The Disobedient Wife. Elizabeth Power
eyes threatened to degrade her in front of him.
‘Kendal!’
She froze on the spot, his imperious tone forcing her to glance back over her shoulder.
‘I meant what I said. You take that job in the States and you go on your own.’
‘And if I don’t?’ she challenged.
‘Then I’ll sue for custody.’
Kendal’s teeth sank into the inner flesh of her bottom lip. ‘You wouldn’t be that callous,’ she whispered.
‘Try me.’
‘You’d never get it!’
‘Why not?’ That hard, cruel mouth pulled down on one side. ‘An incarcerating and unfaithful husband,’ he said, using her own description of him, ‘doesn’t necessarily make for a poor father in English law.’
He was right, of course, and he would use every shred of power and influence he possessed to see it turned out his way. She knew from experience that Jarrad Mitchell always got what he wanted.
‘Get lost!’ she breathed, turning away, battling against an inner surge of panic.
‘No, that’s been your prerogative, darling.’ She heard his voice coming mockingly from behind her. ‘But not any more. Aren’t you rather forgetting something?’
She stopped in her tracks and turned back to him, frowning.
‘The address of where you’re staying,’ he supplied emotionlessly. And then, when she hesitated, he said, ‘Unless, of course, you’d prefer to give it to my solicitor.’
He meant it! Oh, dear heaven.
As he got to his feet she wanted to claw his arrogant face with her carefully lacquered nails, because, of course, he’d been right when he’d said she had hoped that seeing her would soften him into submission. But Jarrad Mitchell never submitted to anyone, she remembered bitingly. He only ever controlled.
Well, get this! she thought, leaning on her small green handbag and scrawling the address of her new flat in the notebook she always carried, which contained the names of useful contacts in the design world. I’m going to take up your challenge of a fight and just for once I’m going to win!
Nevertheless her spirit masked a very strong element of doubt and not a little fear as she tore the page out of her notebook and flung it in the direction of her husband’s daunting figure, unaware of his cool amusement as the page fluttered under his desk from the sudden draught caused as she swept out of his office.
‘So what did he say?’
There was eager anticipation in Chrissie Langdon’s question as she watched her sister sip the sweet, hot tea she had made her.
‘You wouldn’t believe it!’
Five years older than Chrissie, Kendal wasn’t usually one to pour out her troubles to her sister, especially since, during the past year or so, Chrissie had had enough problems of her own. Today, though, it was obvious to Chrissie that her sister was clearly in a state.
‘Oh, I would! Believe me, where Jarrad Mitchell’s concerned, I would!’ Chrissie breathed, rolling large brown eyes emphasised by her small face and her short, spiky brown hair. She darted a glance to eighteen-month-old Matthew, whom she had been looking after that morning, and who had just discovered that hurling a book across the carpet was far more exciting than turning its pages. ‘Go on. Fire away.’
Kendal put down her cup and saucer on the wicker table which formed part of the rustic, bohemian furnishings that Chrissie loved. In fact, when Chrissie had moved into the Victorian semi with Ralph three years ago—newly married and spending money like water—Kendal recalled how she had tried to help her economise, suggesting cost-cutting ways with the design.
Now, though, being in the same position as Kendal was, and between jobs as an office receptionist, Kendal knew that if it hadn’t been for the proceeds of their old home—half of which she had released to Chrissie on her last birthday, the other half of which she had put in trust for Matthew—her sister would have had difficulty keeping up payments on the house even when she was in full-time employment.
Now she sat back, took a deep breath and said, ‘He’s going to sue for custody.’
Chrissie whistled under her breath. ‘What? If you go abroad? Or in any case?’ she appended, suddenly looking aghast, and Kendal groaned. She hadn’t actually considered that he might do it regardless.
‘I think he meant if I take this job.’
‘So what will you do?’ Chrissie sank down onto the low floral-patterned sofa opposite her older sister. ‘Not bother?’
Kendal gave her an exasperated look. ‘Chrissie! That would just be giving in to him. I’ll go—and with Matthew—and I’ll fight Jarrad every step of the way!’
‘You might live to regret that.’ Chrissie picked up the cup of herbal tea she had made for herself. ‘The man’s a fighter, Kendal. And the worst possible kind. He doesn’t take any prisoners. He’ll chew you up and spit you out and have you crawling back to him for mercy before it ever comes to court. Jarrad Mitchell can do anything!’
Kendal grimaced, and yet was unable to contain a fleeting smile as she glanced sideways and saw Matthew, sitting surrounded by the scattered pages of his little picture book, beaming up at her in wide-eyed innocence. ‘You make him sound like some sort of mythical demon,’ she uttered with an inexplicable little shudder as she reached for her cup and saucer. ‘And as though you almost admire him for it!’ she went on to chide disbelievingly, although she knew that wasn’t far from the truth.
From the moment Chrissie had met Jarrad at her own wedding three years ago she had looked up to him with the kind of hero-worship one would expect from a naive teenager—which of course she had been then—and, surprisingly she still displayed it to some degree, despite the brutal way in which he had treated her husband.
’It’s his determination I admire—that scary determination that ensures nobody and nothing gets in his way and makes everybody respect him,’ Chrissie stated almost contentiously. ‘I wish Ralph had had just a quarter of it. Perhaps if he had, we’d still be…’ She shrugged as though she’d learnt from the pains of over a year without the good-looking, quiet-voiced accountant that it was no use wishing.
‘And he’s not a demon—just a man,’ she went on in that same, near-contentious tone, although it took Kendal a second or two to realise that she was still referring to Jarrad. ‘But as I said he’s a very determined one. Determined, tough and a lot more capable of withstanding the sort of emotional pressure that a battle like this is going to put on you. You can’t take him on, Kendal. For heaven’s sake, compromise! Meet him halfway or something.’
Kendal looked at her sister obliquely. ‘You mean give up the chance of this job?’
For a moment something glittered in those dark eyes, and Kendal was struck by Chrissie’s likeness to her father. But then she had inherited his dark hair and complexion too, Kendal thought, remembering the father who had abandoned them without a care. He had left his wife and children for another woman, only to desert again after Jane Harringdale had taken him back—an act, Kendal reflected painfully now, that had proved too much for their mother’s poor health and had ultimately brought on that fatal collapse.
‘Apart from a few months while you were having Matthew, you’ve always been working.’ It was a reproof, and yet it sounded like a complaint, too, from Chrissie.
‘I’ve had to,’ Kendal stressed quietly. When their mother had died eight years ago Chrissie had been just thirteen, and Kendal herself only eighteen, and Robert Harringdale hadn’t wanted to know. It had been a struggle, therefore, bringing up her sister alone, doing office work during the day while studying for her qualifications as an interior designer at night—particularly as Chrissie hadn’t been an easy teenager, always critical of