A Scandalous Engagement

by Cathy Williams

  ‘And you,’ she had continued, before he could find the power of speech, pointing at Andy, ‘will have to come to terms with the fact that you can’t go through life without compromise.’

  That said, she had sat back down, serenely finished her cup of coffee, and watched with a feeling of satisfaction as they’d groped their way through their bull-headedness towards a solution. Old family friends, most of whom would, Curtis had agreed with a wry grin, collapse with surprise should they receive an invitation from him after so many years, would not be invited. He wouldn’t, on reflection, he’d said piously, be responsible for endangering anyone’s health.

  Instead, Andy would ask ten of his closest friends and Curtis would ask five friends and five of the company directors, who would greatly appreciate the gesture. They had both then looked at her and suggested that, since fair was fair, she should ask ten of hers, to which she had politely declined. Did she have ten? They seemed to have dwindled away over the weeks and months and years.

  That hurdle successfully jumped, and with all the invitations accepted, they had then discovered that Jesse, the housekeeper, was having her daughter up from Devon over that weekend and so wouldn’t be able to sleep over. Whereupon Curtis’s powers of persuasion had come into play, so that they had finally agreed that not only would Jesse sleep in, but also her daughter and her two youngest sons, who couldn’t possibly remain on their own for the duration of the four days.

  ‘Will there be enough room in the house for all these people?’ she had asked Curtis dubiously, envisaging a moderately large place bursting at the seams with a collection of people who would probably be at each other’s throats after day one.

  ‘Jesse will open up one of the wings.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jade had said, nodding with a dry expression. ‘Naturally. God, those extra wings are useful when it comes to house parties, aren’t they?’

  Ever since the exhibition, and Curtis’s acceptance of his brother’s lifestyle, or at least his visible acceptance of it, he had been keeping his tendency for razor-sharp sarcasm under control. They were now actually managing to have dinners when the conversation trundled along in a fairly amicable way, even though Jade still kept as low a profile as she could.

  She told herself that that was simply because she wanted to give the brothers all the space they needed to get to know one another, without intrusion from a third party. But she was uneasily aware that the truth was far more complex than that. She wanted to keep her distance from Curtis for her own sake. Now that he was no longer on the attack, that charm which she had glimpsed occasionally was dangerously apparent, and it lay not in any deliberate attempt to flirt with her but in his personality. He charmed men and women alike. He had the sort of sharp, incisive wit that could force a grin out of a confirmed battleaxe and a talent for persuasiveness that she had never encountered before. Little by little, he was drawing his brother out of himself, easing the chip away from his shoulder, and when Andy’s inclination to be defensive rose to the surface, she could almost see Curtis speculating on the best possible way of dealing with it.

  Holding on to her common sense and ingrained need for self-protection were the two pieces in her armoury which she pulled out of the cupboard whenever his eyes turned to her and his charm began worming its way into her secrets.

  Now, she looked at Andy over her cup of tea in the college cafeteria with dismay.

  ‘You can’t do this to me!’ She dropped her head into the palm of her hand and gave another groan of despair.

  ‘Why,’ he asked, reasonably enough, ‘are you getting so worked up over it? It’s not as though I won’t be coming. I just won’t be travelling with you two a day ahead of schedule as we’d arranged. So where’s the problem? You have to admit that I’ve been an angel over the whole thing, agreeing to go along with it even at the expense of my poor friends, who are going to be bored to tears having to socialise with a bunch of stuffy businessmen.’ He crammed some more jam doughnut into his mouth and then looked a little startled when the jam oozed down his fingers.

  ‘Well, I don’t see why I should travel up to Scotland alone with your brother. I’m not part of the family…’

  ‘Ah, but you’re going to be playing the little hostess. You have to be on hand from day one to do all those little hostessy things that big brother will expect. Check all the rooms. Do interesting things with vases and bunches of flowers.’ He finished the remainder of the doughnut in one mouthful and then used four napkins to wipe his mouth. ‘Make sure you pack hostessy clothes as well. Jeans are going to be right out of the question.’

  Jade hadn’t given the wardrobe side of things much thought, but now she frowned and looked worried. She didn’t know what clothes she was going to take for this affair. Andy’s friends would all wear their usual garb of denim and black, and the stuffy businessmen and their wives would probably wear blazers and ties and starched daffodil-yellow knee-length skirts with matching jackets and pearls. Whichever camp she chose to go into, she would be left looking either too informal or else ridiculously overdressed and stuffy.

  Too late now to bemoan the role she had found herself in. Curtis had manoeuvred the situation very cleverly. When he had announced to her that she would be playing hostess he had obviously expected her shriek of horror and flat-out refusal to do any such thing, because instead of being taken aback he had simply swerved course and attacked her from another angle.

  He was surprised, he had said, and a little disappointed that she refused to help out in a situation like this, when he was trying to build bridges. It wasn’t as though she had no experience of doing that kind of thing. She had surely been present at the odd client function in her career as ‘Very Important Personal Assistant’ at her last job, hadn’t she? Had probably seen some things through from start to finish? Wasn’t he correct? He’d claimed not to know how things were handled over here in London, but he had succeeded in forcing her either to confess to having worked in a tin pot company and lying about her status there or else to admit that, yes, she had helped her boss in hosting various company parties.

  He had shrugged negligently, as though bemused by her refusal, and had then proceeded to point out how crucial it would be having someone to oversee events tactfully—after all, businessmen and artists were a potentially combustible union. But naturally, despite the fact that she was living in his house rent-free, she was perfectly at liberty not to help out on the one occasion he requested. After all, she could do as she pleased. No one was going to hold a gun to her head.

  In the end, she had found herself agreeing.

  ‘You’ll have to wear your power suits by day and demure little numbers by night,’ Andy continued. ‘Nothing too startling. You don’t want to have the businessmen leering at you while their wives hover resentfully in the background. You’ll have to be on best behaviour, lots of smiles and jollying everyone along when things look as though they’re getting awkward. You’ll love it!’

  ‘It’s going to be a nightmare.’

  ‘But for such a good cause! Two brothers uniting!’

  ‘Don’t be so cynical, Andy. You know you’re secretly pleased that Curtis has accepted your decision without too much blood being spilled.’

  ‘There’s still a lot he doesn’t know about me, Jade.’

  ‘Yes, well, give it time,’ she said hastily. ‘And stop distracting me from feeling furious with you for backing out and leaving me to go up alone with your brother!’

  ‘Just giving you two the chance to get to know one another. Don’t think I haven’t seen the way he looks at you.’ When she gave him a thunderous glare, he continued quickly, ‘Anyway, I can’t help it if Bigwig Lucas has set up an appointment to view some of my work when I’m supposed to be taking a plane to Scotland. I can hardly tell him to rearrange his schedule to suit me.’ He pressed one finger to the plate, so that some of the sugar from the doughnut adhered to his skin, and he sucked it off, repeating the exercise until the plate looked as though it had
been put through the dishwasher.

  The prospect of time alone with Curtis Greene loomed before her eyes like the vision of a volcano, teetering on the brink of possible eruption.

  The airport, alone. The plane trip, alone. Then the rambling mansion, big enough for the housekeeper and her entourage to conveniently get lost in while they ate, alone. Lots of alones to fill, she thought despondently, wondering, as the day progressed, how much small talk she was capable of raking up for the occasion.

  She felt sick at the thought of what a handful of hours might hold in store for her. There was always the chance that he would revert to his Spanish Inquisition routine about her motives. Although to be fair he seemed to have dropped that particular angle, since it was glaringly obvious that, however close she and Andy were, they were not lovers. More worryingly, he might find isolation the perfect time to start needling her about her private life, something which continued to interest him, judging from his knack of firing personal questions at her under the ludicrous guise of absent-minded curiosity. As though she had been born yesterday and couldn’t see through his ploy. He still wanted to get to the bottom of her, and in the presence of his brother there was a limit to how much he could reasonably ask without appearing boorishly inquisitive. The scenario presenting itself contained no convenient chaperones to ward off his questions.

  Her only hope, she thought, was if Curtis came to the conclusion that it made sense for them all to delay their plans for one day and then travel together as previously arranged.

  It was a hope destined to be shot down in flames before it even had time to take root.

  ‘Too bad,’ he greeted Andy’s explanation. ‘Might work out for the best, though. Jade and I go on ahead, leaving you to sort out the lot down here, get them to the house in one piece. I take it,’ he said silkily, turning to her, ‘that you’re not bothered by my brother’s defection?’

  Later, after Andy had left the room, Jade stayed behind, a first, and hesitantly watched Curtis as he sipped from his coffee and watched her back, in no hurry to rescue her by initiating any conversation. Eventually, she said, ‘About this weekend…’

  He continued to look at her across the dining table with lazy interest, allowing the silence to engulf them. Like most people who are accustomed to running the show and are highly self-confident, he was not in the least fazed by silence. He never filled pauses with inanities simply for the sake of talking.

  ‘What role am I supposed to have? I mean…what sort of clothes should I be bringing with me? It’s just that I gave away most of my work clothes to charity when I gave up my job…’ It had been a gesture of freedom, and she had thoroughly enjoyed chucking the lot into a black bin bag and taking it to the nearest charity shop. Little could she have foreseen that she might need some of them sooner than she’d thought.

  ‘No need for suits,’ he said, amused. ‘You won’t be working, just helping me out. Wear what you would normally wear for smartish occasions.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t have to impress anyone, you know.’

  ‘No, I realise that…’

  ‘You’re not nervous, are you?’

  His question caught her on the hop, and she didn’t have time to think of a suitably dismissive denial. Instead, she paused for a few seconds with her lips parted, giving him ample time to nudge his way in with a few speculations of his own.

  ‘You are nervous. Why?’

  ‘B-Because…’ she stammered, furious at being pinned to the wall, but realising that her hesitation after his question had been long enough to give the lie to any denials she might now come up with. ‘The only real socialising I’ve done over the past couple of years has been to do with work. I…I’ve been so busy and…I’m not sure if I’ll be any good at…’ Her voice was practically inaudible now, and finally petered out altogether.

  Having burrowed this deep, she expected him to plunge right in and carry on digging, but instead he looked at her for a few brief seconds, then said kindly, ‘Sarah used the house quite a bit before she went to Australia. It’s more than likely that she left some clothes in the room she used to sleep in. Knowing my sister, probably more than just a few,’ he amended wryly, ‘and she’s more or less your size. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you borrowed what you wanted.’

  ‘Good!’ She sprang out of the chair, anxious now to be out of the room.

  She was pulling open the door to leave when he said softly, from behind her, ‘There’s really no need to be nervous. You presumably know all of the people Andy’s invited, and my lot may not wear odd clothes and live out of knapsacks, but they’re really quite a relaxed bunch. No one’s going to be looking to pick holes, and if anyone asks too many questions…well…’ he gave her a slow, heat-inducing smile ‘…you can always dodge them. You’re good at that.’

  His reassurances should have put some of her nerves to rest, but whichever set of nerves that was, another larger set had been resolutely activated by that smile of his. However much she told herself that he had not singled her out for any special blast of Curtis Greene charm, there had been occasions when the air between them throbbed with electricity. She didn’t know if it stemmed from his curiosity, his desire to goad her into a response, or if it was simply a game he unconsciously played whenever he was in the presence of a reasonably attractive member of the opposite sex, but his languid, ambiguous teasing left her floundering.

  She could deal with his bare-face arrogance, and even the outlandish accusations he had hurled at her when he had first revealed his identity, but she was vulnerable when it came to anything else. She wouldn’t have been in the least bit surprised if he suspected as much and had decided to deliberately pull her secrets out of her stealthily, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she felt as though she didn’t dare drop her guard, not for a minute, when she was with him.

  She awoke at six o’clock on the morning of their flight, and was so wrapped up in last-minute packing and an anxious examination of the things she had stuffed into the suitcase that she didn’t notice the weather until she pulled back the curtains one hour later.

  The sky was the colour of lead. Through the window, she could feel the intense cold struggling to push into the room, where it would make short work of the central heating. If it was like this in London, how much colder would it be in Scotland? She had never been nearly as far north as that, and she naively suspected that even when the rest of the country basked in summer sunshine Scotland steadfastly refused to bend to peer pressure and simply remained freezing cold, whatever the season.

  ‘Have you seen the sky?’ was her opening question, when she lugged her case downstairs to find Curtis waiting for her in the hall.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve packed enough?’ He eyed her small case dubiously.

  ‘We’re going for four days,’ Jade said, distracted, ‘not two weeks.’ His case, alarmingly, was twice the size of hers. ‘How much stuff are you taking?’ she asked, circling the Louis Vuitton case on the ground as though it was some foreign and slightly bewildering species of animal.

  ‘Enough to get by.’

  ‘You mean with a change of outfit every twenty minutes?’

  ‘I mean,’ he said patiently, ‘with several jumpers for those healthy outdoor pursuits, such as walking and exploring the isolated countryside.’

  Which neatly brought her back to her original subject.

  ‘It looks as if it’s going to snow, and if it snows here, God knows what the state of Scotland will be.’

  ‘No snow predicted on the weather reports,’ he told her cheerfully, taking both cases and allowing her to open the front door for him. ‘And even if it snowed twelve inches here, there’s no guarantee that it’ll be worse up north. Weather fronts are a bit more unpredictable than that.’

  For all the world as if he knew the first thing about them. He was a businessman, unless he had been keeping a useful degree in meteorology up his sleeve. However, since she wouldn’t have put it past him to produce a diploma in weather fo
recasting, she refrained from continuing the subject, only noting to herself that the ominous sky was yet another sign that this trip had been a bad idea from the word go.

  The traffic was sluggish. Curtis had arranged for his driver to collect them, and Jade sat in the back seat, gloomily staring out of the window and internally taking bets that the first flake of snow would hit the ground before they even made it to the airport. Next to her, Curtis lounged with his hands behind his head, perfectly relaxed and apparently dozing.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said out of the blue, making her jump because she had thought him safely asleep, ‘why are you so afraid of a little snow? Everyone likes snow. Little children build snowmen and adults turn back into little children and build snowmen. It’s a well-documented phenomenon.’ He grinned, and half closed his eyes again.

  ‘I can’t imagine you as a little child,’ Jade muttered under her breath.

  ‘And I thought women always saw the boy behind the man. Now I’m disillusioned.’ He opened one eye, then shut it back when satisfied that he had engendered the desired response of blushing discomfort in her.

  She was fast accepting that being stuck with him overnight in some rambling mansion in the wilds of Scotland was going to be even worse than she had originally imagined, especially if he intended to do away with polite formality and spend the entire time in banter mode.

  ‘That’s probably because most men refuse to grow up.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. You treat Andy like a little boy, yet you have to admit he was grown up enough to make some pretty big decisions about his life.’

  ‘Andy’s vulnerable…’ she found herself saying, and, as expected, he was quick to jump in.

  ‘And I’m not?’ Both blue eyes were now wide open, and inspecting her face with devilish amusement. ‘If you care to look, I happen to be a very vulnerable human being, Jade.’