‘Luckily for both of us-’

‘It’s a serious business proposition.’

Jarvis Larne snorted. ‘And I’m Santa Claus.’

‘I said business and I meant business. Nothing else would persuade me even to consider marriage to a man who has all the charm of a scrubbing brush. Unfortunately I need you almost as much as you appear to need me-’

‘I do not need you, madam!’

‘Let me finish. Under my father’s will I don’t get full control of my money until I’m twenty-seven, which is nearly three years away. Unless I marry. Then I get it on my wedding day. But until then I’m stuck.’

‘Sounds like somebody knew you pretty well,’ Jarvis Larne said grimly. ‘If you were my daughter I’d make you wait until you were fifty, and even then I doubt you’d have learned common sense.’

‘Now look-’

‘You look. You’ve got cuckoos in your head. So you got an answer to this stupid ad. You couldn’t telephone? Or find a way to check up? Oh no! You jump on the first plane and come to a place you know nothing about, to throw yourself into the arms of a man you also know nothing about.’

‘I had no intention of throwing myself into your arms or anyone else’s,’ Meryl said, speaking with difficulty. ‘What is on offer is my cash in return for the use of your name. Just that. No extras, because you don’t appeal to me-’

‘Well, you’ll excuse me if I don’t shoot myself-’

‘As for knowing nothing about you-I thought I did know something. The man who wrote this letter is charming, which rules you out, I see that now.’

‘Nobody has ever called me charming,’ he agreed. ‘It’s been very useful in keeping me safe from silly women.’

She regarded him with her head tilted. ‘You wouldn’t find my dowry silly. It would mend the holes in this place. Do you have any other way of mending them?’

‘That does not concern you,’ he said in a dangerous voice.

Meryl didn’t answer at once. It was typical of her that, at the height of the row, her temper faded and she began to see that this had a funny side.