In Want of a Wife? Read online

  But tonight she had taken a leap of faith and borrowed a slim-fitting deep blue dress from her sister. The deep cowl neck showed just a hint of cleavage and made the most of her long, graceful neck. Her boots elevated her from a modest five-foot-four by at least four inches and, yes, she was wearing make-up: a light dusting of powder, blusher, mascara, eye shadow, lip gloss, most of which she had cadged from Maisie, who possessed enough make-up to open a small store.

  ‘Have I?’ Colour bloomed in her cheeks. ‘I just thought that I’d save Mum from having a go. You know how she is …’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not because you want to impress the arrogant, overbearing Mr Jumeau?’ Rose teased, smiling because she had noticed that faint flush on her sister’s cheeks when she had casually described him as ‘all-right looking, if you go for the tall, dark handsome cliché.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ But that weird, tingly feeling she had had two nights before when she had looked up at him was back. ‘I could never be attracted to a man like him, Rose! I like kind, thoughtful men.’ She thought of her most recent boyfriend, a five-month romance that had dwindled into friendship, which was probably where it should have stayed in the first place. He had been kind and thoughtful. Maybe too much so. Was that possible?

  There was the sound of clattering up the stairs and then Maisie and Leigh laughing and talking over one another, while from somewhere else their father shouted at them to keep it down, that he didn’t want complaints from the neighbours. It was a familiar routine. Maisie and Leigh were noisy and high-spirited, like puppies that had yet to be trained into good behaviour—although at least Vivian wasn’t around to scowl and lecture, which usually had the effect of sending them into overdrive.

  It felt strange, being back in the family home when she had become so accustomed to her own space, and she assumed that it was a feeling shared by all her sisters. Maisie and Leigh were on their holidays from university. Rose shared a flat with their old friend, Claudia, but from all accounts had been spending more time recently with her parents thanks to the fact that their house was closer to Crossfeld.

  She should be enjoying the familiar hustle and bustle, but Louis Jumeau had unnerved her. She didn’t like him; she hadn’t appreciated his threats, she had nothing but scorn for his antiquated snobbishness, but she still hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind.

  ‘And stop looking at me like that.’ She threw a cushion from her bed at Rose, and was relieved when the conversation was brought to an end by her mother threatening to leave without them unless they hurried.

  The drive to the venue took half an hour. Six people piled into one reliable seven-seater which had seen off fifteen winters and was still going strong.

  On the way, Grace Sharp could barely contain her excitement, while Lizzy stared through the window and tried to block out her mother’s voice. She cringed at the breathless speculation about Louis and ignored her mother’s demands for more information. Grace had revelled in Nicholas’s attention to Rose. He was new to the area, he was wealthy and his family apparently owned a large estate somewhere in Berkshire. Could it have got any better?

  Lizzy toyed with the entertaining thought of what would happen if Rose decided to dump him and run off with one of the hired help from Crossfeld House instead. Her mother, she suspected, would have a heart attack on the spot. But there was no chance of Rose doing that. She might have decided to play down how she felt, because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself by throwing herself at a guy who might, just might, not be as serious about her as she was about him, but Lizzy knew that her sister was in love.

  She surfaced to find that they had arrived. At once her stomach tightened and her mind, which had been pleasantly drifting this way and that, zoomed into the inevitability of seeing Louis Jumeau again.

  The long drive was already lined with cars and, even as she played with the idea that she might just get away with avoiding Louis altogether by cunningly circulating in whichever circle of people happened to be furthest away from him, she stepped into the tiled hallway to find herself standing directly behind him.

  Then, as several more people piled in behind her, eager to escape the ferocious cold outside, literally pushed into the back of him.

  With a gasp of dismay, she tried and failed to right herself before he could spin around and find her clutching his jacket.

  ‘Ah. So we meet again. And this time you’re literally throwing yourself at me.’ Louis had not been looking forward to this event, and already after five minutes it was living down to all his expectations. Lots of people were enthusiastically greeting Nicholas and were openly curious about the rest of his group, namely himself and Nicholas’s two sisters—who, Louis had discovered as soon as he had poled up to Crossfeld House, had been invited to visit so that they could meet Rose Sharp.

  ‘If you would just move on, you wouldn’t be causing a pile-up,’ Lizzy hissed under her breath. She felt hot and bothered and took a step sideways to avoid the crush of people arriving behind her.

  ‘Are these events usually so well attended? Or are the local folk so desperate to meet the southerners that they’re willing to brave Mother Nature for the experience?’ He leant down, eyes drawn to the creamy smooth hint of cleavage. So this is what she looked like in a dress. He had to admit that he had wondered.

  ‘You’re unbearable.’

  ‘So you’ve already told me. You’re in danger of becoming repetitive.’

  Lizzy chose not to answer. Instead, she swerved away from the entrance hall and made her way quickly and breathlessly towards the large room at the back which had been decked out with tables and chairs and a long trestle table which was manned by six girls, well positioned to spring into action the minute food was required.

  Pausing by the door, she glanced over her shoulder and grimaced when she saw Louis looking at Rose, then at her family, who were introducing themselves, and then back at Rose. She could imagine the wheels in his head whirring around as he jumped to all sorts of conclusions.

  The rise and fall of voices around her did little to calm her nerves, and not even the prospect of meeting some of her old gang could dispel the sickening knot in her stomach.

  ‘He seems lovely.’ Rose’s voice from behind made her jump and she spun around and allowed herself to be led away to a quiet corner. ‘I don’t know why you were so worried!’

  ‘He’s pretending.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Why would he do that? Have you met Nicholas’s sisters, though?’ She glanced quickly to the left and Lizzy followed her sister’s eyes to where two tall blonde girls were looking around them with undisguised contempt. Whilst everyone had dressed up, they were in jeans and thick sweaters and were making no attempt to mingle.

  ‘Have you spoken to them?’ Lizzy asked anxiously, and she could see tears begin to gather in the corner of her sister’s eyes.

  ‘They hate me. I can tell from the way they spoke to me. Oh, they were very polite, but I just got the impression that they didn’t think that I was good enough for their brother.’

  ‘Nicholas is lucky to have you,’ Lizzy said stoutly. She wondered whether Louis had infected them with his scepticism or whether they were all in a similar conspiracy of hunting down the worst-case scenario on Nicholas’s behalf.

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe he feels the same. Deep down.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzy could see Louis looking around him. In a heartbeat of a second, their eyes tangled and then he was bearing down on them, cutting a swathe through the crowds, drink in hand.

  ‘Speaking of Nicholas, why don’t you go and see if you can find him …?’ Lizzy murmured. ‘Louis is coming towards us and I want to have a word with him.’

  ‘What about? You won’t say anything, will you?’

  ‘Don’t panic, Rose. You know how tactful I am.’

  Now that she was looking at him approach, she found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away. He, at least, had made an effort with his clothes: a dark s
uit which fitted so perfectly that it could only have been made to measure, and a white shirt, on which he had undone the top two buttons. It might be freezing outside but the place was warm, warm enough for everyone to have disposed of their coats, jackets, cardigans and scarves.

  He was spectacularly good-looking, she reluctantly registered to herself, and he moved with the easy grace of an athlete. As he walked by, heads swung in his direction and a fair few of them lingered. Of course, he would know the effect he had on people. It was probably just one of the things that contributed to his arrogance. She rallied her fighting spirit at the thought of that and took a swig of her drink, white wine which had become tepid over the course of the hour.

  ‘Are you having a good time?’ She greeted him coolly when he was finally standing in front of her, affording her the sort of undiluted attention that made her pulses race.

  Louis took his time answering. ‘It’s always illuminating to watch and observe.’

  ‘Watch and observe? You mean in the way a scientist watches and observes bacteria on a Petri dish?’

  ‘You’re very different from your sisters.’

  Lizzy’s eyes narrowed. ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, your two younger ones are obviously party animals without a care in the world, and Rose …’

  ‘What about Rose?’

  ‘Very sweet-tempered, or at least that’s the image she’s trying to project.’

  Lizzy bristled, but before she could jump in with a suitable retort he was talking again, his voice a low, lazy drawl, his incredibly dark eyes roving over her flushed, angry face.

  ‘And your mother seems delighted with the fact that she’s going out with Nicholas. In fact, I think she can hear wedding bells in the air … True or false?’

  Lizzy tried not to grimace. Gracie Sharp had always aspired to financial security. She had been the driving hand behind their father’s work ethic, always pushing him to go a little further, do a little better and aim a little higher, and Lizzy could understand that. In fact, she could feel a grudging empathy, because her mother had grown up in a series of foster homes, relying on her looks to pull her through in the absence of any real education. She had duly chosen to launch herself into the world of acting, but it had been a struggle, and one she had from all accounts abandoned the day she had met their father. The legacy of poverty had lived on, however, so was it any wonder that she was now thrilled with Nicholas? At least one of her daughters was achieving what she had supposedly been born to achieve.

  ‘All mothers can’t help but think about their kids, um, finding happiness …’ She wished he would move back a little, so that there was some chance their conversation would be interrupted. But his stance repelled anyone who might want to join them, broad back to the room, and she wondered whether it was deliberate.

  ‘Really? She didn’t seem all that bothered by the fact that there’s no guy in your life.’

  ‘You asked her about me? You were prying into my life behind my back?’ Her eyes glittered with outrage and she clenched her fists as he returned her angry gaze calmly.

  ‘There was no real need to pry,’ Louis said with an elegant shrug. ‘Your mother seems very forthcoming. I’ve heard all about your younger sisters and their hectic social lives, and Vivian and her causes, and Rose, who is apparently as close to perfection as any human being could reasonably aspire to be. And your mother just wishes that they would settle down with the right men. And then there’s you—clever, ambitious—and there was no hint that finding the right man was on your mother’s wish-list. Why do you think that was?’

  Having watched and listened, Louis had reached certain conclusions, and conclusion number one was that he had been one-hundred percent correct in his assumption that the Sharps were fortune hunters. Everything backed him up, from Mrs Sharp’s obvious delight in her daughter’s so-called match, to Rose herself, who was the picture of gentle innocence, but who was also seemingly lacking in the sort of passion he would have expected to see in a woman in love.

  He had made his way over to Lizzy because he had intended on pinning her to the wall. Inexplicably, he now found himself distracted and, even more inexplicably, enjoying his moment of distraction.

  ‘I don’t see that my private life is any of your business,’ Lizzy muttered, on the back foot and hating him for it.

  ‘So how come you’re not involved with anyone?’ He swirled his drink and then tossed his head back to finish the wine in his glass. Just in case she got any ideas about going anywhere, he reached out and planted his hand firmly on the wall so that she was locked in.

  Lizzy wondered how soon she could escape so that she could strangle her overbearing mother.

  ‘Repeat—none of your business.’

  ‘A little tip—men don’t like women who show their claws the way you do.’

  ‘I show my claws because I happen to loathe you!’

  Louis laughed. He wondered if anyone had ever had the audacity to tell him that they loathed him. Nope; he couldn’t think of a single instance.

  ‘And,’ Lizzy continued, fuming, ‘I don’t ask you about your private life!’

  ‘Ask on. What do you want to know?’ He straightened, but when he shifted it was only to further block any exit routes.

  ‘I’m actually not at all interested. And anyway,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘I don’t need to ask, because I can guess what sort of private life you have.’

  ‘Oh? Tell me. I’m all ears.’

  ‘Lots of women,’ she threw at him. ‘Glamour models and airheads who smile sweetly and do whatever you ask them to do. You have so much money that you can pick and choose, and rich men only ever pick stunning women. But my guess is that, when and if you ever do decide to tie the knot, it’ll be with someone from your own class. That’s why you don’t like the thought of Nicholas with my sister. He comes from lots of money and therefore he should stick to his own kind.’

  ‘You’re flirting dangerously with my boundaries. And my patience.’

  ‘You have been flirting dangerously with mine as well.’ She looked at him and something wild and dangerous shifted inside her. Just as quickly she glanced away, but her pulses were racing and her heart was thumping so hard that she felt as though she might faint.

  Behind him, she could hear the first strains of music as the small jazz band—two members of which she had gone to school with—began tuning their instruments.

  ‘Care to dance?’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  Louis laughed again. He had intended to be brutal on this fact-finding mission, but he found that he was enjoying the way she scratched and bristled. It was novel. She had been dead-on target when she had said that the women he dated were beautiful airheads. Airheads didn’t interrupt his work life, and his work life ate up a considerable amount of his time. She had also been dead on target when she had said that the woman he eventually chose would be someone of equal standing—no one who could possibly be interested in his vast wealth, which would mean that her connections would have to be similarly impeccable; no argument there. Neither type of woman would resemble the one currently nursing her empty wine glass and glaring up at him. A girl who got her kicks riding motorcycles and whose mother despaired of her settling down. Even in her finery, she still managed to have a slightly untamed air about her.

  ‘Don’t you dance?’ he asked.

  ‘I choose my dance partners with discretion.’

  Louis made a show of looking around him. ‘And anyone here take your fancy? Or do you go back too far with all of them? My guess is that familiarity can breed contempt in a place as small as this. Is that the reason you legged it down to London while your sisters stayed up here?’

  ‘Rose is the only one who lives here. Leigh and Maisie are at university and Vivian is abroad.’

  ‘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?’