by Anne Weale
‘It’s cold out. Come in and get warm.’ He ushered her into the house. ‘I debated booking a table at a ritzy restaurant, then decided it would be nicer to eat at home, by the fire. I hope that’s all right with you.’
‘Anything that suits you is fine with me.’
Pierce laughed. ‘I’ll remind you of that rash statement in twelve months’ time when you may be feeling less compliant. But I’m glad you feel that way now. Let me take your coat.’
He had put Parson’s basket down on a hard-seated chair and as he was. waiting for Holly to undo her buttons the sound made by a hostile cat drew their eyes to the doorway.
Louisa, who had come to see who was arriving, had noticed the basket and its occupant and was showing every sign of extreme displeasure.
‘She may think he’s a randy tom who will make unwelcome advances,’ said Pierce, ignoring his cat’s arched back and indignant face. ‘She’ll calm down when she finds that he isn’t.’
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought him, but there seemed no alternative,’ said Holly, as he took her coat. ‘I’m not staying with Chiara this time. I wanted to see you before telling her what’s happened.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘At a small guest house. If you’re serious about getting married on my birthday, I shall need to buy some clothes.’
Pierce hung her coat in a cupboard and then, picking up the basket, put a hand on her waist to steer her towards the studio. There, an elderly man in a black coat and pinstriped trousers was placing a bucket of ice with a bottle in it on the table in front of the sofa facing the blazing fire.
‘This is Hooper, who looks after me,’ said Pierce.
Holly smiled. ‘Good evening.’
The manservant bowed. ‘Good evening, miss.’
‘Hooper, you are the first to know that Miss Nicholson has agreed to marry me.’
‘Allow me to offer my congratulations, sir. I wish you both every happiness.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Holly.
‘Perhaps your cat would like some water,’ he suggested.
‘Yes, take him away and give him a chance to compose himself. He was quite rightly shocked by Louisa’s display of bad manners in the hall just now,’ said Pierce. To Holly he added, ‘Don’t worry. By the end of the evening they may be sharing her beanbag.’ The glint in his eyes added a subtext she pretended to be unaware of.
In spite of what he had said the day he’d proposed this strange engagement, about waiting till they were in Venice to make love to her, he might have changed his mind since then. If he wanted to make love tonight, she had no real grounds for refusing other than an instinctive feeling that it would be wiser to wait.
Although she had some experience, it hadn’t amounted to much. If he found her disappointing, he might begin to regret his precipitate proposal. The thought of losing him, before she had had time to learn how to please him, sent a shiver of panic through her.
‘Go and sit by the fire if you’re still cold,’ said Pierce, with a nod at the cushioned club fender. ‘Did you walk? Why didn’t you take a taxi? Are you short of funds?’
‘No, no, I just felt like walking.’
‘Well, don’t do it again...not in London, not after dark. I don’t like the idea of you wandering about on your own, especially encumbered with a cat basket. Women don’t have to be wearing a fur and expensive earrings to be targeted by street thieves these days.’
She perched on the fender. She was wearing a straight black skirt with opaque black tights and black leather loafers. Her top was a cream silk shirt, one of Chiara’s castoffs.
Holly’s pearl studs and single-strand necklace had belonged to her mother. They were cultured pearls, too discreet to make any kind of statement except that of conventional good taste. But none of the ethnic jewellery, bought from market stalls, which she usually wore to go out had seemed right for this occasion. Pierce was accustomed to women who dressed to a high standard of elegance. She didn’t want any detail of her appearance to seem cheap to him.
He brought her a glass of champagne. ‘To us...to a lifetime of sharing everything life has to offer.’
‘To us,’ she echoed as they touched glasses.
After tasting the wine, Pierce sat down at the other end of the fender, leaving a space between them.
‘As you have no family to speak of and mine is across the Atlantic, I suggest we get married very quietly in my local register office. Or would you prefer a church service?’
‘My father was an atheist. We never went to church. I’m happy with a register office.’
‘Right, that’s the first item settled. What about witnesses? Would you like Chiara to be one?’
‘I think she’ll be away... in the south of Spain. What about Mrs Shintaro and Ben, as we both know them?’
‘No, I think not,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask my two closest friends. There’ll be time for you to meet them beforehand. I have a lot of people I want you to meet later on.’
Holly wondered if, despite his friendship with him, Pierce could be jealous of her affection for Ben.
‘After we’ve done the deed,’ he went on, ‘we’ll go to Claridge’s for lunch and then fly to Venice. You can buy most of your trousseau there. There are some excellent shops and I’ll enjoy helping you choose. Which reminds me...your ring. I had a jeweller whose work I like send round a selection for you to look at. If none of them appeals, they can go back and we’ll look for something you do like. I’ll fetch them.’
He crossed the room to one of the banks of books, where he touched something, causing a section of shelf to swing forward, revealing a safe. A combination lock opened the thick fireproof door. From the interior Pierce took a shallow box covered with leather. He brought it to the table in front of the sofa and beckoned her to join him. When he opened the lid, Holly saw that the box was lined with black velvet and divided into many small sections, about a dozen of them holding the selection of rings.
‘You have beautiful hands. I noticed them the first time we met...I mean the very first time,’ he added.
‘Really?’ said Holly, astonished. She had always taken care of her hands, wearing barrier creams and gloves to prevent their becoming ingrained with soil like those of many keen gardeners. But she was amazed that he should have noticed them approvingly the night she had thought he disapproved of her.
‘Try this one,’ said Pierce, taking her left hand and slipping a ring over the third finger. ‘No, that’s not right. How about this?’ He selected another.
‘They all look gorgeous to me,’ she said, and meant it.
Any one of the rings would have pleased her. They had a distinctive style quite different from conventional engagement rings.
He tried all the rings in the box, fitting them on her finger and studying the effect, unaware that for her it was not the beauty of the jewels which entranced her but the way he was holding her wrist in one hand and trying on the rings with the other. Merely to sit beside him, with one of his long, hard thighs inches away from her lap and his lean fingers circling her wrist was an exquisite pleasure which made her mind boggle at the thought of what she would feel when he made love to her.
‘I think this is the right one, but you may not agree,’ said Pierce.
‘It’s lovely. But isn’t it frighteningly valuable? What if I lose it or damage it?’
‘It will be insured,’ he said casually. ‘What matters is that you like it. Perhaps you’ve set your heart on something quite different. If so, you have only to say.’
‘I haven’t set my heart on anything...except trying to be a good wife,’ she said, in a low voice.
His fingers tightened on her wrist. ‘Anyone hearing you say that would think you were marrying me for love.’
Holly could not meet his eyes for fear he might see the truth. ‘I’m not marrying you for any ulterior motive... unless you count Talavera. But even to have that garden I wouldn’t marry just anyone.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ he said drily. ‘Now, to get back to this ring, are you certain you’re happy with it?’
‘It’s beautiful. Thank you, Pierce.’
‘Good. That’s something else settled. Tomorrow or the day after you can go and confer with the designer about what kind of wedding ring you’d like to go with it. We won’t be exchanging rings because I prefer not to wear one. For a climber they can be dangerous.’
He closed the box and took it back to the safe. While he was putting it away, Louisa strolled to the fireside and sat down on the large Persian rug, where she extended one back leg at an angle of forty-five degrees and began some energetic grooming.
Suddenly, pausing, she looked up, fixing large kohlrimmed eyes on the place, near the back of a chair, where Parson was lurking, looking unwontedly nervous.
Coming back to the sofa, Pierce said, ‘Finish what’s left in your glass and I’ll give you a refill. There’s no kick in tepid champagne.’
Obediently Holly drained her glass, her attention on the two cats. ‘I think Parson is scared of her.’
‘More fool he,’ was Pierce’s succinct comment. ‘It’s fatal to let a female of any species feel she can dictate terms. That isn’t what they want. It makes them capricious and cruel. If Parson knows what’s good for him, he’ll come and show her who’s boss.’
Holly felt her hackles rising slightly. ‘Are you including women in that statement?’
‘It’s particularly applicable to women. They can’t stand a man who dithers. They want him to be in control. If he isn’t, they’ll give him hell. Your sex is still programmed by nature to need a protective male to stand between them and any threat to their safety. If they find out a man is a wimp, they’ll delight in tormenting him. I have an example of that situation among my staff at the moment. An accountant working for us is living with a woman who makes his life miserable. As he’s not legally bound to her, it’s a wonder he doesn’t walk out. But that’s part of the problem, of course.’
He stopped speaking, his eyes on Parson who, having retreated behind the chair, now appeared on the other side of it and was investigating the uprights of the fender, pretending to be oblivious to the baleful glare focused on him from the centre of the antique rug.
‘That’s better,’ Pierce said approvingly. ‘Pretend you couldn’t care less. Louisa’s not used to being ignored. Five minutes of the cold shoulder and she’ll start making up to you.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ said Holly, watching her cat stroll past the fire to sniff the fringe of the rug and then the valance of a slip-covered chair on the other side of the hearth. After satisfying himself that there was nothing hiding beneath it, he jumped onto the chair and gave his shoulder a light lick in the manner of a man who has noticed a speck of something on his immaculate suit.
‘D’you mind him sitting there?’ asked Holly.
‘Hooper doesn’t approve of Louisa sitting on chairs, but I don’t mind and I don’t think this is the moment to undermine Parson’s dignity,’ said Pierce.
‘What did you mean about it being part of the problem... the accountant’s problem?’ she asked.
He leaned back and crossed his long legs. ‘Women have gone along with living together and having children together without any formal commitment. But I’m not sure that, deep down, they’re really comfortable with it. I suspect they feel they’ve lost out. If I had said to you—putting it rather more gracefully—Let’s shack up together, what would you have said?’
‘Putting it rather more gracefully, Get lost!’ she told him, with a flicker of amusement. Then, more seriously she went on, ‘My father thought living together was a cop-out...an evasion of responsibility. The irony is that, if he and my stepmother had merely joined forces instead of marrying, when their relationship broke down he could have ended it without, as they say, being taken to the cleaners.’
‘If he’d been thirty, or twenty, or ten years younger, he probably wouldn’t have married her,’ said Pierce. ‘The possibility of being taken to the cleaners looms very large in the male mind these days. It’s the fundamental reason why, if they can, a lot of men would rather dodge marriage and settle for cohabitation. That doesn’t protect them entirely but they usually get off more lightly than a legal spouse.’
‘Doesn’t the thought of being taken to the cleaners bother you?’ she asked.
‘It did...until I met you. Then I knew I had found the kind of person who, if, in a place where no one was watching, she found a wallet stuffed with twenty-pound notes but no identification, would go straight to the nearest police station.’
‘So would any honest person.’
Pierce crooked a cynical eyebrow. ‘People as honest as that are not too thick on the ground, my love. You and I are not going to split, but if we did I don’t think you’d run to a lawyer with instructions to take me for every last penny. I think you’re the kind of woman who wouldn’t even keep that.’ He indicated the engagement ring.
Holly was silent, winded by the shock of being called ‘my love’ in that easy way, as if they were a normal couple to whom endearments came naturally.
Could she bring herself to use loving words to him? Somehow she didn’t think so. Not yet anyway.
‘It would be nice to think that one day our daughter will inherit it. The pearls I’m wearing tonight belonged to my mother. They’re not very special by your standards but they have great sentimental value for me.’
‘Understandably,’ said Pierce. He reached out to put the tip of his forefinger behind the lobe of her ear and then ran it gently down the side of her neck.
The light caress had an effect as stirring as if he had touched her breast. She sat very still wondering what he might do next, but just at that moment Louisa rose from the rug and walked to the front of the chair where Parson was sitting. As they watched, he folded his forelegs, bringing his face almost to a level with hers. After a moment both cats extended their necks and, with noses almost touching, gave each other a cautious sniff. Then Louisa turned round and, with a flourish of her tail, like a belle époque courtesan flirting a large feather fan, strolled away to another part of the room.
‘I’m no expert on feline body language, but that looked like the beginning of a mutually tolerant relationship, don’t you think?’ Pierce asked.
‘Yes, I do,’ Holly agreed.
Hooper reappeared. ‘Shall I serve dinner, sir?’
‘By all means.’ Pierce drained his glass and stood up. While the butler was lighting the candles on the same table where they had lunched but which tonight was more formally laid with a damask cloth and napkins folded to look like water lilies, Pierce said to him, ‘Tomorrow I want Miss Nicholson to choose a wedding ring. I can’t go with her myself. You’ll be taking the ring box back. Would you pick her up from where she’s staying?’
‘Certainly, sir. Where is Miss Nicholson staying?’
Pierce looked enquiringly at Holly who gave the butler the address of her B and B place.
While Hooper went away to fetch the first course, Pierce drew out a chair and seated her. ‘Let’s finish the champagne, shall we? Do you like it, or is it too dry for you?’
‘I like it. I’ve never had this champagne before.’ She had noticed the label. ‘I can see why it’s famous.’
‘You’ll be drinking a lot of it in future. Now...what else do we need to settle? The rings... the form of the wedding... the lunch party afterwards... Oh, yes, the announcement. How shall we word it? “The marriage has been arranged and will take place shortly of...” I’d better write it down.’ He felt in an inside pocket of his coat and produced a pen and a diary. ‘What was your father’s first name, or did he prefer his initials for anything formal?’
‘Professor Peter Nicholson.’
As he jotted it down, Pierce said, ‘The Times and The Telegraph naturally. What about local papers? The one where you went to school, for instance?’
‘That isn’t necessary.’
&nbs
p; She was beginning to realise what should have been obvious already—that in marrying Pierce she was entering a different world, a milieu involving formalities which had not been a part of her past. Her father, although a don at a major university, had lived in a more modest style than many of his colleagues.
The adjustments she would have to make didn’t unnerve her. She was confident she could cope with the public side of their life together. It was merely a matter of studying how things were done.
But the private aspects of their relationship did worry her. Would she be good enough in bed? Would she be able to keep him amused and interested when they were not in bed but were on their own together?
The meal Hooper served was delicious: chestnut soup with the tang of fromage frais in it, a roast pheasant with slices of truffle under the skin of its breast and, to finish, caramelised pears on a bed of juice-soaked sponge cake.
They had coffee in front of the fire while, with almost soundless efficiency, Hooper cleared the table. About half an hour later, while they were listening to music, the butler came back to tell Pierce that he was going home and to ask Holly what time it would be convenient for him to call for her.
After he had gone, she was very conscious that they were alone in the house. By this time Parson had come to sit on her lap, as he usually did in the evening. Louisa, it seemed, was not a lap cat, perhaps because she had been discouraged from settling on her owner’s legs.
‘If you like you can leave Parson here overnight,’ Pierce suggested. ‘I should think he’d feel more at home in the conservatory with Louisa, where he can use her litter tray, than in the place where you’re staying.’
‘They weren’t very keen on having him,’ Holly admitted. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind his staying here? I don’t think he’ll be a nuisance. He’s a very adaptable cat and he has met you before, so he’ll know I haven’t abandoned him.’
‘As long as he doesn’t expect to sleep on my bed,’ Pierce said drily. ‘It would be a good idea to debar him from yours from now on...get him used to the idea that after we come back from Venice your bedroom will be forbidden territory.’