The Faithful Wife Read Free

sister ever since his father had brought the family to ruin, his addiction to gambling on the stockmarket losing them everything—the family-run business, the four-bedroomed house in the prosperous suburbs, the lot.
    Even though Kitty was now twenty-six years old he still thought of her as the wild and troubled twelve-year-old he had held in his arms and tried to comfort when their father had taken his own life. Eight years her senior, he’d felt his responsibility keenly—especially when their mother, worn out with grief and worry, had succumbed to pneumonia six months after the shock of the death of her adored husband.
    He’d never thought of himself as having a protective streak, he thought wryly. But perhaps he did, to have agreed to cancel flights, hotel rooms and drop everything when she’d put that call through to Geneva, catching him at his hotel before he left for one of his most important meetings.
    â€˜I need you, Jake. Spend Christmas with me? I’ve got to have someone to talk to; there’s no one else I can turn to! And, yes, before you ask, it’s Harry.’
    The panic in her voice caught his attention. He said heavily, ‘I thought you and he were settled.’ Of all the men Kitty had dated—and to his knowledge they came and went like the flowers in springtime—Harry had become a permanent fixture.
    Jake liked Harry, and had guardedly learned to trust him. Steady, good-humoured, also a member of the teaching profession, his influence on Jake’s volatile sister had been gratifying. They’d set up home together two months ago. Kitty’s letters and phone calls had been full of joy, and he’d planned to pay off the mortgage on their roomy Victorian house as soon as the banns were called.
    â€˜What went wrong?’ he asked.
    â€˜I can’t talk about it over the phone. But it’s trouble with a capital T.’ Her normally bubbly tones were absent; she sounded at the end of her tether. ‘Look, a couple I know offered me the use of their holiday home in Wales. I need to get away and think, and talk everything over with you. Please say you’ll come, Jake, just for a day or two? Please?’
    He mentally jettisoned his plans for a quiet working holiday in the sun. The thought of a cottage in the Principality, in the dead of winter, wasn’t going to make him expire from over-excitement, but it was far enough away from London. He rarely made more than flying visits to head office now. Since he had sold the Docklands apartment.
    So Wales it would be, and at least he could do his best to sort out Kitty’s problems—something he seemed to remember having to do all through her teens and early twenties.
    And she was saying, taking his silence for tacit consent, ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down, bruv. Look, I’ll post directions through to your London office. Drive up on the twenty-third. I’ll try and make sure I’m there ahead of you, but, in case I’m not, there’s a spare key in the woodshed at the back.’
    And now, the final details of her written instructions committed to memory, he restarted the engine and drove on.
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    The whole package must have cost Evie a small fortune, Bella decided at the end of her tour of inspection. Two bedrooms were tucked under the eaves, small but cosy, with flowery wallpaper and high brass beds spread with top-of-the-range down duvets and patchwork covers. There was a sparklingly clean bathroom and farmhouse kitchen—pine and copper, with colourful rag rugs—complete with a real Christmas tree in a tub and a box of baubles waiting to be hung. The large living room was furnished with antique pine plus squashy chairs and a huge inglenook fireplace that promised long, cosy, relaxing evenings...
    And, thinking of fires, it was time she got moving. It was the least she could do to have the place warm by the time Evie got back. And the best she could do was