The Perfect Seduction {#wattys2016}

Chapter 14

It had given her a bad shock when she had heard his voice and realized that he was standing behind her, and an even worse one when he had informed her that he had seen her outside the offices, she acknowledged as she stepped back from him and started to walk away, so sure that he would make some attempt to either stop her or follow her that she had to turn around when she had reached the exit just to check where he was.
He was standing with his back to her in front of the family grave, and as she watched, he suddenly knelt down and with very great care, tenderness almost, started to remove the weeds that had rooted in the soft grass around the tomb, so engrossed in his task that she might not even have existed.

Shakily she turned away and started to walk quickly in the direction she had originally come.
She made it back to the Grosvenor with ten minutes to spare, and by the time she returned from her room where she had gone to tidy up and brush her hair, Olivia was waiting for her in the foyer.

"Oh good," she exclaimed when she saw Bobbie heading towards her. 'I was beginning to think that you weren't going to come.'

"I spent the morning exploring the cathedral," Bobbie explained, 'and I got back a little later than I'd planned. Your note said that there was something you wanted to discuss with me.'

"Yes," Olivia agreed as they headed for the Brasserie, obviously a popular place for lunch on a Sunday, Bobbie realized when she saw how full it was.
The maitre d' still welcomed them warmly, though, as he showed them to their table.

"It's not so much something I wanted to discuss as a proposition I wanted to put to you," Olivia confessed once they were sitting down and had been handed their menus. 'I mentioned to you last night the problems that Casper and I are having finding a nanny for Amelia and you said you had some experience with children.'

"Yes," Bobbie replied cautiously, sensing what was coming. 'You said that Casper had taken on the role of househusband during the summer vacation.'

"That's right," Olivia agreed. 'But now, with the new academic year looming, he really needs to get down to some preparatory work. Ruth is marvelous helping out when she can, but it really isn't fair to expect her to do more than the occasional babysit for us.'

"No, I suppose at her age..." Bobbie began, but Olivia shook her head.

"Oh, heaven's no, it's got nothing to do with her age. Ruth might have just hit her seventies but she looks more than ten years younger, and so far as her intellectual and energy levels go, she certainly puts me to shame. She's wonderful with children, as well. It's such a shame that she's never had any of her own."

"Some women just aren't particularly maternal," Bobbie offered quietly.

"Some aren't," Olivia concurred as the waiter took their orders and removed the menus, 'but Ruth most certainly is. It's a pity that she never married.

"Perhaps she never found anyone who could give her enough to compensate for losing her right to call herself a Crighton," Bobbie suggested.

She could see Olivia giving her a puzzled look.

"It's true that some male members of the family do see themselves as coming somewhere just a little below God and most definitely very much higher than anyone else, but Ruth has certainly never held that kind of view. No, I think the fact that she has never married has more to do with the fact that her fiancé---a fighter pilot---was killed during the last war than anything else, although according to Casper..." Olivia paused, frowned and then without completing her original statement continued, 'Joss absolutely adores her and she thinks the world of him.'