Wife For Hire

The principal appeared to be dithering.

Rebecca could almost feel the net hanging overhead, but she wasn’t going to allow herself to be trapped. She didn’t like Nicholas Knight, and she especially did not want to spend months under his roof, with the past rising up inside her every time he walked into a room.

‘I have a responsibility to the girls I teach,’ she said carefully.

‘Who, at this moment, do not require quite the same level of compassion as my daughter does. It will be a matter of a few months. Surely you can find it in yourself to spare the time?’ He gave her a winning smile, and the overhead net seemed to drop a few inches closer.

‘It’s entirely up to you, Miss Ryan,’ Mrs Williams said. ‘I should be able to call upon a support teacher to cover for you until you return.’

‘Yes, but…’

Two pairs of eyes focused on her, as they both waited in silence for her to complete the objection.

‘It seems highly unorthodox,’ she finished lamely. ‘And anyway, have you considered that Emily might well disagree with the plan? She may not want to be pursued by her teacher and forced into line…’

‘My daughter will just have to accept it,’ he said bluntly, his mouth hardening. ‘As I will make it perfectly clear when I see her. I can’t unravel this situation, but I have no intention whatsoever of letting her get away with any further stupidity. She made a mistake of horrendous proportions and I shall deal with it whether she likes it or not. She’s sixteen years old and she’ll do as I say.’

Rebecca had visions of racks and thumbscrews and a diet of bread and water for lack of obedience. She shuddered. The man obviously knew nothing at all about teenagers, least of all teenagers like Emily. His idea of taking control of the situation had all the makings of the sort of heavy-handed attitude that could end up driving his daughter to run away.

And, however clever and cunning and unruly Emily was, she was still, underneath it all, a mixed-up child who wouldn’t survive for a day on the streets of London.

The net settled over her and she sighed in defeat.

She would take the job. He was right; it would only be for a matter of months, and she would make sure that he was never reminded of any past they might have shared. She would also make sure to avoid him at all costs. She could still remember how he had made her feel all those years ago. True, she had been young and naïve then, but the man had a certain predatory charm. She might dislike him intensely, but charm had a nasty habit of getting under your skin, and that was something she would simply not allow.

‘All right,’ she conceded, and she saw him breathe a sigh of satisfied relief. Had he actually contemplated the possibility of refusal? If he had, then he could be an Oscar-winning actor, because not at any point had he appeared to doubt the persuasiveness of his arguments.

‘But I shall have to discuss this with you in a great deal more depth before I commit myself.’

‘I thought you already agreed,’ he pointed out. ‘You either agree or you don’t agree.’

‘I will work for you provided you meet my terms and conditions.’

‘Don’t worry, money is no object.’

‘I wasn’t talking about money!’ she snapped, suddenly flustered at the situation she had let herself be talked into.

‘Order, please!’ Mrs Williams smiled at her sudden surge of humour. ‘I think it’s only wise that this is discussed in some depth. I’m sure you understand that Miss Ryan may have some misgivings, Mr Knight. But for the moment I need use of my office. I’m seeing the governor of the board in five minutes. Why don’t you two continue this discussion in the staffroom?’

‘Why don’t we continue this discussion,’ he said smoothly, rising to his feet, ‘in your quarters? It’ll be much more private. The open forum can be a hotbed for gossip.’ He looked at her with the smugness of a cat that had successfully managed to catch a wily little mouse. ‘We’re going to be talking about salary, despite your apparent aversion to money, and you wouldn’t want all your fellow teachers knowing what sort of pay packet you’ll be on, do you? They might all be lining up for jobs as private tutors in London!’

‘Splendid idea!’ Mrs Williams said on Rebecca’s behalf, obviously imagining a mass exodus of her teaching staff. She walked them to the door and shook his hand, pleased with the way things had turned out. She had anticipated the worst and was relieved that a solution of sorts had been found.

‘But…’ Rebecca began. She didn’t think that she had opened so many of her sentences with ‘But’ in all her life.

‘But nothing,’ he said, steering her out of the door and smiling at the principal. ‘You heard Mrs Williams.’

As soon as they were out of earshot, she turned to him and said stiffly, ‘I take it you’re accustomed to exploiting other people?’

‘Exploiting other people?’ He gave her an innocent look that didn’t quite sit with his dark, raffish good looks. Rebecca thought he looked about as innocent as Lucifer on a bad day. ‘I take advantage of opportunities, Miss Ryan. Perhaps I should call you Rebecca. I’m a great believer in employers being on first-name terms with their employees. Puts them at their ease.’

Rebecca, vastly ill at ease, not least because of the sidelong, giggling looks she was getting from the assortment of girls drifting from one class to the other, didn’t say anything.

‘And I’m Nick.’ He grinned to himself, as though at some private joke.

‘Why does Emily not carry your surname?’ Rebecca asked, leading him along corridors, past classrooms and finally into the secluded quarters of the dormitories. With no one around, she was unnervingly aware of his presence.

‘Because by the time Emily was born Veronica and I were so disillusioned with one another that she did precisely what she knew would stick in my throat.’

They had reached her quarters, and she opened the door to the small but comfortable sitting room. There was just enough room for a small flowered sofa, two chairs and a couple of tables, and on either side of the fireplace bookshelves had been mounted which she had crammed with her books. He strolled over to them and began perusing the titles, while she stood and watched him, arms folded.

Did he think that this was some kind of social visit? she wondered.

‘Why did you choose to live in the school?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier for a young woman like yourself to live in the town and travel in?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? Mind if I sit?’ He sat down.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ She had a very small and very basic kitchen. Generally, she ate the school meals, although on her free nights she always went into the town to see her friends. It was one of the good things about working in the place she had grown up in. She had kept in touch with all her own schoolfriends and they met regularly to catch up on gossip. ‘I’m fine.’ His dark eyes raked over her. ‘Why don’t you sit down? You look very awkward towering over there.’

Thanks for the flattering description, she thought sourly. Yes, I do tend to tower, but there’s no need to bring it to my notice.

She removed her jacket and primly sat on the chair facing him. At least she wasn’t hot and stuffy now, but the blouse was still a ridiculous fit. She could feel her breasts pushing against the white material. She was also acutely aware of his eyes on her, and it seemed to her that out of the principal’s office there was something rather more assessing to his gaze.

‘There are a few things I want to make perfectly clear before I take up the position with you,’ she began before he could launch into any more personal asides. ‘Firstly, I want you to know from the start that if I am to tutor your daughter I must be given free rein to do so however I see fit. These are unusual circumstances, and sitting Emily down for formal classes as she would do in a school environment just isn’t going to work.’

‘And what are you suggesting here?’

‘I’m suggesting that she has to feel comfortable with me if I’m to succeed in teaching her anything at all. She will have an awful lot on her mind and she will need fairly gentle handling.’ He looked at her as though he disagreed with every word she had just spoken, but after a while he nodded.

‘Naturally, you will want to be informed of her progress, so I suggest we arrange a time at the beginning of each week, when we can get together for a short meeting, so that I can tell you how Emily is getting along.’

‘And in between these arranged…meetings…? Should we conscientiously ignore one another? Speak, but keep it to the minimum? Pretend that we’re total strangers?’

‘This isn’t a joke, Mr Knight!’

‘Nick.’

Rebecca ignored that. ‘I’m sure Emily will keep you up to date with what we’re doing.’

‘Oh, I doubt that very much. She’s managed to make herself very scarce on the occasion when she’s been forced to be under the same roof as me.’ His voice was bland, but she could sense emotion underlying it, and she felt a pang of sympathy. As a father, it must be difficult to realise that your only offspring would rather ignore you than include you.

‘That must be very difficult for you,’ Rebecca said sympathetically. ‘Being denied contact with your daughter, and then, when she’s a teenager, finding yourself confronted with a young woman you have never really known.’

‘Thanks for the vote of sympathy.’ He gave her a long, cool look and she immediately understood that private utterances along those lines were not welcome. She wondered whether his girlfriend had more access to his emotions, whether he showed her the sides of himself that he kept carefully concealed from the public gaze.

‘Fine,’ she said crisply. ‘Now, shall we discuss the more technical aspects of this…arrangement?’

They became immersed in all the details involved, the nitty-gritty that would make up the contract of employment, which he assured her would be put in writing and sent to her for signature within the next couple of days by his secretary.

When she stood up to indicate that their meeting was now at an end, she was surprised and taken aback to find that he had remained where he was, and was staring at her in a vaguely unsettling manner. Not sexual, but somehow watchful.

‘If that’s all?’ she prompted.

‘I thought that I was the one doing the interviewing,’ he said mildly. ‘There might be one or two things I’d like to say to you.’

‘Are there?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes.’ He linked his hands behind his head and continued to stare at her until, disconcerted, she plonked herself reluctantly back down on the chair.

‘Well, fire away.’

‘Firstly, I shall expect you to have meals with me—expect you both to have meals with me—when I’m around. I don’t intend to slink through my own house like an intruder just to satisfy your bizarre preference for solitude. Admittedly, my work takes me abroad quite a bit, and my social life can be a bit disruptive as well, but there will be times when I’m around, and your presence might pave the way for a slightly smoother relationship with my daughter.’

She caught that slight edge of defensiveness in his voice again and bit down the feeling of sympathy. Emily must be the one crack in his suit of armour which he could not hide. His feelings snaked into his voice, almost of their own accord, and he seemed unaware of it. Probably he was so accustomed to controlling people, situations, events, that he was quite wrong-footed by the one situation, the one person, over whom he had no control.

Rebecca nodded but did not commit herself to agreeing with any such plan.

‘And—’ he stood up, finally, taking his time and slipping on his jacket ‘—just one more thing…’ He gave her a slow smile that made her pulses race. ‘I’d just like to say that you’ve changed.’

Rebecca’s mouth fell open.

‘I know you recognise me.’ He moved over to her and it was all she could do to hold her ground and not scuttle away to the side of the room in alarm. ‘I could see it the minute you set eyes on me. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it, Rebecca?’

Rebecca could think of nothing to say.

‘Did you think that I didn’t remember you? You did. I can see the answer in your eyes.’ His voice was as soft and smooth as melted chocolate. It made her dizzy, a response which she immediately put down to confusion. ‘You haven’t got the sort of face that’s easily forgotten. You look more or less the same. In fact, you seem to have aged very little over the years, but your manner’s changed. If I remember correctly you were so full of life, so eager to please.’

His voice had sunk to a husky whisper, and she could feel her cheeks aflame with colour as she raised her eyes to his. Did he imagine that his syrupy charm was going to have her wilting obligingly? Or was that syrupy charm all part and parcel of his persona, something that manifested itself in every word he spoke?

‘Our paths crossed years ago for a matter of a couple of weeks.’

‘Why didn’t you acknowledge me?’

‘Why didn’t you?’

He shrugged carelessly. ‘I figured you had your reasons. Anyway, it was incidental to what was being discussed. After a while, I became intrigued to see whether you’d slip up, which you didn’t. You still haven’t lost that urge to say exactly what’s on your mind, though, have you? I could see you bursting to condemn me before I’d even sat down!’

So he had known all along. She felt a complete idiot.

‘Why did you run out on me all those years ago?’ he asked. ‘You never bothered to explain. The last I saw of you at that party was with your back turned, laughing, with a glass of champagne in your hand, and then no more contact after that. Every call I made politely declined.’

‘I can’t think that that’s preyed on your mind all this time,’ Rebecca told him, plucking every ounce of self-control at her disposal and immeasurably grateful for the fact that teaching had given her an invaluable discipline as far as her emotions went.

‘Whoever said that it had?’ His eyes narrowed, and not altogether pleasantly, on her. ‘Although…’

‘Although what?’

‘I saw you there, in that room, and the past crossed my mind; it’s as simple as that. And with the past came a bucketful of questions that you never answered when you decided to do your vanishing act.’

‘And they won’t be answered now!’ she flared back at him. ‘And that’s another condition! I do my job, I do what I shall be paid handsomely to do, but there’s to be nothing personal between us.’

He gave her a leisurely, dangerous smile. ‘I suggest you tell yourself that every morning when you wake up,’ he said silkily, ‘because I can feel the heat radiating from you like a furnace. If I laid a finger on you right now, I bet you’d just go up in flames. Poof! Just like that. You’re even trembling, and don’t bother to deny it. But still, nothing personal. At any rate, I’m involved, in case you’d forgotten.’

He stalked across to the door and stayed there for a few seconds, looking at her, his hand resting lightly on the doorknob. ‘See you in a few weeks’ time, Rebecca. And I don’t expect you to back out because of our past little liaison. I’m sure you’re grown up enough to realise that it would be a vast disfavour to my daughter if you did. For the wrong reasons.’

With that, he was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

THE station was packed. Rebecca rarely travelled down to London. Year after year, she promised herself a treat—told herself that she would vanish to London for a week or two during the summer holidays and catch up on all those exciting things a girl of her age should be enjoying: theatres, shopping, mingling with the teeming crowds, perhaps even a nightclub, if she could drag a friend down with her. Unfortunately, whenever she tallied up the prospective bill for any such jaunt, she would feel the familiar shudder of horror at the thought of spending huge sums of money to stay in a hotel for a fortnight, eat out and go to the theatre, not to mention shopping.

And the idea always evaporated. Spain for two weeks during the summer holidays was a cheaper, more reliably hotter option. And Cornwall to visit her cousin and her three boisterous children held even more appeal.

So now, with swarming crowds around her, she felt hopelessly lost, as though she had wandered accidentally into another country.

She’d managed to commandeer a trolley and she pushed it along the platform, at which point she was obliged to abandon it so that she could lug her two hefty suitcases up the escalator and out of the station.

By the time she was outside, with a freezing wind gusting around her, she felt thoroughly deflated.

This was all a horrendous mistake. She had been manoeuvred into doing something she basically didn’t want to do. She had had the whole of Christmas to think about it in Cornwall, and, however much she had lectured to her cousin on what a splendid and altruistic gesture it had been to commit herself for an indefinite period of months to a private tutoring job, she couldn’t erase the niggling unease that had settled at the back of her mind like a heavy stone.

‘Why are you looking so worried if you know you’re doing the right thing?’ Beth had asked her one evening. ‘I can’t really see what’s bothering you. You’re going to be paid more than I could ever hope to get in a month of Sundays, and the school is going to keep your job open for when you return.’ Which had shamed Rebecca because Beth worked like a carthorse, looked after her three children in the absence of a husband, and rarely complained.

‘I don’t much like her father,’ Rebecca had said, omitting to mention that they had once briefly known one another several centuries ago.

‘Why not?’

‘He’s a bit autocratic.’

Beth had shrugged. ‘Humour him. Keep a low profile. Do your job and save all the money you earn. You’ll come out smiling.’ She’d grinned. ‘Then you can fling it all in my direction and buy me another car. Mine’s had it.’

She looked around her now, feeling like anything but smiling. There was a row of black cabs moving slowly forward and a queue of people shuffling in line, waiting their turn. His secretary had informed her that she would be met at the station. She was on the verge of abandoning hope, when she heard Emily’s voice from behind her, and she swung around to see her advancing gaily, confidently and designer-clad in a black coat, black boots, with a glimpse of jade beneath the swirling lapels.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ she said breathlessly, and Rebecca gave her a quick, assessing once-over. This was not the Emily she had expected. She had expected to cope with the teenager’s ongoing despondency. Emily looked as despondent as someone who had just been told that they’d won the lottery.

‘The car’s parked on double yellow lines. We’ll have to hurry before poor old Jason gets a ticket. The traffic wardens are terribly officious around here.’ She grabbed Rebecca’s arm and appeared oblivious to her attempts to move quickly with two suitcases in tow.

‘So,’ Rebecca finally said, catching her breath and sitting back in the plushly upholstered chauffeur-driven Jaguar, ‘how are you, Emily?’

‘Oh, you know.’

‘If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked,’ Rebecca said. Without the school uniform, Emily could have passed for a girl in her early twenties. She was tall, strikingly pretty, with long black hair and very blue eyes, and with the self-assurance of someone who had learned to grow up before her time.

‘Coping,’ Emily said with a careless shrug. ‘Glad you’re here, actually. Christmas was a nightmare.’ She made a face. She had been staring out of the window and she swung around to look at Rebecca. ‘Most of my friends were away doing wonderful things in hot places, and I was stuck at home with Dad and that dreadful, hideous, awful woman of his. I hate her. Yuk.’

She had stopped looking like a young woman in her early twenties and reverted to teenager with an axe to grind. ‘She spent the entire fortnight forcing everyone to be jolly. Thankfully, Dad was away most of the time so I only saw her now and again. When I was dragged out of my bedroom. Do you know what she gave me for a Christmas present?’ Emily didn’t pause to let Rebecca answer. ‘A giant stuffed toy! Can you believe it? A giant stuffed panda!’

‘Maybe she thought that it would come in useful for the baby.’

‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ She had turned away again and was looking out, her shoulders hunched in defiance.

‘You can’t hide from it, though, can you?’ Rebecca said gently.

‘It’s all my father talked about the whole time. My stupidity. I don’t know why I had to come and live with him. He’s worse than Mum. At least all she nagged me about was how much she hated him. He just nags me about everything: the clothes I wear, the way I look and my stupidity. That’s when he’s around. Most of the time he’s not. I think he finds it easier not being around me. I get on his nerves.’ There was such childish, bewildered self-pity in her voice that Rebecca felt her heart lurch. She had to remind herself that this was not about taking sides, it was about educating Emily. Her problems with her father would have to be resolved between the two of them, and possibly the panda-giving stepmother-to-be.

‘I don’t suppose you managed to get any work done?’ Rebecca asked, changing the subject, and Emily looked at her.

‘Course not. I told you, I spent most of the holiday hiding away in my room, listening to music and watching television. Anyway, I was waiting for you to arrive.’

‘We’ll do as much as you feel up to doing.’

‘So if I can’t be bothered, you won’t force me?’ Emily asked with adolescent optimism, and Rebecca shook her head and grinned.

‘Sure I’ll force you, but I’ll make sure to do it gently.’

‘And what if I refuse to do any at all?’

‘I’ll pack my bags and head back home.’ The car had cleared the slow-moving traffic and was picking up a bit more speed as they headed away from the city centre to the leafy suburbs of North London.

‘You can’t do that,’ Emily said quickly. ‘You can’t leave me alone with those two!’

‘One of whom happens to be your father, your own flesh and blood, whether you like it or not.’

‘You mean a complete stranger who doesn’t like me and would rather he’d never been saddled with my presence,’ Emily returned sulkily, and she then spent the remainder of the trip staring vacantly out of the window, leaving Rebecca to nurse her ongoing misgivings at what lay ahead.

On the plus side, she liked what she heard about Nick not being around a lot. At least she wouldn’t have to contend with him and her suspicions that he probably remembered her as the lust-crazed teenager who had made no secret of how she had felt.

On the minus side, Emily was going to be a handful. The fact that she wouldn’t discuss the pregnancy rang alarm bells in Rebecca’s head. It smelled of denial, which meant that she probably hadn’t dealt with the shock of the situation. Nor would she have mentally resolved the considerable consequences it entailed. She had shoved the pregnancy to the back of her mind. Did she think that by avoiding the topic it would simply go away?

She was frowning and thinking about this when Emily said, after her prolonged silence, ‘Nightmare Hall approaches.’

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