In Want of a Wife? (7 page)

‘Really? It’s funny what people drift into, though, isn’t it? Highly unsuitable relationships …’ Her face was flushed and her dark hair was dramatic against the pristine white of the pillow. What was she wearing? he wondered. Was she one of those women whose underwear belied their outward appearance? Was she the leather-jacket-wearing motorbike rider who liked the feel of silk, satin and lace against her skin? Like a runaway horse, his imagination broke its rein and galloped off at furious speed. Hell; he could feel himself getting worked up at the thought of her in a sensible cotton bra and granny knickers! What the hell was wrong with him?

He was forced to turn away and look out of the window
at the falling snow with his back to her, so that she couldn’t make out the evidence of his attraction bulging in his pants.

‘I wouldn’t be so stupid,’ Lizzy hotly denied, to his back.

‘No, of course not.’ Louis, composed again, turned around and looked her squarely in the face. Being cooped up in this place was beginning to do crazy things to him. Women like the one lying in the bed weren’t his type. He liked them taller, fuller breasted, preferably blonde and very, very compliant.

And, whilst he might indulge his women with expensive presents, he didn’t like gold-diggers and the Sharp family sat firmly in that category—whatever Lizzy might have to say on the subject. And he had plenty. ‘You still haven’t said what you would like to eat—and, to answer your question about who would be in charge of making it, I’ve inherited sufficient help to ensure that the nuts and bolts of this place keep ticking over till it’s completely renovated and more staff can be brought on board.’

‘I didn’t see anyone yesterday.’

‘I’d given them the evening off and they were in their quarters.’

‘Oh. Right. Well, maybe I could have something light,’ she said, knowing that he wouldn’t leave until she asked for something. ‘Some toast and maybe an egg would be fine. Thank you.’

‘And I’ll bring you some more tablets, or else your sister will, although she’s somewhere in the bowels of this place with Nicholas and I lack the desire to hunt them down.’

‘I should, um, thank you for …’ She made a vague, all-encompassing gesture. ‘Also for coming to get me when my motorbike broke down.’ She didn’t want to press him on what exactly had happened to her motorbike, which was her responsibility after all, but he must have read her mind.

He said without waiting to be asked, ‘The snow is supposed to clear by tomorrow and I’ve arranged for it to be collected and taken to the garage for servicing.’

‘You shouldn’t have,’ Lizzy said politely.

‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong.’ Louis perched on the side of the bed and noticed the way she edged fractionally away from him. ‘If you stress over that bike of yours, well, stress isn’t going to set you on the road to a swift recovery, is it?’

Lizzy felt her breath catch in her throat. He was mesmerising, mesmerising in a way that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, which surely couldn’t be a good thing?

‘And I want you back on your feet as soon as possible, because you and I need to have a bracing little chat, and it should wait until you’re fit and strong.’

‘A bracing little chat?’ Lizzy wondered why she didn’t care for the sound of that. ‘Bracing little chats’ were what she gave her schoolchildren when they had been particularly naughty.

‘About some information that’s recently come into my possession.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m finding that hard to believe. Surely there are no secrets in that close-knit family of yours?’

‘We’re pretty open with each other.’ Lizzy dragged the syllables out while she tried to work out where he was going with that enigmatic statement. On another level, her senses were wildly reacting to his proximity, drinking in the sharp, beautiful, dangerous angles of his face and the easy, graceful strength of his body.

‘Then it should come as no surprise to you that your father is now heavily in debt and in desperate need of cash or else he might just find himself without a roof over his head.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Lizzy whispered.

She had blanched, and for an instant Louis felt a rush of guilty awareness that he might have gone too far with this revelation. But he couldn’t help feeling that Rose’s sudden,
demonstrative affection for his friend, after what had seemed a certain amount of indifference, had its roots in something less than innocent. He had expected to see a flicker of something on Lizzy’s face, something that would indicate that she knew all about her father’s difficulties. Now, he could have kicked himself for not feeling out the ground before shooting his mouth off. But the words were out and couldn’t be retracted.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Lizzy eventually said in a shaky voice, and Louis shook his head to rid himself of the ridiculous feeling that he had somehow been a complete bastard. Hell, he was looking after his own! Since when had anyone ever been able to divert him from a course of action once he had set his mind to it?

‘Believe it.’ He stood up to put some distance between them because the scent of her was wafting through his head and threatening to derail his cool-headed self-assurance. ‘Now, I’ll send your food up. If you want anything else, just phone through to the kitchens. There will always be someone available.’

He was irritated with himself for dithering, but she had turned her head away, and with a click of his tongue he left the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.

F
OR
once the weather forecasters got it right, and two days later the snow had stopped completely and in its place was a splendid, cloudless blue sky and bright, cold sun.

Dosed up on painkillers and determined to get back to her own house, Lizzy practically had to wrench herself free from Rose, who had settled into a Florence Nightingale routine that included hot drinks on demand and lengthy conversations about Nicholas: he was her big love. She had saved herself for him but she didn’t regret it. He hadn’t proposed as yet, but she could feel it in her bones that a proposal was just a heartbeat away, and she would say yes! But would Mum and Dad be able to afford a lavish wedding? They did have five daughters, after all. Well, provided all five got married.

Which proved conclusively that she knew nothing about their financial situation.

Which made Lizzy think that perhaps Louis had fabricated the whole sorry story to sow dissension in the ranks, even though she knew, somewhere deep inside her, that every word he had said had been true.

Not that she could corner him and get him to give her more details, because as soon as the last flake of snow had fallen, and the courtyard had been cleared, he had taken off back to London in a blur of noise and whirring helicopter-blades.

Jessica and Eloise had gone with him, no doubt desperate to return to civilisation—where they could choose between three
hundred types of coffee at the snap of a finger in chintzy little cafés, and where wellies came in attractive patterns and fetching colours and weren’t designed for anything more strenuous than having a lazy stroll through Kew Gardens.

‘Won’t this place feel way too big with just the two of you in it?’ Lizzy had ventured, and then had listened to how really remarkably small it was when you just occupied a handful of rooms and ignored the rest.

With a sinking heart Lizzy knew, as soon as she walked through the front door and was ushered inside by her parents, that everything Louis had said had been one-hundred percent true: neither of them seemed in the least bit shocked or disappointed that Rose had decided to stay on with Nicholas.

‘We’ll be seeing them soon enough,’ her mother said over dinner. ‘I’ve just come off the phone from Nicholas, in fact. I was suggesting that it might be a nice idea to have a little Christmas party at Crossfeld. The weather’s going to be fine for the next few weeks, apparently, and it would be lovely to show willing to all the folk around here. After all, he’s going to be relying on them for lots of practical help once work starts on the place in the New Year. You know how it works around here,’ Grace continued comfortably. ‘It’s always good to get in with the locals.’

‘He might feel a bit uncomfortable with all the fuss and attention.’ Lizzy speared a pea on her plate, thought better of it and closed her knife and fork. Next to her Maisie and Leigh were busy dissecting Nicholas’s sisters and conducting a silly conversation about which rich and famous person they would most like to turn up to the Christmas party at Crossfeld—because obviously Louis was so rich that he would be sure to know hundreds of beautiful people.

‘Hundreds of beautiful people might not see the wilds of Scotland in winter as the most desirable place to be,’ Lizzy said irritably. ‘And, anyway, where would all these beautiful people stay? Half of the house is closed off.’

She had planned to get her father to one side so that she could probe him about the so-called debt that was hanging like an albatross around his neck, according to Louis. But there was no chance of that with Maisie and Leigh dominating the conversation in their usual high-spirited manner. Her father smiled and occasionally joined in and her mother lapsed into dreamy predictions of a forthcoming marriage, which was enough to make Lizzy squirm in her chair.

‘Marriage is a really big commitment,’ she heard herself saying in the sort of prissy voice that had her sisters yawning and rolling their eyes to the ceiling, butting in to tell her that the only thing Rose ever wanted was to settle down and have a bundle of kids. ‘You shouldn’t try and rush Rose into anything!’ she persevered. But it was difficult to strike the right note when both her parents were busy clearing the table and stacking the dishwasher, apparently not paying much attention to a word she was saying.

‘Why can’t you just be happy for your sister?’ Grace asked sharply, finally picking up on Lizzy’s fourth attempt to quell her mother’s simmering excitement over a marriage that had yet to be proposed—and a wedding that stood a very good chance of coming to nothing. ‘Instead of just sitting there and finding all the reasons why she and Nicholas shouldn’t be in a relationship.’

‘They’re not … There are lots of differences between them. They come from two completely different worlds, Mum …’

‘Not everyone thinks it’s a stumbling block to fall for a wealthy man, Lizzy,’ her father said, sitting down and looking at her across the table. ‘Because someone has money doesn’t disqualify them from the race.’

‘I know
that.’

‘And besides.’ He lowered his voice, but Maisie and Leigh had disappeared off to the lure of reality TV and wouldn’t have heard him if he had been shouting at the top of his lungs. ‘Things are a little tight here at the moment, to be honest. A
few bad investments. At any rate, we’ve had to remortgage the house and I can’t pretend that it wouldn’t help if Rose married Nicholas. I might just be able to put a business proposition to him that could be a life belt for us.’

‘And don’t you go breathing a word of this to your sisters,’ her mother warned, but her face was drawn when she pulled up a chair to sit next to her husband. ‘We’re telling you because you’ve your head screwed on. Maisie and Leigh, well, heaven only knows where
their
heads are—and thank the Lord that Vivian isn’t here to lecture us on your father’s bad investments! And Rose. Well, she deserves her stab at happiness.’

‘So in other words you’ve pushed Rose together with Nicholas because he’s rich and you’d like him to help you out of a hole.’ She regretted it as soon as the words were out.

‘Rose fell for that young man the minute she saw him,’ her father said in a tone Lizzy had never heard before, then he smiled that crooked smile he always saved for her. ‘She’s as romantic as they come, Busy Lizzy; you of all people should know that. If your mother and I had wanted to shove any of you into marrying a man for his money, we would have looked no further than you.’

‘Why is that?’ She smiled weakly back at them but something inside her twisted.

‘Because you’re tough and hard-headed, and out of all you girls you’re the one who would be able to see marriage as a business proposition. Not—’ he sat back and diffused his remark with a chuckle ‘—that your mum and I would ever do that.’

Louis—Lizzy thought later, lying in the bedroom she had shared with Rose a million years ago when they had been children—saw her as an arrogant tough-nut with too much of a mouth on her. Would he ever have spoken to any other woman on the face of the earth the way he had spoken to her? Her parents saw her as hard-headed and practical but in a way that
didn’t seem particularly endearing. To Maisie and Leigh, she was too serious, the last person they would think of inviting to one of their wild parties at university. And Vivian. Well, Vivian lived in a world of her own.

And who could she blame but herself for the way the rest of the world perceived her? She had always been the one who braved the elements with her father at football games. She knew more about rugby than most of the guys she had ever dated. She rode a motorbike, which seemed a pretty practical mode of transport, as far as she was concerned, but which most people found a little strange. Was it any wonder that Louis took no trouble to spare her feelings when it came to telling her how things stood? Any wonder that the whole subject of marriage an ongoing background chant from her mother for as long as she could remember, had never actually been applied to
her?

She sternly told herself that she was perfectly happy with things exactly the way they were. But the following morning, fully recovered and in no mood to spend the day brooding, she packed an overnight bag and announced that she was going back down to London. But she would return for the Christmas period, she added hurriedly, knowing when to change her plans in order to avoid confrontation. So that she could
go to the ball.
Like Cinderella.

‘I know they’re not actually expecting me at school.’ She grabbed a slice of toast on the move whilst checking on her phone to see what time the cheapest train would be running. ‘But I have stuff to collect. And I have to tell Colleen and Paula that I won’t be sharing their alternative Christmas.’

There were also several other things she would have to do, although these she would be keeping under her hat. The first would be to buy something really special for the wretched party at Crossfeld, something sexy and pretty which hadn’t been hurriedly borrowed from one of her sisters. Then she would look up Louis at his London house and, instead of
attacking him and baring her teeth, she would try and plead Rose’s cause—and she would also try and use a few feminine wiles when she did it.

More than ever now, it seemed vital that he understood how deeply in love Rose was with Nicholas and how important it would be if he could just give them both his blessing. Soft-spoken, bespectacled Nicholas was in awe of his sophisticated, predatory friend; would love actually conquer all if Louis got it into his head to break up the relationship? Lizzy had her doubts.

But, more than ever, Louis would think that he had the right to protect his friend. The Sharp family was in trouble financially and with everything to win; he would find it perfectly understandable that Rose would be chosen as the sacrificial lamb: beautiful, shy Rose. He would see that as the essence of a good gold-digger. He lived and breathed cynicism. If he had reluctantly been coming round to giving them the benefit of the doubt, that would have been blown out of the sky by revelations of her father’s financial situation.

When Lizzy thought about it, she had to grit her teeth together and remind herself that trying to bludgeon her way through to him wasn’t going to work. For Louis Jumeau, women should be creatures of grace and beauty, and if they weren’t he had no time for them.

On the train down, she managed to get his address from Rose with a series of half lies and half truths. She
did
want to see him but he certainly
hadn’t
made any promises about donating money to the school. And it
was
vital that she saw him straight away rather than wait, though not because the school was about to close and she wanted to sort things out before everyone disappeared for the Christmas break. She even managed to get his mobile number, which apparently was only given to a few select people. Lizzy heard this and had to suppress a snort of laughter. Who did the man think he was?

And wouldn’t it be funny if he was besieged with thousands of unwanted calls because she had sold his number online?

The following day, however, there was nothing amusing about her situation. She had arranged to meet Louis that evening for dinner at a restaurant in Belgravia and she suspected that the only reason he had agreed had been out of curiosity. He would be wondering what she could possibly have of interest to say to him. Hadn’t he already laid down the ground rules? What else could there be to say on the subject?

She had dashed from school to the shops and had bought herself an outfit so out of her comfort zone that she was almost scared to remove it from its tissue paper and put it on in the privacy of her bedroom.

But put it on she did. The red-and-white-checked miniskirt hugged her and showed off legs that were slender and well shaped. The long-sleeved, body-hugging ribbed jumper, also in a startling shade of red, was modest yet managed to suggest curves she hadn’t really known she possessed. And she now owned a pair of very high ankle boots—which, she grudgingly admitted, looked passable.

There was nothing she could do about her coat or her bag but the small,
faux
fur hat was stylish.

She made sure to arrive late. Not so late that there was a risk that he may just become bored and leave, but late enough to ensure that he would be already there when she arrived.

And he was, sitting in a corner of the discreet, very posh French restaurant. It was a prime seat for looking at who was entering the restaurant, but Louis had the
Financial Times
in front of him and was nursing a drink. Lizzy took a deep breath and steadied her fraying nerves. It would have been easy to give in to that fleeting moment of panic, but instead she gathered herself and walked confidently towards him. She could feel heads turning to look at her, and for the first time she understood why Maisie and Leigh—and even Rose,
to some extent—were so obsessed with clothes. In her small skirt, tight top and high shoes, and with her hair tumbling down her back, she felt sexy.

When she was standing in front of Louis and he finally looked up, she felt a surge of pleasure because, controlled as he was, he couldn’t conceal that flash of pure, sexual appreciation.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ she said carelessly. ‘Traffic.’

‘As in you stopping it?’

Lizzy blushed furiously and sat down.

‘Nice outfit,’ he drawled, once again composed.

‘Oh, it’s just some old thing I grabbed from the back of the wardrobe.’ The wine being poured in her glass was a blessed distraction, as was the over-sized menu when it arrived. Her nerves began to settle over the polite pleasantries about her health and the weather and the small amount of information she volunteered about the school Christmas play she was helping to produce.

She was acutely aware of his legs under the table and the fact that they were only centimetres away from her own. As he leaned forward to signal the waiter to take their order, his knee actually brushed against hers and she had to restrain herself from giving a little startled yelp.

‘So …’ Louis sat back in his chair, tilting his body so that he could stretch out his long legs. ‘Now that we’ve politely done the pleasantries, are you going to tell me why you’re here? Or did you just decide that you wanted me to see your sexy side?’