PENNY JORDAN - For Better For Worse

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Title Page For Better for Worse Penny Jordan www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

AS FERN saw Nick walk into the kitchen, her stomach muscles tensed.

She had heard him arrive from upstairs, had witnessed the impatience with which he had slewed the car to a halt and climbed out, slamming the door, and then glancing up at the house.

She had stepped back from the window then, an automatic and very betraying gesture, pausing as she caught sight of herself in her dressing-table mirror. She looked strained and tired, her eyes empty and lifeless… as empty and lifeless as her marriage to Nick?

Abruptly she had turned away from the mirror and hurried downstairs.

It was her own fault that Nick was in a bad mood, of course. She should not have raised the subject of how much time he was spending working last night. He had always hated her ‘interfering in his life’, as he called it. She had learned early on in her marriage that Nick loathed any form of restraint, even the mildest hint of criticism.

What was wrong with her? he had demanded to know last night. Didn’t she realise how fortunate she was, how many women would gladly change places with her?

‘You’re my wife,’ he had told her. ‘Nothing can change that.’

A promise, or a threat?

She tensed now, guiltily trying to suppress her rebellious thoughts. Nick was right. She was lucky to be married to him, especially after…

As he came towards her, her tension increased, her muscles locking. Automatically she looked away from him, pain a hard-edged lump in her throat. Nick was a very handsome man, and yet these days she found that sometimes she could hardly bear to look at him.

‘I love you… I need you, and I’m never, ever going to let you go,’ he had told her when he’d proposed to her, and she, swept off her feet, totally overwhelmed by his intensity, his insistence, dizzy and bemused by the speed with which he had taken over her life, had been unable to resist the pressure he had put on her.

Then she had been flattered; reassured; filled with gratitude and joy by his words.

Then …

Now, even with the width of the kitchen between them, she could smell the scent of another woman’s sex on him.

Fastidiously she increased the distance between them.

Was Nick having another affair? Last night he had denied it. And she had wanted him to deny it.

She had invested so much in this marriage, given so much to it. Too much?

How could she stay with him if he was having another affair, and yet how could she leave? Marriage was a lifetime commitment, and when problems arose within it they had to be worked at… or ignored? Her heart lurched. Was she really such a coward?

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Nick demanded sourly. ‘Not still sulking, are you?’

Protectively Fern turned to one side, reaching for the kettle, letting the straight swath of her hair swing across her face, obscuring her expression.

‘I’ve got a bit of news for you,’ Nick told her.

The surliness had gone from his voice now. It was lighter, triumphant… gloating almost. Her tension increased, but Fern suppressed it, concealing her reaction from him as instinctively as she had concealed her face. Inwardly her soul ached at what she was doing; for what their relationship had become.

‘It seems my saintly stepbrother is planning to buy Broughton House.’

Fern’s fingers tensed on the kettle-handle. She was glad she had her back to Nick.

‘Now I wonder what he wants with a place that size. All those bedrooms. A real family place…’

Fern could hear the ugly note of triumph quite clearly in his voice now. ‘Pity he hasn’t got a real family to put in it, isn’t it? Or maybe he’s thinking of acquiring one.

‘What is it, Fern? I haven’t said something to upset you, have I? Oh, I forgot—you’ve always been pretty keen on Broughton House yourself, haven’t you? You were always up there at one time… or so you claimed…’

‘I visited old Mrs Broughton occasionally, that’s all,’ Fern told him quietly.

Why did he insist on doing this to her? He knew as well as she did that there was no need… no point… He knew how bitterly she regretted what she had done.

‘Did you go to bed with him, Fern?’ he had asked her. ‘Did you?’ And she had wept silent tears which she knew had betrayed her.

‘He doesn’t want you, you know,’ he had told her, softly, gently almost, kinder to her now when he had the least reason to be than he had ever been. If he had shown her that kindness before, that compassion… would things have been any different?

How many men would still have wanted to remain married to her after that? Not many. A husband’s infidelity was one thing; a wife’s was something very different.

‘You’re my wife,’ he had told her when she had broken down and asked him why he wanted her to stay. ‘Marriage is forever, Fern. Isn’t that what your parents have always told you?’

She was his wife. He wanted their marriage… wanted her… needed her, so why was there this emptiness between them, this lack of harmony… this ugliness which eroded her pride and her self-respect?

‘I’m going up to have a shower,’ Nick told her.

To wash another woman’s scent off his body? Didn’t he realise that it was too late?

The kettle boiled and switched itself off.

So Adam was thinking of buying Broughton House… and of getting married.

Even though she was prepared for it—her body tensed against it—the pain was still sharp enough to make her catch her breath.

Adam was her brother-in-law; that was all, she reminded herself fiercely. Her stepbrother-in-law . Nothing more. Not now, not once… not ever .

Eleanor saw the advertisement while she was sitting in her dentist’s waiting-room flicking through a surprisingly current copy of Country Life .

It was the photograph that first caught her eye; the front of the house faced south and it had been photographed on a sunny day so that the stone walls were washed to a soft warm gold, the light glinting on the uneven leaded panes of the dormer attic windows.

The house looked settled, solid, permanent, safe and reassuring, offering a refuge from life’s turbulence… offering comfort.

She stared at the photograph for so long that at first she didn’t hear the receptionist call out her name.

Later, when she got home and discovered that in her haste to respond to the girl’s second clipped summons she had stuffed the magazine into her bag, she stifled her feelings of guilt and put the magazine down on her desk, intending to throw it away. But for some reason she didn’t… For some reason, later on in the day, taking a break from a particularly difficult translation of some Spanish documents for one of her clients, as she drank her cup of tea she found herself flicking through the magazine again, stopping when she reached the half-page ad featuring the house, reading the written details below the photograph briefly, her real attention focused on the photograph itself, on the warmth the house seemed to give off, the security… the sanctuary…