Worthy of Marriage

by Anne Weale

  It had been obvious, when he was dealing with the splinter in her hand on Sunday, that she disliked being touched by him. She would dislike it even more if, tonight, after his mother had gone to bed, he started coming on strong.

  He turned off the shower, opened the door and reached for the white towelling robe on a hook within reach.

  On the way back from Larchwood at the weekend, he realised it had been an act of thoughtless stupidity to suck a puncture on the hand of a woman who, for all he knew, might be as promiscuous as they came. How did he know how many men she had slept with or who they might have had sex with?

  Once before he had taken a similar risk. But the circumstances had been different. Driving on an empty road, he had stopped at the scene of an accident that had taken place minutes before. The occupants of both cars had been seriously injured. He had called for help on his mobile, then done what he could until the professionals arrived.

  It had involved mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and getting blood on his hands. Just for a couple of seconds before wading in, he had hesitated, aware of the dangers inherent in body fluids. It had been a moment of decision: a contest between the promptings of humanity and the instinct for self-preservation. Humanity had won, and later he’d had the satisfaction of knowing that his first aid had made the difference between survival or death for the most seriously injured casualty.

  Nowadays he kept in his car rubber gloves and a gadget that allowed resuscitation without physical contact. They were sensible precautions in today’s world. Caution hadn’t crossed his mind on Sunday afternoon. He had forgotten that she was fresh out of prison and that he had many reasons to dislike her. A lifetime of training in the behaviour his mother and sisters considered the proper function of the male had kicked in, overriding the guardedness and cynicism he had learned in a cut-throat business world.

  It was an error of judgment he wouldn’t make a second time.

  ‘Why have we come here?’ Lucia asked Jackson when, shortly before one o’clock, he opened the door for her to step out of the car.

  The limousine was parked within yards of the River Thames, near a small marina with Venetian-style striped posts marking the moorings.

  ‘This is where Mr Grey lives, miss,’ said the chauffeur. ‘In the Thames lighter over there.’ He pointed towards a two-storey barge at the far end of the pontoon walkway that gave access to the various craft berthed on either side of it.

  ‘There?’ Lucia echoed, astonished. ‘Do you mean all the time? All year round?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ Jackson said impassively. ‘If you’d like to go ahead, I won’t be long bringing your things.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  LUCIA walked slowly in the direction he indicated, trying to adjust to the fact that Grey’s living quarters were so different from her preconceptions. Why on earth would a man at the head of a company whose stock-market value had made her blink as she read it live in a place like this?

  Not that it wasn’t a lovely place to live…by her standards. The breeze coming off the water, the wide expanse of river stretching away in both directions, the sense of space and freedom in the middle of one of the world’s great cities; all these appealed to her strongly. But it seemed an unlikely environment for Grey and his collection of expensive paintings to inhabit.

  She was wearing flat rubber-soled shoes that made no sound on the planking but, as she approached the lighter, which she knew was the name for a flat-bottomed barge used for transporting cargo when ships were being loaded or unloaded, Grey appeared on the covered deck that seemed to run right round the vessel.

  ‘Good morning. Come aboard,’ he said. He did not go as far as to smile at her, but his manner was not unwelcoming.

  ‘Good morning. Is your mother here?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘Not yet.’ He looked past her to where Jackson was following with her cases. ‘Are those all your worldly goods, or only some of them?’

  ‘Everything. Mrs Calderwood persuaded me to collect both cases. She said there was no point in leaving the second one in storage when she has plenty of attic space.’ She did not use his mother’s first name sensing that, even though she had been given permission to do so, he would think it presumptuous.

  ‘There’s not much point in having them on board overnight, Jackson. Put them back in the car and take them to Larchwood. You’ll need some lunch before you go back. Have the meal of the day at the Crown and Anchor. It’s usually excellent. Tell them to chalk it up to me.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Jackson went back the way he had come.

  ‘It’s useful having a good pub nearby,’ said Grey. ‘I expect you’d like to wash your hands before lunch. I’ll show you your quarters.’

  Although the exterior of the barge made it clear that the interior would be a lot more roomy than the between decks accommodation on most boats, Lucia was unprepared for the spaciousness of the huge living room with its panoramic views of the river. It even had a large fireplace, she noticed with surprise.

  At one end of the living room was an immaculate kitchen with a breakfast bar.

  ‘This deck is fifty feet long by sixteen feet wide so I’m not cramped for space,’ said Grey, leading the way.

  To her annoyance, Lucia found herself eyeing the broad shoulders and sexy male backside that had already caught her eye on Sunday’s walk, more interested in his vital statistics than the boat’s.

  Frowning, she asked, ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Since the development the marina belongs to was completed four years ago.’

  She hadn’t paid much attention to the buildings along the riverbank. They must be another valuable Calderwood development.

  ‘We were reading about your latest project in the paper on the way here,’ she said.

  Grey made no comment. He was moving fast down a short flight of metal stairs leading to a lower deck. Lucia followed, reminded of wider and longer metal staircases between narrow landings ranged with rows of cells.

  Built in Victorian times, the prison had offered little scope for modernisation beyond lighter paintwork and some improvement in the sanitation. A shiver went through her. Would she always be haunted by the memory of those months ‘inside’?

  Grey opened a door leading into a room with twin bunks, one above the other. This, too, was a reminder of sharing a cell with a woman who, for their first three days together, had looked as if she would like to murder Lucia and might have a sudden brainstorm and do it.

  ‘This is where I sometimes put up my nephews and nieces when their parents want a short respite,’ said Grey. His tone was faintly sardonic, suggesting that he didn’t mind relieving his sisters of their offspring occasionally, but was not in the market for such domestic responsibilities himself.

  ‘There’s a shower through there,’ he added, pointing out a door in the wall opposite the bunks. ‘I think you’ll find everything you need. Come up to the living room when you’re ready and we’ll have a drink.’

  ‘It looks very comfortable. Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ The look he gave her before closing the door after him didn’t match the polite response to her thanks.

  For some moments after he had gone she stood staring at the coat hooks on the back of the door, trying to analyse the curious glint in those usually enigmatic dark grey eyes. In the antagonistic context of their relationship to date, her conclusion didn’t make sense.

  She had to be mistaken. It must have been a trick of the light reflected off the river whose soft plashing against the hull she could hear through the half-open window.

  Yet, for a moment, she could have sworn that Grey was looking at her like a man with sex on his mind.

  On her way back to the upper deck, her attention was caught by a painting of a rectangular pool seen from one end with arches at the other and sunlight suffusing the air. There was nothing to indicate where the place was or who had painted the original. Somewhere in southern Europe, was her guess.r />
  Grey was watching the river when she joined him.

  ‘Is white wine all right for you?’ he asked, swinging round and appraising the cream cotton shirt previously concealed by her light all-purpose raincoat. Or was he mentally undressing her?

  Wishing his mother would arrive, she told herself that she must be imagining that his attitude towards her had undergone a drastic change.

  While he took a bottle with a French label from a transparent plastic cooler and began filling a glass, she asked, ‘Is the painting on the staircase wall a souvenir of a holiday?’

  His response was not the momentarily blank look of someone who can’t remember what they have on their walls because they have stopped looking at them.

  He said instantly, ‘In a manner of speaking. Did you recognise it? Have you been there?’

  Lucia shook her head. ‘Where is it?’

  Grey handed her a glass. ‘It’s one of the courtyards in the Alhambra palace in Granada…the last stronghold of the Muslim kings of Granada before they were driven out at the end of the fifteenth century. I spent part of my gap year, between school and university, exploring Spain and learning the language. Did you have a gap year?’

  ‘No, I went straight from school to art college.’ As soon as she had spoken, she wished she had just said no. The mention of her art training must remind him of matters she wanted to put behind her. Not that he was ever likely to forget them, but at least he seemed willing to put them aside for the time being.

  Replacing the bottle in the cooler and picking up his own glass, he gestured for her to choose somewhere to sit. ‘If it’s possible,’ he said, ‘I think a gap year is a valuable interval between school and higher education. Often it can change people’s ideas about how they want to spend their lives…open their minds to the fact that other cultures have different, equally valid, ways of doing things.’

  ‘Did you like the Spanish culture? Is it very different from ours?’

  ‘Yes to both questions. But it’s probably changed a lot in the eighteen years since I was there. I’ve never been back. For various reasons, it’s not one of the countries where the company has been involved in developments. But because of Spain’s once-vast empire, the language is useful in other parts of the world.’

  Lucia would have seated herself in one of the chairs, but before she could sit down he hooked a hand through the crook of her elbow, saying, ‘No, sit on the sofa where you can see the river.’

  There was no way she could refuse, even though every instinct told her it wasn’t a good idea to sit where there was space for Grey to sit beside her. To her relief he didn’t. He moved away to open a cupboard. Moments later, still holding his glass in his right hand, he returned to the long low table placed in front of the sofa with a small earthenware dish and a vacuum-sealed foil pack in his other hand. Placing glass and dish on the table, he opened the pack and shook its contents—cashew nuts—into the dish.

  The shape of his hands made her long for pencil and drawing pad. The form and structure of the male body had always appealed to her more than the curves of the female figure. For her generation of students, life classes, to her regret, had not been part of the curriculum. But she had taken every opportunity to draw people and filled sketchbooks with studies of hands from the fat starfish fingers of babies to the arthritis-twisted hands of the old.

  Between those two extremes were these beautiful, powerful hands she was watching now as he made a missile of the pack by twisting it into a knot and took accurate aim at a nearby wastepaper basket. Then he offered the dish of nuts to her.

  ‘Thank you.’ Lucia helped herself to a couple.

  Then he joined her on the sofa and any hope of relaxing and enjoying the view, the wine and the salty taste of the cashews immediately evaporated. Especially as he didn’t settle himself at the other end of the three-seater sofa but on the central section, with his body angled towards her and his elbow on top of the backrest so that his hand dangled between them.

  She had already noticed that, unlike most of the top-level businessmen she had seen on TV or in real life, he did not wear a signet ring on his little finger. Nor was his watch one of the well-known status symbols of those who were rich and liked everyone to know it. Even his casual clothes were non-conformist. His shirt didn’t advertise, even discreetly, that it was from the collection of a famous designer. His pants were the kind of chinos that could be found in any street market. Clearly, he didn’t need anything to boost or reinforce his innate self-confidence. In a way she liked that. As long as it didn’t lead to arrogance.

  ‘What’s that bridge in the distance?’ she asked.

  ‘Wandsworth Bridge. One of the advantages of this mooring is it’s close to Battersea heliport. My father went everywhere by road and rail, but the roads weren’t such a snarl-up in his time. A helicopter is the only way to get out of the city quickly. I like driving and I generally use the car to get to Larchwood, but mostly I fly.’

  ‘Do you mean you fly yourself, or have someone to fly you?’

  ‘I fly myself. It’s not difficult…no more so than driving a car. Do you drive?’

  ‘My father taught me when I was in my teens and I passed the test. But I’ve hardly ever used my licence. After his old car failed its road test, it was more economical to use public transport than to replace it. At my last job, as long as we did the work we could go in early or stay late to avoid travelling in the rush hours.’

  ‘That was a sensible policy. The way things are heading, I see more and more people working from home or returning to the inner cities to live. For millions of people to spend hours of their lives commuting is a huge waste of life. If I—He broke off to point out a river police launch moving downstream.

  When, as it passed out of sight, he did not complete his unfinished remark but switched to the subject of river traffic, Lucia had the feeling that the launch’s appearance had been a timely pretext to cut off a train of thought he had realised he did not wish to share with her.

  Forgetting for a moment the invidious nature of her situation in his family circle, she said, ‘But if you think that, why isn’t your company building inner city housing developments instead of huge office blocks that can only add to the commuter traffic?’

  She saw the muscles at the angle of his jaw tighten, perhaps with annoyance, but his tone was even as he said, ‘Planning permissions take a long time to go through. From concept to realisation is a matter of years, not months. They may be the last such blocks we do build.’

  He leaned forward to pick up the dish of cashews and offer it to her. When he replaced it and sat back, the space between them had diminished and now his arm was stretched along the backrest behind her shoulders.

  If he had been any other man, Lucia would have felt certain that his next move would be to take her in his arms. But she couldn’t bring herself to believe that this was Grey’s intention. It didn’t make sense. Less than ten days ago he had hated her guts, offered a large sum of money to get her out of their lives. If she had been incredibly beautiful or sexy-looking, it was just conceivable that he might have changed his mind…men being notoriously prone to testosterone-fuelled impulses. But she wasn’t either beautiful or sexy.

  A number of men had made passes at her in the past, but then any reasonably presentable female had had that experience. They had mostly been middle-aged office Romeos or callow youths hoping she might be more compliant than the gorgeous girls they really wanted but couldn’t pull. Grey didn’t come into either of those categories. With his looks, money and position he could pretty well take his pick. So why would he bother with her?

  Unless…Struck by a possibility that was a bit farfetched but not impossible, she took a swig of her wine. Maybe, just maybe he was swine enough to think that a pass was a cheaper and more effective way to get rid of her than his previous gambit.

  On the point of jumping up and putting as much space between them as was possible without the reason becoming too obvious, she
had a better idea. Filed away in her memory was a tip she had picked up at art school from the kind of girl who had men pursuing her in droves.

  ‘When they start coming on strong and I don’t want to play, I reach for the nearest food,’ luscious blonde Katie had said. ‘They can’t kiss you with your mouth full.’

  ‘But what if there isn’t any food?’ another girl had asked her.

  ‘There always is…if you keep a choc bar in your bag. It’s amazing how long you can make half a choc bar last if you really need to,’ Katie had said, with a giggle.

  Lucia leaned forward and scooped up a handful of nuts. ‘These are terribly more-ish, aren’t they?’ she said, putting several in her mouth.

  It worked like a charm. Grey drained his wineglass and rose to his feet. Fetching the bottle he refilled his own and topped up hers, saying, ‘You’re obviously hungry. We won’t wait lunch for my mother. She may have got held up shopping. She loves buying presents for her grandchildren.’

  ‘How many grandchildren are there?’

  ‘Eight. Jenny, whom you’ve met, and Julia my eldest sister, have two each. Lolly, the youngest of the three, has four. She and her husband are doctors. They always seem to have larger than average families. I’ll get some food organised.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’

  ‘No, thanks, it’s all organised. Stay where you are and enjoy those more-ish nuts.’

  Was there a gleam of mockery in his glance before he turned away? Did he guess why she had suddenly gone into starving squirrel mode?

  Grey had guessed. He had been reading female body language for a long time and, although it wasn’t usual for women to show signs of alarm when he was sitting close to them, Lucia had been signalling her nervousness for some minutes before stuffing the nuts in her mouth.

  Actually it had not been his intention to make his move when, at any moment, they might be joined by his mother. He had merely been playing cat and mouse, deriving a somewhat sadistic satisfaction from watching her react to her reading of the situation.