His Convenient Marriage. Sara Craven

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СКАЧАТЬ widespread local astonishment, Sir Robert had announced his own early retirement, and the sale of his company to a European conglomerate. Following this, within a few weeks of Alastair’s departure, the Court had been closed up, and the Markhams had gone to live in Spain.

      ‘Joining the sangria set,’ Mrs Hawkins the post mistress had remarked. ‘She’ll fit right in there.’

      But now, it seemed, they were coming back, although that didn’t necessarily mean that Alastair would be returning with them. That could be just wishful thinking on Jenny’s part, she acknowledged.

      And Chessie hadn’t wanted to question her too closely about what she’d heard. For one thing, Jenny should not have been hanging round the post office eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. For another, Chessie didn’t want to give the impression she was too interested.

      The burned child fears the fire, she thought wryly. She’d worn her heart on her sleeve once for Alastair already. This time, she would be more careful.

      If there was a ‘this time …’

       ‘My God, Chessie, I’d hardly have known you.’

      Was that what he’d say when—if—he saw her again?

      Certainly, she bore little resemblance to the girl he’d known. The Chessie of that summer had had hair streaked with sunlight. Her honey-tanned skin had glowed with youth and health as well as happiness, and her hazel eyes had smiled with confidence at the world about her.

      Now, she seemed like a tone poem in grey, she thought, picking at her unremarkable skirt and blouse. And it wasn’t just her clothes. The reflection in the window looked drab—defeated.

      Yet any kind of style or flamboyance had not seemed an option in those hideous weeks between her father’s arrest for fraud and his fatal heart attack on remand.

      She’d survived it all—the stories in the papers, the visits of the fraud squad, Jenny’s descent into hysteria—by deliberately suppressing her identity and retreating behind a wall of anonymity. Something she’d maintained ever since.

      She’d expected to find herself a kind of pariah, and yet, with a few exceptions, people in the village had been kind and tactful, making it easy for her to adopt this new muted version of her life.

      And working for Miles Hunter had helped too, in some curious way. It had been a tough and exacting time with little opportunity for recriminations or brooding.

      In the last few months, she’d even managed to reach some kind of emotional plateau just short of contentment.

      Now, thanks to Jenny’s news, she felt unsettled again.

      She was about to turn back to her desk when she heard the sound of an engine. Craning her neck, she saw Miles Hunter’s car sweep round the long curve of the drive and come to a halt in front of the main door.

      A moment later, he emerged from the driver’s seat. He stood for a moment, steadying himself, then reached for his cane and limped slowly towards the shallow flight of steps that led up to the door.

      Chessie found she was biting her lip as she watched him. Her own current problems were just so minor compared to his, she thought, with a flicker of the compassion she’d never dared show since that first day she’d worked for him.

      It was something she’d never forgotten—the way he’d stumbled slightly, getting out of his chair, and how, instinctively, she’d jumped up herself, her hands reaching out to him.

      The blue eyes had been glacial, his whole face twisted in a snarl as he’d turned on her. ‘Keep away. Don’t touch me.’

      ‘I’m so sorry.’ She’d been stricken by the look, and the tone of his voice. ‘I was just trying to help …’

      ‘If I need it, I’ll ask for it. And I certainly don’t want pity. Remember that.’

      She’d wanted to hand in her notice there and then, but she hadn’t because she’d suddenly remembered a very different exchange.

      ‘He had the world at his feet once,’ Mr Jamieson, their family solicitor, had told her when he’d first mentioned the possibility of a job, and staying on at Silvertrees. ‘Rugby blue—played squash for his county—award-winning journalist in newspaper and television. And then found himself in the wrong place at the wrong moment, when the convoy he was travelling with met a land-mine.’

      He shook his head. ‘His injuries were frightful. They thought he’d never walk again, and he had umpteen skin grafts. But while he was in hospital recovering, he wrote his first novel The Bad Day.’

      ‘Since which, he’s never looked back, of course.’ Chessie spoke with a certain irony.

      Mr Jamieson looked at her with quiet solemnity over the top of his glasses. ‘Oh, no, my dear,’ he said gently. ‘I think it likely he looks back a good deal—don’t you?’

      And Francesca felt herself reproved.

      She was back at her desk, working away, when Miles Hunter came in.

      ‘I’ve just seen your sister,’ he remarked without preamble. ‘She nearly went into the car with that damned bike of hers. Doesn’t it possess brakes?’

      ‘Yes, of course,’ Chessie said hurriedly, groaning inwardly. ‘But she does ride it far too fast. I—I’ll speak to her.’

      Miles Hunter gave her a sardonic look. ‘Will that do any good? She seems a law unto herself.’

      ‘Well, I can try at least.’

      ‘Hmm.’ He gave her a considering look. ‘She seemed stirred up about something, and so do you. Has she been upsetting you again?’

      ‘Jenny does not upset me.’ Chessie lifted her chin.

      ‘Of course not,’ he agreed affably, then sighed impatiently. ‘Just who are you trying to fool, Francesca? You spend half your life making allowances for that girl—tiptoeing around her feelings as if you were treading on eggshells. I’m damned if she does half as much for you.’

      Indignation warred inside her with shock that Miles Hunter, who invariably addressed her as Miss Lloyd, should suddenly have used her first name.

      ‘It’s been very difficult for her …’ she began defensively.

      ‘More than for you?’

      ‘In some ways. You see, Jenny …’ She realised she was about to say, Jenny was my father’s favourite, but the words died on her lips. It was something she’d never admitted before, she realised, shocked. Something she’d never even allowed herself to examine. She found herself substituting lamely, ‘Was very young when all this happened to us.’

      ‘You don’t think it’s time she took on some responsibility for her own life, perhaps?’ The dark face was quizzical.

      ‘You’re my employer, Mr Hunter,’ Chessie said steadily. ‘But that’s all. You’re not our guardian, and you have no right to judge. Jenny and I have a perfectly satisfactory relationship.’

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