‘Of course she will,’ Lucy was saying, half in jest, half serious. ‘She’s probably eyed you up as a good catch and is plotting how she can net you. And you men are so gullible, you won’t know what’s coming until it’s hit you like a freight train.’
‘I think,’ James lowered his head slightly, ‘you must be talking about the men you sleep with, Lucy, because I certainly do not fit that particular description.’ Just the opposite, he thought drily. He’d already had one collision with that particular type of freight train and he was in no danger of ever having another.
No wonder the woman had not been inclined to discover the charms of the locals. If she knew the rumours circulating about her, she would stay away for the rest of her natural life. Lucy and her friends might not be permanent residents of the place, choosing to work in Edinburgh and travel back home to their parents on the occasional weekend, but if they were discussing Sara King and her motives then he would bet his mansion on the fact that their parents were as well.
And he had to admit that the thought had crossed his own mind. Before he had met her.
If Lucy had been witness to his brief visit the day before then talk about motives and gold-digging and the search for a husband would not be figuring highly in her conversation, because Sara King had shown not the slightest interest in him as anything other than a nosy neighbour she wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible.
He wondered wryly if this wasn’t the reason why he had been spending so much time thinking about her. The fact that he had so obviously failed to impress her when in fact wowing women had always been a talent he had taken utterly for granted.
His mother was calling him over, urging him to participate in a new game of croquet, with two teams competing for a bottle of champagne. It was simply too glorious a day for them to go inside, and croquet, she whispered into his ear with a smile, was a sedate enough game to accommodate old age and tipsiness.
‘I’ll play on one condition,’ James said, sotto voce, ‘and that’s if I’m spared the company of Lucy Campbell. There’s only so much of that girl’s wittering a man can take.’
‘I thought you liked her!’ Maria said in surprise and her son gave her a look of dry disbelief. ‘Or at least didn’t mind her,’ she amended.
‘Reminds me too much of certain social climbers I meet in London,’ he said dismissively. ‘Young, rich and a little too much in love with themselves.’ He placed one foot neatly on a mallet lying on the grass by him and flicked it up, catching it with one hand.
‘In which case, it’s a good thing I hadn’t lined her up for you as a prospective wife,’ Maria smiled.
‘No need for you to line me up with anyone, Mama. According to our dear debutante Lucy,’ he flicked his head in the general direction of the Rectory, ‘someone is already lining herself up to fill the role.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Maria cocked her head to one side and looked interestedly at her son. ‘And who might that be?’
‘Don’t pretend the innocent with me, Mama,’ James said with a slow grin. ‘This is the original nesting bed of the malicious rumour, and Lucy and her clique of friends have already begun circulating one.’
‘Which is…?’
‘That our new neighbour is a money-grabbing gold-digger on the look-out for a prospective husband.’
‘You have met her. You do not agree, then?’ Maria asked casually and James gave a snort of laughter. ‘Perhaps they are right.’ She stole a curious look at her son, who was staring grimly out towards the Rectory. He had invited the girl over and she had failed to appear. She, Maria, had made no comment on this, but she knew that her son had been unsurprisingly annoyed. It wasn’t often that his orders, which they always were, however prettily he tried to package them, were ignored.
‘Perhaps,’ Maria mused speculatively, ‘she is on the look-out for a nice, eligible, rich man…’
‘In which case she’s barking up the wrong tree. Anyway, I can spot an opportunist a mile off and I can’t think of anyone less on the look-out,’ he said, his head filling with the images of the dismissive look she had thrown at him when he had stepped out of his car and the impatient resignation with which she had greeted his offer to make her a cup of coffee. ‘She struggled to invite me into the Rectory, for God’s sake!’
‘What a shame,’ Maria murmured teasingly, ‘and how did you cope with the shock of not being fawned upon by a woman?’
‘Women do not fawn over me, Mama,’ he denied vigorously, but he flushed at the accuracy of her dart. He was fully and cynically aware that he possessed just the right combination of attributes to make a woman’s head turn. ‘And this one certainly didn’t.’
‘So your plans to buy the Rectory have taken a nosedive, am I right?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t rush into assuming any such thing.’ But he had no idea how he was going to persuade her to sell. She hadn’t struck him as the sort of woman who could be talked into doing anything she didn’t want to do.
‘Well, if she does not like you, James, then she is hardly going to agree to selling something she has travelled hundreds of miles to possess.’ Maria looked out to where several of the guests were already trying to decide who should be in what team. Constance Campbell, who usually shifted automatically into the role of organising everyone else, was having a hard time with guests who were tipsy enough to get a kick out of thwarting her.
But I could get to know her, couldn’t I…? James reflected. Discover the chink in her armour. The Rectory was beautiful but frankly falling to bits. If he got to know her, well, he could just help her along the way to realising just how much needed doing to the place and how much easier it would be to shift the potential headache to someone else. Namely him. No good barging in when she still had her little head in the clouds, but a few carefully placed remarks might work wonders.
‘Who knows?’ he answered in a distracted voice. ‘Anyway, shall we get on with this wretched game of croquet? You know I can’t stand the sport.’
‘I know.’ She touched his cheek briefly and lovingly. ‘Not vigorous enough for you. It is nice having you home here.’
‘And it’ll be even nicer when this lot depart. You know what they say about too much of a good thing.’
As it turned out, it was after six before the last of the guests left and after eight by the time a thoughtful James had eaten dinner, which was served informally in the breakfast room off the kitchen. His mother chatted inconsequentially about the luncheon party, amusing him with barbed remarks about village gossip and what was happening with whom and where. Normally, they would have retired to their favourite sitting area, the one which offered the most tantalising views. It would have provided a soothing and welcome end to a fairly hectic day, but James was in no mood to be soothed. His mother’s voice drifted in calm waves over his head but he was thinking. Thinking about what she had said earlier, her throwaway remark that their Rectory neighbour might prove to be as stubborn as the uncle she had clearly never met.
The train of his thoughts made him edgy and he knitted his dark brows together in a frown, only realising his distraction when his mother said something which he was obliged to ask her to repeat.
‘There is no need for the Rectory,’ Maria sighed. ‘Have I not told you this over and over? If the manor is converted to a hotel, I can simply live in a suite.’
‘And share your dinner with the hotel guests?’ He gave her a brooding frown that arrogantly denied his mother doing any such thing. ‘Walk out into the garden so that you can join clusters of other people admiring the flowers? Have your evening drink brought to you by a waiter on his way to serve other people their evening drinks? I would rather,’ he rasped, ‘abort my ideas of converting this place than suffer you going through any of that.’
‘Why do you think Miss King did not come to our little lunch party?’ Maria asked, to change the subject, and he shrugged.
‘Perhaps the thought of socialising with us all filled her little soul with terror. Although
,’ he couldn’t help but add, ‘believe me, it would have been the other way around. She would have been the one filling their little souls with terror.’
‘She made quite an impact on you, James, did she not?’
‘I’ll let you know tomorrow,’ he said slowly, standing up and stretching. He raked his fingers through his hair and then turned to look at his mother.
‘Why tomorrow?’
‘Because I think I’ll head across to Miss King and find out for myself why she did not appear when I specifically invited her.’
‘You were piqued, weren’t you?’ Maria asked slyly.
‘Hardly. It’s simply that…I intend to buy her house and I won’t be able to dangle money at the end of the carrot in an attempt to persuade her. Whatever brought her rushing up here, it wasn’t poverty. From what I glimpsed of her possessions, at least the ones in the kitchen, she was not labouring under financial stress. So I shall simply have to dig deep into my reservoirs of persuasiveness to get what I want.’
‘Does that not sound easy?’ Maria murmured to herself, her dark eyes speculative.
‘So I shall see you tomorrow, Mama.’ He strolled to where she was sitting and kissed her once on each cheek, as he always had done ever since he was a boy, on his way back to boarding-school after the holidays, half longing to stay with his parents and enjoy his life in Scotland with the wide, open spaces around him, half longing to return to his friends with their boisterous camaraderie.
He was under no illusions as he later drove across to the Rectory. Sara King wasn’t going to welcome him in with open arms. She hadn’t the first time round, and she was going to be even less enthusiastic this time. Especially as it was after nine and he would probably have to drag her out of bed with his banging on the kitchen door. Neither prospect was sufficient to put him off the matter at hand.
There were lights on, at least, when he pulled up outside and he killed the engine of the car, sitting inside for a few minutes before going out. Then he strode out, peered through one of the kitchen windows at the side just in case she was busying herself in there, and, not seeing her, banged on the knocker.
From upstairs, where she had just finished settling Simon, Sara heard the authoritative knock and immediately felt her spine straighten in irritation. It had been a hell of a day and seeing James Dalgleish was the last thing she needed, because she was certain that it was him. She had not gone to his wretched luncheon party and now he had come to check and find out why.
She half debated whether she should just ignore the banging on the door and then remembered the way he had continued standing there the previous day, not prepared to budge an inch until she had invited him in. He would just keep banging if she didn’t answer until eventually Simon woke up.
There was no time to try and make herself remotely presentable. Her hair was loose, having been washed only an hour before, and it fell around her shoulders in untamed ringlets, still half-damp. Instead of her usual jeans, she was wearing a loose grey jersey skirt that fell almost to her ankles and a clingy ribbed grey top that ended just above the waistband of the skirt.
‘All right!’ she muttered irritably under her breath, hurrying down the stairs before he broke down the door in his attempts to be heard. ‘Did it occur to you that I might have been sleeping?’ she greeted him angrily as she pulled open the kitchen door.
Idiot that she was, she had forgotten how overpowering he was. She had so successfully managed to shove him into the same category as her ex-boyfriend and her son’s father, the mere thought of whom was enough to fill her throat with sour bile, that to see James standing there against the backdrop of the sinking sun almost made the breath catch in her throat.
He was so awesomely good-looking. He possessed skin that reacted warmly to the sun, and even in the space of a mere day he seemed browner than she recalled. The top two buttons of his cream shirt were undone, exposing the same, magnificently coloured skin, and the sleeves were roughly rolled back, and as her eyes dropped she took in his lean, muscled arms, then she blinked and her head cleared.
‘No.’
‘It’s after nine at night!’ she snapped, a little annoyed with herself for being bowled over, if only for a few seconds, by his physical allure. ‘And you normally go to bed at nine?’
‘Why are you here, anyway?’
‘I’ve now been here twice and both times you’ve given me a pretty hostile reception. Tell me, is it just me or is it the entire human race?’ He looked at her with lazy speculation in his eyes, knowing that she was taken aback by his comment, and while she was still struggling to come up with an appropriate response he continued in the same musing voice, ‘I think it’s the human race. Hence your willingness to bury yourself here without even bothering to take the time out to meet the people in whose community you have chosen to bury yourself.’
‘And I think that you should keep your opinions to yourself considering I haven’t asked you to share them with me.’
‘Where is your little boy?’
‘Asleep.’
‘My mother was disappointed that you didn’t come. She was looking forward to meeting you.’
Sara flushed guiltily. She’d had no compunction about letting him down, but she hadn’t considered that she might be letting anyone else down in the process.
James could read it all from her expression and from the delicate bloom of colour that crept into her cheeks.
‘She wondered,’ he carried on, elaborating on this piece of fiction without the slightest twinge of guilt, ‘whether you had perhaps been taken ill. The Rectory is quite isolated and, as far as she knows, your telephone might well not have been connected as yet.’
‘I…yes, the telephone is connected. With Simon…’
‘Of course. Still…she was concerned.’
There was a short, awkward pause during which James wondered whether he had piled it on too thick. But if she was going to develop a habit of slamming doors in his face, then he certainly could not afford to develop a habit of allowing it. Not if he wanted to get the Rectory. And anyway, he was, by nature, incapable of allowing anyone to slam a door in his face.
‘Look…I apologise for not coming to your party…but…’
‘It’s a little chilly out here. That’s the thing with summers in Scotland. However fine the day is, the night always reminds you not to take the warmth for granted. I merely stopped by to make sure that you were all right.’ He half turned, curious to see whether the flush of guilt would be sufficient for her to stop him and it was. She invited him in. Not in the most gracious of voices and certainly with no noticeable enthusiasm, but it was an invitation he discovered he had been quite looking forward to and was all too keen to grasp.
‘Tea?’ she asked, once they were in the kitchen. ‘Coffee? Something stronger?’
‘Coffee would be fine.’
‘I apologise for not coming to your mother’s little party,’ Sara repeated, spooning coffee into cups, with her back to him, ‘but I couldn’t. How was it? Did it go all right?’
‘Couldn’t…?’
Sara didn’t answer. She poured boiling water into the cups, and a dash of milk straight from the long-life carton in the fridge. The fresh milk she had casually tossed into the cardboard box for the trip up had expired. The dreaded trip to the shops could no longer be avoided, that much was true. Nor could she allow her negative feelings about the place to influence her response to the people who lived there. If she did, then her life would be even more of a nightmare than it already was.
‘Simon wasn’t very well, I’m afraid,’ she said brusquely, putting his cup down in front of him and taking the chair on the opposite side of the table from which she could observe him without that aura of his pervading her senses.
‘What was wrong?’ Under the merciless glare of the overhead light, he could see what he hadn’t noticed before. Her face was drawn and there were anxious shadows under her eyes.
‘He…suffers from recurrent chest infec
tions. He’s still got one now and he was a bit poorly today.’ She swallowed a mouthful of coffee and shifted her eyes away from the blue ones studying her face.
‘Is he all right now? I know Tom Jenkins, the local doctor. I could call him and get him out here to have a look.’
‘Thank you, but no. Simon’s a bit better now. He’s upstairs sleeping. Anyway, I couldn’t come to your mother’s party because at twelve today I was busy dealing with his wheezing and coughing.’
‘You should have driven over. Got me.’ Why had he just said that? he wondered.
‘Thanks, but I can deal with Simon on my own. I don’t need any knights in shining armour to help me out. I’ve done it for the past five years and I’ll carry on doing it.’
‘I wasn’t offering myself as a knight in shining armour.’ James’s voice was a shade cooler. ‘I was merely suggesting that at this point in time I happen to be the only person you know in this town and as such, if you had needed help, it would have made sense to have come to me.’
‘I told you, I didn’t need any help. Look, if you don’t mind, I haven’t had anything to eat this evening. I’m going to make myself a sandwich. I’m sure you have much better things to do than hang around here watching me eat my dinner.’
‘Sit down.’
‘What?’ Sara flashed him a smile of cool incredulity at the rasping command in his voice. ‘For a minute there, I thought I heard you tell me to sit down.’
‘Which just goes to show how accurate your hearing is.’ Before she could stand up, which he knew she was going to do, he stood up himself and moved swiftly to where she was sitting, leaning over her with one hand splayed on the arm of her pine chair and the other on the table.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Sara demanded in a high-pitched, unsteady voice.
His Convenient Mistress Page 3