The Six-Month Marriage. Penny Jordan

something she had always kept hidden even from herself. Her father would have preferred a son … a male to continue the family line and although he loved her, it was to Blake that he had always confided his innermost thoughts, Blake who he thought of as a son … Blake who he turned to when he needed someone to lean on and not her.

      ‘There, sit down and cry it all out,’ Mary said gently. ‘It must have come as a shock to you.’

      ‘Is it true that … that my father …’ Sapphire couldn’t go on. Tears were streaming down her face and she dug in her jeans pocket for a handkerchief. ‘He’s been a very sick man,’ Mary said compassionately, her eyes sliding away from Sapphire’s. ‘His heart isn’t too strong and this bout of pneumonia, but having you home has given him a real fillip.’

      ‘I never knew how he felt about the divorce until tonight.’ Sapphire almost whispered the words, saying them more to herself than Mary, but 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?