‘You don’t believe in love, do you?’ she asked, and Louis laughed, raking his fingers through his hair.

‘I believe in lust, and I believe in marriage.’

‘You mean marriage based on … what? How can you base a marriage on lust? Lust doesn’t last.’

‘But it’s an enjoyable starting point, don’t you agree? Not that I’ve given much thought to marriage one way or the other.’

Lizzy shifted awkwardly. She realised that her legs were brushing against his, and she primly angled her body away from him. When their eyes met, she could see at a glance that he had noted the shift and was amused by it. ‘And what happens when the lust fades away?’

‘Oh, that’s why it’s so important to be practical when it comes to getting married. A decent business arrangement doesn’t allow for any nasty surprises. There’s no such thing as the perfect marriage, but there is such a thing as the perfect criteria for a wife.’

The perfect criteria. A shard of pain stabbed her. When it came to the perfect criteria, she was nowhere on the scale.

About the Author

CATHY WILLIAMS is originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband, Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their pet cat, Salem. She adores writing romantic fiction, and would love one of her girls to become a writer—although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another!

IN WANT
OF A WIFE?

CATHY WILLIAMS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE POWERFUL AND THE PURE

When Beauty tames the brooding Beast …

From Mr Darcy to Heathcliff, the best romantic heroes have always been tall, dark and dangerously irresistible.

This year, indulge yourself as Modern™ Romance brings you four formidable men—the ultimate heroes. Untameable … or so they think!

The Powerful and the Pure

When Beauty tames the brooding Beast.

Coming soon in 2011—four timeless love stories from Modern™ Romance!

CHAPTER ONE

LOUIS CHRISTOPHE JUMEAU slammed the door of the Range Rover and favoured it with a look of pure loathing. Really, he should have known better than to trust in a car-rental agency which proudly proclaimed that it was the only one around for fifty miles. Lack of healthy competition invariably equalled a third-rate service; he had been proved right. He should have arranged his own private transport. He could easily have used his helicopter and had one of his own top-of-the-range cars on standby to collect him from the airfield.

But he had wanted to check out the transport links for himself. Over-indulged, wealthy patrons would expect efficient links to Crossfeld House, should they decide to get there by train, as he had. And onwards by car—as he, unfortunately, had chosen to do.

He cursed fluently under his breath, flicked open his mobile and was rewarded with a robust ‘no signal’ sign.

Around him, in the darkening winter light, the countryside was desolate and unwelcoming. There was also the threat of snow in the air. It seemed to be an ongoing threat for the inhabitants of Scotland and one he would have taken more seriously had he been in possession of a crystal ball and predicted that his rental car—none finer than this, sonny!—would have taken its last breath on a desolate road in the Highlands some forty minutes away from his destination.

He rescued his coat from the back seat of the old Range Rover and decided there and then that the one and only carrental agency for fifty miles around would soon be facing stiff competition, or he would pull out of this particular investment fast enough to make the heads of its five desperate sellers spin.

Crossfeld House—an addition to his already bulging portfolio of boutique hotels around the world and country-house hotels across the UK—would be pleasing but was hardly essential. Its unique selling point as far as he was concerned was its golf course. It had been enthusiastically lauded for its ‘challenging qualities’, which he cynically interpreted as ‘unkempt to the point of unplayable’.

But he would see for himself. If he ever made it to the place on foot.

He would also be in a position to conclusively sort that other little problem out.

He slung on his coat against the bitter December winds and began walking in the direction of the manor house, his mind moving along from the problem he could not currently solve—namely his lack of car—to the problem ahead of him which he most definitely intended to solve. To be precise, his friend’s sudden infatuation with a girl who, from all descriptions, fitted neatly into the category of gold-digger. Even never having met her, Louis could recognise the type: too pretty, too poor and with a mother hell-bent on getting rid of her five offspring to the highest bidders.

His mouth curled into a smile of grim satisfaction at the prospect of showing up on the doorstep of the Sharp family. Nicholas might be rich and successful but he was also naive and way too trusting for his own good. Mother Sharp might be able to shuffle her pretty little daughter up for inspection and Nicholas—whose visits to Crossfeld House on the pretext of checking out the edifice had become ever more frequent—might well have ended up as compliant bait at the end of the hook. But he, Louis, wasn’t born yesterday.

And Nicholas was nothing if not a lifelong friend whose honour and bank balance Louis had every intention of protecting.

Fully absorbed by his train of thought, he was only aware of the roar of a motorcycle when it was virtually on top of him. It pelted past him in a whirl of gravel, ripping apart the eerie silence of the countryside like a shriek within the hallowed walls of a cathedral and then spun around, decelerating so that the rider, dressed entirely in black with a matching shiny black helmet, could inspect him.

More than anything else, Louis was enraged by what he considered wildly reckless driving.

‘Very clever,’ he said with biting sarcasm, bearing down on the rider and standing intimidatingly close. ‘Get your kicks that way, do you? Or do you think that this is your private racetrack and you can ride this thing however fast you want?’

In the middle of reaching up to remove her helmet, Lizzy’s hands stilled and then dropped to her sides.

Up close and personal, this guy was bigger, taller and looked a lot meaner than she had expected. Whilst she knew this part of the countryside like the back of her hand, along with everyone in it, she was still sharp enough to realise that she was in the company of a stranger and there was nothing within screaming distance to disturb the isolation of the landscape.

She couldn’t make out the guy’s face but his voice was like a whiplash, raising the hackles on her back and making her want to meet his attack head-on.

‘I didn’t have to stop for you.’

‘Are you going to take that helmet off so that I can see who I’m dealing with?’

Alone on a dark road, surrounded by acres of barren isolation and staring down a man who looked as though he could snap her in half if he put his mind to it: the helmet was staying on. Let him think that he was dealing with another man. One with a high voice.

‘Was that your car back there?’

‘Very good, Sherlock.’

‘I don’t need to stay here and listen to this.’ She gave a few warning revs of her engine and waited for his apology, which was not forthcoming.

Instead he stood back, folded his arms and gave her a long, speculative look. The rising moon caught the angle of his face and she drew her breath in sharply.

The man might be aristocratic, arrogant and high-handed, but he was beautiful. Black hair was blown back to reveal the harsh, arresting contours of a face that was shockingly perfect. His mouth was drawn in a tight, displeased line but it didn’t take much imagination to realise that under different circumstances, it would be curving and sensuous.

‘How old are you?’ Louis asked suddenly. The question caught Lizzy unawares and for a few seconds she was silent, wondering where he was going with it.

‘Why? What business is it of yours?’

‘You’re a kid, aren’t you? That why you don’t want to take the helmet off? Do your parents know that you’re riding that thing like a bat out of hell, putting other people’s lives in danger?’

‘There’s no one else out here except for you! Trust a tourist to break down,’ she muttered. Prickles of angry, nervous perspiration shot through her. ‘If you’re going to tackle this part of the world, then you should know to do it in a more reliable vehicle.’

‘You should try telling that to the crook who owns the car-rental company by the station.’

‘Ah.’ Fergus McGinty could, she admitted to herself, be a bit shifty when it came to outsiders renting his cars. And anyone opting for the one and only Range Rover would have been cheerfully taken for the proverbial ride. She doubted the thing had been serviced since the start of the century.

‘Friend of yours, is he?’ Increasingly ill tempered, Louis allowed a short pause to elapse. ‘So he’s bound to know the teenager on the big bike when I decide to report you to your parents … Which makes me think that you have no choice here but to graciously give me a ride to wherever it is I happen to be going. Either that, or you’ll find yourself answering to the police for getting on that thing when you’re under age.’

Lizzy was tempted to burst out laughing. Yes, she could see that the high tones of her voice might have led him crashing into the wrong impression, and it was pretty funny when you thought about it. But somehow she didn’t think that this was the kind of man who would take very kindly to being laughed at. Something about the way he held himself made her think that, when there was any laughing to be done, he would be the one doing it at someone else’s expense.

‘You can’t just leave that car there,’ she objected, purely to be difficult.

Louis made an exaggerated show of looking around him before his glinting black eyes settled back on her, his reflection bouncing off the helmet. ‘Why? Do you think there are people lurking behind the heather, waiting to steal it? Frankly, if anyone is stupid enough to break in and able to drive it away, then they’re more than welcome. They would be doing the world at large a service.’

Lizzy shrugged. ‘Where are you headed?’

‘Climb off that machine and you’ll find out.’

‘Climb off? What are you talking about? I thought you said that I would be giving you a ride.’

‘Did I say that? Must have been a crazy slip of the tongue. Why would I endanger my life by getting on the back of a motorcycle ridden by a kid who should be at home doing his homework?’

‘I could leave you right here.’

‘I really wouldn’t consider that option if I were you.’

Lizzy recognised a threat when she heard one. ‘Where are you going?’ she repeated reluctantly. ‘If it’s out of my way, then you’re going to have to wait here and I’ll send someone out to fetch you.’

Louis almost laughed out loud at that. Send someone out to fetch him? For starters, he had had enough of the great Scottish countryside when seen at night from the perspective of a stranded driver. For another, he wouldn’t put money on the odds of the boy doing his civic duty when it would be a lot easier to bike off into the night and get his own back for being taken down a peg or two by an outsider.

‘Really? Well, we’ll have to differ on that one. I’m going to Crossfeld House and you’re coming with me.’

Crossfeld House! Lizzy froze.

‘You know where that is, don’t you?’ Louis said impatiently. ‘I can’t imagine there are too many manor houses with golf courses in this part of the world.’

‘I know where it is. Why are you going there?’

‘Come again?’

‘I just wondered why you were going there, because you can’t stay there … It’s, um, up for sale. I don’t think they’re renting out rooms any more. And if you’ve come to play golf then the course isn’t that great. In fact, it’s wrecked.’

‘Is that a fact, now?’ Louis looked narrowly at the slight figure dismounting the bike, standing back to let him get on. ‘So I should leave my clubs in the car?’

‘Definitely. Do you even know how to ride this?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough. Let’s put it this way—I prefer to risk my neck at my own hands than at the hands of someone else.’ He revved the engine and enjoyed the full-bodied sound of the throttle. It had been a long time since he had been on the seat of a motor bike. He had forgotten how free and powerful they could make you feel. It was going to be an enjoyable ride, especially when he intended to make full use of it by squeezing as much information out of his passenger as he possibly could. Communications with Nicholas had been frustratingly restricted to his friend singing the praises of the Sharp girl, interspersed with one or two essential facts and figures about the estate. But this lad obviously knew the area, was almost certain to know the Sharp family and who wasn’t up for a bit of gossip? In a place like this, it was probably the mainstay of their existence!

‘So,’ Louis shouted encouragingly over the roar of the motorbike. ‘If you know Crossfeld House, then you might know the chartered surveyor there … Nicholas Talbot?’

‘Sort of …’ Lizzy clung to him. He wasn’t kitted out for riding a motorbike, but he had managed to hitch his coat up, and through it she could feel the muscularity of his body. He had clearly ridden a motorbike before; it was apparent from the ease with which he manoeuvred it. ‘Why?’

‘I’m here to supervise what he’s been up to. He should have sent reports back about the state of the place, but his communications have been erratic.’

‘Really? So, you’re his boss?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘You’re checking up on him?’ Lizzy demanded angrily. ‘That’s awful—Nicholas has been working really hard, actually!’

‘So you know him?’

‘I don’t know him, but he’s … It’s a small town, put it that way, and Nicholas has become a very popular member of the community.’

‘Has he, now? Made friends …?’

‘I think he might be interested in one of the girls here, yes …’ Lizzy said in a guarded voice, although she had to shout that information over the noise of the engine. She realised that she had yet to discover the name of the guy to whom she was clinging for dear life but, that said, at least she knew that he wasn’t dangerous—at least, to her. But as for Nicholas, would he lose his job just because he hadn’t filed daily reports to someone who was obviously a control freak?

‘He did mention something of the sort.’ Louis’s voice was non-judgemental, encouraging, persuasive.

Lizzy grasped that and thought that she would make her excuses for Nicholas’s absent-mindedness in reporting back to his master, because she knew that Nicholas would never make excuses for himself. He was too non-confrontational, too mild-mannered. He would probably stammer and stutter and thereby secure his own sacking, because the motorbike rider was just the sort of guy who sacked people. Or maybe he wasn’t even responsible for actually doing the sacking. Far more likely was that he was an errand boy of sorts, someone sent to check out the situation.

‘What did he say?’ Lizzy asked tentatively. She noticed that she was no longer having to shout, which meant that he wasn’t driving quite so fast now. The roads were slippery, unlit and treacherous unless you knew them.

‘He fancies himself in love,’ Louis said with a dry, cynical laugh; Lizzy was suffused with a wave of rampant hostility. Not that she saw love and marriage as the be all and end all of everything, but her sister did. Her sister was head over heels in love with Nicholas Talbot and she bristled at the notion that this perfect stranger saw fit to be contemptuous of a situation about which he clearly knew absolutely nothing.

‘Oh yes?’ she managed to say coldly.

‘In love with someone who’s after him for his money, I gather from reading between the lines.’ No point beating around the bush. If the boy knew anything about what was happening in the town or village, even if he was too young to be really interested one way or another, then he would report back—and the warning would be sent out that Nicholas wasn’t up for grabs.

Louis had had his fill of gold-diggers. He had been targeted at the age of nineteen, when he’d been too young to have known better, by a woman of twenty-five with whom he had fancied himself in love. Of course, the love had come to nothing, and neither had the memories.

When he thought back to Amber Newsome, her big blue eyes, her tears and the way she had convinced him that she was pregnant so that she could worm her way into an inheritance that was fast closing to her, he could feel every instinct for self-preservation ram into place inside him. She had captivated him with her self-assurance at a time when all the other girls at university had been playing games, and for a while he had enjoyed every second of what she had had to offer.

But then the time had come for moving on. He hadn’t banked on the fact that she would not be prepared to let him go. He had not yet learnt that his vast inherited wealth was something that should be kept under wraps. He had paid the price: three months of stress, thinking that he would have to marry a woman he no longer loved for a child he thought she had conceived, only to accidentally discover that he had been duped by an expert.

And then, when he thought of his younger sister Giselle—and the way she had almost been conned by someone who had been close enough to the family to know better—every inclination in him to listen to garbage about love and romance shut down with the finality of a vault door slamming closed on the crown jewels.

Nicholas was less sceptical, and therefore all the more susceptible to anyone after him for his money.

‘How do you know that?’ Lizzy asked, her heart beating fast.

‘I’m an expert when it comes to interpreting the sub-text,’ Louis informed her. ‘Ageing actress with five daughters who desperately wants them married off; it could almost be a cliché.’ It went against the grain to confide in anyone, but in this instance it suited his purpose; he could feel from her silence that she knew the family in question, had views on them.

‘You must have heard of them?’ He invited coaxingly. ‘The Sharp family?’

‘It’s a small town,’ Lizzy muttered non-committally. In front of her, Louis allowed himself a little smile of success. ‘Has … Has Nicholas—Mr, um, Talbot—told you all of this?’

‘Like I said, I’m good at the sub-text.’

‘And at prejudging other people as well, from the sounds of it,’ she threw back without hesitation. ‘You’ve never even met this Sharp family, but you’ve already made your mind up about them.’ Up ahead she could see the first straggling houses that signified the outskirts of the town. In these parts land was not at a premium, and acres of fields could lie between the houses, but everyone still knew each other and the town was really quite vibrant, considering its size. Beyond the town lay the still, dark waters of one of the smaller lochs and to the left of the town, commanding a hill top, lay Crossfeld House.

Lizzy had never known it to be anything other than verging on derelict, although half-hearted attempts had been made over the years to try and bring it back to life. The current owners, however, were not locals. They were wealthy businessmen from Glasgow, all ardent golfers who had, so the rumour went, bought it on the spur of the moment and then promptly relegated it to the back burner because they hadn’t reckoned on the time that would be required to fix it up. And so it had malingered, until three months ago when a buyer had been found.

‘You need to take the next left.’ Her voice was forced as she directed him on to Crossfeld House. ‘And you’ll have to go very slowly. The roads aren’t in the finest condition.’

‘And how far away do you live from the place?’

‘There’s no need to worry about me. I’m more than capable of finding my way home.’

Zooming around on a bike twice his size, Louis was in no doubt of that. For the first time since he had mounted the motorbike, he became fully aware of his surroundings. There was peace, he thought, and then there was the silence of pure solitude. This place definitely fell in the latter category. Personally, he could think of nothing worse than a prolonged stay in a town where finding a mobile-phone signal could be a challenge. But he was confident that there were a lot of people for whom this sort of thing would be just what the doctor ordered, people who found it relaxing to escape the daily grind of city life.

Golf had never been a sport that Louis found attractive; he preferred something that actually increased the heart rate. But, that said, there were vast numbers of golfers out there and he could begin to see that Crossfeld House might just turn into a gold mine. Had the ageing actress thought the same thing, and therefore set poor Nicholas within her sights for that reason? Was she aware that he wasn’t the outright buyer of the property?

There were just one or two things that Louis felt would be advantageous to make clear before his unwitting passenger headed back with tales of the outsider.

‘What do the people in the town think about the buy out of Crossfeld House?’ He initiated the conversation via a circuitous route. He was genuinely curious, anyway.

‘That it would be nice for the place to be renovated,’ Lizzy told him coolly. ‘It’s been a bit of an eyesore for a long time. Course, there’s nothing to say that it won’t go the same way as it did before.’

‘Meaning …?’

‘Meaning that because someone has money doesn’t mean that they’re going to make a success of it.’

‘Someone like Nicholas, you mean?’

‘I don’t know where you’re going with this.’

‘Nicholas isn’t the buyer, as it happens,’ Louis said casually. ‘Although he does come from money. Which is doubtless why he’s been targeted as a catch. The fact is, Nicholas is the chartered surveyor up here to give the place a once-over—make sure it’s not going to collapse into a pile of rubble the second the cheque’s signed.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m astounded you haven’t got round to asking me that sooner.’

Lizzy thought that she hadn’t got round to asking him that sooner because she had been too busy disliking him.

‘My name’s Louis Jumeau, and I’m the guy bankrolling this little venture.’

Wrapped round his muscular body, her hands balled into little fists and her heartbeat quickened.

‘Nicholas happens to be a very good friend of mine,’ Louis said mildly. ‘We virtually grew up together. We may not be alike, but anyone who knows us would tell you that I’m very protective of him. I’m also much more clued up on gold-diggers than he is.’

Just in time, the manor house was approaching; it was a majestic sight. In the light of the moon, it dominated the horizon—even if the cold light of day would unearth all its woeful inadequacies. Around them, the golf course stretched, swelling and dipping, a rolling sea of frozen black open landscape. That, too, would be revealed in all its glory come the morning light, of that Louis had little doubt.

He was vastly experienced in the ways of property development, even though it was only one of the many strings to his bow, and a recently acquired interest at that. With an inherited fortune behind him, he had nevertheless succeeded in making his own mark on the world of finance, and at the age of barely thirty had reached the enviable point from which he could pick and choose where he decided to invest his money.

Which wasn’t to say that he ever made the mistake of investing unwisely.

‘Impressive building,’ he murmured, slowing the motorbike to a halt and spinning it gracefully to a complete stop.

‘Yes. It is.’ By her reckoning, she would be seeing Louis Jumeau far too soon for her liking. In the spirit of encouraging the blossoming romance between Rose and Nicholas, their mother—the dreaded Mrs Sharp, whom Louis would discover soon enough was her mother—had organised a dance at the town hall for all the local big wigs and some from further afield. Furthermore, Nicholas had imported his sisters, a small additional down side which Louis would discover soon enough.

Lizzy cringed at what had all the promise of being a nightmare evening. Her mother might not be a gold-digger but she was very upbeat about Rose getting married to someone who was financially secure. In fact, it was a pleasant fate she often wished for all her daughters. Lizzy’s runaway imagination instantly foresaw all manner of tricky conversations should the man now dismounting her motorcycle catch even the slightest whiff of that.

Oh Lord! She had made the effort to return home all the way from London—had taken a whole week away from school so that she could meet the fabulous Nicholas, about whom she had heard everything there possibly was to know—and it was just her luck that her arrival coincided with a six-foot-two avenging angel on some mission of mercy to protect his gullible best friend from the claws of an unsuitable woman.

And he still had no idea who she was! Not that that was a situation that could continue for ever. The second he let it be known that an unknown motorbike rider had rescued him from the perils of a frozen Scottish countryside, her secret would be out. She had told positively everyone in her family that she couldn’t wait to get back on her motorbike and enjoy the wide open spaces and the beautiful, never-ending silence so wildly different from the crowded streets of London.

Lizzy felt the urge to groan out loud.

‘How long will it take you to get back to your house?’

He turned to face her and she had that suffocating feeling again as she peered at the stunning angles of his face from behind the safety of her helmet.

For once the feisty spirit, the never-back-down attitude, deserted her, leaving her dry-mouthed and strangely unable to think clearly.

With a sigh of resignation, she reached up and began unbuckling the helmet.

‘So you’ve finally decided to show yourself?’ Louis said with biting sarcasm. ‘Wise move. I would have found out who you were sooner or later anyway, but don’t bother; I won’t report you back to your parents for reckless speeding on that bike which is way too …’ With his mind caught halfway between wondering how he was going to retrieve his possessions from the rented car several miles back, and speculating on the condition of what he would find inside the rambling manor house, he was one-hundred percent not prepared for the tumble of long dark hair that fell out of the helmet as it was finally unclasped and pulled off.

For once in his life Louis Christophe Jumeau was rendered utterly speechless. He had expected a teenage lad. Instead, standing in front of him, her head defiantly thrown back and her dark eyes glittering with unconcealed hostility, he found himself looking at a woman with fine, stubborn features, a full mouth, which at the moment was pursed in blatant disapproval, and the graceful, slender body of a dancer.

‘You’re not a boy.’ He heard himself state the obvious.

‘No.’

‘You’re a girl on a motorbike.’

‘Yes. I happen to like motorbikes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ His tone was accusatory.

‘Why should I? What difference would it have made?’ A brisk gust of icy air made her shiver. ‘Besides,’ Lizzy continued, stoking the flames of her anger as she remembered the arrogance and contempt in his voice as he had made his sweeping generalisations about her family, ‘I was interested to hear everything you had to say about your friend.’

For a fleeting second, Louis wondered whether this was the object of Nicholas’s infatuation, but it was an idea he dismissed before it had time even to take root. Nicholas had waxed lyrical about a beautiful blonde, sweet tempered and gentle. On all counts, the woman standing in front of him failed to meet the bill.

‘You know the woman, do you?’

Lizzy decided to evade that question for the moment. ‘I know that you’re the most arrogant, high-handed, unbearable person I have ever met in my whole life!’ Her mother would kill her for saying that. Grace Sharp had been eagerly looking forward to the arrival of this man. She had heard a lot about him and—Lizzy was ashamed to admit even to herself—a lot about his fabulous wealth and legendary status. Alongside Nicholas, he was to be the glittering highlight of the carefully arranged dance—and the reason why so many people were coming, Lizzy suspected darkly.

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’

‘You’ve never met any of the people from here and yet you think it’s okay to make lots of assumptions about them. You’re a snob, Mr Jumeau, and I can’t bear snobs! ‘

‘Mr Jumeau? Surely we should be on first names at least, considering the circumstances? And maybe we should go inside to carry on this conversation. It’s bitter out here.’ Another frozen gust tossed her hair around her face, and he watched in some fascination as she pulled it back and twisted it into a long coil to hang over her shoulder.

He had never considered himself a judgemental sort, but he had to admit that preconceptions he’d been unaware of were being trampled underfoot. Why shouldn’t a woman be on a motorbike—a reasonably powerful one, at that? Why shouldn’t she enjoy the same feeling of freedom that he himself could remember enjoying years ago when he’d still been a university student? And why shouldn’t she be able to speak her mind? Although, granted, this did afford him a slightly bigger problem.

‘I don’t think so,’ Lizzy said tartly, momentarily sidetracked by his sudden change of tone. She folded her arms and glared at him.

‘Fair enough.’ He shrugged, and in the shadowy darkness she was aware of a shiver of apprehension racing like cold water down her spine at the menacing glitter in his dark eyes. ‘You’ve just accused me of being a snob.’

‘Which you are! ‘

‘And I’m not sure that I appreciate that.’ His eyes drifted to that full, defiant mouth. Under the leather jacket, the jeans and the mid-calf hiking boots, he couldn’t make out her figure; it was no wonder that he had mistaken her for a boy. He wondered what she looked like out of the masculine garb, then he impatiently snapped back to the point at hand. He wasn’t here to win a popularity contest. He was here to size up Crossfeld House, to see how much money it would cost to bring it up to scratch, and to put any aspiring fortune-hunters in their place. Whether the girl in front of him considered him a snob because of that was entirely beside the point.

Lizzy wanted to jeer at him, to make some disparaging remark about how men like him, born into wealth and privilege, weren’t entitled to ride roughshod over people they considered their social inferiors. But she was mesmerised by the stark, angular beauty of his face. It kept making her lose her train of thought, which she hated. Out of all the girls in her family, she had always prided herself on being the level-headed one, the one who was least likely to pander to a man.

‘That’s not my problem,’ she managed to tell him in a lofty voice.

‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ Louis countered smoothly. ‘But, while we’re on the subject of prejudices, maybe you might want to stop and think about your own.’

Lizzy’s mouth fell open. ‘Me, prejudiced? I’m the least prejudiced person on the face of the earth!’

‘You’ve just accused me of being a snob. Yet you don’t know me.’

Bright colour flamed her cheeks and she scrambled for something to say. ‘You’re right. It’s bitter cold out here and I have to be getting home,’ she eventually muttered in a stiff voice. ‘You can find the local garage in the Yellow Pages and call them to get the car, or bring your stuff to the house or whatever. Do you have any idea how long you’ll be staying here?’

A spark of hope ignited at the thought that his hideous experience at the hands of his broken-down car might spur him on to make a faster than anticipated return to city life; in which case, there would be no risk of her bumping into him again. But any such hope was squashed when he shot her a half-smile, leaving her in little doubt that he had read her mind and knew exactly what had been going through it.

‘No idea.’ He glanced over his shoulder to the brooding enormity of Crossfeld House. ‘Who knows how long it’ll take to go through every room in that place?’

‘But … but surely you’ll need to head back down to London? And Nicholas, isn’t he the surveyor who would have already checked out all that stuff?’

‘One can’t be too careful.’ He looked at her narrowly. ‘Why? Are you scared that you might accidentally run into me again? It’s a small place, as you’ve pointed out; steel yourself for the prospect. And, by the way, spread the news that I’m in town and I’ll be keeping a sharp eye out for the Sharp woman and her brood of grasping harpies.’ Louis had no idea what had propelled him to tack that on. He wasn’t a believer in being overtly threatening; there was usually far more to be gained by being subtle.

‘You can always tell them yourself when you see them at the dance you’ve been invited to,’ Lizzy returned, head flung back. ‘And, as for the brood of grasping harpies, you’ve already made yourself perfectly clear to one of them!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Let me introduce myself.’ Although her hand remained firmly where it was. ‘My name’s Elizabeth Sharp and Rose is my sister.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘HE’S awful. Arrogant, overbearing …’ Lizzy yanked on one knee-high boot and glared at her reflection in the mirror. Lounging on the bed, fully dressed, fully made-up, and looking as though she had just stepped out from the centre of a magazine, Rose caught her eye and smiled.

‘He can’t be that bad. Nobody’s that bad. Besides, he’s Nicholas’s friend and I know Nicholas would never have a friend who was as horrible as you say he is.’

‘Why do you always give everyone the benefit of the doubt?’ Lizzy grumbled good-naturedly. ‘It’s a terrible trait! Some people weren’t born to be given the benefit of the doubt and Louis Jumeau is one of them.’ She pulled on the other boot and made a quick mental comparison between herself and her older sister. Mental comparisons had become almost second nature ever since, at the age of fifteen, she had overheard her mother describing her to a friend as the odd one out. ‘Too brainy,’ Grace Sharp had lamented. ‘And if only she’d do something about her appearance, take a leaf out of her sister’s book …’

Where Rose was angelically pretty, with rosy cheeks, huge blue eyes and blond hair that fell in ringlets around a heart-shaped face, Lizzy was darker, more angular, more like her father in appearance. She had always made a point of turning a deaf ear to anything her mother had to say about the way she looked. She had fulfilled her brief as the clever one, fleeing to university as fast as she could; she had pursued a teaching career while Rose had stayed in Scotland and settled for working in a boutique in one of the bigger towns fifteen miles away.

From every perspective, they could not have been more different, but in spite of that they were close. If Louis Jumeau had made a point of telling her how loyal he was to his friend, then he had no idea how loyal she was to her sister—which was why she had kept quiet about the reasons for her animosity; not a word about gold-diggers. Rose would have been appalled to think that anyone could see her as the sort of girl who would chase a man for his money and, worse, she would have been hurt.

‘You’ve gone all out with your clothes tonight, Liz.’ Rose stood up, five feet ten inches of radiant beauty in a long-sleeved emerald-green dress and a little faux fur throw that matched her high black shoes. Lizzy didn’t think that she had ever possessed any item of clothing in emerald green. She tended to stick to black and grey; it was impossible to be too much of a fashion disaster in blacks and greys. Bright colours she left for her sisters, who could pull them off a lot better than she ever could.

But tonight she had taken a leap of faith and borrowed a slim-fitting deep blue dress from her sister. The deep cowl neck showed just a hint of cleavage and made the most of her long, graceful neck. Her boots elevated her from a modest five-foot-four by at least four inches and, yes, she was wearing make-up: a light dusting of powder, blusher, mascara, eye shadow, lip gloss, most of which she had cadged from Maisie, who possessed enough make-up to open a small store.

‘Have I?’ Colour bloomed in her cheeks. ‘I just thought that I’d save Mum from having a go. You know how she is …’

‘Are you sure it’s not because you want to impress the arrogant, overbearing Mr Jumeau?’ Rose teased, smiling because she had noticed that faint flush on her sister’s cheeks when she had casually described him as ‘all-right looking, if you go for the tall, dark handsome cliché.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ But that weird, tingly feeling she had had two nights before when she had looked up at him was back. ‘I could never be attracted to a man like him, Rose! I like kind, thoughtful men.’ She thought of her most recent boyfriend, a five-month romance that had dwindled into friendship, which was probably where it should have stayed in the first place. He had been kind and thoughtful. Maybe too much so. Was that possible?

There was the sound of clattering up the stairs and then Maisie and Leigh laughing and talking over one another, while from somewhere else their father shouted at them to keep it down, that he didn’t want complaints from the neighbours. It was a familiar routine. Maisie and Leigh were noisy and high-spirited, like puppies that had yet to be trained into good behaviour—although at least Vivian wasn’t around to scowl and lecture, which usually had the effect of sending them into overdrive.

It felt strange, being back in the family home when she had become so accustomed to her own space, and she assumed that it was a feeling shared by all her sisters. Maisie and Leigh were on their holidays from university. Rose shared a flat with their old friend, Claudia, but from all accounts had been spending more time recently with her parents thanks to the fact that their house was closer to Crossfeld.

She should be enjoying the familiar hustle and bustle, but Louis Jumeau had unnerved her. She didn’t like him; she hadn’t appreciated his threats, she had nothing but scorn for his antiquated snobbishness, but she still hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind.

‘And stop looking at me like that.’ She threw a cushion from her bed at Rose, and was relieved when the conversation was brought to an end by her mother threatening to leave without them unless they hurried.

The drive to the venue took half an hour. Six people piled into one reliable seven-seater which had seen off fifteen winters and was still going strong.

On the way, Grace Sharp could barely contain her excitement, while Lizzy stared through the window and tried to block out her mother’s voice. She cringed at the breathless speculation about Louis and ignored her mother’s demands for more information. Grace had revelled in Nicholas’s attention to Rose. He was new to the area, he was wealthy and his family apparently owned a large estate somewhere in Berkshire. Could it have got any better?

Lizzy toyed with the entertaining thought of what would happen if Rose decided to dump him and run off with one of the hired help from Crossfeld House instead. Her mother, she suspected, would have a heart attack on the spot. But there was no chance of Rose doing that. She might have decided to play down how she felt, because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself by throwing herself at a guy who might, just might, not be as serious about her as she was about him, but Lizzy knew that her sister was in love.

She surfaced to find that they had arrived. At once her stomach tightened and her mind, which had been pleasantly drifting this way and that, zoomed into the inevitability of seeing Louis Jumeau again.

The long drive was already lined with cars and, even as she played with the idea that she might just get away with avoiding Louis altogether by cunningly circulating in whichever circle of people happened to be furthest away from him, she stepped into the tiled hallway to find herself standing directly behind him.

Then, as several more people piled in behind her, eager to escape the ferocious cold outside, literally pushed into the back of him.

With a gasp of dismay, she tried and failed to right herself before he could spin around and find her clutching his jacket.

‘Ah. So we meet again. And this time you’re literally throwing yourself at me.’ Louis had not been looking forward to this event, and already after five minutes it was living down to all his expectations. Lots of people were enthusiastically greeting Nicholas and were openly curious about the rest of his group, namely himself and Nicholas’s two sisters—who, Louis had discovered as soon as he had poled up to Crossfeld House, had been invited to visit so that they could meet Rose Sharp.

‘If you would just move on, you wouldn’t be causing a pile-up,’ Lizzy hissed under her breath. She felt hot and bothered and took a step sideways to avoid the crush of people arriving behind her.

‘Are these events usually so well attended? Or are the local folk so desperate to meet the southerners that they’re willing to brave Mother Nature for the experience?’ He leant down, eyes drawn to the creamy smooth hint of cleavage. So this is what she looked like in a dress. He had to admit that he had wondered.

‘You’re unbearable.’

‘So you’ve already told me. You’re in danger of becoming repetitive.’

Lizzy chose not to answer. Instead, she swerved away from the entrance hall and made her way quickly and breathlessly towards the large room at the back which had been decked out with tables and chairs and a long trestle table which was manned by six girls, well positioned to spring into action the minute food was required.

Pausing by the door, she glanced over her shoulder and grimaced when she saw Louis looking at Rose, then at her family, who were introducing themselves, and then back at Rose. She could imagine the wheels in his head whirring around as he jumped to all sorts of conclusions.

The rise and fall of voices around her did little to calm her nerves, and not even the prospect of meeting some of her old gang could dispel the sickening knot in her stomach.

‘He seems lovely.’ Rose’s voice from behind made her jump and she spun around and allowed herself to be led away to a quiet corner. ‘I don’t know why you were so worried!’

‘He’s pretending.’

‘Don’t be silly. Why would he do that? Have you met Nicholas’s sisters, though?’ She glanced quickly to the left and Lizzy followed her sister’s eyes to where two tall blonde girls were looking around them with undisguised contempt. Whilst everyone had dressed up, they were in jeans and thick sweaters and were making no attempt to mingle.

‘Have you spoken to them?’ Lizzy asked anxiously, and she could see tears begin to gather in the corner of her sister’s eyes.

‘They hate me. I can tell from the way they spoke to me. Oh, they were very polite, but I just got the impression that they didn’t think that I was good enough for their brother.’

‘Nicholas is lucky to have you,’ Lizzy said stoutly. She wondered whether Louis had infected them with his scepticism or whether they were all in a similar conspiracy of hunting down the worst-case scenario on Nicholas’s behalf.

‘Maybe. Or maybe he feels the same. Deep down.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzy could see Louis looking around him. In a heartbeat of a second, their eyes tangled and then he was bearing down on them, cutting a swathe through the crowds, drink in hand.

‘Speaking of Nicholas, why don’t you go and see if you can find him …?’ Lizzy murmured. ‘Louis is coming towards us and I want to have a word with him.’

‘What about? You won’t say anything, will you?’

‘Don’t panic, Rose. You know how tactful I am.’

Now that she was looking at him approach, she found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away. He, at least, had made an effort with his clothes: a dark suit which fitted so perfectly that it could only have been made to measure, and a white shirt, on which he had undone the top two buttons. It might be freezing outside but the place was warm, warm enough for everyone to have disposed of their coats, jackets, cardigans and scarves.

He was spectacularly good-looking, she reluctantly registered to herself, and he moved with the easy grace of an athlete. As he walked by, heads swung in his direction and a fair few of them lingered. Of course, he would know the effect he had on people. It was probably just one of the things that contributed to his arrogance. She rallied her fighting spirit at the thought of that and took a swig of her drink, white wine which had become tepid over the course of the hour.

‘Are you having a good time?’ She greeted him coolly when he was finally standing in front of her, affording her the sort of undiluted attention that made her pulses race.

Louis took his time answering. ‘It’s always illuminating to watch and observe.’

‘Watch and observe? You mean in the way a scientist watches and observes bacteria on a Petri dish?’

‘You’re very different from your sisters.’

Lizzy’s eyes narrowed. ‘How so?’

‘Well, your two younger ones are obviously party animals without a care in the world, and Rose …’

‘What about Rose?’

‘Very sweet-tempered, or at least that’s the image she’s trying to project.’

Lizzy bristled, but before she could jump in with a suitable retort he was talking again, his voice a low, lazy drawl, his incredibly dark eyes roving over her flushed, angry face.

‘And your mother seems delighted with the fact that she’s going out with Nicholas. In fact, I think she can hear wedding bells in the air … True or false?’

Lizzy tried not to grimace. Gracie Sharp had always aspired to financial security. She had been the driving hand behind their father’s work ethic, always pushing him to go a little further, do a little better and aim a little higher, and Lizzy could understand that. In fact, she could feel a grudging empathy, because her mother had grown up in a series of foster homes, relying on her looks to pull her through in the absence of any real education. She had duly chosen to launch herself into the world of acting, but it had been a struggle, and one she had from all accounts abandoned the day she had met their father. The legacy of poverty had lived on, however, so was it any wonder that she was now thrilled with Nicholas? At least one of her daughters was achieving what she had supposedly been born to achieve.

‘All mothers can’t help but think about their kids, um, finding happiness …’ She wished he would move back a little, so that there was some chance their conversation would be interrupted. But his stance repelled anyone who might want to join them, broad back to the room, and she wondered whether it was deliberate.

‘Really? She didn’t seem all that bothered by the fact that there’s no guy in your life.’

‘You asked her about me? You were prying into my life behind my back?’ Her eyes glittered with outrage and she clenched her fists as he returned her angry gaze calmly.

‘There was no real need to pry,’ Louis said with an elegant shrug. ‘Your mother seems very forthcoming. I’ve heard all about your younger sisters and their hectic social lives, and Vivian and her causes, and Rose, who is apparently as close to perfection as any human being could reasonably aspire to be. And your mother just wishes that they would settle down with the right men. And then there’s you—clever, ambitious—and there was no hint that finding the right man was on your mother’s wish-list. Why do you think that was?’

Having watched and listened, Louis had reached certain conclusions, and conclusion number one was that he had been one-hundred percent correct in his assumption that the Sharps were fortune hunters. Everything backed him up, from Mrs Sharp’s obvious delight in her daughter’s so-called match, to Rose herself, who was the picture of gentle innocence, but who was also seemingly lacking in the sort of passion he would have expected to see in a woman in love.

He had made his way over to Lizzy because he had intended on pinning her to the wall. Inexplicably, he now found himself distracted and, even more inexplicably, enjoying his moment of distraction.

‘I don’t see that my private life is any of your business,’ Lizzy muttered, on the back foot and hating him for it.

‘So how come you’re not involved with anyone?’ He swirled his drink and then tossed his head back to finish the wine in his glass. Just in case she got any ideas about going anywhere, he reached out and planted his hand firmly on the wall so that she was locked in.

Lizzy wondered how soon she could escape so that she could strangle her overbearing mother.

‘Repeat—none of your business.’

‘A little tip—men don’t like women who show their claws the way you do.’

‘I show my claws because I happen to loathe you!’

Louis laughed. He wondered if anyone had ever had the audacity to tell him that they loathed him. Nope; he couldn’t think of a single instance.

‘And,’ Lizzy continued, fuming, ‘I don’t ask you about your private life!’

‘Ask on. What do you want to know?’ He straightened, but when he shifted it was only to further block any exit routes.

‘I’m actually not at all interested. And anyway,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘I don’t need to ask, because I can guess what sort of private life you have.’

‘Oh? Tell me. I’m all ears.’

‘Lots of women,’ she threw at him. ‘Glamour models and airheads who smile sweetly and do whatever you ask them to do. You have so much money that you can pick and choose, and rich men only ever pick stunning women. But my guess is that, when and if you ever do decide to tie the knot, it’ll be with someone from your own class. That’s why you don’t like the thought of Nicholas with my sister. He comes from lots of money and therefore he should stick to his own kind.’

‘You’re flirting dangerously with my boundaries. And my patience.’

‘You have been flirting dangerously with mine as well.’ She looked at him and something wild and dangerous shifted inside her. Just as quickly she glanced away, but her pulses were racing and her heart was thumping so hard that she felt as though she might faint.

Behind him, she could hear the first strains of music as the small jazz band—two members of which she had gone to school with—began tuning their instruments.

‘Care to dance?’

‘You’re kidding!’

Louis laughed again. He had intended to be brutal on this fact-finding mission, but he found that he was enjoying the way she scratched and bristled. It was novel. She had been dead-on target when she had said that the women he dated were beautiful airheads. Airheads didn’t interrupt his work life, and his work life ate up a considerable amount of his time. She had also been dead on target when she had said that the woman he eventually chose would be someone of equal standing—no one who could possibly be interested in his vast wealth, which would mean that her connections would have to be similarly impeccable; no argument there. Neither type of woman would resemble the one currently nursing her empty wine glass and glaring up at him. A girl who got her kicks riding motorcycles and whose mother despaired of her settling down. Even in her finery, she still managed to have a slightly untamed air about her.

‘Don’t you dance?’ he asked.

‘I choose my dance partners with discretion.’

Louis made a show of looking around him. ‘And anyone here take your fancy? Or do you go back too far with all of them? My guess is that familiarity can breed contempt in a place as small as this. Is that the reason you legged it down to London while your sisters stayed up here?’

‘Rose is the only one who lives here. Leigh and Maisie are at university and Vivian is abroad.’

‘Doing good works. Like I said, I already have the potted family history.’

‘Isn’t there anything my mother didn’t tell you? Couldn’t you just have chatted to her about the weather, like any normal person would have?’ Lizzy blurted out in frustration and Louis grinned.

It was such a breathtaking ceasefire after hostilities that she felt her breath get trapped somewhere in her throat. The man was beyond good-looking, she thought in confusion. He was wickedly, sinfully devastating.

‘I should mingle.’ Her voice emerged a little unsteady and she cleared her throat. ‘People are going to start wondering why we’re closeted here on our own.’

‘We’re in full view of one and all. I doubt even the most imaginative could jump to any wrong conclusions.’

Which had the effect of immediately making her think of exactly what ‘wrong conclusions’ anyone might have in mind: which wasn’t a comfortable thought.

‘I can see Rose looking for me,’ she mumbled, which wasn’t a complete lie. ‘And besides …’ She sidled to one side and was relieved when he stood back, clearing a space for her, obviously as glad to see the back of her as she was to see the back of him.

‘Besides … what?’ His keen eyes took in the heightened colour in her cheeks and the stray strands of her chestnut-brown hair that were already disobeying orders and tangling about her face; she impatiently tucked them behind her ears.

‘Besides.’ Lizzy shot him a look from under her lashes. ‘Nicholas’s sister is beginning to get a little impatient. She’s been glowering in this direction for the past fifteen minutes. I think she’s waiting for you to wind up this conversation so that you can go and pay her some attention.’ The leggy blonde had not moved from where she had been standing an hour before. Maybe she was just too deadly bored to move.

Louis frowned and glanced around him.

‘I think,’ she continued tartly, ‘she looks a little jealous that you’ve been cooped up here with me. Are you and she an item?’ Lizzy looked at Louis with an innocent, wide-eyed expression and wondered if she dared risk asking him how he liked the limelight being pointed in his direction. Judging from the shadow of intense discomfort that crossed his face, not a lot.

‘You can’t tell me that it’s none of my business,’ she tacked on swiftly before he could reply. ‘You’ve spent all evening nosing into my private life, and it’s only fair that I get the chance to do the same. So … are the two of you involved? Is that why she’s here—to keep an eye on you?’

This was definitely well into the arena of overstepped boundaries. Louis didn’t encourage any sort of intrusion into his private life by anyone, but where was his automatic response to slam shut the door in her face? ‘If you’re asking me whether I’m currently involved with someone, then the answer is no, although I’m at a loss to understand why you’d be interested in the first place.’

‘I wasn’t asking you if you were going out with someone! I was just pointing out that—’

‘I had no idea that Jessica would be here. Or her sister Eloise, for that matter.’

‘Well, they obviously share your low opinion of all of us.’ Lizzy had now backed away to a safe distance and she felt some of her courage and fighting spirit being restored. ‘Because they couldn’t even be bothered to dress appropriately.’ Her face was expressive of distaste.

Louis didn’t say anything. The presence of Jessica at Crossfeld House was unfortunate. Over the past two years, she had been increasingly overt in her flirtations with him, despite his resounding lack of encouragement. And now he was forced to admit to a certain level of disgust at their blatant scorn for their surroundings. Louis didn’t consider himself a snob. He was rich, he was careful and he was wary of gold-diggers. But Jessica and Eloise belonged to that category of spoiled rich kids who thought it was acceptable to sneer at people they considered lower down the pecking order. He had no time for them and even Nicholas, loyal brother that he was, privately despaired of their airs and graces.

‘I quite agree,’ he found himself saying, and she looked at him in surprise. ‘It’s rude, it’s contemptuous and it’s inexcusable.’

‘You agree with me?’

‘Why the shock? I’m a big guy. Maybe the box you’re trying to cram me into is the wrong shape?’

‘I don’t think so!’ Lizzy said tartly. She belatedly remembered some of the things he had said about her family. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me …’

Food was about to be served and the voices had grown louder and heartier as alcohol began to have its loosening effect. She would have to go and stand guard by her mother’s side. Her father would be drinking with his friends, and heaven only knew what other titbits of information her mother would come out with if she had more than a glass or two of wine.

After the enforced intimacy away from the crowd, every fibre of her body focused on Louis, Lizzy was forcibly struck by just how many people had made the effort to get to the bash. There were people from all walks of life; a lot she recognised, some she didn’t.

Lizzy spotted Rose standing to one side, nervously sipping from her wine glass, trying to make some headway with Eloise, who was certainly the less obnoxious-looking of the sisters. Jessica had already been cornered by Louis and was talking and gesticulating to him, her beautiful mouth pursed into lines of sulky displeasure. She was being reprimanded! Lizzy realised with surprise. Louis’s face was tight and disapproving and it was obvious that, wherever his loyalties lay, he had no qualms about putting Jessica firmly and soundly in her place. Lizzy had been happy to dismiss him as a narrow-minded snob, so how did that fit in with the convenient image?

With a little start of discomfort, she realised that she was watching the antics of Nicholas’s sisters with just the same attitude of a scientist watching bacteria on a Petri dish—which she had earlier accused Louis of doing with her own family. So she spent the next couple of hours making a determined effort to talk and chat and absolutely avoid glancing in the direction of either Louis, Jessica or Eloise, or even Nicholas and her sister, for that matter.

It was after midnight when the place started thinning out. Adrian, her father, was beginning to look the worse for wear, and of her mother there was nothing to be seen.

‘Where’s Mum?’ Lizzy weaved her way through the remaining clumps of people to tug her father away from his cronies.

‘She left half an hour ago, with Rose and Nicholas. Apparently your Louis chap has acquired himself a driver and a proper car, or so he said, and he took Nicholas’s sisters back to Crossfeld House.’ Her father, angular and dark as she was—although taller and with less of a forceful appearance—cleared his throat and refused to meet her eye.

‘Why? And he’s not my Louis.’

‘What did you think of the evening?’

‘No good, Dad. Why did Mum leave early?’

‘She wanted to help Rose pack an overnight bag.’

‘For what? Why?’

‘Rose is going to be spending the night at Crossfeld House. Ahem, your sisters have insisted on bringing home some of their friends, and there just wouldn’t have been room in the car for all of us, and the house … Well, Rose volunteered her bedroom, and you know Maisie and Leigh …’

‘I’m not following any of this. You mean you and Mum don’t mind Rose being together with Nicholas at Crossfeld?’

‘Times have moved on, Busy Lizzy, and you know Rose is a big girl now …’

‘You weren’t that liberal minded when Maisie brought home that boy from university last summer,’ Lizzy reminded him sharply as her brain began whirring into action. It was unfair to try and pin her father down; she knew that. What her mother said tended to go, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘Tommy wasn’t exactly suitable material, though, was he?’ she speculated aloud. ‘What with all those tattoos and the pony tail and the Student Union protests. But Nicholas … Mum wants Rose to go to Crossfeld House because she doesn’t want Nicholas to have any kind of chance of getting away or of his sisters influencing him.’

‘It’s not that clear cut, poppet.’

Lizzy thought that it was a good job that Rose actually loved the guy. Would her mother have tried to railroad her into the relationship even if she hadn’t? Would Rose have gone along with it because she was, essentially, so docile by nature?

She was struck by another thought. Shy, sweet-natured Rose was not the flamboyant or demonstrative type. Had it been Maisie or Leigh, the whole world would have known how they felt, and they would cheerfully have taken out a centre spread in the local newspaper to inform the few who didn’t. But Rose was different. Did her mother want to push her daughter into cementing the relationship just in case Nicholas misinterpreted her shyness for indifference and walked away? Was a suitable match so important to them?

Her head was aching by the time Maisie, Leigh and their assorted friends were rounded up. And embedded in that hornet’s nest was the spectre of Louis, watching, observing, speculating, assuming the worst.

Outside, a light dusting of snow had begun to fall. There was always an urgency to the weather in Scotland. What started as a dusting of snow could quickly escalate into a blizzard, and the prospect of that reduced even her high-spirited and very, very tipsy sisters and their friends to focus on gathering their belongings and getting home. Weary and confused, she decided that she would think about everything in the morning.

But the following morning she awoke to find that that tentative promise of a deterioration in the weather had indeed turned into a full-scale war of nature. The falling snow was thick and fast, and the sky was so dark that anyone would be excused for thinking that night had descended a few hours ahead of schedule.

Her father had made himself useful by clearing some of the mounting snow outside the house. Whilst the wind was so far making a nonsense of the snow stockpiling, it wouldn’t be long before the countryside would be knee-deep in the white stuff.

Many a joyous day had been spent revelling in the vagaries of nature when she had been a kid. Heavy snow had usually meant days off school. Now, however, her heart sank. She could think of nothing else but Rose stuck at Crossfeld House, at the mercy of Nicholas’s sisters and Louis, who would be circling her like a shark on the lookout for fresh blood.

By three o’clock, she was going stir crazy, and with the impetuousness that was part and parcel of her nature she announced to her parents that she had decided to go out for a quick spin on her bike.

‘Just up to Crossfeld House,’ she continued, backing away nervously from their duly horrified expressions. ‘My bike’s got fantastic wheels and I’ve ridden in conditions like these in the past.’ More or less. ‘I think Rose feels out of her depth.’ A note of accusation crept into her voice, and she noted the shifty way her parents exchanged glances between themselves. But it was the tipping point, because her mother nodded wearily and then offered to prepare her a packed lunch.

‘And don’t forget your mobile phone.’ Grace shouted up to her for the eighth time as Lizzy kitted herself out in suitable gear for the bike ride.

As if! But at least now she was doing something instead of sitting around, listening to her sisters and their friends play their music too loud, and spread themselves throughout the house with the easy indolence of nineteen-and twenty-year-olds who hadn’t yet taken on any of life’s little responsibilities.

It was bitter outside and the forecasters were warning of plummeting temperatures.

Lizzy revved the engine of her motorbike and felt that familiar thrill as it roared into life. She swung it out of the garage and down the short drive to the main road.

Three years ago, she had had special tyres put on that could better cope with snowy conditions, and she was now grateful for that window of foresight because conditions were truly terrible.

The trip to Crossfeld House on a clear, sunny day was a circuitous one of winding roads. Snow made the trip slower and much more difficult.

But it was only when the fall of snow began making it difficult for her to see that Lizzy eventually acknowledged that she might be in a spot of bother.

Ahead of her, the tiny pinpoints of lights from Crossfeld House at least indicated that she hadn’t been totally disoriented by the blanket of snow. But those small dots of light were also a reminder that her marvellous wheels weren’t quite so marvellous after all. And there was no way that she could walk the motorbike to Crossfeld; it was too big and too unwieldy.

Also, after nearly an hour of slow riding, the cold was beginning to worm its way through and under her layers of clothes, finding her tender skin and sinking its teeth in. Another hour and she would be putting her life at risk.

She pulled out the packed lunch which she had laughed at her mother for providing and gratefully bit into a cheese and pickle sandwich, washing it down with some coffee which had likewise been provided for her, despite her protests.

Then, with a sigh of defeat, she pulled out her mobile phone and dialled through to her sister.

CHAPTER THREE

LIZZY watched the headlights of the Range Rover draw closer, searching her out. This wasn’t the tired old four-by-four which had been left by the side of the road. This was a shiny black monster and not much fancy guesswork was needed to figure out who was behind the steering wheel.

‘You mustn’t try and walk here!’ Rose had exclaimed in horror when Lizzy had explained the situation to her on the phone. ‘You’ll collapse!’

‘I’m not some kind of pathetic Victorian maiden,’ Lizzy had been quick to point out, whilst acknowledging that her sister was right. There was no way she could walk to Crossfeld with the snow coming down in barrels and she was too far from her own house to risk turning back.

‘I’m sure Louis wouldn’t mind. He had a new car delivered; it would take him no time at all. Will you be okay waiting?’

‘I could probably give it another try,’ Lizzy had ventured optimistically, but the suggestion had fallen on deaf ears. Now as she waved to the car, making her presence known, she almost wished that she had pressed a bit harder.

‘Are you completely mad?’ Louis swung his long body out of the car, fighting against the brisk wind. ‘What the hell possessed you to pull a stunt like this? Get in the car!’

Lizzy gritted her teeth together. Unlike the last time, when he had been on the receiving end of her help, he was dressed for the weather now. Thick jeans were tucked into black, fur-lined wellies and under the padded waterproof jacket she suspected that there were several layers of clothes. He was a fast learner.

‘I can’t leave my bike.’ She folded her arms and stood her ground.

‘And that would be because …?’

‘It’ll be ruined.’

‘Tough. You should have thought of that before you decided to come haring out to Crossfeld House to rescue your sister. Who, by the way, doesn’t need rescuing.’ He flung open the passenger door. ‘I’m giving you to the count of three, and if you’re not in you can bed down here for the night.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t put that to the test. I was called out from an important conference call to rescue the damsel in distress. I’m not in the prettiest of moods.’

Lizzy climbed into the car. She should, of course, thank him for coming out to rescue her, but gratitude stuck in her throat; she stared ahead in stony silence.

‘I’m sorry to have interrupted your conference call,’ she eventually managed through stiff lips.

‘You’re a lunatic.’

‘It’s not the first time I’ve ridden my motorbike in snow.’

Louis glanced across at her. She was soaking wet, except for her hair, which she had managed to shove underneath the helmet. Not even the leather jacket, the boots and the scarf had protected her against the onslaught of the weather.

‘I’m amazed your parents let you out of the house,’ he gritted.

‘I’m twenty-three. They couldn’t very well stop me.’

‘Which, of course, gives you the right to drive them out of their minds with worry?’

‘Oh, please! I didn’t think you cared about my parents or the state of their minds.’ She shot him a sideways glare.

‘You’re headstrong. You’re opinionated. You’re arrogant.

And you shoot your mouth off without bothering to stop and think first. Little wonder that your mother’s given up on your chances of marriage.’

Lizzy thought she would explode. She could feel herself beginning to hyperventilate with rage and she breathed in deeply, counting to ten.

‘You’re entitled to your opinions,’ she said in a controlled voice. A brief silence pooled around them. ‘I may be a little headstrong, and a little opinionated, but I certainly am not arrogant.’

‘You were arrogant to think that your sister couldn’t survive a night at Crossfeld without you storming in to her rescue.’

Lizzy squashed the surge of discomfort his remark provoked. Of course she hadn’t been arrogant in thinking that she would be doing Rose a favour by showing up at Crossfeld to give her moral support; that was what sisters were all about. But she didn’t ask you, a little voice whispered in her head. If she had wanted your support, wouldn’t she have asked for it?

‘Rose isn’t like me,’ Lizzy muttered. ‘She isn’t well equipped when it comes to looking out for herself. She gets upset easily and she never, ever fights back.’

‘So you thought you’d jump on your motorbike and get to Crossfeld so that you could do her fighting for her.’

‘What’s wrong with looking out for the people you care about?’

‘Nothing, but sometimes the people you care about are perfectly capable of looking out for themselves because they’ve moved on without you even realising it.’

‘If you’re telling me that Rose doesn’t need me to look out for her then maybe you should see that Nicholas doesn’t need you to look out for him.’

‘You’re right. Maybe he doesn’t.’

He glanced sideways at her and her heart lurched as their eyes met in the silvery darkness.

‘What are you saying?’ Her heart was still in stop-start mode and her voice was high and breathless. ‘That you accept Rose and Nicholas as an item?’

‘I’m saying that I can’t picture you being a teacher.’ Louis moved the conversation swiftly along. What had he been saying—that he might be in the process of having a re-think because the bristly, outspoken woman next to him had managed to make him think outside the very tidy little box over which he had always had complete control? His mouth tightened in automatic rejection of that idea.

‘Really. I mean, how do you cope with rebellious pupils without exploding? And I can’t picture you wearing a suit to work.’

‘A suit? Teachers don’t wear suits!’ But she couldn’t help feeling hurt at the comment. He couldn’t picture her wearing a suit because she didn’t register as feminine as far as he was concerned. He had looked shocked to see her in a dress the night before. Did he think that her entire wardrobe was comprised of jeans, checked flannel shirts and leather jackets topped off by a black helmet and boots with lots of buckles?

‘I love the kids,’ she said brusquely. ‘They’re not complicated or judgemental and I can handle their high spirits. I’m in charge of the seven-and eight-year-olds—they’re responsive and if they get a little over-excited I’m very good at dealing with it. And for your information,’ she tacked on belatedly, ‘I’m not a complete disaster when it comes to guys. In fact, there are some who don’t like simpering women who only know how to say yes; some men happen to like women with opinions and ideas. And the reason I chose to come to Crossfeld was because Jessica and Eloise are snooty and horrible and I was afraid that they might be giving my sister a hard time. I figured she could do with a sympathetic shoulder.’

‘From the looks of it, Nicholas is extremely sympathetic …’

‘That’s different,’ Lizzy muttered. ‘Besides, I wanted to get out of the house. Maisie and Leigh have friends over and they were driving me crazy.’

She stared out of the window and shivered, only suddenly realising just how cold she was and just how foolish it had been to get on that bike and think she could make it to Crossfeld in near-blizzard conditions.

She would phone her parents just as soon as she got to Crossfeld. They had never given the impression of ever having been worried about her. About her younger sisters, yes, because they had grown up getting into scrapes, and things had hardly improved, although the scrapes all seemed to involve boys now. And about Vivian, yes, because she was a do-gooder who always managed to find good things to do in very risky places and she didn’t have the sense of humour to be able to laugh herself out of them. And of course about Rose, who was so placid that life and all its messiness seemed a constant threat. But about her, not really. Straddled between three stunningly pretty sisters and one extremely virtuous one, Lizzy had taken hold of the reins of independence from a very young age and had never let go.

Crossfeld House was now approaching, just an imposing blur through the densely falling snow.

‘Is there a great deal of work to do on the place?’ She broke the silence.

‘Enough to keep a building crew very busy for at least a year,’ he said, pulling up in front of the house as close as he could possibly get to the front door so as to avoid having to manoeuvre over the treacherous courtyard.

‘Good Lord. That’s going to cost a fortune!’ she exclaimed involuntarily. ‘And to think I shall probably have to dive into my paltry savings to get my bike repaired once it’s been fished out of the snow drifts.’

‘The repairs will be on me,’ Louis said drily, wondering whether that was what she had been aiming at with her remark, but the look of horror she shot him was sufficient to tell him that he couldn’t have been further from the truth.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I would never, ever accept a single penny from you.’ Lizzy opened the car door and slammed it behind her. ‘And I hope you didn’t think that I was fishing for hand-outs.’ She folded her arms and stopped to glare at him.

‘Accept the offer, Lizzy. If you felt that you had to come rushing over here for Rose, it was because of what I said, so in a peculiar way I’m partly to blame for the fact that your motorcycle is currently in the process of being buried under ten feet of snow. Besides—’ he reached past her to insert his key in the lock of the rather grand oak door ‘—it’s hardly as though it’ll break the bank.’

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