Permission To Love. PENNY JORDAN

her shrewdly. ‘Your inability to concentrate wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain cousin of mine would it?’

      ‘Sort of. We’re going down to see Jeremy’s parents the weekend after next,’ Lindsay told her, answering her unspoken question.

      Caroline grimaced faintly and rolled her eyes. ‘Poor you. His mother’s a bit of a stickler. Jeremy’s the apple of her eye of course, and no girl could possibly be worthy of him. Of course you have got one thing in your favour.’

      ‘My money you mean?’ Lindsay stood up with fluid grace, kneading the tension knots at the back of her neck. ‘Mmm …’

      ‘Still you’re hardly springing a surprise on them,’ Caroline comforted. ‘Ma was saying the last time I went home that it was high time the pair of you got engaged. What about your family?’

      ‘Well there’s only Lucas of course,’ Lindsay told her. ‘Jeremy and I are going down to see him this weekend.’

      ‘Lucky you.’ Caroline dimpled a smile of feminine envy at her. ‘It’s just as well that he’s your stepbrother and safely married, otherwise poor Jeremy wouldn’t stand a chance.’ She saw Lindsay’s expression and grinned. ‘Oh come on Lin, surely even you can see that he’s living, breathing temptation to our poor vulnerable sex. The dreadful thing is that he doesn’t even seem to be aware of the effect he has on us. I wonder what he ever saw in Gwendolin.’

      ‘She’s very attractive,’ Lindsay responded weakly, feeling honour-bound to defend her stepsister-in-law.

      ‘Sure if you like icebergs,’ Caroline came back forthrightly, ‘I’m sure she doesn’t have an ounce of human warmth in her, and Lucas never strikes me as being a man who’s madly in love with his wife, does he you?’

      ‘He’s always been adept at hiding his feelings …’

      ‘Is that what it is? Sometimes I get the feeling he’s put them into cold storage,’ Caroline came back. ‘I wonder if he’s faithful to her?’

      She saw her flat-mate’s expression and grimaced. ‘Okay, so he’s everything the perfect husband should be, but she’s very far from being the perfect wife. I didn’t say anything before but when I was in Gstaad this winter I saw her there … and not with Lucas.’

      ‘She’s a very keen skier,’ Lindsay told her a little stiffly, ‘Lucas is a busy man … perhaps he couldn’t get away. And anyway just because you saw her with another man that doesn’t mean …’

      ‘That she’s having an affair with him? Don’t you believe it,’ Caroline told her. ‘They might have had separate rooms and they might have been discreet but they were lovers all right … you can’t mistake the signs.’

      ‘Don’t tell me … I don’t want to hear any more,’ Lindsay wanted to plead, and like a warning bell, a comment of Lucas’ surfaced from the past. ‘You always want to avoid awkward situations Lindsay, but you can’t spend the rest of your life doing that. One day I hope you’re going to opt for pleasing yourself rather than simply pleasing others.’

      And it was true. Intelligent; attractive, popular, she knew she was all of those things and yet deep inside herself she saw herself as a coward. As a child she had striven desperately hard after her mother’s death to please her father … to take the place of the woman they had both lost, and had always been nagged by the feeling that she had somehow failed; that the intelligence and stamina she had inherited from him, detracted, in his eyes, from her character and that he would have preferred her to be more like her delicate, hesitant mother. At school too, she had tried to please, breaking the pattern only that summer she had been sixteen, and then of course with Lucas. Lucas was the only person she suddenly realised, with whom she had been able to be properly herself. He had always encouraged her to state her own opinion, to argue with him if she felt so inclined. Lucas had never demanded that she fitted herself into any preconceived ideas he might have about her. But Lucas had changed when her father died; he had ceased being a beloved brother and mentor and become instead a remote, cold stranger, who no longer hugged or touched her in any way; who did not encourage her to talk to him and who eventually married Gwendolin, thus ensuring that there would be a gulf between them for ever. Was Caroline right? Was Gwen unfaithful to him? But why? She had never made any secret of her desire for Lucas. She had in fact pursued him relentlessly, so why break her marriage vows and take a lover?

      ‘Seeing Jeremy tonight?’ Caroline enquired, changing the subject. Lindsay shook her head. ‘I need an early night. I’m taking a break from the office next week, so I want to clear my desk first.’

      ‘Are you and Jeremy going away?’

      Once again Lindsay shook her head. ‘No. I haven’t had a break yet this year. I thought I might do a little bit of shopping … unwind a bit, relax …’

      ‘Mmm … well I’d better fly. Simon’s taking me to dinner, and if I don’t get a move on I won’t be ready.’

      Simon was the new man in Caroline’s life. Her menfriends lasted on average a matter of weeks rather than months, and unlike Lindsay she was constantly falling in and out of love.

      LINDSAY finished work early on Friday afternoon and returned home to pack. She had almost finished when the ‘phone rang. Her nerves tensed totally unexpectedly, and until she picked up the receiver and heard Jeremy’s familiar voice she didn’t realise that her tension had been in case the caller was Lucas.

      ‘Lindsay I’ve got some bad news,’ Jeremy began without preamble. ‘I’m not going to be able to make it this weekend. Something’s come up and I have to fly up to Scotland to see a client.’

      There had been several occasions recently when Jeremy had had to work at the weekend, and as Lindsay suppressed her annoyance she heard him saying, ‘Look why don’t you go home as planned—after all, you’re going to want to tell your brother about our engagement before we make it public. My parents will want to put a notice in the Times, once we’ve made things official next weekend.’

      What Jeremy was saying made good sense, Lindsay knew that and yet she was filled with an intense feeling of reluctance to do as he suggested. She didn’t want to see Lucas without the protection of Jeremy’s presence, but why?

      Shaking aside her nebulous fears, she spoke to Jeremy for several more minutes, eventually agreeing that she would go ahead as they had planned.

      Once she had replaced the receiver she wandered into her bedroom wondering what to wear for the journey, and eventually settling on an attractive soft green wool crêpe pleated skirt with a toning sweater. The green reinforced the unusual tawniness of her eyes, and her skin which tanned well, glowed softly golden. They had had a good spring and early summer, and the sun had bleached her hair slightly adding natural highlights, but as she applied her make-up with deft, practised strokes Lindsay was unaware of her own attractions. She didn’t want to go home, she recognised unhappily, but she had to … It’s only for one weekend, she reminded herself, and yet inwardly she was dreading it; dreading seeing Lucas … and of course Gwendolin.

      She left London an hour later, driving the Escort car she had bought for herself several months earlier. By most people’s standards she and Jeremy could live quite comfortably on their joint salaries, but of course Jeremy had responsibilities towards the estate—heavy and expensive responsibilities, which she suspected were the main reason he was marrying her. What did she want, she asked herself in exasperated impatience as she automatically turned her car in the direction of her home. She didn’t love Jeremy passionately herself and yet here she was questioning his own lack of passion for her. Hadn’t she accepted yet, in spite of all the evidence to support it, that she was simply not a woman with deeply passionate sexual feelings?

      The late afternoon traffic was heavy and she forced herself to switch her attention from her unprofitable thoughts to her driving.

      As she drove westward, Lindsay found the traffic gradually thinning out and when she took the familiar turning off the motorway several miles before Bath,