Most of the guests were already inside, and Jenneth hurried to her own place in a pew to the rear of the small, quiet building, just in time to watch Louise drift beautifully down the aisle.
Although she tried not to let it do so, the familiarity of the comfortable church where she herself had once envisaged being married made her ache inside with a pain she had thought she was long ago past feeling.
Her eyes blurred with tears which she readily recognised were not for the awe and mysticism of the service, but, self-pityingly, for herself. Through the blur of them she was distantly aware of someone entering the pew: a young girl with dark, shiny hair, framing an elfin face, and dressed in a pretty, crisp cotton dress, with a dropped waistline and a neat sailor collar. Behind the girl was a man, but Jenneth didn’t look at him, all her concentration fixed on the bride and groom as she willed herself not to give in to the tears burning the backs of her eyes and making her throat raw with pain.
It was stupidity and self-indulgent folly to remember that once she had believed that she would be married here…that she would walk down the narrow ancient aisle to find Luke waiting for her…to have their marriage blessed and sanctified here in the mellow darkness of the church where members of his family had been married for so many generations.
Some memories, though, could not be suppressed…like the one of Luke bringing her in here when he’d given her her engagement ring, and kissing her finger before sliding on to it the narrow band of gold with its brilliant ring of diamond fire surrounding the central sapphire. He had kissed her once, tenderly, chastely…her mouth twisted over her almost medieval choice of word, and yet there was nothing else that truly described the sanctity of that moment…and her body shook, racked by a tremor of anguish as she fought to suppress the memories threatening to overwhelm her and acknowledged inwardly that this had been what she had feared. Not the speculative looks of others, but her own deep inner vulnerability…her own painful memories…her own still aching need to understand just what had motivated Luke to deceive her so cruelly and surely so unnecessarily. Why get engaged to her in the first place if he had known all along that all he wanted from her was a sexual relationship? Why make promises he had no intention of keeping when he must have known she was so fathoms deep in love with him that she would have given herself to him blindly, with the right kind of persuasion?
The tears she was fighting to suppress overwhelmed her, and ran betrayingly down her face. She bent her head protectively, hoping the soft swing of her hair would conceal her face from the other people in the pew beside her, and bit her bottom lip hard to suppress the vast welling of emotion that threatened her. And then, to her astonishment, she felt something soft touch her hand, and a low but insistent little voice whispered urgently to her.
‘You can use my handkerchief, if you like…I brought two because Daddy said that ladies always need them at weddings…’ This last statement was delivered importantly, as though everything that Daddy said ought to be recorded in the statute books, and Jenneth turned her head automatically, unable to resist the confiding voice and gesture. The handkerchief was crumpled and colourful but, because all her life she had loved and understood children, Jenneth took it, and firmly blew her nose on it while she and her rescuer exchanged conspiratorial feminine glances.
‘I wanted to bring some confetti,’ her new friend confided engagingly, obviously deciding that the loan of the handkerchief and its acceptance constituted a basis for shared confidences. ‘But Mrs. Mack wouldn’t buy any for me. She doesn’t approve of weddings.’
In front of them the bridal pair were making their vows. Louise’s father gave the blessing and above them the organ music swelled triumphantly; as though on cue, the church doors were flung open to admit the brilliance of the June sunshine, and high up in the church tower the great bells which had been cast in the same year that St Paul’s rose from its ashes gave joyful tongue to the happiness of the hour.
Automatically, as the light flooded the church behind them, Jenneth turned her head, and then froze with shock as she found herself looking straight into the familiar features of the one person she would have fled to the ends of the earth to avoid.
‘Luke…’
His name was a strangled sound on her lips, the shocked pallor of her face causing the man watching her to narrow his eyes consideringly as he looked from her blonde head to his daughter’s dark one. It had been a last-minute decision to attend his cousin’s wedding, prompted by his daughter’s very obvious but patiently borne disappointment, rather than any desire to see Louise married.
If the news of his appointment had not meant the cancellation of his lecture tour in America less than a week after it had begun he wouldn’t have been here at all. Angelica had expressed herself delighted to learn that she was going to have her father’s company during the long school holidays after all, and had been even more pleased to learn that they would be moving from London to a city called York, which her father had told her she would like very much.
Since she readily accepted her father’s word as being above and beyond that of any other authority, she was envisaging the impending move with a pleasure and excitement that was only in part tinged with the knowledge that their existing housekeeper, with whom she was not always in accord, would not be moving with them.
Angelica didn’t enjoy being the responsibility of a housekeeper. What she wanted was a real mother like other girls had…but to achieve that her father would have to remarry, and she had judiciously over the last few months been casting her eye about in order to supply the need in their lives that her father seemed neglectful in attending to…
For a moment Jenneth actually thought she was going to faint, but then pride came to her rescue, and she forced herself to regain control of her failing senses, wondering bitterly what premeditated cruelty it was that had motivated Luke to choose this particular pew, and to curse her own susceptibility in believing Louise’s assurances that her cousin was not going to attend the wedding.
The bride and groom were coming down the aisle towards them. Angelica, blissfully unaware of the fierce undercurrents seething between the two adults, grasped Jenneth’s hand and demanded, ‘Doesn’t she look lovely?’ Then, without realising it, she acquitted Louise of any blame for Luke’s appearance by adding innocently, ‘We weren’t going to come today, but Daddy had to come back from America because he’s got a new job, and I persuaded him to bring me…’This was accompanied by a wide beam of pleasure, to which Jenneth in her vulnerable and defenceless state found it impossible not to respond.
‘Can we sit with you at the reception?’ Angelica asked eagerly, following up her advantage with innocent swiftness. ‘I don’t have a mummy and I don’t like the way people look at me and Daddy when we’re on our own,’ she confided appealingly to Jenneth, while in the background Jenneth heard Luke snap warningly,
‘Angelica, that’s enough…’
As tears started in the clear green eyes, so like Luke’s that Jenneth acknowledged she ought to have known immediately who she was, she found herself instinctively protecting the child from her father’s anger, saying fiercely, ‘Don’t…’ and then, before she could overcome her own shock, Angelica announced happily,
‘See, Daddy, she doesn’t mind at all. I knew you wouldn’t…’Cos you’re here on your own, too, aren’t you?’ she said artlessly, adding with a childish forthrightness that struck Jenneth to the heart, ‘You aren’t wearing a wedding ring, so that means that you’re not married, doesn’t it? And I expect you don’t want to sit on your own either. It will be fun,’ she finished, beaming up at Jenneth. ‘We can pretend that we’re a real family…’
And, before Jenneth could make the appalled denial that was choking in her throat, Louise and George drew level with them, and she had a moment’s startled realisation that her friend’s husband looked nothing like George-like, and that Louise was wearing a totally unfamiliar look of blissful bemusement that made her own heart ache treacherously.
Somehow or other she discovered that she was outside with the rest of the