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He looked at her with a cynical humour. ‘How you do run on, Kate! I make half a suggestion, you give me no time to complete it and you’re wading in, hackles erect and willing to credit me with every vile motive your little mind can conjure up. My mistresses have invariably been willing. I’ve never found any need to blackmail any of them into taking the position. In any case, I haven’t offered you that place in my life.’

‘A sort of nanny, perhaps?’ She matched his cynicism. ‘With a few fringe benefits for you, of course.’

‘My wife,’ he corrected, and Kate looked at him, numbed with shock. She was aware of a roaring in her ears and his voice seemed to be coming from the end of a long, black tunnel so that it echoed in her head. The rest of what he said escaped her, although she thought she heard him say that he thought they would make a good partnership. It was such a ludicrous thought that she started to giggle hysterically, and then there was a blissful, quiet blackness and she sank into it with a feeling of relief.

She opened her eyes to the soft light of the oil lamp in her bedroom. She felt the softness of the pillow under her cheek and the fresh sweetness of the damp, night air on her face. She lay quietly for a few moments watching the steady yellow flame in the lamp and the memory swept back, jerking her upright convulsively. He had gone! He had taken advantage of her moment’s weakness and he would be gone, and Philip with him. Fear swept through her, whitening her face, widening her eyes and making her gasp as if she had been running too fast and too far.

A hand found her shoulder and pushed her back on to the pillows. Once more, it seemed, he read her mind.

‘I’m still here, and the boy is asleep in his own bed. You should try to sleep now. Tomorrow we leave for London and the journey will be long and wearying for a small child.’ He rose and went to the door where a loose floorboard creaked under his foot. ‘You even have an alarm!’ He turned back to her with a smile which did nothing to soften his harsh features. ‘Would you like me to bring you the carving knife? You have no need of it, I assure you. Not that you ever seem to fear for yourself, always it’s the boy, and before him, it was your sister. Take off your clothes and rest. I’ll wake you in the morning, we have to make an early start.’

‘I want a drink,’ Kate muttered defiantly, and swung herself off the bed, aware of her rumpled appearance. She smoothed down her skirt and buttoned up the green silk shirt she was wearing before she paddled around with her feet to find her slippers. ‘I’m going to make a pot of tea.’ She passed him in the doorway and stopped suddenly. ‘Where do you propose sleeping?’

Jerome shrugged. ‘I’ll find somewhere.’ He turned to follow her downstairs. ‘Is there a couch in the other room?’

‘Why don’t you go down to the pub in the village?’ She pushed open the kitchen door and was grateful for
the
warmth. ‘They do a decent meal there and you’d get a bed easily. They don’t have many visitors at this time of the year.’ She was talking too much and she knew it, but somehow she couldn’t stop chattering about trivialities. ‘The parlour’s damp, we haven’t used it since we came and I haven’t bothered to keep a fire in there.’

‘Must I say it again, Kate?’ The note of weary insolence was back in his voice. ‘I don’t trust you. I’m staying here!’

‘Oh, you can trust me,’ she flung over her shoulder to him as she reached for the kettle. ‘I have to consider your offer, don’t I? Who knows, it might be too good for me to refuse.’

She filled the small, light kettle from the black one on the hob and lit the burner of the gas stove and turned to find him watching her from the doorway. ‘If I accept, I get what I want, which is to keep Philip,’ she explained gravely. ‘If I ran off with him tonight, where would it get me? Another month, perhaps, and then you’d catch up with me again. Why can’t you leave us alone?’ Her voice was desperate. ‘Why must you have everything? Why do you want Philip? He’s nothing to you. If I could only think straight, I’d probably be asking ‘Why marry me at all?’ You despise me and you know that you can buy Philip’s custody any time you want, and you’ve enough money to employ a regiment of nannies.’

‘With a little tuition you’ll make an admirable and much admired wife.’ His glance flicked over her, and under the insolent regard she lost her temper.

‘Is the Butterfly Circuit beginning to pall?’ She was scathing. ‘Are you weary of flitting from flower to flower, or have you gone through the pack and want something different? You can marry anybody you choose, they’ll all lie down and wriggle with pleasure at the idea. Why pick on me?’

‘Philip is used to you.’ Only a slight flush on his cheekbones betrayed his anger, that and the glitter in his eyes. ‘He’s lost his parents, that surely is enough for one small boy. Then again, there’s another point I’d like to make. At present, Philip is my heir, but I want my own children, and I want them before Philip gets much older. I want Philip to grow up knowing that he’s not in first place—that way, he won’t be disappointed— and finally, I want an obedient wife.’ He smiled nastily. ‘You will be obedient, Kate, I can control you. You’d do just as I say because, if you didn’t, you’d never see Philip again. I’m giving you no choice, am I? You want to bring Philip up and I’ve shown you how you can do it...’

‘On your terms...’ Kate fought back her tears.

‘Certainly on my terms. You’re in no position to dictate terms. All you have to do is accept the inevitable.’

‘Accept your offer of marriage,’ she corrected him as she moved about the kitchen, collecting the milk jug and the sugar basin and setting them down on the table together with a clean cup and saucer. As she did so, she looked a question at him and when he nodded, she added another cup and saucer. ‘And of course, there’s all your lovely money.’ She poured boiling water on the tea-leaves. ‘I’d be a fool to ignore that aspect, wouldn’t I? Or are you one of those millionaires who practises strict economy and expects his wife to wear the same hat for three years running?’

‘You will receive a dress allowance which I’m sure you’ll find adequate.’ The words were flat and she suffered a disappointment at her failure to make him lose his temper. It was so much easier to be filthy rude to somebody who was being filthy rude to her, but he wasn’t. He was just sitting, waiting for his cup of tea and looking quite unmoved. And she wanted him to be beastly, otherwise her better nature was going to make her do something she didn’t want to do. She tried again. ‘If I married you, how many mistresses should I be expected to share you with?’

Jerome looked up at her thoughtfully. ‘Kate, I suspect you’re trying to make me lose my temper. I wonder why.’

She gave up and a spark of humour, long suppressed, glinted in her eyes. ‘If you’ll kindly continue to insult me as you’ve done since you arrived here, I shall have no compunction in bedding you down on a damp couch in a cold, damp room.’

‘And the alternative?’

‘You can have my bed,’ she said grudgingly. ‘There’s a child’s bed in Philip’s room. It’s too small for you, but I can manage there for the night. But please go on insulting me. I
want
you to be uncomfortable! I
want
you to catch pneumonia! I can think of nothing which would please me more! I’ve asked you to go and you’ve refused. I can’t make you go, I’m not physically capable of throwing you out, but I warn you....’

‘You warn me?’ His nostrils thinned. ‘My good girl....’

‘I’m not your good girl!’ she flared at his insolent condescension.

‘The question is, were you ever anybody’s
good
girl? Your meteoric rise to fame as a top model....’

‘That does it!’ Kate slammed her cup down with such force that she cracked the saucer. ‘Now you can damned well sleep on the couch, and I hope you catch pneumonia!’

His hand came down hard on her wrist as she made to rise from the chair, the fingers tightening on the fragile bones under the skin. ‘Before you go, we’ll
have
an agreement. A firm agreement. You will be an obedient and loving wife or....’

‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, ‘I agree to your terms, I accept—but don’t think I’m looking forward to it or think that you’re doing me a terrific favour. As far as I’m concerned, I can’t think of anything more degrading, but if it will enable me to keep Philip, I’ll grit my teeth and go through with it.’

‘Then we’ll seal the bargain.’ He jerked swiftly at her wrist, bringing her against him in a stumbling run and his free hand fastened in the thick pleat of hair at the back of her head, holding and pulling so that her face was tilted to his.

Kate kept her eyes open; it was a trick she had discovered and it usually worked. Men, for some reason, didn’t relish kissing women who kept their eyes open. But this time the trick didn’t work. Jerome’s mouth took hers in open insult so that she wanted to scream, and he took his time about it, demanding a response until she was too exhausted to fight any longer and she softened against him and her eyes drifted shut.

When he at last raised his head, there were tears trickling down her face, tears of fright and some other emotion which was new to her and which she couldn’t name, but she tilted her chin bravely.

‘Is that how it’s going to be?’ she whispered the question. ‘Because, if it is, I think I’d rather die.’

‘Than give me Philip.’ He was emotionless.

‘No!’ Her eyes were still glittering with tears.
‘I’ll
marry you. You said you needed a wife—well, you’ve got one, but you’ll regret it, Mr Manfred, I’ll make sure of that!’ And she fled up the stairs to seek safety in Philip’s bedroom.

Kate did not sleep well. The child’s bed
was
narrow
and
hard and about twelve inches too short, so that she moved about restlessly to find a comfortable position. She had not waited to make the bed up properly, collecting only a couple of blankets as she sped past the linen cupboard at the top of the stairs. The rough wool tickled her and the hard ticking of the uncovered pillow scoured her cheek. After three or four abortive attempts, she gave up even trying to sleep and lay quietly in the darkness, listening to Philip’s steady breathing and making plans. Plans in which Jerome Manfred figured, but only very briefly. She would use him, she decided, for just as long as it was convenient.

Towards morning she finally fell into an exhausted sleep. On the borders of it, hazy thoughts trickled through her mind. Why? He had given her several reasons for marrying her and she didn’t believe any of them. He was using her in some way and for some purpose of his own, and she didn’t think that consideration for Philip’s orphaned state or a desire to have children of his own had anything to do with it. So he was using her; she couldn’t quarrel with that because she proposed using him, didn’t she? Tit for tat!

A discreet tap aroused her. It also roused Philip, who scrambled energetically out of his cot and bounced blithely on her chest.

‘My daddy,’ he demanded. ‘Want my daddy!’

Kate was not feeling her best. A near sleepless night and a heavy but short sleep had brought on a depression so that the plans which she had made during the night now seemed ridiculous and unworkable. And she had started worrying again, so that when Philip started using her as a trampoline, she grew cross.

‘He’s not your daddy, darling. He’s your uncle. You must call him Uncle—Uncle Jerome.’

Whatever else she might have said was cut off abruptly by Philip’s howl of wrath. ‘My daddy, he is, he
is!'

Kate sighed and closed her eyes. ‘Philip darling,’ she said between her teeth, ‘the man is your uncle. Be quiet!’ But her words fell on deaf ears, the little boy was crying tears of rage and pummelling her with chubby fists while he screamed defiantly:

‘My daddy, my daddy,
my daddy!'

His final yell was cut short and Kate felt the weight removed from her chest. She looked up at Jerome Manfred, who stood looking gigantic in the small room and holding Philip’s threshing body easily in one hand. She watched in horror as he deliberately turned the child over and slapped his bottom hard before dropping him back in his cot. Anger rose in her so that she struggled out of the blankets which enveloped her.

‘Don’t you dare do that again!’ Her eyes blazed and she made a move towards the cot, a move that was stopped by a hard hand about her arm.

‘Leave him! What are you trying to do, spoil the child?’

‘He’s little more than a baby, he doesn’t understand!’ She tried to twist free and raised furious green eyes to the dark, enigmatic face above her. Her free arm swung in an arc at his face, but was caught before her hand could land on its objective and she felt herself shaken, and not gently.

‘Kate! Every child needs discipline, Philip no less than any other.’

‘He needs love....’ Her remark was cut short before she had a chance to tell him just what Philip needed and just what she would do if he ever laid a finger on the boy again.

‘We’ll continue this at another time,’ he was curt. ‘Get yourselves dressed.’

‘Want Daddy to dress me!’ Philip had been watching events with interested eyes.

‘Aunt Kate will dress you.’ Jerome Manfred hardly seemed to notice the interruption. ‘And I’m not your daddy. You may call me Uncle.’

‘Yes!’ Philip smiled widely about it, and Kate blinked with surprise.

She made a rapid sortie down to the kitchen for a can of hot water and fled back upstairs with it, and after washing her own hands and face she started on the mammoth task of making Philip presentable, idly wondering how a three-year-old could collect so much dirt on his face during a night’s repose. It was a considerable struggle to get him clean because recently Philip had decided that water had an injurious effect on his complexion and objected violently to anything more than two or three square inches around his mouth being soaped and rinsed. Kate emerged from the tussle victorious but flushed with effort and with her temper a little uncertain.