Merger By Matrimony

She’d not managed to attack the first when her telephone rang and she heard a breathless, girlish voice down the end of the line.

‘Who is this?’ she demanded, cradling the telephone between shoulder and head as she fumbled to undo the front fastening buttons of her dress.

‘Stephanie. I should have been at the meeting this afternoon, but…somehow my appointments overran…’

Destiny stopped what she was doing and held the telephone properly.

‘Anyway, I thought that perhaps we could meet for supper this evening? You could come to my apartment—actually, I only live about ten minutes’ drive away from you…?’

‘Well…’ The thought of slotting in one more piece of the jigsaw puzzle that had become her life was too enticing to resist. ‘If you tell me where you are…can I walk to you? No?… How do I get a taxi?… Yes, right… Well, give me about forty-five minutes and I’ll be there… Right, yes, that’s fine… Yes, I do know what Chinese food consists of… Okay, fine, bye.’

As she inspected her wardrobe, selecting the least colourful of her dresses, she wondered what her stepcousin would be like. Her gut feeling warned her that a disaster lay ahead. Callum Ross was made of steel and any fiancée of his would more than likely be made of similar stuff. She was fast developing a healthy streak of cynicism in this bewildering world where scheming seemed to be part of an acceptable game and exploitation was part and parcel of the same game. The healthy streak of cynicism was now telling her that Stephanie Felt had probably been primed by her lover to use every trick in the book to get what she wanted. Her healthy streak of cynicism was going one step further and warning her that the other woman had probably avoided the meeting on purpose, simply so that their first meeting could be on her own territory. Alone. Destiny stared back dejectedly at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and discovered that, despite her lifelong predilection for all things logical and scientific, her imagination was scrabbling frantically now to make up for lost time.

She left the townhouse nervous, but grimly resolved to face down yet one more enemy. The taxi carried her out of Knightsbridge and into the heart of Chelsea, and then stopped in front of a Victorian house, one in a row of many, all of which were as impeccably maintained as the one she had just left.

She sighed involuntarily as she rang the doorbell. Her nervous system couldn’t take much more. She longed with a physical ache for the simplicity of her compound, with its heat and wild beauty and unthreatening routines.

From Callum Ross to Stephanie Felt in the space of a few short hours. She wondered what else could hit her. There must be some evil, as yet undisclosed relation somewhere in the background, clutching a potion, a broomstick and a book of spells.

The woman who answered the door almost made her gasp in surprise.

‘Hiya.’ More of a girl than a woman, just out of her teens from the look of it, with wavy brown hair and huge blue eyes. Even in her heels, she was still small. Small and slender, her heartshaped face smoothly unlined by time.

‘Have I come to the right house?’ Destiny blustered, trying to peer at the plaque on the door to see whether she had made a mistake with the numbers. ‘I’m looking for Stephanie Felt.’

‘That’s me.’ When she smiled, her face dimpled and she stood back to let Destiny walk past. ‘I’ve been dying to meet you, you know. A stepcousin! I never even knew you existed until Callum told me! Can you believe it? Abraham never mentioned his family, not even to Mum!’ Her voice was light and excited as she led the way to the sitting room. ‘You’ll have to tell me all about where you lived. I’ve never been to your part of the world—never. Can you believe it? Callum says it’s really primitive where you come from. Gosh!’ She turned around and looked at Destiny with glowing curiosity and awe. ‘This must all seem very strange to you! I love your dress, by the way. Neat. All those swirly colours. Is that what the people over there wear? Is it, like, their native costume, so to speak?’

‘No, not really.’ Destiny smiled. For the first time since she had set foot on English shores, she felt unthreatened and relaxed. ‘Most of the women in the Indian tribes I come into contact with walk around bare-breasted…’

‘Which would never do,’ came a familiar drawling voice, ‘so I should practise that mode of dress only in the privacy of your own house.’

Sure enough, Callum was sprawled in a chair strategically positioned so that Destiny was afforded a full-frontal of the man at leisure. It was the first time she had seen him without the formality of a suit and she was taken aback to realise that he looked younger. Younger yet no less off-putting. His cream trousers made his legs seem longer and the short-sleeved shirt with the top two buttons undone revealed masculine forearms and a sneak preview of dark hair shadowing his chest.