A Professional Marriage

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Slightly shaken by his change in attitude, it took all her will-power to stay looking calm. ‘As it happens, I had lunch with your father,’ she replied coolly—she had intended to tell him anyway, and to mention his father’s loneliness at the same time.

‘The devil you did! He came here, conning you—’

‘He rang,’ she cut in, starting to get cross and having great difficulty in hiding it. ‘I got the impression that Magnus wasn’t feeling well. You weren’t here, and I didn’t want to disturb your meeting if—’

‘You would have interrupted my meeting on account of that cunning old fox spinning you some yarn?’ he queried, looking astounded.

Chesnie, realising from that comment that Joel knew his father only too well, ignored Joel’s look of astonishment, though didn’t feel too clever at how easily she had been taken in.

‘He didn’t actually say he was ill,’ she confessed, recalling that Magnus had merely said that there were days when he had felt better.

‘But he alarmed you sufficiently for you to decide that rather than contact me—for which I thank you,’ he inserted sarcastically, not looking in the least grateful, ‘you’d meet him for lunch.’

‘I didn’t plan it at all. I just—got worried. So in the end I drove over to see him.’

‘You went to his house?’ Hostility was rife. ‘How did you know where he lived?’

What was this? ‘He gave me his card so I could ring him—the last time I had lunch with him.’

‘He wanted you to call him?’

If Joel was getting angry, Chesnie was getting furious. ‘Only if I wanted to go to the races with him, which I didn’t. Anyway—’

‘Anyway, you went over to his home and found he wasn’t at all unwell, but merely wanted to dupe you out of another lunch.’

‘He paid!’ she erupted, no longer able to hold it in. ‘And don’t talk about him like that!’ she snapped, her control flying. She was too furious to care that his eyebrows shot up in amazement. ‘He’s your father,’ she stormed on. ‘And he’s lonely, and—’

‘And no doubt you cheered him up!’ Joel snarled, getting angrily to his feet, not at all enamoured of her telling him what not to do, nor her nerve in taking it upon herself to defend his father.

‘What are you implying?’ she flew, angry sparks flashing in her furious green eyes.

‘You tell me! What’s going on?’ he demanded, coming round to where she stood.

‘Don’t you start!’ she exploded, hurling the words at him, feeling within an ace of hitting him. She strove desperately for control. No man had ever riled her so! Somehow, though, she managed to harness her fury, sufficient anyway to inform Joel Davenport crisply, ‘Just as I had no intention of becoming Hector Browning’s stepmother, I’ve no intention of becoming your stepmother either!’

She saw his jaw clench, but recognised that he seemed to have got to grips with his anger too. Though she wasn’t feeling in any way friendly to him when, ‘Close the door on your way out,’ he instructed her coldly.