The Six-Month Marriage. PENNY JORDAN

the other woman caught them and smiled sympathetically. ‘Blake means a lot to him,’ she agreed, ‘he thought that your marriage protected both you and Flaws land.’

      ‘He worries a lot about the land doesn’t he?’ Sapphire’s voice was unconsciously bitter.

      ‘And about you,’ Mary told her. ‘The land is like a sacred trust to him and he has a strong sense of duty and responsibility towards it.’

      ‘Strong enough to want to see Blake and me back together again?’ Sapphire asked bleakly.

      Mary said nothing, but the way her eyes refused to meet Sapphire’s told her what she wanted to know.

      ‘You obviously know my father very well,’ she said quietly at last. ‘He confides in you far more than he ever confided in me.’

      ‘I’m a trained nurse,’ Mary told her, ‘and that is how I first came to know your father. When he was first ill he needed a full-time nurse. Dr Forrest recommended me, and your father asked me to stay on as his housekeeper-cum-nurse. The relationship between patient and nurse is one of trust. It has to be. I can’t deny that your father, like many people of his generation, doesn’t wholly approve of divorce, and he does feel that the land would be properly cared for by Blake, and …’

      ‘And that if Blake and I had a son that son would inherit Flaws Farm and would also be half Bell.’

      Sapphire sighed, suddenly feeling intensely tired. Too much had happened too soon, and she couldn’t take it all in.

      ‘There was a phone call for you,’ Mary added, ‘an Alan. I said you’d ring back in the morning.’

      Alan! Sapphire started guiltily. She had almost forgotten about him, and even more unforgivably she had forgotten about his car. The BMW was Alan’s pride and joy and he wouldn’t be too pleased to hear about her accident.

      Tomorrow, she thought wearily as she climbed into bed. Tomorrow she would think about what had happened. Somehow she would have to convince her father that there was no chance of her and Blake getting together again. Selfish, Blake had called her. Was she? Her father had very little time left to live … six months or so … if she re-married Blake she would be giving her father a gift of happiness and peace of mind which surely meant more than her own pride and freedom? She wasn’t seventeen any more, held in thrall by her adoration of Blake. She could handle him now as she hadn’t been able to do then. A six-month marriage which would be quickly annulled—six months out of her life as payment for her father’s peace of mind. What ought she to do?

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘GOOD MORNING.’ Mary smiled a warm welcome at Sapphire as she walked into the kitchen. ‘I was just about to bring you up a cup of tea.’

      ‘Yes, I’ve overslept disgracefully,’ Sapphire said wryly. Time was when she had thought nothing of getting up at half-past five with her father.

      ‘You were exhausted, what with the accident and all. Oh that reminds me, Blake rang. He said not to panic about your luggage. He’s bringing it over later when he comes to see your father. He calls in most days,’ she added, plugging in the kettle. ‘Your father looks forward to his visits, Blake keeps him up to date on how the farm’s running.’

      ‘May I go up and see my father?’ Sapphire didn’t want to think about Blake right now. He had occupied far too many of her thoughts already.

      ‘Of course.’ Again Mary smiled warmly. ‘Would you like to have your breakfast first?’

      ‘Just a cup of coffee will be fine,’ Sapphire assured her. ‘I’ll go up now.’ Before Blake arrives, she could have added, but didn’t. Somehow, quite how she didn’t know yet, but somehow she was going to have to find a way to explain to her father that she and Blake were parted for good. Even now she could still remember that agony of those first months in London, of having to come to terms with the truth about her marriage; about Blake’s feelings for her. He had tolerated her because he wanted the farm. He had never loved her, never desired her and knowing that she had not seen these truths had diminished her self-esteem to such an extent that she had felt somehow as though everyone who saw her or spoke to her, must share Blake’s opinion of her. The only way she could escape had been to shut herself off mentally from the rest of the world. There had been days when she felt like dying; days when she would have given anything simply not to wake up in the morning. But all that was past now, she reminded herself. She had overcome the trauma of Blake’s rejection; had put the past and all that it held, safely behind her. But she couldn’t forget it, she acknowledged. She still occasionally had those terrible dreams when she was forced to witness Blake making love to Miranda, when she had to endure the sound of their mocking laughter. How she had hated herself; everything about herself, from her height to the colour of her hair, torturing herself by imagining how many times Blake must have looked at her and put Miranda in her place. The only thing that surprised her was that Blake hadn’t married. Those love letters she had found had obviously been meant for Miranda.

      No-one, not even Alan knew how totally Blake had rejected her; physically, mentally and emotionally. And facing up to that knowledge had driven her almost to the point where she lost her sanity. But she had emerged from it all a stronger person. Being forced to come face to face with the truth had made her re-evaluate herself completely. No man would ever hurt her now as Blake had done. She allowed no-one to come close enough to her to do so.

      If Alan did propose to her she would probably accept him. She wanted a family; she and Alan got on well. She would never feel for him what she had once felt for Blake, but then he would never look at her body, imagining it was another woman’s, he would never lie to her, or look at her with contempt. Blake was an arrogant bastard, she thought bitterly as she stood at the top of the stairs, poised to enter her father’s room. After what he’d done to her, she didn’t know how he had the nerve to suggest what he had.

      ‘Sapphire.’ Her father greeted her happily, from his chair by the window. The cold March sunshine picked out with cruel clarity the signs of wasting on his face, and Sapphire was overwhelmed with a rush of emotion.

      ‘Dad.’ She went over to him, hugging him briefly and then turning away before he could see her tears.