Her Hand in Marriage. Jessica Steele

her mother prevaricated.

      ‘It’s not complicated. Lewis and Naylor, you and me, or nothing.’

      ‘But Lewis hasn’t asked me out again,’ Eleanor stated. Though, as if the idea was starting to sound not quite so unthinkable as it had, she suddenly looked as though she quite liked the idea. Even if she did insist, ‘I’ll come, but only if Lewis rings and asks me.’ With that she began to clear their dinner plates seeming a shade foxed all at once as she commented, ‘All I thought to do was to find out if you have a hang up about men—and suddenly it looks as if I’m to get my best dress out of mothballs.’

      Romillie did not look forward to making that phone call, and got up the next morning with the fact that she was going to have to hanging over her like a dark cloud. But, since she did not want to make the call from her workstation, she went out to her car mid-morning and from there rang the number on Naylor Cardell’s business card.

      ‘May I speak with Mr Cardell?’ she asked the female who answered, and realised that the number gave her access straight through to his PA. She half hoped the PA would block the call or say he was not in.

      But no such luck. ‘Who shall I say is calling?’ she enquired pleasantly.

      ‘Romillie Fairfax,’ she replied, and waited, wanting to terminate the call before she started.

      ‘Yes?’ clipped Naylor Cardell, not very enamoured to have his work interrupted.

      ‘We can make Saturday,’ she told him briefly, her tones not enamoured of him either.

      ‘Right,’ he said, and that was all.

      But, fearing he was about to bang down his phone, Romillie hurriedly burst into speech. ‘But my mother will only agree if Lewis contacts her and asks her personally.’

      ‘I’ll see to it!’ Naylor clipped, without so much as a pause—and that was an end to the time he wasted on her.

      That urge she had felt before, to set about him, was there again. She did not know what it was about him but Romillie experienced a quite dreadful desire to punch Naylor Cardell’s head. She half wished he had changed his mind and said that he wasn’t free on Saturday, and that dinner was off.

      But, on leaving her car and going back to work, Romillie realised that to wish that would only make her as selfish as the dratted man thought she was. Not that she was concerned about his opinion. It was her mother that mattered.

      But Naylor Cardell had ‘seen to it’, as he had said he would, and when Romillie went home at lunchtime it was to discover that Lewis had already been in telephone contact with her mother.

      ‘I said we would meet them in town to save them driving down here, but Lewis wouldn’t hear of it,’ Eleanor revealed. ‘He and Naylor will pick us up around seven—but I expect you already know that from Naylor.’

      By half past six on Saturday evening, Romillie was starting to have grave doubts about the venture. Her mother was looking more and more uptight by the minute.

      Which only went to make Romillie wonder if she should have left things well alone and let her mother come to a decision in her own time about whether or not she wanted to go out in male company.

      At five to seven, with her parent growing more and more fidgety, Romillie was feeling very much that she had been wrong to collude with Naylor Cardell the way that she had. In fact, she was of a mind to go out and apologise to Lewis—and Naylor if she had to—and to tell them they would not be coming to dine with them after all.

      Impossibly, however, when her mother had been pacing about for the last ten minutes, no sooner had Lewis arrived and said a quiet, ‘Hello, Eleanor,’ than her mother’s nerves about the evening seem to instantly fall away.

      Looking completely relaxed with each other, they were already engaged in pleasantries when Naylor unfolded his long length from behind the steering wheel of the car and came to join them.

      ‘Romillie,’ he said.

      ‘Naylor,’ she replied.

      And that would have been it as far as she was concerned—except that both her mother and Lewis seemed to be of the opinion that Naylor was her date, and insisted that she sit up front with him.

      ‘Had a good week?’ she enquired, after racking her brains for something to talk to him about as they drove along.

      ‘Can’t complain,’ he replied briefly. A minute ticked by, and then two. ‘You?’ he enquired.

      Grief, this was like trying to harvest a field of wheat with a pair of blunt scissors! ‘Average,’ she managed, and began to be sure that the evening was going to be a complete disaster.

      Strangely, it wasn’t. Not totally. Whoever had chosen the restaurant Naylor and Lewis took them to they had, Romillie saw, chosen well. There was plush carpeting, crisp linen, and room between the well-spaced tables for private conversation. If, that was, they could find anything to talk about.

      But she had to give Naylor Cardell credit that, the idea of the four of them dining together being hers and not his, he did not leave it to her to keep the conversational ball rolling. As they started on their meal, he did away with desultory conversation and appeared to show an interest in her. She knew that it was purely for her mother’s benefit, but felt the oddest sensation inside when he looked across at her for long moments and seemed quite taken with her. She saw his glance flick over her just below shoulder-length long dark hair, stray over her unblemished complexion, before his striking blue eyes connected with her velvety brown ones.

      ‘Eleanor, I know, is a well-known artist of exceptional talent,’ he began engagingly. ‘Tell me, Romillie, have you inherited your mother’s gift?’

      ‘Er—I’ve tried, but I’m quite, quite hopeless,’ she stated honestly, endeavouring to hide the fact that his charm offensive had taken her unawares.

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, darling.’ Her mother joined in the conversation, amazingly, after the way she had been prior to seeing Lewis that evening, now thoroughly relaxed.

      ‘I think you must be seeing my poor efforts through a mother’s indulgent eyes,’ Romillie laughed, and, feeling unexpectedly relaxed herself all at once, fell silent for a while as Lewis joined in and the discussion centred around art, including talk of the exhibition all four of them had attended.

      They were on to the next course when there was a lull in the conversation and Naylor again seemed to remember that, in the interests of furthering the budding friendship of Lewis and Eleanor, he should be showing more of an interest in Eleanor’s daughter.

      ‘What sort of work do you do, Romillie?’ he asked. ‘You never said.’

      ‘I work in a dental practice,’ she replied, realising she was honour-bound to play along.

      ‘You’re a dental surgeon?’

      ‘Nothing so grand,’ she answered, finding a smile. ‘I’m just a receptionist.’

      ‘As long as you enjoy it,’ he responded, and asked, ‘Have you been there long?’

      ‘About a year,’ she replied, and realised he was playing his interested man-friend part well when he did not leave it there.

      ‘What did you do before that?’ he enquired pleasantly.

      Nothing, actually. But for no known reason, while she was sure she was not the smallest bit bothered about his opinion of her, Romillie discovered that—when he must work very hard—she didn’t wish that he should add lazy to his belief that she was selfish.

      ‘I—er…’ she stumbled—and was astonished that when she had spent the last five years doing what she could to protect her mother, her mother, plainly knowing her well enough to read her discomfiture, suddenly took on the role of protecting her!

      ‘Romillie was about to start university in the hope of one day being a forensic scientist, but