Who Loves You Best (7 page)

Nothing wrong with that, of course. Except that Clare was never the type to play Jane to his Tarzan.

Clare wouldn’t listen, of course. Kept insisting it was his age and family background that bothered me. (Well, I wasn’t
thrilled
, especially after I had a private detective do a little digging, but that’s not the point.) It’s a question of compatibility. Opposites may attract; but they seldom last.

Jenna stands up now, cradling Rowan affectionately. “Why don’t I go and give him a bottle?” she asks Clare. “It’ll give you a chance to get Poppy settled.”

“But it’s your day off.”

“Clare,” Jenna says firmly, “this isn’t the kind of job where you watch a clock. I’m sure there’ll be times things will work the other way. Now please stop worrying. I’ll settle him down, and everything will be fine.”

It’s quite clear who’s in charge in
this
relationship.

“You can’t let her take over like that,” I tell Clare after Jenna’s gone in the house. “I realize she’s only trying to help, but that’s not the point. She needs to know who’s boss.”

“Davina, this isn’t
Upstairs Downstairs
. It’s the twenty-first century. Jenna and I are a team—”

“She
works
for you,” I correct. “She isn’t here out of the goodness of her heart, or because she wants to help you. She may love your children, but it’s a mercenary kind of love, and it certainly doesn’t mean she loves
you
. She’s not your friend. She’s here because you’re
paying
her.”

Clare looks hurt. “It’s not like that. Things are different these days. I’ve told you, we’re a
team
. And anyway, I’m quite used to dealing with staff, thank you, Davina. As I’ve told you. I’ve been running a very successful business for years.”

“Hardly the same thing, darling. You must admit you have a tendency to fraternize with domestics—”

“Fraternize
? God, Davina. How very Orwellian of you.”

“How much do you really know about this girl?” I pin Clare with a hard look. “Those scars on her arms, for instance. The sprained wrist. If she’s involved in an unsuitable relationship, you don’t want the chaos spilling over into your life. And you need to consider Marc in all of this”

“What do you mean?”

“He seems very quiet, Clare. And he looks very tense. It can’t be easy for him, having to get used to a stranger living in his home. It doesn’t give him much privacy. Men like to retreat from the world. Their home is their castle, don’t forget. You want to be very careful he doesn’t start to feel left out. It’s hard enough to get used to sharing you with the twins—”

“He wanted a baby as much as I did!”

“Rather more, I suspect.”

“And whose fault’s that?” She shoves back her chair; I wince as it scrapes against the antique tiled floor. “I’ve had to learn everything about being a mother from scratch, out of books, because I certainly haven’t been able to learn from
your
example! All you’ve ever done is undermine and criticize me, and that’s on the odd occasion you’re not ignoring me altogether! Yes,” she shrieks, as I point tactfully towards Poppy, “I can see my daughter is crying! I have eyes in my head, Davina! I may not be a perfect mother, I may in fact turn out to be an utterly dreadful one, but unlike you, at least I am
trying
!”

I pour myself a glass of water, pleased to note that my hand doesn’t tremble. “Really, Clare. I don’t know where
that
came from.”

She sucks in a breath. “No,” she says tightly. “I don’t suppose you do.”

“What
is
that dreadful noise outside? Mrs. Lampard really should see to it. And some more tea, I think—”

The door opens. “Excuse me, Lady Eastmann—”

“Please, Jenna, no need for that. Davina is perfectly fine—”

“Oh, don’t go all democratic now,” a voice drawls behind me. “Not after you’ve had Guy pony up millions for that title.”

“Alexander,” I say, proffering a cheek without turning. “How lovely.”

“Hello, Mother,” he says.

———

If Clare takes after her father, then I suppose I must claim Alexander as mine.

Women love him, in the beginning. By the time it ends, as it inevitably does—whether “it” is a few days (sometimes), a few weeks (usually), or a few months (once)—they have run the full gamut of Shakespearean emotion from infatuation, through devotion, obsession, and jealousy, to end in hatred and despair. One poor child threw herself, like Ophelia, into the river; taking her homage to the Bard a little too far, I felt.

Alexander knows the lethal effect he has on women. With disingenuous insouciance, he washes his hands of it. “I never lie,” he protests. “I always
tell
them I’ll leave.”

Which is precisely the attraction, of course.

“I didn’t expect you this weekend,” I reprove, as Alexander flings himself into a chair next to Clare.

“What can I say? I felt the need to nestle in the bosom of my family.”

He’s staring intently at the nanny. It’s an expression I’m familiar with.

“Have you met Jenna?” I ask, watching him carefully. “Your sister’s new nanny.”

“A pleasure,” he says blandly.

The girl blushes furiously, switching Rowan to her other hip. Alexander has been on the premises a matter of minutes; such a response is quite an achievement, even for him.

Oh, but he is charming, my son. A fallen angel. Long-limbed, graceful, careless, with thick dark hair and ice-blue eyes as glittering, and warm, as diamonds. That he is so clearly damaged seems merely to draw the moths closer.

“Lady—um, I mean, Davina—” she flusters.

“Be careful, dear,” I tell the girl lightly. “He’s every bit as dangerous as he looks.”

The baby wails, cutting off her reply. Clare sighs pointedly as Alexander reaches inside his jacket for the silver hip flask he inherited from his father. He’s already quite drunk, although only those closest to him would know it. The slight shake of his hand and the glaze in those blue eyes betray him.

The drinking started when he was fourteen. At first, he confined it to school holidays and
exeat
weekends; within a year, we were receiving letters from the headmaster. There was an ugly incident with another pupil when he was sixteen, a broken nose and allegations of assault; with typical carelessness, Alexander merely said the boy had had it coming to him. Guy visited the school and made a substantial donation to the library, and the matter was quietly dropped.

The drunkenness could be overlooked; the drugs were taken more seriously. Guy’s money exculpated Alexander from the joints he was caught smoking, but nothing could excuse the cocaine he was discovered selling the week after his seventeenth birthday.

After some persuasion, the school agreed not to make it a police matter, but Alexander was immediately expelled. Guy cut off his allowance, and refused to reinstate it unless Alexander sorted himself out. To our lasting surprise, he responded by going out and getting himself a (legitimate) job.

ShopTV could have been founded with Alexander in mind. Everything he touched turned to gold. By the time
he was twenty-five, he was Head of Marketing; now, at thirty-five, he’s running the network with one hand tied behind his back.

Which leaves the other free for all sorts of mischief.

“Where’s hubby?” he asks me, never taking his eyes off Jenna.

“Guy had business in London,” I say shortly.

“Of course. Big sister wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Xan,” Clare says warningly.

“You’re a guest in my house, Alexander. Kindly remember—Oh, dear God, will someone
please
tell me what all that noise is?”

“I’ve been trying to.” Jenna sighs.

I fling open the French door onto the terrace. Mrs. Lampard is running across the croquet lawn with an athleticism I’d thought decades behind her. In the distance, Lampard and two of the groundsmen are yodeling as if at a rodeo. Bellowing animal grunts sound from behind the topiary, and there is enough splashing from the pool to drown a herd of elephants.

“Alexander,”
I demand.

“Bit of an altercation with a tree,” he says, tipping his head back to drain his flask.

I sweep outside. As I round the corner of the house, I see Alexander’s imported red Mustang wrapped around the ancient oak tree at the bottom of the drive. The force of the impact has knocked down the adjoining split-rail fence; the old five-bar gate swings crazily from its hinges.

Of the bull normally in the field behind it, there is no sign.

Mrs. Lampard, holding up her skirts, runs past me. Behind me, Alexander laughs.

I will kill him
, I think grimly, as I stalk away from him towards the pool. That animal is worth a fortune. If it has to be turned into rump steak, I will personally see to it that Alexander is barred from every pub and bar in Oxfordshire.

Marc, shirtless and muscular, is in the swimming pool, up to his waist in floating shit. The bull is flailing in the deep end, panic having loosened its bowels to devastating effect. The stench is overpowering. Marc has managed to catch hold of its rope halter, and is attempting to lead it towards the shallows. I remember he grew up in Quebec: farm boy country. Lampard and the groundsmen yell support, and I realize my first impression was correct: This
is
a rodeo.

Clare pushes me out of the way. “Lampard, go to the far end and make as much noise as you can,” she yells. “Drive it towards the steps.”

Marc clearly has the situation under control, but Clare kicks off her pumps and throws her husband another rope, yelling instructions. Marc ignores her and patiently draws the bull towards the shallows, doing his best to calm it. The groundsmen whip its flanks, and with another mighty bellow, the bull finally lurches up the steps and onto dry land.

“Make sure that car is moved before my husband gets home,” I tell Lampard, and once more go in search of my son.

———

The nanny is in the orangery, the twins asleep in their baby seats at her feet. “Is everything all right?” she asks, rocking gently.

“Naturally. My daughter is at her commanding best. Where’s Alexander?”

“Alexander?”

“My son,” I say impatiently.

“I think he left.”

She’s lying. Oh, Alexander may have disappeared, leaving, like the Cheshire cat, just his grin; but she’s lying about something. I can always tell.

Something about this girl doesn’t quite add up. Clare won’t have noticed; she’s never learned to judge books by their covers. No doubt my daughter is paying the girl far too much, but even so, how can a nanny afford a (genuine: I know these things) Cartier watch? And I realize some women delight in caring for small children, immune to the dribble and soul-destroying tedium, but conscientious though Jenna clearly is—one can tell from the professional way she handles the babies—I don’t pick up the burning need to nurture one might expect to find in a girl who’s chosen proxy mothering as a career. She’s too bright to be satisfied with a life of building LEGOs and wiping small bottoms.

And then there’s the way she looked at Alexander. I have the distinct feeling I’m missing something here.

So I’m not altogether surprised when Clare rings me four days later from the Chelsea police station, and tells me that Jenna’s vanished, and has taken the twins with her.

“Jesus Christ! The woman’s a bitch!” Marc explodes as we drive out of Long Meadow.

“Marc!” I exclaim.
“Pas devants les enfants!”

“If you have to talk like a stuck-up snob, at least try to get your accent right.”

I bite back a sharp retort. Marc’s always like this after we’ve been to see Davina, and I can’t blame him. She treats him like a foreigner, a second-class citizen. The only consolation I can give him is that she’s just as brutal with me.

“Is she—is she always like that?” Jenna asks from the back, where she’s squashed between the twins’ car seats.

“Yes,” Marc snarls, “she is. How you turned out even partway decent with a mother like that is beyond me, Clare. No wonder Xan drinks.”

“Marc.”

“Excuse me,” Jenna says, “but Marc, do you think you could open a window?”

“Oh, fuck. I smell, don’t I?”

“A bit,” she admits, giggling.

He’s wearing just his white T-shirt and boxers (roomy and concealing, thankfully), the rest of his wet clothes wrapped in a plastic bag in the boot. His bare thighs ripple as he floors the accelerator and the Range Rover bounces out of Davina’s rutted drive onto the main road. I’d forgotten quite how much I fancy him. It’s been so long since we had sex, I’ve got spiderwebs between my thighs.

“How in God’s name did that bloody bull get in the pool, anyway?” he demands.

“Xan knocked down the gate to its field when he crashed his car.”

“Knowing him, he did it on purpose to piss off your mother.”

“Do you have any siblings?” I ask Jenna over my shoulder.

“Nope. Just me.”

“I can’t imagine being an only child. Do you get on well with your parents?”

“Once a month,” Jenna says dryly.

“Davina should never have been allowed to breed at all, never mind twice,” Marc says darkly. “No offense, darling, I’m glad she did, of course, but the woman has as much maternal instinct as a vampire.”

“I suppose that’s where I get it from.” I sigh.

“You’re not like her at all!” Jenna bursts out. She blushes furiously. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out quite like that. But you’re wonderful with the twins. I can see how much you love them.”