The Feisty Fiancée

The first book in the Marriage Pledge series, 2000

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS the first job she'd ever had, and she loved it. Yancie steered the Mercedes onto the motorway and in next to no time was in the fast lane speeding to pick up her passenger.

Not that there should have been any need to pile on the speed. Had she in fact been where she was supposed to be she would not have needed to be driving anywhere at all.

That was the only snag with this job-there was a lot of waiting around. She wasn't used to waiting around; she was used to be being busy. Truth to tell though, the hanging around hadn't proved any great problem. Not after the first week anyhow. She had only been in the job for three weeks, but after the first week of dropping off some high-up executive or other in the Addison Kirk Group and being told she would be required again in two hours, or three hours' time, whenever, Yancie had come to the conclusion she had better things to do than hang around cooling her heels.

Everything had worked out perfectly after that.

She visited museums, art galleries and cinemas, stopped by to call on friends if she happened to be anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. And even on one occasion she had been able to call in on her mother-taking care of course to first remove the identifying label complete with photograph-Yancie Dawkins-she was supposed to wear at all times on the jacket of her uniform. Bubbles to that!

Yancie was very much aware that her mother would not like it at all if she ever found out she had not only left her home, where she'd lived with her stepfather, but had actually found herself a job. She had once vaguely mooted that she wouldn't mind a career in something; her mother had been scandalised.

It made for an easier life if she said nothing, Yancie mused, and smiled as she thought few people she knew would be brave enough to risk her mother's wrath by enlightening her.

Yancie took a quick glance to the seat beside her where the identifying tag lay. She must remember to put it on again before she picked up today's executive, Mr Clements.

She motored on at speed, reflecting on how the job had more found her than she had found it. Though in actual fact it was her cousin, Greville, to be more accurate, who had found it for her. And, if she was going to be even more precise, Greville, her half-cousin.

Though she loved him to bits, as her `full' cousins also did. But Yancie was a good driver and was able to be totally aware of her surroundings, to anticipate any sudden moves other drivers might make, while at the same time reflecting on past events.

It had not been to her own mother she had gone when, pride ruling, she had left the comfortable home she shared with her stepfather and his daughter four weeks ago, but to Aunt Delia, Greville's mother.

Of course, Yancie admitted, she should never have let Suzannah Lloyd borrow her car. She wouldn't have had she known Sukey was going to turn it over and cause it to be a writeoff. Having assured herself that Sukey was all right and that nobody else was hurt, Yancie had told her stepfather what had happened.

Ralph Proctor was a super stepfather, but, anticipating his concern, like hers, would initially be all for Sukey, to Yancie's surprise, he'd instead grown quite cross and begun to give her a lecture about lending her car to all and sundry.

Yancie might well have taken this telling off as her due. But, unfortunately, Ralph's daughter, Estelle, had been there and she'd staggered Yancie completely by challenging that she hoped Yancie wouldn't expect her father to pay for a new car for her.

Yancie wasn't the only one who was surprised-her stepfather had looked startled too at the nastiness in his daughter's tone. Though before he could find his voice Yancie was proudly asserting. `I wouldn't dream of it! I've enough money from my allowance to…'

'The allowance you take from my father!' Estelle reminded her waspishly-and Yancie was left staring at her.

'I never asked for an allowance!' was the best defence Yancie could find.

'You don't mind taking it, though, do you?' Estelle attacked and that was when Yancie suddenly and abruptly realised that her stepfather's house was not big enough for both her and her stepsister. She'd had no idea that Estelle resented her so much!

'Not any more,' Yancie said quietly, and was on her way, in no mind to stay and listen to her stepfather transferring his crossness onto his daughter.

'Really, Estelle!' she heard him say as she left the drawing room and turned to close the door behind her. `You know full well that Yancie more than earns her allowance with the work she does keeping this place running smoothly.'

'Advertise for a housekeep-'

Yancie didn't wait to hear any more. She couldn't stay after this, she just couldn't! She went, where she and her cousins Fennia and Astra went in bad times and good; she went to see her aunt, Delia.

'I never did like Estelle Proctor,' Delia Alford opined when Yancie relayed all that had taken place.

'It is true, though.' Yancie tried to be fair. `I have never minded taking an allowance from Ralph.'

'You've worked for it!' Delia exclaimed, knowing positively how, four years ago, when, at aged eighteen, Yancie and her two cousins had left boarding-school, while the other two had gone into higher business training, Ralph Proctor had almost begged Yancie to stay home and take over the running of his over large house-her mother had sanctioned it, because it was what she termed `not a proper job'. `With that daughter of his picking fault all the time, you know as well as I that he couldn't keep a housekeeper for five minutes. And Estelle won't want to take over-the only comfort that jealous madam's interested in, is her own.'

'What shall I do?"

'What do you want to do?'

Yancie thought about it. She loved her stepfather dearly, but… `I don't want to go back,' she realised. 'Estelle has never been the easiest person to live with; after that…'

'You don't have to go back,' Delia Alford assured her firmly, going on, everything cut and dried to her way of thinking, `You're more than welcome to live here with me, you know that. Though Astra will want you to move in with her. She has more than enough room at her flat, and you know Fennia would be delighted for you to move in with them too.'

The flat her two cousins lived in belonged to Astra's father in actual fact, but he preferred to live in Barbados rather than the elegant apartment which was in a smart part of London. Astra had welcomed Fennia living with her, since Christmas-only a few weeks ago-when Fennia's mother had caught the older woman's latest boyfriend with his arms around Fennia and had chosen to see it as her daughter leading him on. She had, not too politely, thrown Fennia out.

Yancie was in the middle of saying that she'd give Astra a ring, and also that since she just couldn't possibly touch another penny of her stepfather's money she would get a job, when her cousin Greville arrived on one of his unscheduled visits to see his mother.

'Little Yancie Dawkins!' he smiled, having greeted his mother, opening his arms wide for Yancie the way he had since the days when she was a toddler.

Yancie went over to her half-cousin, who was nearing forty and a most reliable figure in her somewhat trauma-ridden life. Greville gave her a hug and a kiss, and then asked what was this diabolical talk he'd overheard about her getting a job.

Over a cup of coffee Yancie and his mother filled him in on the happenings of that morning. `I should have done something about a job before this,' Yancie realised.

'You know your mother's not going to like it, don't you?' Greville commented. 'She'll give both you and Ralph hell!'

'Oh, heck, I never thought about my mother,' Yancie answered, feeling suddenly wretched. It was significant, she supposed, that Aunt Delia had not suggested she might make her home with her mother. The novelty of having a little girl, a white-haired child, had soon worn off. Yancie and her two cousins, who had been similar hindrances to the respective mothers, were, at the age of seven, sent off to boarding-school.

Yancie drove automatically as she recalled how her father had died in a skiing accident and how, although he had left her mother well provided for, it hadn't taken her mother long to run through his fortune. To find herself a job had simply never entered Ursula Dawkins' head. She had instead, after having affairs with several possibles, elected to marry money in the person of Ralph Proctor.

Yancie, on her holiday visits home, had learned to greatly care for Ralph Proctor, and he in turn had grown very fond of her. Too fond, anyhow, to consider allowing Yancie to live anywhere but in his home after the inevitable happened and his marriage broke down. Which was quite all right by Ursula Proctor, who walked off with a very handsome divorce settlement without the encumbrance of a too beautiful ash-blonde daughter to cramp her style.

That wouldn't stop her mother, Yancie fretted, from attempting to make her life, and Ralph's life, a misery should she learn that not only was her daughter no longer under Ralph Proctor's roof, but was actually working.

Although on that fateful day she had left her stepfather's home, Yancie had had no idea what work she could do. `The thing is, I'm not properly trained for anything in particular,' she explained to her aunt and half-cousin. `I can housekeep, I suppose, but…'

'You can't do that!' Delia Alford stated categorically.

'It's all I know,' Yancie confessed.

'Nonsense!' her aunt declared stoutly. `You can drive, and you can…'

'There's a driving job vacant at Addison Kirk,' Greville chipped in, and halted when both his mother and cousin looked at him. `But you wouldn't want to do that…'

'Oh, yes, I would!' Yancie jumped at the chance.

'Hey! I wasn't serious!' Greville protested.

'I am,' Yancie answered.

'I'm not sure they want a woman driver…' he began to prevaricate. Though when his two female relatives looked at him askance he had the grace to grin as he conceded, `But, perhaps, in these times of equal opportunities, it's time they had one.'

Greville then went on to outline how one of the senior drivers had retired at the end of December and how his replacement hadn't stayed in the job longer than a week, and Aunt Delia beamed. She was very proud of her son; he, as his father had been before him, was on the hoard of Addison Kirk.

'That's settled, then,' she stated, and, smiling at her son, she added, `What's the point of you being on the board if you can't give your little cousin a helping hand?'

His `little cousin' was five feet eight, but as she looked uncertainly at him so he too smiled. `Indeed,' he agreed, `what point?'

And so, after the formality of an interview the outcome of which she knew in advance Yancie had got the job. As to the politics of the matter, Greville had instructed the head of personnel to make no written mention of his interest, and Greville-while certain his cousin would fare well with her fellow workers-had suggested to her that it might be an idea not to mention that she had obtained the job through him.

'In fact,' he'd smiled, `it might be an idea if you didn't mention the family connection at all.'

So she hadn't, and inside a few weeks she had gone from not having a car to drive to having a Mercedes, a Jaguar and any number of other cars in which to visit her friends.

As far as Yancie's mother was concerned, having learned that Sukey Lloyd had written off Yancie's car, to Yancie's astonishment, had naturally assumed that the Jaguar Yancie had driven the day she'd called was a replacement.

Yancie's immediate superior had given her a very intensive driving test before stating that her driving was up to his high standard. She had then been measured for a hurriedly tailored uniform-two jackets, two skirts in brown and several shirts in beige, bearing the brown embroidered Addison Kirk logo of a bridge spanning the world. Yancie supposed the logo to be something to do with the manufacture of industrial material which the company seemed mainly concerned with. But so long as she could hide the logo underneath a brooch of some sort when she was visiting friends she didn't much mind what the firmm did. She didn't want to risk anyone she knew bumping into her mother and giving a hint that her daughter was now earning a wage.

Yancie executed a neat piece of laneswapping and went back to reflecting how, as her aunt had said, her cousins had wanted her to move in with them.