Gracious Lady

by Carole Mortimer

  'And just what the hell would he know about it?' he rasped harshly, eyes narrowed.

  Sophie shrugged uncomfortably. 'He recognised the horse as a thoroughbred, and I suppose when he ques­tioned Jennie about it she—'

  'He had no damned right questioning my daughter about anything!' Maximilian bit out tautly. 'Who the hell is he, anyway? Besides the insensitive swine who left you to your fate on a dark road at midnight three days ago!'

  So he had realised that, had he? Sophie hadn't thought it would take him long to add two and two together and come up with the appropriate answer!

  She moistened her lips. 'I told you, he's a friend of mine who——'

  'Some friend!' Maximilian scorned with feeling. 'Your choice of male friends could use a little more—dis­cretion being applied,' he derided harshly.

  He was being deliberately insulting now. 'You could be right...' She looked at him pointedly; after all, they had been on the brink of making love minutes ago. 'If you'll excuse me,' she told him stiffly, 'I think one of us should go and talk to Jennie!'

  Maximilian didn't answer her gibe, had already turned away to talk soothingly to the racehorse.

  Sophie stumbled in the straw as she went to move, but she wasn't sure whether that was because of the un-evenness of the surface, or because her legs were still weak from Maximilian's kisses. Whichever, she was angry with herself for the lapse, slamming the stable door closed behind her as she left.

  With any luck, the horse would be startled into tram­pling all over Maxim— She came to an abrupt halt outside at the vengeful gruesomeness of her thoughts, listening intently for the sound of any snorting or stamping to show the spirited horse's temper. Nothing. Complete silence from inside the stable. No doubt Maximilian had the stupid horse eating out of his hand too; she certainly didn't seem to have any defence against him. He kissed her when he wanted to, and just pushed her away when he didn't!

  She glared at Paul Wiseman on her way through the hallway as he stood there talking to one of the men who worked in the stables. Maximilian's assistant looked taken aback at the ferocity of her gaze, but at that moment Sophie was too angry to care what he thought was wrong with her. Everyone here seemed to be more concerned with the welfare of that stupid horse than they were with the people who lived here. It was only a horse, when all was said and done, whereas Jennie... Oh, damn Maximilian; she couldn't force him to show concern for his daughter if he didn't want to! Maybe Jennie was right after all—maybe he did care more for his horse than he did for her...

  And Sophie couldn't love a man who cared more for his possessions than he did for his family; that would put Maximilian on a level with Malcolm, and she couldn't love anyone even remotely like him.

  Although... Wasn't it said that, no matter how your taste in a partner might seem to differ from one re­lationship to another, in actual fact, beneath the surface, those partners were probably very much alike; that she was more likely to go for a similar type to Malcolm, in fact, than any other...!

  No, she couldn't believe that. Maximilian wasn't at all like Malcolm, and never could be!

  Because she knew she had fallen in love with him...

  It was ridiculous, totally illogical, utterly futile—de­spite the fact that Maximilian had admitted wanting and desiring her. Desire and wanting weren't the same as loving, and she wasn't about to settle for anything less

  'Sophie, what are you doing mooning about in the hallway?' The sharply accusing voice of her aunt cut in on her tortuous thoughts.

  And as she turned to face her aunt she realised she was indeed 'mooning about'; in fact, she was standing with one of her feet on the first stair, the other still in the carpeted hallway. Paul Wiseman, and the middle-aged man he had been talking to when she came in, seemed to have disappeared completely!

  'Er—nothing,' she replied lamely, having stepped down completely into the hallway now.

  Her aunt shook her head. 'Another meal ruined!' she dismissed impatiently. 'I've thrown more food away the last three days than I care to think about.'

  Her aunt did look more than a little strained; in fact, she looked rather pale. 'Aunt Millie, are you feeling all right?' Sophie frowned.

  'As a matter of fact, no,' her aunt muttered, guilty colour briefly entering her cheeks as she put a hand up to her temple. 'I must be getting old, Sophie,' she said wearily, pale once again, 'because all this upset seems to be bringing on one of my migraines!'

  Oh, dear. Sophie remembered those migraines from childhood; her aunt didn't get them very often, possibly only once a year, but when she did it usually meant she had to take to her bed for twenty-four hours.

  'Go to bed, Aunt Millie,' Sophie advised immedi­ately. ‘I can see to lunch—'

  'I told you, no one wants any.' Her aunt shook her head, seeming to go paler by the second. 'It's dinner I'm more concerned with. May is only in until one o'clock, has already gone home, in fact, so she can't cook it. I was looking for Mr Grant to see if I could perhaps—'

  'Don't worry any more, Aunt Millie. I'll find Maximilian and explain all this to him,' Sophie told her decisively, firmly turning her aunt back in the direction of her suite of rooms in the servants' quarters at the back of the house. 'And I'll see to dinner—'

  'You?' Her aunt gave a pained frown as she came to an abrupt halt. 'But—'

  ‘I can cook, Aunt Millie,' she assured her ruefully. 'And Jennie can help me,' she added firmly as the idea suddenly occurred to her; it would take care of two problems at the same time if she could get Jennie to come down to the kitchen to help her, keep the young girl occupied and in so doing give her less time to sit up in her room brooding. It would also get the meal cooked. Yes, it was a brilliant idea, even if she did say so herself. And between the two of them they were sure to be able to come up with something edible for dinner!

  'Miss Jennie, help you cook dinner...?' Her aunt looked startled at the suggestion. 'But—'

  'Will you just go, Aunt Millie?' she cajoled, sure that if her aunt didn't lie down soon she was going to have one of her really bad migraines, and that could inca­pacitate her for days rather than hours. Sophie was well aware that, although she might be able to produce some­thing for them to eat for a couple of meals, after that things might start to flounder; her repertoire was a little limited!

  It was evidence of just how bad her aunt felt, though, that she offered no further argument to the suggestion! 'You will explain to Mr Grant that I—?'

  'Yes, of course I'll explain,' Sophie dismissed im­patiently. Damn 'explaining to Mr Grant'; he would just have to put up with the inconvenience—and her cooking! It was time he learnt that not everyone could function like a machine, as he obviously did. 'Now just go.' She smiled reassuringly at her aunt as she personally took her to her bedroom and left her there.

  Jennie still sat on her bed when Sophie entered the room after the briefest of knocks, a knock Jennie had chosen to ignore anyway. It was obvious from that almost vacuous look on Jennie's face that Maximilian still hadn't been up to see her.

  'Come on, Jennie,' Sophie instructed briskly. 'Let's go downstairs; you and I have a meal to prepare for this evening,' she added as she received no response. Jennie turned to look at her now, frowning as she realised what Sophie had said.

  'Yes.' Sophie grimaced in acknowledgement. ‘I did say you and I are cooking dinner this evening. And if your cooking is anything like mine, we're going to need all the time between now and then to come up with some­thing edible!'

  To give Jennie her due, and despite the fact she was obviously still very upset over that scene with her father, once Sophie had explained the situation to her con­cerning Aunt Millie the girl threw herself into the idea of the two of them preparing dinner with a gusto Sophie could only applaud. And it soon became obvious, as Sophie became the helper and Jennie the cook, that Jennie had much more of an aptitude and liking for cooking than Sophie had ever had. In fact, Jennie had grudgingly confided, she was thinking of taking up some form of
catering as a career once she had been to university.

  They didn't have to worry about dessert at all, they discovered on checking the fridge for contents; the fresh fruit salad her aunt had made for lunch would do for that. But Jennie produced a wonderful prawn con­coction as a starter, with a bought pâté as a standby for anyone who didn't like shellfish. And she soon had a chicken curry, made from the chicken that had been cooked for lunch and then not wanted, bubbling away in a pot on top of the cooker. It smelt absolutely mar­vellous, making Sophie glad she had thought of the idea of getting Jennie to help her in the first place!

  Her own contribution to the proceedings was to make them both a sandwich and stave off the pangs of hunger until dinnertime!

  As for telling Maximilian about her aunt, she couldn't even find him, let alone explain to him. Not that she looked too hard for him anyway, not all that anxious to see him again herself, still disgusted over his behaviour towards Jennie.

  'He went out early this afternoon,' Jennie informed her dully as the two of them sat at the kitchen table drinking mugs of coffee and taking a well-earned break for a few minutes. 'You were wondering where my father was, weren't you?' she stated flatly as Sophie looked at her enquiringly. 'He went out in his car earlier. I heard him leave when I was shelling the prawns.' She shrugged dismissively. 'He's probably gone over to see Aunt Celia,' she announced with a grimace of distaste.

  The fawning, pliant, eager-to-please Celia Taylor, who also didn't have any messy past to be coped with, any tangled present either.

  'Don't look like that!' Jennie groaned as she watched the emotions flickering across Sophie's face. 'I'm his daughter, and, despite what other impression you may have got earlier, I love him. But for any woman to fall in love with him...!' She shook her head sadly.

  Sophie gasped. 'But I don't—'

  'You're starting to,' Jennie shrugged. 'If you haven't already...' She looked at Sophie closely, obviously not liking what she saw.

  Sophie turned away from the intensity of that gaze, feeling totally exposed, her emotions laid bare. 'Jennie, your parents...?'

  'Yes?' the young girl frowned darkly.

  'What happened—between them?' She shook her head at the deeply personal question; she couldn't blame Jennie at all if she told her to mind her own damned business! She shouldn't be asking it of her really, knew that she shouldn't, but it was something she so needed to know. 'They don't sound as if—they were happy together?'

  Jennie gave a disgusted snort at what she obviously thought was an understatement. 'They were in the process of getting a divorce when Mummy was killed in the car crash,' she revealed harshly. 'Who knows what went wrong between them?' She shrugged with a frown. 'All I knew was that it had become impossible to spend time with the two of them together. I was about nine when I first began to realise my parents weren't ecstati­cally happy together.' Her mouth twisted in self-derision. 'Actually, they weren't even mildly happy together. I suppose, like a lot of couples, they stayed together be­cause of me. What happened to change that ar­rangement, I have no idea, but suddenly when I was twelve it was all-change and they decided to get divorced after all.' She shrugged. 'Maybe they had just decided by that time that I was old enough to accept that their marriage was over. I really don't know.' She shook her head.

  When this young girl had been twelve, Sophie's own marriage had only just begun...

  Now, almost four years later she had fallen in love with Jennie's father. And, as Jennie so rightly pointed out, that was pure madness!

  'What's this?' Maximilian frowned as Jennie and Sophie brought in the prawn starters for the five of them to begin their meal, Paul Wiseman having joined them this evening. Sean was seated at the table with the other two men too.

  Jennie glanced down at the prawn dish, somehow avoiding looking directly at her father, obviously still angry with him. 'You eat prawns, don't you?' she frowned.

  'Of course I eat— Where is Mrs Craine? Maximilian watched with narrowed eyes as the two girls set the food on the table in front of him.

  Sophie and Jennie had gone to great pains to make the table look as nice tonight as it did when Sophie's aunt did it, which was probably why the three men had had no idea, until they brought the food in, that it wasn't the housekeeper's work at all. But Sophie had no in­tention of letting her aunt down. Aunt Millie was fretting about her incapacity as it was, very anxious to attain assurances from Sophie as to the progress of dinner when Sophie had taken her in a cup of tea earlier. Sophie had been just as eager to get those same assurances as to whether or not Maximilian ate curry; it was such a specialised dish that, if he didn't, they were in trouble! Luckily, her aunt had assured her it was one of his favourite meals; Sophie wouldn't have put it past Jennie in her present state of mind to prepare something she knew her father hated!

  Maximilian hadn't arrived back until just over an hour ago. Sophie had been in the kitchen still, giving the simmering curry a preoccupied stir, when she heard his car returning. As he passed the kitchen window, she could see he looked a lot less strained than he had earlier, and she couldn't help wondering if Celia Taylor had had something to do with that. No doubt the other woman had given him lunch as well.

  At the thought of that, Sophie wondered why on earth she had gone to such trouble to make sure he wasn't inconvenienced over his dinner; it would have served him right if she had just left him to his own devices!

  'Mrs Craine isn't feeling very well,' Jennie told her father as she took her own seat at the table beside Sean.

  ‘I would have told you earlier—if I could have found you,' Sophie added sharply, sitting down abruptly too. She still hadn't told him about Brian's threats earlier yet—and even a woeful telephone call to Ally on her part hadn't been able to deter him from going ahead with his story; he was adamant that he was going to write it! But if Sophie couldn't even find Maximilian, then she couldn't tell him about that either, could she? So it was his own fault he didn't know about it. The time they had been together in Gracious Lady's stable didn't count!

  'I had to go out,' be dismissed.

  She met his gaze in steady challenge. 'I realised that.' And she had been tortured by thoughts of him and Celia together all afternoon. Oh, she had been kept busy, helping Jennie with the meal, but always at the back of her mind had been that nagging torment of what Maximilian and Celia were doing together all that time. 'So Jennie and I cooked the meal. Jennie mainly,' she added abruptly, no longer able to meet the coldness of Maximilian's gaze.

  'And very nice it looks too,' Sean beamed at them appreciatively to make up for Maximilian's obvious lack of enthusiasm. 'You must have both worked very hard.'

  'Oh, we did.' Jennie nodded, turning to Paul Wiseman, who sat at her other side. 'Come on, Paul, try a prawn,' she encouraged huskily, scooping a prawn up from his plate and holding it temptingly in front of him. 'Go on.' She smiled at him. 'They're delicious!'

  Maximilian's mouth tightened, his eyes narrowed, as he watched the act of intimacy of his daughter feeding his employee the prawn.

  Paul looked as if he would rather be anywhere else but sitting beside Jennie at that moment. Couldn't Maximilian see that Jennie was only behaving in the way she was to annoy him, that she had far from forgiven him for this morning?

  Obviously not, Sophie realised with a sigh as his eyes seemed to glaze over coldly, his sense of humour sadly lacking where Jennie was concerned. His sense of pro­portion, too. Silly man, Sophie thought irritably, not having forgiven him for this morning herself yet either. But a smile curved her lips as she thought of how he would hate being thought 'silly'.

  'Something amusing you, Sophie?' he rasped, cutting into her thoughts.

  She gave him an almost guilty glance, realising even as she did so that he couldn't possibly know what she was thinking—he was clever, but not that clever; he ac­tually believed her humour was at his expense con­cerning Jennie's antics with Paul.

  'Not in the least,' she answered him coolly before turnin
g to Jennie. ‘This prawn dish is wonderful, Jennie,' she told her warmly, hoping to divert everyone's at­tention on to something less explosive than the tension between Maximilian and Jennie.

  'Yes,' Maximilian agreed curtly, his mouth twisting wryly. 'Obviously your private education hasn't been a complete waste of time!'

  Sophie winced at his deliberate barb; Maximilian was obviously furious.

  Mealtimes were proving to be such a relaxing time in this household, Sophie thought heavily as she viciously stabbed a prawn up on to her own fork; she would be lucky if she didn't have an ulcer by the time she left!

  When she left...

  Oh, God, the thought of leaving Maximilian now, when she knew she had fallen in love with him, was like being told she was to have a limb amputated!

  Only another six days and she would be out of his life—and his hair!—forever...

  CHAPTER TEN

  SOPHIE wasn't asleep when the intruder came stumbling into her bedroom. She had been lying awake in the darkness, wondering what she was going to do about her love for Maximilian, when the door suddenly burst open and someone almost fell into her bedroom.

  She shot up into a sitting position in the bed, trying to focus in the darkness, her heart beating wildly in her breast at this intrusion. She had only moved into this bedroom next to Jennie's the day before, and as it was a guest bedroom it had been unoccupied before that, so she doubted that whoever it was had come in here by mistake; who was it?

  The intruder stumbled again, groaning as he came into contact with the edge of the dressing-table placed near the door.

  An incompetent burglar? He was surely making enough noise to have woken her even if she had orig­inally been asleep!