He looked...

Admit it, Kelly, she thought reluctantly. He looks like a dream. Every woman’s fantasy walking around in a white coat.

She stared into eyes the colour of an angry sea, trying to equal his dispassionate scrutiny, trying to convince herself that it was just the shock of seeing him again which made her heart thunder along like a steam train.

Casualty of Passion

Sharon Kendrick

writing as Sharon Wirdnam

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dear Reader,

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

For the stars of Blood Transfusion—the great Vera Hanwright, and in fond memory of Eleanor Lloyd.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dear Reader

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘I TELL you, it was him— I actually saw him!’

Kelly heard the disbelieving sighs which followed this intriguing statement and wandered round into the female clinic room of St Christopher’s world-famous accident and emergency department, her curiosity aroused.

She grinned at the three nurses huddled there. ‘Sounds interesting. Saw who?’

Two of the student nurses looked to their undisputed leader, Staff Nurse Higgs—a statuesque blonde with magnificent smouldering blue eyes, who had given Kelly a particularly hard time since she’d arrived as casualty officer just a month earlier, since she didn’t take kindly to what she obviously saw as competition. Now she shrugged her magnificent shoulders and stared at Kelly as though she had just met her for the first time. ‘We’re talking about the new surgical registrar,’ she said reluctantly.

Kelly blinked. ‘Oh? We have a new surgical registrar on the rotation every couple of years. What’s so special about this one?’

Staff Nurse Higgs’s bosom swelled with excitement. ‘This one—’ she paused for dramatic effect ‘—just happens to be a lord!’

Kelly quickly picked up an ampoule of penicillin that was sitting on a dressing trolley and pretended to study it as a tiny shiver iced her skin into goosebumps beneath the white coat she wore. ‘A lord?’ she queried carefully, noting objectively that her swallowing reflex seemed to have gone to pot.

‘Mmm!’ said Staff Nurse Higgs, almost licking her scarlet lips. ‘Lord Rousay—a real member of the aristocracy! And that’s not all—he’s young, he’s bloody gorgeous, and—’ there was a dramatic pause ‘—he’s single! What do you think about that?’ Her eyes narrowed, her instinctive ability to sniff out gossip alerted. ‘Are you OK, Dr Hartley—you’ve gone awfully pale?’

‘Yes, of course I’m all right,’ answered Kelly briskly. ‘Why on earth shouldn’t I be?’

‘You’ve gone as white as a ghost—and look, your hand’s trembling.’ The eyes narrowed even further. ‘You don’t happen to know Lord Rousay, do you?’

No, I don’t know him, thought Kelly bitterly. I thought I did, but I was young, foolish, naïve. I was just a nobody he tried to take advantage of. She shook her head, but not one strand of the dark auburn hair in its constricting chignon moved. ‘Know him? Now, why would I know him?’ she said brightly. ‘There happen to be over twenty medical schools in the British Isles, with thousands of students, and while I know that lords in the medical world are pretty thin on the ground ...’ She paused for breath, her voice unusually high, and as she looked at their faces she realised that she was completely over-reacting. ‘No, I don’t know him,’ she finished lamely, not caring that she lied.

At that moment, she was saved by the bell. Literally. The sharp insistent peal of the red telephone on Sister’s desk shrilled into their ears.

The emergency telephone: the one which never rang except in critical and life-threatening situations.

Nurse Higgs sped off, Lord Rousay temporarily forgotten, and Kelly followed her, her long and sleepless night shift banished by the rush of adrenalin which always accompanied a crisis. Life in the accident and emergency department was one long series of crises.

When she reached Sister’s office, Nurse Higgs was just replacing the receiver. ‘There’s a child coming in,’ she said succinctly. ‘Aged two. Been savaged on face by a Rottweiler dog. Injuries extend to neck—the ambulance men are querying tissue damage to her airway. They’re trying to intubate her, but there’s swelling, apparently.’

‘Bleep the duty anaesthetist,’ said Kelly quickly. ‘And can you send an experienced nurse into the resuscitation room to make sure the paediatric airway set is open? Did they say how bad the wound is?’

‘No.’

‘Well, when they arrive — ’ But Kelly’s sentence was never finished because at that moment they heard the insistent sound of the ambulance’s siren as it sped to the back entrance of the department.

‘That’s them!’ said Kelly. ‘Come on!’

Kelly ran out to greet it, Nurse Higgs hot on her heels. As soon as the back door was opened, Kelly climbed in, the blood draining from her face as she saw the extent of the child’s injuries. No matter how experienced you were, it never left you—that feeling of helplessness when you saw someone who was terribly injured, especially when you were dealing with a toddler like this one.

The little girl was barely conscious. Shock, Kelly decided. Her breathing was stertorous but steady, and there was an airway in situ.

‘We couldn’t manage to intubate her,’ said the driver, as he helped unhook the intravenous fluid bag from the drip stand before rushing the stretcher into A & E. ‘You’ll need an anaesthetist for that—the tissue is swollen.’

‘He’s on his way,’ said Kelly briefly.

All the way into the department and along the short corridor to the resuscitation cubicle, she quizzed the drivers.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Gemma Jenkins.’

Kelly bent her head and said softly into the child’s ear, ‘Hello, Gemma—I’m Dr Kelly. You’re here in hospital and you’re safe.’

Gemma remained unresponsive. Kelly turned worried eyes to the second ambulance man. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Only a few minutes ago, thank God.’

‘Do we know how?’

The driver’s mouth twisted with distaste. ‘The dog belongs to the mother’s boyfriend. He brought it round after a lunchtime session up the pub, rather the worse for wear. He disappeared into the bedroom with the mother, leaving the child to “play” with the dog.’

Kelly nodded. ‘I see. Do we know where the mother is now?’

‘She’s following behind in a taxi. With the boyfriend.’

Kelly raised her eyebrows. ‘But surely the mother wanted to accompany Gemma?’

‘She’s hysterical.’

‘As well she might be,’ said Kelly grimly.

‘What she wanted,’ said the ambulance driver, in the kind of weary voice which indicated that he had seen too much of the dross of life not to have become a cynic, ‘was to comfort the boyfriend. He’s worried that she’ll press charges.’

Kelly, too, had grown used to the vagaries of human nature: these days she was rarely shocked, but this comment left her momentarily speechless. She shook her head in despair. ‘Come on—let’s get her on to the trolley.’

To Kelly’s intense relief, the anaesthetist arrived and began to intubate the little girl. If he’d been delayed, Kelly could have done it at a pinch but, unless you’d had specialist training, trying to get an airway down a child’s tiny trachea was notoriously difficult, particularly if the area was as swollen as this child’s. The most common mistake was to insert the airway into the oesophagus instead of the trachea.

While the anaesthetist was extending the neck, Nurse Higgs began taking pulse, respiration and blood-pressure recordings, while Kelly gently wiped the blood away from Gemma’s face so that she could see how bad the wound was.

It was bad enough. A great gaping gash which extended jaggedly down the left side of her face, but which had fortunately just missed the eye.

Kelly glanced up at the anaesthetist. ‘How’s her breathing?’

‘Stable. And she’s coming round.’

At least with the child’s condition stabilised the danger of respiratory arrest had been allayed for the time being, thought Kelly, and she turned to Nurse Higgs. ‘She needs suturing. Can you bleep the plastics surgeon?’

‘The plastics?’ queried Nurse Higgs, and the hostility which she had been showing towards Kelly since she had started three weeks ago finally bubbled over. ‘Aren’t you going to do it yourself?’

Kelly frowned with anger at the implied criticism. ‘Nurse Higgs,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m adequate enough at stitching, but not arrogant enough to play God. I’m not sufficiently experienced to do delicate work of this nature—a botch-up here could cost a young child her looks and leave her with an unsightly scar. Now, are you going to bleep the plastics man for me, or am I going to have to do it myself?’

Nurse Higgs’s eyes sparked malicious fire, but she bustled out without another word.

The anaesthetist raised an eyebrow. He was a tall, pale man, infinitely calm like most of his profession. ‘Trouble?’ he queried mildly.

‘Nothing that I can’t deal with,’ Kelly answered resolutely, as she dipped another piece of cotton wool into the saline solution and very gently wiped some dried blood away.

‘Report her,’ he suggested.

Kelly shook her head. ‘I’ll manage,’ she said, and dropped the used piece of cotton wool into the paper bag which hung on the side of the trolley.

They worked in silence, until the glimpse of a blinding white coat out of the corner of her eye told Kelly that the plastics man had arrived, but before she could get a proper look at him, she heard a horribly familiar laconic voice.

‘I’m here to suture.’

Kelly looked up briefly, her eyes flicking to his name-badge. ‘Randall Seton, Surgical Registrar’. His title, Lord Rousay—his still living father holding the title of Lord Seton, which Randall would one day inherit—was of course absent.

She swallowed, and looked down at the child again. ‘I asked for someone from plastics,’ she said. ‘Not a general surgeon.’

He was already taking off his white coat and removing the gold cuff-links from his pristine pinstriped shirt. ‘And there isn’t anyone from plastics available,’ he drawled, ‘so you’ve got the next best thing. Me. Get me a pair of size nine gloves, would you, Staff?’

Staff Nurse Higgs had miraculously appeared by his side, like the genie from the lamp, and was staring up at him like an eager puppy. There was none of her delayed hearing problem in evidence today—the one which habitually had Kelly repeating her requests—and she sped off immediately to do the surgeon’s bidding.

Kelly continued to clean the wound, her heart racing. She was professional enough not to let him know how much his closeness bothered her, woman enough to be unable to deny the potency of his attraction.

‘Right,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s have some local anaesthetic drawn up, shall we, Staff?’

The voice was the same. Centuries of breeding, the finest schools, the big, country houses, privilege from the word go had guaranteed that Randall would speak with that confident, beautifully modulated English accent, as precise as cut glass. But it differed from the popular conception of the aristocratic voice, because it was deeper, sardonic, mocking—worlds away from the popular idea of the upper-class twit. It was an exquisite voice—smooth as syrup and dark as chocolate, the kind of voice which sent shivers down the spine of every woman from sixteen to ninety.

The wound was almost completely clean, and he had gloved up and was ready to start suturing.

‘Thanks,’ he said softly.

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, and the impact of it was enough to make Kelly feel as though she had been winded and bruised by an unexpected blow.

‘I’d better go and talk to the mother,’ she said quickly, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He was too busy pushing a fine syringe into the damaged area of the child’s face with delicate precision even to notice Kelly’s departure.

Heart hammering, Kelly picked up the casualty card, rang through to the reception desk, and asked for the mother of Gemma Jenkins to be sent along to the doctor’s office.

She sat down, noticing dispassionately that her hands were actually trembling. She had never thought that she would see Randall ever again, she really hadn’t—or perhaps that had been wishful thinking. But even given the notoriously closely knit world of British medicine, she certainly hadn’t considered that just the merest glimpse of him, just the sound of that seductive mellifluous voice would be enough to shatter her composure and make her feel like the insecure seventeen-year-old she had been when she’d first met him.

She sighed. Nine long years ago. Where had they gone? Nine years of study, study, study and work, work, work.

And she had imagined that she had acquired a little sophistication on the way, had thought that she had become a little more worldly-wise. Was she going to let just the sight of Randall rip away all the complex layers of emotional maturity she had carefully constructed over the years?

Like hell she was!

There was a soft rap on the door, and Kelly instinctively sat upright in her chair, pulling her narrow shoulders back and arranging her features into a neutral expression.

‘Come in!’ she called.

Gemma’s mother had, predictably, brought the boyfriend in, clinging possessively on to his arm, as though he were the first prize in a raffle. He had lurid tattoos over every available inch of flesh and he stank of booze. Kelly swallowed down the feeling of revulsion, determined to remain impartial. She had been taught, over and over again, that emotionally involved doctors who made value judgements were simply not doing their jobs properly.

The mother could have been little more than twenty-two—a woman who looked little more than a girl herself. She’s younger than me, thought Kelly, with a jolt of surprise. And yet there was a grimy greyness to her complexion which told of a life lived inside, in high-rise blocks far away from the fresh air and the sunshine. She wore cheap, ill-fitting clothes. Her legs were pale and bare and she had squeezed her feet into tight, patent shoes, obviously new, though they were spattered with mud. On her heels she wore plasters where the shoes had obviously cut into her flesh. Her blonde hair was full of gel with little bits spiking upwards like a porcupine’s, and already the dark roots were an inch long. Stooping, sad and pathetic, she stared back at Kelly with blank, disillusioned eyes and Kelly cursed a society which could allow the cycle of deprivation which had made this woman into one of life’s losers. And would now probably do the same for her daughter.

She schooled her face into its listening expression. ‘Mrs Jenkins?’ she asked politely.

‘It’s Miss!’ interrupted the man. ‘That bastard didn’t bother marrying her when she had his kid.’

‘And your name is ...?’ prompted Kelly.

‘Alan,’ he swaggered. ‘Alan Landers.’

‘How’s ... how is Gemma?’ the woman asked, her voice a plaintive whine.

At last. ‘The doctor is suturing her face now,’ said Kelly briskly. ‘Given his skill, and the fact that your daughter is young enough to heal, well—we’re hoping for the best, but I have to warn you that she will have a scar, though the surgeon is doing his best to ensure that it will be as small and as neat as possible.’

She took a deep breath. The police would investigate, but the A & E department themselves would need details of what had happened. ‘Just for the record, would you mind telling me how it happened?’

Mr Landers screwed his face up into an ugly and menacing scowl. ‘Stupid kid was winding the dog up. That dog wouldn’t hurt no one.’

Refraining from pointing out the obvious flaw in his logic, Kelly thought that if she had been a man and not a doctor nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to punch this ignorant lout on the nose, but even if she had done, that wouldn’t have been the answer. He had probably grown up fighting violence with violence, and as soon as he was old enough had gone out and bought an aggressive dog as a kind of ferocious status symbol, supposed to demonstrate just how much of a man he was.

Kelly looked directly at the man. ‘Did you witness the attack?’

‘Nah.’

‘But it was your dog?’ persisted Kelly, her fountain-pen flying as she wrote on the casualty card.

‘That’s right.’

‘And you weren’t there when it attacked?’

‘That’s right,’ he said again.

Kelly had to bite back the incredulous question of how someone could leave a big, violent dog alone with a small child. ‘So where were you when the attack took place on Gemma?’

This provoked a raucous belly laugh. ‘In the bedroom,’ he leered, and his eyebrows lifted suggestively as his gaze dropped to Kelly’s breasts. ‘Want me to tell you what we was up to?’

‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Landers,’ said Kelly crisply. She turned to the woman and her totally vacant expression.

‘You do know, Miss Jenkins, that I’m going to have to call in Social Services?’

‘Do what?’ The grey-faced woman was on her feet at once. ‘And get some nosy-parker social worker sticking their oar in?’

Kelly looked at them both sadly. Didn’t they realise that if the child was deemed to be at serious risk she could be taken away from them? God forgive her, but in a way she wished that Gemma would be free of them, if she hadn’t also known that often children in care suffered from a different kind of neglect. ‘I am also going to have to report the injury to the police—’

‘What for?’ the man demanded belligerently.

Kelly put her pen down. ‘Because this category dog is supposed to be muzzled, Mr Landers—as I’m sure you know. It certainly shouldn’t have been left alone in a room with a toddler ...’ Kelly paused, recognising that, despite all her pep-talking to herself, she had done the unforgivable—she had sounded judgemental. But doctors were human too, and she wondered seriously whether anyone in their right mind could have stopped themselves from adopting a critical tone with a case of this sort.

But it was when the man stabbed an angry finger in front of her face that she realised that if she wasn’t careful, he really could turn nasty. She had better let him have his say. Even in her three short weeks in A & E, she had learnt that ‘verbalising your feelings’, as one of the social workers put it, also tended to defuse pent-up emotions.

Mr Landers’s face was contorted into an ugly mask. ‘You listen here to me, you little bitch—’

‘What’s going on in here?’ came a deep, aristocratic drawl.

The three of them looked at the door, where the tall, dark and rangy form of Randall Seton stood surveying them through narrowed eyes.

The man replied in time-honoured fashion. ‘Push off, you stuck-up git!’

There was a silence of about two seconds, and then Randall moved forward, his whole stance one of alert, healthy and muscular readiness. He radiated strength and he spoke with quietly chilling authority; but then, thought Kelly somewhat bitterly, that was the legacy of privilege too.

‘Listen to me,’ he said softly. ‘And listen to me carefully. Dr Hartley has just been caring for your daughter in Casualty. So have I. I’ve just stitched together the most appalling wound inflicted by an animal that I’ve ever seen, praying as I did so that it will leave as little scar tissue as possible. An anaesthetist is currently pumping air down into her lungs, because where the dog’s teeth ripped at her throat it caused such swelling that if an ambulance hadn’t been on the scene so promptly, her airway could have been obstructed and your daughter could have died from lack of oxygen.’

The mother gave an audible gasp of horror, as though the reality of what had happened had just hit her.

‘She is shortly going to be admitted to the children’s ward,’ he continued, ‘where she will be looked after by another series of staff. Now we’ve all been doing our job, because that’s what we’re paid to do and that’s what we chose to do. What we do not expect is to be criticised or insulted for doing just that. Have I made myself perfectly clear, Mr— Mr—?’ The dark, elegent eyebrows were raised in query, but there was no disguising the dangerous spark of anger which made the grey eyes appear so flinty. At that moment, he looked positively savage, thought Kelly, but he somehow managed to do it in a very controlled kind of way. But there again, Randall was the master of self-control, wasn’t he?

‘Landers,’ gulped the man. ‘Yes, Doctor. I understand.’

‘Good.’ Then the dark-lashed grey eyes swept over Kelly. ‘Can I see you for a minute?’

Nine years, she thought, slightly hysterically, and he asks can he see me for a minute. Breaking up with Randall—not that such a brief acquaintanceship really warranted such a grand-sounding title—had been the best thing which had ever happened to her. But she had often wondered, as women always did wonder about the first man who had made them dizzy with desire, just what would happen if they saw each other again. What would they think? What would they say?

She had never imagined such an inglorious reunion taking place in a tiny and scruffy little office in one of London’s busiest A & E departments, nor him saying something as trite as that.

He looked ...

Admit it, Kelly, she thought reluctantly. He looks like a dream. Every woman’s fantasy walking around in a white coat.

He was lightly tanned. Naturally, he was tanned; he was always tanned. In the winter he skied down the blackest runs in Switzerland, and in the summer he holidayed with friends around the Mediterranean on a yacht which he had owned since the age of eighteen. Nine years hadn’t added a single ounce of fat to that incredibly muscular body, honed to perfection by years of rigorous sport. The hair was as dark as ever, almost too black—a gypsy ancestor had been responsible for the midnight gleam of those rampant waves, he had once told her—sure!—and it curled and waved thickly around a neck which Michaelangelo would have died to sculpt.

She stared into eyes the colour of an angry sea, trying to equal his dispassionate scrutiny, trying to convince herself that it was just the shock of seeing him again which made her heart thunder along like a steam train. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid that I’m busy just now taking a history.’

He gave her a cool smile, the flash in the grey eyes mocking her. ‘When you’ve finished, then?’

It would never occur to him to take no for an answer. ‘I’m afraid that I may be tied up for some time.’

He shrugged the broad shoulders. ‘In that case, I’ll chase you up when I’m out of Theatre.’ His eyes glittered. ‘I can’t wait.’ It sounded awfully like a threat.

She wanted to say, Why bother? What was the point? Instead she shrugged her shoulders indifferently—a gesture which deserved to win her an Oscar. ‘If you like,’ she answered coolly. And picked up her pen again.

‘And now, Miss Jenkins. If you’d like to give me a few more details ...’

She didn’t have time to think of him again during that shift; she was absolutely run off her feet. A middle-aged man came in on a stretcher with his leg badly broken in three places, and then a teenage girl was admitted with an overdose.

‘How many has she taken?’ Kelly asked her white-faced and trembling mother as she handed her the empty bottle.

‘Only ten. That’s all that was left in the box. She left a note. It said—’ and here the woman started sobbing helplessly ‘—said it was to pay me back. I wouldn’t let her go out last night, you see. Told her she had to revise for her exams, or she’d end up like me, Doctor, struggling just to survive.’

‘Ssssh,’ said Kelly softly, as she handed the sobbing woman a paper handkerchief. ‘Try not to distress yourself.’

‘She will be all right, won’t she, Doctor?’ asked the mother plaintively.

Kelly nodded, and answered with cautious optimism. ‘I’m confident that she’ll pull through. She’s in good hands now.’ Though it was lucky that the pills the girl had taken did not have any major side-effects.

She watched while the nurses, garbed in plastic gowns, gloves and wellington boots, put a wide tube into the girl’s mouth and worked it down into her stomach. Then they tipped a saline solution into it, and waited for her to start retching. The physical ignominy of this uncomfortable procedure would hopefully make the girl think very carefully about attempting such an overdose again, Kelly hoped. Because what had started out as an angry gesture could have ended up with such tragic consequences.

She had been working in Accident and Emergency for just three weeks, but already she had discovered that her job was as much social worker as doctor—if she allowed it to be. And, frankly, she didn’t have the time to allow it to be. The lives that people lived and the conditions in which they lived them sometimes made her despair, but there was little she could do to change anything, and accepting that had been a hard lesson.

It was seven o’clock by the time she finished, although she’d been due off at six. She had been held up with a cardiac arrest, and by the time she took her white coat off and washed her hands she was bushed, and could think of nothing she would like more than a hot bath, a good book, and an early night, particularly as she was not seeing Warren until tomorrow.

She set off for her room, through the winding corridors of St Christopher’s—one of London’s oldest and most revered hospitals. The main corridor was particularly impressive at night, and the ornately carved marble pillars dating back from a more prosperous time in the hospital’s history cast long and intricate shadows on the well-worn stones of the floor.

Kelly heard a sound behind her. A sound she knew so well.

Sounds echoed on this particular floor and foot-steps were normal in a hospital. Day and night, people moved in endless motion.

But Kelly stiffened, then remonstrated silently with herself. Of course she wouldn’t be able to recognise his footsteps. Not after nine years.

She turned round to face whoever was close behind her, as any sensible female doctor would.

And it was him.

‘Hello, Kelly,’ he said, his voice a deep, mocking caress, and Kelly felt herself thrill just to the sound of him speaking her name. He managed to make it sould like poetry, but he had always had the ability to do that.

And as she stared into eyes as silvery and as crystalline as mercury, nine years seemed just to slip away, like grains of sand running through her fingers.

CHAPTER TWO

NINE summers ago Kelly had been in the first year of her school’s sixth form, studying science, and studying hard. When other students moaned about the rigorous demands of the syllabus they were expected to cover, Kelly did not. Her study had been hard fought for.

Not many students had to fight their parents to stay on at school—it was often the other way round—but Kelly’s parents simply had not been able to understand why she didn’t want to leave school at the earliest opportunity to start ‘bringing a bit of money in’, as they put it. Which, loosely translated, meant—certainly in the culture which Kelly had grown up in—to help boost her mother’s already meagre income, made even more meagre by her father’s liking for a drink and a bet on the horses. What they had expected for Kelly was a local shop or factory job. But Kelly refused to be condemned to a life of drudgery before getting married to a man like her father and having to scrimp and save and hide her money from him.

Kelly had tried to hide her bitterness at the lack of ambition in the Hartley household, knowing that any hint of rebellion would seal her fate. And she was lucky in two respects. The first was that she had been born with an outstanding intellect, and the second was that she had an absolute champion in her chemistry teacher—a Mr Rolls. Not only did his passion for his subject inspire her to work as hard as she possibly could, but through him she learned really to love the discipline of science.

If Mr Rolls had never achieved his full potential, he was determined that Kelly should not follow the same pattern. In his late thirties, he had never married, instead devoting all his energies to his students. It was Mr Rolls who spoke to Kelly’s dazed parents, told them that it would be a crime if she were not allowed to pursue higher education. It was he who allayed their financial fears by telling them that all sorts of grants were available for gifted students these days, and that they would not be asked to provide money they simply did not have. The only thing he did not discuss with them, at Kelly’s behest, was her ambition to become a doctor.

‘Time enough for that,’ Kelly told him firmly.

‘But why?’ He was genuinely non-comprehending.

She stared back at him, her large green eyes already wise beyond their years, in so many ways. ‘Because it will honestly be too much for them to take in all at once,’ she told him gently. ‘To tell them that I want to become a doctor would be like telling them that I want to fly to Venus!’

But she had felt as though if she spread her arms she really could fly to Venus that August evening, as she walked up the gravelled drive of the enormous country house for the summer school in science which Mr Rolls had insisted she attend. He had even arranged for the school governors to sponsor the trip.

‘And Seton House is in the heart of the country,’ he told her smilingly. ‘Do you good to get out of London for a bit—put a bit of colour in your cheeks.’

Kelly had never seen such a beautiful place in all her life as Seton House. It was not quite as impressive as Hampton Court Palace, which she had visted on a trip with the Brownies years ago, but it came a pretty close second, with its sweeping manicured lawns in the most dazzling shade of emerald, and its carefully clipped yew trees, and its parklands.

She stared up at the house, slightly fearful of knocking, when at that moment the vast door opened and a man in his early twenties came running lightly down the steps, saw her, stopped, and smiled. He had thick, black hair and the longest pair of legs she had ever seen.

‘Well, hello!’ His eyes were sparkling—fine grey eyes with exceptionally long black lashes—as they looked Kelly up and down with open appreciation.

That summer she had grown used to the stares from men; it had been a liberating summer in more ways than one. She had grown her hair, so that it rippled in dark red waves all the way down her back, and the faded jeans and T-shirt which every student wore emphasised the slim curve of her hips, the gentle swell of her burgeoning breasts. If men ogled her, she soon put them in their place. But somehow she didn’t mind this man looking one bit. It gave her the chance to look at him, and he was, without exception, the most delectable man she had ever set eyes on. ‘Hello,’ she answered. ‘Who are you?’

He grinned. ‘Well, actually I’m wearing two hats this week.’

Kelly blinked. ‘Excuse me? Your head is bare.’

His eyes narrowed, and he laughed—the richest, deepest, most mesmerising sound she could imagine. ‘Sorry. What I mean is that I’m one of the medical students running the course, and I ...’ And then his gaze fell to the cheap and battered old suitcase she was clutching, and his eyes softened. ‘Come inside. You must be tired after your journey. Here, let me carry your bags for you,’ and he took them from her without waiting for her assent. ‘Come with me. I’ll show you to your room. You’re the first to arrive. We weren’t expecting anyone until this evening.’

‘I—caught the early train,’ faltered Kelly, as she followed him up the steps leading to the house. The cheaper train, the bargain ticket, planning to kill time looking around the village of Little Merton. Except that when she had arrived in Little Merton there had been absolutely nothing to see, so she had come straight on up to the house. ‘I can always go away and come back later,’ she ventured.

‘What to do? There’s not a lot to see in Little Merton!’

‘So I noticed,’ remarked Kelly drily, and he turned his head to stare down at her again, giving her another of those slow smiles. She wondered if he knew just how attractive those smiles were—he must do!

Kelly followed him into the vast entrance hall, with him still holding her bags. No one had ever carried her bags for her before; in her world, women struggled with the heavy items, like pack-horses for the most part. She rather liked this show of masculine strength, and of courtesy. It made her feel fragile and protected, and rather cherished.

She stared around the hall. She had never imagined that a place could be so large and so beautiful, without being in the least bit ostentatious. There was none of the over-the-top gold scrolling which had abounded in Hampton Court. Instead, just an air of quiet loveliness, and the sensation of continuity down through the ages, of treasures being treasured and passed on for the next generation to enjoy.

‘It’s quite perfect,’ said Kelly simply.

He looked down at her. ‘Isn’t it?’ he said quietly. ‘I’m glad you like it.’

It didn’t occur to her to ask why. She just assumed that, like her, he had an eye for beautiful things.

He showed her upstairs to her room, decorated in a striking shade of yellow with soft sage-green fittings. It was just like being at the centre of a daffodil, thought Kelly fancifully.

‘It’s rather small, I’m afraid,’ he apologised. ‘But we’ve put some of the boys in the larger rooms, sharing.’

Small? Kelly gulped. It was palatial! She had spent the last fifteen years sharing a shoe-box of a room with a sister whose idea of tidying up was to chuck all the mess into an already overflowing cupboard! ‘It’s lovely,’ she told him, wandering over to the window. ‘And oh—’ her gaze was suddenly arrested by the tantalising glitter of sunlight on water in the distance ‘—is that a lake I can see?’

‘Mmm.’ He came to stand beside her. ‘We have black swans nesting there. Very rare and very beautiful. I’ll show you later if you like.’

‘I’d like that very much.’

He smiled.

She was suddenly very conscious of just how tall he was, how broad his shoulders; aware too of the powerful thrust of his thighs, similarly clad in denim more faded than her own jeans. She wasn’t used to being alone in bedrooms with strange men, she thought, her heart beating hard, but he seemed unconcerned by his surroundings. But then, why should he not be? He was a medical student, and about twenty-four, she guessed. He would not look twice at a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl.

All the same, she felt that it was probably wise to establish a more formal footing.

‘Which medical school are you at?’ she enquired politely.

‘St Jude’s. I’m in my final year. How about you?’

‘Another year of A-levels, then I’m hoping to get a place at St Christopher’s.’

He frowned. ‘So you’re—how old?’

‘Seventeen— just!’ she smiled, disconcerted to see an expression of disquiet pass over his features. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

He shook his head. ‘I somehow thought that you were older than that. Most of the students here are just about to go up to medical school. Some are even in their first year. You must be very good to be here.’ The grey eyes were questioning.

Kelly smiled, not falling into the trap of false modesty, knowing her own worth and ability as a student. ‘You’ll have to be the judge of that,’ she answered coolly.

Their eyes met, his giving a brief but unmistakably appreciative flash, and she found that she could not look away, that his face seemed to be at the centre of her whole universe right at that moment. She became aware of other things too, things that up until now she had only read about in biology textbooks: the sudden drying of her mouth and the hammering of her heart. The tightening of her breasts, as though they had become heavy and engorged with blood. And the sudden rucking of her nipples—exquisite and painful and highly disturbing.

Kelly wasn’t stupid. She had grown up in a neighbourhood where girls experimented sexually with boys from as early an age as fourteen, and up until now she had always been disapproving and highly critical of such behaviour. Now, for the first time in her life, she acknowledged the dangerous and potent power of sexual attraction.

She turned away, wondering if he had seen the betraying signs of that attraction in her body. ‘I’d better unpack,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Thanks for showing me to my room ...’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

He paused for a moment before answering. ‘It’s Randall,’ he told her. ‘And yours?’

‘Kelly. Kelly Hartley.’

‘Because your eyes are Kelly-green?’ he hazarded.

She shook her head and laughed. ‘My mother says I was named after Grace Kelly, but my father disagrees. He says it was Ned Kelly—the bandit!’

He laughed too, then stayed her with a light touch of his hand on her forearm as she moved towards the tatty suitcase which looked ridiculously out of place amidst the restrained elegance of the room. ‘Don’t unpack now—there’ll be plenty of time for that later. It’s such a glorious day. Why don’t you let me show you something of the countryside? We could have lunch somewhere. That’s if you’d like to?’

She would like to very much, although the sensible, studious Kelly could think of all kinds of reasons why she shouldn’t go gallivanting off to lunch with someone she had barely met. But something in the soft silver-grey of his eyes was proving to be impossibly enticing. He was not the first man to have asked her out, but he was the first one she had ever said yes to.

She grinned. ‘I’d love to. Do I need to change?’

He shook his head. ‘You look fantastic. Do you have a ribbon or something?’

Kelly nodded. ‘Why?’

‘Bring it, you’ll need it.’

The reason why was a small, gleaming scarlet sports car which was garaged in an area he called the ‘old stables’. Kelly’s eyes widened. Brought up with frugality as her middle name, she said the first thing which came into her head.

‘How on earth can you afford a car like this as a student?’

He seemed surprised by her frankness. ‘It was a twenty-first birthday present,’ he told her as he opened the car door for her. ‘From my parents.’

‘Generous parents,’ commented Kelly wryly, as she climbed into the car.

He moved into the seat next to her, and turned the ignition key. ‘Oh, they’re certainly generous,’ he said, in a voice which sounded strangely bitter. ‘That’s to say, they find it very easy to buy things.’

She stole a glance at him. ‘What’s wrong with them buying things?’

The silver-grey eyes were direct; disburbing. He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t make up for them never having been there, I suppose.’

‘Doesn’t it? I have exactly the opposite problem with my parents,’ answered Kelly, giving a rueful little smile, wondering if anyone was ever contented with their lot.

‘Then I guess we’ll just have to comfort one another, won’t we?’ he said, his voice soft, mocking, having the power to increase her pulse-rate just with its deep, velvety caress.

Suddenly shy, Kelly quickly gathered her thick red hair up in the black velvet ribbon, afraid he might notice that she was blushing like crazy.

He turned on the ignition, and the little car roared off down the drive, spitting out pieces of gravel in its wake, and Kelly sat back in the seat to enjoy the drive.

It was one of those afternoons which stayed in the memory forever—the most perfect afternoon of Kelly’s life. He drove her to a country pub for lunch where they ate crusty bread and great slabs of farmhouse cheese, washed down with local beer. After that, they walked. And talked. They didn’t seem to stop talking. She told him all about the tiny terraced house she had grown up in, about the shared bedroom and the thin walls where the neighbours’ arguments were broadcast so loudly that they might have been in the same room. She told him of her burning ambition to be a surgeon, and his eyes had narrowed.

‘It’s tough enough, anyway,’ he observed. ‘Even tougher for a woman.’

‘I know,’ she said passionately. ‘And I don’t care! I’m going to defeat all the odds, you wait and see!’

He had smiled then, his eyes soft. ‘I can’t wait,’ he murmured.

She blushed again, realising that she had been monopolising the conversation; he was so incredibly easy to talk to. ‘Now tell me about you,’ she urged him.

‘What, everything?’ he teased.

‘Absolutely everything!’

And Randall painted a picture of his own world, so very different from hers. Kelly’s heart turned over when he described being sent away to boarding school at the tender age of eight.

‘Cold showers and cross-country runs,’ he said, and shuddered theatrically.

‘Did you really hate it?’ she asked sympathetically.

‘I loathed it,’ he said with feeling, then grinned. ‘Don’t look so tragic, Kelly—it was a long time ago,’ and he took her hand in his. She didn’t object; her head was spinning, as though he had intoxicated her just with his presence.

The afternoon flew by and it was almost six when they arrived back at the house. There were several cars parked in front of the house, and a woman, small and matronly, stood on the steps, talking to a group of people, most slightly older than Kelly, and whom she assumed were other medical students.

When the little sports car came to a halt, the woman came hurrying over to them, barely looking at Kelly, her face reproving. ‘There you are, my lord!’ she exclaimed. ‘Everyone’s been looking for you. Five medical students and no one knows where to put them.’

Kelly stiffened. Lord!

‘Calm down, Mary,’ he drawled in a voice born to giving orders, and Kelly watched while the older woman softened under the sheer potency of all that charm. ‘I’ll sort it out. Mary—I’d like you to meet Kelly Hartley. Kelly—this is Mary. She lives here and provides food to die for.’

But Kelly knew instantly from his proprietorial tone that Mary ‘lived’ here purely in the capacity of staff. She felt somehow betrayed. They had shared intimacies, swopped secrets—and yet he had left out something as fundamental as the fact that he was a member of the flaming aristocracy! Her cheeks were hot with anger, but she managed to keep her voice relatively calm. ‘Thank you very much for lunch,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ll leave you to it—you’re obviously terribly busy.’

‘Kelly—’ he began, but Kelly had jumped out of the car and run past the staring group and upstairs to her room before he could say anything more, or stop her.

And when the peremptory knock came on her door about half an hour later, she was not surprised, though she was tempted not to answer it.

She pulled the door open to find Randall leaning with languid grace against the door-frame, his grey eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you angry?’ he asked calmly.

‘Why do you think?’

‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me that you were a lord?’ she demanded.

‘Oh, that,’ he said casually.

‘Yes, that!’ she retorted. ‘I suppose that you actually own this house too?’

He shrugged. ‘Guilty as charged. Although on a technical point, I won’t actually own it until my father dies.’

‘Damn you and your technical point!’ she fired back. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

He came inside, closed the door firmly behind him and took her by the shoulders. ‘Because I didn’t want you to know. Not then.’

Kelly’s eyes widened. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Because people can be intimidated by the title, and I suspected that you might be one of them.’

She took a step back. ‘Why, of all the most patronising—’

‘And because sometimes the baggage which comes with all that stuff,’ he interrupted coolly, ‘just gets in the way of what really matters ... you know?’

She shook her head, angry and confused. ‘No, I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do,’ he said softly, and bent his head to kiss her. ‘Of course you do.’

After that Kelly spent every moment she could with him, and for the first time in her life found it difficult to concentrate on her studies. He had put her in his tutorial group, and she really had to make an effort not to run her gaze dreamily over every glorious inch of his body, and to listen instead to his lectures, which she wasn’t at all surprised to discover were absolutely brilliant.

Randall was the undisputed star of the course, and it was pretty obvious that every girl fancied him like mad, but he seemed to have eyes only for Kelly. At the end of each day’s session he would take her off somewhere in his little sports car and they would walk for miles, arriving back only just in time for dinner.

‘Should you be leaving them alone like this?’ Kelly asked him, as the little sports car came to a halt and she tried to drag the brush through her tangled hair.

He smiled. ‘Relax. There’s plenty for them to do—I’m not playing nanny to them. Now come here and kiss me before we go inside.’

Kelly was quite certain that she was in love with him. But it was more than just the completely overwhelming physical attraction she had been aware of from the very beginning, because he gave her a great sense of her own worth for her intellect, as well as a woman.

Thoughts of him disturbed her nights, and she tossed restlessly as she relived how his amazing grey eyes would darken with passion every time he took her into his arms. She suspected that she would willingly have gone to bed with him, except that he behaved with a restraint which she found admirable, given that even with her total inexperience she recognised just how much he wanted her.

And then came that last evening.

First there was dinner, cooked as usual by Mary, and then someone had laughingly suggested charades. So they all filed into the room which was known as the red library, but after a time Randall took her by the hand and led her quietly from the room. She didn’t know whether anyone noticed that they had left, and, aware that she was leaving the following day, she no longer cared. Silently she went up the staircase with him, her heart beating like a wild thing when he led her straight to her bedroom and closed the door quietly behind them.

He stared at her for a long, long moment. ‘I’m going to miss you, Kelly,’ he said softly. ‘Very, very much.’

She could have drowned in the intensity of that silver-grey stare. ‘Are you?’ she whispered.

‘More than you could ever imagine.’ He took her into his arms, his face dark and unreadable, the light from the moon emphasising the aristocratic cheekbones, the sculptured perfection of his mouth. He bent his face so that it was very close to hers. ‘And I want to see you again—you know that, don’t you?’

Kelly nodded silently, shaken by the fervour in his voice, which matched some spark deep in her soul. She wound her arms around his neck, and her body seemed to melt into the hard sinews of his, her unspoken surrender apparent in the kiss she returned so sweetly.

He gave a low moan as he ran his hands through the thick, silken texture of her hair, then let them fall to her waist, to gather her in even closer, so that they were moulded together and she never wanted to let him go. Never, never, never.

Her breasts tingled as he stroked them over the cotton of the simple white dress she wore, and she gave a little sigh, her eyes closing as she felt the warm river of desire flood her veins with sweet potency.

Still kissing her, he slid the zip of her dress down and she let her arms drop to her sides so that it glided down over her hips and pooled on the ground around her feet. He raised his head then, his eyes narrowed as they studied her. Her breasts were so small that she wore no bra, and she was clad only in the smallest pair of bikini briefs, her body silvered by the pale light of the moon, the thick waves of her hair tumbling down over her small, high breasts. Suffused with love and longing for him, Kelly felt exultant as she saw the expression on his face as his gaze slowly covered every inch of her, filled with an elemental and very feminine fire as she revelled in the power of her body, that she could inspire that look of ardour on his face.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told her. His voice sounded unsteady, almost slurred with desire, as he started to unbutton his shirt, letting it fall to the ground as carelessly as her dress had done.

‘So are you,’ she whispered, and she heard him give a low laugh as his hand moved to the belt of his trousers.

Kelly felt shy at her first sight of his arousal, almost dazed and daunted by her ability to do that to him, but her shyness evaporated as he slid her tiny bikini pants down over her thighs, then, naked, pulled her down on to the bed with him and began to kiss her over and over again.

It felt so good. It felt so right. She was drowning in delight, each touch and each kiss making the pleasure escalate until she could hardly bear it any more, almost going out of her mind when his hand moved over the flatness of her belly, to teasingly stroke tiny provocative circles there. She began to move restlessly, and he gave another low laugh as his hand slid down between her thighs to tantalise her even further so that she made an instinctive little pleading sound at the back of her throat.

‘Do you want me?’ he whispered huskily.

‘Oh, yes,’ she shuddered ecstatically as he stroked her skilfully.

‘Really want me?’

‘Yes!’ Oh, God, yes—more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.

He moved to lie on top of her. She was ready for him, gloriously and deliriously ready for him; ripe and hot and moist. She pressed her lips to his shoulders, eager for him to fill her, thrilling as he gently parted her legs, when a stark and elemental fear pierced through the mists of her desire with frightening clarity, as the dreaded phrase of her childhood came back to mock at her.

‘That girl’s in trouble.’

In trouble ...

Kelly remembered Jo Grant at school, only fifteen, but now prematurely aged as she pushed the pram up the hill every morning.

‘Randall,’ she whispered urgently.

He lifted his head from her breast, his voice thick with passion. ‘What?’

‘You won’t—’

‘Oh, I most certainly will, my darling,’ he murmured.

‘—make me pregnant, will you?’

The silence which filled the room was brittle, electric. She felt him tense, heard him stifle some profanity, before he rolled off her, and, with his back to her, the broad set of his shoulders forbidding and stiff with some kind of unbearable tension, began to pull his clothes on.

Kelly was filled with hurt and confusion. She had meant ... had meant ... that they should ...

‘Randall?’ she whispered tentatively, and when he turned, in the act of wincing as he struggled to zip up his trousers, she almost recoiled from the look of frustration on his face, which quickly gave way to one of bored disdain.

‘You certainly pick your moments,’ he drawled cuttingly. ‘Couldn’t you have said something earlier?’

‘Well, what about you?’ Outraged and indignant, she sat up, her hair tumbling to conceal her breasts, and she saw a nerve begin to work in his cheek. ‘You didn’t seem inclined to discuss it either. Don’t you think that you have some responsibility too?’ she demanded.

‘That’s just the trouble, Kelly,’ he said, in a bitter, flat and angry voice. ‘I wasn’t doing any thinking at all.’

And without another word he slammed his way out of the room, leaving Kelly to spend the most miserable night of her life.

The next morning she had risen early, hoping to get away before anyone else was up, and yet trying to suppress the foolish and humiliating little hope that he would still want to see her. She quickly packed her few belongings into the suitcase and went silently down the stairs.

Mary was placing a pile of newspapers on a tray, and looked up, her eyes hardening with disapproval when she saw Kelly.

‘Will you be wanting breakfast, miss?’ she asked grudgingly.

Kelly shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I—I’d like to get away just as soon as possible. Will you please—’ she swallowed. She must be courteous; she still had her pride ‘—thank Randall for his hospitality?’

‘Yes, miss. Though I don’t know when I shall be seeing him next.’

‘I’m sorry? But he’ll be down for breakfast before he goes back, surely?’

‘Oh, no, miss.’

Kelly’s heart started thundering with the implication behind the cook’s triumphant statement.

‘Just that Lord Rousay’s already gone back to London. Left here at dawn, he did. Driving that car of his as though the devil himself was chasing him.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Kelly, in a small, empty little voice, as the fairy-tale disintegrated.

And she had never set eyes on him again.

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