In Want of a Wife?

‘Doing good works. Like I said, I already have the potted family history.’

‘Isn’t there anything my mother didn’t tell you? Couldn’t you just have chatted to her about the weather, like any normal person would have?’ Lizzy blurted out in frustration and Louis grinned.

It was such a breathtaking ceasefire after hostilities that she felt her breath get trapped somewhere in her throat. The man was beyond good-looking, she thought in confusion. He was wickedly, sinfully devastating.

‘I should mingle.’ Her voice emerged a little unsteady and she cleared her throat. ‘People are going to start wondering why we’re closeted here on our own.’

‘We’re in full view of one and all. I doubt even the most imaginative could jump to any wrong conclusions.’

Which had the effect of immediately making her think of exactly what ‘wrong conclusions’ anyone might have in mind: which wasn’t a comfortable thought.

‘I can see Rose looking for me,’ she mumbled, which wasn’t a complete lie. ‘And besides …’ She sidled to one side and was relieved when he stood back, clearing a space for her, obviously as glad to see the back of her as she was to see the back of him.

‘Besides … what?’ His keen eyes took in the heightened colour in her cheeks and the stray strands of her chestnut-brown hair that were already disobeying orders and tangling about her face; she impatiently tucked them behind her ears.

‘Besides.’ Lizzy shot him a look from under her lashes. ‘Nicholas’s sister is beginning to get a little impatient. She’s been glowering in this direction for the past fifteen minutes. I think she’s waiting for you to wind up this conversation so that you can go and pay her some attention.’ The leggy blonde had not moved from where she had been standing an hour before. Maybe she was just too deadly bored to move.

Louis frowned and glanced around him.

‘I think,’ she continued tartly, ‘she looks a little jealous that you’ve been cooped up here with me. Are you and she an item?’ Lizzy looked at Louis with an innocent, wide-eyed expression and wondered if she dared risk asking him how he liked the limelight being pointed in his direction. Judging from the shadow of intense discomfort that crossed his face, not a lot.

‘You can’t tell me that it’s none of my business,’ she tacked on swiftly before he could reply. ‘You’ve spent all evening nosing into my private life, and it’s only fair that I get the chance to do the same. So … are the two of you involved? Is that why she’s here—to keep an eye on you?’

This was definitely well into the arena of overstepped boundaries. Louis didn’t encourage any sort of intrusion into his private life by anyone, but where was his automatic response to slam shut the door in her face? ‘If you’re asking me whether I’m currently involved with someone, then the answer is no, although I’m at a loss to understand why you’d be interested in the first place.’

‘I wasn’t asking you if you were going out with someone! I was just pointing out that—’

‘I had no idea that Jessica would be here. Or her sister Eloise, for that matter.’

‘Well, they obviously share your low opinion of all of us.’ Lizzy had now backed away to a safe distance and she felt some of her courage and fighting spirit being restored. ‘Because they couldn’t even be bothered to dress appropriately.’ Her face was expressive of distaste.

Louis didn’t say anything. The presence of Jessica at Crossfeld House was unfortunate. Over the past two years, she had been increasingly overt in her flirtations with him, despite his resounding lack of encouragement. And now he was forced to admit to a certain level of disgust at their blatant scorn for their surroundings. Louis didn’t consider himself a snob. He was rich, he was careful and he was wary of gold-diggers. But Jessica and Eloise belonged to that category of spoiled rich kids who thought it was acceptable to sneer at people they considered lower down the pecking order. He had no time for them and even Nicholas, loyal brother that he was, privately despaired of their airs and graces.

‘I quite agree,’ he found himself saying, and she looked at him in surprise. ‘It’s rude, it’s contemptuous and it’s inexcusable.’

‘You agree with me?’

‘Why the shock? I’m a big guy. Maybe the box you’re trying to cram me into is the wrong shape?’

‘I don’t think so!’ Lizzy said tartly. She belatedly remembered some of the things he had said about her family. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me …’

Food was about to be served and the voices had grown louder and heartier as alcohol began to have its loosening effect. She would have to go and stand guard by her mother’s side. Her father would be drinking with his friends, and heaven only knew what other titbits of information her mother would come out with if she had more than a glass or two of wine.

After the enforced intimacy away from the crowd, every fibre of her body focused on Louis, Lizzy was forcibly struck by just how many people had made the effort to get to the bash. There were people from all walks of life; a lot she recognised, some she didn’t.

Lizzy spotted Rose standing to one side, nervously sipping from her wine glass, trying to make some headway with Eloise, who was certainly the less obnoxious-looking of the sisters. Jessica had already been cornered by Louis and was talking and gesticulating to him, her beautiful mouth pursed into lines of sulky displeasure. She was being reprimanded! Lizzy realised with surprise. Louis’s face was tight and disapproving and it was obvious that, wherever his loyalties lay, he had no qualms about putting Jessica firmly and soundly in her place. Lizzy had been happy to dismiss him as a narrow-minded snob, so how did that fit in with the convenient image?

With a little start of discomfort, she realised that she was watching the antics of Nicholas’s sisters with just the same attitude of a scientist watching bacteria on a Petri dish—which she had earlier accused Louis of doing with her own family. So she spent the next couple of hours making a determined effort to talk and chat and absolutely avoid glancing in the direction of either Louis, Jessica or Eloise, or even Nicholas and her sister, for that matter.

It was after midnight when the place started thinning out. Adrian, her father, was beginning to look the worse for wear, and of her mother there was nothing to be seen.

‘Where’s Mum?’ Lizzy weaved her way through the remaining clumps of people to tug her father away from his cronies.

‘She left half an hour ago, with Rose and Nicholas. Apparently your Louis chap has acquired himself a driver and a proper car, or so he said, and he took Nicholas’s sisters back to Crossfeld House.’ Her father, angular and dark as she was—although taller and with less of a forceful appearance—cleared his throat and refused to meet her eye.

‘Why? And he’s not my Louis.’

‘What did you think of the evening?’

‘No good, Dad. Why did Mum leave early?’

‘She wanted to help Rose pack an overnight bag.’

‘For what? Why?’

‘Rose is going to be spending the night at Crossfeld House. Ahem, your sisters have insisted on bringing home some of their friends, and there just wouldn’t have been room in the car for all of us, and the house … Well, Rose volunteered her bedroom, and you know Maisie and Leigh …’

‘I’m not following any of this. You mean you and Mum don’t mind Rose being together with Nicholas at Crossfeld?’

‘Times have moved on, Busy Lizzy, and you know Rose is a big girl now …’

‘You weren’t that liberal minded when Maisie brought home that boy from university last summer,’ Lizzy reminded him sharply as her brain began whirring into action. It was unfair to try and pin her father down; she knew that. What her mother said tended to go, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘Tommy wasn’t exactly suitable material, though, was he?’ she speculated aloud. ‘What with all those tattoos and the pony tail and the Student Union protests. But Nicholas … Mum wants Rose to go to Crossfeld House because she doesn’t want Nicholas to have any kind of chance of getting away or of his sisters influencing him.’

‘It’s not that clear cut, poppet.’

Lizzy thought that it was a good job that Rose actually loved the guy. Would her mother have tried to railroad her into the relationship even if she hadn’t? Would Rose have gone along with it because she was, essentially, so docile by nature?

She was struck by another thought. Shy, sweet-natured Rose was not the flamboyant or demonstrative type. Had it been Maisie or Leigh, the whole world would have known how they felt, and they would cheerfully have taken out a centre spread in the local newspaper to inform the few who didn’t. But Rose was different. Did her mother want to push her daughter into cementing the relationship just in case Nicholas misinterpreted her shyness for indifference and walked away? Was a suitable match so important to them?

Her head was aching by the time Maisie, Leigh and their assorted friends were rounded up. And embedded in that hornet’s nest was the spectre of Louis, watching, observing, speculating, assuming the worst.

Outside, a light dusting of snow had begun to fall. There was always an urgency to the weather in Scotland. What started as a dusting of snow could quickly escalate into a blizzard, and the prospect of that reduced even her high-spirited and very, very tipsy sisters and their friends to focus on gathering their belongings and getting home. Weary and confused, she decided that she would think about everything in the morning.

But the following morning she awoke to find that that tentative promise of a deterioration in the weather had indeed turned into a full-scale war of nature. The falling snow was thick and fast, and the sky was so dark that anyone would be excused for thinking that night had descended a few hours ahead of schedule.

Her father had made himself useful by clearing some of the mounting snow outside the house. Whilst the wind was so far making a nonsense of the snow stockpiling, it wouldn’t be long before the countryside would be knee-deep in the white stuff.

Many a joyous day had been spent revelling in the vagaries of nature when she had been a kid. Heavy snow had usually meant days off school. Now, however, her heart sank. She could think of nothing else but Rose stuck at Crossfeld House, at the mercy of Nicholas’s sisters and Louis, who would be circling her like a shark on the lookout for fresh blood.

By three o’clock, she was going stir crazy, and with the impetuousness that was part and parcel of her nature she announced to her parents that she had decided to go out for a quick spin on her bike.

‘Just up to Crossfeld House,’ she continued, backing away nervously from their duly horrified expressions. ‘My bike’s got fantastic wheels and I’ve ridden in conditions like these in the past.’ More or less. ‘I think Rose feels out of her depth.’ A note of accusation crept into her voice, and she noted the shifty way her parents exchanged glances between themselves. But it was the tipping point, because her mother nodded wearily and then offered to prepare her a packed lunch.

‘And don’t forget your mobile phone.’ Grace shouted up to her for the eighth time as Lizzy kitted herself out in suitable gear for the bike ride.

As if! But at least now she was doing something instead of sitting around, listening to her sisters and their friends play their music too loud, and spread themselves throughout the house with the easy indolence of nineteen-and twenty-year-olds who hadn’t yet taken on any of life’s little responsibilities.

It was bitter outside and the forecasters were warning of plummeting temperatures.