Fire With Fire. PENNY JORDAN
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outfit with care. It was a beautifully cut fine wool suit in a sludgy nondescript olive that was a perfect foil for her hair and skin. The jacket was tailored and workmanlike, the skirt slim with a provocative slit at the front and back, just long enough to give a glimpse of her long legs—the suit combined both provocation and discretion, and it had amused her to buy it, knowing as she did that it was a contradiction of itself. If nothing else it should keep them guessing she thought drily, trying to concentrate on everything that Robert was telling her.
When she got home that night there was a letter from Drake Harwood’s solicitors waiting for her. Mr Harwood was agreeable to seeing her, it told her. An appointment had been made on the day and at the time she had requested and that was a relief.
When she told Camilla, her sister pouted sulkily and complained that Emma was trying to make her feel guilty. ‘I’m trying to forget all about that …’ she told her, shuddering, ‘and now you’re trying to make me remember.’
‘I should have thought that was all too easy,’ Emma said drily, ‘especially when it involved a bill of several thousand pounds. Have you tried to talk to David about it.’
‘I can’t. He’d understand, but his mother wouldn’t. Do you know what she said to me today…?’
Emma closed her ears while Camilla set off on a long diatribe against David’s mother. The newly married couple were to make their home at the Manor with her. They were going to have their own wing, and Camilla was already planning how she would re-decorate and re-furnish it. If Mrs T. allowed her to have anything other than very traditional Colefax and Fowler plus assorted antiques, she would be very surprised, Emma thought, but kept her thoughts to herself. Camilla thought that by marrying David she was gaining the freedom to spend his money and buy herself all the things she had never had, but what she was really doing was entering a prison … However, it was her own choice.
She had decided to spend the night before her interview in London—that would save arriving there with her clothes all creased from the train journey. She had booked herself a room at a fairly inexpensive hotel. Her father was busy writing his sermon when she went to tell him she was going. He looked up and smiled at her. The Reverend Richard Court had a vague, appealing smile. There had been several female parishioners eager to step into her mother’s shoes, but he had managed to evade them all. Her father rather liked his bachelordom, Emma suspected. He had several friends at Oxford, dons with whom he spent long weekends re-living the days of their youth. He was also an avid reader. Outwardly gentle and mild, he possessed a core of inner steel. Emma suspected she had inherited from him. No one would ever persuade her father to do something he didn’t wish to do. In many ways he was extremely selfish, but he was so gentle and mild, that very few people realised it. He was kind though and extremely adept at distancing himself from arguments and trouble. He could always see both sides of an argument—something else she had inherited from him Emma thought.
‘I should be back tomorrow evening.’ Her interview with the TV people was in the morning and she was seeing Drake Harwood after lunch.
‘Camilla seems very anxious. I suppose it’s all this fuss over the wedding.’
‘She’ll make a lovely bride…’
‘Yes. Her one redeeming feature in Mrs T’s eyes, no doubt,’ he agreed, surprising Emma as he so often did by seeing what one had not believed that he had seen. ‘It’s lucky for her that she’s so malleable. Marriage to a man like David would never do for you Emma.’
‘No,’ she agreed with a smile, ‘I’m more likely to turn into another Mrs T.’
‘I don’t think so. No one could ever accuse you of being narrow-minded. I hope you get the job.’
Emma knew that he meant it, which was generous of him, because if she did she would have to find somewhere to live in London, and by removing herself from the vicarage she would deprive him of a housekeeper/secretary/general dogsbody. Being her father though, no doubt he would find someone else to take her place, with the minimum of fuss and inconvenience to himself.
She drove herself down to the station. It was only tiny and Joe the stationmaster promised to keep an eye on her car for her. ‘Hope you get the job,’ he told her, as he sold her her ticket. Everyone in the village probably knew why she was going to London—or at least thought they did. None of them knew of her appointment with Drake Harwood. It was ridiculous but she almost felt more apprehensive about that than she did about her interview for her new job.
The train arrived ten minutes late but was relatively empty. It took just over an hour and a half to reach London. Emma was both bored and stiff when it did. She allowed herself the extravagance of a taxi to her hotel, although she noticed that the driver looked less than impressed by its address. It seemed strange to think that if she got this job her face would be so familiar that almost everyone would recognise her. She wasn’t sure yet how she would handle that sort of exposure. She liked her privacy and working for the local station had been able to preserve it. Robert had warned her against stressing too much how she felt about that. Perhaps it was something that one just grew accustomed to.
CONGRATULATING herself on her good timing Emma sat down gracefully in the chair indicated by the hovering secretary. Exactly three minutes to spare before the time appointed for her interview.
Across the other side of the room she caught sight of her own reflection in a mirrored section of wall surrounding an almost tropical plant display. The cool, graceful woman staring back at her was almost a stranger. She had never quite grown accustomed to the image she had learned to project during her years in the media, Emma reflected, hiding a rueful smile. As a teenager she had been gangly and awkward, lacking Camilla’s blonde prettiness. It had been during her first job that an older colleague had suggested a grooming course at a local modelling school might be a good idea. At first she had been dismissive, but the advice had taken root and now she considered the money the course had cost her to be one of her best investments. She wasn’t pretty and never would be, but knowing that she had learned to make the best of herself gave her a calm confidence which was reflected in the way she held her body and moved. What she never saw when she looked at herself was the purity of her bone structure and the sensual lure of the contrast between the dark russet of her hair, and her pale Celtic skin.
One or two curious glances came her way from people passing through the foyer but Emma ignored them. She knew she wasn’t the only candidate for the job, but they must have decided to interview them all on separate days because she was the only person waiting.
Having been kept waiting for the obligatory ten minutes the discreet sound of a buzzer on the secretary’s desk heralded the commencement of her ordeal.
The room she was shown into was large and furnished in a modern high tech style. Three people were already in the room. All of them men. Robert had warned her against adopting a sexual approach to the interview. ‘I know you won’t anyway,’ he had added, ‘but just remember it’s brains they’re looking for as well as looks.’
Emma hadn’t needed the warning. She had scorned using her sex to get her own way all her life. In fact her father had once commented that she was almost too direct. ‘Men, on the whole, enjoy having their egos massaged, my dear,’ had been his mild comment, one afternoon when she had delivered a blisteringly disdainful look in the direction of one of his parishioners. She had tried to explain that she hadn’t liked the way the man had looked at her, or appreciated his heavy-handed compliments, but her father had simply shaken his head. ‘Emma I suspect you’re always going to take the hard route through life. Something in you demands that you meet situations head on. Try to learn that sometimes it’s useful to have the ability to side-step them.’ She had now mastered the art, but it had been a hard-won mastery, and she often had to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying what she thought. ‘Too direct’ other people had called her, while Camilla made no bones of her verdict. ‘You’re always so aggressive Emma,’ she had told