“I’m prepared to do anything.”

Jonah eyed her steadily. “Anything?” he questioned. “You said anything?”

Of course, anything. He had saved her parents from having to move out from Beamhurst Court. “Anything,” she agreed. But added quickly, “Anything legal, that is.”

His mouth picked up at the corners, involuntarily, she rather thought. But he sobered, and asked, “How old are you?”

She was sure he knew how old she was, but answered, “Twenty-three. Why?”

He shrugged. “Just making sure that anything I propose is quite legal—amongst consenting adults.”

Jessica Steele’s latest novel is part of a brand-new miniseries from Harlequin Romance®

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A Paper Marriage
Jessica Steele

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

LYDIE was in worried mood as she drove her car in the direction of Buckinghamshire to her family home. Something was wrong, very wrong. She had known it the moment she had heard her mother’s voice over the telephone.

Her mother never rang her. It was always she who rang her mother. Lydie had held back from asking what was wrong—her mother would tell her soon enough. ‘I want you to come home straight away,’ Hilary Pearson had said almost before their greeting was over.

‘I’m coming next Tuesday for Oliver’s wedding on Saturday,’ Lydie reminded her.

‘I want you here before then,’ her mother stated sharply.

‘You need my help in some way?’

‘Yes, I do!’

‘Oliver…’ Lydie began.

‘It has nothing to do with your brother or his wedding!’ her mother snapped sharply. ‘The Ward-Watsons are more than capable of seeing to it that their only daughter gets married in style.’

‘Dad!’ Lydie cried in alarm. ‘He’s not ill?’ She thought the world of her father. She occasionally felt that fate had dealt him a raw deal when it had selected her sometimes acid-tongued mother for the mild-mannered man.

‘Physically he’s as fit as he always has been.’

‘You’re saying he has a mental health problem?’ Lydie asked in alarm.

‘Good heavens, no! He’s just worried, not sleeping well, he’s…’

‘What’s he worried about?’

There was a moment or two of silence. ‘I’ll tell you that when you get here,’ her mother eventually replied.

‘Why can’t you tell me now?’ Lydie pressed.

‘When you get here.’

‘You can’t leave it there!’ Lydie protested.

‘I’m certainly not going to discuss it over the phone.’

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Who did her mother think was listening in? ‘I’ll ring Dad at his office,’ Lydie decided.

‘Don’t you dare! He’s not to know I’ve been in touch with you.’

‘But…’

‘And anyway, your father no longer has an office.’

‘He…’ What the Dickens was going on?

‘Come home,’ her mother demanded crisply—and put down the phone.

Lydie’s initial reaction was to dial her mother straight back. A second later, though, and she accepted that to ring her would be a waste of time. If her mother had made up her mind to tell her nothing, Lydie knew from experience that she would get nothing more from her until her mother was ready.

Despite her mother’s ‘Don’t you dare’ Lydie dialled her father’s business number. She need not tell him anything of her mother’s call, just say she’d called to say hello prior to seeing him again when she arrived at her lovely old home next week.

A few minutes later and Lydie began to feel seriously worried herself. There was no ringing out tone from her father’s firm; his number was a ceased number. ‘…your father no longer has an office’ her mother had said.

At that point Lydie put down the phone and went in search of the woman whose employ she was due to leave next week. Though Donna was more like the sister she had never had than an employer. She found her in the sitting room with one-year-old Sofia and three-year-old Thomas. They looked such a contented family and Lydie knew she was going to feel quite a pang when she left the family she had been nanny to for the past three years.

Donna looked up. ‘Did I hear the phone?’ she asked with a smile.

‘My mother rang.’

‘Everything all right at home?’

‘How would you feel if I left a week earlier than we said?’

‘Today?’ Donna queried, her smile disappearing. ‘I’d hate it.’

‘You’ll be fine on your own; I know you will,’ Lydie assured her bracingly.

That had been some hours ago. Lydie drove into her home village and realised she had been an infrequent visitor just lately to the home she so loved. Beamhurst Court was in her blood, and it had been a dreadful wrench to leave Beamhurst five years ago when at the age of eighteen she had gone to begin her career as a nanny.

Her first job had not worked out when the husband had started to get ideas about his children’s nanny that had not been in her terms of employment. She had left to go and look after Thomas, Donna and Nick Cooper’s first child, while they followed their careers.

Donna had suffered a quite terrible bout of the baby-blues following the birth of her second child, Sofia. While she was surfacing from that she had started to get very depressed at the thought of returning to work. It had been her husband Nick who had suggested that unless she desperately wanted to keep on with her career, given that they would not be able to afford a nanny and would have to let Lydie go, they could otherwise manage quite adequately without her income.

‘What do you think?’ Donna had asked Lydie.

‘Which would make you happier?’

Donna thought, but not for very long. ‘I’ve always felt a bit of a pang at missing out on Thomas’s first couple of years,’ she answered. That, simply, decided the matter.

Lydie had been due to leave next Tuesday, when she went home for her brother’s wedding the following Saturday. She knew it would not be long before she found another job but, having been so happy with the Coopers, and on edge most of the time with her previous employers, she was in no rush to accept the first job offered.

She turned her car in through the gates of Beamhurst Court and love for the place welled up in her. She stopped for a brief while just to sit and look her fill. Beamhurst would one day be handed down to her brother, she had always known that, but that did not stop the feeling of joy she felt each time she came back.

But her mother was waiting for her, and Lydie started up her car again and proceeded slowly up the drive, starting to get anxious again about what it was that worried her father so, and what it was that caused his business telephone line to be unobtainable.

She left her car on the drive, knowing that her father was her first priority. She would not be looking for a new job until she knew what was happening here. Using her house key, she let herself in and went in search of her parents.

She did not have to look far; her mother was in the hall talking to Mrs Ross, their housekeeper. Lydie kissed her mother and passed a few pleasantries with Mrs Ross, whereupon her mother said they would have afternoon tea in the drawing room.

While Mrs Ross went kitchenwards Lydie followed her slim stiff-backed mother into the drawing room. ‘You took your time getting here!’ her mother complained tartly, turning to close the door behind them.

‘I had to pack. Since I was leaving anyway there didn’t seem much point in going back next week to collect my belongings,’ Lydie answered, but had more important matters on her mind. ‘What’s going on? I rang Dad’s office and—’

‘I specifically told you not to!’ her mother interrupted her waspishly.

‘I wouldn’t have mentioned you’d phoned me! If I’d had the chance! His number’s unobtainable. Where’s Dad now? You said he no longer has an office. But that’s impossible. For years—’

‘Your father no longer has an office because he no longer has a business!’ Hilary Pearson cut her off.

Lydie’s lovely green eyes widened in amazement. ‘He no longer…!’ she gasped, and wanted to protest, to believe that her mother was joking, but the tight-lipped look on her parent’s face showed that her mother saw no humour in the situation. ‘He’s sold the business?’ Lydie questioned.

‘Sold it! It was taken away from him!’

‘Taken! You mean—stolen?’ Lydie asked, reeling.

‘As good as. The bank wanted their pound of flesh—they took everything. They’re after this house too!’

‘After Beamhurst!’ Lydie whispered, horrified.

‘Oh, we all know you’re besotted with the place; you always have been. But unless you can do something about it, they’ll force us to sell it to pay them their dues!’

‘Unless I…’ Already Lydie’s head was starting to spin.

‘Your father paid out enough for your expensive education—totally wasted! It’s time for you to pay him something back.’

Lydie was well aware that she was a big disappointment to her mother. Without bothering to take into account her daughter’s extremely shy disposition, Hilary Pearson had been exceedingly exasperated that, when Lydie’s exam results were little short of excellent, she should take on what her mother considered the menial work of a nanny. Lydie still had moments of shyness, and was still a little reserved, but she had overcome that awful shyness to a very large extent.

She stared at her mother incredulously. Pay back! She hadn’t asked to be sent to an expensive boarding school. That had been her mother’s idea. ‘There’s that few thousand pounds that Grandmother left me. Dad can have that, of course, but…’

‘You can’t touch that until you’re twenty-five. And in any case we need far more than that if we’re not to be thrown out like paupers.’ Thrown out! Of Beamhurst! No! Lydie could not believe that. Could not believe that things were as bad as that. Beamhurst Court had been in the Pearson family for generations. It was unthinkable that they should let it go out of the family. But her mother was going angrily on, ‘I’ve told your father that if the house has to go, then so shall I!’

‘Mother!’ Lydie exclaimed, on the instant angry too that when, by the look of it, her father should need his wife’s support most, she should threaten to walk out on him. Anything else Lydie might have added, however, remained unsaid when Mrs Ross brought in a tray of tea and set it down.

While Hilary Pearson presided over the delicate tea cups, Lydie made herself calm down. Her last visit home had been four months ago now, she realised with surprise. Though with Donna only then starting to get better, but still feeling down and unable to cope a lot of the time, she had wanted her near at hand should everything became too much for her.

Taking the cup and saucer her mother handed to her, Lydie sat down opposite her, and then quietly asked, ‘What has been happening? Everything was fine the last time I was home.’

‘Six months ago,’ her mother could not resist, seemingly oblivious that she was out by a couple of months. ‘And everything was far from fine, as you call it.’

‘I didn’t see any sign…’

‘Because your father didn’t want you to. He said there was no need for you to know. That it would only worry you unnecessarily, and that he’d think of something.’

It had been going on all this while? And she had known nothing about it! She tried to concentrate on the matter in hand. ‘But he hasn’t been able to think of anything?’

Her mother gave her a sour look. ‘The business is gone. And the bank is baying for its money.’

Lydie was having a hard time taking it all in. By the sound of it, things had been falling apart when she’d been home four months ago—but no one had seen fit to tell her. They had always had money! How could things have become so bad and she not know of it? She could perhaps understand her father keeping quiet; he was a very proud man. But—her mother? She was proud too, but…

‘But where has all our money gone?’ she asked. ‘And why didn’t Oliver…?’

‘Well, naturally Oliver’s business needed a little help.’ Hilary Pearson bridled, just as if Lydie was laying some blame at her prized son’s door. ‘And why shouldn’t your father invest heavily in him? You can’t start a business from scratch and expect it to succeed in its first years. Besides, Madeline’s family, the Ward-Watsons, are monied people. We couldn’t let Oliver go around looking as though he hadn’t a penny to his name!’

Which meant that he would take Madeline to only the very best restaurants and entertainment establishments, regardless of cost, Lydie realised. ‘I didn’t mean Oliver had—er—taken the money,’ Lydie endeavoured to explain, knowing that her brother had started his own business five years ago and that, her father’s firm doing well then, he had put up the money to set his son up in his own business. ‘I meant why didn’t Oliver say something to me?’

‘If you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that Oliver and Madeline were on holiday in South America the last time you were home. Poor Oliver works so hard; he needed that month’s break.’

‘His business is doing all right, is it?’ Lydie enquired—and received another of her mother’s sour looks for her trouble.

‘As a matter of fact, he’s decided to—um—cease trading.’

‘You’re saying that he’s gone bust too?’

‘Must you be so vulgar? Was all that expensive education lavished on you completely for nothing?’ her mother grumbled. Though she did concede, ‘All companies work on an overdraft basis—Oliver found it just too much of a struggle. When he and Madeline come back from their honeymoon, Oliver will go and work in the Ward-Watson business.’ She allowed herself the first smile Lydie had so far seen as she added, half to herself, ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Oliver isn’t made a director of the Ward-Watson conglomerate before he’s much older.’

All of which was very pleasing, but this wasn’t getting them anywhere. ‘There won’t be any money coming back to Dad from Oliver, I take it?’

‘He’ll need all the money he can lay his hands on to support his wife. Madeline is used to the finer things in life, you know.’

‘Where’s Dad now?’ Lydie asked, her heart aching for the proud man who had always worked so hard. ‘Is he down at the works?’

‘Little point. Your father has already sold the works to pay off some debts—he’s out of a job, and at his age nobody’s going to employ him. Not that he would deign to work for anyone but himself.’

Oh, heavens, Lydie mused helplessly, it sounded as though things were even worse than she had started to imagine. ‘Is he out in the grounds somewhere?’

‘What grounds? Any spare ground has been sold. Not that, since it’s arable land only, it made a lot.’ And, starting to build up a fine head of steam, ‘Apart from the house—which the bank wants a slice of, which means we have to leave—your father has sold everything else that he can. I’ve told him I’m not moving!’ Her mother went vitriolically on in the same vein for another five minutes. Going on from talk of how they were on their beam-ends to state that if they had only a half of the amount the Ward-Watsons were forking out for their only daughter’s fairy-tale wedding, the bank would be satisfied.

‘Dad doesn’t owe the bank very much, then?’ Lydie asked, but before she could start to feel in any small way relieved, her mother was giving her a snappy reply.

‘They’re his one remaining creditor—he’s managed to scrape enough together to pay off everybody else, plus most of his overdraft. But—today’s Tuesday, and the bank say they have given him long enough. If they aren’t in receipt of fifty thousand pounds by the end of banking on Friday—they move. And so do we! Can you imagine it? The disgrace? A fine thing it’s going to look in Oliver’s wedding announcement. Not “Oliver Pearson of Beamhurst Court”, but “Oliver Pearson of No Fixed Abode”. How shall we ever—?’

Her mother would have gone on, but Lydie interrupted. ‘Fifty thousand doesn’t sound such a fearfully large amount.’

‘It does when you haven’t got it. Nor any way of finding it either. Apart from the house, we’re out of collateral. How can we borrow money with no way of repaying it? Nobody’s going to loan us anything. Not that your father would ask in the circumstances. No, your father overextended himself, the bank won’t wait any longer—and now I have to pay!’

Lydie thought hard. ‘The pictures!’ she exclaimed after a moment. ‘We could sell some of the family—’

‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? Haven’t I just finished telling you that everything, everything that isn’t in trust for Oliver, has been sold? There’s nothing left to sell. Nothing, absolutely nothing!’

Her mother looked closer to tears than Lydie had ever seen her, and suddenly her heart went out to her. For all her mother had never been the warmest mother in the world to her, Oliver being her pride and joy, Lydie loved her.

Lydie went impulsively over to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently, taking a seat next to her on the sofa. ‘I’m so very sorry.’ And, remembering her mother saying only a short while ago that it was time she paid something back for the expensive education she had received, ‘What can I do?’ she asked. While the amount of her inheritance was small, and nowhere near enough, Lydie was thinking in terms of asking to have that money released now and not two years hence, when she would attain the age of twenty-five, but her mother’s reply shook her into speechlessness.

‘You can go and see Jonah Marriott,’ she said clearly. ‘That’s what you can do.’

Lydie stared at her, her green eyes huge. ‘Jonah Marriott?’ she managed faintly. She had only ever seen him once, and that was some seven years ago, but she had never forgotten the tall, good looking man.

‘You remember him?’

‘He came here one time. Didn’t Dad lend him some money?’

‘He did,’ Hilary Pearson replied sharply. ‘And now it’s his turn to pay that money back.’

‘He never repaid that money?’ Lydie asked, feeling just a touch disappointed. He had seemed to her sixteen-year-old eyes such an honourable man—and she knew he had prospered greatly in the seven years that had elapsed.

‘Coincidentally, the money he borrowed from your father is the same amount we need to stay on in this house.’

‘Fifty thousand pounds?’

‘Exactly the same. I can’t impress on you enough that if the bank don’t have their money by Friday, come Monday they’ll be making representation to have us evicted. I’d go and see him myself, but when I mentioned it to your father he hit the roof and forbade me to do anything of the sort.’

Lydie could not imagine her mild-mannered father hitting the roof, especially to the wife he adored. But he must be under a tremendous amount of strain at the moment. No doubt he himself had previously asked Jonah Marriott to make some kind of payment off that loan. There was no way her father’s pride would allow him to ask more than once. But to…

Her thoughts faded when just then the drawing room door opened and her father walked into the room. At least the man was tall, like her father, white-haired, like her father, but Lydie was shocked by the haggard look of him.

‘Daddy!’ she whispered involuntarily, and went hurriedly over to him. There was a dejected kind of slump to his shoulders which she found heartbreaking, and as she looked into his worn, tired face, she could not bear it. She put her arms round him and hugged him.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, putting her aside and sending her mother a suspicious look.

‘I—thought I’d give Donna a chance to see how she’ll cope without me,’ Lydie invented, quickly hiding her shocked feelings. ‘I’ll give her a ring later. If she’s okay I’ll stay on, if that’s all right with you?’

‘Of course it’s all right,’ he replied with assumed joviality. ‘This is your h…’ He turned away and Lydie’s heart ached afresh. She just knew he had been thinking that this was her home, but would not be for very much longer. ‘Your mother been bringing you up to date with everything?’ he enquired, his tone casual, but pride there, ready to be up in arms if his wife had breathed a word of his troubles.

‘This wedding of Oliver’s sounds a bit top-drawer. Are they going to have a marquee—you didn’t finish telling me, Mother?’

Over the next half-hour Lydie observed at first hand the proud façade her father was putting up in front of her, and her heart went out to him. Looking at him, seeing the strain, the worry that seemed to be weighing him down, to go and see Jonah Marriott and ask him to repay the money he had borrowed from her father seven years ago did not seem such a hard task. Particularly as, if memory served, that money had only been loaned for a period of five years anyway.

‘Your room’s all ready for you.’ Her mother took the conversation away from the wedding. ‘If you want to go and freshen up,’ she hinted.

‘I’ve things to attend to in my study,’ Wilmot Pearson commented before Lydie had answered. ‘It’s good to see you, Lydie. Let’s hope you’ll be able to stay.’

No sooner had he gone from the room than her mother was back to the forbidden subject. ‘Well?’ she questioned. ‘Will you?’

Lydie knew what she was asking, just as she knew that she did not want to go and see Jonah Marriott. ‘You’re quite sure he hasn’t paid that loan back?’ she hedged. Her mother gave her a vinegary look. ‘Perhaps he can’t afford to pay it back,’ Lydie commented. ‘All firms work on an overdraft basis, you recently said so,’ she reminded her mother, but, still shaken by the haggard look of her father, wondered why she was prevaricating about going to see Jonah Marriott.

Her mother chose to ignore her comments, instead scorning, ‘Of course he can afford to pay it back—many times over. His father made a packet when he sold his department stores. Ambrose Marriott might be one tough operator but I can’t see him giving to one son and not the other—and the younger Marriott boy hasn’t done a day’s work since the deal was done. They’re all sitting on Easy Street,’ her mother said with a heartfelt sigh, ‘and just look at us!’

Lydie glanced at her parent, and while the last thing she wanted to do was to go and ask Jonah Marriott for the money he owed to her father, she knew that the time for prevaricating was over. She looked at her watch. Half past four. She had better get a move on. ‘Do you have his number?’

‘You can’t discuss this with him over the telephone!’ her mother snorted. ‘You need to be there, face to face. You need to impress on him how—’

‘I was going to ring his office for an appointment,’ Lydie interrupted. ‘He’s hardly likely to see me without one.’ And if he guesses what it’s about he’ll probably say no anyway!

‘I don’t want your father to catch you. You’d better make your call from your room,’ Hilary Pearson decided. And, not allowing her daughter to consider changing her mind, ‘I’ll come up with you.’

‘Marriott Electronics,’ a pleasant voice answered when up in her old bedroom Lydie had dialled the number.

‘Mr Marriott please,’ Lydie said firmly, striving with all she had to keep her voice from shaking. ‘Mr Jonah Marriott,’ she tacked on, just in case Jonah had taken other members of the Marriott clan into the business.

‘One moment, please,’ the telephonist answered, but even though Lydie’s stomach did a tiny somersault at the thought she might soon be speaking to the man she had seen only once but had never forgotten, she did not think she would be put through to him as easily as that.

Her stomach settled down when the next voice she heard was a calm and pleasant voice informing her, ‘Mr Marriott’s office.’

‘Oh, hello,’ Lydie said in a rush. ‘My name’s Lydie Pearson. I wonder if it’s possible for me to have a word with Mr Marriott?’

‘I’m afraid Mr Marriott’s out of the office until Friday. Is there anything I can help you with?’ Pleasant, polite, but Lydie knew she was getting nowhere.

‘Oh,’ she murmured, then paused for a moment, very much aware of her mother’s tense gaze on her. ‘I wanted to see him rather urgently. Um—perhaps I should ring him at home,’ she pondered out loud, knowing in advance that she had small chance the woman—his PA, most probably—would let her have his private number.

‘Actually, Mr Marriott is out of the country until late on Thursday evening.’

Oh, grief, she wanted this over and done with. ‘I’ll ring again on Friday,’ Lydie said pleasantly, and rang off to be confronted by her mother, who wanted to hear syllable by syllable what had been said.

‘We’re going to lose the house!’ Hilary Pearson cried. ‘I know it! I know it!’ And Lydie, who had never before seen her mother in a state of panic, began more than ever to appreciate how very dire the situation was—and she started to get angry—with Jonah Marriott.

‘No, we won’t,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘I’ll go and see Jonah Marriott on Friday, and I won’t leave his office until I have the money he owes Dad.’

Lydie had no chance in the two days that followed to have second thoughts about going to see Jonah Marriott. With her father seeming to grow more drawn and careworn by the hour, not to mention her mother’s endless insistence that Lydie was their only hope, Lydie knew that she had no choice but to go and see him.

Consequently, whenever the voice of reality would butt in to enquire what made her think anything she might say would make him promise to repay that money—he had let her father down; what difference did she think her appeal would make?—her emotions, her love for her parents and the calamity they were facing, would override the logic of her head.

Which in turn, over the days leading up to Friday, caused Lydie to grow angry again with Jonah Marriott. That anger turning to fury with him when she thought of how her father had lent him that money in good faith, and how Jonah had so badly let him down.

Her fury dimmed somewhat, though, whenever she recalled her only meeting with the man. She had occasionally helped her father in his study during her school holidays, and had known that someone was coming to the house in the hope of borrowing some money. It had gone from her mind that day, though, until she had come home and found him sitting in the drawing room of their home. She had been sixteen, a thin, lanky, terribly shy sixteen-year-old.

‘Oh, I’m s-sorry,’ she had stammered, blushing to the roots of her night-black hair. ‘I didn’t know anyone was in here!’ He hadn’t answered, but had done her the courtesy of rising to his feet. She had blushed again, but had felt obliged to ask, ‘Are you waiting for Daddy?’

The man had superb blue eyes, quite a fantastic blue, she remembered thinking as he’d looked directly at her and commented in that wonderful all-male voice, ‘If your daddy is Mr Wilmot Pearson, then, yes, I am.’

Her knees by that time were like so much jelly. But, at the same time, she could not help but think how ghastly it must be for him to have to come and ask to borrow some money, and, while she wanted to fly, she found she wanted more to make him feel better about it. ‘I’m Lydie,’ she stayed to tell him. ‘Lydie Pearson.’

‘Jonah Marriott,’ he answered, and, treating her as a grown-up, his right hand came out.

Nervously, she shook hands with him, her colour a furious red as their hands met, his touch firm and warm. But still she could not leave him without trying to make him feel better. ‘Would you like some tea, Mr Marriott?’ she asked him shakily.

He had smiled then, and she had thought he had the most wonderful smile in the world. ‘Thank you, no, Miss Pearson,’ he had refused politely—and she had blushed again, this time at the dreadful thought that he was perhaps teasing her.

Just then, though, her father had come in. ‘Sorry to keep you, Jonah. That phone call has settled most everything.’ And, with a fond father’s look to his daughter, ‘You’ve met Lydie—soon to tear herself away from her beloved Beamhurst and go back to school again after the summer break!’

‘You’ll miss her when she’s gone, I’m sure,’ Jonah answered with a glance to her, and Lydie had blushed again.

‘I’ll see you later,’ she mumbled generally, and fled.

And so had begun a giant-sized crush on one Jonah Marriott. But she had not seen him later or ever again. That had not stopped her from finding out more about him. He had been in his late twenties then, and already had a thriving electronics business. From bits she had gleaned on separate occasions from her mother, from her father, and also from her brother Oliver, who at one time had gone around with a crowd that included Jonah’s younger brother Rupert, she knew that Jonah was the elder son of Ambrose Marriott. Their father owned several department stores, and Jonah had felt obliged to go and work for his father. When Rupert had finished university, and had declared that there was nothing he would like better than to start work in the business, Jonah had felt free to leave the family business and start up his own company.

His father had not liked it, so Jonah had borrowed from the bank to get started. He had gone from success to success, but still owed the bank when he had wanted to expand his company. The banks had lent him as much as they could—it had not been enough. Too proud to ask his own father to lend him money—he had approached her father, a well-known businessman, instead.

The rest was history, Lydie fumed when, after a very fitful night’s sleep, she awakened on Friday morning. Her father had lent Jonah Marriott fifty thousand pounds. Jonah Marriott, her idol for so long, had never paid him back. And Lydie was going to do something about it—this very day!

Had she experienced the smallest doubt about that, then that very small doubt evaporated into thin air when she went down to breakfast and saw that, while she had slept only fitfully, her father looked like a soul in torment and appeared not to have slept at all.

‘And what are you going to do today?’ he forced a cheerful note to ask. And she wished that she could tell him, Don’t, Dad, I know all about it. But her father’s pride was mammoth, and she could not take that away from him. Time enough for him to know when she came back from seeing Jonah Marriott and was able to tell him—if all went well—that Jonah would ring her father’s bank and tell them, hopefully, that he would take on his debt.

‘I haven’t seen Aunt Alice in ages,’ she answered, Aunt Alice being her mother’s aunt, in actual fact, and therefore Lydie’s great-aunt. ‘I thought I might take a drive over to see her.’

‘You’re picking her up for the wedding next week, aren’t you?’

‘She doesn’t want to stay away from home overnight.’ Lydie tactfully rephrased part of what her great-aunt had written in her last letter.

‘We, your mother, Oliver and me, are going to a hotel overnight, as you know. Your mother’s idea,’ he muttered, but added dryly, ‘Hilary will be sorry her aunt won’t be staying here.’

Lydie grinned. She thought Aunt Alice brilliant; her mother thought her a stubborn pain. Lydie was not grinning after breakfast, though. Dressed in a smart suit of powder blue, her dark hair pulled back from her delicate features in a classic knot, she got out her car ostensibly to make the twenty mile drive to her aunt’s home in Penleigh Corbett in the next county.

While facing that she did not want to make the journey to the London head office of Marriott Electronics, since make it she must, she wanted to be early. For all she knew she might have to wait all day, but if Jonah Marriott was in the building and refused to see her, then, since he had to come out at some time, she was prepared to wait around to speak to him on his way out.

Her insides had been churned up ever since she had opened her eyes that morning, but the nearer she got to London, the more her churning insides were all over the place.

When the traffic started to snarl up she found a place to park her car and made it to the Marriott building by foot, tube and lastly taxi.

But once outside the building she experienced the greatest reluctance to go inside. For herself, perhaps having inherited her father’s massive pride, she would have galloped in the opposite direction. Only this wasn’t for her; it was for him.

Lydie had to do no more than recall her father’s drawn look at breakfast and she was pushing through the plate-glass doors and heading for the reception desk.

The receptionist was busy dealing with one person and there was someone else waiting. ‘Mr Marriott’s PA is on her way down to see you.’ The receptionist put down the phone to pass on the message to the suit-clad man she was dealing with.

Lydie closed her ears to the rest of it, her glance going over to where the lifts were. One started up and, from the changing numerals, she saw that the lift was making its way down from the top floor.

Without being fully aware of it, Lydie edged over to that lift. When the doors opened and a smart-looking woman of forty or so stepped out, and with a smile on her face went over to the man at the desk, Lydie stepped in and pressed the button for the top floor.

She knew she could quite well have got it wrong, but if her hunch was right, that had been Jonah Marriott’s PA. If she had just come down from the top floor, then, to Lydie’s mind, on the top floor was where she might find Jonah Marriott.

The lift stopped; she got out. She felt hot, sick, and knew that this was the worst thing she was ever going to have to do in her life. Instinct took her to the end of the carpeted corridor. With what intelligence her emotions had left her, it seemed to her that the man who was head of this corporation would have his office well away from the sound of the lift going up and down.

There were doors to offices on either side of the long corridor. Lydie ignored them and at the bottom of that corridor turned round a corner which opened out to show two doors blocking her way. Lydie hesitated, but only for a moment. She was by then starting to feel certain she had got it all wrong. Somehow, churned up, anxious, worried, she had got it all wrong, all muddled; she knew that she had. She went forward and, placing a hand on the handle to the door to the right, she paused for about half a second, then turned the handle.

Shock as the door swung inwards and she saw a man seated at a desk in front of her kept her speechless and motionless. He looked up, and as colour surged to her face so, his glance still on her face, he rose from his chair and began to come round his desk and over to her.

She was five feet nine inches tall, he looked down at her and—to her utter astonishment—commented, ‘Still blushing, Lydie?’ He remembered her, her blushes, from seven years ago?

‘I’m L-Lydie Pearson,’ she heard herself say inanely from somewhere far off.

‘I know who you are,’ he answered smoothly. ‘Come in and take a seat,’ he invited, and as she took a couple of steps into the room he closed the door behind her and touched a hand to her elbow.

In something of a daze she found she was seated on a chair some way to the side of his desk before she had got herself anywhere near of one piece.

‘Haven’t I changed at all in seven years?’ she asked, her head still a little woolly that he had so instantly recognised her.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Jonah replied pleasantly, his eyes flicking a glance over her still slender, but now curving deliciously in all the right places, shape. ‘Elaine, my PA, made a note that a Lydie Pearson phoned last Tuesday. I recalled one black-haired, green-eyed Lydie Pearson with one hell of a superb complexion. It had to be you.’ He paused, and then, while she was feeling a touch swamped that he thought she had a superb complexion, ‘You’re still Lydie Pearson?’ he enquired.

Having thought she had her head more together, Lydie wasn’t with him for a moment or two. ‘Um…’ she mumbled, then realised what he was asking. ‘I’m not married,’ she answered, and, with a quick glance to his ringless left hand, ‘It doesn’t look as if anybody’s caught you either.’

His rather splendid mouth quirked upwards at the corners slightly. ‘I have very long legs,’ he confided.

‘You sprint pretty fast at the word marriage?’

He did not answer. He didn’t need to. ‘So, how’s the world treating you?’ he asked.

Lydie looked away from his fantastic blue eyes and over to his laden desk. He had not been expecting this visit and from the look of his desk was extremely busy catching up on a backlog of work. Yet he seemed to have all the time in the world to idly converse with someone he barely knew, someone he had only ever clapped eyes on once—and that was seven years ago.

‘Er—this isn’t a social call,’ Lydie stated abruptly.

‘It isn’t?’ he questioned mildly—when she was sure he must know that it wasn’t.

She experienced an unexpected urge to thump him that surprised her. She swallowed down that small burst of anger, but only when she felt marginally calmer was she able to coldly state, ‘My father seems not to have fared as well, financially, over the last seven years as you yourself appear to have done.’

Jonah nodded, every bit as if he already knew that—and that annoyed her—before he coolly commented, ‘That’s what comes from constantly bailing out that brother of yours.’

How dared he blame Oliver? ‘Oliver no longer has his own business!’

‘That should make things easier for your father,’ Jonah Marriott shot back at her, cool still.

Honestly! Again she wanted to hit him. ‘My father’s own business has gone too!’ she retorted pithily, and saw that at last Jonah Marriott was taking her seriously.

‘I’m very sorry to hear that. Wilmot is a first-class—’

‘So you should be sorry!’ she interrupted hotly. ‘If you’d had the decency to honour that debt…’

‘Honour that debt?’ Jonah queried toughly, just as if he had not the first clue what she was talking about.

‘You’re trying to say that you have totally forgotten coming to my home seven years ago and borrowing fifty thousand pounds from my father?’

‘I’m hardly likely to do that. If it wasn’t for your father—’

‘Then it’s about time you paid that loan back!’ she interrupted his flow hotly. And, suddenly too het-up to sit still, she jumped to her feet—to find Jonah Marriott was on his feet too, and was standing looking down on her. She saw him swiftly masking a look of surprise—at her nerve, no doubt. But she cared not if he thought she had an outrageous sauce to burst in on his busy morning without so much as a by your leave and demand the return of her father’s money. Her father’s peace of mind was at stake here. ‘If my father doesn’t have that fifty thousand pounds by the end of today’s banking,’ she hurtled on, ‘we, that is my mother and father, will lose Beamhurst Court!’

‘Lose…’

But Lydie was too angry to let him in. ‘Beamhurst Court has been in my family for hundreds of years and my father has until only today to see that it stays in the family!’ she charged on.

‘You’re exaggerating, surely?’ Jonah Marriott managed to get in evenly, his eyes on her angry face, her sparking green eyes.

‘I love Beamhurst! Does it look as if I’m exaggerating?’ she erupted. But calmed down a little to concur, ‘It’s true my father invested heavily in Oliver’s company, but my father didn’t know his own firm was going to suffer a downturn.’

‘So he borrowed as much as he could from the banks, putting Beamhurst Court up as collateral,’ Jonah took up. ‘And when your brother’s firm went belly-up, and your father settled his son’s creditors, there was nothing left in the kitty to settle his own debts.’

‘You know this?’ she asked, starting to feel her anger on the rise again that he should be aware of the situation and still refuse to repay her father.

‘I didn’t,’ Jonah replied, defusing her anger somewhat. ‘From what you’ve said, that seems the most likely way it went.’ And disconcertingly he asked, ‘And what’s your brother doing in all of this?’

Lydie did not care for his question. It weakened her argument. Her father was distraught—while Oliver did nothing. ‘He…I haven’t seen Oliver. I only came home on Tuesday,’ she excused, and defended her elder brother. ‘Oliver’s getting married a week tomorrow. There’s a lot to arrange. He’s staying with his fiancée’s people to help with any last-minute problems they…’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Let’s hope he makes a better job of it than he made of his business,’ Jonah commented, but, before she could take exception, ‘Big do, is it?’

Lydie could have done without that remark too. In the instance of her family being on their uppers—and she was coming to realise more and more that her father constantly financing her brother’s business was largely responsible for that—it did seem a bit over the top to have such a pomp of a wedding.

‘The bride’s parents are paying for everything,’ she felt obligated to admit, her pride taking something of a hammering here. ‘Look, we’re getting away from the point!’ she said snappily. ‘You owe my father money. Money he needs, now, if he is to remain in the only home he has ever known, the home he loves.’

‘Fifty thousand pounds will assure that?’ Jonah asked, doubting it.

‘My father has sold everything he can possibly sell in order to meet his debts. All that remains is an overdraft of fifty thousand pounds at the bank that he knows, and they know, he cannot find—nor has any likelihood of finding. They have given him until today to try to find that money anyway. He cannot,’ she ended, and her voice started to fracture. ‘A-and he looks t-terrible.’

Abruptly she turned away from Jonah, knowing that her emotions as she thought of her dear distracted father had brought her close to tears. She went to stare unseeing out of the window and swallowed hard as she fought for control. Her pride would never survive if she broke down in front of this hard man.

When she felt she had control she turned towards the door, knowing instinctively that she had pleaded her father’s cause in vain. It had been a long shot anyway, she realised. Had Jonah Marriott the smallest intention of repaying that money, he would have done so long before this.

She took a step to the door—but was halted when Jonah, having not moved from where she had left him, stated, ‘Obviously your father doesn’t know you’ve come here.’

Lydie turned. ‘He’s a proud man,’ she replied with a tilt of her head.

‘His daughter’s pretty much the same,’ Jonah said quietly, his eyes on her proud beauty.

She wished she could agree. Albeit she had not come to the Marriott building for herself, she had not been too proud to come here today—even if that money was still owing. ‘Should you ever bump into my father, I’d be obliged if you did not tell him I came here,’ she requested coldly.

For answer Jonah Marriott went round to his desk. ‘I won’t—but I think he’ll know,’ he drawled, to her alarm. And, even while she was instantly ready to go for Jonah Marriott’s jugular, he was opening a drawer in his desk, taking out a chequebook, and asking, ‘Who do you want the cheque made out to, Lydie?’

‘Y-you’ll pay?’ she asked, shaken rigid, but in no mind to refuse—no matter how little he offered. He did not answer but picked up his pen. She went over to stand at the other side of his desk. ‘My father. Would you make it out to my father, please?’ she said quickly, before he could change his mind.

It was done. In next to no time the cheque was written and Jonah was handing it to her across the desk. Hardly daring to breathe, lest this be some sort of evil game he was playing, Lydie inspected the cheque. It was made out to Wilmot Pearson. The date was right. The cheque was signed. But the amount was wrong. Jonah had made it out for fifty-five thousand pounds!

‘Fifty-five thousand…?’

‘The bank will be adding interest—daily, I don’t doubt. Call it interest on the debt.’

He meant his debt, of course. Feeling stunned, then beginning to feel little short of elated, Lydie looked up and across at him. She was about to thank him when she looked at the cheque again and noticed that it was not a company cheque, as she would have thought, but a personal cheque—and a large chunk of her elation fell away. Anybody could write a personal cheque for fifty-five thousand pounds, but that did not necessarily mean there was any money in that bank account. Was this some kind of sick joke Jonah Marriott was playing, to pay her back for her impertinence in daring to walk unannounced into his office and demand he paid what he owed?

‘There’s money in this account to meet this amount?’ she questioned.

‘Not yet,’ he admitted. Though, before her last ray of hope should disappear, ‘But there will be…’ he paused ‘…by the time you get to your father’s bank.’

‘You’re—sure?’ she asked hesitantly.

Jonah Marriott eyed her steadily. ‘Trust me, Lydie,’ he said quietly—and, strangely, she did.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and held out her right hand.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, and, with that wonderful smile she had remembered all these years, ‘Let’s hope it’s not another seven years before we meet again.’

She smiled too, and could still feel the warm firm pressure of his right hand on hers as she waltzed out of the Marriott building and into the street. She remembered his blue eyes and…

She pushed him from her mind and concentrated on what to do first. She had half a notion to ring her mother and tell her the outcome of her visit to Jonah Marriott. Lydie then thought of the cheque that was burning a hole in her bag. She had been going to take it straight to her father, to tell him everything was all right now. To tell him that Jonah Marriott had paid in full, with interest, the money he had owed him for so long. But, with Jonah saying that the funds would be there by the time she got to her father’s bank—presumably all that was needed was for Jonah to pick up a phone and give his instructions—would it not be far better for her to bank the money now and tell her father afterwards?

Lydie decided there and then—thanking Jonah for the suggestion—that she would bank the money before she went home. Yes, that was much the better idea. As things stood she had plenty of time to get home, hand the cheque over to her father and for him to take the cheque personally to his bank. But who knew what traffic hold-ups there might be on the road. Much better—thank you, Jonah—to bank the cheque first and then go home.

Having found a branch of the bank which her father used, it was a small matter to have her father’s account located, the money paid in, and to receive the bank’s receipt in return.

Oh, Jonah. Her head said she should be cross with him for his tardiness in paying what was owed. But she couldn’t be cross. In fact, on that drive back to Beamhurst Court, she was hard put to it not to smile the whole time.

The house was secure and, although with not so much land as they had once owned, it was still in the hands of the Pearsons. While her father was unlikely to start in business on his own account again, he no longer, as Jonah had put it, needed to bail her brother out ever again either. Her mother had hinted that her father had been looking into the possibility of some consultancy work. Surely all his years of expertise were not to be wasted.

Optimistically certain that everything would be all right from now on, Lydie drew up outside the home she so loved and almost danced inside as she went looking for her parents. Had today turned out well or hadn’t it? She understood now why, when she’d asked Jonah not to tell her father she had been to see him, Jonah had replied, ‘I won’t—but I think he’ll know.’ Of course her father would know. The minute she told her proud father that his overdraft was cleared he would want to know where the money had come from. Jonah would not have to tell her father—she would. She could hardly wait to see his joy.

‘Here you both are!’ she said on opening the drawing room door and seeing her parents there—her father looking a shadow of his former self.

Her mother gave her a quick expectant look, but it was her father who asked, ‘How was your great-aunt Alice?’

‘Actually, Dad, I lied,’ Lydie confessed. ‘I haven’t been to see Aunt Alice.’

He gave her a severe look. ‘For someone who has lied to her father you’re looking tremendously pleased with yourself,’ he remarked. ‘I trust it was a lie for the good of mankind?’

‘Not exactly,’ she replied, and quickly opening her bag she took out the receipt for the money she had paid into his bank account. ‘I went to see Jonah Marriott.’

‘You went—to see Jonah Marriott?’ he asked in surprise. He took the folded receipt she held out, opened it out, read the very little that was written there, but which meant so much, and—his face darkened ominously. ‘What is this?’ he demanded, as though unable to believe that an amount of fifty-five thousand pounds had been paid into his account.

‘Your overdraft is cleared, Dad.’ She explained that which he seemed to have difficulty in taking in.

‘Cleared!’ he echoed, it passing him by completely just then that she knew about his financial problems, and his tone of voice such that, had she not known better, Lydie would have thought it was the calm before the storm.

‘I went to see Jonah Marriott, as I said. He gave me a cheque for the money he owed you. I paid it into your bank on my—’ She didn’t get to finish.

‘You did what?’ her father roared, and Lydie stared at him in astonishment. Her mild-mannered father never roared!

‘You n-needed the money,’ she mumbled anxiously—this wasn’t at all how she had imagined it. ‘Jonah Marriott owed you fifty thousand pounds—I went and asked him for it. He added five…’

‘You went and asked him for fifty thousand pounds?’ her father shouted. ‘Have you no pride?’

‘He owed it to you. He…’

‘He did not,’ her father cut her off furiously.

‘He—didn’t?’ Lydie gasped, looking over to her mother, who had told her that he did, but who was now more interested in looking at the curtains than in meeting her eyes.

‘He does not owe me anything!’ her father bellowed. ‘Not a penny!’ Lydie flinched as she turned her head to stare uncomprehendingly at the man who, prior to that moment, had never raised his voice to her in his life. ‘Oh, what have you done, Lydie?’ he asked, suddenly defeated, and she felt then that she would rather he shouted at her than that he should sound so utterly beaten. ‘Any money Jonah Marriott borrowed from me was paid back, with good interest, more than three years ago.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘HE PAID you back!’ Lydie gasped. And, reeling from what her father had just revealed, ‘But Mother said—’ Lydie broke off, her stricken gaze going from her mortified father to her mother.

This time her mother did meet her eyes, defiantly. But it was Wilmot Pearson who found his voice first, and, transferring his look to his wife, ‘What did you tell her?’ he demanded angrily.

‘Somebody had to do something!’ she returned hostilely, entirely unrepentant.

‘But you knew Jonah Marriott had repaid that loan—repaid it ahead of time. I told you. I clearly remember telling—’

‘Mother! You knew?’ Lydie chipped in, horrified. ‘You knew all the time that that money had been repaid—yet you let me go and ask Jonah for money!’ Oh, how she had asked him. No, Please will you lend us some money? but ‘This isn’t a social call’ she had told him shortly, and had gone from there to suggest he didn’t have any decency and that it was about time he paid that loan back—when all the time he already had. And she had thought he looked a bit surprised! No wonder! ‘Mother, how could you?’

Her mother did not care to be taken to task, and was at her arrogant worst when she retorted, ‘Far better to owe Jonah Marriott money than the bank. At least this way we get to keep the house.’

‘Don’t be so sure about that!’ Wilmot Pearson chipped in heavily—and uproar broke out between her parents for several minutes; he determined he would sell the house to pay Jonah Marriott and her mother said her father would be living elsewhere on his own if he did, and that Beamhurst was to be preserved to be passed down to Oliver. It was painful to Lydie to hear them, but when her mother, retorting that at least they wouldn’t be opening the doors to the bailiffs come Monday morning, seemed to be getting the better of the argument, her father turned and vented his frustration out on his daughter.

‘He—Jonah—he gave you a cheque, just like that, did he? You told him you wanted that “loan” I made him back—and he paid up without a murmur?’

‘He—um—said he had never forgotten how you helped him out that time. He was grateful to you, I think,’ Lydie answered, starting to wish that her mother had never phoned her last Tuesday.

‘So he gave you fifty-five thousand pounds out of gratitude and without a word that he had already settled that debt? How the devil do you suppose I’m going to pay him back?’ her father exploded, and in high temper, ‘Why ever didn’t you bring that cheque home to me first?’ he demanded. ‘Why in the world did you bank it without first consulting me?’

Lydie felt she would have brought the cheque to her father, had not Jonah Marriott put the idea of banking it first into her head. And suddenly she began to get the feeling that, one way and another, she had been well and truly manipulated here. First by her mother, very definitely by her mother, and secondly by Jonah Marriott himself.

‘Well?’ Her father interrupted her thoughts.

‘It seemed the best way to do it,’ she answered lamely. ‘If there had been any sort of a traffic snarl-up I could have been too late for the bank here. And I knew—’ thank you, Mother ‘—that the bank wanted their money by today.’

‘And they’ve got it—and it’s for certain they’ll hang on to it!’ he stated agitatedly. ‘There’s absolutely no chance they’ll let me have it back again.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’d better go and see Jonah.’

‘I’ll go!’ Lydie said straight away, as she knew she must.

‘You,’ her father erupted, ‘have done enough! You can stay here with your mother and dream up your next scheme.’

That comment was extremely unfair, in Lydie’s opinion, but she understood his pride must be hurting like the very devil. ‘Please let me go?’ she pleaded. He hesitated for the merest moment, and Lydie rushed on quickly, ‘You’re not the only one with any pride,’ she added—and all at once her father seemed to fold.

He looked at her, his normally quite reserved daughter who, up until then, had caused him very little grief. ‘None of this has been very easy for you either, has it?’ he queried, more in the calm tone she was familiar with. And, relenting, if reluctantly, ‘We’ll go and see him together,’ he conceded.

That wasn’t what Lydie wanted either. ‘I’ll go and ring him,’ she offered.

‘Not go and see him?’

‘I’ll probably have to make an appointment first.’ In this instance of eating extra-large portions of humble pie, it seemed more diplomatic to try and get an appointment first rather than to go barging straight into his office.

‘We’ll make the call from my study,’ Wilmot Pearson declared, and, giving his wife a frosty look in passing, for which, since her home was for the moment secure, she cared not a jot, he and Lydie went from the drawing room and to his study.

She was glad that her father allowed her to make the call and did not insist on doing that himself, but her insides were on the churn again as she dialled the Marriott Electronics number.

Again when she asked to speak with Mr Jonah Marriott she was put through to his PA. ‘Hello, it’s Lydie Pearson…’

‘Oh, good afternoon,’ the PA answered pleasantly, before Lydie could continue. ‘I missed seeing you this morning.’ And Lydie realised that plainly Jonah must have made some comment to his PA about her visit—probably something along the lines of Don’t ever let that woman come in here again—she’s too expensive. Lydie hoped he hadn’t revealed the full content of her visit to his confidential assistant. ‘I’m afraid Mr Marrriott’s at a meeting. If you would like to leave a message?’

Blocked. ‘I should like to see him some time. Later this afternoon if that’s possible.’

‘He’s flying to Paris tonight, but…’

Something akin to jealousy gave Lydie a small thump at the thought that he would be dallying the weekend in Paris. Ridiculous, she scoffed. But she began to realise she had inherited a little of her mother’s arrogance in that she would beg for nothing. ‘I’ll give him a call next week. It’s not important,’ Lydie butted in pleasantly, wished the PA an affable goodbye, and turned to relay the conversation to her waiting father. ‘Try not to worry, Dad,’ she added quietly. Having been set up by her mother, she was not feeling all that friendly towards her, but attempted anyway to make things better between her parents. ‘And try not to be too cross with Mother; she only did what she did to help.’

Wilmot Pearson looked as if he might have a lot to say about that, but settled for a mild, ‘I know.’

The atmosphere in the house was not good for the rest of the day, however, and Lydie took herself off for a walk with a very great deal on her mind. She still felt crimson around the ears when she thought of the way she had gone to Jonah Marriott’s office and demanded fifty thousand pounds!

Oh, heavens! But—why on earth had he given it to her? Not only that, but he had made sure his cheque was banked and not returned to him with a polite note from her father. ‘There’s money in this account to meet this amount?’ she had asked him. ‘There will be…by the time you get to your father’s bank,’ he had said, as in Make haste and get there—and she had fallen for it!

Lydie carried on walking, not knowing where she was emotionally. With that money in the bank her father had some respite from his worries—and he sorely needed that respite. Against that, though, since it was she who had asked for, and taken, that money, regardless of where she had deposited it, she was beginning to realise that the debt was not her father’s but hers; solely hers.

Feeling quite sick as she accepted that realisation, all she could do was to wonder where in creation she was going to find fifty-five thousand pounds with which to repay him? That question haunted her for the remainder of her walk.

She returned home knowing that adding together the second-hand value of her car, the pearls her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday and her small inheritance—if she could get into it—she would be lucky if she was able to raise as much as ten thousand pounds!

She went to bed that night knowing that Jonah Marriott’s hope that it would not be another seven years before they met again must have been said tongue in cheek. He must have known she would be on the phone wanting to see him the moment she discovered his loan from her father had been repaid long since. Jonah Marriott, without a doubt, had told his PA to inform her when she rang that he could not see her.

Why he would do that, Lydie wasn’t very sure, and conceded that very probably he’d given his PA no such instruction. It was just one Lydie Pearson feeling very much out of sorts where he was concerned. Him and his ‘Obviously your father doesn’t know you’ve come here.’ It was obvious to her, now, that Jonah knew her father would have soon stopped her visit had he the merest inkling of what she was doing.

Lydie spent a wakeful night with J. Marriott Esquire occupying too much space in her head for comfort. Oversexed swine! She hoped he was enjoying himself in Paris—whoever she was.

The atmosphere in her home was no better when she went down to breakfast on Saturday morning. Lydie saw a whole day of monosyllabic conversation and of watching frosty glances go back and forth.

‘I think I’ll go and see Aunt Alice. Truthfully,’ she added at her father’s sharp look.

‘While you’re there for goodness’ sake check what she intends to wear to the wedding next Saturday,’ her mother instructed peevishly. ‘She’s just as likely to turn up in that disgraceful old gardening hat and wellingtons!’

Lydie was glad to escape the house, and drove to Penleigh Corbett and the small semi-detached house which her mother’s aunt, to her mother’s embarrassment, rented from the local council.

To Lydie’s dismay, though, the sprightly eighty-four-year-old was looking much less sprightly than when she had last seen her, for all she beamed a welcome. ‘Come in, come in!’ she cried. ‘I didn’t expect to see you before next week.’

They were drinking coffee fifteen minutes later when, feeling quite perturbed by her great-aunt’s pallor, Lydie enquired casually, ‘Do you see your doctor at all?’

‘Dr Stokes? She’s always popping in.’

‘What for?’ Lydie asked in alarm.

‘Nothing in particular. She just likes my chocolate cake.’

Lydie had to stamp down hard on her need to know more than that. Great-Aunt Alice was anti people discussing their ailments. ‘Are you taking any medication?’ Lydie asked tentatively.

‘Do you know anybody over eighty who isn’t?’ Alice Gough bounced back. ‘How’s your mother? Has she come to terms yet with the fact dear Oliver wants to take a wife?’

‘You’re wicked,’ Lydie accused.

‘Only the good die young,’ Alice Gough chuckled, and took Lydie on a tour of her garden. They had lunch of bread, cheese and tomatoes, though Lydie observed that the elderly lady ate very little.

Lydie visited with her great-aunt for some while, then, thinking she was probably wanting her afternoon nap, said she would make tracks back to Beamhurst Court. ‘Come back with me!’ she said on impulse—her mother would kill her. ‘You could stay until after the wedding, and—’

‘Your mother would love that!’

‘Oh, do come,’ Lydie appealed.

‘I’ve got too much to do here,’ Alice Gough refused stubbornly.

‘You don’t—’ Lydie broke off. She had been going to say You don’t look well. She changed it to, ‘You’re a little pale, Aunty. Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘At my age I’m entitled to creak a bit!’ And with that Lydie had to be satisfied.

‘I’ll come over early next Saturday,’ she said as her great-aunt came out to her car with her.

‘Tell your mother I’ll leave my gardening gloves at home,’ Alice Gough answered completely po-faced.

Lydie had to laugh. ‘Wicked, did I say?’ And she drove away.

The nearer she got to Beamhurst Court, though, the more her spirits started to dip. She was worried about her great-aunt, she was worried about the cold war escalating between her parents, and she was worried, quite desperately worried, about where in the world she was going to find fifty-five thousand pounds with which to pay Jonah Marriott.

And, having thought about him—not that he and that wretched money were ever very far from the front of her mind—she could not stop thinking about him—in Paris. She hoped it kept fine for him. That made her laugh at herself—she was getting as sour as her mother.

‘Aunty doesn’t look so well,’ Lydie reported to her mother.

‘What’s the matter with her?’

‘She didn’t say, but…’

‘She wouldn’t! Typical!’ Hilary Pearson sniffed. ‘Some man called Charles Hillier has been on the phone for you.’

‘Charlie. He’s Donna’s brother. Did he say why he phoned?’

‘I told him to ring back.’

Poor Charlie; he was as shy as she had been one time. But while to a large extent she had grown out of her shyness, Charlie never had. He had probably been terrified of her mother. Lydie went up to her room and dialled his number. ‘I’m sorry I was out when you rang,’ she apologised. She was very fond of Charlie. He was never going to set her world on fire, but she thought of him as a close friend.

‘Did I ring your mother at a bad time?’ he asked nervously.

‘No—she’s a little busy. My brother’s getting married next Saturday.’ Lydie covered the likelihood that her mother had been rude to Charlie if he had been in stammering mode.

‘Ah. Right,’ he said, and went on to say he had planned to ask her to go to the theatre with him tonight, and had been shaken when he’d rung Donna to hear that she had already left Donna’s home. ‘You’re helping with the wedding, I expect,’ he went on. ‘Would you have any free time? I’ve got the tickets and everything. I thought we’d have a meal afterwards and you could stay the night here, if you like. That is…You’ve probably got something else arranged?’ he ended diffidently.

‘I’d love to go to the theatre with you,’ Lydie accepted. ‘Would it put you out if I stayed?’

‘Your bed’s already made up,’ he said happily back, and she could almost see his face beaming.

Lydie went to tell her mother that she was going to the theatre with Charlie Hillier and would not be back until mid-morning the next day.

‘You’re spending the night with him?’

‘He has a flat in London. It could be quite late when we finish. It seems more sensible to stay than to drive home afterwards.’

‘You’re having an affair with him?’ her mother shook her by accusing.

‘Mother!’ Honestly! Charlie wouldn’t know how to go about an affair. Come to think of it, Lydie mused whimsically, neither would she. ‘Charlie’s just a friend. More like a brother than anything. And nothing more than that.’

Lydie went back upstairs and put a few things into an overnight bag. Charlie had overcome his shyness one time to attempt to kiss her, but had confessed, when they’d both ended up mightily embarrassed, that he had kissed her more because he thought he ought to than anything else. From then on a few ground rules had been established and they had progressed to be good friends who, on the odd, purely spontaneous moment, would sometimes kiss cheeks in greeting or parting. She had stayed at his flat several times with Donna and young Thomas before baby Sofia had come along. But over the last year Lydie had a couple of times comfortably spent the night in his spare bedroom after a late night in London.

The play Charlie took her to was a light-hearted, enjoyable affair. ‘Shall we get a drink?’ he asked at interval time.

For herself, she wasn’t bothered, but felt that Charlie probably wanted one. ‘A gin and tonic sounds a good idea,’ she accepted, and went with him to mingle with the crowd making their slow way to the bar.

They eventually entered the bar, where she decided to wait to one side while Charlie got the drinks. But Lydie had taken only a step or two when all of a sudden, with her heart giving the oddest little flip, she came face to face with none other than Jonah Marriott!

He stopped dead, his wonderful blue eyes on the riot of colour that flared to her face. ‘I thought you were in Paris!’ she blurted out, surprised at seeing him so unexpectedly causing the words to rush from her before she could stop them.

‘I came back,’ he replied smoothly.

She could do without his smart remarks. It was obvious he had come back! ‘I need to see you,’ she said tautly—by no chance did she intend to discuss her business where they stood. But suddenly she spotted something akin to devilment in his eyes and knew then that if he answered with something smart—That’s what they all say—she was going to hit him, regardless of where they were.

He did not say what she expected, but instead drawled, ‘Monday, same time, same place,’ and they both moved on.

She felt unnerved, unsettled, and wished it were Monday, when she would march into his office and demand to know why he had given her a cheque for fifty-five thousand pounds! She was glad when Charlie returned with their drinks.

But Lydie started to feel worse than ever when she abruptly realised that to demand why of Jonah wasn’t relevant. What was relevant was to make some arrangement with him to pay him back. Her spirits sank—how? With that question unanswered, she flicked a glance around—her gaze halting when she spotted Jonah. He was not looking at her but over in their direction, at the tall manly back of her dark-haired escort. Her glance slid from Jonah to the stunning, last word in perfection blonde he was escorting. And she’d thought her spirits couldn’t get any lower!

Not wanting Jonah to catch her looking in his direction, Lydie tore her eyes away from the sophisticated blonde. ‘How’s business?’ she asked Charlie.

‘We’ve got a new woman at the office—she started a couple of weeks ago,’ he said, and went red.

‘Charlie Hillier!’ Lydie teased. ‘You’re smitten.’

He laughed self-consciously, and she smiled affectionately at him. ‘Well, she is rather nice.’

‘Are you going to ask her out?’

He looked horrified. ‘Heck, no! I hardly know her!’

Dear Charlie. He had been a frequent visitor to his sister’s home, but Lydie had known him a year before they had begun to graduate from more than an exchanged hello and goodbye.

She did not see Jonah again that night, and had a late supper with Charlie and went to bed. They shared toast and eggs for breakfast, and Lydie drove home to Beamhurst Court with her head on the fidget with thoughts of her great-aunt, her parents and a man who appeared to enjoy escorting sophisticated blondes to the theatre. Had he taken the blonde with him to Paris?

She awoke on Monday in a state of anxiety. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’ her father asked when she went down to an early breakfast.

She didn’t know about couldn’t sleep—he did not look as if he had slept at all! She looked at his weary face and knew she should tell him that she was going to see Jonah Marriott, but somehow she could not. ‘I thought, with Mother wanting Aunt Alice to look smart on Saturday, that I’d better make an effort and get myself a new outfit,’ Lydie announced. And, seeing that her father looked about to remind her of a very important phone call they had to make, ‘I thought,’ she hurried on, ‘that while I’m in London I’d call in at the Marriott building and make an appointment for us to see Jonah. He was abroad somewhere last week, so I suppose he’s still got a lot of catching up to do and will be too busy to see me today.’ She was lying to her father again, and hated doing so, but this, seeing Jonah, she felt most strongly, was something she had to do on her own.

But her father was nobody’s fool. ‘How did you manage to get an appointment with him last Friday? He would have been catching up then too.’

‘On Friday I thought he owed you money. I didn’t bother to make an appointment. I just sort of barged my way in.

Her father looked appalled. ‘You…’ he began.

‘Please, Dad,’ she butted in. ‘I was wrong. I know it. Which is why I feel I have to do it the right way this time.’

‘I can ring from here. He…’

‘I know I’ve embarrassed you by going to see him at all. But please try to understand—I need to be involved here. I can’t let you take over from me.’

Her father grunted. But, muttering something about being determined to see Jonah at the first possible opportunity, he agreed to allow her to make the appointment.

Lydie was walking into the Marriott Electronics head office building when she started to half wish her father was with her. She felt sick, shaky, and she heartily wished this imminent interview were all over and done with.

She rode up in the same lift, walked shakily along the same corridor and turned round the corner without an earthly idea of what she would say to the man. Eating humble pie did not come easy.

Outside his door, she paused to take a deep breath. She knew she was ten minutes earlier than she had been on Friday, but she was too wound up to wait for ten minutes of torturous seconds to tick by.

She put her right hand on the door handle and took a deep breath, and then, tilting her chin a proud fraction, she turned the handle and with her heart pounding went in.

Jonah Marriott was not alone, but was mid-instruction to the woman Lydie had seen step out of the lift last Friday. He looked up and got to his feet to greet her. ‘Lydie,’ he said and, turning to his PA, introduced them to each other.

‘We’ve spoken on the phone,’ Elaine Edwards commented with a smile, and obviously aware of this appointment, even if Lydie was early for it, she picked up her papers, said, ‘I’ll come back later,’ and went through into her own office and closed the door.

‘Enjoy the play?’ Jonah asked, taking Lydie out of her stride—she had intended to pitch straight in there with some “The debt is mine but I can’t pay”-type dialogue.

‘Very much,’ she answered, with barely an idea just then what the play had been about.

‘Take a seat,’ he offered. ‘Was that your steady boyfriend?’

‘Er—what? No. Um—I see him sometimes,’ she replied, wondering what that had got to do with anything, though she would not have minded asking if the blonde were his steady. Not that she was terribly interested, of course.

She took the seat he indicated and opened her mouth, ready to put this conversation along the lines it was to go, when, ‘Coffee?’ he asked, and she knew then that she was not the one in charge of how the conversation went—he was. He was playing with her!

‘No, thank you,’ she refused, her tone perhaps a little less civil than it should be in the circumstances. ‘When I came here last Friday I was under the impression you had not honoured the debt you owed my father. I…’

‘So I gathered,’ Jonah replied, having retaken his seat behind his desk, leaning back to study her.

She did not care to be studied; it rattled her. ‘You should have told me!’ she flared. ‘You knew you had repaid that loan!

He smiled—it was a phoney smile. ‘I knew I would end up getting the blame.’

Just then guilt, embarrassment, and every other emotion she had experienced since seeing him again last Friday after seven years, all rose up inside her, causing her control to fracture. ‘And so you should!’ she snapped. ‘You set me up!’ she accused hotly.

The phoney smile abruptly disappeared. He cared not for her tone; she could tell. ‘I set you up?’ he challenged. ‘My memory is usually so good, but correct me if I’m wrong—did I ask you to come here, dunning me for money?’

Dunning! Put like that it sounded awful. Her fury all at once fizzled out. ‘I trusted you,’ she said quietly. ‘Yet you, the way you hinted that I should pay the cheque into my father’s bank straight away, made sure I did just that.’

Jonah Marriott eyed her uncompromisingly. ‘Would you rather I had not given you that cheque?’ he questioned toughly. ‘Would you prefer that your father was still in hock to his bank?’

She blanched. It was becoming more and more clear to her that Jonah Marriott was much too smart for her. He knew, as she had just accepted, that by taking the money from him she had allowed her father some respite. At least there wasn’t a “For Sale” notice being posted in their grounds that morning. ‘Why did you give me that money?’ she asked. ‘And why make it pretty certain that I’d bank it first and tell my father afterwards?’

Jonah shrugged. ‘Seven years ago your father’s faith in me, his generosity, made it possible for me to successfully carry out my ideas. From what you told me on Friday, Wilmot was in a desperate fix with no way out. Without a hope of repaying any financial assistance, I knew there was no way he would accept my help.’

That was true. Lydie sighed. She felt defeated suddenly. ‘My father wanted to see you as soon as possible. I said, since I was coming to London today, that I’d make an appointment and that we would both come and see you.’

Jonah eyed her solemnly. ‘You lied to him?’

‘I’m not proud of it. Until last week, when I told him I was going to see a great-aunt but came here instead, I had never lied to my father in my life.’

Jonah nodded. ‘I can see reason for you lying to him about coming here the first time—obviously either your brother or your mother has been bending your ear with falsehoods too—but why lie to your father about coming here today?’

‘Because—because he’s been a very worried man for long enough. It’s time somebody else in the family took some of the load.’

‘Namely you?’

‘It was I who asked you for that money. I who—er—um—borrowed it, not him. The debt is mine.’

Jonah stared at her for some long moments. ‘It’s yours?’ he queried finally.

‘My father didn’t ask for the money. Nor would he. As you so rightly said, he wouldn’t—not for something he couldn’t see his way to pay back.’ She broke off and looked into a pair of fantastic blue eyes that now seemed more academically interested than annoyed. ‘The debt is mine,’ she resumed firmly, ‘and no one else’s. I’ve come today to…’ her firm tone began to slip ‘…t-to try and make arrangements to repay you.’

He looked a tinge surprised. ‘You have money?’ he enquired nicely.

Lydie swallowed down a sudden spurt of ire. Was she likely to have taken money from him had she money of her own? ‘I intend to sell my car and my pearls, and there’s a small inheritance due in a couple of years that I may be able to get my hands on—but otherwise I have only what I earn.’

‘You’re working?’ he enquired.

He was unnerving her. ‘I’m between jobs at the moment,’ she answered shortly. ‘I was leaving my job this week anyway, but left early when my mother telephoned last Tuesday and—’ Lydie broke off and could have groaned out loud. Jonah Marriott was a clever man. From what she had just said he would easily deduce it had been her mother who had told her that he had reneged on his debt to her father.

Jonah did not refer to it, however, but asked instead, ‘What sort of work do you normally do?’

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