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

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.

Sarah had always got on well with her cousin. Sally was her senior by three years and there had always been a bond between them. She had been chief bridesmaid at Sally and Ross’s wedding two years ago, although it had been over a year since she had last seen them.

The shock Sally had tried to hide when she had met her from the train had been quickly followed by her cousin’s verbally expressed concern over her loss of weight and the tension dulling her skin and her eyes.

When she had first arrived no one seeing them together would ever have believed that she was the younger, Sarah acknowledged, but now, as she gave in to her body’s demand for rest and relaxation and tried to put aside her mental and emotional guilt at being so self-indulgent, she was slowly starting to regain some of the weight she had lost so that her five-foot frame looked more slender than gaunt, and her skin had begun to lose its city pallor and strain. That was the trouble with being a redhead: at times of emotional, physical or mental upset one’s skin did tend to reflect those stresses and become so pale in contrast to one’s hair that the effect was over-dramatic.

How the days she had spent outside had given her a warm peachy glow, and Ross had jokingly remarked over dinner the previous night, and Sally had commented as she was coming out this morning, that she was once again starting to look like the stunning sexy redhead who had generated so much male curiosity and comment at the wedding.

Sarah had pulled a face and grimaced at her. She personally would never have described herself as either sexy or stunning. She moved, trying not to recall the problems she had had when she had first entered teaching and some of her male colleagues, and even the older male pupils, had refused to take her seriously because of her looks. It was the combination of red hair and startlingly intense green eyes, plus the high cheekbones and pointed chin she had inherited from her mother, that was responsible for the unintentional sensuality of her looks.

In her teens those looks had caused her endless problems, often antagonising her own sex and making it difficult for her to make friends, and equally often leading the boys she met to assume that she was far more sexually aware and adventurous than was actually the case.

At university she had found that the best way to deal with the problem was to adopt a firm no-nonsense manner in such direct contrast to her looks that it immediately made it obvious that she was at university for the serious business of studying and obtaining her degree and not to have a good time.

By the time she had left university and started her first job she had learned to tuck her long hair into a neat chignon, and to play down her facial features by wearing only a minimum of makeup. She always chose sensible, sturdy clothes, suppressing her own unruly and dangerous urge to wear something more feminine and appealing.

Sally had grimaced with distaste when she had met her from the train, immediately condemning the beige shirtwaister dress she was wearing as unbelievably frumpy and sexless.

Sarah had started to point out that, as a teacher, the last thing she wanted was to be regarded as sexually provocative, but she had been too exhausted, too drained, to bother. Just as she had been unable to find the energy to resist when Sally had dragged her off to Ludlow and ruthlessly insisted on replacing almost everything in the sparse wardrobe she had brought with her.

Which was why today she was dressed in a skimpy halter-necked white top and a pair of cut-off denim jeans, her bare feet thrust into a pair of trainers, her hair caught up on top of her head in an untidy pony-tail to keep it off the back of her neck.

This heatwave was so enervating. It was an effort to think, never mind to move, or was it more because she was so exhausted that it seemed so much simpler to let others direct the course of her life, to simply give in and let herself go with the flow?

Behind her, upstream, a small creature disturbed by the passage of someone along the path made a noise that set the birds off in sharp shrill cries of warning.

Immediately Sarah felt her own muscles tense in response. This path was so quiet that she had almost begun to think of it as her own private retreat. As she drew herself further into the protection of the willow’s overhanging branches she hoped that whoever was coming towards her would walk past her without stopping to chat.

It was a new experience for her, this reluctance to involve herself with anyone. A result, perhaps, of the lecture she had received from her superiors when they had warned her that her over-involvement with her pupils was detrimental to her career.

She closed her eyes, determinedly blotting out the sound of someone approaching her hiding-place, but it was impossible to ignore the timid and very youthful voice that said uncertainly and very anxiously, ‘Excuse me, but is this the right way to Ludlow?’

Unwillingly she opened her eyes.

A child…a boy, no more than six years old at most, was standing watching her. He was fair-haired and blue-eyed, a little too thin for his age and with an anxiety about him that her senses quickly registered and recognised.

Even while she was telling herself that, whoever he was and whatever he was doing here all on his own on this remote country footpath, it was nothing to do with her, and that all she had to do was to answer his question and set him on his way, another part of her, that compassionate, caring, womanly part of her that had already caused her so many problems was wondering who he was, and why he was here, so very, very much alone, and so very, very young.

As she sat up and studied him she fibbed, ‘I don’t really know, but I’ve got a map somewhere here with me…if you’d like to come and sit down for a moment I’ll have a look at it.’

That was true at any rate, she did have a map, and she also had the very generous lunch that Mrs Beattie, Sally’s wonderful daily, had packed up for her that morning.

Reluctantly the child took a step towards her, looking backwards over his shoulder as he did so. Now there was fear in his eyes as well as tension.

What was he running away from? Sarah wondered as she deliberately, very slowly opened the rucksack beside her, and equally deliberately, with nonchalant casualness, removed a can of soft drink and some sandwiches. The child was betraying his youth by his very lack of preparation for his odyssey. His clothes, too, seemed to have been chosen without much regard for their practicality—a pair of heavy jeans, a T-shirt, and on his feet what looked like a pair of baseball boots. The jeans were far too hot and heavy for this weather and they were also too big for him. His T-shirt and his boots, though, were obviously expensive, which ruled out the jeans having been bought with extra growing-room…which seemed to suggest that whoever had bought them had not really been sure of his size.

A tiny frown touched her forehead as Sarah deliberately took her time over extricating the map from the rucksack.

Pretending to be unaware of his tension and the anxious way he kept on looking back in the direction he had just come, she patted the ground beside her, and said easily, ‘Come and sit down. I’m afraid I’m not very good with maps, so it may take me quite a while to find out if you’re on the right path. I’m only on holiday here, you see. What about you? Do you live round here?’

She watched him as he automatically started to respond to her question and then caught himself up after he had started to say, ‘Yes. I live…’ his face suddenly settling into stubborn unhappy lines. ‘I’m staying here,’ he told her gruffly. ‘But I don’t really live here.’

‘Ah.’

Sarah unfolded the map, and then, although she herself was not particularly hungry, she unwrapped some of Mrs Beattie’s sandwiches and started to eat one, pausing to indicate the open foil-wrapped package and to say, ‘Would you like a sandwich?’

He nodded his head, and then said huskily, ‘Yes, please. I am rather hungry.’

He had excellent manners; his speech was almost old-fashionedly formal, as though he had spent a long time with older people. Thoughtfully Sarah watched him as he devoured his sandwich.

She knew already that she would not let him go; that she would have to somehow or other win his confidence and then restore him to his family.

A child of his age on his own…there were so many hazards…so many dangers, from man as well as from nature. His family, whoever they were and wherever they lived, must be going frantic with worry if they knew that he was missing.

She suspected he had not come very far and that the exhaustion she could see so clearly in his eyes came more from misery and fear than from the physical effort of having walked a long way.

He had a scratch on one arm where he had obviously pushed past a bramble, and there were smears of dirt on his T-shirt. He had finished his sandwich and was eyeing the others in the pile with a hungry intensity that made Sarah hide a small smile as she offered casually, ‘Finished? Have another?’

‘You know,’ she told him as he bit eagerly into the bread, ‘I’m not sure that you are on the right path. From this map, it looks as though…’ She paused, frowning, ignoring the tension she could feel emanating from him. ‘I think you could possibly pick up the path half a mile or so further on.’

‘Half a mile; is that a very long way?’

‘Fairly…and then it’s another six or seven miles to Ludlow. Are you going there for something important?’

As she looked at him she saw that he was avoiding her eyes, not wanting to lie to her, but obviously not wanting to tell her the truth either.

‘Never mind…there might be a short cut,’ she offered, re-studying the map. ‘It’s a pity I don’t have a car, otherwise I could drive you there.’

She paused to see how he was going to react to this suggestion, and was relieved to see hesitance and reluctance.

‘I’m not allowed to go in cars with strangers,’ he told her immediately.

Sarah suppressed a small sigh. Poor kid, hadn’t anyone warned him that talking to strangers could be equally dangerous?

‘No, of course not,’ she agreed gravely, investigating the rucksack and offering him an apple. He was still standing up and she patted the ground beside her again and invited, ‘If you come and sit down here you can have a look at the map. I’m not very good at reading them.’

‘No…my mother isn’t either…’ He broke off, his expression suddenly changing. ‘I mean…she wasn’t.’

He had turned his head, tucking it into his shoulder defensively, a betraying tremor wobbling his voice.

Was his mother no longer alive, as his words seemed to imply, or was she merely no longer a part of his life? Sarah was in no doubt now that he was running away and that he was desperately unhappy, but he was still obeying her suggestion and coming to sit down beside her.

He was old enough to have left his baby-fat behind him, but his arms and legs still had the softness of early childhood, and as he sat down beside her he smelled of clean young skin and sunshine.

‘My name’s Sarah…what’s yours?’ she asked him as she moved the map so that he could look at it.

‘Robert,’ he told her, ‘although…’

‘Robert…that’s a very grown-up name,’ Sarah admired. ‘Doesn’t anyone call you Bobbie?’

He shook his head.

‘My…my…Nana used to call me Robbie, but he said it was a baby’s name. He calls me Robert.’ His face suddenly crumpled up, tears shimmering in his eyes, and Sarah respected that the ‘he’ referred to with such anger and dislike was most probably his father.

Unwilling to probe too much and to frighten him into silence before she had obtained from him the information she needed, she didn’t push him but said simply and pacifically, ‘Well, Robert is a very grown-up name, and I expect you must be…well, at least eight.’

She could see the way her words caused his chest to swell with pride and his tears to disappear.

‘I’m six,’ he told her. ‘Almost seven. Well, I’ll be seven in May.’

In May. It was only July now, which meant that he was in fact only just six, but Sarah widened her eyes admiringly and commented that she had thought he was much, much older.

‘Won’t your…your nana be missing you, though, Robert?’ she suggested gently. ‘She’ll be wondering where you are, I’m sure. Did you leave her a note?’

Immediately his eyes filled with tears as he shook his head and burst out, ‘Nana’s dead. She died in a car accident with my mother and Tom…and I had to come back here and live with…with him. I hate him. I want to go back home. I don’t want to stay with him any more. Mrs Richards could look after me. She did before when my mother and Tom were away and Nana was ill. I don’t have to stay here with him. My mother told me that. She said I didn’t have to see him if I didn’t want to and I didn’t want to. I don’t like him. My mother said he’d never wanted me anyway…that he only wanted me to get at her.’

As she listened to the jumbled staccato words Sarah fought down the wave of compassion making her own eyes moisten and her heart ache.

From what he wasn’t saying as much as from what he was, she was beginning to build up a clear picture of what must have happened. His parents were either separated or divorced; he had obviously lived with his mother and perhaps his grandmother as well in some other part of the country, and from what he had said it sounded as though he had lost them in a car accident and was now living with his father.A father who, it seemed, had never wanted him and who had perhaps only reluctantly accepted responsibility for him now. Poor child, no wonder he was so unhappy, no wonder he was running away, but, much as her heart ached for him, much as she sympathised with him, she had to find a way of discovering where he lived and who his father was.

‘So you’re going to find Mrs Richards, is that it?’ she hazarded, causing him to nod his head. ‘Where does she live? Is it far away?’

‘She lives in London,’ he told her importantly.

‘London; that’s a long way to go,’ Sarah commented sympathetically. ‘A very long way. Have you been walking for a long time?’

‘I left after breakfast,’ he told her immediately and innocently, causing Sarah a panic of guilt for the way she was deceiving him. But it was for his own good…his own protection. ‘I had to wait until he…my father had gone to work. Mrs Jacobs went out shopping. She told me not to go out of the garden. I don’t like her.’

Mrs Jacobs. Sarah bit her bottom lip. Surely she had heard Mrs Beattie mentioning a Mrs Jacobs who was one of her neighbours in the village? She had gained the impression that the two women were not good friends and that Sally’s cleaner heartily despised and disliked the other woman.

‘Did…did you leave your father a note?’ Sarah asked him.

He shook his head, his face settling into a stubborn mask.

‘He won’t care. He’ll be glad to see the back of me,’ he told her. ‘Mrs Jacobs says I’m a nuisance and that I cause too much dis…dis…’

‘Disruption?’ Sarah suggested. She suppressed a sigh as he nodded his head, plainly impressed by her mind-reading abilities. Much as she sympathised with him, she was going to have to get his address out of him and take him home.

Unpleasant though both Mrs Jacobs and his father sounded, she could see no obvious signs of any kind of physical or emotional abuse about him, and she was experienced enough to have recognised them had they been there. For all his fear and apprehension, he lacked the desperate silence, the smell of fear that seemed to emanate from such children.

But he was unhappy, desperately so, and she could not help wondering a little about his father, questioning what manner of man he was. She had the impression from what Robert had told her that his father saw him as a burden…a nuisance.

‘And that’s why you’re going to London…to find Mrs Richards.’

‘I’d rather live with her than with my father,’ Robert told her, tears filling his eyes as he repeated, ‘I don’t like him.’

Instinctively Sarah opened her arms to him, and he ran into them, his small body shaken by sobs as she held him, soothing him, comforting him. Poor baby, and he was still only a baby, for all his attempts to pretend otherwise.

Soon, when he had calmed down a little, she would try to coax him into agreeing to go home, but for the moment it was more important to win his confidence and comfort him than to question him, and so she let him cry, gently rocking him, while she smoothed his fair hair.

Absorbed in what she was doing, she missed the warning signs of the birds’ flight as an intruder disturbed them, so that her first intimation of his arrival was when the protective fronds of the willow were swept aside, and she looked up to see a very tall and very angry man standing glaring furiously at her.

‘Robert.’

The curt demand for the child’s attention gave away their relationship even before Robert started trembling against her, clinging on to her.

‘It’s all right, Robbie,’ she whispered, soothing him, anger darkening her own eyes at Robert’s father’s lack of sensitivity.

‘If you would kindly let go of my son…’

The words were a demand rather than a request, and immediately Sarah felt herself reacting against them, her already low opinion of him dropping several more notches as she reflected on his poor handling of the situation, and his apparent inability to see that his attitude was simply terrifying and upsetting his son.

‘You must be Robert’s father,’ she commented, forcing back her anger and trying to stand up. Not an easy feat with Robert still clinging to her, but somehow or other she managed it, automatically assuming her classroom manner, forgetting how inappropriately it went with her casual clothes and almost childish pony-tail and makeup-less face, until she saw how at first angrily and even contemptuously she was being observed.

‘Yes, I am,’ he agreed flatly. ‘But I’ve no idea who you are, or what you’re doing with my son. However, I’ll have you know that the police take a pretty dim view of child abduction.’

Abduction… Sarah sucked in a mouthful of air, too stunned by what he was implying to be able to respond verbally.

Robert was clinging even harder to her now, and she wasn’t sure which of them was shaking the most, Robert from fear or she from anger.

As she swallowed the air she had gulped she retaliated with some heat.

‘Yes, and they take an equally dim view of…of parental cruelty.’

‘Parental cruelty?’

He had started to walk towards them, and now he came to an abrupt halt. His skin was tanned but suddenly his face had lost all its colour. Not from shame or guilt, but from rage. She could see it glittering in his eyes. He had very, very pale blue eyes, like shards of ice, she had thought at first, but now suddenly they were burning so hot that she could almost feel the searing lick of that heat against her skin.

Unlike Robert, he wasn’t fair-haired but much darker, although she noticed that his thick dark hair was touched faintly with gold at the ends as though he had at some time or other spent a long, long time in a very hot climate.

Surprisingly, though, facially he was very like his son, or, rather, Robert was a miniature version of him. They had the same bone-structure, the same nose, the same mouth, but whereas in Robert that full bottom lip trembled with baby emotion and vulnerability, in his father it betokened a sensuality and sexuality which made Sarah itch to distance herself physically from him, her body alive to a sense of danger that went far deeper than any immediate and conscious awareness of his anger and irritation. She didn’t allow herself to ponder on this, though; she was far too concerned about Robert and his panic-stricken reaction to his father’s arrival on the scene to have the time to concentrate on her own atavistic awareness of his father as a man…no, not as a man…as a male…a hunting, arrogant, sexual male being to whom she was a natural form of prey.

‘Parental cruelty,’ he repeated grimly now, jerking her attention back in focus. ‘What the hell are you trying to say? What has Robert been telling you?’ he demanded.

Without making any move towards her, without either raising his voice or using any kind of aggressive force, he was nevertheless attempting to intimidate her, and she responded immediately to that attempted intimidation, raising herself to her full height, her chin firming, her eyes steely and cool as they held his gaze.

‘Robert hasn’t said anything,’ she told him not quite truthfully. ‘He was in far too distressed a state. He’s a very unhappy little boy,’ she added pointedly, adding, to reinforce the point, ‘He was on his way to Ludlow…to London.’

She saw the way the blood surged up under the other’s skin, and knew how much he hated being confronted with the truth. In other circumstances she might have felt sorry for him. He was wearing an expensive business suit, and she noticed that his hands were badly scratched, and his shoes covered in dust, as though he had pushed his way relentlessly down the narrow stream-side path, desperately seeking his missing son. But motivated by what? Anger? She could certainly see that in his face, along with impatience and irritation, but what she could not see there was any love, any remorse, any guilt.

‘Come here, Robert,’he was demanding tersely now, frowning when his son refused to obey him. He was plainly unused to dealing with children, Sarah suspected, and, thinking of the child clinging piteously to her side, she said quietly,

‘Perhaps if I came back with you…?’

Immediately the tanned male face tightened in rejection, the blue eyes cold and biting as they studied her. She could see the refusal forming on his lips, but before he could speak Robert burst out frantically, ‘I won’t go back. I won’t go with you…I hate you…I hate you…and Mummy hated you too.’

He was crying again, tearing, racking sobs that, if they weren’t checked, could easily carry him into hysteria. Instinctively Sarah bent down and picked him up, lifting him in her arms, so that his face was buried in the hollow of her throat, his small arms wrapping fiercely round her as she rocked and soothed him.

As she talked quietly to him she heard his father cursing under his breath.

He shot back a cuff and glanced at his watch, and the sympathy she had started to feel for him fled as Sarah heard him say edgily, ‘That’s enough, Robert. Look, I’ve got a meeting in half an hour…’

He must have seen the contempt, the dislike that flashed through her eyes, Sarah recognised, because he stopped speaking, his mouth firming into a hard angry line before he told her acidly, ‘I’m a businessman as well as a father. I have a responsibility to my workforce as well as to my son. The outcome of an important new contract is in the balance here, and this meeting is a crucial one. Without it…well, let’s just say that without it I could have to let some of the workforce go. Why on earth he had to choose today of all days to play up like this… You do realise that Mrs Jacobs is out of her mind with worry, don’t you?’ he demanded of his son. ‘She had to ring me at work to tell me you’d gone missing, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Ben saw you heading for the stream path…And as for you…’ he gave Sarah an angry, bitter look ‘…surely you realise that a child of his age, on his own, has to have left home without those responsible for him knowing where he is, and instead of encouraging him you could at least have attempted to take him home.’

His accusation took Sarah’s breath away, but before she could deny his statement he was speaking to his son again, reiterating curtly, ‘We’re going home, Robert.’

But, as Sarah had known would happen, Robert refused to let go of her, clinging desperately to her when his father tried to take hold of him.

It was, she knew, out of necessity and nothing else that the man was obliged to stand so close to her, close enough to put his arms around her as he tried to unwind Robert’s hands from behind her neck. She could smell the hot man scent of his skin, see the tiny pores of his face, dark where his beard would grow, his lashes a thick and enviably long fan against his skin as he frowned over his impossible task.

Uncomfortably aware of just how she was reacting to him, of the tiny female ripple of unexpected and unwanted response that jarred through her body, Sarah tried to step back from him, driven, as much by her need to put some distance between them as by her desire to help his son, into saying huskily, ‘Look, it would be much easier if I came back with you.’

She could see the refusal…the rejection…and his dislike in his eyes as they focused brilliantly on her. He was still far too close…far, far too close, she realised as she felt her breath stop in her throat, and her heart started to pound unevenly.

‘I’m not going back. I want to go and live with Mrs Richards,’ Robert was protesting, still clinging to her, adding piteously, ‘Don’t let him take me. I hate him.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! Very well, then, you’d better come back with us. It’s this way.’

Some people had no sense of gratitude, Sarah reflected grimly as he turned on his heel, patently expecting her to follow, but to her surprise he stopped, lifting back the branches of the tree so that she could step through, and then picking up her rucksack before saying more quietly to Robert, ‘You’ve got two legs, Robert, and you’re far too heavy for…’

‘Sarah. Sarah Myers,’ Sarah supplied automatically for him.

‘…for Miss Myers to carry you all the way back to the house.’

‘Don’t want to walk,’ was Robert’s response, his bottom lip jutting out stubbornly as he turned his head and looked at his father. Sarah’s neck was wet from his tears and she felt a wave of tenderness and concern wash over her as she willed his acerbic parent to at least try to understand and to have some compassion for him.

‘Very well, then, if you won’t walk I’ll carry you.’

As she felt the way Robert shrank back from his father Sarah’s tender heart ached for the little boy.

‘Why don’t you show me the way, Robert?’ she suggested, gently putting him down but protectively keeping her own body between him and his father as she took hold of his hand.

As she turned her head she saw that her gesture had not been lost on Robert’s father. His mouth was curved into a line of bitter cynicism.

‘Quite the little mother, aren’t you?’ he goaded her grimly. ‘What is it about your sex that makes you so obsessively unable to behave with any kind of logic where children are concerned? Can’t you see that he’s—?’

‘That he’s what, Mr…?’ Sarah intervened furiously, challenging him.

He looked at her, frowning as though surprised by both her attack and her desire to know his name.

‘Gray. Gray Philips,’ he introduced himself flatly. ‘And you must be able to see that Robert is deliberately working himself up into a hysterical state.’

Quietly, so that Robert couldn’t overhear her, Sarah contradicted equally flatly, ‘No…what I see is a little boy who’s lost everyone who loves him…a little boy who has apparently been left in the charge of a woman who neither likes nor cares about him…a little boy who has no one he can turn to other than his dead mother’s housekeeper.’

Sarah knew that she was being deliberately emotive, but she couldn’t help it. There was something about this impatient, critical man that pushed her into needing to bring home to him his child’s emotional plight. ‘What I can also see is that you don’t appear to know very much about children, Mr Philips.’

Sarah drew in her breath at the way he looked deliberately at her own bare left hand before taunting softly, ‘And you do? Do you have children of your own, then?’

To her mortification, Sarah felt her skin flushing as she was forced to admit, ‘No…no, I don’t.’

‘Then I suggest you wait until you do before you start handing out the homespun advice,’ he told her grittily.

Thoroughly incensed by his attitude, Sarah corrected him impetuously, ‘I might not have any children, but professionally—’

‘Professionally?’ Gray Philips cut in sharply, frowning at her. ‘What exactly does that mean? What exactly is your profession?’

‘I’m a teacher,’ Sarah told him, wondering even as she said the words just how much longer they would be true, and then pushing her fears and doubts behind her as she felt Robert’s hand trembling in her own.

No matter how much she might dislike his father, she was not helping Robert by allowing her antagonism to take hold of her.

He ‘hated’ his father, Robert had said with childish intensity, and Sarah had not missed the brief look of pain that had touched Gray Philips’s mouth as he had listened to his son’s rejection of him. Despite her sympathy with Robert, she had to acknowledge that his father had every right to insist on taking the little boy back home.

She could not stop him from doing that, but what she could do was to go with him and to satisfy herself as much as she could that it was the confusion and grief of losing those people that he loved that was upsetting Robert so much and not any actual mistreatment by his father.

Oddly, despite his antagonism towards her, she could not quite convince herself that Gray Philips was mistreating his child. He had been too angry for that…his reaction to his son’s disappearance too free of guilt and deception to suggest that he knew exactly why Robert had been running away.

He was walking ahead of them now, pausing to hold aside the vicious brambles blocking the path, his frown deepening as he saw the way Robert clung to her side.

It was twenty minutes before they were in sight of the village, but Gray Philips didn’t walk towards it, instead branching off on to an even narrower and more overgrown path, which came to an abrupt end outside a solid wooden gate set into a high brick wall.

Gray Philips opened the gate for her, standing to one side so that she and Robert could precede him through it. Out of good manners, or as a means of ensuring that…that what? That she didn’t pick Robert up and run off with him…What chance would she have had of outpacing a tough adult male like him?

The garden inside the brick wall was overgrown, the brambles even thicker than those on the path outside. Beyond the wilderness of undergrowth a cordon of trees guarded a green lawn and formal flowerbeds, and beyond that lay the house, all mellow brick and unevenly leaded windows.

It was old, Sarah recognised, Elizabethan, and much, much larger than her cousin’s farmhouse.

Whatever Robert’s father might not be, he was quite obviously a very wealthy man. But wealth did not buy happiness, and, even while she was admiring the house, she was not envying him the money that had enabled him to buy it. What good was money when his son was so obviously afraid of him…when his wife had presumably left him? Had she been afraid of him as well? But she must have loved him once. She had married him, after all…they had had a child.

A tiny shudder went through her as she recognised the dangerous course of her thoughts. To question someone’s personal life so intimately and intensely, even within the privacy of her own thoughts, was so alien a response within her that she instinctively recoiled from acknowledging what she was doing.

Robert’s footsteps lagged as they crossed the lawn. He was holding back, dragging his feet. His father stopped, frowning down at both of them.

‘Is Mrs Jacobs still here?’

Sarah found she was holding her breath, praying that Gray Philips would deal sensitively with his son…would hear as she did the thread of fear that ran beneath the words.

If he did, he gave no sign of it.

‘No, she isn’t,’ he told Robert curtly, and then, as though unable to stop himself, he dropped down on one knee in front of the small boy and placed his hands on his shoulders, demanding gruffly, ‘Robert, why did you do it? Why did you run away? You must have known how worried Mrs Jacobs would be. You know you aren’t allowed to go outside the garden…you know.’

Robert was still clinging to Sarah’s hands. He had started to tremble violently, and tears poured down his face as he burst out passionately, ‘I don’t like it here. I want to go home…I want Nana…I want Mrs Richards. I don’t like it here.’

Immediately his father’s hands dropped from Robert’s shoulders. His face was in shadow as he turned slightly away, his voice harsh and low as he said roughly, ‘Robert, your grandmother is dead. You know that.’

He stopped as Sarah made an instinctive sound of shocked distress.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he challenged her. ‘Lie to him? Pretend that none of it happened…that his mother, her lover and his grandmother are still alive?

‘Come on, Robert. Let’s get you inside, and this time no running away.’

As he stood up he took hold of Robert’s arm, firmly taking charge of him, but Robert still clung to Sarah, pleading with her not to leave him.

His father might not be actively unkind to him, but he seemed to have little or no idea of how to deal with him, Sarah recognised as she instinctively tried to soothe Robert’s panic, smoothing the soft hair back off his hot face as she promised, ‘If you’re a good boy and go with your father now, Robert, I’ll come and see you tomorrow if you like.’

‘There’s no need for that.’

She met the look Gray Philips gave her with an equally challenging one of her own.

‘Not according to you,’ she agreed coldly. ‘But Robert—’

‘I don’t want you to leave me. I want you to stay with me,’ Robert said, and burst out crying.

Kneeling down beside him, she tried to comfort him as best she could.

‘I can’t stay now, Robert,’ she told him. ‘My cousin will be wondering where I am, but I promise I’ll come and see you tomorrow.’

She looked defiantly at Gray Philips as she said the words, challenging him to refuse to allow her to see his son, and then, before Gray could say anything to her, and desperately trying to blot out Robert’s tearful pleas to her to stay, she turned her back on both of them and hurried back towards the wooden gate.

CHAPTER TWO

HALF an hour later, as she walked towards her cousin’s house, Sarah was still trembling with a mixture of shock and disbelief. She still could not entirely believe it had all actually happened. That poor little boy. He had been so upset…and his father had been so remote…so…so irritated and impatient…so completely unaware of how to respond to his son’s misery and despair.

Sally was in the garden when Sarah opened the gate, dead-heading her roses.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked with some concern. ‘You look upset.’

Sally was frowning when Sarah had finished explaining to her what had happened.

‘Gray Philips…I’d heard that his son had recently come to live with him. The boy’s mother, Gray’s ex-wife, was killed in a car accident. She was pretty wild, according to local gossip. She was having affairs with other men almost before the ink had dried on their marriage certificate.

‘I never met her, but apparently they separated before the little boy was born. I believe that Gray fought for custody of him, but lost, and that there were difficulties over access, which might explain the child’s apparent antipathy towards his father. It must be very traumatic for him.’

‘Yes, dreadfully,’ Sarah agreed vehemently. ‘The poor little mite was in a terrible state.’

Sally’s eyes rounded.

‘I didn’t mean for the boy, I meant for his father…Gray.’

When Sarah frowned she asked quietly, ‘Think about it. You’ve never been allowed to see your child, never had anything to do with him, and suddenly he’s there living with you…hating you…probably blaming you for his mother’s death. Imagine the state he must have been in when he found out that Robert had gone missing.’

Sarah’s frown deepened. Sally was making her feel quite guilty…as though she had somehow been unfair towards Gray Philips, as though she had deliberately misjudged and condemned him.

‘So you’re going back to see him, the little boy, tomorrow, then?’ Sally asked her.

‘I promised I would, although his father wasn’t very pleased.’

Sally gave her a thoughtful look.

‘You’re such a soft touch,’ she told her wryly, ‘but don’t get too involved, will you, love? Rumour has it that Gray Philips is a man who, because of the breakdown of his marriage, doesn’t have a very good opinion of our sex.’

‘That’s his problem, not mine,’ Sarah responded firmly, and yet she was aware of a sense of dismay as she listened to her cousin’s words, even though they only confirmed what her instincts had already told her.

And yet why should she feel dismayed? Gray Philips meant nothing to her; she hadn’t even particularly liked him, and she certainly hadn’t liked the way he was treating his son.

But she had responded to him physically. She had been very, very intensely aware of him as a man, aware of him in a shockingly sexual and intimate way that was totally foreign to her nature.

She had had a brief love-affair when she was at university, a relationship with a fellow student which had lasted a little over six months, but the sexual side of that relationship had never been as important to her as the emotional one. Even before she was ready to admit that she had fallen out of love with Andy, she had lost all interest in him sexually.

Since then she had been too busy, her life filled with too many other things to allow her the time to develop a committed relationship. She had male friends, went out on dates, but none of the men she knew had ever had one tenth, one hundredth of the effect on her that Gray Philips had had.

Trembling a little, she pushed that knowledge away from her, not wanting to confront or analyse it.

Beside her Sally was saying, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s go in and have something to eat.’

OVER DINNER that evening Sally related the events of Sarah’s encounter to Ross.

‘Gray Philips…’ his eyebrows rose ‘…hmm. That’s interesting. What did you make of him, Sarah? He’s very well thought of by the local business community. A sort of local boy made good. He took over an ailing family business when his uncle died, a light engineering concern in Ludlow, and he’s managed to turn it right round and make it very successful. I have met him, although I don’t know him very well. He’s the sort who seems to prefer to keep himself to himself. Doesn’t play golf…and he isn’t a member of the new private sports centre that’s opened outside Ludlow recently, and yet he certainly looks pretty fit.

‘I had heard that he’d got his son living with him. My boss happened to mention the other day that Philips had been in touch with him, asking if his wife could recommend a good agency to supply him with someone to take charge of the child. Apparently he’s been having problems in that direction. A wealthy single man…’ Ross gave a small shrug. ‘It seems the kind of woman he wanted to employ is reluctant to work in a household without another woman in it, and the kind that does want the job seems to be more interested in keeping him company than his son. He has got a housekeeper now, though, I believe.’

‘Elsie Jacobs from the village,’ Sally told him, pulling a face. ‘And you know what she’s like. Hardly the ideal person to have charge of a small child.’

‘Mm. So what did you think of him, then, Sarah? Impressive, isn’t he?’

‘If you happen to like arrogant, bad-tempered and completely insensitive men, then I suppose he is,’ Sarah agreed tartly.

Ross loved to tease her, and was constantly telling her that it was time she found herself a man and settled down, so she knew quite well what lay behind his question. This time, though, she wasn’t going to rise for Ross’s very obvious bait, nor his assumed mock-chauvinistic pose.

‘It’s the little boy, Robert, I feel sorry for,’ Sally told her husband. ‘From what Sarah was saying, he was almost distraught. He was trying to run away to London to find his grandmother’s housekeeper. It must have been awful for him to lose everyone he loved, everyone who was familiar to him, like that.’

‘Mm…although by all accounts his mother was far from the madonna type,’ Ross interrupted. ‘People locally don’t seem to have a very high opinion of her, but then, I suppose, with Gray being local and her not, and the marriage only lasting for such a short time…And to deny Gray any kind of access to the boy…’

‘Surely no court would do that without good reason?’ Sarah pointed out, frowning.

‘Well, you’d think not, but get yourself a good enough lawyer and who knows? And apparently she, the mother, was pretty good at putting on a performance when she deemed it necessary, whereas Gray, from what I know and have heard of him, isn’t the type to actively sue for people’s sympathy and compassion.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ Sarah agreed feelingly, remembering how much Robert’s father had antagonised her with his curt dismissal of her and his manner towards his son.

Ross shot her a very thoughtful look.

‘All the same, he’s very well thought of locally, and he’s done quite a lot for the community.’

‘Pity he hasn’t done something for his son,’ Sarah said grimly. ‘If you could have seen him…He was so upset…so…so unhappy.’

Ross frowned. ‘You’re not trying to suggest that Philips is actually harming the boy in some way, are you?’

Immediately Sarah shook her head.

‘No…at least not in any physical sense, and not deliberately, but emotionally…There doesn’t seem to be any kind of bond between them at all. I suspect he…Gray Philips looks on his son as just another responsibility, a burden he’s had to assume. He seemed more concerned about a meeting he was supposed to attend than Robert…and, of course, to Robert he’s a stranger. If there hasn’t been any contact between them since Robert’s birth…’

‘And if, as you seemed to think was the case, his mother talked to him about Gray as though he was some kind of monster, he’s bound to be afraid, isn’t he?’ Sally put in.

‘Not an easy situation for any man to deal with, but in Gray Philips’s present position it must be doubly difficult,’ Ross commented, explaining, ‘There’s been some talk of a large multi-national wanting to take over the company. Gray is the major shareholder, but there are other family members holding shares, who, it seems, are in favour of the take-over because it will give them instant cash. Gray, on the other hand, quite naturally wants to retain ownership of the business, so there’s an awful lot of behind-the-scenes negotiating going on. I suspect that ultimately he’ll have to buy out the other shareholders; that will mean raising one hell of a lot of money. No, I shouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now,’Ross concluded.

THAT NIGHT in bed, for the first time since her historic and depressing interview with her superiors, Sarah found that it wasn’t their criticisms of her that were going round and round in her brain as she tried to go to sleep, but that instead she was reliving her run-in with Gray Philips.

Strange how powerful the human mind was. Without even the slightest conscious effort of will she could mentally visualise him in such clear and sharp detail that she could see the changing expressions cross his face; could hear the strong male sound of his voice; could picture each gesture, each movement he had made, almost as though the man himself were there with her.

She turned over in bed, fiercely closing her eyes, trying to block him out of her mind. It didn’t matter what Ross had said to her; she still felt that Gray Philips could have done more, ought to have done more to help his son. That poor little boy, to be so cruelly robbed of those he loved…to be removed from a familiar and loved environment to one that to him must appear totally hostile and unfriendly. To be forced to live with a father who all his young life he had been told was someone who did not love him.

‘I hate you,’ Robert had said to his father with all the vehemence of a frightened child, and just for a moment Sarah had thought she had seen some flicker of emotion burn in those so cold ice-blue eyes. But what that emotion might have been she did not know. Anger and impatience most probably…certainly he had not displayed any other kind of emotion…any kind of warmth or love.

Perhaps in one way it had been wrong of her to promise to visit Robert without first obtaining his father’s permission…perhaps she had done so deliberately because she had known that that permission would have been withheld, but how could she have lived with herself if she had deliberately and uncaringly turned her back on the little boy, shrugging her shoulders and telling herself that he was not her concern? No, she could not have done that. It ran completely counter to her whole nature. Tiredly she allowed herself to drift towards sleep.

‘LOOK, WHY DON’T you take my car? I shan’t be using it today, so you might as well.’

They were sitting having coffee in the kitchen, and Sally’s offer of the use of her car made Sarah say gratefully, ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind, although I’m not sure how to find the house. The path went to a back gate and…’

‘I’ve got a map of the village. The house isn’t difficult to find. I’ll get the map and show you…

‘It was Gray Philips’s grandfather who originally bought it,’ Sally explained when she returned with the map, which she spread out on the kitchen table, pinning it down with her half-full mug of coffee.

‘Gray’s father was the older brother and should have inherited both it and the business, but he was in the army. He was killed in action when Gray was quite small. At least, that’s what Mrs Richards told me. His mother apparently remarried and went to live in America, leaving Gray here. He was brought up by his grandfather, his uncle never married, and—again according to Mrs Richards—Gray was sent to boarding-school and then on to university, so that he virtually only spent his holidays here when he was growing up.’

Sarah was frowning as she listened to her cousin. Against her will she felt an aching tenderness, an awareness of how very lonely Gray Philips’s childhood must have been, but surely that loneliness should have made him more compassionate towards his own child and not less? Then again, she knew enough about psychology to know that an adult would often inflict on his or her own children the same miseries they themselves had suffered, sometimes deliberately, but more often than not quite subconsciously, unaware that, out of their own deeply buried pain and resentment, they were unable to let go of the past and their subconscious resentment of another child, their child, enjoying a happier childhood than they had known.

Most people when confronted with such a truth were both appalled and angry, repudiating it immediately, even when it was explained to them that they were not consciously aware of what they were doing.

Was Gray Philips like that? Did he subconsciously resent his son’s happiness?

She was leaping to unfounded conclusions, Sarah warned herself as she forced herself to concentrate on studying the map…allowing her emotions to take control of her. What Robert needed right now was not someone to reinforce his lack of trust and love for his father, but someone to gently encourage him to form a bond with Gray.

That task was not hers, she warned herself half an hour later as she got into Sally’s car. All she could do was to try to comfort Robert as best she could and to gently point out to him the dangers of trying to run away. It was a pity that Gray Philips had not taken the trouble to find someone more sympathetic and understanding than Mrs Jacobs to take charge of his son, since he plainly was not prepared to give Robert the emotional comfort and support he needed himself.

She found the entrance to the house easily enough. Automatic gates swung open as she drove towards them, admitting her to the gravel-covered drive.

The front view of the house betrayed that it was even larger than she had first imagined and built in the traditional Elizabethan E-shape. The drive swept round not to the front of the house, but through a brick archway and into what had once been the stable-yard. Parking her car here, Sarah climbed out.

Was it her imagination or did the sound of her shoes crunching over the gravel seem preternaturally loud?

She walked round to the front of the house, pausing to admire the double row of clipped yews that framed the main path as she did so. Beyond them in the distance she could see the shape of a formal pond and the spray of a fountain. Reflecting that it must cost a fortune to keep the house and garden in order, she mounted the steps and pulled the bell chain.

For a long time nothing happened, and she was just about to wonder angrily if Gray Philips had given Mrs Jacobs instructions not to admit her, when the door suddenly opened to the extent of its safety chain and a small, familiar voice asked uncertainly, ‘Is that you, Sarah?’

‘Robert…Where’s Mrs Jacobs?’ she asked the little boy as he reached up to release the safety chain.

‘She’s gone home,’ Robert told her when the door was open and Sarah went inside. ‘She said she wasn’t paid to look after the likes of me and that I was getting on her nerves,’ he added woefully.

The hall was low-ceilinged and beamed, with a polished wooden floor and an enormous cavern of a fireplace. It was immaculately clean and yet somehow unwelcoming.

The oak coffer against the wall cried out for a pewter jug full of flowers, the floor for a richly coloured rug, and stairs with barley-sugar twisted and carved posts and heavily worn oak treads led to the upper storeys of the house. A window set halfway up them in their curve let in a mellow shaft of sunlight, and, even while she admired the heavy wrought-iron light fitting that hung from the ceiling, Sarah was wondering why no one seemed to have thought to fit the window-seat with a comfortable squashy cushion, and thinking how bleak the house looked despite its shining cleanness.

‘Are you here all on your own?’ she asked Robert as he took hold of her hand and started to tug her in the direction of one of the doors leading off the hallway.

‘Yes. My father’s gone to work.’

‘And Mrs Jacobs has left. Is she coming back?’

‘No.’ Robert shook his head. ‘She said she wasn’t going to set foot in this place again. At least not while I was here. Children are a nuisance, she said, and there are plenty of places she can work where she doesn’t have to put up with them.’ Tears suddenly brimmed in his eyes as he turned to look at her. ‘My father is going to be cross with me, isn’t he? But it wasn’t my fault that I spilt the milk. I slipped on the kitchen floor.’

Sarah felt a mingling of anger and disgust. How could any father leave his child in the sole charge of a woman as plainly unsuitable as Mrs Jacobs, and how could any woman walk out on a six-year-old child when she knew there was no one to take charge of him, and when she must also know how vulnerable he was?

Robert pushed open a door which Sarah saw led into the kitchen. Her frown deepened when she saw the pool of milk marking the stone floor, its surface ominously broken by shards of glass. Had Mrs Jacobs really left without cleaning up the broken glass? It seemed that she had.

Quietly telling Robert not to go near the broken glass, Sarah set about cleaning up the mess.

While she was doing so he started to explain tearfully to her how the milk had been spilt when he was pouring it into his breakfast bowl of cereal.

The fridge from which he had taken the milk had a freezer section beneath it, and a handle surely far too high for the easy reach of a child of six.

When she heard how he had dragged a stool across the floor and climbed up on it to open the door, apparently while Mrs Jacobs was sitting down drinking a cup of tea, she was so angry both with Mrs Jacobs and with Robert’s father that she felt it was just as well that neither of them was there for her to vent her anger on them.

Surely the older woman must have realised the potential danger of a child of Robert’s age climbing on a stool to open a fridge door? And surely in any case the little boy should not have been left to get his own breakfast?

Not wanting to pry and take advantage of his innocence, Sarah nevertheless had to ask him why Mrs Jacobs had not poured out the milk for him.

‘She said it wasn’t her job to feed me,’ he told Sarah. ‘And, besides, she was very cross. She said I didn’t deserve any breakfast after what I’d done yesterday. She said I ought to be whipped and locked in my room.’ His face grew shadowed and fearful. ‘You won’t…you won’t tell my father about the milk, will you, Sarah?’

‘Not if you don’t want me to,’Sarah assured him, mentally crossing her fingers. She had every intention of making sure that Gray Philips knew exactly what she thought of a man who left his child in the sole charge of a woman like Mrs Jacobs.

It was almost lunchtime, and when she discovered that because of the accident Robert had not had any breakfast she opened the fridge and stared in disgust at its meagre contents. The freezer section below it was packed with microwave dishes and TV dinners, but there was nothing, as far as she could see, nutritious enough for a growing child…no fresh fruit, no fresh vegetables, nothing in the fridge that could in any way constitute the ingredients for a well-balanced healthy meal.

The bread-bin, when she found it, held half a loaf of dry, unappetising white bread, although the biscuit barrel was well stocked. Sarah turned away from this in disgust to announce firmly, ‘Robert, you and I are going to do some shopping.’

It was warm enough for Robert to go out in his shirt and shorts, but before they left Sarah found an envelope in her handbag and wrote down a brief note on it, leaving it propped up on the kitchen table in the unlikely event of Mrs Jacobs’s alerting Gray Philips to the fact that she had left Robert on his own and his coming home to ensure that he was safe.

Since she had no keys to any of the doors, she had to leave the back door unlocked, and as they drove away she prayed that no one would break into the house while she was gone.

In their nearest market town they had a good selection of food stores, so there was no need for her to drive as far as Ludlow.

After they had parked the car and collected their trolley she asked Robert what he liked to eat, and was pleased to discover from his answers to her questions that his mother had obviously been very strict about a healthy diet.

However, when she made some comment about his mother, he shook his head and told her, to her surprise, ‘But I didn’t live with Mummy and Tom. I lived with Nana. There wasn’t room for me at Mummy’s house, and besides…’ He scowled and dragged his toe along the floor, telling her gruffly, ‘Tom didn’t like me. Peter’s father liked him,’ he added wistfully, causing Sarah to cease her inspection of the shelves and pause to look at him, asking questioningly,

‘Peter?’

‘He was my friend at school,’ Robert told her. ‘He lived with his mummy and his daddy. His daddy used to play with him. He was teaching Peter to play football,’ he told her enviously.

Poor little scrap. Sarah ached to pick him up and hug him and to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that he had just been unlucky in the adult males in his life, because she could see the fear in his eyes, the belief that it was somehow his fault that first his mother’s lover and then his own father had rejected him.

It seemed odd, though, that, after going to all the trouble of obtaining sole custody of him and refusing to allow his father to see him, his mother should then allow him to live full-time with his grandmother.

She was frowning a little over this as she scanned the shelves. She had plenty of cash with her, money she had brought with her when she had arrived from the city and which so far she had had no need to spend, thanks to the generosity of her cousin. According to Sally and Ross, Gray Philips was a wealthy man, and certainly wealthy enough to provide his son with a proper diet, so there was no need for her to scrimp on her purchases.

She could only marvel at the quality and training of a housekeeper who apparently was content to feed a grown man and a growing child on pre-cooked frozen microwave meals. There was nothing wrong with such things for emergencies or days when cooking was inconvenient or impossible, but as a sole source of food…

As she paused to ask Robert if he liked fish she tried not to contemplate how Gray Philips was likely to view her interference.

Her shopping complete, she and Robert headed back to the car. He was chattering to her about his grandmother as they did so, and Sarah could tell how much he missed her—more, it seemed, than he missed his mother, but then, if he had lived with his grandmother…It would account for that oddly old-fashioned air he had about him at times, that grave, almost too adult manner that set him apart from the other children of his age that she knew.

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