A Perfect Night. PENNY JORDAN
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was in part a Crighton although that fact hadn’t been realised even by Chrissie’s own parents until she’d become involved with Guy.
Jon Crighton was the senior partner in the family’s law firm. Olivia, his niece, the daughter of his twin brother David, was also a partner. David himself was someone who was surrounded by mystery, having left the town, some said under highly dubious circumstances. Jon and David’s father lived in a large Elizabethan house outside the town along with Max Crighton, Jon and Jenny’s eldest son, and his wife and children.
Max was the apple of his grandfather’s eye and, to Ben Crighton’s pride, was no mere solicitor but a barrister, working from chambers in Chester alongside Luke and James Crighton, sons of Ben’s cousin Henry.
The Crighton family had originated from Chester, but a family quarrel had led Josiah Crighton, Ben’s father, to move away from Chester and set up his own legal practice in Haslewich, and until relatively recently a certain degree of rivalry had existed between the two branches of the family.
Jenny Crighton, Jon’s wife had once owned and run an antiques business in Haslewich in which Seb’s cousin Guy had been a partner, but the pressure of her own family commitments had led to her giving up her share in the business, which Guy had kept on as a sideline.
Guy had, in fact, recommended Jon Crighton to Seb as someone to deal with the legal conveyancing side of his house purchase when he moved back into the area.
As yet Seb hadn’t found a property he wanted to buy and so instead he was renting somewhere.
‘Local property prices are high,’ Guy had warned him, ‘Thanks to Aarlston-Becker. Not that we can complain, they’ve brought prosperity to the area even though there are those who claim that their presence threatens the town.’
Seb changed gear as the traffic slowed to a crawl as he entered the town proper. He had thought that in rebuilding his relationship with Charlotte he had laid to rest the guilt he had felt at his shortcomings as a father, but returning to Haslewich had brought back some painful memories.
‘What you need Dad, is to fall in love,’ Charlotte had told him several months earlier, and even though she had laughed Seb had seen in her eyes that she had been semiserious.
‘Falling in love is for people of your age,’ he had told her drily.
‘Why have you never married again?’ she had asked him quietly.
‘Do you really need to ask?’ Seb had returned sardonically. ‘After all, you’ve had first-hand experience of the mess I made of it the first time. No Lottie,’ he had shaken his head, ‘I’m too selfish, too set in my ways. Falling in love isn’t for me.’
‘No you’re not, you just think you are,’ Charlotte had told him, adding with surprising maturity, ‘You’re just punishing yourself, Dad, because you feel guilty about me. Well, you needn’t. I wasn’t even two when you and Mum split up, and she and George were together by the time I was three. At least I never experienced the trauma of being torn between you and Mum, and she told me that that was thanks to you agreeing to let George bring me up.’
‘So what are you saying…that I did you a favour by turning my back on my responsibility towards you,’ Seb had asked her grimly. ‘That my selfishness was almost praiseworthy…’
‘No, of course not, but at least you did come to feel ultimately that as father and daughter we should be part of one another’s lives. At least I do know that you love me,’ she had added in a soft whisper.
Love her. Yes he did—now—but if he was honest with himself there had been years of her life when he had scarcely allowed himself to remember that she existed and he would carry the burden of that guilt for the rest of his life. Marry again? Fall in love? He cursed abruptly as just in front of him a young woman started across the road without looking causing him to stamp his foot down hard on the brakes. As his car screeched to a halt in front of her she froze in fear, her face turned towards him.
Seb had a momentary impression of her shocked expression, wide eyes set in a piquantly-shaped delicately feminine face, her hair tousled by the light breeze. Small and slender she was wearing a soft, brown linen wrap-around skirt, the pale colour of the cream silk top tucked into it complementing both the warmth of the skirt and the even more alluring light tan of her bare arms—and legs. But as his brain mentally digested these peripheral visual facts, the feeling, the emotion uppermost in Seb’s mind was one of anxiety fuelled by anger.
What on earth had possessed her to step right out in front of him like that? Didn’t she realise how close she had come to causing an accident. The narrow town street was busy with shoppers and if his brakes had failed to work so swiftly or if he had skidded…or not been able to stop…And yet as the shock faded from her eyes, it wasn’t guilt or gratitude he could see replacing it, but rather a sharply condemnatory anger, as though he were the one to blame for what was quite patently her foolishness. Indeed, for a second it almost seemed as though she was about to walk right up to his car instead of finishing her journey across the busy street, but then the car driver behind him, growing impatient with the delay, tooted his horn and she hesitated and then turned aside, shooting him a searing look before marching stiffly away from him.
Just as equally infuriated by her behaviour as she seemed to have been by his, Seb shot her departing back a fulminating look of male contempt for her female foolishness before slipping the car back into gear and continuing with his journey.
As Katie walked through Haslewich’s busy main thoroughfare she was aware of a heavy weight of unhappiness dulling what, by rights, should have been a joyous and hopefully positive return to the bosom of her family.
She was twenty-four years of age, in excellent health, a fully qualified solicitor who had been not just asked, but beseeched by her father and her cousin to join them in the family partnership in their home town. Indeed she had even had the satisfaction of having her elder brother no less, add his persuasive arguments to those of the other members of the family.
‘Dad needs you Katie,’ Max had told her. ‘They’re absolutely inundated with work, and we all know how grandfather would react if Dad were to suggest taking on a non-Crighton partner, just as we all know that no solicitor worth his or her salt would join the partnership without the expectation of being offered their own partnership. For you to come home and join Dad and Olivia would be the ideal solution to the problem. You’re young in terms of legal experience at the moment, but a partnership in the not too distant future is assured.’
‘Yes, I daresay it is,’ Katie had agreed quietly. ‘But you seem to forget Max that I already have a job.’
‘I know you do,’ Max had agreed, ‘but I’m not completely blind Katie, something’s gone wrong in your life. Look, I’m not going to pry or ask questions, God knows I don’t have the right to act the big brother with you now, after all I was hardly a caring one to you when you and Louise were growing up. What I will say to you, though, is that some people need to seek solitude, to lick their wounds and heal themselves, and others need the care and comfort of their close family, and we both know which camp you fall into.’
It was true, Louise, Katie’s twin sister was more the type to seek the solitude Max had just described than her, but then Louise was hardly likely to need to do so. Louise after all was blissfully in love with and loved by Gareth.
Louise and Gareth.
Katie had closed her eyes thankful that no one had guessed her shameful poisonous secret. It made no difference that she had loved Gareth quietly and sedately and from a distance a long time before Louise had realised the exact nature of her feelings for him. And the reason it made no difference was not just because Louise was her other half, her dearly beloved if sometimes somewhat headstrong and exasperating twin, but because Gareth himself did not love her…Gareth loved Louise.
Stoically Katie had accepted the agonising searing burn of her own pain, claiming pressure of work for her increasingly infrequent visits home and her even more infrequent get-togethers with her twin, but then as though fate had not done