‘Luke Crighton?’ She was frowning slightly now and looking both embarrassed and confused.
Max took a couple of steps towards her, causing her to retreat into the house and allowing him to follow her inside. It was a simple enough manoeuvre to master and one he had used to good effect many times in the past.
‘There,’ he explained mock-ruefully, ‘I told Luke that you probably wouldn’t remember him. You worked in chambers with him in Chester some time ago. His father, my uncle was …’
‘Oh yes …’ Her face cleared. ‘Of course, Luke …’
Her colour deepened and she looked both flattered and self-conscious and Max knew perfectly well why. He resisted the temptation to laugh. Did this plain, dull-looking little thing really believe that Luke was likely to have remembered her?
‘So you’re Luke’s cousin … er … please come in.’
A little awkwardly she ushered him into a very Colefax and Fowler furnished sitting room, which Max guessed, as he cast a brief eye over it, probably cost more to decorate than he was likely to earn in a full year, and as for the value of the antiques he could see scattered around the room … Its whole ambience shrieked family wealth and family status and his resentment against her grew. Why the hell couldn’t she have been satisfied with what her type did best? Living in the country and breeding, that was what she was designed for. You only had to look at those softly rounded hips….
‘Er, can I get you a drink?’
‘Thanks,’ Max accepted easily. ‘Dry sherry if you’ve got any.’
She had, of course, and it pleased him to notice that her hand trembled noticeably as she handed him a glass.
‘So, how is Luke?’
‘He’s fine, still based in Chester, of course. I saw him when I went home for a family celebration a few weeks ago. We were both reminiscing about our misspent youth and he happened to mention you and suggested that I call and pass on his regards.’
‘Oh … I see … how kind. I’m surprised he even remembered me, really,’ she told him guilelessly. ‘I was only there the one summer and we didn’t keep in touch. I hadn’t realised … And what do you do?’ she asked him politely.
‘I’m in pupillage at the moment,’ he told her. ‘Or rather, I’m waiting for a vacancy.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘I could move straight into chambers in Chester, of course, but I prefer to be independent, to make it on my own rather than rely on family patronage.’ He gave her a crocodile smile and waited.
‘Oh yes,’ she agreed, stammering slightly, ‘I … I couldn’t agree more.’
‘Mmm … good sherry,’ he commented, pointedly studying her legs as she quickly responded to his hint and took his glass away to refill it.
She had the kind of neat, delicate ankles that plumpish girls often had and they looked as though they were rather nicely tanned beneath her sheer stockings.
‘What about you?’ he asked her, accepting his newly filled glass and the comfortable easy chair she indicated. As he slid nonchalantly into his seat, he noticed the way she perched uncomfortably on the edge of hers. ‘Luke mentioned that you were planning to study for the Bar yourself after university.’
‘Did he? I didn’t realise he knew … I didn’t think …’
Max held his breath as he heard the note of uncertainty enter her voice. He was really going to have the ground cut from under him if she came out with some comment about not having made up her mind what she was going to do when she worked in Chester. Max had always preferred the bold manoeuvre over the cautious, preferring to gamble for high stakes rather than low and he guessed that with her family background, her choice of career would be automatic and unquestioning, just like her acceptance of his lies about Luke’s remembering her.
‘Well, yes … I’ve taken my Bar exams and have been in pupillage,’ she acknowledged, allowing him to start to relax, ‘but I’m not sure … that is, as yet I haven’t quite … Mummy and Daddy thought I might like to take a year off before …’ She bit her lip and looked acutely self-conscious.
‘Mummy’s on the committee of a charity that helps homeless children all over the world and she wants me to go with her on her next tour. I’d like to but … Well … I’m the only one, you see, and I feel I owe it to Daddy to … to preserve the family tradition. He and my grandfather would never say anything, of course. They’d never push me, but one does feel that one has some kind of obligation.’
‘Sounds rather like my people, especially my grandfather,’ Max responded with another crocodile smile. ‘It must be something to do with the way they were trained.’
‘Oh … what does he do?’
‘He’s retired now,’ Max told her smoothly. No need to mention at this stage that the elderly man had only made it as a country solicitor. ‘But I do understand what you mean about upholding a family tradition. As a Crighton, it’s expected that one will become involved with law one way or another. As you say, one feels a sense of responsibility and duty.’ He gave her a complacent look, which was rewarded by a shy smile.
‘It’s nice to talk to someone who knows … who understands …’ she started to confide. She broke off and said instead, ‘It isn’t always easy, is it? One seems to be sort of caught in the middle of things, caught between one’s family and—’
‘And those who think that because of your family, your history and connections, that everything is so much easier for you,’ Max suggested sympathetically.
She gave him another smile. ‘Yes, yes, exactly that, and yet in many ways it can be harder because one feels that …’ She spread her hands and admitted, ‘I feel guilty myself sometimes, especially when I see how hard other people have to work. I even feel guilty about … well, it isn’t easy to find a place in chambers, and there are people with outstanding qualifications who just don’t …’
She stopped again and looked at him. She had a habit of leaving her sentences unfinished and waiting for someone else to finish them for her—an indication of the fact that there had always been someone around to complete life’s more mundane chores for her, Max decided resentfully. But he kept that resentment hidden, the expression on his face benignly and deceptively understanding.
‘My … my friend, Claudine, who shares here with me, she has the most wonderful qualifications but because she doesn’t have any family background in the law she has been finding it most awfully difficult to get a place in chambers and yet I know she would make the most wonderful barrister.’
‘Perhaps your father could help her,’ Max suggested carelessly. He didn’t have the remotest interest in her friend, whoever she was, and even less in her problems in getting a toe-hold on their very slippery and steep career ladder. Why the hell should he? He had enough problems of his own.
‘Well, yes …’ she agreed, looking awkwardly uncomfortable. ‘Daddy could do something but …’
But he probably felt disinclined to use his undoubted power for the advancement of someone who was not ‘family’. That was, after all, how the system worked, how life worked, Max acknowledged cynically, but he kept those thoughts to himself, glancing with apparent regret at his now-empty glass and getting to his feet, telling his unsuspecting hostess, ‘I really must go. I’ve taken up more than enough of your time. I hope I haven’t held you up, delayed you on your way out?’
‘No … not at all … I wasn’t going out and … and I really enjoyed talking to you,’ Madeleine told him shyly. ‘Please … please remember me to Luke when you next see him.’
‘Oh no,’ Max told her softly, moving in for the kill. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
She gave him a startled look.
‘I’ve