“I’m prepared to do anything.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to

The lives and loves of the royal, rich and famous!

We’re inviting you to the most thrilling and exclusive weddings of the year!

Meet women who have always wanted the perfect wedding…but never dreamed that they might be walking up the aisle with a millionaire, an aristocrat, or even a prince!

But whether they were born into it, are faking it or just plain lucky—these women are about to be whisked off around the world to the playgrounds of princes and playboys!

Are their dreams about to come true? If so, they might just find that they are truly fit for a prince….

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A Paper Marriage
Jessica Steele

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

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

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

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

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

‘You need my help in some way?’

‘Yes, I do!’

‘Oliver…’ Lydie began.

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s he worried about?’

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

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

‘When you get here.’

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

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

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

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

‘But…’

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

‘He…’ What the Dickens was going on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘My mother rang.’

‘Everything all right at home?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Which would make you happier?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘After Beamhurst!’ Lydie whispered, horrified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I didn’t see any sign…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You remember him?’

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

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

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

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

‘Fifty thousand pounds?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You sprint pretty fast at the word marriage?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Lose…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fifty-five thousand…?’

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

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

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

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

‘You’re—sure?’ she asked hesitantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He owed it to you. He…’

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

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

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