‘Jenna, come back!’ Sarah commanded teasingly, her smile fading as she added slowly, ‘I think I understand what you’re trying to say. I know you’re probably right, but like you say, it isn’t always that easy. Whenever I feel myself liking James I get angry with myself,’ she admitted wryly. ‘I don’t suppose you can understand that…’
All too well, Jenna thought inwardly, far better than Sarah could ever know.
‘I think so,’ was all she said. ‘You feel torn between a very natural feeling of being drawn towards your step-brother, and an equally natural feeling of guilt because part of you feels that by liking him you are in some way betraying your mother. If you genuinely want to go to art school, you’re going to have to spend so much time studying and getting well that there won’t be time for you to worry so much about your other problems.’
She paused as the phone rang and picked up the receiver.
‘Jenna, it’s me, Graham, are you free for lunch by any chance?’
She could feel the warm colour moving swiftly up under her skin as she held the receiver. Graham Wilde had rung her several times since her return from honeymoon. On the first occasion he had found the bookcase she had wanted, and she had gone with him to see it, and then on to a celebratory lunch afterwards, from which she had returned, slightly light-headed, to be greeted by a coolly disapproving James.
Some reckless instinct she hadn’t known she possessed had led her into agreeing to go out to dinner with Graham two nights later, when he had called to invite her out. Graham knew that she was married, she argued with herself. Therefore, he was hardly likely to mean anything other than a social pleasantry by the invitation. James hadn’t been pleased, but he hadn’t argued either. She liked Graham. She found his company soothing, and his obvious admiration of her flattering. She also knew that their friendship irritated James, and for some reason that made her all the keener to pursue it. She might be married to James, she told herself, but he wasn’t going to lay the law down as far as her personal friends were concerned.
‘Yes…yes I am…’ she confirmed. They made arrangements to meet at a local pub which had a deservedly good reputation for its food and then Jenna replaced the receiver. As she did so she saw that Sarah was frowning slightly, but the younger girl made no comment, merely picking up her crutches and saying that it was almost time for Mrs Holder to arrive.
‘With a bit of luck by Christmas I should be fit enough to go to school with Lucy.’
‘Well, we certainly
hope so,’ Jenna agreed.
Lucy’s school had closed for the summer holidays the previous month. She had spent three weeks at the Hall with them, and Jenna had been thrilled by the new warmth in her relationship with her niece.
One thing that had surprised her though had been Lucy’s relationship with James. She had expected her niece to cling a little to him; and in fact rather to revel in her new relationship with him, but although it was undeniable that they got on well together, Lucy did not call James dad preferring, as Sarah did, to use his Christian name, and although it was obvious that she enjoyed his company her relationship with him was more that of niece and favourite uncle, or even sister and much older brother rather than daughter and father. This had surprised Jenna a little in view of Lucy’s determination to claim him as her father.
This week Lucy was in London, staying with her friend, and James would be bringing her back with him when he returned on Thursday.
It had already been arranged that at the start of the autumn term Lucy would attend a local private school with an excellent scholastic record.
Indeed, everything had worked out very well, Jenna reflected wryly, if she discounted her own feelings about her relationship with James. Sarah was slowly recovering, and, she hoped, coming to terms with her feelings about her step-brother. Lucy was far more settled and far, far happier. The work on the house was progressing well. James had been delighted with what she had done on their own temporary apartments and Jenna had even been approached by one or two of their neighbours with a view to doing some work for them. However, she had decided not to take on any work until the old Hall was finished. In fact, it surprised her how much she was enjoying this break from her career.
She loved the old Hall with an intensity that sometimes frightened her, but nothing frightened her as much as the desire that James could arouse inside her that was, truthfully, terrifying. It was in an effort to counteract his effect upon her that she accepted so many of Graham’s invitations. She found his company restful and undemanding after James’s. She knew that Graham desired her, and she had even gone as far as to wonder what it would be like to be kissed by him, whether his touch would have the same cataclysmic effect upon her as James’s had. In some ways, she wished it might. She didn’t want James to be the only person to affect her in that way. It made her feel too vulnerable.
In truth, James aroused inside her many emotions she found it hard to come to terms with. Her life seemed to be a constant state of conflict: days during which she genuinely managed to convince herself that she was capable of treating him with indifference and cool contempt, and then nights when he brought her so close to hating herself and the way he made her feel with his clever hands and mouth that she almost felt as though she would prefer not to wake up again in the morning. Sometimes she felt as though she were two completely different people; by day the cool, calm woman she had always been, but by night an unfamiliar wanton creature; a changeling who had somehow relinquished her real self and who wanted…What? she asked herself tiredly. What did she really want?
She got up from her desk, irritably pushing aside the accounts she had been working on. Against her will her thoughts winged their way after James. Did he ever feel torn apart by the way they lived, like she did? Did he regret their marriage? If so, he gave no sign of it to her.
Did he even know how much she hated and resented him? How bitter was her gall at being forced to accept him as her husband and lover? Before they had married she had made herself a vow that she would never live with him as his wife. He had broken that vow for her as easily as he might have destroyed a child’s toy.
A bitter, corrosive anger welled up inside her, bathing her with raw heat, fuelling a restless energy that demanded some physical outlet. James was making her do what he wished her to do, and how she hated him for that. But not as much as she hated herself for letting him.
On impulse she went outside, walking hurriedly through the grounds in the direction of the small ornamental lake. August had faded into September, and today there was just a warning touch of autumn in the air. Jenna shivered a little as she walked alongside the lake. How much more of this life could she endure?
Perhaps once the alterations to the Georgian wing were finished she would feel better. It was too cramped, living as they did at the moment. The contractors had promised her that they would be finished for Christmas. James had suggested that they hold a masked party on New Year’s Eve in the newly decorated ballroom. Where the house was concerned he was unstinting in his praise of what she had achieved. He was a very complex man; more complex that she had ever dreamed, she acknowledged, shivering again as her body forced her to recall how swiftly he could change from the mockingly urbane businessman who discussed finance and business deals over dinner, to the dark, demanding lover who possessed her body during the shadowy hours of the night. Who came to her and used his knowledge of her body and its weaknesses to break through her silent resistance, making her cry out with despair and delight.
An acute feeling of nausea suddenly gripped her and she stopped dead where she was. What if she should conceive his child? The thought of being even more tied to him was intensely intolerable, and yet she had taken no precautions against motherhood.
The practical side of Jenna could hardly believe her own folly and yet she knew inside why she had done nothing…it was because to do something would be to admit that she and James would continue as lovers…to admit that she wanted him, not just on the odd rare occasion, or in a moment of weakness brought on by too much champagne and emotion, but permanently…always…and that was a truth that as yet she was unable to face.
Slowly, she made her way back to the house. If she was going to meet Graham for lunch she would have to shower and get changed. She enjoyed these meetings with the antique dealer. Softer, gentler than James he treated her with an olde-worlde courtesy that she found soothing. But, best of all, Graham did not threaten her. He did not possess James’s particular brand of aggressive masculinity.
She dressed carefully in a new outfit, a softly pleated skirt in pink, with a matching long-line jacket worn over a toning pink and cream short-sleeved sweater. The colour was very striking against her hair which nowadays she normally wore down. James liked her to leave it loose, but James did not like her lunching with Graham. Her mouth compressed slightly over what she considered to be his dog-in-the-manger attitude. He had no emotional interest in her himself and yet he resented any friendships she formed elsewhere. Well, she was not totally his possession, Jenna raged, only too glad to find some way in which she could rebel properly against him. In her heart she knew quite well that her determination to pursue her friendship with Graham Wilde came from her bitter and deep resentment of the sexual hunger James aroused within her, but she fought the knowledge down, telling herself that she had every right to make her own friends, her own life.
She went to check on Sarah before going out for lunch and found her step-sister-in-law, as she had expected, in the Georgian hallway, watching enraptured as the two men worked silently on the high ceiling.
Jenna paused for a moment to watch herself. The allegorical scene was now taking real shape, the painted sky with its white clouds so realistic that one almost wanted to believe in it.
‘Don’t forget you’ve got schoolwork to do this afternoon, young lady,’ she chided Sarah gently, as she went to join her.