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Sedgewick stationed himself by the sideboard, ready to be attentive to every need. Nanny Stowe composed herself again, adopting a waiting attitude. Beau ate a crisp croissant and drank some coffee to wash down the flaky crumbs. It didn’t really help his churning stomach but it gave him time to think.
“Did my grandfather call you Nanny Stowe?” he asked.
A wry little smile played on eminently kissable red lips. “It amused Vivian to give me that title, Mr. Prescott.”
The familiarity of Vivian hit him in the gut. “So it was a pet name,” he suggested.
She frowned. “Not exactly. It did have a sort of purpose. My job was to be with him, accompanying him wherever he wanted to go and generally looking after him. But he didn’t call me Nanny himself. I was always Maggie to Vivian.”
“Maggie...” he repeated, knowing it plucked at a chord of memory.
“Yes. My Christian name is Margaret, you see.”
Maggie, the cat. That was it! Maggie from one of his grandfather’s favourite movies, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Elizabeth Taylor had played the role. She was married to a guy whose wealthy old father was dying and to clinch her husband’s inheritance she had pretended to be pregnant.
Pregnant!
Beau’s mind suddenly billowed in horror at the next thought that filled it. He’d more or less challenged his grandfather to beget his own heir for Rosecliff. While his grandfather hadn’t actually married Maggie Stowe, she’d lived very cosily with him for two years and she’d been given a year’s grace here after his death...which could mean his grandfather had still been hoping for a result.
“More coffee, Nanny Stowe?” Sedgewick asked, holding out the coffeepot.
She shook her head. Was she being careful of her caffeine intake?
“More coffee, sir?”
He waved it away. His heart was beating so fast he didn’t need any artificial stimulant. And thinking of hearts reminded him his grandfather had died of a heart attack...before anyone expected him to!
Doing what?
Trying to father a child?
Beau looked down the table at the blue-eyed red-haired siren who had power enough to entrance a man into attempting any reckless stupidity.
He had to know.
He had to ask.
He tried to find a way of couching the question less shockingly. Somehow the sense of urgency mashed his brain. Nothing came but the bald need to get the issue resolved. Immediately! The words shot out of his mouth...
“Are you pregnant, Maggie?”
CHAPTER FOUR
SEDGEWICK dropped the coffeepot.
The shock of this extraordinary happening momentarily distracted Maggie from the deeper shock delivered by Beau Prescott. She stared down at the broken pot and the coffee spreading across the parquet floor with a sense of disbelief. She’d never known Sedgewick to drop anything. Every one of his movements was a study in grace and dignity. Had he been as stunned as she was by the outrageous question thrown at her?
“I do beg your pardon,” he intoned, his face quite blank, as though he couldn’t believe the mishap, either.
“I’ll get one of the maids to clean it up,” Maggie said, pushing her chair back for action.
“No, no...I see I have been splashed, as well.” Distress showing now. For Sedgewick it was quite impossible to tolerate any imperfection in his dress. “I shall have this...this mess...seen to immediately. Please excuse me, sir, Nanny Stowe.”
Maggie was left to face Beau Prescott alone. She stared at him down the length of the table, her mind skittering over the wild hopes she’d been nursing. If he imagined her pregnant, to some other man...he couldn’t be feeling as overwhelmed by her as she was by him. Which put her hopelessly at odds with the feelings he’d stirred in her.
Never in her life had she been hit so forcefully by sheer male sex appeal. When he’d entered the stairhall and looked up at her on the landing, she’d been stunned into immobility by how little the photograph had represented the real man. His skin glowed with vitality. The streaks of sunshine in his hair had gleamed like gold. His face wasn’t just strongly handsome. His eyes were so magnetic they made it instantly charismatic.
His physique was no less impressive. Casually dressed in khaki shirt and trousers, he seemed almost larger than life, like a throwback to when men were hunters and survival of the fittest meant something. If his grandfather had been the ultimate sophisticate, Beau Prescott was the prime male animal, throwing out a compelling challenge to his female counterpart on some instinctive level that had nothing to do with civilisation.
She had no idea how long she’d stood on the landing, enraptured by him, but when she had finally willed her legs to move, the nylon in her tights seemed to crackle with electricity, sending little quivers of sensation through her thighs. Even more shockingly, she’d felt the hot moistness of sexual excitement as he watched her descend the stairs, his gaze travelling slowly up the length of her body until even her breasts started tingling and tightening in rampant response to the primitive charge emanating from him.
Then the mad joy of finding he was taller than she was, tall enough to make her feel they were made for each other. And his hand taking hers, like a burning brand on her skin, a claim of possession, of mating. Utter madness in the light of the question that was still ringing in her ears and echoing around the emptiness it had opened up in her brain.
And he had seemed so nice, as well. Charming. She could have sworn the attraction was mutual...the way he’d absorbed every detail of her appearance, gazed into her eyes, held her hand. She’d been dizzy with exhilaration by the time she’d sat down at this table. Then with Mr. Polly’s suggestion of putting roses in Beau Prescott’s bedroom, she’d begun fantasising...
Maggie swallowed hard. She had probably needed a sobering slap in the face. The dynamic green eyes were still intensely focused on her but she found them uncomfortably piercing now. He was waiting for her reply. Not that he had any right to it—such a personal thing to ask!—but she felt pressed to clear the air between them.
Her tongue felt thick. She forced herself to produce a flat statement of fact. “The answer is no, Mr. Prescott. I’m not pregnant and not likely to be.”
He looked relieved.
Maggie was goaded to ask, “Would you mind telling me what possessed you to make such an inquiry?” She couldn’t help a somewhat terse note creeping into her voice. Disappointment, most probably. Or disillusionment. She must have been fooling herself over his reaction to her since he had jumped to the conclusion she was intimately involved with someone else.
He winced. “My grandfather wanted an heir.”
Confusion whirled. “Aren’t you his heir?”
“Yes.” A heavy sigh ending in a rueful grimace. “But he was on at me to get married and have a child to safeguard the family line. The last time I was here with him, I suggested if he was so keen to pass on his gene pool he should have a child himself.”
Enlightenment dawned like a white frost, covering and killing what had seemed like warm fertile ground between them. “You thought...that I...and Vivian...” Maggie choked. It was too awful a lump to swallow.
He at least had the grace to look discomforted. “It seemed...possible.”
“Vivian was in his eighties!” There’d been almost sixty years between them!
“A man’s libido doesn’t necessarily wear out with age,” came the dry observation. He offered a crooked smile. “And you are very beautiful.”
Maggie was not mollified. She knew perfectly well that beauty was a learnt skill. Vivian had taught her that. He’d seen the raw potential in her and taken pride in developing it. However, beauty was not really the point at issue here. Beau Prescott was horribly mistaken in his judgment and he had to be corrected. She eyed him with searing determination as she spoke.
“Even if Vivian had felt...that way...about me, and he didn’t...”
“Maggie, you exude sex. No man would be proof against it, not even an octogenarian.”
“Oh!” Her face started heating up again. “You’re terribly wrong.” It was Beau himself who exuded sex, not her. No other man had ever made her feel so sexually aware of herself. It wasn’t fair of him to transfer what had happened between them to anyone else. She tried to explain. “Vivian liked me. He was proud of me...”
“I have no doubt he adored you. From your feet up.”
“He didn’t want me like that!” she cried in exasperation, barely holding back the burning fact that Vivian had wanted her to want him! And the terrible truth was she did. Except he wasn’t turning out as nice as she’d first thought him.
Blatant scepticism looked back at her.
“Your grandfather was a gentleman,” she declared emphatically. Which was more than she could say for him, the way he was going.
“My grandfather enjoyed flirting with young women,” he countered. “He insisted they kept him young. He boasted he’d live to a hundred. He brings you into his home and he dies at eighty-six. From a heart attack. Having met you, what am I supposed to think, Maggie?”
Her stomach revolted at the image he conjured up. Her eyes flashed fierce resentment at his offensive line of logic. “A man of any sense might have made some discreet inquiries before leaping to unwarranted conclusions,” she threw at him.
“Hardly unwarranted. It wouldn’t be the first time a beautiful young woman connected with an elderly millionaire. Power and wealth are well-known aphrodisiacs.”
“Right!” Maggie snapped, furious with his cynical view of a relationship which had been precious to her. “I suppose you envisage me just lying back, closing my eyes and thinking of Rosecliff!”
“And all that goes with it.”
Her heart lurched. Hearing Vivian’s own words, though they had applied to a possible marriage to his grandson, touched a very raw place. The whole idea of giving it a chance with Beau Prescott suddenly became intensely repugnant to her. Mutual attraction did not suffice. He would see her as a gold-digger even if he was panting after her.
The cleaning brigade came in, two of the daily maids whose job it was to keep every room in a pristine state. Maggie greeted them and introduced them to their new employer. Apart from those few words she waited in seething silence while the mess was attended to. Beau Prescott also held his tongue, which was just as well, because she felt like biting it off.
Of course, Vivian’s wealth had made life easy for her, and Rosecliff was the most beautiful place in the world to live in, but she wouldn’t have come here if she hadn’t liked Vivian Prescott, genuinely liked him, and she certainly wouldn’t have stayed if he’d tried to come on to her. No way! She would have been out of here like greased lightning!
The maids left, their efficiency truly admirable. Probably the thick atmosphere in the room had hastened their work. Maggie braced herself for the task of setting Beau Prescott straight. In no uncertain terms!
He spoke first. “I like to know what I’m dealing with, Maggie.”
“My title is Nanny Stowe.” And she hadn’t given him permission to call her Maggie.
“Nannies do tuck their charges into bed,” he dryly pointed out.
“Not...this one,” she retorted in high indignation.
He shrugged. “It seemed best to be direct. Your relationship with my grandfather...”
He stopped as Sedgewick stepped into the room, bearing another coffeepot.
Maggie was so incensed with Beau Prescott’s directness she swung around in her chair and impulsively appealed for backup. “Sedgewick, Mr. Prescott wants to know if I was sleeping with his grandfather. Would you be so kind as to...”
The butler halted in horror. The hand holding the coffeepot shook alarmingly. Maggie held her breath, silently cursing herself for shocking the poor man again.
“Steady, Sedgewick,” Beau Prescott gently advised.
The elderly butler stared at the treacherous hand until it performed as it was supposed to, holding firmly. Then he raised his eyes to the ceiling, as though appealing to the heavens beyond it. The expression on his face was easily read. What was the world coming to?
“I’m sorry for upsetting you, Sedgewick,” Maggie said remorsefully.
“Not at all,” he said with lofty dignity. He carried the pot to the sideboard, set it on the hotplate with due ceremony, then swung around to face the wild child with a look of pained reproof. “Sir, Mr. Vivian did not have an illicit liaison with Nanny Stowe,” he stated unequivocally.
“Thank you, Sedgewick,” Maggie leapt in before Beau Prescott could open his big mouth. “Did you ever see him kiss me other than on the cheek or on the forehead, or, in a moment of pure old-world gallantry, on the hand?”
“Never!” came the emphatic reply.
“Did you ever observe him fondle me in what could be called an intimate manner?”
“Certainly not!”
“Did he ever display any sign of being a randy old man around me?”
Sedgewick looked affronted, as well he might. “Mr. Vivian was a gentleman.” Which, to Sedgewick, was the definitive reply, delivered in ringing tones.
However, since a similar declaration by her had not cleared Beau Prescott’s prejudice, Maggie continued to have the situation spelled out, her eyes glittering a proud challenge at her accuser at the other end of the table.
“In your own words, Sedgewick, what was Mr. Vivian’s manner towards me?”
“I believe he thought of you as his adopted daughter whose company was always a delight to him.”
“And my manner towards Mr. Vivian?”
“You wish me to be frank, Nanny Stowe?”
“Ruthlessly frank, Sedgewick.”
“I believe you thought of Mr. Vivian as a benevolent godfather who made beautiful things happen. You saw it as your job to make them even more beautiful for him.”
The truth. The simple truth. And it had been beautiful. It was wicked and destructive of Beau Prescott to soil it with his revolting and insulting interpretations. A rush of tears blurred her eyes and clogged her throat. “Thank you, Sedgewick,” she managed huskily.
He bowed to her in a show of respect. “At your service, Nanny Stowe. Would you like your coffee cup refilled?”
“Please.”
He handled the pot perfectly. Not a drop wavered or spilled. The masterly performance provided a sense of calm. “A refill for you also, sir?’ he inquired.
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