The City-Girl Bride

‘Putting relationships first is the really happening thing now, Maggie,’ Tanya told her gently.

Tanya worked in PR and knew all about ‘happening’ things. She had gone on holiday six months earlier—a tiny private island one could only visit by invitation—fallen in love with a fellow guest, and was now planning to give up her job and join him on his planned trek across the Andes.

Not that Maggie really needed anyone to underline for her what she already knew. She had lost count of the number of people she had ‘relocated’ recently who had insisted on ‘time out for family’ clauses being built into their contracts.

In the past their evenings out had ended late, but now it seemed everyone had things they needed to go on to—everyone but her, Maggie acknowledged. She could walk to her apartment from the wine bar where they had met. Halfway there she stopped outside a small supermarket, and somehow or other she found she was walking into it…

It was only when she was back outside that Maggie allowed herself to question just why she had found it necessary to buy the ingredients to make a chilli.

‘Gran, why don’t you come back to London with me? We could shop, and there’s a wonderful new show we could go and see,’ Maggie suggested to Arabella Russell that weekend.

‘No…no. It’s kind of you to think of me, Maggie, but I just don’t feel in the mood. At least in this house I feel as though I’m still close to your grandfather, even though he was only here for a few short months.’

Her grandparents had moved into a smaller house six months before her grandfather’s death, and Maggie could feel her throat aching with tears as she listened to her grandmother. In the few weeks since Maggie had last seen her she seemed to have become so frail. She looked frighteningly tired and defeated, as if…as though…

Thoughts Maggie dared not let herself form sent a sickening weave of panic through her. If Finn hadn’t stopped her from buying the Dower House right now she could have been telling her grandmother that she had a special surprise for her. She could have been anticipating the pleasure and happiness in her eyes as she walked into the house she had known as a young wife. And Maggie just knew that in that house her grandmother would ‘see’ her grandfather as he had been when they had been young together, and that she would draw strength from their shared past happiness.

Finn…Finn…

She got up and hurried into her grandmother’s kitchen, opening cupboard doors, searching…

‘Maggie, what on earth are you doing?’

Guiltily Maggie looked round as her grandmother followed her into the kitchen.

‘Umm…I was going to make some chilli.’

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nbsp; ‘What…?’

Red-faced, Maggie closed the cupboard doors. What on earth was happening to her? Why was it every time she thought about Finn she had this peculiar desire to make chilli?

Subliminal association was one thing; taking it to the ridiculous lengths of being physically compelled to make chilli just because the act of doing so brought her closer to her memories of the time she had spent at the farm with Finn was something else—and a very worrying and unwanted something else at that. Why on earth should she need to cling to those memories, as if…as if they were some sort of comfort blanket that she simply could not get through any anxiety without?

It was over a month since she had last seen Finn—well, five weeks, two days and seven and three-quarter hours, actually. Not that she was counting. Or cared. No, indeed not. Why should she? She didn’t. No way. No way at all. She was perfectly happy as she was—more than happy. She was ecstatic. Her life was perfect…everything she had ever wanted it to be. At least it would have been if only her grandmother…

Damn Finn. Damn him and his ridiculous antagonism towards city people buying country property. What right did he have to dictate what others could and could not do? No right at all…other than the power that having far too much money gave him, to pay more than twice its value for a house just to stop another person owning it. Well, she just hoped he would be happy in his huge mansion, with his land and his alpaca and his empty Dower House…No, she didn’t; she hoped he would be thoroughly miserable, because that was what he deserved. Unlike her beloved grandmother, who did not deserve to be unhappy at all.

Finn looked grimly at his surroundings. He had taken possession of the estate three days ago, his livestock had been moved to their new home, and he had successfully interviewed a first-class team of workers to help him put his plans into practice. So why wasn’t he feeling more happy? Why, in fact, was he feeling distinctly unhappy?

From the library of the house, which was the room he intended to work from, he could see across the parkland to where the empty Dower House lay behind its high brick wall. Despite the warmth of the room—the house’s ancient heating system had proved surprisingly efficient once it had been coaxed into life—the house had an air of chill emptiness about it.

According to Philip’s assistant, it needed a woman’s touch, and Finn knew exactly which woman’s touch she had envisaged it having. But she wasn’t his type. She was…not Maggie.

Angrily he dismissed the taunting voice whispering the words inside his head. He had been down to see the Dower House the previous day. Structurally it was sound and weather proof, but, like the main house, inside it needed modernising.

‘Pity to let a place like this stand empty.’ Shane Farrell, the man he had taken on as his gamekeeper, had commented. ‘Wouldn’t mind living here myself,’ he had added hintingly.

‘I’d planned to offer you the cottage next to Pete’s,’ Finn had told him, referring to the second of the pair of empty estate cottages he had bought at the auction. But Shane was right. It would be shameful to allow the Dower House to stand empty and deteriorate, especially when…

Walking back over to his desk, Finn picked up the telephone and searched the directory for the number of his solicitor.

The letter was waiting for Maggie when she arrived home at nine o’clock in the evening after a particularly trying day. Gayle was off work, ill with bronchitis, and the person Maggie had been discreetly courting on behalf of one of her best clients had telephoned her in a furious temper, from her home, to announce to Maggie that she had just been informed by her current employers that they knew what was going on—when she had specifically stressed to Maggie how vitally important it was that their discussions were kept a secret. Maggie suspected that it must have been the woman’s partner who had leaked the information; they worked in the same field, but the partner was less well thought of. However, there was no way she could voice such a suspicion.

She had then had an equally irate call from her clients, who had been informed of what had happened by the woman herself. Appeasing them had made her late for lunch with another client—one who had a thing about punctuality. And then after lunch she had tried to ring her grandmother, and panicked when she had not been able to raise her either on the house phone or the mobile Maggie had insisted on giving her.

She had virtually been on the point of driving into Sussex to find out if she was all right when her grandmother had finally answered her mobile, explaining that she never liked to take it with her when she went to visit Maggie’s grandfather’s grave, which she did every week, because she felt that it was the wrong thing to do.