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Angelos’s tone was quiet but so definite it was almost like a slap in the face, making Jessica’s head go back sharply as he watched her.
She was definitely rattled now, he noted with grim satisfaction, seeing how her blue eyes had widened in her pale face. They were huge, dark pools above suddenly ashen cheeks and, though she tried to cover up her concern, he could see the anxiety that clouded her eyes. Even the sleek chestnut hair had tumbled from the clips that she had used to hold it back and was now falling loose around her neck, a stray strand catching on her cheek.
She looked so much more like a real woman than the ice queen who had greeted him on his arrival and who had just tried none too subtly to eject him from the house. But he knew that the image was nothing but an illusion. The lady of the manor mask might have deserted her at the moment but as soon as she gathered breath it would be back in place—temporarily at least. But he had news for her that would soon shatter her belief in the way her life was going to work out, the role she was destined to play. The plans she had.
He was going to enjoy stripping them from her once and for all.
‘Mr Rousakis needs to be here for this,’ the lawyer put in carefully, grimacing as he saw the glare that Jessica directed at him.
‘And are you going to explain why?’
‘Would you like a drink?’ Angelos inserted smoothly, lifting a bottle of wine from the tray.
The look she turned on him should have shrivelled him into dust where he stood—or, at least, he knew that was what she wished for. He took a particular satisfaction in not shrivelling at all but meeting her blazing eyes head-on.
‘Do I need one?’ she shot at him and he felt his mouth curl into a smile in response to her angry question. She looked like nothing so much as a small, elegant cat hissing and spitting at an unwelcome intruder into her territory.
The smile incensed her further, he noted as her teeth actually snapped together in an attempt to hold back the fury she wanted to let loose.
‘You might find it easier to relax.’
And, to emphasise the point, he flung himself down into one of the big, squashy tan leather chairs and leaned back, stretching out his legs in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. Taking a long swallow of the water he had poured, he allowed himself another small smile behind the glass.
She caught it of course. He heard her breath hiss in between her teeth in response as he nodded to the waiting lawyer, indicating that Hilton should go ahead.
‘Would you like to…?’ the other man began but Angelos shook his head firmly.
He knew that there was no likelihood that Lady Jessica would believe anything he told her. She would need the legal facts spelled out to her by someone she trusted, someone she had to believe. And that had to be Simeon Hilton.
Besides, he wanted his attention free to see exactly what happened to her face when the truth hit home.
‘You have the papers…’
With a wave of his hand he indicated the folders that Simeon had placed on the big leather-topped desk.
‘You’d better explain everything. Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in.’
Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in…
Jessica had no idea just why those words hit home to her as hard as they did. There was nothing in Angelos’s tone to upset her. The way he spoke was as casual and conversational as if he was simply passing the time of day with a couple of friends. Nothing to worry her in that.
No—it was the fact that there seemed to be nothing to worry her in his tone that set all her mental alarm bells ringing, bringing her warning nerves to red alert in the space of a single heartbeat. From being an intruder—a stranger who had turned up unannounced and uninvited to her stepfather’s funeral—he had slowly but surely morphed into someone who was far too much at ease, far too much in control for her peace of mind. From the moment that he had walked into the house he had gone his own way, no matter what she said or did. He had been a dark, watchful presence at the graveside, a silent, black-eyed observer at the reception afterwards. He looked almost…
The word slithered away from her as Simeon seated himself at the desk and shuffled through the files, picking one up and tapping it straight on the desktop, then clearing his throat carefully.
‘About Marty—your stepfather’s will…’ he said.
‘There can’t be any problem with that.’
In spite of her determination not to, Jessica found herself a chair and sank down into it. Something in the way that Simeon spoke, the way he looked at her over his reading glasses, suddenly took the strength from her legs. It was either sit down—fast—or risk them giving way beneath her and with Angelos’s cold dark eyes fixed so closely on her face, she was determined not to let that happen. At a time like this dignity was important, and if keeping her dignity meant conceding just a little then she was fine with that.
‘Marty had everything sorted out. He arranged everything just as he wanted it.’
Why wasn’t Simeon nodding? He should be nodding, surely? Smiling and nodding and saying that yes, that was right.
‘We came to see you two years ago—when I turned twenty-three—and he said that he wanted to leave everything to me. Wasn’t that legal, then?’
The shock in her voice was as much from the memory of how she had felt that day, made worse now by the worry and uncertainty about just what was going on.
She had never actually believed that Marty would leave her everything. They had always been close—her mother’s second husband, the only father she had ever known—and the warmth between them had grown as they’d clung together after Andrea’s death in a train crash. And of course he’d been there for her seven years ago, moving in to take action, rescuing her from the repercussions of her foolishness, dealing with things…Jessica’s eyes slid to the dark, silent man in the other chair and she shivered, just remembering when she’d come up against Angelos Rousakis all those years ago.
But she had always believed that there must be someone else who had a far better right to, a far greater demand on the Robbins estate—distant relatives, friends, charities—to whom he would bequeath his fortune rather than to her.
Marty had assured her there was no one else. He had been an only child of only children; any cousins, once twice or even three times removed, had died long ago and he had no descendants of his own.
‘Marie could never have children,’ he’d told her in a sorrowful recollection of his first marriage to a woman who had died of cancer at the early age of thirty-five. ‘And by the time I met your mother we were both past that. But you’ve been the daughter I always wanted. The only family I need.’
He had known how much she loved the house, and the land that went with it, he’d said. And he knew that she would care for it, look after it in just the way he’d wanted. She would keep the farms running, be a fair landlady to the tenants, and of course she had always adored the horses.
‘I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather leave it to.’
She’d been overwhelmed, overjoyed, and, knowing she could never thank him, she had set herself instead to learn everything she could about the estate, working with Marty so that she would know how to handle everything when the time came. She had hoped to have so much longer to do so. Jessica had dreamed of maybe taking over the estate when Marty retired, and neither of them had ever thought that the end would come so soon.
The thought that she would be able to carry things on as her stepfather had wished had been the only consolation she had had when the sudden heart attack had taken him when she had least expected it.
‘Yes, that was quite legal,’ Simeon assured her. ‘Then.’
‘Then?’
The single word, hastily added, snagged on a raw nerve and tugged. It made her sit up straighter, a frown drawing her brows together, all her attention focused on the man at the desk.
‘Did something happen? Did Marty change his will?’
Simeon shook his head. ‘He left everything just as it was. That was the problem.’
‘The problem…Simeon, you’re going to have to explain this to me—it’s not making any sense. Marty left everything to me—so what’s the problem?’
‘The problem is that by the time he died Marty didn’t have anything to leave—to you or to anyone else.’
‘He didn’t?’
Jessica was having to struggle to try to understand just what Simeon actually meant. His words sounded as if they were coming to her down a long, echoing tunnel so that they rang distortedly in her head. And the problem was desperately aggravated by her painful awareness of the way that Angelos was sitting silently still, observing everything.
It was as if he had a sharp wire attached to her, one that kept up a constant, steady tug on every nerve, drawing her attention to him. It was a tug she fought to resist. She was having a hard enough time coping with just what Simeon was telling her. If she looked into Angelos’s face, read what he was thinking there, then she would go to pieces at once. She just knew it.
And so she forced herself to keep her face turned towards the lawyer, praying that Angelos could read nothing of her mood, or her fears, from the profile she presented to him.
‘Just what are you saying?’
‘That over the last year—eighteen months—Marty started to gamble.’
‘He always liked a flutter on the horses!’ Jessica exclaimed. ‘It was the only hobby he had. He…’
Her voice failed her as she met Simeon’s eyes, saw the expression on his face.
‘This wasn’t any sort of hobby, Jessica,’ the lawyer told her sombrely and a cold hand squeezed her heart, stilling her completely. ‘And it wasn’t anything like the way he’d been betting before. He started betting more money than he’d ever done—more than was wise. At first he won, so I suppose that made him bet more and more. But then apparently he started losing—and he’d bet more to try to win back his losses.’
Oh, Marty! Jessica had known that something was troubling her stepfather. He’d changed, lost weight, started smoking again when he’d given up years before as a promise to Andrea. Jessica had tried to get him to talk but he’d always dismissed her concerns. Told her she was worrying unnecessarily. And she had to admit that, caught up with her romance with Chris and the excitement of his proposal, just lately she’d been preoccupied and hadn’t seen as much as she should have done.
‘How bad did it get?’
Did she have to ask? Didn’t she know the answer from the gravity of Simeon’s tone, the look in his eyes?
‘The worst. He lost everything—he would have had to move out, leave Manorfield for good, if someone hadn’t stepped in and bailed him out.’
‘Who?’
Jessica winced as she heard the way her voice croaked, the break in the middle of the short word. Again, did she have to ask? The cruel hand that had been squeezing her heart suddenly gave it a vicious, painful wrench as she felt rather than saw the sudden change in the attitude of the other man in the room and glimpsed out of the corner of her eye the way he straightened in his chair, uncrossed his legs.
‘Who bailed him out?’
‘I did.’
The answer came from Angelos as she had known it must. The terrible dark sense of inevitability that had reached out and enfolded her ever since Simeon had begun the story had deepened and tightened around her neck, it seemed, threatening to strangle her as it closed off all the air from her lungs. There could be no other possible answer really. No other reason why he was here and why Simeon had treated him with such courtesy, such respect.
It took an effort to turn her head and face him, to look straight at him when she had spent the last minutes desperately trying to do the exact opposite. She dreaded what she would see in his face, the triumph there must be in his eyes.
But in fact all she could see was a dark, opaque shadow, no features, no details visible at all. The late afternoon sun had actually come out so that Angelos was just a black figure silhouetted against the huge bay window with its leaded panes.
‘What did you do?’
‘I bought him out.’
Stark and flat, the statement still had the power to stab like a brutal sword, slashing through everything she had believed—everything she’d hoped was going to come true.
‘I bought him out—paid off all his debts, got the creditors off his back and gave him a breathing space.’
‘You bought him out? But you couldn’t—there’s no way… how…’
‘You shouldn’t live in the past, Princess,’ Angelos drawled softly, getting to his feet and crossing to the table to refill his glass. ‘People change. I am no longer the stable boy you thought you could have a sordid little fling with. In fact I never was.’
‘What…?’ Jessica began, but he ignored her interjection, cutting straight across her attempt to say something, ask just what he meant.
‘I am more than capable of buying out your stepfather and saving him from ruin three times over if I wanted to.’
‘You make it sound as if you did him a favour, but I can’t believe that. You’re not that sort of a philanthropist. You don’t do things out of generosity—selfless charity. There had to be something you got out of it too.’
‘Oh, there was. I can assure you that I got everything I wanted—everything and more.’
Now at last she could see his face in the light from the window and what she read there made her heart quail inside her chest. Her breathing snagged again as she met his cold eyed, harsh-faced expression and saw the way that his eyes burned with icy anger, with the darkest searing contempt she had ever seen.
‘And…and that was…?’ she managed, snatching in her breath on a raw painful gasp.
‘You’re standing in it, Princess.’
The long-fingered hand that held the glass gestured in an arc that took in the whole room, the long, polished wooden floor, the huge marble fireplace with another set of leather armchairs and chesterfields standing before it, the range of bookcases on every wall, crammed to the edges with reading matter. And then, with his eyes fixed on her face so she knew he saw every tiny flicker of reaction, every tremor that crossed her features, the wide-eyed stare of blank disbelief and shock, he gestured again so that this time the movement widened enough to encapsulate the whole of the house, the grounds beyond—and the miles and miles of Manorfield estate as well.
‘I’ve wanted Manorfield since the time I first saw it when I came here seven years ago. I was determined never to give up until it was mine. Marty’s gambling, his debts, played right into my hands. I bailed him out to the price of the estate.’
‘I don’t believe you—I won’t believe you. If you’d owned Manorfield then you’d have been here like a shot. Marty still lived here—he was still running the estate.’
‘Because I let him. Because it suited me. Marty was an older man—I wasn’t going to throw him out on the streets, even if he had been happy to treat me that way. And, besides, he knew what was needed here—he knew how to handle things. That also suited me. So I let him stay on.’
Angelos paused, took a slow sip of his drink and swallowed it down, his eyes still holding her shocked blue ones over the rim of the fine crystal glass.
‘If he’d lived longer, I’d have let him stay on a while. But not any more, Jessica. That concession was for Marty only—it ended when he died. Once that happened, Manorfield was mine and all mine. The will your stepfather made has no validity—none at all. There’s nothing for you to inherit, you see. He couldn’t leave you anything because he didn’t own anything—barely even the clothes that he stood up in. All the rest was mine.’
He paused, took another swallow of his drink and, as he did so, Jessica felt the first terrible tremors of shock, the trembling of her limbs that made her grateful for the fact that she was sitting down.
Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in…
Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in…
The words swung round and round in her head, gaining a terrible extra significance with each repetition. She knew now with a dreadful sense of inevitability just what was coming. And she knew that there was no way she could stop it.
She could only sit there and try to control her reactions as she waited for the axe to fall.
He took his time about it. And she knew that was because he was enjoying every moment of this.
‘The truth of the matter is, my dear Jessica, that you can’t inherit Manorfield or any part of it because I own it all—the house, the farms, every last single blade of grass. They are all mine. And you are left with precisely nothing. Not even a home. Because the Manor House is mine and I intend to live here from now on.’
‘No…’
Jessica could only sit and shake her head, struggling, wishing, hoping that by denying Angelos’s arrogant statement she could make it into a nightmare, make it unreal. This couldn’t be happening—it couldn’t…
But even when she looked at Simeon for help she knew that she was not going to get it. Marty’s solicitor was sitting at the desk, the papers in front of him, and the expression on his face, the way that he had done nothing to contradict Angelos’s coldhearted declaration left her without a single hope in her heart.
Everything that he had said was the truth. Every last appalling fact. And now she knew just why his arrival had filled her with such a sense of creeping dread. Why she had known as soon as he’d walked into the room that he was here to do something dreadful, something that would destroy every trace of her peace of mind.
The man she had called the Black Angel was back in her life—and it seemed that he had taken it over and turned it upside down. And it would never be the same again.
CHAPTER THREE
JESSICA sighed deeply, turned over for what felt like the millionth time that night and buried her face in the pillows.
‘Oh, that was horrible!’ she said aloud as she struggled to surface from the dark, clinging sleep that had held her. ‘Horrible!’
She had dreamed that the Black Angel was back in her life and that he…
