Christmas at His Command

‘Please, Flynn—’

‘What are you so scared of anyway, Marigold? Is it me? As a man, I mean? Or is there something more? Something in your past concerning this ex-fiancé of yours? Did he ill-treat you in any way?’

‘You mean apart from sleeping around in a way that ensured everyone knew but me?’ Marigold asked derisively, and then she paused, taken aback at her own bitterness. Right up until this moment in time she hadn’t realised how deep the wound had gone, and for a second she hotly resented Flynn forcing her to see it. She didn’t want to think of herself as damaged or a victim, she thought furiously. She had to get the victory over this.

‘I have to go.’ She gestured towards a scowling Emma, sitting looking at them from the gently purring coupé. ‘Emma’s waiting.’

‘Damn Emma.’

‘I have to go.’ She backed into the doorway and out beyond, running to the car in a way that played havoc with her injured ankle.

Once Marigold was inside the car, Emma wasted no time in leaving, her speed indicating quite clearly she was mortally offended even if she had handled the situation with surprising coolness. ‘What an awful man!’ They hadn’t got out of the drive and onto the lane beyond the gates before Emma let rip. ‘How dare he talk to me like that? And what were you doing in his house anyway?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ OK, so Emma might be upset but no way was she going to apologise for being in Flynn’s home. ‘I wasn’t aware it was out of bounds,’ Marigold challenged quietly.

Emma sent a swift glance Marigold’s way and her tone was less confrontational when she said, ‘Of course it isn’t; I just wasn’t aware you knew the owner, that’s all.’

‘I don’t—I didn’t,’ Marigold corrected. ‘It happened like this…’ She explained the circumstances of her first meeting with Flynn, leaving out his comments relating to Emma and her family and finishing with, ‘I think he thought quite a bit of your grandmother, Emma.’

Emma shrugged offhandedly. ‘I barely knew her,’ she admitted indifferently. ‘I know she drove my parents mad with her refusal to go into an old people’s home, and that she had a load of flea-ridden animals, but my father usually visited her on his own.’

‘How often was that?’ Marigold asked quietly.

‘Now and then.’ It was cursory. ‘She had plenty of friends hereabouts.’

‘It’s not like family though, is it?’

‘Don’t you start.’ Emma skidded to a halt by the side of Myrtle and Marigold could almost see the small car flinch as the sports car missed her bumper by half an inch. ‘My grandmother had the chance to go into a home where she would have been looked after and which my parents could have visited more easily, but she insisted she wanted to stay in the cottage. My father is a busy man; he’s got an important job. He can’t waste time running about all over the place, besides which he and Mother entertain a lot—important people, necessary for his position at work. Anyway, they didn’t get on, my grandmother and father. Just because my father was unable to attend my grandfather’s funeral, my grandmother said she’d never forgive him.’

‘Why couldn’t he go to the funeral?

’ Marigold stared at Emma’s disgruntled face and wondered why she’d never realised that she really didn’t like this girl at all.

‘Pressure of work,’ Emma said perfunctorily. ‘You have to make sacrifices if you want to get to the top.’

‘Yes, I suppose you do.’ Marigold opened her door as she added, ‘I’m leaving in the morning, Emma; there are things I need to do at home. Are you still intending to sell the cottage?’

‘I might be.’ Emma glanced at her as they walked to the cottage door whereupon Marigold handed the other girl the front-door key. ‘Why?’

‘I’d be interested in knowing how much you want for it, that’s all.’ Somehow she couldn’t bear the thought of Emma owning the beloved home of the young, sweet-faced bride in the photograph, or selling it to someone who wouldn’t appreciate the blood, sweat and tears old Maggie had put into the last years. ‘Along with the furniture, the pictures, everything,’ she added quietly.

‘All that old rubbish?’ Emma looked at her as if she was mad, and she probably was, Marigold admitted wryly to herself. ‘Whatever would you be interested in that for?’

‘It fits the cottage, that’s all.’

‘Doesn’t it just!’

Marigold slept the night on the sofa in the sitting room despite Emma’s insistence that she could share the bedroom, and by nine o’clock the next morning she was on her way back to the city. If she had stayed any longer there would have been a very real possibility of her and Emma having a major fall-out, and she didn’t want that. Not so much because it would make things difficult at work as because she felt old Maggie was relying on her to buy the cottage and make it a real home again.

It might be fanciful, Marigold admitted as her car chugged cheerfully along, this link she felt she had with Emma’s grandmother, but she felt it in her bones and she couldn’t get away from it.

As she drew nearer to London, Marigold found she couldn’t stop Flynn from invading her thoughts as he’d done all night; his image in her mind seemed to increase with the miles. He had accused her of being scared of him; was she? she asked herself, hating the answer when it came in the affirmative. She had run away this morning, she acknowledged miserably; for the first time in her life she had run away from something—or, more precisely, someone. Admittedly she would have left the cottage after her conversation with Emma; it had grated so much she couldn’t have stayed and pretended everything was all right as far as the other girl was concerned, but she should have popped to see Flynn on the way and told him she was leaving. After all he had done for her it would have been courteous if nothing else.

But… She gritted her teeth at the but. She’d known deep in the heart of her but not admitted till now that she’d wanted to see him too much as well as not at all. How was that for a contradiction? she thought ruefully.

Was she thinking of buying Emma’s cottage because it would mean Flynn would be her neighbour? Marigold tried to take a step backwards and answer her question honestly. No, she didn’t think she was, which was a relief. But neither did Flynn’s presence just across the valley make her think the notion was impossible, which, if she wanted nothing at all to do with him, wasn’t sensible, was it?

Oh, this is crazy, stupid! Why was she tearing herself apart like this over a man she hadn’t known existed a week ago? He probably wouldn’t give her another thought once he found out she’d gone—if he bothered to enquire, that was.