them. ‘I’m sorry I had to leave you.’
‘Ms Graham has changed her mind about the job you offered her,’ said Grey. ‘She realises it wouldn’t suit her.’
His mother was not a fool. She obviously knew that her son liked to have his own way.
Looking disappointed, she said, ‘Did Grey make up your mind, or is that your own decision?’
Acting on instinct, Lucia had palmed the cheque before Mrs Calderwood saw it. Knowing that Grey would make a dangerous enemy but still impelled to defy him, she said, ‘Mr Calderwood would like it to be my decision, but it’s not. If you’re really sure I will suit you, I’d be happy to work for you.’
‘That’s splendid,’ said Rosemary Calderwood, ignoring her son’s silent but visible fury. ‘Now I’m sure you must be longing for a bath and a change of clothes. I’ve already sorted out some things left here by my daughters that you can wear till we have time to go shopping.’
‘I thought you might need some more coffee,’ said the grey-haired woman, coming back.
‘This is Mrs Bradley, my housekeeper,’ said Rosemary. ‘Miss Graham is joining us, Braddy. Would you show her where she can bath and change before lunch?’
‘One moment,’ Grey said sharply. ‘Mother, I don’t often interfere in your arrangements, but this time I must. I cannot allow you to employ this young woman.’
He looked so stern and fierce that Lucia half expected his mother to yield to the force of his authority. She had already admitted to letting her late husband quash her youthful ambitions. It seemed unlikely she would resist her son if he chose to put his foot down.
But it seemed that Rosemary’s will had strengthened not weakened with age. She said pleasantly, ‘I appreciate your concern for my welfare, my dear, but please don’t use that dictatorial tone to me. Your father laid down the law for fifty years. From now on I shall do as I think best.’ With a sweeping gesture of her hand she sent Mrs Bradley and Lucia on their way, before saying to her son, ‘You are staying to lunch, I hope, darling? I’m the cook today. We’re having lamb cutlets with tapenade.’
It was a long time since Lucia had had a leisurely wallow in a bath of warm scented water. Even then her bath accessories had not been of the quality provided for her use in this luxurious bathroom. As well as a pale blue face cloth to match the thick fluffy towels, there was a huge sponge and a two-handled strap with a strip of loofah on one side and towelling on the other. On a recessed tiled shelf in the wall behind the bath there were bottles and tubes of foams, gels and bath oils. There was nothing anyone could want in the way of toiletries that hadn’t been provided, including the pretty shower cap still hanging on its peg and the white terry robe draped over a heated towel rail at one end of the bath-cum-shower alcove as an alternative to the towels.
Seeing a hair dryer on the counter surrounding the handbasin, she had asked Mrs Bradley if there would be time to wash her hair. The housekeeper had said yes, plenty of time. Lunch would be served at one, leaving an hour to spare.
The bath, designed to accommodate a tall male house guest, was long enough for Lucia to slide down and immerse her hair. As she was doing this, there was a peremptory knock on the unlocked door and Grey Calderwood stalked in.
CHAPTER TWO
FOR some seconds she was too startled to react. Then, as a couple of strides brought him to where a bath mat protected the pale fitted carpet, she sat up in a hurry, making the water slosh dangerously close to the rim while she grabbed the sponge in an effort to cover her breasts.
‘How dare you burst in here?’ she flared at him.
‘How dare you take my cheque and then break the deal?’ he retorted, his cold eyes taking in her nakedness.
There had been times in prison when she had hated the lack of privacy and felt frighteningly vulnerable to unwelcome advances. This was different, but equally disturbing. She knew there was no possibility he would snatch the sponge or touch her. He might be a pig, but he wasn’t that kind of pig. At least she didn’t think he was. Nevertheless she felt furious at being caught with dripping hair and a lot of bare flesh on view.
‘You’ll find the cheque on the dressing table. I never had any intention of cashing it. Take it and get out,’ she snapped at him.
‘Not until I’ve made some things clear to you. My mother refuses to listen to reason. But don’t congratulate yourself on landing a cushy number here. If you step out of line by so much as a centimetre, I’ll make you regret you were born. You got off lightly last time. You won’t again. I’ll make sure of that.’
Lucia was tempted to respond with a mouthful of the hair-raising invective she had learned while she was ‘banged up’, as habitual law-breakers called being behind bars. But even after spending months among women whose language, at the beginning, had often made her flinch inwardly, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to use their vocabulary to vent her hostility towards him. Anyway swearing at him would only prove his point: that she wasn’t fit to associate with a sheltered woman like his mother.
Swallowing her resentment of his unforgiving attitude, she said, ‘I’m very grateful to your mother for extending a helping hand to me. I shan’t abuse her trust.’
‘See that you don’t.’ He walked out.
He and Mrs Calderwood were in the drawing room, chatting as if nothing untoward had happened, when Lucia joined them. From the clothes put out for her to wear, she had chosen a plain white shirt and a pair of pale khaki chinos.
As she entered, Grey rose. It was, she knew, an automatic reflex ingrained from boyhood. Actually he felt none of the chivalrous respect implied by the now-rare courtesy of standing up for her.
‘What would you like to drink, Lucia?’ Mrs Calderwood asked. ‘Grey is having a gin and tonic and my pre-lunch tipple is always Campari and soda—unless I’m alone. I never drink on my own.’
‘May I have a soft drink, please?’ After months of abstinence, Lucia didn’t want to risk her first taste of alcohol going to her head.
‘Of course. Orange juice or peach juice?’
‘Orange juice, please.’
Grey moved to an antique cupboard, the upper half containing glasses and bottles, the lower concealing a small fridge. He brought her a crystal goblet with ice cubes floating in the fruit juice. Rather than handing it to her, he placed it on the end table of the sofa which his mother had indicated her guest should share with her.
‘Thank you.’ Lucia wondered if he felt that physical contact with her, even of the most fleeting kind, might contaminate him. He had probably never had to socialise with an ex-prisoner before.
She had always known there would be people who would consider her unfit to mix in polite society. That was inevitable. She just hadn’t expected to encounter that attitude on her first day outside.
‘What were the meals like in prison?’ Rosemary Calderwood asked. ‘Like boarding school food, I imagine…lots of stodge and over-cooked vegetables.’
Lucia nodded. ‘Chips with everything and not enough salad. But then prison isn’t supposed to be like a pleasure cruise.’
