Husband-To-Be. Linda Miles

eyes in a deeply tanned face, and a mouth that looked as though it could be hard, though at the moment it was quirking with amusement. He was conventionally dressed in a dark suit, but everything about him said that here was someone who went after what he wanted; if convention was between him and it, convention had better get out of his way.

      He was certainly very good-looking, but it was not this that made Rachel stare. Something about him was oddly familiar—hadn’t she seen those deep blue eyes before?

      ‘Any luck, Grant?’ the woman asked in a husky drawl. And suddenly Rachel placed him. It was Grant Mallett, of course—but what was he doing in a suit and tie? Rachel’s idea of keeping up with current events was to read Vogue and Scientific American, but even she had heard of Grant Mallett.

      He’d been labelled everything from eco-warrior to rabble-rouser, but Rachel wasn’t fooled; this was a man who landed in trouble the way some men just naturally ended up in the nearest bar. If a tribe was being pushed out of its territory by loggers in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest, you could bet Grant Mallett had just happened to canoe a couple of hundred miles up an obscure tributary to turn up in the middle of the fracas. If poachers went after ivory in a Kenyan game reserve, it would just naturally be on the night when Grant Mallett had gone out on safari and accidentally got left behind.

      He was persona non grata in eight separate countries, including his own; a man who’d been cursed in thirty or forty languages by officials who were ‘just doing their job’; naturally the British Press adored him. And he was definitely—but definitely—not Rachel’s type.

      Rachel could get in quite enough trouble on her own account without someone like Mr Six Adventures Before Breakfast here. Go around with someone like that and you wouldn’t just find yourself standing in a swamp all your life—you’d find that the swamp was infested with piranhas. Thank goodness she was engaged to Driscoll—sensible, mature, reliable Driscoll. But what in heaven’s name could this lightning-rod in human form be doing in Blandings Magna? And what was the lovely blonde doing with him? It was, in Rachel’s opinion, an unnecessary risk to a perfectly good suit.

      ‘Sorry, Olivia, we must have left it back at the house,’ said Mr Mallett. Something in his voice suggested that the ‘we’ was for politeness’ sake.

      Olivia shrugged. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, darling. Let’s just have a quick look in this antique shop before it closes, shall we? They might have something that would do for the private part of the house.’

      Most of the residents of the village had acquired a pet from Morrison’s in the last month or so. Rachel now realised suddenly, joyfully, that one had not. Joyce, in the antique shop, was new to the district; she had a soft spot for William; probably she’d be only too pleased to have him for her very own.

      She followed the couple into Blandings Magna Antiques.

      ‘It’s absolutely thrilling that you’ve decided to go through with it,’ said the woman, in a bored, drawling voice strangely at odds with her enthusiastic words. In anyone else Rachel might have thought it affected, but in her eyes the owner of The Suit could do no wrong. That was what she wanted to be like. Suave. Sophisticated. Someone who didn’t even own a pair of thigh-high rubber boots, never mind wear them. ‘Daddy says you might even get a knighthood, did I tell you?’

      ‘Oh. Hell. That is, terrific—but there’s many a slip,’ Mallett said hopefully. ‘It may yet come to grief. I thought the countryside had high unemployment, but I can’t even find a secretary...’

      He joined her to look at a cherrywood dresser.

      Rachel stopped, starry-eyed, on the threshold. That was what she’d be! She’d be a secretary! She saw, in an instant, a vision of herself in preposterous heels and a sophisticated suit, seated at a desk; air-conditioning would cool her in the summer, central heating warm her in winter. A coffee-maker in a beautifully appointed kitchenette would dispense freshly made coffee from freshly ground beans, while somebody who wanted an academic career stood in swamps and toughed it out with a battered Thermos.

      While she stood at the door revolving visions of a wall-to-wall-carpeted, mosquito-free environment, the couple made its way slowly about the room, Olivia commenting on each item of furniture in exhaustive detail. Sometimes the flow was broken by a comment shot to Joyce—usually a disparaging remark about the price. Or sometimes a question was put to Mallett—but Mallett, who had always been decisive, indeed obdurate to the point of insanity on the question of, say, conditions in a refugee camp, now only shrugged and deferred to the views of his companion.

      ‘Whatever you think,’ was his constant reply. ‘I don’t know much about it; it looks all right to me; the money’s not a problem if you want it.’

      ‘But Grant,’ Olivia protested at last, ‘it’s not just for me, it’s for us. Surely you must have some opinion.’

      Even Rachel, preoccupied with the double problems of a home for William and her future career as the perfect secretary, could not repress a certain interest in this development. Mallett had replied politely to all the questions put to him, but it was obvious enough that he had been fighting down colossal boredom with the subject. He certainly seemed the last person in the world to make the beautifully finished creature beside him happy. Were they about to discover their mistake? Would he feel trapped? The couple had stopped by a sideboard with a mirror set in the back; Rachel got a clear view of the rueful, humorous look in the blue eyes—no hint of regret there.

      ‘Olivia, my opinion is that the place will look a lot better if you follow your instincts instead of listening to someone who thinks a tent with a folding chair is over fumished. I’m pretty certain the science park will work in that location; I’m sure the house will work well for conferences, and I’m sure we can be comfortable in it. I’m glad to be settling down at last, but I haven’t got out of the habit of expecting to fit my living quarters in a rucksack. I keep thinking you’d be lucky to get that thing a mile in a jungle, which I admit is ridiculous when it will never have to leave the dining room—just give me a while to get used to the idea of having a dining room, will you?’

      Olivia shook her head. ‘Where would you be without me?’ she asked.

      ‘I can’t imagine.’ He smiled down at her, shaking his head.

      Even Rachel, who knew her type—and Grant Mallett wasn’t it—had to admit that the smile was pretty devastating. But Olivia seemed oddly immune; she raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow, and turned her attention again to the sideboard.

      Rachel was about to return to her daydream when she was interrupted by Joyce, a woman with pepper-and-salt hair and the rather sardonic look of someone who has spent a lot of time in the antique trade. She’d been doing something or other with paperwork, in between replies to Olivia, just to take the pressure off the visitors; now a chat with Rachel looked just as good a way to put potential clients at ease. ‘Rachel!’ she exclaimed with pleasure. Her eyes fell to the box. ‘Don’t tell me—it’s not William?’ Joyce had heard all about Mr Morrison’s lack of enthusiasm for innovations at the Feed and Supply.

      “Fraid so,’ said Rachel, clearing her head of a scene in which she opened the morning post with an enamelled letter opener elegantly held in a perfectly manicured hand. ‘The thing is that Basil and Stephen and Christopher all had such striking colouring that they went straight away, whereas poor old William...’

      Joyce shook her head sympathetically. ‘So you’re keeping him yourself?’

      ‘Well...’

      ‘Let’s have a look.’ Joyce took the box, slid back the top, and looked fondly down. ‘Isn’t he a lamb?’ she said dotingly. William had just eaten and was sitting drowsily in one corner, but this was nothing to the eye of love.

      ‘I was actually wondering whether you wouldn’t like to have him?’ said Rachel, recognising her cue. But the reply was one she’d heard dozens of times before.

      ‘I’d love to,’ Joyce said regretfully. ‘But I really don’t think Jack would stand for it. You know what men are like. And