Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

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

Copyright

“I knew it was a mistaketaking her on here,Nicholas.”

Lady Jessica’s voice was filled with malevolence as she continued. “In fact, it was a huge mistake bringing her down to London in the first place.”

Leigh’s body was shaking with anger, but her feet remained glued to the spot.

“She’s a cheap gold digger—we both know that.” Lady Jessica went on. “And worse, she’s going to try and get her claws into you.”

There was deep laughter, then Lady Jessica’s voice returned with increased anger. “You might laugh, but…” Her voice lowered, and Leigh turned away quickly, feeling sick.

CATHY WILLIAMS is Trinidadian and was brought up on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She was awarded a scholarship to study in Britain, and came to Exeter University in 1975 to continue her studies into the great loves of her life: languages and literature. It was there that Cathy met her husband, Richard. Since they married, Cathy has lived in England, originally in the Thames Valley but now in the Midlands. Cathy and Richard have three small daughters.

Naive Awakening
Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

ALL the anger was returning. It had been simmering away for the past two months, but now, here, outside the court, it erupted once again and Leigh felt all that rage rush to her head, making her momentarily giddy.

She squinted against the sun, the first they had had in that part of Yorkshire since summertime was officially declared four weeks ago, and sprinted the last few yards up to the stone stairs outside the local magistrates’ court.

She had a very nice, biting little speech rehearsed in her head, which she was going to give her brother Freddie as soon as this dreadful affair was over and she had him to herself, on a one-to-one basis, and preferably somewhere enclosed so that all escape outlets were barred.

No, she would not be letting him get away with this, not in a hurry, maybe not ever. She had every intention of throwing it in his face every single time he so much as had a wayward thought. If he thought time had mellowed her attitude, then he was in for a shock.

Inside the stone building was chilly after the warmth outside, and she looked around dubiously, not quite sure where to go. Out of the corner of her eye she could see two officials looking at her, probably, she thought sourly, assuming that she was a criminal of some kind. After all, weren’t criminals the only ones who set foot into places like these? The groups of people around her, standing about or walking towards one of the doors, looked normal enough, but who knew what they were there for? It could be anything.

She was sorely tempted to turn around and walk right back outside, but Freddie was expecting her, and besides it would be a waste of a perfectly good rehearsed speech, because she knew that if she did not do it while she was in this sort of mood, then she probably never would.

She adored her unruly little brother, the only person she had left in the world since their grandfather had died over eight months ago, and experience had taught her that he could charm her out of her most ferocious tempers. He would stare at her with those huge blue eyes, and she would feel her anger fizzling away.

But, she thought with a worried frown, boyish scrapes were quite a different matter from trouble with the law.

This time he had gone too far. He and those undisciplined so-called friends of his with whom he had taken up after their grandfather died. Stealing a car for a joyride was no laughing matter, even though he had only been a passenger in the back seat.

Worse, Sir John Reynolds, a man who had been one of her grandfather’s closest friends, had been contacted by their local solicitor, and had seen fit to send his grandson to defend Freddie, to make sure that his copy-book was not too blemished by this one-off incident.

The humiliation of it all.

She was so engrossed in her thoughts, walking quickly, head bent, in what she assumed was the right direction, that she almost ran straight into her brother.

There-was a tall, dark-haired man at his side, but Leigh didn’t see him at all. She focused all her attention on Freddie, who was beginning to look distinctly wary.

‘Hi, sis,’ he said cautiously.

Leigh stood completely still, her hands planted on her hips, her lips drawn into a narrow, angry line.

‘Well?’ she asked, fighting to be as firm and as unforgiving as she could. ‘What was the outcome?’ She still had not looked in the direction of the man who was standing a few feet away from her brother.

‘Nicholas—Mr Reynolds—managed to persuade the judge hearing the case that it was all a horrible error of judgement. I was reprimanded, but that was all.’ He attempted a reassuring smile which met with no change whatsoever in Leigh’s expression.

She opened her mouth to begin her well-rehearsed lecture, when the man, whose presence she had ignored so far, spoke.

He had a deep voice. The sort of voice that people listened to.

‘Well, well, well,’ he was saying now, in a tone of voice which was infinitely mocking, ‘little Leigh Taylor. I wondered what you would look like after all these years.’

They both turned towards him, Freddie with relief that the heat had been taken away from him, if only temporarily, and Leigh with outrage, as much by the fact that he had thrown her off course as by his tone of voice.

She raised her eyes to his face. Her memories of Nicholas Reynolds had been vague. They had grown up together for a while, been to the same school, albeit in wildly different forms because he was—she tried to think back—at least seven years older than she was. They had even played together, more through necessity than choice. His grandfather had spent a lot of time with hers, before the entire family had moved away from Yorkshire to London to live.

To say that he had grown up would, Leigh now felt, be somehow a huge understatement.

It would not begin to cover how vastly he had changed from the slightly aloof dark-haired little boy. For a start, there was nothing at all boyish about the man standing in front of her at all.

He was tall, powerfully built, with the same dark hair, but straighter now, and flint-grey eyes. The strong features were etched into an expression of polite curiosity as he looked at her.

As if, she thought, flushing, he were inspecting a mildly interesting form of bacteria. True, she had not changed much from her girlhood, still the same copper-coloured hair, the same wide blue eyes, the same stubborn, full mouth. Even so, it made her hackles rise to see that he was staring at her as though she had not changed at all, as though she were still the little girl he used to tease all those years ago.

‘Thank you for defending my brother, Mr Reynolds,’ she offered in a stilted voice. ‘I can’t imagine why our solicitor contacted your grandfather. You needn’t have come this long way for something as trifling as a joyride in a stolen car.’

‘My grandfather,’ he said, and it flashed through Leigh’s head that most barristers would give their eye-teeth to sound like him, ‘was very fond of Jacob. When Jacob died, he told your solicitor to get in touch with him if there was ever anything he could do for you and your brother.’

‘I see,’ she replied, only in fact seeing that it seemed a complete waste of Nicholas Reynolds’s time. She knew, from her grandfather’s occasional comments over the years, that he had excelled in law, and was constantly in demand.

The feeling of humiliation washed over her again. He must think them a couple of country bumpkins, she thought, charity cases. And it was all Freddie’s fault.

‘Anyway,’ she said awkwardly, her neck beginning to ache from craning upwards to look at him, ‘thanks for your help and your time. When are you heading back up to London?’

She knew that she should offer to take him out for a meal, or something, but for some reason she shied away from the invitation. Nicholas Reynolds made her feel uncomfortable. He had always made her feel uncomfortable. Anyway, she just wanted to get that brother of hers back to their small house where she could corner him.

She would somehow have to drill it into his head that this brush with the law would be the first and only one, that she was deeply worried by her private thoughts that trifling matters such as those often led to more serious offences. She had a lot on her mind, and none of it involved the unwanted arrival of this city barrister with his aristocratic good looks and persuasive voice.

She refocused her attention on to Freddie, only to find herself again cut off before she could utter a word.

‘Shall we discuss all this over coffee?’ Nicholas said, in a voice that implied she had no choice in the matter, his hand on her elbow as he guided her towards the double doors.

Leigh felt his fingers on her bare flesh with a disconcerting prickle of heat, and drew her arm away.

‘I’d love to,’ she lied effusively, ‘but I want to get Freddie back home.’

‘Why?’

The question threw her because she had expected him to nod, say goodbye and leave the way he came. He was altogether too self-assured, too sophisticated, and too damned good-looking for her liking. Also the way he had stared at her when he’d first spoken to her, and said that he had wondered how she had turned out, still rankled. The lazy drawl had, for no reason at all, made her feel defensive, made her feel, for heaven’s sake, like the gauche schoolgirl she had been all those years ago.

‘Because,’ she said patiently, ‘we have a few things to discuss. Or rather I have a few things to say to him.’ She shot Freddie a look that spoke volumes. ‘Besides, I wouldn’t want to detain you. I know that you’ve got better things to do with your time.’

‘On the contrary. I haven’t been back up this way for years. In fact, since the family left. It would be interesting to see how things have changed. And apart from that there are one or two things we need to talk about.’ Again that hard, inflexible tone that made her uneasy. What was there to discuss?

He pushed open the door, and stood back, allowing her to walk past him, which she did, very quickly.

She didn’t want him to think that she was nervous of him, but she was. Life in the fast lane had given him a cool edge of savoir faire which she was finding disconcerting.

She was not accustomed to men like him. She had grown up in a village where the people were simple, but friendly. They spoke their minds, and you always knew where you were with them.

Leigh had a feeling that Nicholas was the sort of man who only spoke his mind if it suited him. There was something watchful about him, watchful and controlled.

Next to her Freddie began babbling about inviting Nicholas back to the house, and Leigh turned to him and said sharply, ‘Shut up.’ She knew exactly why her younger brother was so keen on showing this virtual stranger all the delights of their little village. It was called buying time, and she was having none of it.

‘I think your brother’s right,’ Nicholas said smoothly. He smiled at her, a charming smile that could not quite hide the fact that he somehow disapproved of the situation in which he had found himself, and Leigh frowned.

‘Well, we could head back to the village and have coffee there,’ she said grudgingly, hearing her brother expel a long sigh of relief. ‘Did you drive up here?’

Nicholas nodded. ‘I’ll follow you, shall I? My car’s just there.’ He indicated a sleek Jaguar parked across the road, and Leigh thought that it was just the sort of car she would have expected him to drive.

‘I’ll go with Nicholas,’ Freddie piped up, ‘to show him the way.’

‘Don’t think I don’t know what game you’re playing,’ she whispered fiercely under her breath. In a louder voice, she said, ‘Fine.’

Nicholas was looking at them both closely. We’re a species apart as far as he’s concerned, Leigh thought acidly. She looked at him again. Under the merciless rays of the sun, he was even more commanding that he had appeared in the shadowy bowels of the court. His black hair was thick and springy, his eyes shrewd and observant. He was staring back at her, and Leigh refused to be deflated. He was in her part of the world now, and as far as she was concerned she would look at him for just as long as she wanted.

Her eyes travelled the length of him, taking in the lovingly tailored cut of his suit, the likes of which she had never seen before apart from on television, the broad muscularity of his chest, the long, clever fingers, the patent leather shoes.

An expensive city animal, she thought wryly, a predator in the concrete jungle. It was unbelievable that he had ever spent any time at all living in Yorkshire, where the people could be as harsh as the weather.

‘Do you normally subject the men you meet to such careful appraisals?’ he asked.

‘Men like you don’t normally frequent this part of the world,’ she said evenly. ‘You’re a rarity here. Just as we’re a rarity for you. I’m merely subjecting you, as you call it, to the same sort of observation.’

‘Touché.’

‘Shall we go, then?’ Freddie asked, grinning at his sister’s ill humour.

He had stuffed his hands into the pockets of the suit which she had made him buy for the hearing, and in which he looked decidedly uncomfortable, and was hovering in a manner that suggested he had much better things to do than stand around in the baking sun.

What options did she have? Precisely none. Her well-rehearsed speech had flown right out of her head, and she spent the short journey back to the village fuming.

Ever so often she glanced into the rear-view mirror, and the sight of Nicholas behind the steering-wheel made her feel even angrier.

By the time they made it to the village and had parked their cars she had made up her mind to make any social patter over coffee as brief as she possibly could, and if he didn’t like her attitude then he could lump it.

Freddie was looking decidedly more relaxed. He shot her a wheedling smile, and asked whether he could go home.

Leigh looked at him, irritated to find that she was suddenly appalled at the prospect of being alone with Nicholas Reynolds.

‘Why do you want to go home?’ she prevaricated.

‘I have some study to catch up on.’

There was no answer to that one. It was rare enough that Freddie volunteered to study, usually relying on the fact that he was innately bright to get him through exams.

He grinned coyly at Leigh, as though fully aware that he had trapped her into submission.

‘Fine. You can also clean the house,’ she informed him, refusing to be beaten by a cheeky sixteen-year-old, ‘fix the kitchen door and take the dustbins out.’

‘Why do I have to fix the kitchen door? It works all right to me.’

‘It’s falling off its hinges.’

‘It doesn’t matter; I mean, there’s just the two of us, and—’

‘Just fix it, Freddie, or else you can stay put and accompany us to the coffee-shop, and afterwards you can come with me to the shoe shop so that I can get you some new shoes, and then to the barber for a haircut.’

She knew that the new shoes and the haircut would swing the argument in her favour, and it did. Freddie hurried off, promising to fix the kitchen door first thing, after awkwardly thanking Nicholas once again for getting him out of a jam.

‘Jam indeed. I’ll soon straighten him on that score,’ Leigh muttered under her breath. She looked at Nicholas, resisted looking at her watch, and said, ‘Shall we go?’ And get this over with, her tone implied.

‘There’s no rush, you know,’ he said softly, as though reading her mind, but he fell in step with her, and as it turned out she was the one who had to hurry, merely to keep pace with him.

They walked through the village, with Nicholas commenting politely on how little had changed since he was last there.

‘Nothing needs to change,’ Leigh said curtly, ‘we’re perfectly happy with the way things are. We don’t need tall buildings and fast cars, and all the glamorous trappings that go with big city life. We don’t need to barricade ourselves into our houses because we’re scared of people breaking in. We all know each other here…’

‘And that’s the way we like it,’ Nicholas finished for her.

Leigh glanced sharply at him. Was he mocking her or was she just imagining it? His tone of voice had been pleasant enough, but there was something about it that she found disturbing.

Was he implying that she was somehow insular? Not for the first time, she wondered what her life would have been if she had left Yorkshire and gone to one of the bigger cities to live. Leeds, perhaps, even maybe London.

The situation had never arisen, and she had never really engineered it, being perfectly happy to have the rugged, beautiful Yorkshire dales all around her, even though she had sacrificed the opportunity to study art at college. She had settled instead for a safe job at the local library, which she rather enjoyed, and looking after her grandfather, which she had enjoyed rather more.

He had raised them ever since her parents had died in a plane crash when she was a child, and she had never once begrudged taking over the job of caring for him as he became older.

Now this suave outsider, because he was an outsider even though he had spent part of his life here, was beginning to addle her, beginning to make her think of things beyond the Yorkshire boundaries. Made her feel hot and defensive, although she couldn’t quite put a finger on why he should be able to do so.

He was remarking on shops which were still around from his boyhood days, and she said sweetly, ‘You wouldn’t be so amazed at all this if you had made an effort to come back here now and again.’

Nicholas turned to face her. ‘Outspoken, aren’t you?’

‘We all are in this part of the world.’

As though to prove her point, Mrs Evans, the middle-aged lady who ran the post office with her husband, came up to them, and greeted her.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, lass?’ she asked, looking at Nicholas with interest.

‘Nicholas Reynolds,’ Leigh said reluctantly. ‘He came here to help with Freddie.’

‘Oh, yes. He was a bit off the rails, your Freddie, wasn’t he? Jacob would be turning in his grave. Nicholas Reynolds—Reynolds, name rings a bell…’

Nicholas gave her one of his charming smiles.

Leigh, looking at him, was suddenly struck by his attractiveness, his masculinity. He was, she thought with shock, more than simply attractive, he was sexy. What must he think of her? Of course, she couldn’t care less, but even so she must appear a complete peasant to him.

She had dressed informally because of the weather, and was wearing only a summery cotton skirt in shades of blue and purple, and a short-sleeved jersey with buttons down the front. She wore no make-up, and had plaited her waist-length hair into a French braid which hung down her back.

No wonder he had looked disapprovingly at her as though she were a schoolgirl, barely older than sixteen-year-old Freddie, instead of the twenty-three-year-old woman that she was.

He was probably accustomed to a quite different type of woman. Even looking at him, any fool would know that he moved in that rarified world of the wealthy and powerful. The women who inhabited that world were no doubt as sophisticated and urbane as he was, leggy blondes with impeccably made-up faces and smiles that never quite reached their eyes.

Leigh pursed her lips defensively, determined not to try and pretend to be anything other than what she was.

He was chatting amiably to Mrs Evans, and the older woman was responding to his charm with blushing smiles and coy motions of protestation when he told her that he remembered her well from his youth, and that she hadn’t aged a bit.

‘Isn’t he terrible?’ she said, turning to Leigh. ‘Hasn’t he grown up into a fine-looking young man, and such a charmer!’

Leigh hoped that Mrs Evans was not expecting any sort of response to her observations, but just in case she was she said succinctly, ‘He seems pretty much the same to me. Just older. As for his charm, I’m immune to it. I remember too clearly when he used to tease me.’

‘I don’t remember teasing you,’ Nicholas murmured to her, after Mrs Evans had left.

‘You used to derive a great deal of pleasure from pulling my hair.’

‘Well, it doesn’t seem to have done it any harm. It’s still as long and silky as I remember.’

Leigh blushed bright red and told herself to get her act together. He might have some kind of charm, but he could forget it if he thought that he could use it on her. She might be a country girl, but that didn’t mean that she was a gullible idiot.

She led him towards the coffee-shop, waiting impatiently while Mr Baird, who owned it, accosted her in a very similar manner to Mrs Evans. He too regarded Nicholas with undisguised interest, and Leigh fervently hoped that the scrutiny went some way to making him feel out of place. Though, she thought, eyeing him from under her lashes, it didn’t seem to. He seemed as at home with these rugged, kindly people as she herself was.

She childishly thought it wasn’t fair.

‘I’m glad we’re here alone,’ he said, as they waited for their coffee and cakes. Mr Baird’s wife baked all the cakes herself and Leigh could never resist the opportunity of having one. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about, and it’ll be easier without Freddie around.’ Something in his voice made her look at him warily.

‘If you’re going to lecture me about Freddie’s brush with the law,’ she began haughtily, ‘then you might as well forget it. I’m fully aware that what he did was wrong, and, believe it or not, so is he. He’s never done anything like this before, and he won’t again. He’s just gone off the rails a bit since Grandad died. They were very close. You don’t have to tell me that I’m going to need to take a firm hand with him, because that’s exactly what I intend to do. In fact, I’d be doing it now if I weren’t here instead, taking a trip with you down memory lane.’

So there, she implied.

Nicholas leaned back in the small chair, his broad frame looking absurdly out of place on the fragile wooden structure, and watched her impassively.

‘Quite a speech,’ he drawled with infuriating calm, not in the least put out by her insinuation that he was somehow wasting her time, ‘but as a barrister I’ve seen all too well how young boys like Freddie can wind up in gaol, and, believe me, speeches and good intentions can get lost in the wind very easily.’

He looked at her thoughtfully, and when he spoke his voice was polite but hard. ‘I fully appreciate that it must be difficult for you—you’re scarcely out of childhood yourself—but don’t lull yourself into believing that things like this can get swept under the carpet after a strong talking-to.’

Leigh looked at him speechlessly. How dared he waltz into their lives and start preaching to her about Freddie’s upbringing?

‘Are you suggesting that I’m not competent enough to look after my brother?’

‘Did I say that?’

‘Please don’t play these verbal games with me,’ she said, making an effort to modulate her voice.

‘All right,’ he replied smoothly, ‘then let me ask you this; what do you intend to do with him now?’

Leigh frowned and had an uneasy feeling that she was being ushered into a trap. ‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said at last. ‘I intend to give him a sound ticking off, and keep my eye on him to make sure that he doesn’t get into any more trouble. Although, as I said, I think he’s learnt a lesson from this. Freddie’s no fool. I can’t see him doing this sort of thing again in a hurry. He’ll listen to me. He won’t end up in gaol!’

‘You mean, that’s what you hope. Tell me something; did you have any idea that he would be involved in this sort of incident?’

‘Well, I know that he hadn’t exactly been disciplined since Grandad died, but—’

‘And you really think that you can remedy that problem?’

‘Yes, I do!’ Her cheeks were flaming, and she stood up, quite prepared to walk out of the shop and to hell with any need to be grateful and polite.

‘Sit back down,’ he grated, and his words held enough of a command in them for her to reluctantly obey.

‘You can’t tell me how to run my life,’ she muttered mutinously.

‘I don’t need to,’ he said smoothly. ‘The mere fact that I’m here says it all, don’t you agree?’

There was very little that she could say to that, but the sheer logic of what he had just said didn’t stop her from feeling furiously angry. Angry at his arrogance, at his assumption that he could write off all her efforts with her brother without so much as an apology, and particularly angry at the way that he had somehow found precisely the right crack in her armour to render her defenceless.

Ever since Freddie’s arrest she had been plagued by self-doubts and by her anxiety at realising that her attempts to stabilise him after their grandfather’s death had clearly failed.

But the last thing she needed was Nicholas Reynolds reminding her of the fact in that patronising tone of voice.

‘Well, then,’ she said frozenly, ‘what do you suggest I do? Keep him chained to his bed as a lesson in discipline?’

‘I suggest,’ he said in measured tones, ‘that you leave Yorkshire.’

Mr Baird had brought them a plateful of home-made cakes, and she bit into one, eyeing him defensively over the pink icing.

‘What?’ she asked, not sure that she had heard correctly.

‘Leave Yorkshire.’

‘What a good idea,’ she bit out sarcastically, ‘perhaps we could rob a bank and spend the proceeds recuperating on the French Riviera. I hate to sound rude, Mr Reynolds—’

‘Nicholas, please. After all, it’s not as though we don’t know each other.’

She ignored his interruption. ‘But I resent you swanning up here with a bag full of good intentions and telling me how to run my life here. I have a good job at the library, and Freddie will settle down.’

‘And what if he doesn’t?’

Leigh almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. Just who did this man think he was anyway? Was he daring to tell her how to run her life? What right did he think he had?

Freddie was her responsibility, and she wasn’t going to have anyone preaching to her on her suitability as his guardian.

He clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘For God’s sake, stop acting as though I’m the big, bad wolf who has nothing better to do than pick on you.’

Leigh’s blue eyes stormily met his cool grey ones. She didn’t care for this man one jot, even as a boy he had managed to get under her skin, so why was she even listening to him as though she were being cross-examined in a witness box instead of sitting in Mr Baird’s coffee-shop?

‘What,’ he continued implacably, ‘do you, for instance, intend to do about Freddie’s education?’

‘He’s just sat his exams, and he’ll be leaving school…’

‘And do you think that’s fair? He’s a bright boy; what will he be leaving school to do? He told me that he would like to go on to specialise in cabinet-making, but that he didn’t know whether he would be able to or not.’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yes,’ Nicholas informed her.

Leigh surveyed him in silence. Right at this instant, it was a good thing that Freddie wasn’t around, because she could quite happily have strangled him.

She knew what he wanted well enough, but money was tight, and she had guiltily thought that he had accepted the fact. She had discussed it with him, and told him that he could do whatever he wanted after he had worked for a while and got some money together. It was the only thing she could think of.

How could he just go and pour out all their personal problems to a stranger?

God knew what else he had told this aggravating Mr Know-it-all.

‘There’s not much chance of that, not just at the moment. Maybe some time in the future.’

‘Because of your financial situation.’

Leigh nodded reluctantly. ‘Grandad’s money will really only help to keep the cottage running. It needs some pretty expensive repairs which we had all been putting off for a while, and which can’t be postponed for much longer. The roof needs work doing on it, I really would like to get some central heating put in, it needs repainting on the outside…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘The list goes on.’

‘More or less,’ she shrugged, hating the admission and thinking of all the other million and one things that still needed doing around the place, ‘but we can manage. With my salary, we should be able to muddle along.’

‘And what about you? Are you going to be happy just muddling along?’

There it was: that underlying criticism that made her feel somehow inadequate. If that was all he had to say, then she sincerely wished that he would just shut up. Did he really think she was depriving her brother of what he wanted through some perverted sense of enjoyment?

‘I don’t see where all this is leading, Mr Reynolds. Oh, sorry,’ she said with honeyed insincerity, ‘Nicholas. I can’t change the way things are at the moment, so if I have to accept us just muddling along for the time being, then I will.’

‘Have you thought about trying to change things?’

‘Have you thought about not sticking your nose into other people’s business?’

She felt a heel as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but she couldn’t take them back, so she looked down at her empty coffee-cup, refusing to meet his eyes.

‘I’ll choose to ignore that statement, though I’d like to remind you that I’m only here at all at my grand-father’s request,’ he said with silky smoothness, and she didn’t answer. She had known from the very first moment that she had set eyes on Nicholas Reynolds that he was a force to be reckoned with, but she had not known to what extent.

He was forcing her to face a few things which she would have been much happier ignoring for the time being, and she didn’t care for it one little bit

The fact that he was worlds apart from her only served to make things worse.

She glared at him, very tempted to tell him that he could choose to ignore it or not, it really didn’t matter to her. Instead she said in as controlled a voice as she could muster, ‘What do you suggest? I can’t change the way things are, I just have to cope the best that I can.’

She glared at him, highly annoyed that he had managed to nettle her when she should just have ignored everything he had to say. True, she was outspoken, but that was simply the way of the world around here. She was not normally given to shouting matches, and she found it infuriating that he was bringing out this side of her.

From behind the counter Mr Baird was looking in her direction with open curiosity. Now, she thought, it would be all around the village that she had had an argument with the lawyer from London, and what on earth could it be about?

She forced herself to smile at Nicholas.

‘When will you be heading back? You never said.’

It was an obvious switch in the conversation, and one which he ignored totally.

‘I’ve spoken with your solicitor about your financial state of affairs, and you’re finding it difficult to make ends meet, aren’t you? Admit it, that cottage of yours is falling down around your ears, isn’t it?’

‘That’s privileged information,’ Leigh gasped, horrified.

‘I persuaded your solicitor that it was in your interests not to keep me in the dark about your state of affairs.’

‘How thoughtful of you. So now that you’ve discovered what a wicked guardian I am, and how desperately badly off we are, you can climb into that expensive car of yours and clear off back to London. I’m of course very grateful for everything you’ve done, for putting yourself out, but, before you tell me yet again that we both need a change of scenery, we can’t afford it. As you have already found out for yourself.’

She had the awful feeling that everything private in her had just been scooped out and held up for public ridicule. Now all she wanted was to go back to the cottage and put any memories of this man to the very back of her mind.

‘Not so simple, I hate to disappoint you.’ He signalled to Mr Baird to bring them a fresh pot of coffee, and asked her whether she wanted any more cake.

She had already eaten three, but she nodded and asked Mr Baird if he could bring her one of his wife’s special custard-filled eclairs. She felt as though she needed it.

‘Are you normally such a voracious eater?’ he asked curiously. ‘No, don’t tell me, it’s the fresh country air. Unlike all that dirty smog you get in London, which has everyone turning away from food and walking around with sallow, pale complexions.’

Another injection of comic relief, she thought sourly. At my expense.

‘Hilarious,’ Leigh said.

‘Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, I can’t leave just yet, because you’re quite wrong. I didn’t only drive here so that I could help your brother.’

‘Really.’ She watched him with a nervous sensation in the pit of her stomach and wondered where all this was leading.

‘No. You see, my grandfather was horrified when he learnt about Freddie’s trouble. He and your grandfather, as you know, were very close. In fact, my grandfather considered Jacob one of his few true friends, someone who liked him for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with his title, or his money. He often said that Jacob was the only man who never hesitated to give him a lecture if he thought that it was necessary.’

Leigh felt a lump come to her throat at Nicholas’s words. She knew exactly what he meant. Her grandfather had been a down-to-earth, totally frank, and very caring man. He would never have been impressed by all the superficial paraphernalia which most people judged each other by.

‘Anyway,’ Nicholas continued, ‘when my grandfather heard about Freddie, he proposed that not only should I come up here, but that I should bring you both back to London with me so that he could look after both of you.’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘I might have heard,’ Leigh said tersely, ‘but I didn’t believe. Look, I know your grandfather means well, and tell him thanks, but no, thanks. We can manage just fine here on our own. We don’t need charity.’

‘There’s no question of charity,’ Nicholas said in a cool voice. ‘My grandfather suggested it because it’s what he wants to do. As for not needing it, from the looks of it, you most certainly do.’

‘What do you mean?’ Leigh abandoned all attempt to be polite.

‘I think it would do you both good to leave Yorkshire for a while. My grandfather would pay for Freddie to go to college to study carpentry, which is what he wants to do, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t just pack in my job and go to London. What about Grandad’s cottage? Who’s going to look after it?’

‘A caretaker.’

‘I can’t accept your grandfather’s offer.’

‘You would sacrifice your brother’s ambitions because of pride?’

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she muttered helplessly. ‘I have a job here. I’d never be able to pay you back, and I won’t be indebted.’

‘Oh, you won’t have to be.’ He leaned back in the chair and looked at her unhurriedly through narrowed eyes. ‘Believe me, my grandfather may be overflowing with the milk of human kindness for you and your brother, but the sentiment isn’t shared. Oh, no, you won’t be coming to London to enjoy a free ride with us. You can work for me, and as far as I can see that would sort out both our problems.’

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS ten days before Leigh and Freddie found themselves at King’s Cross station in London.

She had managed to persuade old Mr Edwards, one of her grandfather’s friends, to keep a regular eye on the cottage for them, in return for which she would keep him supplied in cherry pies whenever she made them. It had seemed a fair deal. In fact, it was only deal available since her finances couldn’t quite stretch to hiring a full-time caretaker.

Nicholas had been spot on target when he had pointed out her cash flow problems to her. The fact was that her money—what little she earned from her job and the small amount left to her by her grandfather—was just enough to make ends meet, and that was with some very acrobatic economising.

Which, she had thought bleakly after he had left, had been the crux of the problem. And he had manipulated it like the persuasive, successful barrister that he was.

Hadn’t he known instinctively what argument to use on her? That it was for Freddie’s benefit? And she, who had never been persuaded to do anything which she did not want to do, had found herself put into a position in which she could barely manoeuvre. She must go to London for the sake of her brother’s future and her own finances and stomach the fact that she was in a trap.

It had only been her brother’s enthusiasm for the idea that had stopped her from calling him up and telling him where he could put his stupid suggestion.

As for the job he had thrown her, she was sharp enough to realise that it was a gesture only partly designed to ease her conscience. After all, she thought, surveying the nerve-racking impersonality of the platform crowds, what did he care about her conscience? No, having mulled it all over, she could see quite clearly that his offer of a job was far more designed to ensure that he wasn’t lumbered with a couple of unwelcome unpaying guests. He basically didn’t want them cluttering up his smart London life, but since he had had little choice in the matter, what better than to make sure that she work for her keep?

She wondered whether he thought that they would stick to his grandfather’s generosity like two parasites and shamelessly eat them out of house and home.

Oh, he had exploited the situation admirably, and as far as she was concerned had left her bereft of any pride.

Now here they were, standing on the platform of a station the size of which she had never seen before, surrounded by their clutter of battered suitcases, some of which had been tied with string, and no porter in sight.

What seemed like thousands of people, more people in fact than lived in her entire village, hurried around them, carefully side-stepping their bags, intent on their business. In Yorkshire, she thought ruefully, there would have been no shortage of people willing to help them.

Her brother was lost in the novelty of it all, as he had been from the very minute he had stepped on to the train at their tiny station.

Leigh looked at him affectionately and promptly ordered him to go and find a trolley.

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said irritably, ‘just go and get one. If we wait for someone to come along and help us, we’ll be here till we go grey.’

He ambled off obediently, and left her to her thoughts. More doubts and a feeling of being completely out of her depth. She had been to Leeds a few times before, but only once to London when she was very young, when Freddie was only a baby, and it was as vast and confusing as she remembered.

She only hoped that Nicholas was outside waiting for them, as he had promised he would be, because if he wasn’t it would be another nightmare of waiting for a taxi to take them to the house in Hampstead.

Oh, God, she thought, why on earth had she ever agreed to come here? She didn’t belong here, she belonged in the country, where people only dressed up for special occasions, and the busiest place was the local market.

Here, everyone seemed so smartly dressed, lots of high heels and tailored skirts everywhere, and the men walking briskly in their suits and carrying briefcases! She couldn’t remember her grandfather ever wearing a suit, although he must have possessed one at some point in time.

She glanced down at her own outfit, a light flowered sleeveless dress falling softly around her slim figure, and a pair of sandals. She had even brought her straw hat with her, to protect her face from the sun.

She was quite pale-skinned, with a smattering of freckles, which always came out with a vengeance if she wasn’t very careful in the sun. She wished now that she had forgotten about the hat, because she imagined that it only served to emphasise how rustic she was.

Freddie returned with a trolley, and after what seemed like ages they managed to find their way through the ticket barrier, and outside the station, which was every bit as crowded as it had been outside.

‘Wow,’ Freddie crowed, staring around him, ‘have you ever seen crowds like these?’

‘Ask me whether I ever wanted to.’

‘Stop being so miserable,’ Freddie said, turning to her with a frown.

‘I’m not being miserable. I just miss all the open space.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I know you don’t. You’re like a little boy at Christmas-time!’

They laughed and she put her arm around him, noticing with amusement how he edged out of her embrace. Sisterly cuddles were taboo with him, especially sisterly cuddles administered in public.

She was looking around for Nicholas, when she heard his deep voice from behind her.

‘So I see you managed to find your way here all right.’

She swung around, blushing as the grey eyes ran over her, feeling oddly as though his scrutiny was stripping her of her clothing.

‘Yes. No problem at all.’ She was here now, and she would be polite, but there was no reason why she should be friendly. She couldn’t forget those thinly veiled insinuations that she was irresponsible when it came to Freddie, and a potential gold-digger who would be given a job if the alternative was her sponging off their hospitality.

‘Good.’ He picked up the cases as though they weighed nothing at all and began striding away. Leigh hurried behind him, clutching her hat, oddly mesmerised by his easy, graceful walk. There was nothing clumsy or cumbersome about him. In fact, from behind, he could well pass for an athlete of some kind.

He was chatting to Freddie, answering all his excited questions, getting along with him as though they had known each other for years. Obviously his hostility did not extend to her brother.

She would, she thought, have to have a serious word with him about being careful not to let London go to his head, and to remember that he was a country lad at heart. The last thing she wanted was for him to change.

The gleaming Jaguar seemed to fill Freddie with as much reverential awe as it had the last time he had seen it.

‘It’s just a car, Freddie,’ Leigh commented, halting his monologue on its engine capacity in mid-flow, and missing Nicholas’s raised eyebrow. ‘Metal on four wheels, designed to get you from A to B.’ She slid into the front seat and strapped herself in, inwardly admiring the walnut dashboard and the deep, luxurious seats.

‘A lot of women would be very impressed by this particular piece of metal on four wheels,’ Nicholas murmured, as he started the engine. His eyes slid along to her face, and Leigh purposefully ignored both him and the little leap of her pulse.

‘Really?’ she said, gazing with mixed feelings through the window. ‘I can’t see why. As far as I’m concerned, the last thing that would impress me about a man would be his car. Or, for that matter, the sort of house he lived in, or the kind of clothes he wore. All that’s superficial and doesn’t say a thing about the kind of person he is.’ So, she wanted to add, you needn’t worry that I’m after your money.

‘And have you been impressed by any men?’

Leigh frowned and didn’t answer, because as far as she was concerned it was none of his business whatsoever.

‘No,’ Freddie chipped in from the back seat, ‘she hasn’t had a boyfriend for ages, since she broke up with Dean Stanley, in fact.’

‘I’ll thank you to not go broadcasting my private affairs to all and sundry,’ she snapped. ‘You’re not too old to rediscover the meaning of punishment.’

Freddie made a face at her and resumed his attention to what they were passing, and Nicholas, she was annoyed to see, was looking vaguely amused by the interchange.

‘Anyway,’ she said in a honeyed voice, ‘is that why you drive this? So that you can impress girls?’

‘I don’t go out with girls,’ he replied, not at all disconcerted by her sarcasm, ‘I go out with women. And I don’t need to impress them with a car.’

Leigh refused to ask him what sort of things he used to impress them. There was an intonation to his voice, something soft and insinuating, that sent her mind racing and she firmly slapped it right back into place.

He took them a circuitous route, on Freddie’s pleading, pointing out all the sights to them, and still with that very slight edge of amusement to his voice, which went completely over Freddie’s head, but didn’t go over hers one bit.

After a while, though, she found herself listening to what he was saying, and actually enjoying his amusing descriptions of the buildings and landmarks. He had a dry wit which made her chuckle on a couple of occasions, even though she reminded herself that she didn’t care for him, or, for that matter, what he represented.

It was slightly over an hour later when the car pulled through the heavy gates which led on to the small courtyard in front of the house. The gardens were not massive—Leigh supposed that in London land was at a premium—but the house made up for that. It was enormous, the impressive frontage studded with numerous leaded windows.

Freddie whistled under his breath, and she said wryly, ‘I can see that there won’t be a shortage of space here. Do you realise that your house is bigger than the one hotel in our village?’

‘I thought you weren’t impressed by outward trappings.’

‘I’m not,’ she retorted, rising to his bait, ‘I’m merely stating a fact. Do you and your grandfather live here alone?’

‘Most of the year. My parents come over for two months every winter, and there are several people who help look after the house and garden.’

The Jaguar pulled up outside the front door, and Leigh stepped outside, her hat clutched firmly in both hands, her head thrown back as she studied the grandeur of the place. She had not bothered to tie her hair back and it fell down her back, silken copper set ablaze by the sun.

Nicholas had stopped a few feet behind her. He shook his head, as if clearing it of some niggling thought, and brushed past her, opening the front door which had been double locked.

At once there was an oldish man there, waiting to take their cases, and another middle-aged woman hovering in the background, waiting to show them to their re-spective bedrooms.

Leigh would have preferred to stay where she was for a while, and admire the house, if house was the right word. The décor was impeccable, all shades of white and cream, with just enough colour from the pictures on the walls and the huge pots of flowering plants to stop it from sliding into blandness.

A huge winding staircase, stripped with deep burgundy carpeting, ran to the upstairs bedrooms, and probably continued further. She knew, from the outside of the house, that there were three floors. Three floors of rooms all sumptuously decorated.

Freddie had snatched up his two cases and was taking the stairs two by two, overtaking the maid. He disappeared from sight, and Leigh turned to Nicholas, who had been observing her from a distance.

‘I don’t think I’ve managed,’ she almost choked on the words, ‘to thank you and of course your grandfather for kindly asking us here. Freddie’s delighted at the prospect of going to college for his course.’

‘And I gather from your tone of voice that you still haven’t worked yourself up to sharing his enthusiasm?’

‘No,’ she replied stiffly, thinking that it was difficult to become excited over emotional blackmail.

‘You could always have stayed in Yorkshire, you know, and made do with your rambling cottage which would have progressively eaten up more and more of your money, and your job at the library which just paid enough to keep the food on the table.’

‘You might as well know, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for Freddie.’

‘But you are, aren’t you?’ he countered smoothly. The grey eyes swept over her with cool calculation. ‘And you can stop acting as though you’re the only one who’s suffering a change of lifestyle. As I said, the only reason I bailed your brother out was because of my grandfather.’

‘Are you trying to say that you don’t want us around?’

‘I’m trying to say that you’ve been rescued from a difficult situation, and…’

‘I should be grateful,’ she finished for him. She felt all her good intentions to be polite with this man draining away from her. Yet again.

‘Shouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said tightly. Grateful, she added silently, for being in a gilded cage, because she was caged—trapped by a situation over which all control had been removed from her.

‘I don’t expect gratitude, Leigh,’ he said in a hard voice, ‘but I do expect you to stop acting like a martyr all of the time. Now perhaps you’d like to go upstairs and freshen up?’

‘Perhaps I would,’ she agreed, stinging from his reprimand, but knowing that she had more less provoked him into it. ‘Where is my room?’

‘I’ll show you up.’ He started up the stairs, and Leigh followed him.

Everything about him, his movements, his speech, that watchful, cool air about him, spelt power and self-assurance, and just a hint of arrogance. He was so totally different from all those boys she had been out with in the past. So totally different from her, she conceded. She would do well to remember that.

He began talking to her about his grandfather, telling her how much he had changed after the death of his wife years ago. ‘He hardly ever leaves the house,’ Nicholas said. ‘He says that he’s simply counting down to the day when he’ll no longer be around. He comes down for meals, and he uses the library on the ground floor a lot, and that’s really about it.’

Leigh thought that it was a shame. Her own grand-father had been full of beans right up to the end. Even in those last few weeks, when his illness had made getting around difficult, he had still insisted on taking his walks, on keeping as active as he possibly could.

Her bedroom was on the top floor, along with Freddie’s. Nicholas pushed open the door, and she stepped inside. Her bags had been brought up and were on the floor next to the gigantic old wardrobe. All the furniture in the bedroom, in fact, was old, from the dressing-table and chairs, to the bureau sitting next to the tall, leaded window, and, of course, the four-poster bed.

‘It’s wonderful,’ she breathed, forgetting his presence temporarily and padding across the floor, her hands trailing along the furniture, her eyes taking in absolutely everything. A small en-suite bathroom had been added at some later stage, and had been fitted out in colours of apricot and green, with matching bath towels.

Nicholas had been lounging by the door, and now he walked into the room and looked around it briefly.

‘It’s home.’ He shrugged and walked across to the window. ‘I suppose I’ve become used to it.’

‘I suppose you would,’ Leigh said drily, ‘although you wouldn’t, if you had any inkling of the hardship that a lot of people have to endure. I know some people who have slaved all their lives, working the pits, or toiling in factories, and for all their hard work they will never be able to know what it is to have this sort of comfort. The problem with wealth is that it cushions you against all of life’s unpleasantness, doesn’t it?’

‘Does it? Don’t you think that that’s a little bit of a generalisation? Why don’t you stop dividing people into categories, and start realising that everyone has something to offer?’

‘That’s unfair! I don’t divide people into categories.’

Nicholas moved to where she was, and before she could escape to some other, safer part of the room he was standing next to her, far too close for comfort.

‘You,’ he said, coiling his fingers into her long, unruly hair and tilting her head to face him, ‘have got to be the most argumentative, stubborn woman I have ever met in my life. And I’ve met my fair share of women.’

Leigh stared at his dark, handsome face in silence. She wanted to fire back with a retort. In normal circumstances she could hold her own in any argument, was rarely at a loss for words, but somehow her mouth had managed to go dry and wouldn’t do what she wanted it to.

She had a swift feeling of giddiness, and then she blinked and reality returned.

‘Believe me, the last thing I’m interested in is the number of women in your life!’

Her heart was beating heavily, and she could feel her hands clammy and tightly clenched at her sides. She just wanted to get away from this man. He was overpowering her.

There was a knock on the door, and Freddie bounded in. Nicholas released her abruptly, and her moment of confusion and alarm was over.

She retreated to her suitcases, which she began dumping on the bed, and chatted to Freddie, her words spilling over each other as she tried to shove the effect that Nicholas had had on her to the back of her mind.

Freddie was in high spirits. He wanted to do everything, see everything, yesterday. He had already unpacked, which meant that he had thrown all his clothes into the nearest available drawers and cupboards, and was now raring to go. He somehow managed to persuade Nicholas to take him to Piccadilly Circus, which he had heard about, on the Underground of course, and Leigh couldn’t resist a grin as she tried to picture Nicholas squashed in the middle of a crowded train.

‘Nicholas probably has to return to work,’ she said, trying to wipe the smile off her face.

This thought had obviously not crossed Freddie’s mind. ‘Oh,’ he said, deflated, ‘can’t you take the day off?’

‘Freddie!’

‘It’s all right, Freddie. I already have, and it’s just as well that you become acquainted with London as soon as possible.’

Freddie bounded back out of the room, an excitable puppy whose energy left Leigh feeling exhausted, and Nicholas turned to her.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll share the joke with me?’

‘Joke? What joke?’

‘The one you were grinning at a few minutes ago.’

Leigh blew a strand of her hair from her face, and said obligingly, ‘I will, actually. I was trying to imagine you on the Underground, with elbows and newspapers sticking into you, like a sardine in a tin.’

‘I see,’ Nicholas said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I find it equally hilarious to picture you on the Underground, sticky and uncomfortable and moaning about how much you’d wished you’d stayed in Yorkshire.’

‘Just as well as I’m not coming with you, then, isn’t it,’ she replied tartly, ‘so you’ll have to forgo the opportunity to laugh at me?’

Once he was out of the room, she ran a hot bath and settled into the suds with delicious enjoyment.

Over the past fortnight, she had barely had time to think, and now, in the silence of the room, her mind played around all the quickfire sequence of events that had occurred recently. It was unbelievable. Plucked from her rural home town and catapulted into London, and not just London, but the London champagne set, because she knew without being told that that was where Nicholas belonged.

It was like Cinderella at the ball, she thought, but an unwilling Cinderella without the fancy dress. She was the plain-clothed, plain-speaking rustic in a world which no doubt operated on various levels of innuendo and subterfuge.

She had as yet met none of his friends, and it was an experience which she was not looking forward to.

She wondered whether they would all be like Nicholas. The men all tall, and debonair, and the women sophisticated and bursting with savoir faire.

It was hard to imagine anyone quite like him, but maybe that was simply because she had never moved in this sort of world.

A sudden thought struck her: had she brought the right sort of clothes? Flowered print dresses, sandals and jeans might be all right in her small home town, but would they look out of place here? She mentally shrugged and decided that people could take her as they found her; she certainly didn’t intend losing much sleep over it.

Later on, when she was dressing for dinner, she looked dubiously at her wardrobe once again, finding it slightly more difficult this time to dismiss the thought that the things she had brought with her really were a bit on the well-worn side.

She had somehow not managed to do any shopping for the past few months, none at all in fact since the death of her grandfather, and a lot of her stuff seemed that touch faded. Of course, it didn’t matter one jot, she told herself defiantly, choosing a green uncluttered dress to wear that evening. She was meeting Sir John and she wanted to look just right.

Nicholas was eating out, and wasn’t going to be in until later, probably when they were having coffee.

Just as well, she thought, staring at her face in the mirror, wondering whether to put on any make-up and deciding against it. She was too sensitive to his presence to really relax with him.

Sir John was waiting for her in the sitting-room when she went down a few minutes later. Leigh introduced Freddie, and as the old man chatted to him she took the opportunity to observe him.

She barely remembered him. He couldn’t have been much older than her grandfather, but he certainly looked it. There were lines of resignation and disappointment around his mouth and his eyes were faded and blue as though he had spent years looking at things that he found depressing.

He turned to her and began talking.

Even his voice, she thought ruefully, was thin and strained. He apologised for not meeting them sooner, ‘But my doctor doesn’t like me exerting myself. I tend to spend a lot of time reading, or resting.’

It didn’t sound like a very healthy lifestyle to her, but she nodded politely and moved the conversation on to other things. She chatted about her grandfather, with Freddie butting in every two minutes with anecdotes which were only just on the right side of risqué, and after a while the old man began to look slightly more animated.

‘He was a rogue in his youth, that old Jacob,’ Sir John said whimsically.

Leigh laughed, throwing her head back, ‘He was a rogue in his maturity as well, Sir John, believe me.’

‘He drove the women crazy,’ Freddie said with a grin.

‘He did?’

Leigh nodded. ‘There was always some lady or other being invited around for coffee. If he really liked her…’

‘He would present her with something he’d made,’ Freddie finished. Leigh looked at her brother, and they giggled.

‘There was this one lady,’ Freddie offered, laughing at the memory until tears came to his eyes, ‘Mrs Bolby, a widow.’

‘Freddie! Sir John won’t want to hear about Mrs Bolby!’

‘Pray continue, young man.’ He really was looking more animated.

‘Mrs Bolby,’ Leigh said primly, ‘was a very quiet lady…’

‘A prude!’ Freddie screeched.

‘And Grandad saw fit—I don’t know what got into him…’ She began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘To present her with this wooden carving of a bed…’ Freddie continued.

‘And a lute. He told her they could make sweet music under cover!’

Sir John laughed, wheezing at first, then louder.

Over the exquisite meal of salmon with prawns, Freddie and Leigh regaled him with humorous things their grandfather had done. The old man really seemed to enjoy it, and over coffee he shook his head and murmured how much he envied Jacob’s life.

‘Having you two must have been a source of delight to him. Of course, I have Nicholas, and I love him dearly, but he’s rarely around and, as for me, I don’t get out at all,’ he confessed. ‘Don’t see the point. The world’s changed around me, and I don’t care for what goes on out there at all.’

‘It’s not all bad, Sir John,’ Leigh said gently, placing her hand over his. She was about to tell him all about her beautiful countryside, the free, enticing nature that surrounded her in Yorkshire, when the door opened and she turned around, her eyes fixed on Nicholas, who was dressed formally, in a charcoal-grey suit, his black hair swept back from his face.

Then she saw that there was someone behind him. A woman. She stepped into the sitting-room and Leigh gasped because she was quite simply the most stunning creature she had ever seen.

She was tall and voluptuous, all the curves in exactly the right places, and she clearly was aware of that fact, because her black dress curved lovingly and tightly around her body, plunging at the front to reveal more of her cleavage than Leigh would have thought possible.

She was only wearing one thick gold chain, but even so there was something expensive about her. Nothing you could quite put your finger on, but the overall package was chic beyond belief. The severely cut short black hair, the large dark eyes, the perfectly pro-portioned face with more than a hint of coldness about it.

Leigh had a sharp, terrible thought: Nicholas obviously doesn’t find her cold. And she obviously was very warm indeed around him because when she glanced at him there was something positively simmering about her.

‘You’re up late, Sir John,’ she said, moving gracefully into the room on very, very high heels. She looked straight at Leigh and threw her a smile which somehow succeeded in being disdainful rather than friendly. Her eyes travelled quickly over her, and registered that there was no threat there.

‘Leigh and Freddie,’ Nicholas introduced, sitting on the sofa and stretching out his long legs in front of him, ‘this is Lady Jessica Thompson.’ He began tugging at his tie, pulling it down until he was able to undo the top button of his shirt.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Leigh said warmly, standing up and stretching out her hand, which Lady Jessica took briefly and then dropped as though finding the exercise thoroughly boring.

Freddie was a little wiser. He said, ‘Hi,’ from the sidelines, but made no effort to shake Lady Jessica’s hand and exited from the party as soon as he possibly could.

Leigh fervently wished that she could do the same, but when she attempted to do so Sir John gestured her back into her seat, and instead eased himself up, rejecting Nicholas’s offer of help.

‘Oh, do help him up, darling,’ Lady Jessica murmured, and was rewarded with something that sounded remarkably like a snort from Sir John. ‘You know how frail your poor grandfather is.’

Sir John winked at Leigh slyly and her lips twitched.

‘Are you ready for bed, Grandfather?’ Nicholas asked, ignoring Lady Jessica’s suggestion.

‘I am now,’ Sir John said.

Nicholas and Sir John both vanished from the room, and Leigh remained perched on the edge of her chair, rooting around in her mind for something to say, although from the look of the other woman there was very little that she was prepared to find interesting in Leigh’s conversation.

‘Nicholas told me all about you,’ Lady Jessica said, crossing her slim legs, and flicking an invisible fleck of dust from her stocking. ‘And I must say, you look so much younger than I expected. My dear, how do you do it? You hardly look a day over fourteen.’

It was all Leigh could do to remember that she was a guest in the house and that she should be polite to her host’s friends.

She gritted her teeth and smiled politely. ‘Really?’ she said evenly. ‘I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment, but I will anyway.’

‘Oh, my dear, of course it’s a compliment!’ Lady Jessica exclaimed, in a voice which left Leigh in no doubt whatsoever that it wasn’t. ‘Though, to be brutally honest, it doesn’t really—how shall I phrase this?—fit in here in London. You look, well, a bit too young and innocent. Anyone would think you worked here, for heaven’s sake, instead of being a guest in the house!’

Leigh’s face was beginning to ache from the effort of smiling politely when she would much rather have thrown her cup of cold coffee into Lady Jessica’s carefully made-up face.

‘My dear—’ Lady Jessica’s eyes opened wide when

there was no response from Leigh ‘—I do hope you don’t think I’m being rude. I only want to help you while you and your brother are here!’

‘We’ll manage just fine,’ Leigh said tightly.

‘Of course you will. Silly little me. I simply wanted to warn you that London isn’t anything like your little village. It’s full of sharks, and it’s always just as well to be prepared.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘How long do you plan on staying anyway?’ Lady Jessica wasn’t looking in her direction, but Leigh knew instinctively that it was a loaded question.

She shrugged and said perversely, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Really?’ This time she did look at Leigh and her black eyes were as hard as little chips of stone.

Leigh nodded.

‘And what do you intend to do about money?’ she asked patronisingly. Surely not live off charity, her voice implied.

‘Nicholas has offered me a job with him.’

She could see that this was unwelcome news to Lady Jessica, but the other woman recovered her composure quickly. ‘That would be Nicholas, of course. Always doing the right thing. I expect he feels so very sorry for you and your brother.’ She smoothed her hands along her legs, and continued, ‘He always did have a soft spot for the underdog, believe it or not.’ She gave a throaty laugh. ‘I suppose it has something to do with his profession.’

Leigh felt the blood rush to her hairline.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she muttered, getting to her feet, barely able to control the anger raging inside her, ‘I want to say goodnight to Freddie, and I’m still quite tired after the long journey, so if you don’t mind…’ Leigh couldn’t care less whether Lady Jessica minded or not, because she knew that if she stayed there a second more she would explode, and that was the very last thing she wanted to do. That would be to reduce herself to the very show of childish ill temper which the other woman was no doubt hoping for.

Oh, no, she would make a very quiet exit, and then pummel her pillow to death in the privacy of her bedroom.

Underdogs indeed! Was that how Mr High and Mighty Nicholas Reynolds saw them? Had he said so to this awful woman? And what else had he told her? That they were destitute, perhaps?

Lady Jessica uncoiled her elegant body from the sofa and stood up, towering over Leigh in her flat shoes.

‘Of course,’ she murmured in agreement, ‘I suppose this must be quite a late night for you, especially with all the excitement of coming down here.’

Really, Leigh thought, did this silly woman imagine that everyone who lived outside London retired to bed promptly at seven o’clock with their cups of Horlicks?

‘Yes,’ Leigh said, unable to resist a few parting words of sarcasm, ‘I can hardly cope.’

She didn’t know why she bothered because Lady Jessica looked at her blankly, then she said in a slow, careful voice, ‘I shouldn’t be too impressed by everything you see here, my dear. And I particularly shouldn’t be too impressed by Nicholas. I know he’s an extremely attractive man, but you take it from me that the last thing he wants is to be bothered by some wide-eyed innocent becoming infatuated with him.’

Leigh looked at her, speechless. This was the limit.

‘And you can take it from me,’ she answered in a cool, cool voice which masked her icy anger, ‘that the last person in the world I could ever find interesting would be Nicholas Reynolds. I could no more be infatuated with him than I could be with a toad from the bottom of the garden. But thank you so very much for your advice…’ She paused and subjected Lady Jessica to one of her own looks of disdain. ‘I’m sure every word of it was uttered with my welfare at heart.’

She turned away and swept out of the room, her head held high, her fists clenched at her sides.

She almost collided with Nicholas, who was coming down the stairs.

‘Going to bed?’ he asked, staring at her flushed face, but not commenting on it.

‘We country people need our rest,’ Leigh said, her voice taut. ‘We’re not used to late nights!’

Then she continued walking quickly up the staircase, not slowing down until she was outside her bedroom door.

She didn’t think that she had ever been so enraged or so insulted in her whole life. She could feel the anger thudding inside her, with a life of its own.

She was still fuming by the time she was finally under the covers and the lights were switched off, even though she told herself that she was stupid to let anything Lady Jessica said get to her.

She and Nicholas Reynolds richly deserved each other. Both as hard as nails, and ruthless in their own individual ways.

The whole evening, she thought, which had been so enjoyable with Sir John, had been spoilt by Lady Jessica. And, Leigh thought dimly, by Nicholas, because she might as well bracket them together. They were a couple, and that, Lady Jessica had made patently clear, was how she intended it to stay.

Not that she needed to make a point about it. Leigh could have told her for free that Nicholas Reynolds was not her kind of man. If he got under her skin, it was because he was arrogant and so totally out of her league that it was laughable.

And that, she thought dimly as she drifted off to sleep, was precisely how she meant to keep it.

CHAPTER THREE

SIR JOHN, the following morning, was horrified to learn that Leigh intended starting work as soon as possible. He was sitting in front of a plate of toast and honey at the breakfast table and he turned to face his grandson.

‘You never told me that you had offered Leigh a job,’ he accused.

‘Didn’t I?’ Nicholas sipped from his cup of black coffee and glanced down at his watch.

He was dressed in a charcoal suit, his dark hair swept back from his face, and as Leigh tucked into her plateful of bacon and eggs she eyed him surreptitiously across the table.

He really was flawlessly handsome. Not in a rugged way, but with a certain cold hardness that was emphasised by the perfect chiselling of his features.

Freddie was busily eating, paying scant attention to the conversation around him, his mind dwelling, Leigh suspected, on far more trivial things.

‘No, you didn’t,’ Sir John said testily. ‘When did all this take place?’

‘When I went up to Yorkshire,’ Nicholas replied smoothly. His eyes skimmed across to Leigh and she hurriedly looked down at her plate of food. ‘We both felt that it was a good idea for her to work for me,’ he was adding, then he paused for a fraction, as if giving her the opportunity to object, which she didn’t. ‘I’ve been looking for a replacement for Karen for a few weeks, and Leigh didn’t want to feel as though she was accepting charity. Did you?’ The grey eyes fixed on her face.

‘Charity?’ Sir John spluttered. ‘My dear, it’s a delight having you here. Nothing charitable about it at all.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Leigh said awkwardly. ‘But Nicholas is

right—’ in a loose manner of speaking, she added to

herself ‘—I want to go out to work. I resigned from my job at the library, and I need the money to put towards the cottage…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘But you could have spent a bit more time relaxing. When do you plan on starting?’

Leigh looked questioningly at Nicholas, feeling very much like one of the serving staff whose fate lay in the hands of the master of the house.

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