What You Made Me
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

WITH a thankful sigh Philippa sank back on her heels, surveying the stacked boxes and paper sacks, quickly stifling an unanticipated stab of pain as she looked at what was after all the accumulation of sixty odd years of living. How little she had really known about her aunt, and all that was left of her now was the faded photograph album Philippa had decided to keep. She hadn’t wanted to come back to Garston, but she had been Jane Cromwell’s only living relative.

Getting to her feet and dusting down her jeans she bent to pick up one of Simon’s motorbike magazines. Her ten-year-old son was motorbike mad at the moment. Even from being quite small he had shown a decidedly mechanical turn of mind. At the moment it was fixed with equal concentration on motorbikes and computers.

Thinking of Simon made her glance at her watch and frown. It was gone five and she had told him to be back at four. She planned for them to have an early meal and then leave to go back to London. Where on earth was he? They had only been in Garston for a week but it was long enough for Simon, with his outgoing extrovert nature, to make friends. Several of them had called for him this morning. Unlike herself Simon made friends easily. There must still be people living in the village who remembered her, but apart from the vicar no one had come to call.

Of course her aunt had always kept herself very much to herself. Living as she did in what was virtually a ‘grace and favour’ house on the Garston estate, her isolation from the rest of the village had tended to set her apart from the villagers, just as it had set Philippa apart during those years when she lived with her aunt. It couldn’t have been easy for her, Philippa now recognised, to accept the responsibility of a fourteen-year-old girl, still shocked by the sudden death of her parents, and inclined to be rebellious and withdrawn because of it. Her father, Jane Cromwell’s cousin, had been a diplomat, and he and her mother had been killed during a terrorist raid whilst Philippa was at school in England.

Their death had brought many changes to Philippa’s life, not the least of which was the discovery that there was no longer enough money for her to continue at the exclusive girls’ school her parents had sent her to. Her father’s salary had been generous but it had died with him, leaving only the proceeds of two small insurance policies. Her aunt had been a teacher and during the last ten years of her career had had only one pupil—Edward Garston, because of which she had been gifted a lifetime’s occupation of the small cottage which became home to Philippa, and which stood just within the boundary of the Garston family’s estate. Once they had owned vast acres of Yorkshire, including the village named after the family, but gradually over the years their land had been eroded away with their wealth until all that was left was the house itself, the parkland it stood in and the home farm. And then further tragedy had struck. Edward Garston had been killed in a car accident and his inheritance passed to a cousin, Scott.

Philippa could remember the day Scott and his mother arrived at Garston quite vividly. Scott’s father had been the second son, the black sheep of the family and there was gossip in the village that his grandfather had sworn he would rather see the house and the estate pass to a stranger than go to his son’s child. Scott had been twenty to her fourteen when he first came to live at Garston. Away at Oxford most of the time, Philippa could remember catching brief glimpses of him during the holidays, when invariably he arrived riding a large and noisy motorbike, his arrival always increasing his grandfather’s already irrascible temper. Jeffrey Garston was a proud, and Philippa had sometimes thought, very lonely old man, very bitter in his resentment of Edward’s death at eighteen and of the cousin who had taken his place. Edward had been reputed to be brilliant and it was no secret in the area that Jeffrey Gaston had looked to his grandson to somehow recoup the family losses and restore Garston Hall to what it had once been. The Garston family fortune had been founded on coal and railways during the Victorian era, but now they were reduced to living on a rapidly dwindling income.

After what she had heard about the family Philippa had been rather surprised that Jeffrey Garston allowed his daughter-in-law and grandson to come and live with him, but he had done so and moreover seemed to be training Scott to take over what was left of the estate, because Philippa often saw him in the holidays working at the farm, or supervising the shoots which still took place in the autumn, when large parties of businessmen would descend on the Hall, and the narrow road that led past the cottage to it would be busy with large, expensive cars.

Where was Scott now? Philippa had only had one letter from her aunt after she left and that had simply told her that Jeffrey Garston had died and that Scott had shut up the house and left the area. That alone had surprised her. Scott had been almost obsessed by his plans to make the estate a viable commercial enterprise once more, and to restore his home to what it had once been. She had replied to her aunt’s letter, telling her about Simon’s birth, but there had been no further correspondence between them. A niece who bore an illegitimate child had been so far outside Jane Cromwell’s own rigid moral code that there was no question that there would ever be forgiveness or acceptance, and certainly never a welcome in her home for either Philippa or Simon. How dramatic and terrifying it had all seemed eleven years ago!

Philippa suppressed a faint sigh. Who would have dreamed then that now women would choose to bear their children alone without the support of the child’s father? Simon’s lack of a father didn’t even cause so much as a faintly raised eyebrow these days. Her own single-parent status was so commonplace that more than half of Simon’s friends at his London school also lived with only one of their parents. Eleven years ago when she discovered she was pregnant she had been terror-struck.

She grimaced as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging on the wall. How very young and naive she had been. Seventeen and as green as grass. Well, she had learned, and now at twenty-eight, she knew without false modesty that she was an intelligent and even shrewd woman, who had learned about life the hard way.

What she failed to recognise in her own reflection was the vulnerability of her softly curved mouth; the shadows that darkened her grey eyes, the hint of pain that still lingered beneath the cool outer shell of reserve in which she cloaked her true feelings.

Her hair had been short when she left Garston. Her aunt had insisted that it was tidier that way. Now she wore it up in a nest chignon in keeping with her image as the efficient secretary to Sir Nigel Barnes, the Chairman of Merrit Plastics, but once released from its imprisonment it curled halfway down her back in honey-gold waves, silky soft and so directly in contrast to Simon’s straight coal-black hair that people often did a double take when they were introduced as mother and son. Like his hair, Simon had inherited his height and breadth of shoulder from his father. At ten he looked closer to thirteen and was maturing quickly, too quickly, Philippa acknowledged, subduing the faint feeling of dismay she always felt when she contrasted Simon’s upbringing with her own. Children were not allowed to remain naive for very long at the large London school Simon attended; sometimes she felt he was growing up too fast.

She sighed, and returned her attention to her appearance, pulling a wry face. Dressed in a pair of shabby jeans which had shrunk and were now barely decent, an old t-shirt which showed only too clearly that she had kept the slender figure she had had before Simon’s birth, her hair tied back in a ponytail, wisps escaping to frame her face, she looked more like Simon’s sister than his mother. Add to that, the fact that he was already two inches above her small five foot four, and their true relationship seemed even more ridiculous.

Thinking of her son, where was he? She glanced at her watch again. If he had one fault it was that when it came to time Simon was something of a dreamer. Once involved in some task time no longer seemed to matter to him. That he was extremely clever had been emphasised to her the last time she had visited his school. His headmaster considered him very gifted, and he had also pointed out rather wryly that it was unfortunate that in the modern secondary school of the type he would probably attend in London, he might not receive the individual tuition needed to make the most of his special gifts. The fact was that Simon, although brilliantly clever with his hands, with anything mechanical or mathematical, had, when it came to English and related subjects, something of a mental block, and as his headmaster had pointed out to Philippa, if Simon was to realise his full potential he would need to work hard to bring his English up to standard.

‘Without at least an “O” level in it, he will never make it to university,’ he had told Philippa frankly, adding ‘Private tuition would be the thing, but it would be very expensive. Another alternative would be a smaller, country school where they have more time to concentrate on individual subjects.’

Both were out of the question. Her salary was a good one, but living in London was expensive, too expensive for her to be able to afford private tuition, unless of course she could get an evening job, but that meant leaving Simon on his own. As it was she felt bitterly conscious of the fact that she was at best a ‘part-time mother’ but what alternative did she have? She was both mother and father to Simon. She had to go out to work.

She heard a sound outside, a car coming towards the cottage, and frowned. The lane the cottage was on was the back road leading to the Hall but was, according to the Vicar, not in use any more, the company which had made Garston Hall its headquarters using the main entrance. The discovery that Garston Hall had been taken over by Computex, a highly successful computer company, had rather surprised her. For one thing Garston was so remote, fifty miles from York, right in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. That meant that Scott must have sold it, but then she had known he would have to when he refused to marry Mary Tatlow. His grandfather had been desperately keen for him to marry her. Her father was a millionaire and once married to her Scott could have looked to his new father-in-law to provide the money to restore Garston. But Scott had apparently refused to comply with his grandfather’s wishes. That had been something else her aunt had written in her last letter.

The sound of the car engine was getting louder. Philippa leaned out of the small casement window, frowning as she saw the enormous gleaming Rolls pushing its way down the overgrown lane, her frown deepening when she saw the huge dent and scraped paint on the front wing. The damage had obviously been caused recently and, to judge from the extent of it, would be horrendously expensive to repair. But then perhaps to a man who could afford to buy such a car the cost of a repair which she judged would probably buy her a very nice small car, meant nothing. The car stopped outside the cottage. The rear door opened and Philippa saw Simon getting out.

She hurried downstairs, wondering how on earth her son had managed to cadge a ride in the car, torn between amusement at his enterprise and maternal anger that he should have ignored all her warnings to him on the subject of strange cars and potentially even stranger men.

The first thing that struck her as she opened the door was that Simon looked extremely pale; the second was that her normally voluble son was suspiciously quiet. A car door slammed and her eyes tracked automatically to the man walking down the narrow weed-infested path, her heart doing a double somersault before lurching to a spectacular standstill. ‘Scott!’

‘So he is your son.’ He had ignored her whispered acknowledgement of him and stood behind Simon, dwarfing her tall, gangly son. As Philippa knew from experience Scott would have to duck his head a good six inches to pass under the low lintel to the cottage. Ten years had effected various changes in him but the one she registered first was the total lack of pleasure or warmth in his eyes as they rested on her, their deep blue depths which she remembered as warm and sunny, freezing her with the dislike he made no effort to conceal.

Eleven years since she had last seen him. He had been twenty-three, almost twenty-four, now he would be thirty-five. He was wearing an expensively tailored suit very much in keeping with the Rolls parked outside the cottage, but totally out of keeping with the Scott she remembered who had worn faded, ancient jeans, whose hair had brushed his shirt collars untidily, whose face had been open, always brimming with humour, his eyes always darkening with teasing laughter.

She shivered suddenly despite the warmth of the May sun. It was like standing in the path of a blast of arctic weather looking into his eyes. His face hadn’t changed though really, merely settled. He had always been very physically attractive, although time had added a certain degree of muscled hardness to the body she remembered as thinner, more boyish, and his face, the face that betrayed the hint of Spanish blood on his mother’s side of the family, was more arrogant, the grooves running from nose to mouth more defined. As a young man growing to maturity he had been devastatingly attractive and yet in many ways unaware of his appeal for her sex.

He was still every bit as physically compelling, perhaps even more so, but now there was a look in his eyes that told her he knew exactly what effect he had on her sex, and Philippa withdrew from the sexual explicitness it with a distasteful grimace she only realised he had witnessed when she saw the anger flare in his eyes.

So that at least had not changed. He still possessed a temper… the temper which had perhaps led him to defy his grandfather and refuse the marriage the old man had planned for him?

‘Simon, where have you been?’ Philippa asked her son, turning her attention to him and hoping that Scott wouldn’t notice the hot colour painting her skin. ‘You know I wanted to leave early.’ If his hair and his bone structure were his father’s it was from her that Simon had inherited his grey eyes and the shape of his face. His mannerisms were hers as well, and she watched him scuffing his toes, his expression woebegone and guilty. Her mind too bemused with Scott’s wholly unexpected arrival to pay more than fleeting attention to Simon, she was startled when Scott said grimly, ‘I’ll tell you where he’s been. Trespassing on Computex land; riding a motorcycle for which I imagine I am correct in saying he has no licence. A motorbike which, moreover,’ he continued inexorably, ‘he crashed into my car.’

In a daze Philippa looked out of the window at the huge dent in the gleaming car, her glance going from that to her son’s milk-white face. Her appalled ‘Oh, Simon, how could you…’ drawing a gruff, ‘It was an accident honest, Mum.… It was broken and I’d been helping to mend it and then Tommy Hargreaves said I could have a go on it for helping them… I didn’t know it was private land.’

He shot a scared glance at Scott and Philippa’s heart went out to him. Poor Simon, what on earth had Scott been saying to him to make him look so terrified? And that dent in the car? Surely that hadn’t been caused simply by Simon? ‘Tommy told me they always used it for racing on… I told him I didn’t have a licence but he said it wouldn’t matter. And then.…

‘… and then I was on my way to the home farm to check on something with my Manager when this young fool came riding out of the trees and nearly ran straight into me. If I hadn’t swerved to avoid him, I doubt he’d be here in one piece now,’ Scott concluded grimly, whilst several facts hit Philippa at the same time. ‘On my way to the home farm,’ Scott had said, which must mean he was back living at Garston… And ‘swerved to avoid Simon’, which meant that Simon hadn’t run into him after all!

She went up to her son, hugging him tightly and for once Simon didn’t squirm away. For all his size he was very much her little boy, his eyes dark and afraid. ‘It was an accident, Mum,’ he said desperately. ‘I tried to explain, but Mr… Mr.…’

‘Garston,’ Scott supplied sardonically, glancing coldly at Philippa. ‘I see you haven’t told him much about that part of your life which preceded his birth, Philippa… I wonder why?’

‘You said you swerved to avoid Simon, which means he didn’t do the damage to your car,’ Philippa interrupted, without answering.

‘Not physically perhaps,’ Scott agreed, ‘but I don’t doubt that any court would lay the blame at his feet, as well as taking a pretty dim view of the fact that he was riding the machine without the benefit of a licence and trespassing on private land. It’s going to cost several thousand pounds to put the damage right.’

Philippa’s mouth went dry. Several thousand pounds, and how Scott would delight in making her pay, in extracting every last penny. He had sworn vengeance on her, eleven years ago, and she had laughed it aside, never dreaming that the future might hold this. Was he remembering that hot summer afternoon, when she told him she was leaving?

She looked at him and knew that he was. Once she had thought she loved him and once too he had thought he loved her, but it had all been a long time ago, an adolescent romance for her, a summer affair for him, both of them poised on the brink of other things with a summer to spare, but she had hurt his pride when she threw his love back in his face, and it showed in his eyes that he had not forgiven her.

‘Scott.…’ She took a step towards him and saw his instant recoil and knew that the plea which had been on her lips to let the past lie could not be uttered. He wanted it to remain alive; he wanted to punish her, and could she really blame him? She had told him she loved him and then she had gone to tell him that she had made a mistake and that she loved someone else. He had every right to resent, perhaps even hate her, whilst she.…

‘Mum.…’ She came out of her thoughts to find Simon watching her. Sometimes he saw too much and worried her with his maturity.

‘Go upstairs, Simon,’ she told him. ‘You still haven’t packed, and I want to leave as soon as possible.’

When he had gone she faced Scott, neither asking him to come in or preventing him from doing so. This house which had been her aunt’s belonged to the estate and would revert to it with her death, and Scott had every right to walk into it with or without her permission.

‘I’m sorry about your car.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Simon doesn’t tell lies, and we haven’t been here long enough for him to know that the estate is private.…’

‘What are you trying to say? That he was misled? He’s how old? Twelve? Thirteen?’

‘Ten.’ Red flags of colour sprang into her cheeks. Scott knew exactly how old Simon was, damn him.

‘He looks much older. Our magistrates are rather old-fashioned around here. They take a dim view of damage to private property. As well as the damage to the car there’ll probably be a hefty fine to pay, always supposing of course that they accept this as a first offence.’

First offence! Philippa’s body went cold. ‘It was an accident,’ she said desperately. ‘You.…’

‘Can you prove that? I could claim that it was malicious damage. I thought you were never going to come back here, Philippa. I thought your lover was going to take you away… somewhere glamorous.… The south of France I believe you said.… How long did it take him to realise what a cheat you were? Not long, to judge from the speed with which he left you. He was back at Woolverton by Christmas and married the following spring to Mary Tatlow. Your aunt was very disappointed in you, Philippa. She did say that she never wanted to see you again if I remember correctly.’

‘I was her only relative, when she died I.…’

‘Came back out of a sense of loyalty to her, is that what you’re trying to say?’ he jeered, anger splintering through the cold façade he had adopted towards her. ‘Don’t try to make me believe that. I know exactly how much your loyalty is worth.…’

‘Scott, I.…’

‘You what? Made a mistake? When did you discover that? When Geoff refused to marry you despite the fact that you were carrying his bastard child? No wonder you left so quickly. It was quite a nine-day wonder, I can tell you, especially as he left at the same time. “There’s someone else,” you told me in that cool, butter wouldn’t melt voice. “I can’t marry you, Scott… I love someone else…” and then you left… cool as the proverbial cucumber… after you told me you were carrying his child. Have you any idea what you did to me? Have you?’ he demanded savagely… ‘I’d defied my grandfather for you. I was even prepared to leave Garston… to give up everything for you. But I wasn’t enough for you, was I? As soon as you found out that my grandfather would disinherit me if we married, you dropped me flat and took up with Geoff Rivers. Did you tell him that I was the one who had your virginity or didn’t he care? He ran out on you in the end though, didn’t he, Philippa? He left you, carrying his child … alone… and you’ll never know just how much pleasure knowing that gave me.…’

‘I think I can guess.’ She sounded calm but she had gone paper white. The force of his anger pounded against her in waves, battering against her defences, forcing her to remember things she would rather forget; that final scene with him; the pain that followed.…

‘Yes, you always were quite quick on the uptake.… So quick that I still find it hard to understand why you ever let me make love to you in the first place. If you’d still been a virgin you might have got more out of Geoff than a bastard child… as it was, you’d have been hard put to prove which of us was the father.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She could feel hysteria building up inside her, an aching, panicky pain she remembered from long ago and which she had kept deliberately at bay in the years that followed.

‘Then what do you want to talk about? How you’re going to pay for the repairs to my car? My car, Philippa, not Computex’s.… Oh yes, Computex belongs to me. I made good after all you see.… You should have stuck with me; despite being disinherited I made it after all. My godfather helped me, and with that and a large slice of good luck I managed to hold on to Garston. Just think if you hadn’t run out on me you’d be mistress of us both now… Garston and me… I always did wonder which of us meant the most to you.…’

‘Neither.’

‘No, of course not. I was forgetting about Geoff. How easily you deceived me.… Did you enjoy it, you bitch, letting me think you loved me when all the time…?’

‘Scott… about your car.’ She wet her lips nerving herself for the admission she had to make. ‘I’m afraid that I… I just don’t have that sort of money.…’

‘How very unfortunate for you.… So… what do you suggest I do? Simply wipe it off—put it down to “experience”?’ He shook his head, baring his teeth slightly in a vulpine grimace. ‘You’ve already cost me far too much under that heading. ‘Oh, no,’ he said softly, ‘this time I’m going to do some recouping. You made a laughing stock out of me eleven years ago, Philippa, and now it’s my turn to turn the screw a little.’

‘Simon! You can’t punish him because.…’

‘Who said anything about punishing the boy? It’s you I want to punish, Philippa. You who’s going to pay, and if you can’t pay in cash then you’re going to have to pay in kind, as they say.’

A kind of numb terror seemed to hold her in its grip, a complete inability to reason logically, a primeval dread that made it impossible for her to shake off the spell Scott’s voice was weaving round her. All she knew was that Scott had the power to hurt her son, and that somehow she must stop him from doing so no matter what the cost to herself.

‘Scott, please.…’

‘Please what? Spare your son? Very well… but only at a price, Philippa.’

‘What is it?’

‘You work as a secretary in London I understand, for Merrit Plastics.’

Philippa nodded her head, perplexed both by his question and the fact that he knew so much about her.

‘You will give your notice in and come and work for me here at Garston.’

‘As your secretary?’

‘That…’ he paused and added significantly, ‘and other things.’ Blood stormed her face as he looked at her, assessing and stripping her, making his meaning all too plain.

‘Never.’

The bitter denial reverberated between them, his eyes darkening, going cold and hard as he breathed softly, ‘Think again, Philippa… I’ve ached for an opportunity like this, an opportunity to get even with you and humiliate you the way you humiliated me… and now that I’ve got it I won’t let go easily. Either way you make a sacrifice. It’s up to you whether it’s you or your son.…’

‘But I can’t work for you and.…’

‘Share my bed? Of course you can, isn’t it what you did for Rivers? You were working for him when you started sleeping with him weren’t you? A holiday job I believe you called it. I want your answer and I want it now, Philippa, otherwise I’m taking your son to the police to make a statement. I doubt they’ll let him off leniently.’

‘Scott, don’t make me do this… I’ve got Simon to think of. I can’t.…’

‘You can and you will, and if the boy doesn’t know what manner of woman his mother is by now, I suspect it’s time he found out. Don’t try to tell me that Geoff was the last man in your life. A woman like you who takes two lovers at a time could never.…’

He caught her hand as it arched towards his face, grasping her wrist painfully, making her cry out with the numbing agony that shot down her arm.

‘Make your mind up, Philippa. Either you come to me and let me use you for whatever purpose I desire, or I take your son to the police.…’

What choice did she really have? Her very silence confirmed her submission, and as she looked up and saw the triumph glittering in Scott’s eyes she recognised that either she had never really known him, or the man she had known was gone for ever. Was she to blame for that? Was she to blame for what Scott seemed to have become—a cold, hard stranger who talked so calmly of revenge, and making her pay, a man who seemed to have no room in his life for either pity or compassion? It seemed that Scott thought she was and she shivered, partly in pain, partly in fear, wondering how she could have miscalculated all those years ago.

She had been so sure that he would marry Mary; so sure that she had been doing the right thing. So sure… and so wrong. But it was too late to go back now, far far too late.

She looked into his face and the thought struck her that perhaps if she stayed she might be able to put right the past, to make Scott see that what she had done she had done not to hurt him but because she had thought it was right, not against him but for him, and it was to this tenuous hope that she clung as she said slowly, ‘Very well, Scott … if that’s what you want we’ll stay, but I’ll have to find somewhere to stay… a school for Simon.…’

‘What’s the matter with the local grammar school, or isn’t that good enough for Geoff’s bastard? His son, his legitimate son should I say, is down for Harrow, so I’m told, but of course men don’t lay out good money to send their bastards to public school, do they?’ He turned towards the door, and then paused, looking back at her over his shoulder as he said coolly, ‘Don’t worry about finding somewhere to stay, you’ll both be staying at the house with me.…’ He saw the expression in her eyes and laughed softly. ‘Yes, it will cause quite a stir in the village, won’t it, but nothing to the stir we’re going to cause… nothing to the stir you caused when you dropped me and went off with Geoff. You should have heard my grandfather crow after you’d gone.’

His eyes were bitter and Philippa sensed that Scott was looking back to that time when he first came to Garston and was very much an outsider, very much the unwanted grandson taking the place—usurping the place—of the favourite dead one, his grandfather bitterly resentful of him and taking no pains to conceal his resentment.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow to take you and the boy up to the house. Don’t try running out on me, Philippa, I’ll come running after you and I won’t be in any mood to be generous.’

The sound of his car had died away completely before Simon came downstairs. Philippa gave him a shaky smile and he came over to her, putting his arm around her waist, so very like his father in the quiet seriousness of his gaze that her heart ached. She ruffled the dark hair. ‘He’s gone then?’

‘Umm.…’

‘And he doesn’t know?’

Something in his tone alerted her, some inner voice urging her to tread carefully. ‘Know what?’

Simon looked at her directly. ‘That he’s my father,’ he said quietly. ‘You didn’t tell him that I’m his son? I saw it on my birth certificate,’ he told her quickly, ‘ages ago, but it never really clicked until we came here and everyone was Scott Garston this and Scott Garston that.…’ Of course! He had spent far more time in the village than she had, but she had had no idea he knew that Scott was his father. ‘Tell me about it,’ he insisted.

She supposed she owed him that, and if they were going to stay here.… If? Did she have any choice? And why had she given in? Because of some crazy impulse that there were still happy endings; that the past could be wiped out; that Scott could be made to see.… What?

She sat down, too wrapped up in her own thoughts for a moment to answer Simon’s questions. When she left Garston she had sworn that she would put Scott out of her mind, but had she ever done? Why, when she hadn’t lacked the opportunities, had she never had a relationship with anyone else? Why had she reacted as she did the moment she saw him? Did she still love him? Did she even know what love was? Certainly not that ridiculous overwhelming emotion; that adolescent self-sacrifice she had felt at seventeen—that had been part hero worship and part adoration, but she wasn’t indifferent to Scott, her senses told her that much, and she would like to wipe out the bitterness, the fierce resentment she saw in his eyes, and to replace it with what? Respect? Love? Who knew? To nurture resentment and anger as long as he had done a man would have to be very powerfully motivated; very powerfully.…

‘Come on, Ma, give. I want the whole story,’ Simon warned her.

‘Okay then…’ she glanced at her son, so like his father for all that Scott couldn’t see it, and said teasingly, ‘Once upon a time.…’

CHAPTER TWO

INCREDIBLY it had had a fairytale quality to it; two lonely young people who had found one another, who had come together, loving and giving without restraint, sharing their thoughts, talking, always talking.… At least that was how it had been at first. She had been in the garden, studying for her ‘A’ levels, Scott had been walking past, and instead of walking past had come in. They had started talking and discovered a mutual love of the Renaissance, and it had gone on from there. He had invited her up to the Hall, she remembered, to see some of the books in the library, including one which charted the history of the old Abbey which had stood where the Hall now stood and which had been a victim of Henry VIII’s nefarious Reformation. And it had continued, companionship giving way to love so sweetly and naturally that it had seemed the most natural, the most beautiful thing in the world. She had never felt a moment’s fear in Scott’s presence; never a moment’s dread, or apprehension.

The first time he kissed her she had given herself into his keeping absolutely. Her first kiss, but not his, but it had left both of them trembling and she, she remembered, had been the one who had reached out and touched him afterwards; the sun-burned skin of his throat and arms, the angles of his jaw, touching his skin wonderingly whilst he let her, his body held tightly under control. ‘I love you’.

Which of them had said it first? She couldn’t remember, only that the words seemed to dance round them in the lazy gold of a summer afternoon; that her body yearned for the touch of his; that their mutual loneliness intensified their love. And they were both lonely. She because of her aunt’s strict upbringing, him because he was a newcomer to the village, an unwelcome intruder in his grandfather’s life. His friends from university had gone and he was alone… they were both alone.

Even before they made love he had told her he wanted to marry her. And she had wanted to marry him and live with him at Garston.

Right from the start he had confided to her his love for Garston, the house which had become his by death. He knew and sympathised with his grandfather’s views, but that didn’t alter his own feelings for Garston. He worried about how he was going to keep it, where he would find the money to maintain and restore it, and it was with her that he shared his hopes and plans.

And then there had been his mother, Eve Garston, whom Philippa had liked on sight. Already even then severely disabled by arthritis, Eve had been wholly dependent on her irrascible father-in-law financially. Scott’s father had been an engineer, and with his death the family had lost their source of income. Without the small allowance Jeffrey Garston paid them it would not have been possible for Scott to go to university, he would have had to take a job to support himself and his mother.

Carefully Philippa explained all this to her son, watching compassion and understanding add an odd maturity to his youthful features, yielding to a traitorous inner impulse to paint his father for him in knightly colours, because that was how she had remembered him. All through the years she had cherished her memories of Scott, refusing to tarnish them, hugging them to her for comfort in those times when she needed it so badly—when she first arrived in London, virtually penniless; when Simon had been born six months later at the home for unmarried mothers. Jobs had been easier to get in those days and with the help of the people who ran the Home she had learned shorthand and typing at college during her pregnancy, and then afterwards she had found a job, gradually progressing in her career, gradually improving the quality of their lifestyle. It had been a slow and painful progress, but nothing to compare with the pain of leaving Scott.

‘Why didn’t he marry you—was it because of me?’ Pain and rejection mingled in the grey eyes so like her own.

‘No.’ Philippa reassured him quickly, ‘No, it was nothing like that. Scott wanted to marry me before… before I was having you, and…’ she bit her lip, forcing herself to speak calmly, ‘and if he’d known you were his nothing would have stopped him from marrying me… but I told him that someone else was your father.’

She saw the shock darkening Simon’s eyes and rushed into an explanation. ‘It was for his sake, Simon. His grandfather bitterly resented him and the fact that he would inherit Garston, but Scott loved it.…’

‘More than he loved you?’

‘Not more, just in a different way, and then there was his mother, Eve.’ She sighed. ‘She suffered from arthritis and needed an operation to help her to walk again. She would have had to wait years to have it done on the National Health but Scott’s grandfather had promised to pay for her to have it done privately. He found out that Scott and I were in love and he sent for me.’

Her eyes darkened unwittingly as she remembered that day. The message had arrived just after breakfast, and her aunt had compressed her mouth angrily. She hadn’t known anything about her relationship with Scott and had assumed that Philippa was being summoned for some other crime like riding her bike too close to the main gates. In many ways Jeffrey Garston was positively feudal, one of the conditions that went with Jane’s tenancy of the cottage was that she and her niece used the narrow back road to and from their home; that they ‘kept to their place’.

There had been no sign of Scott when Philippa was shown into the linenfold panelled library. Later she learned he had driven his mother into York to see a specialist, but at the time her nerves had tightened apprehensively when she realised she was alone with his grandfather. Jeffrey Garston had always unnerved her. Small and wiry he still had a full head of snow-white hair, and eyes the same deep sapphire as Scott’s, although in Jeffrey Garston they were cold burning with the touch of ice—like Scott’s had been last night, Philippa realised with a sudden start. He hadn’t offered her a seat or done anything to make her feel less uncomfortable.

He knew about their affair, he had told her contemptuously, and she remembered how darkly she had flushed at the implications of his comment. The first time they had made love had been in Scott’s bedroom. He had taken her up there quite innocently to show her the view. She had turned back from the window, dizzied by the panorama spread out in front of her, and Scott had caught her. After that events had run smoothly into one another until she couldn’t remember who had made the first betraying movement, who had touched whom first, or how they had arrived at Scott’s bed.

Afterwards he had been anxious and filled with self-anger for taking her virginity, but Philippa had gloried in his possession of her, giving herself willingly and glad of the sharp pang of pain which meant she was his and his alone. It was true that his response to her had rather overwhelmed her. He had always seemed so strong and sure and it was startling to discover that her touch could make him tremble, that his body could riot out of control; that his need for her could make his voice raw and hungry and that his body could over-rule his mind.

‘Now you’ll have to marry me,’ he had told her in deep satisfaction, ‘and your aunt will have to give her permission.…’

She smiled sadly, coming to with a start to realise that Simon was watching her curiously. ‘Go on,’ he pressed, ‘what happened when Scott’s grandfather sent for you?’

‘He told me that he wanted Scott to marry the daughter of a friend of his,’ Philppa told him calmly. ‘This man was very rich and had promised that if Scott married his daughter he would give him enough money to restore and run Garston. Scott didn’t know anything about it, but his grandfather knew how much he loved the house and believed that if I wasn’t there to distract him he would soon turn to Mary.’

‘But how did he make you agree? Why didn’t you tell my father what he had said?’

Philippa sighed. How could she explain to Simon how she had felt, wanting Scott and yet knowing that if she married him she would be depriving him of his birthright; she would be saddling him with the double burden of a wife and an invalid mother. And then she hadn’t known about Simon.

‘Try to understand, Simon,’ she begged her son. ‘Your father would have married me, he wanted to even before… we… but he was in a difficult position. His mother was totally dependent on him, his grandfather was threatening to disinherit him which he could quite easily have done. I didn’t realise then about you, and I felt that I just couldn’t allow him to throw everything away because of me.…’

‘If you had known about me would you have changed your mind?’ Simon asked her gravely. Philippa sighed, reaching out and taking his hand and for once he did not withdraw. ‘No. In fact.…’ She might as well tell him the whole truth. ‘Scott wouldn’t believe me when I told him it was over between us, and then I found out about you. I was desperate, Simon, I knew if Scott ever guessed I was carrying his child he would insist on marrying me. He had just left university… he had no job, and I knew he wanted to study computer technology, so I… so I told him that there was someone else and that I was having this other man’s child.’

Simon’s face was as white as her own. In silence they stared at one another and for the first time Philippa reflected on what she had cost her son in her attempts to protect his father. Even now she could still remember that final scene—vividly. Scott had come to the cottage, furiously angry at her refusal to see or speak to him. ‘Cut it out, Philippa,’ he had stormed at her. ‘I know damned well how you feel about me… I was your lover.…’

‘That means nothing.’ She had said the words more on impulse than anything else, totally unprepared for the way his face drained of blood, for the way he looked at her, his pride stripped to the bone, his love for her darkening his eyes with pain.

‘Dear God, you can’t mean that,’ he had whispered, ‘you don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘Of course I do.’ She had seen then what she must do, and had played her part with a recklessness born of sheer desperation. ‘You haven’t been my only lover, Scott,’ she taunted. ‘Just my first.…’

‘You’re lying.…’

‘No.’

‘Prove it to me.’ His voice had been a whiplash of pain and agony, and she had had to close her eyes against her need to give in to tell him everything, knowing that if she did so he would leave Garston. ‘All right… I’ve been having an affair with someone, and I’m having his child.’

Dear God, even now she could feel the reverberations of her announcement; she could almost feel the quality of the deep silence that followed, Scott’s bitter, ‘Who?’ throwing her off-guard so that she snatched the first name she could think of, Geoff Rivers; the local Lothario son of a wealthy businessman who streaked through the village at the wheel of his scarlet Ferrari.

‘Him?’ His face and voice had tortured her. ‘Dear God, how could you…?’

‘Quite easily, actually.’ She had tossed her head, wondering why he didn’t know she was crying inside, wondering why he didn’t come to her and say ‘I know you’re lying, you could never give yourself to anyone but me, and nothing matters but that we’re together, nothing.…’

But he didn’t, he simply stood there and condemned her with his eyes watching her with such contempt that she had wanted to die. ‘And to think I was prepared to defy my grandfather, to give up Garston for you.’

‘We’ve both had a lucky escape, then, haven’t we?’ She had tossed her head again, aching inside with anguish but refusing to give in to it. ‘I thought you were fun, Scott, but you’re not.…’

‘Fun? Is that why you went to Rivers? Well go to him again and try telling him about his bastard, I’ll bet he won’t be much “fun” then.’

He had left then, and she had only waited until he had gone to give way to her tears. Later that day an envelope had come to her from his grandfather. When she opened it there had been five hundred pounds in cash inside. She remembered the acute feeling of nausea which had stormed over her even now. She had torn the notes up and sent them back, and then she had packed her clothes leaving only a brief note of explanation for her aunt which simply told her that she was pregnant. That had been the last contact she had had with anyone from Garston until her aunt’s death.

‘Did you really love each other?’ Simon looked pale and uncertain.

‘Very much,’ she assured her son. He might not have the security of legitimacy, of knowing the warmth and love of a real family, but at least she would not rob him of the knowledge that he had been conceived in love. ‘That was why I left him, Simon, because I loved him so much, and that is why he was so angry with me when he came here, because he loved me and he thought I had betrayed him with another man.’

‘But you didn’t, and he didn’t marry that Mary,’ Simon told her, adding, ‘I know he didn’t because Rob Harrison told me that he wasn’t married and that he’d only just come back to live here. He was talking about him you see and when he said his name I recognised it, and I wanted to know more.…’

Philippa’s heart ached. Simon had known who his father was and yet he had never talked to her about him, just as she had never mentioned Scott to him.

‘Do you still love him?’ She saw the hope building up in Simon’s eyes and shook her head, hating herself for what she must do. ‘I don’t think so, Simon. It was all a long time ago.’

‘But he might still love you,’ Simon pressed. ‘He isn’t married. If you told him about me?’

Poor Simon, how could she explain? ‘He wouldn’t believe me, Simon, he’s changed. He hates me now.’

‘But he wants us to stay here. I heard him say so.’ Simon looked at her stubbornly.

‘Not because he loves me. If anything he hates me. I hurt him very badly when I left, Simon,’ she told him steadily, ‘and when people hurt us we want to hurt them back, you know that.’

‘If he wants to hurt you he couldn’t have loved you all that much in the first place.…’

Unwittingly Simon had put his finger on the small ache that still lived inside her and which had grown to mammoth proportions whilst she listened to Scott’s bitterly vitriolic comments. Had Scott ever really loved her as she had loved him or had he simply convinced himself that he had because she was there and they were both lonely?

What did it matter now? It was all in the past, and the gentle caring man she remembered no longer existed.

‘If you hadn’t ridden that bike illegally we wouldn’t have to stay here,’ Philippa pointed out dryly, ‘What were you doing?’

‘I managed to fix it and Tommy offered me a ride for doing it. He said that no one ever used that road, and that it was perfectly safe. They called me chicken when I refused.’

He shrugged thin boyish shoulders, narrow in depth despite their width, the childish ribs clearly defined beneath his thin t-shirt. He grew so quickly, already out of the jeans and t-shirts she had bought only three months ago. He looked pale, too, compared with the village children, she had noticed, and she remembered what his headmaster had said about him doing better in a small school.

‘I’d like to stay here.’ He looked at her guilelessly, but Philippa wasn’t deceived.

‘We don’t have much option,’ she told him dryly.

’No, I wonder why he wants you to stay?’

So that he can humiliate me and make me suffer as he once did, Philippa could have told him, but she didn’t want to burden Simon with her own dark thoughts. She could tell that he was fascinated by the subject of Scott and could she really blame him. The discovery of his father’s existence was no doubt a heady experience, and she warned dampeningly, ‘Don’t get any silly ideas, Simon, and please promise me that you won’t tell anyone that Scott is your father.’ She saw his face and said gently, ‘It’s for your sake as much as mine.’

‘Because you think he won’t want me?’

‘Something like that.’ How could she explain again that she doubted that Scott would believe him. ‘It’s all in the past now and better forgotten.’

‘But I’m not in the past. I’m here and he’s my father.’

‘Simon.…’

‘Oh, it’s all right, I won’t say anything. I’m going to bed.’

He stamped upstairs, but not before she had seen the quick sheen of tears in his eyes. Dear God, if she stayed here what was it going to do to her son? But what option did she have? If she tried to leave she knew that Scott would have no compunction at all about carrying out his threat. There was no way she could afford to pay for the damage to his car, and she shuddered a little as she remembered Simon telling her how Scott had had to swerve into the tree to avoid hitting him. Simon was lucky that he wasn’t lying in hospital right now, and she only hoped he appreciated that fact.

She was up early, sleep being impossible, and sat down to write some letters. Her flat she could easily sub-let, but for how long? She had no idea how long Scott intended to keep her here. At the back of her mind, only half acknowledged, lay the fact that Simon now knew who his father was and had made it clear to her that if it were possible he would like to form a relationship with him. She didn’t pretend it was going to be easy—the chances were that if Scott did discover the truth and believe it he would still reject Simon, but did she have the right to deprive Simon of that one chance of getting close to his father? And who knew, in discovering the truth Scott might find a release from the burden of bitterness he obviously still carried around with him.

There was a telephone in the cottage, mercifully still connected, and she used it to phone her boss and explain that she wasn’t coming back. As she had expected he was shocked and inclined to protest, but in the end gave way, knowing that she was right when she pointed out that there were at least half-a-dozen other girls in the firm who had the potential to take her place.

‘Best secretary I’ve ever had,’ he grumbled when she explained that she had decided to stay in Yorkshire. ‘But if you’ve made up your mind—–’

‘Simon wants to stay and—I’ve been offered this job.’

‘With Computex, you say? Umm, excellent firm, doing very well right now and they’ve managed to fight off two takeover bids very successfully. Who will you be working for did you say?’

Philippa hadn’t, but she knew Sir Nigel well enough to know when he wasn’t going to be put off. ‘Scott Garston,’ she told him.

‘Umm. He’s the Chairman and brain behind the company, isn’t he? Think I met him once. Tall dark chap, sharp as a knife, but always looks unhappy. Shouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him, so I suppose I’d better let you go.… Don’t want him making a takeover bid for Merrit Plastics.’

Philippa laughed dutifully, Sir Nigel was notorious for his shrewd business sense and she doubted that anyone would be foolhardy enough to dare to even think about taking over his precious company, much less Scott, who surely had enough on his plate with Computex. She was remembering more about the company now that the first shock of seeing him had died away. There had been a long report on them in the financial press recently, although it hadn’t mentioned Scott by name.

Simon came downstairs just as she replaced the receiver. He looked tired and pale and avoided her eyes as he found a packet of cereal and poured some into his bowl.

‘We’re staying then,’ he said, betraying that he had overheard her conversation, his voice telling her that she still wasn’t wholly forgiven.

‘It’s what you wanted isn’t it?’ Philippa asked dryly. ‘I’ll have to ring your school… it’s just as well it’s half term at the moment. I’ll have to go and see the headmaster here, see if there’s a place for you.’

‘Where will we live? Here?’

Philippa glanced round the cottage, her heart lifting. Could she persuade Scott to let them keep the cottage? Her spirits plummeted swiftly as she heard the sound of a car outside, not the Rolls this time but a bright red Ferrari. Her face burned as she watched Scott climb out of it and come towards the door.

‘I see you do remember it,’ he said coldly when she opened the door. ‘Rivers owned one didn’t he, far more impressive than the bike that was my only transport at the time—either that or grandfather’s old Bentley. You should have stuck with me, Philippa.’ He saw Simon sitting at the table and broke off to glance at him.

‘Simon and I were just wondering if you’d allow us to stay in the cottage while I’m working for you?’

His mouth twisted and her heart sank as she saw the contempt darkening his eyes. ‘What for?’ He said it quietly so that Simon couldn’t hear. ‘So that you can entertain your lovers discreetly? No. I’ve already promised this place to someone else, and besides, I want you where I can see you Philippa. I wonder what they’ll say in the village when they know you’re working for me?’

‘Probably simply that I was lucky to get the job,’ Philippa said lightly. ‘If Simon and I aren’t to stay here then.…’

‘You’ll live up at the Hall with me. That’s what I’ve come here for, to take you both up there, and of course to make sure you haven’t run out on me.’

‘Mum, I’ve finished my breakfast. I’ll go and finish packing.’

‘Not very like Rivers, is he?’ Scott asked derisively. ‘He was blond, like you if I remember. Did you ever stop to think that we might have had a child?’ he added on a savage whisper as Simon went upstairs, ‘but then you didn’t want my child did you? I couldn’t give you all the things he could. But I would have given you marriage.…’

‘Your grandfather would have disinherited you.’

‘Do you think that would have mattered to me? I loved you, damn you,’ he snarled. ‘And anyway, it would have made no difference. I left shortly after you had gone, and he did disinherit me.’ He saw her expression and laughed bitterly. ‘I had to buy Garston back from the National Trust. They were only too glad to get rid of it, it isn’t old enough to be of much historic value and it’s costly to maintain.’

‘Where did you go?’ Why was she asking him this? Why was she tormenting herself in this way?

‘To America. I had a godfather there. He loaned me the money to start the company. I planned to take you with me, but you didn’t know that did you? I had it all planned. He’d loaned me enough money for mother’s operation and she was going to go and live with a friend, you and I were going to make a new life for ourselves in the States, I knew there was no way my grandfather was going to let me have Garston, no way at all. Once I let him see how much I wanted it, he was determined to keep it from me. I used to think there was nothing of him in me, but I learned differently when you tricked me, I learned the hard way how the iron enters a man’s soul, corroding him with bitterness. He punished me by withholding from me what he thought I most wanted; take care that I don’t ever find out what you treasure most, Philippa.’

‘God, you’re hard.…’

‘I’m what you made me,’ he corrected cruelly, ‘Do you feel proud of your handiwork? Does it give you a thrill to know that you and you alone are responsible for what I am today? When you left I had nothing.…

‘I laughed when I heard Rivers had ditched you and married someone else. Can you believe that?’

‘Very easily,’ Philippa told him dryly. She was both fascinated and revolted by what he had become. Knives of fear and panic twisted in her stomach and she wanted to protest that he was wrong to feel so bitter; that she had acted purely out of love for him and nothing else. Where had it all gone so wrong? His grandfather had been so sure he would marry Mary, it hurt to think that she had given him up for nothing. Perhaps if she had been older she would have seen that he could never be a man to do another’s bidding but she had been young and very, very frightened. She had thought of herself as some dreamy novelette heroine, sacrificing her own happiness for that of her lover, but all she had done was sacrifice both of them… no, all three of them, she thought, remembering Simon’s pale, unhappy face.

‘I’ll have to get in touch with Simon’s school and arrange to sub-let our flat… I’ve already spoken to my boss, but.…’

‘You can do all that from the house. I’ll drive you down to the school this afternoon. Simon can come with us. Does he know whose son he is?’ he asked stunning her. It was several seconds before she could get her breath.

‘Yes,’ she managed, telling the truth. ‘He does know.’

‘And he’s forgiven you?’ His lips twisted. ‘It seems to me that Simon and I have something in common, you’ve cheated us both.’

More in common than he could possibly know, Philippa thought half-hysterically, glad when Simon came back downstairs, his eyes brightening when they fell on the car parked outside.

‘Can I go and have a look at it?’ The question was for Scott and not her, Philippa realised bitterly, wondering how on earth Scott was blind enough to ignore the almost startling resemblance between them when they were together, and wondering how long it would be before less prejudiced eyes did see it.

‘You can look, but don’t touch.… I don’t want that wrecking as well,’ Scott cautioned dryly, watching Simon’s thin face flush.

‘If you’re ready, we’ll go,’ he told Philippa, ‘I’ll send someone down to collect your stuff later.’

She had no option but to follow him outside, Simon bounding ahead of them, admiring the sleek lines of the car from every angle and then bombarding Scott with questions about its performance once they were installed inside. For once Philippa was glad of her son’s excited chatter. It kept Scott’s attention away from herself, and only she knew of the inner tightening of her nerves as Garston Hall approached, its chimneys visible over its protective circle of trees and then the front façade itself.

It hadn’t changed, the same grey weathered stone still standing foursquare, the diamond leaded windows staring out towards the hills. Two wings protruded from the main block of the house, and Philippa remembered that these had been closed off when she had visited the Hall before. Now the windows sparkled and curtains flapped gently in the breeze. She half turned to Scott, about to voice her surprise, but he forestalled her saying coolly, ‘One of the benefits of owning your own company—and a profitable one at that. I’ve been able to re-open both wings. One of them now houses the head office of the company, the other is used for any business associates I might have visiting me, and there’s also a leisure complex there for the use of both staff and guests. The main block I have retained for my own use.’

‘You live there alone?’ What on earth had prompted her to blurt that out?

‘Why? Thinking you might take up where you left off?’ His eyes slid to Simon, who was listening to their conversation although his face was averted. ‘Not completely. My mother lives with me and her companion, as to the rest…’ his mouth curved in a humourless smile, ‘sometimes I live alone and sometimes I don’t, does that answer your question?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘THIS way.’ Scott preceded them across the flagged area at the front of the hall, indicating a door in the East wing which was new to Philippa. Simon lagged behind, scowling darkly, and Philippa suppressed a rush of sympathy. Poor Simon; what had he expected, that Scott would immediately recognise him as his son? It was unfortunate that Simon should have seen his birth certificate, and the blame lay with her for naming Scott as his father in the first place, but she had been so distressed after Simon’s birth, so lonely, so aching for Scott’s presence, that she had given his name quite automatically, still drowsy from Simon’s birth, barely aware of what she was doing.

Once they were inside the building and Scott was describing the work his company was engaged on Simon’s attitude changed. As far as Philippa was concerned it was all way above her head, although she couldn’t help admiring the way what she remembered as vast, empty rooms had been transferred into a luxury office suite. A smiling receptionist acknowledged their arrival and from there Scott had shown them round the other offices, Simon drinking in every word he said, asking questions which brought a quick frown of surprise to Scott’s forehead and a curt, ‘He’s extremely bright,’ in an aside to her when he saw that Simon’s attention was elsewhere.

‘What did you expect? That because he was my child he would be dim?’ How angry he was making her with his hateful assumptions. Couldn’t he see what was screamingly obvious to her? Couldn’t he recognise himself in Simon?

‘This is where most of the real work is done.’ It was a large room running the length and breadth of the wing, on the second floor, full of banks of computers and other pieces of equipment all totally incomprehensible to Philippa, but Simon was pouncing on them with glee, studying them with a keen-eyed fascination that drew smiles from the two young men working busily among the equipment.

‘This is where we test out the new equipment. It isn’t manufactured here of course. That’s done in our factory near York, but we perform most of the field tests on the equipment here.’ Simon interrupted with several questions which Scott answered, both of them involved in a discussion far too technical for Philippa to begin to follow. ‘You’re interested in this sort of thing I take it?’

‘He’s interested in anything he can take apart and put back together again,’ Philippa said wryly, remembering the first time she had come home and found their ancient television set in bits.

‘Umm, not something he’s inherited from Rivers,’ Scott remarked acerbically to her whilst Simon’s back was turned. ‘As I recall he was quite happy to play the playboy on what daddy had earned.’ Before she could make a retort, he added, ‘We’ll leave Simon here and I’ll show you my own suite, it’s on the next floor.’

She had expected something even more luxurious than the suite of offices on the ground floor but to her astonishment Scott’s office was almost monastic in appearance. Another office led into it, and this would be hers, he told her, gesturing to the banked telephones and the word processor on the desk. ‘My previous secretary couldn’t stand the isolation of working here, and I need someone experienced enough for me to rely on. I have to go abroad quite frequently, and it will be up to you to take care of things when I’m gone.’

‘You trust me to be able to?’

There was a wealth of fine irony in her voice, but Scott didn’t take her up on it, merely saying, ‘You come very highly recommended. You’ve worked for Sir Nigel, who’s reputed to be one of the hardest-headed businessmen around. I don’t think he pays you simply to sit around looking pretty.’

‘How long do you intend to keep me here?’ Philippa demanded, reminding him that she wasn’t here of her own free will. ‘Until you can find another secretary?’

‘As long as it takes,’ he told her unequivocally, ‘and remember, Philippa, whilst you’re here you’ll fulfil any role I give you, that was part of the deal.’

What exactly did he have in mind? Philippa wondered as he showed her the Directors’ dining room and the conference room which lay beyond his own. Last night when he had given her his ultimatum she had seen in his eyes a look which had stripped her body of every shred of clothing she had worn, and which had committed even worse outrages against her, but she had put his violence down to his shock at seeing her, dismissing it in the calm light of morning as no more than a trick of her fevered imagination. Now she wasn’t so sure. Scott ached to humiliate her as he thought she had once humiliated him and she would be a fool if she tried to deny that fact.

‘I’ll show you the other wing. It’s this way.’

A long gallery connected the two wings, and the doors which Philippa remembered as once opening on to the main body of the Hall and the family’s living quarters had been sealed off, apparently, because the wall was now blank, presumably to ensure that Scott had privacy when he retired to his own part of the house.

‘Did you plan to do this when you… when you left for America?’ she asked him, feeling slightly foolish when he turned and subjected her to an ice-cold, acerbic glare.

‘I wasn’t in any mood to plan anything,’ he flung at her bitterly. ‘I was aching too much from what you had done to me, Philippa. No, it was only when my grandfather died that I realised I might have a chance of getting the Hall back. I was doing quite well then, but it wasn’t until two years ago that the company was doing well enough for me to buy it.’

They had reached the door at the end of the gallery and he pushed it open, standing back so that she could precede him. The doorway was narrow and Philippa felt the hairs on her arms stand on end as she brushed past his suit-clad body, the violent response of her nerve endings to his proximity so totally unexpected that it threw her off balance, both physically and mentally, and she was glad that she had her back to Scott for the few seconds it took her to get herself back under control.

What was the matter with her, for heaven’s sake? She wasn’t seventeen any longer. She had met many handsome and sexy men since she left Garston but none of them had affected her in the way that Scott had just done. Neither had he eleven years ago, but then she had trusted and loved him with innocence and inexperience, now she was immediately wary of the undeniably physical response of her body to his, her sense relaying to her the total maleness of him, the faintly arousing scent of his body whenever he came close to her, the diabolical ease with which her mind supplied her with an image of his unclothed body, even to the extent of adding the changes that time would have brought, turning’ him from a boy to a man.

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