A Suitable Husband. Jessica Steele
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the matter with Edwina. Nothing at all. It was only because of wretched sisterly loyalty, Jermaine fumed, that she had been unable to tell anybody about it. That Edwina did not feel the same loyalty to her, or she would never have made a play for Ash, didn’t seem to alter anything. Jermaine sighed. Stupid though she knew it was, she couldn’t help remaining loyal to Edwina.
Highfield, as its name suggested, was built on highish ground, and as Jermaine steered her way she was glad to find there were no more stretches of water to negotiate around; all water was running downhill.
Her feeling of mutiny against the house’s occupants dipped slightly when she noticed that someone had left the porch lights on, as if to guide her. She studied the stone façade of the elegant old building; she found it truly quite lovely.
But this would never do. Giving herself a mental shake, Jermaine left her car and sprinted for cover from the torrential downpour. Under the cover of the stone-pillared porch, she rang the doorbell. She was not kept waiting very long.
Lukas Tavinor himself pulled back the stout front door and for several seconds just stood looking at her. But Jermaine had had enough of this. He might be tall, he might be dark, he might be good-looking, but rain was pelting in at her and she did not want to be here anyway.
‘You want a discussion on your doorstep?’ she questioned disagreeably, and disliked him some more when she actually thought she saw his lips twitch. If he was laughing at her she’d…
‘Where’s your case?’ he asked.
Jermaine, confused that he might be laughing at her, angry at him and this whole wretched business, and having fallen instantly in love with his house, found she was telling him, ‘It’s in my car.’
In the next second she had got herself into more of one piece, but by then he was ushering over his threshold while telling her, ‘I’ll get it later. Come in out of this rain.’
The inside lived up to the outside, all lush warm wood panelling hung with various oil paintings. But as she stood there while Tavinor closed the door Jermaine reminded herself that she wasn’t here on any pleasure trip, and her case, in this instance her overnight bag, was staying exactly where it was—in her car.
‘Where’s Edwina?’ Jermaine questioned promptly. Get this over with and she was out of here.
‘In the drawing room.’
She’d managed to drag herself out of bed, then? Though, of course, since Lukas Tavinor and his bank balance were what Edwina cared about, she’d hardly be likely to ensnare him while hiding herself away in bed.
‘You’ve told Edwina I was coming?’ Jermaine asked as he escorted her along the hall.
She was looking at him as he glanced to her and shook his head. ‘I thought we’d give her a nice surprise,’ he answered blandly, so blandly that for a fleeting moment Jermaine had an uncanny kind of feeling that this clever man staring down at her so mildly had seen through Edwina. Had seen through her and was on to all her wiles.
Oh, heavens! Though before she could blush from the embarrassment of thinking that Edwina was making a fool of herself, Jermaine countered any such idea. Men fell for Edwina like ninepins. Lukas Tavinor might be clever in business, but he was a man, wasn’t he? Besides which there was nothing in his expression now to so much as hint that he knew Edwina was playing to the gallery.
Then he was opening the drawing room door. How cosy! There was Edwina, feet up on the sofa. There was Ash…Though, come to think of it, Jermaine had seen him looking happier.
‘Jermaine!’
It was not her sister who exclaimed her name but Ash, as he beamed a smile at her and hurried over. ‘You came!’ he cried, and appeared so pleased to see her he bent as if to kiss her.
Jermaine gave him a frosty look for his trouble, but as she pulled back of out his reach she caught his elder brother speculatively observing them. She met Lukas’s gaze full-on, and let him have a helping of frost too.
She wanted out of there! None of these people were doing her blood pressure the slightest good. One way and another she seemed to have been in a permanent state of anger ever since Ash’s phone call three days ago. Since his brother had joined in the act, two days ago, she had gone from mere vexation to a constant state of uproar!
Jermaine decided to ignore both men and approached the sofa where her sister was so prettily draped. Edwina was too good an actress to show her displeasure while the others were in the room, but Jermaine knew her well enough not to miss the hostility in her ‘What are you doing here?’
‘How are you feeling?’ Jermaine asked, hating the role she was forced to play—but it was that or show her sister up as the fraud she was.
‘Oh, I’m much, much better.’ Edwina smiled fragilely.
‘Edwina’s been so brave.’ Ash joined them to look down at his new love.
There didn’t seem much of an answer to that, Jermaine fumed. But she’d already had enough of perjuring her soul by asking Edwina how she was. Jermaine turned and saw that Lukas Tavinor was still silently observing the tableau. Though, since his expression was inscrutable, what he was thinking was anybody’s guess.
‘May I use your phone?’ she asked, tilting her chin a proud fraction. It was humiliating having to come here and start play-acting—but it was all his fault. If he hadn’t deliberately gone to see her parents…
‘There’s a phone in the hall,’ he replied evenly, and went with her from the drawing room and out into the hall. Though his tone had toughened, she noticed, when, as she looked about the wide and splendid hall for a phone, he abruptly challenged, ‘Won’t the boyfriend wait?’
Get him! ‘For ever, if need be,’ she answered snootily—like she was going to tell him she’d been dumped by her boyfriend, his brother, in favour of her sister.
‘You’ve only just got here—did you promise to ring him as soon as you’d landed?’
Jermaine stared at him, her lovely violet eyes going wide. What was this? ‘Thanks to you, and your colossal cheek in alarming my parents, I need to ring them to tell them that Edwina isn’t as badly hurt as you must have made out to them,’ she hissed.
He smiled. She hated him. ‘Perhaps you’d like to make your call in the privacy of my study?’ he offered, and was leading the way before she could hit him.
She hadn’t seen him smile before, though. And, while she was still angry with him, she had to admit there was something fairly shattering about him when he smiled. His smile seemed infectious, somehow. Not that she was going to smile back—perish the thought.
Nor was she smiling a minute later when—so much for privacy—he closed his study door—but with him on the inside. ‘Thank you,’ Jermaine said nicely. He didn’t budge. She looked pointedly at the door—he seemed to find his turned-off computer of interest. Jermaine turned her back on him, picked up the phone and dialled. Her father answered straight away. ‘Edwina’s fine,’ she told him, knowing that that was what he wanted to hear in preference to anything else.
‘You’ve seen her?’
‘I’m with her now.’
‘Can’t she come to the phone herself?’
‘Well, I’m not actually in the same room,’ Jermaine explained. ‘I’m at Highfield, Ash’s place.’ She was aware of the elder Tavinor breathing down her neck and, though when she never, ever got flustered, she started feeling all edgy inside. ‘Well, it’s his brother Lukas’s place, actually,’ she corrected.
‘That would be the man who came to see us this morning?’
‘He shouldn’t have,’ she rallied. If he was staying to hear her private conversation, he could hear this as well. ‘He had no right at all to call and to worry you so. He…’
‘He had every right, Jermaine,’