Her Hand in Marriage. Jessica Steele
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should so conceitedly think she stayed home nights, hurting because of him. ‘You blew it, Jeff,’ she informed him coolly. ‘Get over it.’
Her pride was fully intact when she drove home that night. But, when she went in it was to discover that her mother, who had recently been so up, looked tense, and had taken a step backwards.
‘Had a good day?’ Romillie asked cheerfully, starting to become convinced that her father had called and been up to his old trick of shattering her mother’s confidence.
But it was not her father who was the culprit this time, but, surprisingly, Lewis Selby. And he was not so much shattering her confidence as wanting her to take a peep outside the safe little world she had made for herself.
‘Lewis—called,’ she answered jerkily as Romillie put the kettle on to make a pot of tea.
Lewis Selby had been there yesterday. Twice in two days! ‘He must be nearly finished with his business next door,’ Romillie remarked lightly.
‘He asked me to have dinner with him!’ Eleanor burst out in a sudden rush.
Oh, heavens! Romillie kept her expression impassive, but knew the answer even before she asked the question. ‘Are you going?’
‘No, of course not!’ Sharp, unequivocal. And she saw that her mother, like herself, was a long way from trusting again.
Romillie had never met Lewis Selby, but in her conversations with her parent had gleaned enough to know that the man seven years her mother’s senior sounded a very nice and kind man. He must be nice or her mother would never have allowed him over the doorstep.
‘What did you tell him?’ she asked, believing her mother needed to talk her present agitated feelings out of her system. She looked at her parent and thought, as she always had, how beautiful her mother was. She had raven hair, too, but the trauma of her life with Archer Fairfax had added a wing of pure white to one side.
Her mother was suddenly looking self-conscious, and all at once confessed, ‘I feel a bit of a fool now, but he caught me so unawares at the time that I told him that I never went anywhere without my daughter.’
‘You didn’t!’ Romillie gasped. And, when her mother nodded, ‘What did he say to that?’ she asked.
‘He didn’t bat an eye, but straight away suggested that he take the two of us to dinner.’
Heavens! He sounded keen! ‘So where are we going?’ Romillie teased gently, knowing in advance that her parent had put the kibosh on that notion.
‘We aren’t. I told Lewis I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Eleanor replied, as Romillie knew she would. ‘I feel dreadful now. I didn’t even make him a cup of tea. He just—sort of left.’
All went quiet on the Lewis Selby front after that. Her mother seemed to spend long moments staring into space—though pensively, and not as she had formerly, when her whole world seemed to have imploded.
But a week later Romillie arrived home from work to discover that Lewis had popped in again and had been given a cup of tea. In return he had left her mother with a couple of complimentary tickets he could not use himself and which he thought, since it was for an exhibition of paintings at the opening of an art gallery in London on Friday evening, she might be interested in.
‘Wasn’t that thoughtful?’ Eleanor said, more back to the way she had been prior to Lewis’s dinner invitation. ‘We won’t be able to use them, of course, but it was very kind of Lewis to think of us.’
‘Why won’t we be able to use them?’ Romillie asked, not missing that her mother had seemed a touch animated when speaking of the exhibition of paintings.
‘Do you think we could—should?’ Eleanor asked hesitantly.
‘I don’t see why not. It would be a shame to waste the tickets if Mr Selby can’t use then. And we can easily drive up there when I finish work.’
Eleanor was thoughtful for a minute or so. But suddenly agreed, ‘We’ll have a cooked meal at lunchtime,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll only need a sandwich before we go.’
Romillie hurried home after on Friday and noticed that her mother was dressed in a pale blue suit, making her look as smart as a new coat of paint. It pleased her—her mother was usually dressed in trousers and an overblouse.
‘I can’t remember the last time I was in London,’ she commented when Romillie, having quickly showered and changed into a smart two-piece, too, headed the car down the drive.
It was ages since her mother had been anywhere, for that matter, and Romillie could only hope she was not too churned up. She would keep an eye on her anyway, and if she looked to be feeling stressed in any way she would get her out of there.
Romillie found that she need not have worried. ‘Eleanor! Eleanor Mannion!’ someone greeted her the moment they walked into the gallery. She had always painted under her maiden name. And, for all she had not picked up a paintbrush or sold any of her work in years, as several other arty types came up and beamed at her, it was a name that had not been forgotten.
The next half-hour passed quickly as they paused to look, paused to study, prior to moving on. Romillie did not know when she had last seen her mother so animated.
There were a good many people there whom Eleanor did not know, but a good few whom she did. More people came over and expressed warmth and delight at seeing her there so unexpectedly, and Romillie stood back. This was her mother’s world, or used to be. And she looked so cheered Romillie could only be glad that they had come.
Then it was just the two of them again, but as her mother turned to point out the merits of one particular picture, Romillie saw her glance to someone else who was making his way over to them. He was a man of average height, smartly suited, and had white hair and looked to be approaching sixty.
‘Lewis!’ Eleanor exclaimed, a hint of pink creeping up under her skin—and Romillie knew then that there was something more serious going on here than her parent was willing to acknowledge.
‘Eleanor! I’m so glad you could make it!’
‘I’ve used your tickets!’ she exclaimed apologetically.
‘When I knew I would be able to make it after all, I was easily able to get another,’ he said with a smile. And, turning to Romillie, ‘You must be Eleanor’s daughter.’
Romillie studied him for a moment before deciding that she liked the look of him. She had a feeling he would not deliberately harm her mother—and held out her hand. ‘Glad to know you, Mr Selby,’ she said, for he could be none other.
‘Lewis, please,’ he suggested, and they shook hands.
And while he and her mother discussed the picture in front of them, and commented on other works to be seen, Romillie for the moment kept to the sidelines while she wondered—had Lewis Selby really been unable to use the tickets he had given her mother? Or, in the face of her refusing to go out with him, had he intended to be there all along, this merely a ploy to have some time with her away from her home? At any rate, he was not moving on, but appeared to have latched on to them.
She was still pondering that matter when she noticed a tall man who must have just come in, because she had not spotted him previously. What especially caught her notice was that the tall, good-looking man, somewhere in his mid-thirties, was standing stock still and just staring at her.
Romillie tilted her chin a trifle—and looked through him. She had seen tall, good-looking men before—tall, good-looking and untrustworthy. She turned back to tune in to what Lewis Selby and her mother were saying. But suddenly they were interrupted when the good-looking man she had been ready to ignore was there, proving that he was not so easy to ignore.
‘Naylor!’ Lewis exclaimed. ‘I thought you were still at the office!’
‘I’m taking time off for good behaviour,’ Naylor replied, his voice even and well