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‘She may have mentioned it.’ Jon looked totally vague and disinterested. ‘But it was a very long time ago, wasn’t it?’ He said it so mildly that there seemed to be no outward reason why Chris should colour so hotly until Jon added equally mildly, ‘Really I’m surprised you even remember it. Sophy can’t have been more than nineteen or so at the time.’
The children were pressing quietly against her side, and Sophy turned to her mother pinning a smile on her face.
‘I think we’d better leave now, Mother. Jon has to fly to Nassau in the morning.’
‘Jon has to...’ Chris’s eyebrows rose. ‘Dear me, how very unromantic but then no doubt as you’re both living in the same house you’ve already had ample opportunity to—’
‘Become lovers?’ Jon seemed totally oblivious to Chris’s malice. ‘Oh, about the same opportunity as any other couple of our age and situation in life,’ he agreed cheerfully.
‘Mummy would never have agreed with me living with Chris before we were married,’ Felicity chipped in dulcetly, earning an approving glance from her mother, Sophy noted.
‘No?’ Really, it was quite incredible how Jon’s face changed when he removed his glasses. He had been in the act of polishing them when Felicity spoke and there was quite definitely something almost satanic about the way his eyebrow rose and his mouth curled as he looked across at the other girl.
‘And we were engaged for twelve months.’
‘A wildly passionate romance.’
Sophy couldn’t believe her ears. Chris was red to the tips of his ears and an unbecoming tightness had formed round Felicity’s bowlike mouth. Sophy was quite sure that Felicity and Chris had been lovers well before the date of their marriage; how could it be otherwise when Chris was such a highly sexed man. She had no doubt that the little act Felicity was putting on was purely for her parents’ benefit.
‘I think we’d better leave.’
Neither of her parents made any attempt to stop them going but Sophy didn’t realise that Jon had misinterpreted the reason for her tiny sigh of relief, as they got in the car and he said in an unusually clipped tone. ‘Don’t let it bother you, Sophy. The loss is theirs, not yours. Good heavens,’ he muttered in a much more Jon-like tone, ‘can’t they see that you’re worth a dozen of that stupid, vain little butterfly?’
Wryly she smiled across at him, and said huskily. ‘Thanks...for everything.’ She was remembering how he had claimed that he loved her, protecting her from Chris’s malice.
* * *
ALL FOUR OF THEM were subdued on the way back, although it wasn’t until the children were in bed and they were alone that Jon again raised the subject of her parents.
‘I hope you weren’t too hurt by what happened today, Sophy,’ he began uncertainly. ‘If I had known...’
‘I stopped being hurt by the fact that I’m not the daughter my parents wanted, a long time ago,’ she said calmly. ‘But I was angry, Jon...angry and embarrassed that they should show such a lack of welcome and politeness to you.’
He shrugged and looked slightly uncomfortable as though the emotion in her voice embarrassed him.
‘I don’t suppose we’ll see that much of them,’ he rumbled clearing his throat. ‘Er...Benson, I suppose he’s the one.’
‘Yes,’ Sophy agreed tightly. ‘Yes, he’s he one...but it’s all over now, Jon. My life and loyalty lie with you and the children now.’
‘Yes...’
Why should she feel that there was a certain wry irony in the way he was looking at her?
SOPHY SPENT THE fortnight Jon was away in Nassau organising her new life. From now on Jon would work mainly from home when he was in England, so she moved some of the files from the office in town to his study. She managed to do some fence building in her relationship with her parents but admitted to herself that it could never be the warm one she had once wanted. As she had firmly told her mother, Jon was now her husband and he and the children came first. Grudgingly this had been accepted, but Sophy doubted that there would be much contact between them in the future.
