‘No.’
Maisie looked up at her, a picture of innocence. Something he’d seen her do a hundred times. She’d been listening…
‘I was waiting until you’d finished, that’s all.’ With that, she turned and flounced inside. The dog followed her.
‘When is Sally due to arrive,’ he asked, reclaiming her nanny’s attention, ‘in China?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said, adding a carrier bag to her load, which she held in one hand as she shut the car door. ‘Tomorrow some time, I would imagine. She might pick up her messages earlier if she has a stopover. Of course it’ll be the middle of the night here so she’ll probably wait until the time zones connect before she calls.’
Harry doubted that the difference in time zones would stop his cousin. It would be the sure and certain knowledge that if she called home she’d be expected to do something about the mess she’d made, rather than consideration. That and the fact that the longer she delayed, the more likely it was that someone else would have sorted it out for her by the time she did call. He didn’t say that.
He said, ‘In other words I’m stuck with the pair of you for the night.’
‘Thanks for the welcome,’ she said and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. Not the kind of smile that would make a person feel warm inside, a smile acknowledging how hard this was for him. It was a smile that suggested, in the fullness of time, he’d regret being so thoroughly ill-mannered. ‘And the tea. That at least was lukewarm when I drank it. What time do you have dinner?’
‘Whenever you feel like making it, Miss Moore. Tea is about as domestic as I get.’ He didn’t bother to cross his fingers at this blatant lie. He just wanted her to go and he didn’t care what he had to do to make it happen.
She stared at him. ‘Did someone programme you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘So am I, but we’ll let that pass. I mean did someone take you into a laboratory and fit a chip, preprogrammed with chauvinist cliche´s, into your head?’
‘Is that necessary?’ he enquired. ‘I’d always been led to believe that it was genetic.’
‘That’s just something mendacious men made up to avoid doing their share of the housework.’
‘Possibly,’ he admitted. ‘Although my personal theory is that it was made up by pathetic women to excuse their inability to control them. No matter how hard they try.’
Her eyes, he noticed with interest, had heated up to the colour of molten silver, but that was the only indication that her temper was on a short fuse.
‘I only asked what time you eat,’ she continued, with impressive outward calm, ‘so that we won’t disturb you. You are, of course, more than welcome to join us for nursery tea at five o’clock.’
‘You won’t find any fish fingers in my freezer.’
‘No? Well, I’m sure we’ll manage.’
He shrugged. ‘Maisie has a room of her own in the east tower,’ he said, resisting his natural inclination to take the bags and carry them up for her. The worse her opinion of him, the more likely she was to keep out of his way. ‘She knows where it is. You can have the room next door. Don’t get comfortable, you’re not staying a minute longer than necessary.’
‘Extraordinary! I’d have said we didn’t have a thought in common, but do you know that’s exactly what I promised Maisie?’ He must have frowned be-cause she added, by way of explanation, ‘That I’d only stay until we could find someone she liked to take care of her.’ And she smiled again, as if she knew something that he didn’t.
He ignored the smile and said, ‘I’m glad to hear it. Give me your keys and I’ll put your car in the coach house.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said, clearly caught off balance by such unexpected thoughtfulness. ‘Well, thank—’
‘Nothing that old should be left out overnight in the cold and damp. I’ll take a look at your exhaust while I’m about it. I wouldn’t want anything to delay you in the morning.’
CHAPTER FOUR
JACQUI was shaking so much from her confrontation with Harry Talbot that her legs were jelly as she climbed the stairs.
Thankfully, Maisie was skipping along happily in front of her, leading the way up a second flight of stairs to her own special bedroom and not in the slightest bit bothered, apparently, at the lack of welcome. And hopefully not fully understanding the less than edifying exchange between them.
What on earth had she been thinking?
She’d always known that the giant wasn’t going to be happy about them staying, although even she hadn’t been prepared for quite such a hostile response.
Not that she’d exactly helped matters.
If Harry Talbot had been a wasp’s nest, she would have been the idiot poking it. Which wasn’t like her at all.
Usually she was the soul of tact. Was always prepared to see the other person’s point of view. Even to the point of being walked all over—witness the way Vickie Campbell had stitched her up like a kipper…
Pouring oil on troubled waters was something she usually managed without thinking, but Harry Talbot’s attitude made her see red, and instead of pouring the oil she’d set fire to it and tossed in a couple of metaphorical hand grenades for good measure.
It was within her job description to stand up to him, if necessary, for Maisie’s sake. Unfortunately she’d done rather more than that.
Not that it was entirely her fault. He had seriously provoked her.
She couldn’t have made it plainer that she didn’t want to stay, but honestly, from the way he’d looked at her, anyone would have thought she’d planned the whole thing just to annoy him.
As if she’d really choose to abandon a holiday in the sun—no matter how cheap and cheerful—in order to stay on some cold, fogbound hilltop in a less than spring-like English spring with a bad-tempered bigot.
‘This is my room,’ Maisie announced, opening the door, forcing her to push Harry Talbot to the back of her mind and concentrate on the job in hand.
Jacqui instantly saw the attraction; understood why the child would want to stay despite Harry Talbot’s miserable attitude. The room, at the top of the tower, was pure princess fantasy, from the lace-draped little four-poster bed and matching looped-back curtains, to the hand-painted furniture, where flora in all shades through mauve to deepest purple had been relieved by a green tracery of stems and leaves.
And Harry Talbot must have fixed the boiler because the room was warm and, despite the miserable weather, the bed didn’t feel in the slightest bit damp.
‘It’s lovely, Maisie. Did your grandmother do all this just for you?’
‘Don’t be silly. My mother got in a decorator.’
Of course she did. Go to the back of the class, Jacqui told herself, slapping at her own wrist as the child flounced across to the window.
‘You can see Fudge’s field from here.’
Jacqui, fully prepared to heap admiration on some fat little pony, followed her, but the mist pressed against the glass, obliterating the view.
‘It’s not very nice out there.’ Maisie frowned. ‘He’ll be cold.’
‘Won’t he be tucked up in the stables, where it’s warm and dry?’
‘Maybe. Can we go and make sure?’
Jacqui would have rather stayed away from the outbuildings. Harry Talbot had said