SUSANNE MCCARTHY - Forsaking All Others

Maddy felt her cheeks go from white to deep scarlet. He didn’t know—Jeremy had never told him about Saskia. Of course not, she reflected wryly; even though that hopelessly misconceived engagement had ended inside of three months, Jeremy would have been reluctant to let his cousin know that he was having an affair with his ex-fiancée.

And she could hardly tell him now, she realised in the next instant; he probably wouldn’t believe her, and it would just seem to him that she was trying to off-load the blame on to Jeremy when he could no longer defend himself. Besides, what did it matter to her what he thought of her? Once, maybe—but that was a long time ago. Now she only had to think about what was best for Jamie. She had to work with Leo over the administration of the estate—it would be best if personal feelings didn’t come into it at all.

“What happened between Jeremy and I is none of your business,” she informed him, her voice stiff with dignity. “But neither of us particularly wanted a divorce—it wasn’t as if either of us was in any hurry to marry again. And besides, it was better for Jamie to leave things as they were. It was a perfectly amicable arrangement.”

He lifted one dark eyebrow in frank scepticism, but shrugged the discussion aside with a lift of his wide shoulders. “Well, I suppose it’s all somewhat academic now, anyway,” he remarked coldly. “It’s the future that we have to think about. I’ve made a list of the people who will need to be notified about the funeral arrangements…”

“Oh, have you?” she retorted in sharp annoyance. “Don’t you think perhaps you should have consulted me? I am the next of kin, you know.”

Anger, barely restrained, flared in his eyes. “Don’t get competitive about it,” he warned, his voice quiet with menace. “There’s only one person who’ll suffer if we make enemies of each other, and that’s your son.”

She drew in a sharp breath; was that merely a reminder, or a warning? But he was right, of course—they were going to have to co-operate with each other in order to ensure that Jamie’s inheritance would be worthwhile. And, more than that, it wouldn’t be good for him to have them arguing over his head; like his father, he seemed to have an inordinate regard for his “Uncle Leo”—most times after his monthly visits to Hadley Park he had had as much to say about Leo as about Jeremy. And the fact that Leo was the creator of his beloved EcoWarrior, as well as a number of other cult computergame figures, was enough to elevate him to the status almost of a demi-god.

Drawing in a long, steadying breath, she inclined her head in acknowledgement. “All right,” she conceded evenly. “May I see the list?”

He walked over to the desk and brought her back a sheet of paper, with a long list of names neatly written out in his handsome script—another way in which he had differed from Jeremy, she reflected, recalling her husband’s lazy scrawl.

“That seems OK,” she murmured; she knew most of the names on the list, and none of them were unexpected. She had known Saskia’s name would be on it, of course—she was family, her brother being married to Jeremy’s older sister Julia. Yes, Saskia would be there, weeping touchingly for her childhood friend—and Maddy would be the only one who would know that she was in truth an adulterous little bitch who had wrecked her best friend’s marriage.

“You’re sure?” Those deep-set agate eyes had noted the tautness of her jaw. “Is there anyone you think I— we— should add?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she responded coolly. “You’re suggesting that the funeral should be next week?”

“Yes. I would have gone for Friday, but it may be better to delay it, just in case there are any difficulties arising out of the inquest.”

“Why should there be?” she queried, surprised. “I thought it was a quite straightforward skiing accident.”

He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Almost certainly—but, nevertheless, the authorities will have to be sure that there was no question of…anything else. Like whether he was drunk.”

“Drunk? Don’t be ridiculous! Jeremy could be a little wild at times, but he never drank too much.”

“How do you know?” Leo countered, a hard edge in his voice. “What would you know of his state of mind these past five years—what would you care? You saw him once a month when he came to fetch Jamie for his visit and brought him back.”

She stared at him, her hands shaking slightly. “Are you saying that he’d become an alcoholic?”

He shook his head impatiently. “No, I’m not. But I do know he was unhappy. He was still in love with you—maybe if you’d still been around…”

“Yes?” Maddy’s jaw was clenched tightly in anger. “Maybe if I’d still been around, what? He might not have had the accident—is that what you were going to say? That’s it’s all my fault?”

“No, of course not,” he rapped back. “It just…might have steadied him down a little…”

“I already had one child to think about,” she retorted hotly. “I couldn’t cope with two.” Fulminating grey eyes clashed with agate; Maddy could feel herself trembling—it was rare for her to be so close to losing her temper, and it was a feeling she didn’t like.

She was the first to look away. Leo was right, to some extent—she had married Jeremy for all the wrong reasons. Oh, she had been deeply fond of him—but she had never been in love with him. She had let him spin her into a whirlwind romance, dazzled by his good looks and his charm, and by the aching need inside her to fill the loneliness of her life. And because the man she had fallen instantly in love with had already been spoken for.

But she had kept that last fact a secret for almost nine years. It had been a painful irony to learn, on returning from their crazy honeymoon jaunt around Africa, that Leo and Saskia had ended their engagement just two weeks after her own wedding.

Not that it would really have made any difference, she acknowledged. Leo had made it abundantly clear from the beginning that, like the rest of the family, he disapproved of his cousin’s marriage. She did have some sympathy with their view that at twenty-one he had been far too young, but nothing could have been further from their belief that she had married him in order to claw her way a few rungs up the social ladder.

Leo sighed, and shrugged his wide shoulders in weary impatience. “Perhaps this isn’t the best time to discuss it,” he conceded. “I understand you’ll be staying for a few days—Julia has arranged for you to have the Yellow Room. Jamie can go in the nursery, of course, as usual.”

“Thank you.” So Jeremy’s sister was here already, organising everything in her usual high-handed fashion. Maddy was surprised that they had even bothered to suggest she came down—between the two of them, they seemed to be making all the decisions. But then what else had she expected? They were, after all, Ratcliffes; everyone else was supposed to fall into step with them.

A tap at the door heralded the housekeeper’s return, to announce that lunch was ready. “Shall I bring it up to the morning-room?” she suggested. “You won’t want the big dining-room.”

Maddy was tempted to say that she would prefer to come down to the warm kitchen, but Leo had already agreed that the morning-room would be the most suitable, so she kept her mouth shut. But if he and his cousin Julia thought she was still the diffident young girl who had come into their family all those years ago, they could be in for a surprise. She had no intention of letting herself be pushed around—and no intention of letting them interfere in her son’s inheritance.

It was strange to be back, Maddy mused as she stood at the window of her bedroom, gazing out over the woodfringed parkland of the estate. The house was much as she remembered it—though she couldn’t help noticing that there were even more minor repairs that needed to be done, a few of them now becoming quite urgent if the fabric of the building was to be preserved.