Magnolia Square by Margaret Pemberton Page B

‘Hitler began directing all his energies against Russia, and the bombing was over. Or at least it
was over for a time. I told Mr Harvey I would be travelling down to Somerset to collect Matthew and to bring him home with me.’ She paused, reliving again the nightmarish moment when she had
entered the nursery only to find it empty. ‘And he wasn’t there,’ she said simply. ‘Mr Harvey had spirited him away, and he vowed he would never return him to me.’
    ‘Sweet Jesus!’
The words were uttered softly, so as not to wake the sleeping children, but with such fierce intensity that Kate felt a tingle ripple down her spine. If Leon
had been home, Joss Harvey would have paid dear for his high-handed, unspeakable behaviour.
    ‘The next few days were a nightmare.’ Her voice was unsteady, and though her head was buried on his shoulder he knew there were tears glinting on her eyelashes. ‘I didn’t
know if you were dead or alive. I didn’t know where Matthew was. And no-one would help me. Or at least no-one in authority would help me,’ she added hurriedly as he made a swift, angry
movement of disbelief.
    From the next bedroom, her father’s snores reached a crescendo and then, as he turned over in sleep, subsided.
    ‘What did you do?’ Leon asked quietly, controlling his inner fury with difficulty. He had known, on his last leave at home with her, that Joss Harvey wanted to adopt Matthew. Why,
then, hadn’t he realized how dangerous Joss Harvey could be? Why hadn’t he realized that a man like Joss Harvey was a man who would never take ‘no’ for an answer?
    ‘I went to the police. I went to a solicitor. Both were unhelpful. As far as they were concerned, Joss Harvey was respectability personified. And I, very obviously, wasn’t.’
Her gentle voice held a note of bitterness that, because it was so alien to her warm, compassionate nature, shocked him inexpressibly. ‘Not only was Matthew illegitimate, but I was expecting
another baby outside of wedlock. In their eyes, if Joss Harvey had removed his great-grandson from my care, he had done so for good reasons.’
    He said gently, ‘And so what did you do when you received no joy from the police or the solicitor you had consulted?’
    ‘I realized that the most obvious thing was to capitalize on my friendship with Matthew’s nanny. I’d always got on well with Ruth Fairbairn and I knew that, thanks to Joss
Harvey’s lies, she wouldn’t be aware that I no longer knew where she or Matthew were. So I put a message in the personal column of
The Lady
, which is a magazine all nannies read,
and five days later Ruth was on the doorstep, Matthew in her arms.’
    ‘And now she’s about to marry the Vicar!’ Leon said, humour re-entering his voice again. ‘Which is a nice, happy ending.’
    Kate smiled to herself in the moonlit darkness. Ruth’s visit to Magnolia Square, with Matthew in her arms, had certainly had far-reaching and happy consequences for her. She had met Bob
Giles when he was paying a parochial visit to the Jenningses, and the attraction between the two of them had been instant and mutual.
    She kissed Leon’s dark, velvet-smooth flesh and said, ‘The happy ending came when Nellie Miller introduced me to her niece, Ruby. Ruby is a solicitor and she served Joss Harvey with
so many writs, he must have thought he was drowning under them! Since then he’s left both Matthew and me very much alone.’
    ‘Until yesterday?’
    ‘Until yesterday,’ she agreed quietly and he felt her tremble in his arms.
    He raised himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, sweetheart,’ he said fiercely. ‘Matthew is
your
child. Soon, when
the adoption goes through, he’ll legally be
my
child as well. Joss Harvey is never going to take him from us. Not now. Not ever.’
    As he lowered his head to hers, she hoped with all her heart that his words would prove to be prophetic. But she wasn’t convinced.