Payment Due
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THERE, that was the window display finished. Tania climbed out of the window and, opening the door, went round to the front of the shop to stand on the pavement and study her handiwork.

With the children due back at school from their summer holidays within a fortnight, it had all been rather a rush to get the shop open in time to take advantage of the potential back-to-school trade in children’s shoes, but somehow or other she had managed it, developing along the way a firmness that surprised even her. But, as she had quickly discovered once she had taken the decision to start her business, there were plenty of people around who were only too eager to take advantage of her naïveté and inexperience if they could, often cloaking their callousness in the guise of appearing helpful and concerned.

She had lost track of the number of people who had warned her that her whole venture was a waste of time … that opening a shoe shop catering exclusively for children was madness, especially when she had chosen as her venue a small Cheshire market town. Everyone knew that these days people wanted to shop quickly and efficiently and that the places they chose to do so in were the huge soulless shopping malls.

Tania had listened to them, but had stubbornly stuck to her guns. She was a mother herself and she knew quite well that when it came to buying her daughter Lucy’s shoes, she preferred to do so in comfort, with the help of an assistant who knew what he or she was talking about … someone who had been properly trained to measure a child’s foot and advise on the suitability of the footwear needed.

And as for her decision to start up her business in this quiet town; well, that had been spawned by several factors, chief among which had been the fact that the property she had inherited from her unknown great-aunt, which had enabled her to make the decision in the first place had been a run-down old-fashioned draper’s shop here in Appleford.

One of the most important lessons Tania had learned in life was to make the most of the opportunities fate handed to her. It would perhaps have been easier to give in to the kindly pressure of her great-aunt’s bankers and to sell the shop as it stood, but she had seen in it a means of escape for Lucy and herself from the life they had been living in their small high-rise city flat with its lack of amenities, its claustrophobia, its soulless concrete lifelessness.

She had taken one look at Appleford, seen its small country town prettiness, its surrounding green fields, its open skies, its children who enjoyed the kind of environment she had always dreamed of for Lucy, and her mind had been made up.

Since the only business she had any experience of had been gained through her part-time job in a shoe shop in the city, it had seemed a natural course of events to make the decision to reopen her great-aunt Sybil’s shop, but as a children’s shoe shop.

She had not rushed into the decision lightly, no matter what others might think.

In the six months since she had received the astounding news that a great-aunt she had never known she had possessed had died, and that she was her sole heir, she had put herself heart and soul into making her projected new business a success.

She had been on government training courses to equip her to run the administrative side of her new business. She had learned how to deal with the various tradesmen whose services she had needed to transform the decaying, run-down shop into the pretty bow-fronted eye-catching emporium it was today. She had tackled her great-aunt’s bank manager and persuaded him to advance her the money for her new venture on the strength of the building, with the shop and its upstairs flat as security. She had even taken a course in the correct fitting and selling of children’s shoes, and through it all she had been praying desperately that her venture would succeed. So much depended on it.

Already Lucy was a different child from the pinched wan-faced ten-year-old whom she had feared was growing up far too fast in their potentially morally destructive inner city environment.

Perhaps it was because she herself had grown up in the country that she had felt this almost atavistic desire to return to the slower pace of country life, to a more natural and less stress-inducing atmosphere.

It was too late now to regret that she had never known her great-aunt. No doubt she had had her reasons for not making herself known to her, for allowing her to grow up believing herself to be completely alone in the world. A car accident had left her orphaned when she was twelve years old—a vulnerable age for any child—and the abrupt change in her lifestyle, from the only child of loving, caring parents to merely one of many children growing up under the harassed and over-burdened eyes of a series of foster parents, had caused her to withdraw inside herself, to become very much a loner.

Those years were now years she preferred not to remember, not to dwell on. Those years had culminated in Lucy’s birth, Lucy who was so precious and dear to her, despite the fact that at first she had not wanted her.

She had discovered at eighteen that she was pregnant by a boy she barely knew; a boy who had forced himself on her, practically raping her, she had since realised with the hindsight of maturity and wisdom.

At the time she had been too afraid, had felt too guilty, had believed that she herself was too much to blame to tell anyone what had happened.

They had met at a party; a party to which she had gone unwillingly with a girl with whom she had worked. She had left the foster home by then and had been living in a cramped council flat along with three other girls in similar positions to herself.

No doubt because of the various traumas of their lives, none of them, including herself, had been the type to reach out to others, to make friends easily, to trust easily, and so she had had no one with whom to discuss the tragedy which had overwhelmed her when she had realised she was pregnant.

The boy whom she had only known as ‘Tommy’ was someone she never wanted to see again. The shock of his possession of her had left scars which had taken a long time to heal and by the time she had plucked up the courage to confide in her doctor it was far too late for her to have her pregnancy terminated, even if she had wanted to do so.

Then she had been desolate, anguished, frantic with fear and resentment. Emotions she had continued to experience right up until the moment the midwife had placed Lucy in her arms.

Then she had known that no matter how difficult it might be, no matter what she was forced to endure in order to do so, she must keep her daughter.

There had been privations, hardships. She had hated the necessity of accepting aid from the state, but had had no alternative.

Even so, just as soon as she could, just as soon as Lucy had been at school, she had found herself a part-time job and somehow or other she had managed to make ends meet, but the pressure of her perilous financial situation had been constant and draining. There was no relief from it, no money for even the smallest of luxuries or extras.

So many, many times she had looked at Lucy, wearing the second-hand clothes she had lovingly washed and pressed, and ached to be able to clothe her daughter in things that were hers alone, ached to give her the kind of treats Lucy saw being enjoyed by other children.

It had hurt her sometimes to see the wistful longing in Lucy’s eyes and to know that it was out of love for her, out of a knowledge that no child of her age should ever have had, that she never once begged or pleaded for treats.

She had not been the only single parent living in the massive, desolate tower block of council flats. She had made friends with several of the other mothers, and she knew she would miss their down-to-earth company, now that she and Lucy were finally established in Appleford.

Before leaving she had pressed upon them fervent invitations to come and see her, anxious not to lose touch with the few people with whom she had managed to form a genuine bond.

All of them had tragic, unhappy tales to tell: some of husbands who had deserted them, leaving them with young dependent children; some who had done the leaving, driven from their homes by men who abused them physically and emotionally.

Some, like her, had found themselves mothers virtually before they were adult themselves. All of them shared a gritty, fierce determination to see that their children would not suffer as they had, to ensure that somehow their children would inherit a better, wiser, more compassionate world.

Yes, she would miss their support, their friendship, and they would not be easy to replace. She didn’t make friends easily, preferring her own company. Another legacy from her past; a deep-rooted fear, perhaps, of allowing herself to get too close to anyone because she feared the eventual pain of losing them.

No, it was for Lucy’s sake that she had taken this dangerous step into a new world. It was because for Lucy she wanted so much more than she had had herself. Not necessarily more in a material sense; it was going to be a long time before the business allowed them to live any more luxuriously than they had done in the city.

But at least here, with the clean, fresh air and the wide-open horizons, Lucy would have the benefit of an environment a hundred times better than the one she had had in the city.

Already she had told Tania in amazed accents that, in her new school, there would only be twenty other children in her class. In the city she had shared a classroom with almost sixty other pupils. Here the children had access to playing fields, to tennis courts, to a local sports centre, which, unlike the one in the city, was not a long bus ride away through the heart of a city in which no sensible unescorted woman walked after dark, and certainly where no mother could allow her child to venture unprotected.

Yes, she had made the right decision, no matter how many people might shake their heads and predict failure for her.

She might not be able to provide Lucy with the secure emotional background that came from two loving parents who were committed to one another and to the welfare of their children, but at least she was doing the best she could for her.

And, anyway, marriage wasn’t always the blissful, self-fulfilling, self-contained state of happiness and security those on the outside of it tended to imagine.

Take Nicholas Forbes, for instance, her late relative’s solicitor and now her own. He had a beautiful wife, the stepsister of a very wealthy local businessman, two healthy children, a successful practice, a home on the outskirts of the town in one of its most prestigious areas, which Tania had heard a rumour had been given to them as a wedding present by Clarissa Forbes’s stepbrother, and yet, according to local gossip, Nicholas Forbes and his wife were far from happy.

And it was not only gossip. Nicholas himself had indicated as much to her before she could stop him and make it plain to him that the last thing she wanted was to involve herself in anyone else’s private life. That the very last thing she appreciated in any man was what was to her an outright betrayal of the trust and privacy which should exist between a committed couple. Personally she thought it extremely disloyal for one partner in a relationship to discuss the private problems of that relationship with an outsider, especially when that outsider was not a properly trained counsellor or adviser. Besides, she barely knew Nicholas Forbes. As her solicitor, she had found his advice, his willingness to put himself out for her and help her with all the many small problems involved in setting up her small business, heart-warming and encouraging, making her think that perhaps her years of determinedly distancing herself from the entire male sex were now something she ought to outgrow. She had liked Nicholas, but not specifically as a man. She had liked him as a person, a fellow human being, but sexually … She made a tiny moue.

Sexually she was completely immune to any and all members of the male sex and that was the way she wanted things to stay.

She was an intelligent woman. She realised that not all men were necessarily like Lucy’s father, that even he might have found maturity and wisdom as he grew up. But, despite her awareness that logically not all men had to be disliked and shunned, emotionally and as far as her body was concerned, physically, she only felt safe and in control when they were held at a good distance.

She did her best not to communicate her fear, her dislike to Lucy. Idealistically, maternally, she wanted for her daughter all that she had not had herself and that included the self-confidence, the freedom, the belief in herself and in others which would enable her to reach out when the time came and to forge the kind of emotional and physical bonds with another human being which she had never been able to.

For Lucy she wanted it all: happiness, success, security. She would never encourage her daughter to consider herself less of a human being because she was female. She would bring her up in a full awareness of her own assets. Most of all for Lucy she wanted the security that came from knowing that she would never ever have to depend on anyone else, either emotionally or materially.

Lucy was a clever child, a child who would do so much better in a smaller school environment where she would receive more individual tuition and attention. She also made friends easily, something which she herself had never been able to do.

She had no fears of Lucy being isolated or alone in their new home. Already she had made friends with another girl whose family lived half a dozen doors away. Her parents owned and ran a local decorating shop, her father was a decorator, and it had been he who had papered the awkward-to-deal-with ceilings in their own upstairs flat, cheerfully managing the sloping ceilings of the old eighteenth-century building.

Ann and Tom Fielding were a pleasant couple in their late thirties. Susan was their youngest child, and had two older brothers, and, although Tania had felt her normal reticence with Tom Fielding, despite his genuine kindness, she had felt very drawn to Ann Fielding’s warm personality.

The couple had gone out of their way to welcome her to the local community, giving her generous advice about her potential business and making both Lucy and herself welcome in their home.

Their own shop, unlike hers, was double-fronted, with a generous-sized flat above it in which Ann Fielding had allowed her artistic talents full licence.

Tania had marvelled at the effect of her marbled bathroom, a painting technique which Ann had modestly assured her was quite easy to pick up.

In addition, their property, like her own, had a long rear garden, but, unlike her wilderness, theirs was neatly segmented into a pretty courtyard for sitting in, plus a well-maintained vegetable plot, the sight of which had made her own fingers itch to get to grips with her smaller garden.

Lucy was round at the Fieldings’ now, and Tania broke off her contemplation of her shop window, with its artistically draped ‘branch’ and its tumble of fallen gold and russet leaves in shades that toned with the display of winter brogues and boots, to glance at her watch.

Heavens, was it really that time already? Lucy would be beginning to think she had abandoned her. The window display had taken longer than she had expected, and then there had been that long telephone call from a supplier. It was time she changed out of her scruffy working jeans and T-shirt and went round to the Fieldings.

Ann Fielding had very kindly invited both of them to join her family for tea, an invitation which Tania had hesitantly accepted, not wanting to take too much advantage of Ann Fielding’s generosity and uncomfortably conscious that as yet she was not in a position to repay her hospitality.

In fact it was an invitation she would probably have refused if it weren’t for the fact that last night, totally out of the blue, just as she and Lucy had been about to sit down, her solicitor, Nicholas Forbes, had arrived unannounced and unexpected, explaining that he was on his way past and had thought he would call.

Tania wasn’t used to having men in her home and neither was Lucy, and Tania had been conscious of a feeling of resentment and irritation which she had tried to repress. After all, Nicholas Forbes was merely being kind, merely being friendly. And yet … And yet …

Was she wrong in imagining that there had been something in the way he had eyed her T-shirt and jeans-clad figure, something that, while not remotely lustful, had not been entirely without sexual curiosity either?

She had come a long way from the inexperienced girl of eighteen who had silently endured the painful fumblings of the much stronger and heavier boy who had been her first and only sexual partner. She knew a good deal more about the human race now at twenty-nine than she had done at eighteen. Sex was something she avoided, something she had cut out of her life. She felt no sexual desire, no sexual curiosity, and had no need of a man in her life in any sexual sense, and that was the way she preferred it.

There had been men who had attempted to change her attitude, but she had always firmly and determinedly rebuffed them, making it clear that they were wasting their time, and she had no idea why on earth a man like Nicholas Forbes with a wife as attractive as Clarissa Forbes should show any interest in a woman like her, who could not afford to dress in anything other than the cheapest chainstore clothes, who could never afford the money or the time to visit a hairdresser or beauty salon, whose hands were serviceable rather than elegant, with short unpainted nails—hands which were far more used to the hard realities of life than the sensual pleasures. Unless it was because she was on her own.

She had come up against that particular phenomenon too often and from too many unlikely sources to be naïve about it any more. The most unlikely men could betray the most unwelcome sexual harassment when it suited them. There had been that teacher of Lucy’s who had called round to the flat on the pretext of wanting to discuss her work. There had been her superior at the shoe shop. There had been countless others, all of them no doubt respectable and well-thought-of men, but all of them, as far as she was concerned, men who were being disloyal to their wives and families, to whom they most owed commitment.

Personally she could think of no reason why Nicholas Forbes should want to spend time with her. She was not pretty, not in the way that his wife was. Tania had seen her once when she had called at Nicholas’s office, bursting into the room and totally ignoring Tania, and she was a pretty, fluffy blonde woman in her early thirties, with a slightly petulant, spoilt expression and the mannerisms of a little girl.

Tania hadn’t been particularly drawn to her. Just listening to her pouting little girl demands as she persuaded Nicholas to agree to her plans for redecorating their drawing-room had confirmed Tania’s initial view that as women they were complete opposites.

She doubted if Clarissa Forbes had ever wanted for anything in her entire life. The clothes she was wearing were expensive designer models, her hair, her hands, everything about her proclaimed that Clarissa was an adored, petted woman whose single most important preoccupation in life was herself and her own needs.

She was barely five feet two with round blue eyes and a pretty-pretty face, making Tania at five feet seven, with her thick, heavy mane of conker-brown hair and her cheap cotton skirt and blouse, feel uncomfortably conscious of the difference between them.

Perhaps because no one had ever told her so, Tania herself was unaware of the classic beauty of her oval face, with its high cheekbones and well defined lines. She had no idea that the length of her neck and the fullness of her mouth gave her a sensual vulnerability that men found fascinating, or that her lack of artifice, her inability to pretend and pout, might be like a much-needed glass of clean, pure water to a man who had come to feel sickened by the syrupy mock sweetness of a wife who could turn into a virago the moment she was opposed in any way.

Because she had no wish to attract the male sex, Tania assumed that they felt no attraction towards her. Certainly she did nothing to attract their attention or desire. Certainly she never encouraged them to believe that she wanted or needed them in any way, and, because she was the woman she was, she genuinely had no idea that her very indifference, her very lack of interest, only caused men to be more attracted to her, more curious about her, more determined to breach the walls she had so obviously put up around herself.

She had got rid of Nicholas Forbes just as quickly as she could, firmly explaining that she considered this particular time of day sacrosanct to Lucy. Undeterred, Nicholas Forbes had offered to take her out for a drink so that they could talk in private, but she had quickly refused.

She felt that she had made it more than plain to him that, while she welcomed his conscientiousness as her solicitor, there could be no personal relationship between them, especially one that involved the kind of discussions about his marriage which she knew could only lead to problems.

Even if the kind of friendship he had been offering her had included Clarissa, even if Clarissa herself had been willing to welcome her to their circle of friends, which she quite plainly was not, Tania doubted if she would have felt comfortable with them. The Forbeses, while not jet-setters, certainly had a very comfortable and affluent lifestyle. Ann Fielding had mentioned in conversation that Clarissa’s brother was an extremely wealthy man and that through his various companies and contacts he had put a good deal of business Nicholas’s way.

‘I was at school with Nick,’ she had added, pulling a face as she commented, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t say so, but I suspect that, as far as his marriage is concerned, he’s beginning to discover that marrying a rich girl isn’t all a bed of roses. Clarissa is very spoilt. James dotes on her and spoils her to death. It’s amazing how stupid even the most intelligent of men can be, isn’t it? There’s only three or four years between them; James’s father was Clarissa’s mother’s second husband and both of them were killed in a skiing accident just before Clarissa’s twentieth birthday. She went completely to pieces and although legally she was an adult, James stepped in and virtually took the place of their parents overnight, and he’s gone on shielding and protecting her ever since. Too much so, if you ask me. He’s made a rod for his own back in indulging her so much. She’s very possessive about him, and I doubt if she’s ever going to allow any woman he becomes involved with to oust her as number one in his life, which is a shame, really.’

‘Perhaps he enjoys their relationship,’ Tania suggested. ‘Some men seem to get a kick out of keeping the women in their lives dependent on them either emotionally or financially.’

Her comment had earned her a shrewd, thoughtful look from Ann Fielding and the comment, ‘Some do, yes, but I wouldn’t put James Warren in that class. He’s far too intelligent, too … too secure in himself emotionally to need that kind of hold on another human being. No, I think he’s simply grown so used to believing that Clarissa needs him that he can’t see the truth about her, and she, of course, takes good care that he doesn’t see it. She isn’t at all popular locally. Most people feel rather sorry for Nicholas, even though they also feel that he’s rather brought his own misery down upon himself. Clarissa will never be satisfied with anything that Nicky can give her, not while she’s so aware of the difference between the lifestyle she had with James and the lifestyle that Nicky can provide for her.’

‘But they seem very comfortably off,’ Tania hadn’t been able to stop herself protesting, remembering the glimpse she had had of the brand new mock-Georgian house she had seen through its encircling protective trees, on the one occasion when Nicholas had driven her past his home.

Personally she would have preferred an older, more established property and certainly she doubted that she would have wanted the frilly festoon blinds and over-decorated rooms she had heard Clarissa describing so enthusiastically to her husband the afternoon she had interrupted their meeting. But Tania accepted fair-mindedly that people had different tastes and ideas.

‘Well, they are,’ Ann agreed, wrinkling her nose. ‘But I suspect that Clarissa stills gets an allowance from James. Certainly she could never afford to run that expensive Mercedes nor to buy all those designer clothes, as well as keeping both boys at such an expensive prep school, if James weren’t helping them. I doubt she even knows the meaning of the word ‘‘economy’’. They have a cleaner, and until the boys were at school they had a nanny. No matter how good Nicky’s practice is I doubt it runs to financing all that lot, and even the nicest of men must feel the burden of having his wife’s stepbrother have such a large financial say in their affairs.

‘Of course he’s tied hand and foot, really. The majority of his business has come to him through James. That’s no secret. I don’t envy him one iota … even if at times I do wonder what it would be like to be able to go out and buy all three of mine new clothes at the same time.’

Ann had laughed unselfconsciously as she made this last statement, causing Tania to warm to her even more. Had she known Ann better she might have been tempted to confide in her and ask her advice, but in the early days after Lucy’s birth being independent and showing that she could cope by herself had become such a fierce necessity in her life that she still found it very hard to lean on others, no matter how sympathetic they appeared.

This feeling she had that Nicholas was perhaps being a little more friendly towards her than was strictly necessary was something she would have to deal with on her own.

With a little tact and diplomacy, it should not be too difficult to do so, and, anyway, perhaps she was over-reacting a little, being a touch too sensitive to what was really no more than genuine friendliness on his part.

He had certainly neither said nor done anything to suggest anything different, and she certainly had far more important things to think about. Such as her shop, for instance.

Another few days and the shop would be opening. She felt her body clench with apprehension and excitement. She had taken extensive advertising in the local Press, and she had timed the opening of her business well, done all she could to ensure its success. The rest was in the lap of the gods and she could only hope that they were disposed to smile kindly on her endeavours.

With one last approving look at the window she turned on her heel and opened the shop door.

She was just about to close it behind her when she saw that a man was about to follow her inside.

For a moment, as she looked into his unsmiling face, a tiny frisson of fear ran through her.

He was totally unfamiliar to her, dressed casually in well-worn and very faded blue jeans, and a short-sleeved shirt that acknowledged the heat of the glorious summer they had been enjoying.

His dark hair was untidy and ruffled and he had a smear of oil on one cheekbone. Despite that, he had about him an aura of power and maleness that made her hesitate and then flounder a little before saying quickly, ‘I’m sorry, the shop isn’t open yet. We don’t actually open until Saturday.’

‘So I understand.’ His voice was cool, slightly abrasive, and very, very controlled, as though he was extremely angry.

She looked at him and discovered that he was. She could see it in the cold greyness of his eyes and the hard set of his mouth.

Her own eyes darkened from hazel to tawny gold in recognition of her apprehension.

‘Besides, I haven’t come to buy shoes from you, Ms Carter.’

He hadn’t? Then what did he want? Was he some kind of local official? Some kind of planning official or someone whom she had unwittingly annoyed?

As she frowned her confusion, she said uncertainly, ‘I see. Then … then, why … why have you come to see me?’

‘That,’ he told her curtly, ‘is something I think we can best discuss in privacy.’

Privacy. Her heart pounded. Once, long ago, another man had demanded privacy with her. Lucy had been the result of her acceding to that demand, and, while it was ridiculous to suppose that this man had anything like that in mind, she still could not help the tremor of fear that ran through her, making her tremble visibly.

‘I … I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ she told him huskily. ‘You see, I’m just about to collect my daughter … perhaps if I could make an appointment …’

He laughed harshly.

‘Oh, yes, that would suit you, wouldn’t it? I wonder what’s going through that devious head of yours, Ms Carter? Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any time to waste on conniving females. All I want from you is your assurance that from now on you will cease your relationship with my brother-in-law.’

Tania’s mouth dropped. The man had plainly made a mistake … was perhaps even mad. Anger overtook her fear.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ she told him crisply. Really, what on earth was he talking about? He must have confused her with someone else. That could be the only explanation for his extraordinary behaviour.

She realised suddenly, her eyes rounding in shocked fascination, that he had produced a cheque-book from the back pocket of his jeans and that he was flicking it open, his mouth curling disdainfully as he derided, ‘I see. Well, maybe this will help to convince you. As you see, I’ve come prepared, Ms Carter. Naturally I didn’t expect you to cease your affair out of the goodness of a heart I’m quite sure you don’t possess. Shall we say ten thousand pounds?’

‘Ten thousand pounds …’ She felt sick with shock and pain.

‘Not enough? Well, I assure you it’s as much as you’re going to get.’

Bewilderment gave way to shock and shock to anger as she saw the look of glittering contempt in his eyes.

‘Get out of here,’ she demanded furiously. ‘Just get out before … before I call the police.’

She was speaking wildly, dangerously, her brain warned her. The man was plainly mad. Who knew what on earth he might take it into his head to do if she continued to threaten him?

She was shaking visibly as the adrenalin-fuelled fury pumped through her veins.

‘Very clever, but hardly convincing. What exactly will you tell them? That I offered you ten thousand pounds to stop you breaking up my sister’s marriage? They’d think I was treating you generously. This isn’t the city where no one gives a damn how his neighbour lives. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think over my offer. After that … Well, let’s just say one way or another I’m going to make damn sure you stop trying to wreck my sister’s marriage.’

Speechless with shock and fury, Tania watched in silence as he opened the door and left the shop.

She was still standing where he had left her, bathed in an icy sweat of reaction and fear when Ann Fielding walked in with Lucy a few minutes later.

‘What on earth was James Warren doing here?’ she asked cheerfully as she came in. ‘I know he likes to take a sort of patriarchal interest in everything that goes on locally—that comes of being born into the town’s founding family, I suppose, but I shouldn’t have thought a children’s shoe shop would be of much interest to him. Unless …’

She shot Tania a shrewd thoughtful look, and then exclaimed in concern.

‘Tania … my dear. Lucy, run upstairs and get your mummy a glass of water, will you? I don’t think she’s feeling very well.’

Through stiff lips, Tania demanded thickly, ‘Just repeat that for me, will you, Ann?’

‘Repeat what?’ her friend asked in concerned bewilderment.

‘Tell me again who it was who just left this shop.’

Anne’s frown deepened. ‘Tell you … Well, it was James Warren, of course.’

‘James Warren.’ Tania’s soft mouth twisted bitterly. Well, no need to wonder now whose marriage her unwanted visitor had been so passionately defending. Although she still needed to know exactly why he should imagine that she had the slightest interest in either Nicholas Forbes or his marriage. Come to that, if he was so genuinely concerned about preserving his sister’s marriage, she was the one he ought to talk to, because it was her actions, her behaviour, her habit of publicly and pointedly underlining the differences between her stepbrother and her husband to the latter’s disadvantage which was undermining that marriage.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ann pressed her anxiously. ‘When I came in you looked so pale. I thought you were going to faint.’

Quickly seizing on the excuse Ann was offering her, Tania agreed tensely.

‘Yes. I think it’s the heat.’

‘Yes, and this is an anxious time for you. I remember what it’s like, and from when Tom and I first started up our business. But I’m sure you’ll do well, Tania. And if James Warren should take it into his head to make you into one of his pet causes—’

Tania laughed mirthlessly, her lips tight. ‘The last thing I want or need is any condescending patronage from someone who believes himself to be the local lord of all he surveys. Thanks for bringing Lucy back for me,’ she added curtly, her manner so plainly indicating that she wanted to be on her own that Ann tactfully said her goodbyes and withdrew.

Once she had gone, Tania stood staring into space.

James Warren. So that was Clarissa Forbes all-powerful stepbrother; a very formidable gentleman indeed, but he wasn’t going to intimidate her and the next time he came round, making false accusations against her, she was going to let him know in no uncertain terms just how wrong he was.

How dared he imagine … ? How dared he suggest …? She frowned quickly. But how had he got the idea that she was in any way other than in a business sense involved with Nicholas?

There was only one way she could find out, and the next time he came round here threatening her she intended to have her own ammunition fully prepared and primed. She would ring Nicholas Forbes and discover just how his brother-in-law had got the false impression that they were having an affair.

And what was more she would do it now, before the heat of her anger cooled and she allowed rationality and caution to take the place of righteous indignation and hot-blooded anger.

CHAPTER TWO

HAVING settled Lucy in their small sitting-room and listened to her happy account of her day, Tania went through into the room she had designated as her ‘office’ and picked up the telephone.

Nicholas Forbes’s secretary sounded uncertain and hesitant when she asked to be put through to him and Tania frowned over this abrupt change in the girl’s manner. Normally she sounded breezy and cheerful, and she and Tania had even got to the stage of exchanging the odd few seconds of conversation.

Nicholas, on the other hand, was obviously pleased to hear from her. Prudence forbade her to discuss James Warren’s visit with him over the telephone and so she asked instead if he could manage to find the time to call round and see her.

‘It is rather urgent, I’m afraid,’ she told him.

‘No problem. I’ll be with you in ten minutes. I was just about to call it a day anyway. Clarissa had a dinner party planned for this evening and I promised her I wouldn’t be late. James is just back from the States and so he’ll be joining us.’

As she replaced the receiver, Tania reflected that if she had been the one serving him the meal she would have made sure it had a good spoonful of something bitter in it.

How dared he come round here, threatening her, accusing her … leaping to the most preposterous assumptions?

Angrily she paced her small study while she waited for Nicholas to appear.

She had been so looking forward to her new life, so happy about it, and now suddenly, like a dark cloud crossing the sun, that happiness had been blighted. Through no fault of her own she seemed to have fallen foul of the town’s most important and influential resident. Well, she didn’t care, she decided mentally, tossing her head. Let him do his worst. He was the one who would suffer the most if it ever came out how he had tried to bribe her, a totally innocent person, to give up a non-existent affair with a man who was nothing more than her legal adviser.

Nicholas arrived ten minutes later. Tania let him in through the front of her shop and then led him upstairs to her study.

They had to walk through her sitting-room to get there, and Lucy turned round, beaming when she saw him.

Nicholas was good with children and they responded well to him. Watching him as he listened to Lucy’s excited account of her day, Tania felt a small shaft of bitterness lodge itself somewhere deep inside her.

Lucy should have had this as her birthright, should have had a father to whom she could turn with her small pleasures and problems.

Tania had never felt the lack of a man in their lives, but she realised Lucy might feel differently. The absence of her father was a subject which was rarely raised between them. At the large inner city school which she had previously attended, single-parent children had been in the majority, not the minority, and, although Tania had told Lucy as calmly and matter-of-factly as she could the brief circumstances of her conception, editing them so that they could be understood and accepted by a small child, it was as though in some way Lucy had realised it was not a subject her mother cared to discuss and had asked no further questions.

Now, abruptly and painfully, Tania realised that in thinking their lives complete and content she had perhaps been looking at the situation only from her own point of view. It had never struck her before that Lucy might actively miss the presence of a male parent, even though that presence was something she had never experienced.

Now, listening to her laughing and giggling as she responded to Nicholas’s gentle teasing, Tania was struck by uncertainty and apprehension.

Was Lucy perhaps secretly nursing a need to have a man in her life? A father?

‘What’s wrong?’ Nicholas asked her with urgent concern once they were alone in her study. ‘You sounded worried over the phone.’

‘Worried doesn’t begin to describe it,’ Tania told him tartly. She took a deep steadying breath as she felt the tension build up inside her and then said levelly, ‘I had a visit from your brother-in-law this afternoon. He seems to be under the misapprehension that you and I are having an affair and he came here to demand that I stop seeing you. He also offered me ten thousand pounds to do so.’

‘Ten thousand!’ Nicholas whistled. ‘Did you take it?’

Tania stared at him. He was smiling but beneath the smile she could see that he was ill at ease, guilty almost.

‘No, I did not. But that isn’t why I asked you to come here. What I want to know is why on earth he should imagine that you and I are having an affair in the first place, much less attempt to bribe and threaten me into giving you up.’

Nicholas had turned his back on her. He picked up the paperweight on her desk, weighing it absently in his hands, his movements jerky and uncoordinated.

‘Nicholas, what is going on?’ Tania pressed, reading these betraying signs. ‘And please don’t tell me you don’t know,’ she added with dry irony as she removed the paperweight from his hand. ‘Because it’s perfectly obvious that you do.’

For a moment he was silent and then he shrugged and admitted sheepishly, ‘I suppose it’s all my fault … although I never intended—that is, I had no idea that Clarissa would fire James up to such an extent—’

‘Just a minute.’ Tania stopped him, curtly frowning at him. ‘You mean that it’s Clarissa who has told her stepbrother that we’re having an affair? But what on earth gave her that idea … ? Everyone knows that you’re devoted to her and—’

‘That’s the trouble,’ Nicholas interrupted her bitterly. ‘I’ve allowed her to make a doormat out of me for too long. I’m sick and tired of her carping, her criticisms, of being held up to ridicule … of being made to feel a fool. I’ve already told her that if she doesn’t love me any more then we should separate. Even though, for the children’s sake, I feel … Anyway that isn’t what she wants … or so she says. In fact, she got so wrought up when I suggested it that I began to wonder if I could perhaps make her jealous, make her believe that another woman was interested in me … a woman who didn’t despise me or constantly compare me with another man. She’s always had a very jealous nature … and it’s obviously worked better than I imagined.’

Tania couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘You mean you deliberately allowed Clarissa to believe that you and I are having an affair, even though there’s not the slightest truth in such a suggestion?’ she asked, appalled.

Nicholas had the grace to look embarrassed.

‘I’d no idea she’d take things so far. I didn’t say we were having an affair. I just talked to her about you, told her how much I admire you … You know the kind of thing. I had no idea she’d involve James. I suppose I ought to have done, though. She’s forever running to him with her problems. He’s more important to her than I am—’ He broke off, flushing and biting his bottom lip, and Tania recognised that Clarissa wasn’t the only one suffering from jealousy.

Something unpleasant and distasteful stirred deep inside her at what she was hearing.

‘You’ll have to tell her the truth,’ she announced flatly. ‘And you have to tell your brother-in-law as well.’

He had gone pale and was avoiding her eyes.

‘I will do,’ he told her. ‘But not just yet. If I can just get her to realise—’

‘No,’ Tania protested. She was furious with him. How dared he use her like this and without either her knowledge or her consent? ‘I can understand that you want to save your marriage,’ she told him firmly. ‘But I don’t believe this is the right way to go about it. What’s wrong with simply sitting down and discussing the whole thing honestly with Clarissa? Tell her that you love her and that you resent being compared with her brother. Tell her that you want to make a success of your marriage. After all, you’ve every incentive to do so, both of you. You must have loved each other when you married … you have two beautiful children.’

‘One of whom was conceived before we were married,’ Nicholas told her, astounding her. ‘Oh, I wanted to marry her. I was desperately in love with her, but Clarissa … Well, I’ve never been sure whether she married me because she loved me or because she was pregnant. Sometimes I even wonder if Alec is mine. You see, she was involved with another man—a married man—when we first met. She was using me to prevent James from finding out about her affair. He’s very strict about such things, very moralistic.’

Tania felt sickened by what she was hearing. Mingled with that sickness was pity for Nicholas, tinged with a little contempt, and as for Clarissa …

‘You’re going to have to tell her the truth, Nicholas,’ she insisted curtly. ‘Your brother-in-law has given me twenty-four hours in which to make up my mind about his bribe. After that if I refuse to give you up he assured me that he will find some way of making me do so.

‘He’s a very powerful man locally. I can’t afford to have him as my enemy, no matter what my private opinion of a man who accepts the accusations of someone without making the slightest attempt to find out for himself if they’re true. I can’t help you with your marriage, I’m afraid, and, to be honest with you, if you don’t make sure that he knows the truth, then I shall.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Nicholas told her, ‘but it won’t be easy convincing Clarissa.’

‘Really?’ Tania was coldly, icily angry with him now. ‘You do surprise me. You appeared to have no difficulty in convincing her that we were having an affair. Surely informing her of the truth should be even more easy?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Nicholas reiterated, but, as she saw him out, Tania wished she could have felt more confident of his determination to make sure Clarissa knew and accepted the true situation between them.

As he got in his car to drive away, she called out urgently to him, ‘So you’ll make sure she knows everything, won’t you, Nicholas?’

The smile he gave her was forced and painful, but she dared not allow herself to waste any sympathy on him. He certainly had not spared a thought for her when he had so recklessly and unwisely involved her without her knowledge in his private affairs.

She had gone from feeling sorry for him for the sad state of his marriage to feeling that perhaps he and Clarissa deserved one another after all. She had nothing but contempt for adults who so cruelly played childish games with one another’s emotions.

Surely any good marriage—any worthwhile relationship—demanded total trust, mutual respect, mutual honesty, if that feeling that the human race described as love was going to be allowed a chance to grow to maturity.

If the kind of relationship Nicholas and Clarissa shared was marriage, commitment, then she was glad she had never experienced it.

But then she thought of Lucy, Lucy whom she was perhaps unwittingly denying a very important part of her growing up. Would her daughter as an adult have difficulty in relating to the male sex? Would she have emotional problems and hang-ups because of her lack of a male parent, a male influence in her life?

Uncomfortably she dismissed her thoughts as unproductive, but, later on that evening when Lucy was chatting animatedly about her afternoon at the Fieldings’, describing to her how Tom Fielding was making his daughter her very own personalised stencil for decorating her newly painted bedroom walls, she wondered if she was being over-sensitive in detecting a trace of wistful envy in her daughter’s voice. Lucy’s room in their new flat, while a tenfold improvement on the claustrophobic and damp room she had occupied in their city tower block, was as yet undecorated. Because of the necessity of opening in time for the autumn term trade in new school shoes, there hadn’t been time to do very much as yet with the flat. Once the shop was open and running, then she would be able to turn her attention to making their new home more comfortable.

She had plenty of ideas, plenty of plans, and, determinedly trying to banish James Warren and his threats from her mind, she tried to concentrate instead on discussing with Lucy just how they would decorate her new room.

After Lucy had had her bath and gone contentedly to bed, Tania looked around her sitting-room, mentally giving the plain walls a coat of fresh sunny yellow paint. A pretty stencil frieze around the top of the walls would add a little individuality to the décor; she had taught herself a good many domestic skills over the years, out of necessity more than anything else, and she eyed their comfortable settee she had originally bought second-hand, recognising that it was perhaps time it had a new loose cover, perhaps in a plain damask this time now that Lucy was growing up and the importance of a fabric which would not show every mark was no longer essential. Because her great-aunt had refused to modernise the building in any way, the flat still retained its open fireplaces with their nineteenth-century firebacks.

Worth a fortune now, Ann Fielding had told her enviously, and well worth keeping.

In addition to its two good-sized bedrooms, the sitting-room, the small room she had turned into her study and the bathroom, the flat also had a kitchen-cum-dining-room, but ultimately Tania hoped to extend the rear ground floor of the building to provide Lucy and herself with a downstairs kitchen with french windows they could open out on to a small courtyard for summer eating.

That, however, was for the future. For the present … Grimly she stared out of her sitting-room window, for once oblivious to the view across the open countryside.

She was furious with Nicholas for involving her in what should have been his strictly private affairs, and how on earth Clarissa could be silly enough to believe his lies about her she really had no idea. The woman must surely realise how much her husband doted on her … but then if she was as jealous as Nicholas had implied, almost pathologically so … Tania frowned. The whole situation repelled her, especially those aspects of it which touched upon Clarissa’s relationship with her stepbrother. Clarissa did seem to have an unhealthy dependence on and absorption with her stepbrother.

Surely he, though, as the elder, as the sophisticated and worldly man he was supposed to be, must have long ago recognised the dangers of Clarissa’s dependence on him? Surely it should have been up to him to gently ensure that his stepsister turned to her husband to satisfy her emotional needs and not to him? Surely it should have been up to him to gently and painlessly put a proper distance between them … ?

Or was she confronting just another example of the male sex’s vanity and weakness? Did James Warren perhaps actually relish Clarissa’s patent adoration of him, despite Ann’s denial of this?

Restlessly she moved away from the window. Twenty-four hours, he had said … In twenty-four hours he would return for her decision. She wondered cynically whether, once he had discovered the truth and his mistake, he would apologise to her for his totally unfounded accusations against her. Privately she doubted it. He simply wasn’t the type. She doubted if he had ever admitted to a mistake in his entire life.

She went to bed early, worn out by the events of the day, acknowledging how much strain she was under with the opening of her shop so imminent. She daren’t even allow herself to contemplate failure. She had to make a success of this venture. For Lucy’s sake if nothing else. She had seen already how much healthier, how much happier her daughter was in their new surroundings. How much less inclined to cling to her.

In many ways it made her heart ache a little that Lucy should be so willing to spend so much time at the Fieldings’, but then she reminded herself of how isolated she and Lucy had always been and how much this had worried her in the past. How much she had wanted security, self-confidence, and happiness for Lucy.

It was a long time before she managed to sleep, only to discover in the morning that not only had she overslept but she also had all the signs of an impending migraine.

Mentally cursing James Warren and all his family, she hurried into the bathroom to discover that she was out of the only tablets she had managed to find which, if taken fast enough, sometimes managed to keep her migraine at bay. She knew from painful experience that once she let the headache take hold nothing would take it away.

Luckily there was a chemist in the next street, who listened sympathetically to the reason for her early morning call and thankfully was able to supply her with the drug she needed, although her errand took rather longer than she had anticipated, principally because the chemist was a friendly man who liked to chat with his customers. Once Tania had explained who she was he announced warmly, ‘Oh, yes, of course. My wife was saying only the other day that it was a good thing that a decent children’s shoe shop had opened up here. She dreads taking our two into the city to kit them out for school. A proper nightmare, she says it is, so I expect you’ll be seeing her once you’re open.’

As a potential customer Tania felt she could hardly cut him short and risk offending him, with the result that it was almost half an hour before she was able to hurry back to her own shop.

As she went upstairs to the flat, she recognised that it sounded oddly silent. Normally as she opened the door she could hear Lucy humming or talking to herself, but today everywhere was silent.

Her heart started to pound heavily. She had always stressed to Lucy how important it was that she never went anywhere without her; that she never talked to strangers, much less accepted lifts from them, that she never did anything or went with anyone unless she, Tania, had expressly told her beforehand that she might.

Hurrying into the sitting-room, calling her daughter’s name, Tania came to an abrupt halt as she discovered a tearful Lucy standing in the kitchen doorway.

‘Darling, what is it?’ Tania asked anxiously, dropping down on to her knees and gathering her daughter close in her arms, cradling her there.

Where her own hair was conker-red, Lucy’s was a slightly lighter colour, more the shade of new chestnuts, silky and burnished, and, unlike her own, Lucy’s eyes were grey rather than tawny. Now those grey eyes looked apprehensive and guilty, and as she looked over her daughter’s shoulder, Tania saw the scattered shards of china on the kitchen floor.

‘I’m sorry. I was just trying to help …’

Tania bit her lip as she recognised one piece of china. As a special treat she had recently given in to a reckless whim and bought a pretty set of breakfast crockery, a real luxury to her since in the past all she had ever been able to afford had been cheap seconds, bought on market stalls.

‘I was just trying to make you a cup of tea,’ Lucy told her tearfully, ‘but the teapot just sort of slipped.’

The teapot. It would have to be that, of course, the most expensive item of the set. But at least it hadn’t been full of scalding hot water when Lucy dropped it.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said as comfortingly as she could. ‘Everyone has accidents.’

And yet, even as she comforted Lucy and told herself that it was after all only a piece of china, she couldn’t help grieving for the waste of money its destruction represented. It wasn’t that she was mean or penny-pinching, it was simply that she couldn’t afford … She sighed faintly to herself. Perhaps it was her own fault … Lucy was just at that stage when she adored ‘helping’ and being grownup. She ought to have recognised the danger, ought to have waited a little perhaps before giving in to the impulse towards such extravagance.

It was a day which seemed destined to be fraught with small difficulties and snags, nothing to do, of course, with her own underlying tension and the knowledge that, before it was over, she would once again by confronted by James Warren.

After all, why should she feel apprehensive … ? Apprehensive … She laughed bitterly to herself; sick with fear would be a more accurate description of her feelings. Not that she intended to allow him to see it. Hateful man. No, he was the one who should be suffering, not her.

She even toyed with the idea of purposely disappearing for the afternoon, but acknowledged this was a cowardly and pointless exercise. She was not playing a point-scoring game against the man. All she wanted was for the situation to be sorted out and the truth revealed so that she could get on with her life and her business, without his unwarranted threats hanging over her.

When after lunch Susan Fielding called round to ask importantly if Lucy would like to go back to her house with her so that they could both watch her daddy making her new stencil, Tania was almost relieved to see her daughter go. Not because she didn’t want her company, but she certainly did not want her on hand to witness any confrontation between herself and James Warren.

When three-thirty came and went without any sign of him she told herself with relief that Nicholas must have revealed the truth and, like the bully that he undoubtedly was, James was too embarrassed by his own error to come round and acknowledge the wrong he had done her.

Well, that suited her fine. The last thing she wanted was to see him again. She still felt inwardly bruised and battered from their previous meeting.

It was just gone four o’clock. She was just about to sit down and make herself a cup of tea to wash down the tablets her still-aching head demanded when she heard the shop doorbell ring.

Immediately she knew who it was, but, even knowing, couldn’t stop the tension invading her stomach as she walked towards the door and saw James Warren standing on the other side of it.

For a moment she was tempted to leave it locked, but then she noticed that one of her neighbours was watching curiously from the opposite side of the road and so reluctantly she unlocked the door and stepped to one side so that he could walk in.

‘Very sensible,’ was his jeering comment as he followed her inside. ‘Well?’ he demanded closing the door behind him. ‘I do hope you’ve made the right decision, because, as I warned you yesterday, I am not prepared to stand by and watch you destroy my sister’s marriage.’

Tania stared at him, and then her heart sank. Nicholas hadn’t told him the truth—either that or he had told him and he had simply chosen not to believe her.

Tightening her lips, she told him coolly, ‘There is no decision for me to make, since I am not having an affair either with your brother-in-law or with anyone else. I don’t have affairs, Mr Warren, and, especially, I don’t have affairs with married men.’

‘No?’ His eyebrows rose, his voice dripping with cynicism as he retorted, ‘I might be more inclined to believe you if you hadn’t already provided the proof of your own dishonesty by the fact that you have an illegitimate child, father unknown—or so you apparently claim.’

The cruelty of it, the sheer ruthless brutality left her breathless and speechless, her shocked expression alone betraying to him just how much damage his words were doing.

When her frozen vocal cords relaxed enough for her to reply to him, she did so as unemotionally as she could, her voice low and uneven as she told him, ‘Lucy was conceived when I was eighteen years old. A very foolish eighteen years old. Eighteen-year-olds can sometimes be foolish and naïve. Unfortunately, when they’re female, that folly can often have consequences that affect the rest of their lives.’ She ached to be able to throw in his face her knowledge that his own precious sister had been carrying a child before she married Nicholas, but she told herself that she was not going to demean herself, that she was not going to lower herself to his level, and, as she held her head high and stared bitterly at him, she had the satisfaction of seeing him frown and check before he smiled dangerously at her.

He said softly, ‘I see. Nicholas has been doing a lot of unburdening of himself to you, hasn’t he? What is it exactly that you’re after, Ms Carter? His money? Without my backing, without the business I put his way, he’d barely scrape a living. His lifestyle? Again, without my help he couldn’t afford that lifestyle.’

His cynicism stunned her and she reacted to it instinctively, demanding huskily, ‘Couldn’t it simply be Nicholas himself that I want? Just because your precious sister seems to hold him in such contempt, it doesn’t mean that I feel the same. In fact, I can’t imagine why she’s involved you in this at all. After all, she’s scarcely been giving the impression of a devoted wife, has she? It seems common knowledge that she prefers your company to her husband’s, that it’s to you that she turns for advice, for companionship, and, of course, for money,’ she added sweetly.

She had the pleasure of seeing his whole face harden with rage and distaste as he listened to her taunts.

He didn’t like what she was saying to him; he didn’t like it one little bit, but then why should he expect to be able to stand there and insult her as much as he wished, without her doing a single thing to retaliate? Let him see how he liked being insulted, being accused, being humiliated.

‘What exactly is it you’re implying?’ he demanded savagely, so savagely that immediately Tania panicked, fear swamping her as he took a step towards her. She could see the violence in his eyes, feel it in the heat coming off his body.

‘I’m not implying anything,’ she told him shakily. ‘Nor am I relying on one person’s idiotic assumptions and mistaken beliefs to make accusations which are totally false. The whole town knows that your precious sister looks not to her husband but to her brother, that she constantly humiliates Nicholas by comparing him to you. If he is looking for affection, for warmth, for love outside his marriage then I doubt that anyone would be surprised.’

‘So that’s your justification, is it? It’s all Clarissa’s fault. Have you forgotten that they have two children, two children who need both their father and their mother?’

‘Just as my daughter needs two parents,’ Tania hurled back at him.

‘Well, with my ten thousand you’ll probably be able to buy yourself a man,’ he told her cruelly. ‘You are going to accept it, aren’t you?’

Tania stared at him.

‘No,’ she told him through clenched teeth. ‘No, I am not and what’s more I wouldn’t accept it if you added another nought to the end and made it one hundred thousand pounds.’

‘One hundred thousand. My God, is that your price? Well, let me tell you—’

‘No, let me tell you,’ Tania interrupted him furiously. ‘You come in here, threatening me, bullying me, accusing me. I am not having an affair with Nicholas. And if you don’t believe me try asking him.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he told her flatly. ‘And as for asking Nick … Well, for your information that was one of the first things I did after I had managed to calm Clarissa’s hysterics. Have you any idea what you’re doing to my sister? Have you any idea of how delicately balanced her nervous system is? She’s always been highly strung, vulnerable where her emotions are concerned.’

‘Oh, I’ll bet,’ Tania muttered under her breath, causing him to break off and glare at her.

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