Had he deliberately been trying to goad her, he did a splendid job. ‘You’ve been misinformed!’ Astra snapped, angry pink colour flushing her normally pale cheeks. ‘When I found some of the people I was called upon to deal with too obnoxious for words I resigned.’ Chew on that!
She had as good as called him obnoxious—it glanced off him. ‘You’re still in the same line of business?’ he enquired silkily. ‘You are working, I take it?’
Odious—obnoxious was too good for him! ‘I’ve had two good offers,’ she took great delight in being able to inform him. He wasn’t to know that both offers were in the family, so to speak, or that both offers of a job were for the one firm.
‘You’ve accepted neither?’ Dark, all-assessing eyes studied her. Why did she feel she’d love to poke him in the eye? She’d never had such tendencies before!
‘I’m being selective,’ she replied coolly, in control of her anger once more. Her control didn’t stay around for long.
How could it? He strained it to the limits when loftily he suggested, ‘You obviously earned enough commission in your last job not to need to take another job for a while.’
What was it about this man? Astra took a long, steadying breath. She’d be hanged if she’d tell him she had private means. ‘Obviously,’ she agreed, her temper straining at the leash. She opened the door—to the devil with him; she was going home.
Before she could so much as take a step outside, however, Baxendale was there again with his comments. Though she had to admit she was a touch baffled by his change of subject when he said, ‘You and Alford seem on very close terms?’
What on earth had her cousin Greville Alford got to do with any of this? Astra threw Baxendale a look of intense dislike. ‘We are,’ she replied coldly. ‘Very close.’ And, not giving him a chance to get another remark in, she went swiftly through the door and marched over the tarmac drive.
Honestly! That man! Never had any man upset her the way he so easily did. Insufferable swine! The next time Greville invited her to a party, she’d ask to see the guest list first. If Sayre Baxendale’s name were on it, Greville would be going on his own!
CHAPTER THREE
GREVILLE telephoned Astra on Sunday morning to enquire if she got home all right. ‘I would have rung you last night, only I got held up longer than I expected. Did you enjoy the party?’
Greville himself gave fabulous parties. By comparison the one they’d attended last night was average. ‘More to the point, did you?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply, and Astra didn’t miss that there was a smile in his voice.
‘When are you seeing her again?’
‘Ah—slight snag.’
‘You didn’t ask her out?’ Astra was surprised—her cousin was normally self-assured, confident—he really had got it badly.
‘I didn’t get very much of a chance last night,’ Greville owned. ‘Her brother was there and, albeit he wasn’t always at her side, I thought he seemed a mite protective of her.’
‘How old is she?’ Astra enquired, wondering if the woman her cousin was so enamoured with might be some giddy young woman.
‘Late twenties, maybe thirty,’ Greville replied, and should Astra think that thirty was a bit mature to have a brother watching over her he was instantly defensive of his love. ‘She’s been through a very tough time lately,’ he explained.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be—you’re gorgeous,’ he answered, and was back to being her super cousin again, who, if truth be told, had done a fair job of watching over his three cousins in their traumatic growing years.
The week began slowly and dully, but Astra was cheered on Thursday to receive a postcard from Fennia. ‘Yancie was right,’ she read. ‘S’wonderful.’ They had received a ‘S’wonderful’ card from Yancie on her honeymoon.
Astra was still smiling when her phone suddenly called for attention. It was her cousin Greville again. ‘Anything wrong?’ she asked. Although they were regularly in touch and knew each other’s happenings, either via his mother, her mother, her other cousins or her aunts, sometimes an age could go by without Greville phoning.
‘Why should anything be wrong? Can’t I ring my lovely cousin to enquire how she’s feeling without there being something wrong?’
‘So your lovely cousin’s fine. She’s not fretting because she’s not working a sixteen-hour day. And no, she hasn’t yet found another job that has the same appeal as the last one, but she hasn’t seriously been looking.’ Astra took a breath, and then asked gently, ‘So, what’s troubling you, love?’
There was a second or two of silence before Greville, the pretence over, the game up, told her the real reason for his call. ‘I need a favour.’
He was the dearest man. ‘It’s yours,’ she answered unequivocally. Should that favour be another party with even the remotest possibility of Sayre Baxendale attending—she could be equivocal later. That fiend Baxendale had been in and out of her head ever since Saturday’s party—before that even—and she’d had enough of him. But, for the moment, Greville was sounding a touch anxious, and it would be a pleasure to help him for a change. ‘What can I do for you?’ she offered cheerfully.
‘Would you come to the theatre with me tomorrow?’
Astra had always known how much Greville enjoyed the theatre and was ready to say straight away that she’d be pleased to go with him. But she sensed there was more to his wish that she accompany him tomorrow than hoping she would enjoy it.
‘I don’t know her name, but she’ll be there, won’t she? The woman you…’
‘Ellen,’ he supplied. Astra did a quick flip through a name-and-picture gallery of the women he had introduced her to on Saturday, but she couldn’t link ‘Ellen’ to any of them. ‘Ellen Morton,’ Greville went on, her name sounding gentle on his tongue. ‘The thing is, Astra, I rang Ellen on Tuesday asking her to have dinner with me—and got a polite refusal for my trouble.’
‘Oh, Greville. Don’t give up hope,’ Astra encouraged.
‘I won’t. This is much too serious for that. The problem is, though, and you’ll call me all sorts of a clod, I bumped into Nick Wilson today—he was at the party on Saturday—and he remarked on my stunning partner. But when I said you weren’t my partner but my cousin he said that if he’d known he wouldn’t have been poaching he’d have come over and asked if you’d any space in your diary to fit him in. He asked for your phone number, by the way.’
‘You didn’t give it to him!’
‘Would I? Though he deserves some reward, because if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have got round to wondering had I mentioned to Ellen when I introduced you that you were my cousin. Had I, in fact, told anybody at that party that we were cousins?’
Astra tried to remember—but all she could remember was that she had told Sayre Baxendale that she and Greville were very close, but definitely hadn’t told Baxendale that they were cousins. ‘I don’t think you did,’ she confessed slowly after a few seconds.
She heard Greville groan. Then suddenly he brightened. Though he did start off by confessing, ‘I’m in such a stew, I don’t seem to be able to think straight any more. But follow me through this, Astra. If some chap came up to you at a party and introduced a beautiful redhead, and then—given that the chap exchanged a few pleasantries with you every now and then—more or less stayed glued near to said redhead all night…Then—bearing in mind you’d had your fill of philandering Casanovas, having a year ago divorced one—how