Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

as well as flowers had all been utilised to create the wonderfully rich falls of cascading colour that Olivia was now admiring.

      ‘No wonder Aunt Jenny was so insistent on plain cream hangings for the marquee,’ she commented to Ruth.

      ‘Jenny and I were both in agreement that we wanted to get away completely from the prettiness of bridal tulle and dainty pastels.’

      ‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Olivia assured her, gently touching the silky petal of one of the vividly coloured geums and poppies Ruth had used to create the harmonising masses of reds, oranges and yellows that were her colour theme for the event.

      On the far side of the marquee, Jenny herself was going round each of the tables checking that everything was in place. The caterers had already arrived and were busy getting themselves organised.

      Ben, who had been generally getting in everyone’s way and grumbling all afternoon, had finally allowed Hugh’s wife, Ann, to coax him back to the house, leaving Jenny free to make her final inspections in peace.

      ‘Caspar seems to be getting on well with Hillary,’ Ruth commented, glancing across the marquee to where the two of them were deep in conversation.

      ‘Well, they are both American,’ Olivia responded neutrally. She had never particularly taken to Hillary without really being able to say why.

      It was Saul, she had noticed this afternoon, who had to take charge of their children, including little Meg, but then, in fairness, Olivia had to admit that she had no idea how much time Saul normally spent with his children, perhaps not very much, and hence Hillary’s determination that on this occasion she deserved a small break from them.

      Saul had taken them back to the house now in order to start getting them bathed and changed in readiness for the evening ahead.

      Her own brother, Jack, like his cousin, Joss, had been dragooned into helping out with the carrying to and fro of Ruth’s flowers and other materials. Was he aware of their mother’s problem …?

      All day long Olivia had been trying to push the events of the previous night to the back of her mind but they couldn’t be ignored for ever, of course. Sooner or later she would …

      She would … She tensed as she heard Caspar laughing. Hillary was standing beside him, her hand on his arm, and as Olivia watched she leaned across him to tuck a discarded cream rose into the buttonhole of his jacket. It was an intimate gesture and one that Olivia instinctively resented, her body stiffening as she watched the way Caspar responded to Hillary, apparently oblivious to her own presence.

      ‘Why don’t you take Caspar home?’ she heard Ruth suggesting gently at her side. ‘There’s nothing else to do here now apart from a bit of clearing up and the boys can help me with that.’

      ‘Aunt Ruth …’ Olivia paused. She desperately wanted someone to confide in, someone to talk to about her concern for her mother and her own shock at what she had discovered, but as strong as that need was, her sense of loyalty to her mother prevented her from giving in to it. Ruth had never really approved of Tiggy and if Olivia told her what was going on …

      ‘What is it, dear?’

      ‘Nothing …’ Olivia backtracked. ‘I’ll go and get Caspar.’

      ‘Flowers all done?’ Caspar enquired as Olivia went across to join him.

      ‘Yes,’ she confirmed as she slipped her arm through his and gave Hillary a cool smile.

      Ostensibly Saul’s wife had come down to the marquee to join the other helpers but so far as Olivia was aware she appeared to have spent most of her time chatting to Caspar.

      ‘We really ought to leave,’ she warned Caspar now as she looked pointedly at her watch. ‘The Chester crowd will be arriving soon and I promised Mum that we’d be on hand to help out.’

      ‘Poor you,’ Hillary butted in sympathetically looking, Olivia was perfectly aware, not at her but instead at Caspar as she turned her body slightly towards him and with an air of complicity that Olivia knew only too well was designed to exclude herself. ‘You must be finding it a little intimidating being engulfed by such a large family. I know I did the first time I met them all. I felt quite alienated and alone—the only American and very much an outsider.’

      ‘That would have been your and Saul’s wedding day, wouldn’t it, Hillary?’ Olivia interrupted her coolly, reminding her, ‘I don’t think you’d met the whole family before then, had you?

      ‘Caspar, we really ought to be going,’ she repeated without waiting for Hillary’s response.

      ‘That was a little bit harsh, wasn’t it?’ Caspar commented critically once they were in the car and out of Hillary’s hearing.

      He felt slightly on edge and irritable and was still smarting from Olivia’s sexual rejection the previous evening even though he was loath to admit it even to himself.

      ‘What was a little harsh?’ Olivia queried even though she knew exactly what he meant. The day would have been stressful enough with only the tension of working so hard to get everything just right for tonight without the added burden of worry and anxiety she was having to carry of the discovery she had made about her mother. The last thing she needed now was any kind of disharmony between her and Caspar. But it irked her that he didn’t seem able to see what kind of woman Hillary was, and if she was honest, it had annoyed and hurt, yes, hurt her, too, that he had seemed content to spend so much of the afternoon with Hillary. It still rankled that he hadn’t been more understanding last night.

      ‘You know what,’ Caspar countered as she started the car. ‘That comment you made just before we left.’

      ‘Really?’ Olivia challenged him, changing gear too quickly, the raw, grating sound of the clashing gears further exacerbating the already irritated and edgy state of her nervous system. ‘I don’t think so, Caspar. In fact, if you want my honest opinion, I find it rather odd that Hillary should have made such a statement at all, but then she’s the type of woman who never misses an opportunity to grab any male interest and sympathy she thinks might be available.’

      ‘Aha!’ Caspar responded, his face suddenly relaxing into a teasing smile. ‘I understand. You’re jealous and—’

      ‘No, I am not jealous,’ Olivia denied angrily. ‘I just don’t happen to like Hillary very much, that’s all. She’s a very predatory woman, very cold and calculating and far too—’

      ‘American,’ Caspar finished for her, his voice suddenly hardening as his smile disappeared. ‘No wonder she feels so isolated and alienated if that’s the way your family treats her,’ he continued, his voice grim with contempt.

      ‘Is that what she told you … that she feels isolated?’ Olivia demanded, suddenly beginning to lose her temper. She knew she was handling the situation badly, allowing it to balloon into something far more important and potentially dangerous than it should have ever been allowed to be, but she still felt afraid and hurt from last night’s discoveries and from Caspar’s refusal to share her feelings over them.

      ‘We did discuss how difficult she was finding it to adjust to life in this country,’ Caspar agreed evenly in a tone of voice that warned Olivia that she wasn’t the only one fast losing patience with their conversation. But she was too wrought up, too on edge—too much in need of the very large helping of TLC he seemed to have been unable to give her the previous night but that he appeared to have had no trouble at all in handing out generously to Hillary this afternoon—to apply logic and restraint to her thoughts and emotions—or her reactions.

      ‘Oh, did you?’ Olivia demanded angrily. ‘Well, she certainly seemed to be getting a very sympathetic hearing from you, judging by the way she was all over you,’ she fumed, ‘and she was certainly getting far more understanding from you than I got last night. But then I suppose the two of you are on a compatible wavelength, being fellow countrymen,’ she finished sarcastically.

      ‘It