Alison Fraser - Bride Required

She stared at him hard. ‘I didn’t think you were interested in women.’

Baxter stared back briefly, before deciding to come clean.

‘Time to set the record straight, I think—straight being the appropriate word.’

Dee took a moment to catch on. ‘You’re not gay?’

‘’Fraid not,’ he confided in ironic tones.

Something about his manner made Dee believe him. She should have been angry—and she was—but, behind that, she also felt an odd sense of relief.

She didn’t let it show as she demanded, ‘So why did you say you were?’

‘Technically I didn’t,’ he corrected. ‘What I said was, “I’m not interested in young girls”. Which I’m not, preferring a more mature kind of woman… So, you’re still safe.’

Safe, but confused. ‘Then why the arranged marriage?’

‘That’s harder to explain.’ He was obviously in no hurry to do so.

Dee, impatient as ever, jumped to another conclusion. ‘I bet it’s a legacy. You have to get married by your thirty-fifth birthday or you’ll be disinherited by some great-aunt. Am I right?’

Baxter raised a mental eyebrow. She certainly had imagination. He just wasn’t sure yet if he could trust her with the truth.

‘It’s connected with a legacy, yes,’ he finally confirmed.

‘I knew it!’ She looked pleased with herself for guessing.

‘Anyway, I can’t go into details at the moment,’ he asserted. ‘I can only stress once more that it will just be a marriage of convenience.’

He didn’t have to stress it. Dee had got the message. He didn’t fancy her. Did he have to keep labouring the point?

‘Well?’ he added, raising a brow.

Decision time. ‘I’d have to take Henry.’

‘Of course.’ He glanced down at the dog stretched at their feet. ‘He seems a fairly well-behaved animal. Does he like trains?’

‘Is that how we’d be travelling…assuming I agreed?’

He nodded. ‘I haven’t been back long from Kirundi, and am currently carless.’

‘You were in Kirundi?’ Dee read newspapers and magazines dumped in the underground by commuters. She knew something of the civil war that had raged in the African country.

He nodded. ‘For the last couple of years.’

He sounded emotionless about it, but how could he be? It must have been a scene from hell.

‘Are you going back?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I have no plans to do so.’

Dee met his eyes briefly and imagined she saw in them some of the shadows of that hell. It was just a fleeting impression before he looked away, but she knew without being told; she mustn’t ask any more.

‘My contract with the aid agency has just run out,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be taking up a research post at Edinburgh University in the autumn.’

Dee absorbed this information, then said, ‘Okay, give me the time of the train and we can meet at the station.’

It was a moment before he realised quite what she’d said.

‘You’ll do it?’ Her capitulation had caught him by surprise.

Dee wondered if she really was mad, even as she nodded, ‘Yeah, why not?’

‘Great.’ Baxter suppressed any doubts and allowed himself some satisfaction.

Dee decided it was time to go before she changed her mind. ‘If you don’t know times and things, you can phone Rick in the café. He’ll pass on a message.’

He glanced towards Rick, who was now leaning on the counter, perusing the racing pages. He didn’t look the reliable type.

‘Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to pick you up in a taxi?’ he suggested.

‘You mean turn up at the squat?’ She was horrified by the idea. ‘No, thanks. I’ll meet you at the station or the deal’s off.’

Baxter realised she didn’t want him to know where she lived. He supposed that was fair enough from her angle.

He went into his pocket again and found his passport, still there from when he’d flown in a few days ago. He handed it to her.

Dee checked it over, as he’d intended. It came open at the back pages; they were stamped with the names of a dozen countries, mostly in Africa. She flipped to the front and glanced at his picture. It was an old passport, showing a picture of him from some years ago. It looked like him, only without the current signs of age and experience. She checked the other details. Name: Baxter Macfarlane Ross. Occupation: Doctor. Birthplace: Bangkok.

‘Bangkok.’ She read it aloud. ‘As in Bangkok, Thailand?’

‘My parents were missionaries,’ he explained. ‘They happened to be trying to convert South-East Asia round the time of my birth.’

‘So where exactly were you brought up?’

‘Lots of places, but Scotland mainly. That’s where our grandparents lived and that’s where we were sent to school.’

‘Boarding school?’ she guessed, and he nodded in response.

It explained a lot. He had no real accent, despite the fact she’d made a joke of it earlier. Instead he sounded neutral, almost as if he was a foreigner who’d learned to speak perfect English.

‘So, do your parents live up in Edinburgh?’ she asked, and felt a measure of relief when he shook his head. She didn’t fancy playing the blushing bride to some holy rollers who probably still believed in marriage.

‘They died when I was twelve,’ he added briefly.

‘Sorry,’ Dee apologised for her mean thoughts.

‘It was a long time ago.’ He dismissed any need for sensitivity. ‘And I didn’t know them well… My sister lives near me.’

‘Oh.’ So she was to meet some of his family. ‘Are you and your sister close?’

‘Yes and no. I’ve spent a large part of my adult life abroad… What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

‘No, I’m a little emperor.’ She’d read the expression in a magazine.

‘A what?’

‘An only child. It’s what they call them in China, now they operate a one-child policy… Apparently couples in Britain are also opting to have a single child so they can give them everything.’

‘Is that what you were given…everything?’ He wondered once more about this girl of contradictions.

‘Of course,’ she answered in ironic tones. ‘As you see, I dine at the Ritz, buy my clothes from Harvey Nichols and live in a darling little mews house in South Kensington.’

He gave her an impatient look. ‘I take it that means no.’

Dee shrugged. He could take it how he wanted. In truth she had been spoilt—materially anyway—until the day she had run away in her state-of-the-art trainers, designer jeans, and the baseball jacket that had come with a three-hundred-pound price tag and had fallen apart within weeks of her hitting the London streets.

She handed back his passport, and he said, ‘Now you know who I am, perhaps you could trust me with your address.’

‘Just because you’re Dr Ross?’ She pulled a face, still unimpressed.

‘Point taken.’ He took one of the cheap paper napkins Rick had tossed down in front of them and wrote something on it.

‘The Continental,’ Dee read. ‘Sounds posh.’

He ignored her, writing down the nearest tube station and precise directions on how to find the hotel. ‘Meet me in the foyer tomorrow at nine o’clock, and we’ll go shopping for suitable clothing. Okay?’

Dee nodded and put the napkin in her jacket. She didn’t meet his eyes. If she had, he might have realised she was already having second thoughts. Girls who met up with strangers, however respectable-looking, were asking for trouble.

Baxter watched her as she got up, issued brief thanks for the meal, and, gathering her possessions and dog, made for the door. He was no fool. Chances were he would never see her again.

Dee walked quickly, checking behind her a few times, but there was no sign of him. He trusted her. He actually believed she was going to meet him.