Rachel Lindsay - Man of Ice
"You're just another greedy gold digger."
Abby was shocked at Giles Farrow's words. True, his aunt Matilda Bateman had taken Abby under her wing on Abby's dream holiday to India.
But Abby hadn't been kind to the elderly woman just because Miss Bateman was really Mattie Bates, famous and wealthy detective-story writer. Abby hadn't even known.
It was bad enough to have to put up with Giles's poor opinion of her, his searing eyes that regarded her so accusingly. It was worse to have to admit that he was the most attractive man she'd ever had the misfortune to meet!
CHAPTER ONE
Abigail West looked at the cheque for one thousand pounds and debated what she should do with this unexpected windfall. It was not a serious debate, for deep in her heart she knew exactly what she was going to do.
Common sense told her to put it in the bank for a rainy day, but the streak of devil-may-care she had inherited from her grandmother—whose Christian name she bore—told her quite firmly to do nothing of the sort. No indeed; she was going to spend it. Every single pound. And not on anything sensible like a new wardrobe or clothes, which she badly needed, or a moped that would do away with strap-hanging in the subway during the rush hour, but on a glorious, wildly extravagant holiday to the one country she had always wanted to visit: India, land of the Moghul Kings whose stories she knew by heart. India, whose curry she assiduously cooked for herself twice a month; whose paintings she enjoyed seeing, whose music she enjoyed hearing and whose wise gurus she painstakingly tried to understand.
Folding the cheque, she put it in her handbag and sent up a heartfelt prayer of thanks to the electronic calculator that had chosen her name as one of the winners of a Premium Bond.
'You're crazy to spend the entire amount on a holiday,' her friend Millicent Thomas protested later that day when Abigail told her what she was going to do. 'Why not bank half of it? That will still leave you with plenty to spend.'
'Not enough for me to get to India. The cheapest holiday I can book is nine hundred and fifty pounds. That will give me fifty pounds to spend on clothes.'
'At least you'll have something over,' Milly grumbled. 'As for the rest……Once a holiday has ended, you've got nothing to show for it.'
'That won't be true of this holiday,' Abby replied. 'I'll have thousands of memories to cherish for the rest of my life.'
'Memories!' Milly scoffed. 'That's all you live on. If you don't wake up and start to live in the present, you'll end up an old maid. If you want to use your money for a holiday, why not go to the Bahamas or the South of France?'
'I'd just as soon stay at home as do that. Oh, Milly, can't you try to understand the way I feel? Ever since I can remember I've wanted to go to India.'
Milly pulled a face. 'It would do you more good to go to America—I still can't fathom why you let your mother and sisters go to California without you.'
'Because I didn't want to emigrate, that's why. Anyway, when Mother and the twins went, it was die best thing that happened to me.'
'You're only saying that because——— '
'I mean it,' Abby interrupted her friend. 'You can't imagine what it was like to be the ugly duckling in a family of three swans. My mother is as beautiful as my sisters,' she added.
'You've never admitted that before.'
'It's only recently that I've admitted it to myself. I used to feel so awful for being envious of them. If they'd been selfish or conceited it would have made things so much easier for me. But they were always so loving—and that made it worse. They would have been horrified if they'd guessed how I felt. They can't help being breathtaking to look at, any more than I can help being plain.'
'You aren't plain,' Milly said staunchly. 'You're small and slight, but there's nothing wrong with you that new clothes and proper make-up couldn't put right. And that's what you should spend your money on, Abby, not this crazy Indian trip.'
'Crazy or not, I'm going!'
'Why not write to your mother and see what she says?'
'I don't need to write. I know exactly what she'd say —the same as you.' Abby's small triangular face became unexpectedly serious. 'She's a great believer in putting things aside for a rainy day; probably because my father did the exact opposite, and when he died, she was left with debts, a hefty mortgage and the twins and myself to bring up. She wouldn't go out to work and leave us, so she took in lodgers and cleaned and cooked herself into exhaustion.'
'Still, things worked out fine in the end. It was fantastic the way your sisters won that beauty competition.'
Abby nodded. 'They were wonderful to us. The minute they started earning big money, they took over the running of the house and all the money problems.'
'There aren't any problems when you've got money,' Milly said sarcastically. 'And I don't see why you should be so grateful for what they did for you. Damn it, you acted as their unpaid maid and hairdresser for years. The more I think of it, the more convinced I am you should have gone with them to the States. You might have found fame and fortune for yourself.'
Abby laughed. 'Now who's living in dreamland? No, Milly, I'm much better off here. It's marvellous not to be compared with the fabulous West twins and not to have your boy-friends meet them and immediately forget all about you.'
'What boy-friends?' Milly asked bluntly. 'Whenever anyone asks you for a date, you say no.'
'Only because I haven't liked them.'
'How can you tell until you go out with them? Or are you waiting for Prince Charming to come along and sweep you off your feet?'
Abby chuckled. 'How clever of you to guess.'
'Well, you won't find him in India.'
'Perhaps I'll never find him. That's why I want to spend this money in one wildly extravagant way.'
'Well, at least you're spending the money on yourself and not on one of your lame ducks.'
'Now you're giving me a guilt complex!' The words were accompanied by a half joking expression, but Abby meant what she had said. 'Mrs Perkins needs a new wheelchair and…'
'Don't you dare! If she moaned to her doctor the way she does to you, he'd see she got one. No, Abby, if you're going to blow that win, then blow it on yourself.'
Three days later Abby did exactly that; signing a cheque for nine hundred and fifty pounds in favour of Gallway and King, specialists in Indian holidays.
'It's a decision you won't regret,' the tour operator said as he handed her a receipt. 'Three years ago I went on the same tour and it's the experience of a lifetime.'
Feeling as if she were floating on air, Abby left the office. There were six weeks to go before the great day, and she knew she would count every hour of them.
Driving in the Gallway and King coach to Heathrow Airport, Abby had to pinch herself to make sure she was not dreaming. Eight other people were travelling with her, and they were all middle-aged and looked affluent; the men in well cut tweeds and the women in suits and furs.
Abby wished she were wearing something nicer than her serviceable grey wool dress and jacket, but with only fifty pounds to spend on clothes she had concentrated on summer ones, knowing that once she reached Delhi she would put her winter things behind her. It was scaring to realise she was going to spend Christmas among strangers in a strange land, while her own family was thousands of miles away from her. But at least she would be in the sunshine too, which was a cheering thought.
She frowned, knowing she was verging on self-pity. Had she remained in England she could have stayed with Milly and her parents in Devon, or have spent her time with Mrs Perkins, the old lady who lived on the ground floor of her lodging house. But instead she would be eating her Christmas meal in Bombay— cur
ry and rice in place of turkey and chestnut stuffing.
She grinned at the thought and a dimple came and went in her cheek. It was a softly rounded one, warmed by a flush of excitement which also gave sparkle to her pansy brown eyes. They were her loveliest feature: large, innocent eyes whose corners tilting slightly upwards gave her a faintly exotic appearance. Yet in all other respects she was like an English elf: five feet nothing of skin and bone, her mother had once affectionately described her, and Abby had regretfully known it was true. Not quite so apt now, perhaps, for gentle curves had replaced the angles, but, compared with her glamorous sisters, she was still remarkably unremarkable. She glanced down at her hands. Fine-boned as the rest of her, they were clasping a leather-bound copy of the Vedac, a book of ancient Indian theology which had been a holiday present from Mr Rogerson, whose small antiquarian bookshop she helped to run.
Unable to go to university—for though a grant would have kept her there, it would not have helped her to contribute financially to her mother who was still struggling to bring up fourteen-year-old twins—Abby had regretfully had to decline further education and find herself a job. The one with Mr Rogerson had been an unexpected stroke of luck, put her way by her headmistress, whose distant cousin he was.
'He's an antiquarian in every sense of the word,' Miss Williams had explained. 'He has this wonderful bookshop but stubbornly refuses to engage an assistant; consequently the place has become more and more of a muddle.'
'What makes you think he'll engage me?' Abby had asked.
'Because you love books and you have a gentle manner.' Miss Williams' compliment had been as rare as it was gratifying. 'You're also intelligent enough to learn quickly. Go and see him, Abby. If you don't like him, there'll be nothing lost.'
But Abby had liked Mr Rogerson very much, and a week later she had become his assistant—though hindrance would have been a better word, she had often thought during the first few months of her apprenticeship, for there was so much to learn from him and so much ignorance on her part to overcome. Yet within six months she was able to cope with many of the enquiries that came in from all over the world, and though she knew she would never be as knowledgeable about old books as her employer, she did at least know what he had in his vast and valuable stock.
A year after her coming to work for him, he had paid for her to take a secretarial course so that she could deal more efficiently with the correspondence, and being Abby, she had graduated in half the time, the top of her class.
'If only the twins were as clever as you!' her mother had sighed.
'They're so beautiful they don't need to be clever,' Abby had replied staunchly, little knowing that in a matter of months her sisters would win a beauty competition that they had entered in a spurt of devilry, and be sent on the first step of their meteoric rise to fame and fortune.
It was a fortune they had generously shared, even offering to pay for Abby to go to university and take her longed-for degree in English. But by then Abby had grown to love her unworldly and absent-minded old employer, and she had refused the chance, though she was grateful not to have to contribute any longer to the family's finances. It had enabled her to start saving part of her salary, and when her mother and the twins had eventually announced their departure for America, she had sufficient money of her own to pay for and furnish a small flat in a not too run-down part of Victoria.
However, her propensity for finding and helping lame ducks made it difficult for her bank account to grow again, or her wardrobe to be replenished, a fact which her friend Milly deplored as much as she did Abby's job.
'When you come back from India, I'm going to make you look for something else,' she had declared a few nights before Abby's departure. 'If you go on working for that octogenarian you'll end up like him! You should be in a big firm where you have a chance of meeting lots of people.'
'Lots of men, you mean,' Abby had replied, and had then told Milly that her fears for the future were unlikely to be fulfilled, for Mr Rogerson had told her only today that his shop was being pulled down for redevelopment, and that though he would be receiving compensation, he felt himself too old to begin again.
'Not that you need to worry about finding yourself another job when you get back,' he had said. 'My stock and clients will be taken over by Markhams'—he had named another illustrious firm—'and they've said they'll be delighted to take you on as well.'
'You won't go, will you?' Milly had cut through Abby's explanation. 'Now's your chance to get out and do something more exciting.'
'I know. And you're right. But I don't intend to give it any more thought till I come back from my holiday. I'm not going to let anything spoil this trip for me.'
Abby thought of this now, as the coach trundled steadily along the motorway, and wondered whether Mr Rogerson's enforced retirement was not another pointer from Fate, indicating that she should follow her mother and sisters to California. She shook her head, only realising she had done so when she felt the gold slide she wore slip down on to her neck. Quickly she caught it and put it into her bag. Her long straight hair was so silky that most slides had a habit of falling off, and the gesture with which she now pushed a honey brown strand from her face was an automatic one and unconsciously graceful.
To distract herself from thoughts that could spoil her holiday mood, she opened her holdall and took out the itinerary. It was already dog-eared from long studying, but she read it again, revelling in the pleasure it gave her to mutter the unusual names: Agra, Varanese, Jaipur…
She was so absorbed that she only realised they had reached the airport when the coach stopped, and she followed her fellow travellers to the check-in counter.
There was a crowd of people around it and she knew it would be at least fifteen minutes before she was cleared for her flight. Patiently she waited in the queue, watched bright-eyed little Indian children clinging to their mothers' sides while harassed fathers pressed forward inch by inch to have their tickets stamped.
At last she was able to check in, and after watching her large suitcase trundle along the rollers and disappear from sight, she stepped back from the counter, apologising as she inadvertently knocked against a hard, unyielding barrier.
She turned and saw it was the grey-suited arm of a tall, spare-framed man. His height was the first thing she noticed about him; that, and the clear gold of his eyes, which were the most unusual colour she had seen. They were like pieces of amber, and glowed with the same intensity. But his expression was stern, almost forbidding, until he gave a slight smile which immediately softened it. Not that it could ever be described as a kind face, but it no longer looked disdainful as he murmured an apology for being in her way.
'It was my fault,' she said, and gave him a wide smile which instantly froze his own, for as she watched him, his mouth set in an uncompromising straight line and he backed away from her and turned to speak to the tall, angular woman who was with him.
Mother and son, Abby thought, or perhaps grandson, for the woman seemed too old to be his mother. But there was a similarity about them that spoke of a blood relationship; it was seen in the same well-carved features and austere profiles, and they both had distinct lines down either side of the mouth. They gave character to the woman, but in the man they looked harsh. Definitely his grandmother, Abby concluded, but then had to amend the opinion, for the woman put her left hand on his arm and she saw that it was ringless.
Aware that she was staring, Abby left the queue and searched above her head for a signpost that would lead her towards Immigration. She had only gone a few steps when someone touched her shoulder none too gently. She turned and saw the man she had knocked against. But this time he was extending her holdall.
'You forgot this,' he said without a smile, and before she could thank him, he turned his back on her.
What a disagreeable man, Abby decided, and then dismissed him from her mind as she pushed her way through the crowd. Once in the departure lounge, she availed herself of the fre
e sandwiches and coffee, for she had been too excited to bother with breakfast, then wandered over to the bookstall, where she was soon so absorbed that she was surprised when her flight was called on the tannoy.
Stepping on to the blue carpet in the aircraft—so large that it was more like a ship than a plane—Abby already felt herself to be in India as she was greeted by a dusky-skinned air hostess in a purple and turquoise sari. Another air hostess, in turquoise and pink, led her to her seat, which was close to one of the serving galleys and gave her more leg room—since there were no seats in front of it—as well as an excellent view of the cabin decor. No utilitarian scheme here, but highly decorated wallpaper depicting dancing girls, whose robes matched the blue and green material that covered the aircraft seats.
The look of delight on her face must have given her away, for the woman who had come to sit beside her said:
'Enjoy the beauty, my dear, because I assure you the efficiency doesn't match it.'
Abby turned and recognised the woman as the one she had seen talking to the stern-faced man at the check-in counter. She wondered where he was and why the two were not sitting together, but had her answer the moment the woman spoke again.
'You are on the Gallway and King tour, aren't you? You bumped into my nephew at the ticket counter. He was coming to see me off.'
'There was such a crush there,' Abby explained, 'that I think I bumped into everybody!'
'There's always a crush at airports these days. At one time when you flew you were treated with respect. Now you are treated like so much cattle.'
'I'm afraid I haven't flown sufficiently to notice,' Abby smiled.
'Well, I have, and you can take my word for it. We're just treated like animals. If there are delays you're never told why. If there are strikes you're always in the middle of them, and when you do finally arrive at your destination you have to wait hours for the luggage or stand in a queue for security checks.'
'Yet you are still flying,' Abby said, the dimple coming and going in her cheek.
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