The Ultimate Surrender

“No man could,” Polly agreed.

“Not in your life, then, but perhaps it’s a different matter when it comes to your bed.”

Polly stared at him.

He continued. “If I’d known, I might have done this much sooner….” His mouth came down on her own with a determination that made her whole body start to tremble.

“Kiss me properly,” Marcus demanded rawly against her lips.

“Marcus,” she started to protest, but the moment her lips parted his were covering them, devouring them…devouring her.

And the resistance drained out of her body.

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PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan's novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

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About the Author

Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Ultimate Surrender

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘HI, MA, guess what? I think I’ve found the perfect woman for Uncle Marcus. Her name’s Suzi Howell. We met her when Chris and I were having dinner with his parents. Suzi’s mother is Chris’s godmother, and she’s gorgeous; tall, blonde—you know, that stylish, elegant type that Marcus always goes for. And she’s the right age—late twenties—and she knows all about the hotel trade because she works for some super-exclusive American outfit in the Caribbean, and—’

‘Briony…’ Polly Fraser’s muffled voice interrupted her daughter’s eulogy as Polly emerged from the deep recess of the kitchen cupboard she had been cleaning out.

Why was it one’s offspring always chose the most inauspicious of moments to make such announcements? Polly wondered as she gingerly extricated herself from the cupboard and put its contents on the worktop which she was kneeling with one leg whilst standing on her step-ladder with the other.

‘You’re going to love her; she’s just so perfect for Uncle Marcus,’ Briony continued to enthuse, adding warningly, ‘Watch out, Mum,’ as she deftly caught the jar of home-made plum jam which Polly had dislodged as she hurriedly stepped down from the worktop.

‘Mmm,’ Briony remarked, ‘my favourite. May I take this back to college with me? Bought stuff just doesn’t taste the same.’

‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Polly agreed, smartly repossessing the jar and ignoring her daughter’s injured expression. ‘You know the rules,’ she reminded her firmly. ‘The customers come first. Which reminds me, if you want to earn a little bit of extra money whilst you’re at home that blackberry and apple jelly I made last year from that new recipe has gone down very well…’

‘Mum…’ Briony protested. ‘Can you just stop thinking about the hotel and the guests for five minutes and listen to what I’m trying to tell you?’

Penitently Polly got down properly from her perch and allowed her daughter to lead her towards the kitchen table.

She had been just eighteen herself—Briony’s age—when she had met and fallen in love with Richard Fraser. At twenty-two, four years her senior, he had swept her off her feet.

They had met when he had called at the solicitor’s offices where she’d worked, following the death of his grandfather, General Leo Fraser, who had left jointly to both his grandsons the large Georgian house which had been in the family for several generations but which neither of his sons, both army men themselves, nor their wives, had wanted to take on.

It had been left to Richard to deal with most of the more mundane aspects of the formalities connected with the will since Marcus had at the time been working abroad for a large multinational oil company, and although Polly had heard a good deal about his slightly older cousin from Richard it had not been until after their own wedding, a breathtaking three months after they had met, that she had actually seen Marcus in person for the first time. Even now, all these years later, she could recall the shock that coming face to face with him had given her. Richard, her own husband, had been good-looking and sweetly charming, with the old-fashioned kind of courtesy that came from a traditional services boarding-school upbringing, but Marcus…To call Marcus merely good-looking was rather like comparing the sweet pleasantness of ordinary milk chocolate to the sophisticated, broodingly rich, dark, addictive flavour of plain.

In other words Marcus was in a class of his own, a man who even now, in his early forties, was just so compellingly male that Polly’s mouth still went a little bit dry and her pulse-rate still rose every time he walked into the room. If Richard would have made a classically good-natured and physically attractive hero in the mould of Jane Austen’s Mr Bingley, then Marcus could quite definitely have been Mr Darcy—and then some. There was something of a sense of shut-down, controlled male power about Marcus that immediately made one think of a smouldering volcano—a fierce sexual energy which, for Polly, at nineteen and a very, very new and shy bride, had been rather too much for her to contend with.

And it hadn’t helped either that in those early days of her marriage Marcus had been so plainly disapproving of her youth and the fact that she and Richard had married so quickly. But, although she had been sensitively aware of Marcus’s disapproval of their marriage, Polly had refused to let either him or Richard see it or guess how much it hurt her—for Richard’s sake.

Right from the start, when they had met, Polly had sensed how much his older cousin’s approval meant to Richard. Both boys had gone to the same school and had grown up more as brothers than cousins—and since Richard was the younger of the two of them, if only by some eighteen months, it was perhaps natural that he should have put Marcus on something of a pedestal.

Because of her own upbringing—she had been orphaned at four and brought up by her father’s sister and her husband—Polly had been acutely conscious of not wanting to do anything that might cause a rift between the two cousins. If Marcus’s approval was important to her darling, beloved, wonderful Richard, then she was certainly not going to do anything to prejudice it, even if that meant keeping her own unhappiness about the way Marcus was reacting to their marriage to herself.

‘For God’s sake, Rick, she’s nothing but a baby,’ she heard Marcus expostulating to her husband when neither of them was aware that she could hear them.

‘She’s adorable and I love her to bits,’ she heard Richard responding happily to his cousin.

Marcus sighed, and she was just able to imagine the tight, reined-in look of irritation that must be on his darkly handsome face. It was hard to believe that someone like Marcus could ever understand how it felt to be as deeply in love as she and Richard were with one another.

After their marriage she moved into the small flat that Richard was renting—a tiny place, but with an attic with that all-important north-facing light that artists valued so much. Because Richard was a presently struggling and as yet unknown young artist, who she just knew was one day going to be so famous…and rich…

Right then they were just about managing on the small allowance Richard got from his parents plus the little bits of money he earned from commissions—mostly from his parents’ friends. And then, of course, there was the money she earned as a secretary. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough…just…and when Richard and Marcus sold Fraser House…

And then it happened…an accident…a trick of fate. During the late wedding gift Marcus had given them—a weekend stay in a very, very luxurious country house hotel—either because the shellfish had not been quite as fresh as they should have been or she had imbibed too much champagne, or both, there was a night when Polly was violently ill. Richard was so generously sweet and loving in the way he looked after her—and soon after she was feeling well again…

But a short time later she totally disgraced herself by dashing into the tiny bathroom of their flat, right past Marcus, who had called to see Richard about the problems they were having in finding a buyer for Fraser House, and it was Marcus who first pinpointed the potential cause of her malaise by announcing to Richard in sharp tones of condemnation, ‘My God, Rick, if she’s pregnant…’

‘Pregnant…’

As the tears of nausea and shock filled her eyes Polly started to shake with anxiety.

What would they do if Marcus was right? She and Richard couldn’t afford a baby. They could barely afford to support themselves.

She was scarcely able to touch a mouthful of the special meal she had prepared for Marcus—trying out ambitious new recipes was her hobby. Her aunt was a good cook, and with neither of her own daughters remotely interested in learning her culinary skills she had concentrated on passing them on to her eagerly interested niece.

Naively, perhaps, Polly had never considered the possibility of becoming pregnant—at least not so soon.

Whilst she was in the kitchen she could hear the two men talking together, their voices carrying to where she was working.

‘For God’s sake, Rick,’ she heard Marcus demanding sharply, ‘what the hell were you thinking about? She’s little more than a baby herself…’

‘I wasn’t thinking…You don’t when you’re in love,’ she heard Richard responding simply.

‘In love!’ Marcus almost snarled. ‘You might be that but I doubt that either of you knows what real love is all about.’

He left shortly afterwards, ignoring the cheek she timidly offered him to kiss, his shark-grey eyes almost black with the intensity of his anger.

‘I don’t think that Marcus likes me very much,’ she forced herself to confess to Richard a little later. They were sitting on their small shabby sofa and Richard was trying to playfully spoon-feed her what was left of the rich chestnut roulade she had served the men for their pudding. Just the smell of it turned her stomach, never mind what the taste would do, but at this stage she was still reluctant to confront the truth.

‘Of course he likes you,’ Richard told her heartily—too heartily, perhaps, as he avoided looking at her. ‘In fact he probably wishes he’d met you first,’ he added, before admitting, ‘Not that you’re really his type…’

‘Oh? What kind of girl is?’ Polly asked him, more to stop herself focusing on how very queasy she felt than out of any real interest.

‘Oh, sort of sophisticated and tall, the kind of girl who looks as though she knows what life’s all about, if you know what I mean.’

Polly did, and the kind of girl Richard had just described was as different from the way she was herself as it was possible to be. For a start she was short rather than tall—barely five foot two—and her hair was a soft mousy-brown rather than blonde; and as for knowing what life was all about…

A month later, when it was impossible for her to ignore the fact that Marcus’s angry guess had been right and that she was pregnant, Richard walked into the flat to find her in tears and desperately worried about their future.

‘Don’t worry,’ he consoled her as he took her in his arms and held her tight. ‘We’ll manage…somehow…’

Of course she immediately felt better, comforted by his insouciance and his confidence. Richard had such a warm, sunny nature that it was impossible not to feel buoyed up and infected by his natural optimism and his belief that something would ‘turn up’.

A commission for a portrait via Marcus, together with a generous Christmas cheque from Richard’s parents, who were living in Cyprus where Richard’s father was stationed, helped them to repay the overdraft which had somehow or other built up to alarming proportions despite Polly’s excellently thrifty housekeeping. But the flat was damp and cold, and in the new year Richard caught flu, and then Polly caught it from him and was unable to work. The office sent a letter round suggesting that since she would be leaving work anyway when her baby was born it might be as well if she didn’t return but concentrated on looking after her health. The letter arrived on a raw, miserable February day when Polly was seven months pregnant and the last of the Christmas money had just been used to pay their rent.

The small sitting room of the flat was crammed with things she had bought for the coming baby—all of them second-hand—including the cot that Richard was cleverly repainting. Polly was sitting there on the threadbare carpeted floor, large round tears running down her face and dripping onto her large round tummy, when the door opened and Marcus walked in unannounced.

In her undignified haste to get up Polly caught her foot in the carpet and pitched forward, giving a sharp cry of protest and fear, quickly smothered against the unexpected warmth of Marcus’s expensive cashmere jacket as he caught hold of her, impeding her fall. For a moment, as she stood within the protective circle of his arms her face buried in his jacket, breathing in the raw male scent of him, Polly had the most peculiar and bemusing sense of somehow coming home; of being safe and protected.

It was gone in a second, quickly dismissed by her realisation of just how alien and idiotic her reaction was. She had never felt really comfortable with Marcus, still less as her pregnancy advanced, and she felt sure she could see in his eyes his disapproval of the way their marriage and her pregnancy had taken over Richard’s life, forcing onto him responsibilities which did not allow him full exercise of his artistic talents. So how on earth could she possibly have experienced what she had experienced? It was her imagination—a hallucination—an odd side-effect of being pregnant and poorly. And then Marcus was releasing her, turning his back on her, his face set and unreadable as he headed for the attic and Richard.

It was less than a week later when Richard burst into the flat, full of excitement to tell her of the ‘terrific idea’ that Marcus had had. He picked her up and whirled her round in his arms despite the bulk of her pregnancy, until she was so dizzy she had to beg him to stop.

‘What idea?’ she asked him.

‘Instead of selling Fraser House Marcus says that we should keep it…’

‘But we need the money from it,’ Polly protested anxiously. One thing she had learned about her husband was that he was something of a dreamer, prone to wonderful ideas that he painted for her in all the rich colours of his imagination; but, strong as he was on imagination, Richard was rather weak on practicality, and her heart sank a little as she prepared to listen to him.

‘We need money, yes,’ Richard agreed. ‘But Marcus has come up with this wonderful way for us to make some. You know how he’s just got that recent promotion which involves him spending more time here in the UK and entertaining a lot?’

Cautiously Polly nodded. Marcus had recently been made the head of his department, travelling daily to the company’s UK offices in the city and returning each evening to the luxurious apartment he retained in the small commuter village where his and Richard’s family roots were. And she had learned, through listening to his conversations with Richard, that he spent a lot of time having meetings with his overseas colleagues.

‘Well, apparently Marcus’s boss has just come back from a prolonged visit to their American parent company in the States and he’s told Marcus that over there the trend is for visiting execs and their wives to stay as house guests with their US counterparts. Apparently he’s very keen to introduce the same sort of system over here. Marcus would get a special expenses allowance to cover all the costs but, as he was saying to me, it would be virtually impossible for him to provide the standard of hospitality that would be needed as an unmarried man living alone in a service flat. That’s when he realised what a perfect solution it would be for all of us…’

‘What would be?’ Polly asked him in bewilderment. The baby had started kicking quite hard and her head was still full of flu, and what she really wanted more than anything else was to go to bed—a nice warm bed in a nice warm bedroom…not the horrid, lumpy, uncomfortable bed she and Richard shared in their cold, damp room.

‘What I’ve just said,’ Richard told her. ‘What a terrific idea it would be if the three of us moved into Fraser House and you and I…well, you, I suppose, really,’ he admitted a little ruefully, ‘looked after Marcus’s colleagues…you know…tidied up their rooms, cooked their meals—that sort of thing,’ he told her vaguely. ‘And Marcus would pay us for doing it. Oh, and of course he’d be living there as well, and I suppose you’d have to cook for him too, although he’d still be away some of the time…’

‘Richard…’ Polly stopped him faintly.

‘What is it? Aren’t you feeling well?’ he demanded anxiously as soon as he saw how pale and shocked she was looking. ‘It isn’t the baby, is it? It isn’t time yet…’

No, it wasn’t the baby, although the shock to her system of what he had just outlined could well have caused her to go into premature labour, Polly reflected a little later on as she tried and failed to find the words to tell him how impossible what Marcus was suggesting was. For one thing she just couldn’t see how Marcus—immaculate, lordly, impatient Marcus—was ever going to be able to live side by side with a small baby…never mind side by side with her.

Then, during the night, the ceiling above their bedroom fell in, sending plaster and water cascading everywhere causing Richard to say worriedly that there was no way they could continue to live where they were, especially since he was having to leave in the morning to spend the next ten days working on a private commission for his father’s regiment. He had been asked to paint the regiment’s mascot—an elderly goat which was ‘stationed’ at regimental headquarters near Aldershot.

While Polly still wandering round the flat in a daze, trying to remove bits of fallen plaster from her carefully washed and ironed inherited baby things, Richard was on the telephone to Marcus. Marcus arrived shortly after surveying both the flat and Polly in grim silence before announcing that the place was totally unfit for anyone to live in, never mind a pregnant child.

‘I am not a child,’ Polly retorted, flinching as though he had struck her, reminding him through gritted teeth, ‘I am nineteen years old.’

‘Like I said…a child,’ Marcus returned scathingly, before he instructed, ‘No, leave those and just go and get in the car.’

Much as she longed to object to his high-handedness, Polly thought better of it, which was how she found herself somehow or other installed at Fraser House, its 'For Sale’ sign firmly removed and a team of cleaners produced from out of nowhere to attack the neglect of the months it had been empty.

It was the kitchen which converted Polly to Marcus’s seemingly impossible idea. Large and surprisingly well equipped, considering the age and solitary lifestyle of the General, it possessed a deliciously warm range and a central heating system which produced gallons of scaldingly hot water—something which had been in very short supply at the flat. And then, of course, there was the garden, large enough for an army of children, and the bedrooms—in need of a fresh coat of paint, perhaps, but each of them with the most wonderfully sturdy country-style furniture and enough cupboards and dressing rooms for every single one of them to have its own en suite bathroom, which Marcus told her firmly was an absolute necessity for his executives and their wives.

The drawing room was enormous, and so too was the dining room, complete with the custom-made dining table and its twenty-four chairs—it seemed the General had never done anything on a small scale and that included entertaining. There was a small library and a pretty morning room which Marcus told her he could remember had been his grandmother’s own special domain, and then another sitting room, cellars and an upper storey as well as the attics.

When Marcus told her how much his board were prepared to pay per executive couple per visit, Polly felt faint with shock.

‘So much,’ she faltered, round-eyed.

‘You’ll have to feed them for that,’ Marcus warned her tersely. ‘And proper food, Polly; these people are used to dining at the very best restaurants and they’ll expect the same standard here. Not that that will be any problem for you, I know,’ he added, totally flooring her both with the unexpectedness of the compliment and his casual acceptance that her cooking skills could rival those of the country’s best chefs.

‘I…’ Polly had begun to feel quite faint. ‘I…’ she began again. Marcus had been walking ahead of her across the large hallway, which already in her mind’s eye Polly could see freshly decorated with a huge bowl of freshly cut flowers on the wooden chest next to her to welcome their visitors. The decorating she knew could be safely left to Richard, who, most unusually for an artist, had no inhibitions or prejudices about turning his hand to such work. The mural he had painted for the tiny cupboard at the flat which had been going to be the baby’s room had taken her breath away with its delicacy and imagery.

‘Yes, Richard would…Oh-h-h…’ The sharpness of the pain she felt made her catch her breath and stop in mid-step, her eyes going wide with apprehension and dread.

‘What is it?’ Marcus demanded sharply.

‘Nothing,’ she fibbed, praying that she was right and that the ominous penetrating pain that was ebbing and flowing with increasing strength and increasing frequency was simply the false alarm she had learned so much about at her antenatal classes. It was far too early for the baby yet. She still had nearly a full month to go…