Mills & Boon is proud to present a fabulous collection of fantastic novels by bestselling, much loved author

ANNE MATHER

Anne has a stellar record of achievement within the

publishing industry, having written over one hundred

and sixty books, with worldwide sales of more than

forty-eight MILLION copies in multiple languages.

This amazing collection of classic stories offers a chance

for readers to recapture the pleasure Anne’s powerful,

passionate writing has given.

We are sure you will love them all!

I’ve always wanted to write—which is not to say I’ve always wanted to be a professional writer. On the contrary, for years I only wrote for my own pleasure and it wasn’t until my husband suggested sending one of my stories to a publisher that we put several publishers’ names into a hat and pulled one out. The rest, as they say, is history. And now, one hundred and sixty-two books later, I’m literally—excuse the pun—staggered by what’s happened.

I had written all through my infant and junior years and on into my teens, the stories changing from children’s adventures to torrid gypsy passions. My mother used to gather these manuscripts up from time to time, when my bedroom became too untidy, and dispose of them! In those days, I used not to finish any of the stories and Caroline, my first published novel, was the first I’d ever completed. I was newly married then and my daughter was just a baby, and it was quite a job juggling my household chores and scribbling away in exercise books every chance I got. Not very professional, as you can imagine, but that’s the way it was.

These days, I have a bit more time to devote to my work, but that first love of writing has never changed. I can’t imagine not having a current book on the typewriter—yes, it’s my husband who transcribes everything on to the computer. He’s my partner in both life and work and I depend on his good sense more than I care to admit.

We have two grown-up children, a son and a daughter, and two almost grown-up grandchildren, Abi and Ben. My e-mail address is mystic-am@msn.com and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.

Scorpion’s Dance
Anne Mather

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

MIRANDA COULD remember clearly the first time she saw Jaime Knevett.

It was on the occasion of her tenth birthday, and as a special treat, Lady Sanders had agreed to a birthday party on the lawn, out of sight of the house, of course. Miranda could recall the excitement with which she had anticipated her birthday. Until that time, birthdays had been very little different from any other day, with perhaps a trip to the pictures in the evening, after her mother had finished the preparations for dinner.

But that was hardly unusual in the circumstances. After all, housekeepers’ children should be seen and not heard, or so she had always been led to believe, and no one could deny that Lady Sanders had been kind to her mother when her father died so suddenly, leaving his wife with a three-year-old daughter, and no visible means of support.

Her father had been a farm worker and their cottage was tied to his job. Naturally, when he died the cottage was required for his replacement, and Miranda’s mother had been desperate when Lady Sanders, who incidentally owned the estate on which their cottage stood, had suggested she should come and live at the Hall. Her housekeeper was getting near retirement age, Lady Sanders explained, and reliable help was so hard to find these days.

By taking in Lucy Gresham and her fatherless little daughter, Lady Sanders assured herself of ‘reliable help’ for numerous years to come, but it was only as she got older that Miranda got more cynical. At ten, she was still young enough to take kindness at its face value, and at three she had no opinion at all.

Lady Sanders was a widow. Her husband had been killed in a road accident a year after Miranda was born, and the less charitable people in the village had been heard to express the opinion that it was fortunate he had only wrapped his own car round the tree and not someone else’s. It seemed the late Lord Sanders had imbibed rather freely, and it was chance rather than good fortune which had kept him alive as long as it did.

After his death, Lady Sanders assumed the running of the estate with an assurance that revealed she had been doing so surreptitiously for years. She had one son, the new Lord Sanders, and she was determined that his inheritance should in no way suffer through the death of his father.

Miranda saw Mark Sanders rarely during her formative years. The local prep school, followed by succeeding boarding schools, took care of his education, and in the holidays his mother took care never to let him out of her sight. Mrs Gresham explained that Lady Sanders worshipped the boy, and now that her husband was dead, she had no one else. It seemed a lonely existence to Miranda who, in spite of the strictures impressed upon her at home, led quite an active social life outside. She had friends in plenty, and she pitied the pale-faced youth she occasionally glimpsed playing by himself on the lawns.

A week before Miranda’s tenth birthday, Lady Sanders gave a dinner party. It was the beginning of June, the night of the Hunt Ball, and Mrs Gresham had worked solidly for over a fortnight getting the Hall ready for Lady Sanders’ guests who were staying overnight and going home the following day. There had been such an orgy of cleaning and polishing, and even Miranda had been roped in to fetch and carry for the domestics hired for the purpose. The meal itself had taken hours to prepare—smoked ham and melon, delicately-battered scampi, roast duckling, with peas and new potatoes, and Mrs Gresham’s special orange sauce, and peaches soaked in brandy. The wines, too, had been specially chosen, chilled to perfection, and Miranda had been enchanted by the sight of the table, its silver and crystal gleaming in the light of half a dozen scented candles.

The dinner party was a success, and in gratitude for the work she had put in, Lady Sanders had suggested that as it was Miranda’s birthday the following week, perhaps Mrs Gresham might like to organise a small party for her.

In later years, Miranda was to speculate upon the character of a woman who chose such a way to reward her housekeeper, but at that time the idea of a party had been so exciting to her that she had not stopped to think that perhaps her mother might have preferred less work rather than more.

In any event, the party was arranged, and in spite of lowering clouds which had hung around all morning, the afternoon skies were clear. Miranda helped her mother, and old Croxley, the gardener, carried a trestle table out on to the lawn at the back of the house, and when it was set with sandwiches and pastries, cakes and jellies, and a huge jug of orange juice, to her eyes it looked every bit as good as Lady Sanders’ dinner table had done. Seven little girls had been invited, and Miranda was to occupy the seat at the head of the table, immediately behind the iced sponge cake with ‘Happy Birthday, Miranda’ written in tiny hundreds and thousands.

The guests arrived and Miranda opened her presents with trembling fingers. There were books and crayons and handkerchiefs, and her best friend, Judith Masters, whose father taught at the village school, gave her a pretty pearl pendant that Miranda insisted on wearing at once. They played games and Mrs Gresham had packets of sweets for prizes, and then it was time for tea.

Miranda presided over the table proudly, aping the odd occasions when she had peeped through the dining room door and seen Lady Sanders taking lunch with some of her friends from the Rotary Club. It was her first party, and she was determined it should be a success. Then it began to rain …

Only a few spots at first, rather large spots that dropped just over Miranda’s head, and spattered on the carefully arranged inscription on the cake, making the decorations run together and partially obliterate her name.

Miranda jumped to her feet at once, disappointment bringing an anxious frown to her forehead. Her mother had gone back into the house, leaving her in charge, but surely she must see the rain from her windows. She looked back towards the kitchen, but there was no sign of either her mother or Croxley, and then when one or two of the other girls told her to sit down again, to stop worrying, that it was probably only a shower, Miranda turned her face skyward to see a cloudless arc of blue.

Then a huge drop of water fell in her eye, and she gasped and brought her hands to her face, as a veritable shower sprayed over the table and its occupants, bringing them all to their feet, gulping and protesting and giggling helplessly. Miranda didn’t giggle. Her reason told her it couldn’t be raining. The sky was clear; and besides, the leaves of the laurel hedge that shielded the kitchen garden from sight of the Hall were dry.

And yet the shower just kept on coming, and her guests were so bemused by what was happening that they paid little attention to its source. But Miranda’s sharp eyes noticed how the shower arched over the hedge, and with an exclamation of fury, she dashed towards the bushes.

Immediately there was smothered laughter, and the shower ceased as quickly as it had begun. Miranda paid no attention to that. With furious hands she tore aside the twigs and branches that held her back and burst through the hedge like a veritable virago.

Beyond the hedge was the tap which Croxley used to operate the sprinkler system on the lawns in dry weather. Presently not needed, the sprinkler had been stored away in the garden shed, but someone had got it out. Someone who was presently disappearing round the corner of the house, a tall dark figure who was as unfamiliar to Miranda as she must be to him.

She set out in pursuit, and then halted uncertainly, looking down in dismay at the pretty flowered dress her mother had made her specially for the party. Pushing through the hedge had torn the hem, and it was streaked with dirt as she was. Her hair, rust-coloured, and always unmanageably straight, had come loose from its braids and was presently straggling untidily about her shoulders, and the pearl pendant had disappeared, probably broken in the struggle.

Her friends were shouting her from the other side of the hedge, and Mrs Gresham, alerted by their excitement, had come to see what was going on. Miserably, Miranda forced her way back through the hedge, and suffered the stifled giggles and compassionate glances of the other girls.

‘Miranda!’ Her mother was not prone to unwarranted sympathy. ‘What on earth has been going on?’

At once half a dozen voices attempted to regale her with their version of the story, but Mrs Gresham waited until Miranda herself could explain. Half expecting her mother to disbelieve her, or alternatively find excuses for what had happened, Miranda was surprised to discover that Mrs Gresham seemed as angry as she was. Listening to what had happened, her face went first red, and then white, before she turned and walked silently into the house.

Miranda stared after her worriedly, but the other girls clustered around, demanding to know what had happened, and she allowed herself to be swayed by the importance the incident had granted her. She accepted their sympathy as her right, and basked in their admiration of how she had sent whoever it was packing. She scarcely looked at the table, but when she did, she felt a lump rise in her throat at the sight of the ruined cake and waterlogged sandwiches. Only the jelly repelled the moisture, green and yellow islands in a transparent sea.

Miranda was still standing there surrounded by her friends when her mother came back again, but she was not alone. With her was Lady Sanders—and a boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen. He was tall for his age, thin, with angular features that were not enhanced by the dark pigmentation of his skin. His hair was thick and black, blacker than any hair Miranda had seen before, and she wondered what nationality he was. But she had no hesitation in identifying him as the instigator of that artificial rainstorm.

She glared at him and was infuriated to discover that she could still see amusement in those darkly-lashed eyes, although his face bore an obediently solemn expression. She wondered who he was, and what he was doing at the Hall, and found herself praying that he was an intruder and that Lady Sanders was about to have him arrested.

‘As you can see, my lady, the table is ruined,’ her mother was saying, as they walked across the lawn together, accompanied by the abominable boy, and Lady Sanders nodded her head in agreement, and murmured some words of regret.

Then they turned to the group of girls, and belatedly Miranda remembered that she should have washed her face and hands and combed her hair before appearing before anyone. As it was, she stood there, with the group of other girls, looking like a tattered parrot among so many pigeons. Lady Sanders saw her, exchanged a look with the boy at her side, and ignominy of ignominies, she started laughing. And when she laughed, the boy laughed, and that set all the girls giggling and laughing all over again. Only Mrs Gresham didn’t laugh, but that was small comfort to Miranda. With a sob of humiliation she brushed past all of them, rushing across the lawn and into the house, not stopping until she reached the sanctuary of her own room. She would never forgive them, she thought, not her friends, not Lady Sanders, and most particularly not that black-haired beast who had ruined the only party she had ever had …

Of course, she got over it. She could even laugh about it in time, only never in Lady Sanders’ presence. That day was a turning point in her life, the day she began to realise the differences between the people of Lady Sanders’ world and her own.

She learned that the boy was a distant relation of the late Lord Sanders, son of his cousin, Patrick Knevett, who had estates in Brazil, and who had scandalised his family in 1947 by marrying an Indian girl of Portuguese extraction because she was expecting his child. The boy had been brought up in South America, which would account for the deep tanning of his skin, and had been staying with Lady Sanders while his father made arrangements for him to finish his schooling in England.

During the years that followed, Miranda saw him several times. Because his home was such a long way away, he usually spent Christmas and Easter at the Hall. On the few occasions when Lady Sanders chose to confide in her housekeeper, she explained that he was company for Mark, three years his junior, and much in awe of his older cousin.

Miranda herself succeeded in passing the examination which took her to the grammar school in the local town, but when she was sixteen she left school with eight ‘O’ levels, much to the disappointment of the headmistress, who had been expecting great things of her. However, further education on a housekeeper’s pay was simply not on, and she got a job in the town library and settled down quite happily. She loved books, and working in the library enabled her to read everything that was published.

She had had boy-friends before she left school, and she continued going out with different boys and not going steadily with any of them. She had seen too much of the struggle her mother had had bringing her up to want to put herself into the same position, and she gained the reputation of being frigid and mercenary, which wasn’t strictly true. It was simply that she wanted more out of life than a mortgaged semi, and a parcel of children she couldn’t afford.

Then, when she was eighteen, she was invited to the Hunt Ball.

She had been going out with a young farmer, Dennis Morgan, whose father owned some land on the outskirts of the village, and because his land was used by the Hunt, he had been invited.

At first she had demurred, realising that Lady Sanders would attend the Ball, but surprisingly her mother took a stand.

‘Why shouldn’t you go?’ she demanded, her work-worn hands kneading together. ‘You’ve been invited. I don’t see what it has to do with her ladyship.’

But Miranda noticed she didn’t tell her employer that her daughter was attending the ball, and no one could have been more surprised than Lady Sanders when she saw her housekeeper’s daughter dancing with the son of one of the local landowners.

Miranda was enjoying herself. Her gown was new, and she was aware that it suited her. The years between that disastrous party and now had wrought a great change in her. Her hair was no longer so red, but had toned to a deep chestnut streaked with golden lights, and its straightness was used to advantage by careful cutting. Shoulder-length, it swung in a silken curtain from a centre parting, accentuating the wide depths of eyes that were translucently green. She was tall, too, but not thin, and her breasts swelled provocatively above the deep décolletage of her gown. The gown itself was green, almost exactly matching the colour of her eyes, layers of chiffon over a clinging chemise-like underskirt. What she was unaware of was that another pair of eyes, very similar to those of Lady Sanders’, were watching her with more than casual interest.

The evening was well advanced before a slender, pale-faced young man chose Dennis’s temporary absence to ask her to dance. Miranda knew who he was, of course. She had seen him frequently about the Hall in the past couple of years, just as he knew her; although he doubted he would have believed how beautiful she could be, dressed as she invariably was in denim jeans and shirts, or plain uniform dresses for work. But tonight she was sparkling, and Mark Sanders recognised that she was easily the most interesting girl in the room.

Miranda, prepared to dislike him, found her sympathies aroused by his diffidence, and his barbed humour had nothing coarse about it. He knew everyone there, of course, and his wry comments and dry wit made her see them all in a different light. Old Squire Matthews, who used to terrify her when she was a child by cracking his riding crop against his boot, was just a foolish old man who couldn’t face a kill sober; the Falconers of High Garth, much respected in the village, couldn’t stand the sight of one another outside of public occasions like this; and Canon Bridgenorth and his wife, who lived far beyond their means, would likely retire on social security.

That his comments were vaguely malicious did not really disturb her. Gossip was rife in a village like King’s Norton, and he was only relating what her mother had suspected for years. Besides, she thought, he was only trying to put her at her ease, and she was flattered that out of all the girls there, he should have chosen to dance with her.

Dennis was waiting for her when the dance was over, and he was not best pleased by what had happened. ‘You’re not interested in that pansy boy, are you?’ he demanded, unable to ignore her flushed cheeks and the unaccustomed light in her eyes, and Miranda turned on him angrily.

‘He’s not a pansy boy!’ she declared hotly. ‘He’s very nice actually. A gentleman—something you might not know a lot about.’

Dennis looked affronted, and immediately she was contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Dennis,’ she exclaimed at once, realising she had been rude. After all, without Dennis’s invitation she would not be here. ‘It’s just that—well, I liked him.’

Dennis allowed himself to be placated. He didn’t want to fall out with Miranda. He was half in love with her, and he had been beginning to hope that she might care for him. He knew her reputation. He knew she had never had a steady boy-friend, but he was hoping to change all that.

However, Dennis was to be disappointed. Within a week, Mark had started dating Miranda, much to his own and her mother’s disapproval.

‘You’re a fool!’ Mrs Gresham told her daughter, never one to mince words. ‘He’s not for the likes of you. Lady Sanders would never let her son marry the housekeeper’s daughter!’

‘Why not?’ Miranda was still riding on cloud seven. All the girls in the library had seen Mark’s super sports car when he came to pick her up after work, and all her friends envied her her good fortune. All except Judith, that was. The schoolmaster’s daughter sided with Miranda’s mother in disapproving of the affair, and had jeopardised their friendship by accusing Miranda of dating Mark because he had money. Miranda had denied it emphatically, but deep inside her she wondered if she would find him half so attractive without his sports car and the Hall behind him.

Now Mrs Gresham sank into her comfortable rocking chair by the fire and folded her hands. ‘You’re not thinking seriously enough,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Oh, I suppose I can’t blame you. You and I have always had to work for every penny we earned. But that young man—he’s too like his father for my liking. And I don’t want him smashing up that flashy car of his while you’re inside it.’

Miranada shifted restlessly. ‘Mark wouldn’t do that. He drives fast, I know, but he’s always careful.’

‘When he’s sober,’ remarked her mother dryly. ‘I doubt you’ve seen him drunk yet. But it has been known. And that’s without—well, you know what I mean.’

‘Sex?’ Miranda paced impatiently about the kitchen. ‘Is that what you mean? We don’t have sex. I—I wouldn’t, even if he asked me.’

Her mother looked sceptical. ‘What do you know about it? What do you know what you’d do faced with such a situation? Miranda, it’s no use talking. You’d never understand in a million years. But believe me when I say that there comes a time in every woman’s life when a situation gets completely out of her control …’

‘Oh, Mum!’ Miranda sighed. ‘I do know the facts of life, you know. I know about—body chemistry.’

‘Is that what you call it? They called it something else in my young day. But never mind. So long as you always remember that so far as Lady Sanders is concerned, you’re just one of the long line of girls her son will date before he settles down and marries someone suitable.’

Miranda flounced out of the room. There was more than a grain of truth in what her mother had said, she knew that, at least so far as Lady Sanders was concerned. But she couldn’t honestly believe that Mark was like his mother. He was too kind, too attentive, too much fun.

Then, two days later, she had an experience of how much fun he could be. They had been to a nightclub in the nearby town and were driving home in the early hours. Miranda, who had taken driving lessons as soon as she was seventeen and bought herself an old Mini to get to and from work, had realised Mark was drinking too much and offered to drive them home, but he had scorned her caution.

‘I’m not drunk!’ he had protested mockingly. ‘What’s the matter? Chicken?’

Miranda had shaken her head and climbed into her seat obediently. Perhaps she was being over-cautious, she thought. Perhaps she was thinking too much about what her mother had said. Whatever her private feelings, she had maintained a composed façade, and this seemed to infuriate Mark. Instead of driving with extra care, he seemed to delight in taking unnecessary risks, and Miranda’s palms were moist with sweat when they breasted a hill on the wrong side of the road and saw the headlights of an approaching car directly ahead of them.

She scarcely remembered the details of what happened afterwards. She knew Mark screamed and took his hands off the wheel, and somehow she threw herself across him and wrenched the wheel towards her. The sports car slewed dangerously across the road, but it missed the oncoming vehicle and ploughed half through the bushes on the lefthand side of the road.

Miranda was trembling violently when she brought the car to a halt, but Mark was shattered. Shaking, he had buried his head in his hands, and not until the irate driver of the other car came to ask what the hell was going on did he lift his face to reveal he had been crying. It was left to Miranda to explain how the steering had apparently gone out of control and she let the man assume that Mark had saved them. As it happened, he did know who Mark was, and in consequence was prepared to accept her explanation.

After he had left them and they were alone, Mark pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said, over and over again, and although she was still shocked, Miranda had comforted him like a child.

It was only when his lips strayed across her face to her mouth and his hands fumbled grotesquely at her clothes that she drew back from him, feeling curiously repelled. Suddenly their positions were reversed, and she was no longer in awe of him. It was another turning point in Miranda’s relationship with the Sanders family.

Several days passed before she saw Mark again. She knew the girls at the library imagined that the young earl had walked out on her, but somehow she didn’t really mind. To find that your idol had feet of clay was always a chastening experience, and Miranda was glad of the breathing space to gather her thoughts.

Then, just when she had come to the conclusion that it was all over between them, she found him waiting for her one evening, outside the library. Ignoring the raised eyebrows that greeted his appearance, she got into the car and gave him a long speculative look.

‘I know,’ he said, without turning on the ignition. ‘I needed time to think. I guess you did, too.’

Miranda bent her head. ‘What was there to think about?’

‘You. Me. Us!’ He regarded her intently. ‘Miranda—will you marry me?’

Miranda was staggered. She had expected anything but this! ‘Me?’ she whispered. ‘Marry you? Are you serious?’

‘Never more so in my life,’ he replied gravely. ‘I care about you, Miranda. Enough to want to look after you for the rest of your life.’

‘But—your mother—’ she stammered helplessly.

‘Leave my mother to me,’ he said, and strangely enough she thought she could.

But was this really what she wanted? she wondered dazedly, as Mark set the car in motion. For days now she had been battling with the realisation that she did not really love him at all, that his wealth and social position had blinded her to the weaknesses in the man himself. Now, suddenly he was asking her to marry him, giving her the chance to get out of the rat-race once and for all, and she was hesitating. His mother would be furious, she knew, and her own … How could she go on being housekeeper to her own daughter’s mother-in-law?

But she needn’t. Miranda could see to it that she never had to work again. She could do that; if she married Mark.

It was a tempting proposition, made the more so by the thought of what everyone in the village would say. Miranda Gresham, the new Lady Sanders! Mistress of the Hall!

Her breathing quickened. What was happening to her? she thought disgustedly. How could she consider Mark’s proposal seriously when only hours before she had felt almost a sense of relief to know herself free of him? What had changed? He was still the same man, and she was still the same woman. Except that now she had something concrete to contend with …

Yet it was what came after the wedding that she would have to live with. Could she do that? Did she care for him enough to contemplate the intimacies of marriage without any qualms? There was no one else, and there were times when she believed there never would be. She had never been madly attracted to any man, and she had come to the conclusion that she simply did not have it in her to feel deeply about anyone, except her mother. How could she be sure she would ever feel any differently than she did today? And how could she throw this opportunity away on the fleeting chance she might? She was not mercenary, she consoled herself, just practical; but how practical might she have to be?

As expected, Lady Sanders disapproved of their engagement, although perhaps disapproval was too mild a term to use to describe the words she said to her son when he apprised her of the situation. The row they had could be heard in the kitchen, and Miranda had tightened her lips and closed the doors, and tried to ignore that she was the cause of the quarrel.

Her own mother had taken the news rather differently. She had said little beyond repeating that Miranda was a fool and that a man like Mark Sanders didn’t have it in him to make her happy.

The wedding was arranged for a week before Christmas, and the young couple were to fly out to Barbados afterwards for two weeks in the sun. Miranda got used to the other girls envying her her good fortune, and to having her picture in the paper alongside Mark’s, and to parrying the reporters’ questions about her rags-to-riches story. She found it harder to quieten her own conscience when it came to justifying her reasons for accepting his proposal.

Defeated, Lady Sanders gave in gracefully, outwardly at least. She was seen to accompany Miranda to her own dressmaker in London, pictures were taken of them shopping together, and just occasionally all three of them appeared together at some official function or other. Miranda was an apt pupil, and while she didn’t like Lady Sanders, she could respect her, and they adopted a kind of armed truce with one another. Lady Sanders recognised that Miranda was not some impressionable debutante she could mould to her own design, but a girl with definite ideas of her own. Nevertheless, she was experienced enough at dealing with people to know exactly how to approach her future daughter-in-law to get the required result. She never gave up hoping that Mark might come to his senses, but in the event that he didn’t, she was determined to hold on to her position in the household.

Surprisingly Miranda grew less apprehensive as the wedding neared. Mark was behaving particularly well, never demanding too much of her, never drinking excessively, never driving too fast; reassuring her that her first opinion of him had not been misplaced. Until the Rotary Club Ball in December …

The Ball was an annual event, and as Lady Sanders was a prominent member, naturally she was expected to attend. Her son and his fiancée were invited, too, and Miranda spent hours in her room beforehand, preparing for the last official gathering before their wedding. The wedding itself was only two weeks away, and a sumptuous function it was going to be. Lady Sanders had taken over all the organisation because, as she explained, no one could expect Mrs Gresham to pay for the kind of reception their friends would expect.

But before that, there was this evening, and Miranda was determined that Mark should feel proud of her. Her gown was made of velvet, rich cream velvet, that brushed against her skin with a kiss of silk. Her hair was about her shoulders as usual, but she had threaded it with seed pearls, which matched the pearl necklace and ear-rings Mark had given her as an engagement present. Excitement had heightened the colour in her cheeks, and her lips were parted in anticipation. She had never looked more attractive, and she knew it.

Her mother viewed her appearance without enthusiasm. These past weeks Mrs Gresham seemed to have aged considerably, and Miranda wondered if she was unhappy at leaving the Hall to retire into the comfortable cottage on the green that Mark had acquired for her. She was fifty-three, after all. Surely she couldn’t want to work all her life.

But Mark and his mother were waiting for her, and picking up her evening cloak, Miranda said a reluctant goodbye and walked along the passage which separated the housekeeper’s and kitchen quarters from the rest of the Hall.

Another door, set beneath the curve of the stairs, brought her into the main hall of the building. Here, panelled walls stretched up two floors to a magnificent carved ceiling, and a massive fireplace was flanked by portraits of earlier members of the Sanders family. The floor was polished, and briefly Miranda could remember her mother working on her hands and knees to keep it so, although now she had an electric polisher. There were skin rugs, and long damson-coloured curtains, and two huge armchairs which almost blocked the heat from the glowing log fire. The hall had an almost mediaeval charm, and Miranda had always responded to its austere beauty.

She thought the hall was deserted, and with a glance up the wide carved staircase, she made her way towards the library where Mark and his mother usually enjoyed a drink before dinner. But before she reached the leather-studded door, a man rose from the depths of one of the armchairs by the fire and said: ‘Good evening, Miranda.’

His sudden appearance startled her, and because he was not Mark or his mother she thought for a moment he must be the ghost of one of their ancestors. But no Sanders was ever so dark or so big, and her hands clenched tightly as she realised who he was.

‘It—it’s Mr Knevett, isn’t it?’ she asked, unwilling to speak to him at all but equally unable to ignore him. It was five or six years since she had seen the brutal violator of her childhood tea-party, and then only from a distance. She couldn’t recall that he had ever spoken to her, not even to apologise for what he had done. And now he spoke to her as if he knew her! How dared he? And what was he doing here anyway?

CHAPTER TWO

AS IF IN answer to her unspoken question, Jaime Knevett flexed his shoulder muscles, and said: ‘I seem to have arrived just in time for the wedding, don’t I?’

He spoke English without a trace of an accent, as well he might, she thought broodingly. He had attended school in England, after all, and his father was English. But he didn’t look English. He looked Brazilian, or Portuguese, with that straight uncompromising nose and those fine lips. And yet there was something about his eyes which was wholly alien to either of those nationalities.

‘You’re—staying?’ she asked now, not quite knowing what to do, and he inclined his head gravely. Belatedly, she saw he was wearing a fine mohair dinner jacket, and his shirt front was an intricate mass of pleated lace which contrasted wildly with his hard, wholly masculine features. Was he to attend the ball with them? And why hadn’t Mark told her he was coming?

‘I gather you don’t approve,’ he observed dryly. ‘Haven’t you forgiven me yet?’

Miranda felt the wave of colour sweeping up her neck to her face. ‘I really don’t know what you mean,’ she protested, but patently he didn’t believe her.

‘I think you do,’ he told her insistently, his hands sliding into the pockets of his jacket to leave his thumbs hooked outside. ‘But never mind. You’re almost a member of the family now.’

‘Not your family, Mr Knevett,’ she retorted, and saw the faint smile that lifted the corners of his mouth.

‘You may call me Jaime,’ he said, refusing to argue with her, but she determined he should never have that satisfaction.

Lady Sanders’ appearance curtailed any further conversation between them. Black lace became the older woman very well, although her eyes flicked almost enviously over Miranda in her cream velvet. Mark was evidently well pleased with his fiancée’s appearance, and his hand curved possessively about her waist as he asked Jaime whether he didn’t envy him his good fortune.

Jaime’s response was as enthusiastic as he could have wished, but Miranda was aware of the cynicism in the older man’s gaze, and hated him for it.

The ball was a glittering occasion in the county, and because the Sanders were there, the press were out in force. Miranda was forced to face so many flashbulbs that her head began to feel as if it was exploding, and she hardly noticed who took advantage of Mark’s diverted attention to draw her away to dance. It was such a relief to escape from the pressures of being Lord Sanders’ fiancée that she didn’t particularly care who engineered it.

But once on the dance floor, with Jaime’s arms linked about her waist in the manner of the young people present, she had to press her palms against the soft material of his jacket to keep some breathing space between them.

‘What’s the matter?’ he inquired softly. ‘We’re only dancing.’ But Miranda could not relax.

Her breathing was unaccountably quicker, and she looked round determinedly at the other dancers, endeavouring to dismiss the hardness of Jaime’s thighs close against her own. There were lots of young people present, all dancing in the way they were dancing, the girls often with their arms looped about their partners’ necks, so why she should feel so uncomfortable she had no idea. But she did. It was not as if he was attracted to her, and certainly she despised him. But he possessed a certain animal magnetism which drew the eyes of many women in the room, and she told herself it was this physical manifestation which was causing her intense awareness of his man’s body against hers. She had never felt like this with Mark, but then Mark was so much thinner, less muscular somehow, and he had never held her so closely when they were dancing.

‘Do you—do you intend to stay in England long, Mr Knevett?’ she asked, attempting a casual conversation, and he looked down at her with slightly raised eyebrows.

‘I didn’t think you cared,’ he drawled, and she pressed vainly against the iron bands that encircled her. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he continued, ‘I intended to return home next week, but Mark’s persuaded me to stay until after the wedding.’

Of course. Mark would. Mark had always admired his older cousin, however remote their relationship might be. But Miranda wished that he hadn’t with a strength that far outweighed the importance of that distant childhood humiliation.

‘My aunt tells me you’ve been working in the local library,’ he said, and realising she could not cause a scene here, on the dance floor, Miranda forced herself to look up at him. He was taller than Mark, and her gaze crossed his face, noting the firm line of his jaw and the lean flesh stretched across his cheekbones before reaching his eyes. But those dark brown depths derided her and she wished she dared say something to wipe that mocking amusement from his face. Apparently he agreed with his aunt and could see no reason why Mark should choose to marry someone socially inferior and so obviously unsuitable.

‘What do you do, Mr Knevett?’ she responded coldly. ‘When you’re not making sport of the working classes? Or is honest toil abhorrent to you?’

His expression scarcely registered her taunt. ‘As it is to Mark, you mean?’ he countered provokingly, and she realised she had fallen into a trap of her own making.

‘Mark works,’ she defended her fiancé hotly. ‘The estate—’

‘—is run by a very efficient bailiff,’ he interrupted her mildly. ‘You see, I do know about such things, but I doubt you do.’

Miranda wished the band would get to the end of this particular waltz so she could return to the safety of Mark’s protection. Every minute she spent with Jaime Knevett seemed to deepen the antagonism between them. She didn’t like him, it was true, but he was her fiancé’s cousin, and she suspected Lady Sanders would still use any method within her power to prevent her son from taking such an irrevocable step.

‘As a matter of fact, I’m a doctor, or I shall be when I’ve completed my training.’

Miranda realised Jaime was speaking again and gathered her thoughts. ‘I beg your pardon …’

‘I said—I’m a doctor,’ Jaime repeated, lowering his head so that she could hear him more clearly and in so doing bringing his lips within touching distance of her hair.

The faintly alcohol-scented fumes of his breath fanned her forehead; a not unpleasant sensation, it made her aware of the other scents about him—the soap he used, the spicy tang of his after-shave lotion, the clean male smell of his body. His hair, as straight as her own, needed no artificial preparation, and lay thick and smooth against his head.

All this her senses told her, sensitising her fingertips against his chest, her breasts swelling against his hardness. A wave of heat began in the pit of her stomach and spread to the outermost extremities of her body, firing her blood and quickening the tell-tale beat of her heart. Dear God, she thought weakly, what was the matter with her? She felt quite faint. Surely she was allowing her imagination to run out of all control.

He had noticed her sudden lack of colour, however, and he said sharply: ‘Are you feeling all right?’

Miranda managed to nod. ‘Yes. No. That is—it’s very hot in here, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ His eyes compelled hers. ‘Shall I take you back to your fiancé? Or would you rather step out into the corridor for a few minutes?’

Either seemed wholly unsuitable. How could she step outside with Jaime and run the risk of being spotted by scandal-hungry reporters? But equally, how could she go back to Mark like this, her legs unwilling to support her, and trembling like a leaf?

‘There’s an ante-room behind the dais,’ Jaime observed quietly. ‘The band use it in the interval. You could go in there for a few moments, if you’d rather not run the gauntlet of the press.’

The ball was being held at the Fleece, the largest hotel in the town, and the ballroom was used for conferences on other occasions and there were several ante-rooms adjoining.

The size of the hall and the press of people made it possible to slip unnoticed into the ante-room. Miranda stood there in the semi-darkness, unwilling to put on the light, and took several restoring gulps of air. She had expected Jaime would leave her, but he leaned against the wall just inside the doorway, watching her with dark inscrutable eyes.

‘Better now?’ he inquired, after she had expelled her breath on a shuddering sigh, and she looked at him uncertainly.

‘I suppose you’ll tell Mark,’ she said.

‘Tell Mark? Tell him what?’

‘About me. About this.’

‘What about this?’ He straightened away from the wall. ‘Why should you think he would be interested?’

Miranda shook her head. ‘I—don’t know.’

‘Don’t you?’

He didn’t sound wholly convinced, and she flinched when he put out a hand and touched the creamy pallor of her cheek, his thumb probing the quivering contours of her mouth. When her lips parted, the pad of his thumb rubbed against the vulnerable barrier of her teeth, and then withdrew with an abruptness that left her with an aching pang of regret.

‘Come!’ he said. ‘We will be missed. The band has stopped playing.’

Humiliation such as she had never experienced before washed over her. With trembling fingers she smoothed her hair, checked the neckline of her dress and then swept past him out of the ante-room. But she didn’t get far before cruel fingers caught her wrist, and she was jerked round to face—her fiancé!

‘Mark—’ she began in surprise, and then checked at the thunderous expression contorting the normally pleasant features of his face. ‘Mark, what is it?’

‘Little tramp!’ he muttered against her ear. ‘What the hell have you been doing?’

If Miranda had been pale before, she was bright scarlet now. She looked round desperately for Jaime, for once needing him, requiring him to explain.

‘I—we—Jaime—’

‘Jaime, is it?’ Mark sneered. ‘That didn’t take long, did it? My God, I should have listened to my mother when she warned me—’

‘Warned you!’ Miranda stared at him aghast, praying that no one could hear what they were saying above the sound of the beat number the band had started to play. ‘Mark, I don’t know what you mean!’

‘You bloody little fool! Don’t you understand? Haven’t you guessed? Mother asked Jaime to come, not me! She invited him to the Hall, she asked him to stay for the wedding. And not because she dotes on him, because she doesn’t. But because she knows what a sexy swine he is, and how a little tart like you wouldn’t be able to resist his flattery!’

‘No!’ Miranda put a shocked hand to her mouth. ‘No, that’s not true! Mark, I swear to you—’

‘What do you swear?’ he taunted, swaying a little as he spoke, and she realised to her dismay that already he had drunk more than was good for him. ‘That you weren’t attracted to him? That you didn’t spend the whole of the last dance gazing up at him, moon-faced? That you haven’t been missing for a quarter of an hour since the dance ended?’

‘I felt faint—’ she began desperately, and Mark nodded vigorously.

‘I bet you did,’ he muttered. ‘And to think I thought you were saving yourself for me!’

Miranda looked about them despairingly. Reason told her that Mark didn’t mean all the things he was saying, but that didn’t make them any the less painful. Painful too was the realisation that he might be right about his cousin, and that hurt most of all. If she could only get him out of here, away from all these people, she might to able to convince him he was wrong.

‘Mark, we have to talk,’ she said, in a low forceful tone. ‘Now—do you want it to be here, where everyone can see us? Hear us?’

Mark looked at her suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, Mark!’ She stared at him appealingly. ‘Can’t you see? You’re reacting exactly how they want you to react! I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t you believe me?’

Even as she said the words, she wondered if she was being strictly honest. But this was a dirty game she was involved in, and she had to use the cards as they were played to her. Her own reactions to Jaime Knevett she would take out and examine at some other time, but right now she had to make Mark understand how he was being manipulated.

Mark was breathing heavily, the amount of alcohol he had consumed befuddling his brain, making it difficult for him to think clearly. He wanted to believe her. He had never cared for any girl the way he cared for her. In fact, girls had never figured too prominently in his life until she came along. He had much preferred fast cars and horse racing, and the company of his friends. But he was tired of those pursuits, and it had been a novelty taking out someone of whom he knew his mother disapproved. She had always chosen his friends for him, but he was sick and tired of that arrangement. Miranda had been a heaven-sent opportunity, a chance to escape from his mother’s cloying possessiveness.

‘All right,’ he said heavily. ‘Let’s go to the car. We can talk there.’

Miranda would have chosen anywhere but there, but she had no choice in the matter. So long as Mark was prepared to talk, there was a chance she could persuade him he was wrong. And unless she wanted the break-up of their engagement, and the subsequent gossip that would arouse, she had to go along with him.

It was cold outside. Avoiding the main corridors of the hotel meant leaving her cloak behind, and Miranda was shivering when they climbed into the sports car. She had seen Mark’s mother watching them as they left the ballroom, and the look on her face had confirmed Miranda’s worst fears. Lady Sanders would not give up while there was still a chance she might be able to split them up.

Mark put his keys in the ignition and started the car, and Miranda looked at him in consternation. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Car’s cold,’ he said. ‘We’ll warm up the engine, then we’ll talk.’

‘But Mark …’

She bit into her lower lip anxiously, and he gave her a derisive stare. ‘What’s the matter? Think I’m too drunk to drive or something?’

She sighed. ‘Frankly, yes.’

Mark shook his head. ‘You worry too much. I know exactly what I’m doing.’

Miranda wished she could be sure. Staring out of the frosted window, she wondered where Lady Sanders thought they had gone. Perhaps she would send Jaime to look for them. Jaime! Miranda’s lips tightened. How she would like to see him humiliated just once in his life!

Mark had stopped at the traffic lights and was looking at her in the light cast by the street lamps. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, as if he had just realised the fact, and she forced a faint smile although her lips felt stiff and unresponsive.

Then the lights changed and they were moving again, faster now as the outskirts of the town were left behind them, and the open road invited greater speed. Miranda fastened the safety belt and gripped the seat tightly with her fingers. She would not ask him to slow down, she told herself fiercely. If he killed them both now, she would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that Lady Sanders had not won. She felt curiously fatalistic, and it was almost a shock to see the lights of the village ahead of them and to know that they had arrived safely.

‘Wh-where are we going?’ she ventured, speaking for the first time when he drove past the turning to the Hall, and he heaved a half regretful sigh.

‘You’ll see,’ he said, and slowed to a standstill before the cottage he had bought for her mother.

Miranda caught her breath. ‘Here?’

‘Why not? It’s mine, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘The decorators have been here all day. The place is bound to be warm. It’s as good a place as any to talk, isn’t it?’

Miranda made no reply, and he thrust open his door and climbed out. As she joined him, she wondered how many pairs of curtains twitched as their owners espied the visitors to the cottage, and she cringed at the thought of her mother being regaled with the information.

Inside, as he had said, it was warm, and there was the pungent odour of new paint. Central heating had been installed, and the radiators still retained an atom of heat. But it was the gas fire in the living room which really dispelled the draughts, and illuminated the shadowy corners of the room. Mark had not put on the light as there were no curtains as yet at the windows, but the firelight was enough.

Two planks were fixed horizontally between two pairs of steps and the painters had spread the planks with an old piece of carpeting they had found to make a seat. Mark sat down on the planks and beckoned to Miranda to join him. She looked doubtfully at her cream gown and then at the grubby carpeting. Obviously it would stain, but if Mark was prepared to risk it, so must she.

‘So,’ he said, turning sideways to look at her. ‘Here we are.’

‘Yes.’ She sought about desperately for some way to begin this. ‘Mark, I want you to know—’

She broke off suddenly when he leaned towards her and pressed his lips to the side of her neck. It was a totally unexpected caress, and her tension melted.

‘You—believe me?’ she breathed.

‘Let’s say I’m prepared to be persuaded,’ he responded, his voice thickening somewhat. ‘You can tell me first what you were doing with that half-breed cousin of mine!’

Miranda caught her breath. ‘Mark! Don’t say things like that.’

‘Why not? It’s true.’ His lower lip jutted aggressively. ‘Is that why you found him so attractive? They say women like that sort of thing!’

Miranda sighed. ‘Mark! I’ve told you what happened. I felt faint and—and Mr Knevett suggested I stepped outside for a few minutes, that’s all.’

‘All?’ Mark’s lips curled even as his fingers probed the nape of her neck before sliding down to linger suggestively on the swelling mounds of her breasts. ‘And what did you do while you were—outside?’

‘Nothing!’ Miranda’s unease returned in full measure. ‘What do you think we did? What could we do?’

‘I could think of a lot of things,’ replied Mark with a sneer. ‘This, for instance,’ and he slid his hand inside the neckline of her gown to cup the rounded softness of her breast.

Miranda froze. His hand inside her gown aroused nothing but a feeling of distaste inside her, and the derisive twisting of his mouth revealed that he was aware of her revulsion.

‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded, leaning towards her. ‘Don’t you like me to touch you? Don’t you want me to see how desirable you are?’

‘Mark, this has gone far enough—’

‘No, damn you, it hasn’t,’ he snapped violently. ‘Not half far enough!’

With a muffled exclamation his arms were around her, forcing her back on the planks until her shoulder blades were digging painfully into the wood. Then he threw himself upon her, his lips wet and slippery against the shrinking coldness of her flesh.

Miranda was so shocked that for minutes she could do nothing but lie there. Then, as his intentions became clear to her, she began to struggle desperately, digging her nails into his arms, fighting in any way she could to escape his revolting caresses. He was no longer the gentle man she had imagined him to be, but a drink-crazed beast who cared for nothing but his own sexual appeasement.

And she was no match for him. Slender though he was, he had no difficulty in overcoming her frantic efforts to evade him, and tears were streaming down her face when she heard his groan of defeat. Not understanding, she was too shocked and shaking to move when he rolled off her, buttoning his clothes and muttering to himself in tones of distress.

Blinking, hardly capable of coherent thought, she propped herself up on one elbow, staring at him through the wild disorder of her hair. Holding the bodice of her gown together with trembling fingers, she thought at first he had come to his senses, but the ravaged face he turned to her disabused her of that fact.

‘M-Mark!’ she got out unsteadily, but his face just contorted more savagely.

‘Don’t speak to me!’ He spat the words at her. ‘Don’t speak to me!’

Miranda pushed back her hair with an unsteady hand and got to her feet. ‘Mark, you’re drunk—’

‘Drunk, am I?’ He lurched a step towards her, and then shaking his head, he stared broodingly down at the floor.

‘Drunk! Huh, that’s a laugh! God, I wish I was!’

Miranda was trying to understand what he was saying, but her mind wouldn’t work very well. Yet common sense told her that something had happened to bring Mark to his senses, and she desperately wanted to find some good in this awful mess.

‘Mark, you’ll feel better in the morning—’

‘Will I? Will I?’ He glared at her. ‘What do you know about it? What do you know about anything?’ His breathing had quickened again, and as she watched him she saw to her astonishment that there were tears in his eyes.

It was a revealing moment, and compassion swept over her, dispelling the revulsion she had felt for him. ‘Mark, let me help you—’

‘You! Help me?’ His laugh was bitter. ‘I don’t need your help. I don’t want you. I don’t need you. I never did. Don’t you understand, I don’t need anyone!’ And with a muttered oath he flung himself across the room and out the door.

Miranda stared after him blankly, not immediately comprehending the import of what he was saying. But suddenly she knew, suddenly she guessed why he had not finished what he had started. He couldn’t! That was what was eating him up. He couldn’t love anyone.

She turned back to the fire, her hands pressed to her mouth, and as she did so she heard the sound of the sports car starting up outside. With a cry, she turned and darted to the door. He couldn’t go! He couldn’t leave her here like this, without even a coat to cover her torn gown.

But he had. The tail lights of the sports car were already disappearing into the light mist which had fallen when she reached the door, and she stood there watching them until they disappeared from sight. Then she turned and went back into the cottage.

There was no phone, so she could not even ring her mother to ask someone to come and get her. But equally, she could not spend the night here. Apart from anything else, her mother would worry about her, and besides, she wanted to get home, to close the door of her own room and shake away the horrifying implications of the night’s revelations.

She turned out the gas fire, and running combing hands through her hair, walked to the door. The freezing air made her hesitate, and on impulse she went back and gathered up the piece of carpeting to hold like a cloak about her shoulders. Her dress was light, and therefore noticeable, but she couldn’t help that. It was a quarter of a mile to the turn off to the Hall, and another half to the Hall itself.

Miranda had scarcely gone two hundred yards, however, when the headlights of a car picked her up, and she bent her head in agony, praying it was no one she knew. The village attracted a fair number of evening commuters to its two public houses, and it was after closing time.

The car slowed, but she hurried on determinedly, aware of the dangers of a casual pick-up, but when a window was rolled down and a harsh voice said: ‘Miranda!’ she was forced to turn and look.

The car, a red Daimler, was familiar to her. It belonged to Lady Sanders. But Mark’s mother was not driving, she was not even in the car. Jaime Knevett was behind the wheel.

His raking gaze swept her dishevelled appearance, and even in the shadowed street lights she knew she must present a ragged figure. She was reminded of that other occasion when he had seen her torn and bedraggled, and she thought with a rising sense of fury that indirectly he was again the cause of her distress.

‘Get in!’ he said, but she just returned his stare, determined not to be beholden to him for anything. ‘I said—get in!’ he repeated forcefully, and telling herself it was because she was cold and the Hall was still a good distance away and not anything to do with the bleak fury in his eyes, she complied. Gathering her mist-dampened skirts about her, she huddled into the seat beside him, and he leant across her to slam the door with controlled violence.

‘Now,’ he said, his profile hard in the gloomy light, ‘what in God’s name has been going on?’

Miranda cast him a sidelong glance. ‘I’d like to go home,’ she said pointedly, but he ignored her, tossing the disreputable piece of carpet into the back and shrugging out of his own jacket to wrap it about her shoulders. Miranda wanted to protest that she needed nothing from him, but the jacket was so blessedly warm and soft after the scrubby pile of the carpeting that she gave in without argument.

‘If we have to stay here all night, you’re going to tell me where you’ve been,’ he intoned grimly, and she had the feeling he meant it.

‘Don’t you know?’ she demanded, drawing an unsteady breath. ‘Or didn’t your imagination stretch that far?’

‘What do you mean?’

Miranda’s composure was slipping. She didn’t want to sit here discussing what had happened with him. It was still too raw, too vulnerable, and to consider breaking down in front of him was too frightful to be borne.

‘Please,’ she said tremulously, ‘I want to go home. Can’t you restrain your curiosity until the morning? I’m sure Mark will be only too happy to regale you with the details!’

‘Mark?’ His heavy black brows drew together. ‘Mark is responsible for—this?’

His fingers flicked the tangled strands of hair that clung to the mohair of his jacket, but she flinched away from his touch with the nervous mobility of fear. Immediately his eyes narrowed, and uncaring of prying eyes, he switched on the interior light and saw what the masking shadows had concealed. Miranda’s face was pale and haunted, and there were bruises around her throat, just visible above the encompassing shoulders of his jacket. Wordlessly, he tugged the jacket out of her resisting grasp and spread the lapels to reveal the scratches on her arms, and the torn material of the bodice of her dress. Miranda spread her arms crosswise over her breasts, but she had the feeling he was not seeing her as a woman at all, but as the victim of some sexual attack.

With a savage oath, he wrapped the jacket around her again and switched out the light. Then he drew several deep breaths before saying quite calmly: ‘I’ll kill him!’

‘No!’ Somehow from the depths of her being, Miranda managed to articulate the words. ‘It’s not what you think. He … didn’t. That is … he tried to, but … he didn’t.’

Jaime rested his forehead against the steering wheel. ‘Where is he now?’

Miranda shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You mean he just left you? He put you out of the car …’

‘Oh, no, no!’ Miranda had never felt so weary in her life. ‘We … went to the cottage. Mark … he bought my mother a cottage, you see. Back there.’ She gestured feebly. ‘We went there.’

‘But he left you?’

‘Yes.’ She gulped despairingly. ‘Can I go home now?’

He straightened, flexing his shoulders. ‘In a moment. There’s one more thing.’

‘What?’

‘Why did you assume that I might know what had been going on?’

Miranda sighed. ‘Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you didn’t.’

Jaime’s mouth was a thin line. ‘Nevertheless, I think I deserve an explanation.’

‘Oh, can’t it wait?’

‘No.’

Miranda shifted restlessly. ‘Why should I give you explanations? You’re on their side, not mine.’

‘I am not on any side,’ he declared coldly. ‘And what is all this talk of sides? You’re marrying Mark, aren’t you? You’ll marry him anyway, whatever he’s done.’

Miranda gasped at the callousness in his voice. ‘Why should you assume that?’ she demanded, but he merely shook his head.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he said, starting the motor. ‘Perhaps we’ll find your fiancé is there, waiting to make amends.’

But Mark was not at the Hall. Only Lady Sanders awaited them, pacing impatiently about the polished floor, and gasping in horror when she saw Miranda’s dishevelled appearance. Miranda had not wanted to confront her future mother-in-law like this. She had wanted to slip round the side of the building and let herself in through the kitchen as she had always done. But Jaime’s hard fingers around her wrist had prevented this, and her strength was too depleted to put up much of a struggle.

‘My God, what’s happened!’ Lady Sanders grasped her shoulder, and then dropped her hand aghast when Miranda winced painfully. ‘There’s been an accident, hasn’t there?’ Her eyes lifted to her nephew’s face. ‘Jaime … tell me! Tell me! Where’s Mark?’

Unhurriedly, Jaime unfastened the studs at his wrists, and folded back his cuffs. ‘I thought you might know that, Aunt Lydia,’ he remarked levelly. ‘I haven’t seen him.’

‘You haven’t? But …’ Lady Sanders gestured towards Miranda. ‘Then how …’ She broke off to moisten her upper lip with her tongue. ‘Miranda! Where is my son?’

Miranda wished the floor would open up and swallow her. She had had just about enough, and she swayed on to her heels. ‘Mark … Mark left me at the cottage,’ she was beginning, when Jaime interrupted her.

‘Don’t you want to know how Miranda got into this condition?’ he inquired, the mildness of his tone belying the glitter of his eyes, but Lady Sanders was in no state to look for hidden meanings.

‘I … well, of course,’ she said agitatedly. ‘If it has any bearing on the matter.’

‘Oh, it has bearing on the matter,’ retorted Jaime tautly. ‘Believe me!’

At last, his aunt seemed to gauge the tenor of his mood, and took a moment to give him her full attention. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What happened?’

Jaime’s nostrils flared. ‘Your son did this,’ he said coldly. ‘Your son attempted to rape his own fiancée! Now why do you suppose he did that?’

Lady Sanders gasped, one hand going automatically to her throat. ‘You can’t be serious!’

‘Oh, but I am,’ declared Jaime heavily, and Miranda felt Lady Sanders’ eyes going over her with almost tangible distaste.

‘How do you know?’ Mark’s mother countered swiftly. ‘Who told you that? You said you hadn’t seen Mark.’

‘Miranda told me—’

‘Oh, please …’ Miranda began to protest again, but they both ignored her.

‘So you’d take her word against the word of my son,’ Lady Sanders was saying now, and Jaime swore violently.

‘We don’t have any word but Miranda’s,’ he retorted. ‘But you don’t imagine she did this to herself, do you?’ and with forceful fingers he plucked his jacket from her shoulders.

It was like a scene from some Victorian melodrama, thought Miranda, an hysterical sob rising in her throat. Behold, the villain’s perfidy! Will wicked Sir Jasper win the day? The difficulty was in deciding who was the wicked Sir Jasper. Was it Mark, the victim of his own inadequacies? Or was it Lady Sanders, whose overriding ambition for her son blinded her to his faults? Or could it possibly be Jaime Knevett, whose motives were as enigmatic as he was? Miranda was too tired to figure it out.

Lady Sanders plucked with nervous fingers at the diamond necklace circling her throat. ‘That still doesn’t explain where Mark has gone, does it? What was this Miranda said about the cottage?’

‘We went to the cottage,’ said Miranda dully. ‘My mother’s cottage. There—there was a scene. Mark left. Afterwards, Mr Knevett found me walking back to the Hall.’

‘How convenient!’ Lady Sanders’ voice was taut with malice, but her nephew intervened.

‘Convenient?’ he asked. ‘Convenient for whom?’

‘Oh, Jaime!’ Lady Sanders waved away his questioning. ‘Don’t get involved in all this.’

‘But I am involved,’ he insisted harshly. ‘However, I do believe no useful purpose is being served by standing here arguing about it. I suggest we allow Miranda to go to bed. She looks—exhausted. We can talk again in the morning.’

‘But what about Mark?’ cried Lady Sanders, aghast. ‘Aren’t you going to look for him?’

‘If you want me to, of course I will,’ he replied gravely. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll escort Miranda to her part of the house.’

‘That’s not necessary—’ Miranda began, but he ignored her, dropping his coat about her shoulders again and urging her forward with his hand in the small of her back.

Miranda was glad to escape from the accusation in Mark’s mother’s eyes. It had been a long evening, a strange evening, and one she never hoped to repeat. But it wasn’t over yet.

Jaime opened the door and accompanied her along the corridor towards the kitchens. But Miranda halted so far along, and turning to him said stiffly: ‘There’s really no need to come any further. I shall be quite all right now.’

In the dim illumination of wall-lights, his face was curiously shadowed, giving it an almost malevolent cast. His eyes seemed deeper set, heavy-lidded, the flaring hollows of his nostrils expelling the heat of his body upon her. She felt suddenly uneasy, apprehensive of the future and she could not dismiss her fears as fancies. She had the overpowering conviction that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

‘Will your mother be up?’ he asked now, and she shivered to dispel the chill that had wrapped itself about her.

‘Perhaps,’ she answered. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Will you explain?’

Miranda bent her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

She heard his harsh intake of breath. ‘You should,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps your mother can bring you to your senses!’

Her head jerked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you know.’ His eyes were cold, glittering black diamonds in the muted light. ‘You can’t marry Mark now. Not after what’s happened. Not considering what might be to come. I don’t think even becoming mistress of the Hall is worth that, do you, Miranda?’

She gasped. ‘You think I’m marrying him for his money?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No!’

‘Oh, come on. You’re not telling me you love that little punk! After what’s happened?’

Miranda’s breasts rose and fell in her agitation, and her fingers holding his jacket in place trembled. She wanted to tear it off and throw it at his feet and trample on it, but the desire to retain her dignity was stronger.

‘You’re his cousin!’ she declared. ‘How can you speak of him like that?’

Jaime’s mouth curled. ‘Our relationship is remote, thank God! Do you think I want to be associated with someone who does this?’

Miranda’s breathing was harsh. ‘He—he didn’t mean it.’ If he did, she didn’t want to admit it. ‘He was drunk—enraged! His mother saw to that.’

‘You’re making excuses for him,’ exclaimed Jaime contemptuously. ‘My God! You’re just like her, aren’t you? His mother! She’s made excuses for him all his life! Well, I wish you well of each other. You deserve everything you get!’

Miranda didn’t know why, but she wanted to crumple up and die. She despised Mark, she didn’t love him. And she despised herself for defending him. But she hated Jaime for making her see herself for what she was.

He was turning away from her in disgust when a low groan reached them. It seemed to come from the kitchen, and with a cry Miranda whirled around and sped along the remaining length of the corridor to where a light was filtering through a crack in the kitchen door. She burst into the room with Jaime right behind her, and then stopped dead at the sight that greeted her stunned eyes.

Her mother was lying on the floor in front of the fire. Mercifully, she had not fallen into the flames, but the flags beneath the polythene tiles were hard and at first Miranda thought she had knocked herself unconscious. But then she saw how one side of her mother’s face had twisted, and spittle was dribbling out of the corner of her mouth.

The sound Miranda made was a kind of choking gulp in her throat, and then Jaime cannoned into her, unable to prevent himself when she stopped so abruptly. The hard warmth of his body dispelled her momentary paralysis, and on shaking legs she moved across the room to kneel down beside Mrs Gresham. But Jaime was there before her, brushing past her and bending to his knees, taking her mother’s wrist between his fingers, probing the rolling sockets of her eyes for any sign of life.

At first Miranda wanted to protest, but then she remembered that he had told her he was a doctor, and she sat back on her heels, staring at him mutely, beseeching him to tell her what was wrong.

‘It looks like a stroke,’ he was saying grimly, when the door behind them burst open again to admit Lady Sanders. But not the Lady Sanders they had left in the hall. This woman was wild-eyed and tearful, lips quivering, hands trembling, a shaking mass of desperation. Grief-stricken fingers tore her handkerchief to shreds, as she cried: ‘Jaime! Jaime! Where are you? Oh, God, Jaime, it’s Mark! Mark! A policeman’s just been to the door. He’s dead, Jaime, he’s dead! Oh, God, what am I going to do?’

She held out her hands towards him, but Miranda who, like Jaime, had got to her feet as Lady Sanders entered the room, reached him first as she sank into a dead faint for the first time in her life.

CHAPTER THREE

IT RAINED on the day of the funeral, exactly a week before Miranda had expected to become the new Lady Sanders. The guests who had been invited for the wedding all arrived for the funeral, as if not to be done out of a celebration of one kind or another, Miranda thought ghoulishly, numb with more than the realisation that her future which she had thought so secure was suddenly so uncertain again. Her mother was in hospital, unable to speak, paralysed by the stroke which had stricken her almost in the same moment that Mark’s car had crashed through the tollbridge into the river. The dual tragedy had shaken them all in different ways, and Miranda was guiltily aware that her mother’s illness had relieved her of the necessity to display a grief she could not feel. The mourners saw a pale shadow of the girl she had been on the night of the Rotary Club Ball, and made their own assessment of her feelings. They could not know that all her sorrow was for her mother, alone and lonely on her hour of need. Only Jaime, who thought he knew her so much better than anyone else, looked beneath the façade she was presenting and drew his own conclusions.

Lady Sanders had taken it badly, so badly that Miranda could not help but feel sorry for her. After all, she had lost her husband so early in her life, and now her only son. No one could fail to pity her. Strangely, during the past few days, Miranda had felt closer to her than at any other time in her life.

Miranda rode back to the hall in the black Rolls that had followed the hearse to its final resting place. Lady Sanders was with her as, too, was Jaime, the somberness of his clothes accentuating the darkness of his skin. Miranda had worn black as well, unaware of how becoming the dark colours were to her, or of how the burnished glory of her hair stood out against the stark austerity of the graveyard.

A cold buffet had been laid in the dining room, and the guests who had accompanied them back to the house helped themselves to canapés and vol-au-vents and slices of homecured ham. Miranda endeavoured to accept everyone’s condolences with composure, but she was well aware that to most of these people present she had become somewhat of an embarrassment. She did not fit in here, and now she never would.

Sipping a glass of sherry, she tried to assimilate her situation. What was she going to do now? Her mother’s illness had curtailed her working life, and no doubt once she had recovered herself, Lady Sanders would require a new housekeeper. So where did that leave Miranda, or her mother? They had no home, nothing, and the salary she was paid by the council authorities would not stretch to buying a house. She thought of the cottage in the village. Perhaps Lady Sanders would allow them to rent that. It was of no use to her.

Miranda moved towards the buffet tables. Lady Sanders was there, talking to Canon Bridgenorth. Dared she take this opportunity to speak to her? If she didn’t, when might she get the chance again?

A solid object stepped into her path, and about to apologise and step aside, she looked up into Jaime’s hard features. They had said little to one another since the night of the accident, but now he put out a hand to detain her when she would have passed by.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he said, in a low voice.

Miranda glanced apprehensively about her. ‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ He tucked his thumbs into the waistcoat pockets of his dark grey suede suit. ‘Now we can do it here, or we can go into the library. As you wish.’

Miranda’s cool eyes challenged him. ‘I don’t think we should leave the room again, do you?’

He returned her stare narrowly. ‘I see. Perhaps you consider I was to blame for what happened with Mark.’

She gasped. ‘I didn’t say that!’

‘You didn’t have to.’ He paused. ‘But as a matter of fact, you’re wrong. In one of her—how shall I put it?—more emotional moods, my aunt confessed to—er—encouraging Mark to think the worst, you understand?’

Miranda took an unsteady breath. ‘I have only your word for that.’

‘And I’m afraid that’s all you’re likely to get,’ he remarked brusquely. ‘I do not anticipate my aunt ever repeating such an allegation.’

Miranda looked away from the almost hypnotic brilliance of those dark eyes. ‘So! I can’t think what we have to say to one another.’

‘No?’ Dark brows quirked. ‘You have made arrangements for your future?’

Miranda’s eyes widened. ‘What has that to do with you?’

‘Come into the library, and I’ll tell you.’

Miranda sighed. ‘I have to—circulate. Besides, I want to speak to Lady Sanders.’

‘Oh? Why?’

She gasped. ‘Mind your own business!’

‘Perhaps it is my business.’

She was amazed at his audacity. ‘It couldn’t possibly be,’ she declared shortly. ‘Now, please—you must excuse me.’

‘One thing more …’ he added.

‘What is it?’

‘Whatever happens, will you promise to let me know what your plans are?’

Miranda made an exasperated sound. ‘I can’t see why it matters.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I should have thought you’d be cheering that everything’s gone so sour on me.’

His lashes shaded his eyes. ‘Did you think I wasn’t?’ he parried mockingly, and her cheeks flamed with colour.

‘You—you beast!’

‘Your vocabulary’s sadly lacking,’ he remarked dryly. ‘There are far more suitable epithets than that.’

‘And you know them all, I suppose?’

‘A fair number,’ he agreed, and with a tightening of her facial muscles she left him.

Canon Bridgenorth attempted a sympathetic smile when Miranda appeared. She wondered if she was being uncharitable in supposing that of all of them there, he had had the most experience at hiding his feelings, and perhaps that was why he could look at her without either satisfaction or envy.

‘Dear Miss Gresham,’ he said, patting her sleeve with his plump white hand. ‘So sad, so sad! I’ve just been telling Lady Sanders you must both summon all your strength for the week ahead. The week which should have been such a happy one for both of you.’

Miranda’s gaze flickered over the older woman’s lined face. ‘I expect we’ll find plenty to do,’ she said quietly.

‘Ah, yes.’ Canon Bridgenorth shook his head. ‘All the presents to return.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll do whatever I can, of course.’

He moved away to speak to his wife, and for a moment Miranda was alone with the woman who was to have been her mother-in-law. It was the moment she had been waiting for, and she could not let it pass.

‘I saw the specialist at the hospital yesterday, Lady Sanders,’ she said, and pale eyes were turned in her direction.

‘Indeed? And what did he say?’

There was a chilling lack of feeling behind the question, and Miranda guessed that it was a perfunctory inquiry and no more. A tragic state of affairs considering her mother had worked at the Hall for over twelve years. But she had to go on, for her mother’s sake.

‘He said—it’s doubtful that she will ever walk again.’

Lady Sanders’ lips twitched. ‘I see.’

Miranda licked her own lips that were suddenly dry. ‘You understand what I’m trying to say?’

‘Perfectly.’ Lady Sanders was in complete control of herself. ‘Your mother will not be able to continue here as housekeeper.’

‘No.’ Miranda inclined her head. ‘Of course, she wasn’t going to anyway, after—after—’

‘After the wedding, you mean?’ Lady Sanders said it without emotion. ‘No. But now there is to be no wedding.’

Miranda wished she would make it easier for her. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she murmured, ‘that was what I wanted to talk to you about.’

Lady Sanders frowned. ‘Indeed? Why, pray?’

‘The cottage …’ Miranda hated having to beg. ‘The cottage at Blind Lane: I wondered whether we might—rent it from you.’

‘From me?’ Lady Sanders’ mouth tightened. ‘From me!’ She gave a mirthless little laugh. ‘My dear girl, you’re wasting your time speaking to me. I don’t own the cottage at Blind Lane. The estate is entailed, didn’t you know? To the eldest male heir.’

Miranda stared at her aghast. ‘No! No, I didn’t know.’

Lady Sanders sniffed, taking out her handkerchief and blowing her nose. ‘Why should you? I never thought—no one ever expected—’ She broke off as emotion threatened once more. ‘The home farm is mine, except that it’s tenanted, of course. But this house—and its contents—the estate, the land, everything, belongs to my husband’s family.’

‘But what will you do?’ For a moment, Miranda forgot about her own troubles.

Lady Sanders shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I expect I’ll be given time—to decide.’

The appearance of Elias Bell, the Sanders’ solicitor, curtailed their conversation, and Miranda moved politely away, aware that in estate matters and death duties she had no part.

So, she thought bleakly, she and her mother were not the only ones to lose their home. The old order changeth, with a vengeance.

She wandered out into the hall, looking up the carved staircase to the balustered gallery that curved round the well of the hall. To think she had been within an inch of being mistress here! She might have occupied the master suite, and descended those stairs every evening for dinner. She might have had servants to fetch and carry for her, and been invited to all the county functions. Countess Sanders—the housekeeper’s daughter. Of course, she would have had to accept other responsibilities, too, not least the commitment to let Mark into her bedroom every night. That was not so easy to contemplate, and she determinedly thrust away the memory of the last time she had seen him …

‘Reflecting on what might have been?’ a lazy voice drawled behind her, and she spun round resentfully to face her tormentor.

‘Would it do any good to deny it?’ she demanded.

‘It might. But I’d find it very hard to believe. The old place has a lot to commend it.’

Miranda folded her hands round her handbag. ‘I’m surprised you think so. It must be much different from what you’re used to.’

His smile was mocking. ‘Now how am I supposed to take that? Am I to assume you think we live in squalor back home? Or have I simply not the taste to appreciate it?’

Miranda expelled her breath on a sigh. ‘I was merely stating that rural England must be vastly different from—where is it you live? South America? Brazil?’

‘South America will do,’ he returned, his voice noticeably cooler. ‘And yes, of course, it is—vastly different. Geographically at least.’

Miranda wanted to walk away from him, but something held her where she was. She didn’t like the way he could disconcert her without any apparent effort on his part, and although she knew he was only six or seven years her senior, he seemed much older than that. Perhaps it was due to the differences in their ways of life. She guessed that conditions in South American countries were much less civilised than in her own, and the heat and the insects held no appeal for her.

Trying to take the conversation on to a lighter plane, she said: ‘Will you be leaving now? Or will you stay with your aunt until after Christmas?’

‘That rather depends.’ Jaime folded his arms, standing feet apart facing her, his expression impossible to read.

‘Depends?’ Miranda was aware of the quiver in her own tones. ‘On what?’

He pushed his lower lip forward. ‘To quote an earlier conversation—what has that to do with you?’

She coloured deeply, half turning away. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’

Her voice was stiff with embarrassment, but when she would have left him, he stepped forward and caught her arm. ‘Have you spoken to Lady Sanders?’ he asked.

Miranda looked up at him. ‘You know I have.’

‘What did she tell you?’

Miranda pressed her lips together to suppress her indignation. Then she said tautly: ‘She told me the estate is entailed, and that she, like my mother and me, is losing her home.’

‘Is that what she said?’ Jaime’s lips twisted. ‘Those were her very words?’

Miranda tried to pull her arm free, but it was a useless exercise. ‘She might not have said that exactly, but that was what she meant. Why? What has any of this to do with you?’

He let her go then, and she rubbed her sleeve to stimulate the blood circulating through her numbed flesh. ‘Perhaps I feel sorry for you,’ he said provokingly. ‘Or then again, perhaps I don’t.’

Miranda uttered a word under her breath that she would never have voiced, but from his expression she suspected he had heard her. ‘I think you’re despicable! It may have slipped your notice, but I cared for Mark, and now he’s dead! That’s all that matters to me.’

‘Really?’ The scepticism in his voice was denigrating. ‘How touching! Forgive me if I don’t shed a tear!’

‘You don’t care about any of us, do you?’ Miranda said accusingly. ‘You just enjoy making fun of us.’

He ran a probing hand over the fine silk of his tie, and regarded her intently for a moment. Then he said, ‘Would you think I was making fun of you if I asked you to marry me?’

Miranda groped weakly for the newel post at the foot of the staircase. Her fingers curved round the polished ball on its pedestal, and its coolness was like a lifeline in a broiling sea.

‘I see the prospect had not occurred to you,’ he said mildly. ‘And there are certain advantages in the element of surprise.’

Miranda gathered herself and stared at him resentfully, half suspecting that this was yet another attempt to humiliate her. ‘You’re not serious, of course!’

‘Why not?’ His mouth thinned. ‘Is it such a distasteful proposition?’

Now was her chance, and Miranda seized it with both hands. ‘Frankly, yes,’ she declared coldly. ‘I think you must be quite mad to consider it!’

She had not really thought that she could arouse him, but she was wrong. Before her half fearful gaze, she saw the sudden tautening of the skin across his cheekbones, the aggressive tightening of his jaw, and the diamond-hard congealing of his eyes. The temperature in the hall lowered a terrifying number of degrees, and she knew she had been right to be apprehensive of this man.

‘Very well,’ he said now, and she was almost shocked at the lack of emotion in his voice. ‘But you’ll remember what I said.’ And he walked away.

Miranda stood for several minutes in the hall after he had gone, desperately trying to regain her former composure. But composure would not come, only a devastating conviction that for all her small victory, the war was not yet over.

The guests began to drift away in the late afternoon, and by five o’clock only Miranda, Jaime and Lady Sanders, and the caterers she had hired for the occasion, were left in the echoing mansion. Avoiding Jaime’s eyes was becoming increasingly more difficult, and Miranda excused herself on the pretext of checking that the hired staff knew where to put everything. The kitchen was her domain, she told herself bitterly, refusing to contemplate what her lot might have been had she accepted Jaime Knevett’s offer. She had no idea why he should have made such an outrageous suggestion, but in any case, marrying him was out of the question. Apart from anything else, she could not consider leaving the country with her mother a helpless invalid in some National Health establishment. Besides, she had no desire to marry him, or anyone else for that matter. It was all rather unreal and insubstantial, part and parcel of the unreality of these last days.

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