At the Cattleman's Command

Since Leroy, who had to be the Great Dane, now had his paws on her shoulders and had her pinned to the car as he licked her face, this was just as well, Chas felt.

‘Um—down boy!’ She wiped her face with her jacket sleeve. ‘I’m Chas Bartlett. I believe I’m expected.’

‘Good heavens! We thought you were a man! How do you do? I’m Harriet Hocking, Vanessa’s mother. To be perfectly honest, I’m relieved. I was expecting some long-haired arty chap.’

‘You were? But—uh—Ms Tait knew I wasn’t a man, after the initial confusion.’

Harriet raised her eyebrows. She was good-looking, thanks to great bone structure and a slim figure, but in a rather weathered kind of no-nonsense way. ‘Well, she somehow failed to pass it on; not like our Birdie. Never mind, come in!’

Several exhausting hours later, Chas closed herself into her bedroom, slipped her shoes off and sat down on the bed.

Then she lay back flat across the bed with her arms outstretched and started to laugh softly. Beside Harriet, Vanessa and Clare Hocking, Laura Richmond paled into insignificance.

If she could get this wedding to the altar she’d be more than a genius!

She sat up. The only member of the immediate wedding party not present this evening had been the man who had hired her, Thomas Hocking. Would it be too much to hope that he might actually be normal?

Yes, it would, she decided.

She herself had brought his name up halfway through dinner—a dinner that she would probably remember for a long time. It had been served in a large panelled room at a vast table with silver cutlery, crystal glasses and Wedgwood china. A pale, tense-looking young man, apparently part of the kitchen staff, had dished up and passed around a feast.

‘I thought Thomas Hocking might be here since he actually hired me, I believe,’ she ventured at the dessert stage—brandy pudding and custard, which she was secretly viewing with despair after all the food that had gone before.

‘Thomas?’ Vanessa, a stunning brunette, raised her eyebrows and smirked. ‘As a matter of fact, Thomas more or less press-ganged the rest of us into being here, then he sloped off. Typical, and with a woman, no doubt! I bet it’s that peachy blonde who’s opened up a riding school down the road.’

‘She certainly finds plenty of opportunities to visit Cresswell,’ Harriet said drily, ‘so you can’t exactly blame Thomas.’

‘Can’t you?’ Vanessa said with some patent cynicism. ‘If there wasn’t such a very long line of them, I might agree.’ She shrugged and turned to Chas. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she advised. ‘He’s only paying for the wedding.’

‘If the details were left to him,’ Harriet said, ‘Vanessa would have to make do with a registry office, come to that.’

Clare Hocking, about the same age as her sister-inlaw, Harriet, put in, ‘There is a lot to be said for elegant simplicity, you know.’

They all gazed at her. Far from elegantly simple in her appearance, Clare wore several layers of clothing, none of which matched, as well as a stole and three long necklaces. Her silvery hair was tumbling out of a bun and she had two bright spots of artificial colour on each cheek, rather like a clown.

‘All the same…’ Rupert, Lord Weaver, cleared his throat. ‘I’m quite sure we won’t have to r-resort to a r-registry office. He would never do that to you, Vannie,’ he added reproachfully.

‘However, he can,’ Harriet said at large, ‘make things awkward, as we all know. Therefore this way, with Chas here to help—at his suggestion—we can keep the rest of his involvement to a minimum.’

‘Agreed.’ Vanessa pushed away her dessert plate and reached for a plum. ‘So whatever you do, Chas, take a stern line with Thomas!’

A womaniser, obviously, Chas thought as she considered Thomas Hocking in the privacy of her bedroom, but who was he and what other bizarre qualities did he possess?

He obviously held the purse strings but he didn’t sound like Vanessa’s father or Harriet’s husband. An uncle perhaps, who was now the head of the family? Who was resented, even, not only for his grip on those purse strings but also for his reprehensible taste in peachy young blondes?

She shook her head. Time would tell. In the meantime, the couple of hours after dinner she’d spent with Vanessa, Harriet and Clare had been tricky to say the least.

She’d listened to Vanessa’s ideas for her wedding and her dress, she’d listened to both Harriet and Clare’s ideas, and had formed the opinion that never would the trio meet.

That was when she’d quietly produced her folder of wedding dresses and pointed to the one she felt would suit Vanessa best.

There’d been a startled silence, then Vanessa had jumped up and thrown her arms around Chas. ‘It’s perfect! So different but so beautiful.’

‘It is lovely,’ Harriet agreed.

‘My, my!’ Clare enthused.

Then they discussed venues, and Chas gave her opinion that Cresswell Lodge was the perfect spot for a wedding reception. And, thinking rapidly, she outlined some ideas for decorating the house and garden for a wedding, including a silk-lined marquee on the lawn, because, as she told them, she never took chances with the weather.

‘Ah,’ Harriet said thoughtfully, ‘not just a pretty face, Chas Bartlett.’

‘I hope not, Mrs Hocking,’ Chas replied. ‘I did also wonder if it mightn’t be appropriate for the bride and groom to arrive at the reception in a horse-drawn carriage. Naturally they’d have to drive from the church in Warwick by car, but we could do a discreet changeover somehow or other. And horses do seem to feature prominently in your lives.’

Harriet sat up and Vanessa drew an excited breath. ‘Awesome!’ she said.

‘Wonderful,’ Harriet agreed. ‘You can leave that bit to me, Chas. Of course, we’d need matching carriage horses but that shouldn’t be too hard.’

Chas came back to the present and bit her lip. Matching horses?

She really needed to know what her budget would be before she made any more expensive suggestions. Not—she gazed around the impressive guest bedroom—that the Hockings appeared to be short of a dime, but there was the mysterious Thomas and his ‘registry office’ notions to take into account.

She yawned and was startled to see it was close to midnight so she changed into her night gear. Then she remembered that, impressive though the room was, with a king-size bed invitingly turned down, lovely drapes and a matching carpet, and warm as it was from central heating, there was no en suite bathroom.

The guest bathroom was several doors down a passage. She picked up her sponge bag and walked to the door, and the lights flickered, went out and stayed out.

Damn, she thought. I hate going to bed without cleaning my teeth! I’ll just have to manage in the dark.

She stepped out into the passage and waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. The house was quite silent.

She found the bathroom and, after a bit of fumbling around, managed to clean her teeth, wash her face and attend to all else that was necessary.

As she came out of the bathroom she hesitated and felt for her watch. It wasn’t there, for the simple reason that she’d taken it off when she was changing.

Not that it matters, she assured herself. I know that I have to turn this way, count two doors down and the third is my bedroom.

It all worked to plan and with a sigh of relief she shut herself into the room. There was nothing for it but to go to bed, since the lights were still out—she’d flicked the switch she’d groped for beside the door then flicked it off when nothing had happened. She pulled off her robe, felt around for the bed, and slipped into it.

The next few moments were electrifying. An arm descended on her waist, a sleepy exclamation issued forth, a pair of hands started to run down her body and a man’s deep voice said, ‘Holy mackerel! Not again!’

CHAPTER TWO

CHAS gasped, twisted and reared up. To her mortification, the sounds she uttered, which were meant to be serious screams, came out instead as a series of squeaks.

‘Whoa!’ She was determinedly wrestled back to the bed. ‘Look here, sweetheart, you came into my bed, not the other way around, so your objections are a bit bogus, surely?’

‘Stop!’ Chas hissed.

‘Why? Do I know you?’