The Perfect Seduction, page 9
‘Mmm... Uncle Jon seems to feel that it was your father who first started the whole anti-American thing,’ Olivia commented. ‘Something about some argument he’d had with someone in authority on the American side...’
Bobbie wondered if she was being over-sensitive in thinking that Ruth hesitated just that little bit too long before replying and that her voice was not quite so naturally or warmly pitched as it had been before as she responded, ‘That may very well have been the case. Your great-grandfather had his own very decided views on things and he certainly wasn’t too happy with the way the Ministry had appropriated land—especially when it was his land—for war use and I believe there were certain quarrels and petty arguments over his belief that he still had a right to walk on what he considered to be his own land while the authorities viewed that he was trespassing on what was now military property.’
Olivia laughed and, as she bent down to scoop up her small daughter who was now beginning to object to the lack of adult attention, told Bobbie, ‘Well, you can rest assured, Bobbie, that Americans are more than welcome in this household. You will stay for lunch, won’t you?’ she turned to ask Ruth as the older woman started to straighten her skirt.
‘I wish I could, but it’s the Simmonds’ wedding this weekend and I promised I’d help with the flowers for the church today,’ Ruth answered, turning away from Olivia and smiling gently at Bobbie as she added, ‘It’s been lovely to meet you. Perhaps Olivia will bring you over to see me before you leave.’
‘Bring her over to see you... How formal.’ Olivia pulled a face.
Without waiting for Bobbie to reply, Ruth turned back to her small great-great-niece, her eyes alight with tenderness and love as she bent her head to kiss her.
‘Ruth is wonderful with children,’ Olivia told Bobbie ten minutes later after Ruth had driven off.
‘Yes ... yes, I can see that she is,’ Bobbie agreed flatly. The day had suddenly started to turn sour on her. She had the beginnings of what promised to be a very bad headache, and for the first time since she had come to Britain, she missed her twin so much that she positively ached with the pain of wanting her.
‘Bobbie, what is it? Are you feeling all right?’ Olivia asked her anxiously. ‘You weren’t upset by what we were saying about Americans, were you? It was thoughtless of me to bring it up. It’s just that you’re almost bound to meet Gramps and, well, depending on what kind of mood he’s in and how much his hip is paining him, he can be rather...tactless. He’s rather behind the times, I’m afraid, and his outlook is very blinkered. You’d never believe that he and Ruth are brother and sister. She’s so modern and so forward-thinking. I know that Gramps is older than her but sometimes you’d think he’s got stuck in some kind of time warp, whereas Ruth—’
‘You obviously think very highly of her,’ Bobbie commented abruptly.
Olivia gave her a thoughtful look.
‘Yes ... yes ... I do,’ she agreed gravely. ‘You see... Well, let’s just say that if it wasn’t for Ruth, I doubt very much that Caspar and I would be together today and I certainly wouldn’t have you, would I, my wonderful, precious, naughty little one?’ She smiled, hugging her gurgling daughter.
‘In many ways, Ruth and Jon’s wife, Jenny, have been the true mother figures in my life, the people I’ve turned to for help and advice and, yes, for the definition of myself as a woman. My own mother...’ She gave Bobbie a sad look. ‘It’s no secret and you’re bound to hear about it sooner or later, so I may as well tell you myself. My mother, Tania, suffered very badly from...from an eating disorder. So badly, in fact, that even now, although she’s in recovery, she still needs help.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Bobbie commiserated, genuinely moved to compassion, not just for Olivia but for her unknown mother, as well.
‘Yes, so am I,’ Olivia agreed, ‘which is just one of the reasons why I’m so determined that this tittle madam gets a very different kind of mothering.’
‘And your father?’ Bobbie asked hesitantly.
‘Who knows?’ Olivia returned dryly. ‘He ... he disappeared shortly after my mother became ilt—he’d been recovering from a heart attack in a nursing home and he just walked out. We’ve tried to find him but...’
‘And you’ve heard nothing from him?’ Bobbie asked her, shocked.
‘Two postcards, one from Italy and the other from South America, but we still haven’t been able to trace him.’ Olivia gave a small shrug.
‘As Amelia grows up, Jenny and Jon will be her maternal grandparents and Ruth... Ruth, I hope, will always be Amelia’s special person and be there for her as she was for me when I was a child and as she is now for Joss. She’s convinced that, of all of us, he’s the one who will fulfil all of Gramps’s ambitions, and she’s probably right. Mind you, Joss is going to have a long way to go before he matches Luke’s awesome courtroom manner,’ Olivia noted, smiling.
‘Yes. I can imagine,’ Bobbie agreed grimly. ‘He must be a ruthless prosecutor.’
‘Prosecutor!’ Olivia stared at her. ‘Oh, but Luke specialises in defence, didn’t he tell you? That’s his forte.’
‘Whom does he defend?’ Bobbie muttered cynically, trying not to betray her discomfort. ‘Murderers and rapists?’
She could see from Olivia’s expression that she had gone too far and inwardly cursed her runaway tongue’s impulsiveness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised guiltily. ‘It’s just...’
‘It’s all right,’ Olivia assured her. ‘You don’t have to explain to me. Caspar and I had some pretty horrendous fights in our time.’
Whilst Bobbie stared at her, she added illuminatingly, ‘I’m afraid that Fenella wasn’t too discreet in giving vent to her feelings about discovering the pair of you together. I don’t intend to pry,’ she declared firmly. ‘But, well, let’s just say that it’s pretty obvious that there’s a certain something smouldering away between you, and my experience is that when something smoulders, sparks can fly,’ Olivia finished more light-heartedly.
Bobbie didn’t say a word. How could she? She was too busy trying to grapple with the latest complication in her life. She doubted that Luke would be too pleased at discovering that at least one member of his extended family and possibly others appeared to think that they were something of an ‘item’. Well, he only had himself to blame, and unpleasant though she might find the thought of being linked romantically to him, she at least would soon be walking away from the situation—and from him.
For now, though, she was caught in something of a cleft stick. She either allowed Olivia to continue thinking that there was some kind of romance going on between herself and Luke or she told her that there wasn’t and left her believing that she had simply spent the night with him. Of the two, the second option was certainly the more unpalatable, Bobbie acknowledged, and besides, she rather suspected that Luke would find it much more difficult to explain his way out of a supposed romance than to dismiss a mere one-night stand, and if he was busy doing that, he would surely have far less time to indulge his suspicions of her. In fact, the more Bobbie thought about it, the more advantages she could see in allowing the fiction that she and Luke were attracted to one another to continue.
For a start, it would allow her to be far more openly curious about Luke’s family background than she could allow herself to be as a mere substitute nanny and for another thing... Well, she admitted that she wouldn’t have been human if she wasn’t enjoying the prospect of seeing Luke wrong-footed and discomforted and she certainly knew exactly how he would feel at the idea of having her for a ‘girlfriend’.
And then another thought struck her.
‘I hope you didn’t offer me this job because...because of me and Luke,’ she asked Olivia uncomfortably.
‘Certainly not,’ Olivia reassured her immediately. ‘No, Caspar and I had already talked about approaching you on the night of the party. Which reminds me, could you hold Amelia for a moment, please, while I go and ring Caspar and find out what time he’s coming home?’
Left alone with her new charge, Bobbie smilingly returned the baby’s curious, round-eyed stare, enjoying the soft, warm feel of her in her arms, and instinctively started to talk to her.
When Olivia returned, Amelia was smiling hugely in Bobbie’s arms whilst Bobbie herself...
Some women just had a natural mothering instinct, Olivia believed, and Bobbie, whether she knew it yet or not, was definitely one of them.
Twenty-four hours later, even Bobbie herself was surprised at how easily she had fitted into the household. Caspar and Olivia treated her more as a friend than an employee, and as for Amelia...
She was delicious, Bobbie had happily and wholeheartedly told a grinning Caspar. Yummy, delicious, delectable and definitely the most intelligent and aware eight-month-old who had ever existed.
‘You’re almost as bad as Luke,’ Olivia teasingly scolded her later that evening. ‘He’s the most besotted godfather that ever was.’
‘And a far better choice than Saul would have been,’ Caspar chipped in, adding dryly, ‘He would have been more interested in making eyes at Amelia’s mother than at Amelia.’
‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned him.
‘Saul’s my father’s cousin,’ she explained to Bobbie. ‘You may have met him at the birthday party.’
‘He was the one Louise was desperately trying to impress,’ Caspar supplied helpfully, ‘but she’s wasting her time because Saul—’
‘Caspar...’ Olivia warned a little more firmly this time. ‘Saul’s much too old for Louise,’ she explained. ‘He’s well into his thirties now and Louise is only eighteen.’
‘He’s also getting divorced, has three children and is still half inclined to believe himself in love with you,’ Caspar interjected.
‘Saul was never in love with me,’ Olivia refuted firmly. ‘He may at one time have thought...felt... Oh, I’m sure Bobbie doesn’t want to hear all this ancient family history,’ she told her husband, then continued to explain to Bobbie, ‘As a teenager I did have a bit of a crush on Saul, and then when his marriage broke up and Caspar and I were estranged, Saul provided a welcome cousinly shoulder for me to cry on. His wife was an American, by the way. In fact, it’s rather ironic, given Gramps’s insistence on being so anti-American, that two of us have married across the Atlantic, as it were.’
‘If you ask me, a good deal of your grandfather’s antipathy towards us springs from Ruth’s mysterious relationship with her army major,’ Caspar conjectured.
‘Caspar, please,’ Olivia objected even more sternly this time, and good manners precluded Bobbie from asking any questions. Instead, Olivia tactfully changed the subject and talked about how Haslewich had developed as a town. Her enthusiasm was infectious, but she admitted her knowledge was limited.
‘If you really want to know more about its history, Ruth is the one to talk to. Which reminds me, I’ve got some books she loaned me and I really ought to get back to her. Could you possibly return them for me tomorrow, Bobbie, when you’re out with Amelia?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Bobbie agreed.
‘I’d take them back myself, after all she only lives a few minutes away from the office, but I’m in court in Chester tomorrow and possibly for the rest of the week, as well.’
‘Oh and, Cas, before I forget, we’ve all been summoned to Queensmead for lunch on Sunday. Apparently, Max is home and Gramps has issued a royal summons. You’re included, too,’ she told Bobbie, adding ruefully, ‘Not that it’s likely to be a particularly relaxing occasion, not with Max around.’
‘You’d have thought that marriage would have mellowed him a bit,’ Caspar grumbled.
‘The only thing that’s ever likely to mellow Max is a large helping of humble pie,’ Olivia responded forthrightly, ‘and he’s certainly not going to be fed that by Madeleine, who worships him.’
‘Mmm...I’ve noticed,’ Caspar agreed wryly. ‘Hardly a healthy foundation on which to base a marriage and it can’t but lead one to suspect that Max’s motivation for marrying her—’
‘Poor Madeleine,’ Olivia broke in, ‘I feel so sorry for her. She doesn’t work and she’s prepared to devote herself to Max and then to their children when they come along and, of course, she genuinely is a very lovable and kind-hearted person.
‘And although Luke doesn’t normally put in an appearance when he knows Max is going to be around, I suspect that we’ll be seeing him at Queensmead this Sunday,’ Olivia told Bobbie with a teasing smile.
Fortunately Amelia distracted them, freeing Bobbie from the necessity of making any reply, although she was uneasily aware that in refusing to correct Olivia’s misconception that she and Luke were romantically involved, she was potentially risking tangling with an unstable situation, but, she told herself firmly, it was Luke’s responsibility to tell his cousin exactly why he had virtually forced himself into her room, and not hers.
She was thinking about Luke again the following day as she wheeled Amelia through the sunshine and into Haslewich’s pretty town square on her way to return Ruth’s books. It was an unfathomable mystery to her how such a man—the type of man she would normally have sidestepped past with the same kind of politically correct disdain with which she would have avoided some offensively rabid right-winger spouting his views at a Washington dinner party—could have such a deep and profound impact on her at the deepest level of her emotional and physical self, especially when there was so much else that was far more important to occupy her thoughts. It must be because she disliked him that she was spending so much time thinking about him, she decided hastily, but the analytical and fiercely sharp streak of hard-hitting perseverance and brutal self-honesty she had inherited via her father from his Puritan forebears refused to allow her such an easy way out. If she disliked him so much, how come he had the kind of physical effect on her body and her female desires that she couldn’t remember having had so strongly or so bewilderingly activated since junior high?
So she was as vulnerable as the next woman to the kind of raw sexual energy that Luke positively exuded. So what? She knew otherwise perfectly sensible and intelligent women who went glassy-eyed over Brad Pitt and only admitted to it in the privacy of dark, sheltered wine bars after at least half a bottle of good wine.
Perhaps because she was thinking of Luke and therefore in defiance of her thoughts and his suspicions, she decided to wheel Amelia through the church walk instead of going straight across the square.
The walk ran along one side of the square and down to the gated church close that housed Ruth’s home. All of the four benches were already filled, mainly with the town’s more elderly residents, Bobbie noticed as she smiled in response to their admiring comments about Amelia. From the walk she could see the churchyard, and the temptation to visit it a second time proved irresistible. Amelia gurgled happily as she reached out to try to grab a handful of the pretty wild poppies that had seeded themselves in the grass verge and it was whilst Bobbie was gently detaching her from them that she heard someone calling her name.
Looking round she saw Ruth coming towards her. She was carrying an empty flower trug and explained, as she reached them, that she had been to do the church flowers.
‘We were just on our way to see you,’ Bobbie informed her quietly. ‘Olivia asked me to return some books she borrowed from you and I thought that we’d take a small detour through the church walk,’ she explained a little uncomfortably.
But to her relief Ruth didn’t seem to share Luke’s suspicious objections of her behaviour and simply replied, ‘Yes, there’s something fascinating about old churches. They always seem to hold such an air of peace and tranquillity. We can cut through here,’ she added, indicating by waving her hand in the direction of the churchyard. ‘It will save us walking all the way back.’
‘It was here that I first met Joss,’ Bobbie offered conversationally as they followed the path that meandered between the gravestones.
‘Yes, I know,’ Ruth returned. ‘He often comes here. Jon and Jenny lost their first baby,’ she explained quietly. ‘He’s buried here and Joss often comes to bring flowers and to talk to him. He’s that kind of boy.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Bobbie agreed, suddenly discovering that there was a lump in her throat and that her eyes were filming with tears. Without really thinking about what she was saying, she murmured emotionally, ‘That must just be the hardest thing...to lose a child...a baby....’
There was a long silence before Ruth replied and when she did Bobbie could hear the tension in her voice as she responded, ‘Yes, it is.... Here we are,’ she said in a more normal voice, indicating a small gate set into the neatly clipped hedge that separated the churchyard from the close. ‘We go this way.’
Ruth’s home was everything that Bobbie had expected and a good many things she had not The antique furniture, the Persian rugs, the smell of polish and flowers, the family heirlooms and photographs. She had known those would all be there, but the other things... A carefully chosen and displayed collection of polished stones and pebbles that were of no material value at all, other than the fact that someone—probably Joss—had found them and lovingly polished them to give to her, children’s toys suitable for nephews and nieces of different ages; a book of modeRN flower arrangements and a rather racy novel along with several political biographies that Bobbie would never have thought of as typical reading for a spinster living in a quiet rural backwater.
On the bookshelves as well, though, were some very well-worn copies of Jane Austen’s novels plus several leather-bound volumes of poetry.
Amelia, it was obvious, was delighted to be in the company of her great-great aunt and Bobbie was compelled to admire the very practised and confident way in which Ruth changed the baby’s nappy, covering the little girl’s face with kisses as she re-dressed her.
Angry with herself for her own emotional reaction, she had to turn her head away to hide tears as she watched the loving rapport between Amelia and Ruth. Bobbie, too, had great-great aunts but they were nothing like Ruth.
