Free Cruel Legacy by Penny Jordan

and slightly boring. Today she had looked different—sharper, more alert, the substance of the woman she obviously was rather than merely a shadow of her husband.
    He had never particularly liked the man and had wondered wryly if he had ever realised how much of his real personality and insecurity he betrayed to others with his hectoring manner and his need to ensure that others knew of and envied his material success.
    Small wonder that he had felt unable to face life without the support and protection of that success. Henry Carter sighed slightly to himself, he might not have particularly liked him but he would nevertheless not have wished such a fate on him.
    The recession was biting deeply into the lives of the boys and the school, with fees unpaid and pupils leaving at the end of one term and not returning at the beginning of another without any explanation. So far Andrew had been their only suicide, but there were other tragedies that went just as deep even if they were far less public.
    It occurred to him as he ushered Philippa to the door that almost as strong as his pity for her was his contempt for her late husband.
    When she reached home Philippa parked the car and climbed out tiredly. Her body ached almost as though she had flu. It was probably delayed shock, she decided distantly; the doctor had warned her to expect it, even offering to prescribe medication to help her overcome it.
    She had felt a fraud then, seeing herself through his eyes, a shocked, distraught wife abruptly made a widow by her husband's own hand, her grief too heavy a burden for her to bear.
    She had been shocked, yes, but her grief.. .where was that?
    So far her emotions had been a mixture of disbelief and confusion, the woolliness with which they had clouded her brain occasionally splintered by lightning flashes of an anger so intense that she instinctively suppressed it.
    The house felt cold. She had turned off the heating this morning when she'd left, economising. She had very little idea what personal financial assets Andrew had had.
    Robert had seemed to think that she would be reasonably well provided for, but that did not allay her guilt and concern about what might happen to Andrew's employees. According to Robert the company was virtually bankrupt.
    That was something else she would have to do: see the bank. Robert had offered to go with her but after his refusal to help her with the far more worrying problems of the company she had curtly refused his offer.
    In the kitchen she filled the kettle and plugged it in.
    The hand-built waxed and limed wooden units and the gleaming scarlet Aga had cost the earth; the large square room with its sunny aspect and solid square table should have been the perfect family environment, the heart of their home, but in reality it was simply a showpiece for Andrew's wealth. The only time the kitchen, the house, really felt like a home was when the boys were back from school.
    She frowned as she made herself a mug of coffee. She had given up trying to change Andrew years ago, accepting that she would never have with him the kind of emotionally close and loving relationship she had dreamed of as a girl; she had in fact come to realise that such relationships were extremely rare.
    And when she looked around her it seemed that very few of her female acquaintances had fared much better. Love, even the strongest and most passionate love, it seemed, eventually became tainted with familiarity and its accompanying disillusions.
    She knew women who complained that their husbands bullied them, and women who complained that theirs were guilty of neglect. Women whose men wanted too much sex and those whose men wanted too little. Women whose men were unfaithful, sometimes with another woman, sometimes with a hobby or sport far more dearly loved than their marriage partner.
    She had her sons and the life she had built up for herself and for them; the tepid sexual relationship she had had with Andrew had been