knows her. Who won’t judge. Or run to the press with this.’
‘The press?’
‘Something like this would damage me.’
‘You! Is that all you’re worried about?’ she demanded, absolutely furious with him. ‘Yourself. Not Saffy? Not Nancie?’
Nancie, startled, threw out a hand, lost her teddy and began to cry. Glad of the chance to put some distance between them, May scrambled to her knees to rescue the toy, give it back to the baby. Stayed with her on the floor to play with her.
‘The Garland Agency has a branch in Melchester,’ she said. ‘I suggest you call them. They’ve a world class reputation and I have no doubt that discretion comes with the price tag.’
‘As I said. There are a number of problems with that scenario. Apart from the fact that my apartment is completely unsuitable. You’ve read Saffy’s letter. They’ll want details. They’ll want to know where her mother is. Who she is. What right I have to make childcare arrangements. Saffy is on the run, May. There’s a court order in place.’
‘You must have some idea where she’d go? Isn’t there a friend?’
‘If anyone else had asked me that I’d have said that if she was in trouble, she’d come to you.’ He stared into the cup he was holding. ‘I did ring her a few months ago when there was a rumour in one of the gossip mags about her health. Probably someone heard her throwing up and was quick to suggest an eating disorder. But she was bright, bubbly, rushing off to a shoot. At least that’s what she said.’ He shrugged. ‘She was too eager to get me off the phone. And maybe I was too eager to be reassured. I should have known better.’
‘She sounds almost frightened.’
‘I know. I’m making discreet enquiries, but until I know who this man is I’m not going to hand over my niece. And I’m doing my best to find Saffy, too. But the last thing we need is a hue and cry.’
He put down the mug, knelt beside her.
‘This time I’m the one up the drainpipe, Mouse, and it’s raining a monsoon. Won’t you climb up and rescue me?’
‘I wish I could help—’
‘There is no one else,’ he said, cutting her off.
The unspoken, And you owe me… lay unsaid between them. But she knew that, like her, he was remembering the hideous scene when he’d come to the back door, white-faced, clutching his roses. It had remained closed to his knock but he hadn’t gone away. He’d stayed there, mulishly stubborn, for so long that her grandfather had chased him away with the hose.
It had been the week before Christmas and the water was freezing but, while he’d been driven from the doorstep, he’d stayed in the garden defiantly, silently staring up at her room, visibly shivering, until it was quite dark.
She’d stood in this window and watched him, unable to do or say anything without making it much, much worse. Torn between her grandfather and the boy she loved. She would have defied her grandpa, just as her mother had defied him, but there had been Saffy. And Adam. And she’d kept the promise that had been wrung from her even though her heart was breaking.
She didn’t owe him a thing. She’d paid and paid and paid…
‘I can’t,’ she said, getting up, putting distance between them. ‘I told you, I know no more than you do about looking after a baby.’
‘I think we both know that your experience as a rescuer of lame ducks puts you streets ahead of me.’
‘Nancie is not a duck,’ she said a touch desperately. Why wouldn’t he just take no for an answer? There must a dozen women who’d fall over themselves to help him out. Why pick on her? ‘And, even if she were,’ she added, ‘I still couldn’t help.’
She couldn’t help anyone. That was another problem she was going to have to face. Finding homes for her family of strays.
There wasn’t much call for a three-legged cat or a blind duck. And then there were the chickens, Jack and Dolly, the bees. She very much doubted if the Crown would consider a donkey and a superannuated nanny goat an asset to the nation’s coffers.
‘Why not, May?’ he insisted. He got to his feet too, but he’d kept his distance. She didn’t have to turn to know that his brows would be drawn down in that slightly perplexed look that was so familiar. ‘Tell me. Maybe I can help.’
‘Trust me,’ she said. Nancie had caught hold of her finger and she lifted the little hand to her lips, kissed it. ‘You can’t help me. No one can.’
Then, since it was obvious that, unless she explained the situation, Adam wasn’t going to give up, she told him why.
Why she couldn’t help him or Saffy.
Why he couldn’t help her.
For a moment he didn’t say anything and she knew he would be repeating her words over in his head, exactly as she had done this morning when Freddie had apologetically explained the situation in words of one syllable.
Adam had assumed financial worries to be the problem. Inheritance tax. Despite the downturn in the market, the house was worth a great deal of money and it was going to take a lot of cash to keep the Inland Revenue happy.
‘You have to be married by the end of the month or you’ll lose the house?’ he repeated, just to be certain that he’d understood.
She swallowed, nodded.
She would never have told him if he hadn’t been so persistent, he realised. She’d told him that she couldn’t help but, instead of asking her why, something he would have done if it had been a work-related problem, he’d been so tied up with his immediate problem that he hadn’t been listening.
He was listening now. And there was only one thought in his head. That fate had dropped her into his lap. That the boy who hadn’t been good enough to touch Coleridge flesh, who’d shivered as he’d waited for her to defy her grandfather, prove that her hot kisses had been true, now held her future in the palm of his hand.
That he would crack the ice in May Coleridge’s body between the fine linen sheets of her grandfather’s four-poster bed and listen to the old man spin in his grave as did it.
‘What’s so important about the end of the month?’ he asked. Quietly, calmly. He’d learned not to show his thoughts, or his feelings.
‘My birthday. It’s on the second of December.’
She’d kept her back to him while she’d told him her problems, but now she turned and looked up at him. She’d looked up at him before, her huge amber eyes making him burn, her soft lips quivering with uncertainty. The taste of them still haunted him.
He’d liked her. Really liked her. She had guts, grit and, despite the wide gulf in their lives, they had a lot in common. And he’d loved being in the quiet, ordered peace of the lovely gardens of Coleridge House, the stables where she’d kept her animals. Everything so clean and well organised.
He’d loved the fact that she had her own kettle to make coffee. That there was always
