Hostile engagement (9 page)

was to wear the ring on her engagement finger for three months. She should have realised without having to be reminded that Jud Hemming had paid three thousand pounds for the ring, she must have been an idiot to think he would write off the loss of his money so easily. And yet if Rupert hadn't blabbed about her engagement to Charles Arbuthnot, none of this would have happened.

Thinking of her brother she hoped he was safely tucked up in bed somewhere and not getting up to any mischief with Archie Proctor. She wished she could stop this overprotective feeling she had for her brother-as she had told Jud earlier that evening, Rupert was twenty-five and well able to make his own decisions, but that didn't stop her worrying about him. He had been shaken to the core when he had discovered the lands he had hoped one day would be his had been gambled away from him, and she could understand in part why he should feel 'to hell with everything' and go wild for a time, especially since he had worked so hard to learn everything there was to know about looking after his inheritance. Poor Rupert, there was no longer an estate for him to manage.

Her thoughts see-sawed backwards and forwards between Jud Hemming and her brother, and she fell asleep at last wondering what on earth had possessed Rupert to tell the bank manager she was engaged to Jud.

Lucy felt much better about everything when she got up the next morning. Everything had seemed to have taken on nightmare proportions last night. She still didn't want to spend the weekend at Mrs Hemming's house, and had to keep taking a look at her ring every now and then to prevent herself from taking out her writing case and penning a regretful note to her saying she couldn't go. But as Jud had reminded her last night, the only lies she had told had been by implication only—that still didn't make them any less lies, in her view, but there was small consolation in that, and she did so want to keep her ring. Its monetary value

was incidental, she loved it because it had belonged to her mother and would have loved it equally had it been worth only a few pounds.

She was still preoccupied with her thoughts after lunch when Rupert returned. There was no doubting he was in high spirits as he came whistling into the kitchen where Lucy was putting a sponge cake in the oven.

`Made a killing at the races yesterday,' he said excitedly after the briefest of greetings. 'Old Archie put me on to a couple of good nags ...' He then went on to explain the intricacies of doubling one's bet by letting all the money won on the first horse ride on the second, and then on to more involved procedure that seemed highly complicated to Lucy. With a sinking heart she listened to him enthuse about 'good old Archie', and wanted to beg him to have nothing more to do with him. She had a question she wanted to ask her brother and it had nothing at all to do with horses, but she held back until eventually Rupert came to the end of his tale; he still had the light of success in his eyes and she didn't want to take that look away—he'd had very little to get excited about lately—but her question couldn't wait any longer, and with the openness of the relationship she had had with him since childhood, she a
sked her question straight out

`Why did you think it necessary to tell Charles Arbuthnot that I was engaged to Jud Hemming, Rupe?'

Expecting him to at least have the grace to look ashamed of himself, Lucy was shaken to see Rupert greet her question with no sign of looking abashed, though he did think to say he hadn't thought old man Arbuthnot would spread it around.

`I hadn't meant to tell him,' he admitted, not at all put out that his sister sho
uld take him to task about it. B
ut he was treating me like a school-kid—you know the sort of thing I mean.' Lucy said nothing and waited to hear him out as he mimicked Charles Arbuthnot's tones and man-

nerisms. 'He reminded me, as if I needed any reminding, that "your family have always been well respected, Rupert. I know you have had to take a nasty blow, but unless you do something about clearing your overdraft I shall be forced to take steps to ensure that the bank has its money".' Lucy didn't know how Mr Arbuthnot proposed the overdraft be cleared, and privately she thought he was being a little high-handed about an amount which at the most couldn't be more than a couple of hundred pounds, but she bit her lip worriedly as Rupert went on. 'Old Arbuthnot carried on in the same vein for what seemed an hour—though I was only with him for twenty minutes-but when he said, "The last thing I want, Rupert, is that you should lose your status in the community"-well, it niggled me. Who does he think he is, for God's sake? So I told him, "Actually, Mr Arbuthnot, I think there's very little likelihood of that," and you should have seen his face, Lucy, when I told him you were engaged to the millionaire owner of Rockford Hall.'

Lucy turned away from him trying to drown her thoughts as she filled the kettle to make a cup of tea. So it had been bravado-sheer bravado, that had been the reason for Rupert telling Charles Arbuthnot she was engaged, and to whom. She wondered who else the bank manager had told besides his wife, and realised it didn't really matter who else he had told—as Jud had said, it wouldn't be long before it was all over Priors Channing anyway. Mrs Arbuthnot was not likely to keep that snippet of news to herself.

`I say, you're not upset about it, are you?' Rupert, Lucy thought, was being particularly insensitive about the whole affair.

`I was upset, Rupert,' she confessed, by calling him by his full name showing she wasn't feeling all that friendly to him just then. `Jud Hemming came here yesterday—Mrs Arbuthnot had told Jud's mother, and he insisted I

went to the Hall and be introduced to her.'

`Strewth!' muttered Rupert, taken out of his stride momentarily, only to come bouncing back to say, 'Well, you're still alive to tell the tale.'

Lucy saw it was pointless telling Rupert any of her feelings, the uncaring mood he was now in. 'Yes, I am, aren't I,' she said quietly. 'Do you want a cup of tea?'

`Might take some of the fur off my tongue,' Rupert replied, letting her know he had drunk his fill last night. She joined him at the kitchen table, and sat absentmindedly stirring her tea-she didn't take sugar.

`You'll have to look after yourself this weekend,' she stated unemotionally. `I'm going to stay with Jud's mother for a few days on Friday.'

Rupert went up to his room shortly after he had drunk his tea. No doubt to catch up on the sleep he had missed, Lucy thought, as she rinsed the teacups they had used. Far from showing regret that she had been manoeuvred into going to Malvern on Friday, he had seemed delighted-not that she had told him how Jud had accepted the invitation for her when she had been certain he would have refused; Rupert's face, she recalled, had beamed at the news and all he had said was, 'I thought you said Jud Hemming didn't fancy you.' She hadn't used those actual words, though she had implied them, she recalled as she took the sponge cake out of the oven. Then feeling her emotions beginning to get on top of her, she tipped the cake out on to a rack to cool and went outside into the sunshine and taking a route across fields that were as familiar to her as breathing, she took herself off for a long walk, not returning until she had walked her agitated feelings out of her system.

Lucy saw nothing of Jud Hemming for the next few days, and was relieved about that. She had no idea where he worked, but since the nearest Hemming Aluminium plant was about forty miles away she reasoned that he probably went there daily. Assuming he would be working dur-

ing the day, that still left him with his evenings free, but when it came to Thursday and he hadn't contacted her, she began to feel a little irritated. He was playing the lord of the manor with a vengeance, she thought. Having said he would call for her on Friday afternoon he had left it at that, as if having given his instructions he need not concern himself with her until Friday.

News of her engagement had spread rapidly round the village and she had several phone calls from friends who rang to wax enthusiastically about her good fortune. Philippa Browne was one of her telephone callers, saying she couldn't believe it when she had heard.

`I never had any inkling that a romance was going on right under my nose,' said Pippa, who always reckoned to know everything that was happening. 'Mrs Hemming was at the hairdressers at the same time I was having my hair done-I've had it done in that new frizzy .style, though I don't think I like it-anyway, Mrs Hemming was saying you met her son when he first came to view the Hall, and that things grew from there. You are lucky, Lucy—I'd give my eye teeth for him, with or without his bank balance!'

Lucy had sat stunned for a while after the call. It took all sorts, she mused, thinking over what Pippa had said about giving her eye teeth for Jud Hemming. She had to admit, if she was to be truly honest, that some women might go for his cool manner-she refused to dwell on the nebulous thought that had come to her when he had kissed her, that if she didn't dislike him so much she might have enjoyed the experience; the kisses she had received prior to the ones he had bestowed had lacked the experience of the more mature man. Hastily she turned her mind away to reflect that he must have told his mother that bit about their first meeting when he had come to view the Hall. Were there no lies he wouldn't utter in order to get his own way?

On Thursday evening she had done nothing about packing her weekend case. It was as though by not doing so she

felt herself uncommitted. Rupert was out again tonight, probably again with Archie Proctor. He would have told her who he was meeting if she had asked him, only like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, she had decided she didn't want to know, and in consequence now wished she had.

When the phone rang she went to answer it, wondering if it was Rupert to say he wouldn't be coming home that night. But it wasn't Rupert's voice she heard but that of Jud calling her from Germany.

`I didn't tell you what time to be ready,' he said infuriatingly.

`I've been sitting here waiting for my orders,' she came back sarcastically.

There was a small pause, and when he spoke next she thought she could detect a faint trace of amusement in his voice, but it must have been a distortion in the telephone cables, she thought, because it soon disappeared.

`You haven't been up to the Hall,' he stated.

She had no idea how long he had been in Germany, but no doubt he would have been in touch with the Hall by telephone and his mother would have told him she hadn't seen her.

No—I'm not as practised as you in the art of lying without verbally committing myself.'

`You are committed, though, aren't you?' he jibed.

`Roll on the end of August,' Lucy retorted fervently. It was indelibly imprinted on her mind that the end of August would see the end of their engagement. `What time shall I be ready tomorrow?' she asked into the silence left when Jud made no reply to her fervent wish.

`I'll call for you around three,' he said smoothly, then the line went dead.

Lucy was ready when the Bentley pulled up outside Brook House the following afternoon. She had been pacing up and down the sitting room carpet still trying to think up

ways of getting out of going, when she spotted the car from the window. There was no one in the passenger seat, so she guessed they would be returning to the Hall to pick up Mrs Hemming.

Dressed in a linen suit of ice blue, she went to let Jud in. Rupert had gone out before lunch, and she had hoped he would be back before Jud arrived if only because it would have meant he had sufficient brotherly concern to see for himself the man she was engaged to. But Rupert hadn't returned and if she didn't know better she would have suspected he was purposely keeping out of Jud's way, which was ridiculous because the two had never met and there was no reason for Rupert to avoid meeting him.

`Ready?' asked Jud, as she opened the door to him putting his hand out for the weekend case she was holding.

Unspeaking, Lucy handed her case over, pulling the door closed behind her. It annoyed her that Jud checked to see that the door was securely locked, but she stamped down her feeling of annoyance, knowing that in ten minutes or so she would have to greet Mrs Hemming as though she hadn't a care in the world.

Jud seemed quite unconcerned that she hadn't spoken one word to him, and that irritated her further. They were almost on the point of turning into the drive of the Hall before it came to her that she might be being a little childish. She looked down at the ring on her finger. She was being well paid after all, she thought, it wouldn't hurt to be civil to him—beast that he was.

. . . did you have a pleasant time in Germany?' she enquired politely as the car turned into the drive of the Hall, and could have wished she had been able to make her remark without that stammering start.

`You've spoilt a record,' Jud answered mysteriously. `Record?'

`I've never known a woman be quiet for ...' he checked his watch as he halted the car outside the front door of the

Hall, `... all of ten minutes,' he ended.

`I'll bet,' said Lucy acidly, a mental picture of him with some willing female in his arms flashing unheralded through her mind. It was disconcerting to realise that Jud knew a fair bit of the thoughts that went through her mind, disconcerting also to hear that laugh she had heard once before.

She was outside the car before he had come round to her side, and was a little ashamed of herself for the way she slammed the door behind her. The majestic Bentley had done nothing to deserve such treatment.