Jewels by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online

going through.” As he thought of it, he was almost grateful that she had lost the baby. He looked at his daughter sadly then. “Sarah, do you love him?”
    She hesitated for a long time, and then shook her head, looking down at her hands tightly folded in her lap, and speaking in a whisper. “I don’t even know why I married him.” She looked up at them again. “I thought I loved him then, but I didn’t even know him.”
    “You made a terrible mistake. You were misled by him, Sarah. That can happen to anyone. Now we have to solve the problem for you. I want you to let me do that.” Edward’s resolve never wavered for a moment, as the others nodded their agreement.
    “How?” She felt lost, like a child again, and she kept thinking of all the people who had seen him make a fool of her the night before. It was almost beyond thinking. It was mortifying … bringing prostitutes to her parents’ home…. She had cried all night, and she dreaded what people would say, and the terrible humiliation to her parents.
    “I want you to leave everything to me.” And then he thought of something else. “Do you want the apartment in New York?”
    She looked at him and shook her head. “I don’t want anything. I just want to come home to you and Mama.” Tears filled her eyes as she said the words, and her mother gently patted her shoulder.
    “Well, you are,” he said in an emotional tone, as his wife dried her eyes. Peter and Jane held hands tightly. The whole thing had upset everyone, but they were all relieved now for Sarah.
    “What about you and Mama?” She looked at them both mournfully.
    “What about us?”
    “Won’t you be ashamed if I get divorced? I feel like that terrible Simpson woman—everyone will talk about me, and about you too.” Sarah started to cry and buried her face in her hands. She was still a very young girl, and the shock of the last months still overwhelmed her.
    Her mother was quick to take her in her arms and try to soothe her. “What are people going to say, Sarah? That he was a terrible husband, that you were very unlucky? What have you done wrong? Absolutely nothing. You have to accept that. You have done nothing wrong. Frederick is the one who should be ashamed, not you.” Once again, the rest of the family nodded their agreement.
    “But people will be horrified. No one in the family has ever been divorced.”
    “So what? I’d rather have you safe and happy, than living that nightmare with Freddie Van Deering.” Victoria felt her own guilt and pain at not having realized how bad things were for her. Only Jane had suspected how great her sister’s distress was, and no one else had really listened. They had all thought her unhappiness was due to the miscarriage.
    Sarah still looked woebegone when Peter and Jane went back to New York later that afternoon, and the next morning, when her father left to meet with his lawyers. Her mother had decided to stay in Southampton with her, and Sarah was emphatic about not wanting to return to New York for the moment. She wanted to stay there and hide forever, she said, and more than anything, she didn’t want to see Freddie. She had agreed to the divorce her father had suggested to her, but she dreaded all the horror she assumed would come with it. She had read about divorces in the newspapers, and they always sounded complicated and terribly embarrassing and unpleasant. She assumed that Freddie would be furious with her, but she was stunned when he called her late Monday afternoon, after he had spoken to her father’s attorney.
    “It’s okay, Sarah. I think this is all for the best. For both of us. We just weren’t ready.” We? She couldn’t believe he had actually said that. He didn’t even blame himself, he was just happy to be free of her, and the responsibilities he had never bothered to face anyway, like their baby.
    “You’re not angry?” Sarah was amazed, and hurt.
    “Not at all, babe.”
    And then a long silence. “Are you