anything amiss in the recent exchange as her lilting tones had reverted to the subject of books.
‘Middlemarch, now,’ she was saying. ‘Did you ever read that? A wonderful book, but what a fool young Dorothea to be marrying that dried-up stick of a man. And then leaping out of the frying pan into the fire with the other fellow.’ She snorted. ‘A ne’er do well, if ever there was one. And what in the world is it that draws a decent girl to the likes of them?’
Somehow, Alanna managed a smile. ‘I’ve no idea. But it’s still a great novel.’
As I told your grandson who bought it for you around this time last year...
She was grateful when they were interrupted by Mrs Healey.
‘Isn’t it time we all got ready for dinner, Mama? I know we’re not actually dressing tonight, but I’m sure Miss Becket, for one, would like to tidy herself,’ she added with a look suggesting that Alanna had recently been dragged through a hedge backwards. ‘Joanne can show her to her room.’
Alanna found her hand being patted. ‘I have to let you go, dear girl,’ said Niamh Harrington. ‘But there’ll be plenty of time for another grand chat.’
Joanne turned out to be the blonde who’d been sitting beside her grandmother, not just pretty but clearly disposed to be friendly.
‘Rather you than me for the cosy chats,’ she confided as they went upstairs. ‘Grandam has a way of asking questions when she already knows the answers. But that won’t happen with you.’
Oh, God, I hope not, thought Alanna, her heart sinking.
‘And you know about literature,’ Joanne went on. ‘It’s as much as I can do to get through Hello! in the hairdresser’s, and Kate’s as bad, although she can use Mark and the baby as an excuse for being too busy to read.’
At the top of the impressive stone staircase, she turned left. ‘We’re down here—spinsters’ alley, I suppose, although you don’t really qualify as you and Gerard are an item.’
‘It’s a bit early to call it that,’ Alanna said carefully. ‘We’ve only been going out together for a few weeks.’
‘But he’s brought you here. Exposed you to the entire Harrington onslaught.’ Joanne giggled, naughtily. ‘I bet Grandam gave you the full once-over, checking for childbearing hips. Her father owned a stud farm in Tipperary, and she practically claims to be descended from Brian Boru, so she’ll want to know all about your family—suitable blood lines and all that. No dodgy branches on the family tree.’
Alanna gasped. ‘You are joking.’
‘Not altogether.’ Joanne pulled a face. ‘She does take the whole thing horribly seriously, and I’ve never had a boyfriend I’ve dared bring here in case he turns out to be spavined or sway-backed or something equally ghastly.’
She opened a door. ‘Well, this is you. I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ she added dubiously. ‘The bathroom’s between us. It’s only small, because it used to be a powdering room for people’s wigs, but the water’s always boiling, and there’s a door into the bedrooms on each side which we can bolt, so no need to sing loudly during occupancy.’
She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll be back to collect you in forty minutes. Will that do?’
Alanna could only nod.
Left alone, she sank down on to the edge of a rather hard mattress on a three-quarter-size bed, and looked around her. It was an old-fashioned room with a narrow window, and made even darker by cumbersome furniture dating from the beginning of the previous century, and wallpaper covered in flamboyant cabbage roses in a shade of pink Nature had overlooked.
Her bag had been placed on the foot of the bed, so she unfastened it and extracted tomorrow evening’s dress, removing its tissue paper wrapping before hanging it in the cavernous wardrobe.
Joanne, she decided, was undoubtedly indiscreet as well as cheerful, and she would probably need to be on her guard. But the other girl could be a valuable source of information and a few casual questions could do no harm.
Because it was clear that Niamh Harrington’s other grandson, whose arrival for her birthday party had caused such a disturbance to the arrangements as well as destroying her own peace of mind, was also something of an outsider.
Her first instinct was, once again, to run. To invent some work-related emergency involving an imperative summons back to London. But that would, quite correctly, lead Zandor Varga to suppose she was scared of him, and what was left of her pride forbade it.
Besides, the Harrington family en masse now seemed more of an advantage than a problem. By the time she’d done the rounds and met them all, it should be perfectly possible to lose herself among them, thus avoiding any further contact with Zandor.
And, of course, Gerard would be her shield too, she told herself, wondering why that was an afterthought.
Her immediate dilemma was what to wear that evening. She’d brought a dress, of course, a black, knee-length linen shift. It wasn’t the one she’d been wearing when she first met Zandor—that had been consigned to the dustbin the following day—but it bore far too distinct a resemblance to the other for her comfort. On the other hand, she felt hot and sticky in the clothes she’d travelled in, and her skirt was badly creased.
I’ll just have to bite on the bullet, she thought. Brazen the situation out. Let him think what he likes.
Her decision made, she took a quick refreshing bath in the deep, old-fashioned tub, then dressed swiftly and brushed her hair till it shone. She clasped a necklace composed of flat silver discs round her throat adding a matching bracelet to her wrist.
She disguised her unwelcome pallor with a discreet use of blusher and masked the strained lines of her mouth with a brownish-pink lipstick.
She reached for her scent spray, then hesitated. She only ever wore one perfume—Azalea, from the distinctive Earth Scents range by Lizbeth Lane, a new young designer whose workshop she’d visited with Susie when she first arrived in London.
And that was something he would definitely recognise—if he got close enough, she thought, sudden heat pervading her body as she returned the atomiser to her makeup purse.
She was trying to calm herself with some Yoga-style breathing when Joanne tapped on her door.
‘Ready for the lions’ den?’ she asked cheerfully.
‘You certainly look great. Your hair is the most amazing colour—rather like Gran’s antique mahogany dining table. Granny Dennison, I mean, not Grandam.’
‘You call her that too?’
‘We all do,’ Joanne said as they walked to the stairs. ‘Except Zan, of course. He sticks to the formal Grandmother when he visits—which isn’t that often.’
She sighed. ‘None of us knew he was coming this time either. I suppose it’s about money again, which means the usual row. And unfair, I think, to put her in a bate on her birthday weekend. On the other hand, I guess we must be thankful he didn’t bring Lili.’
She encountered Alanna’s questioning look and flushed scarlet. ‘Oh, hell, me and my big mouth. Look, just forget I mentioned her—please.’
‘Forgotten,’ Alanna assured her over-brightly, reflecting she’d been entirely accurate about Joanne’s talent for indiscretion.
But it was interesting that the dynamic, all-conquering Mr Varga needed money, suggesting that Bazaar Vert might be feeling the economic crunch along with other high-profile businesses.
Gerard had mentioned nothing about any downward turn, but she could hardly expect that he would, any more than she’d confessed to him her fears about the takeover at Hawkseye, now said to be looming. They weren’t on those sorts of terms.
And now they never would