had no intention of still being there but somehow having been swept along, she was in a seat, listening without taking in a word of what the introductory speaker was droning on about.
She had by then started to recover from seeing Nathan Mallory again after all those years. As well as being tall with dark hair, Nathan was handsome—quite devastatingly so. A man who could have any woman he chose. But Nathan Mallory—she drew a shaky breath—was her husband! She, for all she went by the name Phelix Bradbury, was in actual fact Mrs Nathan Mallory. Phelix Mallory. Oh, my word!
As she twisted her wedding ring on her finger—the marriage band he had put there—her thoughts flew back to more than eight years ago. She ceased to hear the speaker’s voice and was back in the cold, cheerless home she shared with her father in Berkshire. She was no longer in the conference hall, but was in her father’s study, back before she had met Nathan.
Her grandfather, cold and forbidding Edward Bradbury Senior, had died shortly after her mother. Phelix had missed her warm and loving mother so much, and later realised that, perhaps needing warmth and comfort at that time, she had been ready to imagine herself in love when Lee Thompson, their gardener’s son, home on vacation from university.
It seemed as though she had always known Lee. She had always been shy with people, but he’d seemed to understand that as their romance blossomed.
Though he’d left it to her to seek her father out in his study and tell him that she and Lee were going to marry.
‘Marry!’ her father had roared, utterly astounded.
‘We love each other,’ she had explained.
‘You might love him—we’ll see how much he thinks of you!’ Edward Bradbury had retorted dismissively. And that had been the end of the conversation —and the end of her romance.
She had seen neither Lee nor his father again. When Lee had not phoned as he had said he would she had telephoned him, and had learned that his father had been dismissed from his job and that Lee had been bribed—for that was what it amounted to—to sever all contact with her.
She had been too shocked to fully take in what Lee was saying. ‘What do you mean—my father will pay off all your student loans?’ she had protested.
‘Look, Phelix, I’m in hock up to my ears. I was mad to think we could marry and make a go of it. We’d be broke for years! You’re not working and—’
‘I’ll get a job,’ she’d said eagerly.
‘What could you do? You’re trained for nothing. Any money you’d be able to bring in would be nothing at all like as much as we’d need to keep us afloat.’
That was when a pride she hadn’t known she had started to bite, and she had taken a deep breath. ‘So, for money you’d forget all our plans, all we ever said? All—’
‘I have no choice. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you now. I’m risking the bonus your old man promised me if I—’
‘Goodbye, Lee,’ she had cut in, and had put down the phone.
After that she hadn’t cared very much what happened. But a few days later she had been able to accept that, her pride feeling more bruised than her heart, that she had been more fond of Lee than in love with him. And that in fact what lay at the base of her wanting to marry him was more an urgent desire for change of some sort. More a need for some kind of escape from this—nothingness. For the chance to leave home, the chance to get away from her intimidating father.
And, since it was for sure Lee had not been in love with her either, she’d realised that any marriage they’d made would probably not have lasted. Not that she had seen her father’s actions as doing her a favour. She had not. She’d still wanted to get away. But she supposed then that she must have been living in some kind of rose-tinted never-land, because when she’d got down to thinking about leaving and striking out on her own, she had known that she just could not afford to leave. She could not afford to live in even the cheapest hostel. And as Lee had more or less stated—who would employ her?
Another week went by, but just when she had started to feel even more depressed, her father summoned her to his study. ‘Take a seat,’ he invited, his tone a shade warmer than she was used to. Obediently, she obliged. ‘I’ve just been advised of the contents of your grandfather’s will,’ he went on.
‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured politely, wondering why he was bothering to tell her. Grandfather Bradbury had been as miserly as his son, so probably had a lot to leave—but not to her. In any event, she was sure that anything he left was bound to have some ghastly condition attached to it.
‘Your grandfather has been very generous to you,’ her father went on.
‘Really?’ she exclaimed, surprised, Grandfather Bradbury had never shown any sign that he knew she existed when he had been alive.
‘But I’m afraid you are unable to claim your quite considerable inheritance until you are twenty-five,’ he enlightened her. The hope that had suddenly sprung up in her, died an instant death. Bang went her sudden joy at the thought that she could leave home and perhaps buy a place of her own. ‘That is, unless…’ her father murmured thoughtfully.
‘Unless?’ she took up eagerly.
‘Well, you know he had a thing about the sanctity of marriage?’
To her mind he’d had more of a thing about the iniquities of divorce. He’d had a fixation about it ever since his own wife had walked out on him and, despite all his best efforts, had ultimately divorced him. He had passed his loathing of women breaking their wedding vows down to his son. Phelix’s mother had confided in her one time when Edward Bradbury had been particularly foul to her how she had wanted to divorce him years ago. He had gone apoplectic when she’d had the nerve to tell him—delighting in telling her that if she left him she could not take their daughter with her. ‘When you’re eighteen,’ she had promised, ‘we’ll both go.’ And, until that last desperate bid when Phelix had been seventeen, she had stayed.
‘Er—yes.’ Phelix came out of her reverie to see her father drumming his fingers on his desk as he waited for her to agree that his father had had a thing about the sanctity of marriage.
‘So—he obviously wanted you to be happy.’ Her father almost smiled.
‘Ye-es,’ she agreed, knowing no such thing.
‘Which is why a clause was inserted in his will…’ Naturally there was a clause—possibly some snag to prevent her claiming her inheritance even when she was twenty-five, ‘…to the effect that if you marry before you are twenty-five you will be eligible to receive ten percent of the considerable sum he has left you.’
‘Honestly?’ she gasped, her spirits going from low to high, then back down to positive zero. Oh, if only this had happened a couple of weeks ago. She could have married Lee and claimed that ten percent and have been free! Well, not entirely free. Only now did she fully accept that she was glad her romance with Lee had gone no further. Marriage to him would have been a big mistake.
‘Your grandfather plainly did not want you to suffer financial hardship in any early marriage you made.’
‘I—see,’ she answered quietly.
‘And how do you
