Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN
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own?’ she asked Olivia as she prepared to leave.
It had already been arranged that Jack would go home with Jenny, at his own request.
‘Yes. I’ll be fine,’ Olivia reassured her.
Jenny only realised that Jon had followed her home as she was pulling in front of the house. She hung back after she had sent Jack inside, wondering what her husband wanted.
These past few weeks had somehow given him a much more noticeable air of authority; he seemed slightly taller, and as she listened to him talking to the doctor, she’d observed how much more positive and even assertive he was. He had, she recognised, for perhaps the first time in his life, stepped out of David’s shadow, and as a consequence, was being judged on his own merits instead of being dismissed as merely David’s twin. The change suited him, gave him an added air of masculinity and self-assurance.
She looked away from him as he got out of his car and walked towards her.
‘Jenny,’ he asked her, ‘can we talk?’
Her heart sank. ‘That depends on what you want to talk about,’ she told him eventually, forcing herself to meet his gaze. ‘If by talk you mean that you want my shoulder to cry on because of Tiggy …’ She paused and looked away from him again before continuing huskily, ‘I appreciate the way you feel about her, Jon. I know you … you believe you love her….’
‘No … you’re wrong. I don’t. I don’t know which makes me feel more ashamed,’ he told her sombrely as she stared at him. ‘The fact that I fell so easily into the trap that nature sets middle-aged men and so whole-heartedly and stupidly embraced my … my belief that life owed me the chance to be infatuated with the idea of falling in love, or the fact that I could so easily and quickly realise that I didn’t love her at all.’
‘It must have been a shock for you … finding her like that,’ Jenny commiserated. She was trying desperately hard to put aside her own feelings and focus on him but it wasn’t easy, especially when she still hurt so much.
‘If that’s a tactful way of saying that you think that was what brought me to my senses, I can, thank God, at least acquit myself of that. No—’ he shook his head ‘—I had already realised the truth before tonight … this afternoon in fact. I was due to appear in court earlier today and I took Tiggy to Chester with me. We had lunch together. Afterwards … Well, let’s just say that when the opportunity to put our … our relationship on a different footing occurred, I very quickly discovered that that wasn’t what I wanted at all. To be brutal about it, Jen, my body told me in no uncertain terms that it knew exactly who it wanted and it most certainly wasn’t Tiggy.
‘No, it wasn’t Tiggy I wanted to talk to you about.’ He looked levelly at her. ‘I know I don’t deserve it and I wouldn’t blame you if you refused, but is there any chance that we can … that I could … I want to come back, Jen. I’ve missed you and the kids like hell. I … I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few weeks, and although it hasn’t been easy, I’ve come to accept that no matter how much in the past I might have believed otherwise, a part of me has always subconsciously envied David. I see now how jealous I was of him at times, and I resented the fact that his needs, that he always had to come first.’
‘But you were the one who always insisted that he come first,’ Jenny countered. ‘You always made it perfectly clear that your loyalty to him, your love for him, superseded everything and everyone else….’
‘On the surface, yes, because I knew that was what was expected of me, but inside … My son, my wife, my father, my friends, everyone loved David more than they did me and so I suppose when someone, and not just any someone but David’s own wife, actually seemed to prefer me … I’m not trying to make excuses for myself,’ he said. ‘There are none. I despise myself for what I did and always will. I guess a part of me must have been thinking, well … Jenny might prefer you to me but Tiggy, your wife, prefers me—’
‘Oh no, you’re not getting off by thinking that,’ Jenny interrupted him fiercely. ‘I did not … do not prefer David.’
‘You married me because you were carrying his child,’ Jon reminded her quietly.
‘I married you for almost the same reason you married me,’ Jenny admonished him. ‘I married you for the sake of David’s child to give him the family, the father, the protection he deserved, just as you married me to give David the protection you believed he deserved. I hardly came into it at all. I could have been anybody.’
Jon frowned as he heard the forlorn note in her voice. ‘That’s not true,’ he objected.
‘You didn’t love me,’ Jenny charged.
He looked away from her, his eyes veiled. ‘No, perhaps not,’ he agreed heavily at last, and then he took a step towards her and reached for her hand. He held it firmly between his own, his action surprising her into looking questioningly up at him. ‘Not then, but … Do you remember the night Harry was born?’ he asked her huskily.
Jenny nodded her head. Of course she did. How could she forget it? Her first child, the long struggle to give birth, her joy when they handed her her son.
‘That is when I fell in love with you,’ Jon declared softly. ‘That was when I fell in love with both of you. Yes, up until then, marriage to you had been a responsibility, my duty … for David’s sake, the child you were carrying, David’s child, but when I saw him born, suddenly he was my child. I can’t explain properly just how I felt … there aren’t the words. I just know I felt this tremendous uprush of love for both of you.’
‘You … you never said anything,’ Jenny returned weakly, her voice husky with tears and not just because of the memories Jon’s words had conjured up.
‘I … there wasn’t time,’ Jon said simply. ‘His life was so short, and afterwards … Well, afterwards, when you told me that there was no reason for us to stay married any longer, I felt … thought it inappropriate to tell you how I felt.’
‘I … I was just trying to do the right thing, to give you your freedom,’ Jenny explained.
‘To give me my freedom.’ Jon smiled ruefully at her. ‘It was much, much too late for that. What I really wanted you to give me was your love.’
‘Oh, Jon.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ he assured her. ‘No one can love to order, and the last thing I would ever have wanted you to do was to pretend … fake….’
‘But, Jon, I did, do love you,’ Jenny told him. ‘Not when we first married. I don’t think that I was capable of allowing myself to love anyone then, but later when Harry … you were so … I loved you then,’ she admitted simply. ‘But it seemed that I’d burdened you with so much already that I couldn’t burden you with that, as well.’
‘How old are we?’ Jon asked wryly. ‘And how long have we been married? And it’s taken all this for us to be able to tell one another how we really feel.’
‘I thought you couldn’t possibly love me, especially when I compared myself with Tiggy. She’s so—’
‘You’re beautiful,’ Jon interrupted her gruffly, cupping her face. Then narrowing his eyes he added, ‘I’ve always thought so. I was so damned jealous the night of the party—seeing you look so lovely. That dress …’
‘I thought you didn’t like it,’ she owned. ‘You never told me.’
‘I couldn’t,’ Jon admitted. ‘I wanted to, but I just couldn’t.’
‘Oh, Jon …’
‘I hated seeing you dancing with David—I would much rather have been