A Suitable Husband. Jessica Steele
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was a tense silence from the other end. Then, to her surprise, Ash confessed, ‘I didn’t go to Scotland.’
He’d been away two weeks but hadn’t been where he had told her he was going? ‘Your plans changed?’ She concentrated on keeping her tone light. She still had no clue as to why Ash, if he hadn’t called to say goodbye, had put off making this call. But she was more astonished than surprised when at last he answered.
‘I never intended to go to Scotland,’ he confessed.
‘You never…? You lied to me?’ The lightness had gone from her tone.
‘I—couldn’t help it,’ Ash admitted. Jermaine’s feeling of astonishment went up tenfold and, at his next three words, it mingled with a sudden familiar sickness in the pit of her stomach. ‘Edwina and I…’
‘Edwina?’ Her voice had risen in her shock. ‘Edwina, my sister?’
‘We couldn’t help it. We fell in love, and…’
‘You’ve been seeing Edwina?’ Jermaine couldn’t take it in. ‘All the time you’ve been ringing me, dating me, you’ve been…’
‘It didn’t start out like that,’ Ash jumped in quickly.
Jermaine was reeling, but holding on—just. ‘I’m sure it didn’t!’ Oh, weren’t we on familiar territory! ‘It started out with me introducing her to you at my parents’ home over two months ago—have you been dating Edwina since then?’ Jermaine questioned sharply.
‘No!’ he protested. ‘And it didn’t start out as a “date”.’ Tell me about it! ‘Edwina was near my home, Highfield, Lukas’s place, when she had a puncture. You must have given her my phone number because, poor darling…’ Poor darling! I’m just loving this! ‘…she rang me with no idea what to do.’
Jermaine knew for a fact, since she had seen nor heard nothing from her sister this past couple of months, that by no chance had she passed on the telephone number of Highfield. ‘You had, of course?’
‘Yes,’ Ash answered.
‘You never mentioned Edwina’s “puncture” to me.’
‘She asked me not to.’ I’ll bet she did! ‘She thought you might be upset that she’d bothered me. I said you wouldn’t be but Edwina said she’d feel better if it was our little secret.’
How sweet! ‘So you asked her out and…?’
‘I didn’t. We—er—that is, Edwina found a glove in her car—it was your fathers, but she didn’t know that then. Not until after she’d called in at my office one day when she was passing. And, since it was close to lunch time, suggested that the least she could do after the inconvenience she’d put me to was to take me to lunch.’ Hook on to my line and let me pull you in! Edwina obviously hadn’t lost her touch. ‘Then you couldn’t see me—that weekend you went home to look after your mother when she had flu—and…’
‘Thank you for at last having the decency to tell me!’ Jermaine chopped him off. She didn’t want to hear any more; she could guess the rest. ‘Goodbye, Ash,’ she added with quiet dignity.
‘That wasn’t why I phoned!’ Ash cried in panic before she could put the phone down.
She hesitated. She needed time, space to lick her wounds. Edwina had done it again! ‘It wasn’t?’
‘Edwina’s had an accident!’
Fear struck her. She did not particularly like her sister—but that didn’t stop her from loving her. ‘What sort of an accident? Is she badly hurt? Where is she? Which hospit—?’
‘She isn’t in hospital. It isn’t as serious as that. She’s here—at Highfield.’
Highfield! ‘Your brother’s place? Edwina’s at your brother’s home?’
‘We’ve—er—had a little holiday here,’ Ash owned reluctantly. ‘She intended to go back to her place yesterday, but…’
Edwina had been holidaying with Ash! A two-week holiday! Jermaine was shaken anew. She supposed she shouldn’t really be shaken by anything Edwina did, so perhaps it was the fact it was Ash—her own boyfriend—correction, ex- boyfriend—who was her sister’s holiday boyfriend that was the real shaker. All this while Jermaine had thought him too up to his ears in work in Scotland to get near a phone—and he had been holiday all the while with her sister at his brother’s home in Hertfordshire!
But—Edwina was hurt in some way. ‘What’s wrong with her—what sort of an accident?’
‘As I said, Lukas came home unexpectedly on Saturday. He’s been away for about a month and was pretty shattered. So, to give him a chance to unwind a bit, I took Edwina down to the local riding stables and we hired a couple of horses. Only Edwina’s mount was a bit more spirited than we were told, and galloped off with her. When I caught up with them, Edwina was lying on the ground, stunned. She’d taken a dreadful tumble and hurt her back.’
‘What does the doctor say?’ Jermaine asked urgently.
‘Poor darling, she’s so brave—she’s refused point-blank to see a doctor.’
‘She’s refused…? Can she walk?’
‘Oh, yes. But with great difficulty. Between us, Mrs Dobson and I—she’s Lukas’s housekeeper—’ he explained, ‘got Edwina upstairs and into bed. She’s there now. She tried to insist on getting up, but when she fainted I made her stay exactly where she was.’
Fainted! Suspicions which she did not want began to stir in Jermaine’s mind. How well she remembered how conveniently Edwina would limp with some knee injury or other should she be called upon to do some errand she wasn’t keen on. Jermaine clearly recalled when she had been thirteen, Edwina seventeen, and Edwina, who had had her own small car, had been in a fury because her mother wouldn’t allow her to borrow her much larger and zippier car. There had been a fearful screaming match, Jermaine remembered. It had ended with Edwina flouncing out of the drawing room. Her mother had gone after her a minute later—and had found Edwina in a dead ‘faint’. Only Jermaine, who had rushed out at her mother’s call, had seen the way Edwina had surreptitiously peeped beneath her lashes to see how her ‘faint’ was going down. Not many weeks afterwards Edwina’s car had been changed for her first sports car.
‘So you see, Mrs Dobson has looked after Edwina, but now she’s busy with her other duties,’ Ash was going on. ‘And although I know I’ve got a colossal neck to ask it of you, I just had to ring to ask if you’ll come down to Highfield and look after your sister?’
‘Colossal neck’ was putting it mildly. ‘I’d better have a word with her,’ Jermaine answered coolly, feeling mean for her suspicions, but years of living with her sister had left few blindfolds.
‘She doesn’t know I’m ringing!’ Ash exclaimed. ‘She’d have a fit if she did. I didn’t want to ring at all, which is why I’m ringing so late after her accident. But Lukas has just asked what family Edwina has and seems to think that you, as her only sister, would be sure to want to come down to Highfield to look after her, so…’
‘Now wait a minute!’ Go down to Highfield? Go to look after her back-stabbing, excellent horse-woman sister who, more than probably—if past knowledge of her was anything to go by—had not hurt her back as badly as she was making out? ‘I’ve a job to go to. I can’t drop everything and come dashing down to Hertfordshire just because…’
‘Just because?’ He sounded horrified. ‘Edwina’s your sister…’ he began to remonstrate.
‘And she’s your girlfriend!’ Guilt at the small percentage of doubt that remained, because maybe Edwina had seriously injured her back, made Jermaine’s voice sharp. ‘You look after her!’ she told Ash, and discontinued the call.
She couldn’t rest,