But he had no option in this instance. He had to contact James Abbott, and then tell Nanny Briggs and Harry they were welcome to dance at his wedding provided they kept quiet about his identity and showed no surprise whatsoever if Allie referred to them as Granny and Gramps!
And he had to persuade Harry to let him borrow this wreck of a van for the duration, arrange for the safe-keeping of his Jag for an indefinite period, contact the gardener and housekeeper at his country home and tell them to make themselves scarce for the next couple of weeks. He could do none of this if Allie was with him.
The fiction of the down-at-heel, feckless character with a losing streak had to be maintained. If she knew who he really was, that the sum she’d offered for his part in the deception had hardly more relevance to him than the loose change in his pocket, she would know he had an ulterior motive in agreeing to be her husband, bought and paid for.
And she would call the whole thing off, Studley or no Studley.
That, he told himself firmly, was not going to happen.
CHAPTER FIVE
LAURA arrived home much earlier than Allie had expected. She had watched Jethro drive away with a totally unwarranted feeling of abandonment, and spent the intervening half an hour trying to talk herself out of that ridiculous state of mind, foolishly letting her thoughts dwell exclusively on him instead of deciding how to break the news of her imminent marriage to a hunky but apparently feckless window-cleaner.
And now her mother was here, and Allie didn’t have a clue about how she was going to dress the news up to make it sound believable.
‘I cancelled this afternoon’s stint with Mrs Thompson,’ Laura explained, perching on a stool at the breakfast bar and pushing a limp strand of hair away from her forehead. ‘She wasn’t too pleased, but that can’t be helped. I suddenly realised it’s not fair on you, leaving you kicking your heels here while I’m working all hours—especially when you’ve put your career on hold to spend some time with me. I thought we might do something together this afternoon—look round the shops, if you like, maybe take in a film, if there’s anything on you fancy seeing. But first I could murder a cup of tea.’
Grasping the momentary reprieve, Allie turned to fill the kettle at the sink, reach the teapot and a couple of mugs from the wall cupboard. Her mother looked as downtrodden as a pair of old socks. She wasn’t frail, and at forty-one she certainly wasn’t old. It was spiritual weariness that was oppressing her, the drudgery of the work she had to do to scrape a living, the feeling she must have that there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
Well, that was going to change. Allie poured boiling water onto the leaves in the pot, her chest filling with the need to tell her everything was going to be fine. But she knew she had to hold back and make the acquisition of Studley sound like a very secondary consideration.
Allie had never lied to her mother, but she was going to have to now. Jethro had been perfectly right when he’d said Laura would be unhappy with the truth. Her mother had always been a hopeless romantic—from an early age Allie had recognised that both her parents had lived with their heads in the clouds—and she would view marrying for the sole purpose of material gain, even if that gain was Studley, as being totally distasteful.
She would never be completely content back at her beloved Studley if she knew the price her daughter had paid to get it for her.
The tea poured, chocolate digestives laid out on a plate, there was no longer an excuse for delay. Allie cleared her throat nervously, avoided her mother’s eyes, and stated, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Something nice?’ Laura was nibbling a biscuit, spooning sugar into her tea at the same time. She had the type of metabolism that allowed her to pack in the calories and not gain an ounce, and Allie had inherited that enviable trait. But right now she didn’t think she’d ever want to eat again.
‘I think so!’ Allie tried to sound the way she imagined an excitedly fluttery bride-to-be would sound. She knew she’d failed miserably when Laura responded, ‘From where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look like it. You look as if you’re about to confess to breaking every last piece of Fran’s best china!’
There was no easy way to lead up to this, so Allie stretched her mouth into a smile and stated, ‘I’m going to be married.’
‘Married?’ Laura repeated, and dropped the second biscuit she was about to take back onto the plate. ‘You? You always insisted that getting married and settling down was the last thing you were interested in.’ The slight shoulders went rigid beneath the plain grey cotton blouse she was wearing. ‘Has it anything to do with that stupid condition of your uncle’s?’ she questioned grimly. ‘When you told me you thought you knew of a way to get our old home back I imagined you’d consult with your own solicitor, see if you could overturn his will because that condition was ridiculous.’
Laura slid down from the stool and carried her mug over to the sink. ‘So if you’re thinking of overturning your convictions and getting married to see me back at Studley, then forget it. Because I promise you I’ll never set foot in the place if you do!’
She held the mug under the fierce gush of the hot water tap and scrubbed at it as if she aimed to wash the pattern clean off the surface, and Allie knew she had to act her socks off. Her mother hadn’t even asked whom she was marrying—that was how little she believed in her daughter’s sudden desire to rush to the altar!
Willing herself to get it right, she went and hugged the older woman, made herself giggle. ‘Are you nuts? I know how much you long for the old place, but there are limits to what I’d do to help you get back there, and prostituting myself is one of them!’
She hated lying to her mother. Hated it! But what else could she do when the poor dear’s future contentment was at stake? And at least she wasn’t lying about the prostitution part, because Jethro wouldn’t lay a finger on her. It was part of the agreement.
Laura would never find out that the marriage had been a means to an end, a business contract, and for her own part, being legally tied to Jethro for a year would be nothing more than a vague nuisance. A small price to pay.
She knew her words had penetrated her mother’s suspicions when she shrugged the hugging arms away and turned to fix Allie with a very determined eye.
‘If you tell me the ceremony’s due to take place within the next three weeks then I’ll know I’m right. So look me in the eye and tell me it isn’t!’
‘Of course it is.’ Allie injected a note of exasperation. ‘It’s called killing two birds with one stone!’ Then she added, more gently, ‘We would have waited a little longer, given ourselves time to have a wedding with all the trimmings. But not much longer, because we would have married before my next shoot in any case. So we thought about it and decided to set a date some time within the next three weeks. So we get each other and you get Studley and everyone’s happy—except possibly, Fabian, who will be looking down on us and gnashing his teeth!’
‘So who’s the lucky man? Do I know him?’
Laura still looked far from convinced, and no doubt would look totally sceptical when she learned who her future son-in-law would be. Allie bit the bullet. ‘Of course you do. It’s Jethro Cole.’ And, to her amazement, she watched a lot of the suspicious tightness leach out of her mother’s face.
‘The window-cleaner?’ she queried, as if to make sure there weren’t two Jethro Coles she ought to know about.
‘That’s the one,’ Allie responded. ‘Don’t tell me you think a mere window cleaner is beneath me!’