Merger By Matrimony

by Cathy Williams

  Destiny arrived at the wine bar, late but calmly resolved to sort out the problem with Callum and the wayward, puzzling effect he had on her, with the same calm determination that had always seen her through the thousands of minor crises that she had faced in her life. Crises of a more practical nature, but no less surmountable than the problem of Callum Ross. Which, anyway, was an inconvenience but hardly a crisis.

  When she cast her mind back to their dinner the night before, she could feel her heart-rate speed up and that would never do.

  Stephanie was waiting for her at a corner table of the wine bar. It was obviously a place to go with the fashionable crowd. Rows of men in business suits were lounging by the circular bar, idly drinking but more interested in who was walking through the door. Some of them were with women, who were also smartly dressed in well-tailored suits to match their well-tailored short haircuts. The tables were all occupied, mostly with groups of people talking loudly, gesticulating, and laughing.

  The décor was very modern. Pale colours, wooden floor, large abstract paintings on the wall of the kind painted by some of her eight-year-old children on the compound. Just splashes of paint that looked as though some idiot had spilled his palette on a canvas and hadn’t been bothered about cleaning it up.

  Stephanie stood up and waved and Destiny scurried over to the table and sat down.

  ‘It’s very crowded, isn’t it?’ She leaned forward and glanced around her, smiling.

  Her stepcousin grinned. ‘I know. It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Callum hates crowds like this, but I love it. What’s the point making an effort getting dressed if no one’s going to be around to appreciate it?’ She was in a smoky blue fitted dress, very short, and her nails were painted the exact coral shade of her lipstick. This was Callum’s fiancée, Destiny reminded herself, and incidentally everything a man like him would want in a woman. Neat, attractive, vivacious, always smiling, always amenable.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Destiny admitted, breaking off to order some mineral water and a salad, taking the lead from Stephanie and remembering Callum’s reaction at her hearty appetite. ‘I can’t say that dressing up was something that happened much on the compound. No need.’ She grinned. ‘And no dressing-up clothes either, come to think of it.’

  Which revived all the open-mouthed fascination that Stephanie had shown previously. Whenever she leaned forward her wavy brown hair swung over her shoulders, and she would flick it back by running her fingers through it and then tossing her head the way a horse tossed its mane.

  She wanted to know everything about Destiny—her life, her education, what it felt like to live so far away from decent shops, what she ate, what she drank, whether she’d ever had malaria, what the people out there looked like, what her father looked like. When the subject came round to Henri, whose name had been mentioned casually, but had been picked up with the perceptiveness of someone well versed in the ways of relationships, Stephanie shot her a coy smile.

  ‘So there is more to life there than you let on!’ She giggled. ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘You’ve hardly touched your salad,’ Destiny said wryly, dodging the questions she could see hovering on the horizon. Stephanie obligingly stuck a couple of lettuce leaves in her mouth and continued to survey her stepcousin with a gleam in her blue eyes.

  ‘Okay. He’s about my height, brownish hair, specs, thinnish.’

  ‘Any more ishes to add to the description? What about sexyish?’

  No, that describes your lover, was the thought that flashed through Destiny’s head, disappearing before it had time to take root.

  ‘Yes, well…’ she said vaguely.

  ‘I can see—’ Stephanie sat back and arched her eyebrows meaningfully ‘—that you’re overwhelmed by lust for this man.’

  ‘It’s too hot out there to get lusty.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Too sticky.’

  ‘Right. In that case, I’m surprised anyone has babies.’

  ‘Tell me about Callum,’ Destiny said, going red and rapidly changing the subject, which was greeted with another arch of perfectly bowed eyebrows, but Stephanie grinned and relented.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You must be very excited at the thought of getting married…’ Her salad had already settled in her stomach and steady hunger pangs were beginning to set in. How could anyone exist on a handful of shrubbery with a bit of black pepper on top?

  ‘Well, we’re not getting married. Least, not yet.’ The heart-shaped face suffused with delicate colour.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s just that the time isn’t right,’ she rushed on, blushing madly. ‘You know…’

  ‘Well, not really, but it’s none of my business anyway.’

  ‘Yes, it is! I mean, you’re the closest thing I have to a relative. At least, a relative of my own age. I have a couple of aunts in Cornwall but they’re in their nineties.’ She wrinkled her nose, considering the dilemma of her relativeless state, then her face cleared slightly. ‘It’s just that…you know…Callum and I… Well, he’s pretty busy…work and such…’

  ‘Why don’t you tell him to make some time for you?’

  Stephanie shrugged and chewed her lip. ‘It’s not as easy as all that.’

  Destiny inclined her head to one side and listened. The waiter efficiently cleared their table, routinely asking whether everything was satisfactory, to which she replied, honestly, ‘There wasn’t enough of it.’

  ‘I shall tell our head chef,’ the man said with an expression that told her that he had no intention of doing any such thing.

  ‘I mean,’ Stephanie said in a rush, ‘Callum’s so overpowering and he hates women who nag. When we first started going out, he used to say that he loathed women who were demanding.’

  ‘So what?’ Destiny frowned, trying to work this out in her head. ‘If you don’t demand certain things, how on earth do you ever get them?’

  Another helpless shrug. ‘Thing is, we met at a business do that Uncle Abe had hosted before he and Mum divorced, and he sort of swept me off my feet to start with. You wouldn’t believe the women who would love to be seen with him…’

  ‘I can’t see why if he’s that intolerant.’ But she could. He drew stares from other people. He was physically commanding. He had the sort of personality that compelled other people’s attention.

  ‘Oh, he’s so rich and powerful and awe-inspiring.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s awe-inspiring. Actually, sometimes he irritates the life out of me.’

  ‘But you’d never let him know that, would you?’

  ‘Yes. Why not? He’s not going to chop both my arms off if I say what’s on my mind.’

  Stephanie looked at her as though she had suddenly discovered that she was dealing with a madwoman.

  ‘Anyway,’ Destiny said hastily, ‘tell me about this wonderful house I shall be going to see on the weekend. Has Callum told you about his offer?’ Which he hadn’t, unsurprisingly, so she spent a few minutes telling her stepcousin the details.

  ‘So what will you do?’ Stephanie asked, while Destiny wondered why her fiancé had chosen to withhold such important news from the woman he loved. ‘If he’s made such an offer, then you know he’ll expect you to accept. He never compromises when it comes to business.’ She giggled nervously. ‘Or anything else, for that matter.’

  ‘I don’t care what he expects. I shall have a look around and come to my own conclusions.’ Now, from her stepcousin’s expression, she was listening to someone from another planet speaking in forked tongue. Destiny gave a little sigh, plunged into an unrevealing conversation about Henri because she knew that it would distract her stepcousin, and left the restaurant half an hour later wondering what exactly was the nature of the relationship between Stephanie and Callum. Was it any wonder that she had no time to read over here? There was far too much drama in her everyday life to leave much room for a bit of mindless escapism.

  Whatever the dress code w
as for a trip to a country house—her country house, as Derek had explained in length on the telephone the day before—Destiny didn’t care. She packed comfortable clothes. A spare pair of jeans, two tee-shirts, flat walking boots, a pair of wellingtons. She had worked out that she now possessed roughly twice the amount of clothes she had ever had at any one time before. Aside from when she had been boarding in Mexico.

  She managed to cram everything she was taking into her rucksack, and Stephanie’s first words on seeing her at ten past nine on the Saturday morning were, ‘Is that all you’re bringing?’

  Destiny slung her bag into the back seat and then folded her long body into the car next to it.

  ‘It’s only a weekend,’ she pointed out. ‘Hello, Callum.’ She belatedly addressed the back of his dark head. It seemed that meeting Stephanie for lunch had not managed to put some vital perspective on her wayward feelings because, as their eyes met in the rearview mirror, she could feel her skin tingle.

  ‘My make-up takes up nearly as much room as that,’ Stephanie was saying cheerfully. ‘Doesn’t it, Callum?’

  ‘If not more.’ He pulled out of the enclosed cul-de-sac, and reached over to hand her an envelope. ‘One or two photos of your little house,’ he said drily. ‘Thought you might be interested.’

  The bundle of twenty-odd photos, rescued from Stephanie’s photo album from the times she had gone there years previously, before her mother had joined the line of ex-Felts, showed a sprawling mansion with a series of outbuildings, curling around a swimming pool. From the front seat, Stephanie craned backwards to explain the photos. The outbuildings had apparently been used for stabling horses but were now empty and the swimming pool had been put in at the insistence of her mother, who had seen it as adequate compensation for being deprived of living full-time in the city. The grounds were extensive and included a wood, a stream and orchards of fruit trees.

  ‘Who looks after it now?’ Destiny asked, still puzzled by the need her uncle had felt to possess a house of that size in which people could lose each other without a great deal of trouble.

  ‘Derek kept on a skeleton staff,’ Callum said from the front. ‘He assumed that you’d probably want to sell but, if you didn’t, I suppose he thought that you might want the retainers to stay. I have no idea how many people he’s kept or what they’re doing there for that matter. We haven’t been to the place for months. They could have hijacked the silver and cleared off for all I know.’

  ‘I thought you said that the contents were willed to…lots of other people?’

  ‘Certain of the contents, yes. Which would still leave quite a bit in situ.’

  ‘So is there anyone there now?’ She had visions of arriving at an inhospitable mansion, stone-walled and freezing cold.

  ‘Stephanie got in touch with Harold and his wife to open up and get the place ready. Or, should I say, get a small part of the place ready. A lot of the rooms have never been used.’

  ‘What a waste.’

  She noticed that they were now leaving London and was heartened by the sight of greenery. It must be easy to forget the existence of open land when you were constantly surrounded by buildings.

  ‘What would you do with the house if…I decided to go ahead with your proposal?’

  ‘Convert it into something, I expect.’

  ‘Convert it into what?’

  ‘A hotel.’

  ‘You’d convert this beautiful old mansion into a hotel?’

  ‘I would convert a beautiful old mansion into a beautiful old hotel,’ he said, with a trace of impatience in his voice. ‘At least it would be used. What difference would it make to you, anyway? Do you intend staying in England?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘This is all premature speculation anyway. Let’s just get to the damned place and see how you feel about it then.’ He accelerated as they cleared the outskirts of London and hit the motorway, and Destiny lapsed into silence, watching the scenery flash by. Summer was still holding its own and the blue, cloudless skies made everything seem crisp and fresh.

  They were at the village before eleven, and Stephanie, who appeared to have drifted off into a light sleep, was revived at the sight of a few shops and the prospect of getting out of the car and stretching her legs. She launched into an animated conversation about what she’d used to do when she went to stay at the country manor, interrupting herself frequently to remark on the dullness of country life.

  ‘It must be an awful lot more peaceful than living in London, though,’ Destiny pointed out, liking the feeling of space and calm around her. The small village, with its pubs and little stone shops and parish church, had none of the threatening claustrophobia of London. And the air was much fresher. She had rolled down her window, ignoring Callum’s comment about the air conditioning in the car, and closed her eyes briefly, enjoying the breeze through the window.

  ‘Stephanie isn’t enamoured of peace,’ he said drily, speaking about her as though she wasn’t sitting next to him—and, in all fairness, Stephanie didn’t object.

  ‘And are you?’ Destiny asked, looking around her now with interest as the car slowed on the narrow lane and turned left up an avenue lined with trees. Ahead of them, a pair of massive wrought-iron gates were open, and beyond them lay fields and pastures. ‘Or do you prefer living in the fast lane, where you can stride around, giving orders to everyone and enjoying having the world bow down to you?’

  Stephanie uttered an incoherent squeak of horror and looked around at Destiny, who grinned airily back at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said politely. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘Sorry? You? For having said something you shouldn’t? Why? Why break habits of a lifetime?’ But there was lazy amusement in his voice. ‘These are all part of the grounds. The sheep keep the grass down, but there are still six acres of lawned land. Look ahead. You can see the house coming into view.’

  She leaned forward and watched as the impressive façade rose up ahead of them, like a matriarch surveying her domain. She had never seen anything quite like it before in her life. The fact that it belonged to her seemed unreal.

  ‘Did you bring a swimsuit?’ Stephanie asked suddenly. ‘It’s hot enough for us to swim and I could do with a tan. I can’t bear English weather. All rain and fog and light drizzles.’

  ‘I don’t possess a swimsuit,’ Destiny told her.

  ‘Not at all?’ Her stepcousin sounded horrified.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But how are you going to go into the pool? I’m sure I have a couple here, but you’d never fit into them!’

  ‘I shall have quite enough to do looking around, honestly.’ The thought of trying to cram her huge frame into one of her stepcousin’s swimsuits wasn’t worth thinking about. She looked comical enough next to her as things stood.

  In fact, as they all trooped into the overwhelming hall, she wondered whether two days was going to be long enough to see everything. Harold, a wizened middle-aged man with eyes that seemed permanently focused on his feet, welcomed them in and he and Callum conferred in hushed voices for a few minutes, while Destiny continued to stare open-mouthed around her. Stephanie, well accustomed to all the grandeur, stood unimpressed to one side and then, as soon as Harold had disappeared with the cases, announced that she wanted to go for a dip in the pool. Just in case it decides to rain later. You know what the weather’s like over here.

  ‘Sure you won’t come with me and try on one of my swimsuits?’ she asked kindly, and Destiny shook her head with a laugh.

  ‘I don’t think that would work, do you?’ She wanted to tell her stepcousin to run along and have a good time. Even though they were more or less the same age, Destiny felt decades older. There was something very young and childlike about Stephanie, something very much in need of protection. Which brought her round to Callum.

  He was standing, watching them with some amusement; and as soon as Stephanie had disappeared up the stairs, lightly running, he turned to her
and said in a drawling voice, ‘It’s hard to believe that you two are roughly the same age. You treat her as though she was your daughter.’

  Destiny smiled indulgently. ‘Actually, sometimes I feel as though she is. She’s so…young…in her ways.’ She sighed and caught herself. ‘Anyway, the house. Should we start now? Looking around? Or do you need time to recover from the car drive? Oh. You may want to go and have a dip in the pool as well,’ she added awkwardly. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘No. Playing at being a sun lizard isn’t my cup of tea.’ He looked at her with a shuttered expression and realised, with a certain amount of confused irritation, that he would have been more than happy to play the sun lizard game if it involved watching her frolic around in a swimming pool with next to nothing on.

  He would, he decided, have to speak to Stephanie. Whether he liked it or not, the doubts that had been swelling over the past few months about their relationship were rapidly crystallising into the unpleasantly concrete fact that their relationship was sagging. Sex, which had been satisfactory enough to start with, had been almost nonexistent for months now, and lately had disappeared altogether from the agenda. He could kid himself that his work left him exhausted, but who was he trying to fool? The blunt truth of the matter was that however fond he was of his fiancée, he no longer felt any sexual urges when he was around her.

  Why else was he mentally stripping the woman in front of him now? Wondering what that body of hers would look like uncovered? She was not his type. Too big, too forthright, too damned argumentative and clever. But she was on his mind more than he cared to think. Daydreaming and fantasising about her was obviously a symptom of the malaise in his own personal life.