Penny Jordan Collection(56)

                Her mother made a small moue. ‘But, darling, that was before...’

                ‘Before what?’ Sylvie challenged her wryly. ‘Before he inherited the title...’

                ‘Well, these things do make a difference.’ Her mother defended herself as Sylvie gave her a quizzical look. ‘Ran is now an extremely eligible man.’

                ‘Mother! These days a woman doesn’t need an eligible man,’ Sylvie told her. ‘We can support ourselves.’

                ‘Every woman needs a man to love her, Sylvie,’ her mother told her sadly. ‘I still miss your stepfather.’

                Immediately Sylvie was contrite. Her mother was old-fashioned and out of touch in her ideas, her thinking, but she had genuinely loved both Sylvie’s own father and her second husband, Alex’s father, and Sylvie knew that despite the business with which she filled her days she was sometimes lonely.

                ‘Have you seen Alex and Mollie recently?’ she questioned, wanting to turn the conversation into happier channels.

                ‘Oh, yes,’ her mother responded immediately and warmly, ‘and they’ve invited me to Otel Place for Christmas.’

                Several hours later, as she prepared for an early night, Sylvie wondered what Ran was doing. Not going to bed on his own if his recent behaviour pattern was to be followed. Angrily, she closed her eyes. What did it matter to her who Ran spent his nights with or how?

                What did it matter?

                All the world, that was how much it mattered, but no one but her must ever know that.

                Even before he had kissed her she had known the truth. Just the way her body, her senses, her being, had reacted the moment she had set eyes on him again had told her that what she had tried to dismiss as a mere childish crush had somewhere, somehow, against all the odds and certainly against her own will, turned into real adult love. She ached for Ran—to be at one with him, at peace with him, to be loved by him, to share his life, to bear his children—with such an intensity that sometimes she didn’t know quite how she was going to be able to go on bearing it.

                Live one day at a time, that was her present motto; just get through each minute, each hour, just go on telling herself that ultimately it was going to get better, that once the work on Haverton Hall was finished and she was out of Ran’s orbit she would be able to rebuild her defences and, with them, her own life. That was what she told herself, but deep down inside she wasn’t sure she truly believed it.

                * * *

                ‘We’ll have to call at the Rectory first,’ Sylvie warned Lloyd as she drove north. ‘I don’t have the keys to Haverton Hall with me.’

                ‘That’s fine by me,’ Lloyd assured her. ‘How are you and Ran getting along, by the way?’

                ‘He’s a client of the Trust,’ Sylvie pointed out severely.

                ‘So you haven’t fallen in love with him, then,’ Lloyd teased her. Somehow Sylvie managed to force a responsive smile. Lloyd meant no harm. He took a paternal interest in her and often told her, only semi-jokingly, that it was time she fell in love. He had no idea about the real state of affairs between her and Ran, the real state of her heart, her emotions.

                ‘Say, this is really beautiful countryside,’ he commented as they drove through Derbyshire.

                ‘But still not as beautiful as Haverton,’ Sylvie teased him.