His Rags-to-Riches Bride: Innocent on Her Wedding Night / Housekeeper at His Beck and Call / The Australian's Housekeeper Bride. Susan Stephens
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family. Mrs Hallam is terribly strict about that. Is Simon with you?’
‘No, he’s off to the Cairngorms, climbing.’ He pulled a face. ‘The ruling passion, once again. I’m here in his place.’
‘Didn’t you want to go with him?’ she asked shyly. Simon might not be here, she thought, but neither was the horrible Candida. The Daniel she knew was back, and she wanted to turn a cartwheel in sheer joy.
‘God, no.’ He shuddered. ‘I get vertigo if I climb a ladder. Now, are you coming out to tea, or not? It’s all fixed. We have your principal’s blessing.’
‘But how? I don’t understand.’
‘Friends in high places, sweetheart.’ He swept her out to the long, low sports car waiting on the drive. ‘My father just happens to be on the board of governors. Mrs H can refuse me nothing. Anyway, I want to know how you’re getting on.’
Over sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, and rich chocolate cake served in the hushed and luxurious environs of a nearby country house hotel, she told him everything, her face glowing. Told him about the challenge of the work, her favourite teachers, the ghastly savoury mince served on Mondays that she hated, the friends she’d already made, and the possibility that next term she might get into the junior swimming team.
‘And Celia Welton has asked her mother if I can stay with them during the Christmas holidays,’ she ended in triumph, adding breathlessly, ‘Coming here is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’
‘Well,’ he said lightly, and smiled at her across the teatime debris. ‘That’s all right, then.’
Rules and regulations notwithstanding, his visits had become a regular and anticipated feature of her life at Randalls, and Laine had soon found herself being quizzed about him by some of the senior girls, who tended to be much in evidence when he was expected.
‘A kind of brother?’ one of them had echoed enviously after her stumbling explanation. ‘Daniel Flynn, no less. My God, I should be so lucky. Sex on legs, and rich with it.’
Was that when it had started—when her ideas about him had begun to change? Perhaps. All she could remember, as she’d progressed into her teens, was suddenly finding herself awkward and tongue-tied whenever he was around. Fantasising about him in ways she was ashamed to recall. Longing desperately to see him, but crippled with shyness when he appeared.
And eventually, unable to deal with the confused riot of emotion inside her, making excuses not to see him at all—citing too much work, an extra games practice. She had not, of course, been able to totally avoid him at Abbotsbrook, where she’d had less control over the matter.
But when he’d been there, he’d had little time to spare for her, anyway. When he and Simon had visited they’d invariably been on their way somewhere else, and accompanied by an ever-changing—and interchangeable—series of girls, usually blonde. Laine had privately and contemptuously dismissed them as ‘The Clones’, even while she had secretly bitten her nails down to the quick with the most savage and primitive form of jealousy, and despised herself for it.
But that had by no means been her only problem. Her mother had become more anxious about money, and more discontented all the time, and her complaints had made Laine feel embarrassed and inadequate.
‘You’d think Simon would help out more,’ Angela had said bitterly on that last occasion. ‘I thought that’s why he’d abandoned his plan to join the Forestry Commission and taken that job at the bank.’
Laine said nothing. She knew how much it had cost Simon to give up his cherished dream and work in the City instead. Small wonder he was devoting so much of his free time to his beloved climbing, she thought. He was now becoming known as a mountaineer, and had already been on a number of expeditions to the Alps and the Dolomites. But Laine knew that his sights were set on more distant horizons than that, and it worried her a little.
And, on a more personal level, Simon was causing her concern too.
‘I’m having dinner with an old friend,’ he’d told her casually a few months earlier, when he’d visited her at school. ‘Remember Candy, who used to date Daniel years ago?’
‘Yes,’ Laine had said quietly. ‘I remember.’ And had crossed her fingers that it would stop at dinner.
But it hadn’t. And it seemed that each time Laine went home Candy was there, all smiles and charm, cooing over Angela, praising the house, and rhapsodising over Graham Sinclair’s books.
‘I had no idea Simon was related to that Sinclair,’ she’d enthused. ‘My God, I’m such a fan.’
Laine had been tempted to ask which of the novels she liked best, certain that she hadn’t read any of them, but had controlled the impulse.
‘Mum,’ she said, one evening when they were alone. ‘Is it serious, do you think, this Simon and Candy thing?’
Her mother put down her magazine. ‘It’s certainly going that way. They’re talking about an engagement. Why do you ask?’
‘It just seems odd—when she was Dan’s girlfriend originally.’
Angela laughed indulgently. ‘My dear child, that was years ago, and a lot of water’s flowed under the bridge since then. Dan is very wealthy, of course, especially now that his father is dead, and he has charm to spare, but I think Candy knew quite early in their relationship that it was going nowhere.
‘And Dan certainly lost no time in replacing her many times over, so he was hardly heartbroken when they split. In fact, I understand that it’s all been very civilised, and he may well be best man at the wedding.’
She paused. ‘It doesn’t matter to you, surely, that she was once Dan’s girlfriend? For God’s sake, Elaine, tell me you’re not still harbouring that ridiculous childhood crush where he’s concerned. Because that would be too sad—and horribly embarrassing.’
‘No,’ Laine said quietly. ‘I don’t have a crush on Daniel Flynn.’
Although perhaps that’s how I should have tried to see it—before it was too late, Laine thought now, leaning back and closing her eyes, wearily. As the kind of worship I’d have probably given a film star or a rock musician in other circumstances. Something transient that I could look back on one day and smile.
Instead, I made him the sun in my sky. The centre of my universe. The focus of everything I wanted from life. And that made me—vulnerable. Especially when I was seventeen and came face to face with my first personal tragedy.
She’d had no presentiment that anything was going to happen. Her only real foreboding had concerned Simon and Candy’s wedding, which had been scheduled to take place in the summer. And for which she would be required to wear lavender taffeta.
But, quite apart from that, she had known in her heart that Candy was the last person in the world she’d have chosen as a sister-in-law. And suspected the feeling was mutual.
Their only common ground was the vexed subject of Simon’s climbing. Candy had been uneasy about it and so had she—especially when he’d been invited at the last minute to go to Annapurna in place of someone who was ill.
‘It’s the chance of a lifetime,’ he’d said buoyantly. ‘Serious stuff. A dream come true.’ His face had clouded slightly. ‘But I’ve promised Candy that I’ll cut down once we’re married. She says it’s no longer a hobby but an obsession, and she could be right.’
Laine swallowed, remembering how she’d been sent for by the headmistress, and had gone to her study filled with trepidation, wondering what she’d done to fall from grace. But Mrs Hallam’s expression had spoken of distress rather than severity, and she’d risen and came round the desk, taking Laine’s hands in hers. An unheard-of gesture.
‘My dear,’ she said gravely. ‘I’m afraid I have some very sad news for you.’ She hesitated, shaking her