CHAPTER ONE
'Honestly, Jess, I don't know what that family of yours would do without you,' Colin Weaver told his assistant with a wry smile. 'Well, what is it this time? Has your aunt locked herself out again, or your uncle forgotten to collect his new cheque book?'
'Neither,' Jessica Forbes told him, hiding her own smile. It was true that her aunt and uncle did tend to ring her at work for assistance every time there was a family crisis, but they weren't really used to the hectic pace of the modern-day commercial world—Uncle Frank, for instance, still lived in a pre-war daydream fostered by the leisurely pace of life in the small market town legal practice he had inherited from his father, and Aunt Alice wasn't much better nervous, dithery, she was given to complaining in bewilderment that life had changed so much, she barely recognised it any more, and as for Isabel! Jessica sighed; the problems dumped on her by her eighteen-year-old cousin made those of her aunt and uncle seem mere nothings.
'Okay, okay, I'm sorry for criticising your beloved family,' Colin apologised with a wry smile. "I suppose I'm just jealous really,' he admitted plaintively. 'Would you drop everything and come running for me if I locked myself out?'
'It wouldn't do any good if I did,' Jessica pointed out with a grin. 'You live in a penthouse apartment, my aunt and uncle live in a rambling old vicarage with a pantry window that simply won't close, but which neither of them can fit through, whereas yours truly…'
'Umm, I'm beginning to get the point,' Colin agreed, glancing appreciatively over her slender five foot eight frame, 'but that doesn't stop me from wishing they would stop depriving me of your valuable assistance.'
'I have to go this time—it's Isabel.' Jessica frowned, chewing the soft fullness of her bottom lip, dark eyebrows drawn together in a worried frown. The problem was that her aunt and uncle had been slipping gently into middle age when Isabel had arrived unexpectedly on the scene and neither of them had ever totally recovered from the shock.
'Oh, Isabel,' Colin said grimly. 'That girl's lethal,' he added with a grimace. 'I remember when you brought her here…'
'Here' was his exclusive London salon where he showed the alluring ranges of separates that bore his name. Jessica had worked for him ever since she left art school. She loved her job as his assistant, and if he needed mollycoddling occasionally, he more than made up for his lapses when they were over. In Jessica's view there was no one to match him in the design of separates. His secret, he had told her on more than one occasion, lay as much in the careful choice of fabric as the style the materials were eventually made up in. 'Couture Classics' were how Vogue described them, and Jessica reckoned there could be few wealthy women in Britain aspiring to the well-dressed lists who didn't have something of his in their wardrobe. For some clients he designed individual ranges, but it was, as Jessica knew, his great dream to take his designs and elegance into the high streets at prices every woman could afford.
'She is a little immature,' Jessica agreed, repressing a sigh at the thought of her cousin— pretty, headstrong Isabel, who reminded her of a frisky lamb, throwing herself headlong into whatever came her way on a momentary whim.
'She's exactly two years younger than you were when you first came to work for me,' Colin reminded her a little grimly. 'You all keep that girl wrapped up in too much cotton wool, Jess, you spoil her, and she laps it up. What were you doing at eighteen? I bet you weren't still living at home, financed by Mummy and Daddy?'
'No,' Jessica agreed sombrely. Her parents had died three months before her eighteenth birthday. They had been killed in a car crash on their way home from visiting friends. She could still remember Uncle Frank trying to break the news; Aunt Alice's white face. They had offered her a home, of course, but by then she had her career planned, first art school and then, she hoped, a job in fashion design, and so instead she had used some of the money left to her by her parents and had bought herself a small flat in London, but she had stayed in close contact with her aunt and uncle; after all, they were the only family she had left, and as she grew older the ties between them had strengthened. Family came to mean a lot when there was so little of it left.
Isabel had been a little girl of ten at the time of the accident, too young to remember very much about Jessica's parents, and somehow Jessica had found that as the years went by she was called upon to mediate between impatient youth and dismayed late middle age in the storms that swept the household as Isabel grew into her teens, Isabel urging her to support her on the one hand, while her parents were pleading with Jessica to 'make Isabel realise' on the other.
The plan was that Isabel would go on to university after leaving school, but in the sixth form she had suddenly decided that she was tired of studying, that she didn't want a career at all, and so at eighteen she was working in her father's office, and complaining bitterly to Jessica about it whenever they met.
'I wanted to talk to you about our visit to Spain as well,' Colin said sulkily, interrupting her train of thought. Jessica gave him a teasing smile. At forty-eight he could sometimes display all the very worst characteristics of a little boy in the middle of a tantrum, and he was not above doing so to make her feel guilty or get her attention when he felt the need arise. Jessica excused him on the grounds that he was a first-rate designer and an excellent employer, flexible and with sufficient faith in her ability to make her job interesting. The Fabric Fair was something he had been dangling in front of her for several months. Initially he had planned to go alone, and: then he had suggested that she should go with him. He heard by word of mouth about a Spanish firm who had discovered a series of new dyes for natural fibres, and that the results were stunningly spectacular. Their fabrics were sold only to the most exclusive firms, and Jessica knew that Colin was angling for an introduction to their Managing Director.
'I don't know whether I'll be able to go,' Jessica frowned, hiding a sudden shaft of amusement as his manner changed from smug satisfaction to anxious concern.
'Not that damn family of yours again!' he protested. 'This time you'll have to tell them to do without you. I need you, Jess,' he told her plaintively.
'Very well, but no more unkind comments about Isabel,' she reprimanded him severely. 'I know she's a little headstrong…'
'Headstrong! Stubborn as a mule would be a better description, but I can see nothing I have to say is going to have any effect on you, so you may as well finish early tonight.'
Colin really was a love, Jessica reflected fondly an hour later, opening the door to her flat. They had an excellent working relationship, and if she someti
mes chafed against his avuncular manner it was a small price to pay for working with such talented and experienced man. There was no one to follow him in the business, and he had already mentioned that he might be prepared to offer her a partnership if things went well. They would make a good team, he had told her, and Jessica agreed. In spite of his experience he would always listen to her suggestions, and often adopted them.
She grimaced at her reflection as she caught sight of it in the mirror. She had hurried away from the office without combing her hair or renewing her lipstick, and both looked untidy; her lipstick because she constantly nibbled on her lower lip, and her hair from running impatient fingers through its sable length.
Without doubt her hair was her greatest asset, in her eyes; long, thick and glossy, it fell smoothly past her shoulders in a gentle bell. Sometimes she twisted it into an elegant chignon, on those days when Colin wanted her to meet clients and she wanted to create the right impression. One of the bonuses of working for a well known designer was the fact that she got most of her clothes at cost; another was that her lissom shape and long legs were ideally suited to the subtle tweeds, silks and linens Colin preferred to use.
'I do love seeing my clothes on a real woman,' he had told her once, appreciatively. 'Models are caricatures of the female species, clothes-horses, the complete antitheses of the heavy county types who buy from me, but you… You might have been made for them,' he had told her.
Isabel laughed about her cousin's employer. 'An old woman' was how she referred to him, and while it had traces of truth, Jessica chided her. Colin was shrewd and extremely talented, and while he might not be as charismatic as many of the men Jessica came into contact with, he was genuine, with a genuine love for his chosen career.
Another thing Isabel derided was Jessica's own fastidious reluctance to indulge in what she was pleased to term 'fun'.
'Fun' to Isabel encompassed a wholly idealistic impression of what it was like living alone in London. In Jessica's place there was no end to the 'fun' she might have, but unlike Jessica, who was footloose and fancy-free, she was tied to the boring old parents, and dull Merton with its farmers and relaxed pace of life. After one or two attempts to correct her misapprehensions Jessica had acknowledged that her cousin had no intention of letting herself be disillusioned, and besides, Jessica's 'freedom' was a useful tool to wield against her parents when rebellion stirred. It had struck Jessica more than once lately that her aunt and uncle were beginning to look tired. Uncle Frank was talking about retiring, and Jessica sensed that in some ways it would be a relief to them when Isabel eventually married and someone else took on the responsibility of their rebellious daughter. But so far Isabel had shown no signs of wanting to marry, and why should she? Jessica reflected. In her opinion eighteen was far too young—or perhaps that was just one of the penalties of still being single at twenty-six; one became super-cautious of marriage, of the risks and dangers involved in making such an enormous commitment to another human being, and demanding so much from them in return.
Jessica was aware that Isabel had a far lighter approach to life than she did herself and would consequently probably have a much easier ride through life. She sighed, and chided herself for getting old and cynical as she showered quickly,barely sparing the briefest glance at the slender length of her body before draping it in a towel and padding into her bedroom.
Jeans and a tee-shirt would suffice for the drive down to her aunt and uncle's, and she pulled them on quickly, zipping up the jeans before brushing her hair with a swift economy of movement. Her skin was good, thank goodness, and she rarely used much make-up; less when she was 'off duty'. Her eyes were a tawny gold—an unusual combination with the satin sable hair, oval and faintly Oriental, adding a dash of piquancy to her features, even if she did lack Isabel's pretty pouting beauty.
It was just after eight-thirty when she turned her small car into the familiar road leading to the Vicarage. She frowned as she remembered her aunt's tearful telephone call. What on earth had Isabel done this time?
Silence greeted her as she stopped the car and climbed out. Nine o'clock was normally supper time, so she walked round to the back of the house, knowing she would find her aunt in the kitchen. Alice James gave a small start, followed by a relieved smile as she saw her niece, enveloping her in a warm hug.
'Jess! You made it—oh, I hoped you would! We've been so worried!'
'Is Belle here?' Jessica asked her, pulling a stool out from under the kitchen table and perching comfortably on it. She knew from old how long it took to drag a story out of her aunt. 'No. She's out, with… with John Wellington, he's the young partner your uncle's taken on. Belle seems pretty keen on him.'
'And that's a problem?' Jessica enquired humorously, correctly reading the note of doubt in her aunt's voice. 'I thought this was what you'd been praying for for the last couple of years?—that she'd find someone safe and steady and settle down.' She was still at a loss to understand the reason for her aunt's concern. 'Isn't that what you've always wanted for her? A nice safe marriage?' she prompted again.
'Everything we wanted for her,' her aunt confirmed. 'And now it's all going to be spoiled, because of that wretched holiday!