The guard, his whistle to his lips, held the door for him as he raced up the stairs to catch the eight-fifteen train into London. ‘You’ve cut it a bit fine this morning, Mr Kavanagh.’
‘I seem to be cutting my entire life a bit fine at the moment, Michael,’ Fergus replied, without any noticeable lack of breath, as he stepped aboard.
The other man grinned. ‘It’s always the same with weddings. I’ve seen two daughters through it; I know what it’s like. Just you concentrate on how peaceful it’ll be when it’s all over, and you’ll sail through it.’ And with those words of comfort the man blew his whistle and slammed the door.
Peace. As Fergus made his way through the crowded carriages in the direction of the restaurant car the word flickered tantalisingly, like a beacon just out of reach. Peace was a concept that had always seemed just to elude him, but he had believed, he had really believed, that after Dora’s wedding it might at long last be attainable.
With both his sisters married, and now the responsibility of their respective husbands, he could concentrate on business, his estate and the simple pleasures available to a bachelor of means. He was a collector. He collected fine art, fast racehorses and profitable companies.
He should have known better. Even up to their eyes in such desperately important last-minute decisions as colour schemes for flowers and balloons, the problem of how they were going to seat three women who had all, at one time or another, been married to the same man, and where in the world they were going to find a small boy who would not object to wearing satin knee breeches, Poppy and Dora, his two darling sisters, had still found time to plot yet more mayhem with which to plague him.
Well, they could plot without him. He refused to take any further part in the proceedings. His club might be dull, but women were excluded from any part of it, and with Dora in temporary possession of his house he was quite prepared to stay there until the wedding. He would have stayed there until after the wedding, until every vestige of confetti had been plucked from the borders, every trace of heel-marks removed from his immaculate lawns by a bad-tempered gardener. Unfortunately, it was his duty to give away the bride and, since duty was something he had never shirked, that small personal revolution was denied him.
He paused at the entrance to the dining car and caught the steward’s eye.
‘Good morning, Mr Kavanagh. We’re a bit full this morning. The ladies seem to be taking advantage of the special discounted fare to visit the spring sales. We don’t usually see you on Friday,’ he said, glancing around, ‘or I’d have kept you a table. I’m afraid you’ll have to share …’
Yet more irritation. He was not in the mood for company. He had been looking forward to a quiet journey, during which he could read the City pages and forget all about his sister and her wedding.
Instead, he found himself being shepherded towards a two-seater table where a woman was perusing the menu.
No, that really was the last straw. The barrier of a newspaper was enough to deter most men from fatuous conversation; women, he knew from experience, were trickier. Bringing up two younger sisters had taught him just how tricky they could be. Peter should really know better than that. But one glance was sufficient to reassure him; the seat opposite her was occupied by a large hatbox. Excuse enough to move on.
He spotted an empty space at the far end of the compartment, but as he turned to point it out to the steward the woman forestalled him.
‘Do move that tiresome hatbox and sit down,’ she invited, in a low, husky voice. She had lowered the menu a little, and was regarding him over the top of it so that he could see a sweep of smooth platinum-blonde hair and a pair of the most extraordinary silver-blue eyes. As he hesitated, torn between a desire to avoid company and common courtesy, the expression in those eyes suggested that she knew precisely what was going through his mind, and was sufficiently entertained by his dilemma to stir the pot a little and see how he coped. ‘I don’t bite,’ she promised, without a trace of a smile.
Under normal circumstances he would simply have murmured something polite but distant and kept on moving. It was her eyes that kept him riveted to the spot, her eyes and her air of authority, of a belief in herself and confidence that he would do exactly as she said. Rare qualities in a woman. Rare enough to divert him from his purpose, although her beauty alone should have been enough for that.
Assured, elegant, she was old enough to be interesting, young enough to turn heads. No. That was wrong. She had the kind of bone structure that would still be turning heads when she was ninety. And she was definitely not going to the spring sales. The heavy grey silk of her skirt was too perfect a complement for her eyes to be a chance bargain, and the pearl studs in her beautifully shaped ears had the lustre that only a natural oyster could produce. A lustre that the lady herself matched to perfection.
He realised with something of a shock that she was one of the loveliest women he had ever seen. Yet there was more than beauty; there was a touch of mischief in those eyes that made him absolutely certain that she would prove a far more entertaining companion for the journey than his newspaper. His suddenly heightened pulse-rate was evidence enough of that. The distant table and its promise of a peaceful journey quite suddenly lost its appeal. But eagerness would be a mistake.
‘If you’re quite sure I wouldn’t disturb you? I could easily sit further along—’ The train lurched obligingly just at that moment, so that he was forced to grab the back of her seat. He smiled apologetically. ‘Perhaps I’d better just sit down.’
‘Perhaps you had,’ she agreed, her answering smile polite, nothing more. And yet there was something.
Intrigued, he lifted his overnight bag onto the luggage rack next to a small Vuitton suitcase that presumably was the property of the lady. Then he picked up the hatbox.
It was light, but awkward. Clearly too large for the overhead luggage rack, and there was no room for it beneath the table, although checking this out had given him the opportunity to admire a pair of long, slender legs and narrow, well-shod feet that matched the rest of the lady.
The hatbox, however, remained a challenge to his ingenuity. But not for long.
Thrust into control of a major industrial conglomerate whilst still in his twenties, Fergus Kavanagh did not lack ingenuity, and he had fine-tuned delegation to an art form. He turned and handed the box to the steward.
‘Perhaps you would be good enough to find somewhere safe to stow this, Peter,’ he said, then sat down, nodded briefly to his breakfast companion and flicked open his copy of the Financial Times. It was what that reserved creature of habit, the English businessman, would be expected to do, and every instinct was telling him that the lady would not allow him to ignore her for long.
For a moment Veronica regarded the crisply cut dark head of hair, the glimpse of broad forehead and long, rather thin fingers holding the paper—all that was visible of Mr Fergus Kavanagh behind his Financial Times. And she was glad of a moment’s respite.
Her heart was pounding like a drum. She hadn’t felt so nervous since she had negotiated her first big contract. Kavanagh’s business career suggested a man prepared to take a risk, prepared to be unconventional, but on first acquaintance he seemed nerve-rackingly distant, a touch austere.
Yet there was something about the way he was holding his newspaper, a stillness that suggested he was not reading but waiting for her to make a move.
Then there was that promising smile, brief though it had been, fanning laughter lines about his eyes, almost as if he knew … Maybe, beneath the disguise of that pinstriped suit and old-school tie, there beat the heart of an adventurer after all. She certainly hoped so. In fact, she was counting on it.
‘Would you care to look at my menu?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Whilst Peter is disposing of my hat?’
Fergus smiled under cover of his newspaper. He was human enough to enjoy being