A Suitable Groom

by Liz Fielding

  ‘No one. It wasn’t necessary. Once I’ve got a name,’ she said, clicking her fingers, ‘I have instant recall.’

  ‘Do you?’ The surprise was not feigned. ‘That’s odd. I don’t remember you ever demonstrating this astonishing gift at school.’

  ‘The only people they talked about at school had been dead for centuries.’ Suzie picked up another thin biscuit coated in dark Belgian chocolate and regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, before taking a small bite and letting it melt on her tongue. ‘Come on, Ronnie. You’re my best friend; I’ve known you for ever … And Fergus Kavanagh has the reputation of a man whose bachelorhood is set in concrete. Rather like your own, come to think of it. So when are you going to quit stalling and tell me?’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Everything. Come on, Ronnie,’ Suzie demanded, impatient at her lengthy silence. ‘I want every last detail. What’s he like in bed?’

  ‘Suzie!’ she exclaimed, the colour flooding without warning into her cheeks. Highly convincing stuff, if Suzie’s delighted chuckle was anything to go by.

  This was like that old game they had played as children … what was it called? Truth, Dare, Kiss or Promise. This morning she had dared everything when she had waylaid Fergus; they had promised to help one another out of their mutual difficulties; Suzie was a determined searcher after truth, and an occasional kiss was to be expected—hoped for, even …

  ‘All right, let’s start with something easy and work up to the good stuff,’ Suzie continued impatiently. ‘Where did you meet him?’

  Veronica’s hand had strayed once more to her mouth. At Suzie’s words she quickly dropped it, came back from that doorstep kiss. If this was a game, it was time she started concentrating and playing in earnest.

  ‘Where did we meet?’ At least she had an easy one for openers. They had already decided that it would be simpler to stick to the truth. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be interesting. ‘Over breakfast.’

  Suzie, hand poised to take another biscuit, turned and stared. ‘Over breakfast?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Veronica raised her cup to her lips. ‘He likes kippers,’ she said. ‘And white toast. And coffee.’ As she took a sip from her own cup, a wicked little urge prompted her to add, ‘He has them every morning.’

  Suzie’s eyes widened. ‘Every morning?’

  ‘Every morning,’ she confirmed—hadn’t Fergus said as much?

  ‘That’s …’ Suzie loss of words was reaching epidemic proportions. But it didn’t last for long. ‘Indecent,’ she finished.

  ‘Is it? And I would have sworn that kippers were one of the few fishy delicacies that could not, under any circumstances, be described as indecent.’ Slightly eccentric, perhaps.

  ‘It depends upon the context,’ Suzie said with feeling.

  Veronica smiled. ‘You’re just a jealous old married woman,’ she said, replacing her cup on the tray.

  ‘Too true. Tell me more.’

  ‘I’d love to stay and tell you every intimate detail,’ she replied, without a trace of shame, ‘but I really haven’t got time. The traffic is horrendous this morning and Luigi’s expecting me at eleven-thirty.’ She rose to her feet with the most expressive of shrugs.

  ‘Ronnie! You can’t leave me like this,’ Suzie wailed.

  ‘You made the appointment for me yourself, Suz, and you know he’ll throw a tantrum if I’m late.’

  ‘Blame me! No one will see your hair under a hat!’

  ‘But I’ll know.’ And she smiled, knowing that Suzie didn’t really mean it.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re going to run out on me now,’ she muttered, reaching for the compensation of yet another chocolate biscuit.

  Veronica, beginning to find it difficult to resist the need for chocolate herself, moved out of temptation’s reach. ‘You don’t want me arriving at St Margaret’s looking a mess, do you?’

  ‘You have never looked a mess in your entire life. That’s something else I’ll never forgive you for.’

  ‘If you’d seen me when I was decorating the spare bedroom you wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Oh, sure. I bet you didn’t get so much as a splash of paint on your pinny,’ Suzie sulked.

  Veronica laughed. ‘You know that’s not true. And we’ll catch up later, I promise.’ She stopped, remembering her escape plan. ‘Although actually—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I won’t be able to stay tonight after all, Suzie.’ She wanted to get this wedding over and get out of town as quickly as she could. ‘I have to get back to Melchester. Something’s come up—’

  ‘It’s all right, Ronnie, you don’t have to explain,’ Suzie said gravely. ‘I quite understand.’

  ‘Do you?’ She was surprised. She’d expected a minor tantrum at the very least.

  ‘Of course I do. Fergus can’t be expected to go without his, umm, kippers.’ As Veronica felt her cheeks begin to heat once more at her friend’s interpretation of her excuse, Suzie reached out and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t tease. I do want you to be happy—’

  Her sincerity was so obvious that Veronica felt an almost overwhelming urge to confess, tell her the truth. Suzie would understand. She would help, even. But she would not be able to resist telling her husband. That was the way of the world. What would married life be without a little pillow talk, after all?

  Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the end of it. Nigel was a dear, but he just wouldn’t be able to stop himself from passing on this hilarious piece of gossip in the changing room at his squash club.

  And inevitably it would get back to her mother, who would never forgive her for making a fool of her, for playing games, wasting opportunities when the serious business of matchmaking was afoot.

  Fergus Kavanagh didn’t go to his club after all. Once he’d picked up his morning suit from his tailor, chosen a new shirt and cravat to go with it and borrowed a top hat, he headed for his office.

  ‘Good morning, Julie.’

  His personal assistant looked up from her desk and smiled. ‘Hello, Fergus. What’s the matter with Melchester today?’

  ‘Nothing that the absence of my sisters wouldn’t instantly put right.’ They had worked together since he was a wet-behind-the-ears graduate with a company to drag back from the brink and she was an empty-nester looking for a new career once her children had flown.

  He’d chosen her over the leggy blondes the Personnel Department had hoped would distract him, keep him out of everyone’s hair so that they could carry on as they always had. Long lunches, long weekends and not a lot happening in between.

  They had made their mistakes together in the early days, covered for each other, and now she was his firm right hand, with a staff of her own and a salary to match.

  She grinned sympathetically. ‘Are Dora’s wedding preparations getting on top of you?’ Her wedding preparations for him.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Coffee, then,’ she said, getting up to make it herself. ‘Do you want to see the post?’

  ‘Is there anything you can’t handle?’

  She grinned. ‘No, I was just being polite.’

  ‘That’ll be the day. Just organise sandwiches for me for twelve-thirty. I’m going to a wedding and I don’t want my stomach to rumble in church.’ He caught her eye and grinned back. ‘I know. I’m a glutton for punishment.’

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘And I’ll need a car with a driver for one o’clock. Something roomy enough to accommodate a large hat.’

  She glanced at the top hat he was holding. ‘Yours?’ she enquired. ‘Or something wider?’

  ‘The kind of hat that comes in a hatbox this big,’ he said, making a broad angler’s gesture. ‘And then I want all the information you can dig up on Veronica Grant. She’s on the board of Jefferson Sports. They’re based in Melchester.’ He paused in the doorway to his office, about to add that it was urgent, but she was already reaching for the telephone. He realised, too late, that
he should have asked Veronica whose wedding they were going to. ‘Have you got today’s newspaper?’

  She tucked it beneath his arm before he had finished speaking, and, closing the door behind him with his foot, he dropped his overnight bag on the floor, hooked his suit over the coatstand and tossed the remainder of his purchases along with the top hat onto a chair. Then he opened the newspaper at the ‘Court & Social’ page and spread it on his desk in order to peruse the list of the day’s weddings.

  Miss Felicity Wetherall to Viscount Carteret at St Margaret’s, Westminster. That had to be the one. He pressed the button on the intercom. ‘Julie, one more thing. Will you call my club and tell them I’ll be staying there tonight?’ Now that he had an ace up his sleeve in the form of Miss Veronica Grant, he wouldn’t be needing a long-term hideout.

  ‘No problem. If anyone wants you in the meantime, are you available?’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘No. I’m going to take a shower and change.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget to wash behind your ears.’

  ‘One of these days you’ll go too far, Julie.’

  ‘I’m twenty years too old for that,’ she replied. ‘More’s the pity.’

  He showered and changed in the private suite attached to his office, and then, while he ate the sandwiches Julie had provided, he read the information that she had collated for him from the financial pages. She’d done a good job in the time, but there was little that he didn’t already know.

  They told him that Veronica Grant was beautiful— something that it would be difficult to miss; they told him that she was accepted in the most elevated of social circles, but that was already clear from the fact that her mother expected a title to accompany her marriage and that she’d already come close to achieving that ambition; they told him that she was twenty-nine, and they also told him, almost as an afterthought, that she was an impressive businesswoman who, with Nick Jefferson, was making serious waves in the growing leisure market.

  He wondered briefly how he would react if a business profile of him concentrated on his looks and his pedigree and mentioned his achievements almost as an afterthought.

  A cool exterior might be one way to handle it. A touch of frost to fool all but the closest observer, as well as to hide a passionate nature and a pair of warm lips.

  He pushed the folder away. There was nothing with which to get a hook on the real woman, what made her tick. Nothing to tell him what had driven her to pick up a total stranger on a train and invite him along to her cousin’s wedding. Nothing to tell him why she and the belted Earl had called it a day. But he wouldn’t find that in the business press. Julie had worked on the only hard facts he had been able to give her and had done her best with them in such a short time. The business press wasn’t the place to look; what for, exactly, he couldn’t have said, but there had to be more.

  His door opened and he glanced up. ‘Your car is here, Fergus.’

  He glanced out of the window as he stood up. A silver Rolls-Royce was standing at the kerb. ‘A Rolls?’ he queried.

  ‘It’s the only possible car when you’re wearing a hat this big,’ Julie murmured, repeating his hands-wide-apart gesture. And she picked an infinitesimal piece of fluff from his top hat before handing it to him with the merest suspicion of a smile. ‘Have a nice wedding.’

  ‘Nice?’ He considered the matter as he took the hat from her. ‘The only thing I’m certain of is that it will be interesting.’

  ‘Really? Is there some doubt that the groom will show up?’ she asked, following him to the door of his office. ‘Or the bride? Or do you have some advance information on the subject of “just cause and impediment”?’

  ‘I couldn’t say to the first two questions, since I’ve never met either of them, Julie, and no to the third.’

  ‘Then it must be Miss Veronica Grant and her large hat who will provide the interest,’ she suggested, her eyes sparkling behind the pair of spectacles she had recently taken to wearing. ‘Tell me, your club is one of those dreary, old-fashioned, men-only places, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is neither dreary, nor old-fashioned. It is a haven of peace and tranquillity where a man can relax safe in the knowledge—’

  ‘As I thought, men only. Are you sure you’ll be wanting that room?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Because Veronica Grant is a lovely-looking woman. And because it’s time you stopped worrying about everyone else, Fergus, and started having some fun.’

  ‘Thank you, Julie. I’ll bear that in mind.’ But he smiled as he headed for the lift, recalling that doorstep kiss. If he was looking for fun, hot ice cream might be a promising place to start.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE Rolls came to halt at Suzie Broughton’s front door a minute or two before one-thirty, and when Fergus rang the bell it was answered with such immediacy by Suzie, now wearing an elegant suit and holding a hat the size of a cartwheel, that he suspected she had been lying in wait behind the curtains for him.

  ‘Mr Kavanagh, do come in,’ she invited.

  ‘Fergus, please,’ he said, depositing his gloves and hat on a small Sheraton table in the hall.

  ‘Fergus,’ she repeated obediently. ‘And I’m Suzie. Come through into the sitting room. Veronica will be down in a moment. Would you like a drink while you’re waiting?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’ He had no idea what Veronica had told this woman, but he wasn’t fooled for a minute by her easy charm. Her eager eyes gave her away, and he knew that he was in for a grilling. It was certainly not the moment to dull his wits with alcohol.

  ‘Have you known Ronnie long, Fergus?’

  ‘Ronnie? Oh, you mean Veronica.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She gave him a thoughtful look. ‘Ronnie’s been avoiding questions, too. You know, you’re both being so cagey that a suspicious mind would think the pair of you had something to hide.’

  She wasn’t wasting any time getting to the point. Veronica must have kept her very short of information. ‘What could I … we … possibly have to hide?’ he asked.

  ‘You see? You’re doing it again. Answering my question with another question. It’s a technique I know well,’ she said, with a shameless grin. ‘I use it myself all the time, when I don’t have the right answers.’

  ‘I can’t believe that you’re ever short of the right answers, Suzie.’

  She continued to smile. ‘You’re good, Fergus. Very good. That’s the trouble.’ Fergus assumed what he hoped was a suitably puzzled expression. ‘You’ve both gone to far too much trouble to avoid a question as simple as when you met—’

  ‘Suz!’ A man’s desperate voice called from above.

  ‘But it seems that you’ve been saved by Nigel. For now.’ She cast an exasperated glance at the ceiling as the call was repeated, rather more loudly. ‘He’s a love, but absolutely hopeless with shirt-studs. I’ll have to go and help him.’

  ‘Please don’t let me detain you,’ he said, earning himself another, this time appreciative, smile.

  ‘As I said, you’re very good, Fergus, but give me time and I’ll have all your little secrets. You see if I don’t.’

  ‘I’ll try and be patient,’ he said, returning her smile with interest as a final, infuriated demand for her presence above sent her flying from the room.

  Fergus was standing by a pair of open French windows looking down into a small courtyard garden when her scent alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone. Gardenia. That was the flower that had eluded him. It was the top note of a scent that could have been created just for her. Cool at first, but with an undercurrent of something warm, something unexpected. He turned and she was standing just inside the doorway, quite still, watching him.

  She was wearing a heavy silk coat-dress with a small collar that stood away a little from her neck to display the plaited gold necklace that lay about her throat. The dress was a silvery blue that exactly matched her eyes, accentuating the dark, inviting richness of her mouth. Her hair, which
this morning had been worn loose in a neat page-boy bob, had been coiled in some simple style on top of her head, and the contents of the troublesome hatbox, little more than a stiffened circle of the same material as her dress, had been pinned in place by a dashing gold hatpin.

  She looked absolutely stunning. Breathtaking. At least, she had taken his breath away.

  ‘Do you suppose,’ she asked, finally breaking the seemingly endless silence that seemed to stretch between them as she crossed the room to join him by the window, ‘that men cease to be able to do the simplest things for themselves the moment they marry?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Apart from the obvious things, like sending birthday cards to their mothers or making appointments at the dentist. I mean the simple things, like cufflinks, studs, cravats.’ She paused. ‘Shoelaces, for all I know. You don’t have a wife to fuss about you, yet you managed to get here on time, fully dressed. Or does your club have a valet?’

  ‘What?’ Then, ‘No. At least, I’ve never … I didn’t go …’ He made an effort to pull himself together. ‘Is this relevant?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she replied solemnly. ‘I was just thinking out loud. I like your new suit. So few men have a morning coat that fits them properly.’

  He stretched his shoulders and pulled a face. ‘I hate wearing new clothes.’ He paused. ‘You look quite lovely.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The hat is a real head-turner. Worth all the—’ He broke off as Suzie returned, hat in place and apparently eager to be off, although still fiddling impatiently with a troublesome cufflink while Veronica introduced Nigel Broughton. As they shook hands, Veronica raised a conspiratorial eyebrow in his direction. You see? she seemed to be saying. And Fergus felt an odd warmth seep through him as she invited him to share her unspoken amusement.

  ‘How are you getting to the church?’ he enquired, turning back swiftly to Nigel Broughton in an attempt to cover his intense desire to take her hand, to touch her. Then, conscious of Suzie’s eyes on them, he wondered if he should take her hand. Or would that look too much as if they were playing a part? Like working too hard at avoiding simple questions. Instead, he said, ‘Can we offer you both a lift?’