Lesson To Learn. Penny Jordan
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Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
About the Author
PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lesson To Learn
Penny Jordan
MILLS & BOON
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CHAPTER ONE
SARAH settled herself comfortably against the trunk of the willow and closed her eyes. Letting the soft gurgle of the stream gently lull her towards sleep, she firmly ignored the pangs of guilt trying to remind her that she was supposed to be thinking about her future; about her superiors’concern that because of her lack of detachment, her apparent inability to stop herself from becoming emotionally involved with her pupils, she was seriously hindering her career as a teacher.
Ignoring the niggling reminder that her cousin had given her this morning, that sleep could sometimes be used as an anodyne against depression, she told herself that it was as a result of the stress of the recently ended term that she felt so exhausted, so drained, so completely unable to take charge of her life and direct it firmly back into the ambitious channels she had planned for herself during her time at university.
Then it had all seemed so simple: she would get her degree, she would go into teaching; she would progress up her career ladder, perhaps even moving into the private sector for a while before applying for the challenging position of head teacher, and she would attain that goal before her thirtieth birthday.
And yet here she was at twenty-seven, acknowledging—or, rather, being forced to acknowledge—that in her original formula for her career she had neglected to take into account one vital factor, namely that she would become so involved with her pupils, so concerned for them, that her own needs, her own plans, her own life, would become completely submerged in her desire to help them.
Exhaustion was how her doctor had sympathetically described the intense physical and mental weakness which had overtaken her midway through last term; stress—the stress of modern living and of a job that made far too many demands upon her.
Her superiors had confirmed that diagnosis, but had been less sympathetic, telling her that her problems were self-inflicted; pointing out that no one had asked her to take on the extra responsibility of organising out-of-school activities for the twelve-year-olds in her care; that no one but herself was to blame for the fact that she seemed to have no defences against taking her pupils and their problems to her heart and suffering with them.
The enormous comprehensive where she worked had a far too rapid turnover of staff, quickly disillusioned by the problems caused by dealing with such vast numbers of children; the children themselves, many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds, were sometimes difficult to deal with, Sarah had to acknowledge that, but most of them, given time and encouragement, would respond…
She gave a small sigh. Forget about your job, her doctor had advised her. Take yourself off somewhere relaxing; lie in the sun…unwind…
Of course, that would have been impossible. Teachers did not spend the entire long summer break without any work to do, as so many people outside the profession seemed to believe, but then had come the news that, even if she was not actually being formally suspended, her future as a teacher was in grave doubt. Which was why she had come here to Shropshire to stay with her cousin and her husband in their quiet country village, where Sally, her cousin, had promised her she would find all the peace and relaxation she needed.
Ross and Sally had been married for two years; Ross worked for an innovative engineering firm in Ludlow, and Sally was an illustrator, working from a small downstairs study in their pretty ex-farmhouse.
Both of them had made Sarah welcome, but their jobs meant that she was left very much to her own devices during the day. Which was what she wanted…or at least what her doctor had said she needed. And it was true that since she had come to Shropshire two weeks ago the problems of her pupils, and the anxieties caused by her over-involvement with them, were beginning to lessen their grip on her, but even that was causing her to feel guilt, to remind herself that they, unlike her, were not fortunate enough to have kind cousins living in idyllic country surroundings, so that they too could escape from the enervating, choking heat of a city simmering under a very un-English and long-lasting heatwave.
On the news at night there were photographs of parched dry fields and parks, of empty streams, and city streets with melting tarmac, and hard blue skies.
A small plopping sound from the stream caused her to open her eyes and focus on the fish jumping out of the water to catch flies. It was a fair-sized trout, and the sight of it made her smile, remembering childhood fishing trips with her father and brother.
Her parents were in Canada now, visiting John and Heather and their twin sons…which was why Sally’s invitation had been such a godsend.