A Question of Pride (7 page)

If he made any reply, then Clea didn't hear it. Yes, she thought painfully. It was definitely over.

Clea stepped outside the railway station and looked around for the distinctive steel-grey head of her mother's new husband, James Laverne.

She had called Amy earlier in the week to invite herself down for the weekend. Joe had let her leave work early on her final day, a leaving that had been sadly quiet, since only Joe and Mandy knew of her going. Her new job started a week on the following Monday, which meant she had the whole of next week to get used to all the changes affecting her life. Max was in the past. She had to learn to accept that now, even if the ache of acknowledgement was sometimes unbearable.

Amy had been delighted by Clea's intention to stay a few days. Her light laughter had come down the telephone line to fill Clea with a surge of homesickness for the sight of her mother's dear face.

'Oh—that's wonderful, darling!' Amy had exclaimed. 'It will give me an opportunity to tell you my marvellous news—well, two pieces of news, really,' she amended drily. 'But they're both marvellous.'

And I have some less marvellous news for you too, Mother, Clea had thought rather bitterly. She didn't relish the announcement at all, and could only hope that her news wouldn't cast whatever Amy had to tell her into the shade.

'Clea!'

More female heads than just hers turned to follow the long strides of the tall, elegant figure of her new stepfather. Clea grinned at him, dropping her weekend case on the ground so she could put hands on hips in a provocative stance as he approached her, eyeing him up and down in the guise of an appreciative connoisseur.

'How my mother was lucky enough to catch you, James Laverne, I'll never know!'

She found herself wrapped in a bearhug of an embrace before James came back with a reply. 'You know as well as I do who was the lucky one, miss, so you can stop the teasing right now!' James was smiling lazily, his sharp blue gaze searching her pale face, taking in in an instant the changes in her since they had last met.

They walked together to where James had parked his car, James carrying her case and stowing it in the back of the luxurious Rolls before climbing in behind the wheel and heading them towards home.

'You look peaky,' he observed bluntly once he'd negotiated the car into the steady flow of commuter traffic. His glance swept briefly but thoroughly over her then returned to the road ahead. 'You know I would have collected you from work and saved you a train journey. Why do you look peaky?' he pressed on sternly. 'Amy will go spare when she sees you.'

'I look "peaky", as you so nicely put it, because I've just recovered from a rather inconvenient tummy bug.' She had no intention of blurting out the truth to James. Confession time would come later, when Amy was there, too. 'And I couldn't ask you to pick me up, because I had no idea what time I would be leaving the office ... And

Mother always finds something about my appearance to worry over—whether I'm in blooming health or lying at death's door!' She shrugged expressively. 'It must all be part of being a mother, I suppose, looking for trouble when none is there ... ' Clea threw James a teasing glance. 'I bet she mothers you to death!

James grinned, his lean, handsome face softening on thoughts of his new wife. 'And the rest,' he admitted ruefully. Then he shook his head with some more ruefulness. 'I still find it hard to believe that she actually gave in and married me. She was so
offended
when I first told her how much I wanted her!' That steely head shook again, his expression saying a lot about how James treasured memories of his courtship with Amy. Clea felt an automatic lessening in the tension that had gripped her for days now. Amy and James were like two star-crossed adolescent lovers, the way they behaved. It seemed unbelievable when you considered that, for the reputedly hard-bitten, successful stockbroker he was, when James had fallen for her mother, he'd lost seven tenths of his cynicism and
all
of his forty-six-year-old-bachelor ways.

'The mistake you made was in the terminology,' Clea thought it fair to point out. 'It's the word "want" that offends, not the actual wanting.'

James nodded, looking suddenly thoughtful. He glanced shrewdly at her, his blue eyes too all-seeing. 'I have a feeling that was spoken from some experience?'

She shrugged the question in his tone away, turning her face to the side window so he couldn't probe any deeper beneath her fragile defences. 'How's the Stock Exchange?'

There was only the slightest pause while James absorbed the fact that she was deliberately changing the subject, then he launched into a fascinating tale about the ups and downs of the unpredictable Exchange, and his talk continued all the way to the lovely mansion house he shared with her mother.

Amy was waiting at the door when they drew to a stop, her loving embrace encompassing Clea the moment her feet stepped on to the driveway. Clea stood a good five inches over her blonde-haired, petite mother, but their hugs were equal, both physically and spiritually.

Tension slid from her shoulders like a heavy mantle lifted away. Could it only be a week since that fateful visit to the doctor? It felt longer—much, much longer.

Cleasat in front of her dressing-table mirror, staring at her freshly made-up face, and wondered if she had managed to cover up the ravages of the last week enough to fool her mother. Amy was sharp, and had already sent Clea some frowning looks before she had managed to escape to her bedroom, on the pretext that she was in desperate need of a long soak in a warm bath. The latter had been true to a certain extent, and she had indeed indulged herself in the soak, but only as a way of delaying the return back downstairs. Now her time had run out, and dinner would be ready in a few minutes.

Her eyes clouded, apprehension and the ever-present heartache mingling to form a constriction in her throat. The next few hours were, perhaps, going to be more difficult than her next meeting with Max. And she didn't relish
that
much—or doubt that it would take place once Max had found out about her defection from his employ. He was going to want to know why, and she was going to have to tell him.

One thing at a time, Clea, she advised her reflection, realising how once again she had let her mind wander to Max. Max! The perpetual ache contracted into a sharp pain she was beginning to associate with his image.

Sighing unhappily, she applied just a shade more blusher to her cheeks before getting up to check the snug fit of her red mohair wool dress. Long-sleeved and cowl-necked, it moulded her slender shape to her firm hips before flowing out to swirl gracefully about her knees. Red suited her. Max liked her in red, he said it enhanced the incendiary quality in her she liked to think was well hidden ... Stop it!

She spun away from the reflection. If she carried on like this she would be in no fit state to go downstairs; her nerves were already jangling with dread. At least her slim shape showed no signs of what was happening inside her body—except, maybe, in the dark smudges beneath her eyes that were not entirely due to worry, but also a constant awareness of an unsettled tummy.

With a determined pushing up of her chin, Clea made for the door and went slowly downstairs, convincing herself that she was ready to confess all.

But in the end things didn't work out quite like that, because her mother revealed her news before Clea could conjure up the right words to broach her own problem.

They had reached the coffee stage after a superb meal, unspoiled by guilty confessions. The conversation had been pleasant and relaxed, with only the three of them at the table to enjoy the intimacy of soft lighting and beautifully prepared food. Clea had just been dragging her courage together in readiness to break her news, when Amy excused herself from the table and disappeared out of the room for a moment, coming back with a long envelope that looked faintly ominous, which she placed in front of her daughter. Then she stopped Clea from looking inside by placing a dainty hand over hers.

'The first of my surprises,' she announced smilingly. 'You will be twenty-one years old in a month's time.'

Clea's eyes widened. So she would be! The magic number! People officially 'came of age' at eighteen these days, yet the old tradition still lingered in most people's hearts as the 'real' age to receive the proverbial key of the door.

'This—' Amy tapped the envelope '—is by way of an early birthday present ... Open it,' she allowed at last. 'And then I'll explain properly.'

Baffled, Clea picked up the envelope, slowly drew out the high quality paper and opened it out with decidedly shaky fingers. A long and complex-looking official document lay on the table before her, and Clea's puzzlement increased as she stared at it, unable at present to make head or tail of the elegantly scripted words printed on it.

She lifted a bemused gaze to her stepfather for insight. 'What is it?' she appealed breathlessly. 'I don't understand ...'

James was smiling at her, his blue eyes gentle, and as if by second nature he reached out to clasp one of Amy's hands. 'It's an endowment policy,' he enlightened gently. 'Taken out in your name, at the time of your birth, by your father.'

Clea stared blankly at him for the moment it took for those words to sink in, then shifted her gaze to the document—and felt a sudden flush of love run through her.

'When he—your father—died,' James went on quietly, 'your mother continued the payments. It matures on your twenty-first birthday.'

'I-for me?' she repeated huskily. 'Daddy took this out for
me?'

'You know what he was like, darling,' her mother put in warmly. 'So old-fashioned and—and
Italian!
It was meant, I think, as a dowry, outmoded in this day and age, I know, but it was what he intended and I was determined to carry through his wishes.'

Clea saw, through her own blur of tears, how Amy's eyes had glazed with soft but sad memories.

'Oh—Mummy!' she choked, clutching that tiny hand that held on to her own. It was too much—too much! And coming at a time when she felt she had let her beautiful parents down!

'The reason I'm telling you about it,' Amy went on more briskly, 'is because I need your signature to release the money the endowment has accrued.' Then, when Clea remained too full up to say anything, Amy squeezed her hand and said huskily, 'This has nothing to do with James and I ... It is your father's gift, given to you with all his love.'

'How will I ever thank him?' Clea sobbed, crying quietly and without restraint.

'In your heart, darling,' Amy answered gently. 'He'll hear your thanks there.'

James simply listened and looked on, faintly envious of the deceased man who could still command this much love from his family. After allowing the two women to weep for a while, he took in a deep breath, then broke into the emotional storm with a delicate clearing of his throat. 'You haven't even asked how much,' he pointed out mockingly.

'I don't care,' she replied on a sniff, then broke into a husky giggle. 'How much?' she then asked immediately, her eyes twinkling at James.

He named a figure that shocked her into stillness. She heard little of James's knowledgeable explanation on how some endowment policies accrued money by wise investing throughout the years; all Clea could think of was that her father had done this with her future in mind—because he loved her, and because he wanted the best for his daughter. She had sullied that love with her foolishness; it cast a scar deep into her heart to realise it. She had dishonoured her father and the clean morals he had instilled in her through his own high moral beliefs. She didn't deserve this, and worse—even as she was thinking it—she was aware of feelings of relief because of what the money would mean to her future.

Amy turned bright eyes to her husband—misreading the expression skittering across her daughter's pale face. 'Oh, James!' she sighed. 'How can Paolo be dead, when he sits here looking at me through my daughter's eyes?'

It said a lot for James's confidence in Amy's love for him that he could accept such an emotional outburst, and Clea's own estimation of her new stepfather doubled as she saw his gaze soften with sympathy.

'Now, Mum,' she rebuked teasingly, to break the grip emotion had on the room. 'You and I both know just whose eyes I inherited.'

'Colour, shape, size.' Amy nodded in agreement. 'But the expressions you use are all your father's.'

'I think we'd better retire to the other room,' James inserted with a rueful tilt to his mouth. 'Before all this emotion threatens ruin to my Queen Anne table!'

They walked out together, James flanked either side by a beautiful woman, both as opposite as the poles, yet unbreakably tied by the sheer strength of natal love.

Clea went very quiet once she was seated in the luxuriousness of an easy chair of champagne velvet. Her brow was creased into a brooding frown as, with each passing minute, it became more and more difficult to say what she knew she had to say. James was fussing around Amy, seeing her seated on the settee before going to pour them all drinks, handing them out before going to sit beside his wife, again reaching for her hand, as though physical contact was imperative to his well being.

Clea felt a stab of envy rip through her. Amy was so lucky! She seemed to have everything her daughter yearned for—the love of a good man and ...

'What was your other piece of news?' she asked suddenly, again delaying the moment when she would have to confess. 'You did say
two
bits of news, didn't you?' she prompted, when she was surprised by the look of sheepish embarrassment that reddened both faces opposite.

Amy and James looked at each other and their glances lingered, silent messages passing from one to the other while Clea sat watching it happen with a vague feeling of uneasiness. It was her mother who turned to face her, looking as uncomfortable as Clea felt.

'I—I'm not sure how you're going to take this, darling.' She began with the warning so as prepare her daughter. Clea straightened slightly in her seat. 'I—that is, we—James and I—' poor Amy blundered, her cheeks going redder and redder. 'That is—well... We're going to have a baby!' she announced on a rush.