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Sophy’s mind balked a little at taking it all in. That Louise should attempt to seduce Jonathan, of all people, into offering her marriage, seemed impossibly ludicrous. Surely she realised, as Sophy herself had, that he was immune to sexual desire…totally oblivious to it in fact.
Another thought struck her. ‘And the other two nannies?’ she asked faintly.
‘Well, they didn’t actually go to Louise’s length, but—’
Sophy was too amazed to be tactful. ‘But surely they could see that you aren’t interested in sex?’ she protested.
The dark head bent, and she watched him rub his jaw in his familiar vague fashion, his expression concealed from her as he responded in a faintly strangled voice that betrayed his embarrassment.
‘Uh…obviously they didn’t have your perception.’
‘Well, next time you’ll have to employ someone older,’ Sophy told him forthrightly. ‘Do you want me to get in touch with the agencies while you’re away?’
‘Er…no. We’ll leave it until I get back. Can you stay with them until then?’
‘Well, yes…but why delay?’
‘Well, I’m thinking about making some other arrangements.’
Other arrangements. What other arrangements? Sophy wondered. As far as she knew, he was the children’s only family. Unless—her blood ran cold.
‘You’re not thinking of abandoning them…of putting them into foster homes?’
‘Of course…of course, it’s always a possibility.’
Trying to come to terms with her shock, Sophy wondered why she had the feeling that he had set out to say one thing and had ended up saying another…perhaps he was embarrassed to admit the truth to her. ‘Surely there must be another way,’ she said impulsively. ‘Something…’
‘Well, there is,’ he looked acutely uncomfortable. ‘In fact I was going to discuss it with you when I came back from Brussels.’
‘Well, why can’t you tell me now?’
There were times when his vagueness infuriated her and now was one of them.
‘Well…this evening perhaps, when the kids are in bed.’
It was only natural that he wouldn’t want them to overhear what he might have to say and so she nodded her head. ‘All right, then.’
It was nine o’clock before both children were bathed and in bed. Jonathan’s case was packed, his documents neatly organised and safely bestowed in his briefcase. He had offered to make them both a mug of coffee while Sophy finished this final chore and she had urged him to do so. Up until then he had been hovering like a demented bloodhound in his study, frantically searching for some all important piece of paper which had ultimately turned up under the telephone. Gritting her teeth, Sophy set about tidying up. Talk about disorganised!
And yet for all his vagueness, Jon could be ruthless enough when the occasion demanded it, she mused, pausing for a moment—witness his dismissal of Louise.
She sat down in his desk chair, still half stunned that a girl as clever and as quick as Louise had honestly thought she could use her sexual allure to trap Jonathan into marriage. That must have been what she had thought. No girl as modern as the children’s nanny had been could possibly have believed that any man would marry her simply because he had been to bed with her.
Getting up, she made her way to the sitting room most used by the family. It caught the afternoon sun and she passed by the deeply sashed Victorian windows staring at the sunset as she waited for Jonathan.
‘Coffee, Sophy.’
For such a large man he moved extremely quietly. Frowning as she turned round, Sophy was suddenly struck by the fact that Jonathan was altogether deceptive. She always thought of him as clumsy and yet when he was working on his computer he could be surprisingly deft. She had thought him too obtuse and involved in his own private thoughts and his work, and yet he was surprisingly perceptive where the children were concerned and this afternoon, when he had answered her unspoken question. He sat down on the ancient, slightly sagging sofa, the springs groaning slightly as they took his weight. Standing up he often looked thin and faintly stooping but he wasn’t thin, she realised in sudden surprise as he took off his glasses and, putting them down on the coffee table, stretched his body tiredly so that she could see the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt, and they were muscles, too…
Still standing by the window she continued to watch him, faintly shocked to realise that in profile his features were attractively irregular and very masculine. Without his glasses he looked different from the normally aesthetic man he appeared to be. He ceased stretching and rubbed his eyes.
‘What have you got planned for the children, Jon?’
She sounded more belligerent than she had intended and she half expected him to jump uneasily in apprehension as he was wont to do when she complained because he had upset her neat filing cabinets. Instead, he smiled at her glintingly.
‘You sound like a protective mother hen. Come and sit down. I hate having to look up at you,’ he added, smiling again. ‘I’m not used to it.’
Knowing that she would not get a scrap more information from him until she did as he asked, Sophy took a chair opposite the settee. Beneath that vague exterior lurked a will of iron, as she already knew, but so far she had only seen it in force where his work was concerned.
Suddenly and quite inexplicably she felt tense and nervous, neither of them feelings she was used to experiencing in Jon’s presence. To cover them she said quickly, ‘Mother was saying only today that you need a wife, Jon, and I’m beginning to think she’s right.’
‘So am I.’ He started polishing his glasses, something he always did when he was nervous, and yet his nervous movements were oddly at variance with the tense determination she could almost feel emanating from him.
‘But not Louise surely?’ she began faintly, only to realise that it was hardly any of her business. And yet the thought of the pert, dark-haired young woman as Jon’s wife was oddly distasteful to her. She bit her lip and looked up. Jon was looking at her and it was hard to analyse the expression in his eyes. All she did know was that it was unfamiliar to her.
‘Not Louise,’ he agreed gravely, suddenly looking away from her, his voice once again faintly husky and nervous as he cleared his throat and said, totally out of the blue, ‘As a matter of fact, Sophy, I was rather hoping that you…’
Her? Jonathan was trying to say that he wanted to marry her! Oh no, surely she must be imagining things. She must have misunderstood. She looked across at him and saw from the hopeful hesitant look he was giving her that she had not.
‘You want to marry me?’ she asked disbelievingly, just to be sure. ‘You think we should get married? But that’s totally out of the question.’
She had expected him to accept her refusal immediately; even to be faintly embarrassed and perhaps a little relieved by it. After all, he could have no real desire to be married to her…but to her dismay he shook his head, and plunged on quickly.
‘No, no…listen to me for a moment. You love the kids.’ He paused and while she said nothing Sophy knew she could not deny it. She heard him clearing his throat again and held her breath slightly. ‘And, er…well…that is…you don’t seem to have a…er…a boyfriend at the present time.’
‘I don’t want to get married, Jon,’ she broke in firmly. ‘Not to you nor to anyone else.’
‘But you want children, a family.’
There was no hesitation in his voice this time and once again she was astounded by his perception.
‘I need a wife, Sophy,’ he continued, ‘someone to look after the children and to run my home but not someone to…to share my bed.’
The words sank in slowly.
‘You mean a…a marriage of convenience?’ Sophy asked him uncertainly. ‘Is that legal…is…?’
‘Perfectly, since no one will know the truth apart from ourselves.’
‘But, Jonathan, it’s crazy! Just because Louise…Is that why you want to marry me?’ she asked, staring at him. ‘To stop—’
‘It’s amazing the lengths some of your sex will go to, to secure what they consider to be a wealthy husband and I’m afraid I am wealthy, Sophy.’
She knew that, and while it had never particularly concerned her she could see, now that he had mentioned it, that he would be quite a financial catch for a woman wanting to marry only for money. Suddenly she felt quite protective towards him.
‘The children need you as well, Sophy,’ he told her. ‘They love you. With you they would be secure.’
‘If I don’t agree, what will you do…put them in some sort of institution?’
Her mouth went dry at the thought. It was true, she thought bleakly, feeling the pain invade her heart. She did love them…perhaps all the more so because she knew she would never have any of her own.
She watched Jonathan shrug uncomfortably and get up to pace the room. ‘What else can I do?’ he asked her. ‘You know how much time I spend away. It’s not fair to them. They need a settled background. They need you, Sophy. I need you.’
‘To protect you from the likes of Louise.’ Sophy agreed drily, adding teasingly, ‘Is the thought of an attractive young woman wanting to seduce you really so very repulsive, Jon?’ She knew the moment the words left her lips that they were the wrong ones.
Slow colour crawled up under his skin and he turned away from her saying, in a faintly stifled voice, ‘I must confess, I do find such determined women…er…intimidating. I had a very domineering mother,’ he added almost apologetically.
Busy drawing the inevitable Freudian conclusions it was several seconds before Sophy observed the faintly risible gleam in his eyes and then it was so brief that she decided she must be imagining it. After all what could Jon be laughing at? It was no laughing matter for a man to have to admit he was frightened of the female sex. After all, didn’t she herself hold an almost equal fear of his own, albeit for different reasons. Temptingly the thought slid into her mind that as Jon’s wife she would be safe for all time from her own fears about her lack of sexuality. There would be no uncomfortable reminders in her unwed state about her inability to respond to his sex nor any fear that others would discover it and mock her for it as Chris had done.
Chris! No one would ever want to marry her, he had said. She took a deep breath.
‘All right, then, Jon. I agree. I’ll marry you.’
The moment she heard the words she regretted them. Had she gone mad? She couldn’t marry Jon. She couldn’t but he was already coming towards her, grasping her wrists and hauling her to her feet.
‘You will? Sophy, that’s marvellous. I can’t thank you enough!’ He made no attempt to touch her or to kiss her. Then again, why should he? She wouldn’t have wanted him to.
Panic set in. ‘Jon…’
‘I can’t tell you what this means to me, to be able to keep the children.’
The children. They would be her family. Already she loved them and found them a constant source of delight. She would have this house, its vast sprawling garden…a whole new way of life which she knew instinctively would delight her. She was no ardent career woman and it was a fallacy these days that housewives and mothers degenerated into cabbages. She would have the constant stimulation of the children’s growing minds.
But to marry Jon of all people. She glanced at his tall, slightly stooping frame. Wasn’t Jon the ideal husband for her, though? an inner voice asked. Jon, whose lack of sexuality would always ensure that he never learned of her humiliating secret. With Jon there would be no fear of rejection or contempt. Jon wouldn’t care that sexually she was frigid—wasn’t that the word—she goaded herself. Wasn’t frigid the description of herself she was always shying away from, fighting against facing, but the truth nonetheless?
‘I…er, thought we might be married by special licence. Perhaps next weekend?’
Special licence. Sophy came out of her daze to stare at him. ‘In such a rush. Is that necessary?’
Jon looked apologetic. ‘Well, it would save me having to find a new nanny. You can’t stay on here, living here while I’m living here too if we’re going to get married, Sophy,’ he told her with surprising firmness.
She wanted to laugh. She was going to laugh, Sophy thought, on a rising wave of hysteria.
Catching back her nervous giggles she expostulated, ‘Jon, this is the nineteen-eighties. You’re talking like someone out of the Victorian era.’
‘Your mother wouldn’t think so.’
His shrewdness left her lost for words for a moment. He was quite right. Her mother would most definitely not approve of her living beneath Jon’s roof once she knew they were getting married. Neither, she realised hollowly, would her mother be at all pleased by the fact that they were getting married. She closed her eyes, imagining the scenes and recriminations. Jon was not her mother’s idea of what she wanted for a son-in-law. She would also want a large wedding with Sophy in traditional white, a June wedding with a marquee and…
Groaning slightly she opened her eyes and said faintly, ‘Yes, you’re right. A special licence would be best and then we needn’t tell anyone until afterwards.’
There was a strange gleam in Jon’s eyes and this time she was almost sure it wasn’t the sunset, reflecting off his glasses, that caused it.
‘I’ll, er…make all the arrangements then. Do you want to tell the kids or…?’
‘I’ll tell them tomorrow when you’re gone,’ she suggested. ‘They’re always a bit down after you leave, it will cheer them up a bit.’
Although outwardly well adjusted and cheerful children, Sophy knew that neither of them could have gone through the experience of losing their parents without some scars. They were both passionately attached to Jon and she had thought him equally devoted to them. It had shocked her immensely to hear him talk of sending them away…it didn’t equate with what she knew of his character somehow.
‘I, er…think I’ll have an early night,’ she heard him saying. ‘My flight’s at nine and I’ll have to be at the airport for eight.’
‘Do you want me to drive you?’ Jon did not possess a car; he could neither drive nor, it seemed, had any desire to do so, although he had hired a small car for Louise’s use.
‘No. I’ve ordered a taxi. Don’t bother to get up to see me off.’
Picking up their coffee cups, Sophy grimaced slightly to herself. She always saw him off on his journeys because she lived in perpetual dread that if she did not he would lose or forget something of vital importance. She made a mental note to tell the cab driver to check the taxi before Jon got out of it and then, bidding him goodnight, carried their cups to the kitchen.
She was tired herself. It had, after all, been an eventful day. On her way to the room she always had when she stayed over at the house and which was next to the children’s room, she had to walk past Jon’s room. As she did so, she hesitated, still amazed to think that Louise had actually gone into that room fully intent on making love to its occupant. That earlier and extraordinarily disturbing mental vision she had had of their bodies sensuously entwined she had somehow managed to forget.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE WAS AWAKE at half-past-seven, showering quickly in the bathroom off her bedroom. The room which she occupied was what the estate agent had euphemistically described as ‘a guest suite’. Certainly her bedroom was large enough to house much more than the heavy Victorian furniture it did and it did have its own bathroom but after all that it fell rather short of the luxury conjured up by the description bestowed on it.
She dressed quickly in her jeans and a clean T-shirt. Her body, once gawky and ungainly, had filled out when she reached her twenties and now she had a figure she knew many women might have envied; full breasted, narrow waisted, with long, long legs, outwardly perhaps, as her friend had once teased, ‘sexy’, but inwardly…She was like a cake that was all tempting icing on the outside with nothing but stodge on the inside, she thought wryly, pulling a brush through her hair and grimacing at the crackle of static from it.
There wasn’t time to pin it up and she left it curling wildly on to her shoulders, her face completely devoid of make-up and surprisingly young-looking in the hazy sunshine of the summer morning.
As she went past Jon’s door she heard the hum of his razor and knew that he was up. Downstairs she checked that the cases she had packed for him the previous night were there in the hall. In the kitchen she ground beans and started making coffee. Jon was not an early morning person, preferring to rise late and work, if necessary, all through the night and despite the fact that she knew he would do no more than gulp down a cup of stingingly hot black coffee, she found and poured orange juice and started to make some toast.
He didn’t look surprised to find her in the kitchen, and she knew from his engrossed expression that he was totally absorbed in whatever problem was taking him to Brussels.
Jon was the computer industry’s equivalent of the oil world’s ‘trouble shooter’. She had once heard one of his colleagues saying admiringly that there was nothing Jon did not know about a computer. Although she knew that Jon himself would have been mildly amused by her lack of logic, she herself would have described his skill as something approaching a deep empathy with the machines he worked on.
As far as she was concerned the computer world was a total mystery but she was a good organiser, an excellent secretary and Jon found her flair for languages very useful. He himself seemed to rely entirely on the odd word, nearly always excruciatingly mispronounced from what Sophy could discover. But then, who needed words to communicate with a computer? Logic was what was needed there…and Jon had plenty of that, she thought wryly as she poured and passed his coffee. Only a man of supreme logic would propose to a woman on the strength of needing her to look after his wards and run his home. And also to keep other women out of his bed, Sophy reminded herself.
She didn’t ask him if he wanted toast, simply pushing the buttered golden triangles in front of him. He picked one up, absently bit into it and then, frowning, put it down.
‘You know I don’t eat breakfast.’
‘Then you should,’ she reproved him. ‘It’s no wonder you’re so thin.’ But he wasn’t, she remembered…recollecting that brief, unexpected glimpse of hard muscles.
She heard the sound of a car approaching over the gravel. So did Jon. He stood up, swallowing the last of his coffee.
‘I’ll ring you on Wednesday to let you know what time I get back. If anything urgent crops up in the meantime—’
‘I know where to get in touch with you,’ she assured him. She would have to drive into Cambridge later and leave a message on the office answering service asking callers to ring her here at the house. Her mind raced ahead, busily engaged in sorting out the host of minor problems her being here instead of in Cambridge would cause.
She walked with Jon to the taxi…sighing in faint exasperation as he forgot to pick up his briefcase, handing it to him through the open door and then turning to speak to the driver.
‘Ticket…’ she intoned automatically, turning back to Jon. ‘Passport, money…’
He patted the pocket of his ancient tweed jacket, a faintly harassed look crossing his face.
Registering and interpreting it correctly Sophy instructed. ‘Stay there, I’ll go and get them.’
She found them in a folder beside his bed, and sighed wryly. She remembered quite distinctly handing them to him yesterday and telling him to put them in his jacket pocket.
She ran downstairs and handed the documents to him, catching the driver’s eye as she did so. He was looking faintly impatient.
