The Woman From Paris Read Online Free PDF Page B

much has he given her?” Roberta persisted.
    “We don’t know,” said Tom.
    “When do we find out? I mean, we have to contest it, surely.”
    “Why?” David asked, flopping onto the sofa and stretching out his long legs.
    “Because it’s not fair. The portion he gives her might be our daughter’s inheritance.”
    “I think we have enough,” said Joshua quietly, wishing his wife wouldn’t make such a scene.
    “That’s not the point, darling. It’s the principle,” she retorted.
    “Antoinette has no intention of contesting it,” said Rosamunde authoritatively. “She’s tired and emotional. When she’s had some rest, she’ll change her mind,” Roberta assured her.
    “I think you should go and talk it over with Grandma,” Tomsuggested, smirking at the thought of the pair of them pecking away at poor Phaedra’s remains after they had torn her to pieces.
    “So Margaret agrees with me at least.” Roberta smiled.
    “She didn’t want to talk about it, actually,” David corrected. “But I imagine she’ll agree with you. Not that any of our opinions matter when it comes to the will. Dad had every right to change it. We can’t undo it, and Mum won’t want us to. In spite of being tired and emotional, Roberta, she wants to honor Dad’s request, and so do Tom and I.”
    “Sure, whatever,” said Tom, flicking ash into the fire. “But it is all rather odd, don’t you think?”
    David sank into the armchair and swirled the ice about in his tumbler, making a light tinkling sound. “She’s thirty-one, which means she was born in 1981. I was born two years later, so Dad slept with her mother a year before he married Mum.”
    “That’s cutting it pretty fine,” said Joshua. “Considering he dated Mum for about a year before he proposed.”
    “Perhaps it was a one-night stand,” said Roberta.
    “Shhh, keep your voice down,” Joshua cautioned, thinking of his mother upstairs in her bedroom.
    “Phaedra said Dad was her mother’s ‘great love,’ so it must have been more than a one-night stand,” Tom recalled softly.
    “But she was not your father’s ‘great love,’” Rosamunde was quick to add. “I imagine it was a hasty fling for George that left the poor girl heartbroken. Happens all the time, though in this case he left a bun in the oven, which was very careless.”
    “Why didn’t she tell him he had got her pregnant?” Roberta asked. “I mean, if she was so in love with him, might she not have thought he would do the decent thing and marry her? Nowadays people have no sense of duty, but in those days—we’re talking the 1980s—wasn’t it a terrible blot on one’s reputation to be pregnant outside marriage?”
    “Depends what sort of family she came from,” said Rosamunde. “In most respectable families, it wouldn’t be considered proper even today.”
    “Which leads me to suspect that she never told him,” said David. “If she had, he would have looked after her. I’m not sure he would have married her, but Dad was a good man; he wouldn’t have run off, leaving her to bring up his child alone. No, I believe she never told him.”
    Roberta narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “It all seems very fishy to me. She turns up the day of his funeral and declares herself his illegitimate daughter. It’s a little too tidy.”
    Tom blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. “Not really. Mother brings daughter up on her own, tells daughter who her real father is, daughter goes looking for him, which is natural. Father feels guilty he wasn’t around when she was growing up so includes her in his will. Nothing fishy about that.”
    “It’s just a feeling,” Roberta persisted. “You’re all much too trusting.”
    “Look, Dad isn’t around to answer our questions,” said David. “The only person who knows the answers, and most likely not all of them, is Phaedra. I suggest we ask her when we next see her.”
    “You’re not thinking of seeing her again, are you?” Roberta