A Rekindled Passion. PENNY JORDAN
speechless with bliss when he’d asked her out. He’d been working in Cornwall for the summer, a job with the National Trust, helping to maintain the cliff-paths. He’d been lodging in the village at a house not far from her aunt’s…and so it had begun.
‘Mama…the photographer’s ready.’
Sophy’s calm, firm voice broke into her private world. She blinked, and the vision of the tall, dark-haired young man who had charmed and delighted her so much was gone, and in its place she saw the reality of a man in his forties who, as Sophy had so rightly said, could easily have been mistaken for someone in his late thirties—a man who wore his obvious wealth and sophistication as casually as the boy she had known had worn his jeans.
The arrival of the photographer gave her a much-needed excuse to slip into the background and be alone. The shock of seeing Joss so completely unexpectedly had made her feel sick and faint. Long, long ago she had accepted that he was gone from her life and that it was right that he should have done so, so that to see him here today of all days was appallingly painful. The redhead must be his wife…and she, like Joss, looked younger than her forty-odd years. She gave another quick, hunted look at the woman’s immaculate make-up and hair. Her clothes were expensive, designer label most likely, but there was a petulant set to her mouth and a frown marring her forehead. Where was their child? Odd that she had never known whether it was a boy or a girl…Sophy’s half-brother or -sister. Her heart gave a frantic twist as the pain splintered inside her. Still, after all this time, when it should have long ago died.
She was starting to shake. Another moment and her distress would be so obvious that it would cause comment. There were still the photographs to get through, and then the reception. The day seemed to stretch endlessly in front of her, like some kind of refined torture.
What would happen when they met? Would he recognise her…and, if he did, would he acknowledge her…or pretend that they had never met?
The latter, most probably. And what about Sophy, standing there with John, laughing up into her bridegroom’s face? She would go through the rest of her life never knowing that John’s mother’s cousin was in reality her own father.
Her heart seemed to bolt with fright. If only her parents were still alive…If only she had someone to turn to…to confide in.
She felt a light touch on her shoulder and jumped in panic, but it was only Sophy’s godfather, James Phillips, the local doctor.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked her frowningly. Today he had stood in for the father Sophy had never had and the grandfather she had lost…giving her away…Tears rose and stung her throat and the backs of her eyes.
‘Just being sentimental and stupid,’ she assured him.
‘Ma…the photographer wants you,’ Sophy called, and distractedly she hurried over to join John’s parents, while James followed at a more leisurely pace.
It was a nightmare. It couldn’t be real…but it was, and sooner or later she was going to have to come face to face with Joss. She shuddered sickly, and the photographer frowned. It was normally the bride who looked faint and sick, and not her mother…although this particular bride’s mother was rather unusual, slim as a gazelle, and young enough to pass for the bride’s sister. It seemed impossible to believe the reality of their relationship. She must have been a child herself when she had had her, he reflected consideringly.
She was a very beautiful woman, and would have been more so if she had not looked quite so strained.
When the photographer had finished, Mary Broderick, who had seen three daughters married herself, went over to Kate and said quietly, ‘It’s awful, isn’t it? You know you should be happy for them…and yet you feel so lost, and you hate yourself for feeling like that. It does get better,’ she informed Kate with a smile.
Privately, when John had announced that he was getting engaged and had explained the circumstances of his new fiancée’s birth, she had been worried about the situation, but she needn’t have been. Sophy was everything she could have wanted in a daughter-in-law, and as for Kate…
Something about the petite woman who was now her son’s mother-in-law made her want to mother her in much the same way she had mothered her own four children. It wasn’t that Kate wasn’t mature and capable. She was both. The way she had brought up Sophy was testimony to that. No, it was her vulnerability—that and the youthfulness of her face and figure. No one looking at her would ever have imagined she was a day over thirty.
‘We’d like you to come and spend a couple of days with us when you can spare the time. We feel we’ve hardly had an opportunity to get to know you yet.’
There was no doubting the sincerity and warmth of the invitation, but Kate could barely respond to it. The moment she was dreading was fast arriving, and it was too late now to bitterly regret that Sophy had ever opted for the formality of a receiving line.
There was no way of avoiding it. She and Joss were going to come face to face.
Face to face with the man who twenty-one years ago had given her her dearly beloved daughter, and who had then walked out on her without even knowing that she had conceived.
The garden was everything a country garden should be, the scent of roses, from the traditional walkway bisecting the lawn, heady with musk. All around her Kate could hear people commenting appreciatively as they congregated on the drive. A light breeze stirred the blue and white awnings of the marquee.
The staff she and Lucy had hired to serve the meal were moving deftly among the guests, gently encouraging them on to the lawns as they circulated offering pre-wedding breakfast drinks.
James took her arm and gently guided her towards the marquee where it had been decided they would line up to receive the guests. Slowly the guests filed past, all of them beaming their pleasure and enjoyment of the day. Old friends, whose faces were as familiar to her as her own…strangers, people who belonged to John’s side of the family, but who nevertheless were reaching out to her with warmth; all of them passed her in a blur, until the shocking moment she had been waiting for, and she heard John’s mother exclaiming warmly, ‘Joss! It’s lovely to see you. We weren’t sure you could make it…’
And then she heard the familiar timbre of a voice she had never, ever forgotten. A voice that had whispered such things to her that she had shivered in unbearable pleasure and arousal, now saying mundanely, ‘We only just made it, but it’s lovely to be here.’
Sophy was speaking to him, flirting lightly with him, and then it was John’s turn…John who was turning to introduce her to him.
‘You won’t believe it, but Kate is my new mother-in-law,’ he said gallantly, and the whole world stood still as they looked at one another, and she saw from his face that this meeting was as much a shock to him as it was to her.
‘Kate,’ he said hoarsely, and the hand touching hers gripped her so tightly that she actually winced with pain.
He had aged, but only slightly. He was no longer a young boy, but a man…tall, dark, powerful, his jaw lean and clean-cut, bearing no trace of too selfindul-gent living, his skin bronzed and his grey eyes as clear as those of his daughter.
His hair was just as thick and dark as she remembered, and his body as he had walked towards her had moved lithely and easily.
He was a man in his sexual prime, she recognised numbly, and it didn’t need the sidelong looks the other female guests were giving him to tell her so.
Shock absorbed her and held her, and then abruptly released her so that she started to shake and her eyes stung with tears. Totally unable to hold on to her composure, she tugged her hand from his and looked past him to the woman accompanying him. Her mouth had tightened into an unattractively thin, tight line. She glared pointedly at Kate as she stretched out her hand, and Kate said mindlessly, ‘Mrs Bennett.’
John waited until they had gone past to chuckle and say to her, ‘Not Mrs Bennett as yet, although I suspect she’s hoping to be. She’s Joss’s secretary.’