Hitched!

George snapped the phone back and stared at me.

‘What?’ I said out loud.

‘You’ve heard of Saffron Taylor?’ he said conversationally, and a dreadful feeling of foreboding stole over me.

‘Omigod,’ I said in a sinking voice.

‘Adored daughter of charismatic tycoon Kevin Taylor? The ultimate IT girl? Darling of the celebrity circuit?’

‘Omigod,’ I said again.

‘She’s crying in Roly’s private sitting room.’

I stared at him, aghast. ‘Omigod!’ It was all I could say.

‘And she says she’s your sister.’

I dropped my head in my hands. ‘Please tell me this is a joke! Saffron can’t be here. She gets disorientated if she leaves Knightsbridge!’

‘Saffron Taylor is your sister?’

‘OK.’ I lifted my head and set my palms flat on the desk. Drawing a deep breath in through my nose, I exhaled slowly. ‘Random sister in client’s house. No need to panic.’

‘She is your sister!’

‘Half-sister,’ I said, rummaging in my bag for Audrey’s keys. ‘What in God’s name is she doing at Whellerby Hall?’

‘Crying, I think.’

A thought zoomed in out of nowhere and hit me so hard I almost buckled at the knees. ‘Has something happened to my father?’

God, what if something had happened to him? My mind spun frantically. What would I do? What would I say? What would I feel?

‘I think we’d have heard on the news if something had happened to Kevin Taylor,’ said George in a practical voice and I clutched at the thought.

‘Yes, yes, you’re right!’ I said gratefully.

‘Roly said something about a wedding, I think,’ he went on. ‘But he was whispering, so I might have got that wrong.’

I clutched my hair. ‘Please don’t tell me Saffron has come all the way up here because of some wedding crisis!’

‘I gather she wanted to talk to you.’

‘Then why didn’t she just ring? Oh!’ A horrible thought struck me. Another one. I pulled out my phone and stared at its blank screen. ‘I switched my phone off last night,’ I remembered in a hollow voice.

‘I always find it helps to keep my phone on if I want people to get in touch with me,’ said George, but I was in too much of a fret to rise to his smug tone.

‘I’ve just had so many phone calls from Saffron about the wedding,’ I said as I switched on the phone. ‘It’s been going on for months already. Which superstar rock band should be flown in to perform? Should she get her dress designed in New York or Paris or London? Castle A will look better in the photos, but castle B has a helipad, so which should she choose? It’s totally out of control!’

My phone began beeping as message after message came through. Distractedly, I scrolled through the ream of texts. ‘Call me... Call me... Crisis... Where r u?...I need u,’ I read. ‘Good grief, what’s been going on?’

‘Perhaps you’d better see her and find out.’

‘I would if I could just find my car key!’ I went back to scrabbling in the depths of my bag. ‘I know it’s in here!’

George got to his feet. ‘I’ll give you a lift, if you like. I’m going up to the Hall anyway.’

He was really enjoying the fact that I was so flustered, I could tell. The moment I knew Saffron was all right, I was going to kill her, I thought vengefully.

‘There’s really no need—ah!’ My fingers closed around the car key at last and I pulled it triumphantly out of my bag. ‘Here it is. I’ll be fine, thanks.’

I hurried down the steps and hop-skip-jumped my way around the puddles to Audrey while George was putting on his boots.

‘I’ll tell Frank you’ll be a while, shall I?’

Oh, God, I’d forgotten about the foundations! I dithered desperately as I hung onto the driver’s door. I needed to be on site, but I couldn’t leave my sister weeping all over my client. I hated being beholden to George Challoner, but I didn’t have time to explain to Frank now.

‘Er, yes...thank you,’ I said. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Sure.’

He strolled over to the foundations while I flung myself into Audrey and shoved the key in the ignition.

Audrey wheezed, coughed, managed a splutter and then died.

I made myself breathe slowly. My sister was having hysterics over the client who was key to the success of Hugh’s business. I mustn’t panic. I would deal with it the way I dealt with everything else, firmly and capably. All I had to do was to apologise to Lord Whellerby and remove Saffron.

No problem.

Except that Audrey had chosen now not to cooperate. I tried to start the engine again, but got only more wheezing, feebler this time.

More deep breaths. I counted to ten and then turned the ignition key once more.

‘Please, Audrey,’ I muttered, jaw clenched. I was acutely aware of George Challoner, who had delivered the message to Frank and was now watching me from behind the wheel of the Land Rover. ‘Don’t let me down,’ I begged Audrey. ‘Not when he’s watching.’

But Audrey did.

One last turn of the ignition key, and not even a wheeze in return.

I resisted the urge to bang my head against the steering wheel. Just.

I couldn’t sit there any longer. I knew what Saffron was like when she got in a state, and if Lord Whellerby was anything like every other man I had known, he would be terrified. He was probably already Googling for another design and build company to complete his conference centre, I thought bitterly.

How was I going to explain that to Hugh?

I know this was the big contract to ensure the future of your company, but, see, Saffron was having a bit of a crisis and now we’ve lost the contract? I’d be lucky if Hugh didn’t have another heart attack.

Barely two weeks on the job, and what would I have to show for it? Hugh back in hospital, out of a job, my best chance for site experience blown. My plan would be in tatters, my career would be over before it had really begun.

I pulled myself up short. Good grief, I was getting as bad as Saffron! There was no point in overreacting until I knew what the situation was, and to do that I had to get to Whellerby Hall.

My eyes flickered to George, and then away.

I could walk to the Hall, but it would take too long to cross the estate.

There was only one thing to be done.

Sucking in a breath, I got out of Audrey, closed the door, walked deliberately around the bonnet of the Land Rover and got in next to George without a word.

For a moment I sat there, looking straight through the windscreen, my lips pressed so firmly together they almost disappeared.

‘Thank you,’ I said at last, forcing the words out. ‘I’d be very glad of a lift.’

‘My pleasure,’ said George.

To my annoyance, his engine leapt into life without so much as a murmur of protest. I cast a reproachful look at Audrey as George reversed out behind her, and changed gear.

‘You know, you could invest in a reliable car,’ he said, a ghost of amusement in his voice.

‘I couldn’t get rid of Audrey,’ I said, instantly on the defensive. ‘She’s a great car. It’s just that she can be a little...temperamental.’

Or downright contrary, at times.

George raised an eyebrow. Have you ever met anyone who could actually do that? Raise one brow? George could.

‘Audrey?’ he said.

‘She’s named after Audrey Hepburn. Because she’s so glamorous,’ I added when George seemed unable to make the connection.

‘Right.’ He glanced at me and then away, shaking his head a little, but I could see the curl at the corner of his mouth.

I pushed my seat belt into place with a firm click. ‘She’s got style,’ I said defiantly. Vintage, perhaps, but definitely style.

‘Lime green is an interesting choice of colour,’ George commented.

‘It’s not everyone’s first choice, I know,’ I said, ‘but she was the only car I could afford when I bought her. I washed dishes for three years to pay for a car of my own,’ I told George. ‘Audrey’s a symbol as much as a car.’

George swung the Land Rover out of the site gates and onto one of the narrow lanes that criss-crossed the Whellerby estate. ‘I’m surprised to hear Kevin Taylor’s daughter had to buy her own car,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t your father buy you one? It’s not like he can’t afford it.’

My face closed down the way it always did when I had to talk about my father. I hugged my arms together and looked out of the window. I hadn’t taken a penny from him since I left school, and I wasn’t about to start now.

‘I pay my own way,’ I said. ‘I always have, and I always will.’

TWO

‘I didn’t even know Kevin Taylor had another daughter,’ said George.

I kept my eyes on the hedgerow brushing past my window. ‘Few people do,’ I said. My voice was perfectly even, the way I had trained it to be when I talked about my father. ‘I’m not sure he even knows himself any more.’

‘How long is it since you’ve seen him?’

‘Six years. I made the mistake of asking if he’d come to my graduation,’ I said. ‘He went to New York on business instead.’

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I couldn’t think what had possessed me to tell George Challoner of all people about that bitter memory. I tensed, waiting for the sympathetic noises, but he surprised me.

‘I haven’t seen my parents for four years,’ he said, and I slewed round in my seat to look at him in surprise. He was so golden, so effortlessly charming. I couldn’t imagine him falling out with anyone.

‘Why not?’

‘We had an...er...disagreement,’ he said, lifting one hand from the steering wheel and spreading it in an eloquent gesture of resignation. ‘It culminated in one of those never-darken-our-doorstep-again conversations, and so I haven’t.’

‘I know what those are like,’ I said, unprepared to find myself sharing some fellow feeling with George.

‘Fun, aren’t they?’

‘Fabulous,’ I agreed. ‘Can’t get enough of them.’

‘Still, at least you’ve got your sister,’ said George. ‘I did family estrangement as a job lot. I haven’t seen my brother since then either.’ He spoke lightly, but I sensed the pain lurking, and I looked away.

‘Perhaps I should be grateful for Saffron, then,’ I said, keeping my tone light to match his. ‘Although if she upsets Lord Whellerby and anything goes wrong with Hugh’s contract, I will personally strangle her and then I’ll end up without any family either.’

‘Don’t worry about Roly,’ said George reassuringly. ‘He’s really not the grudge-bearing type.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ I gnawed fretfully at my thumbnail.

‘Is your sister really going to marry Jax Jackson?’ George asked to distract me after a moment.

‘Half-sister,’ I said automatically. ‘And so she says. I’m not really sure what it’s all about,’ I confessed, shifting back with a sigh to look out of my window where the hedgerows were a blur of spring green.

‘As far as I can tell Jax was a mediocre pop star until he started dating Saffron and became a celebrity. Now he’s on the cover of all those glossy magazines you get at the checkout in the supermarket. He seems to spend most of his time on tour, but Saffron’s so thrilled by the idea of getting married that he appears to be incidental to the whole process.

‘It’s going to be the wedding of the century, I gather,’ I added with a sigh. Ever since Saffron had announced her engagement, she had been in a frenzy of wedding plans, and if I never heard the word wedding again right then, I’d have been more than happy.

George glanced at me. ‘So are you going to be bridesmaid?’

‘No, thank God. Saffron did ask me, but obviously only because she thought she should, and when I said I didn’t think I’d fit with her other bridesmaids and would rather just be happy for her on the sidelines, she was so relieved it was funny. I really don’t blend with Saffron’s décor,’ I said to George. ‘She’s a socialite and I’m an engineer...you can probably imagine how much we have in common!’

‘I’d certainly never have guessed you were sisters,’ he agreed. ‘You don’t look at all alike.’

‘No, Saffron’s gorgeous,’ I said without rancour. ‘Her mother was a model, and Saffron gets her looks from her, not my father. Saffron’s blonde and bubbly and beautiful, and I’m...not.’

I wasn’t looking at George, but I could feel the blue eyes on my profile. Instinctively, I lifted my chin a little higher to show him that I didn’t care.

‘No one could argue that you were blonde,’ he said. ‘And I’d put you down as prickly rather than bubbly, but otherwise I think you underestimate yourself.’

‘You don’t need to be polite,’ I said, in what he probably thought was a very prickly way. ‘I know I’m not beautiful. I’m not ugly either. I’m just...ordinary. As my father never tired of telling people when I was younger, Saffron got the beauty, and I got the brains.’

‘Ouch.’

‘It’s true.’ I shrugged. ‘Saffron and I are so different it’s almost comical when we’re together, which isn’t very often.’

‘And yet it’s you she rings when she’s upset.’

‘That’s because she doesn’t have a mother. Tiffany ran off with her personal trainer when Saffron was a baby, and she died a couple of years after that. I always felt sorry for Saffron. She was the prettiest little girl, and she’s always been the apple of my father’s eye, but nobody really had any time for her.’

‘So you’re the big sister?’

‘That’s right. I was seven when my father decided a model suited his image better than my mother. Mum didn’t want a divorce, but when Tiffany got pregnant, Dad insisted. His company wasn’t as successful as it is now, so the settlement was fairly modest, and Mum and I had a very ordinary life. We lived in the suburbs and I went to the local school.

‘It was fine,’ I said, pushing away the memory of my mother weeping at night when she thought I couldn’t hear her. It hadn’t been fine for her. ‘But I had to spend two weeks every summer with my father, who was super rich by then and kept getting richer. It was like being dropped into a whole different world. I hated it,’ I said.

I sighed. ‘And then Mum died when I was fifteen.’

‘I’m sorry,’ George said, all traces of his usual lurking smile gone. ‘That must have been hard for you.’

‘It was awful.’ I pressed my lips together in a straight line. Just thinking about that time could still send a wave of desolation crashing over me.

Mum was only thirty-nine when she dropped dead at the sink one day. ‘The doctors said it was an embolism, and that she wouldn’t have felt a thing. I wasn’t there,’ I told George. ‘I was at school, and a neighbour found her. By the time I got home, they had taken Mum away.’

I swallowed hard, remembering how I had stood in the kitchen in dazed disbelief. One minute my mother had been there, the next she wasn’t. Gone, just like that.

There was nothing I could have done, even if I had been there. Everybody said so. But deep down, I always felt as if I should have known. I should have said goodbye and told her I loved her instead of cramming a piece of toast in my mouth and running for the bus. I wish I could remember the last thing I said to her, but I can’t. It was just an ordinary day.

And then it wasn’t.

‘My whole world fell apart.’ I’d almost forgotten that I was talking to George by then.

My nice safe life had vanished the moment that clot blocked my mother’s brain and I was pitched into an existence where nothing seemed certain any more. For months I flailed around in a hopeless search for something to hold onto, until I realised one day that the only thing I could be sure of was myself.

Slowly, carefully, I built a new life, and I made it as secure as I could. Friends sighed and called me a control freak, and maybe I was, but routines and plans at least gave me a structure, one that nobody else could take away from me without warning. Without them, I would have been lost.

‘Presumably you went to live with your father then?’ said George after a moment.

‘If you can call being packed off to boarding school “living” with him,’ I said. ‘At least I had Saffron in the holidays. She’s over seven years younger than me, but neither of us had a mother and she was so desperate for attention that we used to spend a lot of time together then.

‘It was Saffron who painted the eyelashes over Audrey’s headlights,’ I told George.

‘I wondered about that.’

‘She was so pleased with them, I didn’t have the heart to paint them out, and now they’re part of her.’ My smile was probably a little twisted. ‘Saffron’s spoilt, but she’s got a sweet nature and all she wants is a little attention. Unfortunately, this wedding has made her hysterical.’ I sighed, remembering the situation. ‘I just hope Lord Whellerby’s not too angry.’

‘You haven’t met Roly yet, have you? If you had, you’d know you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ said George when I shook my head.

‘Easy for you to say,’ I said tensely. ‘It’s not your sister having hysterics over your most important client!’

* * *

We were bowling up an avenue lined with stately trees. To either side stretched lush parklands, with placid cows grazing under the horse chestnuts. The Land Rover rattled over a cattle grid, the avenue curved round over a hill, and I caught my first sight of Whellerby Hall. I’d been too busy to visit before, and my jaw dropped.

It was an extravaganza of a house, a vast Baroque structure with a domed roof in the centre, and two wings stretching out on either side, set atop a slope on the far side of a serene lake.

George drove right up to the imposing entrance and parked with a crunch of gravel. The door was opened by a cadaverous-looking individual who looked offended by George’s cheerfully casual greeting but unbent enough to explain that Lord Whellerby was in his private sitting room.

‘That’s Simms.’ George led the way up a sweeping marble staircase, past massive oil paintings of naval battles and skimpily clad nymphs. My father’s house was ostentatiously ornate, but still I had to make an effort not to goggle at the sheer size of the Hall. ‘He was old Lord Whellerby’s butler, and Roly inherited him along with the house. Roly’s terrified of him.’

‘I don’t blame him.’

‘You’d get on well with Simms. He always refers to Roly as Lord Whellerby too. He’d really like Roly to be out shooting peasants all day and coming home to sit over his port and cigars.’

‘It’s a strange way to live, isn’t it?’ I said as we climbed another flight of stairs, rather less imposing this time.

‘I know. I feel as if I’m part of a costume drama whenever I come to see Roly. I keep expecting a dowager duchess to pop up and tick me off for seducing the housemaids under the stairs—and no, before you ask,’ he said, turning his head with a smile that did odd things to my breathing. ‘There are no maids. A very efficient cleaning firm comes in once a week, and they’re far too busy to dally with me anywhere.’

‘Disappointing for you,’ I said tartly to cover the fact that my lungs were still not cooperating with the business of inflating and deflating. Perhaps it was all these stairs, I thought hopefully. George was taking them awfully fast. It was hard to believe a single smile could have such an effect.

‘Not at all. I’m fussy about who I dally with,’ said George. ‘I like a challenge,’ he said, turning his head to look straight at me. ‘I like to be intrigued. I like classy girls who don’t need me and maybe don’t even like me. I like to feel that any dallying I do will lead to something really...special.’

I waited for him to smile to show me that he was joking, but he didn’t. He just kept looking into my eyes and for some reason my breathing got all tangled up again.

So, nothing to do with his smile. Must be those stairs after all.

‘Here we are.’ A minute or so later, when we had trekked down a long corridor, and I had given up trying to work out whether or not he had been serious, George flung open a door. ‘Frith to the rescue,’ he announced.

There was a moment of silence in the room, and then both occupants of a sofa leapt to their feet.

I had a professional smile fixed on my face to greet Lord Whellerby, but Saffron gave me no chance to make the fluent apology I had planned. She stumbled across the room to throw herself into my arms. ‘Oh, Frith,’ she wailed. ‘I’m so glad to see you! Everything’s gone so horribly wrong!’

I held her close and patted her back comfortingly, while trying to grimace apologetically over her shoulder at Lord Whellerby, who was hovering anxiously. I could see why George had been amused when I insisted on referring to him as Lord Whellerby. He had a pleasant face, fair skin that clearly flushed as easily as mine, a solid figure that was already growing stout and a hesitant air in marked contrast to George’s easy assurance.

I could feel George watching us, and, although I couldn’t see his face, I knew that his eyes would be dancing. We must have looked ridiculous. Saffron was so much taller than I was, she had to bend right over to bury her head on my shoulder. She was shuddering with little sobs and clearly teetering on the edge of hysterics. That was all I needed.

‘That’s enough, Saffron,’ I said sharply. ‘Stop crying and tell me what you’re doing here.’

My sister is one of those irritating women who can cry prettily. When I held her away from me, tears spangled the end of her beautiful green eyes, and her soft mouth trembled, but under my stern gaze she made an effort to gulp back her tears and bravely knuckled beneath her eyes, being careful, I noted, not to smudge any of her mascara.

Roly—impossible to think of him as anything else now!—hovered nearby, clearly torn between relief that Saffron had stopped crying at last and alarm at my crisp approach.

‘I had to s-see you,’ Saffron hiccupped. ‘Daddy’s in Beijing and there’s no one else.’

‘What’s the matter?’ She really did seem upset, I thought with compunction. Perhaps there was something really wrong. ‘Is it Jax?’

‘No.’ The beautiful face crumpled and Saffron buried her head back on my shoulder. ‘It’s Buffy!’

‘Buffy?’ I echoed blankly. ‘Who’s Buffy?’

‘My bridesmaid! My chief bridesmaid! She’s ruined everything!’

Another outburst of weeping. Roly wrung his hands helplessly, and I began to feel a little frayed at the edges.

‘What on earth has this Buffy done?’

‘She’s getting married!’

George was grinning. He thought this was funny! I glared at him as I mentally counted to ten.

‘OK, look, I’m sure we can sort this out, Saffron,’ I said, keeping my voice calm, ‘but not here. We’ll go back to my cottage, I’ll make you a cup of tea, and it’ll all be fine.’

‘What c-cottage?’ sobbed Saffron.

‘The cottage where I live,’ I said with emphasis, and Saffron lifted her head, momentarily distracted from whatever crisis had been precipitated by the unknown Buffy.

‘I thought you said you were living at Whellerby Hall?’

‘I said I worked on the estate.’ I drew a calming breath. ‘This is Lord Whellerby’s home and we’re intruding.’

‘Oh...really...no problem...’

‘Who’s Lord Whellerby?’ Saffron’s puzzled question broke over Roly’s inarticulate stammer.

For answer, I turned her to face Roly, who shifted from foot to foot and blushed painfully.

‘Oh, you should have told me!’ Saffron gazed at him, her eyes still swimming with tears. ‘You’ve been so sweet to me, too.’

‘Pleasure,’ he muttered, embarrassed. ‘Please, call me Roly...er...I mean...’ He lost himself in a morass of pleasantries.

I suppressed a sigh. This wasn’t how I had imagined my client! But somehow I had to retrieve something from the situation. I hadn’t wanted to meet him this way, but I would just have to make the best of it.

Tugging my jacket into place, I stepped forward and offered my hand. ‘I’m so sorry about the misunderstanding, Lord Whellerby,’ I said briskly, avoiding George’s amused gaze. ‘I’m Frith Taylor, the site engineer—and Saffron’s sister, as you’ve obviously gathered.’

‘Er...delighted.’ Roly looked daunted by my formality, but he shook my hand.