A Suitable Husband. Jessica Steele

Even while Jermaine fumed against it and made herself remember how, from childhood onwards, Edwina had always taken anything that was hers, be it a toy, a game, a boyfriend, she still felt this nonsensical family loyalty to her, and knew that no matter how much she kicked against it she wouldn’t give Edwina away.

      Feeling thoroughly out of sorts, and this morning revising her last night’s opinion and deciding that Lukas Tavinor did deserve a fate going by the name of Edwina, Jermaine slipped off her shoes and re-entered the house.

      By instinct she found the kitchen, and Mrs Dobson. ‘I’m Jermaine Hargreaves,’ she introduced herself to the plump, sixty-something housekeeper. ‘Am I going to be very much in your way if I clean my shoes at your sink?’

      ‘I’ll do them for you…’

      Jermaine wouldn’t hear of it, and for the next half an hour stayed in the kitchen chatting with Mrs Dobson, when that lady wasn’t popping in and out to the breakfast room. And, since Jermaine had told Tavinor that she had better things to do, yet wasn’t able to get to her place of work, she assured the housekeeper that she was there to help.

      Jermaine had a bit of breakfast with the housekeeper, and, having got on famously with her, insisted on preparing Edwina’s breakfast. Another half an hour later and Jermaine was carrying a tray up the stairs.

      She was nearing the top when a door opened on the opposite side of the landing from where she and Edwina had their rooms, and Jermaine saw Lukas appear from what she presumed was his room.

      They met at the top of the stairs. ‘Looking after your sister, I see,’ he remarked with a glance to the tray she was carrying. Jermaine wasn’t sure, had not her hands been full, that she wouldn’t have thumbed her nose at him—she was certain she’d heard a mocking sort of note in his voice. As it was, all she could do was walk past him without a word.

      Edwina was still in bed, but wasn’t pleased to see her. ‘I didn’t expect you to still be here!’ she exclaimed nastily.

      That makes two of us. ‘It’s either me or a nurse, apparently,’ Jermaine answered, unable to resist seeing the whites of her sister’s eyes.

      ‘Heaven forbid!’ Edwina roused herself.

      Jermaine took the tray over to her. ‘How long do you intend to keep up this pretence?’ she asked forthrightly.

      ‘What’s it to you?’ Edwina asked disagreeably, her sneering tone flicking Jermaine on the raw and causing her to say more than she would have.

      ‘Since you ask—and aside from the fact that you’ve got both your parents, your father in particular, in a state worrying about you, not to mention that you’re disrupting the whole household here, expecting to be waited on—were it not for your injury, I would be at work today, earning my living. And talking of earning a living,’ Jermaine flared, ‘it wouldn’t hurt you to get off your back and find yourself a job.’

      ‘Work! Me!’ Edwina exclaimed as if she’d been shot. ‘I wasn’t brought up to work!’ That was true, Jermaine had to agree. Their father had indulged Edwina past spoiling. ‘Dad wouldn’t want me to soil my hands…’

      ‘But you must know he can no longer afford to be as generous to you now as he was in the past.’

      ‘He doesn’t have to be, not for much longer,’ Edwina purred, and Jermaine knew then, if she hadn’t known already, that Edwina would latch on to any man who had money. In this case, Lukas Tavinor. Wasn’t that the sole reason Edwina was still at Highfield? ‘I’ll say goodbye now,’ Edwina went on as Jermaine, again for some unknown reason not thrilled that Lukas might be ensnared, went to the door. ‘Just phone Lukas at his office and tell him that I became so distressed at taking you away from your boring old job that I insisted you leave at once.’