His mind had a new, worrying tendency to wander away from anything to do with work Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE Copyright

His mind had a new, worrying tendency to wander away from anything to do with work

What is the matter with you? he asked himself furiously, finding himself doodling a face on his blotter. Big eyes, warm mouth...James scribbled blackly all over it and put down his pen. He would not, must not think about Patience Kirby.

Dear Reader,

Traditionally, a romance novel is seen through a woman’s eyes, but I have often wondered how her man sees the same events. Are men more like us than we realize? Are they as unsure of themselves, are their feelings as deep, do they get hurt, do we baffle them, keep them awake the way they do us? Do they need love to make their lives complete? When Harlequin Presents suggested I write a story entirely from the man’s point of view I jumped at the chance to find the answers to some of these questions. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Sincerely,

An Excellent Wife?

Charlotte Lamb

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN the phone began to ring in the outer office James ignored it, expecting his secretary to pick it up, or, failing that, her current assistant, a girl with hair of an improbable yellow, the colour of a day-old chick, which was very suitable since, in his opinion, she had the brains of one, too, not to mention an irritating habit of flinching every time James spoke to her. This morning, however, neither woman answered the phone. The ringing went on and on, without cessation, making it impossible to concentrate on the complex financial analysis he was studying.

At last James could stand the noise no longer. Springing to his feet, he strode to the door of his secretary’s office and flung it open. ‘Why don’t you answer that phone?’

He stopped in mid-sentence, seeing that the room was empty and that there was nobody in the smaller room beyond, the door of which already stood open.

His entire secretarial staff appeared to have deserted him. The place was a Marie Celeste. Computers were switched on, their screens blinking, a fax machine was churning out paper in a comer and a pile of letters stood waiting to be signed, but of human beings there was no sign, except for himself, and the still shrill and ringing telephone.

‘Where the hell are they?’ James leaned across the desk to pick up the phone to silence it, his jet-black hair falling over his eyes. It was getting too long; he must have it trimmed. But he hadn’t had time; he was far too busy this week.

‘Hallo?’ he curtly said, and was met with silence for a second, as if the caller had been taken aback by his impatient tone.

Then a husky female voice said, ‘I want to speak to Mr James Ormond, please.’

Miss Roper had a telephone routine which James had heard a thousand times. He followed it now, more or less, not precisely in her words, let alone her cool, clear, modulated tones, in fact more in a terse growl, asking, ‘Who is this?’

‘My name is Patience Kirby,’ she said, as if expecting to be recognised, then added, ‘Mr Ormond won’t know me, though.’

He’d already realised that. The name meant nothing to him, and if she represented some company she would surely have said so. As she clearly did not, he was not wasting his precious time on her. That was what he employed Miss Roper to do—weed out time-wasting callers and make sure he wasn’t inconvenienced. Miss Roper could deal with this woman when she got back.

‘Ring back later,’ he curtly advised, starting to put the phone down.

Before he could do so, the soft voice implored, ‘Oh, please! Is that...? Are you Mr Ormond?’

‘Ring back later,’ he repeated, his cold grey eyes swivelling to stare accusingly at his secretary as she came hurrying through the door with her blonde assistant trailing after her.

Hanging up the phone, James snapped at the two women, ‘Why am I having to waste my time answering your phone? Where have you been?’

The blonde girl gave a terrified little baa, like a lamb confronted by a wolf, and backed out of Miss Roper’s office into her own with that halfwitted expression on her face which he recognised all too well. Why on earth had Miss Roper appointed her?

James had gradually got into the habit of leaving the hiring and firing of the secretarial staff to Miss Roper. He had come to trust her judgement, but this girl was not one of her successful appointments. He must have a word on the subject when he wasn’t so busy. The girl must go; it was disconcerting to have her backing away from him in such obvious panic every time she saw him. It was making James feel like some relation of Jack the Ripper.

Miss Roper said, ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Ormond, the girls in Admin were giving a coffee party for Theresa; we just shot along there with our presents for a few minutes. She’s leaving today, as you know...’

‘I didn’t know. I don’t even know her, come to that. Theresa who?’

‘Theresa Worth. She’s on the switchboard, a girl with short black hair and glasses.’

Dimly James remembered her from that description. ‘Oh, that girl! Why is she leaving? Got a better job? Or did you fire her?’

‘She’s having a baby.’

He raised his brows. ‘Is she married?’

His secretary observed him with a wry expression. ‘Don’t you remember? She got married last year and we gave a party for her. You let us use the canteen.’

‘I remember that,’ James said, voice cold. They had created havoc in the place, throwing food about, from the sight of the floor, and chucking those paper streamers that fire out of cardboard cases and stick to everything for miles around. The cleaners had complained bitterly next day.

Miss Roper looked guilty, as well she might.

‘Is this girl going for good? She isn’t just having maternity leave?’ asked James.

‘No, sir, she and her husband are moving back to Yorkshire. Theresa isn’t coming back.’

‘Just as well; she seems to have been quite a nuisance so far.’

‘She’s very popular,’ Miss Roper told him indignantly. ‘We all like her.’ Even if you don’t, said her brown eyes. ‘And I assure you, Mr Ormond, we weren’t gone more than a minute, and I told the switchboard not to put any calls through until we got back. I’m very sorry you were disturbed. I’ll investigate and make sure whoever put the call through comes along to apologise in person.’

‘No, don’t bother, I’ve already wasted enough time. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

‘It won’t,’ she promised, very flushed.

He couldn’t remember ever seeing her look so flustered before. She was always so neat and calm, a small sparrow of a woman with brown hair and eyes, who wore a lot of brown, too: brownish tweed skirts in winter, brown linen in summer, with crisp white shirts.

She wore grey and black, too, actually, but whenever James thought about his secretary he imagined her in brown. The colour expressed something essential in her personality. Brenda Roper was older than him by twelve years. When James had begun working at the bank, fourteen years ago, after leaving university, Miss Roper had been assigned to him by his father, then managing director, who had handpicked her from the various candidates, and she had been with James ever since.

In the beginning, when he’d been unsure about himself and struggling to find his feet in a family firm run by a dictatorial father, James had found her efficiency slightly intimidating, which was why he had insisted on calling her Miss Roper, instead of using her first name. Using surnames to each other had seemed to put their relationship on the right footing, made James feel more in charge, less of a newcomer.

They still continued the same polite formality today, although James knew that most of his executives were on first-name terms with their secretaries. From time to time James had hovered on the point of using Brenda Roper’s first name, but had always drawn back from changing a long-established and successful habit.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving the office?’ he demanded. ‘Anyone could have walked in here, could have stolen the cash from the safe or operated the computers, retrieved secret information from the private files, endangered one of our projects.’

‘Not without the code words, Mr Ormond,’ Miss Roper said quietly. ‘Nobody can hack into our private computers without those, and you and I are the only ones who know the codes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you we were going out; I didn’t want to interrupt you.’

‘In that case, why did you both go? You should have left the halfwit behind. At least she can answer phones, even if she can never take a message properly.’

From the outer office they both heard a muffled squeak.

Miss Roper gave James a reproachful look. ‘Lisa does her best, Mr Ormond.’

‘It isn’t good enough!’

‘That isn’t fair. Believe me, she’s a capable girl, she works hard. It’s just that you make her nervous.’

‘I can’t imagine why!’

Miss Roper drew an audible breath, her eyes rounding into brown saucers. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and then the phone began to ring again so she moved swiftly to answer it, looking faintly relieved, like someone snatched from the brink of making a disastrous move.

James walked back into his own office, slamming the door behind him. He had a feeling they had both been rescued from a dangerous moment, too. Sitting down behind his wide, green-leather-topped desk again, he picked up the report he needed to finish studying before lunch. He had the ability to switch off his immediate surroundings and focus all his energy on his work without being distracted by thought of anything else, yet he was always very punctual for appointments. He would stop work at exactly the right moment in order that he should not be late for his lunch with Sir Charles Standish, one of his directors, with whom he needed to discuss the report he was reading.

Charles had once worked for the firm they were studying; he would be able to supply details this report did not contain. James liked to know everything about a company before he made up his mind about it. This particular company might be ripe for a take-over bid by one of the bank’s biggest clients, who had asked James for his opinion before they reached a decision. He could not afford to make a mistake.

Miss Roper came in with his coffee five minutes later and began to murmur another apology as she poured strong black coffee from the silver coffee pot on the silver tray, both of them inherited from his father who had always used them.

‘I really am very sorry you were disturbed,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you have a lot on your mind this week.’

Without looking up, James waved a dismissive hand. ‘Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. In future, there must always be someone on duty out there. I don’t pay you to have to answer the phones myself. You’ll be wanting me to type my own letters soon!’

‘You can’t type, Mr Ormond.’

James looked up then, eyes narrowed and wintry, flecked with ice. ‘Is that meant to be a joke, Miss Roper? Or was it sarcasm?’

‘No, it was simply a statement of fact,’ she said, without sounding contrite, and lingered by his desk, as if having more to say.

Impatiently James asked, ‘Well?’

‘A Miss Kirby is on the phone, sir, asking to speak to you.’

He frowned. ‘Kirby?’ The name was familiar but he couldn’t place it until he remembered the earlier call. ‘Patience Kirby?’

Miss Roper gazed at him with eyes that seemed to James to hold a secret, almost furtive smile. ‘Yes, that’s right, sir, Patience Kirby. Shall I put her through?’

He glared. ‘Do you know her?’

‘Me?’ She looked taken aback. ‘No, Mr Ormond, I don’t know her. I thought you did.’ The secret smile had disappeared from her eyes.

‘Well, I don’t. Who is she?’

‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t ask; I assumed it was a personal call.’

‘What gave you that idea?’

‘Miss Kirby did.’

‘Oh, did she? You don’t surprise me. While you were out I took a call from her, and that was the first time I heard her name.’

‘So, shall I put the call through?’

‘Certainly not. Find out what she wants and deal with it yourself.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Miss Roper backed out, closing the door.

James picked up his cup of coffee and sipped as he continued working. It was exactly the way he liked it, strong and fragrant. He always had his coffee at this hour, served in a delicate porcelain cup, white with a dark blue trim edged with gold, one of an early Victorian set which had belonged to his father before him. It was still complete, not a cup or saucer broken, and lived in a glass cabinet when not in use. Bank employees handled it with kid gloves. They knew how much it meant to James Ormond: one of the symbols of continuity in the bank, a link with his dead father and grandfather.

He always drank two cups, ate one thin shortbread biscuit from a flat silver box. He was a man of routine, established very early in life by his father, who had been a strict disciplinarian and who had trained his only son to run the merchant bank, Ormond & Sons, on precisely the lines Henry Ormond’s father had laid down some seventy years ago. They might now use new technology, electronic wizardry that made their work much easier, but in other ways nothing much had changed.

Their offices were in the City of London, within walking distance of the rambling outer walls of the Tower of London. From this floor James had a good view of the River Thames and a fascinating panorama of London, old and new. The glint of golden flames on top of the Monument to the Great Fire of London which had destroyed so much of the old city in the reign of Charles the Second, the dome of St Paul’s blocking in the skyline behind them, and in front of that the delicate spires of eighteenth-century churches crowded ever closer between the towering glass and concrete of late twentieth-century skyscrapers on both sides of the river.

James Ormond rarely looked at that view and barely saw it if he did occasionally glance out. He rarely looked up from his desk unless he was talking to someone, or was going out of the office. He was always at his desk by the time his secretary arrived; he customarily got to the office by eight and would have liked his secretary to get there by that hour, too, but Miss Roper had a mother living with her for whom she had to get breakfast and who she had to see settled in a chair by the window of their flat, with the television switched on, before she would leave. She paid a neighbour with children at school to come in five days a week to take care of her . mother and their flat until she got home.

James had suggested that Miss Roper should get the neighbour to come an hour earlier, but apparently the woman had to get her children off to school first, and the children needed to have a good breakfast and be taken to the school gates in person by their mother. The way these women organised their lives was maddening. It would have been far more convenient if he could have persuaded Miss Roper, and her neighbour, to see things his way, and organise their lives to suit him, but when you came up against their domestic responsibilities these helpful, sensible, capable women became immovable objects, politely deaf to the most rational of arguments.

The phone on his desk rang and James absently reached out a hand to pick it up. ‘Yes?’

‘Miss Wallis, sir,’ his secretary said in the remote voice she always used when she talked about Fiona. James was quite aware that Miss Roper did not like Fiona, and the hostility was mutual, he suspected, although Fiona was simply cool whenever she mentioned his secretary. Fiona never wasted energy on anyone who was no threat to her. Miss Roper seemed to hum like a vacuum cleaner with unspoken dislike, however.

This morning Fiona sounded listless and fuzzy. ‘Darling, I’m sorry, I’ll have to cancel dinner tonight. I’ve got one of my migraines.’

‘Cheese or chocolate?’

She laughed huskily. ‘You know me too well! Cheese, darling, at dinner last night, with my father. I had the merest sliver of Brie. It looked so delicious I couldn’t resist it, and I did hope I’d get away with it this time, but no such luck, alas. I’m almost blind with migraine this morning.’

‘How can you be so silly? Why risk triggering a migraine just for a piece of cheese?’ It was unlike her to be weak-minded, but she landed herself with one of these migraines every week or two by giving in to a passion for both cheese and chocolate, knowing perfectly well that a migraine would probably follow within eight hours.

‘I know, it was crazy, but I had the teeniest bit, James, and I do love Brie.’

His mouth twisted. ‘I despair of you. I hope you’ve at least taken your pills?’

‘Just now, but they haven’t started working yet. I’m at the office, but I’m going home to lie down in a dark room. It will probably take eight hours for me to get over it, so I have to scrub round this evening. Sorry, James. Maybe tomorrow night?’

‘It will have to be Saturday; I’m having dinner with the Jamiesons tomorrow night. Ring me on Saturday morning and don’t eat any more cheese! Or chocolate!’

She blew him a kiss. ‘I’ll be sensible. Bye, darling.’

He hung up, irritated that his planned evening should be ruined by something so unnecessary. They had been going to have dinner at a new restaurant someone had recommended, then go on to a club to dance for an hour or two. It was a favourite way of unwinding for both of them. They both loved the smoky, dark atmosphere of their favourite nightclub.

Fiona, an ice-blonde with hair the texture of white spun sugar and eyes of arctic blue, and he had been seeing each other for a year now, and he knew her family and friends expected them to get engaged any day.

She was probably the most suitable girl James had ever dated, and she would make an excellent wife for a man in his position, but he hadn’t proposed yet.

Fiona worked in her father’s stockbroking business, had a clear, hard mind for business, was tall and elegant, with perfect taste. He admired her looks, her clothes, her exquisitely furnished flat in Mayfair and her red Aston Martin, about which she was almost passionate—far more excited than she had ever seemed about James, he sometimes thought.

But then he wasn’t sure how he felt about her, either. Was he in love with her? He swung his chair round to face the window and gazed at the grey, glittering waters of the Thames, as if they might give him the answer to that question, but honesty forced him to admit to himself that the possibility had never arisen. He had never been ‘in love’ in his life.

He had fancied girls from time to time, had been to bed with some of them, although not with Fiona, who had told him early on in their relationship that she did not believe in sex before marriage. He had been faintly startled by that, had wondered if she might not be rather cold, sexually, a thought which was faintly offputting. He had tried a few times to get her to change her mind, but when she’d gently refused James hadn’t particularly cared. He wasn’t desperate to get her into bed, he discovered.

He knew that that meant he wasn’t in love with her—but then what did being in love really have to do with getting married? You didn’t need to be in love to have a good marriage; all you had to do was choose the right woman.

Someone who shared your interests and attitudes, a beautiful woman like Fiona, who made other men envy you, who looked good at your dinner table, who could discuss international finance or world affairs or politics rationally, without getting emotional or losing her cool. Fiona would never make heavy demands on his time or expect him to change the way his life was organised. What else did he want from a woman?

It was a little disturbing that neither of them felt any urgent desire to make the final jump, perhaps because they were both so comfortable as they were.

If they did marry, Fiona would have to sell her flat and move into his Georgian house close to Regent’s Park, in which he had lived all his life, his father having inherited it from his own father, old James Ormond the first, who had founded the firm and bought the house in 1895. James couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. If he felt passion for anything it was for his home. He loved every brick of it, every painting, piece of furniture, even every blade of grass in the garden.

Thirty-five, and very settled in his ways, he did not want his well-run life to change. He expected it to go on in just the same way for ever, even if he married and had children. He wanted children; he would like a son to inherit the business in turn, one day, and then maybe Fiona would want a daughter after that, but neither of them would want a large family. The children and the home would be Fiona’s province. She would get a nanny, of course, and continue to work, at least parttime. She was an only child, too, and would inherit her family business, but she liked to make decisions and be in charge; she would enjoy taking care of their home and family.

Yes, he was sure they would build a good life together, but there was plenty of time. No hurry.

The telephone on his desk rang again and he swung back to pick it up, saying curtly, ‘I thought I told you I didn’t want interruptions? I hope this is urgent.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Ormond, but Miss Kirby has rung again and insists on speaking to you. This is the fourth time she’s rung; I can’t get rid of her.’

‘Have you found out who she is? Has she told you what she wants to speak to me about?’

Miss Roper’s voice was expressionless and discreet. ‘She says she wants to talk to you about your mother, sir.’

James stiffened, his face losing all its colour, turning pale and immobile.

There was half a moment of silence. He heard his wristwatch ticking, a pigeon cooing on the windowsill outside, and from the river the sigh of a spring wind.

His voice harsh, he said at last, ‘My mother is dead; you know that perfectly well! I don’t know what she’s up to, but I do not want to speak to her, now or ever. Hang up, and then tell the switchboard not to put through any more calls from Miss Kirby.’

Dropping the phone back on its rest, he leaned back in his chair, his hands flat on the leather top of the desk, grey eyes bleak as they stared straight ahead.

His tie was too tightly tied; he couldn’t breathe. He angrily loosened the knot, undid the top button of his shirt.

Nobody had mentioned his mother to him since he was ten years old and she had vanished from his life for ever. He hadn’t even thought of her for years. He didn’t want to think about her now.

What was this Kirby woman up to? Was this some sort of blackmail attempt? Maybe he should have got Miss Roper to call the police? Or the security firm he employed to check on dubious clients? He could easily find out everything he needed to know about this Kirby woman, from where she had been born to whether or not she took sugar in her tea. But why waste time and money? She couldn’t be any sort of problem to him.

Oh, no? Women can always be a problem, he thought grimly. Even someone as rational and sensible as Fiona did crazy things, like eating cheese when she knew it gave her migraine. Miss Roper was prepared to annoy him in spite of the very high salary he paid her, simply because she had a mother living at home when she could easily find her a nice, comfortable nursing home where she would be well taken care of day and night. Women might have good brains, might try to think calmly and reasonably, but they usually ended up thinking with their hearts instead of their heads.

His mouth was oddly dry; he needed a drink. Getting up, he walked over to a discreetly concealed cabinet in the oak-panelled wall.

Opening it, James selected a tumbler and poured himself a finger of good malt whisky, dropped ice cubes into the glass and shut the cabinet again, then walked back to his desk, nursing his whisky.

He rarely drank before the evening, apart from a glass or two of wine during lunch. He sat down, leaned back, sipping the whisky. He must put the whole stupid incident out of his mind and get on with his work.

He looked at his watch. Half an hour left; he might still finish the report before he had to meet Charles, if he wasn’t interrupted again. Finishing his drink, he turned his attention back to the closely typed pages.

He was on the final page when a confused noise began outside. James looked up, frowning. Now what?

Someone was shouting—it was Miss Roper’s voice, he recognised a second later with amazement, since he had never heard her shout that way before.

‘No, he doesn’t want to see you! Look, I’m sorry... You can’t go in there! Stop...’

The door fell open and bodies crashed through into his office. Three bodies, to be precise. Miss Roper. Her halfwitted assistant. And a third woman, who rolled across the floor in a flurry of arms and legs and fiery red hair in a tangle of tight, exploding curls, finishing up close to him.

James was so stunned that he didn’t even move; he just sat there behind his desk, staring down at her.

Clutching at a chair to stop herself falling, Miss Roper burst into stammering explanation, on the verge of tears.

‘I told her...said she couldn’t...she forced her way past me. I’m sorry, I did my best...she wouldn’t listen.’

Her assistant was already backing out, away from James’s terrifying presence, making gasping noises of panic and alarm. He took no notice of her, expecting nothing else from her by now, and in any case far too intent on the third person who had imploded into his room.

She was at his feet, quite literally, suddenly reaching out and attaching herself to his shoes with both hands, clinging on like a limpet.

‘I’m not going until you let me talk to you!’

James looked at Miss Roper again. ‘Is this who I think it is? The Kirby woman?’

‘Patience Kirby,’ said the girl, her slanty hazel eyes fixed on his face. ‘Please, Mr Ormond, just give me five minutes of your time, that’s all I ask. I won’t go until you do.’

‘Call Security, Miss Roper,’ James ordered, flintyhearted.

Miss Roper gulped and headed for her own office.

‘You might as well get up,’ James told the girl. ‘I am not listening to you. If you aren’t out of here in one minute my security men will carry you out. And let go of my feet!’ He couldn’t move with her tethered to him, except by dragging her along with him.

Her hands let go of his shoes, but she immediately shot up and clasped his legs instead, wrapping her arms around them. ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’

‘You tiresome female! Let go of me, will you? You’re making yourself ridiculous—this isn’t some soap on TV; this is real life and you are in serious trouble. I could have you arrested for forcing an entry and physical assault!’

‘I’ve got a message from your mother,’ she said, ignoring his threats.

‘My mother is dead!’ James heard the running feet of the security men along the stone floors in the corridor from the lift. Thank God, they would be here soon to end this embarrassing scene.

‘No, she isn’t, she’s alive.’ She bit her lip, frowning. ‘You didn’t really think she was dead, did you?’ The small face lifted to him had an annoyingly childlike look: heart-shaped, with large, beautifully spaced glowing eyes fringed by a ludicrous number of thick ginger lashes which shone in the sunlight like gold, a small nose and a wide, warm mouth. She wasn’t pretty, but she was oddly appealing. Not his type, of course; he preferred women to be elegant and coolly beautiful, with good brains, like Fiona, but he could imagine that boys of her own age might find this girl adorable.

‘My mother is dead!’ he insisted, his teeth snapping out the words.

‘Did your father tell you that? And all this time you’ve believed she was...? Oh, that’s terrible.’ Tears actually formed in those eyes. One began sliding down her cheek while James watched it incredulously.

‘Stop that!’ he muttered. ‘What are you crying about?’

‘It’s so sad...when I think of you... How could your father lie to you like that? Only ten years old, to be told your mother was dead! You must have been heartbroken.’

He had been. He remembered the coldness that had sunk into him, the misery and anguish, the sense of betrayal, of desertion. Of course, his father hadn’t told him his mother was dead. His father wasn’t a man given to telling lies. He had told him the cold, bitter truth.

‘Your mother has run off with another man and left us both,’ his father had said curtly. ‘You’ll never see her again.’

James had been taken off to stay with an aunt who had a bungalow at Greatstone, on the Kent coast, and had stood, day after day, on the beach, staring out at the grey, heaving waters of the English Channel, listening to the melancholy cry of gulls, the slow, sad whisper of the tide rising and falling on the sand. Whenever he heard those sounds something inside him ached, a stupid emotional echo of almost forgotten pain.

‘But she isn’t dead! She’s alive!’ said Patience Kirby.

‘She’s dead to me,’ James said tersely.

It was too late now for his mother to come back. He had spent a quarter of a century living without her; he had no need of a mother now.

Three security men burst into the room, big men in dark uniforms and peaked caps, ready to do battle with whatever they might find.

‘Get her away from me,’ James ordered.

The girl turned her small, heart-shaped face to them. They stared at her tear-wet eyes and trembling lips, then all three men shuffled their feet and looked sheepish.

One of them said uneasily, ‘Better get up, miss.’

Another offered her a hand. ‘Come on, miss, let me help you up.’

‘No, I’m not moving!’ she obstinately refused, shaking her head so that the red curls flew around like the petals of a flower in wind.

‘Well, don’t just stand there, pick her up!’ ordered James, and leaned down to loosen her grip on his legs.

Her hands were smaller than he had expected; soft little fingers curled around his like tendrils of vine around a tree and he felt a queer tremor in his chest. Clutching them, he stood up, pulling her up with him. She came without a struggle, her head just below his shoulder level.

Was she an adult, or a child pretending to be grown up? he wondered, looking down at her in closer, sharper assessment. Five foot two or three, and, no, not a child, just a very small girl in her early twenties, in scruffy blue jeans and a cheap dark blue cotton sweatshirt which clung to small breasts and a skinny waist. Yet she was not boyish; indeed she was amazingly female in a way he found hard to explain to himself.

‘Your mother’s alive, Mr Ormond,’ she said softly. ‘She’s old and broke, and lonely. It would make her so happy to see you. She’s all alone in the world and she needs you.’

‘You mean she needs money,’ he said with a cynical twist of his lips. Now and then he wondered if his mother would one day get in touch and ask for money; he had never been quite sure whether or not he would give her any. In the divorce settlement she had been given a pretty considerable sum. his father had assured him; she was not entitled to anything else. But she had always been extravagant, his father had said; she would probably run through her money and be back for more one day.

Patience Kirby bit her lip. ‘Well, she hasn’t much, it’s true—just her old-age pension, actually, and when she has paid her rent she has barely enough to live on—but I throw in three meals a day and...’

‘You throw in three meals a day?’ he interrupted sharply.

‘She’s living with me.’

My God, is this girl her child? His stomach sank. He hated the idea. Is this my half-sister, daughter of whatever man his mother had run off with twenty-five years ago? He searched her face, looking for some resemblance, but found none. The girl did not look like his mother or any of their family.

‘I run a little hotel, a sort of boarding-house,’ Patience Kirby said. ‘The local Social Services people send me old people who need somewhere cheap to live. That’s how I got your mother; she came three months ago. She’s very frail; she’ll only be sixty next week, but she looks much older, she’s had such a hard life. She’s been living abroad, in France and Italy, singing in hotels and bars, she told me. Earning very little, just enough to keep her going.

‘I thought she had nobody in the world, then one day she told me about you, said she hadn’t seen you since you were ten. She thinks about you all the time; she has pictures of you and cuttings from newspapers about you stuck up everywhere around her room. She would give anything to see you at least once. You’re all she has in the world now, and she’s sick; the doctor doesn’t think she’ll live for more than a couple of years.’

James was furiously aware of their audience—the three security men, Miss Roper, the bird-brained assistant—all standing on the other side of the room, listening with obvious sympathy, their eyes moving from the girl’s emotional face to his set, cold one, their expressions reproaching him for being so hard-hearted.

Harshly, he said, ‘My mother chose to go away with some man twenty-five years ago, leaving me and my father without a backward look. It’s too late now for her to turn up and ask for help, but if you leave your name and address with my secretary I’ll make arrangements for her to start receiving some sort of pension.’

‘That isn’t what she wants!’ Patience Kirby burst out. ‘She wants to see you!’

‘But I don’t want to see her! Now, I’m very busy, I have a lunch appointment and I am going out.’

‘I’m not leaving here until you promise to come and see her, at least once!’

James told the security men, through clenched teeth, ‘Get her out of here, will you?’

They shuffled forward. ‘Please come along, miss!’

She sat down in James’s chair, hazel eyes defiant, red hair tumbling over her small face, and held on tightly to the arms. ‘I am staying put!’

Helplessly, they looked at their employer.

‘Pick her up and carry her out!’ James snarled. ‘Unless you no longer want your jobs?’

Galvanised by this threat, the three took reluctant hold of Patience Kirby’s arms and legs, in spite of her struggles, and began to carry her towards the door.

‘How can you be so heartless? Whatever she did all those years ago, she’s still your mother!’

‘She should have remembered that fact years ago. Now, don’t come back or next time you’re going out of the window!’ he shouted after her disappearing red curls, surprised to hear his own voice sounding so out of control.

He hated losing control; it was Patience Kirby’s fault; she had pushed him to the limit. But she had wasted her time. He was going to forget everything she had said about his mother, you didn’t wipe out a lifetime of rejection by simply turning up and asking for forgiveness after twenty-five years. Patience Kirby wasn’t getting through his defences a second time. He would see to that. He hoped never to set eyes on the girl again.

CHAPTER TWO

AS HE left the office shortly afterwards James told Miss Roper to find out how Patience Kirby had got up to his floor and make sure it did not happen again.

‘She should never have got past the receptionist, let alone into a lift. Check which receptionist was working this morning, and which security guard was on duty by the lifts. That girl could have been a terrorist or a bank robber! Security has obviously become very lax. I want them to have a surprise security exercise tomorrow. Let’s see how alert the team really is!’

‘Yes, sir.’ Miss Roper sounded meek enough but James knew her very well; she rarely called him sir, and when she did it was always a sign of suppressed rage over something that had upset her. He could see that her normally placid brown eyes were smouldering, glinting with red. Miss Roper was angry with him; she hadn’t approved of the way he’d dealt with Patience Kirby. She didn’t understand how he felt. Miss Roper’s mother hadn’t left her when she was ten years old.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ he crossly said, then turned away and stamped off to the lift feeling ill-treated and sorry for himself.

His chauffeur, Barny King, always drove him during the day so that James did not have to hunt for a parking space. Barny would drop him wherever he wanted to go, then drive off back to Regent’s Park, have his own lunch with his wife, Enid, in the kitchen of James’s house, and when James summoned him by telephone drive back to pick him up again.

He would be waiting outside now; he was always punctual. You could rely on Barny and he wouldn’t dream of implying criticism. Only women thought they had a God-given right to sit in judgement on other people. Men were far more reasonable and tolerant.

James did not use the same lift as all the other bank employees; he had an express lift which shot you straight down to the ground floor or the underground car park without stopping on any of the other seventeen floors. His father had installed it not long before he died because he’d feared being buttonholed with complaints or requests for a rise by employees using the opportunity of being in the same lift.

Emerging on the marble-tiled ground floor, James paused to glance around in case Patience Kirby was hanging about, but he didn’t see her. There were crowds going in and out of the other lifts, walking to the revolving doors which led to the busy city street, taking the escalator upwards. But no Patience.

What a name for a little hothead like her! Her parents must have seen that red hair and expected her to have a temper to match, surely! The name must have been their warped idea of a joke.

As he walked across the foyer James admired the decor, as he always did; he had chosen the design of the long, high, wide plate glass wall along one side, admitting as much light as possible, the marble-tiled floors and the glass-walled escalator which slowly ascended through hanging vines and rubber plants which were of a tropical height now and kept on climbing. The original bank had been a far darker place, with fewer, smaller windows and no plants at all, just ancient, creaky, over-fussy furniture.

As a child he had not enjoyed his visits; he had thought the place gloomy and alarming, and had not looked forward to working there, as he knew his father would insist he did when he was old enough.

Looking back down the long tunnel of those years, he couldn’t remember what he would have liked to do instead. Drive a train, maybe? Or be an explorer? He certainly had not wanted to work in a bank. It was his destiny, his father had told him. Doom would have been a more accurate word.

When his father died, four years ago, James’s first act as managing director and chairman had been to begin making changes to the structure of the bank in an effort to create a more pleasant working environment for the staff and customers. The work had cost millions, but every time he looked around the light-filled reception area, the glass and greenery, he was satisfied that it had been well worth it.

The dark and gloomy building he remembered from his childhood had been buried for ever in his memory.

He hurried out through the revolving doors and across the pavement to where his chauffeur was holding open the door of the white Daimler. James shot into the back and gave a sigh of relief as Barny closed the door on him and walked round to get behind the wheel.

‘Lock the doors!’ James ordered, and with a glance of surprise Barny obeyed.

‘Something wrong, Mr James?’

‘No, just taking precautions,’ James enigmatically said, deciding not to mention Patience Kirby’s visit.

A man in his mid-fifties, with iron-grey hair sliding back from his forehead, leaving his scalp shiny and smooth, Barny King had been working for the Ormond family for years. He had driven James to boarding school, aged ten, with a set, pale face and very cold hands, had ferried him and all his luggage to Cambridge when he went off to university, trying to look thirty when he was actually only eighteen, and he had driven old Mr Ormond back and forth to the City from the exquisite house in Regent’s Park, where Barny and his wife had a private apartment over the garage.

Barny and Enid were an important part of James’s life, as important to him as Miss Roper but even closer because they had known him as a child and been kind to him when he needed kindness, comforting when he was lonely. When he remembered his childhood from the age of ten he remembered Barny and Enid, rarely his father. They had almost been parents to him; he had happy memories of sitting in the kitchen with them eating buttered crumpets and home-made jam sandwiches, neither of which were permitted on the table if he ate with his father.

James stared out of the window as they drove off. Patience Kirby must have given up and gone away. He suddenly remembered those tiny, soft warm hands clutching at him and felt a strange stab of undefined feeling in his chest.

Angry with himself, he frowned, pushed the memory of her away, got the financial report out of his briefcase and began skimming it through again. He wanted all the details fresh in his mind when he met Charles.

Traffic along Piccadilly was as heavy as usual, but Barny fought his way through to drop James at the side entrance of the Ritz.

‘I’ll ring for you in a couple of hours,’ James told him, getting out.

He found Charles in the Palm Court, drinking a champagne cocktail. Waving cheerfully, Charles summoned the waiter to bring another for James.

‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’

James looked blank. ‘Is it? I hadn’t noticed.’

Charles roared with laughter. ‘All work and no play, Jimmy.’

He had always called him Jimmy, indifferent to the fact that James hated it. James sipped his cocktail and studied the menu, choosing in the end to have rocket and anchovy salad sprinkled with grated parmesan followed by a Dover sole with asparagus and new potatoes.

‘Grilled, served off the bone,’ he instructed, and the head waiter nodded.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sometimes I get déjà vu, lunching with you, Jimmy,’ Charles said. ‘You’re the image of your old dad. Time whizzes back for me, listening to you.’

‘I’m flattered,’ James said, knowing Charles had not intended to flatter him, was being sarcastic. ‘I was very attached to my father.’

Charles made a face. ‘Really? I hated mine. Never stopped lecturing me, tedious old Victorian of a chap.’

They ate in the beautiful dining room looking over Green Park. Their table was in a comer by the windows, which were slightly open to let mild spring air into the room, setting the gilded metal chains on the elaborately painted ceiling swinging and tinkling softly.

They talked business throughout the meal, but occasionally James looked out into the park at the daffodils, golden and swaying, under the trees which were just breaking into tiny, bright green leaf.

Noticing his occasional abstraction, Charles grinned at him. ‘How’s Fiona, Jimmy?’

How James hated that nickname, but he suppressed a shudder. ‘She’s fine, thanks.’

‘Ravishing girl, you lucky boy! I’d swap places with you any day. You’ve been seeing her for months, haven’t you? We going to hear the ringing of wedding bells before long?’

James gave him a cool look. Charles was not that close a friend and James had no intention of discussing Fiona or his personal life with him.

When he didn’t answer, Charles said cynically, ‘In no hurry to tie yourself down, eh? I wish I’d been as wise as you. Well, I’ve learnt my lesson now. No more marriages for me. In future I’ll just have affairs.’

In his early fifties, elegant, willowy, always smoothly tailored, with silvering at his temples among the smooth raven-black hair, Charles had been married four times so far and was currently in the middle of his latest divorce from a much younger woman, a ravishing TV star with her own series.

Coming home late after a business dinner, Charles had caught her in bed with her co-star. He might not have minded so much if it had not been the matrimonial bed, his own bed in his own bedroom, and if the other man had not been her age and something of a sexual athlete.

The divorce was to have been discreet, on grounds of breakdown of the marriage. Charles had not wanted the whole world to know his wife had been cheating on him with a much younger man. But his wife had not been so silent; she had given exclusive interviews to several daily newspapers and Charles had had the chagrin of reading intimate details of his sex life printed for everyone to see.

As they began to eat, James produced the report he had spent the morning studying and asked a series of shrewd questions. Charles might be a fool where women were concerned but he had a good business mind and was able to tell James everything he needed to know.

The bottle of good white wine they were drinking had vanished long before they finished their main course, but James had consumed very little of it. He disliked drinking too much over lunch; it always meant you got very little done during the rest of the day.

He refused a pudding, ordering a pot of coffee; Charles, however, asked for spotted dick with custard and ate it when it came with half-closed, delighted eyes.

‘Delicious, just like school pud. You should have had some.’

‘I never eat puddings, especially heavy ones.’

‘Puritan! Your problem is you were never taught to enjoy life. That gloomy old father of yours had a very bad influence on you.’

James could have said that his father had taught him not to keep marrying women who cost a fortune and were always unfaithful, not to drink like a fish and wake up late every morning with a hangover, and not to spend his days hanging around bars and going to wild parties. But where was the point in offending Charles by telling him the truth?

He looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, Charles, I have to rush off. I have an appointment at three. Thanks for all your help.’ He pulled his mobile out of his briefcase and called Barny, told him to come at once, then called the waiter over, asked for the bill, signed it, dropped a tip on the plate and stood up.

‘I think I’ll have a little brandy before I go,’ Charles said, settling comfortably in his chair. ‘Thanks for lunch, old boy. My love to Fiona. Sexy as hell, you lucky bastard.’

James went to the cloakroom, used the lavatory, washed his face and hands and brushed his black hair back, staring at himself in the mirror. His grey eyes had a wintry look. Would he call Fiona sexy? Not a word he would have chosen to describe her, no. Beautiful, yes. Elegant, yes. But sexy? No, she was far too cold.

A shiver ran down his spine. Was that what he really thought about her? Dismay filled him. Of course she wasn’t cold. Cool, maybe, but not cold.

Yet the grey eyes reflected in the mirror had a distinctly uneasy look. This was being a very unsettling day so far. He hurriedly turned from the mirror, collected his coat, shrugged into it, tipped the cloakroom attendant and went out of the hotel to find Barny just pulling up outside.

‘I hope I didn’t keep you waiting, Mr James. Traffic a bit heavy the other side of the park today.’

James smiled at him. ‘No, I just left the hotel. Perfect timing, Barny, as always. Back to the office, now. Did Enid give you a good lunch?’

‘Her oxtail stew and mashed potatoes, and then I had an apple.’

‘Lucky Barny. One of my favourites. What is she making tonight?’

‘Thought you were going out for dinner this evening, sir.’ Barny looked anxiously into the driving mirror. ‘We booked to see the new musical, Mr James—will you need us, after all?’

‘No, no, I’d forgotten. Of course I’m eating out.’ James did not want to ruin their evening just because his own had been cancelled. He might as well still eat at the new restaurant as he had a table booked.

Barny relaxed with a barely audible sigh of relief. ‘You had me worried there—Enid is really looking forward to seeing this show. You know how she loves a good musical. She’s such a romantic, my Enid.’

Eyes warming, James smiled back at him. ‘Always was, I remember. How many Sunday afternoons did I spend with Enid watching weepie films on TV, feeding her paper tissues to mop her eyes with? Well, have a lovely evening. Could you pick me up at five and drop me at my club? Then you’ll be free. I’ll get a taxi back home tonight.’

‘Right, Mr James, thanks.’ Barny drew up outside the bank; James looked around hurriedly before getting out, but there was still no sign of Patience Kirby’s bright red head. He felt a queer little niggle inside his chest; he told himself it was relief. She was the last thing he wanted to see. Crazy girl. But he was surprised—had she really given up and gone home?

He had a much busier afternoon and hardly had time to think about anything except work. At five o’clock precisely he went down in his lift and walked out of the bank to where Barny was waiting.

By then he had forgotten Patience Kirby. He got into the back of the Daimler; Barny walked round to get into the driver’s seat. The window beside James was half-open. A little hand came through it suddenly and grabbed his shoulder. Startled, he looked out into those large, luminous hazel eyes. Stupidly, for a second all he could think about was the tiny golden flecks around her dark pupil, like rays of sunlight fading into the soft hazel iris.

‘Won’t you please change your mind? Surely you could spare an hour to drive over and see her? Just once, that isn’t too much to ask, is it? If you could only see how frail she is, you wouldn’t refuse. She looks as if a breath of wind would blow her away.’

‘Can’t you understand English? As far as I’m concerned she’s dead. I’m not interested in renewing our acquaintance. Now, let go of me, will you? Drive on, Barny!’

He was hot with temper, partly because for a second he had felt his heart lift as if with delight, and that was disturbing, and partly because some of his employees were coming out of the bank, shamelessly eavesdropping and staring. This would be all round the bank tomorrow morning. In all his time at the bank James had never been the centre of scandal and he was furious at the prospect of all the gossip he could be sure would follow.

‘How can you be so hard-hearted?’ Patience Kirby hurled at him, her eyes glittering. ‘Your own mother!’

James heard an intake of breath from Barny, felt him swivel in his seat to stare with clearly shocked eyes. Damn her! What was she going to do next? Ring the national newspapers and give them the story, spread it right across the country?

‘I’m going to shut this window; get your hand out of it!’ he muttered, his hand reaching for the button.

The window began to slide upward. She snatched her hand away only at the last moment.

‘Drive off, Barny!’ snapped James.

Barny automatically obeyed, accelerating away fast just as James realised that the window had shut on Patience Kirby’s sleeve. To his horror he also realised that she was being dragged along with the car, her red hair blowing around the pale, frightened face he could still see outside his window.

‘Stop! For God’s sake, stop!’ he yelled at Barny, who slammed on his brakes. The Daimler came to a shuddering halt.

It was at that point that James made a stupid, overhasty move. He operated the electric switch, the window slid down, releasing her sleeve, and the red hair disappeared from his view. It was only at that second that he realised he should have waited, got out on the other side of the car and held her while Barny opened the window. As it was, she tumbled to the pavement with a crash that made his heart crash in echo. Jumping out, he found her lying face down; he hurriedly knelt down beside her, white-faced in shock. By then a crowd was beginning to gather, staring with a mixture of curiosity and hostility.

‘What’s happened?’ one woman asked another, who shrugged.

‘Think he knocked her down.’

‘Poor girl! Looks bad to me. Dead, I’d say.’

Barny had got out too. ‘How is she, sir?’ he asked, and James noted the slight frost in his tone and knew Barny was now as disapproving as Miss Roper. What was happening to everyone in his life? They were all starting to look at him as if he was a monster.

He had a strange suspicion that if he looked in a mirror right now he would find his own eyes held a similar expression.

Patience Kirby sat up shakily. ‘Are you okay?’ James asked. ‘You’d better not move until we get an ambulance.’

She put a hand to her head; James saw blood on both.

‘You’re bleeding! Barny, ring for an ambulance!’

Patience Kirby hurriedly staggered to her feet, using James’s arm for support.

‘No, really, I don’t want to go to hospital. They are bound to be busy. It will mean spending hours in Casualty waiting to be seen and all that’s wrong with me is a few cuts and bruises.’

‘You don’t know that! You could have some broken bones.’

She flexed a slim ankle, took a couple of swaying steps. ‘See, I can walk; I haven’t broken anything.’

‘What about your head? That hit the pavement with an almighty crack.’

‘Oh, I’ve got a tough skull.’ But she did not seem to James to be too steady on her feet, all the same.

‘Was she trying to snatch something out of your car?’ a man in the crowd hissed next to him. ‘I saw her grabbing at you through the window. Don’t know what the City’s coming to, street girls hanging about in broad daylight! You expect them up West, but not around here. You be careful, mister, I don’t think she’s hurt at all—just a bit of blackmail. I’ll be a witness for you if the cops come. I saw it was an accident; don’t you let her trap you.’

James gave him such a ferocious sideways glance that the man backed off hurriedly, muttering. ‘Oh, well, if you want to make a fool of yourself, don’t let me stop you.’

‘You should be X-rayed to make sure there are no fractures,’ James told Patience, who shook her head, grimacing.

‘I hate hospitals.’

‘Nevertheless it’s only sensible...’

‘I won’t go, okay? Look, if I feel any worse tomorrow I’ll go along to Casualty. Please stop fussing. You’re worse than my grandpa.’

Being compared to her grandfather went down like a lead balloon with James. Tight-lipped, he said, ‘Get in the car, please. I’ll give you a lift home.’

The crowd began to disperse, seeing that no further excitement was likely.

Her hazel eyes glinted mischievously up at him. ‘Remember, I might pick your pocket if you let me get close enough.’

‘Very droll, Miss Kirby. Please get into the car.’

She obeyed this time, but was still looking up at him, which was why she stumbled over the edge of the kerb.

Before she could hit her chin on the open car door James grabbed her, slid an arm around her waist, another behind her knees, and carried her to the car, very conscious of her glinting red hair brushing his jawline, her heart beating under that shabby old sweatshirt she wore, picking up a faint, flowery scent from her throat. If you missed the slight rise of those tiny breasts you’d think she could be a boy, she was so slightly built, so skinny of hip and leg, but it would be a mistake to forget her femininity. He had already been stung by it once or twice. Looking at her was one thing; having her in his arms made an entirely different and disturbing impression.

She looked like a child, but she got her own way with a woman’s maddening deviance. He had been determined not to visit her home and here he was, committed to doing just that—and the really infuriating part was that he didn’t even really mind.

Not that he was really attracted to a skinny brat like this, of course! Good God, no! It was just that... He tried to explain his reactions to himself, to be rational and level-headed, but she had slid her arms round his neck and put her head on his shoulder and James was suddenly having some sort of problem thinking at all.

Almost feverishly he deposited her in a hurry on the back seat of the car and climbed in beside her, trying not to make his agitation visible.

What the hell was the matter with him? He was behaving like some sex-starved lunatic.

Slamming the door, he watched Barny get back behind his driving wheel. Without looking at the girl, James asked curtly, ‘What’s the address?’

‘Muswell Hill, Cheney Road; the house is called The Cedars.’

The address intrigued him; it sounded Victorian, gracious, and didn’t fit this girl at all. He would be curious to see what her home looked like, what sort of family she came from. But he wouldn’t go into the house; he was not letting her win every trick. He would drop her and drive away.

‘Make for Muswell Hill. Barney,’ James said, leaning forward to open a small cabinet fixed to the back of the front seats. It held among other things first aid items; James selected a box of paper handkerchiefs, a bottle of still water and a couple of sticky plasters.

“Turn your face to me, Miss Kirby.’

‘Patience,’ she said, obeying.

‘That’s a very old-fashioned name.’

‘My aunt’s; she was rich and my parents hoped she would leave me her money if they called me by her name.’

‘Did she?’

‘No, she left it to a cat’s home. In her will she said she had always hated her name, and if my parents hadn’t called me Patience she would have left me her money, but she despised them for saddling an innocent child with a name like that and said money had never helped her enjoy life so I’d be better off without any.’

James laughed. ‘She sounds interesting. And were you?’

‘Was I what?’

‘Better off without her money.’

Sadly she shook her head.

He began cleaning the blood from her forehead, exposing a long but thankfully merely a surface cut. James washed and dried it before covering it with a plaster, then washed the rest of her heart-shaped face and dried it carefully, very aware of her looking up at him, curling dark gold lashes deepening the effect of those eyes. He wished she would stop staring. Uneasiness made him brusque. ‘Head hurting much?’

‘Not at all.’

He held up three fingers. ‘How many fingers can you see?’

‘Three, of course.’

He stared into the centres of the hazel eyes but the pupils seemed normal, neither dilated nor contracted. She smiled, a sweet, warm curve of the mouth that made him flush for some inexplicable reason.

He scowled. No, that wasn’t honest; he knew very well why he had gone red. He had wanted to kiss that warm, wide mouth. He still did; in fact just contemplating the possibility made him dizzy. I’m light-headed, he thought. Am I coming down with some bug? There is flu going around the office. That must be it. Why would I want to kiss her? I don’t even like this girl; she’s a nuisance. She isn’t much to look at, either. Not my type.

She’s too young for you, anyway, a little voice inside his head insisted. Look at her! You can give her a good fifteen years.

Don’t exaggerate! he told himself. Ten, maybe—she’s in her early twenties, not her teens!

She had been watching him, now she looked down, her dark gold lashes stirring against her cheeks. James hoped she hadn’t picked up what was in his mind. He didn’t want her getting any crazy ideas about his intentions. As far as she was concerned, he did not have any!

A moment later Barny slowed, turning a corner. ‘This is the road; where exactly do I find the house, miss?’ He and James both contemplated the road of detached houses in large gardens. It certainly matched the address the girl had given them, but it did not match the girl herself. She didn’t look as if she came from one of these gracious period homes set among trees and shrubs, with curving drives, and lawns.

‘Keep driving and I’ll tell you when to stop,’ Patience said, and obediently Barny kerb-crawled until she said, ‘This is it!’

The car stopped outside and both men stared curiously at the high Victorian house with gabled pink roofs on several levels, twisty red barley sugar chimneys, latticed windows behind which hung pretty chintz curtains. Built of red brick, the woodwork painted apple-green, the design made it took more like a cottage than a large house, a typical design of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was set well back from the road in large gardens in which spring was busy breaking out.

A flurry of almond blossom on black boughs, green lawns covered in daisies, yellow trumpets of daffodils and purple crocus showing in naturalised clumps—James hadn’t noticed until now how far spring had progressed. There was an over-civilised tidiness to his own garden that missed out on this lyrical note.

‘The Cedars?’ he queried drily. ‘What happened to them?’

‘There is one, but it’s at the back. There were two when the house was built; the other one blew down in a storm years ago.’ She gave him a defiant glare. ‘And will you stop being sarcastic?’

He didn’t answer. ‘Barny, take us up to the front door.’

Barny swung the car through the green-painted open gates and slowly drove up to the porch which sheltered a verandah and a green front door. He stopped right outside; James got out of the car and turned to help Patience out.

‘Here you are. Goodbye. And I don’t want to see you again.’

She slid down from the car and stumbled over his foot. Quite deliberately, in his opinion, but it would be useless to point that out. Sighing, James caught her before she hit the path and picked her up. She was beginning to feel comfortable in his arms. He would have to watch that. This girl was insidious as ivy; she would be growing all over him soon if he wasn’t careful.

‘Okay, this is the last thing I do,’ he told her coldly. ‘I will carry you to your front door, but I am not going inside.’

He waited for an argument, but didn’t get one, which was ominous in itself. He would dump her on the doorstep and run back to the car and safety.

She looked over his shoulder at Barny, gave him that lovely, sweet smile. ‘Thank you, Barny.’

Suspiciously, James demanded, ‘How do you know his name?’

She turned her hazel eyes up to him. ‘You’ve been calling him that all the way.’

He got the smile this time, and felt his stomach muscles contract disturbingly.

‘You are funny,’ she told him indulgently.

He carried her up the steps on to the verandah and over the painted wooden floor which creaked every step of the way. James forced himself to put her down at the front door.

‘Well, goodbye, Miss Kirby, don’t come to my office again. I have tightened up security procedures; you won’t get in again.’

She gave him a distinctly wicked glance through her long, darkened lashes. ‘I bet I could if I really tried.’

He bet she could, too. His security men were only human.

Sternly, he said, ‘Don’t try. I would hate you to land in jail.’

‘You’d love it,’ she said, mouth curling, pink and teasing. ‘Men love to exercise power. Tyranny is their favourite occupation.’

James refused to argue with her any more. He turned to go back to the car, but at that second the front door swung open and a noisy multitude rushed out of the house and engulfed him in barking dogs with wagging tails and licking tongues, what appeared to be a dozen yelling children in scruffy jeans and sweaters, two old ladies in floral aprons and an old man in dirty boots and dungarees.

James should have fled there and then but he was too slow, too busy looking at the old ladies and wondering if one of them was his mother. He saw no resemblance at all, but then would he, after twenty-five years? Patience had said that his mother was frail and delicate. The description did not fit either of the two women; they looked tough and capable, in spite of both being at least seventy years old.

‘He’s taken our puppy and he’s going to drown it!’ one of the children sobbed. ‘Make him give it back.’

Patience was greeting dogs, her small hands busy on their heads, impeded by their licking tongues. ‘What puppy?’ she asked the tallest child, a boy with a mop of familiar red hair and eyes like melting toffee.

The old man answered her gruffly. ‘They found it and brought it home with them. As if there weren’t enough dogs underfoot without bringing puppies back here!’

‘I found it,’ the smallest child said, a little boy with spiky ginger hair. ‘I bringed it home in my spaceship.’

‘Spaceship?’ asked Patience.

‘Her wheelbarrow,’ interpreted the eldest boy.

Her wheelbarrow? That was a girl?

Patience smiled down at the smallest child, ruffling the hedgehog-like hair.

‘Where did you find it, Emmy? It must belong to someone! They’ll be worried about it; we must let them know the puppy is safe.’

‘No good,’ the old man grunted. “They don’t want it back. They’re not daft; they jumped at the chance to get rid of it.’

“The lady at Wayside House gave it to me!’ said Emmy. ‘She said nobody wanted it and I could have it, and it likes me. It wanted to come with me, it licked my face and jumped in my spaceship, but Joe says he’s going to drown it. Don’t let him, Patience, please...’

Emmy began to cry, tears seeping out of her eyes as if she was melting, and trickling down her small face.

‘This place is already overrun with animals; we’ve got to take a stand!’

‘I hate you, I hate you,’ Emmy sobbed, and kicked the old man with surprising violence on his ankle.

He hopped back. ‘Here, you stop that!’

As if at a given signal, the children all surged forward and were clearly about to launch a physical attack on him, too, but Patience said sharply, ‘No! Don’t be naughty, children!’ and they fell back obediently but glared and muttered.

‘He’s a nasty man!’ Emmy said, still dripping tears.

‘And what business is it of his, anyway?’ the tallest boy said, his voice breaking with temper, making him sound oddly touching, stranded halfway between child and man, neither one nor the other.

Patience produced a handkerchief and gently wiped Emmy’s wet little face. ‘You shouldn’t kick grown-ups; you know that, Emmy.’

‘Not even if they deserve it?’ the tall boy asked cuttingly.

Patience looked confused. ‘Not even then, Toby,’ she said at last, and the children shifted, scowling.

By then James had worked out that there weren’t actually a dozen, only about half a dozen, and he wasn’t sure if they were all related. The ones with hair on the red side were probably related to Patience; the three others of about the same ages were probably just their friends.

Barny got out of the car and came up the steps, asking quietly. ‘Are you coming, sir? I have to get back to Enid, if you remember, or we’ll be late for the theatre.’

Patience swivelled to look at James; the children, the old women and the old man all stared, too, silenced for a second or two and taking James in then, their eyes curious, probing. ‘Is it him?’ the children whispered to Patience, who nodded at them, putting a finger on her lips.

James knew he should be going. This whole family were obviously crazy. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. His life had always been so neat and ordered, a world of calm colours and hushed voices. He couldn’t help being fascinated by this revelation of a very different universe and he hesitated, feeling he should leave yet so curious he knew he would stay.

‘Off you go, Barney, you mustn’t keep Enid waiting. I’ll get a taxi,’ he said offhandedly.

Barny nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’ For some reason he smiled, too, as if he was pleased with James, although why he should be James could not imagine, flushing slightly and feeling irritated and self-conscious. Barny went back down the steps; the car drove off and James felt one last wild urge to run after it, but at that instant a tiny hand twined itself around his fingers.

He looked down into the bright green eyes of the little girl.

‘Come and see my puppy. Do you like puppies?’

‘Don’t encourage her,’ said the old man. ‘You can see how many dogs we’ve got. The last thing we need is another dog, and this puppy isn’t even house-trained; it leaves puddles everywhere and it has already torn up a cushion and Mrs Green’s slipper—chewed it to bits, it did.’

‘Oh, never mind that old slipper! I don’t care twopence about it. Don’t you drown that poor little mite on my account!’ said a spry, white-haired woman whose blue flowered apron exactly matched her blue eyes. ‘I’ll soon house-train him. I’ve always had a soft spot for a Jack Russell, and he’ll certainly keep the vermin down. We won’t need to worry about rats or mice if we have that little chap here.’

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