A Suitable Husband

Highfield! ‘Your brother’s place? Edwina’s at your brother’s home?’

‘We’ve—er—had a little holiday here,’ Ash owned reluctantly. ‘She intended to go back to her place yesterday, but…’

Edwina had been holidaying with Ash! A two-week holiday! Jermaine was shaken anew. She supposed she shouldn’t really be shaken by anything Edwina did, so perhaps it was the fact it was Ash—her own boyfriend—correction, ex- boyfriend—who was her sister’s holiday boyfriend that was the real shaker. All this while Jermaine had thought him too up to his ears in work in Scotland to get near a phone—and he had been holiday all the while with her sister at his brother’s home in Hertfordshire!

But—Edwina was hurt in some way. ‘What’s wrong with her—what sort of an accident?’

‘As I said, Lukas came home unexpectedly on Saturday. He’s been away for about a month and was pretty shattered. So, to give him a chance to unwind a bit, I took Edwina down to the local riding stables and we hired a couple of horses. Only Edwina’s mount was a bit more spirited than we were told, and galloped off with her. When I caught up with them, Edwina was lying on the ground, stunned. She’d taken a dreadful tumble and hurt her back.’

‘What does the doctor say?’ Jermaine asked urgently.

‘Poor darling, she’s so brave—she’s refused point-blank to see a doctor.’

‘She’s refused…? Can she walk?’

‘Oh, yes. But with great difficulty. Between us, Mrs Dobson and I—she’s Lukas’s housekeeper—’ he explained, ‘got Edwina upstairs and into bed. She’s there now. She tried to insist on getting up, but when she fainted I made her stay exactly where she was.’

Fainted! Suspicions which she did not want began to stir in Jermaine’s mind. How well she remembered how conveniently Edwina would limp with some knee injury or other should she be called upon to do some errand she wasn’t keen on. Jermaine clearly recalled when she had been thirteen, Edwina seventeen, and Edwina, who had had her own small car, had been in a fury because her mother wouldn’t allow her to borrow her much larger and zippier car. There had been a fearful screaming match, Jermaine remembered. It had ended with Edwina flouncing out of the drawing room. Her mother had gone after her a minute later—and had found Edwina in a dead ‘faint’. Only Jermaine, who had rushed out at her mother’s call, had seen the way Edwina had surreptitiously peeped beneath her lashes to see how her ‘faint’ was going down. Not many weeks afterwards Edwina’s car had been changed for her first sports car.

‘So you see, Mrs Dobson has looked after Edwina, but now she’s busy with her other duties,’ Ash was going on. ‘And although I know I’ve got a colossal neck to ask it of you, I just had to ring to ask if you’ll come down to Highfield and look after your sister?’

‘Colossal neck’ was putting it mildly. ‘I’d better have a word with her,’ Jermaine answered coolly, feeling mean for her suspicions, but years of living with her sister had left few blindfolds.

‘She doesn’t know I’m ringing!’ Ash exclaimed. ‘She’d have a fit if she did. I didn’t want to ring at all, which is why I’m ringing so late after her accident. But Lukas has just asked what family Edwina has and seems to think that you, as her only sister, would be sure to want to come down to Highfield to look after her, so…’

‘Now wait a minute!’ Go down to Highfield? Go to look after her back-stabbing, excellent horse-woman sister who, more than probably—if past knowledge of her was anything to go by—had not hurt her back as badly as she was making out? ‘I’ve a job to go to. I can’t drop everything and come dashing down to Hertfordshire just because…’

‘Just because?’ He sounded horrified. ‘Edwina’s your sister…’ he began to remonstrate.

‘And she’s your girlfriend!’ Guilt at the small percentage of doubt that remained, because maybe Edwina had seriously injured her back, made Jermaine’s voice sharp. ‘You look after her!’ she told Ash, and discontinued the call.

She couldn’t rest, of course. Jermaine paced her small flat, furious with Ash, angry with Edwina—but plagued by conscience. Drat, and double drat. Then she remembered the mobile phone from which Edwina was never parted. In seconds Jermaine had dialled the number.

‘Hello?’ enquired a sweet, totally feminine voice.

‘Thanks for pinching Ash. How’s your back?’ Jermaine opened with sisterly candour.

‘He rang you?’ Edwina was clearly outraged, her sweet tone swiftly departing, sounding not the slightest abashed that Jermaine knew about her and Ash. ‘He had no right…’

Edwina could talk of right! ‘Why wouldn’t he ring—with you “suffering” the way you are.’

‘Stuff that—you should see his brother!’

Click. In that one sentence Jermaine, who knew her sister so well, had it all worked out. The wealthy elder brother, bachelor brother, had returned home unexpectedly and Edwina—never one to miss a chance and already established at Highfield—had no intention of removing herself from his orbit. Due to leave Highfield the next day, Edwina must have had her greedy little brain working furiously in her endeavour to find some way of lingering on at Highfield. Jermaine saw it all. Lukas Tavinor would be a much better catch than his brother. Poor Ash; like the proverbial hot coal, he would be dropped.

‘You’re a better rider than Ash?’

‘He’d barely settled in his saddle when I took off,’ Edwina boasted.

‘He wants me to come down and “look after” you.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Edwina shrieked.

‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to,’ Jermaine retorted, and hung up.

Well, she had no need to feel guilty any more, Jermaine fumed. All too plainly there was nothing wrong with Edwina’s back. Her ‘accident’ had merely been a means to an end. By the sound of it, the globe-trotting Lukas Tavinor was back in England for a short while—Edwina wanted to be ‘on the spot’ while he was still around, and before he went away again. And what Edwina wanted, she invariably got.

Jermaine was familiar with her sister’s tactics, yet even so it still shook her that there had not been a scrap of remorse from Edwina, or apology, for ‘holidaying’ with her younger sister’s boyfriend. Edwina had cared not a bit, nor felt any need to pretend when they’d been on the phone just now. She had not hurt her back, but took Jermaine’s loyalty for granted, assuming without question that she would not tell anyone what a humbug Edwina really was.

And the devil of it was, Jermaine fumed, Edwina was right. Edwina had done nothing to earn her loyalty, but she had it. She knew Jermaine wouldn’t be telling Ash what a fraud she was. But he had enough to learn. Jermaine went to bed wondering if he knew yet that he and Edwina were history.

By morning Jermaine was coming to terms with her ex-boyfriend’s duplicity and was starting to feel a little incredulous that she had ever given more than a passing thought to the sort of commitment Ash had wanted. Good grief, he was as fickle as the rest of them! She had been so sure about him too. So sure that he wasn’t remotely interested in Edwina.

Well, it was doubly certain now that the next man who dated Jermaine Hargreaves had better not try the ‘commitment’ angle. She positively was not interested. Come to that, she wasn’t interested in dating again either. She had a good job; she’d concentrate on that.

Thinking of which, Jermaine left her flat and drove to her place of work, aware as ever that something seemed to cut off in her when her boyfriends strayed in her sister’s direction—Jermaine was no longer attracted to them and Edwina was welcome to the spoils. One or two had come back, pleading for a second chance, but Jermaine just hadn’t wanted to know.

It was the same with Ash—she had lost interest in him. She had enjoyed his company but should he ever again ask her to go out with him then she would tell him, quite truthfully, thanks, but no thanks.

And, having moved on, Ash Tavinor would become someone she once knew, and would be no more than that—Jermaine got on with her work.

‘Coming for a swift half?’ Stuart Evans invited when they were clearing their desks for the day.

She had nothing else pressing, and Stuart was more a friend than anything else. No way could his invitation be construed as a date. ‘Since you ask,’ she accepted, and the ‘swift half’ turned out to be a bar meal. Jermaine arrived home around nine to hear her phone ringing.

‘It’s Ash,’ he said as soon as she answered.

Ash who? or Hi? Since she knew full well that there was nothing whatsoever the matter with Edwina, Jermaine simply couldn’t bring herself to enquire how she was. ‘How’s Ash?’ she enquired instead.

‘Look, Jermaine, couldn’t you come and look after Edwina? Not that there’s a lot to do,’ he added quickly. ‘The poor darling’s talking of going back to her place—she doesn’t want to be a nuisance. But I can’t let her do that and…’

‘In case you didn’t hear me last night—I have a job to go to.’ Jermaine cut him off, with no intention at all of going down to Highfield to hold her sister’s hand.

‘I never knew you were so hard!’ Ash complained.

Hard! ‘Let me put it this way. Edwina’s your holiday companion—take an extended vacation.’ There was a brief silence, but if Ash was drumming up some kind of an argument, Jermaine didn’t want to know. ‘Goodbye, Ash,’ she bade him, and had barely put the phone down before it rang again.

‘Have you no concern at all about your sister?’ enquired a harsh voice she had never heard before—though her mind was working overtime as to whom her caller might be.

Jermaine only just managed to bite back a snappy retort. She swallowed hard. ‘Good evening,’ she managed pleasantly.

‘Your place is here, looking after your sister, not staying out half the night.’

It was only a little after nine o’clock! Which monastery had he sprung from? Jermaine strove hard for control. ‘Have we been introduced?’ she tossed in shortly.

‘Lukas Tavinor!’ he barked—as she’d surmised, Ash’s brother. ‘Ash has an important meeting he can’t miss tomorrow. You’d better come now and…’

At which point Jermaine lost the small control she had over her annoyance with the whole lot of them. ‘ I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow!’ snapped she who hadn’t, not caring at all for his tone, much less his orders. ‘Edwina’s your guest—you look after her.’