Play Fair with Love

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

When Harriet Rothman's father dies suddenly leaving her penniless, the chance of renting out the family house, Swallow Grange, seems a temporary soulution to her immediate financial problems. But by renting Swallow Grange to young widower Martin Blake, Harriet exposes herself to Blake's private, tormented world - and that of his autistic son, Peter. Unlike Martin's sister-in-law, Molly, Harriet has a way with Peter and she willingly postpones her university studies to care for the boy. But Molly's jealousy, Martin's worry and Peter's needs weigh heavily upon her, as do the expectations of Justin, her husband to be...

Release date: January 29, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

‘IF YOU WOULD only marry me, Hatty, it would solve everything!’

‘I’m sorry, Justin, but I can’t … and don’t call me Hatty; you know I hate it!’

The young man’s serious expression softened into a grin.

‘Harriet, then! Do be sensible, darling.’ The smile gave way to a frown as he stared into the hazel eyes of the girl beside him. She looked nearer nine than nineteen balanced precariously astride the old brick wall, dangling her long slim legs in their scruffy jeans ravelled at the hem above delicate ankles and dusty bare feet.

‘If you would only give me one good reason why not!’ he said with semi-pathos, semi-irritation.

Harriet’s mouth, full, red and soft, tightened into a harder, more determined line.

‘You know why not, Justin. If we weren’t ready to get married before … before Daddy died …’ her voice trembled … ‘then it has to be wrong for me to marry you now just as a way out of my problems. I won’t … and that’s all there is to it.’

She jumped lightly down from the wall and linked her arm through Justin’s in a way that indicated quite clearly the familiarity of their friendship.

‘Come on—let’s go and have tea and stop worrying about me. I’ll think of something.’

Justin allowed her to lead him towards the beautiful old brick house, warm and sleepy in the July sunshine.

‘You keep saying that but what will you do, Hatty? I do wish you’d let me help.’

The girl did not reply. Gently, she disengaged her arm as if the unconscious gesture underlined her determination to remain independent. Her eyes were concentrated fully now upon the house they were nearing. This was her home, more beloved than anything in the world other than the man, her father, who had shared it with her until that terrible day, a month ago, when he had died and left her quite alone. He had been not only parent but friend, companion, confidant, the pivot round which her world revolved. All her achievements, childish though they might have been, were won so that her father would be proud of her, so that she might measure up to his expectations … the silver cups she had won at gymkhanas, the O levels and then the A levels and finally a place at university. If he had done everything humanly possible for her all her life, so she in turn had given him everything she had to give.

His death had left a chasm that she knew no other human being could fill—not even Justin whom she loved very much and who loved her. He was kind, loving, her companion from childhood, her tennis partner, dance partner, the recipient of her girlhood passion. She loved him dearly but she never looked up to and adored him the way she had respected the man who had been the very star in her life and now was gone. She knew, despite his silence on the subject, that Justin felt respect should be gone, too; but then Justin did not understand her father the way she did and judged him now as the world would judge a man who died leaving his daughter penniless.

It was not, Harriet knew, as if he had spent money carelessly and lavishly upon himself. The family capital had been spent in keeping up the beautiful old house for her, because it was her home where she was happy. He’d kept on her horse and paid her school bills and given her a generous personal allowance because he could not bear to see her go without anything. Old Daley, the accountant, had told her so, peering miserably over his rimless spectacles, his gnarled freckled hands lying helplessly over the sheaths of papers with their columns of spidery figures all in red.

‘Your father borrowed money from the bank. The manager was his friend, Harriet. He continued to let him increase his overdraft. Your father could not make the house over to you because he needed it as added security to cover his loans. He intended to sell Swallow Grange eventually but not until you married and left home. If you sell the house well, it should cover capital transfer tax but unfortunately there are other creditors—local tradesmen mostly. I’m afraid there is nothing for it, my dear child, than for you to sell the house and we’ll pay off as much as we can.’

‘And perhaps leave money owing? Money everyone believed my father would repay?’

‘There’s no other way!’

‘There has to be. I’ll think of something!’

But no matter how late at night she sat pouring over the figures, there was no other way—until Justin suggested she marry him now instead of waiting until they were both qualified and with their degrees.

‘Mother and Father say we can do up the coach house and live there until we can buy a house of our own. You can sell Swallow Grange and Father will lend me five thousand pounds to settle whatever debts remain. When we’re both earning, we can repay him.’

‘They are my debts, not yours, Justin. I can’t do it!’

‘Your debts would be mine in any event if we were married!’

‘I won’t marry you just to get out of financial trouble. We agreed it would be wrong to think of marriage before we qualified. You’ve another year before you get your M.D. and I’ve done only a year of my psychology. With you in Edinburgh and me in Cardiff, what kind of married life would we have, Justin? Besides, I’m not ready to get married yet.’

Even to her own ears her final remark sounded ambiguous, coming from someone who professed to be in love. If you were in love, it was natural to want to marry, to be even closer, to share your body and heart and mind—to be one. Somehow she just didn’t feel that way about Justin although she loved him dearly. They’d grown up knowing they belonged together; that one day when they were old enough they would fall in love and marry. Some time when she was in her teens and Justin had just left school, he had kissed her for the first time as a lover rather than as a friend and from then on they had been what her father liked to call ‘sweethearts’.

‘Seeing you two sweethearts holding hands reminds me of the days when I was courting your mother, Harry. It makes me very happy to see you and Justin together!’

Harriet had never known her mother who had died at her birth, but she had nevertheless been an integral part of her life through Dad’s memories. He’d brought her up ‘the way your mother would have wanted’, chose the school ‘your mother would have chosen’. His approval of Justin was as much because he liked him as because her mother would have thought him ‘just the right young man for you, Harry; steady, honest, kind, hard-working. She always liked doctors, too!’

Life had been so easy, trouble free, tension free, carefree. She sailed blindly over the smooth waters with no real thought of the future beyond getting to university and studying psychology.

‘You have a wonderful way of handling the younger children, Harriet,’ Mrs Agrew, her head mistress, had said perceptively. ‘That’s one of the reasons you make such a good prefect. You seem to understand even the more difficult ones. Are you interested in children?’

‘I like them!’ Harriet said. ‘I don’t think they are difficult if you can make yourself feel what they feel and treat them the way you’d want to be treated if you were one of them.’

‘But that isn’t so easy as you may think for a lot of people. You need sensitivity, imagination and perception. You have all three. You’re intelligent, too. You could go further than nursing if you really wanted, Harriet—become a doctor, for instance.’

From that small conversation, ambition had formed and grown until it had matured into a certainty and she had gained a place at Cardiff University. The future seemed assured—until suddenly without prior illness, her father had had a coronary and died and the secure background to her world had fallen apart.

‘Harriet, you’ve got to marry me. You’ve just got to!’

Justin’s voice pulled Harriet back to the present. They had reached the giant copper beech and Justin was backing her against the trunk, imprisoning her by placing an arm on either side of her. His face was very close to hers so that she could see her own reflection in the brilliant blue of his eyes. His hair, eyebrows and eyelashes were quite golden with the sun slanting down through the leaves. He looked like a young Greek god—handsome by any standards and strong, clean, dearly familiar to her. Yet she felt a million miles apart.

‘I love you, Harry. You know that. I’ll make you happy. Say you’ll marry me. I’ll take care of you, darling. Trust me!’

His face came nearer and she closed her eyes. As his mouth touched hers, she felt her body slacken, soften towards him and involuntarily her arms went up and round his neck. His breathing quickened and she felt his desire. But within her there was no answering response. It was always this Justin needing her and her mind wanting to respond whilst her body remained untouched by the fire she knew should be there.

‘I’m nineteen years old and still a virgin!’ she thought. ‘Maybe I’m frigid!’

But the thought was a familiar one as was the answer to it—she knew that she was not. There would come an awakening—she knew it in every fibre of her being. But Justin had not been able to fan that spark into a flame. The more intense his desire, the greater her withdrawal, no matter how many times her brain told her: ‘You love him, you love him, you love him.’

Gently, she eased him away.

‘We’re only confusing the issue!’ she whispered, although there was no one but Justin to hear. ‘I want to think clearly, Justin.’

His voice in reply sounded gravelled and hurt.

‘If you felt about me as I do about you, you wouldn’t have any doubts. I want you, Harry. I want to marry you. I want to make love to you. You say you love me but …’

‘I know, Justin. Forgive me. I can’t help it. I could pretend but you wouldn’t want me to do that and I could never cheat with you.’

He turned away angrily.

‘I don’t think you’re really in love with me at all. You’re not a schoolgirl any more, you know. I could understand you being shy and reserved and inhibited when you were in your teens. But you’re a woman now, Harriet—a grown-up woman, yet you don’t have any of the natural responses of a woman. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were just plain frigid!’

Her face flushed with anger but it was only momentarily. She understood that he was hurt by her rejection and he’d only voiced her own thoughts and fears.

‘Justin, I’d like to be able to explain but I can’t. I do love you. I always have. I think I always will. There never has been anyone else I thought I loved or could love.’

‘Or anyone else you wanted, Harriet? Has no man aroused a few basic sexual desires in that beautiful body of yours?’

‘Justin!’ Her voice was full of reproach but the denial on her lips lay unspoken. She had all but forgotten the end of term party and that crazy car ride along the coast with Peter Powell. She remembered his name though little else about the dark-haired Welsh boy. He had had too much to drink and so had she. They’d danced and he’d held her much too close and kissed her violently when the lights were dimmed. Surprised, she’d found herself reacting, her body responding in a quite frightening way, where willpower had little control over her senses. She was both excited and nervous, yet she had agreed without argument when he’d suggested a drive, only pretending to herself that she did not know what the invitation really meant.

He’d stopped the car near some sand dunes and without any romantic preludes, had walked her across the beach to a secluded, moonlit patch and pulled her down on top of him.

The following day Harriet had felt ashamed; not because she had succumbed because fortunately she had been in no position to do so. The combination of desire and too much to drink had so reduced her prospective seducer’s powers of restraint, he had not been able to wait for her participation. It was all over before he had half undressed her. But the fact remained she would have participated and because the mere thought of having her first sexual experience with a young man she neither knew nor particularly wished to know was so dismaying and humiliating, she had chosen to forget the incident as quickly and completely as she could.

Now Justin had reminded her of the occasion and she felt the hot colour of embarrassment burn her cheeks. What kind of animal passion had moved her when Justin whom she loved could not? The Welsh boy had been so totally different—a little rough, coarse, hard, primitive, the very opposite to all the qualities she had grown up to believe worthy of love and respect; the very opposite to Justin, to her father. Both were kind, gentle, weak with her.

Even now Justin was apologising for having offended her. The trouble with Justin was that he was much too nice to her; maybe too good for her.

‘Don’t let’s quarrel!’ she said impulsively. ‘I’m sure you’re right and I’m being stupid but please be patient. Maybe I just need to grow up a bit. Give me a little time, Justin.’

He softened instantly, clasping her hand and holding it against his cheek protectively.

‘It was my fault. It’s only natural you’re still emotionally upset after your father’s death. You’ve been incredibly brave about it all, darling. I admire your courage.’

Had it not been for the faint shrill of the telephone bell reaching them across the lawn as Justin stopped speaking, Harriet’s life might have taken a very different road. Justin’s gentleness, tolerance and kindness had so touched her that but for the bell, she would have told him she’d changed her mind; that she would marry him after all. But the bell did ring and sighing, Harriet said:

‘I suppose I’d better go and answer it. Wait here for me, Justin. I’ll bring tea out with me and we’ll have it under the tree.’

She ran across the lawn with a curious sense of urgency. The phone call was probably of no importance and yet she had the feeling that if it were to stop ringing before she answered, she would miss something terribly important. When she reached the hall and lifted the receiver, she was too breathless to gasp more than ‘Hu. . .