Showering quickly and then dressing she went to her small study, but it was difficult to work. She managed to push the dream out of her mind but she was uneasily conscious of her promise to allow James Allingham to look round the Hall. She closed her eyes for a moment, leaning back in her chair, hoping to ease the tension from her muscles, but instead James Allingham’s arrogant features immediately formed in her mind’s eye. Swiftly she tried to banish it, but the image refused to disappear. Instead, subtly and, frighteningly, it altered imperceptibly, until the face she saw was that of the portrait: the hair still as darkly thick as James Allingham’s but longer and tied back in a queue, the eyes the same, just as vividly blue, the mouth curled in the sardonic expression of amusement she had seen so recently on James Allingham’s mouth.
‘No!’ Unaware of having spoken aloud Jenna got up and paced restlessly, trying to get a grip on her shattered self-control.
Things like this simply did not happen to her. She had never had a dream like the one she experienced last night. She loathed James Allingham and all he represented. She had dreamed about the man in the portrait and not him. It was just a trick of her mind that somehow made them one and the same person.
After an exhausting ten minutes’ pacing, she felt slightly calmer. As she sat down at her desk again, she had managed to convince herself that she had banished the dream successfully and everything to do with it to the remotest corner of her mind and tha
t never again would it be resurrected. She had no logical explanation for what she had experienced but it was over now and best forgotten.
She opened her diary briskly and started to go through it. If she was to go to Yorkshire she would have some rearranging to do. On Sunday she was taking Lucy back to school. Monday she had several appointments; the rest of the week was busy, but she could clear one day if she had to by juggling other engagements. It would be interesting to see the papers James Allingham claimed to have, but if he thought he was going to oust her from possession of the old Hall, then he was going to be sadly disappointed. She must just pray that luck was with her and that her business would run smoothly and profitably, she told herself firmly, banishing the small warning voice that reminded her that life had a way of handing out unexpected shocks. It still unnerved her to realise how finely balanced her financial affairs were. If for any reason she should suffer a financial setback and had to sell the Hall, James Allingham would be first in line to take it from her. But she would never allow that to happen, she thought passionately. Never! Never!
CHAPTER SIX
‘LUCY, do I have to remind you again that you’re going back to school this afternoon, and you still haven’t packed?’ Jenna said briskly over the breakfast table.
Lucy had been sullen and withdrawn ever since her return from her friends, and Jenna had barely been able to get a word out of her. When she asked how they had spent their time, Lucy had said bitterly, ‘Why do you want to know? You don’t really care, as long as I’m out of your way. My father wouldn’t treat me like you do…’ and Jenna had had to bite her lip to stop herself from saying waspishly that she was fortunate in not knowing her father, if she did but realise it.
Lucy was reading the Sunday papers and didn’t even bother to lift her head in response to Jenna’s nagging reminder. Sprawled out on the sitting-room floor, she looked every inch the gawky teenager that she was, but in her thin, colt-like limbs there was a suggestion of the elegance to come. She really was unbearably like Rachel, Jenna thought achingly. Thank God, she could discern no trace of her father in her at all, although she did have James Allingham’s jet-black hair. The thought crept unbidden into her mind, causing her to tense and frown.
‘You didn’t tell me you’d been dating James Allingham?’ Lucy’s angry accusation shocked her out of her thoughts.
‘I haven’t,’ Jenna denied, her frown deepening.
‘Well, that’s not what it says here.’ Lucy waved the paper she was reading in front of her. ‘It says the two of you were at a party together and that you both disappeared for quite a long time!’
‘We met by chance at Margery’s,’ Jenna told her, angry at the way the gossip columnist had totally misinterpreted their relationship. ‘That was all.’
Lucy looked sulky. ‘I like him,’ she complained to Jenna. ‘I bet if he was my father life would be a lot more fun than it is with you.’
‘Well, he isn’t,’ Jenna snapped sharply, unaware of the sudden speculation in Lucy’s eyes as she poured herself a second cup of coffee.
‘Do go and start your packing, Lucy, I’ll come and help you when I’ve finished my coffee.’
Surprisingly, this time Lucy obeyed her without argument. Once she had closed the door behind her, Jenna found herself unable to resist picking up the paper the girl had been reading and scanning it. The insinuation that she and James Allingham were lovers was very thinly concealed and she threw the paper down in disgust. The rubbish that these rags printed! And all on the very thinnest information. No doubt she had Margery and her gossip to thank for that piece! Well, it wouldn’t be the first time her name had been linked with some man’s, nor would it be the last, but it goaded her that in this instance the man in question should be James Allingham, until she realised that he was as unlikely to be pleased as she was herself. As sexy as a Barbie doll was how he had scathingly described her…She smiled a little grimly to herself. Let the gossip press print what it wanted. It didn’t really affect her.
Finishing her coffee she got up and went after Lucy. She desperately wanted to get closer to her, but every time she tried, Lucy put up invincible barricades. Had she really actually thought that James Allingham might be her father? Jenna chewed worriedly on her bottom lip. Was Lucy so desperate to know her father that she was ready to imagine every man she came in contact with might be he?
When Jenna knocked and then walked into Lucy’s room the younger girl hurriedly put down the address book she had been writing in. Her half-packed cases were still open on the bedroom floor, the clothes that Maureen, their daily, had had cleaned and laundered still in neat piles on the chair.
‘Come on, I’ll give you a hand,’ Jenna said briskly, removing the untidy piles of clothes Lucy had heaped in the cases and setting about restoring some sense of order. Earlier in the week she had prepared a list for Lucy, and now she asked her to find it, quickly ticking off everything as it was packed.
‘I hate school and I don’t want to go back,’ Lucy announced mutinously when Jenna had finished.
Although her heart ached with sympathy for her, Jenna felt she had to be firm.
‘I didn’t like it myself, darling,’ she admitted, ‘but a good education is so important—as you’ll discover once you leave school, especially these days.’
‘Important? Why?’ Lucy demanded bitterly. ‘So that I can be a career woman like you? That isn’t what I want from life. I want to get married, have a family…’
Trying not to let herself be hurt by Lucy’s obvious contempt for her own achievements, Jenna said patiently, ‘Of course you do, Lucy, but life isn’t a fairy story; there may come a time when for whatever reason you need to earn your own living. Marriage, for one thing, isn’t always for ever, Lucy.’
‘But at least I intend to get married,’ Lucy returned acidly. ‘I won’t let my children grow up not knowing who their father is. Wouldn’t he marry you? Didn’t he love you enough?’
Jenna knew that Lucy was deliberately trying to hurt her, and she fought hard not to give in to the temptation to tell her the truth—or at least some of it. In her own mind Lucy had made Jenna the villain of the piece, imbuing her unknown father with all the virtues he had in reality never possessed.
‘Will you be seeing James again?’
Lucy asked the question as she settled herself next to Jenna in the car.