‘I don’t know why you’re taking this so badly.’ He looked genuinely puzzled, and frustrated, and exasperated. ‘I’ve only done what I quite openly discussed with you when we met in the park.’
‘Good for you. Go right ahead. See if I care.’
His hands reached out in appeal. ‘I want to placate you. How was I to know you’d come back into my life and give me some of my greatest moments?’
‘That’s what men always do. Justify themselves. No matter what,’ she shot at him scathingly.
‘It’s not as if Urszula will be living with me.’
Sasha reached
the door and opened it. She cast one last furious look at Nathan Parnell. ‘By all means use the law as you wish to sort out your problems, Nathan Parnell. Please leave me out of them in your future planning. I won’t be your witness ever again. I won’t be your lover. Ever. I won’t be a pretend mother for Matt, either, because that will end up breaking my heart. So you’d better straighten him out, too. Then get to work on yourself.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He looked bereft.
She slammed the door shut behind her. To Sasha’s mind, it was the metaphoric slamming of a lot of doors on things she was never going to think about again.
Bigamy, she thought in towering outrage as she stamped up the stairs to the nanny’s quarters. It was no better than bigamy.
CHAPTER TEN
FOR the next few days Sasha saw very little of Nathan Parnell. Occasionally they passed in the foyer or hall. She bestowed a frosty, ‘Good morning,’ or ‘Good afternoon,’ on him, disdaining any answer to the provocative things he chose to say to her.
Matt did not visit the nursery. Marion Bennet offered to mind Bonnie whenever Sasha had to go into the city to search through the archives for the facts Hester wanted. Sasha usually came home to find Matt playing with Bonnie in the Bennets’ apartment, but she let that pass without comment. It involved no emotional attachment for herself and she was sympathetic to the little boy’s loneliness.
Hester Wingate remained true to the autocratic behaviour of their first meeting, but Sasha found herself enjoying the old lady’s highly individual view of the world and its inhabitants.
Hester loved thoroughbred horses and bloodlines. Breeding them had made her fortune, which accounted for her predisposition to judge things from the stallion’s point of view.
She was an amazingly colourful character, unique in Sasha’s experience, brutally direct in all her opinions and beliefs and blithely dismissing anything she considered not worthy of her attention. She was the perfect antidote to any brooding over Nathan Parnell’s perfidy. That was reason enough for Sasha to like being with her, but the liking quickly became genuine for Hester herself.
Sasha’s first action, on Hester’s behalf, was to obtain a copy of Seagrave Dunworthy’s will at the probate office. The clauses Marion had told her about were there, almost verbatim. There was a lot more besides. There was no beneficiary called Parnell; no beneficiary called Wingate; no beneficiary called Maddox, or any other name that Sasha recognised. The tontine existed, but the money was all diverted to a series of trusts.
Apart from the task of digging up dirt on Seagrave Dunworthy and Hester’s other associates, Sasha had to check all the dates in the tampered bible. These related to the Dawson family with five sons and eight daughters. It took Sasha many hours to gather every birth, marriage and death certificate, but it didn’t solve the problem.
Most of the children, at one time or another, had had a valid reason for altering their ages upwards. Four of the girls married before they reached the age of consent, and two of the boys enlisted in the army for World War One before they reached the minimum age. There was no obvious way of telling what was cause and what was effect. Did the boys enlist in the army knowing they were under age, or did they genuinely believe in the dates in the bible? It was very puzzling.
Sasha was so bent on evading Nathan Parnell that she almost missed paying her rent between nine a.m. and the twelfth stroke of noon on Friday. It was only when Hester paid her for her work that she remembered. Hester immediately ordered Brooks, her chauffeur, to drive Sasha home again.
It seemed the height of irony to be racing the clock in a Rolls-Royce for the sake of paying ten dollars, but Sasha was mightily relieved when she made it home with five minutes to spare. She bolted into the foyer and ran straight into Nathan. He had just emerged from the library which was directly across the foyer from the lounge.
‘Please get out of my way!’ she cried. ‘I have to pay my rent.’
‘I paid it for you.’
She pulled out of his steadying grasp and tried to catch her breath. She glared at him uncertainly. ‘Why did you do that? Don’t tell me you still want me living here.’
His eyes were piercingly blue, projecting the same concentrated interest in her that had held her captive in the park. ‘I want you to stay.’
‘It won’t do you any good,’ she warned, holding out the ten-dollar note she’d had ready to give to Marion Bennet. ‘I don’t want to owe you anything.’
‘As you wish,’ he said, taking the note and pocketing it.
‘Do you pay rent?’ she asked bluntly, discomfited by the thought he might somehow be the owner of the house.
‘Of course.’
‘How much?’