In Want of a Wife? (5 page)

Many a joyous day had been spent revelling in the vagaries of nature when she had been a kid. Heavy snow had usually meant days off school. Now, however, her heart sank. She could think of nothing else but Rose stuck at Crossfeld House, at the mercy of Nicholas’s sisters and Louis, who would be circling her like a shark on the lookout for fresh blood.

By three o’clock, she was going stir crazy, and with the impetuousness that was part and parcel of her nature she announced to her parents that she had decided to go out for a quick spin on her bike.

‘Just up to Crossfeld House,’ she continued, backing away nervously from their duly horrified expressions. ‘My bike’s got fantastic wheels and I’ve ridden in conditions like these in the past.’
More or less.
‘I think Rose feels out of her depth.’ A note of accusation crept into her voice, and she noted the shifty way her parents exchanged glances between themselves. But it was the tipping point, because her mother nodded wearily and then offered to prepare her a packed lunch.

‘And don’t forget your mobile phone.’ Grace shouted up to her for the eighth time as Lizzy kitted herself out in suitable gear for the bike ride.

As if! But at least now she was doing something instead of sitting around, listening to her sisters and their friends play their music too loud, and spread themselves throughout the house with the easy indolence of nineteen-and twenty-year-olds who hadn’t yet taken on any of life’s little responsibilities.

It was bitter outside and the forecasters were warning of plummeting temperatures.

Lizzy revved the engine of her motorbike and felt that familiar thrill as it roared into life. She swung it out of the garage and down the short drive to the main road.

Three years ago, she had had special tyres put on that could better cope with snowy conditions, and she was now grateful for that window of foresight because conditions were truly terrible.

The trip to Crossfeld House on a clear, sunny day was a circuitous one of winding roads. Snow made the trip slower and much more difficult.

But it was only when the fall of snow began making it difficult for her to see that Lizzy eventually acknowledged that she might be in a spot of bother.

Ahead of her, the tiny pinpoints of lights from Crossfeld House at least indicated that she hadn’t been totally disoriented by the blanket of snow. But those small dots of light were also
a reminder that her marvellous wheels weren’t quite so marvellous after all. And there was no way that she could
walk
the motorbike to Crossfeld; it was too big and too unwieldy.

Also, after nearly an hour of slow riding, the cold was beginning to worm its way through and under her layers of clothes, finding her tender skin and sinking its teeth in. Another hour and she would be putting her life at risk.

She pulled out the packed lunch which she had laughed at her mother for providing and gratefully bit into a cheese and pickle sandwich, washing it down with some coffee which had likewise been provided for her, despite her protests.

Then, with a sigh of defeat, she pulled out her mobile phone and dialled through to her sister.

L
IZZY
watched the headlights of the Range Rover draw closer, searching her out. This wasn’t the tired old four-by-four which had been left by the side of the road. This was a shiny black monster and not much fancy guesswork was needed to figure out who was behind the steering wheel.

‘You mustn’t try and walk here!’ Rose had exclaimed in horror when Lizzy had explained the situation to her on the phone. ‘You’ll collapse!’

‘I’m not some kind of pathetic Victorian maiden,’ Lizzy had been quick to point out, whilst acknowledging that her sister was right. There was no way she could walk to Crossfeld with the snow coming down in barrels and she was too far from her own house to risk turning back.

‘I’m sure Louis wouldn’t mind. He had a new car delivered; it would take him no time at all. Will you be okay waiting?’

‘I
could
probably give it another try,’ Lizzy had ventured optimistically, but the suggestion had fallen on deaf ears. Now as she waved to the car, making her presence known, she almost wished that she had pressed a bit harder.

‘Are you completely mad?’ Louis swung his long body out of the car, fighting against the brisk wind. ‘What the hell possessed you to pull a stunt like this? Get in the car!’

Lizzy gritted her teeth together. Unlike the last time, when he had been on the receiving end of
her
help, he was dressed for the weather now. Thick jeans were tucked into black, fur-lined
wellies and under the padded waterproof jacket she suspected that there were several layers of clothes. He was a fast learner.

‘I can’t leave my bike.’ She folded her arms and stood her ground.

‘And that would be because …?’

‘It’ll be ruined.’

‘Tough. You should have thought of that before you decided to come haring out to Crossfeld House to rescue your sister. Who, by the way, doesn’t need rescuing.’ He flung open the passenger door. ‘I’m giving you to the count of three, and if you’re not in you can bed down here for the night.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t put that to the test. I was called out from an important conference call to rescue the damsel in distress. I’m not in the prettiest of moods.’

Lizzy climbed into the car. She should, of course, thank him for coming out to rescue her, but gratitude stuck in her throat; she stared ahead in stony silence.

‘I’m sorry to have interrupted your conference call,’ she eventually managed through stiff lips.

‘You’re a lunatic.’

‘It’s not the first time I’ve ridden my motorbike in snow.’

Louis glanced across at her. She was soaking wet, except for her hair, which she had managed to shove underneath the helmet. Not even the leather jacket, the boots and the scarf had protected her against the onslaught of the weather.

‘I’m amazed your parents let you out of the house,’ he gritted.

‘I’m twenty-three. They couldn’t very well stop me.’

‘Which, of course, gives you the right to drive them out of their minds with worry?’

‘Oh, please! I didn’t think you cared about my parents
or
the state of their minds.’ She shot him a sideways glare.

‘You’re headstrong. You’re opinionated. You’re arrogant.

And you shoot your mouth off without bothering to stop and think first. Little wonder that your mother’s given up on your chances of marriage.’

Lizzy thought she would explode. She could feel herself beginning to hyperventilate with rage and she breathed in deeply, counting to ten.

‘You’re entitled to your opinions,’ she said in a controlled voice. A brief silence pooled around them. ‘I may be a little headstrong, and a little opinionated, but I certainly am
not
arrogant.’

‘You were arrogant to think that your sister couldn’t survive a night at Crossfeld without you storming in to her rescue.’

Lizzy squashed the surge of discomfort his remark provoked. Of course she hadn’t been arrogant in thinking that she would be doing Rose a favour by showing up at Crossfeld to give her moral support; that was what sisters were all about.
But she didn’t ask you,
a little voice whispered in her head.
If she had wanted your support, wouldn’t she have
asked
for it?

‘Rose isn’t like me,’ Lizzy muttered. ‘She isn’t well equipped when it comes to looking out for herself. She gets upset easily and she never, ever fights back.’

‘So you thought you’d jump on your motorbike and get to Crossfeld so that you could do her fighting for her.’

‘What’s wrong with looking out for the people you care about?’

‘Nothing, but sometimes the people you care about are perfectly capable of looking out for themselves because they’ve moved on without you even realising it.’

‘If you’re telling me that Rose doesn’t need me to look out for her then maybe you should see that Nicholas doesn’t need
you
to look out for
him.’

‘You’re right. Maybe he doesn’t.’

He glanced sideways at her and her heart lurched as their eyes met in the silvery darkness.

‘What are you saying?’ Her heart was still in stop-start mode and her voice was high and breathless. ‘That you accept Rose and Nicholas as an item?’

‘I’m saying that I can’t picture you being a teacher.’ Louis moved the conversation swiftly along. What
had
he been saying—that he might be in the process of having a re-think because the bristly, outspoken woman next to him had managed to make him think outside the very tidy little box over which he had always had complete control? His mouth tightened in automatic rejection of that idea.

‘Really. I mean, how do you cope with rebellious pupils without exploding? And I can’t picture you wearing a suit to work.’

‘A suit? Teachers don’t wear
suits!’
But she couldn’t help feeling hurt at the comment. He couldn’t picture her wearing a suit because she didn’t register as feminine as far as he was concerned. He had looked shocked to see her in a dress the night before. Did he think that her entire wardrobe was comprised of jeans, checked flannel shirts and leather jackets topped off by a black helmet and boots with lots of buckles?

‘I love the kids,’ she said brusquely. ‘They’re not complicated or judgemental and I can handle their high spirits. I’m in charge of the seven-and eight-year-olds—they’re responsive and if they get a little over-excited I’m very good at dealing with it. And for your information,’ she tacked on belatedly, ‘I’m not a complete disaster when it comes to guys. In fact, there are some who don’t like simpering women who only know how to say yes; some men happen to like women with opinions and ideas. And the reason I chose to come to Crossfeld was because Jessica and Eloise are snooty and horrible and I was afraid that they might be giving my sister a hard time. I figured she could do with a sympathetic shoulder.’

‘From the looks of it, Nicholas is
extremely
sympathetic …’

‘That’s different,’ Lizzy muttered. ‘Besides, I wanted to get
out of the house. Maisie and Leigh have friends over and they were driving me crazy.’

She stared out of the window and shivered, only suddenly realising just how cold she was and just how foolish it had been to get on that bike and think she could make it to Crossfeld in near-blizzard conditions.

She would phone her parents just as soon as she got to Crossfeld. They had never given the impression of ever having been worried about her. About her younger sisters, yes, because they had grown up getting into scrapes, and things had hardly improved, although the scrapes all seemed to involve boys now. And about Vivian, yes, because she was a do-gooder who always managed to find good things to do in very risky places and she didn’t have the sense of humour to be able to laugh herself out of them. And of course about Rose, who was so placid that life and all its messiness seemed a constant threat. But about her, not really. Straddled between three stunningly pretty sisters and one extremely virtuous one, Lizzy had taken hold of the reins of independence from a very young age and had never let go.

Crossfeld House was now approaching, just an imposing blur through the densely falling snow.

‘Is there a great deal of work to do on the place?’ She broke the silence.

‘Enough to keep a building crew very busy for at least a year,’ he said, pulling up in front of the house as close as he could possibly get to the front door so as to avoid having to manoeuvre over the treacherous courtyard.

‘Good Lord. That’s going to cost a
fortune!’
she exclaimed involuntarily. ‘And to think I shall probably have to dive into my paltry savings to get my bike repaired once it’s been fished out of the snow drifts.’

‘The repairs will be on me,’ Louis said drily, wondering whether that was what she had been aiming at with her
remark, but the look of horror she shot him was sufficient to tell him that he couldn’t have been further from the truth.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I would never, ever accept a single penny from you.’ Lizzy opened the car door and slammed it behind her. ‘And I hope you didn’t think that I was fishing for hand-outs.’ She folded her arms and stopped to glare at him.

‘Accept the offer, Lizzy. If you felt that you had to come rushing over here for Rose, it was because of what I said, so in a peculiar way I’m partly to blame for the fact that your motorcycle is currently in the process of being buried under ten feet of snow. Besides—’ he reached past her to insert his key in the lock of the rather grand oak door ‘—it’s hardly as though it’ll break the bank.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

‘Well, suit yourself. But pride comes before a fall.’

‘I’ve never believed in that old rubbish,’ she retorted, stepping back. ‘If I’m going to fall, I’m more than happy to fall with my pride keeping me company on the way down.’

Louis looked at her with sudden, vibrant appreciation and a flare of hot colour warmed her face. In the act of pushing open the door, he was so close to her that she could breathe in the woody, clean, masculine scent of him and it filled her head like an exotic, powerful incense.

She automatically stepped back, blinking like a mole suddenly exposed to bright light, then the door was opening and she was looking at the vast hall that she vaguely remembered from a thousand years ago.

Crossfeld House had been passed down the generations until its upkeep became too costly. Its glory had gradually faded, a grand old lady with no one rich enough or finally interested enough to give her the attention she deserved.

From what Lizzy could see, the place wasn’t in bad order. The five-strong golfing conglomerate had obviously had high hopes of bringing it up to standard, but the plummeting
economy had taken care of that dream, and in the intervening years jobs begun had not been completed so that there was an unfinished air about the place. There were too few paintings on the walls, the tired, faded wallpaper needed to be stripped off; one immense, high ceilings were dingy. But nothing could take away from the scale and grandeur of the place.

‘Appreciate it while it’s here,’ Louis murmured drily as he followed her gaze. ‘It won’t be for long. The wiring’s chaotic, and the plumbing has an agenda of its own, and by the time those two things get sorted there’ll be nothing left of what you see.’

‘It’s a big task for, um, someone like you …’ Lizzy said faintly.

‘Someone like me?’

‘A year out restoring this property—isn’t that going to eat up lots of your valuable, high-powered time?’

‘Ever heard of delegation?’

‘You really do live in a different world from the rest of us, don’t you?’

‘Hence my natural caution about anyone aspiring to claw their way in through a back door.’

‘Right. The gold-diggers.’ She was comfortable being back on ground she understood. Just for a minute, when he had looked at her with that warm, amused appreciation, she had felt herself floundering, out of her depth and not knowing what to do about it. ‘Where’s Rose?’

‘Safe and well,’ Louis told her with infuriating amusement. ‘And in the sitting room with Nicholas and his sisters.’

Feeling a fool, she trailed behind Louis, feigning great interest in her surroundings whilst wondering why she had come. They weren’t about to feed Rose to the dogs. He had been right: she
had
been arrogant to assume that it was her sacred duty to watch over her sister like an unappointed guardian. When they finally reached the sitting room she could see from a glance that Rose wasn’t cowering in a corner but
sipping from a glass of wine and looking radiant in a pair of casual leggings and a long-sleeved grey jersey-top that promoted her fantastic figure without revealing anything at all.

She gave a screech of delight and rushed over, only to stand back and hold Lizzy by the shoulders.

‘You’re soaking wet!’

‘That’s the trouble with being stuck in snow.’

‘Thank you so much, Louis, for rescuing her.’

‘He didn’t
rescue
me. He picked me up. I would have made it here just fine on my own, but it might have taken a little longer.’

Rose frowned and immediately Lizzy felt churlish and clamped her lips tightly together. ‘Not that I’m not grateful. I am.’

‘But what have you done with your motorbike?’ Jessica demanded, standing up and tossing her long, poker-straight blond hair over her shoulder. She smirked; it was a glaringly obvious smirk even though no one else appeared to notice it.

‘You look as though you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards,’ she continued, still smiling, still sounding sympathetic, but still looking at her narrowly, her bright blue eyes chips of ice. ‘You should go have a bath. Or something. But I’m not sure what you would change into … You’re a tiny little thing, aren’t you?’

‘Good things always come in small packages!’ Nicholas exclaimed, joining in the general fuss and trying to smooth over the jagged undertones. ‘Except in the case of Rose.’

‘Are you saying that I’m fat?’ She looked over her shoulder and laughed, and Lizzy was again struck by the idiocy of trekking her way to Crossfeld to help shore up the defences of the Sharp family. Rose was relaxed and more than capable of holding her own against Jessica and Eloise in her own quiet, unflappable way.