‘Mrs Humphries let me in,’ he drawled now before Cassandra could voice her displeasure at this blatant intrusion into her home. ‘She told me Bethany was having her bath, and when she was called away to answer the telephone I took it upon myself to come upstairs.’ Dark brows were raised in silent challenge as he dared her to question his arrogance.
This man ‘took it upon himself’ to do exactly what he wanted whenever he wanted, Cassandra knew—but he wasn’t about to start walking about her house, the home she had shared with Charles for the five years of their marriage, as if he owned it! Which he most certainly did not. Jonas might have inherited a lot of things from Charles when he died, but this house was not one of them.
Her eyes flashed deeply gold. ‘You——’
‘Uncle Jonas! Uncle Jonas!’ An ecstatic Bethany came bounding out of the bathroom to launch herself at Jonas, effectively cutting off any angry rebuke Cassandra might have been—damn it, had been—about to administer. ‘It is you.’ Bethany grinned at him gleefully.
Jonas had swung the little girl up in his arms by this time, uncaring of the water and bubbles that instantly soaked into his expensively tailored suit, obviously having come here straight from the office, by the formality of his clothing. ‘Hussy!’ Jonas laughed huskily as he buried his face in the damp darkness of Bethany’s hair.
Cassandra watched the closeness between the two of them with mixed emotions—amazement at the way Jonas lost all trace of that hard cynicism and reserve when it came to Bethany, resentment at that very closeness which had seemed instantaneous from the very moment the two set eyes on each other, while at the same time grateful that Bethany did have this male influence in her young life. Because Bethany’s other contacts in life were mainly women: Cassandra, her aunt and grandmother, the housekeeper, Jean Humphries; even Bethany’s form-teacher at the day-school she had begun attending in September was a kindly middle-aged lady. But none the less Cassandra could still only deplore her daughter’s choice of a man to adore!
But adore Jonas she did, and Cassandra moved into the adjoining bathroom to escape the painful sight of Bethany in her uncle’s arms, gathering up one of the thick peach-coloured towels to take it back into the bedroom. ‘Here.’ She held the towel out somewhat impatiently, avoiding Jonas’s darkly taunting gaze as he mockingly noted the way Cassandra carefully avoided any contact with him while she wrapped Bethany in the sumptuous bath-towel. ‘Your suit will be ruined,’ she muttered defensively—she always seemed to be on the defensive where this man was concerned, had been made to feel that way from the very first time they met, and Jonas had never done anything to make her less wary and angry with him than she had been on that occasion.
‘I can always buy a new suit,’ Jonas drawled derisively. ‘A cuddle with this particular young lady——’ he tickled Bethany pointedly ‘—is priceless!’
Amazing how, even when she tried to make an effort with this man, he somehow managed to twist it round so that she appeared the one in the wrong again! Although if she was honest—with herself, at least—she hadn’t really been thinking of him and his damned expensively hand-made suit at all when she got the towel, had actually resented his presence here, but most of all she had hated his easy laughter with Bethany. It was wrong of her, she knew, but when she looked at him with Bethany she felt he had no right to be there at all. But Bethany did love him so, to the point where Cassandra feared he was superseding Charles in her daughter’s affections. Deliberately so on Jonas’s part…?
Jonas had always been the black sheep of Charles’s family from the little she had gathered from either Charles or his father, Jonas’s mother having been divorced by Peter Hunter years before Jonas reached adulthood. Jonas, it appeared, had lived in America for years without making any effort to see either Charles or their father. Cassandra had realised exactly what sort of man he was when he didn’t even come to their wedding, even though Charles had expressed a wish that he be his best man. Maybe his refusal to be with his own brother on his wedding day was another one of the reasons she now felt so resentful about the part he was going to be asked to play in her sister Joy’s wedding…
‘Don’t you think so?’
She looked up sharply, to find Jonas looking down at her probingly; despite her own considerable height, he was still at least six inches taller than her.
‘Bethany’s hugs are priceless,’ he reminded her of what he had said only minutes ago, holding Bethany easily in one arm as he did so.
‘Absolutely,’ Cassandra agreed in a briskly dismissive voice, lifting her daughter down on to the carpeted floor. ‘Time we got you into some clothes, young lady, before you get cold,’ she explained with a smile as Bethany looked disappointed. ‘I—— Ah, Jean,’ she said with some relief as she spied her housekeeper standing in the doorway Jonas had so recently vacated.
The older woman, in her early sixties now, Cassandra suddenly realised with a frown, looked slightly harassed as she glanced at Jonas before speaking. ‘I was just on my way upstairs to tell you Mr Hunter was here, when the telephone began to ring.’ She gave Cassandra an apologetic grimace, obviously feeling responsible for Jonas’s arrogant intrusion upstairs; if they had been alone, Cassandra would have assured the woman who had become her friend during the last five years that she was well aware Jean would have been trying to stop the equivalent of a tank in trying to prevent Jonas from doing exactly as he pleased! Although she knew that, given the opportunity, Jean would have had a good try, none the less!
The two women had had severe differences when Cassandra had first become Charles’s wife. Jean had been in charge of Charles’s household for years when he and Cassandra married; until that time, it seemed, Charles had given every impression of remaining a carefree bachelor, and at already forty-two that perhaps wasn’t such a strange assumption to have made. But it had meant, when he had married Cassandra, that the older woman deeply resented the introduction of a twenty-year-old bride as new mistress of the house. Naturally so, of course.
Cassandra hadn’t blamed the other woman for feeling that way at all, had tried very hard, during those first few months, not to step on the other woman’s already bruised feelings, determined that Charles shouldn’t be made to feel he was living in the middle of a battlefield—worse than that, that he might actually have to take sides! That was the last thing Cassandra wanted for him, because she knew that he would hate that, that he hated any sort of upset in his usually smooth-running existence. In fact, Cassandra had teased him that it had been for that very reason he had balked against marrying her at all for months after they had realised they were in love. He had protested that it wasn’t that at all, that he felt perhaps the age-difference was too much, that it would eventually break them up. Cassandra’s answer to that had been but think of what a marvellous time they would have had together, for however long it lasted. Charles’s love for her hadn’t been strong enough to fight such an argument, thank God, and Cassandra knew, despite that slightly reckless air of his that could make him so frustratingly irresponsible, that they had shared five good years together.
But those first few months of being Charles’s wife, because it seemed Jean Humphries would never accept her, had been traumatic ones for Cassandra. And then Cassandra had done something that had forever changed her relationship with Jean—she had produced Bethany… Jean doted on the little girl from the day Cassandra came home from the hospital with her, Bethany being the closest thing the older woman would ever have to a grandchild of her own. For the title of Mrs was only a professional one for Jean, Cassandra knew, the other woman