‘As soon as she’s free of hospital tests I intend to buy a house away from London——’ He frowned suddenly, checking himself. ‘However, I’m sure you don’t really want to hear any of this.’
His sardonic comment increased her feeling of guilt. It was plain from what he said that he cared deeply about his step-sister, and that he was prepared to make changes in his own life, sacrifices, in fact, for her benefit. Was she being selfish in insisting on moving to the old Hall?
‘How is Lucy?’
His question startled her, and she looked directly at him for the first time that day. The startling blue of his eyes shocked her, bringing back memories she had thought successfully submerged. Her skin grew hot as she fought them down again. James might bear some resemblance to the ancestor she had dreamed about, but they were not one and the same person.
‘Not too happy, I’m afraid,’ she admitted unwillingly. ‘Her headmistress is concerned about her too. She’s worried that Lucy might ruin her life by rushing into marriage—looking for a father-figure.’
‘So…why not provide her with one yourself? Either tell her about her real father, or marry and provide her with a substitute one.’
‘It isn’t as easy as that.’
‘Isn’t it? Or are you just telling yourself that to ease your own conscience.’
‘Of course I’m not.’ He had goaded her into real anger now. ‘Would you marry just to provide your step-sister with a substitute mother?’
‘I might…if I thought I had sufficient grounds for doing so.’
His answer stunned her and he shrugged briefly, his eyes thoughtful as he registered her surprise.
‘I don’t entirely support the modern view that marriage should be a relationship founded on true love—for one thing love is an extremely difficult emotion to define. Most of us make the mistake of confusing it with sexual desire—a pretty potent force to resist, I admit, but no basis for a lifelong relationship. Marriage demands mutual respect and a lot of hard work, a willingness to compromise on both sides and an understanding of what makes the other person tick. It demands acceptance of them too…compassion and a lack of desire to completely transform their character.
‘It’s my view that no marriage is far, far better than a bad marriage, and good ones are very hard to find. We’re all taught these days to expect perfection in a relationship and it doesn’t exist, so the moment things don’t work out, we get disappointed and angry and fall out of love. If people took a more realistic view of marriage and what they can expect of it, it would last a lot longer.’
‘And yet believing all that, you can still advocate that I marry purely to provide Lucy with a substitute father?’
He shrugged again. ‘It’s all a matter of priorities—a question of what you put first: Lucy’s happiness or…’
‘My own?’ Jenna enquired sweetly.
Instead of replying James glanced at his watch. ‘Time we were on our way,’ he told her calmly.
They made good time, but even so Jenna was stiff and tired when he eventually stopped the car outside the Hall just before midday.
Jenna had arranged for the architect to meet her at two, and when James suggested lunch, she said coolly that she would only require a snack and, moreover, that she had an appointment.
‘Suits me fine,’ was James’s laconic response. ‘I’ll have a wander round and meet you outside at one. We can get a quick snack in the hotel in the village.’
Jenna forbore to comment. She had intended to tell him that she was lunching with Bill and Nancy, but he hadn’t given her time to make the excuse.
They went inside the house together, James wandering off into the older wing, leaving Jenna alone to make a careful tour of the Georgian rooms.
Without the initial excitement of her purcha
se to buoy her up she could see that she was going to have a far harder job on her hands than she had at first visualised. In her imagination she clothed the rooms as she wanted to see them, but she could not deny that it would take a long time to get them like that. Using her camera to record details of the plasterwork that needed repairing and the motif on the mahogany doors, she made detailed notes. Tattered brocade curtains hung at the library windows, the once elegant room dingy and drab. She knew a firm that specialised in traditional fabric patterns; they were expensive, but very good. She itched to see James’s sketches, but he had not mentioned them to her as yet and she was not going to ask.
Her tour of the downstairs completed, she retraced her steps into the hall. The staircase curved elegantly upwards, or at least it would be elegant once it was repaired. Sighing faintly, she stepped over a pile of rubbish on the floor and mounted the stairs. Immediately in front of her was the portrait. She tensed as she looked up at it, licking her lips, her muscles suddenly locking. To look into those mocking blue eyes was to remember in vivid detail the acutely sexual nature of her dream. The portrait at once fascinated and revolted her. She stepped backwards, stifling a shocked scream as she felt hands grasp her shoulders.
‘It’s okay, it’s only me,’ James said easily from behind her. ‘Sorry if I startled you.’ He released her immediately, moving away from her but as she turned to face him Jenna was struck by his likeness to the portrait. It shuddered through her flooding her mind with confused mental pictures.
‘My scapegrace ancestor,’ James commented wryly. ‘I’m surprised Sir Alan kept the portrait hanging there.’
‘People get so used to what’s around them that they cease to notice it in the end,’ Jenna said huskily. She felt curiously weak and faint, and told herself it was because she was hungry.
‘It’s getting on for one,’ James informed her. ‘If you’ve finished down here, how about going for lunch now?’
There was no reason for her to refuse. She knew the hotel in the village quite well, and although the owner was justifiably proud of his carvery lunch, Jenna found she was barely able to touch her plateful of food, despite her earlier conviction that she was hungry.