by Liz Fielding
Faith stood for a moment open-mouthed as he turned towards the library. Then she found her voice.
‘Excuse me!’
‘Yes?’ As Harry turned his dark blue eyes upon her she wavered, but only for a moment.
‘The only thing I need right now is the door out of here. So if you’ll kindly take the baby I’ll be on my way.’
‘But you’ve only just arrived,’ Harry said, apparently impatient for his drink. ‘I told Janet that I needed her for at least a week.’
‘A week!’ Of all the conniving, blackmailing manipulating old women — she knew that was impossible! ‘I don’t have a week to spare—’
‘Then you should have told her that before you came. In fact you never told me why she didn’t come herself.’
Faith felt herself sinking into boggy ground. Janet had made her promise not to tell Harry about her operation, although she wasn’t sure that her aunt deserved such loyalty under the circumstances. ‘She retired two years ago, Mr March, when it all got a bit much for her,’ she said, sidestepping the question. ‘And she seems to have forgotten to mention anything about staying for a week. Or babies.’
He looked disbelieving. ‘She sounded perfectly rational when I spoke to her. And she was as fit as a fiddle last time I saw her.’
‘And when was that?’ she snapped back and was gratified by the tightening of the muscles that clamped his jaw tight. ‘Anyway, I thought you had already made up your mind that I was sent by your sister to lure you up the aisle?’ she added, caustically. ‘Since you’re clearly not interested, I might as well be on my way.’
His eyes gleamed in the dusky evening light. ‘Oh no, Faith Bridges. You look the part but you’re altogether too sharp-tongued for that particular game. But if Janet could have come she would, retired or not. So why did she send you in her place?’
He was so sure of his authority, his power to command instant attention that Faith felt an urgent desire to dent his arrogance. She restrained herself. ‘She had other commitments that she couldn’t avoid, Mr March, but she asked me to try and sort out your problems as best I could. Since I’ve absolutely no experience as a nanny my advice is that you do what you should have done in the first place and call an agency.’
‘An agency?’
‘A nanny agency. There are dozens of them in the Yellow Pages. Since this is your sister’s baby, why don’t you ask her to help you find one? Where is she, anyway?’
‘My sister is in America. I told—’
‘She went away and left Ben with you?’ Faith’s disbelief was palpable and ignited a dangerous spark in his eye.
‘It was an emergency,’ he said, glaring at Mac when he would have interrupted, ‘and it was Elizabeth’s idea to call Janet.’ Then, without warning, he smiled. It was an assured, I-can-get-away-with-anything smile, just the kind of smile to captivate a recalcitrant female and Faith suspected it had been used to devastating effect on more than one occasion. It was a slightly crumpled version these days to be sure, but if you were in the least bit susceptible—
Faith discovered her mouth was softening in response and had to mentally shake herself, remind herself firmly that she was twenty-five years old, with a reputation for being anything but susceptible. On the contrary, she told herself, she was furious that he would think her so gullible. Unaware of the effect it was causing, he turned and walked back towards her. ‘Surely Janet meant you to stay? Otherwise why would she have sent you in her place?’
His logic was impeccable, but for one minor detail. ‘If she’d understood the nature of the problem I imagine she would have made some other arrangements.’
‘Understood the problem?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘She’s a nanny for heaven’s sake, what other reason could I possibly have for asking her to help out?’
Not susceptible, huh? For someone much-applauded for her objectivity why hadn’t she been able to see that for herself? Had she been thinking too much about the man rather than the problem?
‘I knew this was a mistake,’ she muttered, feeling very stupid. ‘I wanted to telephone, but she knew I wouldn’t come if I discovered the true nature of the problem, that was why she threatened—’
‘Threatened?’ He was on the word like a terrier on a rat. ‘What exactly did she threaten you with?’
She bit her lower lip as she realised she had very nearly given the game away and shifting the sleeping child into the crook of her arm, she offered him to Harry. ‘Look I’m really very sorry, Mr March, but even if I knew the first thing about children I just don’t have a week to spare. I simply have to get back to London.’
‘Ask for a week’s leave,’ he advised, ‘on compassionate grounds. Or are you going to tell me that you are indispensable — that your bank couldn’t possibly manage without you for a whole week?’
He wasn’t insulting her, she realised, but teasing. ‘It’s not my bank,’ she said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the bank. It’s personal business.’
‘Couldn’t you handle it from here?’ Harry ignored the proffered baby and she took a desperate step closer which was plainly silly, since she had to tilt her head to look up into his eyes and that made her feel vulnerable — too vulnerable to explain why she had to organise her wedding single-handed. While technically it was perfectly possible to do most things from Wickham Ash, she certainly had no desire to do it under Harry March’s taunting eyes.
‘The minute I get back to London I’ll telephone an agency for you and ask them to despatch a temporary nanny,’ she promised.
‘That all seems rather unnecessary now you’re here.’ His smile took on a coaxing quality. He could, apparently, turn it on like a tap. The knowledge didn’t make the effect any less devastating. ‘Despite your protestations about your lack of experience you obviously have a way with you. Ben seems to like you and that’s worth a lot. I’d pay you top rates,’ he said. ‘You would have your own sitting room,’ he offered, temptingly. ‘There’s a TV, you can use Elizabeth’s car any time you want and the swimming pool when I’m not using it—’
‘I don’t need your money,’ she said quickly, sensing that she was being steamrollered for the second time that day. ‘And I have my own car.’ She glanced down at Ben as he sighed in his sleep.
‘A vintage Alpha Romeo Spyder, sir,’ Mac interjected, with a certain dour satisfaction. ‘A red one with a black hood. Very nice.’ Harry March ditched the smile and threw him a warning look that would have silenced thunder.
‘And I swim every day at my club,’ Faith added, as if that settled the matter.
‘I don’t suppose you have the entire pool to yourself?’
‘No, but then I like company. And I never watch television.’
‘Never?’
Hardly ever, she amended, but silently, inside her head. ‘Who has the time?’ she murmured.
‘I see.’ The words had a slightly ominous ring as Harry March finally decided to take her objections seriously and give her the benefit of his undivided attention. ‘So, I can’t tempt you with money or material things? I wonder what would buy you, Faith Bridges?’
His eyes were thoughtful, his look assessing. To be inspected quite so thoroughly was disconcerting to say the least and Faith squirmed under his intense gaze.
‘I’m not for sale, Harry March,’ she said, crossly, longing to turn and walk out of the house but, hampered by the baby, escape was impossible.
‘Maybe no one has ever offered you something you wanted enough,’ he suggested.
She finally snapped. ‘Considering I’ve driven all the way from London in answer to your cry for help you could at least try to be civil.’
‘Well, I’m sure it’s very good of you to have come all this way just to say you can’t help but frankly, I can’t understand why you’d bother.’
‘Aunt Janet said you had some sort of crisis. Unfortunately she didn’t say what it was—’
‘And are you always so obliging? It seems excessively altruistic to come all this way to
help a perfect stranger.’
Except Harry March wasn’t a stranger, not in the true sense of the word. Long ago he had been Aunt Janet’s favourite nursery charge and she had been telling Faith tales about her darling boy for as long as she could remember. But while her aunt might think the sun shone out of his eyes, Faith didn’t think he was within a country mile of being perfect.
‘I told you—’
‘I’m beginning to wonder if I wasn’t right in my first assumption after all.’ His long fingers bridged the distance between them and she gave a tiny, telltale start as he touched her chin, lifting it a little so that she was forced to look straight into those bottomless blue eyes. ‘Suppose I did what Elizabeth and Janet so desperately want and offered to marry you, Faith Bridges? Would you stay then?’
It was so long since anyone had made her blush, really blush, that she couldn’t be sure, but the tingle that tormented Faith’s cheekbones seemed horribly familiar. She swallowed, tried to remember that she was renowned for level-headedness.
‘Are you really that desperate?’ she asked, congratulating herself for retaining her cool manner under pressure.
‘Not yet.’ She had expected a lop-sided grin, an admission of defeat. Disconcertingly, Harry March was not smiling. ‘But come back in a couple of days and who can tell.’
Faith felt herself slipping under the spell of the man her aunt had described as irresistible, but she could resist. She’d prove it.
‘I’m sorry, Mr March, but I’m already spoken for so you’ll have to think of something else. But just in case you’re still not convinced I’ll tell you why I came galloping post-haste to your rescue—’
Aunt Janet won’t like it, her subconscious intervened, hastily.
Harry March glanced at Mac. ‘This should be interesting.’
Faith consigned her subconscious to the devil. Aunt Janet was safely tucked up in her hospital bed and it wouldn’t do this smooth manipulator of women any harm at all to know just how far people were prepared to go to help him for precious little thanks.
‘My aunt received your cry for help just before I arrived to take her into hospital for a hip-replacement,’ she informed him, a touch recklessly for someone renowned for her level-headedness. ‘In fact,’ she continued, enthusiastically warming to her subject, ‘she threatened to cancel her operation and come herself if I didn’t promise to come and find out exactly what the crisis was and do what I could to help. And since she’s waited three years for that operation, Mr March, I promised.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘BLACKMAILED you did she?’
‘Certainly not!’ she declared, ignoring the fact that she had used the self-same word not an hour before.
‘And yet a promise is a promise,’ he said, ignoring her disavowal, ‘even when apparently extracted under duress.’ The familiar phrase drummed into her by her aunt since she was knee high to a gnat sounded odd coming from him and yet Janet Bridges had looked after him until he went away to school. He would certainly be as well versed in her aunt’s virtuous homilies as she was and like her aunt he was apparently quite capable of a little blackmail on his own account.
‘I’ve kept my promise, Mr March.’
‘To the letter and not an inch beyond it,’ he retaliated sharply; mixing his metaphors to considerable effect and making her feel just a little mean-hearted. She hadn’t been sure what reaction her revelation would provoke. Irritation perhaps that something like an arthritic hip should be allowed to interfere with his concerns. His anger was unexpected. ‘Three years? She’s been waiting three years for her operation? Good grief, why on earth didn’t she tell me?’ he demanded. ‘She knew I’d have paid for private treatment for her, but she’s never even hinted—’ He paused. ‘You’re right of course. It must two years or more since I last saw her. I should have realised that something was wrong when she kept putting me off.’
‘My father and I did offer to pay for private treatment for her.’ Could it be that she was trying to rehabilitate herself in this man’s eyes? ‘She wouldn’t hear of it. She said it would be queue-jumping.’
‘That’s predictable I suppose.’ They exchanged a look that acknowledged Janet Bridges’ unshakeable will. ‘When is she having her operation?’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Faith said, slightly mollified at this totally unexpected show of concern.
‘Where?’ She told him. ‘Well at least I can get her a private room. The hospital can think up some reason for moving her. And I’ll send her some roses from the garden. They have more scent than those dreadful hot-house things they sell in florists.’
‘I don’t know about the room, but she’d love the roses. She’s very fond of you.’ Then slightly embarrassed by such a statement, she quickly continued. ‘I could take them back with me if you like,’ Faith offered.
‘It’s a little late to be picking flowers, Miss Bridges and far too late for you to drive all the way back to London tonight. And to be honest I’d feel a lot happier if you would at least stay until a proper nanny can be despatched to take your place. Just in case—’
‘Just in case?’
He gestured towards the sleeping child and smiled. The gesture was so graceful, the smile of such self-deprecating charm, so utterly different from that automatic knock-em-dead smile he had used earlier, that Faith found herself not only ignoring the alarm bells ringing frantically in her head, but responding helplessly as women had been doing since he had first discovered his power to bend them to his will when he was little more than a babe-in-arms himself.
Besides, it wasn’t the smile that moved her, she told herself foolishly. She had been planning to stop at the first hotel she passed on the way home and stay the night. It would be idiotic to refuse Harry March’s hospitality just because he thought he was getting his own way. After all, she knew better. And if she stayed to see the temporary nanny in place then she could be absolutely easy in her mind that she had carried out her promise to her aunt. That remark about keeping her promise “to the letter” had hurt. And as Harry March had reminded her, a promise is a promise. She could almost hear Aunt Janet saying the words.
What about your promise not to tell Harry March that she was in hospital? Her conscience, well aware that she simply wanted to make him feel bad, was on her case in a flash.
Guiltily, she glanced down at the sleeping baby. ‘Well, if I’m staying, I suppose the least I can do is put Ben to bed,’ she said. ‘Then I can make a few telephone calls and organise someone who knows what they’re doing to help you out.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Miss Bridges,’ Harry said, taking her arm with grave courtesy, his long graceful fingers curving beneath her elbow, cool against her skin. ‘I’ll show you the way, shall I? I’m sure you’d like to change out of that damp blouse. And I can introduce you to Alice if she’s still awake,’ he added.
‘Alice?’ Faith felt her stomach contract with alarm.
‘Ben’s sister. She’s four. Very nearly five.’
Another child! Her stomach had been right. Faith, despite the damp patch on her shoulder and a rapidly developing ache in her arm from the unaccustomed weight of the baby, had started to feel in control of the situation. Now she gave an inward groan. The sooner she got away from Wickham Ash the better.
‘Mac, could you rustle up something special for dinner?’ Harry said. ‘Since I have a guest?’
Faith saw Mac’s face finally twist into something that might have been a smile. But whether it was because he was genuinely pleased she was staying, or simply amused at the ease with which Harry March had got his own way, she couldn’t be quite sure. It didn’t worry her much either way because whatever happened she would be leaving first thing in the morning.
‘Why has your sister left the children with you?’ she asked, drawing Harry out of some deep thought.
‘Mmm? Oh, she was staying here while her husband was in the States on business but he’s been taken ill with some bug so she’s gone rushing off to mop
his fevered brow.’
‘Is he desperately ill?’
‘No one was sure what it was which is why she didn’t take the children.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s on the mend, apparently, but you know how women love to worry.’
‘Whatever would men do if women didn’t worry about them?’ she asked, just a touch sharply.
‘Have a quiet life?’ he offered.
‘A quiet life? Nothing that Aunt Janet ever told me about you suggested that you wanted that, Mr March.’
‘Harry, please,’ he said, turning to look down at her as if wondering exactly what Janet Bridges had been saying about him. ‘Mr March makes me feel geriatric.’
‘Mac calls you sir,’ she pointed out. ‘Surely that’s far worse?’
‘Mac was my sergeant when I was in the army and he’s somewhat set in his ways. Despite strenuous efforts to get him to call me Harry, I haven’t yet been able to break him of the habit. But I’m working on it.’
‘Oh, I see. And is he looking for a quiet life too?’ Faith asked as they reached the top of the stairs.
The ear-splitting scream that rent the air rendered any answer redundant and Harry March abruptly relinquished his hold upon her elbow to sprint awkwardly along the gallery as a small dark-haired figure dressed in a long white nightgown appeared from one of the bedrooms.
‘Alice? What is it kitten?’ He swung the child up into his arms and tucked her against his shoulder.
‘I had a bad dream, Uncle Harry,’ Alice said, pathetically, wrapping her arms about Harry’s neck and pressing her cheek against the darker skin of his powerful neck. ‘I want my mummy.’
‘I know you do, darling. She’ll be home soon with Daddy,’ he murmured, soothingly, but Alice had already spotted Faith and bad dream apparently forgotten she pointed dramatically.