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only Edward would just once kiss her as though she were not his favourite niece.
    â€œDid he touch you at all?” said Edward, stodgily going over the same ground.
    â€œYes. He touched my left foot. Have you ever noticed what an amorous left foot I’ve got?” A sprightly smile touched her mouth and her throat sent out a laugh that went scurrying to the elaborately moulded ceiling, and her eyes sparkled with merriment.
    â€œDarling, don’t be so old and stuffy.”
    At that moment she looked like a naughty elf, a very infantile elf, he thought.
    â€œI am old and age is stuffy.”
    She tended to forget that he had been her mother’s friend and her mother’s contemporary. Possibly because he didn’t look his age. She went back in her mind to the day they got engaged, if one could call their odd arrangement an engagement.
    â€œYou need a holiday,” he had told her. “You’ve worked like a Trojan these past months. You desperately need a break.”
    â€œIt doesn’t seem right. My mother –”
    â€œInez would be the first to understand,” he finished for her. “Go abroad, get right out of the country, that would be a real change.”
    â€œIt would be a real challenge. I don’t know whether I dare – go alone, that is.”
    â€œI wasn’t suggesting that you went alone.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œIt’s all right. I’m not proposing anything improper. If it will make you feel any better, you could wear this.” Then he had produced the ring, a square-cut sapphire on a raised shoulder of platinum-set diamonds. Its flamboyance suited her long slender fingers. Fingers which were once at home poised over an ivory keyboard, sending professional notes ringing into the corners of high-ceilinged halls.
    She was about to draw the ring back over her knuckle, when he stopped her.
    â€œIf nothing else, wear it as a mark of respectability. I don’t see why we shouldn’t go on holiday together.”
    â€œHas the ring any other significance, besides respectability?” she had asked, thinking what an Edwardian Edward he was to think that two people had to be engaged before they went on holiday together.
    His glance raked hers searchingly. “It has a very special significance.”
    Perhaps he read the doubt in her eyes, because he rounded his question – proposal – off with a careless: “Let us leave the heavy side of it in abeyance. Allow me the pleasure of your company. That is if you think you can bear with an old man?”
    â€œYou’re not old,” she had told him then.
    â€œYou’re not old,” she told him now. “I think age is a silly obsession, anyway.” She took his huge hands in hers, pulling them round her waist; she tipped back her head to look up into his face. It was the first time she had taken the initiative with any man and she felt breathless and daring, but it did not stifle her forebodings.
    â€œEdward, don’t let’s stay. I’ve got the strangest feeling that the island doesn’t welcome us.”
    â€œThe island doesn’t welcome us? That’s ridiculous!”
    â€œNo, it isn’t. Nothing’s gone right from the start. First we couldn’t get seats on the same plane –”
    â€œOnly because we booked at the last minute. Anyway, it worked out rather well. I was able to come on ahead and make the hotel reservations. You do like your room?”
    â€œLove it. But please don’t sidestep the issue. My plane did develop engine trouble and had to crash-land, and if that isn’t an omen, I don’t know what is.”
    â€œI do believe – you are deadly serious!”
    â€œYes, Edward. I am. Thank you for not laughing at me and please, please listen to me. Let’s take the first plane out, no matter where it’s going.”
    He transferred his hands from her narrow waist and placed one on either side