Rescue Operation
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHELSEA frowned thoughtfully as she parked her small car carefully behind her sister’s BMW. Ann had sounded worried and anxious on the telephone, unusually so, and she sighed a little as she slid long slender legs out of her car. Parenthood brought many perils, if Ann was to be believed, but none more burdensome than those engendered by a seventeen-year-old daughter.

As she had expected she found her sister in her large modern kitchen busily engaged in mixing fruit in a huge bowl.

‘Cake for tomorrow,’ Ann told her, reaching out automatically to slap away her hand as Chelsea filched a small amount of the raw mixture. ‘You’re as bad as Kirsty,’ she complained, tempering the criticism with a warm kiss on her sister’s cheek, as she added, ‘Thanks for coming. Did I drag you away from anything important?’

‘Only a sixteenth-century chair cover,’ Chelsea replied humorously, referring to her work as a restorer of mediaeval embroidery. ‘And speaking of Kirsty, what’s the problem this time? Not threatening to run off with her favourite pop singer again, is she?’

Ann Stannard shot her sister an exasperated glance. With the fourteen years’ difference in their age, Ann sometimes felt more like Chelsea’s mother than her sister. Their parents had died when Ann was just twenty-two and on the brink of marriage to Ralph Stannard, and for all her teasing of her sister, Chelsea never forgot Ralph’s generosity in giving his orphaned sister-in-law a home. It couldn’t have been easy, she recognised from the vantage viewpoint of twenty-six, for the newly married pair to make a precocious and inquisitive teenager welcome.

Kirsty was the Stannards’ only child, a spirited and attractive teenager, currently still at school, but as Chelsea well knew, rebelliously determined to leave just as soon as she possibly could.

‘She’s not still got this bee in her bonnet about becoming an actress, has she?’ Chelsea queried.

‘I wish that was all we had to contend with. I’m afraid it’s far more serious than that. We’re both at our wits’ end, Chelsea. You’re our last hope. You’ve always been so close to her. Ralph and I were hoping you could make her see sense …’

‘About what?’

‘About Slade Ashford,’ Ann said grimly. ‘She’s absolutely infatuated with him. Nothing either Ralph or I say to her makes the slightest difference.’

‘Calf-love,’ Chelsea informed her, trying not to smile. Ralph and Ann were extremely protective of their daughter, and a high-spirited girl like Kirsty was bound to rebel. They had been the same with her. Ann, for all her placid nature, seemed to have an imagination that worked overtime when it came to the fates that could befall an unprotected girl. In Chelsea’s view, Ann was almost an anachronism in this day and age; a woman who was quite content to be a stop-at-home wife and mother, and who moreover was still as deeply in love with her equally staid husband as she had been when she first met him.

‘Look, I know you don’t want to admit your little girl has grown up, but girls do fall madly in love at seventeen …’

‘I’m well aware of that, Chelsea.’ Ann eyed her sister frowningly. ‘If it was a boy her own age, another teenager, it wouldn’t matter, but Slade is far from being that. He’s in his early thirties at least.’

‘And Kirsty worships him from afar,’ Chelsea grinned, still refusing to take her sister seriously. ‘Look, love, I know Kirsty is a very pretty girl and the apple of your eye, but a man of thirty-odd isn’t going to be interested in a schoolgirl.’

‘You wouldn’t think so,’ Ann agreed, ‘but he is—and interested enough to keep her out until two in the morning the other night. Ralph was furious!’

‘Has he tackled him about it?’ Chelsea asked frowningly. ‘Does he know how young Kirsty is?’

‘The situation’s a very difficult one,’ Ann told her. ‘Slade’s company has just bought out Lutons.’

Lutons Engineering was the largest firm in the small town of Melchester, and Ralph had been the Works Manager there for several years. Chelsea could quite see, without her sister needing to put it in as many words, that her gentle brother-in-law might find it rather difficult to tackle his new boss on the subject of his liaison with his young daughter. But surely the man himself must realise … Contempt darkened Chelsea’s long blue eyes. Surely the man must know that Kirsty, for all her prettiness, was no more than a child … a little girl still, despite her frequent attempts to appear more sophisticated – far more sophisticated than she had been at seventeen, Chelsea thought wryly. But then at that age she had not had the advantage of Kirsty’s ripe prettiness. Well could she remember her too thin body and straight dark red hair. But at seventeen girls didn’t consider themselves children. She could remember that.

‘How about sending Kirsty off to stay with Ralph’s parents for a while?’ she suggested.

‘Not possible, I’m afraid. Ralph’s father’s heart is troubling him again, and besides, I don’t think Kirsty would go. She’s changed, Chelsea. I barely recognise her,’ Ann admitted. ‘And I’m so afraid for her. Slade isn’t a boy … he’s a grown man, who could never be satisfied with the sort of innocent relationship …’ Her voice trailed away and she looked helplessly at her younger sister.

‘You want me to talk to Kirsty? Do you think she’d listen?’

‘No. And I don’t want you to talk to her exactly.’ For the first time that she could remember, Chelsea saw that her sister couldn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘Chelsea, I hate reminding you of this’ Ann began in a low voice, ‘but …’

‘But if anyone can speak from experience, it has to be me,’ Chelsea supplied for her in a bitter voice. ‘I agree, but experience is something everyone has to learn for themselves. God knows there were people enough to warn me that Darren was married, that all he wanted with me was an affair, but did I believe them? No. And I went on disbelieving them right up until I was inside the bedroom door.’

‘It still hurts, doesn’t it?’ Ann questioned gently. ‘It’s nearly ten years ago now, but you’ve never really got over it.’

‘A sensitive little plant, that’s me,’ Chelsea agreed with self-mockery, ‘I should have listened to you in the first place. You never really wanted me to go to drama school, did you? But I insisted, and you and Ralph gave way. When Darren told me I was exactly right for the ingénue part in his new play I swallowed it completely; fool that I was. The only part he had in mind for me was the traditional role of mistress, and a very brief part at that.’

‘Oh, Chelsea, don’t!’ Ann protested, hating to hear the bitter self-accusation in her sister’s voice. ‘We were as much to blame. You were far too young to leave home—we should never have let you go to London alone. When you came back that night …’

‘My pride in tatters but my virtue intact,’ Chelsea supplied dryly. ‘I honestly believed that he loved me and that in time he intended to leave Belinda. He actually laughed at me when I told him that, you know—I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that touching little detail before. Heavens, when I look back, the whole thing was more farcical than tragic, although at the time no one could have convinced me of that fact. I thought the world had come to an end, turned my back on drama school.’

‘And made a first-class career for yourself …’

‘As a repairer of ancient tapestries,’ Chelsea supplied. ‘But we were talking about Kirsty, not me. What’s this man like? He can’t be much of a man if he needs to search the ranks of schoolgirls for female companionship.’

Ann’s dry, ‘Don’t you believe it—he’s very, very much a man,’ brought Chelsea’s eyes to her sister’s face in astonishment. Ann pulled a face. ‘Oh, it’s not just that he’s good-looking—and he’s that all right, but he’s also incredibly sexy with it. You know the type—even I went weak at the knees.’

Chelsea did. Darren had been the same, and she was beginning to dislike Slade Ashford without even meeting him.

‘Well, in that case Kirsty can hardly be the only contender for his … attentions,’ Chelsea told her sister. ‘Is he married?’

‘No. In a way I almost wish he was,’ Ann admitted. ‘Chelsea love, please, you’ve got to help!’

‘Willingly,’ she agreed, her dislike and contempt for Slade Ashford growing with everything Ann said about him, ‘but how?’

‘We’ve invited him to our anniversary party. Kirsty insisted, and of course he is Ralph’s boss. You know we’ve decided to hold it at the Clarence?’

Chelsea nodded. The anniversary Ann spoke of was their twentieth, and she knew that her sister and brother-in-law had planned for some time to celebrate the event in some style. The Clarence was their most expensive local hotel, an old country house set in its own grounds, and the party was something Ann had been planning for for many months.

‘Well, what I thought was that you …’ you Ann stirred her cake mixture carefully, avoiding Chelsea’s eyes. ‘I thought you could somehow get Slade away from Kirsty,’ she finished, adding defensively, ‘I know it’s a cruel trick to play on her, but kinder in the end, surely you can see that?’

‘It’s certainly cunning,’ Chelsea agreed. ‘Always supposing it was possible. What makes you think he’d drop Kirsty for me?’

‘Haven’t you looked in the mirror lately?’ Ann demanded dryly. ‘Kirsty may be a pretty girl, but you’re a beautiful woman, Chelsea.’

‘Well, thank you!’

‘It’s true,’ Ann said quietly. ‘You are beautiful, even though you always try to deny the fact.’ She studied the rich dark red fall of her sister’s water-straight hair, and the long, dark-lashed eyes with their sensuous, smoky darkness. A faint flush touched her high cheekbones, emphasising the triangular shape of her face, faintly feline and subtly sexy, although Chelsea herself always denied the fact. Add to that a tall slender body with long, long legs, a narrow waist and rather fuller than fashionable breasts, and it all added up to a woman men looked at and looked at again. And it was all such a waste, Ann thought regretfully. She had lost count of the men she and Ralph had introduced to Chelsea; the little dinner parties they had arranged. She sighed … Just because she had been hurt once Chelsea seemed to have made a decision never to let any other man close enough to her to be hurt again.

‘It takes more than physical appearance to attract a man,’ Chelsea was saying crisply. ‘I’m sorry, Ann, but it just wouldn’t work. I don’t have the right aura …’

‘But you do have the right equipment, and the training to use it properly if you wanted to,’ Ann reminded her quietly. ‘Please, Chelsea, if you won’t do it for me, do it for Ralph. He thinks the world of Kirsty. It would break his heart if she did anything … foolish.’

‘Like letting herself be seduced by a man old enough to be her father, you mean? Are you so sure it hasn’t happened already?’ Chelsea asked bluntly.

Ann paled, her hands trembling slightly. ‘She said it hadn’t so far, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time. If you could just show her that his interest is only fleeting; that he would respond to any attractive woman who made herself available to him …’

‘So … I’ve got to make myself available to him as well as steal him away from my niece? Anything else?’

‘Oh, Chelsea!’ There was real anguish in Ann’s voice. ‘Kirsty is making a fool of herself over him. Please help! I hate having to ask you, but I can’t think of anything else. I know you’ll hate doing it, but with your drama training ..’

Ann’s shoulders were hunched, tears making damp tracks down her floury cheeks. Chelsea took her in her arms, remembering all the times as a child when their roles had been reversed and Ann had been the comforter.

‘It’s all right, love—I’ll do whatever I can,’ she promised. ‘He must be a swine to contemplate an affair with an innocent like Kirsty. It’s been a long time, though, since I was called upon to put my training into practice, let’s just hope I can rise to the occasion. I seem to recall that I never was much good at the role of femme fatale!’

It was a thought that lingered in her mind on the drive back to her flat, images of Darren coming back to torment her. A stupid little prude he had called her, and worse. She had gone round to his house to read the script, or so she had thought. She had been surprised to find him dressed only in a bathrobe as although she felt herself in love with him she had been too naïve to contemplate a full-blooded affair. But she went willingly enough with him when he said his study was upstairs. She shuddered as she remembered what had followed. Darren’s fury when he realised she wasn’t going to give way to his advances had been a real eye-opener. He had been amused at first, and then amusement had given way to anger. Chelsea could remember quite vividly how disillusionment had warred with sickness as she listened to his furious abuse. And then his wife had returned, setting the seal on her humiliation with her amused contempt. Apparently Chelsea hadn’t been the first little diversion Darren had sought. Even now, years later, her stomach heaved at the memory; because there had been a moment when because of her love for him she had been tempted to give way to him. She had loved him—or had thought she had, she thought bitterly. God, she had been a fool, and naïve! And now here was history almost repeating itself with poor little Kirsty!

Her phone was ringing as she entered the flat, and when she picked it up she heard the familiar voice of her boss, Jerome Francis. He wanted to tell her about a new commission they had obtained from the National Trust. Jerome’s company specialised in repairing prize tapestries and other antique fabrics, and Chelsea was his most skilled employee. She had left drama school after her débâcle with Darren, too humiliated to return, guessing that the others on the course with her must have known how Darren had been deluding her, and admitting to herself that she did not have the aptitude for the stage she had once thought. She lacked the hard, unyielding core that made a first-rate actress, one of her teachers had told her, but she had gained a certain panache; a way of moving and holding her head that drew the eye, even while she herself was unaware of it.

Instead of the stage she had turned instead to her second love, embroidery, being lucky enough to enrol at the Royal College of Embroiderers, where she had come to know Jerome and eventually to work for him.

The new commission sounded just her cup of tea. The Trust had just taken over a mansion in Northumberland. The house had been in the same family—a cadet branch of the Percys—for many centuries and had been inherited by a cousin who had decided to offer it to the Trust.

The pattern was a familiar one, but what excited Chelsea was Jerome’s information that among the contents being left in the house was an extremely old tapestry, said to have been stitched by the ladies of the family during the Third Crusade.

‘If everything goes well you could start work up there when you’ve finished the chair covers,’ Jerome suggested. ‘I’ll be away most of next week, so we can finalise arrangements when I get back.’

One of the joys of her job was that her work was never monotonous or boring and could and did take her all over the country, and sometimes to the chateaux and palaces of Europe, but Northumberland was somewhere she had never before visited, and Chelsea felt the familiar excitement growing in her as she replaced the receiver, her happy smile being replaced by a sudden frown as she remembered her conversation with her sister.

Ann was not a fusser, nor prone to exaggeration, and Kirsty was an enchantingly feminine girl; pretty and clever with an excellent future ahead of her, providing she did not fall into the same trap that had so cruelly mauled her, Chelsea thought grimly.

She was granted an unexpected opportunity to judge for herself exactly what danger her niece was in when she had to drive into town for some embroidery silks she had run out of.

For most of the articles she worked on, Chelsea dyed her own silks, using natural dyes of the same type as would originally have been used, and these were then cleverly faded to match the existing colours, but in this instance all she wanted was an oyster-coloured silk she knew she could obtain from a local craft shop.

Parking her car in the cobbled square which doubled as a market place on market days, Chelsea got out and walked down the narrow street which housed the craft shop, stunned as she did so to see her niece emerging from a newly opened restaurant, accompanied by a darkly tall man.

For a moment the elegance of the expensively cut charcoal grey suit, the way the lean brown fingers cupped Kirsty’s elbow as they stepped off the pavement, took her back in time and she herself was seventeen again.

Fighting against anger, Chelsea stepped back automatically into the shadows, the progress of the other couple across the road affording her an uninterrupted view of her niece’s escort for the first time.

One look at him and Chelsea felt her heart sink. Ann had been quite right; this man had sensuality written all over him—it was imprinted into his skin, drawn tautly over high cheekbones, olive-tinted as though he spent a considerable amount of his time in climates far warmer than Melchester’s.

As he bent his head to Kirsty’s Chelsea was forced to acknowledge the fascination he would undoubtedly have for a girl her niece’s age—and for many considerably older.

The way he moved, his smile, the lean fitness of his body, all bespoke a maleness that would attract the majority of women.

But not her, Chelsea thought contemptuously, wishing she could forget the adoration in her niece’s eyes as she looked up at him. They had now safely crossed the street and were walking past Melchester’s one and only fashionable boutique when an elegant blonde emerged, the smile she gave Kirsty’s escort a very clear invitation.

Chelsea didn’t miss the way Slade Ashford’s eyes admired the blonde’s slender curves, and her fears that she wouldn’t be able to free Kirsty vanished on another wave of contempt. Even when he was with her niece the creature couldn’t keep his eyes off other women! What could he possibly want with Kirsty, a man of his undoubted experience? Was her very innocence the challenge which his jaded appetite demanded? Would he simply seduce her and then leave her? Not if she had anything to do with it, Chelsea vowed grimly.

She telephoned her sister when she returned home, and ascertained that Kirsty was indeed spending the afternoon with Slade Ashford.

‘I didn’t want to let her go,’ Ann admitted, ‘but what could I do? If I’d refused she’d only have arranged another meeting behind my back. I don’t want to force her into lying to us.’

‘Don’t worry too much,’ Chelsea comforted her. ‘Kirsty might be blinded by adoration, but he’s far from being similarly afflicted.’ She told her sister briefly about the blonde. ‘You know the type—skin-tight jeans, brief tee-shirt and a very come hither smile.’

‘Poor Kirsty!’

‘I expect he finds her refreshingly different,’ Chelsea said bitterly, remembering Darren using those words about her in what now seemed another life. ‘But at least it means that he shouldn’t be too difficult to detach from her, and perhaps the humiliation of it being done so publicly at your party will be enough for her to refuse to see him again.’

‘It ought to be,’ Ann agreed. ‘She shares your pride.’

‘I don’t think it would be a good idea to introduce me to him as your sister,’ Chelsea warned Ann. ‘He just might smell a rat. In fact, it might be as well if I engineered my own introduction. I suspect Kirsty will try to stick to his side like glue, so we’ll have to find some means of detaching her for long enough for me to introduce myself. I only hope I haven’t forgotten all my old drama training, although playing femmes fatales wasn’t high on the list of our studies.’

‘Perhaps not, but you’re an excellent mimic,’ Ann reminded her sister, ‘and travelling as you do, you must have had ample opportunity to study the breed in its natural habitat.’

Chelsea grinned. If it wasn’t for her concern for poor Kirsty, she might almost enjoy cutting Slade Ashford down to size. He and men like him had preyed on her sex for too long. Picturing Slade Ashford’s expression when she had seen him with Kirsty, Chelsea doubted that a woman had ever said ‘no’ to him in his life. All the bitterness she had experienced over Darren welled up inside her. Now, she realised, she had a chance to even the score.

Like any good actress she laid her plans carefully, including a visit to London to find a suitable outfit. Something definitely provocative and sexy, she decided, as she sat in the train; something to appeal to the experienced male predator; not too blatant though …

She found it after several hours’ search in a small boutique tucked away off Bond Street. It was part of their new Christmas stock, the salesgirl told Chelsea as she admired it. It was also criminally expensive, but nevertheless she agreed to try it on.

Normally the rich blue taffeta dress with its tight moulded bodice wouldn’t have appealed to her at all, but as she emerged from the changing cubicle to study herself full-length in the pier glass she had to admit that it suited her. The tight bodice clung seductively to her breasts, her shoulders and throat glowing softly pale against the rich fabric. The rustling skirts billowed gently from the narrow waist in piquant contrast to the sophistication of the bodice, and the salesgirl produced a matching band of velvet ribbon adorned with silk roses sewn with pearls and diamante which she fastened round Chelsea’s throat.

‘If you wore your hair up very simply and just decorated with the same flowers, you’d look absolutely stunning,’ she told Chelsea, scooping up her long hair to reveal the pure length of her slim throat.

The effect was a bewitching one, Chelsea admitted, and although the dress was outrageously expensive, she found herself weakly agreeing with the girl that it might have been made for her.

As indeed it might, she admitted a little later as she stepped out of the boutique, clutching a black and gold embossed box and a piece of paper on which the girl had scribbled an address where Chelsea could have a pair of shoes made up to match the dress. The boutique had also been able to provide the silk flowers to decorate her hair, and on a sudden impulse, as she was walking past the store, Chelsea hurried into Harrods and headed for the cosmetics department.

Two hours later she emerged exhausted but delighted with the new make-up she had bought in colours far stronger than those she had normally used. The salesgirls had been more than willing to show her the latest winter styles, and Chelsea had been pleased and a little startled to discover her stage training came flooding back as she memorised and elaborated in her mind, adapting what they had shown her to suit not her own personality but the image she intended to project in order to lure Slade Ashford.

The weekend before the party, Chelsea was surprised to hear someone knocking on her door and to discover Kirsty standing shivering outside in the cold east wind which was blowing.

‘Come on in,’ she invited her niece. ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

She had already noticed the storm signals flashing in Kirsty’s blue eyes, and the stubborn set of her mouth, and her heart sank as Kirsty shook her head and flung herself into a chair.

‘It’s impossible at home,’ she announced bitterly. ‘Anyone would think I was seven, not seventeen!’

‘Do you know,’ Chelsea remarked conversationally, ‘I’ve often noticed that people have a tendency to treat us the way we behave.

There was a pregnant pause. She looked up and smiled guilelessly at Kirsty, adding sympathetically, ‘What’s wrong? Arguments over the curfew?’

‘You mean Mum hasn’t told you?’ Kirsty asked suspiciously.

‘Told me what?’ Chelsea frowned. ‘The last time I saw her she was full of preparations for the party.’

‘I want to go to drama school,’ Kirsty told her aggressively, ‘but they won’t let me.’

‘You’ve still got a year to do at school,’ Chelsea reminded her, her heart sinking a little. She and Kirsty had always been able to talk to one another, but here was her niece masking her involvement with Slade Ashford by pretending her quarrel with her parents was about her desire to go to drama school.

‘Yes, and then I’ll be eighteen; able to do exactly what I want.’

Fear shafted through Chelsea.

‘The acting profession is a very gruelling and often heartbreaking one,’ she warned her niece. ‘You know I went to drama school?’

‘Yes, but you left.’

‘Not just because I realised that the stage wasn’t for me,’ Chelsea admitted. ‘I got involved with someone I met there—an older man.’ Beneath her lashes she studied Kirsty’s set face. ‘He was married, of course,’ she continued carelessly, ‘but I was far too naïve to realise that he was just using me—until it was too late. I’d hate that to happen to you, Kirsty.’

‘Things are different nowadays.’ Kirsty tossed her head and eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I never knew you were involved with a married man.’

Chelsea winced at her choice of words.

‘He was very attractive—sophisticated and extremely worldly. I thought he genuinely cared about me, but of course he didn’t. How could he? We were worlds apart. I was a girl of seventeen who knew next to nothing about life, he was a man in his thirties who’d already experienced nearly everything it had to offer.’

There was a small silence and then Kirsty got to her feet.

‘Mum’s told you about Slade, hasn’t she?’ she demanded scornfully, making Chelsea wince for her own clumsiness. ‘You just don’t understand—any of you!’

She was gone before Chelsea could protest, black curls bouncing on her shoulders, her coltish jean-clad legs padded with scarlet striped leg-warmers a bright splash of colour as she ran quickly down the street.

Cursing herself for mishandling the situation, Chelsea paced her small living room. There had been disappointment and wariness in Kirsty’s expression—and a barrier that had not been there before.

As she watched her niece disappearing Chelsea resolved that no matter what it cost she would somehow rescue Kirsty from Slade Ashford.

CHAPTER TWO

ALTHOUGH not a dedicated partygoer, Chelsea was not normally averse to accepting the many invitations that came her way; mainly as a means of in-depth study of the human race at play. Ann often protested that she spent far too much time watching from the sidelines when she could have been joining in the fun, but her experiences with Darren had left her wary and cynical and more especially reluctant to get involved.

Tonight, though, was different. Normally she would have enjoyed the thought of attending Ann’s wedding anniversary gathering, but there was no thought of enjoyment in her mind as she made careful and thorough preparations for the evening, the maxim of her drama school tutors ringing warningly in her ears. ‘Immerse yourself completely in your part,’ had been their favourite command. ‘Remember that when you walk on the stage you are the character you are playing. If the audience is to believe it, you must believe it.’ Something told her that Slade Ashford was the most demanding ‘audience’ she was ever likely to meet, and so, as she lay in a deep bath of scented water, mentally relaxing and breathing deeply, she forced herself to put aside her own character and assume that of the woman who – for tonight – she was going to be.

Her efforts were so convincing that by the time she was ready to emerge from her bath she had almost come to like the rich Oriental perfume she had chosen for her role – one that normally she would have avoided in favour of something more Establishment.

No bra was necessary because of the way the bodice of her dress was boned, and smoothing fragilely sheer matching blue stockings over silkily perfumed legs, she paused for a moment to study her appearance objectively in her bedroom mirror. Her skin was creamily pale; her breasts firm and full, the, curve of her waist lending a delicate sensuality to the narrow-boned hips.

Minute petrol blue briefs matched her stockings and suspenders. Her fingertips brushed accidentally against one silk-clad thigh and with a slight grimace of distaste Chelsea turned away from the mirror. She looked like a slave girl adorning herself for the market. Unbidden, a memory struggled to be unleashed from the chains in which she had bound it—herself at seventeen, bright-eyed, eager, and more than a little embarrassed as she spent her meagre savings on cheap fake satin undies, hardly daring to imagine how she would feel if Darren saw her in them.

Fool! Fool! she goaded herself. Why remember all that tonight? And the ridiculous thing was that when Darren had tried to make love to her all she had felt was fear and revulsion. Frigid, he had called her, and with good reason.

Stop it—stop it! Her teeth ground together with her efforts to deny the memories. She had never dreamed when she went round to read the script that night that Darren would … Somehow whenever she had envisaged them making love it had been in some secluded hideaway, remote and fairytale; not the house he shared with his wife. The moment she had realised that script-reading was the last thing he had on his mind, her desire had disappeared, too weak to overcome the suffocating awareness all around them that Darren was married to someone else.

Since then she had walked warily, too fastidious to ever allow herself to become involved with any man who had ties elsewhere and too cautious to trust even those who did not.

Her phone rang, and she went to answer it. It was Ann, ringing to bolster her courage and thank her yet again.

‘Don’t thank me yet,’ Chelsea warned her sister. ‘All I’ve promised to do is try.’

Half an hour later, fully dressed and made up, she studied her reflection critically. The blue dress was perfect against her pale skin and dark red hair, emphasising the rich blue of her eyes which she had deliberately emphasised with her new make-up. Gold glitter shimmered in her cleavage and along her high cheekbones. As the salesgirl had suggested, she had twisted her hair into a smooth chignon and decorated it with the blue silk flowers.

It was only when she secured the band of ribbon round her throat that her fingers betrayed a fine tremble. With their coating of lip-gloss her lips looked full and softly vulnerable, matching varnish gleaming softly on the nails she had deliberately allowed to grow. She normally detested anything other than natural or faintly pearl varnish on her nails, but tonight hers were those of a predator—dipped in blood, she thought, shuddering.

For Kirsty’s sake she had to succeed, and yet already she was hating the thought of the pain she knew she would inflict upon her niece.

Rather than drive herself to the Clarendon she had ordered a taxi. It arrived promptly, and because the night was cold Chelsea pulled on a cream wool coat which had been a present to herself the previous Christmas.

The hotel was ablaze with lights when her taxi drew up outside, and in the car park she glimpsed several familiar cars. Melchester was a relatively small market town and her family were fairly well known. She and Ann had grown up there, and when Ann had married the young man who had come south from Birmingham to work for Lutons, Ralph too had been absorbed into the closely knit society Chelsea and Ann had known from childhood, hence the party tonight was well attended with the friends and families of their school friends.

The early arrivals were clustered round the bar of the self-contained hotel suite Ralph and Ann had hired for the evening, when Chelsea walked in. She left her coat with the cloakroom attendant and quickly sought out her sister.

Apart from the slight concern shadowing her eyes, Chelsea didn’t think she had ever seen Ann looking better; not even on her wedding day. Maturity suited her fair prettiness, and even as they stood side by side no stranger could have guessed at their relationship. Ann in her early forties was small and inclined to be slightly plump, her fair hair cut short and waving softly round her face.

‘Chelsea!’

They kissed. Ann was wearing Guerlain’s Chamade, and raised her eyebrows slightly as they drew apart, her murmured, ‘Very, very sexy!’ drawing a reluctant smile from Chelsea.

‘Where’s Kirsty?’ she asked.

‘Oh, she refused to come with us. Apparently Slade is picking her up.’ Ann sighed, and looked unhappy. ‘I’m so worried about her. She’s changed completely. Oh God,’ she protested feelingly, ‘there are the Rosses. I’ll have to go and speak to them. See you later!’

Humanity the world over was much the same, separated only by the greater or lesser degree of sophistication their particular society enjoyed, Chelsea reflected, observing the delicate cut and thrust of conversation between two well-known rivals and co-members of the Town Council.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a slight disturbance by the door, and the suddenly prickling awareness shivering along her spine alerted her before they came into view that Kirsty and her escort had arrived.

Wondering if she was being over-sensitive in thinking how silent the room had suddenly become, Chelsea reflected that if she was successful in detaching Slade Ashford from Kirsty he would have scant chance of restoring himself to her good books. Desertion in the face of so much interested observation would be a bitter pill for any seventeen-year-old to swallow, and she was relieved to see that the son of Ann and Ralph’s closest neighbours was obviously home from university. Was it really only last Christmas that Kirsty had been swooning over him? She had grown up a good deal in ten short months.

Discreetly keeping out of sight, Chelsea studied her quarry meticulously. Expensive dinner suit, obviously neither hired nor bought off the peg; thick silk shirt; even thicker dark hair brushing the collar of his jacket. He turned, and Chelsea automatically stiffened slightly, hoping that Kirsty hadn’t seen her. It was not part of her plan to be introduced to Slade Ashford as Kirsty’s aunt.

Kirsty had spotted her parents. Slade Ashford cupped her elbow. Poor Kirsty, she didn’t stand a chance. It was almost literally possible to see the awed reverence in the eyes of the women they walked past, as they rested appreciatively on Slade’s lean form.

For almost an hour Chelsea circulated among the other guests, deliberately creating a subtle presence, a distinct awareness of her as a woman. Several men of Ralph’s generation paid her heavily gallant compliments, while many of the younger ones were a little more obvious in their attentions, responding to her sensuously appealing aura.

To anyone watching her Chelsea’s progress across the room had neither purpose nor pattern, but it did bring her into a circle of people barely two feet away from Kirsty and Slade Ashford. Across the room she caught Ann’s eye. It had been arranged between them that when eventually Chelsea managed to get Slade’s attention, Ann would distract Kirsty.

Perceiving her signal, Ann moved discreetly towards her. Summoning every ounce of control, Chelsea stepped backwards, deliberately allowing herself to collide with Slade. Her drink spilled as he turned to apologise and steady her, a cynical awareness in his eyes which at any other time would have made her writhe with shame. Out of the corner of her eye Chelsea saw that Kirsty was about to make some comment.

Clinging gracefully to Slade’s arm, Chelsea bent to fuss over her shoe, which had been splashed with the contents of her now empty glass.

‘Oh, what a nuisance!’ she pouted.

‘I think they’ll dry.’

Chelsea was quite sure they would. Lifting her head slowly, she raised her lowered eyelashes and let her lips curve into a seductively promising smile. Beneath her tensed fingers Slade Ashford’s arm felt like solid rock.

His eyes which she had imagined to be brown shocked her by being a deep intense jade, and as coolly mocking as her own were sensually promising.

‘Oh, I’m not worried about my shoes.’ The husky softness of her voice surprised even Chelsea herself. Perhaps age had turned her into a better actress than she had ever imagined—age, or perhaps necessity.

‘It’s my drink,’ she murmured. ‘I had to wait simply ages to get it—waiters never pay the slightest attention to a woman on her own, and now I’ve lost it.’

‘Then please allow me to get you another …’

So far so good; she had managed to both capture his attention and very unsubtly let him know that she was alone. As she drew a rather shaky breath of relief she heard Ann saying urgently to Kirsty, ‘Darling, can you spare us a moment?’

For a second Chelsea held her breath. If Slade elected to go with Kirsty there was nothing she could do about it. Her own fingertips still rested on his arm, and she could almost feel her niece’s puzzled and hurt look, but she refused to yield to it.

‘Quite a sweet little thing,’ she said patronisingly as Ann led a reluctant Kirsty away. ‘A relation of yours?’

Only she knew exactly how much satisfaction it gave her to see the slightly grim expression in those dark green eyes as Slade said curtly, ‘No; the daughter of a business acquaintance—Now, your drink …’

Now came the most difficult part of the evening, Chelsea warned herself. She had managed to detach him from Kirsty, but now she had to keep him not only away from Kirsty for the rest of the evening, but also firmly and publicly attached to her.

She had to wait several nerve-wracking seconds before he returned to her side with a fresh Martini, and managed to draw out their mutual self-introduction for ten minutes, one half of her mind bemused and appalled by the fulsome inanities she was uttering.

‘I hate coming anywhere like this alone,’ she confessed when she saw his attention was beginning to waver. ‘My date couldn’t make it at the last moment. Oh, wouldn’t you know it!’ she pouted, suddenly having a brainwave as the band suddenly started playing a dreamily romantic tune. ‘They would play my favourite when I don’t have a partner to dance with!’

At any other time the cool irony in those green eyes would have shattered her, but tonight she was playing a part and there was no room for her normal icy reserve.

‘Far be it from me to disappoint a lady,’ Slade Ashford drawled, and just for a moment as he negotiated a path to the dance floor it struck Chelsea that his ironic comment could have more than one meaning, but she swiftly dismissed the thought as over-imaginative.

In keeping with the romantic mood of the evening the dance floor was dimly lit, and in the darkness Chelsea almost stumbled, shocked by the sudden warmth of Slade’s fingers on her arm as he reached for her.

In his arms on the dance floor it came as a shock to realise how long it had been since a man had held her like this. She had danced, of course, but never with this intimacy, since Darren, and the hard brush of muscled male thighs against the softness of her own body as they moved in time to the music became increasingly disturbing as frissons of awareness spread upwards from her thighs. Revulsion coursed through her in waves and the need to tense her body against the alien intrusion of arrogant male flesh became overpowering, but she refused to give in to it.

Slade’s hand caressed her spine, sliding upwards to stroke the vulnerable nape of her neck. Her breath caught in her throat. Dear God, what chance would Kirsty have against a man like this if he chose to submit her to the full force of his sexual expertise?

She missed a step and was drawn still closer to the lean male body of her partner, her breasts crushed against the hard wall of his chest, his breath fanning her temple. The revolving spotlight suddenly caught them in its beam and Slade raised his hand to the dusting of glitter along her cheekbones, tracing it lightly. The music stopped and she withdrew from him, smothering a gasp as his fingers left her face to trace instead the glitter-dusted curve of her breasts above the bodice of her dress.

‘Very enticing.’ He smiled at her and in the darkness there was no irony in his smile, and Chelsea felt her breath catching in her throat at the unbelievable appeal of that smile.

For the rest of the evening she clung to him like ivy, firmly closing her mind against what she was doing. He left her once to collect some food for them both from the buffet tables, and Ann hurried across to whisper,

‘Keep it up—you’re doing marvels’ You should have seen poor Kirsty’s face when she saw you dancing with him! She hasn’t said anything, but I suspect she’s discovered that her idol most definitely has feet of clay. Just to make sure I thought it might be as well if she were to see you leaving with him, if you can engineer that. He’s attractive enough for the fact that other women are attracted to him to add a dangerous piquancy.’

Unable to do anything other than agree with her sister’s observation and worried about her niece’s reaction to her behaviour, at first Chelsea almost missed Slade’s cool, ‘Do you have your own means of transport for getting home?’

For a moment she was tempted to tell him that she intended getting a taxi, and then she remembered Ann’s whispered suggestion, and summoned the last of her flagging courage to say with a slow smile,

‘I’m afraid not. I was hoping someone would be kind enough to offer me a lift.’

She couldn’t have made her meaning any plainer, and she almost shuddered to see the cynicism carved deep in the grooves running alongside his mouth, as he drawled, ‘Allow me.’

As luck would have it Kirsty was standing with a group of teenagers by the foyer, and as they walked past the group Chelsea couldn’t bear to look at her niece.

At last they were out in the cool night air, crisply autumnal with the intensely evocative and faintly mournful scent of woodsmoke and frost hanging in the stillness.

‘Here we are.’

Slade stopped alongside a svelte, powerful-looking car, its dark paintwork gleaming, and paused to unlock the doors before helping Chelsea inside. Expensive hide moulded itself to her body, its rich smell filling the dark interior, mingling with the tangy aftershave Slade was wearing.

‘You haven’t asked me for directions,’ Chelsea pointed out to him as the long bonnet nosed its way out into the traffic.

In the darkness she could feel him glance at her, and a nervous fluttery feeling began in the pit of her stomach and spread outwards as he said smoothly,

‘First I thought we’d go to my place, have a cup of coffee.’

For a moment Chelsea’s brain refused to work. When she had been planning the evening she had never thought as far as this. Somehow she had imagined that it would end with her leaving the hotel with Slade and then getting a taxi home. She turned towards him to protest, checking as she saw the cold cynicism of his smile, and anger suddenly welled up inside her. It didn’t take much imagination to guess that ‘coffee’ wasn’t all he had in mind. The arrogance of the man! she seethed. Did he expect her to jump into bed with him simply because she had accepted a lift from him?

It wasn’t purely because she had angled for a lift, honesty made her admit; she hadn’t exactly kept him at a distance during the evening. Forcefully she pushed aside the thought. So Slade Ashford thought she was going to allow him to make love to her. Perhaps it was time that someone showed him that when it came to women he wasn’t as overpoweringly irresistible as he seemed to think.

This thought was enough to boost her spirits and keep her doubts at bay for the fifteen minutes it took them to reach Slade’s flat; one of half a dozen in a prestigious luxury two-storey block on the outskirts of the town set in the grounds of what had once been the old manor house.

With a cool economy of movement that made it impossible for her to object Slade drove the car into a garage at the back of the apartments, locked it, and escorted her into an attractive communal hallway.

‘My apartment’s on the second floor,’ he told her, indicating the lift.

It whisked them upwards so swiftly that Chelsea felt that she had left her stomach behind. She was twenty-six, she reminded herself dryly as they emerged from its claustrophobic confines, and this wouldn’t be the first time she had had to fend off unwanted advances; and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Shrugging aside the tiny inner voice that warned her that Slade Ashford was different, she allowed him to usher her into a small inner hall. As he snapped on the light she had a brief impression of stunningly effective faux-marble walls in rich brown and cream, one of them mirrored to add to the illusion.

‘Not my choice,’ he told her, noticing her expression. ‘I needed a place in a hurry and this one was vacant. I believe the previous owner was a businessman who let it to a … friend.’ His voice was expressionless, but the meaning was plain nonetheless, and Chelsea suppressed a sudden shudder as she contemplated how narrowly she had escaped being Darren’s little ‘friend’, his kept mistress.

‘Living room’s through there,’ Slade told her, opening another door.

It was decorated in varying shades of pale blue and grey; with expensive silk-covered settees, and a thick pile carpet, and Chelsea wondered if it was merely her imagination which made her think that despite its luxury this wasn’t a happy place.

‘I’ll take your coat. Make yourself at home while I get us both a drink.’

This was the moment when she should tell him that she wanted neither a drink nor his company, but he was gone before she could speak. She would tell him when he came back, she decided. Fortunately they weren’t very far from her own flat, and if he refused to take her home, she could always walk. She was studying a painting when he returned, and her first intimation that she was no longer alone came when she felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her round to face him, his expression hidden from her as he bent his head and touched his lips to the soft flesh swelling above the top of her dress, following the line of gold glitter.

‘Opium,’ he murmured appreciatively against her skin. ‘Tell me, is all of you as deliciously scented as this bit?’

‘Let me go!’

The persona she had assumed fell from her like a borrowed cloak, her eyes darkening with anger and fear as she pushed ineffectively at his hard shoulders.

‘Don’t you think it’s a little late to play hard to get?’ he laughed sardonically. ‘You should be honoured. I don’t normally fall for such obvious ploys, but there’s something about you …’

‘I asked you to give me a lift home, not … not maul me!’ she managed on a choked whisper.

‘Maul?’ His expression was ugly as he raised his head and looked at her. ‘Believe me, if I really wanted to I could make what I’m doing now pale into insignificance—and don’t bother starting to cry rape. There’s not a court in the land that would uphold such an accusation after the way you’ve been putting yourself about tonight—in front of witnesses too!’

Sickness crawled through the pit of Chelsea’s stomach. Dear God, what was she going to do?

‘Look,’ she began desperately, ‘there’s been a mistake …’

‘Indeed there has,’ Slade agreed softly. ‘I don’t know what your game is—but I can make a pretty shrewd guess. However, this time you aren’t getting away with it. I’m no pigeon for the plucking, and perhaps it’s time that someone made you come up with the goods you’re so good at offering—and then withdrawing.’

Panic clawed at her. She wanted to scream at him that he didn’t understand; that she wasn’t what he thought but she knew with complete certainty that he wouldn’t believe her.

Impulsively she turned on her heel heading for the door, but she had barely moved a yard before she was stopped and lifted up bodily.

‘Oh no,’ Slade told her slowly. ‘Tonight there’s no running out on your obligations.’

He kicked open a door without bothering to switch on the light, and all Chelsea could see was the generous proportions of the king-size bed. She was dropped on to it without ceremony, her attempts to struggle upright suddenly ceasing as Slade closed the door and slowly started to remove his shirt. A fury she had not expected seemed to possess him.

Trapped in the sardonic gleam of his eyes, she could neither move nor think. One part of her mind registered the smooth tanned flesh of his shoulders, and the dark finely curling hair matting his chest; the play of sleek muscles as he moved and the male grace of a torso that tapered from broad shoulders into a narrow waist; while the other screamed in silent protest at the monstrosity of what was happening to her.

‘What’s wrong?’ The soft goading words brought the colour flooding to her face. ‘Don’t tell me you’re opting for maidenly modesty at this late stage in the game and you want me to do your undressing for you?’

Her control broke then, deep shudders wracking her body as she tried to tear her eyes from his body and failed. His hands were on his belt when she finally managed to drag her gaze away, and as he came towards her Chelsea shrank back.

She heard him swear, and then his hands were on her body, not roughly as she had anticipated, but dangerously skilful as they traced the bones of her shoulders, their path followed by his lips as he explored the vulnerability of her skin.

She started to protest, but the words were cut off by the sensual pressure of his mouth as it explored the shape of her own. Sensations she had never experienced before flooded over her. Of their own volition her lips seemed to soften and part, the sudden invasion of his mouth shocking her with conflicting emotions. One part of her longed to repudiate him; while another, hitherto unsuspected instinct urged her to yield to the sensuous pleasure he was invoking. His fingers were in her hair, freeing it from its chignon, and weaving themselves into it while he held her, making a leisurely inspection of her face with lips that teased and tantalised from her feelings she had never suspected she possessed.

Not even with Darren had she felt this dangerously seductive desire to abandon herself completely to a man’s possession. Her mind was a jumble of confused thoughts as she told herself that she had been celibate for too long; that what she was experiencing was the result of repressed emotions. She gave a small moan of protest, and Slade’s mouth returned immediately to hers, probing her half parted lips.

She was so engrossed in trying to rationalise the feelings she was experiencing that it was several seconds before she realised that Slade had released the zipper of her dress and was easing it slowly from her body. The knowledge froze her into shocked stillness, her instinctive impulse to conceal her bared breasts from him as the blue dress rustled to the floor, and shame washed over her as she remembered the brevity of her underwear, the sheer silk stockings and the perfume with which she had scented every inch of her skin.

Slade’s, ‘You certainly believe in dressing for the part, don’t you?’ held an unexpected contemptuous anger that burned into her, reinforced by his mocking laughter when he saw the way she had crossed her arms over her breasts.

‘What the hells’s that for?’ he demanded grittily. ‘Enticement? Don’t overplay your hand; believe me, that dress you were wearing was enticement enough!’

When she didn’t move but lay staring up at him in frozen horror his mockery gave way to anger, his fingers biting into her wrists as he grasped them, dragging them away from her body, no mercy in the eyes that scrutinised every centimetre of exposed flesh.

Unable to stop herself, Chelsea cringed, hating him for making her so vulnerable; for confusing her by kissing her the way he had; and now for destroying her pride and self-respect. She shuddered to think that by the time the evening was over he would know her body more intimately than she did herself, and although she had always told herself that her virginity was more accident than design, now when she was on the verge of losing it she knew that some tiny corner of her heart had never entirely given up the hope that she would give it to a man who loved her as she loved him.

‘You really know all the tricks, don’t you?’ Slade breathed savagely. ‘But feigning reluctance won’t work with me. I’m not some gullible fool easily bewitched by a pair of dark blue eyes and a vulnerable mouth. But in one respect at least I’m just like any other man.’ He glanced down at her body, and Chelsea felt the tension in him.

‘I want you,’ he said thickly, and as he raised his head she thought she saw bitter anger in the eyes which were already beginning to glaze with desire.

His hands left her wrists to cup her breasts, his eyes holding hers as his thumbs moved arousingly against the pink flesh of her nipples.

Shock gave way to fear as she felt their unmistakable betrayal, and a small moan escaped from her clenched teeth as the tormenting caress continued and Slade’s lips moved tantalisingly along her throat, investigating the tremors running over her skin.

Quite when her arms slid round his neck she didn’t know, but one moment, it seemed, they were at her sides and the next they were clinging to the breadth of his shoulders, exploring the male bone structure before sliding sensuously over his back.

This time when he kissed her she had no thought of holding back, the harsh rasp of his body hair against the sensitised tips of her breasts was so intensely pleasurable. She was lost—drowning in a sea of new sensations, each one more pleasurable than the last. When Slade lowered his head and trailed burning kisses against the curve of each breast fireworks seemed to explode inside her, compelling her to arch urgently against him and gasp on a wave of burning pleasure as his tongue stroked roughly against the aroused tautness of her nipples. Lost in a rainbow-coloured cloud of feeling, she dimly heard Slade’s hoarse groan as he lifted his mouth from her breast and slid his hands urgently over the gentle swell of her stomach, shocking her into sudden awareness of where she was and with whom.

‘Slade, no!’ she protested, her desire abating as self-revulsion swamped her.

‘Damn you,’ he swore hoarsely, ‘you can’t tell me “no” now! God knows why when I know what you are, but I want you more than I’ve wanted any woman in a long time. There’s something about you …’ He shifted slightly, studying her pale outline and watching the movement of his own hand as it moved over her skin. Chelsea shivered, shocked that even now her body seemed to have a mind of its own, wantonly responding to his touch.

‘Slade …’

The sudden shrill ring of the phone shocked her into silence. Slade swore, and for a moment she thought he intended to ignore it, but eventually he got up and left, closing the door behind him. Chelsea heard him pick up the receiver and was suddenly galvanised into action.

Her dress lay on the floor, but she ignored it. She daren’t waste time. Her coat was on a chair and she pulled it on, snatching up her bag as she slid’ into her shoes, praying that Slade’s caller would keep him occupied for long enough for her to escape. Another door led off the bedroom into an inner hall which as she had hoped opened into the marble foyer.

Her fingers trembled over the latch, made clumsy by her desperation, but at last the door was open. Not daring to slam it behind her in case the sound alerted Slade to her escape, she fled downstairs and into the cold darkness of the night.

By fortunate chance she was able to pick up a taxi just outside the apartment, and within ten minutes of leaving Slade she was inserting her key in her own front door.

Once inside she locked and barred the door, quickly stripping off everything that she had been wearing and hurrying into the bathroom, where she quickly showered, grimacing with distaste as she tried to banish from her mind her fevered response to Slade’s touch.

By the time she was dried and dressed in her nightclothes she had managed to persuade herself that she had over-exaggerated her own response, and that far from experiencing pleasure in Slade’s arms what she had actually felt was revulsion. How could she feel anything else when not even Darren had been able to arouse her to desire? She stifled an hysterical laugh as she dwelled on Slade’s reaction to finding that she had fled, leaving merely her dress. That dress—she shuddered. If she never saw it again she would be more than happy. Thank God Slade didn’t know her address. He had been so determined to make her pay for the pleasure of his company that she wouldn’t have put it past him to suddenly arrive at her flat, demanding that they take up where they had left off. It was ridiculous really, but just before the phone rang she had had the impression that he resented her. He had told her that he ‘wanted’ her, but men were notorious for their purely physical desire. Sickness welled up inside her and she raced to the bathroom, gagging suddenly as reaction set in. Dear God! To think it could have been Kirsty in her place tonight. Knowing that made everything’ she had endured worthwhile. Her last thought as sleep claimed her was that she was glad that she would soon be going north and that there was scant chance of her ever meeting Slade Ashford again. Lutons was only one of the companies he owned, and once the takeover had been sorted out to his satisfaction Ralph was doubtful that Melchester would see very much of him. Thank goodness!

The impatient ringing of the telephone penetrated the deep layers of sleep blanketing her, and Chelsea reached muzzily for the extension phone at her bedside.

‘Chelsea—thank God, for a moment I thought Slade must have done away with you! I’ve rung twice already. I thought you weren’t there.’

‘I’m fine, Ann,’ she lied numbly. If Slade Ashford had had his way she wouldn’t have been, unless it was his practice to send his women home once he had finished with them.

‘Thank heavens for that!’ her sister breathed. ‘Ralph was furious with me for letting you leave with Slade. He told me that after the way you’d been playing up to him all night Slade might quite naturally have thought that you wanted to spend the night with him as well as the evening.’

‘I’m fine,’ Chelsea lied again. She had no wish to remember the black anger in Slade’s eyes when he had touched her body. Disgust for her own behaviour flooded through her. She had never thought of herself as sexually repressed, ‘sex-starved’ to the point where she would respond physically to any experienced man—just the opposite; and yet last night …

‘How’s Kirsty?’ she asked her sister, trying to obliterate Slade Ashford from her mind.

‘She seems fine,’ Ann told her. ‘In fact she seemed more puzzled than distressed about you going off with Slade. Perhaps she’s just trying to put on a brave front—I don’t know, but I do know one thing—she’s going out with Lance James tonight, to some disco. All we have to do now is to make sure that the rift becomes permanent. I don’t suppose you …’

‘No way,’ Chelsea told her firmly. ‘I’ve done my femme fatale bit to death—besides, I’ll be leaving at the end of the week.’

‘Ralph says I’m not to worry. He persists in believing that Slade was merely indulging Kirsty. He says a man like Slade doesn’t need to chase after seventeen-year-old schoolgirls, no matter how pretty they are … Are you sure you’re all right?’ Ann persisted. ‘You sound strange. Look, why don’t you come over …’

‘Ann, I’m fine,’ Chelsea interrupted firmly. With the night behind her it was easier to convince herself that she must have exaggerated her body’s response to Slade’s skilled lovemaking.

With a sudden start of horror she relived her flight from Slade’s apartment, shuddering with distaste as she recalled the way she had been dressed. Her dress! Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside her. What was more important—the loss of a dress, or the loss of her self-respect? Besides, something told her that she would never have been able to wear it again, because at the back of her mind was the knowledge that it was tainted for her by the way she had behaved while wearing it.

For Slade Ashford it had been nothing more than simply another brief sexual encounter; an automatic male response to an available woman; a casual acceptance of a way of life which was totally alien to her.

CHAPTER THREE

IT seemed impossible to believe that she had been at Darkwater for nearly a month, Chelsea reflected, walking up the overgrown lane which led from the Dower House to Darkwater. Her task was turning out to be one of the most demanding she had ever undertaken, but instead of depressing her, the restoration work on the tapestry promised to be so potentially rewarding that even the problems it caused her were a challenge rather than a chore.

The National Trust officials who had been working on the house had now completed their work—as it had been inhabited until the death of the owner very little had needed to be done, and Chelsea knew that the Trust had high hopes of opening the house to visitors the following summer.

Because Darkwater was so remote—ten miles from the nearest border town of Jedburgh—Chelsea was staying at the Dower House. The new owner, whom Mrs Rudge the housekeeper referred to in a rather tight-lipped fashion as ‘Mr Harold’s newphew’, was apparently away—Mrs Rudge had grudgingly informed her that he had considerable business interests which took him away a good deal.

‘Not that we ever saw much of him at all before he inherited,’ she had told Chelsea that morning at breakfast. ‘Born and brought up in the South, he was. Mr Harold’s sister married one of them stockbrokers. It would break Mr Harold’s heart if he knew what was going on with the house an’ all.’

‘It’s probably for the best,’ Chelsea had told her gently, guessing that the housekeeper’s feeling towards her late employer’s nephew sprang from resentment at what she saw as a callous indifference to his family home. ‘With death duties many families find keeping on their homes an impossible burden. At least endowing it to the Trust will ensure that it’s preserved.’ She knew that the Trust very rarely took on houses unless the donors were prepared to include a substantial sum of money for upkeep, which was why so many people were forced to sell their homes to developers, to be converted into flats and hotels.

Her walk took her past a newly ploughed field. Mist clung to the hedgerows as the ground dipped away; a faint riming of frost reminding her that it was less than a month to Christmas.

The red tractor in the distance executed a neat circle, its driver lifting a checked shirt-clad arm.

Chelsea waved back, her lips curving into a warm smile. The Littles, who farmed High Meadow, which had once been the home farm, had made her very welcome, especially Tom, the son of the family. Two years Chelsea’s senior, he had been farming in New Zealand when his father had suffered a heart attack, and as he ruefully told Chelsea, it was sometimes hard after living one’s own life to return to the parental roof.

Chelsea had found his mother to be a mine of information about the Darkwater family, although she had been surprised when Chelsea told her what she was doing in the Borders.

‘Restoring a tapestry?’ she had murmured. ‘Well, there’s a thing … a firescreen, is it?’

Chelsea had laughed, visualising the thirty-odd-foot length of mediaeval tapestry obviously designed to cover one of the walls in a huge baronial hall, and Mrs Little had joined in her laughter when she had explained.

Tomorrow she planned to drive into Newcastle to collect some silks she was having specially dyed. The tapestry itself, so fragile that in places it hung together on single threads, was being attached to a new backing. Once that was done Chelsea intended to clean it, using the specialised processes she had learned during her training. Old fabrics were notorious for their fragility and momentary clumsiness could ruin centuries-old articles.

As always when she saw the house she was struck by the granite hardness of it, rising out of the earth; more of a fortress than a home, its back to the sea looking down the long valley which linked England and Scotland; a formidable guardian of the Borders, and one whose owners had owed loyalty to both the English and the Scottish Crowns at various times in history.

It was hard to accept that once this green, fertile valley had run red with the blood of warring clansmen; Border reivers, a law unto themselves, too far from the civilising influences of both London and Edinburgh to heed the commands of their rulers.

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