style="font-size:15px;"> ‘What I want, for starters,’ she said collectedly. ‘But there’s no time to go into all of that right now. Your mother’s invited some friends to meet us—well, me, I suppose.’ She searched her brain for names. ‘Ruth and Lester Spencer. We’ll be expected to show our faces any time now.’
He moved away from the window, taking his elegantly cut dinner jacket from the wardrobe where she’d hung it earlier. ‘Then we’d better change the subject, hadn’t we?’ He was coolly dismissive. ‘So tell me, what did you and Ma find to do with yourselves?’ he tossed at her, settling the jacket snugly over his shoulders.
‘Plenty.’ She applied her make-up hurriedly, her hands shaking. She was still deeply affected by the undercurrent of antagonism. ‘I helped her prepare the salads for the meal this evening, then she made some lemonade and we carried it out to the rose garden and simply sat and nattered.’
‘What about? Were you bored out of your socks?’ He was sharing the mirror, talking like a polite stranger, tying his bow-tie with expert fingers. ‘Once she starts on the subject of her charity work she sends everyone to sleep. But don’t tell her I told you so; the poor love would be shattered.’
‘We mostly talked about you.’ She capped her lipstick, her voice deliberately matching the coolness of his. ‘But don’t worry, I managed not to yawn.’
She watched his eyes glitter at her and wasn’t going to tell him that the conversation had revealed how ignorant his doting parents were of his true desires and needs, and said instead, ‘I wonder if you appreciate how lucky you are? Oh, not all this—’ She gestured vaguely around the room at the lovely antique furnishings, the porcelain bowls of garden flowers set on almost every available polished surface. ‘But the feeling of love and warmth that comes entirely from your parents. They obviously dote on each other and on you. Which is nice, because it rubs off on me, too. They have the happy knack of making me feel I’m at last part of a family.’
She had already told him that her parents had split up when she was five, that the modest terraced house had been sold after the divorce, she and her mother moving to a one-bedroom flat. But he had more or less accused her of keeping secrets, of telling him little or nothing about herself. So now, as she tipped her head to fix her gold stud earrings, she elaborated.
‘Before Dad left us, my enduring memory is of them fighting. I never saw him again. He hadn’t wanted children; Mum never stopped telling me that. Then, oh, years later, she met a former mutual friend who told her Dad had remarried, had had three children and was completely content. It made her even more bitter. She’d told me so often that Dad had left because I was a burden he didn’t want. Having to face up to the fact that he was perfectly happy with a full-blown family took the blame for the break-up from me and put it on her. After that she became impossible to live with.’
She stood up, smoothing the silky fabric of her dress over her hips, and Nathan asked slowly, ‘Is that why you married so young? To get away from home?’
‘Probably. Although I’d been living on my own for twelve months when I met Max,’ she said dismissively. She didn’t want to talk about it. But she caught his disappointment; it blanked the life from his expressive eyes.
She sucked her lower lip between her teeth, knowing intuitively that he’d wanted to hear her affirm it, tell him that her marriage to Max hadn’t been born of the kind of passion they shared but had been her way out of an intolerable home situation.
But it was too late now to repair the damage and her years with Max were something she never talked about, something she never thought about if she could help it.
She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s time we went down. We don’t want to keep dinner waiting any longer.’
The Spencers, Nathan’s parents’ oldest friends, were a comfortable couple, and the panelled dining room, with the tall French windows open to the soft summer evening, the oval mahogany table set with glittering crystal and the heavy family silver, was the perfect setting for convivial conversation over the hot lobster bisque and cold pheasant and salads.
More at ease after two glasses of superb wine, Olivia caught the gleaming humour in Nathan’s eyes across the candlelit table and smiled at him softly, her heart lifting because she felt close to him again, knowing what he was thinking.
Angela Monroe was enthusiastically relating the success of her favourite charity work, but Olivia couldn’t see anyone yawning yet and her smile deepened.
She already felt at home here, accepted, and the misery, the plain nastiness of what had happened last night had assumed the mantle of a bad dream, no more, a fading dream that would soon be entirely lost to memory.
Once he’d got over the shock of what he’d heard last night, Nathan wouldn’t believe a single word of it. And sooner or later he’d agree to discuss their future, listen to what she had to say on the subject of her resignation, and they’d reach a decision they could both be comfortable with.
And she couldn’t imagine, as she saw the soft glow of love in Nathan’s eyes as he watched her across the table—and that couldn’t be merely a trick of the candlelight, could it?—that everything could start to go wrong again. Badly wrong.
‘We’re really going to miss you on the committee, Ruth,’ Angela sighed. ‘Apart from that, I don’t know what I’ll do without you. If you’d asked my permission to sell up I’d have flatly refused!’
Nathan turned to Ruth Spencer, his dark brows raised in mild surprise. ‘Are you and Lester moving? I thought you were as deeply rooted here as the Monroes.’
Ruth shook her head, her white curls bobbing. ‘Hardly. We can’t claim to have been here since William the Conqueror!’ She glanced at her husband. ‘We can’t say it was an easy decision. But The Grange is too big for two old codgers.’
She turned to Olivia. ‘Sadly, we didn’t have children so we don’t even have the excuse of handing the place on through the family. So we’re bowing out gracefully, before we get too old to stand the trauma of moving, and retiring to the coast. We’ve found a manageable cottage with a small garden that’s crying out for reclamation. So that leaves The Grange looking for the owners it deserves—a young family, ideally, to fill all those rooms.’
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Angie?’ Edward grinned at his wife down the length of the table. He was still a handsome man, his iron-grey hair thick and strong, the family resemblance between him and his son unmistakable—which meant, Olivia thought contentedly, Nathan would mature spectacularly well.
‘I’m sure I am!’ Angela put her cutlery neatly on her plate and planted her elbows on the table, cupping her chin in her hands, her merry blue eyes fixing on Nathan’s. He returned her fizzling look with an amused smile.
‘Thinking of buying it, Ma? Housing a few more homeless families? Or are we into craft centres for struggling artisans? Whatever, I’m with you, as always. You can count on my donation.’
Watching him swallow the last of his wine, Olivia thought she had never loved him more. The close family bonds were evident, his interest in what his parents were doing, his open-handed support for his mother’s charities, totally endearing. She closed her eyes briefly, her happiness almost uncontainable. What had she ever done to deserve Nathan’s love? She had never felt so protected, so secure, in the whole of her life.
‘No, darling, not this time.’ Angela tipped her head on one side. Her rich auburn hair had only
