Diana Hamilton - Separate Rooms

‘I’m sure Graham’s very fond of you,’ Avril defended. But there was a cornered look in her eyes that made Honey believe she was at last beginning to win her parent round. But Avril fluttered her hands and grumbled, ‘I simply can’t understand why you’re so against him, that’s all. I can think of half a dozen young women who would be only too happy to be his wife.’

The conversation had gone full circle and Honey was in no mood to endure any more. She knew from experience that when her mother was in this mood she wouldn’t let the subject rest and wondered, fleetingly, if Graham had reported the quarrel they’d had last night back to his father and if Henry had been on the phone to Avril this morning, grumbling about her daughter’s lack of good sense and grace.

She got to her feet and collected her bag. If she stayed any longer she would lose control of her temper and, no matter how much her mother sometimes irritated her, she didn’t want a fight on her hands.

‘As you don’t feel up to doing anything this afternoon, I’ll go back and get on with some paperwork,’ and managed to keep her smile pleasant, her voice light as she countered Avril’s snippy,

‘But you always stay on for supper,’ with,

‘Usually, not always. I do have a business to run. I’ll phone you in the week.’

Guilt and relief waged a battle as she drove back into town but by the time she’d parked her car in the lock-up she rented and walked the few hundred yards back to Stony Shut relief had won. She would not be made to feel guilty because she had walked away from a fight in the making, or because she refused to contemplate marriage to a man she didn’t much like, let alone love.

She threw herself into the backlog of paperwork with a will and only stopped to make herself a pot of tea and carry it down to the desk she used at the rear of the shop, picking up the phone to remind Fred Wilson that she would be gone before he arrived at nine in the morning, on her way to a country house sale in Cheshire.

Giving herself a moment’s grace, she sipped her hot tea and reflected, as she often did, on how lucky she’d been to find Fred. A year ago, almost to the day, he—and his wife, Mary, she was to discover—had walked into the shop carrying a Georgian sofa-table between them. He was a big, blunt-featured man in his fifties, and his first words had been a no-nonsense, ‘How much?’

‘You want to sell?’ Honey was already casting her eyes over the clean, graceful lines, noting that one of the legs was not original. However, the piece had been beautifully restored, the repair difficult to spot unless one knew what to look for, and, if the price was right, she had a customer who was looking for just such a table.

Her pleasure was not even slightly dented by the middle-aged man’s blunt, ‘We wouldn’t have humped it halfway across town if we hadn’t.’

‘The piece is yours?’

It was a question that had to be asked but she instinctively knew the couple were honest and quite forgave the man’s growled, ‘Well, it didn’t fall off the back of a lorry.’

‘Fred—really!’ his faded companion admonished, her worried eyes on Honey’s as she explained, ‘My husband has always collected antiques and, well, as he was made redundant eighteen months ago, we thought we ought to part with some of them.’ Fred gave her a withering glare but she met it without flinching, stating, ‘There’s no point being proud, is there? Anyway, the house is bulging at the seams; we could do with a bit more space.’

And more money in the bank, Honey thought sympathetically. The proud Fred would be unlikely to find employment at his age when so many younger men were desperately seeking work too.

Straightening up from her inspection, she offered a price that was as generous as she could viably make it, telling them, ‘It’s the best I can do. I suppose you know the table’s been restored at some stage of its life? But the quality of the work is such that it doesn’t affect the value too much. I don’t suppose you know who restored it?’ There was always a slim chance that they did, that they—in more affluent days—had commissioned the work. The restorers she used weren’t altogether reliable and, just lately, their prices had begun to soar. So if—

‘Fred did.’ There was real pride in his wife’s voice. ‘It’s been his hobby for years—buying damaged antiques and doing them up. He’s always been good with his hands.’

‘In that case—’ Honey gave the blunt-featured man a huge grin ‘—why don’t I make us all a cup of tea and we can discuss business?’

Which was how the talented Fred Wilson had come to work for her, performing his magic in the workroom at the back of the shop, looking after the customers for her on the days when she attended sales. She didn’t know what she would do without him now...

Returning her cup to her saucer, Honey gave her attention back to her work. Soon deeply engrossed, the tapping on the shop door didn’t impinge at first, but when it did her mouth went dry. Looking beyond the circle of light shed by the desk lamp, over the dark shapes in the dim body of the shop, she could just make out the black silhouette of a threateningly large male outside the small-paned windows.

She should have turned on the interior lights ages ago, activated the alarm system, she thought uselessly, then took herself in hand. Felons didn’t knock to announce their presence, fool! she told herself. She got to her feet, reaching for the light switch, and remembered.

Ben. Of course. Despite what she had told him he had said he would come at seven. And he had. A rapid glance at her watch confirmed the time and she was smiling idiotically as she went to let him in. Relief. She was just pleased she hadn’t a weirdo, or something worse, on her hands. That was all.

‘So you changed your plans, after all. Sensible lady.’

His smile was as smooth as cream as he walked through the door and waited while she shot the bolts home. And in case he got the wrong idea, believed she’d done so for the pleasure of sharing a meal with him, she explained coolly, ‘I wasn’t expecting you, actually, not after what I’d said. I left Mother sooner than I’d intended because if I’d stayed we’d have been at each other’s throats.’

One dark, well defined brow drifted upwards. ‘Your unspeakable silliness regarding the gorgeous Graham, no doubt?’

‘Something like that.’ Honey relaxed enough to offer him a wry smile. He had a calming effect on her and, although he was a virtual stranger, she felt more at ease in his company than with anyone else she knew. And she watched, her brown eyes warm, as he strolled among her things, lingering in front of her collection of early pewter displayed on a sixteenth-century carved oak chest.

‘You have some fine pieces,’ he approved at last. ‘You can tell me how you came to get started over dinner.’

No mention of his promised solution to the problem of Graham, she noted drily. Not that anything he could have dreamed up would have helped, of course, but knowing that it had been an excuse to date her left a nasty taste in her mouth. She had, in the past, been dated by experts, men who had, in various ways, let it be known that they regarded dinner for two as an unobstructed pathway into her bed. This man was smoother than most, though, more devious. But his intentions had to be the same.

The disappointment was so intense that the withering look she gave him took even her by surprise and her voice was frozen acid as she refused.

‘I’m working. I have no plans to go out to dinner.’

His mouth twitched.

‘You still have to eat and we don’t need to go out. In fact, it’s probably better if we stay here, we have so much to talk about.’