His Rags-to-Riches Bride: Innocent on Her Wedding Night / Housekeeper at His Beck and Call / The Australian's Housekeeper Bride

Making certain she’d leave no trace of her presence for him to complain about there either, she told herself with cold resolve.

It was a long evening. Laine tried watching television, but she soon realised she’d grown completely out of touch with current programming, and found herself flicking restlessly from channel to channel, searching for something that might grip her interest.

In the end she gave up in exasperation, and decided to read instead. There were some books on the alcove shelves that were new to her—most of them thrillers that she guessed had been acquired by Jamie, and each of them triumphantly claiming to be ‘the new number-one bestseller’.

They can’t all be that, surely? she thought, pulling a face as she picked the least overtly lurid. But the story failed to engage her particularly, and the identity of the villain seemed all too obvious even by chapter three, so, sighing, she abandoned that as well.

One of the things she’d managed to rescue from the boat was her address book, and she sat slowly turning over the pages, trying to summon up the courage to ring someone—anyone. Fiona from the gallery, perhaps? Or Celia Welton, her best friend from school, who’d been her bridesmaid at that ill-fated wedding.

At the same time she knew full well that she wouldn’t be doing so—or not yet, anyway. Because she wasn’t ready to face the inevitable questions—especially when it emerged that she and Daniel were back sharing a roof.

She’d been let off the hook when their marriage had ended with such startling suddenness, because people had recognised that she was in desperate pain, and suppressed their natural curiosity and concern, standing back to allow her to recover. Celia, in particular, bewildered but loyal and kind, had helped picked up the pieces.

But this new development would require answers that simply weren’t possible immediately.

Because she was still in shock. She needed time to think things through. To come up with some feasible explanation for everything that had happened to her. And make it clear that sharing a flat with Daniel was not the basis for some kind of reconciliation—and never would be.

She swallowed. Which meant, in turn, that at some point she might be asked about what had happened two years earlier. Why her marriage hadn’t survived the honeymoon, or even the wedding night, given the bleak significance of that swift annulment. Because after this length of time, tact would not be a primary consideration any longer.

And if they did ask, what the hell could she say? she wondered wearily. Certainly not the truth.

And if she tried saying that she’d realised she didn’t love him no one would believe her for a moment. She’d worn her heart on her sleeve too openly and for too long for that.

She didn’t even know when it had begun. When Daniel had stopped being just Simon’s friend, and the surrogate brother he’d alluded to so acidly, and occupied a very different role in her hopes and dreams.

But she could remember very clearly her first half-term at Randalls, when everyone else had gone home for the weekend, being told kindly by the matron that a visitor was coming to take her out to tea.

Simon, she’d thought joyfully. It had to be Simon. But she’d been wrong, because it had been Daniel who had waited in the front hall as she came down the stairs, her heart thundering in nervous excitement.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I went down to Abbotsbrook to see you, and you weren’t there.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t convenient this time. Mummy had other people coming to stay.’

He nodded. ‘So I gathered. Therefore, I decided to pay you a visit here instead.’

‘But you shouldn’t have,’ she whispered, looking anxiously around. ‘It’s against the rules. We’re only allowed out with immediate 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.