Free Penny Jordan by [The Crightons 09] Coming Home

dark pit of anxiety she knew was waiting to claim her if she broke faith with the pact she had made with herself to prove that she was not her father's daughter.
    No one else knew how she felt, of course. She was a woman, an adult, not a child, and whilst the family might discuss anxiously the effect of her father's behaviour on her younger brother Jack and enfold itself protectively around him, no one seemed to feel that she might need...
    What?
    What it was exactly that she did need, Olivia wasn't sure. Not any more. Once she would have said that the thing she wanted and needed most was Caspar's love, but that had been a long time ago, and now...
    She was glad in a way that Maddy had been out. What good would discussing her problems with her do anyway? She had to face them alone just as she had always done.
    The icy cold explosion of fear that rocked through her body stopped her in mid-step as she hurried back to her car.
    From the protection of the shrubbery, David watched. Her down-bent head, her frown, the quick, impatient way she moved—all were indicative of a young woman who was not happy either with herself or with her life.
    As she passed right by him and got into her car, David had an overwhelming urge to reach out to her, to go and hold her in his arms, to tell her how much he loved her. She was a woman and yet, as he watched her walk unseeingly past him, the expression in her eyes was that of a lost child.
    'My going back now can serve no purpose other than to salve my own conscience,' he had told Father Ignatius in frustration when the older man had urged...insisted...that it was time for him to leave the protection of their enclosed world.
    'In your view,' the priest had agreed. 'But we must never forget that there is another higher authority and His overview overrides the narrowness of ours, just as His will supersedes ours.'
    'I am not a religious man,' David had protested.
    The priest had chuckled as though enjoying a private joke. He said, 'You don't have to be.'
    Not a religious man now, but he had seen enough, learned enough, in the time he had worked alongside Father Ignatius to understand and accept the complexity of the needs and emotions that gave mankind its humanity.
    His daughter wasn't happy and David could feel the sharp, aching tug of her distress.
    He had felt a similar emotion in Jamaica over his son Jack, who had been caught up in that same vicious attack as Max. Were his children the reason, after all, that he had been compelled in some way to come back?
    Olivia had driven away. As he looked towards the house, David could see his father seated in his chair in the library. Outwardly, the two of them had shared a very close bond. He had always been Ben's favourite, but inwardly, their relationship had been based upon Ben's need to re-create the twinship he believed he had lost when his own twin brother died at birth. Ben was as much a victim of his own upbringing and loss as David and Jon had been of theirs.
    David wondered where Olivia had gone—back to the solicitor's practice where he'd once been senior partner? The senior partner so far as the world at large was concerned, but in reality it had been Jon who had had the better qualifications and who had handled all the more complicated cases.
    Jon on whose overburdened shoulders the full weight of the responsibility for maintaining the family's professional reputation had actually rested, although no one within the family had ever given him credit for it. David himself least of all.
    So many debts that he had walked away from and left unpaid...debts that perhaps could never be repaid.
    This train of thought reminded him his small store of cash was dwindling away very rapidly.
    He needed to earn some money and find himself some proper accommodation. Not in the town itself, of course, where he would be recognised.
    No, not there. An outlying farm, perhaps, or better still, Lord Astlegh's estate. Surely he could pick up several days' work