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Sir Charles drew himself up in righteous indignation. ‘I won’t have that kind of talk at my dinner table,’ he pronounced pompously. ‘If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, you’d better leave the room.’
‘That’s exactly what I was planning to do,’ she retorted. ‘I couldn’t stand to sit here with the pair of you wittering on a moment longer! Neither of you ever listen to each other anyway. I’m going down to the stables—at least the company’s a little more civilised down there!’
Her temper was still simmering as she walked down to the stables. She knew she shouldn’t have been so rude to her father, but she felt as if she had been stretched on a rack all day—and his posturing had been just about the last straw.
Of course, she shouldn’t be the least bit surprised at the way he was behaving, trying to thwart poor old Gramps’s wishes even after his death. It wasn’t as if he needed the money—he seemed to have business interests all over the place; there were always companies who were eager to pay for the kudos of his aristocratic links and public-school education, though she had the impression that they generally saw through him pretty quickly, and kept him out of any serious areas of responsibility.
The stables were warm and quiet. Fury wickered softly in greeting, nuzzling into her shoulder, hopeful that she had brought him an apple. She had, of course, and one for Lady too, then she perched up on the partition of the stall as she watched them munching contentedly.
‘Maybe it’s time I started to look for a place of my own anyway,’ she mused, idly stroking the horse’s thick mane. ‘After all, I’m twenty-two. The only problem is, what am I going to do with you two? I’ll have to find a livery stable for you somewhere. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re comfortable. But it won’t be quite the same as having you at home.’
Fury regarded her with one liquid brown eye, completely understanding every word she said.
* * *
She had had the day off for Gramps’s funeral, but the next day found Pippa back at work behind the counter of the small flower-shop she owned, in partnership with her friend Marjorie. They had been in business for nearly eighteen months now, and the shop was proving so successful that they were thinking about opening another one.
Situated on the edge of Stratford-upon-Avon, close to the river, it was one of a row of medieval half-timbered houses that had been preserved and turned into shops—there was a tea-shop next door, and an antiques dealer, and a very smart dress shop at the end of the row. It was the kind of hidden corner that the tourists loved, stumbling across it unexpectedly and ever after convinced that they were one of an exclusive few who had found it.
It had been a busy afternoon. As closing time approached, Pippa was helping a customer select a bouquet for his wife’s birthday when she heard the door open. She didn’t bother to look up—Marjorie was already stepping forward with her polite, ‘Can I help you?’ on her lips.
‘Yes—I’d like some flowers to send to a young lady. Roses, I think.’
The sound of that familiar laconic drawl brought Pippa’s head round in astonishment. He must have seen her, though he was acting as if he hadn’t. But it was certainly no coincidence that he had chosen to come in here, out of all the florist shops in town, she reflected, her mind in turmoil—he must have done it deliberately, just to needle her.
But who on earth could he be sending flowers to? A girlfriend in Canada? He had hardly had time to get something going in this country—so far as she was aware, he had arrived only yesterday morning! Not that she cared, of course—it was none of her business...
‘Does that include VAT?’
‘Oh...’ She turned her attention quickly back to her own customer, annoyed with herself for allowing Shaun Morgan to distract her. ‘I beg your pardon.’ She smiled a swift apology. ‘Yes, that’s inclusive of VAT. And delivery within the local area is two pounds ninety-five. Tomorrow, you said?’
Shaun was chosing long-stemmed roses—a pretty expensive trifle, to be paid for out of his new-found wealth, Pippa noted acidly. At least he had chosen yellow instead of red—the significance of sending a dozen red roses would have been unmistakable, and she had no wish to see the girl he proposed to install as the new mistress of Claremont flying over here on the next 747.
Forcing herself to concentrate on what she was doing, she began to write down the address for delivery of the birthday bouquet. But she couldn’t stop herself listening to the conversation taking place at the other end of the counter.
‘What message would you like to put with them?’ Marjorie was asking, the way she was gazing up at Shaun betraying very clearly that that eminently sensible married lady had succumbed without a fight to his smooth masculine charm.
He smiled down at her, just a trace of sardonic humour in his eyes. ‘Let me see. I think just “Will you have dinner with me tonight?” will do,’ he said. ‘And you needn’t bother to put who they’re from—I think she’ll guess.’
Pippa had stiffened, her pen stilled. Marjorie was laughing. ‘Lucky girl,’ she sighed, comfortable enough to amuse him with a little meaningless flirtation. ‘You’d like them delivered this afternoon?’
‘If that’s possible?’
‘No problem,’ she assured him, smiling. ‘I’ll take them myself. Pippa, have you finished with the order pad?’
‘Oh... Yes.’ She pushed it casually across, far too busy with taking her customer’s payment to even notice whom Marjorie was serving—though her jaw was clenched with the effort of ignoring him as much as he was ignoring her.
‘Now...’ Marjorie held her pen poised expectantly. ‘Who are they for?’
‘Miss Philippa Corbett,’ Shaun dictated, only that slight smile betraying his amusement in the situation. ‘The address is Claremont...’
Pippa choked, her cheeks flaming a vivid scarlet as both Marjorie and the other customer stared at her in astonishment. Her eyes clashed with those deep-set hazel ones in a storm of anger—how dared he make a laughing-stock of her like this?
‘Don’t bother to take the order, Marjorie,’ she rapped, snatching back the pad and ripping off the sheet on which her friend had begun to write. ‘It’s just his stupid idea of a joke.’
Shaun put on an air of hurt surprise that wouldn’t have deceived a child. ‘Not at all,’ he protested. ‘Why shouldn’t I send you flowers?’
‘You can save your money,’ she fumed. ‘I’m not going to have dinner with you.’
His mocking laughter was a deliberate goad. ‘My, what a little hornet! You do change sides quickly—I can’t keep up with you. Yesterday afternoon you were batting those big baby-blues at me as if I were the answer to all your prayers!’
‘I was not!’ She caught herself up, furious with him for provoking her into such an undignified public argument. Tilting up her chin at a haughty angle, she responded with icy clarity, ‘Of course, if you chose to be conceited enough to interpret a simple apology for my father’s appalling rudeness as some kind of attempt to flirt with you, that’s up to you. All I can do is assure you that it was nothing of the sort.’
‘Ah, what a pity. And I thought I was beginning to make some headway.’ The regret in his tone was belied by the sardonic glint in his eyes. ‘I guess I’m out of luck.’
Pippa hesitated, lost for a sufficiently cutting response. She was all too uncomfortably aware of Marjorie’s burning curiosity, and the mild amusement of the other customer, who was still standing watching. With a snort of angry frustration, she flashed them all a glare that would have stripped paint, and, turning on her heel, marched out into the back room of the shop.
She was shaking with rage. No one, in all her life, had ever dared to treat her that way! Picking up the flower-scissors in a taut fist, she stabbed them into the wooden draining-board, wishing with all her heart it was Shaun Morgan’s damned handsome face.
Marjorie came in after her, laughing a little uncertainly. ‘Hey, careful,’ she protested. ‘Those are the best scissors. Here.’ She took the pair from Pippa’s hand with exaggerated caution, and substituted some old ones. ‘If you really must start stabbing things, use those. They’re blunt.’
Her friend’s gentle teasing made Pippa laugh at herself. She shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t be much good, then, would they?’ She put the scissors down. ‘I’m sorry, Marje. But I could just kill that man!’
‘Oh, surely not!’ Marjorie protested. ‘He’s gorgeous! What’s he done?’
‘His name’s Shaun Morgan,’ Pippa explained, a slight flush of pink colouring her cheeks. ‘He’s...Gramps’s son.’
Marjorie stared at her in amazement. ‘Well, I never! I never knew he had a son.’
‘Well, he did. Apparently his mother used to be Gramps’s secretary. I can’t say I blame him for going off and having an affair—my grandmother must have been hell to live with. Anyway, he came over for Gramps’s funeral. And according to the solicitor, because Gramps died without making a will, he’s going to inherit all his fortune.’
‘What—the house, and the company and everything?’ Marjorie queried, stunned. ‘But...what about your father?’
‘Oh, he’s hopping mad.’ Pippa confirmed with grim satisfaction. ‘But there’s not a thing he can do about it. The law says it’s a child of the blood who inherits, legitimate or not, and a stepchild gets nothing at all.’
‘Well, I never!’ Marjorie sat down heavily on a convenient stool. ‘No wonder you’re mad at him.’
‘Oh, it isn’t that.’ Pippa pulled a wry face. ‘I’m not bothered about the money at all—in fact it serves my father right that he’s not going to get a penny. But he’s so arrogant! Do you know, he had the nerve to suggest that I was trying to...to get him to marry me, just as my grandmother married Gramps for his money!’
Marjorie laughed, but there was a wise glint in her eyes. She had known Pippa from her babyhood—her own mother was one of Lady Corbett’s closest friends. And although she knew all about the notorious Corbett temper, she was shrewd enough to guess that her young friend would normally have been able to dismiss any such ridiculous suggestion with all her usual sense of humour. This could lead to all sorts of interesting developments!
But the sound of the doorbell prevented her from exploring the situation any further. ‘Damn—there’s a customer,’ she grumbled, rising reluctantly to her feet. ‘Tell me the rest later.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘JEREMY, please—get down!’ Pippa begged, watching anxiously as the handsome boy teetered along the top of the high wall that surrounded the car park of the country club. ‘You’ve had too much to drink—you’ll fall off.’
‘No, I won’t—I can do it,’ he insisted obstinately. ‘Watch me—right the way to the end.’
Their friends were cheering noisily, egging him on. ‘Go on, Jer—attaboy! Go for it!’
Pippa sighed wryly, conceding defeat. Somebody had bet Jeremy fifty pounds he couldn’t walk the wall, and he had needed no second bidding. Considering that he was all of twenty-three years old, the Honorable Jeremy Hardwicke-Cooper frequently behaved like a little boy—especially when, as now, he was what he cheerfully called, ‘hog-whimpering’.
At last, to her profound relief, he reached the end of the wall safely, and swung himself down, caring not a jot for the scuffing of his already rather well-worn dinner-jacket. ‘There!’ he proclaimed in triumph, swooping his arms around her and dropping a lightly affectionate kiss on her forehead. ‘Safe and sound—told you so!’
To be fair, it wasn’t solely an excess of alcohol that accounted for the rowdy high-spirits of the group; having spent the earlier part of the evening dutifully attending a very stuffy charity ball, it was now as if they had been let off the leash.
But Pippa wasn’t really in the mood for their usual high-jinks tonight. As they crossed the car park, she gently detached herself from Jeremy’s casually embracing arm—though in the midst of all the merriment he didn’t seem to notice.
What was the matter with her? These were her closest friends, she had known them all her life—but lately she had begun to feel as though she no longer had much in common with them. The sons and daughters of the wealthiest and most distinguished families in the district, they seemed to take nothing seriously; was she the only one who ever wondered whether there was more to life than driving expensive sports cars too fast, or trying to ski backwards down the red run at Verbier wearing a fright-mask?
They had reached the wide steps that led up to the front porch when she suddenly became aware that she was being watched. Someone had just got out of a car on the far side of the car park—and some sixth sense had told her who it was before her eyes even met those deep-set hazel ones.
Shaun Morgan acknowledged her with a faintly sardonic smile, and she turned away quickly, an odd little flutter accelerating her heartbeat, her cheeks slightly pink. To cover her reaction she added her laughter loudly to someone’s childish joke, grasping Jeremy’s hand as she skipped lightly up the steps to the porch.
‘Come on—I want to dance all night!’ she declared, a little over-bright.
‘I’m game for that!’
It was a boisterous crowd that erupted into the elegant bar of the club. Pippa was perhaps the only one sober enough to realise that they were behaving very badly, expecting lesser mortals to steer out of their way, demanding and receiving first service at the bar. But some evil demon seemed to have got hold of her, goading her to even more outrageous extremes.
‘Champers!’ she demanded imperiously. ‘I won’t drink anything less.’
‘Of course not!’ concurred Jeremy, as if such an idea was unthinkable. ‘The very best. Hey, Kevin,’ he called out to the barman. ‘How about building us a couple of magnums of that Bollers down here—and make it snappy, eh?’
Pippa was acutely aware that Shaun had come into the bar shortly behind them. He had slanted just one disparaging glance in their direction, and then turned away to talk to his companions, totally indifferent to the juvenile antics of the beautiful young things at the bar.
Well, damn him—why should she care what he thought of her? Whatever she did, he was going to despise her. Besides, who needed Shaun Morgan anyway? There were plenty of other young men who seemed more than interested in winning her favour—wealthy, handsome, highly eligible young men like Jeremy.
But try as she might to deny it, she knew that she was doing all she could to make him notice her, even if in the most negative way. And the less she was succeeding, the more desperately she tried. He seemed to be totally absorbed in the conversation at his table; it hadn’t taken him long to get on social terms with the directors of Morgans, she reflected tartly—the party he was with consisted of two of the senior board members and their wives.
Without actually drinking very much, she was managing to give the impression of hogging a whole magnum of champagne to herself, waving it around as she laughed and joked, flirting outrageously with Jeremy and all the other young men in the crowd.
They had seemed at first a little surprised at her uncharacteristic behaviour, but were soon responding eagerly. A loud quarrel had broken out between Jeremy and Peter for the honour of drinking champagne out of her shoe.
‘It’s my prerogative,’ Jeremy was insisting, brushing aside his best friend’s protests. ‘It was me she came in with!’
‘But I thought of it first,’ Peter argued plaintively. ‘It’s really not sporting, you know, pinching another chap’s idea.’
Clutching the long satin skirt of her lapis-blue evening dress in one hand, Pippa skipped up on to a bar stool, slipping off one dainty shoe and dangling it above their heads. ‘I’ll settle the argument once and for all,’ she declared brazenly. ‘Whichever of you can reach my shoe can be the one to drink out of it.’
There was an immediate scramble as all the young men in their crowd—and several hangers-on—vied eagerly for the prize. She laughed teasingly, holding it just out of their reach; but too late she realised that she had chosen a precarious perch as in the mêlée someone knocked against the stool, and suddenly she felt herself losing her balance.
She fell backwards with a small shriek—into a pair of safe, strong arms. ‘Well, that wasn’t a very sensible thing to do,’ an all-too-familiar voice commented with dry humour as he set her on her feet. ‘You could have broken your ankle.’
She glared up at him, too resentful of his mockery to thank him for saving her. ‘So what?’ she pouted. ‘A short life and a merry one!’
‘A broken ankle wouldn’t be very likely to kill you,’ Shaun pointed out dampeningly. ‘You’d just have a couple of very uncomfortable months in a plaster. I can’t help but think that would cramp your social life somewhat.’
She shrugged in a gesture of haughty indifference, lifting her foot to slip her shoe back on, angry that he was still holding her in the circle of his strong arms, angry with herself for having given him the excuse to do so.
‘Let’s dance.’ Without troubling to ask her permission, he drew her out on to the floor.
She stiffened, alarmed at the prospect of being held close to him any longer. ‘No!’
‘Why not?’ The hint of challenge in those level eyes told her that he had recognised her fear.
‘I...I want to go back to my friends,’ she temporised, knowing full well that he couldn’t have prevented her if she had only resisted more forcefully.
‘Back to those idiots?’ He cast a scornful glance over her shoulder at the gaping crowd they had left behind. ‘Is that why you wouldn’t go out to dinner with me—because you prefer to hang out with a bunch of Hooray Henrys?’
‘They aren’t Hooray Henrys,’ she protested indignantly.
‘They sure look like it to me. And seeing you with them does absolutely nothing to improve my opinion of you.’
‘So?’ She was finding it difficult to keep her heartbeat steady, being held so close to him—his body was strong and hard, and there was a faint musky scent in her nostrils that made her feel strangely dizzy. ‘I told you before, I don’t give a damn for your opinion.’
‘True,’ he concurred. ‘But for the record, I’ll give it to you anyway. You’re a spoilt little rich bitch, and my strongest inclination is to put you over my knee and smack your bottom.’
She tried to return him a frosty glare, but she couldn’t quite meet his eyes—and anyway the effect would have been ruined by the hot blush that sprang to her cheeks. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ she protested breathlessly. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘Well, for a start, I’m the man who owns Claremont, however much you and your precious parents might dislike the idea,’ he responded, coolly provocative.
She tried to draw back from him, her anger at boiling point. ‘Why, you bast—’ She shut her mouth abruptly as she realised what she was saying, her colour deepening to a vivid scarlet.
‘Go on—why don’t you say it?’ he taunted, drawing her back even closer into his arms. ‘I’m a bastard. I’m not ashamed of that fact. I’d rather have been born out of wedlock than into the kind of marriage my father had with your grandmother.’
Her mind was struggling in vain for an answer, but deep down she was too inclined to agree with him to be able to retaliate. And anyway, it was impossible to think straight when he was holding her so intimately close, moving her slowly to the music, his warm breath stirring her hair.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the warmth of his arms was melting the ice in her spine, the musky male scent of his skin invading her senses, drugging her mind. She closed her eyes, surrendering to the spell he had woven around them, a spell that was causing everything else to fade to a dark blur, until it seemed as though he was the only real and solid thing in the whole world.
As the music changed, she made no further attempt to pull away from him. The whole length of her body was curved intimately against his, as if it had been cast as part of the same mould. She could sense a fierce male hunger in his embrace, but a tide of purely feminine submissiveness was flooding through her, filling her with a strange glow of warmth that seemed to be melting her bones...
A sudden loud roar of laughter from Jeremy snatched her back abruptly to the real world. He seemed to have already forgotten her existence—he had clambered on to a table, and was trying boozily to balance a half-full magnum of champagne on top of his head as he began to strip off his jacket.
‘I hope you’re not proposing to let that drunken lout drive you home?’ Shaun enquired, his voice laced with scorn.
She retreated swiftly into a pose of defensive disdain. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she countered with studied indifference. ‘What are you going to do about it? Report him to the police?’
‘If we were in Canada, I’d be the police.’
She stared at him in blank surprise. ‘You’re a policeman?’
His smile was grim. ‘That’s what I said. And I don’t find the idea of drunken driving at all clever or funny. You should see the consequences of a freeway accident some time, or maybe have to go knocking on some poor family’s door at one in the morning to tell them their kid’s been smashed up or killed. You might learn something about real life.’
His low, ferocious voice made her shiver, and she swallowed hard, ashamed now of the flippancy she had put on deliberately to annoy him. ‘I...I didn’t know you were a policeman,’ she stammered.
‘Detective,’ he amended shortly. ‘But I guess I’ll be handing in my badge now.’ She glanced up at him questioningly. ‘I’ve just inherited a pretty large chunk of an engineering business,’ he pointed out with dry emphasis. ‘I ought to see about learning how to run it properly.’
