Permission To Love. PENNY JORDAN

his father overjovial. Lindsay had sensed them thinking that she was not really their type; she loathed hunting for instance and Jeremy’s father was Master of the local Hunt. She also had a career whilst Jeremy’s mother had made it clear that anyone who married her son would have to devote herself to the type of committee/good works life she enjoyed. She was torn, Lindsay knew that. She and Jeremy had known each other for several years. She had met him through Caroline and they had several interests in common. She knew he would make her a good husband—if somewhat dull. He was a very placid man, stuffy in some ways perhaps as befitted a junior partner in an old established firm of stockbrokers. He tended to look down on Lindsay’s work. She worked for one of the foremost Unit Trust organisations in the country, and the salary she earned through selling their Unit Trusts was phenomenal. There was more of her father in her than he had ever suspected, she often thought. She enjoyed the cut and thrust of her business life, and yet another side of her, her mother’s side perhaps, yearned for a home and children.

      ‘Sex isn’t everything.’ Jeremy looked embarrassed as he made the comment. Lindsay had discovered early on in their relationship that anything to do with such a personal topic embarrassed him. When she had first guessed that he intended to propose to her she had suggested they went away on holiday together. She was a virgin by choice, never having met any man whose touch or kisses aroused her to the point where she craved his possession and she desperately wanted to feel at least some of that craving for Jeremy, but he had been horrified by her suggestion. Rather stiffly he had told her that he had too much respect for her to take advantage of her suggestion; indeed he had gone on to say that he had heard that she had a reputation for being unobtainable sexually and she had sensed then that this had pleased him. She had chosen Jeremy freely and yet every now and then nagging doubts arose. Was there perhaps something wrong with her? Was she totally incapable of intense sexual desire? There were people with low libidoes and if she was one of them it was as well that she was marrying a man like Jeremy.

      Contrite, she proffered a brief smile. ‘No, perhaps you’re right,’ she agreed.

      Relieved Jeremy smiled back at her. ‘So you’ll arrange for us to visit your brother and his wife this weekend?’

      Sensing his impatience to return to his office, Lindsay nodded her head. She wasn’t looking forward to going down to Dorset but it would have to be done. Although she was well over age for a legal guardian, she still had to have Lucas’ approval to her prospective husband before she could come into her inheritance, and Jeremy would not want her without it. Not that Lucas was likely to disapprove. Jeremy was everything her father had wanted for her in a husband. Who would have thought that Lucas could change so much? Jeremy was paying the bill; Lindsay stood up. She intended going straight back to her flat after lunch. She had taken the afternoon off, but there was some paperwork she wanted to catch up on. Jeremy kissed her briefly on the cheek before depositing her in a taxi. His lips were dry and faintly chill. Sighing, Lindsay gave the driver her address.

      Lucas had bought the flat for her when she first came to London and it was situated in an elegant Regency block. At first she had raged that she could manage on her own, but a month of living in grotty digs, feeding herself on beans and toast every night had soon brought her down to earth. It had been Lucas who insisted on her advertising for a flat-mate and who had carefully vetted the applicants. She had taken little interest in the proceedings. It had been pride and nothing more that had led to her leaving home, and the pain of parting from all that she loved; the pain of being betrayed by the one person she had thought would never let her down had anaesthetized her against feeling anything else.

      She had worked hard to get where she was and she was proud of her success. Jeremy wanted her to give up work when they married. Sighing faintly, Lindsay paid off her taxi and walked towards her front door.

      She had decorated the flat herself, choosing soft, feminine shades of peaches and greys and she was very pleased with the effect of the pale peachy rag-rolled walls, and the soft, plain grey carpet. Ignoring the large sitting room she went instead into her own small study. Because of the nature of her work her hours were flexible and she could if she chose, work at home in preference to in an office, and her flatmate knew that this particular room was out of bounds to everyone apart from Lindsay herself.

      It should have been the easiest thing in the world to simply pick up the ‘phone and tell Lucas that she was going down this weekend.

      It hadn’t come as a surprise to her on her father’s death to learn that he had appointed Lucas as her guardian and that he had left Lucas in charge of his business empire. The house had been left to them jointly but there was a stipulation in her father’s will that unless she married, Lucas would always have control of her inheritance and that when she did marry it must be to a man whom Lucas approved of.

      She had been stunned by this knowledge, but at sixteen the trauma of coping with the death of her father and Sheila had vastly overridden any concern she might have felt about the will.

      Her father had been dead for three months before she began to realise how much Lucas had changed. For a start he had tried to insist that she went to finishing school as her father had wanted her to. That had been his first betrayal and the shock of it had caused her almost as much pain as her father’s death. Lucas himself had been the one to tell her to make her own way in life, but when she tackled him about this he had simply said grimly that things had changed.

      It was about that time that she had first become aware of Gwendolin. She had never particularly liked the older girl, who was the daughter of her father’s solicitor, and her constant visits to the house under the guise of ‘helping’ made her feel extremely prickly. She wasn’t a child, she remembered telling Lucas hotly on one occasion; she was more than capable of seeing that they ate proper meals … and that the house was kept clean.

      After Sheila had married her father they had never taken on another housekeeper, Sheila preferred to manage with help from the village, and at the time she had not properly understood Lucas’ grim, ‘That you’re not!’

      Which only went to prove how much of a child she actually had been. No. It had taken Gwendolin to open her eyes to the truth. People were talking about her and Lucas, she had told Lindsay spitefully. And when she had asked why, Gwendolin had pointed out that they weren’t related by blood. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at him,’ she had added nastily. ‘Poor Lucas, he must find it difficult to deal with such a mammoth crush. It isn’t fair to him at all of your father to have landed him with the responsibility of you. And what about when he marries?’

      Lucas married? A coldness had crept through her limbs. ‘What’s the matter,’ Gwendolin had demanded acidly. ‘Surely you realise that Lucas is an extremely virile man? Naturally he will marry … and when he does you can hardly suppose his wife will want a teenage stepsister on her hands.’

      Lindsay knew without having to hear it in so many words that when Gwendolin talked of Lucas’ wife, it was herself she had in mind. A deep pain tore through Lindsay when she turned the conversation over in her mind later. She didn’t want to lose Lucas as well … not so soon after losing her father and Sheila, and marriage would take him away from her … she knew that.

      Gwendolin hadn’t been content to leave matters there. She had told Lindsay in Lucas’ hearing that people were starting to talk … that there were those who thought it wrong for a teenage girl to live so closely with a man who after all was no blood relation to her. Lindsay had been instantly defensive. ‘Lucas might not be my brother,’ she had cried painfully, ‘but I love him as one …’ Can’t you see, she had wanted to say, he’s all I’ve got left, but the words had stuck in her throat, and later on when Lucas had changed from the warm, smiling man she knew into a grim-faced stranger she had been filled with dread.

      At first when he had insisted on taking her out with him when he went visiting their neighbours she had thought it was because he wanted her company, but her pleasure had turned to pain when she realised the truth. He was trying to get her married and off his hands.

      He gave her the ultimatum the night after Richard Browne had approached him for permission to marry her. Either she accepted Richard or she went to finishing school.

      His