Their Engagement is Announced

Dora gasped. ‘You’re so—’

‘Good God, woman,’ Griffin continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘even my mother has picked herself up from the blow Charles’s death was to her plans of continued glory for the family name! And we all know how determined she was that Charles should have a respectable marriage—so that he could follow our father into politics and eventually obtain a Knighthood!’ Griffin’s mouth twisted derisively at the latter.

But he was right, of course. Dora had always known of Margaret Sinclair’s ambition for her eldest son to take over in the political arena where her late husband had left off after his death twenty years ago. And as the daughter of Professor Baxter, famous university lecturer until his retirement ten years ago, Dora had been the perfect choice as a wife for Charles.

Unfortunately Charles had been killed in a car accident ten months ago, and all of Margaret’s plans with him. Because even if Griffin Sinclair had been in the least bit interested in politics—which he most assuredly wasn’t!—he was not a man, at aged thirty-four, to be moulded into anyone’s else’s ambitions, and least of all those of his mother!

‘Something else I’m damned sure of,’ Griffin continued, his eyes glittering. ‘If the boot had been on the other foot—if you had been the one to die in that crash instead of him— Charles wouldn’t still be mourning you! After a period of grief, followed by a respectable time-lapse, he would have been looking around for your replacement! Or my mother would—so that he could get on with his career!’

Dora knew that he was right about that too, her face pale now at the deliberate cruelty of his words.

‘And how about you?’ Griffin challenged. ‘Hasn’t your father found you another rising star yet, who can be moulded into a suitable son-in-law for him?’

Dora thought briefly of Sam, a doctor she had seen several times during the last few months, and knew that he didn’t fit that description at all. Sam was dedicated enough; it was just that Dora didn’t feel that way about him. And her father, she knew, on the one occasion he’d happened to meet Sam, hadn’t been impressed.

‘You know…’ Griffin shook his head disgustedly, his smile humourless now. ‘I always thought, with both their partners passed away, your father and my mother should have been the ones to marry each other—they’re both ruthless, conniving, manipulative—’

‘My father died last week, Griffin,’ Dora cut in flatly. ‘That’s the reason I’m wearing black.’

He looked stunned for a moment, and then his mouth twisted wryly. ‘Are you sure? Did you double check before they—?’

‘Griffin!’ she gasped, incredulous at his complete lack of feeling for her loss, as well as the death of another human being. In their short acquaintance, Griffin had struck her as many things, but unfeeling wasn’t one of them…

‘His sort don’t die, Izzy,’ Griffin maintained grimly. ‘They’re usually stuffed and put on exhibition—’

‘He wasn’t a ‘‘sort’’, Griffin,’ she bit out tautly. ‘He was my father.’

‘Oh, I know who he was, Izzy,’ he dismissed scathingly, ‘I also know what he was,’ he added grimly.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve never understood this dislike you had for my father.’ What had he ever done to Griffin? Except disapprove of the younger man’s whole lifestyle, of course!

Griffin was everything her father despised in a man: no permanent home, a job that he did if and when he felt like it—and Dora would be surprised if he even so much as possessed a suit! And as for that overlong hair—! No, Griffin wasn’t a man her father could ever have approved of. But she had never quite understood why Griffin felt the same aversion towards her father… Maybe it was the reverse, and Griffin had despised her father’s own respectable lifestyle? Whatever it was, the two men had heartily disliked each other from the moment they had been introduced.

‘I realise that,’ Griffin answered harshly. ‘And I’m not about to be the one to shatter your illusions about him!’

She sighed. ‘Griffin, when you arrived you said you had just called in to do something,’ she reminded him firmly. ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me what that ‘‘something’’ was, and then I can get on with my work?’ She looked at him with steady grey eyes.

He looked about them pointedly at the bookcases of mainly leather-bound books. ‘Not exactly bursting over with customers, are you,’ he said dryly. ‘What are you going to do with this place now that your father is gone? Sell it, I suppose.’ He nodded in answer to his own statement. ‘There can’t be too much call—’

‘I have no intention of selling this shop,’ Dora burst out indignantly. ‘I—have plans of my own. Changes in mind,’ she added guardedly.

It still sounded more than a little disrespectful to talk of making changes in the shop which had been her father’s work for the last ten years of his life when he had only been dead for ten days.

Her father had been—difficult; she acknowledged that. Since her mother had died, ten years ago, when Dora was sixteen and studying for her A levels, it had been just the two of them. And, once her A levels had been completed and attained, Dora had spent her time taking care of their home and helping her father in the shop, putting her own plans for going to university on hold.

Until her father no longer needed her, she had told herself at the time, not realising that that time would never come. Her father’s health hadn’t been particularly good after the death of Dora’s mother; his heart-attack ten days ago had been devastating, but not exactly unexpected.

So now, at twenty-six, Dora was at last free to pursue her own aborted plans. But after all this time she felt it was too late. She had the house, and this shop, and had every intention of making something of her life. Despite Griffin Sinclair’s derision!

He really was the most incredible man. It seemed he abided by none of the conventions that most other people lived by. His remarks concerning her father’s death, for example, had been disgraceful.

Oh, Dora accepted there had been no love lost between the two men, her father considering the younger man to be a Bohemian reprobate while Griffin had believed her father to be—what had he called him earlier?—ruthless, conniving and manipulative.

Dora didn’t completely agree with either of those opinions, but she had been left in no doubt that the two men disliked each other intensely.

And as for Griffin’s reference to ‘Izzy’…! That wasn’t just something they had agreed never to talk about; it was something she preferred not to even think about, either!

‘What sort of ‘‘plans’’?’ Griffin was watching her with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you’re actually going to drag this place into the twentieth century?’

He could mock all he liked, but her plans were her business, and she wasn’t about to discuss them with him. Griffin was the last person she would tell her plans to!

‘I know this is difficult for you to believe, Griffin,’ she told him tauntingly, ‘but not everyone wants to travel the world, calling no place home, living out of a suitcase—by the way, what could possibly be important enough to have brought you home this time?’ she added pointedly.

His mouth had tightened grimly at her deliberate barbs. And, in truth, she wasn’t being exactly fair. The last she had heard of Griffin he’d had an apartment in London he called ‘home’, and when he ‘lived out of a suitcase’ it was usually in first-class hotels. And as for ‘travelling the world’, that was Griffin’s job; the travel books he wrote after making those trips were highly successful, being amusing as well as informative.

Not that there was a copy of any of those books in this shop. Her father had considered Griffin’s writing to be too light and frivolous to be taken seriously, let alone take up any space on his shelves! Once Dora had picked up a copy of one of his books at a hotel she’d stayed in on a business trip for her father. She’d found that Griffin’s personality came through in every word; concise, humorous, derisive, but with warmth and charm also apparent if he had particularly liked the place he was writing about.

‘Family crisis,’ he abruptly answered her mocking question. ‘Which brings me to— Aha,’ he murmured softly as the bell pealed over the door as it was opened once again. ‘I’ll browse through the books and try to look like another customer,’ he told Dora conspiratorially. ‘That way it will look as if you have a rush on!’

Dora had trouble keeping her face straight as that was exactly what he proceeded to do. The woman who’d entered the shop, probably aged somewhere in her sixties, glanced across at Griffin as he began to amass a pile of books in his arms. Books, Dora was sure, that he chose from the shelves at random, and was convinced of the fact when she saw him put a copy of a book about the Titanic on the pile.

The elderly lady’s own attention seemed to be only half on the row of books she was perusing too, her glances in Griffin’s direction becoming more and more frequent as the minutes ticked by. Griffin pointedly ignored her glances, his attention seeming enrapt now on a shelf of books on prehistoric animals!

It was almost Dora’s undoing when he glanced across at her sideways, waited until the other woman wasn’t looking at him, and gave Dora a knowing wink!

She gave him a reproving frown. Dreadful man! His irreverence—in any situation—was unbelievable!

‘I say, miss.’ the elderly lady had now sidled up to her, talking to her in a whisper. ‘That young man over there.’ She nodded in Griffin’s direction.

‘Young man’? At age thirty-four, Griffin hardly fitted that description! But with a definite lack of any other young men in the vicinity…

‘Yes?’ Dora prompted attentively.

‘He looks very like Griffin Sinclair,’ she told Dora avidly. ‘You know, the man who does those travel programmes on the television,’ she prompted at Dora’s blank look. ‘Do you suppose it could be him?’ she added excitedly, looking quite youthfully flushed at the idea it just might be Griffin Sinclair.

As Dora knew only too well, it definitely was him. But it was the first she had heard of him being involved in a television programme. Not that that was exactly surprising; they didn’t possess a television at home for her to have seen him on. Her father had never liked that form of entertainment, and preferred to listen to the radio if he bothered with anything at all. Or rather—he had…

‘Why don’t you go and ask him?’ Dora suggested lightly, looking across at Griffin with new eyes.

He would be good on television, Dora thought to herself. He had the looks and presence to carry off such a role. And if this elderly lady’s reaction to him was anything to go by, he obviously had quite a female following of the programme, at least!

‘Do you think I should?’ The woman gave another nervous but also coy look in Griffin’s direction.

Dora definitely thought that she should—if only so that she could witness his reaction to the obvious admiration this woman had for him.

‘I’m sure you should,’ she encouraged lightly.

‘You don’t think he would be offended by a perfect stranger going up and talking to him in that way?’ The woman looked quite concerned that he might be.