The City-Girl Bride

PROLOGUE

THE head of the Perfect Matches Department, English Speaking Division, scratched the top of his wing in irritation.

‘Now look what’s happened,’ he complained to his newest and least experienced recruit. ‘They’ve called a summit meeting of all the top angels in Cupid Department to discuss the current state of romance. Far too many people are refusing to fall in love and make commitments. If this continues we shall be out of business and a fine thing that would be. Of course they would call this wretched conference when I’m already short-staffed and I’ve just finished drawing up this session’s list of ideally matched pairs. It’s too late to put things on hold now, and besides—’ he glowered darkly ‘—this session I’m determined that we’re going to meet our target, I am not having that pompous idiot from the Third Agers Section telling me yet again that he’s matched up more couples than us. But there’s just no one to do the work.’

‘There’s me.’ His newest assistant reminded him eagerly.

The head of the department sighed as he studied the hopeful smile of his trainee recruit. Enthusiasm for one’s job was all very well, and to be applauded of course, but in this particular recruit’s case that enthusiasm needed to be tempered by the caution of experience and time. However, right now…Right now he had six couples to get together: couples who as yet had no idea that they were meant for one another, couples whose romances needed to be set in motion asap.

Reluctantly he acknowledged that on this occasion he would have to bow to expediency and ignore his forebodings. Handing over his carefully compiled list, he told his junior ‘Every one of these couples has been carefully vetted and checked for compatibility. In this department we do not put couples together unless we are sure they will stay together. Everything is set in place and nothing can go wrong. All you have to do is make sure that each and every one of them is in the right place at the right time. You must follow my instructions exactly. No experimentation or short cuts. Do you understand?’

All students had to learn, of course, but it was, to say the least, unfortunate that this particular student’s experimentation had led to a New York socialite’s pedigree chow falling desperately in love with her neighbour’s prize-winning Burmese cat. Luckily the outcome had not been totally without merit, and the marriage which had ensued between the socialite and her neighbour had been a very satisfactory conclusion to the whole affair. He had been working towards pairing her off with someone very different, but there you are…

‘Hi there. What are you doing?’

The new recruit grimaced as one of the naughtiest zephyrs blew playfully on his wings.

‘I’m busy,’ he responded loftily. ‘So go away and bother someone else.’

With hindsight he acknowledged that it had probably been the wrong thing to say. It was common knowledge that this particular zephyr positively enjoyed her reputation for boisterous behaviour, and perhaps it was silly of him to have spread out all the head of department’s carefully written notes and instructions, along with the slips on which the names of the humans they related to were written.

‘Go away like this, do you mean?’ she challenged him, taking a deep breath and sending all his precious papers flying as she exhaled noisily over them.

Of course afterwards she was contrite, and helped him to gather everything up. It was surprising just how much power there was in that ethereal frame, and by the time they had finally collected everything he was feeling out of breath himself.

But that was nothing to the feeling of dread filling him as he tried frantically to remember which couples had been paired together.

The zephyr did what she could, and in the end he was as sure as he could be that he knew what he was supposed to do.

‘So, which couple are you going to do first?’ she asked him.

He took a deep breath. ‘This one,’ he told her, showing her their names.

She frowned as she looked at the names and their addresses. ‘But how are they going to meet?’ she asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll think of something.’

‘Can I help?’ she begged eagerly. This was so much more fun than blowing a few leaves off trees, which was all she was ever allowed to do.

‘No,’ he denied firmly, quickly changing his mind when he saw her taking another deep breath.

As a first step in bringing the two ideally matched partners together, his job was to engineer a meeting between them according to the instructions he had been left.

Engineer a meeting…Right…

CHAPTER ONE

MAGGIE stared in disbelief at the downpour which had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, turning the road she had been driving along into a vast puddle and making her head ache with the tension of concentrating. From the moment she had seen the sale advertised she had been determined to buy the house. She was sure that it was exactly what her adored grandmother needed to lift her out of her current unhappiness.

Of course Maggie knew that nothing and no one could ever replace her grandfather in her grandmother’s life, but Maggie was convinced that returning to live in the house where her grandparents had started their married life, a house that was filled with memories of their shared love, would help to take her grandmother’s mind off the sadness of her loss. And Maggie was a woman who, once her mind was made up about anything or anyone, refused to change it. Which was why she was such a successful businesswoman—successful enough to be able to attend the auction being held to sell off the large Shropshire estate on which her grandparents had beg

un their married lives, in the rented house which was now being auctioned for sale.