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

She said, ‘I’ve just found my school trunk in the hall. What’s going on? How did it get here?’

Angela was sitting on the sofa, glancing through a fashion magazine. She said, ‘I had it sent for. See that it’s unpacked, please. It’s terribly in the way.’

‘But why?’ Laine stared at her. ‘It’s nowhere near the end of term, and I have stacks of coursework to catch up with. I can’t afford any more time off.’

‘And I can’t afford any more of the expense of keeping you at that school.’ Angela put down the magazine and looked up at her daughter. ‘Therefore I telephoned to Mrs Hallam and said you would not be returning to Randalls because from now on you were needed at home. She quite understood.’

‘Which is more than I do.’ Laine swallowed. ‘Mother, my fees are paid from the bursary—unless it’s been withdrawn for some reason. Has it?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware. But it doesn’t cover everything. Think of all the items of uniform I’ve had to replace, as well as the extras—your piano lessons, for instance. It simply can’t go on.’

Laine felt suddenly very cold. ‘But I have to go back to school. How else am I going to get to university?’

‘I’m afraid you’re not.’ Her mother sounded almost brisk. ‘I’ve only just finished subsidising Jamie, and I’ve no intention of starting again with you. Anyway, I have to consider the running costs of this house, and now that Simon is no longer here to help with the finances savings have to be made.’

She paused. ‘I have therefore decided to let Mrs Evershott go, and we will have to manage the housework and cooking between us.’

‘You’re sacking Evvy?’ Laine was aghast. ‘But you can’t.’

‘I’ve already done so,’ Angela said shortly. ‘While she’s working out her notice you’ll spend time with her, learning how to run the house. Don’t forget it was only last term that I paid a small fortune for you to go on that cookery course in Normandy,’ she added acidly. ‘I only hope it was money well-spent. At any rate, it’s high time you made yourself useful round here.’

Laine’s heart sank like a stone. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please say you don’t mean this.’ She swallowed. ‘We’re talking about my life, here.’

‘And what about my life?’ There was a sudden strident note in her mother’s voice. ‘Do you realise what it’s been like for me since your father died? The way I’ve been stuck down here—having to coax people down to stay three weekends out of four to avoid going mad with boredom?’

She got to her feet, walking restlessly round the room. ‘This house has been nothing but a burden for years—and it’s a burden you’re going to share, Elaine, or at least until you’re eighteen.’

She paused, then added brusquely, ‘Ask Mrs Evershott for some plastic bags for your school uniform. You won’t be needing any of it again, and it can go with the rest of the rubbish tomorrow.’

Laine watched her return to her seat and reach for the magazine again. Then she moved, slowly and stiffly, crossing to the door and closing it quietly behind her. She stood for a moment in the hallway, feeling stunned—battered—as if Angela had hit her, knocking her to the floor.

She supposed she’d always known instinctively that she wasn’t her mother’s favourite, but if she’d hoped that they would somehow be drawn closer in their mourning for Simon she now realised how mistaken she was.

I feel as if I don’t know her, she thought. As if I’ve spent my whole life living with a stranger.

Yet, looking back, she could see the resentment had always been there, never far from the surface. But not targeting her—or not openly—and certainly not until then.

However, she soon realised she was not the only sufferer, when she made her reluctant way to the kitchen and saw Mrs Evershott’s white face and compressed lips.

‘Oh, Evvy.’ Distressed, she put her arms round the older woman’s rigid figure and hugged her. ‘I’m so sorry.

‘I would never have believed it,’ the housekeeper said tonelessly. ‘Never credited that Mrs Sinclair could treat me like this after all these years.’ She swallowed. ‘It would never have happened, Miss Laine, if poor Mr Simon had been spared. Never.’

Along with so much else, Laine thought, as she lay, staring sightlessly into the darkness. And especially, crucially, her brief and bitter marriage.

All the demons were out of the box now, tormenting her wincing mind. Reminding her, with merciless precision, of everything that had happened in those bleak, bewildering weeks, when she’d gone from a girl with all her hopes and dreams in front of her to being a glorified domestic servant.

There had been nights at first when she had fallen into bed exhausted from the non-stop cooking and cleaning and her mother’s incessant demands. But she’d been young and strong, and eventually she had established a workable routine largely drawn from her predecessor’s neatly compiled roster of household tasks.

And in the middle of it all she had become eighteen years old. There had been no party—Angela had said tearfully that it was too soon for any celebration—but Celia and some of Laine’s other friends had driven over from Randalls at the weekend and taken her out for a meal in Market Lambton, followed by a visit to its only nightclub, and for a few hours she’d been able to hide her unhappiness behind a shield of music and laughter.

On her actual birthday she had received a watch from her mother, an iPod from Jamie, and a surprise parcel from her late grandmother, sent on by the trustees, which contained Mrs Sinclair’s pearls and her copy of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, complete with the legend of Lancelot and Elaine.

And also out of the blue had come a messengered bouquet of eighteen pink roses from Daniel, with a velvet box tucked in among them holding a pair of gold earrings, shaped like flowers, with a tiny diamond at each centre.

‘Charming,’ Angela commented with a touch of acidity, as Laine shyly showed them off over dinner. ‘But surely a little over the top for a child of your age.’

Jamie leaned forward, his gaze flicking from his mother’s raised brows to Candida’s faint scowl, and smiled. ‘On the contrary,’ he drawled. ‘Maybe Dan’s giving us all a salutary reminder that Lainie’s now officially a woman. And entitled to a life of her own,’ he added pointedly. ‘Together with the ability to make decisions about it.’

There was an odd silence, then, ‘Oh, don’t be absurd,’ Angela said shortly, and turned the conversation to other topics, leaving Laine wondering, and even a little uneasy.

Yet nothing could have prepared her for the bombshell that had exploded a few days later, or its implications for her future.

And for which, even now, she was still experiencing the fallout.

She turned over, punching her pillow into submission, then burying her face in it. Telling herself to relax, because everything would seem better after a good night’s sleep, but knowing at the same time that it wasn’t true.

That the pain would still be there waiting for her when she opened her eyes.

It was very early when she awoke next morning, and she lay for a moment, totally disorientated, listening to the distant hum of city traffic as opposed to the creak of a boat at anchor.

Her eyes felt as if they were full of sand, and her throat was equally dry—almost as if she’d been crying in her sleep, making her glad she could not remember her dreams.

She glanced at the illuminated dial of her bedside clock and sat up, pushing her hair back from her face. She had a full day ahead of her, she reminded herself, and turning over for another doze was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

She bathed and put on her underwear, then looked along the wardrobe rail for job-hunting gear. However limited her options, she needed to make the most of them, which meant looking neat and efficient, she thought, pulling out a black skirt and another of her white cotton shirts. Both were clean, but creased, demanding a short stint at the ironing board before they presented the correct image.

Belted into her robe, she opened her door cautiously and peeped into the living room, but everything in the flat seemed quiet and completely still. And long may it remain so, Laine thought, as she trod silently on bare feet to the tall built-in kitchen cupboard where the iron was stored. Especially as it seemed Daniel now chose to sleep with his bedroom door slightly ajar for some reason and, accordingly, she needed to keep the noise level down.

Her task accomplished, she was creeping back to her room, with the freshly pressed garments over her arm, when it suddenly occurred to her that Daniel’s door was open because that was how he’d left it when he went out the previous evening.

And that could only mean.

She swallowed convulsively, the clothes crushed against her as if they were some form of defence, as she told herself that, whether he was there or not, it was none of her business. That it could not be allowed to matter to her one way or the other. And, that for her own peace of mind, it was much better not to know.

She was still telling herself all this as the door gave easily to her hand, affording her a perfect view of the empty room, and the wide, smooth bed, with its unruffled covers. Providing absolute confirmation, if it had ever been needed, that Daniel had spent the night somewhere else entirely.

So now you know, she told herself stonily. And what good has it done you?

You’re not married to him, and you never were—not in the real sense of the word. Which was your own decision. No one else’s. And you’re quite well aware that he’s not going to sleep alone just because you turned him away. You’ve been aware of it for two whole years, so you should be used to it by now.

He’s not your husband, and he never was, so it’s ludicrous to feel like this. To feel sick—hurt—betrayed, as if he’s been unfaithful to you. To allow jealousy to rip through you like a poisoned claw. To imagine him with another woman, making love, sharing with her everything that you could have had, but that you deliberately denied yourself.

She said aloud, ‘I can’t let this happen. I can’t think like this and stay sane. So I have to close myself off—to become, in effect, blind, deaf and dumb while the present situation endures.

‘And when it’s finally over, and he’s gone, I can let myself deal with it and begin to feel again. To become, at last, a whole person. ‘Somehow …’

A few hours later she had a job—although not without a certain reluctance on the part of her new employer.