by Unknown
In the end, it was gone eleven o'clock before they finally set off for Fitzburgh Place, calling en route at Charlie's house so that Chrissie could change her clothes.
'Lord Astlegh is very good about allowing both the house and the grounds to be used for a variety of local functions,' Guy told Chrissie as she made him stop his car so she could take a longer look at the spectacular vista revealed by a sharp turn in the drive leading to the house.
'Aarlston-Becker held a particularly spectacular masquerade ball here not so long ago,' Guy added, smiling at her awed excitement.
They both surveyed the man-made canal that bisected the grounds to the front of the house and the ornamental lake complete with island and 'Greek'
temple that lay beyond it.
'The original design for the grounds dates from the time of Charles II,' Guy explained, 'with certain modifications incorporated during the reign of William and Mary, hence the Dutch influence. Fortunately, when the fashion for Capability Brown's
"natural vistas" was at its height, the then-incumbent of the house was more dedicated to the gaming tables than redesigning his gardens and so they remained untouched.'
'They're beautiful,' Chrissie acknowledged, then asked, 'Where exactly will the fair be held?'
'To the rear of the house, in the mews area round the original stable yard, which is separated from the house and which Lord Astlegh has had converted into a series of workshops that are let to local craftspeople at very low rents. He also provides them with access to business advice, which ranges from help in preparing their books and accounts to guidance on the best market products.'
'He sounds very philanthropic,' Chrissie commented.
'Well, yes, he is,' Guy agreed. 'But it's a move that several big landowners are following, adopting a trend originally started by the likes of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.'
They were back in the car now, but instead of head-ing towards the main house, Guy took a narrow drive that angled out to the rear of the property and steered through a pair of stout wooden doors set in a high brick wall and into the cobbled stable yard that lay behind it. As Guy brought the car to a halt, Chrissie caught her breath.
What she assumed had originally been stables had been converted into small, double-storey units, each with its own window and smartly painted dark green door flanked by Versailles planters filled with an artistic profusion of summer bedding plants.
Several other cars were already parked in the large enclosed area, and as she studied her surroundings Chrissie could see how well it would adapt to a traditional market-place environment, right down to the smartly painted pump she noticed in the middle of the yard.
'The barn at the end there will be cleared out to house some of the exhibitors,' Guy was telling her as he indicated the large building forming one side of the rectangular area, 'while various empty units are going to be converted to shops selling a variety of traditional items. Stalls will be erected in the yard itself and the original tack rooms and the space above them will house a traditional market-place restaurant and bar.'
'It's going to be wonderful,' Chrissie enthused, genuinely impressed. 'The organisation must be causing you quite a few headaches, though,' she added.
'Just a few,' Guy agreed ruefully before bending his head to whisper to her, 'but I think I've discovered the perfect cure for them.'
Chrissie laughed.
'A headache is supposed to put you off sex,' she reproved him. 'Not—'
'What you and I have is a long, long way from mere sex,' Guy interrupted her seriously. 'A long, long way.'
The look he gave her made Chrissie feel weak at the knees.
Whilst Guy had his meeting with the estate manager, Chrissie elected to go for a walk in the grounds. The Greek temple on its small island in the middle of the lake would make a very romantic venue for a wedding, she decided dreamily as she sat cross-legged on a grassy knoll overlooking the lake. So much had happened in such a very short space of time that she was still half-inclined to feel she ought to pinch herself just to make sure that she was fully awake. It was now totally impossible for her to contemplate a life for herself that did not include Guy—her relationship with him, and the love they shared, as the focal point of that life.
'This is Chrissie,' he had said, introducing her to his sister last night, and then he had looked at her in a way that showed more clearly than any verbal explanation ever could just how he really felt about her.
'I think your sister guessed about us,' Chrissie had told him later when they were in bed.
'Mmm...I suppose I did rather give the game away,' Guy had admitted as he nibbled delicately on her ear. 'She'll probably have told the whole Cooke clan by now. I hope,' he added teasingly, 'you don't have any skeletons tucked away in your closet because if you do, knowing the female side of my family, they won't take very long to dig them out.'
'None at all,' Chrissie had assured him lovingly, but of course, it hadn't quite been the truth, had it?
She still hadn't told him about Uncle Charles, and she must do. She would do. Tonight, she promised herself as she glanced at her watch and realised that Guy's meeting would be over.
She got to her feet and started to walk back towards the stable yard. When she got there, another car had been parked next to Guy's, and as she crossed the yard she saw that Guy was talking with an elegantly dressed woman who looked slightly older than Guy himself.
Both of them were deeply engrossed in their conversation, and from the proximity of their bodies and the affectionate, almost intimate way Guy had his hand on her shoulder and the way she was responding by, if not actively nestling up against him, then certainly standing extremely close to him, Chrissie guessed that their relationship was a long-standing one.
Long-standing and... She bit her lip as she recognised that the feeling paralysing her, making her stay where she was a good ten feet away, unwilling to intrude on their closeness, was one of acute and very painful jealousy.
And then Guy turned his head and saw her.
Was it her imagination or had she, for the barest fleeting breath of time, seen a look in his eyes that suggested that her arrival, her presence, wasn't entirely welcome? If so, it was gone now and there was certainly nothing in the way he was smiling at her to suggest that he wasn't pleased to see her—far from it.
'Chrissie,' he exclaimed, 'come and meet Jenny.'
Jenny! So this was his partner.... Jenny Crighton, Jon Crighton's wife. A little hesitantly, Chrissie went forward.
The other woman wasn't beautiful in the obvious physical sense and she certainly wasn't young, but despite that, she had a warmth, a sweetness.. .a certain something about her that Chrissie could see would appeal very much to a certain type of red-blooded male. And although there was nothing in Jenny's manner to suggest it when she smiled warmly at Chrissie and shook her hand, Chrissie also somehow knew that Jenny's feelings for Guy were far deeper and more complex than those of one business partner for another.
Was the atmosphere she could sense between the two of them a legacy from some past relationship or the result of something that existed in the present? If so, how might it affect her own relationship with Guy? She wasn't a jealous person by nature but then she had never felt about another man the way she did about Guy, she recognised.
'Jenny and I were just discussing some of the arrangements for the fair,' Guy explained to Chrissie, adding to Jenny, 'Chrissie is dealing with Charlie Platt's estate. We met when I went round to check over the contents.'
As Jenny extended her hand towards her, Chrissie took it somewhat reluctantly. It wasn't like her to feel awkward or uncomfortable with a member of her own sex, but for some reason she discovered that she couldn't quite meet Jenny Crighton's eyes.
Because she was afraid of what Jenny might see in her own eyes or because she was afraid of what Jenny's might reveal to her?
'Will Louise and Katie be able to help out at the fair this year?' Guy asked Jenny, then turned to Ch
rissie to enlighten her. 'Katie and Louise are Jon and Jenny's twin daughters.'
'No, I'm afraid not. They're both studying hard for their exams,' Jenny informed him. 'So they won't have much spare time on their hands.'
'Louise is still determined that she and Katie are going to become Eurolawyers, I take it?' Guy smiled.
'Louise is, but I rather think that Katie has her own ideas about her future,' Jenny returned wryly. 'Jon and I had hoped to spend a few days visiting them this month, but the break-in has affected Ben quite badly and we're a bit reluctant to leave him. Ben is my husband's father,' Jenny explained for Chrissie's benefit. 'Queensmead, his home, was broken into recently and although Ben himself wasn't aware of what was going on—fortunately he was asleep in bed at the time and the burglars didn't disturb him—it has left him feeling very vulnerable.'
'Your father-in-law must have been terribly shocked,' Chrissie sympathised.
Despite her disturbing suspicions about the depth of intimacy that existed between Guy and Jenny, she had to acknowledge that there was a friendliness and warmth about Jenny, which in other circumstances would have had her wanting to get to know the older woman better. As it was...
Turning away, she frowned as Guy started to describe his meeting with the estate manager to Jenny, aware that, although she wasn't being deliberately ex-cluded from their conversation, it involved a part of Guy's life about which she had very little knowledge and, in fact, revealed rather painfully to her just how wide the gulf was between her knowledge of him and Jenny's.
She had known him less than twenty-four hours, she reminded herself sternly. He and Jenny had quite obviously known one another for years, but she still was sharply conscious of the fact that Guy had made no move to reach out and draw her closer or even to touch her physically in any way, whilst Jenny was standing close enough to him for their bodies to be touching.
'It's been very nice meeting you,' Jenny told her with a smile, having glanced at her watch and exclaimed that she had things to do.
'We ought to be getting on, too,' Guy observed, adding, 'Chrissie has an appointment with Jon this afternoon to sort out the legal ramifications of Charlie Platt's estate.'
'Oh yes,' Jenny said, smiling at Chrissie. Jon had mentioned to her over breakfast that he had an appointment with the late Charlie Platt's niece concerning his affairs.
Jenny shook hands with her, but she and Guy hugged and kissed one another with obvious closeness and affection, Chrissie noticed before the older woman turned and hurried away, leaving them head-ing for Guy's car at a more leisurely pace.
'You and Jenny have obviously known one another a long time,' Chrissie remarked as Guy drove back to town, unable to resist bringing up the subject even though she felt a stab of jealousy.
'Yes, we have,' Guy agreed, the warmth in his voice and the way he was smiling fanning the flames of Chrissie's apprehensions into an unwanted positive belief that Jenny held a very special place in his life—
and in his heart?
'How long have she and Jon been married?' she asked, unwilling to demand to know outright just what Jenny meant to him and yet increasingly anxious to dispel her growing fears.
'I'm not quite sure. Well over twenty-five years,'
Guy informed her. 'Max, their eldest child, must be in his late twenties, I should think.'
Over twenty-five years. Chrissie started to relax slightly. Well, at least that meant that there could have been no youthful relationship between Guy and Jenny, the embers continuing to smoulder throughout Jenny's marriage. But she still couldn't entirely relax.
'And they've always been happy together, have they?' she probed.
Guy frowned as he turned his head towards Chrissie. What on earth had made her ask that particular question and how the hell should he answer it?
The truth was that Jon and Jenny's marriage had gone through a bad patch at one time and he... His frown deepened.
The relationship between him and Jenny had never been anything other than that of business partners and good friends, but... But there had been a time when he had wanted it to be more, he acknowledged inwardly. There had, in fact, been a time when he had been ready and willing—more than willing, if he was being honest—to encourage Jenny to leave Jon...
when he had actively wanted her to do so. Fortunately and wisely, Jenny had never allowed either of them to cross the fine line that divided the safety of friend-ship from the danger of... something else.
There was no logical reason why he couldn't tell Chrissie any of this. But how would she react to the knowledge that he had once come very close to wanting Jenny to break her marriage vows, to convincing himself that the emptiness he had been beginning to sense in his life at that time might be filled by her; that her vulnerability and need had aroused within him a protective and very masculine desire to shelter and take care of her and to convince both himself and her that those emotions could be transmuted into something they could both call love.
Surely it was sufficient for him to know that he had been wrong and that thankfully Jenny had known that and prevented them both from making what he now knew would have been a bad mistake.
He would eventually, of course, tell Chrissie about Jenny and about his own awareness of how emotionally vulnerable he had been at that time. And he could tell her then, too, how glad he was at the same time that she was the only woman he had ever and could ever want to make a formal lifelong commitment to.
That now that there was love, that now that he did love, he could recognise the vast gulf, the huge difference, that existed between it and what he had believed he felt for Jenny.
Yes, he would tell Chrissie all of that later when their own relationship was far more firmly estab-lished. For now, he mentally crossed his fingers behind his back and assured himself that he was doing the right thing. Smiling at her, he replied, 'Yes, so far as I know, they've always been extremely happy together.'
She had the reassurance she needed, so why did she feel that Guy was keeping something from her?
Withholding something from her? Chrissie wondered.
'We can't go on like this,' Guy was telling her groan-ingly less than an hour later as they lay together on his bed, Guy's hand resting possessively and tenderly on her body as he kissed her gently in the aftermath of their passionate lovemaking. 'I wanted to keep you to myself for just a little while longer before we went public but...'
'What are you trying to say?' Chrissie asked him, but from the excited way her heart was racing, she suspected she already knew.
'We could fly to Amsterdam tomorrow,' Guy told her softly. 'I know a dealer there who specialises in antique jewellery, or if you'd prefer something more modern...'
Chrissie's heart leaped into her throat. 'An engagement ring, do you mean?' she whispered.
'An engagement ring and, more importantly, a wedding ring,' Guy affirmed throatily as he bent his head to kiss her.
'We can't get married just like that,' Chrissie protested, but the look in her eyes as they met Guy's revealed just how much she would like to. 'My parents...' she began. Guy nodded regretfully and agreed.
'My family will be just as bad. If we don't have a big formal wedding, there'll be no end to the sulks and looks of disapproval.'
'Marriage,' Chrissie said wonderingly, her heart in her eyes as she asked him huskily, 'Are you sure that that's what you want...that I'm what you want?'
'More sure than I've ever been of any other thing in my whole life,' Guy told her solemnly and meant it.
'We can talk about it properly tonight,' Chrissie promised, then reminded him, 'If I don't leave now, I'm going to be late for my appointment with Jon Crighton.'
'Tonight,' Guy agreed. 'Tonight we'll make our real vows to one another, our real promises...our real plans. It'll be our last chance before we're swamped with offers of bridesmaids and wedding cakes.'
Chrissie laughed, leaned forward and then smiled up into his eyes as he drew her closer to him for one last, lin
gering kiss. She would remember this moment for ever, she promised herself. Remember the smell and feel of him, his warmth, their shared closeness, the almost physical presence of their shared love as it engulfed and cocooned them.
Yes, she would remember it for ever.
CHAPTER FIVE
CHRISSIE saw that Jon Crighton was frowning when he got up from behind his desk and walked across the room to stand in front of the window as he listened to what she had to say.
Jenny's husband had turned out to be a tall, blond-haired man in his fifties whose slight shyness couldn't really conceal the natural warmth of his personality, and now that she had met him she felt oddly reassured that Guy had spoken the truth when he said that Jon and Jenny had a good marriage.
'My parents, my mother, would like to have a list of Uncle Charles's debts, especially the names of those people he personally owed money to,' Chrissie told Jon, watching as his frown deepened.
'There's no legal responsibility on her part to meet such debts,' Jon began, but Chrissie shook her head and interrupted him.
'My mother and her brother were never close. I barely knew him and there was a problem, a quarrel, within the family, which meant... But still my mother feels very strongly that she doesn't want other people to suffer financially because they...because they trusted her brother perhaps unwisely. She has a very strong sense of family,' Chrissie explained quietly to Jon. 'And an equally strong sense of moral responsibility.' She took another deep breath and plunged on. 'She knows, we know, that her brother was not always...honest in his dealings with other people.'
She paused and looked at Jon.
'No,' Jon agreed calmly. 'He wasn't, and I have to be truthful, there are some people to whom he owed money who will not be repaid out of what there is left of an estate, who are financially in straitened circumstances themselves.' Jon paused, mentally reflecting on the wide differences that could exist between two members of the same family. He was no stranger to this state of affairs; he thought of his own brother David and himself. 'Your mother need have no fears that either she or her parents are remembered locally with anything other than very great fondness and respect,' he told Chrissie gently, adding, 'Your grandmother, in particular, was very well known locally for her generosity to a number of charities, both financially and through the voluntary work she did.'