Diamonds are for Marriage. Margaret Way
fact, he was staring at him with open disgust on his face. “It follows, as it does with men like Dad who spend their lives in competition with their sons, I couldn’t be allowed to have you. My father is paranoid about losing. He lost my mother’s love very early on. Didn’t you, Dad? It took a while but then she began to see through you.”
“Shut up, Boyd!” Rupert gritted, his handsome features cold and set.
“Is that it, Rupert?” Leona appealed to Boyd’s father, sounding desolate. “You wanted to deny your own son?”
Difficult as it was to comprehend, there was a great ambivalence in Rupert Blanchard’s complex nature. Existing simultaneously with a great love and pride in his son and heir was a tremendous level of competition and rivalry. That conflict had found its most powerful expression right here and now. Boyd had to be denied Leona as he had been denied Serena. Not that Serena had been aware of his illicit feelings or the conflicts within him. Rupert couldn’t attempt to explain it. It just was.
Rupert had passed to a stage where he no longer tried to formulate answers. All his life he’d been under tremendous stress. People imagined that being a scion of the very rich was fortunate indeed. He’d had no real choices in life. His father had made it very clear to him that he was to take over Blanchards, run it with the same hard-headed skills and determination as the men of his family did. His sisters were permitted to do as they liked. Gerri had followed an academic career, while Josephine, who kept well clear of the limelight, had married her medical scientist, had four children and led a happy, fulfilled life. Not him. His beautiful Alexa had escaped him. In spirit at least. Serena had been a mid-life aberration. It could never have come to anything. But he had not forgotten. He had given Serena’s daughter, Leona, her mirror image, every advantage. She was a lovely young woman in her own right. Now he was finding it unbearable for his son and Leona to be looking at him in the way that they were.
Rupert groaned aloud, then buried his face in his hands. He had always thought that he knew Alexa well, yet he had never known that she had discovered his secret infatuation. Not only that, Alexa had confided his secret to their son. Why not? Mother and son had always been very close.
The humiliation was not to be borne. Neither was it to be permitted. Rupert Blanchard reached out for a small trophy that sat on his desk, then crushed it in his bare hand.
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