A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [11]
‘My parents would think so,’ she said, laughing and trying to extract herself from his clinch.
‘Even if I said I wanted to marry you?’
‘Do you?’ Fifi asked, assuming it was just a joke.
‘More than anything else in the world,’ he said.
Fifi was shocked to see his eyes were swimming. He had told her he loved her after knowing her just two weeks, but in such a light way that it wasn’t possible to gauge whether he’d said it out of affection or real to-die-for passion. Yet now she was left in no doubt.
‘But we’ve only known each other six weeks,’ she said, caressing his cheek tenderly.
‘I knew on the first night you were the only girl for me,’ he replied. ‘All the other six weeks and two days has done is confirm it.’
Fifi held his face in her hands, loving his high cheekbones, his generous, sexy mouth and his chocolate-brown eyes. She felt exactly as he said he did – they were like twin souls – but she hadn’t dared even think about marriage.
‘Are you asking me to marry you?’ she whispered. ‘Or is this one of your jokes?’
‘I’ll say it’s a joke if you refuse, just to keep face,’ he said with a weak grin. ‘I wouldn’t blame you refusing, it’s not as if I can offer you anything. I haven’t got any money, not even a car or a decent place to live. But I love you, I’d look after you and I’d treasure you.’
Tears came into Fifi’s eyes then. Dan’s love was all she wanted. ‘Let’s see how tomorrow goes first,’ she whispered. ‘You might not want me after you’ve met my mother!’
Chapter two
Fifi looked around the table and not for the first time wondered why she was so different to the rest of her family.
Her father Harry, at the head of the table, was the personification of what everyone expected from an academic: tall and thin with stooping shoulders, glasses slightly askew on his nose, and a wide expanse of forehead which grew larger every year as his fair hair receded even further back. His maroon cardigan did nothing for his pale skin, but it had been knitted by his wife and as he had a very placid nature, it would never occur to him to abandon it for something more flattering.
Despite having a very strong bond with her father, Fifi didn’t appear to have inherited anything from him, neither his looks nor his keen intelligence. She also wished he would take a stand on how he felt about family matters but he never did, just going along with his wife.
Fifi might look like her mother, but the similarity ended there. Right now Clara was poised like a graceful but ever watchful deer. She looked lovely in her best powder-blue wool dress and pearls, with her hair in a neat chignon, but the effect was spoiled by a fixed false smile. She was not a relaxed person at the best of times, but since Dan’s arrival at three o’clock she had become extraordinarily tense.
Peter and Robin, nineteen and eighteen respectively, showed every sign of ending up looking just like their father. They were fresh-faced and bright-eyed, their backs as straight as guardsmen’s now; a framed photograph of their father as a young man, in full view on the sideboard, could have been mistaken for either of his sons. They didn’t share their father’s sharp intellect, though – studying came hard to them. They were a couple of life’s plodders, amiable, gentle and without much fire.
Fifi could see that her brothers were both wishing they had a good reason to excuse themselves from the tea party. Although she doubted that their mother had confided in them her fears about Dan, the atmosphere she was creating had made these all too obvious.
Fifi felt her brothers liked Dan. They had laughed at many things he’d said during the afternoon, and now and again they’d looked admiringly at him, but they lacked the social skills or the nerve to bypass their mother’s disapproval.
Patty, a born diplomat, had done her best. Although she was usually shy with strangers, mainly because she was aware of being fat and spotty, she’d made a great effort to make Dan feel comfortable. She had done her best to