was dressed in jeans and a checked cotton work-shirt, his hair tousled, the open neck of his shirt revealing a deep vee of tanned flesh and the beginnings of a tangle of dark hair. Who was he? He was so like James Deveril that he must have some Deveril blood somewhere … but why not? There had been several Deverils in the past who had taken what they considered their droit de seigneur over the village girls; this man could be the descendant of one of them. He couldn’t be a legitimate member of the family; there weren’t any alive.
‘Thinking of buying it, are you?’ He nodded towards the house as he spoke, his eyes lingering on the full thrust of her breasts as she turned to unlock her car.
Seething inwardly Jenna ignored him, hoping that he would take the hint and leave her alone, but when he kept on prowling appreciatively round her car, she began to suspect he was deliberately trying to infuriate her, and she snapped shortly, ‘Look, I can see that you consider yourself something of a local Don Juan, but I’m really not interested. If I were you I’d get back to work before your employers discover that you’re missing.’
She had expected him to be disconcerted by her put-down, but instead he merely laughed, stepping away from the car as she slid in to fire the engine. The car needed servicing and was being rather temperamental. It refused to start, despite several attempts to get it going, and all-too-conscious of his amused scrutiny, Jenna willed herself not to give way to temper.
‘Here, let me.’
His arrogance left her breathless, stupefaction giving way to fury as he opened her door, turned the key in the ignition and the car fired right away.
Closing the door for her he gave her a wide, taunting smile, and said, ‘Some cars are like women; they respond best to a man’s touch.’
Chauvinist! Much as she longed to throw the insult at him, Jenna restrained herself. Why get so het up about the sexual insolence of some village lout who obviously thought of the female sex as no more than male chattels.
She was still fuming when she reached her destination. Although deference wasn’t something she expected to receive from her peers — of either sex — there had been an air of insolent amusement about him, an easy, but none the less distinct, self-assurance that had jarred on her. Mere farm labourer he might be, but for all that he had made it plain that he considered himself superior to her simply by virtue of his sex, and that made her seethe. It had been a long time since she had come up against such blatantly arrogant maleness and it had unsettled her. Implicit in the look he had given her as she drove away had been the suggestion that had he so wished he could have mastered not only her car but her as well. No man could look at her like that and get away with it.
For goodness’ sake, Jenna chided herself as she parked her car in the drive of the old school-house and climbed out, why was she getting in such a state over some country Lothario?
Since she had left the area her old school had been shut down but Bill Mather, the headmaster, had been allowed to purchase the school-house. Built in the Victorian era, it had an air of solid respectability and stability. This was the first house she had ever truly called home, she thought, as she ignored the front door in favour of walking round to the kitchen. She had come here as a frightened, ignorant girl of barely fifteen, having been virtually thrown out by her great-aunt, her clothes in a battered suitcase and a two-week-old baby in her arms. She sighed faintly, anticipating the conflict now to come with that same ‘baby’. Lucy had objected strenuously to coming to Yorkshire, mainly because Jenna herself had been so eager to do so. What had happened to the easy friendship that had once existed between them? Sometimes these days she felt as though Lucy almost hated her. Was she being selfish in wanting to buy the house? Lucy still had several terms to do at school, even if she decided to leave after O levels; she had always complained about the smallness of their London flat. Here she could have as much space as she wanted. Perhaps even that horse she had nagged her mother for last year.
There was no sign of Lucy as Jenna walked into the Mathers’ kitchen. No doubt she would be sulking in her room. Lucy had made her dislike of the Mathers more than plain, because, Jenna suspected, she believed that like Jenna herself they knew the identity of her father and were conspiring with her mother to keep it from her.
Of course Jenna could understand why Lucy wanted to know her father’s identity, but it was something she just could not tell her … She bit her lip wondering how many people living in the village could remember that summer nearly sixteen years ago. She had changed of course. Then, she had been a painfully thin, milk-skinned child with red hair and enormous, frightened eyes. All that was still the same was the colour of her skin … even her hair had turned from carrot to rich Titian. No, she doubted if anyone would recognise her. She hadn’t had many friends. Her aunt had never really mingled with the other villagers, and besides, she had always been content with Rachel’s company.
Rachel … pain pierced through her. Fifteen years her sister had been dead and even now Jenna’s grief was as fresh and sharp as it had been then. Rachel had been everything Jenna had not: three years older, warm and extrovert, with a personality that drew people to her. There had not been an ounce of malice in her nature. Naturally warm-hearted she had naïvely believed that everyone else was the same; trusting and eager to please, she had paid a terrible price for her naïvety …
‘Jenna!’
She tore her thoughts abruptly from the past as Bill Mather walked into the kitchen. ‘I thought I heard your monster of a car arrive. How did it go?’
The grey eyes weren’t quite as keen now as they had been fifteen years ago, but they were still kind and wise.
‘I fell in love with the place, totally and for ever,’ Jenna told him honestly.
He and his wife were her only bridge between the present and her past; she loved them with an intensity that went so deep that it was something she could never talk about. Without them …
The faded grey eyes showed concern. ‘Jenna, my dear, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’
‘If you’re questioning my motives, I admit that initially it was a macabre need to gloat that brought me here. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t harbour some resentment.’
Bill Mather smiled wryly. ‘No, of course not, but you mustn’t let your bitterness over the past mar the present, Jenna.’
‘You mean I should forget what happened, forget how the Deverils killed my sister … how they …’
Emotion boiled up inside her, pain reflected in her eyes as they met his.
‘Jenna … Jenna … of course not … but, my dear, Alan and Charles are gone … the family is gone …’
‘Not quite.’ She said it quietly, her face pale and strained as she looked at him. ‘There’s still Lucy …’
‘Yes. Jenna, do you think it’s wise to conceal the truth from her? The child has a right to know that …’
‘That what? That her mother was brutally raped by her father and left pregnant … abandoned and left to die giving birth to the child she should never have had? Is that what you want me to tell her?’ She was shaking with emotion, sick with the force of it. Fifteen years had done nothing to lessen the sense of sick despair she always felt when she thought about her sister. Beautiful, lovable Rachel. ‘I want to buy the house,’ she said quietly. ‘I want to buy it for Lucy, because it is hers by right.’ She remembered with bitter clarity how she had visited the house with Rachel, just after Rachel had discovered
