Worthy of Marriage

by Anne Weale

  Earlier, he had narrowly stopped himself from telling her something he had never discussed with anyone. Why he should even think of making her his confidante was beyond him. She was the last person in the world he would trust with his private concerns.

  It had also annoyed him when Lucia had had the nerve to tell him what the company should be doing. She seemed to have very little sense of the insecurity of her position. She was the sort who, given an inch, would always take a mile, he thought sourly.

  But his mind was too analytical not to be aware that part of his annoyance was directed at himself. The fact was that although the object of tonight’s exercise was to get rid of her, he felt no reluctance at putting the plan into practice but rather anticipation.

  He wanted to know how her body would feel in his arms, how her mouth would feel under his. Though of course the last thing he wanted was a willing response. The more outraged she was the better.

  As he moved about the stainless steel and cherry-wood kitchen, making the final preparations for the meal prepared by his home help, Mrs Botting, he remembered a scandal a couple of years ago when a girl in Calderwood’s Birmingham office had accused the manager of her department of sexual harassment. Grey had prevailed on her to change her mind by dismissing the man involved. He had not been a satisfactory employee on a number of accounts. Satisfied that the girl had done nothing to provoke the manager, Grey had sympathised with her. He could understand the distress it must cause to have to cope with a middle-aged groper on a daily basis.

  But he had no compunction about making a pass at Lucia. Every instinct told him she would resist. There was no question of them ending up in bed together. Nor was there any likelihood of her screaming for a lawyer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN HER art student days, and later when she was working at the advertising agency, Lucia had often passed through the great triple archway leading off the north side of Piccadilly on her way to the loan exhibitions put on by the Royal Academy.

  The spacious courtyard surrounding the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Academy’s first president, with his palette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, was the scene of many happy memories for her. Here, with her fellow students, she had stood in line to see masterpieces by Goya, Tiepolo and other immortal artists.

  Life had seemed full of promise then. Even after the realities of earning a living had forced her to recognise her limitations and modify her ambitions, there had still been the golden dream of meeting her true love to make life seem an exciting adventure.

  That prospect, too, was tarnished now; partly by her own fault, and partly by the experience of people she knew whose dreams of being happy-ever-after had ended in disillusionment.

  Tonight, crossing the courtyard in the company of Rosemary and her son, Lucia remembered the other occasions when she had come here. This time her sense of anticipation was counterbalanced by apprehension. Although it was most unlikely she would be recognised, it was hard to rid herself of the feeling that what she had done, and where she had been, hung about her like an inescapable aura.

  The others were waiting for them by the steps to the entrance and soon they were all in the crowded foyer dominated by a majestically wide staircase leading up to the lofty galleries.

  For some reason the crush in the foyer made Lucia feel uncomfortable to the point of wanting to turn tail. But escape was an impossibility. She just had to tough it out until her uneasiness passed off.

  Grey was at an advantage in crowded places, his height allowing him to see beyond the people surrounding him. But tonight he was not looking out for people he knew and would be expected to speak to. Social obligations—never of primary importance to him—were the last thing on his mind. He had other fish to fry.

  He glanced at the fish in question, forced to acknowledge that she was looking unexpectedly striking in her cream silk shirt and a long narrow black skirt that looked decorous when she was standing still but gave eye-catching glimpses of her slim legs when she moved.

  Without any jewellery and with only minimal make-up, somehow she managed to outshine most of the women present despite their designer outfits and hours spent at expensive hairdressers. The sheer black tights she was wearing had been a present from his mother when she returned from her shopping expedition.

  Looking at Lucia more closely, he noticed a faint sheen of moisture on her temples. Although the foyer was crowded, the temperature was not uncomfortably high even for men in suits and certainly not for women. The dew on her skin had to be caused by some form of stress.

  Her discomfiture should have left him unmoved, even pleased him. But he found that it didn’t.

  In a murmured aside the others wouldn’t catch, he said, ‘Are you feeling ill? Do you need to get out of here?’

  Lucia was amazed that, of the four people she was with, it should be Grey who recognised her unease and offered assistance. For an instant she caught herself thinking what a rock of support the man would be to a woman he cared about.

  Then she realised his concern was not really for her but rather for the rest of the party who would have their enjoyment disrupted if, as he might fear, she fainted or threw up.

  She pinned a bright smile to her lips. ‘I’m feeling fine,’ she assured him. Then, seeing his face harden, would have added, But thank you for your concern, if his sister hadn’t chosen that moment to speak to him.

  Once they had mounted the staircase and were being led round the exhibition by Tom, the panicky feelings subsided. She was able to give most of her mind to what they had come to see. But, interesting as the exhibition was, it could not wholly distract her from her puzzlement over Grey who, at times, showed signs of detesting her, this afternoon had seemed as if he might pounce, and a little while ago had tuned in to her unease more intuitively than either his mother or sister.

  The man was a conundrum. Would she ever understand what made him tick? Sometimes she had the feeling that even the people closest to him didn’t really know him.

  A week later Grey drove down to Larchwood. Since the night of the Academy party he had been annoyed with himself for not carrying out his intention to get rid of Lucia by making a heavy pass.

  But, when it came to the point, he had changed his mind. Aware that the evening had already been some kind of ordeal for her, he had found himself curiously reluctant to add to her problems.

  In the meantime he had thought of a more orthodox way of discouraging her.

  Lucia was alone in the house when Grey arrived. Both Rosemary and Braddy were out, visiting a former home help who was recovering from an operation.

  After she had offered him coffee, which he declined, Grey said, ‘Before you start driving my mother around on these painting trips, I’d like to satisfy myself that you’re a competent driver. You can show off your paces in my car.’ He handed her the keys.

  Lucia was appalled. Driving a strange car—a very expensive car—with Grey watching her every move was an ordeal she wasn’t ready for. For a moment she was tempted to say, I can’t…you will make me too nervous. Then she realised she had no option. If she chickened out, he would use it as a lever to get rid of her. He had backed off last time, when his mother had stood her ground on the day of Lucia’s arrival. But he wouldn’t do that a second time.

  ‘Do you think that’s a fair test? Your car isn’t exactly typical of the average hired car,’ she pointed out.

  ‘A competent driver should be able to drive anything short of a heavy goods vehicle,’ he said sternly. ‘I’m not asking you to take it into a maelstrom of traffic. The roads around here are quiet.’

  As they walked towards his car, Lucia remembered her official driving test. She had been nervous, but nothing like as nervous as she was now. The examiner had been a small balding man whose manner had been pleasant if not exactly friendly. But he certainly hadn’t been hostile, as she felt Grey was. He wanted her to fail. She could feel it in her bones.

  He was so determined to get rid of
her that he was prepared to risk damage to his beautiful car in order to achieve that end.

  Gritting her teeth, she gathered her will-power together, determined to stay cool and not let him throw her into a panic.

  Grey opened the driver’s door for her. ‘You’ll need to adjust the seat. I’ll show you how in a moment.’ He closed the door and walked round the bonnet.

  The interior of the car had the luxurious smell of real leather upholstery, but she wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it, or the elegant arrangement of the various dials on the custom-built walnut fascia. Part of her felt as daunted as if she were sitting in the cockpit of a private plane.

  Grey slid his tall frame into the passenger seat and closed them inside what suddenly seemed a much smaller space than it had when she was occupying it by herself.

  Having shown her how to adjust the seat, he then pointed out all the controls.

  Finally he sat back, pulled the seat-belt across his shoulder and chest, clipped it into place and said, ‘Right: it’s all yours.’

  Forty minutes later, she drove back up the drive, feeling as if she had been through a gruelling three-day course to test her mental and physical stamina.

  After she had stopped the car, put on the handbrake and switched off the engine, she turned and looked him in the eyes. ‘Are you satisfied?’

  ‘You seem to be competent…in not very testing conditions,’ he tacked on.

  Lucia removed the keys from the ignition and handed them to him. His grudging agreement infuriated her. There had been a couple of moments when, if she hadn’t anticipated poor road use on the part of other drivers, his car might have been damaged. He had to have nerves of steel to have sat through those two incidents without showing any sign of wanting to grab the wheel or even of being on edge. But while his self-control might be admirable, she could not admire his unwillingness to concede how well she had performed, given the nature of the test.

  ‘You hoped I would fail, didn’t you?’ she said bluntly. ‘You still want me out of here’—with a gesture embracing Larchwood.

  As if he intended to ignore the question, Grey got out of the car. Expecting him to head for the front door, she stayed where she was, her hands clenched with rage at the cold arrogance of the man.

  Instead, to her surprise, he came round to open her door. Resting one arm along the top of it, he looked down at her with an expression she could not read. ‘I expected you to fail,’ he said coolly. ‘But the stakes were high and you rose to the occasion. I admire your ability to do that. Just be sure that you maintain the same level of care when you’re driving my mother.’

  It took all Lucia’s self-control not to tell him she had never met a more monumental prig. In fact the epithet on the tip of her tongue was even more derogatory. As she bit it back, she could tell by the gleam in his eye that he knew what was in her mind and had been deliberately goading her to say something he could use against her.

  Swinging her legs out of the car, she put her feet to the ground, stood up and said, with saccharine politeness, ‘I’ll do my best, I promise you.’

  The memory of his attempt to expel her from the Calderwood orbit was something she thought about every time she and his mother used the car they had rented to explore the narrow lanes and winding coastal roads on the little island of Guernsey, a dependency of the British Crown but closer to the coast of France.

  ‘I wish Grey would pop over and join us for a couple of days,’ said Rosemary, more than once during their stay.

  Lucia murmured agreement but hoped that he wouldn’t. She had fallen in love with the place and didn’t want her pleasure marred by Grey’s disturbing presence.

  They were lucky with the weather and spent long hours out of doors, painting.

  ‘You are looking much better,’ Rosemary told her, the day they flew back to the mainland. ‘Being here has done you good.’

  The success of their first painting trip made Rosemary eager to venture further afield. She knew of a house in Spain that some friends had rented for their summer holiday, describing its setting as idyllic.

  On the evening that the long range forecast on TV said a month of wet weather was ahead, she rang the owners of the house at their English number and arranged to take it for a week with an option to extend the booking if she wished.

  The following morning she called a travel agency in the nearest town and asked them to organise two first-class seats on a scheduled flight to Alicante.

  Grey heard about this development when he came to Larchwood at the weekend to be present at a dinner party Rosemary had set up some time ago as part of a neighbour’s programme to entertain a VIP house guest.

  ‘I planned the table before it was certain you would be here,’ she told Lucia. ‘I hope you won’t mind being left out?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Lucia assured her. ‘I don’t expect to be included in everything. If I may, I’ll spend the evening reading your new guidebooks.’ A parcel of books had arrived from London that morning.

  Grey arrived a couple of hours before the others were due. He looked rather worn, Lucia thought, as he entered the drawing room. As if, even at the summit of the Calderwood organisation, it had been a tough week.

  Each time she saw him, he struck her as too physical a man to spend his life behind a desk, or at the head of the table in a boardroom. On the bridge of a naval ship, or in charge of an army command post—yes. She could visualise him in any number of jobs from war-reporting on TV to conducting important million-dollar sales for a leading fine arts auction house. But he didn’t seem to fit what he really did. His height, his shoulders, his bearing and especially his angular jawline and hard midriff were not those of any top echelon businessmen she had ever seen.

  After greeting them both, he kissed his mother and went to fix himself a drink. ‘What about you two?’ he asked, opening the corner cupboard.

  ‘Not for me, dear. Lucia, would you like something?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Lucia found it hard not to watch him. He seemed to draw her gaze to him, like a pin being drawn to a magnet.

  Their forthcoming trip to Spain came up a few minutes later when Grey mentioned a film opening in London the following week. ‘I think you’d enjoy it. It’s a romantic comedy.’

  ‘I’m sure we should, but we’ll have to see it some other time,’ said Rosemary, going on to explain why next week was not possible.

  Lucia expected to see one of Grey’s forbidding frowns appear and was surprised when he received the news impassively.

  When Rosemary said it was time she went up to change, Lucia left the room with her.

  About forty minutes later, she was reading one of the guidebooks when there was a knock on her door. She knew it wasn’t Rosemary or Braddy. There was only one person it could be, though why he should come to her room she couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Come in.’

  As he opened the door, she laid down the book, reminded of the day he had burst into the bathroom. The memory warmed her cheeks and she hoped the colour didn’t show.

  ‘Would you like a drink now?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s kind of you…but I think I’ll stay on water tonight.’ She indicated the bottle of mineral water on the table beside her armchair.

  The bedroom had another armchair on the far side of the dressing table but she hesitated to ask him to sit down. If his brother-in-law had had a reason to enter her room, it wouldn’t have made her feel on edge. But, apart from being a loving husband, Tom was a different kind of man. The sort women instinctively felt safe with. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling safe with Grey, at least not in the sense of being unaware of his masculinity and seeing him simply as another human being.

  ‘Are you happy about this Spanish trip?’ he asked. ‘There could be language difficulties…and driving on the right can be tricky, the first time you do it.’

  ‘I don’t have a problem with it. Do you?’ she asked bluntly.

  It must have been fifteen seconds before he answer
ed. The long pause increased her tension.

  Finally, he said, ‘Not provided you give me your word to make immediate contact if anything should go wrong.’

  ‘Of course you have my word on that.’ It had to be a step forward that he thought her word was worth having.

  ‘Good.’ Turning back to the door, he paused. ‘By the way, you’re not missing anything. If the visiting senator is anything like his English cousins, it will be an extremely dull evening. You’re better off up here. Goodnight, Lucia.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ His use of her name sent a strange tremor through her.

  As the door closed behind him, she relaxed. She took up the book and tried to focus on details that might be useful when they reached Spain. But in her mind’s eye she saw the tall figure going down the stairs, a dutiful son taking his late father’s place and supporting his mother through an evening not of his choosing.

  Behind the sometimes urbane, sometimes autocratic façade, what was he really like?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  COCOONED in the comfortable tranquillity of the first-class section of the aircraft taking them to Spain, Rosemary and Lucia were sipping the drinks offered to them within moments of their being seated, and flipping through their copies of the airline’s in-flight magazines, when a stewardess said, ‘Here you are, sir,’ and made a gracious gesture at the two empty seats on the other side of the aisle.

  ‘Grey!’ his mother exclaimed, when she saw who the newcomer was. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m taking a few days off. You don’t mind if I join you, do you?’ His glance at Lucia included her in the question.

  ‘What a lovely surprise,’ said Rosemary, answering for both of them. ‘But why spring it on us like this? If you’d let us know last night, we could have collected you on the way here.’

  ‘It was possible I might have had to pull out at the last moment.’

  ‘Shall I help you with your things, sir?’ the stewardess offered, opening the overhead locker.