Stronger Than Yearning. PENNY JORDAN
to the street, she realised that for the first time she had not paused to enjoy the thrill of pride the nameplate outside the main door gave her.
She was overtired, she told herself, and worried about Lucy, but she also knew that her heart was not in London. She was aching to get back to Yorkshire and the old Hall.
There was no Lucy to greet her when she got home. Instead, there was a message on the answerphone announcing that she was staying another night with her friend. The flat seemed empty and sterile and as she made herself a cup of coffee all her old guilts came flooding over her. What sort of a parent was she really to Lucy? There had been a hurtful degree of truth in the accusation that Lucy had thrown at her, but what was the alternative? How could she have kept Lucy without the financial means to support them both? She could have given her up for adoption, of course … Putting her coffee down, she prowled restlessly into the drawing-room, pacing up and down tensely. Would Lucy have been happier if she had? It was all very well telling herself that all teenagers were rebellious but there was a lack of communication between them that hurt as well as worried her. She knew its roots were in her refusal to talk to Lucy about her father. It was all very well for other people to be full of good advice, Bill, Nancy, James Allingham …
Her mouth hardened. Why on earth had she thought of him? A playboy millionaire who had inherited and not earned his wealth, a man who typified qualities of his sex she particularly disliked, rampantly male and arrogantly pleased by the fact, she thought unkindly, using his sexuality about as subtly as a caveman with a club. To denigrate him mentally released some of her tension and, she reflected sardonically as she headed for her bedroom to change for the evening, having a sick step-sister to care for would certainly cramp his style.
She showered quickly, putting on clean underwear before sitting down to do her make-up and hair. Her underwear was white and plain, pristinely immaculate, her taste quite different from Lucy’s who tended to go for pretty pastel cottons with embroidery and bows. Jenna despised even the idea of dressing to please a man, of using her body to gain male favour. The male sex as a whole was worthy only of contempt, she thought as she applied her foundation, so vain and egotistical that it honestly believed all the tricks of the feminine repertoire were motivated by desire rather than necessity. It constantly amazed her how the shrewd business brain behind a successful business could genuinely believe that his pretty secretary flattered him because she found him sexually desirable. Men were past masters at deception — especially of themselves. Take James Allingham, for instance. No doubt in twenty years’ time he would still be believing that it was his body and not his money that drew beautiful women to his side. Maybe now that was the truth, but like so many other men before him he would never be able to admit that he was ageing, less attractive. Women, unfortunately, were not able to be so self-deluding.
She got up and opened her wardrobe. What should she wear? She had several elegant formal dresses especially bought for these sort of dos and eventually selected a plain black silk skirt topped with a white silk jacket. The jacket had wide revers and a fitted waist. The skirt was straight with a discreet pleat at the back. To go with it, she chose very fine silk tights. She styled her hair in an elegant French pleat and then stood back to study her reflection with approval. Elegant and businesslike. No one looking at her tonight would mistake her for someone’s wife — or someone’s mistress.
The invitation had been for eight-thirty and it was just gone nine when she rang the doorbell of the Billingtons’ apartment.
Margery Billington greeted her, hugging her theatrically. ‘Jenna, darling. I’m so glad you’re here! Everyone adores your décor.’
Jenna smile diplomatically and followed her hostess into the drawing-room. It was full of dinner-suited males and designer-clad women. Margery had specified something eye catching and different that also looked expensive and Jenna had done her best to oblige. The walls had been dragged in a soft aqua greeny-blue effect and then veined in gold to produce a delicate shimmer almost like a translucent pearled marble.
The carpet echoed the base colour of the walls; the furniture a matt off-white — to Jenna’s critical eye the scheme was rather theatrical but Margery had loved it. As she acknowledged several people she knew, she edged her way over to the fireplace to study the huge giltwood mirror she had commissioned from a young student at the Royal College of Art. He had done an excellent job, she noted approvingly, seeing that the cherubs holding the frame had Margery’s features. The mirror had been expensive, but …
‘Jenna, I absolutely adore it. You must do something similar for me.’
She turned away from her contemplation of the mirror to talk to the woman who had come to join her. She was the owner of an extremely successful New York-based boutique which sold British designs at a horrendous mark-up.
‘I’m thinking of buying a pied-à-terre over here … Just something small to use while I’m here on buying trips.’
They chatted for a while, Jenna making a mental note to follow up their talk.
‘Jenna, I’m so thrilled,’ effused Margery. ‘Maison want to do a feature on the apartment. One of the directors has a filly with us, and they’re contemplating a horse-racing issue — You know … noted trainers and their lifestyle, owners, races, that sort of thing, and he wants to feature us.’
Jenna knew the magazine, an upmarket glossy which would do her no harm to be seen in.
‘It would be fantastic advertising for you,’ Margery pressed. She looked sly as she added. ‘We’re thinking of redoing the cottage. I’d like you to do it for us, but you know what men are … he’s kicking a bit over the cost. With the business that will come your way from the Maison feature I’m sure you could see your way to, well … compromising a little.’
Jenna didn’t let any reaction show on her face. The Billingtons were multi-millionaires and could well afford a designer four or five times as costly as herself, but she had no wish to offend Margery, and she thought wryly that there were ways and means of offering a discount that was not always what it seemed. She never had, and never would, seek to make outrageous profits, and charged what she considered to be a reasonable fee for her services. That way she believed she was preserving both her integrity and her reputation, but people like the Billingtons were so used to being ripped off that it probably never occurred to them that she wasn’t jumping on the bandwagon.
‘I’m sure we can work something out,’ she agreed with a smile. ‘Why don’t we get together after the Maison feature is finalised?’
A subtle way of letting Margery know that she hadn’t been born yesterday: no feature, no discount!
She came up against a good many Margery Billingtons in her work and had learned to accept that to succeed she often needed to employ a degree of subtlety.
There were quite a lot of people at the party whom she knew. In the dining-room, hired staff were serving a buffet — the fashionably de rigueur wholefood-cum-nouvelle-cuisine type, Jenna noticed, accepting a glass of wine from a passing waiter. She had nothing against wholefood per se, and indeed was extremely particular about what she and Lucy ate, but most of the people at the party had probably dined well at lunchtime and would go on to consume another hearty meal later. Gluttony for food was like gluttony for sex, she thought distastefully, wondering as she did so why it was she who always seemed to stand apart from the rest of the human race.
Bill and Nancy were the only people she was really close to, and she kept even them at a distance. Sometimes she suspected from the sharp looks that Nancy gave her when she was particularly scathing about the male sex, that the older woman was about to take her to task. There was no one with whom she could share her innermost thoughts and fears — no one at all. She frowned, wondering why she should have such a depressive thought. Her lack of intimate relationships had never bothered her before, in fact she had deliberately cultivated it. The crowd round the buffet table thinned and her frown deepened as she caught sight of a familiar dark head. James Allingham — here?
She was just about to dismiss her suspicion as the product of an overworked imagination when he turned round and she realised she was right.