The Marriage Solution

'Hi.' She turned to see Joseph in the doorway. Carlton had had a chair-lift installed in the early days of Joseph's accident so that he was able to move about the house freely. 'Maisie says lunch will be ready in twenty minutes.'

'Lovely.' She smiled warmly at Joseph. The more she had seen of Carlton's brother, the more she liked him, and the two had found that an easy, friendly relationship had developed between them almost without their realising it.

Maisie she found harder to communicate with. The girl was an excellent housekeeper but painfully shy and the only person she really seemed to open up to was Carlton, a fact which Katie had to admit, in the odd moment of self-analysis, she didn't like. And the way he was with Maisie— gentle, protective even… She brushed the thought aside as Joseph wheeled his chair into the room.

'What does Carlton think to all this, then?' he asked cheerfully as he glanced round the room that had been Carlton's. He had been sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms while she redecorated this one. 'Does the master approve?' he asked cheekily.

'Uh-huh.' She smiled down at the face that was so like her fiancé's, and waved her hand expansively at the dusky grey curtains and carpet, and deep scarlet duvet that covered the large four-poster bed. 'It was a compromise.'

'Bodes well for the future.' She nodded but the shadow that passed over her face wasn't lost on him. 'Anything wrong, Katie?' he asked casually as he wheeled his chair across to the large full-length window and looked out into the garden, lit with soft May sunshine.

'Not really, it's just that—' She hesitated, unsure of how much to say. Although she and Joseph got on well he was still Carlton's brother and fiercely loyal. She didn't want him to think that she was criticising Carlton behind his back. 'He's a very private person, isn't he?' she murmured quietly. 'It's hard to know what he's thinking.'

'Persevere.' There was a note in Joseph's voice that made her join him at the window and as she sat on the carpet at his side he looked down at her, his face open and direct. 'The last thirteen years or so haven't been easy for him, Katie, looking after this house, the business, being father and mother to me.' He hesitated, then continued slowly and quietly as though he found his thoughts difficult to express.

'I went through a bad patch after the accident. I was just a kid, Mum and Dad were gone and I couldn't bear to think I'd never walk again, that I was a cripple for life.' The last few words were full of pain and she put out a hand to him, her eyes soft. 'At the time I took all the care and love Carlton gave me as my right; kids can be very selfish…' He paused, his expression reflective.

'Carlton dedicated himself to me in those early days, gave me the will to fight, to go on, and I slowly came to terms with it all. It was a long time later that I realised just what he'd had to sacrifice too.'

'He'd been involved with a girl, Penny, at the time of the accident They'd been going to get married. Oh, it wasn't official—' he flapped a hand '—nothing like that but he'd told me and they'd started to make plans.'

'Well, like I said, he put in a lot of time with me in the early days and Penny began to object A helpless little kid brother wasn't her idea of the best start in the world to married life. She made his life hell for a time, trying to make him choose between what she saw as a millstone round his neck and herself, and then one day he found her in bed with someone else and that was that.'

He eyed her warily and she forced herself to keep her face blank and betray none of the pain that had hit her like a ton of bricks. 'It hit him hard—he's the original still waters that run deep—but he'd never talk about it after he told me what had happened. But from that point—' He paused abruptly. 'Well, he played the field, I guess. You know that.'

'Yes.' It hurt It hurt far, far more than she would have thought possible and everything in her wanted to ask him if he thought Carlton still loved his first love, but she couldn't She was too frightened of what the answer might be.

'And then he met you.' Joseph looked up at her as she rose slowly to her feet. 'And I could see straight away you were the real thing.'

'Could you?' For a moment she almost told him—told him that this whole thing was a sham and that Carlton was merely acting a part, but she bit back the words before they passed her lips.

'Sure.' He grinned as she forced a smile to her face. 'The way he looks at you, his voice when he speaks your name—I never thought to see him like this but, like I said, still waters run deep. But it's difficult for him to open up, Katie; he's always been like that, but more so after Penny. Don't give up on him.'

She nodded blindly. Well, she'd brought this on herself; she should never have started the conversation in the first place. But oh—she found she was gritting her teeth as she followed Joseph out of the room to go downstairs for lunch—why couldn't she have affected him the way this Penny had?

The thought shocked her and she immediately tried to explain it away. Of course it would be better if he had some feeling for her—they were going to be married for goodness' sake. That was all she wanted, just some sort of normal human warmth. She didn't love him and she knew he didn't love her but they were going to commit a good part of their liv

es to each other. It was only natural that she wanted some solid basis to build on, wasn't it?

She continued to talk to herself all the way downstairs and into the kitchen where the three of them ate at lunch-time at the huge wooden kitchen table that Maisie kept scrubbed snow-white.

Maisie glanced up as they entered, her beautiful velvety brown eyes lowering swiftly as she quickly began to place the cold meat, jacket potatoes and salad on to the table. For the hundredth time since she had first come into this house Katie found herself wondering about the relationship between Carlton and his housekeeper.

She couldn't fault Maisie. The girl was sweet and quiet and almost painfully timid and yet there was something… Something in those big brown eyes that she couldn't quite fathom. And Carlton was…different with her. Whereas Joseph would tease and chaff Maisie he always managed to keep her at a distance too, but Carlton… He was defensive, protective even.

The thoughts that had been forming for weeks solidified. She wasn't imagining it, she wasn't. But she couldn't ask him about it. Her wedding was only three weeks away and yet she couldn't really talk to the man she was marrying. The urge to scream and shout at the tangle she had made of her life was overwhelmingly fierce but she bit it back painfully.

By the time she arrived home later that afternoon the tension had culminated in a pounding headache at the back of her eyes. Carlton was taking her out to dinner that night and she had never felt less like seeing him. There was such a mixture of emotions swirling about in her head that she couldn't identify just one and yet she knew that if he cancelled the evening she would be unbearably disappointed.

'You look tired.' Her father raised his head as she glanced into his room where he was sitting reading a book.

He was much better although he still tired easily and the fact that he hadn't insisted on returning to his old room upstairs before now told Katie that he was aware of his weakness. 'Doing too much, no doubt, just like your mother.'

He had taken to mentioning his wife more and more in the last few weeks and Katie loved it. The fact that she could talk about her mother with him, for the first time since she had died, was beginning to ease the ache in her heart that always accompanied thoughts of the woman she had loved so much.

'I'm OK.' She walked over and bent to kiss him and he raised his face to meet hers. It had happened several times now but it always stunned her. He had changed and mellowed since his illness, she thought. He wouldn't thank her for saying so but it was true. She sat a while with him, discussing her day and making something out of nothing to entertain him, and then wandered upstairs to shower and change.

At eight, when she heard Carlton's voice downstairs after an imperious ring of the doorbell, she was ready to join him. After the snow and blizzards of March May had entered as gently as a lamb and the night was warm and soft, the scent of summer hanging heavy in the air. He had warned her that he would be taking her to a nightclub so she had dressed accordingly in a chic sleeveless cocktail dress in midnight-blue with a short silky jacket that she had spent hours finding a few days before. It had cost the earth, but the expert cut of the material and the much needed confidence the dress gave her was worth every penny, and now she stared at her reflection in the mirror anxiously.