his pick of women to share his life.
‘Well, anyway, he’s coming to dinner this evening too,’ her mother announced almost challengingly—a challenge Cassandra was only too happy to meet!
‘Why?’ she prompted softly.
‘I’ve just——’
‘Why, Mother?’ she repeated firmly, easily meeting her mother’s searching gaze.
‘Bethany!’ her mother finally realised. ‘She was here earlier when we were discussing…! Joy has a perfect right to ask whom she wants to give her away,’ she said in defence of her youngest daughter.
‘It wasn’t so long ago Joy was chasing after Jonas for quite another reason,’ Cassandra reminded her drily, perfectly aware that when Jonas had first returned to England her sister had been very attracted to him indeed. But while Jonas hadn’t seemed averse to having Joy reacquaint him with London he hadn’t been interested in anything more than that from her, Joy had told her disappointedly one day. Cassandra had been most embarrassed by the whole incident; she had been sure Jonas was secretly laughing at them all for her sister’s obvious ambitions where he was concerned. Joy’s engagement to Colin was a relatively new thing, and Cassandra just hoped it was for the right reasons; Colin was nowhere near as ‘primitively exciting’ as Joy had claimed she thought Jonas was! Still, that was Joy’s problem, not hers. Her problems were much more pressing than that.
‘And if she had succeeded it might just have been the answer for all of us,’ her mother snapped angrily.
Cassandra looked at her mother closely. ‘And just what do you mean by that remark?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ her mother said with impatient dismissal—although she wasn’t quite meeting Cassandra’s gaze, she noticed with a frown. Did her mother know more than she was prepared to say…?
‘It would have been the perfect arrangement if we could have kept the company in the family,’ her mother continued briskly. ‘As it is, Jonas could eventually marry anybody, and then where will we all be?’ She frowned.
Exactly where they were now, Cassandra would have thought. Unless her mother did know something…
‘Don’t start being difficult about this, Cassandra,’ her mother told her shortly. ‘The decision has been made, and nothing you say will make any difference.’
‘But do you have to ask him now?’ She frowned. ‘What’s the urgency?’
‘There is no urgency,’ her mother shrugged. ‘We just thought it would be a nice gesture, what with the time of year and everything.’
A time of year when Jonas was much less likely to refuse, Cassandra realised ruefully, her own hands tied for very much the same reason. ‘Mother——’
‘Do stop calling me Mother in that disapproving way of yours,’ she was told impatiently. ‘Either Mummy, or Marguerite, if you prefer, but Mother makes me sound like some matriarchal monster!’
Her mother was tense and agitated, she could see. Admittedly, she also having been widowed, the last year had been as difficult for her mother as it had for her, but at the same time her mother had seemed to be coping, her life continuing to run in its usually smooth way. What had happened to change that? Unless her mother did know something. Colin was Jonas’s assistant, so he would know all about the audit Jonas had ordered. Maybe that was why——
‘Mr Chorley, madam,’ the butler came into the room to announce after knocking quietly.
‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ she accepted vaguely. ‘Show him in, will you?’ She turned to Cassandra once they were alone again. ‘Just drop this for now, Cassandra,’ she hissed impatiently. ‘It’s absolutely none of Godfrey’s business.’
‘I would have thought Godfrey was the more obvious choice to give Joy away,’ she began reasoningly. ‘He——’
‘He’s a family friend, nothing more,’ her mother snapped. ‘Even if he would like to be more than that. Especially as he would like to be more than that.’ She was becoming agitated once again. ‘Cassandra, Jonas is very important to all our lives, so please just stop being difficult where he’s concerned!’ she pleaded anxiously.
Cassandra was prevented from saying anything more on the subject by Godfrey’s arrival, quickly followed by Joy and Colin joining them. As it could only be a matter of minutes before Jonas arrived too she quickly made her excuses!
But she was so preoccupied when she finally met Simeon at the restaurant that she couldn’t have been much company for him. Not that he complained; they didn’t have that sort of relationship—Simeon was more like a brother to her than anything else, despite what the rest of the family might think to the contrary.
Simeon had turned up at her London salon one day three years ago, short and dark-haired, at twenty-six nevertheless managing to look perpetually boyish, with no qualifications except a wonderful eye for colour and design, a fact he had proved only too well when on that very first occasion he had told her her displays were all wrong and offered to do them for her! The difference he had made in a very short time had convinced her she should employ him. It was a decision she had never regretted—although not even Simeon’s obvious talents could alter the fact that her business was in deep financial trouble. She wasn’t even sure she would be able to continue to employ him after the expense of putting out the spring collection!
But because Cassandra was so caught up in her own thoughts she cut the evening short, driving herself home again, wondering when she would be able to see Jonas again to finish their conversation. She certainly hadn’t been expecting him to be waiting for her when she got home!
But she would know that dark green Jaguar anywhere, and she glanced warily over at the house as she locked her own car before going inside. Obviously Jonas had decided they should finish this conversation tonight!
Jean looked at her with raised brows as she entered the house. ‘Mr Hunter is in the sitting-room,’ she said ruefully; obviously she hadn’t had any choice about letting him wait in there for Cassandra to come home!
‘Thanks, Jean.’ Cassandra squeezed her arm reassuringly, leaving her bag on the hall table to go through to the sitting-room, straightening her back defensively as she entered.
Jonas stood beside the unlit fireplace, watching her with narrowed eyes as she came in and quietly closed the door behind her. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he rasped accusingly.
She gasped at his direct attack. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your——’
‘You knew damn well I had assumed you would be at your mother’s this evening,’ he bit out impatiently.
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t say I would be,’ she reasoned, the two of them facing each other like adversaries across the width of the fireplace.
The perfectly tailored black dinner-suit and snowy white shirt Jonas wore did little to hide the fact that these trappings of civilisation were merely that—a veneer of sophistication that did little to hide the contempt he felt for the polite conventions that meant he had to dress this way to go to dinner at her mother’s house.
‘No, you didn’t say that,’ he accepted harshly. ‘But you knew I thought it anyway.’
