The Marriage Business

CHAPTER ONE

AVENA ALLADICE paused in brushing her long rich golden-coloured hair and owned that she was just a tiny bit out of sorts that morning. She looked at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror and, as large eyes of a brilliant blue stared back at her, was a mite ashamed that she could be in any way unhappy with her lot. Her complexion was milky white with just a hint of the palest pink in her cheeks. She came from a long line of beautiful women, and according to her grandmother she was the most beautiful of them all—but then, her grandmother was biased.

Avena suddenly became aware of the minutes ticking by. She brushed her hair back from her face and, with a few deft movements, expertly flicked it into a chignon—the style she always adopted for the office.

That morning, however, she was not going to do very much in her office but was going to the opening of Oakby Trading’s new headquarters. Oakby Trading came under the umbrella of the multi-million pound conglomerate Lancaster Holdings and the firm she worked for, Marton Exclusives, was exceedingly anxious to do business with any company connected with Lancasters.

Marton Exclusives, a firm which manufactured high-class sports equipment, was owned by her brothers-in-law, Tony and Martin—the name meant to be more an abbreviation of ‘Marathon’ than of Martin and Tony. Avena was their finance director and had done well since she had first gone to work for them. The term nepotism, however, did not apply. She had laboured hard in the six years she had been with them, soaking up figure work like a sponge, and she knew that neither Tony nor Martin would have promoted her if she had not been up to it.

They did not come much harder-headed than her two brothers-in-law—which made it just as well that neither of her elder sisters, Lucille and Coral, was a shrinking violet.

‘They take after your mother,’ her grandmother had told her once when, at fifteen years old, she had been amazed at the anger in both her sisters when their husbands had suggested that they spend less so that they could keep more in the firm’s coffers. ‘You, on the other hand, given that you get your looks from the female side, are all your father.’

‘Are you saying that my mother married Daddy for his money?’ She had been horrified at the idea.

‘Ah!’ Her grandmother had paused. ‘I must have forgotten what an intelligent child you are.’ And, in that, Avena had her answer though Grandmother Carstairs, her mother’s mother, had quickly taken her mind away from that shocking news to tell her, ‘Your father was a gentleman.’

‘Was he?’ Avena had asked, eager to hear more about her father who had died when she was ten.

Over the next year, however, she had seen evidence for herself that her mother and both her sisters were motivated by a love of money, when the fortunes of Marton Exclusives had come near the brink of bankruptcy. That was when her mother had declared that she would have helped them out if she could, but that the amount her husband had left her had dwindled to practically nothing.

And while Avena had observed that, ‘penniless’, her mother did not seem to be changing her lifestyle any—still living in gown shops and spending just as before—her two sisters were talking not of doing all they could to help but, astonishingly, talking in terms of dumping their respective husbands if matters didn’t improve!

‘But…you’ve both got brains; why don’t you go out and get jobs? It would all help!’ she had protested. Neither of her sisters wanted children but plainly not because they were career-minded.

Lucille had looked at her as if she were mad. But it had been Coral who had replied, ‘You go and get a job. If you’re so high-minded about it, you go and get a job instead of living off Mother all the time!’

That had shaken Avena. She had never thought that she had been living off her mother, but with the latter talking of having very little left she had begun to question whether she should stay on at school the extra year as she had intended.

Instinctively she had wanted to ask her grandmother, but after having moved in with them six years ago to be what help she could when her daughter’s husband had died her grandmother had rowed once too often and once too angrily with her daughter a month before, and had moved out. Besides which, she had realised, although Grandmother Carstairs tried hard not to have favourites, Avena could not but know that, as her grandmother was special to her, she was special to her grandmother.

On the grounds that her grandmother would from the love she had for her make sure she stayed on at school and would insist, since she achieved top grades, that she go on to university, Avena had realised she could not ask her advice. Instead, after thinking matters over very carefully—not to mention discovering that she had a pride that was up in arms at having Coral turn the tables on her in the way that she had—Avena had approached her brothers-in-law.

Tony and Martin had been business partners before Tony had met Lucille and subsequently introduced Martin to her sister Coral. Her two sisters had married in the same year. They had all been together at one of her mother’s dinner parties when, her sisters having gone upstairs with their mother to complain that their well-to-do husbands were going through a second rocky financial patch, Avena had found herself alone with the two business partners. ‘I need a job,’ she had blurted out. ‘You haven’t got anything in the clerical line, have you?’

‘An Alladice working?’ Tony had enquired sarcastically. But, while she’d coloured up, Martin—the marginally less sharp of the two—had explained that they had paperwork by the ton but couldn’t afford to pay her very much.

‘I wouldn’t want very much—just enough to keep me in the occasional pair of shoes—that sort of thing.’

Tony had looked at her seriously. ‘Well, provided you don’t buy your shoes from the same expensive source as your sister…’

A month later, her parent making not the smallest protest, she had started work at Marton Exclusives. There had been a mountain of paperwork and Avena, having a quick brain, had shifted it. In fact, she had found that she had an aptitude for it and, once she knew what she was doing, had moved the paperwork very quickly.

She had been working at Marton Exclusives six months when the firm had begun to recover from its set-back and she had been put on a realistic salary. And six months later, as the firm had gone from strength to strength and after a few incidents when she could have explained to her sisters more about the firm’s finances but hadn’t, the two partners had realised that her loyalty to the firm was in a separate compartment from the loyalty she had for her sisters.

Over the next few years she had attended evening classes, read and absorbed everything she could about the financial running of a company. And, as her brothers-in-law had discovered how easily she coped with spreadsheets and how at home she was with matters financial, she had assumed, and been given, more and more responsibility. So that, as time had gone on and the firm had become yet more buoyant, the three of them had found that she had been doing the work of financial director for twelve months before their bank manager had referred to her as such. From that day the two partners had conferred the title on her.

Which was fine, Avena thought as she left her dressing-table and donned the crisp pale green twopiece she was going to wear on what looked like being a warm summer’s day. So why did she feel as if she was missing something? She had a good job, a good home, a super grandmother a couple of hours’ motoring away in Worcestershire—what more could she want?

Feeling impatient with herself, she left her room and, aware of the inadvisability of looking into her mother’s room to say goodbye, tripped lightly down the stairs of the large, rambling house she had been brought up in, and headed for the kitchen.

‘Good morning, Mrs Parsons,’ she greeted their housekeeper of the last six months—housekeepers never stayed with her mother for very long. She went over to the coffee-percolator and poured herself a cup. ‘Any problems you need help with?’ she enquired with a smile. She liked Mrs Parsons and was hopeful that she would stay longer than her predecessors.

‘If you don’t mind me saying, I think you should have a proper breakfast,’ seemed to be the housekeeper’s only complaint.

‘Tomorrow I will,’ Avena promised, having a slender but curvy figure with never the smallest need to diet. ‘Scrambled eggs with toast?’ she suggested, and felt quite cheered when that lady smiled.

‘In the breakfast-room?’

Clearly Mrs Parsons liked matters in their correct order. ‘If you insist,’ she laughed, saw Mrs Parson’s smile become a grin and, because she was meeting up with her brothers-in-law, made her goodbyes and went out to her car.

She had saved hard to buy her car, yet it had seemed a tremendous amount of money to spend in one go. She had asked her grandmother’s opinion.

‘Blow it!’ had been her advice.

‘All of it?’ Earning money and saving hard had taught her the value of it.

‘All of it,’ Grandmother Carstairs had decreed. ‘With your looks some man will soon snap you up. He’ll have money and——’

Avena’s shocked expression had caused her to break off. ‘Gran!’ Her mother had married for money—her marriage had been a disaster. Her sisters had married for the same reason and their marriages were pretty similar—and had nearly been over when their husbands’ finances had rocked that particular time. ‘I couldn’t marry for money!’ she’d exclaimed fervently, and had known it for a fact.

‘Don’t I know that?’ her grandmother had smiled. ‘Don’t I know that you’re as unlike your sisters—your mother too for that matter—as chalk is from cheese? But it stands to reason that if he hasn’t already got money, then to gain you your future husband will work his fingers to the bone to give you everything you’ll ever want.’

‘Did I ever tell you that you wear glasses that are a wee bit rose-tinted in my favour?’ Avena had laughed fondly.

Her grandmother had laughed too. Though she’d added, with an oblique reference to the pleasant but unthreatening types whom her youngest granddaughter associated with, ‘You’re not afraid of meeting real men, are you, love?’

Avena had shaken her head. She had occasionally dated other types—men like Tony and Martin. But she had found them brash and insensitive, interested only in being seen with her, in making conquests. If they were ‘real’ men she would prefer safe, if dull types. Yet safe, dull types seemed to be vulnerable somehow—and could be hurt. And, while her sisters exulted in their power to hurt, such power as bestowed by the Alladice beauty alarmed her.

Which, with her position of financial director for an ever expanding firm meaning that she had to work long hours, curtailed the time she had available for dating—a situation she was not too unhappy about. She supposed she would quite like to marry one day, but never for money like Coral and Lucille, who, appallingly, had affairs to brighten up their inconsequential lives.

She stopped her car at the bottom of the drive and, about to get out to open the wooden gates, saw that the paper-boy had arrived and had started to do that chore for her.

‘Why, thank you, James,’ she smiled, getting out of her car anyway and coming to assist with the other gate. ‘I’ll return the favour for you one day.’

He went a trace pink and Avena, aware that the fifteen-year-old might be having problems with his adolescence, was all sensitivity when he suggested gruffly, ‘You could do me one big favour anyway, if you like.’

‘Name it,’ she invited with an encouraging smile.

‘I’m playing the accordion in the village concert in a couple of weeks—can you come?’

She had seen the advertisement about the concert pinned to a telegraph pole when she had been out walking. ‘Count me in,’ she accepted. ‘Do I pay you for my ticket?’

‘You can pay at the door of the village hall,’ he beamed, and, jumping on his cycle, he went pell-mell up the drive.

It was a glorious morning, and whenever possible Avena put her foot down and sped to her office.

‘I don’t have to tell you how important today is,’ Tony addressed her in heavy tones, a few minutes before they were due to set off for the opening of the new Oakby Trading headquarters.

‘You’re not expecting to do business today, surely?’ she enquired. She knew that Tony and Martin were keen to expand yet further, but to her mind everyone would be more interested in champagne and publicity—unlike Marton Exclusives, which would be holding an open day in six weeks’ time with business very much in mind.

‘We did very well to get an invitation—I’ve been trying to get in with Oakby Trading for a year,’ Tony replied. ‘We can’t afford to let the grass grow now—if there’s so much as a sniff of a chance of doing business, I want to be in there.’

Tony had insisted that she must go with them to the opening, and she had been flattered that they wanted her with them, but now she was beginning to wonder. ‘Just why am I coming along?’ she asked in her usual forthright manner. She glanced at Martin, who was starting to look a shade uncomfortable.

‘You’re an asset to any firm,’ he mumbled. ‘We’re bound to get noticed with you with——’

The hint of mutiny that started to come to her face caused Tony to interrupt—fast. ‘It’s nothing like that,’ he contradicted, with an impatient look to Martin. ‘It’s just that should we get the chance to talk business, should we get asked if we can afford materials to pay for any colossal order which Oakby Trading may consider putting our way, you’ll be on the spot—with your usual honesty—to tell them it’d be no problem, and anything else in connection with finance.’

She wasn’t quite sure that she trusted his reply but since he knew full well that there was positively no way that she would be used, or would make capital out of the looks she had inherited, she had, for the moment, to go along with it. It was true, she would be able to answer any questions about finance relating to an order and she knew, with Tony referring to her honesty, that in the years she had been in charge of finance Marton Exclusives had acquired a name for straight dealing; she liked to think that she had contributed to that.

They went in