A Suitable Groom

by Liz Fielding

  ‘I am. Or I thought I was. That one seems to have escaped me. I can’t think how. He’s … well, he’s—’ For the second time in five minutes Suzie was quite lost for words.

  ‘Yes, isn’t he?’ Veronica concluded helpfully. ‘Of course, he lives in Melchester, like me. Right out in the sticks.’

  ‘Even so,’ Suzie murmured, oblivious to being teased.

  ‘And I have to admit that he’s more likely to be featured in the Financial Times than Hello! magazine.’ Then, ‘He has two sisters,’ she said, offering a clue.

  ‘Do I know them?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Poppy?’ she offered. ‘Dora?’

  Veronica could almost see the cogs of Suzie’s mind working as she matched the names against the punch cards of her memory. Her forehead creased as she said, ‘Kavanagh?’ Then she shook her head. ‘You can’t mean Poppy and Dora Kavanagh.’

  ‘Can’t I?’

  ‘But their brother is—’ And then she answered her own question. ‘Oh, God.’ Suzie clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Don’t tell me that was the Fergus Kavanagh?’ Veronica obliged. ‘But he must be one of the most elusive bachelors in England.’

  ‘Not that elusive.’ Suzie was seriously impressed. Which was good. And bad. If he was that much of a catch there would be a lot more interest than she had bargained on. Than he had bargained on, too, no doubt. ‘Just too busy making a living for idle socialising, I imagine.’

  ‘Making a living?’ Suzie was too astonished to take offence at her friend’s remark. ‘Making a living? Are you crazy, Ronnie? The man’s middle name is Midas. Everything he touches—’ She seemed momentarily lost for words. ‘What a catch!’

  Veronica chose not to confirm or deny whether Fergus Kavanagh had, indeed, been caught. She merely smiled. ‘There, you see? Easy, wasn’t it? You didn’t need my help at all. Do you know Poppy Kavanagh?’ she enquired, as if she herself had known the woman for years, in an attempt to sidetrack Suzie at least temporarily.

  ‘Everyone knows her. Or at least knows of her. She signed that contract as the face of some American cosmetic firm last year and she’s married to Richard Marriott. They say it was love at first sight.’

  ‘Do they?’ Suzie’s knowledge of the social scene was legendary, whilst she, like Fergus, was too busy working to bother keeping up.

  ‘And Dora Kavanagh’s been running supplies to refugee camps in …’ She flapped her hand vaguely as she tried to remember exactly where, before giving up. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere.’ Suzie was getting into her stride now. ‘And she’s about to marry John Gannon, that journalist who spent months hunting for his daughter and then nearly ended up in jail when he smuggled her into the country. You must have seen him on television. I wept buckets …’ On reflection, Veronica realised that she had. And shed a tear or two of her own. It seemed that, whilst her own perusal of the Financial Times might have given her some background information about Kavanagh Industries, Suzie, who was addicted to the diary pages, knew a great deal more about the life history of Fergus Kavanagh, or at least his family, than she did. ‘But why am I telling you?’ Suzie said. ‘You must have been invited.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been invited. The wedding is in two weeks.’

  Suzie’s eyes gleamed as she scented a story. ‘Does this mean that you and Fergus are …?’ She left Veronica to fill in the blank.

  Veronica realised that it was time to change the subject before Suzie could get fully into her inquisitorial stride. ‘Darling, will the gossip keep for a few minutes? If my dress isn’t hung up immediately I’ll look a total mess this afternoon.’

  There was a disbelieving grunt, but she didn’t object. ‘You know which room.’ The one good thing about Suzie was that she had her priorities right. Clothes first. Then gossip. ‘I’ll make some coffee while you’re freshening up, and then we can have a really good chat.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Veronica said, then added, ‘I can’t wait to hear all your news.’

  Upstairs, she opened her small suitcase, shaking out the dress she had bought for the wedding and hanging it over the wardrobe door. Then she laid out her toiletries, washed her hands and checked her hair in the mirror. But her eyes seemed to be transfixed by her mouth.

  She lifted her hand and with just the tips of her fingers touched her lips, so recently, so unexpectedly, so thoroughly kissed. Not gay. Definitely not gay.

  All through that conversation with Suzie she had been conscious of the heat left by his mouth, the tingle where his knuckles had grazed her cheek.

  She should be cross at such a brazen move on his part. He should have discussed it with her … asked …

  Then she found herself grinning idiotically at her reflection as she considered how they might have choreographed the moves in the back of the taxi as it had crawled through the morning traffic. It would have amused the taxi driver. It could quite conceivably have caused an accident … She let the image go. No. It would never have worked. They would have been far too self-conscious, or at least she would have been self-conscious. She wasn’t so sure about Fergus …

  She had wished for an adventurer, and so far he had more than lived up to the billing, establishing their relationship far more convincingly than any story they could have invented in such a short time.

  Suzie would be breaking her neck to tell people how they had arrived on her doorstep together that morning, that Fergus had been kissing her when she opened the door. And there could be no suggestion that either of them had been faking it …

  She snatched back her fingers, found her lipstick and set about repairing the damage, determined to put the incident out of her mind. Not that the cool gloss could quite eradicate the warm, throbbing tingle. Her newly painted lips seemed to glow right back at her from the mirror.

  Had Fergus really been thinking that far ahead?

  She straightened her collar. Obviously. Why else would he kiss her?

  But had it required quite such enthusiasm? And did he always do everything with such thoroughness?

  She smoothed down her skirt.

  Of course he did. His reputation guaranteed it. Fergus Kavanagh was a man to be reckoned with, and not just in business. Her instincts had not let her down. The fact that her eyes were suspiciously bright and there was a faint flush to her cheeks that hadn’t been there this morning was proof enough of that.

  But she had a more pressing problem than the fact that Fergus Kavanagh was a nine-out-of-ten man when it came to kissing. Quite possibly ten-out-often, given a little more time and somewhere rather more promising than a doorstep …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SUZIE. Incorrigibly curious and harder to distract than a wasp at a picnic, her best friend Suzie would want every last detail of their supposed relationship. Veronica glanced at her watch. Or maybe not.

  It was just after ten-thirty. If she could get through coffee without giving the game away, she would be able to escape to the safety of the hairdresser’s. After that they would both be too busy getting ready for the wedding to indulge in intimate girl talk. And if, rather than stay overnight, she invented some reason why she simply had to return to Melchester tonight, she would be home and dry.

  No problem.

  She flicked back her hair.

  Nothing to worry about.

  After the way she had picked up Fergus Kavanagh this morning, she could handle anything. Even Suzie in gossip overdrive. But as she smiled at her reflection, her lips seemed to mock her.

  Downstairs, Suzie was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to the tray, and she looked up as Veronica walked in. ‘I thought we might have coffee outside, take advantage of this lovely weather.’

  Veronica was not fooled by her friend’s apparent loss of interest in Fergus Kavanagh. ‘Great. Here, let me take that.’ And she picked up the tray, carrying it through to a tiny courtyard garden filled with old stone and terracotta pots from which tulips and forget-me-nots and aubretia tumbled in a riot of late spring colour.
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br />   Veronica put the tray down on the table while Suzie shooed a small grey cat from one of the chairs. ‘It’s so lovely to see you, Ronnie. You never come to town since you moved to Melchester.’

  ‘Yes, I do. At least twice a month.’

  ‘Oh, for work. Not play. That doesn’t count.’ She patted her bottom and pulled a face. ‘I haven’t been to the gym for weeks without you to keep me up to scratch. I’ve no self-discipline.’

  ‘It doesn’t show.’ Veronica doubted that Suzie could stay away from the gossip palace of the gym any more than she could fly. ‘But why don’t you and Nigel come and stay for a few days now the weather is so much warmer? I’ve finally decorated my spare bedroom, and the countryside around Melchester is very pretty. There are some lovely walks along the river,’ she added mischievously.

  ‘Walks?’ Suzie looked horrified.

  ‘There’s a country park quite near, too.’

  ‘You must be joking! A gentle stroll around Harvey Nicks is about my limit. You know me, Ronnie, I’m addicted to city pavements … trees scare me.’

  ‘London is full of trees,’ Veronica pointed out.

  ‘I know, but they’re the domesticated, restrained kind of trees that know their place. Out there in the countryside, well … I’d rather not risk it.’ She paused. ‘Everyone was stunned when you decided to sell up and move out of London, you know.’

  So that was the way Suzie was going to play it; start with what she knew and work outwards. ‘Haven’t we had this conversation before?’ she asked.

  ‘I know, but I still don’t understand. You worked so hard to build up your own company—’

  ‘A fact that was reflected in the price I sold it for.’ She thought Suzie had understood all that, but if it kept the conversation away from Fergus she was quite happy to explain it all again, at length. ‘The lease was up on my flat, Suzie, and there were sound business reasons for selling my company.’ And she was a businesswoman. ‘It was time to decide where I was headed. Did I want to be in the same place in five years’ time?’

  ‘You could have been married, been a countess, Ronnie—’

  ‘A title is not a reason for getting married, Suz. I haven’t yet met a man worth changing my life for.’ It was a story that had worked since the split with George; she could see no reason to change it.

  ‘Not even Fergus Kavanagh?’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like my mother,’ she warned.

  ‘Good grief, am I?’ And Suzie, perhaps realising that she’d gone just a little too far, laughed and let it go. ‘That will never do. After all, you always knew what you wanted, where you were going.’

  ‘So did you. You wanted to leave school and marry Nigel.’

  ‘While you were clearly never meant to hang on to the coat tails of some man.’ She broke off a piece of biscuit and dropped it for the cat. ‘You always were the ambitious one, Ronnie. Even at kindergarten everything you did was gold star material.’

  ‘Rubbish. Besides, ambition isn’t always enough. Success requires capital. The marketing company had gone just about as far as I could take it on my own, and companies are like people, they have to grow or stagnate and wither. Sooner or later I would have been swallowed up by a much bigger organisation and just become a little fish in some great big pond.’

  ‘I doubt that. You’d have been running the place in five years.’

  ‘Only if I was prepared to spend more time playing internal politics than doing my job. Not my scene, Suz.’

  Suzie shuddered in sympathy. ‘I’d hate it.’

  Veronica thought Suzie would be thoroughly at home playing power politics in a big company, but she held her peace. If Suzie wanted explanations, she would get explanations. It meant less time fending off questions about Fergus.

  ‘I had an offer for the business from someone wanting to expand quickly, someone who had the backing to move into the really big time. I was working on a project at Jefferson’s at the time, and when Nick Jefferson offered me a seat on the board, well …’ she spread her hands in an eloquent gesture ‘… that was it.’

  ‘But don’t you miss London?’ London? The suffocating circle of friends who always appeared to be on the point of asking the question, but who never quite dared? She couldn’t wait to get away. It was why she hated these major social occasions. The look she always saw in the eyes of her friends, her family. She had offered no explanation and neither had George, and no one had ever been quite brave enough to ask. But it didn’t stop them wondering.

  ‘Melchester is not the end of the world, you know. It’s a city—a small city, I grant you, but it’s a great place to live. No traffic jams, no pollution, at least not by London standards. Why don’t you come and see for yourself? We have an orchestra, an art gallery, a museum,’ she added, in homage to Fergus.

  ‘Oh, wow.’

  ‘And a very elegant shopping mall in the atrium of the Jefferson Tower.’

  Suzie gave her a sly grin. ‘And of course Marlowe Court is quite near Melchester.’

  ‘Marlowe Court?’

  ‘Fergus Kavanagh’s estate?’ Suzie reminded her teasingly. Marlowe Court? That was where he lived? That beautiful old stone manor house a few miles outside the city? She’d passed it a couple of times … ‘Tell me, did you meet Fergus Kavanagh before or after this fabulous offer from Nick Jefferson?’

  ‘What? Oh, after,’ she answered swiftly, when she realised that Suzie was grinning idiotically. ‘That is quite a recent development.’

  Her friend was not discouraged. ‘And now he’s coming to Fliss’s wedding with you?’

  ‘He was coming to town anyway,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  ‘No? You mean you hadn’t planned to introduce him to your mother on neutral territory?’

  ‘How do you know my mother hasn’t already met him?’

  ‘Because, my dearest friend, I would have heard. Everyone would have heard. And everyone would have been talking about it. I can’t wait to see how he handles the moment of truth.’ Veronica raised her eyebrows. ‘That moment when he discovers that your mother’s dearest ambition is to marry you off to some wealthy aristocrat.’

  ‘Fergus isn’t an aristocrat, so he’s nothing to worry about, and he’s quite capable of handling my mother.’

  ‘He can certainly handle you.’ She grinned. ‘Kissing on the doorstep like a pair of lovebirds … I never thought I’d see the day …’ Neither had she, but Veronica refused to rise to her friend’s teasing. ‘So, are you going to tell me all the lovely details of this affair, or am I going to have to extract them from you with tweezers?’

  ‘Affair? I don’t remember saying anything about an affair.’

  ‘Of course,’ she carried on as if Veronica hadn’t spoken, ‘if you don’t want to tell me about it, just say so. I’ll understand. I’ll hate you, but I’ll understand.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell, Suz. Fergus and I …’ It was definitely time to be enigmatic, mysterious, understated. She paused tantalisingly. ‘Are just good friends.’ Not even that. Acquaintances. Kissing acquaintances.

  ‘Oh, I see. It’s that serious.’ And Suzie smiled like a cat who’d just been locked in the larder with a poached salmon. ‘Help yourself to a biscuit.’ Veronica shook her head. ‘You’re inhuman,’ her friend groaned. ‘You’ve no vices.’

  She declined to comment on that, instead sipping her coffee before attempting a diversion. ‘How’s Nigel?’ she asked.

  ‘Overworked and overweight,’ Suzie sighed. ‘Much the same as usual, in fact. And don’t think I’ll allow you to change the subject that easily. Where did you two meet?’

  It was Veronica’s turn to sigh a little. ‘You’re incorrigible, do you know that?’

  Suzie grinned. ‘You can’t distract me with flattery, Veronica Grant. I’m a seeker after truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and I won’t rest until I have it.’

  ‘Don’t quote the gossips’ charter at me,’ Veronica warne
d her, grinning right back. ‘Have one of those biscuits instead; it will keep your mouth busy.’

  Suzie didn’t need a second invitation, but it didn’t keep her quiet. ‘I met Poppy Kavanagh once at a charity thingie. Now, she’s incorrigible, if you like. Did you know that she moved in with Richard Marriott the day she met him?’

  ‘That’s not incorrigible, Suzie, that’s knowing what you want and not giving a damn who knows it.’

  ‘Well, she got it.’

  ‘So you said. That’s love at first sight for you.’

  ‘Dora fell for John Gannon like a ton of bricks too, or so I’m reliably told.’

  ‘Perhaps it runs in the family,’ Veronica suggested, and immediately knew she had made a mistake as Suzie’s eyes lit up like Christmas.

  ‘Is that how it was with you and Fergus?’ she demanded, jumping in with both feet. ‘Another case of love at first sight?’

  ‘There was an instant rapport,’ Veronica admitted, with a small smile.

  ‘Really?’ You just couldn’t overdo enigmatic, apparently, because Suzie’s face was positively glowing. ‘It must be a family thing, then.’ She bit into the biscuit and waited for more details. When Veronica didn’t oblige, she said, ‘His parents were inseparable too. They were into archaeology, or at least Mrs Kavanagh was, and her husband just adored her; he wouldn’t let her go anywhere without him. They were killed in an earthquake somewhere.’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘I’m not much good at geography.’

  ‘You have other talents.’

  Suzie grinned, unoffended. ‘Fergus had just come down from Oxford. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or three …’ She paused to think.

  ‘It was the year after he graduated,’ Veronica dropped in, without shame. In fact, she was beginning to enjoy herself.

  ‘He just took charge of everything. The company, the estate, his pre-teen sisters. Dora must have been quite small …’ She turned to Veronica. ‘But of course you know all that.’

  Veronica smiled back. She’d known some of it. Most of it. The extra little details were interesting, more than interesting, but she wasn’t going to get herself all tangled up with them. ‘I can see you’ve been doing your homework while I’ve been unpacking,’ she said, her voice all mock reproach. ‘Who did you ring?’