Maid for Marriage

by Sue Peters

  Luke followed her gaze, and remarked, 'The same pair stay with us year after year. Some of their young ones go off to make their homes on the bigger lake in the park, but, although they're quite wild, these two seem to prefer to stay on the moat.'

  So wild. So free. And yet choosing always to remain in the one place.

  Luke added, 'They've been here for so long that they've become part of the scenery. They're always together.'

  'In tandem?' Dee enquired drily.

  It came out more sharply than she had intended, and Luke turned and regarded her through narrowed eyes that did not pretend to misunderstand her meaning. He answered with a flat, 'They're not fettered. There's no chain binding them together.'

  Only the wish.

  Dee kept her eyes studiously fixed on the majestic birds below, not meeting Luke's look. No fetters. No chain. Each bird had wings that could lift it far away to explore any corner of the earth. And yet the pair remained tied by an invisible link, the pen swimming meekly behind the cob, content to accept the age-old order of things.

  Dee stirred with quick impatience. Such subservience was all very well for swans. She could feel Luke's eyes resting on her face, probing her thoughts, and she pulled her expression into an uncommunicative blank, behind which her mind wondered, Did Luke mind being chained by birth to the home of his ancestors? Did he never want to break free? Or was Ransom Court the anchor that he could put down whenever he wanted to run for harbour, to recharge his personal batteries?

  By what means did he recharge them? For a man with his exceptional mind, sport must be only one of many answers. The world knew of his occupation, but nothing of the man himself. Of what he thought, how he felt, and what were his own, very private, dreams. Did he ever let his own personal drawbridge down, and, if so, to whom?

  Dee did not know.

  As a defence against wanting to, she resolutely turned her mind to the purpose of her visit to Ransom Court, and steered the conversation, and her thoughts, into safer channels with, 'Where exactly in the house are you holding the exhibition?'

  'In the main hall.' To her relief, Luke followed her lead. 'It runs along the whole of the one wing. Normally I keep it divided into three rooms with sliding screens, but they can be pushed back if necessary to form one big room.'

  One very big room, from the sound of it, which confirmed Dee's impression of the size of the house itself. She asked, borrowing Luke's own earlier brevity on the same subject, 'Security?'

  'More than adequate. Apart from Bill Williams's security team, whom you must already know, each individual firm is providing its own selected staff, who will be staying at the court, and will be the eyes and ears for their own exhibits.'

  Doubtless the people who would be occupying the other bedrooms. The people she had expected to meet at dinner tonight. Luke went on, 'The exhibits we brought back from India will be attended by staff from one of the international jewellers at this end. My own personal responsibility is for the overall security of the court itself, which is well taken care of by the present alarm system. Which means I shall be able to take time off to show the children round,' he smiled.

  Dee said carefully, 'With all those people here to look after the exhibits, why do you need me as well?'

  It didn't make sense. Nothing did any more, she decided nervily, and Luke answered, 'I need help to keep balls rolling among the visitors. Bill Williams told me you're used to mixing among people from widely differing cultures.'

  'Only university students.'

  'Students or adults, it helps when they all come together if there's someone around who is sensitive to their various taboos, and is able to smooth over any difficulties.'

  A hostess, in fact. And Luke had no wife to do the job for him.

  The explanation hit Dee like a blow. Doubtless Luke's parents would have come to the rescue, but they were still somewhere on the high seas, enjoying their cruise. Manoj and Gita might have helped, but for a good deal of their time they would be in London, only returning to the court during the evening.

  Which left herself as a handy substitute. Dee's lips took on a bitter twist. How convenient for Luke that she should be available to be used. She slotted in yet another piece of jigsaw, and fought down an irrational feeling of let-down.

  She would like the village of Abinger Hammer, Luke had said. Nice of him to include the hired help in the outing. He cut across her thoughts with, 'You won't need to concern yourself with the sheikh. He will bring his own entourage.'

  'Entourage?' Dee echoed, her eyes widening.

  Luke inclined his head. 'He always travels with a bodyguard.'

  Dee grimaced. 'It can't be worth it.'

  'What can't be worth what?'

  'Being so fabulously rich. What's the use if you have to hire bodyguards to protect you? It's too high a price to pay. His wealth must be a ball and chain to him. He would never, ever feel free.'

  'Does being free mean so much to you?'

  There was an odd timbre in Luke's voice which arrested Dee's attention, and she turned a wide stare in his direction, but the moonlight that gilded the bronze of his hair left his face in shadow, and she couldn't read his expression.

  She had her own reasons for wanting to remain free, which Luke knew nothing about. Silence made a barrier between them, and she bit her lip, unwilling to break it, hiding her innermost feelings from this man who was still, to all intents and purposes, a stranger to her.

  A stranger who held a frightening attraction which threatened to undermine her resolution, and if she was so foolish as to allow herself to fall into the same snare again she knew that she would later have to come to terms with the consequences, and pay the price in tears when she moved on and left her heart behind.

  That was a secret which Luke must never learn.

  It came to Dee that this was the first time since she had met him that she and Luke had been in danger of the kind of personal conversation which enabled people to learn about each other, to go deeper than surface exchanges, and probe into minds and hearts.

  With a man of Luke's quick perception she would need to be constantly on her guard if she was to hold on to her secret.

  She longed for Manoj and Gita, or the children. Even for the polo pony, which as a last resort she could spur on ahead to avoid having to reply. Always before there had been an escape route, except in the car when Luke had taken her back to her hotel in Delhi, and the time on the bungalow veranda in the hills.

  Then Luke had not troubled to talk. He had acted instead. But kisses were not conversation. They spoke a different language, on a subject which needed no words.

  To her cost, she had already learned a smattering of that language, but since Alan she had deliberately avoided learning more, since fluency meant commitment. Luke, she discovered, was very fluent.

  Did that mean that he was committed?

  The question tracked across her mind, even as he drew her into his arms, and then sensation drowned thought as he took her deep into the mysteries of the language that had no words.

  His arms held her imprisoned, while his lips opened windows on to other worlds and the kind of commitment which people like Alan would never know. Dee trembled at the view, hating Luke for his slow, mocking smile that witnessed her temptation, confident that he could make her succumb if he really set out to try. Despair claimed her as she felt her resolve begin to weaken, and she strained away from the fierce heat of his exploring lips.

  'I'll just clear these crocks away. Is there anything else you need tonight, Mr Luke?'

  Kate!

  Dee surfaced with a gasp, and couldn't decide whether the housekeeper was friend or foe as Luke's arms dropped to his sides, releasing her, leaving her body contrarily aching for their bondage, and her lips mutely crying out for the pressure of his kiss, while he replied easily, 'Nothing more tonight, Kate, thank you.'

  Nothing more tonight... There was more. Much, much more. A new, uncharted world, which beckoned with a siren song in a w
ild, sweet language that Dee realised now she was only just beginning to learn. She made a small, strangled sound in the base of her throat that the housekeeper must have heard and misinterpreted, because she said with a smile, as if she was answering Dee, 'Goodnight, miss. Sleep well.'

  It was the escape route Dee needed. With an immense effort that gave a desperate energy to her trembling limbs, she gathered together the remnants of her self-control, distributed a mumbled, 'Goodnight,' between Luke and his housekeeper, and fled for the sanctuary of her room.

  When she reached it her suitcase had been placed neatly on the stand at the foot of her bed. No hope of going back with the van driver tonight.

  Shaken, and shaking, she collapsed on to the bed, and lay with her eyes staring up unseeingly at the dark space of the ceiling, which became filled with vivid images of Luke's face, Luke's smile, Luke's laughter, and were joined, like the proverbial skeleton in the cupboard, by a vision of the black lace neglige, hanging in the wardrobe close by, that seemed blacker than the night itself.

  Morning brought activity, and people. Blessed people, who bustled round her, giving her no time in which to brood as they drew her willy-nilly into the organised chaos that setting up an exhibition entailed.

  It was all new to Dee, the essential follow-on from her own work that hitherto had remained a closed book to her. She opened it gratefully. Setting up an exhibition was the perfect antidote to thinking, she decided, and threw herself energetically into the bustle.

  Luke seemed to be everywhere at once, making decisions, ironing out problems, and when they did happen to coincide there was someone else present to lessen the impact.

  Burly, competent men set up wooden stands, Bill's team of erectors, who recognised Dee and called out cheerful good-mornings, which lightened her spirits and gave the other exhibition staff an entirely false impression of her status, elevating her in their minds to Luke's second-in-command, and privy to the reasons behind his planning of the lay-out.

  Just the opposite was true, she thought ruefully, deftly disposing of a couple of wheres and whats, only to turn and find another exhibitor at her elbow, complaining bitterly about the siting of his stand.

  'It's right at the end of the room, the furthest from the door,' he grumbled.

  Dee gave an inward sigh and, grasping at inspiration to guide her, she drew the man to one side. In a conspiratorial tone, she soothed his discontented, 'I've been pushed right away in a corner,' with a convincing, 'It's a rather special corner, actually. Mr Ransom works on the theory of leaving the best until the last. You know he has a personal interest in porcelain, and he thinks yours is unique.'

  Unique was the kindest description she could think of. Dee hurried on, trying not to allow her aversion for the ultra-modern pottery to show, 'The sun strikes through the stained-glass windows just at this point.' She ad-libbed wildly, and prayed that the windows didn't face north. 'The light falling through the coloured glass will have a charming effect on your exhibits. Visitors will pass by the other stands first, and then come to yours, and notice the difference.'

  They would be very short-sighted not to, she thought drily. Ugliness under the guise of art would be truer, if less tactful. She wondered if this was the reason why Luke had tucked this particular exhibitor in an out-of-the-way alcove, and ended rather lamely, 'I'm sure you'll find people will want to stop and buy when they see what you have to offer.'

  I sound like an ice-cream seller, she thought with an inward giggle, astonished at her own powers of invention, and equally astonished when the man accepted her explanation with a pleased, 'I hadn't looked at it in that way.'

  'Neither had I,' an amused voice confessed in her ear as the potter went back to his stand with a satisfied smile, and Dee spun round and collided with Luke. He put out a hand to steady her, and in the middle of the hustle and the flurry she went deathly still.

  Luke's hand held them together, turning them into an island in the middle of a sea of people, whose noisy chatter receded, and left them marooned in a speaking silence, like the void at the eye of a storm.

  Luke's words dropped into it, pebbles into a pool, and sent a tremble spreading through Dee in ever-widening ripples as each one hit the surface of her consciousness.

  'Keep it up. You're doing a grand job. If it's of any help, the sun does shine through that particular window. It faces west.'

  It did not help. The information scarcely registered. Only the numbness of 'You're doing a grand job'.

  The hired hand, being given a patronising pat on the back for doing a good job that would, no doubt, have been done even better, and as her right, by the owner of the black lace neglige if she hadn't been—where?

  Luke laughed down at her, waiting for her to laugh too, but Dee felt as if her face muscles were frozen, while her eyes looked inwards on to a bleak, sunless landscape that stretched endlessly into a footloose and solitary future, and held none of the warmth and bright promise of her dreams.

  Solo. So lonely.

  The length of snowy white damask tablecloth reflected the ice inside her as she took her place that evening at the dining table, grateful for the twenty or so guests to provide a welcome distraction, and wishing she could have sat among them at the side of the table instead of at the foot, to where Luke had led her, opposite his own seat at its head.

  Each time she glanced up his eyes made contact with her own, levelled along the table at her with an all-seeing look that made her concentration waver, so that she lost the thread of what her right-hand neighbour was telling her, and he had to repeat himself before she managed to break the spell of the glowing quartz flecks that mesmerised her power of thought.

  'Oh—er—yes, of course,' she managed distractedly.

  Her companion smiled. 'Don't you mean, "no"?'

  'Do I?' Dee jerked back to what he was saying. 'I'm sorry, I...'

  'I shouldn't tease,' he remarked contritely. 'You look pale. Are you feeling all right, Miss Tredinnick?'

  Pale was how she felt. White. Icy. Frozen inside. She excused her distraction, 'It's been a long day. I only flew in from abroad yesterday. I'm still a bit jet lagged.'

  If she kept on like this she would qualify as a writer of fiction. She was becoming adept at invention. Her excuse seemed to satisfy her companion, however.

  'Try to get a good night's sleep,' he urged her kindly. 'You'll have an even busier day tomorrow.'

  She had received the same advice before, she remembered wryly, and now, as then, she found it impossible to follow, but the exhibitor's prophesy proved to be accurate enough the following day.

  As a top-of-the-market exhibition, it didn't attract the huge crowds who attended the usual craft fairs, but by mid-morning the courtyard was filled to capacity with cars, large, luxurious limousines from the world's premier manufacturers and, for the most part, chauffeur-driven.

  Watching them arrive, Dee wondered how many of the uniformed figures were bodyguards in disguise, and watched the cars disgorge their owners without envy.

  The Arab sheikh arrived with his entourage in two cars. Dee studied the party of robed visitors as they entered the hall with quickened interest. Luke paused beside her on his way to greet them.

  'The one in the middle is the sheikh,' he said.

  The man was tall, about Luke's height, and handsome in a hawk-like way, with a haughty, aloof expression and ever-watchful eyes, as were those of his companions. The party advanced, and Luke took Dee by the elbow, and drew her forward.

  'Come and meet them.'

  'Me?' She tried to pull away.

  'Of course you.' There was a touch of asperity in his tone. 'That's what you're here for, isn't it?'

  Dee no longer felt sure what she was here for. She only knew that it had been a dreadful mistake to come. She felt tense with nerves. What kind of impression would it give to these men to see her by Luke's side, welcoming them into Luke's home, living the lie that she was a bona fide hostess instead of merely a hired help?

&n
bsp; Whatever impression its owner received, the hawk face confronting her gave nothing away. The two men greeted each other as old friends, equal in power in their own separate worlds, and a million miles away from her own, Dee thought silently, and then Luke said, 'And this is Dee.'

  He gave no further explanation, and Dee's eyes flew apprehensively to the keen, bronzed face above her, and found herself enveloped in a smile of surprising gentleness.

  It melted her nerves, and turned the aloof, intimidating, oil-rich man of the desert into a friendly human being, and she realised with a sense of shock, Luke's world is not so very different from mine, after all. Young high fliers, studying at university, or their more mature counterparts, were still people, behind the outward shell.

  She smiled back, returning the sheikh's greeting, and did not know how winsome she looked, a tiny figure dwarfed between the two men.

  'He's nice,' she enthused to Luke as the entourage moved away to view the exhibits after exchanging a few polite words. 'I hope he finds something he likes among the stalls.'

  'He isn't here to indulge himself.'

  'Who, then?'

  Her upturned face asked the question, and Luke answered it with, 'He's setting up a public museum in his capital city. He was coming to London on a diplomatic mission, so he took time off to come here to see if there was anything suitable to add to what he already has. And to meet Manoj, of course.'

  'Manoj?' In the bustle of the morning Dee had temporarily forgotten that the specialist and his family were due at any moment.

  'The sheikh wants Manoj to do a similar lecture tour over in his own country. Thanks to his wealth, he has got the ability to build and staff some of the finest health centres that money can buy, and a medical school to back them up. Which is where Manoj's specialist knowledge will come in.'

  'You seem to know a lot about the sheikh.'

  'We were all at school together—he, and Manoj and I,' Luke said simply. 'I know him to be a very caring man, with a passionate interest in the welfare of his people. To him, his wealth is merely a means to an end.'