His Convenient Marriage

Sara Craven- His Convenient Marriage

"I thought we might get married."

Chessie had a curious feeling that the entire world had come to a sudden halt. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "I don't think I quite understand."

"It's perfectly simple. I've just proposed to you—asked you to become my wife." Miles sounded totally cool about it. "Look on it, if you want, as a new kind of contract."

Her lips moved. "Marriage is—hardly a business arrangement."

"I'd say that depends on the people involved." His gaze was steady. "Considering our individual circumstances, marriage between us seems a sensible idea." He paused. "I think we could work out a perfectly satisfactory deal."

CHAPTER ONE

'CHESSIE—oh, Chess, you'll never guess what they're say¬ing in the post office.'

Francesca Lloyd frowned slightly, but her attention didn't waver from her computer screen as her younger sis¬ter burst into the room.

'Jen, I've told you a hundred times, you're not supposed to come to this part of the house, and especially not during working hours.'

'Oh, nuts.' Jenny perched on a corner of the big desk, pushing aside some of the neat piles of paper to make room for herself. I simply had to see you. Anyway, The Ogre won't be back from London for hours yet,' she added airily. 'I checked that his car wasn't there before I came round.'

Chessie's lips tightened. 'Please don't call him that. It's neither kind nor fair.'

'Well, nor is he.' Jenny pulled a face. 'Besides, you may not need this job for much longer.' She took an excited breath. 'I heard Mrs. Cummings telling the post mistress that she's had instructions to open Wenmore Court again. And that means that Alastair's coming back at last.'

Chessie's fingers stilled momentarily on the keyboard. For a moment her heart leapt, painfully—almost brutally.

She kept her voice even. 'Well, that's good news for the village. The house has been closed up for far too long. But it won't make much difference to us.'

'Oh, Chess, don't be silly.' Jenny gave an impatient sigh. 'It makes all the difference in the world. After all, you and Alastair were practically engaged.'

'No.' Chessie turned on her. 'We were not. And you've got to stop saying that.'

'Well, you would have been if his beastly father hadn't sent him to business school in the States,' Jenny retorted. 'Everyone knows that. You were crazy about each other.'

'And much younger, too.' Chessie began typing again. 'And a hell of a lot has happened since then. Nothing's the same.'

'Do you really think that would make any difference to Alastair?' Jenny demanded scornfully.

'I think it might.' It still hurt to remember how the weekly letters had dwindled to one a month, and then pe¬tered out altogether before the end of their first year apart.

Since then, her only contact had been a brief note of condolence following her father's death.

And if Alastair had known that Neville Lloyd had died, then he almost certainly knew the circumstances of his death, she thought, wincing.

'God, you can be a real drag sometimes,' Jenny accused. 'I thought you'd be thrilled. I ran all the way home to tell you.'

'Jen, we shouldn't make assumptions.' Chessie tried to speak gently. 'After all, it's been three years and a lot of water under the bridge. We're not the same people any more, Alastair and I.'

There'd been a time when she'd rejoiced in those three words, she thought sadly. When they'd had meaning—even a future...

She squared her shoulders. 'And now I've got to get on. Please don't let Mr. Hunter come back and catch you here again.'

'Oh, all right.' Jenny slid mutinously off the desk. 'But how great it would be if Alastair asked you to marry him. Imagine being able to tell The Ogre what to do with his rotten job.'

Chessie stifled a sigh. 'It is not a rotten job,' she returned levelly. 'It's good, and well paid. It keeps food in our mouths, and a roof over our heads. And it allows us to go on living in our old home.'

'As servants,' Jenny said with intense bitterness. 'Big deal.' And she went out, slamming the door behind her.

Chessie sat very still for a moment, her face troubled. It was disturbing that even after all this time, Jenny had not been able to come to terms with the admittedly devastating change in their circumstances.

She could not seem to cope with the fact that Silvertrees House no longer belonged to them—or that the only part of it they were entitled to occupy was the former house¬keeper's flat.

'Yet, why not?' Chessie asked herself, wryly. 'After all, that's what I am—the housekeeper.'

I don't want, or need, a lot of staff,' Miles Hunter had told her at that first, fraught interview. 'I require the house to be run efficiently, and without fuss, plus secretarial sup¬port.'

'Meaning what, precisely?' Chessie looked impassively back at her potential employer, trying to weigh him up. It wasn't easy. His clothes, casually elegant, were at odds with the harshly etched lines of his face, accentuated by the scar that ran from his cheekbone to the corner of his unsmiling mouth. The cool drawl gave nothing away, ei¬ther.

'I use a very old portable typewriter, Miss Lloyd. I al¬ways have, but my publishers now require my manuscripts on computerised disks. I presume you can handle that?'

She nodded wordlessly.

'Good. On the domestic side it will be up to you what additional assistance you require. I imagine you'll need a daily help at least. But I insist on peace and quiet while I'm writing. I also value my privacy.'

He paused. 'I'm aware this may be difficult for you. After all, you've lived at Silvertrees all your life, and you're used to having the free run of the place. That, I'm afraid, can't happen any more.'

'No,' Chessie said. 'I—I can see that.'

There was another brief silence. 'Of course,' he said, 'you may not wish to take the job on, but your lawyer felt it could solve a number of problems for both of us.'

The blue eyes were vivid against the deep tan of his thin face. 'So, how about it, Miss Lloyd? Are you prepared to sacrifice your pride, and accept my offer?'

She ignored the note of faint mockery in his voice. 'I can't afford pride, Mr. Hunter. Not with a young sister to support, and educate. I'd be more than grateful for the job, and the accommodation.' She paused. 'And we'll try not to impinge on your seclusion.'

'Don't just try, Miss Lloyd. Succeed.' He drew the file on the desk in front of him towards him, signaling the interview was ending. As she rose he added, I will get my lawyers to draw up the necessary lease, and contract of employment.'

'Is that really necessary?' There was dismay in her voice. 'It sounds a bit daunting. Couldn't we have some kind of— gentleman's agreement?'

His mouth seemed to twist harshly, or was it just the scar that gave that impression?

'I've never been a gentleman, Miss Lloyd,' he remarked. 'And appearances are against you, too. I think it better to put things on a businesslike footing from day one—don't you?'

And that, Chessie thought drearily, had been that. She was allowed to occupy the former housekeeper's flat, with Jenny, for a peppercorn rent, as long as she continued to work for Miles Hunter.

At the time, desperate as she had been, bleak with guilt and grief over her father, it had seemed a lifeline. Too good a proposition to turn down.

Now, with hindsight, she wondered if she should have refused. Taken Jenny and herself far away from old mem¬ories—old associations.

But that would have meant finding a new school for Jenny just before an important exam year, and she'd been loath to create any more disruption in her sister's life.

And at first it had seemed worth it. Jenny had done well, and was expected to go on to university in due course. She'd get a student loan, but it would still mean all kinds of extra expenditure.

So Chessie seemed contracted to several more years of transferring Miles Hunter's starkly exciting thrillers onto the computer, and keeping his home running like the clock¬work he demanded.

It had not, she reflected, been the easiest of rides. As she'd suspected at that first meeting, he wasn't the easiest person in the world to work for. He expected consistently high standards, and could be icily sarcastic and unpleasant if these were not met, as several of the daily helps who'd come and gone could vouchsafe.

But while Chessie had adhered strictly to her own terri¬tory outside working hours, Jenny had not always been so scrupulous.

She'd made it plain she regarded Silvertrees' new owner as little more than an interloper in what was still her own home, and this had led to trouble, and almost confrontation, on more than one occasion. And this had led to her coining the resentful nickname 'The Ogre' for Miles Hunter.

Chessie pushed back her chair, and wandered over to the window, beset by sudden restlessness.

Jenny could be disturbingly intolerant at times, she thought ruefully. It was true that she'd found her father's disgrace and subsequent death traumatic in the extreme, but that was no longer a valid excuse. But her young sister bitterly resented the collapse of her comfortable, cushioned life.

She wanted things back the way they were—and that was never going to happen.

I've accepted it, Chessie thought sadly. Why can't she?

And now Alastair might be returning and Jenny had seized on this as a sign that their circumstances were about to change for the better in some miraculous way.

Chessie sighed under her breath. Oh, to be that young and optimistic again.

As she had been once—when she and Alastair had been together, and the world and the future had seemed to belong to them.

As a first love, she supposed, it had been pretty near idyllic. A summer of walks, and car rides; of swimming and playing tennis, and watching Alastair play cricket. Of kisses and breathless murmurs. And promises.

In retrospect, all very sweet. And absurdly innocent.

Alastair had wanted her. There was little doubt about that, and to this day she didn't know why she'd held back. Maybe it had been some unconscious reluctance to take the step that would have left her girlhood behind for ever, and made her a woman. Or, more prosaically, perhaps it had been the fear that it had only been her body that he'd really wanted. And that, having made the ultimate commitment, she would have lost him.

'A man will tell you anything, darling, if he's trying to get you into bed.' Linnet's husky voice, cloying as warm treacle, came back to haunt her. 'Don't make it too easy for him.'

Chessie had reacted with distaste at the time. But maybe the words had stuck just the same. Like so many of Linnet's little barbs, she reflected ruefully.

And if the Court really was being re-opened, that would mean that Linnet would be back too, proving that every silver lining had a black cloud hovering.

In a way, it had been Linnet who had unwittingly drawn Chessie and Alastair together originally.

Sir Robert Markham, like Chessie's father, had been a widower for several years. It had been popularly assumed in the village that if he remarried, his choice would be Gail Travis, who ran the local kennels, and whom he'd been escorting to local functions for the past year.

But one night at a charity ball he'd seen Linnet Arthur, an actress who, up to then, had made an erratic living from modelling, bit parts in soap operas, and playing hostess on daytime television game shows. Linnet, with her mane of blonde hair, perfect teeth, endless legs and frankly volup¬tuous body, had been decorating the tombola. And suddenly poor Mrs. Travis had been history.

After an embarrassingly short courtship, Sir Robert had married Linnet, and brought her down to the Court.

The shock waves had still been reverberating when he'd given a garden party to introduce her to the neighbourhood. And Alastair, standing like a statue in the background, had clearly been the most shocked of all.

He'd disappeared during the course of the afternoon, and Chessie had found him sitting under a tree by the river, throwing stones into the water. She'd been about to creep away, convinced he'd wanted to be alone, but his face, white with outrage and misery, had stopped her in her tracks.

Over six feet tall, with chestnut hair, and good looks to die for, Alastair, three years her senior, had always been Chessie's Idol.

Somehow, she'd found the courage to say, 'Alastair, I'm so sorry.'

He glanced up at her, his brown eyes glazed with pain. 'How could he?' he burst out. 'How could he have put that—bimbo in my mother's place? God, Chessie, she even brings bimbos into disrepute.'

To her horror, Chessie found herself struggling not to laugh. Alastair noticed, and his own mouth twitched into a reluctant grin. After that Linnet was always referred to be¬tween them as 'The Wicked Stepmother', and they spent many enjoyable hours slagging off the time she devoted to her personal appearance, her horrendous schemes for re¬decorating the Court, firmly vetoed by Sir Robert, and her doomed attempts to establish herself as the lady of the manor.