her how much he loved her, and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
They were married two weeks later in the register office in Marylebone. She had been sixteen years old, younger than Ralph by eleven years, and four months pregnant by then.
The elder Jardines, always contentious, had shown their disdain and anger by boycotting the marriage of their only son. So had Alicia, Ralph’s sister.
But her mother had been present, her beautiful mother, Blair Connors, once the most famous model in the world, a supermodel before the term had even been invented.
Accompanying her mother that morning had been her new husband, Derek Rayner, the great English stage actor who everyone said was the heir apparent to Larry Olivier’s crown.
After the wedding ceremony, Derek had taken them all to lunch at The Ivy, London’s famous theatrical restaurant, which the elite of stage, film, and cafe society favored. And then they had gone to Paris for their honeymoon.
Ostracized by Ralph’s parents, Stevie and Ralph had lived for each other, and the world had been well lost to them.
A wistful sigh escaped her. For a long time now she had recognized that the weekends and holidays she had spent on the Yorkshire moors had been the most happy of times for her, perhaps the happiest in her entire life. It saddened her that they could never be recaptured, that this particular kind of happiness would never be hers again.
So young, she thought, I was so young then. But already the mother of three: Nigel, born when I was just seventeen, and the twins, Gideon and Miles, when I was nineteen.
A smile animated her face as images of her children leapt into her mind unbidden. Three towheaded little boys, each with eyes as blue as speedwells. Grown men now. And she was still young herself, only forty-six, but a grandmother for the past two years, thanks to Nigel.
Stevie laughed inwardly. How often she was mistaken for her sons’ sister, much to Nigel’s chagrin. He did not like it; the twins, on the other hand, gleefully encouraged this deception whenever they could. They were incorrigible, loved to pass her off as their sibling to those who were unsuspecting of the truth, and they were usually successful at their mischievous little game.
Gideon and Miles were proud of her youthful looks, slender figure, energy, and vitality. Nigel felt just the opposite. It seemed to her that everything about her was an irritant to him. A small frown furrowed her smooth brow as Nigel’s presence nudged itself into her mind. Swiftly, she pushed aside the flicker of dismay that flew to the surface.
She loved her eldest son, but she had always known he had a lot of his grandfather in him. And Bruce Jardine had never been one of her favorites, although as the years had passed, he had behaved decently toward her. Most especially after Alfreda’s death. But as long as her mother-in-law had been alive, that awful contention had persisted, at least as far as Alfreda was concerned.
A small sigh escaped her and she turned her head, looked toward the fire, her mind sliding back in time as she remembered Alfreda and Bruce as they were then….
Four years after she and Ralph had been married, his sister, Alicia, had died of leukemia. The elder Jardines had been forced to reconsider the situation and effect a compromise, in order to come to terms with them. Ralph and she were the parents of their only grandchildren, their heirs, three boys who one day would follow in their grandfather’s and father’s footsteps, running Jardine and Company of London, the Crown Jewellers.
Eventually she and Ralph had succumbed to his parents’ conciliatory overtures, albeit somewhat reluctantly, and certainly with a great deal of trepidation. They had accepted the proffered olive branch. As it turned out, they were forever fighting off interference from the senior Jardines, who tried, without success, to take over the rearing of the boys.
Their great escape had been the trips to Yorkshire to stay at Aysgarth End, the farmhouse on the moors above the Dales, where they had fled with the children whenever they had been able to get away. Large, rambling, in constant need of repairs, it was, nevertheless, their blessed haven, a little bit of heaven on earth, the place they really called home.
They liked their apartment in Kensington; it was spacious and comfortable, ideal for rearing a growing young family. For some reason Aysgarth End meant so much more to them emotionally. Stevie had never really been able to fathom what it was exactly that made the farm so special, except that it was full of love and laughter. And a special kind of joy.
She still believed, as she had all those years ago, that this joy sprang from Ralph’s natural goodness, his genuine spirituality. He was truly a pure man, the only one she had ever known, filled with kindness and compassion, and he had had such an understanding heart.
That absolute joy in each other and their children had flourished at Aysgarth End until the day Ralph had died. He had been only thirty-four. Too young, by far.
She had become a widow at twenty-three.
And it was then that her troubles had begun.
Of course it was her parents-in-law who were the troublemakers. Endeavoring to brush her aside, ignoring her terrible grief and the enormous sense of loss she was experiencing, they had tried to wrest the children away from her. Foolishly so. They did not have a leg to stand on. She was the perfect mother, exemplary, without blemish, and untouched by any kind of scandal or wrongdoing.
Ralph’s best friend, James Allerton, had also been his solicitor, and with Ralph’s death he had become Stevie’s legal representative. It was to James that she had turned when her in-laws had started to make their moves.
At a meeting with the Jardines, James had almost, but not quite, laughed in their faces, and had told them to go to hell, in more polite terms, of course. Not only was the law of the land on her side, there was the matter of Ralph’s will. In it he had made his feelings for her abundantly clear. He had reiterated his love and admiration of her, not to mention his confidence in her ability to rear their sons. He had left her everything he owned, and in so doing had ensured her financial security. He had also made her entirely independent of his parents.
The trusts he had inherited from his grandparents he had passed on to his three sons; he had named his wife as the administrator of the trusts and executrix of his will.
As James so succinctly pointed out to the Jardines, Stevie was holding all the cards and she had a winning hand. They slunk away, defeated; for once they had been outmaneuvered.
It was her resentment of the Jardines, and her anger at them, that had served her so well in 1973. Especially the anger. She had turned it around, made it work to her advantage; it had also fueled her determination to keep her sons close at all times.
Although she did not know it at that moment, the anger had kindled her ambition as well, and eventually it would spur her on to do things she had never dreamed possible. At the back of her mind a plan was developing, a plan that would make her indispensable to Bruce Jardine, and ensure her control of her children until they were old enough to fend for themselves. That year, beset as she was with problems and crushed by grief, the plan did not come to flower. But the seed had been sown.
Stevie was a pragmatist at heart. She never forgot that one day her sons would inherit the family business, and that they must be properly educated and prepared for this. Founded in 1787 by one Alistair Jardine, a Scottish silversmith who had made his way to London and opened a shop there, Jardine’s had always been run by a Jardine.
And
