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Tainted Love
Alison Fraser
A Prisoner of Passion…Clare Anderson: a woman with a past… Fen Marchand: an Oxford University professor, and father to ten-year-old Miles, who was badly in need of a housekeeper - so badly in need that he agreed to take on Clare… . She had a good idea of how Fen saw her - his opinion was totally colored by her previous record and, though he was prepared to give her a job, that didn't mean that she was good enough for the likes of him!But still, an intense physical attraction developed between them. However, Clare was going to keep her distance; Fen would never understand why she'd taken that risk - because he'd never know it had been for the sake of her little son… .
Tainted Love
Alison Fraser
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#u539ff118-50a2-5be0-b2e7-e3fe18e6e732)
CHAPTER TWO (#u33dd713a-903b-5491-a56e-da95528680b3)
CHAPTER THREE (#uf7f4902c-45f9-5c8b-b10f-731b60f2215d)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS summer when Clare was released, but it might as well have been winter. The sun did not touch her. Nothing did. They’d called her cold-hearted and she’d become so.
The day of her job interview was especially hot. In Oxford, summer students paraded tanned limbs in white T-shirts and shorts. Clare wore black. Black jacket. Black skirt. Black court shoes. The only relief was a cream-coloured blouse. She’d aimed for respectability and succeeded to the point of drabness. She didn’t care.
Need alone had prompted her to go for the job. Her prison visitor, Louise Carlton, had a brother who needed a housekeeper. She believed Clare might suit the post. Clare didn’t. She didn’t think the brother would either, but Louise had badgered her into an interview.
She walked from the rail to the bus station, caught the two o’clock to Chipping Haycastle and got off at the Old Corn Mill as instructed. She walked for perhaps quarter of a mile, before she reached two iron gates set in a six-foot-high wall. ‘Woodside Hall’ was etched into the stone.
She peered beyond and saw only a tangle of woodland through which a tarred drive disappeared. She pushed at the gates. She’d been told they would be open. They weren’t. There was no chain on them and she wondered if they were electronically operated. She pushed again and they gave a little. She looked downwards to discover they’d been tied shut with string.
She bent down to untie the string and heard a sound. She glanced round her but saw no one. She started to unpick the string and heard the sound again. This time there was no doubt. It was the sound of a child’s laughter and she caught a glimpse of a head bobbing up from a clump of shrub on the far side of the gates.
‘Hello,’ she called out to tell the child he’d been spotted.
There was no response, just the rustling of bushes as the hidden figure made a getaway.
That, she assumed, would be Master Miles Marchand. A sweet boy according to his aunt Louise. Clare wondered if tying the gates together came under the category of ‘sweet’.
The string had been knotted many times and it took her about ten minutes to untie it. The next hurdle was waiting for her round a bend in the drive. She could hardly miss it—a piece of twine, a foot off the ground, running from a tree on one side of the road to a tree on the other. Presumably she was meant to trip up on it and take a flier.
Instead she stepped over it and called out, ‘Sorry. Too obvious, I’m afraid.’
This time there was no response, not even a rustle of leaves, but she was still sure he was watching her. She sensed it as she went up the winding drive to the house.
It was an early Georgian manor house of considerable size: six windows wide and three storeys high. She knew Louise was wealthy. It seemed her brother was, too.
She passed a Jaguar and a Mercedes saloon, and went up to the huge oak door. She pulled the bell at one side, and waited. And waited. And waited. Assuming it hadn’t been heard, she rang it again. By her third attempt, she decided it couldn’t be working.
She lifted the lion’s-head knocker on the door, and it came away in her hand. She was left wondering how the heavy lead object could possibly have unscrewed itself from the door. Then she heard the sound of childish laughter again.
It was clear that one member of the household definitely didn’t want a new housekeeper, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to volunteer for the post, either. It wasn’t as if she knew much about children. Just Peter, and that had been a long time ago—so long she could almost think of him without pain.
She felt this other boy’s eyes on her as she circled the house, searching for signs of life. She heard the drift of voices coming from an open French window, and came closer. She recognised Louise’s as the female voice. The other she assumed belonged to Fenwick Marchand, the eccentrically named master of the house.
Clare approached the doorway, intending to announce her presence, but got as far as lifting her hand to knock before the man’s voice arrested her on the spot.
‘Honestly, Lou, you don’t really expect me to give this woman a job,’ he declared. ‘Charity’s one thing. Ask me for a donation—fine, you’ll get one. But if you think I’m going to open up my home to some...some...whatever the hell she is.’
‘She’s a very nice girl who’s had a rough time of it,’ Louise Carlton replied in a soft, kindly tone that contrasted sharply with her brother’s. ‘If you knew what has happened to her—’
‘Well, I don’t, do I?’ Marchand jumped in again. ‘Because you refuse to tell me.’
‘Only because you’d get the wrong idea, Fen,’ his sister went on calmly, ‘and what she was convicted of is irrelevant.’
‘To you, maybe,’ the man countered. ‘But then you aren’t about to share your home with some thief or drug addict or murderer. Possibly all three, for all I know.’
‘I’ve told you. She was innocent,’ Louise said with utter conviction.
It drew a scoff of laughter in response.
Clare pursed her lips. She couldn’t see Marchand, because he was seated in a high armchair. But she saw Louise Carlton, standing before him, looking upset and flustered as she tried to appeal to her brother’s better nature.
Clare could have told her not to bother. The owner of that deep, sarcastic voice had no better side, and Clare felt no compunction about eavesdropping.
‘Clare has never discussed her case with me,’ Louise Carlton claimed in perfect truth. ‘She has never asked anything of me, either. I was the one who suggested this post to her, knowing she needs work and you need a housekeeper.’
‘Need, yes,’ he agreed, ‘am desperate for, no. And I’d have to be to employ this woman. I ask you, do you really want Miles exposed to her influence?’
‘He could do worse,’ Louise said, on the defensive.
‘He already has done,’ Fenwick reminded her. ‘I don’t think I fancy him adding lock-picking or safe-cracking to his list of other doubtful interests.’
This time Louise didn’t respond, but her face gave her away, colouring slightly at the reference to safe-cracking.
Her brother was quick to spot it. ‘So that’s what she is—a professional thief.’
‘No, don’t be ridiculous,’ Louise dismissed the idea hastily, before ruining Clare’s chances with the admission, ‘Stealing may have been one of the things she was accused of, but—’
‘One of the things?’ Fenwick’s voice rose in disbelief. ‘How many more are there?’
Louise shook her head. ‘I told you. It doesn’t matter. You have my word she’s a reformed character.’
‘Really?’ His voice became a sarcastic drawl. ‘I thought you said she was innocent.’
‘She is.’
‘Then she wouldn’t need to be reformed, would she?’
‘I...’ Louise Carlton frowned over her brother’s logic. ‘Stop trying to confuse me, Fen. We both know you’re cleverer with words—and pretty much everything else. But I do know people better than you.’
‘Possibly,’ he conceded. ‘At any rate, you saw through that bitch I married.’
‘Fen!’ his sister reproved in shocked tones.
‘What? I mustn’t call her a bitch, because she’s dead,’ he scoffed. ‘Is that it?’
‘Well, yes...’ Louise admitted that that was what she meant.
‘I called her such long before she drove off a cliff with her toy-boy lover,’ he pointed out. ‘I don’t see why she should be canonised now she’s dead.’
‘Maybe not,’ his sister agreed, ‘but you have to be careful. It wouldn’t be very nice if Miles overheard you.’
‘Miles isn’t likely to,’ he dismissed. ‘Having discovered there was another candidate for housekeeper, he took himself off to his hut in the woods and is no doubt scheming on how to get rid of the lady, should I be rash enough to employ her.’
‘You told him about Clare?’ Louise said in exasperation.
‘That she was coming, yes,’ her brother confirmed, ‘that she was an arch-villain, no. If I had, knowing Miles, he would probably have wanted me to hire her.’
‘And you won’t consider it?’ Louise’s tone switched to appeal.
But Marchand was adamant, responding with dry sarcasm, ‘Not unless I go barking mad, in which case I’d want you to have me committed first.’
‘Very funny.’ Louise pulled a face at her brother’s sour humour. ‘Well, I hope you’ll at least be polite and give her an interview.’
‘If I must.’ He sighed heavily, then apparently consulted his watch as he ran on, ‘Always assuming she turns up. It’s already twenty past the hour.’
‘Yes, I wonder where she’s got...?’ Louise trailed off, her question answered as she looked from her brother to the open French windows and caught sight of Clare.
Her face mirrored her shock, then dismay, but her brother didn’t notice as he went on, ‘Well, if she doesn’t materialise soon, I won’t even interview her.’
‘Fen...’ His sister tried to alert him to Clare’s presence, while casting an apologetic glance in her direction.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Fenwick continued regardless, ‘if your pet safe-robber can’t be bothered to show up on time—’
‘Fen!’ Louise whispered his name fiercely, at the same time nodding towards the window.
He must have finally caught on, as Clare saw a figure rise from the chair a second before she decided to cut and run herself. She didn’t literally run, but walked quickly away, believing neither would be anxious to follow.
She was wrong. Marchand not only followed but, when his shouted, ‘Hold on!’ was ignored, caught up in a few strides and grabbed at her arm.
Forced to turn, Clare came face to face with Fenwick Marchand for the first time. It was a shock.
She had expected him to be of the same age as Louise—about fifty. But he was much nearer forty. She’d also expected him to look like his voice—bloodless, pompous and self-righteous. She couldn’t believe this tall, fair, beautiful man could be a scholarly professor of politics.
He mirrored her look of disbelief. What had he expected? A woman with a number stamped across her forehead?
In some ways Clare had changed little during her three years in prison. Now twenty-six, she still had the small, gamine features that made her look young for her age. And, though her once abundant mass of red hair had been ruthlessly cropped short, the boyish cut emphasised that youthfulness. But she was too thin and too hard-eyed to be considered a beauty any more.
Marchand continued to stare at her until he felt her pulling at his grip, then he muttered, ‘I’m not going to apologise, you know.’
‘No one asked you to,’ Clare responded coldly.
‘You shouldn’t have been eavesdropping,’ he went on. ‘It’s normal to come to the front door of a house.’
‘I did,’ Clare spat back. ‘Here!’
She shoved the lion door-knocker in his hand. He stared at it in puzzlement.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘From your front door, and no, I wasn’t pinching it,’ she said before he could suggest such a thing. ‘It came off in my hand.’
‘How odd,’ he commented, still frowning.
She retorted, ‘Not really. Someone had already unscrewed it from its plate.’
‘Ah.’ Enlightenment dawned on Fenwick Marchand. ‘I think I can guess who. I’ll see he’s punished.’
‘Don’t bother on my account.’ Clare shrugged. ‘He’s saved us both time.’
‘What do you mean?’ the man demanded.
‘You won’t have to go through the motions of an interview now,’ Clare explained, ‘and I won’t have to make a wasted effort to impress you. I’ll leave you to square things with Louise,’ she concluded briskly, and would have walked away if he hadn’t tightened his grip on her arm.
‘Hold on,’ he protested. ‘You can’t just walk off like this.’
‘Why not?’ Clare rallied.
‘Well...I mean to say...you have come for an interview, after all,’ he argued, somewhat inarticulately for a professor.
‘You’re not about to offer me a job, are you?’ Clare challenged point-blank, and, at his lack of response, added, ‘So, there’s not much more to say.’
Again she tried to walk away and again he stopped her, muttering, ‘You’re making me out to be very narrow-minded. I’m not.’
‘Really?’ Clare’s tone suggested she couldn’t care less what he was like.
His lips thinned slightly. ‘Look, if it were just me, I’d be willing to give you a chance, but I need someone who’ll also keep an eye on my son and, frankly—’
