Return Match

‘What’s he like?’

‘Tall dark and handsome,’ Lucy responded flippantly, and then realised that it was quite true; and more than that there was a masculine strength about him that she found inordinately appealing.

Appealing? Nonsense! She was letting the fact that the responsibility for Fanny and the children weighed heavily on her shoulders get to her.

It took her almost half an hour to persuade Fanny that she ought to join them for lunch.

‘You’ll have to meet him sooner or later,’ she reminded her stepmother. You don’t want people to talk.’

It was a good ploy and one that brought a petulant frown to her stepmother’s forehead.

‘How on earth are we going to feed him, Lucy?’ she demanded. ‘These Americans are used to eating well, you know.’

‘And so he will,’ Lucy responded tartly. ‘We’re having asparagus from the garden, fresh salmon, and strawberries and cream.’

The salmon had been a gift from one of their neighbours, a retired colonel who had been a close friend of her father and who lived alone.

‘I suppose the salmon was from Tom Bishop?’ Fanny shook her head. ‘That poor man. You know, he really should marry again Lucy … Living all alone in that huge house, spending all his time fishing …’

∗ ∗ ∗

At one o’clock on the dot Saul rapped on the front door. Lucy, who had been working nonstop from the moment she walked in the house, determined that there was no way he was going to be able to look as slightingly on her meal as he had done on her person, paused in the hallway and then called to Tara to let him in.

‘Take him into the drawing-room to your mother,’ she instructed the little girl, ‘and then go and tell Oliver to come downstairs.’ Oliver was in his bedroom, organising his possessions.

She had been so busy she hadn’t even had time to change, but now, from the safety of the kitchen where she was checking on the light sauce she had made to go with the salmon, she heard the drawing-room door and judged it was safe to dash upstairs and do something about her appearance.

Her wardrobe wasn’t exactly bursting with fashionable clothes, her lifestyle didn’t require them, but the few clothes she did have were good, carefully chosen and well cared for. Before her death her mother had once remarked approvingly that Lucy had inherited her own eye for colour and design, and the dress she hurriedly selected, a soft wrap-over style in pastel hued silk with pleats falling from the hip, was both elegant and feminine.

The soft peachy pink fabric with its pattern of muted greys and blues emphasised her summer tan, at once making her hair seem fairer and her eyes darker.

There was no time for her to bother with make-up and, quickly running a brush through her shoulder-length hair, she slipped on a pair of high-heeled sandals and hurried out of her room, almost colliding with Oliver at the top of the stairs.

He was, she saw with a sinking heart, looking oppressively sulky, his expression so like her father’s that she wondered that she had never realised the truth.

‘What’s wrong?’

He glowered at her. ‘I don’t want any lunch … I don’t want to have to talk to him … I don’t want him here, Lucy.’

‘Maybe not, but he is here and he has every right to be here,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘Oliver, I do understand how you feel, but you must try to realise how he feels as well. You don’t want everyone to think you resent the fact that he’s inherited the Manor do you?’

He shook his head slowly ‘I suppose not.’

‘Good. Now come down and have your lunch. It’s salmon. The colonel gave it to us.’

‘Did he?’ His face lit up. ‘I wish I’d been there when he came. He might have told me some more about during the war.’

Lucy laughed, relieved to see his sulks banished.

‘Well, there’ll be plenty more opportunities to talk to him I’m sure.’ Deliberately she didn’t let him go into the drawing-room alone, propelling him slightly ahead of her as she opened the door.

Fanny was sitting in one of the armchairs facing the french windows and to her astonishment Saul was standing close beside her, one arm casually draped over Tara’s shoulder as they all looked at something on her knee.

‘Oh there you are, Lucy dear …’ Fanny looked slightly flustered. ‘I was just showing Saul the photographs of our wedding. How pretty you look. It isn’t often we see you in a dress. That must be for your benefit, Saul.’ She smiled coyly up at him, blushing a little, while Lucy mentally seethed. She knew her stepmother to be completely innocent of any charge of guile, but nevertheless it was extremly galling that Saul should think she had dressed especially for him.

‘Well I could hrdly sit down to lunch in my work clothes,’ was all she said, but she was conscious of the mocking scrutiny in Saul’s eyes as she crossed the room with Oliver, and introduced him to the older man.

She was pleased to see that instead of talking down to him Saul shook hands with the boy, gravely treating him very much as the man of the house. Oliver visibly relaxed and Lucy gave a mental sigh of relief. Oliver could be extremely intractable and sulky when he chose—the result of too much laxity and spoiling, which she tried to counteract as best she could, all too conscious that once Oliver went away to school he would find that discipline was imposed upon him whether he liked it or not. Here again she blamed her father for not taking a firmer hand and not realising what a traumatic shock it could be for Oliver to go straight from his mother’s spoiling to the rigours of boarding school.

‘Darling, I think we’d better go into the dining-room for lunch.’ Fanny suggested. ‘Will you bring it in?’

It was good to see Fanny rallying from her depression and taking an interest in something once more and Lucy willingly complied, leaving the others to make their way to the dining-room while she hurried to the kitchen.

Everyone was seated when she went in with the asparagus.

The furniture in this room had been her mother’s, and if the Sheraton dining chairs were rather scratched and worn, they were still undeniably elegant.

‘Asparagus … Very English,’ Saul commented as Lucy served him. ‘From here?’

‘From the Dower House’s garden, yes,’ she agreed, making it plain to him that the asparagus was not from the Manor. In point of fact the vegetable garden attached to the Dower House was better stocked and cared for—a legacy from one of their tenants who had been a keen gardener.

She had the satisfaction of seeing the faint tide of colour creep up under his skin as he digested her remark.

‘Lucy, really,’ Fanny reproached her. ‘There’s no need for that. I’m sure that Saul wouldn’t have minded in the least had the asparagus come from the Manor.’

The smile she directed towards him was one she had always used to good effect on her husband, and, watching Saul respond to it, Lucy wondered a little bleakly if she herself wouldn’t be well advised to adopt a few feminine wiles.

Not once had Saul smiled at her like that. Not once had he smiled at her at all.

‘This is really delicious.’

He was looking at Fanny, who coloured modestly but said nothing.

Oliver, seated beside Lucy, frowned watching the by-play and then said sturdily, ‘Mum didn’t cook it—Lucy does all the cooking.’

She was aware of Saul looking at her, but refused to look back, concentrating on her food until she felt the concentration of his gaze slacken.

Fanny she saw was frowning slightly, not pleased by her son’s comment. ‘Poor Lucy has had to take charge of so much,’ she told Saul, giving her stepdaughter a little smile. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been so prostrate with misery that I haven’t been able to do a thing.’

For a moment Lucy had to stifle a wild desire to remind her stepmother that never once since the start of her marriage had she shown the slightest interest in running the Manor, but she stifled it at birth, telling herself that she was being unfair. Fanny was Fanny and that was that.

‘I’ll go and get the main course,’ she said calmly instead, quickly collecting the plates and heading for the door.

Saul reached it before her, his forearm touching her body as he leaned across her to open the door.

A frisson of sensation shivered through her, so unexpected as to be faintly shocking, and she drew back from him as though her skin burned.

‘Am I correct in thinking I recognise the Sheraton?’