Naive Awakening

‘He did?’

Leigh nodded. ‘There was always some lady or other being invited around for coffee. If he really liked her…’

‘He would present her with something he’d made,’ Freddie finished. Leigh looked at her brother, and they giggled.

‘There was this one lady,’ Freddie offered, laughing at the memory until tears came to his eyes, ‘Mrs Bolby, a widow.’

‘Freddie! Sir John won’t want to hear about Mrs Bolby!’

‘Pray continue, young man.’ He really was looking more animated.

‘Mrs Bolby,’ Leigh said primly, ‘was a very quiet lady…’

‘A prude!’ Freddie screeched.

‘And Grandad saw fit—I don’t know what got into him…’ She began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘To present her with this wooden carving of a bed…’ Freddie continued.

‘And a lute. He told her they could make sweet music under cover!’

Sir John laughed, wheezing at first, then louder.

Over the exquisite meal of salmon with prawns, Freddie and Leigh regaled him with humorous things their grandfather had done. The old man really seemed to enjoy it, and over coffee he shook his head and murmured how much he envied Jacob’s life.

‘Having you two must have been a source of delight to him. Of course, I have Nicholas, and I love him dearly, but he’s rarely around and, as for me, I don’t get out at all,’ he confessed. ‘Don’t see the point. The world’s changed around me, and I don’t care for what goes on out there at all.’

‘It’s not all bad, Sir John,’ Leigh said gently, placing her hand over his. She was about to tell him all about her beautiful countryside, the free, enticing nature that surrounded her in Yorkshire, when the door opened and she turned around, her eyes fixed on Nicholas, who was dressed formally, in a charcoal-grey suit, his black hair swept back from his face.

Then she saw that there was someone behind him. A woman. She stepped into the sitting-room and Leigh gasped because she was quite simply the most stunning creature she had ever seen.

She was tall and voluptuous, all the curves in exactly the right places, and she clearly was aware of that fact, because her black dress curved lovingly and tightly around her body, plunging at the front to reveal more of her cleavage than Leigh would have thought possible.

She was only wearing one thick gold chain, but even so there was something expensive about her. Nothing you could quite put your finger on, but the overall package was chic beyond belief. The severely cut short black hair, the large dark eyes, the perfectly pro-portioned face with more than a hint of coldness about it.

Leigh had a sharp, terrible thought: Nicholas obviously doesn’t find her cold. And she obviously was very warm indeed around him because when she glanced at him there was something positively simmering about her.

‘You’re up late, Sir John,’ she said, moving gracefully into the room on very, very high heels. She looked straight at Leigh and threw her a smile which somehow succeeded in being disdainful rather than friendly. Her eyes travelled quickly over her, and registered that there was no threat there.

‘Leigh and Freddie,’ Nicholas introduced, sitting on the sofa and stretching out his long legs in front of him, ‘this is Lady Jessica Thompson.’ He began tugging at his tie, pulling it down until he was able to undo the top button of his shirt.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Leigh said warmly, standing up and stretching out her hand, which Lady Jessica took briefly and then dropped as though finding the exercise thoroughly boring.

Freddie was a little wiser. He said, ‘Hi,’ from the sidelines, but made no effort to shake Lady Jessica’s hand and exited from the party as soon as he possibly could.

Leigh fervently wished that she could do the same, but when she attempted to do so Sir John gestured her back into her seat, and instead eased himself up, rejecting Nicholas’s offer of help.

‘Oh, do help him up, darling,’ Lady Jessica murmured, and was rewarded with something that sounded remarkably like a snort from Sir John. ‘You know how frail your poor grandfather is.’

Sir John winked at Leigh slyly and her lips twitched.

‘Are you ready for bed, Grandfather?’ Nicholas asked, ignoring Lady Jessica’s suggestion.

‘I am now,’ Sir John said.

Nicholas and Sir John both vanished from the room, and Leigh remained perched on the edge of her chair, rooting around in her mind for something to say, although from the look of the other woman there was very little that she was prepared to find interesting in Leigh’s conversation.

‘Nicholas told me all about you,’ Lady Jessica said, crossing her slim legs, and flicking an invisible fleck of dust from her stocking. ‘And I must say, you look so much younger than I expected. My dear, how do you do it? You hardly look a day over fourteen.’

It was all Leigh could do to remember that she was a guest in the house and that she should be polite to her host’s friends.

She gritted her teeth and smiled politely. ‘Really?’ she said evenly. ‘I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment, but I will anyway.’

‘Oh, my dear, of course it’s a compliment!’ Lady Jessica exclaimed, in a voice which left Leigh in no doubt whatsoever that it wasn’t. ‘Though, to be brutally honest, it doesn’t really—how shall I phrase this?—fit in here in London. You look, well, a bit too young and innocent. Anyone would think you worked here, for heaven’s sake, instead of being a guest in the house!’

Leigh’s face was beginning to ache from the effort of smiling politely when she would much rather have thrown her cup of cold coffee into Lady Jessica’s carefully made-up face.

‘My dear—’ Lady Jessica’s eyes opened wide when

there was no response from Leigh ‘—I do hope you don’t think I’m being rude. I only want to help you while you and your brother are here!’

‘We’ll manage just fine,’ Leigh said tightly.

‘Of course you will. Silly little me. I simply wanted to warn you that London isn’t anything like your little village. It’s full of sharks, and it’s always just as well to be prepared.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘How long do you plan on staying anyway?’ Lady Jessica wasn’t looking in her direction, but Leigh knew instinctively that it was a loaded question.

She shrugged and said perversely, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Really?’ This time she did look at Leigh and her black eyes were as hard as little chips of stone.

Leigh nodded.

‘And what do you intend to do about money?’ she asked patronisingly. Surely not live off charity, her voice implied.

‘Nicholas has offered me a job with him.’

She could see that this was unwelcome news to Lady Jessica, but the other woman recovered her composure quickly. ‘That would be Nicholas, of course. Always doing the right thing. I expect he feels so very sorry for you and your brother.’ She smoothed her hands along her legs, and continued, ‘He always did have a soft spot for the underdog, believe it or not.’ She gave a throaty laugh. ‘I suppose it has something to do with his profession.’

Leigh felt the blood rush to her hairline.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she muttered, getting to her feet, barely able to control the anger raging inside her, ‘I want to say goodnight to Freddie, and I’m still quite tired after the long journey, so if you don’t mind…’ Leigh couldn’t care less whether Lady Jessica minded or not, because she knew that if she stayed there a second more she would explode, and that was the very last thing she wanted to do. That would be to reduce herself to the very show of childish ill temper which the other woman was no doubt hoping for.

Oh, no, she would make a very quiet exit, and then pummel her pillow to death in the privacy of her bedroom.

Underdogs indeed! Was that how Mr High and Mighty Nicholas Reynolds saw them? Had he said so to this awful woman? And what else had he told her? That they were destitute, perhaps?