A Pretend Engagement

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Leon Beaumont looked loftily down at her. ‘You’re saying your friend was female?’

She felt a fool again. She did not like the feeling. ‘Do you give all your—your staff this—um—third degree?’ she questioned hostilely.

He smiled. He actually smiled. It did wonders for the mostly severe expression she was more used to. She wasn’t sure that her heartbeats did not give a little flip—utter nonsense, of course—but it did make her see, as Johnny had told her, why women fell for him like ninepins. Not her, of course. Heaven forbid.

‘Not all of them,’ he drawled. ‘But you’re so delightful to wind up.’

The pig! He was baiting her for his own amusement! While she admitted that there was not very much going on around here in the way of entertainment, she did not take kindly to the fact that he was amusing himself by getting her to rise—that she was the star turn! How she hid the fact that she would like to crack the plate in her hands over his head, she did not know.

‘Thanks a bunch!’ she told him huffily. ‘I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready.’

‘Your friend knows you’re here at Aldwyn House?’ he stayed to enquire, ignoring her hint that she hoped not to see him again before dinner.

‘I expect so,’ she answered carefully.

‘You didn’t say what you were doing here?’ Leon Beaumont’s tone had hardened, as he reminded her how much he wanted his whereabouts kept secret.

For about two seconds she played with the idea of saying that she had. Then thoughts of Johnny were there again. Perishing brothers! ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t think you’d like me to tell him.’

‘Are you having coffee with him again?’ he wanted to know, taking in his stride the information that her friend had been male, as he had thought.

She shook her head. ‘Russell is returning to his home in Caernarvon soon,’ she replied.

‘Good!’ Leon Beaumont grunted, and, taking up the newspaper from the top of one of the units, where she had put it, he went casually out from the kitchen.

Varnie did not mistake that that ‘Good!’ was anything other than good because it meant there was someone less for her to blab to about his whereabouts. The man did not care a jot how many men she had coffee with, that much was certain. His privacy was all that concerned him. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

CHAPTER THREE

SOMEHOW the weekend passed without Varnie putting rat poison in Leon Beaumont’s food. They were sparky with each other—she couldn’t always remember to be nice.

Well, who would? she thought mutinously on more than one occasion. He still did not seem totally convinced that she wasn’t there trying to make capital of the situation of them being under the same roof alone together. Huh!

She sat in front of her dressing table mirror on Monday morning and brushed her long blonde hair, then flipped it up into an elegant bun. She allowed her large sea-green eyes to study her dainty features and clear complexion, then took her eyes from the mirror to stare down at her well-kept hands and long fingers with their neat and equally well-kept nails. Then had to suppose that in all honesty she was not your general picture of an everyday ‘skivvy’.

Varnie left her room, never more grateful that her grandfather had thought to install a computer in his study. Not so far as she knew that he had used it for any business purpose, but she knew he had spent many a happy hour playing either bridge or chess on it. But the machine came in useful for getting Leon Beaumont out of her hair. What work he could do at weekends she had no idea, but the computer had been on when she had taken him in a cup of coffee yesterday morning. And he had been playing neither bridge nor chess, but had had a screen full of matter that was way past her comprehension. With luck the computer would keep him occupied for all of this day too.

She was always astir at six. He was downstairs before her and already in the kitchen drinking coffee. He wasn’t mean, she’d give him that, when, not bothering to ask if she wanted one, he poured her a cup of coffee.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and, remembering her place, ‘Good morning,’ she added pleasantly. Which turned out to be a bit of a wasted effort when he ignored her and went, carrying his coffee, out through the kitchen door. ‘Suit yourself!’ she addressed his departing back.

‘Good morning!’ sailed back to her—and, oddly, she had to laugh.

And so the day began. Leon Beaumont spent a great deal of his day working in the study and she barely saw him. He made several telephone calls and, when she rushed to answer the phone so that it should not disturb him, she found that he had answered the phone first and that the call was for him.

It would not have been for her anyway, she belatedly realised, because no one but Russell Adams knew that she was there. And Russell was probably back in Caernarvon by now. So Varnie got on with the job she was supposed to be there to do, and cleaned that which had to be cleaned, left fresh towels outside her ‘employer’s’ door, and cooked that which had to be cooked. She went to bed that night feeling not as satisfied with her day’s work as she should have been, and somehow feeling more than a little fed-up.

She was still feeling the same when she got up the next morning and went down the stairs, musing that her only reason for coming here had been so that her parents should enjoy the tranquillity of their retirement and not be upset that she was upset.

But, and she could hardly believe it, she did not feel as emotionally broken as she had supposed she would when the numbness of Martin Walker’s dreadful deceit had worn off. What she did feel was disgusted with him, and disbelieving of her own naivety. So—if there was nothing for her parents to be upset about—what in creation was she doing here? Suddenly she realised that—she could go home!

Leon was in the kitchen. He poured her a cup of coffee and, impulsively, before she could think it through, she blurted out, ‘Would it put you out too much if I left?’

He was standing by the draining board and studied her with cool grey eyes. ‘Good morning,’ he replied, and took a swig of his coffee. Her lips twitched, but if he noticed he paid no heed, but told her easily, ‘I wouldn’t be at all put out. You’re quite free to go whenever you wish.’

Truly, he didn’t give a light. But something, she knew not what, but something in the way he said it caused her to hesitate. And when she should have been skipping up the stairs to gather her belongings together, she stayed. Stayed to question, ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘I’ve said so,’ he answered curtly. ‘Though if you’re in touch with your friend Metcalfe before I am you might tell him to take my name off his CV.’