Bachelor's Family
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Jessica Steele
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CHAPTER ONE
FABIENNE had said cheerio to her parents and Oliver, their mischievous Jack Russell terrier, and was in the hall on her way to spend Saturday evening with some of her friends when the phone rang. ‘I’ll get it!’ she called, and went over to the instrument, picked it up, and said, ‘Hello.’
‘Miss Preston?’ queried an all-masculine, all-authoritative voice. A voice she immediately recognised, for all she had only heard it once before.
‘Y-yes,’ she stammered, and could barely believe that, when she was normally so confident, she should sound so nervous!
‘Vere Tolladine.’ He announced that which she already knew.
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied guardedly.
‘Can you start Monday?’
‘I’ve got the job?’
‘Don’t you want it?’ There it was again, that brusque, no-nonsense tone she had brought on herself at the job interview.
‘Of course I do!’ she asserted, rattled, when in truth she had been unsure. But, not one to be oppressed by anyone, she metaphorically pulled up her socks and, before he could bark out his orders on what time she should start on Monday, she took the battle straight into his camp. ‘If I’m to get the twins to school for nine, I’d better move in tomorrow,’ she declared.
‘Do that,’ he returned coolly, and spent the next few minutes giving her directions on how to get to Brackendale, his home in the village of Sutton Ash, Berkshire, from her home in the small town of Lintham, Oxfordshire. ‘Until Sunday,’ he ended—and put down his phone.
Slowly, Fabienne did the same. But, even as she pondered why she should have considered her dealings with Vere Tolladine as a battle, she knew that she was committed. Too late now to consider if she really and positively wanted the job of ‘temporary nanny and mother’s help’ she had seen advertised. In all honesty, though, she hadn’t thought, when she’d journeyed to London for an ‘expenses-paid’ interview, that she had stood a chance of getting it. For she had not the smallest nanny-mother’s help credential. Her only experience of the workplace was as first assistant in her mother’s gown shop.
‘Who was it?’ Her mother and Oliver, coming out into the hall from the drawing-room, caused Fabienne to concentrate her thoughts on how in creation she was to soften the blow that, albeit temporarily, she was leaving home.
There was, she swiftly realised as she bent to pat Oliver absently, no way to soften it. ‘You know that interview I went for last Tuesday? Well,’ she went on quickly, not wanting to draw out the agony, ‘I got the job.’
‘Oh, love!’ Clare Preston cried, but proved again what Fabienne already knew—that her mother was a special kind of person—for she suddenly found a smile and asked, ‘Have you time to come and chat it over with your father and me before you go out?’
When, fifteen minutes later, Fabienne drove off to keep her arrangement with her friends, she took with her her parents’ blessing about her leaving home to take up her new job.
It had helped, of course, that the job was temporary. And the fact that she was able to tell them that she would have every weekend off to come home went a long way to weaken their resistance. And, although she was twenty-two and of an age where she did not need her parents’ consent to leave home, what finally convinced her father that she would come to no harm living in a household which was not his was that Vere Tolladine was known to him. Not that the two had ever met, but apparently the man who headed Tolladine Finance Incorporated was well known for his integrity in the business world—word of that integrity filtering down to her father who, with her brother Alex, ran the family engineering firm that touched the fringes of ‘big’ business. It was her father’s view that Vere Tolladine’s business integrity was so much part and parcel of the man that it must spill over into his private and, therefore, home life.
Fabienne halted her car in the car park of the George Hotel where she was meeting her friends. She did not immediately get out, however, but sat and reflected about how, save for her good friend Hannah, everyone in their group had left home ages ago and was now living on their own.
‘Your parents make life too comfortable for you,’ Tom Walton—another of her very good friends—had teased one time and, she realised, she could not argue with that.
She came from a very comfortable home and, from day one, had been loved, cared for and protected. Even her brother Alex, her senior by ten years, had taken to watching over her and was ever-ready to take up cudgels on her behalf.
It was Alex to whom she had turned when her studies at school were almost completed. She knew that her father was keen for her to go to the same university as Alex and obtain an engineering degree with a view to entering the family firm. And Alex was, too. But, while she had no idea what sort of career she wanted, or if she wanted a career at all, what she did know was that she did not want to be an engineer. The problem was that as she was loved by her family, so she loved them as much in return, and she just could not bear the thought of hurting her father by telling him of her feelings.
Alex was married by that time and, after weeks of fretting about how to tell her father, it had all come blurting out one early evening when her brother came to collect her to babysit while he and his wife, Victoria, went for a rare evening out.
‘Would Daddy be very upset if I didn’t come into the firm, do you think?’ she had said in a rush, before Alex had barely driven out of the avenue where she lived.
By the time they had reached the crescent where Alex lived, he had taken a tremendous load of worry from her by assuring her that their father would be twice as hurt if she went into training for something she had no appetite for, just to please him.
‘Don’t worry about it any more, Fenne,’ Alex had said and, like the marvellous big brother he was, ‘I’ll tell Dad tomorrow, if you like.’
And she had been so relieved she had almost let him. But she was growing up and she just knew that this was something she must do for herself. ‘No, I’ll do it,’ she’d replied.
Though she afterwards wondered if perhaps Alex had laid some sort of foundation for her, because when the very next evening she took her courage in both hands and tentatively began to tell her father how she felt, instead of being shocked, hurt and disappointed as she’d imagined he would be, for some serious moments he had looked solemnly into her worried brown eyes. Then, stretching out an arm to give her a hug, ‘Is this your way of telling me you want to work in your mother’s frock shop?’ he’d teased.
‘She’d scalp you if she heard you call Clare’s a frock shop!’ Fabienne had laughed in her relief—and, when she left school, somehow found that she was working, quite happily, in the gown shop which her mother had opened ten years previously.
Everything had gone along swimmingly, and was still going along swimmingly until some months ago when something had happened which had caused Fabienne to do some very in-depth thinking. Although, in fact, what she had had to do did not require very much thinking about at all.
Out of the blue her mother suddenly began to have dizzy spells. It was when she fainted outright, however, that her husband put his foot down.
The end result was that a medical consultant was called in, who said that there was nothing wrong that tablets and complete and utter rest would not cure. His stipulation that she must slow down and rest more in future, too, gave them all food for thought.
‘I’m not very happy about your mother starting work again,’ Edward Preston took his daughter aside one day to state.
Fabienne wasn’t happy about it either, yet they were a work-orientated family and, despite this being Nature’s way of telling her mother to slow down, her mother was already making noises to the effect that she’d had enough rest. ‘How do you think she’d feel about closing the shop?’ she asked him.
‘Close the shop!’
‘Mum will never rest while it’s still open.’
‘That’s true,’ her father conceded. ‘What about you, though? Don’t you want to keep it on?’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘I can set you up in something of your own, if you like,’ he offered.
‘Can you see Mum resting while I’m rushing around in the throes of getting everything ready to open?’ Fabienne vetoed that idea and, because her mother was going to be upset at the idea of closing down Clare’s while there was any chance of keeping it open, ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind having a go at something a bit different.’
What that something different was, however, she had little idea. She knew that she did not want to work in an office environment, nor a factory environment, either. Their own shop was closed down by then, but to work in someone else’s gown shop, when she was used to virtually being her own boss, was something she felt would not work out very well either.
‘What you need,’ her friend Hannah stated after some thought, ‘is a job that’s a total contrast.’
‘So tell me about it?’ Fabienne encouraged.
‘Something—something you wouldn’t think of doing in a million years.’
‘I’m not going deep-sea fishing for you or anybody,’ Fabienne laughed.
Though it was Hannah who, a day or so later, produced the ‘temporary nanny’ advertisement. ‘Have you seen this?’ she asked, and didn’t seem to think the notion was at all as preposterous as Fabienne did as she read the advertisement for a live-in, weekends-off, temporary nanny-cum-help to mother and seven-year-old twins during the school summer holidays. Interviewing expenses paid.
‘Go back to sleep, Hannah,’ was her initial reaction. But she went home with the piece of paper bearing the advertisement which Hannah had insisted she not dismiss out of hand, but think about. It was certainly a job that was a total contrast, she’d give Hannah that!
She was amused by Hannah’s idea that she could do a nanny’s job, or that anyone might want to employ her as such, and at dinner told her parents of her friend’s latest wacky notion.
‘What does she use for a brain?’ was her father’s good-humoured reaction.
‘Actually, Hannah’s got quite a good brain,’ Fabienne defended. ‘It’s just that...’
‘In this instance she left it in neutral.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Edward,’ her mother chipped in. ‘Fabienne’s very good with children. Her patience with Philip was endless when his “terrible twos” seemed to go on until he was five. Victoria couldn’t do...’ Her voice petered out, and they each became engrossed in their own thoughts for the moment.
Her parents adored Philip, their grandson; they all did. But, after Alex and Victoria had divorced last year, they saw less and less of him. The break-up of her brother’s marriage had been bitter and acrimonious and the divorce messy, with Alex losing the fight for custody of his son and with Victoria, regardless of his ‘rights of access’, being obstructive when he went to collect Philip on his allotted weekend.
It was sad because they were all fond of Victoria, and they’d had no idea that there was anything wrong. It hadn’t been until Victoria had started to complain about her husband working too many hours and the lack of a social life that they’d realised his marriage was hitting troubled waters. Just the same, it had been something of a very great shock when her mother had hinted to Alex that it was three weeks since they’d seen Philip and Alex had confessed that Victoria had left the marital home, taking Philip with her, a month before. They later discovered that there was another man involved but, prior to obtaining her divorce, Victoria had been very circumspect about him.
Unusually, Fabienne had difficulty in sleeping that night and, when counting sheep proved useless, she gave her mind over to other matters, and found she was reflecting on the easy and happy relationship she had with her nephew. From there her thoughts went to the advert Hannah had given her—and suddenly the idea of applying for it did not seem anywhere near as absurd as it had initially.
When Fabienne left her bed the next morning she discovered that, far from forgetting all about the notion, she had remembered it. Remembered and, since she felt she had been idle for quite long enough, felt inclined to do something about it. ‘You know, Mum,’ she addressed her parent, ‘I think I’ll apply for that temporary nanny’s job.’
Her mother threw her a startled look while her father, on his way out to work, plainly of the view that she was becoming as nutty as her friend, opined, ‘You’re seeing too much of that Hannah Reed!’ and, giving his wife a kiss, departed.
To everyone’s astonishment, Fabienne included, she had a letter on Saturday calling her to interview at a smart hotel in London the following Wednesday. Oh, crumbs, Fabienne thought as she read her letter from one Sonia Morris, now what did she do?
On the basis that it was some small while since she’d been to London, and that she would quite enjoy a look around the shops, she decided she could fit in the interview without too much hindrance to her trip.
It was early June, and the Wednesday dawned brightly and, since she guessed it was going to be hot in London, Fabienne opted for a long, loose-fitting print dress and sandals. She wondered if she should pin her long black hair back—braid it or something—but decided she fancied wearing it loose.
‘You’re going for a job interview like that?’ her mother exclaimed, just as she was about to leave her elegant home on the outskirts of Lintham. ‘You look like a gypsy!’
‘How many gypsies do you know?’ Fabienne countered with a laugh, and drove off to Oxford where she parked her car and took a train to London.
She entered the hotel with five minutes to spare before the appointed time and told the man at Reception that she was there to see a Mrs Morris. He had been forewarned to expect her, it seemed, for, ‘May I have your name?’ he enquired.
‘Fabienne Preston,’ she replied, and stood by the desk while he busied himself with the telephone and, after replacing it, summoned a page to escort her.
The hotel was smart and discreetly expensive and as Fabienne sailed upwards in the lift, so she began to wish—as her mother’s ‘gypsy’ remark came back to her—that she had put on any other of the plentiful supply of smart clothes she had in her wardrobe.
Particularly did she wish it when a woman a few years older than herself, smart and efficiently clad in crisp linen, came from a door further up the corridor. Fabienne instinctively knew that she had just come from interview. They passed and she was even more certain, when she saw the woman’s mousy hair was strictly gathered into a severe knot at the back of her head, that the woman had applied for, and had probably got, the temporary nanny’s job.
It did not surprise her at all when the page stopped outside the door that the woman had just come from. ‘Thank you.’ She smiled to him, knocked, and waited.
The door was soon opened and a last-word-in-smartness woman stood there. ‘Miss Preston?’ she smiled. ‘Come in.’
She led the way into the ante-room of a hotel suite—and that was when Fabienne realised that whoever got the job would not be working for any harassed mother on a budget. Not that she had thought about it much before; she had just sort of assumed that the interview would take place in the hotel lounge, perhaps over a cup of coffee. But Mrs Morris had clearly rented a suite and, in this hotel, that wouldn’t come cheap.
‘I think I’d better tell you, Mrs Morris, that—’
‘Miss Morris,’ the other replied and, while Fabienne was taking that on board, Sonia Morris smiled and at once disabused her of any idea that she was either a single lady or used the ‘Miss’ title for career purposes, by adding, ‘I don’t think we should keep him waiting.’
Waiting! She was bang on time, not so much as half a minute late. What sort of impatient person was she to see? And—him!
‘You can tell Mr Tolladine what you have to during your interview,’ Sonia Morris added serenely as she went over and opened a door that led into a room that was the main sitting-room of the suite. ‘Miss Fabienne Preston, Mr Tolladine,’ she announced and, ushering her in, she promptly went from the room, closing the door after her.
In those initial moments of looking across at the dark-haired man, probably about thirty-five, who stood well above average height, and who looked back at her with the most direct look from cool grey eyes, Fabienne went through the whole gamut of thoughts and emotions. Where was Mrs Tolladine? She’d have thought, since it was her she or the successful applicant would be working with, that the twins’ mother would want to interview her in person. Though on looking at the cool, grey-eyed man, Fabienne had a notion that one would have to be up very early in the morning to put one over on him!
Whether he was used to interviewing nannies on his wife’s behalf, she had no idea, but she quickly formed the notion that he was more than up to the job. There was a tough look about that strong, firm chin that said he did not suffer fools gladly and, as she saw the immaculately suited man take in her smooth, olive-tinted complexion, brown eyes, loose-flowing hair and dress to match—his one glance taking in her classic but none the less casual sandals and bare toes—so she began to feel at a disadvantage and, more than ever then, wished she had dressed differently.
‘I shouldn’t have come!’ she stated, her voice strangely husky, as she half turned to the door.
‘Why?’ Just the one word. Curt. Crisp. No-nonsense. It stopped her.
‘Because—’ She turned to face him, and stayed to tell him what she had been on the way to telling Sonia Morris a few minutes ago. ‘Because I don’t have one single solitary qualification for the job.’
For a stern second or two those cool, disconcerting eyes dissected her. Then, ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he stated bluntly, and she’d have given anything just then to have an ounce of his confidence. Especially when, brusque almost to the point of rudeness, he demanded, ‘Do you want the job or not?’
God, she wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him! But did she or did she not want the job? It was fast going from her mind what the job was, but she had always thought of herself as fairly confident and some spirit inside her was darned if she would turn within five minutes of knowing the man into someone who wished for an ounce of his. So, ‘Yes, I want it,’ she replied spiritedly, her chin tilting a defiant fraction as though to tell him in advance that it was no skin off her nose if he chose not to employ her valuable services.
Everything about her was noted, she was sure of that but, after pinning her with another cool look from his direct gaze, instead of telling her to collect her expenses on her way out as she fully expected, to her surprise he replied, ‘Then I suggest we sit down and discuss it.’
Fabienne covered the unexpectedness of his reply by moving over to one of the several easy-chairs in the room and doing as he suggested. She observed that he did the same, and she busied herself crossing her ankles neatly while she waited for him to fire away with what—since the chosen applicant was going to be resident in his home—she was sure were going to be very pertinent questions indeed.
‘Tell me about yourself, Miss Preston,’ he invited with very little delay.
In her view that was hardly a job-interview-type question. ‘What would you like to know?’ she countered, and weathered his narrow-eyed look that indicated that if she was messing him about she’d get short shrift.
However, he must have decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, because he changed tack to enquire, ‘Do you live at home or on your own?’
‘I live with my family.’
‘You’re obviously happy living at home?’
‘We’re a very happy family.’
‘But you want to leave?’ He was in there like a flash, and left her gasping.
‘This job is only temporary,’ she bounced back, having got her second wind, not prepared to be intimidated by him or anybody else. ‘I’m in between jobs at the moment and, since I’m not sure what sort of work I want to do in future, I thought a temporary job would give me space in which to decide.’ That wasn’t quite true but, as she thought about it, Fabienne realised that, since to work was in her genes, it was a very good idea.
‘What sort of work have you been doing?’
‘I’ve worked in a dress shop since I left school.’
‘How old are you now?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Why did you leave the dress shop?’
That was easy. ‘It closed down. But—’ she smiled on an imp of mischief ‘—I can get a reference if you need one.’ She wasn’t going to get the job anyway, so there was little point in telling him that the gown shop had belonged to her mother.
She saw his glance on the sudden upward curve of her mouth, then those cool grey eyes were on hers again and he was asking, ‘Have you ever had anything to do with children?’
‘I’ve an eight-year-old nephew—we used to be great friends.’
‘Used to be?’ he took up.
‘Philip’s parents are divorced. We—um—don’t see as much of him as we once did,’ she explained quietly.
‘Clearly you miss him?’
‘I suppose I do,’ she had to admit.
‘Which, whether you know it or not, is probably the reason why you applied for the job of helping with a pair of seven-year-olds,’ he decreed.
Had he studied under a disciple of Freud, for goodness’ sake? She almost said as much, but only just then realised that there must be an invisible line between employer and employee which, because she’d always worked with her mother, she had never encountered. But it was one which it might be an idea to start learning about, so instead it seemed more politic to comment, ‘You’re probably right.’ And, employer, employee, or not, she thought she had a right to ask one or two questions herself. ‘Are the twins both boys?’
‘One of each—Kitty and John.’
‘They’re at boarding-school?’ she guessed, thinking that they must be coming home for the summer holidays—but knew she had guessed wrong when he shook his head.
‘At the moment they’re attending the village school about a mile from where I live.’
At the moment! Evidently Mr Tolladine was considering sending them elsewhere. ‘And you’re looking for someone to start—um—in July?’ Fabienne asked, after a quick calculation of when the school term ended.
‘They finish school towards the end of July,’ her interviewer announced crisply after studying her for some moments. ‘But—’ he paused, his direct gaze taking in her fine features ‘—I should want the successful applicant to start more or less straight away.’
‘To get to know the children first?’ Fabienne queried, realising that he meant nothing of the sort. What he meant was that if—by some gross error of misjudgement—the person he decided upon did not suit, then that would give him ample time to dismiss her and find somebody else.
‘Would you have any problem with that?’ he queried in answer.
‘None at all,’ she replied. ‘Er—what sort of duties would be expected of me—er—of the successful applicant?’
His look said he considered she should have known that before applying for the post but, oddly, she formed the impression that he was as vague about what a nanny-cum-mother’s help did as she was. ‘Take the children to school, meet them from school, generally make yourself useful—that sort of thing. You do drive?’ he asked abruptly.
‘I have my own car,’ she answered, and thought it not impertinent in the circumstances to enquire, ‘Does your wife follow her own career?’
‘Wife?’ he questioned, as though she had suddenly gone mad.
‘M-Mrs Tolladine,’ she stammered, feeling that he had wrong-footed her.
‘There is no Mrs Tolladine.’
‘No M—’
‘I’m not married,’ he declared, as though thinking that she was a little thick not to have cottoned on to that fact before.
‘Well—’ Fabienne bridled; it was all very well being clever when one was acquainted with all the answers, but no one had told her, until now, that there wasn’t any Mrs Tolladine ‘—does your partner follow her own career?’ she insisted. ‘If the person you take on is to help the children’s mother...’
‘I have neither wife nor live-in lover,’ her inquisitor fixed her with an arrogant look to state.
‘Then who the blazes—?’ Fabienne began spiritedly, but closed her mouth at his raised-eyebrow look. And knew then that she had just blown the interview.
She started to get to her feet and found he was on his feet, too—and that he was on his way to open the door. ‘The children’s mother,’ he revealed, just before he opened it, ‘is my sister-in-law. She’s living in my home for a while.’ And, totally unexpected when she just knew that she hadn’t got the job, he handed her his personal card. ‘I’ll be in touch, Miss Preston,’ he stated, and the next moment, his card in her hand, she was one side of the door and he the other.
She was still feeling slightly stunned at how abruptly her interview had ended, and was unsure which one of them had terminated the interview, when she became aware of Sonia Morris approaching her with an envelope. ‘Your expenses, Miss Preston,’ she began. ‘I hope...’
‘That’s all right.’ Fabienne smiled, waving the envelope away. ‘I was coming to London today anyway.’
With that, she made her escape, and was heading downwards in the lift before she remembered the card she held. ‘Vere Tolladine,’ she read. ‘Brackendale, Sutton Ash, Berkshire,’ and his telephone number. Vere Tolladine? She knew that name from somewhere!
So intent was she on puzzling where she had heard the name of Vere Tolladine before that she was on a train on her way back to Oxford before she realised she had not carried out her intention to take a look around the shops. She rather thought that her interview with the Tolladine man was in part responsible for her forgetfulness, too—for never had she met a man anywhere near like him.
It was her father who gave the answer to where she had heard the name before. ‘Vere Tolladine!’ he exclaimed as they sat around the dinner table that evening. ‘Heavens, Fenne, surely you remember seeing him on TV the other week when sterling had a little hiccup. He’s head of Tolladine Finance! He’s always being quoted in the Press.’
Fabienne was positive that if she had seen Vere Tolladine before then by no chance would she have forgotten it. Though had to concede, for all she was not much into matters financial, that she must have seen his name in the papers from time to time.
* * *
She sat now in the car park of the George and thought of how ever since last Wednesday memory of that interview with Vere Tolladine had returned to haunt her. Leaving aside the many questions that darted in and out of her head, such as why was his sister-in-law living in his house? And was his brother living there too? He had to be, surely. For, if his brother had split from his wife, then it made more sense that he be the one to reside in Vere Tolladine’s home. But, even as she pondered why he was taking such an interest, that he was the one doing the nanny-interviewing and not either of the children’s parents, strangely, Fabienne could not seem to get him out of her mind.
That, she told herself logically, had to be because, in truth, she had never ever met a man quite like him. Though as she left her car and went into the hotel to meet her friends she acknowledged that when she had attended the job interview, completely unconcerned about getting it, something—some strange, nebulous, untouchable thing—had happened, during the interview and since that phone call tonight, that made her feel that she would not mind at all taking it on.
And now, thanks to that phone call, the job was hers! Was he, Vere Tolladine, conceivably right with his theoretical notion that she had applied for the job with children because she was missing the contact with her eight-year-old nephew?
Tomorrow she was due to move into the financier’s house, so maybe she would find out. Although as she recalled those cool, direct grey eyes, not to mention his brusque attitude on the phone earlier, perhaps it was just as well that her weekly stint would be only Monday to Friday. With luck, he had a pied-à-terre in town and only came home to Sutton Ash at weekends.
