‘Catherine, this is Verity,’ Honor announced importantly. Catherine was smaller and fairer than Honor and it was plain to see which of them was the leader of their twosome, Verity acknowledged as Catherine gave her a shy look and started to giggle.
‘Goodbye.’ Honor reached up and gave Verity a fierce hug before telling her, ‘And don’t forget, will you, about the dinner party?’
Verity watched her race out of sight with her friend before turning to walk back to the car. Bending down, she told Silas through the open window, ‘I can walk home from here, thank you…’
And before he could say anything she turned smartly on her heel and proceeded to do just that.
She wasn’t going to give him another opportunity to humiliate her by keeping his distance from her, she decided proudly, as she lifted her chin and willed herself not to look back at him.
As he watched Verity walking away through his rear-view mirror, Silas hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.
He was the one who was in danger of being hurt, rejected, used, so how come it was Verity who was behaving as though he were the one treating her badly?
He had known all along that last night had been a mistake and there, this morning, was the proof of it. Verity was treating him as distantly as though they were two strangers. It was perfectly obvious that she regretted what had happened between them, and that she intended to make it very plain to him that neither it nor he meant anything to her. Last night she might have wanted him, but this morning…
‘But you promised…’ Honor insisted, tears clustering on her lashes as she stared across the table at her father.
‘Honor. I’ve just explained. I don’t have the time to get involved in giving dinner parties and—’
‘Verity’s going to do it…’
‘Verity is far too busy with her own life to want to get involved in ours,’ Silas told her curtly. ‘And, whilst we’re on the subject, I want you to promise me that you won’t go round there any more. Verity has her own life to live.’
Watching the tears run pathetically down his daughter’s face,
Silas cursed silently to himself.
He hated having to disappoint and hurt her like this but what other option did he have? The more he allowed her to get involved with Verity, the more she was going to be hurt in the end.
‘Now hurry up and finish your homework,’ Silas admonished her sternly. ‘I’ve got to go out at eight and Mrs Simmonds is coming round to babysit you…’
‘Mrs Simmonds.’ Honor glared at him. She liked the elderly widow who normally came to sit with her on the rare occasions when Silas went out in the evening, but she wasn’t Verity.
‘Why can’t I have Verity? Where are you going anyway?’ she demanded suspiciously. ‘Not to see Myra?’
Silas gritted his teeth.
‘No. I am not.’
He knew perfectly well what was in Honor’s mind. She had made it more than plain that she didn’t want Myra as a stepmother—not that there had been any real danger of that happening. Myra was not good stepmother material, Silas acknowledged, especially not for Honor who needed a much more compassionate hand on the reins; a much more gentle touch—like Verity’s! Now where had that thought come from?
Watching him under her lashes, Honor held her breath. For her, Verity would make the perfect stepmother. She remembered the message she had seen on the back of the photo in her father’s desk.
‘To my beloved Silas, with all my love for ever and always.’
‘Why did they say they didn’t know each other, do you suppose?’ Catherine had asked, wide-eyed, when Honor had related this interesting fact to her.
Honor had rolled her eyes and told her severely, ‘Because they’re still in love with one another stupid…’
‘How can they be?’ Catherine had objected naively. ‘Your father married your mother…’
‘It happens!’ Honor had assured her wisely.
‘Maybe they just stopped being in love,’ Catherine had suggested, adding, ‘Anyway, why do you want to have Verity as your stepmother?’
‘Because…’ Honor had told her with quelling dismissal.
If she had to have a stepmother, and it seemed that she did, then Verity was quite definitely the one she wanted, and so she had mounted her own special campaign towards that end.