seconds while he pressed impassioned kisses against her determinedly closed mouth. It had been a harmless enough episode. He had presented himself rather sheepishly and shamefacedly at Queen’s Meadow the following afternoon, full of remorse and apologies, and begging for a chance to make a fresh start, which Rosy had tactfully refused. But up until now she had had no idea that Guard had even witnessed the small incident.
She turned away from him, pacing the room edgily.
‘Why on earth don’t you buy yourself some decent clothes? After all, it’s not as though you can’t afford it. Your father left you very well provided for. Or wouldn’t it impress dear, sanctimonious Ralph if you turned up looking like a woman rather than a half-grown child?’
‘Ralph is not sanctimonious,’ Rosy denied angrily as she turned to face him. ‘And as for my clothes…’ She frowned as she glanced down at her well-worn leggings and the thick, bulky sweater which had originally belonged to her father.
‘I dress to please myself, in what feels comfortable. Just because you’re the kind of man who likes to see a woman humiliating herself by dressing up in something so skin-tight she can barely walk in it, never mind run, teetering around in high heels… Mind you, I suppose at your age that would be your idea of style,’ she added disparagingly.
‘I’m thirty-five, Rosy,’ Guard reminded her grimly, ‘not some ageing fifty-year-old desperately fighting off middle-age, and as for my ideas of style, personally I think there’s nothing quite so alluring as a woman who has enough confidence in herself to dress neither to conceal her sexuality nor to reveal it—a woman who wears silk or cashmere, wool or cotton, clothes cut in plain, simple styles—but then you aren’t a woman yet, are you, Rosy?’
For some reason Rosy couldn’t define, his comments, his criticism had hurt her, making her leap immediately to her own defence, her voice husky with emotion as she told him fiercely, ‘I am a woman, but you can’t see that. You only think of women in terms of sex—the more sexual experience a woman has had, the more of a woman it makes her. Well, for your information—’
She stopped abruptly. Why was she letting him get to her like this? Why did they always end up quarrelling, arguing, antagonists?
‘For my information, what?’ Guard challenged her.
‘Oh, nothing.’ Rosy retreated. She had been a fool to listen to Peter. If, as he said, the only way to save the house was via an arranged marriage, then it would have to be with someone else. Anyone else, she decided savagely. Anyone at all just so long as it wasn’t the arrogant, hateful, horrid man standing in front of her, watching her with those mesmeric, all-seeing, all-watchful golden eyes.
‘All right, I know,’ she told him bitterly. ‘It was a stupid idea, and I was a fool to think you’d agree, no matter how much you might want Queen’s Meadow. I’d be better off advertising in the personal columns for a husband…’
Something flickered briefly in Guard’s eyes, a tiny movement so swiftly controlled that Rosy felt she must have imagined it.
‘I haven’t given you my answer yet.’
Rosy looked up at him.
‘You’re talking about taking a potentially very dangerous course,’ he continued warningly, as Rosy remained silent. ‘Edward is bound to be suspicious.’
‘But he can’t do anything. Not so long as I’ve fulfilled the terms of my grandfather’s will.’
‘Mmm… Edward is a very tricky character. It wouldn’t be wise to underestimate him. There’s an element of fraud in this whole plan of yours.’
‘Fraud?’ Rosy interrupted him anxiously. ‘But…’
‘I’ll be back from Brussels the day after tomorrow. I’ll give you my answer then. And, Rosy,’ he told her as he turned to leave, ‘in the meantime, no ads in the personal columns, hmm?’
It wasn’t fair, Rosy reflected indignantly when he had gone. Why did he always have to make her feel like a child? And a particularly stupid child at that.
‘You’ve forgotten to put sugar in my coffee again,’ Ralph reproved Rosy. He frowned slightly, his sandy eyebrows lifting almost into his hairline as he added, ‘In fact you’ve seemed very preoccupied altogether these last couple of days. Is something wrong?’
‘No…no, nothing,’ Rosy denied untruthfully.
‘Mm. You know, Rosy, it’s a pity you didn’t work a bit harder at persuading your grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to us. Hallows, the engineering place, is closing down next month and that’s bound to put more pressure on us. God knows how many more it’s going to make homeless. We haven’t got anything like enough beds here as it is. When I think of that damned big house and all those rooms…’
‘Yes, yes I know,’ Rosy agreed guiltily. She hadn’t discussed with Ralph the terms of her grandfather’s will and, since Edward had already made it plain that he expected to inherit the house, Rosy had simply allowed Ralph to believe that as well.
When she had first announced that she was going to do voluntary work at the shelter, she knew her father had been a little concerned but, needless to say, it had been Guard who had taken it upon himself to warn her that, in view of her family connections and her comparative wealth, Ralph might put pressure on her to help fund the shelter.
‘Ralph would never do anything like that,’ she had protested then, indignantly. And she had believed it… Had believed it… Still believed it, and if Ralph was cross with her because he felt she ought to have persuaded her grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to their charity, well, she could understand why.
She could never walk into the old, run-down shabby building on the outskirts of the town without a small pang.
They all did their best to make it as homely as possible, but the rooms still had that air about them that reminded her of the boarding-school she had attended when she and her father had first returned to England from his army posting in Germany. She hadn’t stayed there long, but it had left a lasting impression on her.
The first spring she had worked at the shelter she had arrived one morning with the boot of her small car filled with vases she had ‘borrowed’ from home and the back seat covered in a mass of daffodils.
Ralph had found her just as she was placing the last vase in position.
She winced even now when she remembered how angry he had been.
‘You waste money on flowers when we barely have enough to buy them food,’ he had shouted at her.
She had never made the same mistake again, but sometimes the sheer austerity of the shelter weighed her down, her own feelings adding to the compassion and anguish she already felt at the plight of the young people they took in.
Today, though, she was guiltily aware that her mind was more on her own problems than those of the homeless. Guard was due back this afternoon. What would his decision be? What did she want his decision to be?
She knew quite well what Ralph would say were she to ask him for his advice, and the modern, aware part of her agreed with him: there were far more important things to worry about than a house; there were people, her fellow human beings, in far more need than a building and yet, when she walked round the house, something she had found
