by Fiona Harper
That didn’t explain why he’d stayed in London for almost a week.
Yesterday he’d hinted he had something big to tell her, something that might make her want to ditch him altogether. Had he just been exaggerating and had told her this big ‘thing’ last night, or was the revelation still to come? She knew what she wanted to believe, but a sense of foreboding had settled over her like frost in the night and she couldn’t shake it.
Until she knew, they couldn’t even hope to start planning a future together. Everything hung on what Alex would say this morning—her life, her dreams, her dignity—and she wanted to get it over and done with. She’d waited long enough.
They made it halfway down to the restaurant before any hopes of a quiet tête-à-tête over coffee and croissants were dashed. As they turned at one of the large square landings on the staircase, they caught up with Auntie Barb, who was looking chirpier than she had a right to.
Jennie didn’t have time to backtrack up the stairs, dragging Alex with her. She didn’t even manage to outmanoeuvre an orange kiss. But the ordeal was over quickly because her aunt was much more interested in checking out the man she was with.
She batted her lashes at him. ‘I don’t think we had the pleasure of meeting last night, Mr…er…’
‘Dangerfield,’ Alex said without holding out his hand, and looking vaguely impatient.
‘Well, Mr Dangerfield, it’s lovely to meet any friend of Jennifer’s.’ She suddenly remembered her niece’s presence and turned to her, all syrup and sweetness. ‘So kind of you to offer your room to poorly old me last night,’ she said. Then she leaned in close and added in a lower voice, ‘It’s this arthritis of mine. It wears me out unexpectedly sometimes.’
Jennie bit back a cackle of laughter. ‘No problem,’ she said smoothly.
But Auntie Barb wasn’t going to be shaken off that easily. ‘Why don’t we all have breakfast together?’ She paused to look at Alex, her jovial smile gaining a slightly predatory edge. ‘We didn’t get a chance to chat last night and you can catch me up on the latest scrape you’ve got yourself into.’
Jennie just kept smiling.
He’s standing right next to me, actually.
‘That’s a lovely idea, Auntie Barbara, but I’ve just remembered I’ve left my…er…in my room. I better just go and.’ She jerked her thumb towards to the top of the staircase.
‘Never mind,’ her aunt replied, not looking crestfallen in the slightest. ‘That’ll give Mr Dangerfield and I a chance to get to know each other better while we wait for you.’
Jennie grabbed for Alex’s hand and felt him start. She gripped harder. ‘Oh, but Al—Mr Dangerfield—needs to come and help me look,’ she said, nodding hard and willing him to play along.
Alex looked both solemn and irritated for a second, and then he bestowed one of his rare smiles on Auntie Barb. Jennie’s heart thudded to a stop. He really should have warned her he was going to do that. When Alex smiled, the effect was devastating.
It wasn’t just that it transformed his face, made him seem less intimidating, more approachable. No, the thing that took one’s breath away was being the object of all that concentrated focus. The woman in question felt as if the smile was one hundred per cent hers, that he might never smile that way again at any other woman for the rest of his life…
‘I can’t leave a lady in distress, now, can I?’ he said ruefully.
Auntie Barb just nodded understandingly.
‘Maybe we’ll bump into each other later,’ he added.
And then Jennie and Alex were running back up the stairs, hand in hand, leaving Auntie Barb to mutter, ‘Oh, I do hope so,’ to herself in a wistful voice.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WE HAVE to get out of here,’ Jennie whispered at him when they’d reached the top of the stairs. She kept running, pulling him along behind her, until they were tucked away down a little side corridor. She stopped and rested against the wall, panting a little. Alex couldn’t stop watching the rise and fall of her collarbone as she craned her neck towards the staircase to see if another random family member was about to appear.
All he could think about was leaning in close and tasting her there.
Jennie looked unusually serious. ‘If we go downstairs,’ she said, ‘my whole family will accost us one by one. They’ll want to know who you are, why they didn’t see you last night and why you’re here now.’
His previously optimistic mood plummeted. Last night he’d thought he’d been wrong about her, had judged her too harshly, but now he wasn’t sure.
She was staring at him, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t answer, her perfectly plucked brows wrinkled slightly. ‘What?’ she said, shaking a single wisp of hair that had escaped her ponytail out of her eyes.
‘Still trying to hide your dirty little secret?’ he said.
She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, but the frown increased. ‘What dirty little secret?’
‘Me,’ he said simply.
She shook her head. ‘It’s not like that! ‘
He glanced at the stairs, waited until she followed his gaze. ‘Then why don’t we go downstairs, hand in hand, and you can introduce me to your family properly? No more sneaking around, Jennie. I’m tired of it.’
She opened her mouth and shut it again. ‘But I…I can’t.’
The whole situation had him on edge. He was finding it impossible to stand outside of himself, be objective—something he made a very good living out of. His thoughts became dark and sarcastic. Of course she didn’t want to tell her family. Getting carried away and eloping had been glamorous and exciting but, when it came down to it, neither of them were sure she was in it for the long haul—he’d seen the uncertainty in her eyes this morning. It had haunted him all the while he’d been in the shower.
But there were too many things haunting him at present, so he banished the feeling with a little biting humour. ‘Of course you can. Think of the stir it’ll create. You’ll be chief topic of conversation for weeks, maybe even months. What’s not to like? Unless, of course…’ he leaned in close—too close ‘…you’re ashamed of me.’
She slid along the wall a little to escape him, her full lips pouting slightly. ‘That’s not fair, Alex.’
Probably not. But he was on a roll, and it felt good to finally say all the things that had been circuiting his head for a couple of weeks.
‘Isn’t it? Then what other reason can you give me for getting married, not telling a soul—not even your parents—and then running away and pretending it never happened? Daddy’s not going to clear the mess up for you this time, sweetheart. I’m one problem you’re going to have to solve yourself.’
She glared at him. ‘You’re being deliberately nasty, twisting things…’
He shrugged. ‘Then convince me otherwise.’
Jennie’s bottom slid a couple of inches down the wall and her shoulders wilted. ‘Alex, how do we explain…. us…to my family? Seriously? Even we don’t know where we stand with each other at the moment!’
She had a point there. But that was the problem with Jennie Hunter—normally rational, sensible men got all riled up when she was around and let their emotions have a part in the decision-making process. It wasn’t the way he usually did things. Perhaps a bit of fresh air and distance from this pressure cooker situation would help.
‘Okay. Let’s go somewhere else.’ Constant ducking away from nosy relatives would just keep their adrenalin spiking and they both needed to be calm if they were going to discuss their future.
‘But where?’ Jennie said. ‘It’s half eight on a Sunday morning. Nothing’s open for hours yet.’
‘We’re just over the border from Kent, and Elmhurst is less than an hour away,’ he said, mentally pulling up a map of the county and marking out the best route home.
Jennie looked uncomfortable, and he didn’t begrudge her that. If things had turned out differently, they’d have both been living in the spacious farmhouse on t
he outskirts of the village now. He’d imagined them coming home from their honeymoon, weary and happy, laughing at their own silliness as he carried her over the threshold.
‘We’d have all the time and privacy we need,’ he added. The house was going to be empty until early evening. Plenty of time to break the news to Jennie.
She bit her top lip and then let it slide past her teeth slowly. ‘Okay,’ she finally said.
He nodded, looking more confident and sure of a satisfactory outcome than he felt. He hoped to high heaven that she didn’t set one foot inside the door and decide to run again.
The winter sky was a pure cool grey, lit from below by a sun that refused to stray far from the horizon. The previous night had been clear, full of stars, and now a crunchy frost covered the fields and hedgerows. Jennie sat in silence as Alex drove them down virtually empty country roads to the small Kent village of Elmhurst.
She’d been to Alex’s house many times before, had always loved the rolling countryside, dotted with farmhouses, and little hamlets with steepled churches, but this visit was different. It wasn’t a game any more. They weren’t in the throes of a whirlwind romance, sneaking off to spend time with each other whenever they could. Just going inside the front door would remind her of all that should have been, but wasn’t.
Her bathrobe should have been hanging on the back of Alex’s bathroom door. Her toothbrush should have been nestling up to his in the pot by the washbasin. Her clothes should have been filling half—okay, probably a lot more than half—of Alex’s wardrobe. But it was a month after her wedding day and she wasn’t really occupying any space in his life at all.
She closed her eyes and tried to relax the muscles in her neck. Had it only been hours ago that her and Alex’s lives had collided again? She’d felt and thought so many conflicting things during that time that it seemed a lot longer, and now she seemed cast adrift on a lake of confusion.
On one hand, the man she’d pledged her life to had sought her out, just as she’d wanted him to, but on the other hand, there were multiple reasons not to trust the inward tugging that was slowly drawing her back into his orbit. Yes, she knew now that he’d done what he’d done because it had been part of his strict moral code, that he’d been acting nobly, but what if things like this cropped up in the future? Obviously, there wouldn’t be another dying first wife, but there would be other things he felt compelled to do.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a marriage where she played second fiddle to her husband’s lofty ideals. She supposed she could cultivate some lofty ideals of her own, but that kind of thing didn’t come naturally to her. What if her critics were right, and she didn’t have it in her to be that mature and unselfish?
No, if they decided to patch things up and go forward, they were going to have to promise each other that the relationship came first, and that nothing and nobody should be allowed to get in the way of that. It was what she’d thought they’d done already, after all. Wasn’t that what marriage was all about?
They made good time, and it wasn’t more than forty minutes before they pulled into the driveway of his small manor house. Unlike the local stately home, Elmhurst Hall, Alex’s home was only just verging on grand, the home of a gentleman farmer in years gone by. It was a large square, two-storey building with tall multi-paned sash windows and red brickwork that had weathered into a dull rust colour.
She’d expected the windows to be dark when they pulled up, but there was a faint orange glow from the ground floor windows on the left side of the house where the kitchen was, and there was a car she didn’t recognize parked in the drive. Alex brought the car to a halt and put the handbrake on, but when she moved to open the door he placed a hand on her arm. She let go of the door handle and looked at him.
‘Before we go in…’
Jennie’s heart started to pump. The way he was looking at her was making her very nervous. She saw doubt in his eyes, hesitation. And Alex never hesitated about anything. Once he’d made his mind up to do something, that was it.
‘What is it?’ she said quietly.
He looked ahead out of the windscreen at the house, in the direction of the orange glow. ‘I thought they’d planned to be out this morning, but there must have been a hiccup in the timetable. I have someone staying with me—a relative.’
‘Oh.’ She frowned again. She seemed to be doing a lot of that at present. Now she was just confused. Alex had said they’d have space and privacy, and now they were going to have to tiptoe around a house guest? The whole point of leaving the hotel had been to avoid bothersome relatives. But, before she could think of anything to ask him about the situation, he was out of the driver’s door and striding round the car to open hers.
Jennie just blinked. Her husband might be an enigma, but one couldn’t fault his manners.
She eased herself from the car seat elegantly and nodded her thanks, then followed him up to the front door. The inside of the house was different, too. It smelled different. Before, it hadn’t really had an aroma. If she’d had to describe it, she’d have said Alex’s house smelled clean, and faintly of leather. Now, however, there were warm baking smells drifting from the kitchen—cinnamon and butter and toffee. There were extra coats on the hooks by the front door and the sound of a radio tuned to a pop station somewhere in the distance.
‘I’ll introduce you quickly, and then we can talk,’ he said seriously.
Jennie nodded, knowing that the quicker she did what Alex asked, the sooner they’d reach a decision about their future, one way or the other. She was sick of waiting, sick of something else always butting in and getting in the way. At last she was going to have her husband’s full attention, and she was going to make it count.
He led her into the kitchen and the first person Jennie saw was a woman, maybe a little bit younger than she was, bending to remove some delicious-smelling muffins from the oven. The woman had wavy dark hair cut into a bob and her eyes were warm and smiling when she turned to greet Alex. There was a flicker of hesitation as she saw Jennie standing there, but her smile didn’t falter.
‘Perfect timing,’ she said, her gaze transferring back to Alex and warming even further. Jennie realised she was doing that thing her father said she did with her lip again and smiled back at the woman to iron it out.
‘This is Toni—my cousin,’ Alex said.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Toni said, nodding at Jennie, but displaying hands floury enough to preclude any other form of greeting. ‘The kettle boiled not long ago. Do you both want coffee?’
‘Hi,’ Jennie said. ‘And yes, please.’
It seemed bizarre, smiling and making small talk while her whole future hung in the balance.
‘And this is Mollie,’ Alex added, and Jennie suddenly noticed a little girl—of about two or three, she guessed, not being very good at that type of thing—sitting at the kitchen table. She had dark hair caught into two low bunches, and the ends were threatening to dangle themselves into the gloopy muffin mix she was stirring with great care. At the mention of her name, the little girl looked up at them and blinked.
‘Hello, Mollie.’
Alex swallowed. ‘Girls…this is…um… Jennie.’
‘Hello,’ Mollie said, and then returned to what she was doing. Toni just smiled again, wiped her hands, then opened one of the kitchen cupboards and took out a cafetière.
It hadn’t escaped Jennie’s attention that Alex had been economical with the introductions, mentioning names but leaving their marital relationship out of the equation, and it gave her an unexpected boost. She wasn’t the only one to chicken out of coming clean to the family, then. And the knowledge helped her feel less wrong-footed by the whole situation. For all Alex’s high-handedness about her reluctance to spill the beans to her relatives, he’d done exactly the same thing, meaning he was just as wary about the future as she was.
Despite Alex’s impatient fidgeting, Toni was making the coffee at a leisurely pace and Jennie decided to distract hers
elf from the strange undercurrents circling beneath this charming scene of domesticity by taking an interest in Mollie’s cookery while Toni told Alex something about not being able to have Sunday lunch at her house because one of her boys had chickenpox and she didn’t want Mollie to get it.
‘What are you making?’ Jennie said, and sat down in the empty chair next to the little girl.
Mollie didn’t answer for a second, too intent on mashing a lump out of the cake mix.
‘Muffins,’ she said without looking up at Jennie. She carried on mixing until Toni retrieved the bowl and motioned for Mollie to put crinkly paper cases into a deep-holed baking tin.
Well, every family had its quirks, and it looked as if she was going to have to get used to Alex’s side’s silence and cryptic looks. But surely little girls weren’t supposed to follow that pattern? Weren’t they supposed to chatter on to anybody, given the chance? She certainly had. Her nanny had always complained they couldn’t leave the house without Jennie giving at least five people her life story and treating them to an impromptu dance recital.
But what did she know, anyway? She didn’t run into many children in her line of work. Most of her parties involved cocktails and expensive goodie bags, not jelly and ice cream.
Toni declared the coffee ready and Jennie turned to find Alex staring at her, a new and unreadable expression in his eyes.
She raised her eyebrows. What?
Just like the little girl beside her had done, he took his time answering, all the while watching her intently, and then something changed—clicked—as if he’d made a decision of some kind.
‘Shall we?’ he said as he took the tray Toni offered him and motioned towards the kitchen door with it.
‘Of course.’ She looked over her shoulder as they left the room. ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said.