Worthy Of Marriage

‘I’ve been allowed early-release.’ She leaned forward to pick up the coffee pot. ‘Would you like another cup, Mr Calderwood?’

He shook his head. ‘Has my mother been in touch with you while you were in prison?’

‘No, never. This morning, before I was released, the governor told me there was someone willing to help me rebuild my life. A car was waiting outside the prison gates. I met Mrs Calderwood when I got here.’

‘My mother has a quixotic nature. Sometimes she allows it to overrule her common sense,’ he said coldly. ‘The governor would have done better to put you in touch with the various organisations that help released prisoners. While he’s taking you to wherever you wish to go, you can use Jackson’s mobile to call a Citizens’ Advice Bureau. They’ll put you in touch with the right people to help you.’

It took all Lucia’s concentration to keep her hand steady as she refilled her cup. Before her arrest and imprisonment, she had been a self-confident person, a good mixer. They were characteristics, once effortless and taken for granted, that she would have to relearn. She was all right with someone friendly, like Mrs Calderwood, but the son, now that he had turned hostile, was harder for her to handle. He sapped her shaky amour propre merely by looking at her.

‘I would like to accept the post your mother has offered me,’ she told him.

‘Out of the question,’ he snapped. ‘If my mother is determined to go on these trips, it’s essential she has someone with her who has impeccable references and will be absolutely reliable. Not someone fresh out of prison for a serious offence.’ His voice had the same cold ring she remembered from the court room.

‘But not the kind of offence that makes me an unsafe person to be in charge of young children or elderly people.’

‘That depends. In my judgment you are not a suitable companion for my mother.’

‘Isn’t that for her to decide?’

His mouth compressed in a hard line. The dark grey eyes flashed like steel blades.

‘Perhaps a hand-out will persuade you to see reason.’ He went to the chair where he had left his coat and took a cheque book from an inside pocket. As she watched he uncapped an expensive black fountain pen.

She watched him writing the cheque, wondering what he would consider a suitable pay-off. Although she had disliked the man from the moment he stepped into the witness box and looked across the court room as if, in his opinion, she was as despicable as a drug dealer or a child abuser, a part of her mind was forced to admire the articulation of his long strong fingers.

‘There…that should cover your overheads until they find you a job.’ He held out the cheque.

Lucia took it, curious to see what he was prepared to pay her. Her parents had not been well-off even when both were working, her father as a reporter on a provincial city’s evening newspaper, her mother as a public librarian. There had never been a time when Lucia hadn’t had to be careful with her own earnings. She couldn’t imagine being able to scrawl a cheque with three noughts as casually as people dropped spare change in a charity worker’s collecting tin.

The amount he had written in figures and numbers took her breath away. Particularly as there was no element of kindness involved. Clearly, he didn’t want to help her. She felt he wouldn’t have cared if her sentence had been ten times as long.

‘But don’t take it into your head that there might be more where that came from,’ he said cuttingly. ‘It’s a one-off payment that will never be repeated. I’m making it on condition that you vanish from our lives and don’t reappear…ever. In the circumstances, it’s exceedingly generous of me to offer you any help. If you show up again, you’ll regret it. I can make big trouble for you—and will. You had better believe that.’

‘Oh, I do. You already have,’ she said dryly, folding the cheque in two and then in four.

‘You brought that on yourself, though I dare say you’ll never admit it. You’d rather believe the sob story cooked up by your lawyer.’

There was no point in arguing with him. He was the type of man who, privileged from birth, could never understand the actions that had led to her arrest.

Mrs Calderwood rejoined them. ‘I’m sorry I had to leave you.’

‘Ms Graham has changed her mind about the job you offered her,’ said Grey. ‘She realises it wouldn’t suit her.’

His mother was not a fool. She obviously knew that her son liked to have his own way.

Looking disappointed, she said, ‘Did Grey make up your mind, or is that your own decision?’

Acting on instinct, Lucia had palmed the cheque before Mrs Calderwood saw it. Knowing that Grey would make a dangerous enemy but still impelled to defy him, she said, ‘Mr Calderwood would like it to be my decision, but it’s not. If you’re really sure I will suit you, I’d be happy to work for you.’

‘That’s splendid,’ said Rosemary Calderwood, ignoring her son’s silent but visible fury. ‘Now I’m sure you must be longing for a bath and a change of clothes. I’ve already sorted out some things left here by my daughters that you can wear till we have time to go shopping.’

‘I thought you might need some more coffee,’ said the grey-haired woman, coming back.

‘This is Mrs Bradley, my housekeeper,’ said Rosemary. ‘Miss Graham is joining us, Braddy. Would you show her where she can bath and change before lunch?’

‘One moment,’ Grey said sharply. ‘Mother, I don’t often interfere in your arrangements, but this time I must. I cannot allow you to employ this young woman.’

He looked so stern and fierce that Lucia half expected his mother to yield to the force of his authority. She had already admitted to letting her late husband quash her youthful ambitions. It seemed unlikely she would resist her son if he chose to put his foot down.

But it seemed that Rosemary’s will had strengthened not weakened with age. She said pleasantly, ‘I appreciate your concern for my welfare, my dear, but please don’t use that dictatorial tone to me. Your father laid down the law for fifty years. From now on I shall do as I think best.’ With a sweeping gesture of her hand she sent Mrs Bradley and Lucia on their way, before saying to her son, ‘You are staying to lunch, I hope, darling? I’m the cook today. We’re having lamb cutlets with tapenade.’

It was a long time since Lucia had had a leisurely wallow in a bath of warm scented water. Even then her bath accessories had not been of the quality provided for her use in this luxurious bathroom. As well as a pale blue face cloth to match the thick fluffy towels, there was a huge sponge and a two-handled strap with a strip of loofah on one side and towelling on the other. On a recessed tiled shelf in the wall behind the bath there were bottles and tubes of foams, gels and bath oils. There was nothing anyone could want in the way of toiletries that hadn’t been provided, including the pretty shower cap still hanging on its peg and the white terry robe draped over a heated towel rail at one end of the bath-cum-shower alcove as an alternative to the towels.

Seeing a hair dryer on the counter surrounding the handbasin, she had asked Mrs Bradley if there would be time to wash her hair. The housekeeper had said yes, plenty of time. Lunch would be served at one, leaving an hour to spare.

The bath, designed to accommodate a tall male house guest, was long enough for Lucia to slide down and immerse her hair. As she was doing this, there was a peremptory knock on the unlocked door and Grey Calderwood stalked in.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR some seconds she was too startled to react. Then, as a couple of strides brought him to where a bath mat protected the pale fitted carpet, she sat up in a hurry, making the water slosh dangerously close to the rim while she grabbed the sponge in an effort to cover her breasts.

‘How dare you burst in here?’ she flared at him.

‘How dare you take my cheque and then break the deal?’ he retorted, his cold eyes taking in her nakedness.

There had been times in prison when she had hated the lack of privacy and felt frighteningly vulnerable to unwelcome advances. This was different, but equally disturbing. She knew there was no possibility he would snatch the sponge or touch her. He might be a pig, but he wasn’t that kind of pig. At least she didn’t think he was. Nevertheless she felt furious at being caught with dripping hair and a lot of bare flesh on view.

‘You’ll find the cheque on the dressing table. I never had any intention of cashing it. Take it and get out,’ she snapped at him.

‘Not until I’ve made some things clear to you. My mother refuses to listen to reason. But don’t congratulate yourself on landing a cushy number here. If you step out of line by so much as a centimetre, I’ll make you regret you were born. You got off lightly last time. You won’t again. I’ll make sure of that.’

Lucia was tempted to respond with a mouthful of the hair-raising invective she had learned while she was ‘banged up’, as habitual law-breakers called being behind bars. But even after spending months among women whose language, at the beginning, had often made her flinch inwardly, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to use their vocabulary to vent her hostility towards him. Anyway swearing at him would only prove his point: that she wasn’t fit to associate with a sheltered woman like his mother.

Swallowing her resentment of his unforgiving attitude, she said, ‘I’m very grateful to your mother for extending a helping hand to me. I shan’t abuse her trust.’

‘See that you don’t.’ He walked out.

He and Mrs Calderwood were in the drawing room, chatting as if nothing untoward had happened, when Lucia joined them. From the clothes put out for her to wear, she had chosen a plain white shirt and a pair of pale khaki chinos.

As she entered, Grey rose. It was, she knew, an automatic reflex ingrained from boyhood. Actually he felt none of the chivalrous respect implied by the now-rare courtesy of standing up for her.

‘What would you like to drink, Lucia?’ Mrs Calderwood asked. ‘Grey is having a gin and tonic and my pre-lunch tipple is always Campari and soda—unless I’m alone. I never drink on my own.’

‘May I have a soft drink, please?’ After months of abstinence, Lucia didn’t want to risk her first taste of alcohol going to her head.

‘Of course. Orange juice or peach juice?’

‘Orange juice, please.’