‘Goodness, what are you doing here, Nancy?’ Ashleigh exclaimed, getting to her feet. ‘Has something gone wrong? Don’t tell me it’s raining down at the park!’
The actual ceremony was to take place in a picturesque park down by the river, James having vetoed his mother’s suggestion they have the wedding at a church neither of them attended. Ashleigh had happily gone along with his idea of a marriage celebrant and an open-air wedding, choosing the local memorial park as a setting. Nancy, though not pleased, had acquiesced, warning them at the time that if it rained it would be their own stupid fault!
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ she muttered now in an agitated fashion.
Ashleigh was surprised at how upset James’s ultra-cool and composed mother seemed to be. Her hands were twisting nervously together and she could hardly look Ashleigh in the face.
‘Could I speak privately to Ashleigh for a minute or two?’ she asked Kate with a stiff smile.
‘Sure. I’ll go along and check that the others are nearly ready.’ The others being Alison and Suzie, Ashleigh’s cousins—the second bridesmaid and flower girl respectively.
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Hargraves said curtly.
Kate flashed Ashleigh an eyebrow-raised glance before leaving the room, being careful not to catch the voluminous skirt of her burgundy satin bridesmaid’s dress as she closed the door behind her.
Ashleigh eyed her future mother-in-law with both curiosity and concern. It wasn’t like Nancy to be so flustered. When she’d offered to help with the wedding arrangements Ashleigh had very gratefully accepted, her own mother having died several years before. She imagined not many women could have smoothly put together a full-scale wedding in the eight weeks that had elapsed since the night she’d accepted James’s proposal. But Nancy Hargraves had for many years been Glenbrook’s top social hostess, and all had been achieved without a ruffle.
Ashleigh got slowly to her feet, taken aback to detect red-rimmed eyes behind the woman’s glasses.
‘What’s happened?’ she said with a lurch in her stomach.
‘I...I’ve heard from Jake,’ came the blurted-out admission.
Ashleigh felt the blood drain from her face. She clutched her dressing-gown around her chest and sank slowly down on to the stool again. It was several seconds before she looked up and spoke. ‘I presume he rang,’ she said in a hard, tight voice. ‘There’s no mail on a Saturday.’
The other woman shook her head. ‘He sent me a letter through a courier service. It arrived a short while ago.’
‘What...what did he say?’ she asked thickly.
‘Apparently the wedding invitation only just reached him,’ Nancy said with the brusqueness of emotional distress. ‘He...he sends his apologies that he can’t attend. He...he also sent this and specifically asked me to give it back to you today before the wedding.’
Ashleigh stared at the silver locket and chain dangling from the woman’s shaking fingers. Her own hand trembled as she reached out to take it, a vivid memory flashing into her mind.
‘What’s this?’ Jake had asked when she’d held the heart-shaped locket out between the bars of his cell the night before the verdict had come down.
Her smile had been pathetically thin. ‘My heart,’ she’d said. ‘Keep it with you while you’re in here. You can give it back to me when you get out, when you come to claim the real thing.’
‘I could be here for years, Leigh,’ had come his rough warning. Jake always called her Leigh, never Ashleigh.
‘I’ll wait...I’ll wait for you forever.’
‘Forever is a long time,’ he’d bitten out in reply. But he’d taken her offering and shoved it in the breast pocket of the shabby shirt he’d been wearing.
Now she stared down at the heart-shaped locket for a long, long moment, then crushed it in her hand, her eyes closing against the threatened rush of tears.
‘I’m sorry to have upset you, Ashleigh,’ Nancy said in a strained voice. ‘I know what Jake once meant to you. But believe me when I say I wanted nothing more than to see you and James happily married today. I did not want to come here with this. But I had to do what my son asked. I just had to. I...’
She broke off, and Ashleigh’s wet lashes fluttered open to see a Nancy Hargraves she’d never encountered before. The woman looked grey, and ill.
Anger against Jake flooded through her, washing the pain from her heart, leaving a bitter hardness instead. How dared he do this, today, of all days? How dared he?
Ashleigh pulled herself together and stood up, the locket tightly clasped within her right hand. ‘It’s all right, Nancy,’ she stated firmly. ‘I’m all right. I have no intention of letting Jake spoil my wedding-day. Or my marriage. You haven’t told James about the letter, have you?’
Nancy’s blue eyes widened, perhaps at the steel in Ashleigh’s voice. ‘N...no...’
‘Then everything’s all right, isn’t it? I certainly won’t be mentioning it. By tonight, James and I will be driving off on our honeymoon and he’ll be none the wiser.’
She was shocked when her future mother-in-law uttered a choked sob and fled from the room.
CHAPTER TWO
ASHLEIGH stood there for a few moments in stunned silence, her thoughts in disarray. But she soon gathered her wits, renewing her resolve not to let Jake spoil her marriage to James. No doubt Nancy would soon collect herself as well and present a composed face at the ceremony in little over half an hour’s time.
‘Mrs Hargraves gone, I see?’ Kate said as she breezed back into Ashleigh’s bedroom. ‘What on earth did she want? She looked rather uptight.’
‘Yes, she did, didn’t she?’ Ashleigh agreed with a deliberately carefree air. Kate was a dear friend but an inveterate gossip, the very last person one would tell about the correspondence from Jake. Everyone in Glenbrook would know about it within a week, with suitable embellishments. It had been Kate who had furnished Ashleigh with the news of Jake’s fleeting visit over three years before, the information gleaned from Nancy Hargraves’s cook, a talkative lady who had her hair done at Kate’s salon every week.
Ashleigh smiled disarmingly at her friend. ‘It proves that even someone like James’s mother can be nervous with the right occasion. I thought something must have gone wrong there for a moment. But she just called in to give me this to wear today.’ And she held up the locket and chain. ‘Must be one of your mob, Kate. An upholder of old traditions. This is to be my something borrowed.’
The irony of her excuse struck Ashleigh immediately, but she bravely ignored the contraction in her chest. She’d lent Jake her heart, and now he’d given it back to her.
Good, she decided staunchly. I’ll entrust it to James. He’ll take much better care of it, I’m sure.
With a surge of something like defiance, she slipped the chain around her neck. ‘Do this up for me, will you?’ she asked her chief bridesmaid.
‘Will do. But what are you going to do for the something old, something new and something blue?’
‘No trouble,’ Ashleigh tossed off. ‘My pearl earrings are old, my dress is new, and my bra has a blue bow on it.’
‘Spoil-sport,’ Kate complained. ‘I had a blue garter all lined up for you.’
‘OK. I’ll wear that too. Now help me climb into this monstrosity of a dress, will you? The photographer’s due here in ten minutes.’
‘You’re