Authors: Fiona McIntosh
Stella was waiting for Georgina Ainsworth to stamp her foot too. ‘Mrs Ainsworth, if we’ve made arrangements for lessons, then unless there is an emergency, it is polite at the very least for Georgina to turn up for them.’ She was surprised how commanding she sounded and dared not look towards Rafe, although she could feel his gaze on her. ‘I would love a free day to roam the gorgeous Kent countryside but you are paying me very well to teach your daughters and I want to make sure that I fulfill your expectations. I can’t of course if the student goes shopping instead.’ She watched Beatrice flutter her eyelids as if deeply wearied of the topic. Stella turned to Georgina. ‘No more excuses please, Georgina; I will leave your timetable with Mrs Boyd and a copy with your mother and perhaps there need be no further misunderstandings.’
‘Y-yes, let’s see to that, Bee,’ Rafe stammered, reaching for a Scotch that Stella only noticed now. She also noticed him put it to his lips but not taste it. ‘I think that’s fair enough.’
‘Oh, do shut up, Daddy. You’re not helping,’ Georgie whined. ‘Mummy, are you really going to allow a stranger to boss us around?’
Beatrice Ainsworth gave a pained glance to her husband but he was moving away to play cat’s cradle with his youngest daughter and it was written on Beatrice’s face that she understood she was going to have to sort it out. ‘Georgie, do stop complaining, or I’ll get one of my headaches. Now, darling, it is fair that you attend lessons because we’re paying for them. You told me that your lesson had been postponed until tomorrow so we could stay on in Brighton. I had no idea you’d telephoned Mrs Boyd. Is that the call you made when we were having tea at the Grand?’
Stella shifted her glance to the daughter again, delighted that Georgina had been caught out, but keeping her expression neutral.
Georgina cut her tutor a look of pure loathing.
‘Nine-thirty sharp we begin tomorrow and we’ll be done by eleven. You’ll soon see I am not trying to make your life difficult, Georgina,’ Stella tried again.
‘But you are!’ the girl snapped and ran to the door, leaving the room filled with tension. ‘I’ll take my meal upstairs. Gracie, tell Mrs Boyd, will you?’ She flounced out but only after throwing a scowl at her mother. ‘You’re no help, Mummy!’ And then she was gone. The carpeted stairs mercifully dulled her footsteps although they did hear a distant door slam.
‘Why is Georgie always so mean?’ Grace wondered, taking her father’s hand.
‘She’s a teenager,’ he replied, looking sideways towards Stella, who caught his glance. She didn’t believe his rationale either.
‘Heavens, that girl is so dramatic. I think I might have been like that when I was younger,’ Beatrice admitted with a chuckle. She swallowed the gin and tonic. ‘Are we having another gimlet? More lemon this time, darling.’
‘Will do.’
Distantly a phone rang. Stella remembered seeing it in the main hall.
‘Oh, who can that be?’
‘It’s always for Daddy,’ Grace chirruped from somewhere behind one of the curtains where she had been humming to herself.
With Rafe watching her from behind his wife, Stella couldn’t help but notice that now he had the freedom to take off his glasses and smile softly at her. And suddenly there he was, the Rafe she had met in London – calm, confident, suave. She couldn’t reconcile the bumbling Dougie Ainsworth with the sure-footed, confident man who was now reaching for the soda syphon.
‘I apologise for our daughter’s behaviour, Stella. She won’t be late again for your lesson,’ he said.
Beatrice looked up. ‘Grace, go and check on your sister and see if she can’t be persuaded to join us for dinner.’
Stella wanted to tell them to let Georgina stew but she held her tongue and sipped her sherry and tried not to blush at the way Rafe’s gaze was heating her in places she’d prefer him not to. He sprayed the soda and Beatrice shrieked as a sharp squirt of fizzing water drenched her back. Grace convulsed into helpless laughter and Rafe was around the armchair like a springing cat.
‘Oh, my dear. I am so, so sorry,’ he said, earnestly. ‘I thought I was pointing the spout the right way, but I —’
Beatrice looked horror-struck and vaguely catatonic with an open mouth as the cold water seeped uncomfortably through her velvet dress. Mrs Boyd, who had presumably heard the scream, had barged in and was trying to work out what had occurred.
Stella helped out. ‘Er, Mrs Ainsworth was accidentally sprayed by the soda; I’m afraid she’s very damp,’ she offered.
Mrs Boyd immediately moved to her mistress and helped her to stand up. Beatrice was squirming and squalling while Stella tried to suppress her amusement.
‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ Rafe bleated.
‘Oh, do be quiet, Doug,’ she complained. ‘You’re only making it worse. Grace! Stop your laughing and go speak with your sister!’
Stella cut a glance towards the instantly quietened Grace and the girl scampered off.
‘Let’s get you out of these wet clothes, Mrs Ainsworth.’ Mrs Boyd offered an arm to her employer as though she were an invalid. ‘Miss Myles?’
‘Yes?’ Stella stood and looked at the housekeeper.
‘That was a Miss Farnsworth calling,’ Boyd said sternly, almost as an accusation. ‘I told her you were with the family and she said she will call tomorrow if she can, probably quite late, though.’
‘Thank you.’ Stella watched the two women walk to the door, unsure of what to do next. ‘Mrs Ainsworth . . . ?’
Beatrice waved a hand. ‘Amuse yourselves. I shall be back in ten minutes.’
The door was closed behind them and Stella turned slowly now to fix her other employer with an accusatory stare. She said nothing immediately, taking a few moments to gauge his mood as he stood warming himself by the fire and she sensed his sheepishness.
‘You did that on purpose,’ she finally breathed, still filled with astonishment.
‘For good reason.’
‘Good reason? You deliberately sprayed your wife —’
He gave her a soft look of exasperation, pushing at the air before him and she immediately dropped her voice.
‘Why?’
‘I needed a chance to talk with you alone.’ Rafe’s voice was now so low she had to sit forward to hear him speaking just above the gentle crackle of the fire.
‘Bloody hell,’ she gasped in a whisper and this amused him hugely.
‘A woman who swears properly. That’s refreshing around here.’
‘I’ve good reason. What was that all about?’
‘Stella, I wanted to thank you for keeping mum about our original meeting,’ he said.
‘You didn’t have to go to such lengths.’
He nodded as though he wanted to explain more but something prevented him from doing so. ‘Even so, I appreciate your discretion.’
‘Presumably you have good reason for you and I to be seen as meeting for the first time today?’
‘I do. However, while it is not my intention to put you into any difficult position, it couldn’t be avoided. You will have to trust me on this.’
‘But why should your wife mind if —’
‘Stella, my wife is . . .’ He shook his head. ‘She is extremely protective of whatever it is that she prizes.’
‘I’m not sure I understand you, Mr Ainsworth.’
‘Rafe,’ he murmured.
‘In a dance hall, you’re Rafe . . . even in the taxi afterwards. But not here. Not even by your own admission are you Rafe here. Why is that?’
‘I told you I have —’
‘Three names, yes,’ she hissed under her breath. ‘But why would you share with me your preferred name that the women of your childhood used but you don’t share it with the women of your adult life?’
He looked back at her with a pained expression that was so poignant in that moment that she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. You do not have to answer that. It truly is none of my business.’
‘You did make it your business, though.’
Stella blushed, remembering how demanding she had been that first night. ‘But I have new perspective now,’ she countered, and they glanced at the door, perhaps both thinking of the women behind it. ‘You are no longer a stranger from a dance hall whom I didn’t expect to meet again. You are Mr Ainsworth, my employer, and I’m grateful for this short-term contract and would do nothing to jeopardise it, or how your family regards you.’ She lifted a shoulder as if to say that nothing more needed to be said. ‘However, what you do when you are away from your family is indeed your own affair and I don’t plan on making it my concern, so you can continue to count on my discretion.’ The way he was looking at her was making her cheeks burn warmer than they should on this cool evening and deep in her heart she knew she was trying to convince herself of her indifference. ‘What I’m trying to say is that you appear to have a private side that is unknown to the people you love, and it is no intention of mine to add any awkwardness to those . . . um . . . secrets.’ That last word was spoken cautiously as it sounded sinister but contrary to her expectation, all she got from him was a burst of soft amusement.
‘Thank you, Stella.’
She bristled. ‘I didn’t imagine what I said was amusing?’
‘You’re very hooked on the notion that I have an alternate life to hide from my family.’
‘Well, if I’ve read you wrong, then I apologise. Mr Ainsworth, maybe it’s best under the circumstances if I don’t share the family meal this evening. Really, it’s not —’
‘Nonsense! Why?’
Stella let out a slow breath. ‘Because I feel uncomfortable.’
‘I’m sorry. Is that all my fault?’
‘You keep apologising. There’s no need . . . really.’ She hesitated but Stella felt determined to make him understand and not laugh at her. ‘But you shouldn’t have to do what you did simply to have a quiet word with me. That alone makes me feel as though we are engaged in something clandestine, when all of this has come about because of a chance encounter.’
‘I keep apologising because my family makes it necessary. My wife treats you with indifference while our youngest is the opposite and already so in love with you she could wish you were her big sister. Meanwhile Georgina is unforgivably discourteous and I will have Beatrice speak to her about her poor manners towards you.’
‘I’m not sure that’s wise; she detests me enough already.’
‘No, I loathe her attitude to people, while her high opinion of herself and her own standing needs adjustment.’
Stella gave a sad half smile and nodded silently to signal that she couldn’t deny his sentiments.
He made a fist and pressed it silently but firmly on the mantelpiece to show his quiet disgust. ‘Her mother protects her, unfortunately. Georgina has been allowed to ride roughshod over people all of her life. She has been indulged so thoroughly that I fear there is no way back for her other than the harsh way with some sort of violent awakening. Boarding school, for instance. I’ve discussed a finishing school in Switzerland in the hope that her departure will remove the tension from the household that Georgina can provoke with a snap of her fingers. You witnessed her fine skills tonight.’
‘Maybe that’s a sound idea. I hear those schools can be firm with their charges.’
He nodded. ‘They get away with very little under the keen eyes of the mistresses, most of them older spinsters with an axe to grind about temperament and behaviour . . . and hemlines of the young women of today.’
‘Too much ankle?’ Stella grinned.
Rafe pursed his lips in a comical pantomime of a high-born lady of the Victorian age.
Stella chuckled as quietly as she could. ‘Oh gosh, you’d make a great Lady Bracknell.’
‘What do you mean? I already have,’ he said, affecting an injured tone. ‘I was Lady Augusta Bracknell in the school’s production of
The Importance of Being Earnest
. Not a single poor review, either; an agent actually asked afterwards if I would like represen-tation.’
‘Oh, yes . . . you’d make a fine actor,’ she offered dryly. Again she saw the boyish Rafe break through from the amusement and sparkle that erupted in his eyes at the memory. ‘How old were you?’
‘Twelve. Seriously, I think I was only given the role because my voice broke early.’
Stella laughed. ‘I’m trying to imagine you mincing about on stage in a silk crinoline.’
‘My father was horrified at my bustle but I swear they could hear my mother’s laughter all the way to the green room. Oh, how I loved her laugh . . .’ He looked instantly melancholy, his gaze focused on more than two decades back.
Stella realised they’d got far off the point. ‘Anyway, your girls are so different.’ She shook her head. ‘But if it’s any comfort, I imagine that life will help her grow up, when Georgina starts to live beyond the umbrella of her mother’s protection.’
He gave a soft snort as he returned to the present. ‘You’re so careful with your words, Stella.’
‘I can hardly afford not to be so.’
‘And yet I gather from Grace that you’ve been challenging Georgina?’
She nodded. ‘I intend to, every day, but in private. I think the error was mine tonight in speaking out in front of her parents. The problem is I’m too honest.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘No,’ he assured, his tone filled with irony.
She grinned. ‘My directness can get me into hot water sometimes but I’m not very good at hinting. I’d rather just be plain.’
‘You’re anything but plain, Stella,’ he mused and the softness in the way he looked at her was unnerving.
Stella hurried on because the mood of the conversation was now feeling similar to the mood of the taxi. ‘I don’t think you should talk like that.’
‘Like what?’ he said, stepping close enough that she could smell the woody, spicy scent of his shaving soap.
‘You should not be so familiar.’
‘I am merely stating a fact that no one can deny. You are beautiful, Stella, and you achieve that without an ounce of affectation . . . you dress modestly, you wear none of the ghastly cosmetic palaver that other women plaster on and yet your skin glows and your lips are —’
‘Stop! Please, this is not appropriate.’
‘I appreciate beauty in art, in nature, in women. I am merely saying you are not plain.’
‘And you’ve made your point. You made it without tripping, fumbling, stammering or even wearing glasses. As I say, you confound me.’