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She spent an hour wandering around the town, pausing every now and again to consult her guidebook and admire the city’s ancient buildings. Outside the castle she stopped a little longer than she had done anywhere else and even longer outside the building facing onto the river that had a discreet brass plate by the door bearing the legend, ‘Crighton, Crighton and Crighton’.
A flutter of movement at an upstairs window made her glance around uneasily and then walk past. Surely there was no one actually working in the offices on a Sunday.
It was half an hour, spent lazily and apparently purposelessly meandering through the narrow streets on a route she had planned earlier, before she arrived at her real destination.
Chester’s cathedral had originally and uniquely been a monastery, only later being converted into a church, but fascinating though the history of the building was, Bobbie didn’t have time to follow the other tourists in the direction of the ancient arched crypts but instead hurried eagerly in the direction of the graveyard.
It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. In Chester the Crightons had been men of substance and law for many, many generations as the large mausoleum in which they had chosen to bury their dead testified.
Bobbie gazed at it with mixed feelings. Some of the names inscribed on the marble tablet affixed to one end were so faded it was almost impossible to read them; others were much brighter, much newer. Unsteadily she reached out and traced one of the names.
‘He was my great-grandfather,’ a familiarly unwelcome voice said from behind her.
I know, Bobbie wanted to say, and it was his disapproval of his youngest son’s marriage that led to the latter leaving home to establish the Haslewich branch of the family with his new wife, but, of course, she said no such thing. She didn’t even turn round.
Instead she simply said as levelly and as calmly as she could, ‘Luke, what are you doing here?’
‘I rather think that question would be more appropriate coming from me to you,’ he responded dryly. ‘For such a young woman you seem to have developed a rather morbid penchant for visiting graveyards, first in Haslewich and now here in Chester.’
‘It’s an interesting way of discovering more about the families who lived in the area,’ Bobbie returned neutrally, adding more challengingly, ‘and it certainly isn’t a crime.’
‘No, not unless you’re planning on exhuming one of the bodies, it isn’t,’ Luke agreed, stepping forward so that he was standing alongside her, but Bobbie still didn’t look directly at him. ‘So it’s your interest in local history that brings you here, then. Local history in general or more specifically one particular local family?’ he asked pointedly.
‘I was looking around the cathedral,’ Bobbie told him, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. ‘I took a wrong turning and found myself out here. This mausoleum caught my eye and I came over to look at it...’
‘And by the greatest coincidence, discovered it belonged to the Crightons,’ Luke supplied for her. ‘You’re lying,’ he confronted her bluntly, adding before she could speak, ‘And don’t bother perjuring yourself by denying it. I’ve been watching you. I saw you stop outside the office. You didn’t come out here in error, you—’
‘Watching me? You mean you’ve been following me, spying on me,’ Bobbie burst out furiously. ‘Back home we have laws against that kind of...of harassment...that kind of pervert,’ she raged on forcefully, curling her lip and glaring at him in determined outrage.
‘Indeed, well, we all have our own beliefs about what does and what does not constitute violation of privacy. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing or what you’re after, but believe me, I intend to find out,’ he warned her grimly, ‘and when I do...’
‘You’ll what...use your legal powers to have me thrown in jail? I don’t think so,’ Bobbie told him scornfully. ‘If I were you, instead of persecuting me and worrying about me, I’d be looking into my family tree to see if there’s any history of paranoia lurking there because, boy oh boy, are you ever exhibiting some,’ Bobbie said even more scathingly, praying that he would put her flushed face and obvious agitation down to anger and not to the sickening sense of guilt and dread that was gripping her.
‘I can see you’re an aficionado of the cult that believes that attack is the best form of defence,’ Luke responded dryly. ‘I’m not a young boy of Joss’s age to be beguiled and deceived by a head of blonde hair and a pair of blue eyes, you know,’ he told her harshly.
‘No,’ Bobbie agreed bitingly. ‘At least not unless it comes packaged with a simpering smile and is under five-five in height.’
She held her breath as she saw the ominous surge of anger darken his skin and harden his mouth.
‘We’re getting off the point,’ he returned tersely, but as she started to exhale her pent-up breath in a leaky sigh of relief, she quickly realised he had picked up the attack again. ‘You still haven’t explained why it was our family mausoleum that attracted your attention,’ he demanded.
‘It was simply that I recognised the name,’ Bobbie fibbed. ‘It caught my eye and I came over to have a look and—’
‘You had to walk past four other family vaults to get here.’ His brows rose, underlining the cynicism in his voice as he pointed out, ‘Something must have made you pick it out.’
‘I’m a woman,’ Bobbie told him sweetly. ‘I never go for the obvious.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ he replied dryly as he elucidated, ‘They don’t come much more obvious than Max and last night you couldn’t take your eyes off him.’
‘He’s a very good-looking man,’ Bobbie offered carelessly.
‘He’s also a man with a wife,’ Luke reminded her again sharply.
Bobbie frowned as she caught sight of her watch. Twelve-thirty. She ought to start back if she was going to be in time to meet Olivia. ‘I have to go,’ she told him. ‘I have a lunch date.’
Luke was frowning. ‘With Max?’ he pounced.
‘Work it out for yourself, Counsel,’ she taunted him, headily relieved that he had stopped cross-questioning her about her interest in the mausoleum.
It had given her a bad shock when she had heard his voice and realised that he was standing behind her, and an even worse one when he had informed her that he had seen her outside the offices, she acknowledged as she stepped back from him and started to walk away, so sure that he would make some attempt to either stop her or follow her that she had to turn around when she had reached the exit just to check where he was.
He was standing with his back to her in front of the family grave, and as she watched, he suddenly knelt down and with very great care, tenderness almost, started to remove the weeds that had rooted in the soft grass around the tomb, so engrossed in his task that she might not even have existed.
Shakily she turned away and started to walk quickly in the direction she had originally come.
She made it back to the Grosvenor with ten minutes to spare, and by the time she returned from her room where she had gone to tidy up and brush her hair, Olivia was waiting for her in the foyer.
‘Oh good,’ she exclaimed when she saw Bobbie heading towards her. ‘I was beginning to think that you weren’t going to come.’
‘I spent the morning exploring the cathedral,’ Bobbie explained, ‘and I got back a little later than I’d planned. Your note said that there was something you wanted to discuss with me.’
‘Yes,’ Olivia agreed as they headed for the Brasserie, obviously a popular place for lunch on a Sunday, Bobbie realised when she saw how full it was.
The maître d’ still welcomed them warmly, though, as he showed them to their table.
‘It’s not so much something I wanted to discuss as a proposition I wanted to put to you,’ Olivia confessed once they were sitting down and had been handed their menus. ‘I mentioned to you last night the problems that Caspar and I are having finding a nanny for Amelia and you said you had some experience with children.’
‘Yes,’ Bobbie replied cautiously, sensing what was coming. ‘You said that Caspar had taken on the role of househusband during the summer vacation.’
‘That’s right,’ Olivia agreed. ‘But now, with the new academic year looming, he really needs to get down to some preparatory work. Ruth is marvellous helping out when she can, but it really isn’t fair to expect her to do more than the occasional babysit for us.’
‘No, I suppose at her age...’ Bobbie began, but Olivia shook her head.
‘Oh, heavens no, it’s got nothing to do with her age. Ruth might have just hit her seventies but she looks more than ten years younger, and so far as her intellectual and energy levels go, she certainly puts me to shame. She’s wonderful with children, as well. It’s such a shame that she’s never had any of her own.’
‘Some women just aren’t particularly maternal,’ Bobbie offered quietly.
‘Some aren’t,’ Olivia concurred as the waiter took their orders and removed the menus, ‘but Ruth most certainly is. It’s a pity that she never married.’
‘Perhaps she never found anyone who could give her enough to compensate for losing her right to call herself a Crighton,’ Bobbie suggested.
