The Happiest Day Read Free Page B

been
gossiping about her.  Eventually, she learned to stay in her room or at the
stables when Helen had friends over for tea.  She was the very opposite of
Rachel’s own mother and Rachel never had to worry about the woman trying to
replace Julia.
    Norris would never
be her father, but he was a special link to the memory of her parents.  There
were times she found him gazing at her, his eyes misty, his jaw trembling and
she knew he must be thinking of her parents.  Once, when she was barely ten
years old, she found the courage to approach him and he drew her onto his lap,
laying his head against hers, stroking her long hair.
    “You look so much
like her,” he had whispered gruffly.
    “I know.”  She did
know that she looked like her mother.  Her father had always referred to them
as twins, separated by twenty years.  “Does it make you sad?”
    “No.  It just
makes me love you all the more.”
    Almost ten years
had passed in the care of the Thorntons.  Laurie had blossomed, having been
only four when orphaned.  He viewed Norris as his father and Geoff, Maryanne,
and Peter as his own siblings.  Rachel, on the other hand, had remained
emotionally aloof for months, if not years, not wanting to betray the memory of
her parents.  It had been Peter who had taken her under his wing, allowing her
to ride horses with him in silence, until one day she had said in a little
voice, “I don’t want to forget them.”
    Peter hadn’t even
looked at her, only answered, “You won’t.  You’ll never forget them.”  He had
been ripped from his grandparents at the age of nine when Helen had come to
reclaim him, years after abandoning him as a newborn.  Her husband, a stable
master, had been killed by the hooves of a stallion, and the owners of the
estate had no use for a widow and infant.  Helen had taken Peter to his
paternal grandparents and left without a backward glance.  Peter had confided
in Rachel that he believed Helen would have never come for him if Norris hadn’t
discovered his existence by accident and insisted that Helen’s son come to live
with them.
    Rachel had found
her place in the family as time went by.  Maryanne, just a few months older
than her, became her dearest friend and Geoff was like a bothersome but
adorable little brother.  Peter was quite simply her protector.  He insulated
her from Helen’s barbed comments and scathing looks.  He didn’t poke or prod
when she seemed withdrawn and sad, but seemed to sense it, even after he moved
away from the estate.  He would appear at her bedroom doorway, his dark eyes
taking in her body language, and flick his hand.  It didn’t matter if they left
via horse or his car—he was her means to escape from the sometimes oppressive
atmosphere of the Thornton estate.
    She asked him once
how he knew when she needed him and he had teased her, “Maybe we’re soul mates,
Spider.”
    That could have
been a romantic statement causing her teenage heart to stutter, but the
existence of Blanche MacGregor, his wife, put to rest any such notions.  Peter
had married her after he finished law school and she was generally despised by
Rachel, Laurie, and Peter’s siblings.  It was beyond Rachel why Peter had
married somebody so much like his own mother.  Blanche even looked like Helen
in a way.  She was short, but curvy, and wore her jet black hair in a severe
slicked back hairstyle that suited her face.  She had feline eyes, green and
slanted.  She and Peter were a beautiful couple and it was easy to see that
they were physically attracted to each other.  Blanche always dressed in the
latest fashion and, along with Helen, was on the top rung of the social
ladder.  People lived and died by Blanche’s opinion.  For her to appear at a
party was the highest honor.  If she so much as sneered at someone, though,
that unfortunate individual knew they were doomed.
    Throughout their
engagement and for the first few months of their marriage, Peter