Penny Jordan - The Marriage Demand

The smile he gave her sent another burst of white-hot fear licking along her veins.

‘Oh, yes, I can,’ he told her softly. ‘I made it a condition of the hand-over, and naturally the Foundation’s board fully understood that I would want to oversee the conversion. Especially since it was being handled by such an inexperienced young architect.’

Faith looked blindly at him. ‘But I’m staying here—I have to—it’s all arranged. You can’t do this to me,’ she protested. ‘It’s…it’s harassment,’ she accused him wildly. ‘It’s…’

‘Justice,’ Nash supplied with soft deadliness.

‘I’VE instructed Mrs Jenson to put you in your old room.’

Her old room. Hugging her arms around herself for protection, Faith recalled the openly challenging way in which Nash had delivered that piece of information. It had been obvious to her that he was expecting some kind of hostile reaction, but she refused to allow him to manipulate either her actions or her emotions.

Her old room. Pensively she walked across to the small window and looked down at the elegant mini-patchwork of the gardens.

This room had once been part of the house’s original nursery, tucked away in the faux turret that formed such a distinctive part of the house’s architecture. It was an amusing piece of fantasy on the part of its designer, and at fifteen Faith had still been young enough to imagine herself as a fairy tale princess, enjoying the solitude of her private tower.

‘I expect you’re disappointed that the tower isn’t surrounded by a lake,’ Nash had teased her when she had tried to express her pleasure at being given such a special room, but to Faith the tower room Philip Hatton had chosen for her was perfect as it was, and she had struggled to find the words to tell him so.

That night, her first night in the room’s comfortable and generously proportioned bed, she had closed her eyes and thought about her mother, whispering to her in her thoughts, telling her how lucky she felt, describing the room to her and knowing how much pleasure her mother would have had in sharing with her the wonder of everything she was experiencing. She had wished passionately that her mother could be there with her.

But of course she couldn’t. And tears had filled her eyes, Faith remembered, and she had cried silently into her pillow, knowing with the maturity that the last painful and frightening six months had brought her that her mother would never see Hatton.

Restlessly Faith moved away from the window. The room had hardly changed; the bed in it looked exactly the same as the one she remembered, although the curtains at the window and the covers on the bed were different. Even the faded old-fashioned rose-coloured wallpaper was the same. Tenderly she reached out and touched one of the roses.

Her bedroom in the tiny Housing Association flat she and her mother had shared had had pretty wallpaper. They had papered it together just after they moved in. She had known how much her mother had hated leaving the small cottage they had lived in since Faith’s birth, but the garden had become too much for her and the flat had been closer to the hospital, and to Faith’s school, and much easier for her mother, being on the ground floor.

There was something almost frightening about the power one event could have to change a person’s whole life, Faith acknowledged now as her thoughts focused on the past. It had only been by the merest chance that she had ever come to Hatton at all.

Shortly after the move to their flat, her mother’s doctor had announced that she had to have a major operation and that after it she would be sent to recuperate at a special rest home, where she would have to stay for several months.

At first her mother had flatly refused to agree. Faith had only been just fifteen, and there had been no way she could be left to live on her own for the time the doctors had said her recuperation would take. The doctor’s response had been to suggest that the Social Services be approached to find a place for Faith temporarily at a local children’s home, where she could stay until her mother was well enough to look after her.

At first her mother had refused to even consider such an option, but Faith had seen for herself just how rapidly and painfully her mother’s health was deteriorating, and despite her own dread and fear she had set about convincing her mother that she was perfectly happy to do as the doctors were suggesting.

‘It will only be for a while,’ Faith had tried to reassure her mother. ‘And it will be mostly during the summer holidays. It will be fun having some other girls to talk to…’

And so it had been arranged. But right at the last minute, on the very day that Faith’s mother had been due to be admitted to hospital, it had been decided that instead of going to the local children’s home Faith would have to be sent to one almost fifty miles away.

Faith could still remember how apprehensive she had felt, but her fear for her mother had been greater. Even worse had been the discovery that she would not be allowed to visit her mother, either after her operation or whilst she was recuperating.

Although on her arrival at the home the staff there had been kind, Faith had felt overwhelmed by the anonymous busyness of the place, and the hostility of one particular group of girls who had already been living there.

She had been allowed to speak to her mother by telephone after her operation, but Faith had determinedly said nothing about the crude attempts of this group of girls to bully her and demand money from her. The last thing she’d wanted was for her mother to worry about her when Faith knew she needed all her strength to get better.

A week after she had first arrived at the home Faith had been thrilled to discover that they were being taken out for the day to visit a nearby Edwardian mansion and its gardens. Her father had been an architect, and it had been her secret dream to follow in his footsteps—although with her mother’s meagre income she had known it was unlikely that she would ever be able to go to university and get the necessary qualifications.

It had taken a little of her pleasure away to discover that the girls who had taken such an open dislike to her were also going on the trip—as well as surprising her, since they had all been extremely and crudely vocal about their favourite ways of spending their time.

Faith had known that her mother would be horrified if she knew about them. Faith had heard them boasting openly about their criminal activities. She had even heard whispers from some of the other girls about them going into the local town and stealing from the shops there.

‘Why don’t you tell someone?’ Faith had asked the girl who had told her. The other girl had shuddered.

‘They’d kill me if they found out, and anyway, like Charlene says, even if they do get caught they’ll only be sent to a juvenile court.’

‘Only!’ Faith hadn’t been able to conceal her own shock, but the other girl had shrugged dismissively.

‘Charlene’s brother’s already in a remand home. She says he says it’s great…they can do what they like. He got sent there for stealing a car. Charlene hates it here because she says there’s nothing worth thieving—only bits of stuff from shops.’

Faith had been appalled, and even more determined to give the girls in question a wide berth. They’d seemed to take a delight in taunting and tormenting her, but her mother’s illness had given her a maturity that had helped her to ignore them and to treat them with a dignified silence.

The theft from her room, though, of the delicate silver brooch her mother had given to her—a tiny little fairy—which had originally been given to her by Faith’s father—had been very hard to bear. Especially when Faith had been pretty sure of who was responsible for taking it. She had reported her loss to the home’s harassed staff, though she had sensed it was a waste of time.