gone and a woman had taken her place. She was so proud of her daughter. Proud of all that she was and all that she would be, and she had prayed desperately that Katie would get safely through university and launch herself in her chosen career before she fell deeply in love.
Now it seemed as though in making those prayers she, her mother, had brought down on her the very fate she had wanted her to escape.
True, Katie had said nothing about being in love with this Silas. Silas … what sort of name was that? It was far too theatrical, far too … too male. But the very way she said his name, the very hesitation in her voice, the very fact that she, Hazel, her mother was so acutely aware of these things, made Hazel desperately anxious to make the acquaintance of this man who, it seemed, had become so important to her daughter. And equally it made her extremely reluctant to get to know him, as though in doing so she was acknowledging his importance in Katie’s life.
It wasn’t just maternal jealousy either; it wasn’t that she resented someone else becoming more important to Katie than she was herself … well, not entirely.
Guiltily she tugged at her own swollen bottom lip.
Upstairs two immaculate and comfortable bedrooms were waiting for their arrival.
Two bedrooms. Katie would sleep in her own bedroom, of course. Her friend, this Silas …
Gnawing on her swollen lip, Hazel stared unseeingly across the pretty sitting-room, for once not seeing the charm of its exposed timbers, its low ceilings, and its deep stone-framed windows.
The house was old, very old, and she had fallen in love with it the first time she had seen it. She suspected that if her father hadn’t been in such a hurry to move them out of London he would have waited until something more modern came on the market, but as it was he had bought this pretty half-timbered Cheshire farmhouse with its large gardens and its wonderful aspects over the surrounding countryside, and gradually over the years Hazel had put her stamp on it, had brought it to life with all her gentleness and artistic skill, so that people coming into it for the first time caught their breath in pleasure as they studied its colour-washed rooms with their faded chintzes and brocades, its air of homeliness and comfort, its gentle warming welcome to everyone who walked into it.
Perhaps she should have taken hold of her courage and asked Katie outright if she expected this Silas to share her room, her bed. But then Katie’s room still only had the small single bed she had all through her teens.
That was no excuse, she told herself severely. The house had five bedrooms and two bathrooms. The room she had made up for Katie’s friend was the smallest of these, right next door to her own room. It had a tiny dormer window, and a polished wooden floor. It also had a large double bed. All the rooms apart from Katie’s and her own did, and she could hardly have moved out of her own room, not without causing Katie to make some comment.
So what would she do if Katie gaily announced that she would move into the spare-room with their guest for the duration of his visit? What would she do if this Silas chose to insist that Katie show her mother just how committed she was to him by sleeping with him?
Hazel had heard enough horror stories from other parents, other mothers confronted with just this sort of situation to feel more than mere apprehension. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to admit that her daughter was an adult, a woman. Of course she knew, of course she accepted … but it was one thing to accept that Katie was old enough to have a sexual relationship with someone, and quite another to be forced to witness that relationship, to be forced to have all her fears and anxieties revived right under her nose. It was bad enough worrying about Katie when she couldn’t see what she was doing …
If only they would arrive. Or, even better, if only they would ring and say they’d changed their minds. She was dreading meeting him, dreading it …
But for Katie’s sake she would have to pretend that she was happy for her. She would have to pretend that she liked him.
Stop it, she warned herself. He’s probably a very nice boy. He’s probably just as much in love as Katie is. He’s probably just as vulnerable, and he’s also probably got a mother somewhere dreading meeting Katie as much as I’m dreading meeting him.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4405f1b5-2b8b-5112-a699-a786e7fea57a)
SURELY they couldn’t be much longer? About four o’clock, Katie had said. Now it was almost five. Hazel’s stomach knotted and churned. What if there’d been an accident? History repeating itself—Katie dying as her father had died …
Once again she had to stop herself from allowing her imagination to run away with her.
She had prepared Katie’s favourite supper, including a pie made from their own Bramley apples. She had enough carefully stored to take her over Christmas and into the new year.
Secretly she had been looking forward to Christmas, to having Katie home, treasuring the thought of it like a child with an illicit hoard of sweets, because she knew that after this first term, after this first year, Katie would make her own friends and would naturally want to spend future holidays with them. So deep in her heart lurked the knowledge that this coming Christmas could be their last together. Now she wondered, shivering in the chill of the thought, if she would be expected to share Christmas with this Silas, or, even worse, if he would take Katie away from her completely, if the two of them would spend their Christmas somewhere alone, while she …
As she heard the sound of a car drawing up outside, her stomach muscles tensed and she froze, and then forced herself to walk as calmly as she could towards the front door.
As she passed the mirror hanging over the fireplace, she glanced surreptitiously into it. What would he see, this Silas, who threatened her peace of mind so much? She frowned at her own reflection, wondering if he would notice or even care that she and Katie shared the same heart-shaped face, and the same slightly almond-shaped eyes, but where hers were an uncertain, hesitant greeny-brown—hence her name—Katie’s were a brilliant laughing blue, just as her curls were mere brunette, where Katie’s were glossily and extravagantly black.
Katie’s colouring, like her height, came from her father, but they shared the same fine bone-structure, the same delicacy of wrist and ankle. One thing she did envy Katie, though, was her height. Hazel hated being so small, barely five feet two, and so slender with it that there were still occasions when people called at the house and found her dressed in jeans and a T-shirt working in the garden and, seeing her from the back, made the mistake of assuming that she was still a child.
Perhaps if she wore her hair in a different style, but it was so curly and untameable that there was little she could do with it other than to have it go its own wayward way.
The front door of the house was wooden and solid. She could see nothing through it as she unbolted and then opened it, but already in her mind’s eye she could see her daughter: laughing, exuberant, flinging herself into her arms, and almost knocking her over as she did so—only when she did open the door, there was no sign of Katie.
Instead a man was climbing out of the car parked on her drive, smiling slightly at her as he acknowledged her presence.
Disappointment mingled with relief. Whoever this man was, he could not be Katie’s precious Silas. He was too old, for one thing, closer to forty-five than twenty-five.
He was probably a stranger who had lost his way. Certainly he wasn’t anyone she knew she had ever met. Had she done so she would have been bound to remember him. He was far too attractive, far too male for any woman to be able to forget. Her heart gave a tiny unsteady thump as her brain acknowledged what her senses had already registered; namely that this stranger walking towards her was an extremely virile and masculine man, whose casual attire of well-worn jeans and soft denim shirt revealed a body packed hard with muscle and male strength.
Hazel could feel the most odd sensation burgeoning into life in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself as though doing so would control this strange, unnerving feeling.
‘Miss Partington?’ he queried, coming towards her.
His voice was deep and pleasant. The way he spoke her name made Hazel feel faintly dizzy. Her name. How had he known her name?
‘Er—yes. I’m afraid I don’t know …’
He was extending his hand towards her, so that she automatically reciprocated the gesture, her eyes registering the shock caused by the brief physical contact between them. What was the matter with her? She had shaken a man’s hand before, for heaven’s sake.
Feeling thoroughly flustered, she looked uncertainly at him.
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m Silas Jardine. I dropped Katie off in the village. She said something about wanting to buy something. She told me not to wait, said she might be a little while, and told me to come and introduce myself. She said something about wanting to catch up on some gossip. It really is kind of you to put me up like this.’
Hazel wasn’t listening any longer. She was staring at him in shocked disbelief.
This man could not be Katie’s Silas. This man could not be Katie’s boyfriend. Boyfriend! This was no boy. Outrage mingled with her shock. How could he stand there, glibly carrying on a conversation with her, when all the time he must know how shocked she was, how stunned, how … yes, how disbelieving that he could …? That he could what? Love her daughter? She caught herself up on the thought. What was that feeling beginning, like a cold, sharp dagger in her middle? That wasn’t maternal protectiveness, was it? That was … That was …
It was nothing, she told herself quickly. It was nothing at all, and it certainly wasn’t an uncomfortable and impossible stab of something almost approaching betrayal.
Her smile had turned to a frown now, as her shock registered all too plainly on her face. She could almost feel him withdrawing from her, distancing himself from her with cool reserve. Panic clawed at her. This was a situation she simply could not deal with, did not know how to deal with. When she had envisaged Katie’s Silas, she had envisaged a younger man—a much younger man. This man was far too old for Katie. Far, far too old.
She started to tremble, suddenly feeling incredibly weak and sick. Tears of shock blurred her eyes, causing her to clench her jaw and hurriedly blink them away.
‘I’m sorry. I seem to have given you something of a shock.’
He was too astute, saw too much, and suddenly she was desperately frightened of him. What if he should sense her anger, her shock, her disgust, her outrage, and punish her for them by trying to turn Katie against her? Once she would have said that could never happen but then once she would have said that Katie would never have any need in her life that would lead her to imagine herself in love with a man old enough to be her father.
‘Look, I think we’d better get you inside. Katie warned me that you hate people saying you look fragile, but …’
Katie had told him that. What else had she told him? Hazel wondered achingly as she stepped back into the hall, fighting to get her shock under control.
She hated him, she decided fiercely as he followed her inside. She hated him already. How could she not do when she looked at him and saw in his face, in his eyes, all his years of living, and then compared those years, that maturity with Katie’s youth?
She knew all about men like him. Men who were too insecure to love women who could match them in terms of age and experience. Their vanity led them to feed off youth, like leeches. Oh, yes, she knew the type all right and she despised it, but she had never, ever envisaged that Katie would fall prey to such a man, no matter how good-looking he might be—and this man was certainly that, she acknowledged grudgingly, trying to ignore the frisson of sensation that danced over her skin as she looked up and discovered that she was being studied with gravely thoughtful interest by Silas Jardine’s disturbingly perceptive cool grey eyes.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asked her quietly. ‘Katie—’
Whatever he had been about to say was forgotten as the front door was flung open, and Hazel heard her daughter calling out cheerfully, ‘Ma, Ma … where are you?’
‘Noisy lot, aren’t they, the young?’ Silas Jardine remarked easily as she hurried towards the door. His comment made her check and turn to give him an indignant look. What on earth was he trying to do, aligning himself with her? Did he honestly think that she was stupid enough to fall for such a ploy or that it would endear him to her, or incline her to accept him as her daughter’s lover?
The sickening sour scald of revulsion that burned through her at the thought turned her indignation to self-disgust, and she turned away from him quickly before her face could betray her.
She was becoming frighteningly aware that if he chose to do so this man could drive a wedge between her and her beloved daughter that might never be removed.
Hopefully, please God, there would come a time when Katie would open her eyes and see him for what he undoubtedly was; a forty-odd-year-old man who was bolstering his ego, his machismo by feeding off her youth. And when that time came he would no longer have a place nor a role in her life, but by then Hazel suspected that it would be too late to heal the rift which he could cause between them.
She would have to be careful, so very careful not to betray to Katie how shocked and distraught she felt, she acknowledged as she hurried into the hallway and was immediately taken hold of and swung off her feet as Katie gave her an enthusiastic hug.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ she scolded her mother maternally as she set her back on the floor and studied her critically, and then, turning to Silas who had also come out into the hall, she demanded happily, ‘Isn’t she everything I told you she was?’ Without waiting for a response, she turned back to Hazel and grinned at her.
‘He wouldn’t believe me when I told him I had a mother who looked like a teenager and not a fully grown-up one at that,’ Katie teased.
To her intense mortification, Hazel discovered that she was actually blushing, something she’d thought she had successfully got under control years ago.
Katie laughed and teasingly tousled her curls, telling her, ‘I stopped off in the village to buy this. I’ve got you a proper present, of course, but I thought we could have this tonight to celebrate.’
When Hazel didn’t say anything, she added in a more gentle voice, ‘You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you, Ma? I shan’t embarrass you in front of Silas by mentioning the fact that you’re thirty-six years old today.’
‘Katie!’ Hazel expostulated weakly. To tell the truth, she herself had almost forgotten that it was her birthday in the anxiety of worrying about her daughter, but now that Katie had reminded her of the date she wished that she hadn’t. It wasn’t the thought of adding another year to her age that bothered her. No, it was the quiet, assessing way that Silas Jardine was continuing to study her that made her feel so uncomfortable. His mouth twitched a little as she removed the bottle of champagne from Katie’s exuberant grasp, and told her as firmly as she could, ‘Katie, you know quite well that I gave up celebrating my birthday years ago.’
‘You may have done so, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to follow suit,’ Katie informed her, adding, ‘What time are we eating, Ma? I’m starving. I wanted to stop off on the way, but Silas said there was no way he was going to poison his insides with the stuff they serve in motorway fast food outlets. He’s even worse than you,’ she added grumbling, while Hazel gave a doubtful look in Silas’s direction, wondering how he was taking this criticism.
A little to her surprise he seemed more amused than annoyed, his manner more that of an indulgent uncle than a passionate lover. It seemed oddly out of keeping, because this man would be a passionate lover. A tiny thrill of shock tingled down her spine, a sensation almost of actually being touched. She shivered under it, sensitively cringing from the intimacy of her own thoughts. Thoughts she had no right to have, no right at all. Silas Jardine was her daughter’s lover and not …
Not what? she asked herself shakily. Not an exceptionally virile and male man, whose simple presence in her home was making her feel as nervous and on edge as though she were the one who was the teenager?
It was all his fault. If he had arrived, as he had been supposed to do, with Katie, she would never … he would not … She bit her bottom lip hard.
What on earth was the matter with her? She had seen good-looking men before, talked to them, spent time with them, without going to pieces like this.
And she was going to pieces. She only had to look at him and she could feel herself disintegrating inside.
This is ridiculous, she told herself firmly. She had to pull herself together. What on earth was happening to her? Surely—she could feel herself going hot with self-disgust at the thought—surely she wasn’t about to turn into one of those dreadful women who in middle age seemed to develop an embarrassing need to prove themselves by flirting very desperately and very obviously with their daughters’ boyfriends?
Desperately she tried to concentrate on what Katie was saying to her, telling her nervously, ‘Well, I’ve made your favourite for supper: roast beef with all the trimmings and apple pie.’
She couldn’t bring herself to look at Silas, and so, instead, she said to Katie, ‘I should have checked with you that your friend—er—Mr … doesn’t mind such plain fare …’
When she had envisaged Katie’s ‘friend’, she had been thinking in terms of a much younger man with far less sophisticated tastes than the very obvious man of the world who was now addressing her, telling her smoothly, ‘Please call me Silas—and to tell the truth a home-cooked meal will be rather a treat for me.’
Katie gave him a dancing look of amusement.
‘Don’t listen to him, Ma. He’s got females queuing feet deep, just longing to offer him all the home comforts.’
She could just bet he had, Hazel reflected acidly to herself, and she doubted that it was just their cooking that they wanted him to sample.
