CHAPTER ONE
SEATBELT securely fastened. Seat in its upright position. That distinctive humming sensation in the head that always happened when the cabin slowly depressurised along with their steady descent. And that other very familiar growling sound which said the huge Boeing was throttling back on its final approach into London’s Heathrow Airport at last. And suddenly panic erupted from nowhere, drying Madeline’s mouth, closing her eyes, catching at her breath and jerking her hands into white-knuckled fists on her trembling lap.
Was she really ready for this?
What a question! she chided herself angrily. What a useless, stupid question to ask herself now, of all times!
Of course she was ready. And even if she wasn’t, she would still have come!
Nothing—nothing would stop her from attending Nina’s wedding. Not even the reawakening of a sick panic she had thought she’d spent the last four years combating!
Four years, she thought painfully. Surely four years had been quite long enough to spend in exile for her sins, without her having to feel like this? Four years ago she had been just too young and ill-equipped to deal with the pain and humiliation of it all. She had been her own worst enemy then. But she was four years older now, she reminded herself sternly, four years the wiser, and she had gained four full years’ much needed maturity and sophistication to help armour herself against whatever waited for her down there beneath those familiar grey clouds of London.
‘All right, darling?’
Part of her armour, Madeline admitted as she forced a reassuring smile for her travelling companion. Perry had invited himself along on this trip, and she had hesitated only slightly before accepting his company—whether through conceit or cowardice she wasn’t sure. Conceit certainly played a part in her need to show them all at home just how well she could do for herself. And cowardice because she was uncomfortably aware that she was using Perry as an elegant prop for her new image.
An image that was the complete antithesis of her old one.
Perry, she supposed, could be called her latest beau! He was one of the Boston Linburghs. The eldest son and heir in fact to that highly influential and wealthy family. And looked it too, she noted fondly as she studied his smooth lean profile. Hair the colour of wood ash, worn fashionably short, styled to the good shape of his head. His eyes were a warm shade of hazelnut, and his smile the unaffected kind which made him so easy to like.
She and Perry had been a ‘thing’ for several months now. Their relationship—warmly platonic, she decided, described it best—was useful to both of them, because behind their friendly intimacy they were each nursing the wounds of a broken engagement.
So, when Nina’s letter had arrived begging Madeline to come to her wedding, Perry had immediately suggested he come with her.
‘I can combine the trip with some business my father needs attending to at our London office. That way, at least I’ll be able to to be with you at weekends.’ And give you any support you may find you’ll need, was his silent addition. She and Perry understood each other very well.
‘What’s this stepsister of yours like?’ he enquired now, turning teasing eyes on her. ‘Not one of the wicked kind, is she?’
‘Nina?’ Madeline gasped. ‘Good grief, no!’
If anything, she thought ruefully, she was the wicked stepsister; Nina was the angel.
Madeline was the only child from Edward Gilburn’s first marriage, a marriage that had lasted only six stormy years before ending up in a surprisingly amicable divorce considering her parents’ track record for doing nothing amicable for each other. The then five-year-old Madeline had remained in England with her father when her mother decided to return to the States to live. Dee, her Boston-born-and-bred mother, had possessed just enough sensitivity to see that parting Madeline from her father would have been nothing short of first-degree murder, since they both doted so much on each other. Dee had not been offended, just philosophical about the situation. Madeline and her father had needed each other more than they needed Dee. So she had packed her lorry loads of baggage and shipped herself back to Boston, where Madeline had commuted on a regular visiting basis ever since.
She had been just eight years old when her father announced his intention to remarry, and she could still remember how determined she had been to hate this unexpected competitor for her father’s affections. Then in walked Louise, a vision of fair and gentle loveliness. And by her side, with her small hand clinging to her mother’s, stood Nina, tiny will-o’-the-wisp Nina, with her mother’s anxious cornflower blue eyes and soft vulnerable mouth. And the very spoiled and wilful Madeline Gilburn had been captivated right there and then.
On looking that far back as the plane’s wheels touched smoothly down to earth, Madeline wondered why everyone had been so surprised by her immediate capitulation when over the years she and her father had proved time and time again how much in harmony were their thoughts and feelings. Where one loved, the other invariably loved also.
Which had made it doubly painful for both of them when she and Dominic broke up…
Dominic. Thoughts of Dominic Stanton brought her full circle and back to the very roots of her moment’s panic. It was because of him that she had run away to Boston four years ago. And, she acknowledged secretly, it was also because of him that she had decided to come back.
She needed to lay the ghosts of a love long dead.
Customs clearance took ages, but eventually she emerged into the mad crush of the arrivals lounge with her loaded luggage trolley, her blue eyes scanning the sea of faces she encountered, looking for the one she was expecting to see and completely oblivious to the interested glances she was receiving for herself alone.
She was tall and beautifully slender in her tailored suit of pure silk knit, its electric blue colour an exact match to her wide-spaced eyes. Her skin was a little pale after the long hours cooped up in an aeroplane, but nothing could dim its natural purity. Her long blue-black hair had been confined in a braided coronet for the journey, and had arrived at the end of it looking as sleek and sophisticated as it had when she’d set off more than twelve hours ago. She was the kind of woman who stood out in a crowd. Destined to belong to someone special. Exclusive.
The man walking at her side suited her. His air of high breeding and easy sophistication showed clearly. His smooth fairness complemented her dark sleekness. Two very sophisticated people.
‘Madeline!’
Her head twisted, blue eyes alighting on the tall distinguished figure of her father, and on a soft cry she moved eagerly into his arms.
‘You’re late,’ he complained after releasing her from a suffocating bear-hug of an embrace. ‘Over an hour late coming in, and another hour getting through those infernal Customs!’
Madeline smiled and kissed his cheek. ‘Don’t knock the tight security,’ she scolded him. ‘It’s all done for our own safety.’
‘Hmph,’ was his only answer to that as he held her out at arm’s length so he could look at her. ‘You’re looking good enough to eat,’ he decided, ‘though how you manage to after that lousy journey confounds me.’
‘Mummy comes in useful for some things, you know,’ she grinned. Expecting and getting another disparaging ‘Hmph’.
There was very little love lost between her parents. Her father saw Dee as a very beautiful but empty-headed social doll, and Dee saw her father as a brusque, insensitive tyrant. The only place they met in any harmony was where their daughter was concerned, and even there they begged to differ—over all points but her happiness.
‘Now, where’s this young man your mother’s been telling me so much about?’
Turning in her father’s arms, Madeline searched Perry out, to find he had been joined by a big dark-haired man who was greeting him like an old friend.
‘Forman!’ she cried in surprise.
The newcomer grinned and came over to kiss her cheek. She had met Forman Goulding several times in Boston. He was a big dark man with the kind of hard masculine looks she tended to shy away from these days. He was also Perry’s cousin and the member of the family who took care of their European interests.
It was with Forman that Perry was going to stay during his stay in London, coming to Madeline in Lambourn during the weekends only. By the time all the introductions had been made, her father had invited Forman down to Lambourn with Perry whenever he wished to join them, then they were all moving outside to her father’s Bentley, with Rogers his chauffeur standing by the boot waiting to receive her luggage, and in front of it a long low growling monster of a car which could only belong to Forman Goulding.
Perry took Madeline in his arms and kissed her gently, promising to be with her in Lambourn by Saturday lunchtime.
‘That was a fine show of affection,’ her father commented once they were seated in the car and on their way.
‘Was it?’ Madeline murmured, then subtly turned the conversation by demanding to know how everyone was, her eyes warm on him as she listened to all the latest news.