Stronger than Yearning Read online

  The words ‘James Deveril, aged 32, 1817’ were painted on the frame, and it seemed to Jenna as she studied him that the dark blue eyes watched her, coolly mocking her.

  As far as she knew most of the Deverils had been fair-haired Saxon types whereas this man was dark, his hair as jet black as a gypsy’s, his skin tanned as though he had spent some time in hotter climates than Yorkshire’s.

  Fascinated by him against her will, Jenna wondered who he was. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out—the Deveril history was well documented in the local library as she already knew.

  What on earth was wrong with her? she chided herself, moving away. The moment she entered this house she had been acting in a manner totally foreign to her normal behaviour.

  She walked from the Georgian wing into the old, Tudor part of the Hall. Here the rooms were small, oddly shaped, the windows mullioned and the ceilings beamed. The Georgian wing fronted the house and the original Tudor building ran at right angles to it, a good-sized courtyard was at the back of the building enclosed on two sides by the house itself and on the other two by stables and outbuildings. Now neglected and weed-covered, Jenna could already see how attractive this area could eventually be.

  Beyond the house lay the grounds, which included a small park planted with specimen trees, collected by an adventuring Deveril who had had business interests in the West Indies, but the rich farmland that lay beyond the house’s immediate environs was being sold separately. Not that she would have wanted it, Jenna admitted, studying the plans at the back of her sale pamphlet, the land that went with the house afforded it plenty of privacy. She remembered as a child cycling past the lodge gates, intensely curious about what lay behind the protective ring of trees that hid the house from sight.

  Today wasn’t the first time she had visited the house, though; there had been one other occasion on which she had been here. As she stepped out through the back door into the derelict yard her mouth twisted bitterly. On that occasion she had made the mistake of ringing the front doorbell, and had been sent round to the servants’ entrance for her pains. ‘Servants’ entrance’, dear God, how antiquated it all seemed now, ridiculously so; the hallmark of a family desperate to preserve the old ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘master’ and ‘servant’ image. Then she had been totally over-awed, embarrassed and humiliated. How naïve she had been! A true product of her remote village upbringing by a spinster great-aunt.

  Having finished her inspection she walked back towards her car, lost in memories of the past.

  ‘Nice car!’ The unexpected intrusion of the deep male voice into her thoughts unbalanced her, and she swung round tensely, colour flushing up under her skin as she found herself being studied by a pair of openly appreciative male eyes. The visual impact of coming face to face with a man so similar to the portrait of James Deveril, which she had just been studying, made her usual cool poise desert her, and she could only glance from him to her scarlet Ferrari in disorientated bewilderment.

  ‘Sorry if I startled you!’ His eyes crinkled in warm amusement, laughter tingeing his voice as he added, ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost! Have you? They do say that one of the wives of one of the Deverils walks sometimes at full moon…though no one’s ever seen her during the day.’

  He had a faint accent that she couldn’t place, and angry at herself for her bemused reaction, Jenna threw him a cold look. The laughter died from his eyes immediately, and he sketched her a briefly mocking bow, drawling lightly, ‘Sorry if I spoke out of place, ma’am…’

  He was dressed in jeans and a checked cotton work-shirt, his hair tousled, the open neck of his shirt revealing a deep vee of tanned flesh and the beginnings of a tangle of dark hair. Who was he? He was so like James Deveril that he must have some Deveril blood somewhere…but why not? There had been several Deverils in the past who had taken what they considered their droit de seigneur over the village girls; this man could be the descendant of one of them. He couldn’t be a legitimate member of the family; there weren’t any alive.

  ‘Thinking of buying it, are you?’ He nodded towards the house as he spoke, his eyes lingering on the full thrust of her breasts as she turned to unlock her car.

  Seething inwardly Jenna ignored him, hoping that he would take the hint and leave her alone, but when he kept on prowling appreciatively round her car, she began to suspect he was deliberately trying to infuriate her, and she snapped shortly, ‘Look, I can see that you consider yourself something of a local Don Juan, but I’m really not interested. If I were you I’d get back to work before your employers discover that you’re missing.’

  She had expected him to be disconcerted by her put-down, but instead he merely laughed, stepping away from the car as she slid in to fire the engine. The car needed servicing and was being rather temperamental. It refused to start, despite several attempts to get it going, and all-too-conscious of his amused scrutiny, Jenna willed herself not to give way to temper.

  ‘Here, let me.’

  His arrogance left her breathless, stupefaction giving way to fury as he opened her door, turned the key in the ignition and the car fired right away.

  Closing the door for her he gave her a wide, taunting smile, and said, ‘Some cars are like women; they respond best to a man’s touch.’

  Chauvinist! Much as she longed to throw the insult at him, Jenna restrained herself. Why get so het up about the sexual insolence of some village lout who obviously thought of the female sex as no more than male chattels.

  She was still fuming when she reached her destination. Although deference wasn’t something she expected to receive from her peers—of either sex—there had been an air of insolent amusement about him, an easy, but none the less distinct, self-assurance that had jarred on her. Mere farm labourer he might be, but for all that he had made it plain that he considered himself superior to her simply by virtue of his sex, and that made her seethe. It had been a long time since she had come up against such blatantly arrogant maleness and it had unsettled her. Implicit in the look he had given her as she drove away had been the suggestion that had he so wished he could have mastered not only her car but her as well. No man could look at her like that and get away with it.

  For goodness’ sake, Jenna chided herself as she parked her car in the drive of the old school-house and climbed out, why was she getting in such a state over some country Lothario?

  Since she had left the area her old school had been shut down but Bill Mather, the headmaster, had been allowed to purchase the school-house. Built in the Victorian era, it had an air of solid respectability and stability. This was the first house she had ever truly called home, she thought, as she ignored the front door in favour of walking round to the kitchen. She had come here as a frightened, ignorant girl of barely fifteen, having been virtually thrown out by her great-aunt, her clothes in a battered suitcase and a two-week-old baby in her arms. She sighed faintly, anticipating the conflict now to come with that same ‘baby’. Lucy had objected strenuously to coming to Yorkshire, mainly because Jenna herself had been so eager to do so. What had happened to the easy friendship that had once existed between them? Sometimes these days she felt as though Lucy almost hated her. Was she being selfish in wanting to buy the house? Lucy still had several terms to do at school, even if she decided to leave after O levels; she had always complained about the smallness of their London flat. Here she could have as much space as she wanted. Perhaps even that horse she had nagged her mother for last year.

  There was no sign of Lucy as Jenna walked into the Mathers’ kitchen. No doubt she would be sulking in her room. Lucy had made her dislike of the Mathers more than plain, because, Jenna suspected, she believed that like Jenna herself they knew the identity of her father and were conspiring with her mother to keep it from her.

  Of course Jenna could understand why Lucy wanted to know her father’s identity, but it was something she just could not tell her…She bit her lip wondering how many people living in the village could remember
that summer nearly sixteen years ago. She had changed of course. Then, she had been a painfully thin, milk-skinned child with red hair and enormous, frightened eyes. All that was still the same was the colour of her skin…even her hair had turned from carrot to rich Titian. No, she doubted if anyone would recognise her. She hadn’t had many friends. Her aunt had never really mingled with the other villagers, and besides, she had always been content with Rachel’s company.

  Rachel…pain pierced through her. Fifteen years her sister had been dead and even now Jenna’s grief was as fresh and sharp as it had been then. Rachel had been everything Jenna had not: three years older, warm and extrovert, with a personality that drew people to her. There had not been an ounce of malice in her nature. Naturally warm-hearted she had naïvely believed that everyone else was the same; trusting and eager to please, she had paid a terrible price for her naïvety…

  ‘Jenna!’

  She tore her thoughts abruptly from the past as Bill Mather walked into the kitchen. ‘I thought I heard your monster of a car arrive. How did it go?’

  The grey eyes weren’t quite as keen now as they had been fifteen years ago, but they were still kind and wise.

  ‘I fell in love with the place, totally and for ever,’ Jenna told him honestly.

  He and his wife were her only bridge between the present and her past; she loved them with an intensity that went so deep that it was something she could never talk about. Without them…

  The faded grey eyes showed concern. ‘Jenna, my dear, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’

  ‘If you’re questioning my motives, I admit that initially it was a macabre need to gloat that brought me here. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t harbour some resentment.’

  Bill Mather smiled wryly. ‘No, of course not, but you mustn’t let your bitterness over the past mar the present, Jenna.’

  ‘You mean I should forget what happened, forget how the Deverils killed my sister…how they…’

  Emotion boiled up inside her, pain reflected in her eyes as they met his.

  ‘Jenna… Jenna…of course not… but, my dear, Alan and Charles are gone…the family is gone…’

  ‘Not quite.’ She said it quietly, her face pale and strained as she looked at him. ‘There’s still Lucy…’

  ‘Yes. Jenna, do you think it’s wise to conceal the truth from her? The child has a right to know that…’

  ‘That what? That her mother was brutally raped by her father and left pregnant…abandoned and left to die giving birth to the child she should never have had? Is that what you want me to tell her?’ She was shaking with emotion, sick with the force of it. Fifteen years had done nothing to lessen the sense of sick despair she always felt when she thought about her sister. Beautiful, lovable Rachel. ‘I want to buy the house,’ she said quietly. ‘I want to buy it for Lucy, because it is hers by right.’ She remembered with bitter clarity how she had visited the house with Rachel, just after Rachel had discovered her pregnancy. Her sister had been distraught with fear and shame, frightened into telling Jenna about the brutal attack she had endured.

  She and Charles Deveril had met by accident. Rachel had been attending college in York and he had seen her waiting at the bus stop and recognised her as someone from the village. He had offered her a lift, and Rachel had naïvely accepted, but instead of driving her straight home, he had taken her down a deserted farm track. There had been tears in Rachel’s eyes and voice as she described the way she had fought against him, only to be overpowered. Terrified by what had happened and too frightened to tell their aunt, Rachel had tried to put it from her mind. Their upbringing had been a strict one and neither girl was promiscuous: at eighteen, Rachel had still been a virgin.

  It had been Jenna who had insisted that they must go up to the house, naïvely sure that when he knew what had happened Sir Alan would insist on Charles marrying her sister. But after ringing the front doorbell they had been sent round to the back, and Sir Alan had accused them of making the whole thing up and had even threatened to call the police, claiming that Rachel was trying to besmirch the Deveril name.

  It was only later that Jenna discovered that Charles had something of an unsavoury reputation with women, and that he had been expelled from school because of certain allegations made against him by the parents of a girl in the village near to the school.

  What had followed had been a nightmare of conspiracy and fear. Rachel had bound her to silence, making her promise to say nothing to anyone. A tall, slender girl, she had disguised her pregnancy with the then fashionable loose clothes, refusing all Jenna’s entreaties to visit a doctor or tell their aunt.

  She had started in labour one Saturday afternoon when they were both in York; a passing policewoman realising what was happening had taken them both to hospital. What happened there had been a nightmare to Jenna, bewildered and confused, alone in the waiting-room until a doctor suddenly appeared, grave-faced, questioning her gently, until she broke down and told him the whole story. ‘My sister…please let me see her,’ she had begged when she had told him, and she had known instinctively by his silence and tension that something was wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she…?’ Jenna could remember even now how those words had burst from her throat, panic and pain clawing desperately at her stomach. Rachel could not be dead. She was only eighteen—people didn’t die having babies these days.

  But Rachel had. Rachel, whose narrow frame wasn’t built for easy birth, whose life might have been saved had the doctors known what to expect. ‘She should have had her baby by Caesarian section,’ the doctor had explained quietly to Jenna, but because it had been too late, there had been complications.

  Complications which had resulted in her sister’s bleeding to death, her life flooding away on a dark red tide that the nursing staff had not been quite quick enough to conceal from Jenna as the doctor gave way to hysterical pleading and allowed her to see Rachel for one last time.

  As she looked at her sister, she had heard a faint mewling cry, and had stared, totally stupefied at the tiny bundle held by one of the nurses. Until that moment she hadn’t given a thought to Rachel’s child.

  ‘A little girl,’ the nurse told her softly.

  ‘Give her to me.’ Jenna had been barely aware of making the demand, but as she looked upon the tiny screwed-up face of her niece she made a vow that somehow she would find a way to keep her sister’s child, and that somehow the Deverils would be made to pay for Rachel’s death.

  It hadn’t been easy—far from it…Painfully, Jenna dragged her thoughts away from the past.

  ‘I’d better go up and see her,’ she told Bill, referring to Lucy. ‘Oh, by the way, the most curious thing…I saw a portrait in the house—of a James Deveril, quite unlike the rest of the family—very dark…and then just as I was leaving this man came up to the car. He was almost identical to him…the living image in fact.’

  ‘A trick of heredity,’ Bill told her. ‘It must be. There are no Deverils left. The solicitors made an exhaustive search before putting the Hall up for sale. It happens occasionally.’

  ‘Yes… After all, Lucy is far from being the only Deveril bastard to be born around here.’

  Bill Mather heard the bitterness in her voice and sighed. The effect of her sister’s death had left scars on Jenna that he doubted would ever heal. Fifteen was such a vulnerable age to be exposed to the agony of losing a deeply loved sister, and especially in such circumstances. He had never ceased to admire the way Jenna had shouldered the responsibility of her niece, the way she had forged a new life for herself—and a very successful one at that—but it grieved him that she was still alone, still so wary and sharp with men. They couldn’t know, as he did, that it cloaked a very real fear, a dread of betrayal that had been burned into her soul with Lucy’s birth and her sister’s death.

  It would take a very special sort of man to break down the barriers Jenna had built around herself: a man with the st
rength to appreciate her need to be self-sufficient, to have her career, her escape route from the pain of emotional commitment. He would need patience too…patience to undo the wrongs of the past, and the intelligence to see past the beautiful façade Jenna presented to the world, to the woman beneath.

  The kitchen door opened and his wife walked in. They had been married for over forty years and were still as happy together as they had been on their wedding day. Their one regret was that they had no children.

  ‘Have you spoken to Jenna?’ Nancy asked him. He had met her, a brisk Yorkshirewoman, during his first teaching job near Thirsk. A farmer’s daughter used to hard work and the uncertainties of life in the Dales, she had a down-to-earth common sense that was sometimes worth more than any educational degree.

  ‘I tried to…but it’s very difficult.’

  ‘It’s not difficult at all,’ Nancy corrected him crisply. ‘You simply have to point out to her that she must tell Lucy the truth. The child has a right to know. Jenna’s always listened to you before.’

  ‘She isn’t sixteen any longer, Nancy,’ he said gently. ‘I can only advise her now, not command. She wants to protect Lucy. Think how you would feel learning that your mother had been the victim of a vicious attack by your father.’

  ‘Jenna should have told her years ago. I mind I told her often enough. Has she made up her mind about the old Hall?’

  ‘She says she’s fallen in love with it.’

  ‘Fallen in love with a pile of stones and mortar?’ Nancy Mather snorted derisively. ‘She wants to find herself a man to fall in love with. It’s past time she did. Unplucked fruit only withers,’ she added forth-rightly. ‘You only have to remember that great-aunt of hers to know that. Where is Jenna now?’