She Shoots to Conquer by Dorothy Cannell Page B

the pressure he’s under . . . the responsibility, having to constantly check that those under him are doing what they are supposed to do.”
    “Being a bank teller must bring its headaches, too.”
    “Thank you. It does. But Harold is a worrier; he’ll talk for hours about someone having moved a paperclip on his desk and what could have been behind it. Sometimes, disloyally, I’ve wanted to tell him he might be just a little bit neurotic. And that particular night when he went on and on about the undercooked green beans and that there wasn’t a proper pudding—just some jam tarts from Sainsbury’s—I felt ready to . . .”
    “Throw a paperclip at him.”
    The dog grinned up at me, but Livonia Mayberry did not crack a smile “. . . tell him what I’d heard the girls at the bank saying.”
    “Which was?”
    “That I must be blind as a bat not to realize that he was stringing me along because of the free meals and all the other things I did for him—taking his clothes to the cleaners, mending and altering, doing the shopping for when he ate at his flat, to which I was rarely invited. That all those evenings when he said he had to go back to the office he was really seeing someone else . . . possibly several different women. But I couldn’t get any of it out. I knew I would go to pieces if I tried. After he had gone, I just sat wishing desperately that I had a dear little cat so I could hold on to it and cry all over its fur. And the next morning I went on the Internet at work, during my lunch break, of course, and found the site for Here Comes the Bride . I felt I had to do something . . . anything to force Harold into a decision about our relationship.”
    “How did he take the news when you were accepted?”
    “At first he thought it was a joke—a very bad joke—and I was about to cave in and say that was all it was and that I was sorry, when he called me a tart . . . a repressed tart of the Victorian spinster variety, incapable of a normal sexual relationship, and he shouldn’t be surprised that this was what he got for his patience in allowing me to keep him at arm’s length all those years.”
    “Brutal.”
    “And unfair. He’d never given any indication that he was . . . eager to get me into bed.” She blushed at the three letter word. “Sometimes I did wonder at his restraint. Never more than a kiss goodnight. I know the girls at the bank think it all very peculiar, but I always assumed he had old-fashioned morals and . . . perhaps a low libido. Mummy always said that men set the pace. And I would never have dreamed of broaching the subject and making us both uncomfortable.”
    “Did he break things off?”
    “Not exactly. He said he’d have to think long and hard about giving me a second chance when I wasn’t the selected bride, which I wouldn’t be because no lord of the realm—however desperate to find an unpaid housekeeper—would pick me.”
    Why commit himself to giving up all those free meals and other entitlements? I placed a hand on her arm. “Oh, Livonia! I wish I could have been there to punch him in the nose for you. But,” thinking it best to wrench the subject away from that cruel scene, “back to those gloves that my doggy friend made off with; you said Harold gave them to you.”
    “A couple of years ago at Christmas.” Her face unfroze and tears melted her blue eyes. “It was such a lovely surprise; usually he gave me a wall calendar. Mrs. Knox said she couldn’t think of anything more thoughtful, but the gloves—navy blue leather—I just couldn’t believe he’d got the fit so right. I’ve always been a little vain about my hands.” She held them out—nicely shaped, with slim fingers and oval nails coated with clear varnish. “Mummy said once that they were the prettiest thing about me.”
    How flush with the compliments!
    “I know it sounds silly,” Livonia looked more directly into my eyes than she had yet done, “but sometimes on nights when I was