The Thorn in His Side (5 page)

Eustace sat on the passenger seat with his head out of the window as Libby drove the half-mile down the lane to the chocolate-box roses-around-the-door cottage where Chloe lived.

The short journey did not take long, though longer than it might have had she not felt the need to stop halfway to bury her head in her hands and groan a mortified—You wanted to kiss him; you
enjoyed
it!

It seemed to Libby as she angled a glance at her refection in the driving mirror that her shame was written all over her face. Chloe was going to know that something had happened the moment she saw her and in her present frame of mind Libby had an uncomfortable feeling she might tell her what it was!

Hand on the ignition key, she paused and dropped her hand, thinking, Maybe not …? It might be an invitation to any passing felon, but a running engine also provided an escape route of the ‘must dash, the engine’s running’ variety. And Chloe was already aware that she was in a hurry home.

Her precautions proved unnecessary as it was Chloe’s husband, Joe, who answered the door. Not really renowned for his sartorial elegance, Joe resembled an unmade bed even more so than normal and the bags under his eyes had acquired company.

Libby’s own problems receded momentarily as she angled a look of sympathy at his exhausted face. ‘Hi, Joe.’

Beside her Eustace saw his master and leapt at him, tearing the lead from her hand in the process.

‘Hush, you’ll wake the baby, hound,’ Joe said, grabbing the trailing lead of the barking dog and receiving a slobbery kiss from the overexcited animal before bestowing a grateful but weary smile on Libby. ‘Thanks, Libby. It turns out I could have picked him up—I got off work early.’

Now he tells me, Libby thought, fixing a smile. ‘No problem.’

Other than discovering I am actually not a
nice
girl. That actually when it comes to breathtakingly handsome Spaniards I am what is termed
easy.

On the plus side, it was good to know your weaknesses. From now on she was going to avoid anywhere where there was so much as a chance of hearing flamenco music.

‘The vet said you can bring him back Tuesday to get the stitches out and to give him these.’ She reached
into her pocket and produced a bottle of tablets. ‘Twice a day, I think he said,’ she said, glancing at the label.

Joe took them and pocketed them. ‘Don’t worry, we know the drill—unfortunately.’ Joe ran a hand over his unshaven jaw and seemed surprised to find gingery stubble there. ‘But no more or it’s obedience school for you,’ he warned, patting the animal’s head.

Libby fought back a smile. Poor Joe—designer stubble was not a good look on him. Of course there were some men who would not necessarily look disagreeable with a couple of days’ beard growth.

A few might even look sexy in a slightly edgy, piratical way, she conceded, thinking of one face in particular.

‘How are things?’ she asked, making a conscious and unsuccessful effort to push the face away.

‘A bit … twilight zone, really. I think it’s the sleep deprivation. Chloe’s having a nap. I know she’d love to see you, but you don’t mind if I don’t wake her …?’

Finally banishing the image of a specific dark lean face complete with designer stubble, Libby shook her head and struggled to hide her relief.

‘Not a problem. To be honest I’m a bit tired. I want to get home and Mum and Dad—’

‘Yes, of course!’ A spasm of sympathy crossed Joe’s face. ‘I heard, Libby. I’m
so
sorry. If there is any—’ He broke off, looking over his shoulder and groaning as the unmistakeable sound of a baby’s demanding cry rang out in the distance.

Oblivious to the alarm in Libby’s expression, he gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Sorry, must go before Chloe wakes up. She’s all in and—’

‘No problem, you go and give my love to Ch—’

‘You’re a pal.’

If Libby had not stepped back the door might have hit her nose. As it was she turned her ankle on the cobbles that ran around the house.

Teeth gritted and ignoring the stabbing sharp pain in her ankle, she retraced her steps, the sound of Joe’s voice amplified in her head above the sound of her feet on the gravel driveway—I
heard, I’m so sorry …

Heard what? Sorry about what?

She had to fight the impulse to run back to the cottage, bang on the door and demand that Joe explain himself. However the sound of the dog barking and the baby crying did suggest that Joe had enough on his plate … and anyway she might be misreading what he had said.

She shook her head. Deep down she knew this wasn’t the case. She wasn’t misreading anything or overreacting—she had
known
something was wrong!

And how did she respond to a potential family crisis? She stopped off to kiss a total stranger on her way home!

The fact the kissing had not been planned did not constitute an excuse in Libby’s mind. It did make it all the more difficult for her to forgive herself for her reprehensible behaviour.

Resisting the impulse to floor the accelerator—she’d already caused one accident today—Libby drove through the village at a sedate pace responding mechanically to the waves she received from several people. Was she being paranoid or had there been sympathy in those waves? It was a small community and everyone pretty much knew everyone—and secrets, forget it, there weren’t any.

She was probably the only person in a twenty-mile
radius who wasn’t in the know, Libby thought as she struggled to keep her imagination in check.

She failed miserably. By the time she slowed automatically to negotiate a particularly awkward hairpin bend a mile beyond the village her fertile imagination had gone into overdrive to the point where she felt physically sick.

‘Please let everything be all right.’

Just two hundred yards further was the driveway for Maple House. People who did not know the area frequently missed the turn and drove past. Hardly surprising—it had once been an impressive entrance but, like the house it led to, had seen better days. One weathered stone griffon had fallen off his sentinel perch on the high, once-ornate but now crumbling gatepost. One of the massive wrought-iron gates that had once borne the name of her family home lay propped up against the wall—reattaching it was one of those tasks that somehow no one had got around to—covered by ivy and moss.

Libby did not notice the signs of decay and neglect that might strike a stranger as, her white face set in a pale mask of apprehension, she drove down the potholed tree-lined driveway with scant regard for the suspension of the car she drove.

The sight of the people carrier her brother and his wife had traded their smart sports car in for after
the birth of their twin sons two years ago did not encourage optimism.

It was definitely not a good sign. She was glad her brother was here, but she knew that with the imminence of her due date and the problems heavily pregnant Meg had had with her blood pressure during this pregnancy he wouldn’t have left her alone with the twins and made
the long trip down from Scotland for anything that wasn’t urgent.

After being away the first sight of the mellow stone of the façade of her home usually gave Libby a sense of calm and well-being. No matter what problems she had the old stone walls had always represented safety and security and a sense of continuity. Those feelings were absent as she stepped out on the gravelled driveway.

The silence barring the song of the wood pigeons was another ominous sign. The Marchants, not a family renowned for their reserve, did noisy welcomes, and normally they would have been crowding around her before she had been able to open the car door, acting as though she’d been away for a year rather than few weeks, all talking at once and queuing to hug her.

Where were they?

Unease crept like a cold bony finger up her spine as she marched across the noisy gravel to the stone steps that led to the big front door, Libby still half expecting it to open and her family to spill out.

It didn’t. With a shaking hand she fished her key from her handbag and opened it. The only sound in the panelled hallway she entered was the ticking of the grandfather clock that kept erratic time.

‘Mum! Dad! Ed …?’ she called as she bent to pick up the pile of mail, mostly circulars, from the doormat and kicked the door shut with her foot. As she did so the drawing-room door swung open and her sister-in-law, a heavily pregnant pretty brunette—even when her sunny face was creased into a dark frown—appeared.

‘Meg?’ Libby blinked, startled. A five-hundred-mile journey with two-year-old twins did not by any stretch of the imagination constitute rest, which was what Libby
knew the doctors had prescribed for her sister-in-law. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Libby, oh, God, am I glad to see you! It’s terrible, I don’t know what to do and Ed is so …’ Meg stopped, shaking her head and biting her lip.

Libby caught her arm. So far reality was proving more alarming than the worst of her nightmare imaginings. ‘What’s wrong, Meg?’ Amazingly her voice sounded calm and steady.

The older woman caught her trembling lower lip between her teeth. ‘Everything!’ she wailed.

This came from a woman who she had once seen deliver a sharp reprimand to a would-be mugger. Libby sucked in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. It was dawning on her that the reality of this situation might actually be as bad as the worst of her imaginings.

The knot of dread in her stomach tightened as Libby limped past her weeping sister-in-law into the drawing room.

Nobody spoke when she entered. The bone-deep chill that hit her had nothing to do with the fact there was no cheerful fire burning in the ornate marble fireplace.

A pall of gloom hung in the air so heavy it seemed to suck in the light from the room. Despite this Libby’s first reaction was actually relief—everyone was alive!

‘Thank God!’
she breathed.

The comment earned her a look of incredulity from her grim-faced elder brother, a blank stare from her father—her mum rather bizarrely continued to trim the ends off the roses she was placing in a large arrangement on the bureau, the contrast of the normality of her actions adding to the surreal quality of the scene. Libby wasn’t sure if she had even registered her presence.

‘Is anyone going to tell me what’s wrong?’

For a moment it seemed as though no one was, then her father stood up slowly. He might not have suffered a heart attack but he looked as though it might happen any moment.

Watching him, Libby thought, He’s old, Dad’s old. The thought shocked her. She had never thought of her father that way before, even after his heart attack.

‘Aldo Alejandro is dead.’

A frown formed between Libby’s feathery brows. The name triggered a vague image of a large man who had lifted her off her feet and swung her high in the air—he had seemed to take her squeals of terror as squeals of delight.

‘That’s sad.’ Sad, but it did not explain the air of impending doom. ‘Sorry, Dad, you were close?’ Not close enough surely to even partly explain the grey tinge in her father’s normally ruddy complexion.

‘He was always a good friend to me.’ Her father’s voice broke and Libby watched with horror as tears began to slide down his cheeks.

Her brother moved away from his sentinel position by the window and strode over to his father’s side. ‘The grandson has inherited and he’s calling in the loan.’

Libby blinked, confused. ‘What loan?’

Philip Marchant cleared his throat. ‘We’d been having a few cash-flow problems—when the bank wouldn’t let me take a second mortgage out on the house Aldo helped me out with a loan.’

Second mortgage? Libby hadn’t even known there was a first mortgage. She turned to her brother. ‘Did you know?’

He nodded.

‘So what does this mean?’ Libby asked, dividing the question between her brother and father.

Behind her Meg said, ‘I must check on the boys.’ And fled the room.

‘I shouldn’t have let her come with me,’ Ed said as he followed her from the room.

Libby kept her eyes trained on her father’s face. ‘What does it mean, Dad?’

‘It means that we are going to lose the firm and the house—I’ll be bankrupt.’

‘This house!’ Libby shook her head, looking around the room filled with a lifetime of memories. ‘No, that can’t be right. How is it possible? You have to speak to the grandson, explain that people rely on you, that—’

Kate Marchant stopped rearranging the flowers crammed in the big vase on the bureau and turned to face her daughter. ‘Sit down, Libby, and shut up!’ The yellow rose in her hand fell to the floor as her daughter and husband stared at her in varying degrees of astonishment.

Libby responded to the uncharacteristic abrupt directive without thinking. Sinking into the chintz chair she struggled to recall the last time she had heard her mother raise her voice, let alone speak harshly to her.

‘This is hard enough for your father to explain without you interrupting. Do you really think he would be telling you this now if he hadn’t already tried everything else?’

Libby swallowed. ‘But what will happen to the staff? Doesn’t this man know that they’ll lose their jobs, that their expertise will be lost? Doesn’t he care?’

‘Of course he doesn’t care,’ her mother returned bitterly. ‘The man is a total monster!’

Philip Marchant walked over to his wife and pulled
her into his arms. ‘I had a meeting with him yesterday, Libby, and I’m afraid there is no chance of him changing his mind.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ Libby asked, feeling oddly numb as she listened to the sound of her mother’s heart-wrenching sobs.
Mum doesn’t cry.

Philip shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s out of our hands now.’

Libby shook her head, frustrated by this defeatist attitude. Nothing was impossible; they had to fight. ‘But maybe if we spoke to the bank—’

Libby broke off as her brother ran into the room, an expression of fear and panic on his face that
would stay with her for ever.

‘Come quick, it’s Meg—the baby is coming!’

R
AFAEL ALEJANDRO’S
strongly delineated dark brows drew together in a dark line above his hawklike nose as the raised voices emanating from the outer office made him break off for the second time.