Her Hand in Marriage. Jessica Steele

raven hair, now drawn back neatly, and looking deeply into her wide brown eyes.

      ‘Sorry I couldn’t make it last night,’ she apologised, having cancelled their arrangement, though without explaining that her mother had seemed a bit down when she had gone home at lunchtime.

      ‘No problem,’ he replied good-humouredly. ‘How are you fixed for tonight? We could go and see that new film.’

      Romillie, recalling that her mother was so sensationally ‘up’ that morning as to actually consider picking up her sketching pad, smiled a warm smile. ‘I’d love to,’ she accepted.

      Carrying her coffee back to her desk, she thanked Cindy for covering for her. But when Cindy did not go but fidgeted, moving things around on the desk, Romillie realised she had something on her mind. When she heard what it was, however, something in Romillie iced over.

      ‘Are you and Jeff Davidson an item?’ Cindy blurted out suddenly.

      The dental nurse seemed wound up. Romillie, from experience, tried to help. ‘Is it important?’ she asked quietly.

      ‘I went out with him last night,’ Cindy said in another rush, and, while a sick feeling invaded Romillie’s insides, ‘I—um—wouldn’t want to—um—you know, if…’

      ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Romillie answered, somehow managing to maintain her quiet air. ‘I have been out with him. But that’s finished now.’

      Cindy beamed at her. ‘You didn’t mind me asking?’

      ‘Not at all,’ Romillie replied, and even found a smile.

      She carried on with her work, but all the while thoughts of the fickleness of men bombarded her. Her father was a prime example, and now the man she had been out with enough times to have begun to think of him as her boyfriend was another.

      But, as she had told Cindy Wilson, that was now finished. If he thought she was going to the cinema with him that night did he have another think coming! All that remained was for her to tell him that.

      Romillie went home at lunchtime, hid from her mother that she had received a pretty nasty jolt that morning, and ate the sandwiches her mother had prepared. She returned to work with a certainty that nothing would alter, that while she and Jeff Davidson might have been an item yesterday, they most assuredly were not an item today. Nor would they ever be.

      She did not get the chance to tell him so until she went to make a cup of tea and he came to find her. ‘What time tonight?’ he began.

      While the fear silently haunted her that she might have inherited some of her father’s weaknesses, Romillie, with her years of experience of his dishonesty in his relationship with her mother, just knew without having to think about it that there would be no such dishonesty or underhandedness in any relationship she had.

      ‘You went out with Cindy Wilson last night,’ she said bluntly.

      That caught him off-guard, but after a second or two he recovered. ‘I didn’t know I was yours exclusively,’ he replied.

      Romillie stared at him, her brown eyes wide and serious. Then suddenly she smiled. It was a phoney smile. She might be hurting but he would never know it. ‘You’re not,’ she said. And, in case he had not yet got the message, ‘Enjoy the film,’ she bade him, picked up her tea, and walked away.

      Romillie was still feeling churned up inside about Jeff Davidson when she drove home that night, and she blamed herself—when her father was a fine example of a two-timing man; in her father’s case more than two timing—that she had believed that she and Jeff Davidson were exclusive to each other.

      It made her angry that she had been such a fool. Once bitten twice shy, she vowed. And with her knowledge of her father’s faithlessness, and now her supposed boyfriend proving to be little better, Romillie knew it would be a very long time before she trusted any man again.

      She hid her hurt and disenchantment when she arrived home, and went in search of her mother. She found her in the kitchen.

      ‘I saw you coming. I’ve got the kettle on,’ Eleanor Fairfax announced, and seemed equally bright as she had at the start of the day, so that Romillie felt able to bring up the subject of her taking her sketchpad outside.

      ‘Did you manage…?’ It was as far as she got. For, guessing the question, her mother picked up the sketchpad from behind her.

      ‘What do you think?’ she asked, showing a small sketch of a corner of the garden.

      ‘Mum, it’s wonderful!’ Romillie enthused, meaning it on both fronts. It was wonderful that her parent was showing an interest again, and her talent as an artist was truly wonderful too. Her attention to detail never ceased to amaze Romillie.

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,’ Eleanor protested. ‘I might try painting it later, but I’m so rusty. I…’ She left the rest unsaid, but was smiling happily as she revealed, ‘I had a blast from the past this afternoon.’ And when Romillie looked at her quickly, fearing the worst, ‘No, not your father. Though no doubt Archer Fairfax will show his face again as soon as he wants something. No, I was absorbed in what I was doing when I suddenly felt someone’s eyes on me. I looked up, and there in next-door’s garden was Lewis Selby.’

      ‘Lewis Selby?’

      ‘You won’t know him. I wouldn’t have known him myself—I hadn’t seen him in over forty years. He’s a cousin of Sarah Daniels.’ Sarah Daniels lived next door, but had closed the house up some months previously to go on an extended stay in Australia. ‘Lewis and his family used to visit quite often when he was a boy—he’d have been about twelve the last time I saw him. I must have been five or six,’ Eleanor broke off to explain, ‘and I heard them having such fun in the garden next door that it seems I toddled off round there to join in. Lewis was delegated to take hold of my hand and bring me back.’

      ‘You remember the incident?’

      ‘Oh, I do. He was such a kind boy. Apparently I would look out of the window every day for him, but I didn’t see him again.’

      ‘Until today?’

      ‘Until today,’ her mother agreed with a smile. ‘He knew from Sarah that I’d become an artist—was an artist,’ she corrected. ‘He didn’t recognise me either, but came to the hedge when he saw me to make himself known.’

      Romillie laughed. It was a joy to see her mother so ‘up’. ‘What a pity he didn’t know that Mrs Daniels was away. Had he come far?’

      ‘He lives in London and he knew Sarah was out of the country. She has been in touch, it seems, and guess what?’ Romillie had no idea. ‘Apparently Sarah, horse-mad Sarah, has met a man in the Outback—and won’t be coming home.’

      Romillie’s eyes went wide in surprise. ‘She’s getting married?’ she asked. Sarah Daniels, closer to sixty than fifty had, when widowed young, moved back to her family home.

      Eleanor nodded. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she exclaimed, seeming oblivious to the fact that marriage, as in her own case, was very often a disaster.

      ‘Er—yes,’ Romillie agreed, holding back from saying that now, and probably even before Jeff Davidson’s careless treatment of what she had started to think was a little more than a casual association between them, she viewed the prospect of men and marriage through much less rose-tinted glasses. ‘Um—so why did this—er—Lewis Selby visit if he knew she wouldn’t be here?’

      ‘Apparently Lewis is thinking of semi-retirement and Sarah contacted him with the idea of putting his semi-retirement to good use.’

      ‘She’s selling the house?’ Romillie guessed.

      ‘Not straight away,’ her mother corrected. ‘It seems that she and her Australian are mutually besotted and he’s afraid that if she comes home she won’t go back again. So to prove her love she has said that she will stay.’

      ‘This