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Meryl chuckled, liking the old woman’s frankness. ‘I might be,’ she said. ‘But don’t count on the marriage. It’s starting to look like one of my crazier ideas.’ She gave a rueful sigh. ‘I’m afraid I have a lot of those.’
Hannah didn’t answer. She was examining the discarded clothes, noting their luxurious quality. ‘I’ll take these to dry,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘You stay by the fire until your room is ready.’
She hurried out and Meryl huddled before the flames, feeling herself thaw out blissfully. The bathrobe was made for someone much larger and could almost have wrapped twice around her slim figure. She tightened the belt, but still had to clutch the edges together at the front.
The room seemed to be a library. Everywhere she saw signs of one-time grandeur declined to shabbiness. The carpet was threadbare, but no more so than the heavy curtains, battling with small success, to shield the rattling windows.
‘He really needs me,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe we can do business. If only I hadn’t arrived like this! Me! A damsel in distress, for Pete’s sake! Rescued from peril like some Victorian heroine. I’ll never live it down.’
She looked up quickly as the door opened. It was her rescuer, wearing fresh clothes and with his hair rubbed until it was almost dry. She saw now that it was dark brown, shaggy and needed a cut. With him were the two dogs, who made straight for Meryl.
‘Good evening,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, fending off Alsatians with one hand and holding the robe with the other. ‘You know who I am, but—’
‘I’m Jarvis Larne,’ he said.
Her head whirled. ‘You? Lord Larne? You can’t be!’
It was more wishful thinking than conviction, and Meryl could have bitten off her tongue the moment the words were out. But it was too late now. The man’s sardonic face showed that he could follow her thoughts.
‘Why can’t I be? Because I don’t stand to attention for you? Just who did you think you were talking to back there? The bailiff?’
This was too close for comfort. ‘Certainly not,’ she said with dignity. ‘I never dreamed you could be Lord Larne because you’re so different to your letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘The one you wrote in answer to my advertisement.’
‘Advertisement?’
‘Oh, look! That ad was foolish, I admit, but don’t deny that you answered it. Now I’ve seen this place I can understand why.’
‘Wait a minute,’ he said, peering at her more closely. ‘Are you the woman who was looking for a fortune-hunter?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted defensively. ‘It might have been better put, but—’
‘And you think I’m the answer to your prayers?’
‘No,’ she said with spirit, ‘just the answer to my ad. My prayers are for something quite different.’
‘Then why bother with me?’
‘You wrote to me.’
‘I never wrote to you.’
She pounced on her purse, thankful that this, at least, she’d managed to save from the waves. Pulling out the letter, she thrust it at him. Watching his face as he read the contents, she saw disbelief change to outrage.
‘I’ll kill him,’ he said at last. ‘I will personally wring his stupid neck, and then I’ll boot his rear from here to kingdom come.’
‘Who?’
‘Ferdy Ashton. I recognise his writing and his turn of phrase.’
A cold hand was beginning to clutch Meryl’s stomach. There was something horribly convincing about his exasperation. She’d come all this way—
‘Are you telling me someone else wrote this in your name?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t believe it. Nobody would do such a stupid thing.’
‘Then you don’t know Ferdy,’ Jarvis Larne said bitterly. ‘There’s nothing that idiot wouldn’t get up to. I told him I wanted nothing to do with it—or with you.’
‘For a man who needs money as badly as you do, you’re very high-handed.’
‘My need for money is my business and certainly none of yours. I don’t believe a word of this nonsense. You’re a journalist, aren’t you? Well, you’ll not get a story out of me. I don’t like you. I don’t want you here, and the sooner you’re gone the better I’ll be pleased.’
‘A journalist? Me?’ He was briefly taken aback by the fierceness of her outrage, but his face remained unyielding. ‘My name,’ she said emphatically, ‘is Meryl Winters.’
‘So?’
‘My father was Craddock Winters.’
He still looked blank. ‘Of whom the world says—?’
‘He drilled a few oil wells.’
‘And that made him rich enough for his daughter to act like a headless chicken?’
‘Yes!’
‘All right, we’ll assume that I believe you. I’m not saying I do, but let’s pretend. Why find a husband this way? I’d have thought the world was full of fortune-hunters without having to advertise your desperation. And you don’t look too bad.’
Meryl stared at him, almost beyond speech. ‘Not too bad?’
‘OK, you’re passable—for a man whose taste runs to brunettes. Mine doesn’t, and even if it did you’re the last woman I’d want.’
She breathed hard. ‘I was not proposing a love match—’
‘Luckily for both of us—’
‘It’s a serious business proposition.’
Jarvis Larne snorted. ‘And I’m Santa Claus.’
‘I said business and I meant business. Nothing else would persuade me even to consider marriage to a man who has all the charm of a scrubbing brush. Unfortunately I need you almost as much as you appear to need me—’
‘I do not need you, madam!’
‘Let me finish. Under my father’s will I don’t get full control of my money until I’m twenty-seven, which is nearly three years away. Unless I marry. Then I get it on my wedding day. But until then I’m stuck.’
‘Sounds like somebody knew you pretty well,’ Jarvis Larne said grimly. ‘If you were my daughter I’d make you wait until you were fifty, and even then I doubt you’d have learned common sense.’
‘Now look—’
‘You look. You’ve got cuckoos in your head. So you got an answer to this stupid ad. You couldn’t telephone? Or find a way to check up? Oh no! You jump on the first plane and come to a place you know nothing about, to throw yourself into the arms of a man you also know nothing about.’
‘I had no intention of throwing myself into your arms or anyone else’s,’ Meryl said, speaking with difficulty. ‘What is on offer is my cash in return for the use of your name. Just that. No extras, because you don’t appeal to me—’
‘Well, you’ll excuse me if I don’t shoot myself—’
‘As for knowing nothing about you—I thought I did know something. The man who wrote this letter is charming, which rules you out, I see that now.’
‘Nobody has ever called me charming,’ he agreed. ‘It’s been very useful in keeping me safe from silly women.’
She regarded him with her head tilted. ‘You wouldn’t find my dowry silly. It would mend the holes in this place. Do you have any other way of mending them?’
‘That does not concern you,’ he said in a dangerous voice.
Meryl didn’t answer at once. It was typical of her that, at the height of the row, her temper faded and she began to see that this had a funny side.
‘Please don’t be nervous,’ she told him sweetly. ‘I promise you I have no designs on your virtue.’
That infuriated him, she was glad to note. ‘Don’t push me too far, madam.’
‘Let’s get to the bottom line. I need your name; you need my money.’
‘What I need is your absence,’ he retorted through gritted teeth. ‘Preferably at once, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’
‘And then I’m supposed to leave? How? In my drowned car?’
‘We’ll find it when the tide’s out.’ He became suddenly very interested in the contents of his desk.
‘When I’ve got it back I’ll decide what to do. And would you please have the decency to look at me while I’m talking to you?’
‘It’s for the sake of decency that I’m not looking at you,’ he growled, keeping his gaze averted.
Glancing down, she saw that the belt had become untied, and the bathrobe had sagged open, so that her nakedness was completely revealed. She was briefly too nonplussed to move, and in that moment Jarvis, thinking it safe, turned his gaze back to her. He looked away again almost at once, but in the split second she met his eyes she saw a flash of reaction. Meryl hastily retied the belt, feeling dizzy.
So he thought she was only passable, did he? She knew differently now.
He began talking, still with his face averted.
‘It serves you right for acting without thinking,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘The sooner this nonsense is over, the better.’
‘It’s all right, you can look now.’
He did so. ‘Hannah will see you to your room, and take you up some supper.’
‘You mean you’re not inviting me to eat with you?’
He regarded her. ‘Wearing that?’
‘Aren’t there some clothes I could borrow?’
‘You’ve already got my robe. What else can I offer you?’
She folded her arms and regarded him challengingly. ‘Lord Larne, anyone would think you didn’t want me to dine with you.’
‘You amaze me.’
‘Well?’
‘I was being polite about it. I still think there’s something fishy about you—’
She gave a choke of laughter. ‘After that swim I should think there is.’
Her unexpected humour disconcerted him, but he recovered. ‘I don’t trust you and I won’t spend another moment talking to you.’ He raised his voice to call, ‘Hannah, you can come in now.’
The door opened so quickly that it was clear Hannah had been eavesdropping and that her employer accepted it as normal.
‘Please take Miss Winters to the Green Room, make sure she’s warm and well fed.’
‘Like I’m a horse,’ Meryl observed.
‘Miss Winters, if I was to give my honest opinion about what you are we’d be here all night and one of us would be arrested for murder. Let’s both quit while we’re ahead.’
He strode out, without waiting for her reply.
Hannah produced a pair of slippers. ‘They’re Jarvis’s,’ she said. ‘You could have had mine but I’m afraid—’ She paused delicately.
‘I’ve got big feet,’ Meryl said without rancour. ‘It comes with being built like a beanpole—as a certain person described me tonight.’
‘It’s just until your own things are dried out. I’ll show you to your room.’
Lord Larne’s slippers were three sizes too large, forcing Meryl to walk without flexing her feet. Crossing the great hall she caught a glimpse of herself in a long mirror and realised that between the huge robe and the floppy footwear she was waddling like a duck in a duvet.
Adventure.
Then her attention was claimed by her surroundings. Stone walls covered with shields and weapons arranged in circles, paintings of battles, suits of armour: the English Middle Ages came to life all around her as she turned and turned in dazed circles.
‘I’ll show you over the place tomorrow,’ Hannah said as she gently urged her up the vast curving staircase.
‘He’s going to throw me out tomorrow,’ Meryl informed her cheerfully. ‘Either that or murder me in my bed. I don’t think he’s quite decided.’
‘Are you going to let him throw you out?’
‘Certainly not. I might decide to leave, but if he thinks I’m going at his command, he’s got another think coming.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Hannah said, sounding pleased.
They were passing down a poorly lit stone corridor, Meryl moving slowly as she looked about her. ‘These walls are so old,’ she said in wonder, ‘and battered.’
