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It took her three quarters of an hour to get to Magnus Davenport’s address, and, having pulled up at the very nice-looking house, Chesnie hoped he would be fit enough to come to the door. It might be that he hadn’t moved from where he’d been sitting when he had telephoned her.
She was, she discovered, wrong in a lot of her assumptions. Her ring at the doorbell was answered immediately, and, standing there smiling, Magnus Davenport looked as sprightly as ever.
She opened her mouth—he spoke first. ‘I thought you’d never get here!’ he exclaimed cheerfully.
He had been expecting her? ‘You’re—not ill?’ she questioned. He looked and sounded in the best of health!
‘I’m lonely,’ he answered.
And Chesnie just stared at him. There was nothing wrong with him, and she was going to have to work late tonight to make up for her earlier lack of concentration and the time she’d taken out when she should have been working. ‘You want me to take you to lunch?’ she guessed—he was dressed as smart as new paint.
‘I’ve had a few winners lately.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll pay.’
She wanted to be cross with him—he had conned her into driving to see him. But how could she be cross? He was grinning like a mischievous schoolboy, and had admitted to being lonely.
He was his usual indiscreet chatty self over lunch, with tales that most often began with, ‘When Dorothea threw me out…’ This way Chesnie learned he had been on his uppers with nowhere to go when Joel had come to the rescue and had bought him his house. Joel, it seemed, also gave him a monthly allowance.
‘I’d rather have had a lump sum, but Joel said I’d be bound to spend it all in one go on the gee-gees. He knows me too well,’ Magnus complained wryly. ‘Arlene Yeatman’s still after him, I suppose?’
Arlene Enderby, née Yeatman. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘She was after him even before she ditched her husband and got her divorce. She—’
‘I don’t think you should tell me…’
‘Not you as well!’ He laughed. ‘Dorothea always used to accuse me of being worse than some gossipy old washerwoman.’
Chesnie smiled a gentle smile. ‘You still care for her, don’t you?’
‘Dorothea? Adore the old battleaxe,’ he admitted, and Chesnie’s smile turned into a laugh. He really was incorrigible.
She was very late getting back to her office. It had gone three when she hurried in—Lord knew what time she’d be working until that night. And Joel was back, the door between the two offices open.
First dropping her bag down on her desk, she went in to see him. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she apologised, out of courtesy. ‘I hope you didn’t need me for anything?’
‘Been shopping?’ he enquired mildly, his glance going over her sage-green short-jacketed suit, its just-above-the-knee skirt showing the long, slender length of her legs and trim ankles.
‘I’ve been out to lunch,’ she answered.
‘The time you put in you’re entitled to more than an extended lunch,’ he replied, and she knew she was right; their working relationship really was harmonious. Or she’d thought she was right, until all at once his relaxed manner vanished and, ‘Who with?’ he demanded.
Slightly shaken by his change in attitude, it took all her will-power to stay looking calm. ‘As it happens, I had lunch with your father,’ she replied coolly—she had intended to tell him anyway, and to mention his father’s loneliness at the same time.
‘The devil you did! He came here, conning you—’
‘He rang,’ she cut in, starting to get cross and having great difficulty in hiding it. ‘I got the impression that Magnus wasn’t feeling well. You weren’t here, and I didn’t want to disturb your meeting if—’
‘You would have interrupted my meeting on account of that cunning old fox spinning you some yarn?’ he queried, looking astounded.
Chesnie, realising from that comment that Joel knew his father only too well, ignored Joel’s look of astonishment, though didn’t feel too clever at how easily she had been taken in.
‘He didn’t actually say he was ill,’ she confessed, recalling that Magnus had merely said that there were days when he had felt better.
‘But he alarmed you sufficiently for you to decide that rather than contact me—for which I thank you,’ he inserted sarcastically, not looking in the least grateful, ‘you’d meet him for lunch.’
‘I didn’t plan it at all. I just—got worried. So in the end I drove over to see him.’
‘You went to his house?’ Hostility was rife. ‘How did you know where he lived?’
What was this? ‘He gave me his card so I could ring him—the last time I had lunch with him.’
‘He wanted you to call him?’
If Joel was getting angry, Chesnie was getting furious. ‘Only if I wanted to go to the races with him, which I didn’t. Anyway—’
‘Anyway, you went over to his home and found he wasn’t at all unwell, but merely wanted to dupe you out of another lunch.’
‘He paid!’ she erupted, no longer able to hold it in. ‘And don’t talk about him like that!’ she snapped, her control flying. She was too furious to care that his eyebrows shot up in amazement. ‘He’s your father,’ she stormed on. ‘And he’s lonely, and—’
‘And no doubt you cheered him up!’ Joel snarled, getting angrily to his feet, not at all enamoured of her telling him what not to do, nor her nerve in taking it upon herself to defend his father.
‘What are you implying?’ she flew, angry sparks flashing in her furious green eyes.
‘You tell me! What’s going on?’ he demanded, coming round to where she stood.
‘Don’t you start!’ she exploded, hurling the words at him, feeling within an ace of hitting him. She strove desperately for control. No man had ever riled her so! Somehow, though, she managed to harness her fury, sufficient anyway to inform Joel Davenport crisply, ‘Just as I had no intention of becoming Hector Browning’s stepmother, I’ve no intention of becoming your stepmother either!’
She saw his jaw clench, but recognised that he seemed to have got to grips with his anger too. Though she wasn’t feeling in any way friendly to him when, ‘Close the door on your way out,’ he instructed her coldly.
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