Forbidden Fruit Read online

  'No, I don't even want them to know about it!'

  'You can't be serious!' gasped Angela. 'You don't even mean to tell them you're having Malcolm's baby?'

  'No.' Leonie pushed back her fine silvery hair, leaving her delicate profile exposed, and for the first time Angela could see a resemblance between her and her mother. Leonie's face might have a fragile bone-structure, but it was set, determined, and it had a strength Angela had never noticed in it before.

  'But why not?' Angela couldn't understand Leonie's attitude at all.

  Leonie's blue eyes glittered with hostility. 'They didn't want me in their family. They didn't even answer the invitations to the wedding; they probably wouldn't have come. Oh, Giles Kent has been quite kind to me since…' Her voice quivered and she bit down on her lower lip, then took a deep breath and went on, 'Since Malcolm died… When he came to tell me, that day, he was a bit brutal at first, but when he saw I was knocked sideways by it he started being quite kind, and then in Italy, when I walked into him in the street, he was almost nice…'

  'He's certainly sexy,' said Angela, grinning. 'I wouldn't say no to a date with Giles Kent!'

  Leonie gave her a startled frown. 'You must be crazy! Sexy is the last word I'd apply to Giles Kent!'

  'It isn't me that's crazy! It's you. And blind, too! He's got all that power and money… they're potent aphrodisiacs, for a start!'

  'Well, you're welcome to him,' Leonie said flatly. 'But I don't want anything to do with him, or any of them.'

  'But they have lots of money—'

  'That's why I'm not telling them! They might try to take the baby away from me.'

  'They couldn't do that!'

  'I think they might—after all, they could obviously give the baby a luxurious home, whereas I'm going to have a hard struggle to manage… '

  'But isn't that exactly why you are going to need their help? I'm sure they wouldn't try to take the baby away—but they might give you an allowance which would make all the difference!'

  'I don't want their money.'

  'Oh, but Leonie…'

  Face stubborn, Leonie said, 'Please, Angela, drop the subject! I've made up my mind about this. I am not going to tell the Kent family anything, and don't you tell anyone, either. Promise.'

  Angela reluctantly promised. Sighing, she asked, 'So, if you aren't going to live with your mother, where are you going to live?'

  They spent the next hour discussing possibilities: trying to think of some part of the country where Leonie could get a job, find someone to look after the baby while she worked, but still afford to rent a fiat. It was a dispiriting and fruitless discussion.

  A month later Leonie began to notice people giving her a second look, their eyes startled and disbelieving at first. She went a little pink, and waited for a comment, but perhaps nobody liked to say anything, since she had not dropped any hints and they weren't sure they were not imagining things. Then people started standing in huddles, whispering, until she appeared, when they would hurriedly spring apart and disappear in all directions without meeting her eyes.

  After a few days of this, her boss gruffly asked her to come into his office one morning, and, after clearing his throat a few times and fiddling with the papers on his desk, muttered, 'Miss Priestley, I am sorry to have to ask you this, it is very embarrassing for both of us, but…there is some gossip in the office… I am told that people think… that…'

  Leonie was sorry for him, he was finding it so hard to get the question out, so she answered it without his needing to ask.

  'Yes, I am going to have a baby, Mr Rawlings,' she said quietly.

  He let out a long sigh. 'Oh, dear. I… I am very sorry to hear that…'

  'I am not sorry to be having it, Mr Rawlings,' Leonie said at once, her voice husky. 'I was happy when I knew; it will be some compensation for losing Malcolm, to have his child.'

  Mr Rawlings picked up a pencil and doodled on a sheet of paper without looking at her. 'I have every sympathy, of course, and we are not so behind the times that we take a moral attitude, I assure you… but how will you manage to go on working after the child arrives?'

  'If I can find someone to take care of it until I get home each evening…' she began, and he looked at her at last, kindly, with pity.

  'You couldn't possibly afford a full-time nanny on your salary, Miss Priestley. My daughter has a baby and still works, but quite a sizeable chunk of what she earns goes to pay the nanny. If she weren't married she would never be able to manage. I think you aren't being very realistic. But, if you can make some arrangement of the sort, of course you can keep your job, and we will allow you the usual maternity leave. I will get an agency secretary in until you can come back, but please let me know well in advance whether or not you will definitely be coming back. If you are not able to make some arrangement for the child to be cared for full-time, you can always carry on working here in another capacity, perhaps part-time, or work flexible hours to enable you to spend time with your baby.'

  She was grateful that he was allowing her to stay on in her job until the birth; that gave her a useful breathing-space. At least he wasn't telling her to go at once. She had suspected he might. His office was highly respectable and dealt with some very wealthy, often quite elderly, and at times narrow-minded clients. This might be the end of the twentieth century, but she often thought that some of their clients were not aware of that fact.

  'Thank you, Mr Rawlings; I promise to let you know, well in advance, what arrangements I've been able to make,' she said.

  She was just as fortunate in the agents who represented the owner of her flat. They at once pointed out that she could not be permitted to have a baby living in the flat, but agreed with some sympathy that she could stay on until after the birth, so she had a breathing-space during which she was sure she would come up with something.

  She started hunting for another flat at once, but London prices were so high, and landlords tended not to want unmarried mothers as tenants unless they could afford massive rents. She still had two and a half months before the birth, but time was passing so quickly.

  The last person to find out that she was going to have a baby was the one she might have told first if her mother had been different. Leonie had not seen her since her angry, resentful reaction to Malcolm's death, but, when Leonie was a little more than six months pregnant, her mother arrived at the flat one Saturday afternoon without warning.

  Leonie opened the door and her mother froze on the spot, staring fixedly, her cold eyes opening wide in shock.

  'You had better come in,' Leonie said wearily, holding the door and standing to one side to let her pass.

  Her mother walked into the flat, Leonie closed the door and followed her into the sitting-room, waiting for the storm to break over her head.

  Swinging to face Leonie, Martha let her pale blue eyes flick down over her, her nostrils flaring in anger and distaste. 'When is it due?' she asked, and, when Leonie had answered that, at once asked icily, 'It is Malcolm Kent's, I presume?'

  Hot coins of red in her face, Leonie snapped back, 'Yes, it is!'

  Martha's lips thinned. 'I thought you had more brains than to let this happen to you! I can see why you stayed away and never said a word to me about it! Well, at least his family can afford to support you, that is one mercy!'

  Leonie looked aside, biting the inside of her lip.

  Martha's eyes narrowed and she sharply asked, 'They are going to help you, aren't they?'

  Leonie took a long breath. 'I don't want to involve them—'

  'Don't be ridiculous!' Martha interrupted. 'What did they say when you told them? Didn't they offer to ?'

  'I didn't!' Leonie said shortly.

  'What?' Martha was red with anger now. 'Are you telling me that they don't know? You stupid girl! Of course you must tell them. They have plenty of money, and you have a right to some of it. I'll speak to them if you're so proud that you can't bring yourself to!'

  'Don't you d
are!' Leonie desperately burst out, for once having the courage to contradict her mother to her face.

  Martha Priestley looked disbelievingly at her, stiffening, and for once wordless. 'Stay out of it,' Leonie went on less fiercely. 'I want nothing more to do with Malcolm's family. They hate me; they didn't want me when Malcolm was alive, and I'm not going begging to them. I would rather live on welfare than ask them for a penny.'

  She hadn't silenced her mother, of course. Martha was shaking with rage, and she had a lot to say, firing the words at her daughter like bullets.

  'You can't afford to be so high-minded! And neither can I! You know very well I wanted to ask the Kent family to help me pay the bills I was left with for that wedding. Some things could be cancelled—the reception and the church, the wedding cars, the flowers… but a lot of things still had to be paid for. The invitations, the cake, that real lace veil you were going to wear…the accessories, your white shoes, your trousseau… oh, I know it was my present to you, but the bill was enormous! And then there was my own dress…'

  She caught Leonie's eye and flushed angrily, although her daughter hadn't said a word. 'Well,' Martha defended herself sharply, 'I had to have something special; I didn't want the Kents to think their son was marrying into a poor family. I had a dress made by a famous designer, and I couldn't hand it back, I had to pay for it—I would never have bought anything so expensive for myself; I only ordered it for your wedding. I have always been very careful with money, and, let me tell you, I hated running up debts of that sort, and I couldn't see why the Kents, with all their wealth, should not have been asked to help. After all, it would have been their son's wedding as much as yours, and I was extravagant only because I wanted to make sure the wedding was a grand affair, an occasion to which all the Kent family and friends could come with pride.'

  'I know,' Leonie said unhappily, wishing she would stop talking about it. Her own anxieties over her pregnancy had somehow eased her pain over Malcolm's death; it wasn't that she had forgotten him or that she missed him less—indeed, she often thought of him when she thought of her baby—but she had so many other problems on her mind, and time kept ticking by like a racing clock. In a few months now she would be having her baby, and she needed to get her life sorted out first.

  'I don't think you do!' Martha snapped at her. 'I did not, in fact, ask the Kents for help, in the end, because you became almost frantic when I spoke to you about it. But that meant that I was left to bear the burden of that debt, when in my opinion the Kents might have offered to help me! And if you think that I am going to help you carry the cost of Malcolm Kent's baby, you are very much mistaken!'

  'I didn't ask you to help!' Leonie said, on the point of tears. 'I'm sorry if you got into debt on my behalf; I wish I had the money to pay you back now, and one day when I do have some money I will pay you, but I'm not asking you for money now, or for help, or…or anything… I'll manage, somehow.'

  Martha stated at her, breathing hard, her cold blue eyes like marble, her fine-boned face clenched in fury. Leonie flinched, afraid of what she might be going to say, but her mother simply walked past her and slammed out of the flat.

  On a Saturday Leonie did the shopping and the housework, so she was able to push the thought of her mother to the back of her head while she concentrated on her usual weekend routine. She found it rather more tiring at the moment, of course, so she didn't try to rush about, but took it slowly and easily.

  She ate a light salad lunch once her work was finished, and then lay down for an hour, but she had no sooner closed her eyes than the doorbell rang, and she sighed and trudged back up the corridor.

  She expected Angela, who often dropped in on a Saturday afternoon for a chat or a cup of tea, but when Leonie opened the front door she was appalled to find herself looking into the cold grey eyes of Giles Kent.

  She couldn't get a word out, flinching in alarm, waiting for his first reaction to the sight of her, but as she stared at him she realised that he already knew she was pregnant. His face didn't register shock or incredulity; he ran one brief glance over her heavy body and then he took a step forward, into the flat, forcing her to step back out of his way.

  Leonie's mind was racing. He had known before she'd opened the door. Someone had told him! My mother! she thought bleakly. It has to be my mother; she was the only one who would have done it. In spite of everything I said to her—oh, how could she?

  And what did she say to him exactly? What did she ask him to do? Leonie's hands screwed up into tight little balls of tension and misery. Martha had asked for money, for some financial arrangement, of course—that was why she did it. Money has always been what mattered most to her. I told her I didn't want anything from the Kents; I told her exactly how I felt… how could she?

  'You're not looking well,' Giles said abruptly, and she gave him an incredulous look.

  'You may not have noticed, but—'

  'You're pregnant, I know; I am quite observant enough to notice that, I assure you,' he said with a dry intonation. 'But I've always understood that pregnant women looked radiantly healthy, and you are very pale and listless. Axe you taking care of yourself?'

  'Yes, thank you,' she said in a mock-submissive voice, and he half smiled, a quick crook of the mouth before his lips straightened again.

  'Sit down,' he ordered in that peremptory way of his, gesturing to a chair, and Leonie, with a sigh of resignation, obeyed, saving her energy for whatever argument might be going to follow. She was determined not to let the Kent family interfere in her life, but she suspected Giles was not going to give in easily.

  Once she was seated, Giles sat down, too, near by, leaning forward, his black hair lit with a halo of the autumnal sunlight filtering down behind him, through a plane tree in the street outside. His face was half in shadow as he stared at her; she couldn't guess what he thought about her situation, but then Giles Kent could, when he chose, always hide what he was thinking.

  'Your mother rang me,' Giles told her without a flicker of expression, and a wave of hot colour swept up Leonie's face.

  Angrily, she burst out, 'I suspected she had when I saw you outside, but she did that without my permission. I told her not to get in touch with your family!'

  'I know, she mentioned that,' Giles said, with dry irony. 'It was a very frank conversation.'

  Leonie winced, embarrassment in her eyes as she looked down. 'If she asked you for money, please forget it—'

  'She didn't ask me for money,' he interrupted curtly. 'Well, not directly. Of course, she did point out how difficult life was going to be for you when you had the baby. She explained that she wanted to help you, but she had financial problems of her own at the moment. She explained that there was a large debt she had incurred because the wedding had had to be cancelled.'

  'Oh, no!' Leonie said, biting her lower lip. She looked up then, her darkened lashes flicking against her pale cheek. 'I'm sorry…'

  'Why should you be?' Giles coolly returned. 'I blame myself for letting her get into debt. It should have occurred to me long ago that there might be a financial problem. I imagined Malcolm would have seen to it that the wedding expenses were not left to your mother to pay—she is a widow living on a small income, and I can see it must be difficult for her, I'll deal with her problem immediately. I only wish I had thought of it before, but…' He paused, frowning, his mouth incisive. 'But I had other things on my mind, I'm afraid.'

  Leonie watched him, her dark blue eyes sensitive to the tension in his face. She could guess what he was thinking about. Her own grief at the loss of Malcolm was mirrored in the Kent family; she had not forgotten how Malcolm's mother must have felt these past months and she had often regretted that the dislike Mrs Kent felt towards her meant she was unable to give her the comfort and support she must have needed.

  'How is your mother?' she asked gently, and Giles looked up, his gaze flicking across the room to her again.

  'She has been in a state of deep depression for months.'<
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  'I'm sorry,' Leonie murmured.

  He nodded. 'From the look of you, so have you!'

  She didn't answer that, and he went on, 'She is finding it hard to come to terms with Malcolm's death; he was always her favourite child—I suppose mothers always fed a soft spot for their youngest, and Malcolm had a lot of charm. It hit her very hard, and she won't accept professional help, she won't see a therapist or even talk about her feelings, which might help. Bottling it all up inside herself just makes the situation worse, her grief is feeding on itself—I've become increasingly worried about her.'

  'I can quite understand why she doesn't want to see a psychiatrist, or talk about it,' Leonie thought aloud with sympathy. Mrs Kent was a woman of great pride; she would hate the idea of confiding her innermost feelings to anyone, especially to a stranger, and Leonie imagined that she would equally dislike the idea of having analysis. She would probably think that it was shameful, and would be afraid of her friends finding out, of being talked about, even laughed at.

  'You and my mother have more in common than she realises,' Giles said, staring narrow-eyed at her, and she flushed, her look startled. Before she had time to think about that remark, Giles went on, 'I have been at my wits' end, trying to think of a way to get through to her; nothing I could do seemed to help. When your mother rang me today it was like a gift from heaven—I realised at once what it would mean. This is going to snap my mother out of her depression; this baby is going to give her something to live for. It will be like giving Malcolm back to her. So you don't need to worry any more, or agonise about ways and means of coping on your own, Leonie. From now on, you can leave everything to us.'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That was what Leonie had been afraid of, what she had dreaded, and she burst out anxiously, angrily, 'No! I don't care what my mother told you, she wasn't talking for me. I may have problems, but they are my own business, nobody else's, and I can deal with them. This baby is mine, and I want it, I'm keeping it—I can take care of it myself without any help from my mother, or you, or anybody. I'm certainly not giving it up.'