them cheerfully.
Ushering the dogs through the gate, she closed it securely behind her, feeling light-hearted for the first time in days.
She loved her job, thrived on the challenges and hassles, the praise Jake gave so generously, the companionship that inevitably built up when you worked so closely with someone you admired and respected. But she certainly couldn’t keep it after they separated. It would look very odd to the rest of the world if she were to continue to work for her ex-husband after he remarried.
So the prospect of losing her job had to be responsible for the bleak mood she’d been in ever since she’d seen that photograph and realized the implications behind his first ever indiscretion. And before that, even, beginning when Liz had told her about that legacy and she’d thought—wrongly, as it happened—that Jake would terminate their agreement because the conditions were no longer being met and he, above anything, was an honorable man.
And the relief that she had worked it all out must have shown on her face because when she walked into the big, cosy kitchen Emma, heating milk on the Aga to add to the mid-morning coffee, turned and said, ‘What’s happened to cheer you up? You’ve been looking like a wet Sunday since Jake left. I said you were missing the brute but Frank thought you were sickening for something.’
Claire didn’t like to think she was so transparent, but she hid her unease with a smiling shrug and offered, ‘Fresh air and exercise does wonders! It’s a beautiful morning and you don’t feel the cold if you keep moving. The dogs enjoyed it, too.’
Thankfully, the mention of dogs deflected her, as it had been meant to do. Emma petted and crooned over the dogs which had just returned, sitting at her feet, pink tongues lolling. Claire rescued the milk.
She and Emma had taken an instant liking to each other the first time they’d met. Jake had insisted she spend that first Christmas here. They’d just got ‘engaged’—one of the shortest on record—and he’d brought her down to meet the only family he had. And last Christmas they’d been here as a married couple, he giving the same reason she had for their preference for separate rooms, and they would be here together again this year. For the very last time, she expected.
Jake always spent the festive season at Lither ton, and was openly impatient for Emma to provide him with nieces and nephews for him to spoil and play with. But Emma was in no hurry to oblige. She had her dogs and her husband, not to mention the absorbing business of running the big estate like clockwork, with the occasional input from Frank, who was Jake’s personal accountant, handling his impressively massive portfolio.
Claire deeply regretted being unable to let her sister-in-law get really close. Emma was open and bright and bubbly and would have liked nothing better than to have long heart-to-heart chats with her brother’s wife, but Claire, recognizing the dangers in that, put on an act of reserve and refused to be drawn. No one but she and Jake knew what a sham their marriage was. They both wanted to keep it that way.
‘There’s just the two of us today,’ Emma remarked as Claire finished making the coffee. ‘Frank’s spending the day with Liz. He’d have asked you along too, but they’ll be spending the time talking investments. Boring!’ She pretended an exaggerated yawn and Claire’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. One of the first things Jake had done after they’d arrived at Lither ton was to tell Frank of Liz’s newly acquired wealth.
‘At the moment it’s swilling around in her bank account. I want you to go and see her. You can do better than that for her.’ His tone had implied ‘or else’, and that was typical of the type of man he was. Claire pushed him quickly out of her mind and the wall-mounted phone rang.
She was already—more or less successfully—thinking of her marriage in the past tense so when she realised Emma was talking to Jake the shock made her stomach curl up in a ball and turn to ice. And they were obviously talking about her, because Emma was saying, ‘No. Only to do some Christmas shopping. She borrowed one of the cars and took off for the day.’
Claire watched the puzzled frown gather between her sister-in-law’s eyes and just knew he was checking up on her. He was still suspicious about the phone call he’d interrupted, and that made her coldly angry because who was he to poke and pry into her affairs when his was splashed all over the papers? He would want their marriage to end when the time was right for him. He wouldn’t want her jumping the gun, painting him in the guise of a cuckolded husband!
‘Of course I didn’t go with her,’ Emma was saying, running out of patience. ‘I always get mine done early, you know that. No. No— Look, she’s right here; ask her yourself.’
She handed Claire the receiver with an upward hunch of her shoulders and Claire managed coolly, ‘Ask me what?’
The tiny ensuing silence was electrifying and, for no reason that she could fathom, her heart began to beat like a drum gone out of control; then cold anger took over as he told her without an atom of shame, ‘Just checking up on how my wife spends her time. Get all your shopping done, did you? Or perhaps you forgot something vital? Find you have to spend yet another day in town?’
If theirs had been a normal marriage she would have thought he was harboring deep suspicions, half believing she was seeing someone else, was blisteringly jealous. As it was, she knew he was simply anxious not to be made to look a fool.
She hated it when they were like this together. Up until his return from Rome they had got along fine, becoming really close companions. Squashing the impulse to reassure him, because getting back on to a best friends footing again would only make the inevitable break-up much more difficult, she gushed, ‘Now however did you guess? Such a bore! Was there anything else you wanted to check up on, or can I go? My coffee’s getting cold.’
‘No, you may not go.’ The tone of his voice set all the nerves in her body on edge. It was the tone she had heard him use when dealing out reprimands to underlings who had earned his displeasure. He had never used it to her before. And now that clipped, arrogant voice was telling her, ‘I’m buying a property in Have ling. The agent will deliver the keys to you in the morning. As soon as he does, I want you to drive over there and wait for me. I should arrive around lunchtime. Got that?’
She answered, ‘Yes,’ but was talking to silence. Her face went red. He’d put the phone down, just like that! How dared he treat her as if she were a mere employee he’d suddenly lost patience with?
But an employee was all she was, all she had ever been, she reminded herself with a swift return to rationality, and maybe the brisk arrogance he’d used on her for the very first time was his way of easing them apart, phasing out the strange but special relationship they’d had.
‘What was that all about?’ Emma wanted to know. ‘I’ve never heard him so snappy—someone been giving him a bad time?’ She was cutting fruit cake and suddenly looked deadly serious. ‘You? Before he left he asked me to keep an eye on you,’ she went on slowly, as if thinking things out and not liking the conclusions she was reaching. ‘He said he was worried about you. You’d got overtired, I must make sure you had plenty of rest and didn’t go racketing round on your own. But just then he sounded on edge, as if there was a lot more to it than that. Is there?’
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