Yancie supposed she could have driven the Jaguar straight to the garage once she had said goodbye to her employer-no `Thank you very much, your driving is excellent', she noticed. On the other hand he hadn't told her-as she was sure he would if it were so-that her driving was lousy and that he'd be reporting it to her head of section. So, she must be thankful for small blessings.
Knowing her mother would be ringing round to trace her if she didn't turn up in answer to yesterday's summons, Yancie decided to drive over to see her mother first.
'You've taken your time!' was her greeting when she got there.
'I'm sorry, I…'
'Come and meet Henry; we've just finished lunch. And what's this I hear about you moving out?'
Oh, heck. `You know about…'
'I tried to phone you this morning. I smelt something fishy when Ralph told me to try Delia's. He eventually told me you'd moved out, but wouldn't say where to. Delia was out when I rang her and I'd mislaid your car phone number-and I couldn't get Greville.' Thank goodness for that! `So, what happened to make you leave home? I told Ralph he should be ashamed…'
'It wasn't Ralph's fault!' Yancie cut in quickly. 'Um-the house just wasn't big enough for both Estelle and me, so…'
'She always was a stroppy madam. You should have… Ah, here's Henry!'
Her mother was all smiles suddenly, and although Henry Ottaway, a portly little man, was pleasant enough he didn't have Ralph Proctor's gentle manner. What he did have, however, was a Rolls outside, and, knowing her mother's propensity for spending, Yancie guessed her mother had run through Ralph's handsome settlement, and was now out to replenish her stocks. Yancie felt saddened that she should think that way-but years of knowing her mother had only endorsed that the only person Ursula Proctor would ever love was Ursula Proctor.
Yancie stayed and had tea with them then both her mother and her soon-to-be new stepfather came out to the car with her, her mother inspecting the registration plate, murmuring under her breath, `Ralph Proctor might have bought you a new one!'
The car was less than a year old! Yancie drove back to the home she shared with her cousins, her mother never ceasing to amaze her. Yancie had considered taking the Jaguar back to the firm's garage, but since Astra had a perfectly good spare garage going begging, and since Yancie would be one of the first in at Addison Kirk tomorrow, it hardly seemed worthwhile. Besides which, by taking the car home she wouldn't have to mess about with public transport.
Yancie had only just finished telling Fennia and Astra about her dinner with dear Charlie Merrett, when her half-cousin Greville, full of apologies, rang to speak to her.
'Don't worry, Greville.' She smiled down the phone to him. 'I'm sure you couldn't have done anything else.'
'You know your mother's tactics resemble water wearing away stone. I did hold out as long as I could. Did she reach you?"
'Yes-but it wasn't a problem,' Yancie quickly tried to assure him.
'That's good. I was hoping you'd either not be in the car when she rang, or be parked up somewhere. It was the tears that did it.'
'Tears?"
'I thought Aunt Ursula was about to break down in tears when she said how she'd tried everywhere.'
Poor Greville. He couldn't bear to see, or in this case hear, a woman in tears. `Apparently you had a terrific party,' Yancie swiftly changed the subject.
During the week that followed, Yancie was out and about driving many times. She chauffeured Mr Clements a couple of times, and other directors. And once her half-cousin Greville. But never did she drive Thomson Wakefield. She knew from other drivers that he'd been out and about, though.
It was every bit as if, having satisfied himself that she was a decent driver, Thomson had no further use for her services. And that slightly upset Yancie. She would go into work each day feeling quite excited about what the day might bring-and go home each evening feeling quite flat. Though she was positive that it had nothing to do with her not seeing Thomsonn that day.
Yancie spent a lacklustre weekend, and was driving the Jaguar after dropping her passenger on a local call the following Monday when the car phone rang. She pulled into the side of the road to answer it, and heard her mother's voice. Oh, crumbs; so much for her wishing this number would stay mislaid!
'Since you're already out and about, do you think you could come and pick me up?' No way! I'm working! But her mother didn't know that! `Where are you? I'm at home and my car's in for a service.'
Yancie started to frame her refusal, but then realised she could probably get to her mother's and drop her off where she wanted to go without a soul being any the wiser.
'I can pick you up,' she agreed. `Can you make your own way back?'
'I'm meeting your aunt Portia for lunch she can drive me home.'
Yancie put down the phone and raced over to her mother's home-only just remembering as her mother came out of the house that she was wearing a badge that proclaimed 'Yancie Dawkins, Transport Department, The Addison Kirk Group'. Swiftly Yancie unfastened her tag and stowed it away. But, while luck might have been with her on that occasion, it deserted her totally not long afterwards.
They were in the centre of London in the middle of slow-moving traffic with her mother in the front passenger seat and Yancie listening to her talking at length while at the same time watching the car in front. When suddenly and why she looked over to the pavement at that particular moment she never afterwards knew-but just as all the traffic halted, look across she did, just as a tall, dark-haired business-suited man came out from a building and, his glance searching, quite obviously ready to hail a taxi, he saw instead the Jaguar he'd been a rear-seat passenger in not two weeks ago. Oh, no! Of all the foul luck! Yancie wanted to look away, to pretend she hadn't seen him. Indeed, had the traffic been free-flowing, she might well have put her foot down and shot off.
But no, Thomson Wakefield was looking straight at her-his glance taking in her flawlessly and expensively dressed passenger. He started to come over-and a riot of emotions played havoc in Yancie.
Without so much as a by-your-leave-and why would he?-Thomson opened the rear passenger door and got in. Her mother, never at a loss for words, was the first to speak. `Do you very much mind?' she demanded in cultured superior tones.
Yancie, her face scarlet with mortification, quickly found her voice. `Mother, let me introduce Thomson Wakefield. Thomson…' Oh, grief! Too late now. Yancie ploughed on. `My mother, Mrs Ursula Proctor.'
Yancie fully expected that at any moment now Thomson would pass some remark to the effect that he was commandeering the Jaguar and its driver and that since Mrs Proctor was not on the company's payroll would she mind vacating. But, much to Yancie's relief, not to mention surprise, she heard him do no more than exchange a few pleasantries with her mother.
'I thought I knew all of your friends, Yancie,' her mother ploughed deeper into her daughter's furrow of acute and deep embarrassment. And shrewdly, she commented, `Though your voice is familiar. Was it you who answered the phone when I rang Yancie on her car phone the other Saturday?'
'I believe it was,' he answered smoothly.
'You must be a frequent passenger in my daughter's car,' Ursula Proctor was just observing, when, to Yancie's undying gratitude, the traffic started to move again.
Her mother's lunch venue wasn't too far distant. Perhaps Yancie could manage to drop her off before any more damage was done.
Though how she was going to square it with Thomson Wakefield now her mother had made it clear that she thought the Jaguar belonged to her daughter, Yancie had no idea.
'Yancie is very generous with her lifts,' Thomson informed her mother evenly.
'Well, at least she's learned her lessons and has stopped loaning her car out to all and sundry,' Ursula Proctor carried on, thinking to add, `As you probably know, one of her friends wrote off her old car.'
'I didn't know that,' Thomson murmured, and Yancie, this simple lift taking on nightmare proportions, was glad that for o
nce her mother didn't seem to have anything to come back with.
Yancie's respite, however, was short-lived because, as though only breaking to recharge her batteries, her mother was taking a look at her in relation to her own flawless appearance and the impeccable tailoring of the man they were giving a lift to, and as if ashamed, to Yancie's horror, she began holding forth. `Honestly, Yancie, you used to have more dress sense. You're always wearing that same drab suit! You were wearing it when you came to meet Henry the Sunday before last!' Thank you, Mother! It wouldn't take a genius, and Thomson Wakefield was no fool, to work out that after she'd dropped him off the other Sunday she, and the firm's vehicle, had done a bit of private motoring. But it was not over with yet-in fact, it got worse. `Living with Delia Alford is doing you no good at all!' her mother stated. Stop! Mother, please stop! But it was already too late. Their unexpected, uninvited guest, who was most able to put two and two together, was taking an interest.
'Delia Alford?' he queried pleasantly, more interested in discussing people than in drab uniforms, apparently.
'You've met Yancie's aunt Delia?' Ursula Proctor enquired a touch sharply, as if it was her right to be introduced to all her daughter's friends first.
No! No, he hasn't met her! Nor is he likely to. And, thank goodness, this is where you get out. Yancie pulled over to let her out, but before she could push the passenger door open and wish her mother a hasty goodbye Thomson Wakefield was saying smoothly, `I believe I may have met her-son.'
Yancie knew it was all over before her mother responded, 'Greville…'
'I'll have to go,' Yancie butted in quickly. `I'm illegally parked.' But why was she bothering? Thomson didn't need to hear anything more. He'd heard all he needed to hear. To prove it he left the rear of the car and went to open the front passenger door.
'Thank you,' her mother accepted elegantly, and with no idea of the problems she had just caused her daughter she wished them goodbye and went on her way.
What Yancie did not need was for Thomson Wakefield to take the seat her mother had just vacated. `I wouldn't want your mother to think we're not the best of friends,' he murmured blandly-and Yancie knew, as she pulled away from the kerb, that she was in for it.
But she needed this job-the best she could do was to try and bluff it out. 'Er-do I gather I'm-um-likely to be suspended again?' she went into battle, inviting a discussion on the subject.
'You don't think I should dismiss you?'
Well, as a matter of fact, no, I don't. `What have I done?' she asked innocently. `Well, apart from borrowing the firm's motor to visit my mother the other Sunday. And I'm sure you'll see that, since I had been working-and was quite pleased to,' she inserted hastily, 'that…'
Thomson spared her further complicated self-exonerating explanations by cutting in. `You forgot to mention on your application form-in the space that asks "Do any members of your family work for the company?"that you're related to one of the directors.'
He had her there. Attack. `I didn't know you took such a fine interest in your drivers' job applications.'
'With you, Yancie Dawkins, I've discovered it's as well not to take everything on face value.' What did he mean by that? `Was everything on your application form a lie?'
She wished she could remember! He'd obviously seen her application form more recently than her. 'Er-the address I gave is the right one.'
'Your aunt's address?'
Oh, hang it! `I'm not living with my aunt, I'm living with my cousins-er, Fennia and Astra. Greville's my half-cousin. He lives…' she broke off; she was rambling.
'I know where Greville Alford lives,' Thomson spared her coolly. But, shaming her, he went on, `Your mother believes you're living with your aunt.'
'I didn't tell her I was,' she defended, `I just didn't tell her I wasn't living with Ralph any more.'
A pause followed. A cold, icy kind of pause. `So that was a lie too, when you said you knew the theory of the facts of life, intimating you hadn't any experience…'
'It wasn't a lie!' she denied hotly-oh, grief, she wasn't doing herself any favours here getting cross. This was no way to go about keeping her job. But she followed his drift, and said more calmly, `Ralph is my stepfather.'
A few moments of silence ensued, but it didn't last for long before Thomson was questioning-though making it sound more like a statement-'You lived with him until recently?' He didn't wait for her to answer. `You left your stepfather's home around the time one of your friends wrote off your car.'
'No wonder you're the top man!' Yancie said sniffily.
'Your stepfather was angry and threw you out,' he went on as if she hadn't spoken.
'He did no such thing!' she denied. `Ralph wanted me to stay. He wants me to go back.'
'But you're refusing to go?"
'It's a pride thing.'
'Which is why you need this job.'
Now we're truly down to the nitty-gritty! It went without saying that Thomson was now fully aware that she had only got this job because she was related to Greville. 'Driving's about the only work I'm qualified for,' she confessed.
'What about housekeeping?' he enquired silkily.
Sneaky devil! She'd put on her job application that her previous job was as a housekeeper-she remembered that. `It was the truth!' she stated. `That is, I kept house for Ralph. It's a big house, too,' she added for a little extra importance. Well, she was in trouble here, and knew it.
'I don't doubt it,' Thomson Wakefield rejoined. `Your mother doesn't know you have a job, does she?'
'I think I can safely say my mother would throw a fit at the very idea of a daughter of hers working for a living,' Yancie replied, after so much deception glad suddenly to be honest. But, her heartbeat quickening all at once, she took her eyes off the road in front for a moment and turned to stare at him. `Are you saying I still have a job?'
Thomson Wakefield stared back at her, his expression giving nothing away. Then, music in her ears, `If you think you can bear the uniform,' he replied.
And as her heart rejoiced Yancie looked swiftly away. For a moment there, she felt so overjoyed she could have kissed him-and that would never do. Instead, she suddenly became aware of her surroundings-hadn't they been past that shop there twice before? `Where are we going?' she asked hurriedly, and, glancing at him, was sure she saw his lips briefly twitch before he abruptly told her to take him back to his office. She was late, of course, picking up her earlier passenger.
So as not to involve Greville in any prevarications on her behalf, she contacted him as soon as she could to say that Thomson Wakefield now knew that they were half cousins.
'Was he all right about it?' Greville asked.
Given that he'd all but pulled her back teeth in extracting from her all that there was to know! `He was very kind,' Yancie assured her cousin.
She supposed, when she thought about it, that Thomson had been kind. It was for certain he'd soon recognised that her mother didn't know she was working-and he could so easily have given her away, but hadn't. He could equally have tipped both of them out of the firm's vehicle, and driven off in it, but hadn't. Yes, he had a very kind streak in him.
Yancie drove him later that week. But forget kind. He was back to being the grouch she had first known. Treating the vehicle as an extension of his office, working away there, with barely a glance at her.
Yancie went home with Thomson on her mind a lot. And felt all fluttery in her chest the next day when she happened to be in Kevin Veasey's office when Veronica Taylor rang down for a car for Thomson.
'Shall I?' Yancie offered, available.
'He wants Frank to do this run,' Kevin smiled.
'Fine,' she smiled back-and felt unbelievably hurt.
She did not drive him for several days after that, and was sure she didn't give a button. Then, on Wednesday of the following week, Kevin Veasey told her she would be driving the Jaguar and Mr Wakefield tomorrow to a late afternoon meeting in Staffordshire. It was, she fully owned, ridicul
ous to feel so cheered. Quite, quite ridiculous.
'Did I hear Kevin say you were going north tomorrow?' Wilf Fisher waylaid her half an hour later.
'You did,' she replied, and felt so extraordinarily pleased with life just then that when he asked her if she would mind dropping a parcel of wool oddments off at his mother's home-Mrs Fisher apparently knitted blankets in her spare time, and was always short of wool-Yancie was happy to oblige. `Your mother's home is quite a bit out of my way,' she qualified, `but if I'm to wait any length of time I'd be glad to drop it in for you.'
Wilf was all smiles, Yancie was all smiles; she really did like her job, she decided. To be out and about. Some people must like office work but she was glad she didn't have to do it.
That some people thrived on office work was borne out the next day when Yancie collected her passenger. A grunt for a greeting was all she got. And, once installed in the back of the Jaguar, Thomson Wakefield undid his briefcase, buried his nose in his paperwork, and Yancie didn't hear another grunt from him until she pulled up outside one of their subsidiary companies.
'I'll be finished here at six. Have a rest and something to eat,' he ordered. Yes, sir, anything you say, sir. She had something better to do! Their eyes met, and Yancie could only suppose he must have picked up a gleam of defiance in her eyes, because he questioned bossily, `Yes?'
Yancie had no idea why his manner should rattle her so, but, `Yes,' she agreed-bubbles to that-striving for a meek note.
What was it about him? she wondered as she headed out of Staffordshire and into
Derbyshire. He had managed to upset her from day one. She wouldn't have got so riled, had any other board member suggested she take a rest and have something to eat. But then, he hadn't suggested, but told. Perhaps she wasn't any good at taking orders. She really must try and get this being employed sorted out.
Wilf Fisher's mother was expecting her, and was very pleased to see her. 'You'll stay for a cup of tea and a piece of cake?' she asked as Yancie handed over the large, bulging plastic sack. To please Mrs Fisher, whom, it appeared, had made the cake especially for her, Yancie said she'd love a cup of tea and a piece of cake, and chatted to her for about half an hour.
The Feisty Fiancée Page 7