PENNY JORDAN - Loves Choices

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Title Page Love’s Choices Penny Jordan www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

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IF only something would happen, Hope wished rebelliously, dragging the toes of already grubby tennis shoes along the dusty earth. If Sister Maria knew of her thoughts she would give her a penance for their wickedness, but as she had undoubtedly already earned herself a scolding by skipping tennis, she might as well compound her sin.

Although hidden from her by the high hedge surrounding them, Hope could hear the sounds from the tennis courts; the almost soporific springy thud of the ball against the racket, which came with such regularity that she knew without going to see that Charlotte Howell was playing. Charlotte was by far and away the convent’s best player—way, way out of her class, Hope thought dreamily, bending her head to study the ambling flight of a bee, tennis and her other sins forgotten as she watched the small creature entranced, the silky silver-blonde weight of her hair sliding from its clasp.

Her hair was just another grievance. She hated its long straightness, but whenever she pleaded to have it cut, Sister Maria told her that her father had refused his permission. The nuns knew a good deal more about her father’s wishes than she did herself, Hope reflected a little bitterly. She hadn’t even seen him in years. Sometimes the panicky feeling that he intended to leave her in the convent for the rest of her life, swept over her, almost drowning her. Already several of the girls in her class had left, swept away by parents and family, some going on to exclusive finishing schools, others disappearing into carefully arranged marriages.

Hope shivered a little, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder, but no one had come to disturb the calm peace of the cloister gardens—her secret retreat for those times when living constantly surrounded by other people swamped her spirit.

What must it be like to have a home and family of one’s own, Hope wondered enviously. As a younger girl she had fantasised frequently on this subject, imagining that her father would arrive, a laughing, warm-hearted woman at his side, who would tell her that a daughter was the very thing she had always wanted. Only her father had never married again, and her own mother, who had died when Hope was two, was only a vague memory.

The intensity of the Spanish sun beating down out of the cobalt sky warned Hope that her peace would soon be at an end. The lesson would shortly come to a close and then she would have to join the others for lunch—a frugal but meticulously served meal in the large refectory, as the school dining room was called.

The convent wasn’t simply a school in the ordinary sense—even Hope with her limited knowledge of the world knew that. The majority of the girls came from wealthy and titled families who had sent their daughters to St Cecilia’s knowing that the nuns’ strictly enforced regime and very stern moral attitudes would produce young women of a type the French described approvingly as bien élevée.

Even in her innocence Hope was aware that a far different world existed outside the convent walls from that she knew. Although she had no one special friend at school, she was a popular if somewhat aloof girl and knew from the chatter of the others—girls whose parents were not quite as elusive as her own father, and who spent holidays at home and abroad—that the ways of the world were not entirely as portrayed to them by the nuns.

Only at Easter—six short weeks ago—Leonor de Silva, one of her closest acquaintances, a South American girl of lush, dark beauty, had returned to the convent, her eyes sparkling, her mouth soft and warm with an emotion which caused a curious pang to quiver through Hope’s own inexperienced flesh, as the girl described her feelings for the young man she had met while at home.

‘Of course, Rodrigo is not “suitable”,’ she had added in an unhappy voice. ‘My parents have told me this, and I know that it is so—there has been a marriage arranged for many years with my cousin …’

That was Leonor’s fate, but what was her own? Hope brooded. She had been eighteen two weeks ago—the event totally ignored by her father—and she could not remain at the convent for ever. At least the majority of the other girls knew what their families had in mind for them. She was unusual in that she was the only English girl at the school. Most of the others were Spanish, or Latin American, with the odd French and Italian pupil, but she was the sole representative of her own country, and sometimes that made her feel very alien, despite the fact that the convent had been her home since she was eight years old.

As the bell rang for lunch, Hope sighed and slowly uncurled herself, stretching as she stood up, examining her uniform for grass stains and dust. Cleanliness was next to Godliness as far as the nuns were concerned, and Hope, with her long swathe of pale blonde hair and her coltish, almost gawky limbs, often earned the Sisters’ disapproval for her ungainliness.

Recently, though, her body had started to change—her legs still seemed as awkwardly long as ever, but she was no longer as terribly thin as she had been; in fact it made her blush a little to realise how provocatively full her breasts had become, her waist so narrow that her uniform, now straining across her breasts, hung like a sack on the rest of her body.

Bianca Vincella, an Italian girl who had befriended Hope when she was a shy young junior, had remarked only days before her scandalous expulsion that Hope was starting to look incredibly sexy, but then Bianca had always enjoyed teasing her. Besides, Hope was not so naïve that she didn’t know that ‘incredibly sexy’ was the last thing the convent wanted its pupils to be.

As she made her way to the refectory, Hope shivered a little, her eyes, a soft dove-grey, pensive. Sex was something only to be discussed in hushed, excited whispers in the dormitories at night, and Hope, who had not spent so much as a few days outside the convent walls since she had entered them, had no knowledge of this activity bar that passed on by the Sisters during biology lessons, and what she had gathered from the other girls’ whispered confidences.

From her reading she knew of the ecstasy two people could experience together, but how this ecstasy was to be equated with the dismal facts of procreation described by the nuns, and the fumbling intimacies of her friends, she did not know.

Today was a ‘French’ day, which meant that only French conversation was allowed, but Hope was fluent enough in this language not to mind. Indeed, she was fluent in most languages, and not simply the regulation French, Spanish and Italian taught at the school. German was another of her languages, and she had started to learn Russian. At the back of her mind was the idea that once she left the convent she would like to have a job—to train as a secretary perhaps, and use her languages in that capacity. Hope always did well at her lessons, but the convent set no conventional examinations for its pupils, so she had no real way of judging her ability.