Savage Innocence

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‘But why?’ exclaimed Isobel blankly. ‘She’s the success of the family, not me.’

‘Well, obviously she doesn’t think so,’ retorted her friend shrewdly. ‘It must have been a sickener for her when she found out about you and Jared. I mean, doesn’t she spend all her time trying to insinuate herself with the divine Elizabeth?’

‘Don’t say that.’ Isobel couldn’t allow Michelle to ridicule Jared’s wife. ‘Life hasn’t been easy for Elizabeth, you know that.’

Michelle grimaced. ‘I know what she wants everyone to believe,’ she remarked drily. ‘But, okay. I won’t say anything bitchy about Mrs Kendall if you’ll stop getting mopey over Marion’s maliciousness. Hell, she’s probably afraid you’re going to go looking for him.’

Isobel frowned. ‘Why should that bother her?’

‘Come on.’ Michelle was impatient now. ‘What was that address you just told me? Tregarth Hall? That doesn’t sound like a semi in a nice, but unspectacular, part of town.’

Isobel stared at her. ‘You’re saying you think my father might be a—a wealthy man?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Michelle, shrugging as she opened Isobel’s fridge. ‘Ah, wine,’ she noted approvingly. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

Isobel sniffed again, but her mouth tilted a little at her friend’s good-humoured common-sense. ‘I don’t want any,’ she said, helping herself to a can of Coke. ‘It’s all yours.’

Michelle lifted the bottle out of the fridge and looked for the corkscrew. ‘So you’re really going through with this, then?’

Isobel looked down at her stomach. ‘You mean the baby?’

‘I mean the baby,’ agreed Michelle, pouring herself a glass of Chardonnay. ‘Does Marion know about that?’

‘Heaven forbid!’ Isobel spoke fervently. ‘She’d say, Like mother, like daughter.’

‘Mmm.’ Michelle headed back into the living room. ‘And you’re still determined that Jared doesn’t need to know either?’

Isobel nodded vigorously. ‘It was never meant to happen, Michelle. You know that. It’ll be better for all of us when I go away.’

‘Well, if you want my honest opinion, I think he’s bloody lucky to have known you,’ declared her friend staunchly. ‘I hate to say anything good about the bastard, but he hasn’t had the happiest of marriages with the—with Elizabeth, has he?’

‘No.’ Isobel’s throat was tight.

‘And, contrary to what you say, I think he would do something about it, if he knew.’

‘What? Get a divorce? I don’t think so. Apart from the fact that Elizabeth’s disabled, it’s common knowledge that he was driving the car when the accident happened.’

Isobel was getting emotional again, and Michelle apparently decided it was time to back off. ‘Who knows?’ she said lightly. ‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, I guess.’ She sank down onto the sofa again, and took a sip of her wine. ‘So…what are you going to do about the letters?’

Isobel perched on the chair opposite. ‘What do you think I should do?’

Michelle arched improbably thin eyebrows. ‘How should I know?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘But I guess, looking at you now, that you’ve got a plan in mind.’

‘I had,’ admitted Isobel ruefully. ‘Now, I’m not so sure.’

‘Why not?’

Isobel bit her lip. ‘I had thought of looking for somewhere to live near—near Polgarron.’

‘Ah. And?’

‘Well, if your suspicions are true, and he—does have money, I don’t want him to think I’m looking for him now because I think he—owes me something.’

‘He does.’

‘Michelle!’

‘He does, dammit. You are his daughter.’

‘If it’s true.’

‘Do you doubt it?’

‘No.’

‘There you are, then.’ Michelle was triumphant. ‘I suggest we drive down the first weekend of the holidays.’

Isobel caught her breath. ‘You’ll come with me?’

‘And see you settled? What else?’

‘Oh, Michelle, thank you.’ Isobel went and gave her friend an impulsive hug. ‘I thought I’d have to go on my own.’

‘How are you going to haul all your stuff in that match-box of yours?’ demanded Michelle, disparaging Isobel’s car with affectionate familiarity. ‘No, we’ll take the estate car. Phil can manage with my car for a few days, and we’ll leave your car in our garage until you’re settled. Then, you can either come back for it or get a local garage to deliver it for you.’

Isobel shook her head. ‘Won’t Phil object?’ Michelle’s husband was a sales rep and used the estate car to carry demonstration equipment.

‘As I say, he can make do with the Peugeot. Honestly, he won’t mind.’

‘But your holiday—’

‘We’re not going away until the third week in August,’ exclaimed Michelle impatiently. ‘Stop making obstacles where there aren’t any. With a bit of luck, you’ll be installed in your new place before we go away. Hey—’ she laughed ‘—after you move, Phil and I will have a permanent holiday home in the West Country, won’t we?’

‘The West Country.’ Isobel echoed the words with a shiver of apprehension. Despite the news about her father, and the gratitude she felt towards Michelle for her help and understanding, she couldn’t forget what she was leaving behind. ‘It sounds so far away.’

‘It is far away,’ said Michelle mildly. ‘I thought that was the idea.’

Isobel heaved a sigh. ‘It is, of course, but—’

‘You’re going to miss me. I know,’ said Michelle drily, but when Isobel turned pained eyes in her direction, she shook her head in knowing resignation. ‘You’ve got to forget him, kid. You said yourself there’s no future in it.’

‘That doesn’t stop me wishing—’ Isobel cut herself off before she could finish the damning sentence and swung around towards the spare bedroom. ‘Come on. Let’s get started with the packing. It’s only two weeks to the start of the summer holidays.’

CHAPTER FOUR (#u631a5a41-2ef1-5cf4-a2d2-a609a9edf935)

JARED dropped his hard hat onto the seat beside him, and rested his head against the soft leather upholstery. It had been a long, hot day and the hair at the back of his neck was damp with sweat. He needed a drink and a shower, not necessarily in that order, and then the prospect of spending the rest of the evening with the only woman he cared anything about.

Isobel…

But that wasn’t going to happen. He scowled as he started the engine of the powerful Mercedes, barely acknowledging the salute of the security guard who was on duty at the gate of the building complex. Elizabeth had a dinner party for her father planned that he’d promised to attend. Instead of changing into jeans and a tee shirt and picking Isobel up for a bar-meal at some country pub, he was obliged to put on a dinner jacket and spend several hours talking to people he didn’t even like.

He sighed. That wasn’t absolutely true. Many of his in-laws’ acquaintances were friends of his, too, and if he could have counted on looking at Isobel across the candlelit dinner table he’d have been content.

He was actually working on a plan to take her away for a few days. There was an architects’ conference in Paris in August, and the prospect of several days—and nights—with Isobel caused his trousers to become unpleasantly tight. Dammit, they’d never spent a whole night together. He couldn’t wait to wake up with her beside him.

The trouble was, while it was comparatively easy to find excuses for going out in the evenings, it was much harder to explain a night’s absence. And, lately, Isobel had been finding excuses for not seeing him in the evenings either. On two or three occasions recently she’d turned him down in favour of other commitments, and, while he knew she had some crazy idea of breaking up with him, he also believed she was as helpless as he was to destroy what they shared.

His lips twisted. It was his own fault, after all. No one had forced him to marry Elizabeth. He’d gone into their relationship with his eyes open, and if the knowledge that as Howard Goldman’s son-in-law he might be given the opportunity to gain recognition for his work had not been unpleasing to him, it had definitely not been the sole reason he’d made Elizabeth his wife.

He’d joined Goldman Lewis as a very junior draughts-man after getting his degree, and from the beginning he’d been aware of Howard Goldman’s daughter watching him every time she came into the office. Elizabeth was easy on the eye, and he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t been flattered by her attention, but he’d never expected anything to come of it.

That it had had been more due to Elizabeth than himself. Young architects with big ideas were ten a penny, and he’d naturally assumed that Elizabeth would marry someone with a far different pedigree than his own. He’d actually hesitated before accepting that first invitation to a party at the Goldmans’, unsure what her father would make of one his junior employees fraternising with the boss’s daughter.

In fact, Howard Goldman had encouraged the relationship, but it hadn’t been until they were married that Jared had found out why. Dazed by the speed with which he’d been promoted from a minor employee of the firm to a member of the family, Jared hadn’t looked for reasons. He’d been far too busy congratulating himself on his good fortune to search for motives for his success.

His life with Elizabeth, however, had soon proved how naïve he had been. The woman he’d known far too fleetingly before the wedding bore little resemblance to his new wife, her black moods and violent depressions demonstrating that whatever feelings she had expressed for him before they were married, she could barely tolerate him now.

Within a few months, Jared had realised that Elizabeth’s reasons for marrying him had had nothing to do with love or sex. She’d no longer been interested in him except as a means to pacify her father, and Jared had begun to understand that marrying him had been a way to get Howard off her back. The old man had confided in him before the wedding that his dearest wish was that his daughter should give him a grandchild, and, with Elizabeth approaching her thirtieth birthday, he’d been losing hope that she’d ever find a husband. Now that they were going to get married, he’d assumed Elizabeth would be proud to grant his wish.

How wrong he’d been.

Jared’s lips compressed. Elizabeth’s agenda had been totally different from her father’s, from his own. She’d known all about his background before the wedding: the fact that his parents were dead, that he’d been brought up in a series of foster homes until he was sixteen and he’d run away to London, that there’d been little love of any kind in his life. He’d had to steel himself against his emotions; he’d been hurt too many times in the past to trust anything to change. He’d worked at a handful of jobs to earn the money to go to college, determined to get the qualifications necessary to get a decent job. And when he’d passed all his exams he’d returned to the north-east.

To a job with Goldman Lewis.

He sighed now. Elizabeth had apparently believed he’d be so grateful to her for what her father could do for him that whatever she did, however she behaved, he wouldn’t object. She’d been sure he’d do nothing to jeopardise his privileged position, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. For more than half his life already he’d been forced to do what other people—often strangers—told him, and he’d had no intention of allowing it to happen again.

Yet it had.

He scowled. He’d tried so hard to save the marriage, he remembered bitterly. He’d even convinced himself that he must be to blame for Elizabeth’s change of attitude towards him, and when she’d suggested that their relationship might benefit from being given a little space, he’d happily agreed to her spending the weekend at a health farm with one of the women she played golf with.

The call that had shattered all his illusions had come on a Sunday morning. Jared had been sprawled on one of the sofas in the living room, the Sunday papers scattered around him in disarray. He’d actually been anticipating his wife’s return with some enthusiasm, hoping against hope that whatever it was that had brought them together might still have the power to promote a reconciliation.

The call had killed any feelings he’d still had for her. It had been from a clinic in London. To begin with, Jared had assumed Elizabeth must have given him the wrong information. She’d said the health farm was in Northamptonshire, and as these places sometimes called themselves clinics, Jared had assumed he’d made a mistake.

He hadn’t.

The young woman who’d contacted him—a very junior nurse, he’d learned later—had explained that there’d been a complication. She’d said that the operation Mrs Kendall had had the previous afternoon hadn’t gone as satisfactorily as Dr Singh had anticipated.

Jared had been stunned. He hadn’t known Elizabeth needed an operation and he’d briefly blamed himself for his ignorance. And when he’d expressed his concern the young nurse had taken pity on him, assuring him that his wife was in no danger, that the termination had been successful.

Jared had heard the rest of what she’d said in numbed disbelief. He hadn’t wanted to hear that Elizabeth had developed an infection immediately after the operation, or that she wouldn’t be able to return to Newcastle for a few days. His revulsion that she should do such a thing, without even telling him, had been all he could think about, and he’d been hard pressed to be civil to the girl who’d broken the news.

Of course, Elizabeth had never expected him to find out. As he’d discovered afterwards, the clinic was supposed to be totally confidential, and it was only the fact that a new—and very inexperienced—nurse had been on duty when Elizabeth had expressed her concern about the delay, and had taken it upon herself to call the number Elizabeth had given when she’d booked in, which had given the game away. Elizabeth herself had been a little groggy at the time, or she’d never have made such a stupid mistake. She’d have waited until she was well enough to call him herself, and given some other excuse for not returning home.

Jared didn’t know how he’d got through the rest of that day or the days that followed. His first impulse had been to pack his bags and be out of there before his wife got back, but he’d wanted to see her first, to tell her what he thought of her, and that had been a mistake. When Elizabeth had got back she’d been still weak and shaken, but not too weak to remind him of the effect his intended actions would have on her father. The infection she’d developed after the abortion meant there could be no second chances, and the thought of Howard finding out that his daughter would never give him a grandchild was not a prospect Jared had wanted to face.

He’d been brought brutally back to earth when Howard had reminded him of the dinner he and Elizabeth were expected to attend in Alnwick the following evening. Howard had been invited, but it had clashed with another engagement he had in the city, and because these days Jared often acted as his deputy, the Kendalls had been invited in his stead.

The arrangements had been made weeks before or Jared wouldn’t have hesitated in turning the invitation down. But to do so would have created questions he had not yet been ready to answer, and for Howard’s sake he hadn’t made any complaint.

Only when Elizabeth had insisted on driving home after the dinner had Jared objected. Knowing he’d had a thirty-mile drive ahead of him, he had drunk tonic water all evening, whereas Elizabeth had had several glasses of wine. She wasn’t fit, he’d said coldly, expecting her to get out of the driving seat, but instead she’d started the engine, and he’d had no doubt she’d intended to leave him behind in the car park of the hotel.

He remembered grabbing the passenger door and jumping in beside her. The alternative would have been to let her drive off, leaving him to have to explain his plight to those who had still not emerged from the hotel.

It had been at a notorious bend in the road that the car had appeared to go out of control. Jared’s stomach still roiled at the memory of jarring gears and squealing tyres, and the horrifying image of an enormous truck bearing down on them. He’d wondered since then whether Elizabeth hadn’t had some crazy notion of killing herself and him, but he’d grabbed the wheel out of her hands and wrenched the car back from imminent disaster. Nevertheless it had lost too much traction, and he’d felt the wheels skidding over an icy patch on the road. There’d been no way to prevent the vehicle from mounting the kerb before it had lurched headlong into a ditch.

He didn’t recall much after that, until he’d woken up in hospital the following day with two broken legs and a mild concussion. Howard had been sitting by his bed when he’d awakened, and for a moment he’d been sure the older man was there to break the news that Elizabeth was dead.

But Elizabeth hadn’t been dead. Though she had been badly injured. Howard’s reasons for keeping vigil by his son-in-law’s bedside, however, had been to ensure that Jared would take the blame for the accident. Though he hadn’t been sure then who had been at the wheel at the time of the crash—they’d both been flung out on impact—he’d wanted to protect his daughter’s reputation. And the reputation of the firm, Jared had added silently. If Elizabeth had had to face charges of dangerous driving as well as having been drunk at the wheel, it would have proved a juicy piece of gossip for the press.