and you have your debts paid off?’
‘I want them to have the best,’ she said stubbornly. ‘They shouldn’t suffer because my father…’
‘Because your father didn’t face his responsibilities.’ Alastair’s voice gentled. ‘You face yours, though, don’t you? And I do, too. That’s what this is all about. Facing responsibilities. That’s why I’m asking you to marry me. It could help us both.’
‘I don’t—’
‘No, don’t say anything.’ He smiled at her, a smile that lit his face and took the heaviness away from her heart. ‘First let’s eat a very good dinner. And tell me…’
‘Tell you what?’ She was thoroughly flustered. ‘You already know everything.’
‘I don’t know this.’
‘What?’
‘Why do they call you Penny-Rose?’
She didn’t answer him until she’d demolished the first course. Her snails were magnificent morsels of taste sensation. She’d never tasted anything so delicious in her life. And in a way, it was time out. Her whole attention had to be on conquering the tricky silver tongs and tiny fork—and on not missing a drop of the gorgeous juice.
She finally finished and looked up to find Alastair watching her. The look on his face was strange, as if he couldn’t believe she was real.
‘Oh, what?’ she said crossly. ‘Have I made a faux pas?’
‘On the contrary, you managed beautifully,’ he told her, just a hint of a smile lingering in his voice. ‘In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed watching someone eating snails more.’ He left her to make of that what she liked, and then pressed home his question for the third time. ‘Before our next distraction comes—’
‘Food’s not a distraction,’ she retorted. ‘What a thing to say!’
‘OK, I was brought up wrong,’ he admitted. ‘I could have had snails for breakfast if I’d wanted. But I do want to know—’
‘You know everything.’
‘Not this.’
‘So pay more money to your private investigators.’
‘My mother asked them,’ he confessed. ‘But apart from knowing your full name is Penelope Rose O’Shea…’
‘So? That’s why I’m called Penny-Rose.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘It’d explain Penny, or Rose, but—’
‘I hate Penny.’
Alastair’s face was thoughtful, watching hers. ‘I see you do. Why don’t you call yourself Penelope, then?’
‘I’m not much into that either.’
‘Would you like to explain?’
‘My…’ She caught herself. No! This was none of his business. It was no one’s business.
But then she looked at him again, and he looked gravely back, and she thought, He does want to know. For whatever reason, he’s really interested.
In me.
The thought was so novel she could hardly believe it. Talking about herself was something she never did, but suddenly she couldn’t resist telling him. Just once.
‘My father called me Penelope,’ she began. ‘He insisted I was called that after a great-aunt, so she’d leave us money. But she never did, and my father hated the name because of it. And I think…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I think my father hated me.’
‘That’s a fair indictment of your father.’
She shook her head. ‘Maybe I don’t blame him. I was his conscience, you see,’ she told him. ‘From the time my mother died I badgered him. All Dad wanted was to drink himself into oblivion, and I wouldn’t let him.’
‘How did you stop him?’
She shrugged. ‘It was never easy. I’d steal money from his wallet to feed the kids, so when he went to the pub he didn’t have enough. A great little thief—that’s me. Or I’d wake him up sometimes…’ Her voice faltered as she tried to continue. ‘When I was ill or when the milking got too much for me, I’d sometimes be able to shame him into helping. And I badgered him into teaching me to build stone fences. He had to work a bit to get money to drink, so he’d take on a stone-walling job, and there I’d be, watching. Because it meant money, I’d help all I could.’
‘I’d have thought,’ Alastair said thoughtfully, his eyes resting on hers, ‘that he’d have been grateful.’
‘He wasn’t.’ There was no question of that. ‘He called me Penelope. He’d put on this dreadful voice and he’d say to the kids, “Penelope says we have to do this. Penelope says there’s not enough to eat…’” She broke off. ‘He’d tell the kids it was my fault they were hungry—because I’d taken his money! Sometimes it was as if I had another kid to look after, but he was my father. I couldn’t stop him hating me. The only way I could get through to him was to threaten to come into the pub and tell his drinking mates how much we’d had to eat that week.’
‘You didn’t!’ Alastair said, awed, and she managed a smile.
‘You have no idea what you can do when you’re desperate. Only then…after the first time I threatened that, he started calling me Penny instead of Penelope. He said I was constantly grubbing for money so I might as well be named for it. I hated that, too. So, behind his back, the kids started calling me Penny-Rose.’
‘I see…’
‘And it’s sort of stuck,’ she told him. ‘And maybe it fits me. Penelope Rose is on my passport and job application, but when I got the job with Bert they said I was such a two-bit thing they’d call me Penny-Rose.’ She smiled. ‘’Cos I surely wasn’t a two-bob Rose.’
There was silence as he took that on board. The waiter came and cleared their plates, but still Alastair didn’t speak.
‘I don’t think you’re a two-bob Rose either,’ he said at last, and he couldn’t quite keep the emotion out of his voice. He looked at her across the table and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. All this… His mother had told him her background, but until now it had hardly seemed true.
‘I don’t think you’re a two-bob Rose either,’ he repeated. ‘I refuse to call you Penny. Or Penelope. I think you’re a Rose, and a million-pound Rose at that. A Princess Rose. You deserve it, and marriage to me might just make sure that you get it. From this time on…’ His voice caught with sudden, unexpected emotion. ‘From this time on, you’re Rose.’
‘Rose…’
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Yeah, but it doesn’t sound like me.’ She grinned. ‘It sounds too dignified.’
‘You can live up to your name.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘If you want to…’
The main course arrived then, giving them welcome time out. Penny-Rose—or just Rose—was never going to be distracted from food like this, not for all the princes in the world.
Before her was roast duckling, snow peas and crispy roast potatoes, served with a jus that made her mouth water before she even saw it. Penny-Rose-cum-Rose forgot all about dignity and concentrated on what was important.
Which was a novelty in itself to Alastair. He wasn’t accustomed to taking a woman out to dinner and having all her attention focussed on the food!
He sat and watched, bemused, waiting for the moment when she’d scraped her plate clean, and then turned back to more