The Deal ~ Section II
by Lise

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Part Sixteen

Wednesday Morning

James returned wearing one of her dressing gowns. Elizabeth gave him a long glance. "Am I marrying a transvestite?" she asked mockingly, although in that case he would have picked one of her more feminine ones.

He stuck out his tongue at her. "Now don't worry. Nobody will know about your misfortune. Only I witnessed it."

She saw he had shaved. "You didn't use my razor too, did you?"

"What else? You obviously never have male guests. I threw it away because you might not want to use it anymore. And I'm wearing this because my underwear is in your washing machine."

She placed a large mug of coffee in front of him. "I didn't really want to know you weren't wearing anything underneath my dressing gown," she said humorously, surprising herself with her words as well.

"Oh." That had not occurred to James yet. "Yes, that would follow if my underwear is being washed. I wrapped a towel around myself because this thing keeps flipping open at the most inappropriate moments. It's rather flimsy. Is this called a dressing gown? It doesn't really dress."

"It dresses female bodies perfectly well. It's not really meant for men and I'm glad you didn't think my underwear was unisex too," she said dryly.

He grinned at her. "Me too. I can only barely deal with wearing this, but I thought I had to wear something so as not to shock you across the breakfast table."

"And so you wear a woman's clothes," Elizabeth nodded in amusement. "I'll be back before you finish that cup of coffee," she promised. "Just need to freshen up a bit."

When she returned, James was reading the newspaper and two well-timed pieces of toast popped out of the toaster as if this was a breakfast scene in a commercial -- as if he were her husband and not a business partner wearing her dressing gown, whom she had tried to get drunk with in order to conceive a child. On the surface life seemed quite normal, Elizabeth thought as she watched the scene from the door opening, yet if one looked deeper there were many bizarre elements to it. "I wonder what secrets other people are hiding," she remarked conversationally. "People who seem normal."

"How many other women have breakfast with men in women's clothing, you mean?" James asked in the same conversational tone.

"Yes, sort of." She had a plate now suddenly, but she could not recall laying the table.

He slid a piece of toast onto her plate. "You have a point. We might seem normal from afar, just like other people do."

"We are normal." Elizabeth felt she had to get this straight, if only to reassure herself.

"Quite, but I doubt that other people would agree."

"What do we care?" she said, spreading jam onto her toast. He had put the jam on the table as well. Had he thought of everything? There were enough people who would wait for her to come back so she could put everything on the table, just like there were enough people who would put things on the table and not wait for her before they started eating. James had laid the table and waited.

"Not much. I'm beyond domestication anyway."

Elizabeth looked at him in disbelief. They must have different definitions. He could make dinner, he could lay the table, he could operate a washing machine, he had manners -- and this was being beyond domestication?

James saw her look. "I've repeatedly been told that I'm impossible to live with."

"Why?" The only strange thing about him so far was her dressing gown, but he could not have worn anything else, because there was nothing else.

"I haven't got a clue. I can live with myself just fine," he said with a grin. "Selfish, they said."

Elizabeth had the feeling that people who had won James' everlasting devotion would not call him selfish. Maybe she should ask his grandfather. He seemed to do an enormous lot for his grandfather. "Have you ever lived with anyone?"

"Not counting my family, not more than a day. Either she or I said it would be impossible. I don't mind, though. I'm a snob."

"Oh?"

"Too picky."

"Oh?"

"Will never get hitched."

"Except to me. We have a deal," she reminded him.

"Except to you, then, which is good, because you make great coffee and you have the best shower I've ever been under."

"Glad I passed the test," she mumbled. "Are you acting or are you serious?" She was not sure one could ever tell with an actor.

"I can't act," James said immediately. "I only got my first role because they thought I was good-looking and I figured I could try to make a lot of money by taking advantage of that."

"But it didn't work," she stated.

"Not really. I haven't made nearly enough. It's a bit degrading to have to sell yourself and you have to be pretty convinced that you're wonderful, which is all pretty hard. But still, it beats being a doctor or a lawyer."

"Were those your other two options?"

James coughed self-consciously. "No. Before I realised we were in a bad financial situation, I was already doing…classical languages." He whispered the last bit, knowing people never reacted in an ordinary way.

Elizabeth tried not to laugh. She managed to tone it down to a smile. "Oh yeah, and that is hardly a lucrative field."

"So, after exploiting my brain for several years, I went on to exploit my appearance, but I think I'm going to give it up soon. It's not all that fulfilling and if it pays just as insufficiently as exploiting my brain, I might as well go back to that," he said pensively.

"You did the other thing for the house, not for yourself," she commented. "No wonder it's not fulfilling."

"Do you have a hairdryer?" James asked as he emptied the washing machine. Elizabeth was brushing her teeth.

She noticed he had filled it up with her underwear as well and that he appeared completely unfazed by it all. "Why did you do my laundry and why do you need a hairdryer?"

"It's a waste of water and money to turn the machine on just for my underpants," he said, disentangling them from a bra. "Get off! I'm glad it's not lace. I would rip lace." Finally he managed to pull the two pieces of clothing apart.

She could see why to some people he might be impossible to live with, but not to her. "I don't have lace -- or a hairdryer."

"What kind of woman are you?" he said in dismay, feeling his wet underpants. "How am I going to dry these?"

"Hang them up?" she suggested, picking her own laundry off the floor. It might be dirty on the floor. How often did he think she had it cleaned? "Microwave them?"

Part Seventeen

Wednesday Morning

A few cups of coffee and some food had restored James to better health. He said the hammering in his head was no longer as severe, but Elizabeth still made him swallow a painkiller. He accepted it without protesting, secretly liking her concern.

She had kept one eye on the clock and seen the hands move to a definitely late hour to arrive at work. Lateness could not be helped, but she had better leave James and the three bottles of wine out of her explanation. She hoped nobody had driven past her house and seen two cars there.

She had gone to work and James had gone to Merscombe Hall before his matinee, to tell his family about the plan. They would be affected as well and they had a right to know. He could just go back and forth before he was due at the theatre.

"I've found a way out of our financial misery. I'm getting married," James announced when he crashed in on their lunch.

This came down on the assembled family members like a bombshell and they all stared at James. He did not care much about their opinion, since he could guess what they would think of his getting married, except his mother's. He looked at her.

"To whom?" she asked pleasantly.

"To a woman with money."

"What makes you think she'd want to marry you?" one of his brothers cut in. They too had been looking for women with money, but women their age were either not rich yet, or they were just not likeable.

"We've talked about it." James gave him a disturbed glance. Was the fun to start so soon? And why were these two brothers of his not at work? But then he remembered that they worked nearby and that they usually came home for lunch.

"Has she got a university degree in the classics?" the same brother asked. That was running joke in the family.

"No." He did not know, actually. Probably not.

"And you still want to marry her?" Disbelief was audible. James would stoop to marrying women who did not know classical languages?

James looked displeased with the question. "Yes." Alright, so he had lowered his standards. It was possible. There was no need to laugh at it.

"Have you grown up?" his mother asked curiously but kindly, not mockingly like his brother.

"I think not." That was really the only answer he could give if he did not want it to be pounded upon by the rest.

His mother looked thoughtful. "She's not New Money, is she?" New Money and social climbers were people to be wary of. She could well imagine that some upstart girl with a rich father would be thrilled to marry into the old classes, but most of them failed to assimilate. She did not have anything against New Money personally, really, but it could be dangerous if it wanted to marry James for the status of his family rather than for James himself.

"No, very old money." James did not know how old. Elizabeth's family must have risen to wealth and influence long ago and acquired some respectability along the way. He had no illusions about the ways the aristocracy accumulated wealth in the past, not by today's standards. They had probably both descended from some warlord who had chopped off more heads than others and New Money was perhaps more respectable in that matter nowadays. Still, he was proud of the respectable things his ancestors had done afterwards, once they no longer needed to make their own hands dirty.

James' mother put her hand on his arm to claim his attention. "Are you marrying her for her money?"

"Yes."

"Does she know?"

"Yes."

"What is she marrying you for?"

"I'd rather not divulge that." He would not mention babies in front of his brothers. They were too immature.

That silenced the table for quite a long time as everyone tried to think what it could be. "Can we meet her?" his mother asked eventually.

"Yes. I'm sure that could be arranged."

His brothers had decided that the woman must be ugly. Why else would she agree to something like this? They whispered among themselves and snickered as they tried to come up with names of very ugly girls they knew. It had to be someone they knew, if it was old money. They would have run into her somewhere.

James' mother took James out on the terrace after they had finished their lunch. She sent the other boys away. They were only being a nuisance at the moment. "James…" she began.

He did not like that tone. She was going to question his motives and he would have to tell her everything. And then she would laugh. "Yes?"

"This is rather a surprise."

"To me too." He looked the other way.

"Saving the Hall is not your responsibility alone, James. You don't really have to sacrifice yourself."

James looked stubborn. "Tell me who else will save it." Sure, the others laid some money aside now and then, but it was never enough to pay for the big repairs that were so necessary.

His mother sighed. "You don't have to marry for it…marriage is not something to be taken lightly."

"It's a contract. We're not taking anything lightly, since we both know what we're doing and we'll get a divorce soon after. It's just a necessary step that is part of our deal. The marriage doesn't really have anything to do with the money."

She thought about it, staring out over the endless lawn. The grass at the edge of the terrace was growing too long. Someone should cut around the small fence with scissors, but they could not really afford a gardener. "What does she want?" If there was to be a divorce, the woman could not be wanting status. "Not a title, obviously."

"She's already got one," he mumbled. "Or more. She wants a baby." It was fairly dangerous to mention babies to older women, James realised suddenly, especially if they were one's mother and did not yet have any grandchildren. The sudden interest in her gaze unsettled him. Perhaps there were even more unforeseen complications.

"A baby?" That would be James' child -- her grandchild. She attempted not to convey any enthusiasm with her voice, telling herself it would be a child from a bizarre union.

"Yes," he said slowly. He had never thought his mother would be this crazy. Had she been dying to see him married all this time, just so he could give her a grandchild? Her tone indicated that getting a grandchild would make any deal acceptable to her. He ought to be glad for her acceptance, but it was not something he or Elizabeth had thought of. They had merely been thinking of a baby as a shocking thing and not as somebody's grandchild. He frowned. He had not even been thinking of it as his child. Somehow they seemed to have opened a can of worms. "All women want babies," James shrugged. And grandchildren, he added silently.

"When is it due?"

"Nine months after conception, I suppose."

"Well, at least you know that," his mother said enigmatically. He was well aware of all the rational implications of his decision, but he seemed to have no clue about the emotional ones.

"And what don't I know?"

"It's no use telling you right now." She brushed something off his sleeve. It was no use criticising him either. He would be able to counter anything with logical arguments and just claim he would not be feeling anything. However, she did not think James was the sort to remain unaffected by fathering a child. He could think at the moment that it was only a deal and that he could stay uninvolved, but he would be drawn in for certain, even if the woman would not let him near his child. It was not quite the right attitude, but she loved him for it anyway. It was James. All she could hope was that the woman was not so cruel as to sever all contact after the birth. But how could a woman not love James? "I trust you've been thinking about this."

"Yes, of course."

"I'd like to meet her." She wanted to see what the woman was like. Perhaps it was still only a girl. She wanted to gauge the woman's feelings, since gauging James' feelings was usually well-nigh impossible, unless he had figured them out himself. But that was not one of his talents. James would make her none the wiser. He would not be able to give her a description of his fiancée's character, so she would have to read between the lines. "What kind of woman would go along with such a deal?" she wondered.

"She's a bit desperate."

"About having a baby? How old is she?"

James frowned. He did not know exactly. "She's over thirty, but not much, because she doesn't look it. And she's not desperate about having a baby just in time, if that's what you mean."

A thirty-something was no longer a girl and could be expected to have some common sense. "Why does she want one?"

"To shock her father so he'll disown her."

His mother wondered what James had got himself into, agreeing to impregnate a thirty-something without common sense. "I don't know what to say to that, James…" Every time she thought James had grown into a right-thinking young man, he surprised her.

"She thinks it's the only thing that'll work. She doesn't like conflicts, you see."

She raised her eyebrows incredulously. "She doesn't like conflicts, so she does this? And why does she need you?"

"Women can't have babies alone."

"Yes, they can. They can go to a sperm bank. I fail to see why you're needed."

"Because she gave me the money."

"Why did she?"

"Because she liked the house. She's the one who planted the flowers."

"Ah." That was one point in the unknown woman's favour, but still not a very strong one.

"And she didn't even know me yet then," James continued. "Granddad sent me around to her office and one thing led to another."

His mother had heard about that from her father-in-law. "She saw you and offered you money so you could give her a child?" James was a handsome boy and this was by no means an unlikely scenario.

"No. We ran into her again after we were really desperate about not getting a loan and she took pity on us, so she offered us the money. Er…I forget to mention that I'd been corresponding with her via notes in a parking garage -- anonymously -- and that I knew she wanted to have a child to shock her father, so I rang her up to ask her for advice about getting money to pay our debts, since this would be the same kind of immoral scheme. She suggested that we combine the two."

"I see," said his mother. It was all too confusing.

"I didn't know the woman of the flowers was the woman from the parking garage until she wrote me about the flowers. It was a bit of a coincidence."

"It's vital that I get this straight," she said, concentrating. "You were corresponding anonymously with a woman in a parking garage?"

"Yes, she left a note on my car Monday a week ago and we replied back and forth ever since."

"She turned out to be the one who planted flowers here this weekend?"

"Yes, but we didn't know that, of course. She wrote to me that she had done something like that. It had to be one and the same, and then Granddad sent me around to her office to see what she was like, because he was afraid she would send him a bill." His grandfather had become a bit paranoid about bills, expecting them to rain down on him from all sides. He was beginning to see danger in every person who did him a favour.

"I'm sure it's all very logical to the parties involved," James' mother remarked. For some reason she was not surprised upon hearing that James had been corresponding with a woman, but she was surprised that it had been the same woman who had been here. "And then what happened? What did she say when you were in her office?"

"She thought I was strange, because I said I had something for her to translate and I didn't. I went there twice, once in the morning and once in the evening, because she had seemed a bit stressed out in the morning. And then the next day after Granddad and I had been to the bank, I decided to call her up and ask her advice about undertaking a selfish scheme to get money, since we'd been corresponding about the fact that there ought to be something in every deal to satisfy both parties. I didn't know who else to ask. So she came over to the pub where we were."

A woman he did not really know and who did not really know him came to him when he called? "She must have had an ulterior motive," his mother decided. "And seen her chance to get what she wanted."

"No!" James protested. "She didn't know I was the person from the parking garage. She only knew me as James Stanton. She had no idea what I wanted to see her about. I think she mainly came to ask how I had got her phone number."

"People don't do that."

"She would. So I told her it had been me and I told her about my problems and she offered to pay our bills."

"Now that is the suspicious part," said his mother. "People don't do that."

"She would. She's got plenty, anyway. She could see I had some problems accepting her money for nothing in return, so she said I could give her a child."

"And naturally, you being the intelligent and generous boy you are, you went along with this?" His mother was more curious about this woman than ever. Critical James who sold his body just like that?

"I didn't have much of a choice. I mean, I was pretty desperate about the money and very grateful of course that she wanted to help out, so I had to do something in return." James could turn this into a really logical and convincing explanation. He had no trouble producing it, since it had gone around in his mind often enough already. Maybe he should get more sheep. There were not enough of them to take care of keeping the entire lawn short. Or he could rent a lawnmower for a day. That might be cheaper. But not as nice.

"I take it she isn't ugly." If James told her he would sleep with an ugly woman in return for money, she would really have him committed to a psychiatric hospital. There was no need to commit men who wished to sleep with pretty women.

"No."

"I take it she isn't very intelligent either."

"She is," James would think. "We had a very nice conversation about philosophy."

"I'm not talking about academic abilities, I'm talking about common sense." But considering James lacked that as well, he might not be able to recognise a lack of it in others. He really had to bring that woman here so she could judge for herself. His mother analysed what she had been told about the woman. She corresponded with a strange man in a parking garage, she planted flowers in strange gardens just like that, she offered James all her money just like that, she could hold James' interest while talking about philosophy and last but not least, she wanted a child so her father would disown her, because she disliked conflicts.

James' mother was curious, very curious. If anything, it sounded like a female version of James himself. His fiancée disliked conflicts and no doubt she would dislike emotions as well. If she could wonder who James thought he was kidding, she might as well wonder the same about this woman. If this were indeed true, she would not have to worry about that baby deal at all. If neither of them had found their emotions by the time of the birth, she could just throw some rational arguments at them and they would be as meek as lambs. Being his mother, she knew how she could make James do what she wanted without him being aware of it. And she wanted that grandchild. It was unthinkable that any of her children should have a child that was going to be kept away from her.

She hoped her guesses about the woman were not completely wrong.

"I take it she's all for artificial insemination," she mocked. It would fit into this picture perfectly. Clean, sterile, rational and the perfect excuse for people who were afraid to admit what they wanted. God forbid that the woman should discover that she liked sleeping with James, when she had to be liking James in order to come up with this enormously clumsy attempt at a courtship.

"Yes, of course," James answered.

"I think I like her," his mother grinned. She would have a marvellous time watching this unfold, which was pretty mean of her, she mused, considering that she was James' mother and she wanted what was best for him.

Part Eighteen

Wednesday Morning

Getting to work more than an hour and a half late would require a superb excuse, even if you were the boss. No, especially if you were the boss in charge of a nosy staff. Elizabeth had rehearsed stories all the way to work, but her colleagues did not give her the starters she needed to rattle any of them off, which was a bit disappointing. Kim was in Marie's office, having their mid-morning coffee break, Frank was talking to a client and Daniel was not there.

Kim and Marie had called back a reply to her cheerful "hi" as she passed them and she could feel their eyes in her back for as long as she was in their sight. She hung up her coat in her office and started up the computer. So far, so good, but she would not be let off the hook this easily and especially not if Kim and Marie were together when she marched in late as if nothing had happened.

She sat waiting, but they did not appear, which was strange. And her computer had started up completely by this time. She could even check her email right away without being bothered, a rare occurrence here in the office on days she had come in later. There were also some faxes in her tray on which Marie had stuck yellow post-it notes with the question if she had time to do these before the weekend. Elizabeth wondered if the question was meant sarcastically.

She realised that she had not returned here after lunch yesterday either. That stretched her absence into almost twenty-four hours, which would be odd for a person who nearly lived here otherwise. Perhaps they were going easy on her because they thought she deserved a break, which would be extremely considerate of them. "Come on, don't be stupid -- they're your staff," she said out loud. They were not considerate at all. She was being too kind as usual, too willing to see the good in people and too willing to believe that they had abandoned their love of poking their noses in other people's business, hers especially.

Elizabeth got up and looked in the mirror she had hung on the wall so she would be forced to pay attention to her appearance from time to time. If there was no mirror, she might forget and clients should see her at her best. She looked far more competent with her hair brushed, of course. Clients were bound to think that and she would not tell them that she translated far more easily if she could play with her hair as she worked, because playing with her hair made her look sloppy and if she looked sloppy, her translations would be sloppy as well. When in reality it was all about ease and fluency and getting into the language and not so much about keeping her hands on the dictionary instead of her hair.

She had been keeping her hands out of her hair so far, so it still looked fine. She still looked respectable and competent, not at all like someone who had downed a bottle and a half of wine last night. Francis had said she was beautiful. Was she? She cocked her head to one side, studying her features and her brown eyes and brown hair. If it had been someone else she had been studying, she might have been less critical, she realised, but she merely settled for pretty now. Beautiful was such a glamorous and sexy term and she was not glamorous or sexy at all, certainly not with her hair in a bun. Besides, she was not an actress so it was not important, she reflected, thinking of James. She could manage very well with just having satisfactory looks and she never bothered to spoil them with cosmetics.

It mattered much more how you were than how you looked. "That's a fine thing to say, you immoral schemer," she told the reflection in the mirror. Alright, so internal consistency had gone on holiday for a bit. It could not always be there, she supposed. It was not all that bad. All humans had that problem from time to time.

And all humans would be talking to themselves from time to time. There was no need to get worried about that. Not that long ago she had decided that it was only because there were no other people around and one still had the urge to make sounds. Well, there were no people around now either, so her hypothesis seemed to be correct. She had not talked to herself when James was there, had she? No, she had not. "See?" she said triumphantly. She was perfectly normal.

There was a knock on her door. Despite her reassuring words to herself, Elizabeth nevertheless turned away from the mirror guiltily. "Yes?"

"It's my birthday," said Daniel. "We're having cake in Marie's office. I've just been out to buy some. Come on."

"Oh, is it?" Had she forgotten? She had still known this on Monday. "Congratulations." She kissed him. "You're my age now."

"It's not that bad for a man, though," teased Daniel, who was under the assumption that all women disliked hitting thirty.

"It's not that bad for anyone. It certainly puts an end to those jokes about nearing thirty, doesn't it?" she shrugged. "Personally I feel none the worse for it."

"That's what Marie said," Daniel let slip.

Elizabeth gave him a sharp glance. "How would Marie know how I feel?"

Daniel looked very innocent. "Oh, not you especially. She was making general comments --"

Somehow that made Elizabeth think they had not been general at all.

"-- about how women over thirty sometimes seemed to start to live with wild abandon."

"Oh God," was all she could say. What was wild abandon, anyway? She was not living with wild abandon at all. She had merely been late to work -- as far as Marie would know -- but it was a bit disturbing that Marie should have these kinds of ideas about her. "Oh well," she said with a forced laugh. "I'm thirty, but I'd hardly qualify, wouldn't I? All I ever do is come late, but maybe Marie's life is so boring that she thinks this wild."

"Yeah," said Daniel slowly.

She did not really know what he meant. They had reached Marie's office, so Elizabeth could not question him any further. If she asked too much, he would become suspicious and start wondering if there were things her colleagues at the office did not know about.

"Has your father been bugging you again?" Kim asked sympathetically. That was usually the prime reason for any of Elizabeth's unannounced absences.

"No, thankfully not." She could say what she had been doing, but she chose not to. They would ask, if they really wanted to know.

Marie handed her a piece of cake on a saucer and Frank poured her a cup of orange juice. "We thought you might have eaten something bad yesterday at lunch, because you never came back," Marie said.

That might actually be a good excuse and Elizabeth worked it out in her mind. It would explain why she had never come back. She had to stick to saying things that were actually true, because she was a bad liar. "Had something from my fridge and most of the stuff in it should have been thrown away three weeks ago." James had said that and bless James, he had thrown it all away for her. He had said he would not even feed half of it to his rabbit. It was a miracle she looked so healthy with all that bad food, really, but maybe she only remembered the bad things she ate and not the good things.

"So you got sick?" Marie asked. Judging by her tone, her suggestion of indigestion had only been an excuse to pry and she had to get used to accepting it was actually the truth. Perhaps she merely failed to see why eating bad food could make Elizabeth smile.

"Felt pretty rotten this morning too," Elizabeth nodded, equally comfortable about mentioning this as she had been about saying her refrigerator only contained bad food. The statement in itself was the absolute truth, only the context was not. It was not a lie.

"Are you sure you can eat cake?" Daniel asked in concern. He did not want anyone to feel obliged to eat his birthday cake and he would certainly not be offended if she had none.

"I think so." She was not particularly hungry, what with her slight headache and James' idea of breakfast being that the person he ate it with should eat as much as he did, because it was a waste of energy to put only one slice in the toaster and unmannered to eat both slices himself. But she would try to eat the cake and she could also try to explain to James that she was female and therefore in need of less food than he was. It would be perfectly alright to be unmannered.

"You look very well now," said Kim.

Elizabeth had just studied herself in the mirror, so she was aware of that, but good manners forbade her from expressing her agreement. Besides, since she did not often study her looks, she could not really say if she looked better now than ever. Good food last night and good food this morning apparently made a difference. Maybe she should invest a little more time in preparing her meals.

Wednesday Evening

She worked hard all day, cooked herself a healthy meal that tasted like nothing, left the dishes because she had already been domestic enough that day and then worked some more at home, on the bills and on translations. She had an extra set of dictionaries there and she had brought the specialised ones from the office so she could finish this job before the weekend. It would be nicer if texts were interesting and educational, instead of boring instruction manuals on sophisticated alarm clocks that made no sense even in the original language. Never one to understand instruction manuals, Elizabeth wished they had provided her with the alarm clock itself, so she could at least figure out what kind of actions she was supposed to describe. Now it was all translating in the dark.

At half past ten the doorbell rang. It startled her, because she never had visitors this late. James' concern came back to her. It might not be anyone with good intentions. Should she open the door? She hesitated. Maybe they would go away.

But they rang again. Elizabeth's uncertainty increased. They sounded insistent. Someone really wanted to see if she was home. She had a chain on the door, but if this person had a genuinely sad story it might be rude to keep the chain on. She knew herself. It was best to avoid such situations at all.

And again they rang, very insistently now. She got up and walked to the front door, put on the chain and opened the door to the narrow crack that was all the chain allowed. It was James. "You scared me," was all she said before she closed the door again to take the chain off it. It was good that the chain had already been on the door when she had bought the house, because it would never have occurred to her to install it herself.

"I'm sorry," said James when she opened the door again to let him in. "I had to tell you I went to see my family -- my mother, mainly."

"What did she say?" Elizabeth asked as she watched James dispose of his coat and bag. She led him into the living room. "Drink?"

"No wine, please," he smiled. She had been working, because the computer was on. The pile of bills also looked a little neater than this morning.

"I'll get you some juice."

He followed her into the kitchen and stared at the dishes in amusement. "You cooked." Would his remarks have had that much effect?

She looked into the refrigerator and took out the juice. "I did."

"Was it edible?"

"A bit tasteless." She gave him a glass of juice and pushed him back into the living room again. "Tell me what your mother said."

James sat down on the couch he should have slept on. His neck had been stiff all day because he had not done so. He would not say his mother had said she liked Elizabeth, because that had been meant mockingly. He stared into his glass. "There's one thing we overlooked."

"And that is?"

"That my mother wants a grandchild."

"Oh well, she can have one" Elizabeth said generously.

Part Nineteen

Wednesday Evening

"She can?" Her prompt reply had taken James by surprise.

"I don't see why not. I mean, I wouldn't have a child just to please her, but if I'm having one anyway, I don't see how it can be anything but her grandchild, assuming that I have one with you."

"Right," he said, still adjusting to the ease with which she had answered.

"She didn't ask you what on earth you were getting yourself into?" Elizabeth inquired.

"No."

She frowned. What kind of disapproval was concealed behind his mother's careless attitude? "That's not really a good sign."

"Can you come and meet her as soon as possible?" James asked. "Not over the weekend, please." His brothers would be there and possibly some other relatives. It was better to introduce Elizabeth to his family one by one, starting with his mother.

"Do you mean something like Friday?"

He would have to go to the theatre on Friday. "Tomorrow morning, if that's possible with you."

"You sound like my father, except that he always assumes that it's always possible." She leant back on the couch and stretched out her legs, thinking with her eyes half closed. "Does your mother know who I am?"

"No. She never asked any questions specific enough and I wasn't really dying to tell her."

Elizabeth opened her eyes. "Why not?" The fact she was never dying to tell anyone either was not relevant here. His words made her feel as if she was highly undesirable. It was not very nice to feel that way when it was not even reasonable for her to do so, because she was going to pass him off to her own parents as someone who was highly undesirable too. If anything, it was James who should be feeling offended, not she.

"I already had lots of other shocking things to tell her."

She hoped his mother was not prone to gossiping. Things would go wrong if his mother passed on this secret and if it somehow reached her father before she and James had done anything about getting pregnant. "Couldn't a regular GP do anything for us?" she asked. "We need to get going a bit before your family start telling people. A female GP, obviously." Otherwise James might just as well do it himself.

"Maybe we should ask my mum about it. She's had children," James said uncertainly. And he could ask his mother to keep quiet about it. Elizabeth's father, who was not the most predictable of people or so he had gathered, might lock his daughter up in a tower if the news reached him. Whatever Elizabeth said he would do to her made no sense, but she would know her father better than he would. "Would you like to come with me right now? I was just going there."

"And I was just going to bed. It's half past ten."

James did not see this as much of a problem. "She'll still be up."

But Elizabeth would not, not by the time they got there. "And do you mean that we stay the night there?" Coming back here afterwards would not be feasible. She might fall asleep at the wheel.

James' mother was not surprised to see James, since he always arrived late on Wednesdays, but she had not expected to see a girl with him, a very sleepy girl who was blinking against the lights in the hall after having had her eyes closed in the car for an hour. So this was the thirty-something who had no common sense. She studied the girl with interest. From afar she had looked older because of her clothes, but from up close she would bet that this girl had only very recently turned thirty.

"This is Elizabeth," James said awkwardly. He occupied himself by hanging up her coat. At least, that was his intention. It kept falling down.

Elizabeth suppressed a yawn before shaking his mother's hand. "I'm sorry," she said apologetically. "I'm very tired." It was not Merscombe Hall's main entrance they had taken. This was a far smaller hall.

"I can understand. My name is Lucy. James, why don't you prepare a room?" his mother suggested, both amused and embarrassed at his clumsiness. "I'll take care of your guest." She assumed the girl was staying and she also assumed, that given the situation, she would not be staying in James' room.

"Leave the coat, James," Elizabeth said tiredly after watching his seventh attempt. "It's only a coat. It won't get a stiff neck or anything from lying on the floor."

Lucy was surprised to see James actually smiled at that. She took Elizabeth's arm and took her into a sitting room. "My husband has already gone to bed, so we shan't be disturbed. Why are you paying our bills?" she asked as soon as Elizabeth had sat down.

"I liked the house and I should be sorry to see it fall apart."

"James mentioned something about a baby."

Elizabeth coloured, although he cheeks were already red from fatigue. "That was my private wish I had been writing to him about. It didn't have anything to do with my money until he wouldn't accept it because he couldn't offer anything in return, so you shouldn't think I'm…I'm paying him to…to get me…er…pregnant." She coloured even deeper. "It's more like he's…he will be getting…helping me get pregnant because I gave him the money."

It occurred to Lucy that if they had both spoken as haltingly as this, it must have taken them a long time to get around to concluding anything. She looked at the girl, who was trying to sink as deep into her comfortable chair as possible.

Elizabeth tried not to feel like a little girl. She could turn things around and be the one in power. "James said you'd like a grandchild."

Lucy was surprised. She did not think she had actually said so to James. He had been more perceptive than she had given him credit for. "That's right," she said quietly, also surprised to note that Elizabeth's embarrassment did not mean she did not have the presence of mind to take control of the conversation. Attack for attack. Lucy could well imagine that if she had done this to James when he had been asking for advice about his financial problems, James would have been an easy target to gain control over, especially if she had won him over with some logical arguments. Lucy rather approved of the tactic, because she frequently used it herself. However, she was not sure Elizabeth used it as consciously as she did.

"Well, you'll have one once we've found a doctor." Elizabeth was a little too tired to phrase things very graciously.

"James led me to believe that the marriage would be brief." What would happen afterwards?

Elizabeth frowned. "We'd hardly kill our child if we got divorced, so I'm not sure what you mean."

"I meant that you might take the child away from him or us after your marriage to James has ended."

Lucy's impassive face and too casual tone were unnerving Elizabeth, but she could only keep her face just as impassive herself. "I live an hour away and I have no plans to move abroad."

"You might remarry," Lucy continued relentlessly. And pigs might fly.

"Yes and I might die, James might die, you might die and we might be invaded by aliens."

Lucy looked away from her and was silent for a minute. "I do not believe in aliens," she said gravely.

Elizabeth stared at her. Was she serious or not? "Then you'll be abducted first."

"What do you need a doctor for?" Lucy inquired.

"To get pregnant without inconveniencing James."

A muscle near Lucy's mouth twitched. "I beg your pardon?" This was the best rubbish she had ever heard.

"This is a business deal. I think we should keep inconveniences to a minimum."

Emotions were inconvenient, of course. "I'm not sure it would be that much more convenient for James to have to withdraw into a private room with a bottle or whatever he should deposit the substance in and then to come out of it to face all those people who know what he's just done. And I'd hate to think what they would do to you, dear. Suppose it takes a while. They're not very keen on privacy in hospitals nowadays." She gathered from Elizabeth's expression that the girl was shocked. "It might not be as convenient as you think." She was really a devilish old woman, but young people today just did not think.

"It's more acceptable morally to make use of a doctor," Elizabeth replied coolly. "James wondered if you could help us find one."

Lucy did not know whether there were any doctors who were willing to give up some of their much-needed time to assist a pair of fools who would have no trouble helping themselves if they only removed their mental blockages. "I shall ask around," she said nevertheless, without having the intention to do so. Would it do any good to mention that James had been conceived in a morally unacceptable way? And Elizabeth as well, probably.

"Discreetly," Elizabeth stipulated. "My father mustn't hear of it, else he'll thwart my plans and announce my wedding to Karl-Heinz." If that happened, the whole nation would be working against her and she was not sure she had enough strength to fight it.

"Who's your father?" James had not told her that. He had only said old money.

Elizabeth felt a bit ridiculed. Maybe she would be taken more seriously if she told Lucy the truth. James had not wanted to do so for some reason. "King William."

Part Twenty

Wednesday Evening

"Aren't you supposed to be working for a bank in New York?" Lucy demanded after a long silence. Elizabeth worked here, not in New York. "Or was that one of your sisters?" She might have got them mixed up. There were five of them after all.

"They might have said that about me once. I can't remember. The most I've done for them is translating a brochure from their subsidiary from French into English," Elizabeth replied. "Someone probably invented something. I don't do anything classy enough for them to tell the truth. And you can't get any more anonymous and invisible than by working for a bank in New York. Maybe only by acting in Hollywood, but acting is not all that decent, of course. Oops," she nearly bit off her tongue. She was talking to the mother of an actor here. Could she insult someone even worse? But it would at least prevent Lucy from treating her differently now.

"Ha ha," said Lucy, who seemed amused. "Well, I'm glad it's not his glamorous profession that attracted you."

Elizabeth did not want to think about attractions, so she said nothing.

"Maybe you can get him out of it?"

"But the more undesirable, the better for my purpose."

"But once he's served his purpose…" Lucy was sure that a new purpose would be found or that nobody would be talking about purposes anymore.

"That sounds as if I'm using him." Elizabeth did not like using people, or discarding them after they had been used.

"You are." Lucy was delighted.

"I don't see why you should be happy that I'm using your son."

"Because he evidently wants to be used and it might be a good thing." Take that and think, girl, Lucy wanted to add.

James returned before Elizabeth had come to any satisfactory conclusion about his mother's words. It had not taken him very long to prepare a room. "We have to get up very early," he said to his mother.

"Finally someone who realises I have a job," said Elizabeth. "I start at nine."

"Only on good days," James added. "Shall we leave at eight?"

"Unless traffic going into town is really bad?" It probably was. They might need more than an hour or she would be late again and this time she would not be able to blame it on bad food.

"We'll find out." James looked at his mother. "I'm going to bed now." A real bed and not the floor.

"No need to reveal your morally acceptable sleeping arrangements to me," said Lucy. "I'll find out in the morning which beds have been slept in," she could not resist saying.

"I should be mean and sleep in six," James answered. He was used to his mother's teasing, so he knew she meant well, in some way. "Why do mothers have to be so nosy? I told you how things would be."

Considering that James had also once told her that he would never marry, Lucy was not inclined to put much faith in his words. "Yes, yes, you've got quite detailed plans."

Elizabeth was trying to hide in her chair again. She did not find the topic under discussion very comfortable, nor were the detailed plans still as appealing as they had been. She kept thinking about what Lucy had said about the clinics.

"I'm sorry if we embarrassed you," James said as they were going upstairs.

"I can take it, although I wish other people wouldn't have to know about it. Will your mother really check where I've slept?"

"Not as such, but she'll find out anyway." James began to feel that they never should have come here.

"It makes me a bit nervous." It would be more pressure, instead of only having James to sort all of this out.

He agreed. "You don't suggest that we have more wine, do you?" he asked cautiously. One way to end nerves was to speed things up, but wine had not been the right thing to set things in motion.

Elizabeth stared at her feet for a short while. He had woken up with a bad headache that morning. She understood why he was not thrilled about having more wine, but she knew what he meant. Maybe it was best to get it over with as soon as possible. Just do it. But not without any help. "I'll have a bottle if you don't want to. I'm sure you don't need it. But I do."

James did not say if he did. "Why do you?"

"It's nothing to do with you. I just don't like it much."

"Whiskey is quicker than wine." He did not really want to suggest this if she did not like it much. But then, how had she thought she was ever going to have a child?

"I don't like whiskey much either," Elizabeth said in resignation, meaning she did not like it at all. They had to take some action or they would have this thing hanging over them forever. With more and more people who came to know about it, undoubtedly. It was a bad prospect.

Thursday Morning

She had accepted the whiskey anyway and she had only very indistinct memories in the morning. James' memories were more distinct, but he felt no better than she did when he woke up. "I'm never going to do that again," he said when he was sure Elizabeth was awake.

"Oh, it wasn't any fun?" She hoped not, because she had missed all of it in that case. He muttered something about corpses that she did not quite catch. If he had not been so obviously embarrassed, her own embarrassment might have persisted, but now it disappeared. For some strange reason she felt relieved. "If this worked, we can just forget about it or laugh at it," she said, looking at his hair, which was all that was visible. Had it worked? She felt nothing out of the ordinary. A headache in the morning was fast becoming an ordinary thing as well. She wished he would give her some clue.

"I'll forget about it."

"Thank you anyway for trying, James. Should we put whiskey on the wine list then? I didn't notice a thing."

He had thought as much. "But I did."

"So…?" she asked anxiously. What had he noticed? That it did not work?

"Yes." It was actually more of a groan or a moan, but it did not sound like no.

Elizabeth did not know if she felt excited, relieved or embarrassed. But James did not feel too good about it, she gathered, and that might just be the understatement of the week. She would have to cheer him up a little. "I'm sure that was just as bad as seeing me totally plastered. I don't remember a thing. I could worry about what I did or how I looked, but I won't. We're even."

In a way they were. James looked out from under the sheet. No other people knew or would ever know. It would remain their secret -- his secret, since he seemed to be the only one who knew what had happened. He should be glad about that, actually. "But you shouldn't ever drink whiskey again."

That sounded bad. "What did I do?" she asked, opening her sleepy eyes as far as they could, fearing the worst.

"No, no. Won't tell you." James forced himself to smile. "Be glad you can't remember. Have you got a headache?" Anyone should at 7:25. Headaches were alright. He should be glad the alcohol had not upset her stomach.

"Yes, but it never makes me grumpy. I mean, it's not your fault that I have one, so I shouldn't take it out on you."

James did not know if he was that nice to people. He checked if he was fit enough to go to the kitchen. "I'll go and see about breakfast. The bathroom is the one with the bit of glass in the door." He decided to put the episode behind him, treating it as one of his roles. "No comment," he said when he found his mother in the kitchen. She had that look on her face, that highly annoying, inquisitive, motherly look of amusement.

"That's quite enough," she said, infuriatingly accurate. So Elizabeth had actually been very perceptive when she had said she preferred a doctor for James' sake. He looked rather inconvenienced, not that she had had a prior notion of what this should look like. She saw him and she just knew -- inconvenienced. "She's a brave girl."

"Hence that bottle of whiskey," he said dryly. He could never hide anything from his mother. Either she found out herself or she made him tell her somehow. Perhaps it was good that his father was not around. He was more direct and that was more embarrassing. With his mother he could always pretend he did not really know what she was talking about, because she was guessing most of the time.

"As long as you sort things out between the two of you, I don't care how many bottles of whiskey are needed." She felt she should encourage James as much as possible. He had a nice girl with him now.

"Thanks Mum. I hope you and Dad don't think I'm doing the wrong thing."

"Not as long as you don't hurt her. She seems to be a nice girl." Her husband had not seen Elizabeth yet, but she was sure he would understand. While she could laugh at it herself, it would all be perfectly reasonable to him to act foolishly because of a pretty girl. "Go and get dressed. I'll make you breakfast."

Elizabeth was the next to appear. "Good morning." She sat down behind the only plate that did not have a small pink pill on it. They would be people's medications.

"Good morning," Lucy said. She did not think Elizabeth looked too bad, merely as though she had partied the night before.

Elizabeth was surprised when Lucy transferred one of the pink pills onto her plate. "What's that?" It looked like a smartie.

"A painkiller."

"Oh. H-H-How did you know I have a headache?"

"James mentioned a bottle of whiskey."

Had he told his mother everything? Elizabeth cringed. She looked at the other plate. It looked like someone else had been drinking as well. "Who else had whiskey? James didn't." Why had he not told his mother that?

Lucy raised an eyebrow. "In that case…" She put the other pink pill on Elizabeth's plate as well. "You might be needing two if you drank for two."

"It wasn't that bad!" Elizabeth squeaked in protest. "It might be too much. Thank you, but I think I'll manage on one."

"Take it to work," Lucy advised her. "An entire bottle?"

"No," Elizabeth said with a blush. "But enough." She sipped her coffee as an escape, but she burnt her tongue. It was still too hot, of course. It had only just been poured. "Why did he tell you?"

"I'm his mother."

She looked horrified. "I wouldn't dream of telling my mother." She was still wondering what her mother would say when James returned.

Lucy observed them quietly. She was glad there was no awkwardness between the two, even if they were rather awkward with her. She was almost unnoticed, leaning against the sink with her cup of coffee. Sitting down at the table with them would feel like an intrusion and from here she could also observe them better. They looked a nice couple, if somewhat quiet, but it was still early.

"I don't like sausages," said Elizabeth, looking at his plate. The sight and the smell put her off. Maybe she had a hangover. While she could never eat them, looking at them was usually alright.

"That's not what you said last night." James began to see some fun in the situation now too. It had not been that bad. He had laughed as well.

"Really? What did I say?"

"That you didn't like thothithith in the morning. You probably do like them in the afternoon and at night."

"How awful!" she exclaimed. "Thothithith?"

"Yes."

"I can't remember that."

"That was after three glasses. You lost my last name after three glasses as well. My first name after four. My name was one of the last things to go, after it did you called me sir." He had wisely stuck to two glasses himself.

"At least I remained well-mannered." Elizabeth was appalled.

"Oh very." James' eyes twinkled. He would tell her some time, but not now. She might not survive hearing that she loved him because he had nice pyjamas.

Part Twenty-One

Thursday Morning

It was inevitable that they should get stuck in a traffic jam which made Elizabeth eighteen minutes late. James, noticing her discomfort, offered to go up to her office with her. "After all, I'm an important client."

"Please, tell me everything I said when I was drunk. I'm suspicious of any jokes you make now," Elizabeth begged.

"Most of it was nonsense."

"Why wasn't I the-e-ere?" she complained.

"You gave a very good impression of being there, but I knew from the things you were saying that you weren't." James turned his car into an available parking space. "For instance, you said you were completely in love with me because of my pyjamas."

Elizabeth was appalled at herself. "You have horrible pyjamas!" They were blue with tiny pink and yellow piglets on them. "For a man!"

"They're comfortable," James apologised. And his mother had bought them.

"I might have liked them for myself. They're not for men!"

"Yes, you did sort of try to get them off," James remarked casually.

"I did?" Elizabeth ducked with her head between her knees to deal with this shock. Oh Lord. She had attempted to strip James.

"Are you vomiting?"

"No, I'm just shocked, because I vaguely remember something." For a fleeting moment she saw a glimpse of pyjamas.

"Don't be shocked. That's honestly the worst thing you did. You're an extremely decent girl."

"Will you swear to that?" Elizabeth was not convinced. "Nothing tasteless?"

"I will," James said solemnly. "Nothing tasteless. You just got a little silly, that's all."

"Whew," she breathed.

James walked with her to her office, although he did not really know why. He had nothing to do there. He supposed it was mere politeness.

"Do you really only work four days a week?" Elizabeth asked.

"This time of the year I do."

Elizabeth assumed that other plays might be less or more days. "It's too bad you only know dead languages," she mused. "Or else I could hire you."

"What would your staff say to that?" he asked as they waited for the lift.

"Welcome, one more person we can gossip about. Hmm. We should draw up a written agreement if you're an important client."

"Yes, about my play, not about --" James coughed. "What if we mislaid it?" It would be dynamite. The tabloids would know how to exploit it.

"You're right. The play is perfect." Did he want to have it translated then or was he using it as an excuse?

"You didn't even understand it," he protested.

"A perfect excuse," she explained. "I'm sure I'd come to understand it if I was translating it. I'd have to, to do it well. Or didn't you mean that seriously?" She was not going to do a translation if he did not really need one.

"It might be useful." French people might be interested and they would prefer French texts. James tried to think of French people he knew and who might be able to do something for him.

Elizabeth nodded. If this was to be an official thing, she would make him go the official way. "I'll send you past Marie." It would make Marie happy and keep her off her own back as well.

"That doesn't sound as if I'm going to like it," James said suspiciously. "Who's Marie?" Why could he not handle all business with Elizabeth?

Marie was thrilled and she was resolved to take her time. She had to find out why this gentleman -- what else? -- had arrived at the same time as Elizabeth, twenty-one minutes late. Elizabeth had said she had found him in the lift, but after you found someone like this in the lift, you would not immediately let him go, now would you? Well, Marie would not.

James' phone calls to the fertility clinics had shown him to be capable of producing extremely serious-sounding nonsense and he sensed this was going to be another of those occasions. Marie would be very receptive to it. His refusal to divulge what J. S. stood for had already had her guessing for five minutes, although he knew she was aware that the J. was James, because she had accidentally called him Mr Bond.

Marie was very impressed when she heard it concerned a play. "But you don't look as if you could write one, you know."

"I beg your pardon?" James, for his part, thought she did not look as if she could ever finish drawing up that agreement. She was too thrilled and she had a completely wrong idea of him, he was sure, but he could give it to her if she wanted it. He suspected that she thought he was like James Bond.

"I'm sure you're always too busy to sit down and write."

"Yes, people do give me a hard time, especially women." He tried to remember what else James Bond did.

Marie looked at him with a mixture of disgust and awe. "Do they?" She could well believe that.

"They want me to drive them around in my sports car all the time," he said with a grin.

Marie's eyes widened. "Gosh." Would he have brought his sports car? Too bad she was working. She looked at the next line of the standard agreement she was filling in. "And the desired language will be…?"

"French."

"Oh Paris, of course." She always associated France with wine and adultery. "You want to conquer Paris?"

Well, he was forced to, because Elizabeth only did French. "Hopefully," James said politely.

"And have you and Miss Williams agreed on a fee? Is it ordinary language or will she need to get out the specialised dictionaries?" Marie lowered her voice. "And I don't think Miss Williams does profanity or any risky stuff, so it's best to warn you."

Playwrights would only use such language, James thought with a sarcastic smile, and James Bond would only engage in such activities. And Miss Williams did not do that, did she? "Miss Williams looks as if she might enjoy some risky stuff, though," he said, enjoying his role. Miss Williams sounded just like the sort of girl James Bond would go after -- a mission impossible kind of thing. "And we haven't agreed on any fee yet." That came out more hesitantly. Would Elizabeth charge him a lot?

"I'll ring her," Marie said energetically. "And the language is alright?"

"I promise that it wouldn't give a woman Miss Williams' age any occasion to blush," James said solemnly. It was good that Marie did not know what Miss Williams was up to in her spare time.

"Would that still hold if you subtracted fifteen years from her age?" Marie asked impertinently, her hands on the phone.

James gulped. "Good Lord. Y-Y-Yes, I suppose so."

Marie dialled 11. "I have a question about the fee. Mr Henley says it's ordinary language even though it's a play, so do you want to charge the ordinary fee?"

Pro deo, said Elizabeth. She was not going to charge James money and then pay the bill herself. That would be ridiculous.

"What?"

That means no fee.

"I know…but why?"

Struggling young playwrights should be supported. And why not?

"Right," said Marie, totally baffled. It was not as if James Bond here was really young. Perhaps only struggling handsome playwrights should be supported.

He'll give us free tickets some time.

"He will?" Marie asked. And that sufficed as fee?

"What will I do?" James asked curiously.

"Give us free tickets, but I don't speak French, you know."

"Come on, everyone speaks French. Voulez-vous…? You have to know that one." James wondered what the fee would be. Only the free tickets?

"Liz?" Marie said down the line, blushing furiously. She had to concentrate on her work. "It's fifty pages. You sure?" It was going to be a lot of work. Elizabeth was far too easy on people. "Fifty pages of art." She might not understand what half of it was about.

"Er…" James interrupted. "Does Miss Williams have a boyfriend?"

"What?" The question stunned Marie so much that she replied truthfully. "No." Only then did she realise that she should not have answered it at all.

"So I could pay her in kind?" James asked.

Marie was also waiting for Elizabeth to reply, so she looked confused at first. "Oh!" she gasped. How shocking. She hoped Elizabeth had not heard. No way would there be any translating then. "That is…that is…"

Marie? Elizabeth asked. What's he saying?

"He wants to…to…to pay you in kind." It was unbelievable. Marie loved it.

That's what I was talking about -- the tickets, Elizabeth said patiently.

"Nooo!" Marie cried. "I'm sure he was talking about something else." Unfortunately she could not mention that in front of him.

You would think that, Marie. Just put 0.00 in the agreement. James was not really making her life easier, was he? Elizabeth did not want to know what he was saying to Marie. Payment in kind? Actually, she did want to know. Hastily she clicked to save her document and almost ran to Marie's office. Oh God, why had she ever let James loose on Marie? He could not be trusted. "I'm not at all certain things are going well here," she said.

"Oh, things are going splendidly," Marie assured her. "I just don't know how to put this payment in kind in the agreement, because your interpretation differs a bit from Mr Henley's." Not that Mr Henley would ever see his interpretation written out in a formal agreement, she thought.

"Leave it out," Elizabeth advised.

Marie looked reluctant. "But then I don't know what you mean by it."

"Marie!" Elizabeth called her employee back to order.

"I never hinted at any kind of interpretation," James said innocently, making it all too clear that he had hinted.

"You did," Marie said accusingly. "And now I'm confused."

"I'm soooo sorry." James looked at Elizabeth, putting on his best undesirable-male smile. "I'm sure Miss Williams and I could work something out." Such smiles did not work on her, he noticed. She remained cool, but he would have been surprised if she had started to flirt with him. He could only take flirting to a certain level anyway and then he would be stuck.

Elizabeth knew Marie would not expect her to act anything less than coolly. "Maybe I should just let struggling artists struggle."

"Writing is no struggle," James said in a very dignified manner. "Although paying my bills is."

"When that only comes down to writing a signature?" she raised her eyebrows mockingly. "And writing is no struggle, you say."

James rose. "I'll return when you're ready to show me some proper appreciation," he said, looking offended. "You must have had a rough night." He winked at Elizabeth when Marie could not see it. "Hangover?" he said in an infuriatingly teasing tone.

Elizabeth gasped. She wanted to kill James, but she admired him too. Gasping was the only option.

"She doesn't drink," said Marie, not sure if she should still be impressed by James Bond. Yes, she should. Even though he was insulting her boss shamelessly.

Now it was James' turn to gasp. For someone who did not drink Elizabeth had imbibed an awful lot the past two nights. "She doesn't drink?" he exclaimed in amazement and then he had to save himself. He had better leave before Marie should ask why he was so amazed. "Can't stand to be in one room with people who don't drink. Adieu."

"Yumm," said Marie when James had left. "What a terribly wicked and wrong kind of man."

Elizabeth nodded a half-hearted agreement. James had been wicked alright, confusing Marie, but he should not have made Marie so interested in him. And he had really left rather suddenly. A grand exit, but it rather took the sense out of coming here at all.

"He wanted to pay you in kind. You should have said yes so you could have told us about it."

"Assuming I would have remembered it," Elizabeth said dryly, thinking of the night before.

"With him? Oh yes." Marie was certain of it.

Elizabeth looked a little strained. What did Marie actually know of real life? Things were not always straightforward. And James was an actor. It was not as if he had really been flirting with anyone.

Part Twenty-Two

Thursday Afternoon

At 9:59 James had found himself in his flat with nothing to do, so he had gone swimming. He did not have to host a barbecue party until that evening.

He had a two-room flat and although one of the rooms was nothing more than a cupboard, the other was a very large space. Despite that, he preferred to go home to Merscombe Hall as often as possible. The sparsely furnished room was not exactly a welcoming place. He fell down on his bed heavily and was rewarded with a dangerous cracking sound. The mattress dented in at an uncomfortable angle.

James got up and inspected the damage. Great. He had just ruined his bed and he might as well chuck it out completely and put the mattress on the floor. It did not look as if it could be fixed, unless he went through a lot of trouble and with the current weather, he did not feel up to it.

It took some time to put all the bits and pieces outside with the rubbish and then the mattress on the floor looked pathetic, very shabby, but luckily this cupboard was not a place he ever entertained any visitors in. People would think he earned no money at all if they saw this, but he did. He just did not spend any of it on this flat.

Contemplating how the cupboard only fit a single bed, he wondered if that was one of the reasons he was impossible to live with. No woman would give up her home to move in here. It suddenly occurred to him that he could move in with a woman as well, but for some reason that thought had never crossed his mind. Interesting. James examined the reasons. He was too proud -- or a male chauvinist pig, as Elizabeth had put it. Could be. She had said so twice. Or there simply had not been any women interesting enough. Either reason was likely. What did it matter anyway? Nobody had asked him and he had not refused it, so it was no use looking back. He lay down on his mattress and dozed off.

He woke up nearly two hours later, after having relived last night in a dream. Fortunately memories of the dream faded quickly, because they were not quite the same as reality had been.

He took some food and his notebook onto the flat roof and sat in the sun. Life would be grand, if it were not for ancestral homes and women who wanted him to make them pregnant. Now, he should not complain about those things or make them sound worse than they were, because there had only ever been one of each: one home and one woman.

Still, James wondered if he did not prefer having to kiss ten actresses to having to sleep with one princess, given all the complications involved in doing the latter thing. It was a problem of luxury anyway. He imagined a conversation between him and his friends. I feel rotten, friends. I had to sleep with a woman. Anyone would laugh at him, surely? He could hear the raucous laughter already. But she was drunk, friends, and I would have preferred -- James! who cares? You got to sleep with her, James, they would say. Hurrah. Well done, old boy.

And now she might be pregnant. James discovered he had been looking out on the small playground all along. He might have one of those small children that were playing there. He might sit there with those mothers. It would be interesting, assuming Elizabeth was pregnant and assuming he would still be in touch with her when the child was old enough to go to playgrounds. He would have to ask Elizabeth about that, but Elizabeth could not say no. Elizabeth was a softie. James looked at the children with renewed interest. What would their child look like? Dark? Fair?

She rang him half an hour later. You called me once, so your number was in my phone. I wonder if it isn't too much trouble for you to cook for me while I sort out some of your bills, she said hurriedly, barely pausing to breathe.

James looked guilty because he had thought about her earlier. Was this a test to see if he was truly a male chauvinist pig? He had that party to go to and he was not sure he could do it. "Er…what time? I have friends coming over."

I knew it was selfish of me, she apologised, nearly sounding mortified at having asked someone who had other plans.

He frowned. "Not at all."

I hate it when you're polite, James.

His frown stayed in place. What was she talking about? "I meant it."

You should tell me when I should stop using you. I used you this morning to keep Marie busy, but it didn't really work out the way I had imagined.

Elizabeth had that problem all the time. "Do things ever with you?" James chuckled. Yet she seemed to get what she wanted, eventually. She had her own business. He could imagine that was hard won, what with her family. "What would you like to eat? And no more alcohol. I heard you don't drink."

I don't.

"You empty bottles at an alarming speed for someone who doesn't drink."

That was for a good cause. My good cause again. Elizabeth sounded guilty. I hate that and now I'm using you again. Say you can't make it or tell me what I can do for you. Do you need anything?

"I need a new bed," James remarked. "It broke this morning." But if she was going to offer to buy him one, he would refuse. He did have some dignity left.

We did that? Her voice rose incredulously.

James heard she was ready to feel guilty again. What was the girl getting herself into all the time? "No, my bed here in the city."

You have a house in the city?

"Just a room with a bed, actually."

And the bed is broken, so now it's just a room? Elizabeth tried to imagine people living in just one room. How did they do that?

"With a mattress on the floor, so it's not that bad. I slept on it this afternoon."

Lazy bum. I wish I could sleep. But you shouldn't sleep on the floor. I know you like sleeping on the floor, but it really won't do, Elizabeth said decidedly.

"What's the alternative?"

Getting a new bed.

"I might do that if I can bring myself to get up really early on the day that the rubbish is being collected here in the neighbourhood. Your neighbourhood might be better. I'm sure people have more expensive furniture there."

It was quiet for a while. Listen, James…

"Uh oh." He was going to be told off for being too indifferent about it.

How did you break the bed? Was it just you?

"What?" he cried. That was something he had not expected. "Was it just me? Was…it…just…me. It was just me! Elizabeth! What do you think of me? Do you think that less than twelve hours after…after… that I would do…that I…argh!" He could not even get the words out.

It was quiet for even longer now.

"Elizabeth?" James asked anxiously. He had not heard her break the connection, so she must still be there.

I'm sorry, she said very contritely. I'm really sorry. Forget about dinner. I'll cook it myself.

James did not understand that. "Elizabeth!"

Really, don't bother. It's not your fault. It's mine.

He hated it when they did that, saying it was their fault and yet implying or making him think that it was his. It was so frustrating. "I hate women."

And I hate men, she said in a small voice. Do you want to come over and vent? We don't have anyone we can vent to, do we?

But he had thought it a better idea if she came over to him. When Elizabeth had finally found James' flat and rang the bell, the door was someone who would have been a perfect ancient Greek God had he not been wearing some very modern underpants and sunglasses.

"James?" Elizabeth said in hopeful uncertainty. It would be too much to hope that this was James, although it looked like him. Her second thought was that she was not sure if she should be happy about him opening doors in his underwear.

He removed his sunglasses. "Who else?"

"Why do you open the door dressed like that?"

"Dressed?" James smirked, looking down.

Elizabeth gestured vaguely. "And in antiquity people did not have sunglasses," she said, pushing him so he would go inside and no neighbours would see him.

"Er…?"

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth pulled the door shut behind her when James had finally stepped back. He did not have the sort of body that yielded easily and she could have kept pushing forever.

"Sunbathing on the roof of the flat below."

"Like that?" She wished she would not have to gesture at his underpants.

"Yes. Why don't you join me? Take something off."

Elizabeth looked shocked. "What about your neighbours?" She followed him to a window.

"Take a look outside and see what my neighbours are wearing," James said invitingly.

She peered out of the window discreetly and saw the gardens, balconies and roofs were populated by people who were in some cases wearing even less than James, relatively speaking, because they had more fat. "Gahh." She drew her head in again. "What a neighbourhood."

James stepped onto the terrace. He had an inflatable double mattress lying there. "The neighbourhood will only stare if you appear here with your clothes on, because then you're a voyeur. You can pull a chair up to the window and talk to me from there. Whatever you want." He lay down on his mattress with his hands behind his head.

"I would have done it in my bathing costume, but in my underwear it's different."

"All the more reason to show it if it's different." That was really a remnant from this morning's James Bond episode, James thought. Oh well. It had slipped out just like that and he could not take it back.

Elizabeth groaned and disappeared into his flat. She would explore it first and then decide. There was not much in the room. She opened a door -- tiny bathroom -- and another door -- tiny room with a heap of bedclothes on the floor and a mattress on its side against the wall. She went back into the main room and searched the kitchen cabinets for a glass because she was thirsty. She filled two and walked to the window. James had his eyes closed. "James, water?"

"Thanks." He sat up and took the glass. "Come on out. I'll make some space for you." He lay back down on one half of the mattress and closed his eyes again.

Elizabeth hesitated for a while, then decided that from afar her underwear looked just like a bikini. After hanging her clothes over a chair she stepped onto the roof and lay down on the mattress next to him. Lying next to such perfection made her a little insecure about her own body. It was a good thing that opening doors in his underwear detracted a little from that perfection. He was crazy. She kept her eyes on him anxiously, especially when she accidentally moved against him with her leg. He had to feel she was not completely dressed and she expected him to look. All men would.

James did not. All he did was smile with his eyes closed and say, "good girl." He lay still for another while and then turned a little on his side, still keeping his eyes closed. "Or not. Just checking." One of his hands moved over the mattress until it touched her thigh. "Good." It moved upwards quickly along her side, encountering fabric twice. "Yes, good." Then he rolled onto his back again.

Elizabeth was glad he had his eyes closed so he could not see her blush. "What were you doing?"

"Checking if you weren't wearing too little," he said lazily. "I don't want any topless women on my terrace. What would the neighbours think of me? I should have felt clothing here," he felt his own hip and then drawing his hand up to below his armpit, "and here. And that was the case. You'll be getting a nice stomach tan. Wasn't that a very gallant way to check? You came here to vent about men, so I thought I'd play safe." He did not manage to sound as indifferent as he wanted. "Felt very interesting, a bit bony."

"Bony?" she guffawed, grabbing his hand and putting it on her stomach. "Bony?"

"Not there, no. Don't you remember that that is where skeletons have such a gap?" James said in amusement. He withdrew his hand to sneeze.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun. She knew she had come to vent, but she could not do it anymore. "I can't vent about you, James. You're insane, but you have a good heart."

"Hmm," said James. The same applied to Elizabeth, but it was really embarrassing to say that so directly. He had to, though. "Likewise." Was it very bad to have a smug grin on his face? "And Elizabeth…?" Now that he was in the mood to speak directly, he had more to say.

"Yes?"

"You'll get there."

"Where?"

"Wherever you want to be and I'm sorry that you're such an absolute disaster at taking the easiest and least embarrassing way." He chuckled.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"No, I'm not good at it either," James sighed.

Elizabeth knew he would not have accepted her money if there had been another way. "But I gave you the money now," she said in a gentle voice. "You got there, so don't look back."

James opened his eyes and looked up at the sky. "I've always wanted to live there. As long as I could do that, I figured, I wouldn't care about anything else. Maybe I can, now."

"I don't know how that feels. I've never cared much where I lived, as long as it was by myself," Elizabeth said pensively.

"How long have you been living alone?"

"For six years and I had to live with three acceptable companions for three years before that."

"That's what I meant. It cost you three years and no conflicts, right? When other people might slam their fist on the table and do it right away. But you got there too."

Elizabeth looked aside. "You're the first to see it like that."

"I sometimes tell myself the circuitous route is more interesting because you see much more, but that's just because I take so many of them myself." He turned his head and saw she was still looking at him. Briefly he touched her stomach. The circuitous route would drive him crazy. He wanted to know, so he had to be direct. "When will you know?"

Elizabeth looked uncertain. "Oh…I never keep a lot of track of that, but I'd say in about two weeks."

"At first I hadn't realised what it meant. What it might mean," he corrected self-consciously. "That depends on you."

Elizabeth looked frightened by the sudden thought that something depended on her. "To be truthful, I've only been worried about how to get pregnant up till now and not about what would happen after it had happened. Have you been thinking about it?"

"A little."

"And what did you think?" Someone else's opinion was always worth more than her own.

James got the feeling she was going to agree with everything he would say. It was not a good thing in itself, but it was a good thing for him right now. "It'll be my child too. I don't want to be left out."

Elizabeth was reassured by the earnest look in his eyes and briefly curled a few fingers around his thumb. She should not grab too much of him at once and for too long, but she smiled at him so he would know she would not leave him out. It was very nice here, lying the sun, but she should not do too much thinking. "Can I read your play? I can never lie still without doing anything."

Part Twenty-Three

Thursday Evening

Elizabeth had been reading James' play, while he had been writing things and moving about to prepare for his barbecue party. He had figured that now that Elizabeth was lying here in her underwear, he might as well change back into his swimming trunks, since he had originally been wearing those and he had only changed out of them into his underpants because he had thought she would never take any clothes off otherwise. Now that they had taken the first steps on the road to complete immorality with that deal, he might as well take another, he had figured. And actually he could tell her about it, because only a hypocrite would get dressed now after having lain like that for ages.

But he was quite content. Elizabeth would let him stay involved if they had a child and she had not put down his play, but kept reading, so it interested her. The only thing that bothered him a little was how he should present her to his friends. "Are you my translator, if my friends ask?"

She glanced up at him. "If you're the type to have your translator sunbathe with you."

"You look the type of translator to take sunbathing." James was surprised that she did not even notice his different attire, or if she did, that she did not say anything about it.

"Really?" Elizabeth asked. "It's never happened before."

"They're going to wonder, though."

"Then they won't be far from the truth," she said pleasantly. "But they needn't know."

"No," he agreed quickly. "I've been thinking about that and they'd only laugh."

"If they're too obviously wondering, I could tell them I'm very thorough. That getting to know the author will give me a better sense of what his work is expressing and that by stripping I was trying to get him to do the same. Right, James?" she asked meaningfully. James turned an interesting shade of red and she giggled. "That was a guess, but it looks like I was right." She did not mind. James had a right to know what he was marrying and Elizabeth was beginning to feel that it might be nice to be married to him.

James had to go and answer the door and she returned to reading the play. He had said it was the unadapted version, which made it a bit different from what was on stage, but she liked it. He was great with dialogue -- other people's dialogue, not his own most of the time, although he had improved considerably.

James showed two men and a woman onto the terrace, introducing them as Mike, Tony and Celia. "This is Elizabeth. She's translating my play for me," he explained.

"Goodness," Celia exclaimed with a high-pitched giggle. "In your underwear?" She glanced at James to see what his reaction was and she obviously did not believe Elizabeth was translating anything.

Elizabeth took an immediate dislike to Celia. She was too blonde, too thin, her clothes were too daring and her giggle too high and artificial. And she could see that Celia had a very high opinion of her own skills in seducing men, putting down other females upon arrival.

"Do you do that for all male clients, Elizabeth?" Mike teased.

"No, silly!" Celia chided him. "No work would be done at all!"

"I don't lose my capacity to think if I take my clothes off," Elizabeth said politely. "Maybe men would, but they need not be thinking while I'm translating for them." She put down the play on the table. "I'll put some more clothes on if it's too distracting."

"No, darling," Celia said with a wave of her hand. "No need. Your underwear wouldn't inspire anything in the male mind. You chose it well. Now James on the other hand…James, darling. It's far too much for me to see you walking around like that."

James thought this was a bit exaggerated, since Elizabeth had not said anything like that and she had been seeing him like this for a few hours. And he had his own opinion of Elizabeth's underwear that he would not share with Celia.

Elizabeth, who had already heard quite enough, went inside to put her blouse and skirt back on. It was impossible for those outside to look in, because the curtains were closed against the sun. When she wanted to go outside again, James was just coming in. He glanced at her clothes and kept her from going out. "Go and look in my cupboard to see if anything fits you. You might get barbecue sauce on your white blouse." She looked at him uncomprehendingly, but he gave her a push in the direction of his bedroom. "Please?" She shrugged and went.

When she came onto the terrace again, dressed in tight cycling shorts -- the only shorts that fit perfectly -- and an oversized white polo shirt, James had also changed into a T-shirt and shorts. He was doing something to the barbecue, but along with everyone else, including two new arrivals, stared at her. James left the barbecue to introduce her to Ken and Andy, but with Celia right on his heels to disclose with many smirks and suggestive looks that Elizabeth had been found here in her underwear, ostensibly translating James' play.

Elizabeth wondered if James was going to say anything about spilling barbecue sauce on his white polo shirt, since had been so concerned about her white blouse, but he did not. He merely looked at her in exasperation, but whether that was because of her white shirt or because of Celia, she never found out. She hoped it was because of Celia.

"Do you always go to work like that?" Celia inquired sweetly. But then she noticed the emblem on the polo shirt and her tone became less sweet. Elizabeth had not even looked at it, but it was a school emblem and Celia evidently knew where James had gone to school. She knew Elizabeth was wearing clothes of James' and she did not like it. "Oh, these are James' clothes. James! I didn't know you had cycling shorts. Could you put them on for us? I'd love to see you in them. Elizabeth can wear one of your other shorts, can't she?"

James looked appalled. "What? Are you kidding? They're too tight and they date from the period that I didn't have to be concerned about the quality of my --"

Elizabeth had once read an article about tight trousers and their effect on male fertility and she was a little suspicious of what James was going to end his sentence with, however touched she felt by the fact that he was concerned about his fertility. It was nobody's business why James was suddenly concerned about being in a superb condition for procreation. "Besides," she interrupted hastily. "James doesn't have time to change clothes all the time. He has to work on the barbecue." James' grateful look made the interruption worth it.

Celia wanted to help with getting the barbecue ready, naturally, but she got the raw end of the deal when James let her poke the coals constantly while he walked to and fro.

The male guests were alright and they were obviously pleased to see another woman. Celia would undoubtedly have the energy to keep them all hooked if she was interested in doing so, but at the moment she was focusing all of it on James, with only a few side remarks to the rest as decoys.

When she saw a chance to escape from the barbecue, she immediately came over to the mattress where Elizabeth sat with Mike and Ken. "Move over, make room for me," Celia ordered, wriggling herself between Mike and Elizabeth. "Oh Ken! I hate it that you're so far away from me. Forgive me?" she cooed past Elizabeth.

"Sure," said Ken.

"Elizabeth…you've got to tell me something," Celia purred. "You look so familiar. If it weren't so degrading for a princess to be found on an actor's roof in her underwear, I could have sworn you were Princess Elizabeth. But you're not her, are you? She would look classier."

The two men listened with interested faces and Elizabeth wondered what she should say. If she showed she was insulted, Celia would have won and Celia did not deserve to win. "I don't know why it would be degrading," she said calmly. "You gave the impression of being jealous of it."

"Me?" Celia giggled her high-pitched giggle. "Oh no! You've got that all wrong." James, just passing with a tray of raw barbecue meat, gave them a startled glance. Celia looked after him longingly. "But you are her? I know you are." She patted Elizabeth's knee and got up, eager to go after James. "God, he's got the cutest little bum I've seen in a long time. That's the advantage we commoners have -- we can get our hands on it."

Elizabeth watched in horror as Celia stood beside James and gave him a little pinch in his left buttock. James started and said something to her, after which she burst out laughing and placed her arm across his shoulders. Elizabeth could not have been more stunned after a slap across the face. The nerve! She had trouble breathing for a few moments. She knew what Celia had meant. She must have sensed there was more to James and Elizabeth than met the eye and she was determined to interfere. I'm going after James and you can't stop me. This could not happen. Celia would not have James. Never before in her life had Elizabeth felt the need to get her claws out, but she felt it right now and she was going to strike with them. James was hers and Celia had better get the message.

Part Twenty-Four

Thursday Evening

Elizabeth was determined to win, but she was not going to use Celia's methods. If James preferred the one who fondled him most shamelessly, he was not worth the trouble. She would remain every inch the superior in manners, good breeding, dignity, composure, intelligence and kindness -- although she reserved the right to give Celia some less kind replies.

"Are you really a princess?" Ken asked.

Elizabeth really only felt like one if she paraded somewhere with a stupid hat on. "Yes, but not today, though. Would you like another drink?" James was too busy at the moment and nobody could help themselves because the bottles were nowhere in sight. She should help James and get people some drinks. On her way inside, she rescued James' play from the table where it was in danger of disappearing under bowls of crisps and glasses. He might not like to see it stained and she had not finished it either. Someone like Celia would be careless and use it to light the barbecue with.

She surveyed the range of bottles and juice cartons. Right. Some of them ought to be kept away from James, or at least from Celia, notably the martini and the wine. Without hesitation she took the two bottles and hid them in James' laundry basket. Celia would not die from having to drink apple juice and even if she did, who cared?

James was using all his trays for the barbecue meat, so she had to carry the bottles. Figuring that all men would want beer, she took four bottles onto the terrace and got rid of them immediately. Then she was faced with the most difficult part: guessing what Celia and James wanted. James, she thought, would take what was on offer. And he had better. For Celia she poured some apple juice too.

Elizabeth went out with the two glasses. First she handed one to James, who took it without protesting. Celia refused, saying she wanted something stronger. "There's beer inside," Elizabeth told her politely. "On the dining table." She took a sip of the apple juice Celia had refused so Celia could not change her mind about wanting it after all.

James waited for her to mention the wine and the martini, but that did not happen.

"I asked James to buy me some martini," Celia complained. If this was a hint for anyone to hurry indoors to get it for her, nobody took it.

"It's not there. He must have forgotten," Elizabeth guessed. "So much to buy for a barbecue. It's more important that he remembered to get the meat," she praised, as if James was wonderful for having pulled off this complicated task.

"James?" Celia gave him her most pleading and helpless look. "Will you look anyway? I'm sure Elizabeth overlooked it. Maybe she doesn't even know what martini looks like."

And that was another stab. Elizabeth was determined not to count.

James looked at Elizabeth. She looked calm, determined and strong, keeping her earnest brown eyes on him expectantly. There were apparently more important things in life than curing people of the assumption that you did not know what a bottle of martini looked like and if James had been in any doubt, her slight frown would have made him certain. She knew what martini looked like, because she had made it disappear.

What it was that made him so certain of that, he did not really know. He could go inside to look for it, but he would not find it. If Elizabeth said it was not there, it was not there, even though he had bought it. Perhaps it was last night that had turned her off alcohol completely, even so much as to dislike seeing other people drink it.

And that fixed stare implied that if he went in to look for it, he would go down a few notches in her estimation. "Go and look yourself," James said to Celia. "I have to stay with the barbecue." He seemed to be getting caught between two women with ulterior motives and it was not all that pleasant, dodging one and trying to figure out both of them, because he had no clue what Celia was after either. And he did not know what Elizabeth wanted the others to know.

"Let Elizabeth do that."

"No."

Celia, the only one without a drink, was forced to get one herself, but she was not pleased about it at all.

Elizabeth decided to say nothing to James. He would probably say she was imagining things and she wanted to fight her own battles. She did not want to complain. And what if he liked Celia? Men were stupid like that. She clutched her glass and stared at the meat on the barbecue, six sausages and one drumstick.

"What happened to the martini?" James asked neutrally, turning over the sausages.

"It got lost."

"So you didn't drink it?" That had been an option too, although Elizabeth with the contents of an entire bottle in her body would now be lying passively on the floor and not staring at him with such determination.

"Would you survive a double assault?"

Before James could ask what she meant, Celia returned. "I can't find the martini." She could not leave those two alone for too long.

"I hadn't been expecting you to," James answered.

"Why not?"

"Because Elizabeth said there wasn't any."

"What do you want me to drink now?" Celia pouted.

"Whatever you drank before you became an alcoholic."

"Ha ha ha," Celia laughed. "You're so funny, James." She grabbed him around the waist with one arm.

Elizabeth gulped down her apple juice before she would feel the urge to throw it in Celia's face. She choked on it and coughed.

James rubbed her back. "Easy." His hand remained there a little longer than was strictly necessary.

Never one to like being out of the picture, Celia drew the attention to herself once more. She had seen one drumstick and six sausages on the barbecue and no way was she going to pass up this chance of being special again. "Oh lovely! I want that drumstick."

"No," James answered, turning the drumstick over defensively. "It's Elizabeth's."

Not many people ever told Celia no, apparently. "Why?"

"She doesn't like sausages."

Elizabeth did, rather, just not in the morning, but she was not going to say this and have Celia take away her privilege of having James take special care of her.

"Doesn't she," said Celia, displeased. "Can't she sit this round out? I wonder what Freud would say about her not liking sausages."

"You can have Elizabeth's sausage, Celia," James said innocently. He rubbed Elizabeth's back again when she choked once more.

"No, really. I was serious, James," Celia continued. "Freud would think it very significant that Elizabeth doesn't like sausages."

"Who's Freud?" James asked.

"You don't know Freud?" Celia exclaimed, seeing her attack stopped by bullet-proof glass.

"I'm afraid not."

"But Elizabeth must know Freud. Do you?"

Elizabeth gave her a vague look. "I'm sorry. Were you talking to me? I confess I haven't been paying attention to your…" she waved her hand. "…chattering."

Celia leant towards James and whispered to him confidentially. "Not liking sausages means that you're sexually repressed. Royals often are."

"I hate sausages," James whispered back. He took a disposable plate and put the drumstick on it before Celia could snatch it away. He handed it to Elizabeth and called out to the others that the first round was ready.

Elizabeth took a bit of potato salad as well and sat down to eat. She tried to figure out whether James knew what was going on. He did not turn Celia down as hard as she would like.

She noticed James hardly got the chance to eat anything himself. He managed little bites of his sausage in between putting the next load on the barbecue, but he had no time to get some bread or salad with it. She put down her plate and walked over. "I know barbecues are a man's domain, but you've got to sit down and eat something. I'll look after the meat. I don't like sausages anyway, you said." And the next load was six sausages and one drumstick again.

"You might mutilate them. Can I trust you?"

"Gahh. Go and eat." No doubt one of the other men would be concerned about her barbecuing skills and help her out. Unfortunately her concern for James sent him right into Celia's waiting clutches. Elizabeth cursed herself. Everything she did seemed to go wrong.

Celia, who did not give a damn whether James got anything to eat, but who was only interested in having him sit beside her, beckoned him immediately.

Elizabeth was really sorry, but these sausages were not going to come out unscathed. Unleashing your frustration on a sausage generally led to them being broken. Andy joined her at the barbecue and thought he had to teach her how to turn a sausage without mutilating it, but in another mood Elizabeth would not have to be taught. Any damage had been intentional. She replied cheerfully to his chatter, but her heart was not in it. Behind her back Celia was draping herself over James. She had been about to do so when Elizabeth had last looked and it had to be worse now. And indeed it was. She turned back and saw Celia's hand grab at something between James' legs and come up with a piece of bread. It made Elizabeth sick. Why could he not see it? Why did he allow such things?

She had to step inside for a few moments. This was just too much. She took her empty glass and went inside as if to refill it.

Part Twenty-Five

Thursday Evening

Inside she sat on the couch with her empty glass. She could not compete with this shameless preying, not if James did not co-operate.

The sound of the oven clicking off drew her eyes towards it. She would like some of that warm bread right now. James could go to hell with his sausages, Elizabeth thought as she took the hot bread from the oven. With a vicious movement she cut the baguette in small slices and took a bite off one, tears of helplessness stinging behind her eyes.

She had tried to be determined, but as usual she was powerless against true meanness. She had failed, just like her kindness towards another person had only given herself more pain. Why should we be kind to people if unkind others come along to mess it up? It's no use.

She looked down on the slices of baguette that lay there mangled. It was always very hard to cut warm bread, but they would extend into a better shape soon. She carried them outside and went past everyone, very hostess-like. That was what she should concentrate on, not on the disturbing mix of emotions that were fighting within. Work helped in such a case. It was perfect to take your thoughts off something else.

Elizabeth was surprised when James left his chair when she was helping herself to some lettuce. He gave her a drumstick. "Saved this one for you."

She was touched. "Thank you." Then she forced herself to sound flippant. "Celia probably has a theory about Freud and drumsticks too."

"I have to remain consistent. Who is Freud?" James asked.

"A conversational mechanism to embarrass other people," Elizabeth's eyes sparkled.

"He wouldn't be very pleased if he heard twenty-first-century elite reducing him to something like that," James remarked.

"Oh, I don't know what the elite thinks of him," she said hastily, lest the elite's opinion was different from hers.

"I do. You just said so."

"But that's just my own opinion." Elizabeth revelled in having James all to herself for a few moments and her mood improved. "Not the elite's."

"You are the elite," he said curiously.

"Only socially and not today, anyway. I was referring more to the intellectual and cultural elite. You, maybe. Theatre and stuff."

"Not today, anyway. I've never heard of the man," he maintained.

"That's an opinion in itself. You don't want to have heard of him."

"It didn't seem very politic today," said James.

Celia was of the opinion that nothing dangerous could transpire between a man and a woman who were not touching and who were only talking. Considering that they were both holding a plate and eating from it, it would be very hard for them to touch, but she came to investigate anyway. "This must be quite a poor party to you, Elizabeth," she began, taking some more lettuce. "Not as grand as what you're used to. You mustn't have come for the sausages either, since you don't like them."

"Maybe not. And you?" Elizabeth asked politely.

"I came for the meat," Celia said, casting a quick preying look at James, who did not notice.

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. There was not that much flesh on James' bones. "You must have been starved," she said sympathetically. "To have come for so little."

James had no idea what they were talking about. He looked confused. He had enough meat for them, he thought.

"A little goes a long way if its quality is good. But you weren't starved?" Celia asked with narrowed eyes. She rather resented the implication that she had been starving for men. Not someone with her looks, surely.

"No. I have a steady supply of food. Comes from having money."

"Really?" Celia opened her eyes wide. "From what I always hear I gathered that the supply of food in the highest circles is very rich, but not that nourishing."

"I prefer not so rich, but nourishing," Elizabeth said calmly. "And I think that of the two of us, I have been eating more properly, because I'm fat enough to fit into James' cycling shorts and they would definitely slide down to your ankles. For some reason or another," she could not resist adding.

James made a choking sound. He recovered himself when they stared at him. "Fat?" he asked, making them think he had choked at that.

"I wasn't going to say it, James, but she's admitting it herself," Celia said in a sugar-sweet tone. "She's not very thin and that's alright if she doesn't mind it herself." She let on that the population at large would have different ideas. "Everyone should be happy about their own figure."

James wiped one hand on a paper napkin and raised Elizabeth's polo shirt a little to look at her thighs. "Dear me," he said in a voice that was almost imperceptibly mocking. Just where had Elizabeth and Celia spotted that fat?

Celia looked pleased.

James slowly ran his hand up and down the back of the cycling shorts as if he were inspecting the damage that too much food had done. "Oh well, as long as she and her man can live with it…"

Elizabeth breathed in again haltingly. There had been a definite stop in her breathing rhythm and it still was not back to normal. "I need to sit down," she said breathlessly, stumbling towards the nearest vacant chair.

Celia looked even more pleased, but she disguised this as concern. "She doesn't look too well pleased about that, James, but really, I don't see how anyone could say she was slim. I think it's so bad that all women have to aspire to being slim nowadays. It simply can't be done and then they're hurt if they're not part of the happy few." She was one of the happy few, of course.

"The thing with happy few is that you never know which side of them you're feeling up," James said seriously. "Which could be an advantage if they're facing the wrong way. You don't have to make them turn around to get a better feel."

"Ha ha ha," Celia laughed, as she always did when she did not quite know how to interpret his words. She went to sit beside Elizabeth, having some interesting news for her. "James says he likes feeling up slim people better."

"Does he?" Elizabeth asked. That was not the impression James' hand had given her. Her breath was still in danger of disappearing when she thought of it. She should not have been drunk last night. "That's what he would say, wouldn't it? Do to others what you would like them to do to you. I don't think we can believe what some people tell us, anyway." She hoped this applied to Celia as well as to James.

Her voice quavered enough for Celia to believe that she had scored a direct hit. She looked immensely satisfied. James came around with drinks a minute later. "Have you found any martini yet?" Celia asked, not yet allowing him to refill her glass with juice in case a bottle of martini had turned up somewhere mysteriously.

"Alcohol dulls the senses," Elizabeth commented. She should not have drunk any last night.

"Is that your experience? Mine is that it enhances the senses, rather. I'm sure it only dulls them if they are already dull," Celia said in a voice that was just a little short of being catty.

"All the more reasons not to drink any."

"What do you say, James?" Celia asked.

He was busy pouring orange juice into the glass Elizabeth was holding out and started when he heard his name. A lot of orange juice went over her white polo shirt and he jerked the juice carton backwards. "Oh! Sorry!"

"Well?" Celia demanded. "Who minds a little orange juice spilled over their clothes? Just let it dry up. What do you have to say about alcohol, James?" She wished she had something spilled over her bust and not Elizabeth, who must have done this on purpose somehow to have some attention drawn to her chest for once, since it would not attract any attention by itself.

"Nothing. Do you want me to find you a new shirt?" James asked Elizabeth.

"You should have punched a second hole in the carton so the air could escape." Elizabeth looked down at her chest, feeling how wet the shirt was. "I hope it washes out."

"Don't scrub too hard," Celia advised very helpfully. "You might scrub your entire front off."

"Thank you for the advice, Celia," James said with a pleasant smile, beckoning Elizabeth to follow him. "I'll be careful."

Part Twenty-Six

Thursday Evening

James was in no danger of falling for Celia. He was in fact quite aware that Celia was trying to snatch him away before Elizabeth could and he would almost bet on the fact that Elizabeth knew it too, given the things she said to Celia. But, because Elizabeth did not make any passes at him or claim him in any way, he was not sure what her interest in the matter was. That she was aggravated was clear, but whether it was because she had been insulted, or because there was something else, James could not tell.

And James had been rather busy trying to let the girls know where his preferences lay in a subtle manner too. It was quite frustrating to see both of them so apparently blind to his preferences. Every attention he paid to Elizabeth evoked a response from Celia and unfortunately none from Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth remained invariably dignified and reserved as if nothing could thaw her, whereas Celia immediately launched a new attack on him every time. He could, of course, tell Celia to stop, but she was always hovering on the edge of acceptable behaviour, a comment on which might also mean he had a dirty mind and James had an additional problem that kept him from speaking up: he admitted to being completely enthralled by how Elizabeth bore it all. Nevertheless, it was not only that Elizabeth's quiet anger or mocking eyes made her more beautiful but also that she helped him out by going around with drinks or bread and that she told him to sit down when nobody else did.

Yet Elizabeth completely failed to see how it made him feel. James knew he was not obvious about it, but he did not know how else than in a subtle way he should make his feelings known, considering that they had the deal to reckon with as well. He could not simply say he cared for Elizabeth, because that would make the deal useless. Their deal was completely free of feelings. It was purely business. Nothing would be left of it if feelings came into play. It might lead to the same result, but then again, it might not.

James was not stupid. He could consider himself and his value in the eyes of a father-in-law objectively. Elizabeth's having a child in a happy relationship with a young aristocrat would not enrage her father. Elizabeth's having a child from a one-night stand with a young aristocrat might and Elizabeth's having a child from a one-night stand with an unknown man would. What it would be, or rather, how she would pass him off to her father depended on whether Elizabeth would care more for him than for breaking free from her family. And that was something he could not tell. Maybe she would say they had to keep it a secret until she had broken with her family, after which they could have could have any kind of relationship they liked. Producing a baby out of nowhere was naturally a bigger shock than coming up with a boyfriend.

"Are there women who stuff up their bras?" James asked in a low voice when they came inside. "I wonder why Celia thinks a little scrubbing could remove your entire chest. Must be because a little scrubbing would remove all her stuffing."

"You think about the strangest things," Elizabeth told him. "Why are you thinking of her chest?" She did not like that.

He gave her a frank grin. "I wasn't. I was thinking of yours."

"Why?" she asked, strangely thrilled.

He suppressed the urge to groan. Why would he, indeed? Because he was male, perhaps. Or perhaps because he could not forget last night. Even a drunk Elizabeth was desirable, but a sober Elizabeth would of course be much better. Unfortunately Elizabeth was not burdened by any memories or desires. "Because I spilled orange juice over it." Elizabeth's plans, though rationally sound, had a tendency not to work out for some reason. In this case, James thought, she had overlooked that he might have feelings. Did she not have any feelings herself? James reviewed the deal so far. From day one the deal had been leaving the rational sphere and that had not been all his fault. In fact, the whole deal was based on her feelings for Merscombe Hall, dammit. She had better not tell him she could not feel, because he would hold her upside down under the tap.

That was not such a thrilling thought as it had promised to be and Elizabeth chastised herself for having let herself be carried away by her imagination. They had reached his bathroom already and Elizabeth took off her shirt to hold it under the tap to wash out the juice.

"I've got another one just like it," James said. Really, it was not his fault alone that ever since they had agreed on that deal, they had not spent a single night apart as if they were some married couple. Elizabeth was as much to blame as he was. He wondered if she would deny it. She was obviously unaware of it. "Let me check if it isn't in the laundry." He stepped towards the basket to look in it.

"No!" she cried. The bottle of martini was right under the shirt he had his hands on right now and the bottle of wine too. If he pulled that shirt out, he would see it. "Don't!" she cried again when he lifted the shirt.

James was curious and continued anyway. "I'll be damned," he said when he encountered the bottles. "How could I ever forget putting them there?" He put them back carefully after going through the basket. "The shirt's not here. I'll get it for you." He spoke the words and wondered if she thought he would do this for any business partner.

Elizabeth stared at her incredulous reflection in the mirror. Was that all James was going to say about it? He had taken it well. Did he not want to know why the bottles were there? She would.

He came back shortly and handed her a folded white polo shirt. "Here you go."

"Thank you." She pulled the shirt over her head. James adjusted the polo neck for her properly and she liked the feel of his hands accidentally brushing against her neck. It was too bad his shirt had been neatly ironed so it did not require much straightening.

"You're fit to be seen again," he said, taking a step back to study her.

"No. I need a cold shower," she mumbled. She needed to cool down. Outside she had been craving for a moment alone with James, but now that she had got it, it turned out to be too much.

"I've been needing a cold shower for hours," James said with an enigmatic smile. "But the host cannot give in to his foolish desires. He has to continue hosting the party. If you had thrown any orange juice over me, I would have sizzled. And you think you're in a bad state."

"You're no help." Elizabeth tried to imagine a sizzling James. That only made it worse.

"I'm trying to be," he said honestly. "Believe me."

"Then why…" Then why did he allow Celia to take so many liberties with him? "Then why…do you allow…Celia…" It was difficult to say. She coloured and looked embarrassed.

"That doesn't affect me at all," James said hastily, his eyes widening in comprehension. She was not insulted. She was jealous. While he liked it, he did not know how to handle it. No wonder he had known what was wrong inside her head. He was only one step ahead of her and not far enough to speak about it. "And don't say it. The host has to continue hosting the party. He cannot lock himself up in the bathroom with one of the female guests -- or would that be the hostess? -- to comfort her for too long, as much as he would…" James jerked open the door and stepped out, eager to get away from this difficult situation, no matter how hard he had wished for it earlier on. He feared he would never return to his party if he gave in to his feelings now. It was best to postpone it. "As much as he would love to and as much as he needs a really cold shower right now, more so than ever."

Elizabeth watched him disappear. James was not affected by Celia. That was the most important thing. The rest of his words had been a jumble of nervous nonsense, very James-like and very adorable, but also very frustrating. She sat down on the toilet seat to think about it and to allow her fluttering insides to calm down again. Just when she had her heartbeat down to a level she could deal with, it shot up again when James came hurrying out of the living room. "You'll kill me one of these days," she said. These changes in heart rate were not good for a person.

"If you don't kill me first," he answered, bending down towards her and not giving her any chance to protest again his kiss. "Whew. I couldn't decide between the cold shower and the kiss, but this was the right thing." For him. He crossed his fingers for Elizabeth.

"Yes," Elizabeth said with a silly smile.

"That damn deal is off, of course, but we'll talk about that later," he said, stroking her face before closing the door and hurrying back into the living room again.

She was floating. Could anything ever be as reassuring and exhilarating at the same time? It took her a few minutes to recover her senses enough to be able to look composed outwardly. Inside she was still happy, but she did not want that feeling to disappear.

Slowly she walked into the living room. She probably did not think enough, ever, where James was concerned. She had plunged headlong into the acquaintance without thinking too and now she was only vaguely aware of some unresolved issues concerning Celia, not to mention the deal he wanted to cancel. It felt as if they were mere details, unimportant at the moment.

But as she was about to go outside, she wondered. Really, what had James done?

He had kissed her and then run off. He had not said he loved her or given her any other verbal reassurances of his everlasting devotion. No, he had only kissed her and that was that. It might have meant anything. Then why was she so damn happy about it? Why did this make her float? True, it had been quite a sensation, but Elizabeth was realistic enough to know that firstly, she was in love with James so anything he did to her would be received with extreme gratitude and guaranteed to make her head spin, and secondly, James would make anyone's head spin and certainly the head of someone who worked far too much to encounter many men.

It did not mean that James felt the same about her. Sadly enough it did not. The last kiss she had received before this one had not been from someone who was wild about her either. It would be silly to lose her head over this one. He was an actor. He would have to be comfortable with kissing people he did not care for. His threshold would be far lower than the ordinary person's.

And why was the deal off? Had he kissed her so she would accept it better? Or had he kissed her because he had felt he would not be able to part from her after they had concluded their transaction? Elizabeth hoped it was the second thing, but she dared not hope too eagerly. When was the last time she had ever felt so at ease around a man -- in her previous life, surely?

Still, she was happy to have been kissed and she told herself that no matter how much she thought about it, she would not know what followed anyway. She should just take one step at a time, although she wished she could remain on this step forever.

If she stepped out onto the roof terrace now, would people know? Would people look and wonder? Would they be able to tell from that silly smile she could not get rid of? Elizabeth forced her face into a serious expression and stepped out. Fortunately the sun made her blink and distort her face anyway.

Everybody was still eating. They seemed to eat lots, maybe because the food only reached them at intervals. She had better get herself a piece of meat too then and, deliberately not meeting James' eyes, walked over to the barbecue where Andy was still in attendance.

"Sausage?" he asked.

"Something else, please, if you have that."

"Chicken that should have been on a stick?"

"Alright," Elizabeth nodded and he scraped pieces of chicken off the grill for her. She sat down in a vacant chair next to James' -- amazing that there was one, since they were always the first to be occupied. He casually dropped his hand on her leg without her expecting it. Suddenly it was there and she left it there without saying anything about it. She even resisted the temptation to glance at Celia, but only checked where James' other hand was. He was holding a glass in it. That was good.

Part Twenty-Seven

Thursday Evening

It was lovely to sit outside. The terrace was on the west and the buildings on the other side of the gardens were not very high, so the sun was still visible. It was more public than a public park, because the whole neighbourhood was outside as well and most people would know each other. What does my neighbour think of my outfit was probably everyone's main concern, closely followed by how do I avoid asking my neighbour how the barbecue works?

Elizabeth's main concern was different, though it fell into the same category. How do I get to the phone to call Miriam without James taking his hand off my leg? He might not replace it when she returned. It was not something she could ask him and she had promised to call Miriam about going swimming.

Elizabeth was not entirely sure that Celia could see where James had his hand, or else she would have been cattier earlier on. A baby began to cry on a nearby balcony. James' hand moved a little in do-you-still-want-to sort of way. Of course. The crying did not bother her.

"Shut up," said Mike to the baby.

"Take it inside," Celia added. "They shouldn't keep babies on balconies."

"No, they should be kept in the garden," said James. He wondered if she thought babies were pets.

"Then you could never take a baby. You don't have a garden," Celia said with a logic that did not astound James.

"I didn't know babies could only be conceived in gardens," James said naively. Elizabeth had better pay attention to this wisdom and he moved his hand again. She made a hissing sound at him.

"I think that if you took a survey, Celia, beds would come out on top," said Ken. "Followed by kitchen tables and hearth rugs and showers and --"

"I'm not sure we should be discussing this," Celia said demurely, always ready to deflect embarrassment onto somebody else. "I'm sure that some of us feel embarrassed by it. I heard that until they get married, princesses believe that babies come from the stork. All this talk about beds must be very puzzling."

"Indeed it is, Celia," Elizabeth said, leaning forward to look at Celia. "Beds? Isn't that terribly…well…unimpressive nowadays?"

The men laughed, but Celia did not. "And what's impressive then?" she asked cattily.

"You're not aware of the latest trends in conception?" Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "If I told you now and you had to try it out, you'd already be running behind things. I shouldn't tell you, because I don't think you want a child right now and once you do, trends will have changed."

"I'm sure you still believed in the stork before I mentioned beds."

Elizabeth shook her head calmly. "I'm afraid not. James explained it all to me."

"James?" Celia cried.

James wanted to echo her, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Yes, James. He knows a lot about it."

"Does he," Celia had the nerve to sound sceptic. James almost wanted to defend himself.

"He said beds were out at the moment."

"That's why I threw my bed out on the street this morning," James said, looking neither right nor left, but straight ahead. He would laugh if he did that. "It had become untrendy. Didn't you pass it on your way here? That big heap of rubbish near the lamppost?"

Celia huffed. She knew about the bed, since she had peeked into his bedroom. She felt they were spinning her a tale, but she did not understand how James and Elizabeth could be co-operating and she was certainly not going to say more about the subject.

"I need to call Miriam," Elizabeth decided after she felt herself beginning to tire. She remembered that she was supposed to have a serious hangover today. The sun had nearly set behind the houses and it was getting colder now. She had promised to call Miriam about going swimming, but it was running rather late, so she really had to make a decision about going. "We're going swimming at nine." She would go. She had promised Miriam and although she also wanted to stay with James, she had not promised him anything. She stood up and went inside.

James remembered that he had only asked her to stay this afternoon. It was logical that she had a previous plan, but he felt a little disappointed nevertheless. He had hoped she would stay longer.

Most of his guests seemed to consider this an appropriate moment to say goodbye as well, except Celia. If everyone was gone, she could chat to James all by herself.

As James showed his friends out, he struggled a little with this problem. He was too polite to throw her out. He returned to the terrace without having found a solution. He could say he would be cleaning all night, of course, but nobody would believe that, not even Celia. It would take fifteen minutes at the most.

Elizabeth appeared again, this time with her own clothes on and a bin bag in her hand. She knew very long skirts were not the most flattering clothes she could wear and certainly not if she had not tucked her blouse in, but at the moment she did not really care about the impression she was making. "Are you helping too, Celia?"

That seemed to be a magic phrase, because Celia immediately sprang up and claimed she had to work tomorrow. James and Elizabeth both knew she was in that play and they knew it was on at night only, but neither felt compelled to mention it. If Celia needed a beauty sleep, she should by all means have one.

James showed her to the door. He braced himself and took care to keep his distance.

"Thank you, darling! It was wonderful," she purred. "I'll throw a party one of these days and I might invite Elizabeth as well, but only if she behaves and if she learns how to dress properly."

"She doesn't have to dress for me," James said lazily. That would get Celia.

Celia raised her eyebrows questioningly. "Ah. I see you're determined to make a fool of yourself. You might think it's good for your career to flirt a bit with a princess, but it's all about appearances and if the world sees that next to you, they're going to think very lowly of your abilities." She sounded very concerned.

"Don't talk crap." He was not 'flirting a bit,' he was flirting quite a lot and he had seen nothing wrong with her clothes.

She sighed in regret. "If that's how you want it…"

"It is. Bye." James closed the door and discovered that Elizabeth had already cleared most of the terrace. "Wow, you're quick."

"I really have to fly," she said regretfully, stepping inside. "I'm sorry I don't really have the time to help, but I wanted to make sure Celia really left." She would not have a good swim if she knew Celia was still with James. The woman could not be trusted. Elizabeth looked at James shyly. She hated saying goodbye. How did she say she wanted to see him again? "You should stop by for the bills one of these days."

"Yes." He would try tomorrow.

"Does tomorrow before work suit you?"

James was glad she was eager to see him soon too. "My work or your work?" he asked. That made a considerable difference.

"My work. Is that too early for you? I don't know when else. I have to sleep and I have to work and I have to talk to you and I don't know how I can fit it all in." Elizabeth looked desperate. "You have to clean up right now."

James looked at her for a few seconds and then looked around for her bag. She would have her keys in there, he supposed. He looked into her shoulder bag and pocketed all her keys except her car keys. Tomorrow before work suited him just fine -- but only if he was already there. He had trouble fitting things in as well, but he figured it made no difference where he slept and sleeping there would give him at least an hour extra to talk to Elizabeth.

"What are you doing?"

"Go swimming," he said. "And go home."

"But you've got my keys."

"Exactly. I'll open the door for you."

Part Twenty-Eight

Thursday Evening

Miriam had tried to make sense of the story Elizabeth had told her bit by bit as they had been swimming. She understood that if Elizabeth had been interested in the person writing the notes, she would have become crazy about him when he had turned out to look like James. She had only ever seen him once, but she remembered that he was good-looking. Apparently he was interesting as well, although he had first looked so despairingly at Elizabeth and then so relieved, something that would always have worked on Elizabeth's heart no matter how interesting he was. "I'm flattered that you abandoned this paragon of manhood to come to the pool," Miriam said sarcastically when they were in the dressing rooms, amused to see this made her friend blush.

"He said he'd be there when I got home," Elizabeth said softly, as if she was afraid to tell anyone. "He took my keys."

"Took? Without asking?"

"Without asking."

"It's mutual," Miriam concluded. She waited for Elizabeth to either panic or doubt.

"Do you think so?" Elizabeth asked hopefully.

"Unless he's a really authoritative scumbag who wants to control you. But," she added when Elizabeth wanted to protest. "He rather looked like he wanted to be controlled himself, but in that case he wouldn't have taken your keys without your consent, so yes, I think I can safely say that it's mutual. But he does sound as if he might have some serious communicational problems. How is a normal woman supposed to know that someone likes her if he only steals her keys?" Any normal woman would have difficulties interpreting that and for someone like Elizabeth it would be downright impossible.

"He had kissed me before that," Elizabeth revealed.

There might be hope for James yet, Miriam thought. Brave man, to have attempted to take the fortress Elizabeth. Or perhaps perceptive man, to have seen there were ways in. "Right before? And I hope you sort of kissed back?"

"No, not right before. And you'd have to ask James if I kissed back. So, what do you think if you hear all that? Does he like me?"

"What do you think?" Miriam asked in an exasperated voice.

"I don't know. I prefer to hear someone else's opinion."

"Why don't you ask him?"

Elizabeth looked shocked. "Oh no."

Miriam knew Elizabeth was not going to ask him no matter how many people told her to do so. "How do you like him?"

"I like him," Elizabeth said cautiously.

"Can we increase that statement exponentially, as usual? You like everybody, but you certainly don't let everybody kiss you. On a scale from one to five, how would you express the amount of lust you feel for this person?" Three, Miriam replied to herself silently. Elizabeth was typically someone for the middle, noncommittal answers.

"Lust?" Elizabeth looked shocked again. She did not even want to think about that, let alone tell Miriam.

"Love, if you wish," Miriam said.

"Three."

"Didn't I know it!" Miriam sighed. "And if I forbid you to take three, again on a scale from one to five?"

"I can't." Elizabeth looked tormented.

"Yes, you can," Miriam encouraged. "Think of dear James' blue eyes and his undoubtedly really, really nice figure."

"What have you been looking at?" Elizabeth said suspiciously, but the damage had been done and she remembered James on his terrace, before his friends had appeared. James did have a really, really nice figure.

"Answer me, Liz. One to five, no three."

"F…" Elizabeth began. She could not decide.

"No swear words," Miriam warned.

"F-F-Four," Elizabeth stammered, colouring deeply and feeling as though she had just bared her whole soul.

"I know you were going to say five," Miriam said in satisfaction. "But you were afraid I was going to ask you how you could know after only having known him for a few days. That's why you said four. Are you aware of having a problem with this sort of thing?"

"Yes." Elizabeth thought James might have one too, but she was not certain. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part, hoping that he would understand her better if he was the same.

"It's very nice to have someone open the door for me for once," Elizabeth smiled when she got home. All the time she had been worried that he might not be there after all, that he had changed his mind.

"And if you visit your parents?" James automatically put his arms around her. He did not even have to think about it.

"Nobody opens the door for me when I get there," Elizabeth murmured. James certainly knew how to open doors. "At least, not like this." She wondered if she had kissed him back, in case Miriam asked about it.

"Like this?" James teased and did it again.

"Yes," Elizabeth answered, replying both to him and to Miriam.

"I never open doors like this."

"I don't care. You don't need any practice. You do it well." Elizabeth let go of him. "Have you been here for long?"

"About half an hour."

She walked on to the kitchen and gave him a banana, taking one herself as well.

James' mother called him on his mobile phone at that moment and he dug it out of his coat pocket. I tried to reach you at home, but you're not there, she said to him, obviously wanting him to reveal where he was instead.

"I'm at Elizabeth's house." And do not ask me what I am doing there, he added silently.

That's what I wanted to know -- how things had worked out. Give me her phone number. Lucy preferred to keep the costs down.

James asked Elizabeth for her number and passed it along, knowing that it might be used to call Elizabeth when he was not there, but as long as his mother told him what Elizabeth had said about him, it would be alright. His mother rang back instantly. Are you staying the night?

James groaned. She should not ask him such difficult questions. Elizabeth had only just got home. There was no way of telling what she wanted him to do. "I don't know."

Well, if you want to, you should give her some convincing arguments as to why she should let you stay, she advised him.

"Thank you for helping me out," James said sarcastically.

If you were so good at it, you wouldn't be needing deals.

He heard his father say something in the background. "What was that?"

Your father disagrees with me.

"Of course."

He says to ask her if you can stay first and then to use the arguments. It's more straightforward than my method, because my method will make the woman think it was her own idea, when it was of course the man's idea.

"The man's mother's idea," James corrected. "Just go to bed, will you, Mum? And you'll hear about it later."

I should let you sort this out yourself, I know, but the two of you are such idiots, she said affectionately. Well, enjoy your evening. Bye, dear.

"Bye." James looked at Elizabeth, who had finished eating her banana and who was now leaning onto the table sleepily. He decided to take his father's advice rather than his mother's. "Can I stay?"

"I thought you had stolen my keys for that purpose," she said wonderingly.

"I wouldn't stay against your will."

Elizabeth looked at him carefully. "Why don't you go upstairs and pick a room? Any room will be fine with me." She did not want to tell him what to do. He might be hurt.

Considering that James had already looked around himself before she had come home, he knew what was on offer: six bedrooms with six single beds. "I've looked around already. It's easy." He saw she looked a little frightened, probably of not getting enough sleep, something she needed after the past two nights. She should not worry. "I'll take the one next to yours."

Part Twenty-Nine

Friday Morning

Elizabeth had made sure she had got dressed and made coffee before she woke James. He felt dishevelled compared to her tidy appearance in her office clothes and with her hair not yet messed up, but she said she had done this on purpose so he could back to bed after she had gone to work.

James yawned and followed her downstairs. He did not know if he wanted to go back to bed later, especially not if she gave him coffee and she did. The radio was on cheerfully in the background and despite the foul weather outside -- such a change from the day before -- it was very cosy inside. He forced his brain to wake up and to pay attention to the succession of bills Elizabeth laid before him at a rather high speed for such an early hour.

Her efficiency ensured that they had finished all of them by eight o'clock. Elizabeth had even taken care to pay them out of different bank accounts, in case her bank thought it strange and contacted her to see if someone was forging her signature.

This left them free to talk for at least half an hour, but James noted that Elizabeth was less confident about the situation between them than about bills. "Er…yes," she began, staring into her coffee cup. It looked the same as always, but it was best to check in case a fly had fallen into it. "We can talk now."

"We should," James said in agreement. He wanted her to start. He did not know where.

"I've been thinking last night." She had been thinking a lot, but she was not going to acquaint him with all of it.

"About me?" James would think it strange if she had not devoted a single thought to him. Things would definitely be wrong in that case.

"You have no idea what you're doing to me," she said in a plaintive voice, but with a little smile on her face. It was not the sort of thing one could complain about.

"Oh," he smiled, recognising that thought. She probably had no idea of what she was doing to him either. "You're not by any chance finding out that this deal has far too many consequences? More than your brain can process at once?"

"My brain can," Elizabeth said promptly. "But my heart can't."

"You think it works less fast."

"Yes," she said, grateful for the help.

James had thought that about himself at first as well, but was no longer certain it was the right conclusion.

"It wants to go there, but it can't keep up," she said softly.

"I thought I had the same problem, but I changed my mind. I think too much. You think too much."

"What are you thinking now or have you stopped?"

"I could never stop," he smiled. "I'm thinking we should expand that deal." She would be interested in such a thing, he guessed. He should come up with a nice, rational and efficient expansion on the deal.

"How?" It sounded like a great idea to Elizabeth, very safe, no strains on the heart.

"We'll keep trying to get you pregnant," James said with a grin. He wondered if she was going to let him get away with those words. It was better to say why they should keep trying, in case Elizabeth mistook his attitude. "Because you want to, then we'll get married because I want to and then we'll stay together because our child will want to. There's no need to get any hearts involved."

There was a serious frown on her face. "What about kissing?"

"All engaged people kiss and they can't refuse being kissed," he improvised.

"Indeed they can't." Elizabeth hesitated. There was something that did not feel quite right here. Something was inexplicable and she hated inexplicable things. "Wouldn't it be easier just to say I loved you? If I could explain that."

Equality would require the same thing from him, unfortunately. "Would you want me to explain why I loved you?" No wonder her heart could not keep up with her brain -- his brain could not even keep up with it either.

"Do you?"

No, his brain definitely could not. The girl was into explanations, not into hearing about feelings. What was she doing? He was not going to say anything about his feelings. "I asked you if you wanted me to explain it."

"Bahh, can't you just be my boyfriend?" asked Elizabeth, who suddenly had enough of it. "You're confusing me." She was a little scared by her own words, but they had been spoken and James had heard them.

James was getting pretty confused as well and he was not sure it was his own fault. "That would explain things a lot better." Elizabeth apparently did not like vagueness. She had to know what was what. It suited him fine. He liked to know what was what as well.

If James insisted on hiding behind explanations, Elizabeth would let him. The final result was the same, after all. No point in telling him she was in love with him. He would be scared by it. She smiled at him benignly and finally began eating her breakfast.

James was thinking the same. Elizabeth would find out sooner or later, when she was ready for it. When would she be, though? Perhaps only after a lengthy exposure, but how could that be accomplished? "Can I move in?" he asked out loud, when he had only wanted to think about the idea. Now he had to save himself. "I'm bad at saying goodbye. I'll stay in your spare room." Would she forgive him for asking?

"And you don't have a bed anymore," she said with a smile. She was bad at saying goodbye too.

"And one of my brothers needs a flat," James provided another reason.

That settled it. "Of course you can move in," Elizabeth said generously. It could get a bit lonely sometimes, living alone. "I wouldn't have to go to that parking garage anymore to talk to you. Much easier." It was also much easier to discuss the practical elements than going into such things as loneliness and love. "You still have my keys. Could you have extra ones made today? Then you'll be free to come and go as you please."

James knew they had just done it again, but he did not care as long as they moved in the right direction. He could never see it had happened until afterwards, not when it was taking place. For someone who claimed her heart could not follow her brain, Elizabeth was drawing him into suspiciously many irrational schemes that none of them seemed to have been devised by her brain alone. Maybe her brain could not follow her heart.

And something else struck him. What would Elizabeth's father do if he found out? James did not think he could do a great deal to two adults, but still. Her father might well make their life miserable. "What about your father?" he asked.

Elizabeth looked taken aback. "Oh, I hadn't thought about him yet."

James resisted the urge to say triumphantly that he was right about her heart and her brain. Her brain would have thought about everything. "Will he be shocked to hear I moved in? Are you supposed to stay away from men until you're married?"

"I don't know if he'll be shocked and I don't have to stay away from men, but I'm not supposed to get into mischief."

She did not say if she ever had and he was interesting in knowing, but maybe she would tell him another time. "No chance of that with me," James said with an angelic look on his face. He would not call himself mischief.

"Why not?" She was fascinated, even though James looking angelic only inspired trust and not distrust.

"Because I'm staying in another bedroom."

"That measure may already be too late," Elizabeth said gravely.

James had decided to have some breakfast as well now that he was up. He postponed answering until he had filled his plate -- and thought about it. First he wanted to ask if he should still sleep in the other bedroom, but then he remembered that she did not have a double bed. Two in one bed would be a bit crowded -- at the moment. He had better focus on that other consequence of pregnancy. "Then we're going to have a plan a wedding between now and eight months." Some people started two years in advance, so he should not underestimate the amount of work it cost to prepare a wedding.

"Why eight?"

"It might come early," he suggested.

"That would be just the sort of thing to happen to me," Elizabeth agreed with an ironic smile. "I keep being defeated by my own superb plans."

Part Thirty

Friday Morning

Elizabeth arrived at work before everyone else and she was already working on something with the coffee machine rumbling when the others arrived. She wondered if today was one of those days that she would be one of her more caring days, making coffee for everyone.

They were surprised to see her there so early, even though this had been her usual time before she had become involved with men and things like that. Marie inevitably questioned her about the barbecue, suspecting that there was a connection between James' phone call the day before and Elizabeth's leaving for a barbecue not long after. "Did you meet any nice guys?"

"Yes, one."

"His name was probably James, wasn't it?" Marie asked.

"You're too clever."

"But Elizabeth…" Elizabeth had been leaving the kitchen and Marie called her back. "Did anything happen?"

"Yes." Elizabeth enjoyed the look on Marie's face. It was priceless. On the other hand, she did not know if she should be so pleased to see that Marie doubted her ability to get anywhere with men. There was not that much wrong with her.

Marie was stunned. "What?"

It had never been Elizabeth's intention to tell the truth. "A lot of sausages got grilled," she said with a grave face.

"No, really!" Marie cried. "What happened?"

"He might move in with me." Sooner or later people were going to find out. It was not something that could be concealed. "His brother needs his flat."

Marie could imagine the charming but wicked James Bond lying about such a thing. If he had a brother at all, the brother would not be needing a flat. It was just like Elizabeth to fall for such a man. He was even worse than that Robert she had had a few years back, because Robert had only ever wanted to move in during the night and never permanently or regularly. She looked shocked. "And you're allowing him to?"

"Sure."

"He might be taking advantage of you. How many other women has he moved in with?" Marie remembered that Robert had had several as well.

"At the same time? Just me, I think," Elizabeth said calmly. Marie was being preposterous. Why was she so suspicious?

"Okay. Well," Marie said doubtfully. She was certain James Bond was going to move out soon. Elizabeth was not a Bond-girl. But the thing with women who always fell for the wrong men was that it was no use telling them. It was always that this man was different.

James stopped by towards the end of the day to bring Elizabeth her keys. Marie, who was just leaving, looked at him suspiciously as he walked past her and said hello. He had disguised himself as an unglamorous and trustworthy man this time, but that did not fool her. And Elizabeth was just approaching, so Marie waited a bit to see what would happen. Nothing happened. He only handed Elizabeth the keys and said he had moved in. Marie decided to leave. She could not find any excuse to stay and nobody here had to be chaperoned.

"You'll be late and I always go to bed early on Fridays," Elizabeth said to James when Marie had left. "I'll see you tomorrow morning or do you have somewhere to go?"

"I usually go home, but I don't have to."

"You don't have to stay just for me," she hastened to say. "I have things to do as well and they might be very boring. Shopping and cleaning and that sort of thing."

Those were not the most exciting things James could imagine and he smiled. "Not a man's job, I agree," he teased.

"James!"

"I know," he said, knowing he had another accusation of male chauvinism coming. "But who do you think cleans my flat?"

"Your mother?"

He guffawed. "She has seven sons. She's not crazy. Why don't you have a cleaning lady? You can afford one."

"I can also afford to buy twenty houses, but what would I do with them? I'm not disabled. There's nothing wrong with me."

That was what his mother always said. She had two hands. "True." James took her hands and studied them. He wondered how people could suddenly be struck by the urge to drag a woman into one of the empty offices to make wild and passionate love to her on a desk. He was not the type, although people like that seemed to exist. He had better not think about it at all and he grimaced.

"What are you thinking of?" she demanded immediately.

"Oh, nothing. Just an academic question."

"I love academic questions," Elizabeth said brightly.

James groaned inwardly. She would not love this one. He would undoubtedly not have mentioned academic questions to people who turned out not to care about them, but now he had mentioned one to somebody who would undoubtedly not rest before she had got her share in thinking about it. It followed that he had to make one up now and he did not want to fail her expectations. "I was thinking…" he began.

Elizabeth looked at him expectantly.

James groaned audibly now. He could not make anything up. "You've been working all day. Hasn't your brain had enough challenges?" he tried.

"My brain can never get enough challenges."

It should try to understand her heart for once, if it did not get enough challenges, but James did not say so. The challenge was too big at the moment. "Well, you figure out how…" How to do what, exactly? He needed more time for that.

"Yes, I'll figure something out," Elizabeth said. James stared at her dumbly and she laughed. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"When are you going home?" James had seen Marie leave and he did not think that anyone else was still here at nearly six o'clock on a Friday.

"They're going to kick me out at six."

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow morning then?" he asked.

"Yes."

Saturday Morning

The doorbell had been ringing for a while and James had thought Elizabeth would answer it, but she did not and now there was some freak standing on the doorstep shouting Elizabeth's name. James did the same, inside, but there was no answer. Where had she gone? No one could sleep through this. It had woken James up too and he went downstairs in his pyjama bottoms with a rather annoyed look on his face.

James jerked open the door. It was the annoying young man he had once seen in Elizabeth's office. That did not improve his mood. "What do you want?" he bellowed.

"I want Elizabeth." Francis looked surprised upon seeing a man answering the door, a half-undressed man who was being impolite, at that.

"You can't have her." James closed the door. The bell rang instantly and he opened the door again. "What is it?" he shouted.

"Where's Elizabeth?"

"How should I know?" James said in irritation. He wanted to know what too, so Elizabeth could deal with this idiot herself. She had said she would see him this morning, so where was she?

"Who are you?"

"Who are you yourself?"

"I'm a friend."

"So am I."

"I don't know you," Francis said suspiciously.

"I didn't say I was your friend."

"You're Elizabeth's friend?"

"Bingo."

"Your name is Bingo?" Francis asked.

"Lord!" James muttered. This fellow either had a bad sense of humour or he had no intelligence whatsoever. He would bet on the latter.

"Lord Bingo," Francis concluded. "Why don't you let me in, Lord Bingo?"

"Are you really this stupid?" James inquired, looking disgusted. How could this be a friend of Elizabeth's? "You can't be."

"If I'd really been stupid, I'd ask you if Elizabeth had had a sex change. Why does Elizabeth have men in her house?"

"Men? Just me, I should think."

"You hope," Francis said dryly. "You weren't expecting me either. Who else is going to turn up?"

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