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MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
CALLIE added jam to her buttered toast, knowing she would have to start getting ready soon, but lingering reluctantly over her breakfast, making herself another cup of coffee. After all, it wasn’t a long drive from London to Berkshire.
She wished she didn’t have to go, that Jeff hadn’t put her in this position. Hadn’t she gone through enough the last six months—her mother’s death, Jeff’s own death in a car accident, and now she had to meet his family, a family who hadn’t even wanted to speak to her themselves but had contacted her through a lawyer. She had disliked James Seymour on sight.
He had sat in that dusty-looking office, surrounded by rows and rows of huge official-looking books, the whole room looking like a mausoleum. And James Seymour had been totally in keeping with the room, fusty and old, looking down his nose at her as he informed her she was the sole beneficiary of Jeff’s will.
‘I am?’ she gasped. ‘Oh, but surely there must be some mistake,’ she protested.
James Seymour looked as if he thought so too, and that Jeff, dear kind, loving Jeff, had made it! ‘I can assure you there is no mistake,’ he said in his haughty voice. ‘I was Mr Spencer’s lawyer for many years, did in fact draw up this will for him. Caroline Day, 28, Hill Apartments, London. That is you, isn’t it?’
‘Well … yes. But I don’t want any of—of that,’ she pointed wildly at the will laid out in front of the lawyer.
He looked at her as if she were slightly deranged. ‘Three-quarters of a million pounds, seven hundred and sixty-three thousand pounds, to be exact—–’
‘Oh, let’s be exact,’ she said shrilly, sure this man didn’t know what he was talking about. Jeff hadn’t been rich, not that rich anyway. Three-quarters of a million pounds! It was unthinkable, unimaginable.
James Seymour looked at her over the top of his glasses. ‘I was being exact,’ he said stiffly. ‘There is also the matter of thirty-seven and a half per cent of the shares of Spencer Plastics—–’
‘Spencer Plastics?’ she questioned sharply.
His mouth tightened. ‘We would get on a lot quicker, Miss Day, if you would refrain from constantly interrupting me.’
‘Yes, but Spencer Plastics? Sorry,’ she mumbled at his quelling look, the eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses the cold grey of the sea on a winter’s day.
Had she gone mad? She had looked warily at the letter when it had arrived last week, should have guessed there was something wrong when she had telephoned the office of Seymour, Seymour, Seymour, and Brown, and they had refused to divulge the reason for requesting to see her over the telephone.
‘If we could continue?’ James Seymour said woodenly.
‘Go ahead. I mean—please do,’ she blushed at his condescending look.
‘Mr Spencer, Mr Jeffrey Spencer, that is, left you his shares in the family company—–’
‘You mean Jeff—I mean Jeffrey, was related to the Spencers of Spencer Plastics?’ Even she had heard of the powerful Spencer family, Sir Charles and Lady Spencer, and Sir Charles’ sister Cicely. But surely the Charles and Cissy Jeff had sometimes spoken of couldn’t be them …?
‘Jeffrey Spencer was Sir Charles’ younger brother,’ she was informed distantly.
It was what she had already guessed, what she had dreaded him confirming. Jeff had never said, never given any indication—Dear God, that family would eat her alive if she dared to claim those shares!
‘I—Do they know about me?’ she asked nervously.
‘I believe Mr Spencer told them of your relationship, yes.’
‘No, not that. I mean, do they know about Jeff’s will?’
‘Yes, they know.’
Oh, lord! They were probably ready to lynch her from the highest tree by now. The Spencer family was one of the most powerful in the world of plastics, and they would hardly welcome a little nobody like her into their midst. If only Jeff had told her who his family was, explained to her what he meant to do!
‘Sir Charles has expressed a wish to see you,’ the lawyer told her now.
She would just bet he had, and she could guess what about. ‘When?’ she asked dully.
‘This weekend, if that’s possible.’
It didn’t sound as if she had much choice. ‘I—Well, yes, I suppose so.’
‘Good. Sir Charles is expecting you.’ He handed her a piece of his official-looking notepaper with Sir Charles’ address on. ‘For the weekend,’ he added firmly.
Callie’s eyes widened, deep brown eyes with golden flecks in their depths. Her hair was the colour of corn, straw-coloured she called it, straight and thick to just below her shoulders, the full fringe shaped about her small heart-shaped face, making her eyes the dominant feature, her nose small and short, her mouth wide and smiling—usually—her figure petite, even boyish, and at twenty-two years of age she had given up the idea of growing any taller than her five feet two inches in height.
‘For the weekend …?’ she echoed weakly.
‘Yes. Sir Charles feels it would be advisable for you to meet the family. I understand the nephew will not be there,’ James Seymour’s voice cooled perceptively, giving Callie the impression that he disliked the absent nephew even more than he apparently disliked her—if that were possible. His disdain for her had been obvious from the moment she had entered the office half an hour earlier. ‘I believe business matters have taken him out of the country,’ he explained abruptly.
Callie could understand his reluctance to talk to her—after all, she had no real claim on the Spencer family, and James Seymour obviously thought so too, revealing the family movements as if pressured to.
Well she had had enough, she didn’t want to hear any more. ‘Please tell Sir Charles I accept his invitation. I have to leave now—–’
‘We haven’t finished, Miss Day—–’
‘I’m sorry,’ she stood up, ‘but I really do have to go. Perhaps you could send me a letter explaining everything in more detail?’ she added to soften the blow.
He looked as if she had insulted him, sitting ramrod-straight in the leather desk-chair. ‘That isn’t the way I like to do business, Miss Day—–’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll call you,’ she told him before disappearing out of the door.
It all seemed like a bad dream, the money, the thirty-seven and a half per cent shares in Spencer Plastics. She felt sure she would wake up soon and just be ordinary Callie Day with none of the responsibility of money and shares.
She told her friend Marilyn so; Marilyn and her husband Bill lived in the flat next door. ‘I’m sure the haughty Mr Seymour will find there’s been some mistake. He has to,’ she groaned.
Marilyn shook her head dazedly. ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You’re rich, don’t you realise that?’
‘Of course I do,’ Callie frowned. ‘Although Mr Seymour said it would take several months to sort out the details. But I don’t feel I have any right to those things.’
‘Jeff wanted you to have them, that’s all the right you need.’
‘I doubt the Spencer family see it that way,’ she grimaced.
The two of them were sitting in Marilyn’s kitchen drinking tea, baby Paul playing happily at their feet.
‘From what I can tell, you’re more Jeff’s family than any of that snobby lot,’ commented Marilyn. ‘Not one of them came to the funeral.’
Callie shrugged. ‘Mr Seymour said they weren’t informed in time. Anyway, I wouldn’t have wanted them there,’ she added with a catch in her throat. ‘Only people who loved you while you were alive should be allowed to say goodbye to you. Jeff always said that.’
‘And now Jeff is saying he wants you to have those things, that he still wants to take care of you,’ Marilyn pointed out gently. ‘If you turn them down it will be like throwing his love back in his face.’
Put like that, she had little choice but to go to Berkshire for this weekend, grit her teeth and make the most of it. But she felt sure it was going to be a disaster.
She got up from the breakfast table, if it could be called that at eleven-thirty in the morning! Sir Charles and Lady Spencer would probably be scandalised by such behaviour. But she had been out with some friends the evening before, a party that had gone on long into the early hours of this morning, carrying on to one of the girls’ flats once the other party had ended. Her hangover wasn’t going to help her cope with the Spencer family! She was expected for dinner, Mr Seymour had told her when she telephoned his office yesterday, his manner even more frosty than at their first meeting.
A long soak in the bath, her hair washed, and she was starting to feel a little more human, although what to wear was another problem. She was invited to dinner, and yet she would be arriving late afternoon. Of course she could always change before dinner … Yes, that was what she would do, what she would be expected to do. Oh dear, she was going to make a fool of herself this weekend, she just knew she was. She wasn’t used to mixing with Sirs and Ladies, and she usually sat down to dinner in whatever she had worn to the office that day!
She chose one of the suits she wore to work to arrive in, a black tailored skirt and jacket, a white Victorian-style blouse worn beneath the jacket, a large cameo brooch pinned at her throat. Her hair swung smoothly about her shoulders, clean and silky, her whole appearance was one of cool confidence. She just hoped she acted that way when she got there.
Once she got out of London and on to the motorway it was a clear run down to Berkshire, her ten-year-old Ford Escort excelling itself and doing a steady sixty miles an hour. Royal Berkshire, the home of Windsor Castle, one of the Queen’s residences. It was also the home of the Windsor Safari Park, which perhaps wasn’t quite so prestigious. Maybe that was one of the subjects she should avoid this weekend.
The trouble was she had no idea what she was going to talk about! They obviously couldn’t discuss Jeff and the shares for the whole of the time she was there, and she doubted she would have anything else in common with the Spencer family. The truth of the matter was, she had nothing in common with them, not even Jeff. He had been as far removed from them as she was, hadn’t even owned to being a member of the family.
Dear Jeff. Callie had loved him so much, his death had come as a shock to her, even more so than her mother’s, which had been expected, as her illness had been terminal. But the car accident that had taken Jeff from her too had left her numbed with grief, still had the power to reduce her to tears, and she rapidly blinked them away as she saw the turn-off for Ascot.
She had instructions to the Spencer house from there; the name of the house did not reveal its location. She followed the instructions implicitly, and finally found herself completely out in the country, slowly turning the Escort down a long gravel driveway, a huge stately Tudor manor house standing at the end of it.
The gardens were resplendent with flowers, despite the lateness of the season, the October weather not being exactly conducive to the delicate blooms. Someone obviously tended these gardens with tender loving care—and why not? she thought cynically. Money could achieve most things, even a flowering garden in October. Oh dear, she was getting cynical! But maybe that was the only way she was going to get through this weekend. Sir Charles was likely to eat her alive otherwise.
Her Escort looked slightly out of place next to the Jaguar, a Rolls-Royce parked next to it, a huge garage at the side of the house containing two more cars, although from this distance she couldn’t tell their make.
There was a man coming down the steps towards her as she got out of her car, a tall grey-haired man of perhaps fifty, fifty-five, still handsome despite his years, the superb cut of his cream trousers and Norfolk jacket pointing to him not being a servant. Could this possibly be Sir Charles himself?
Callie closed her eyes. Oh Jeff, Jeff—she was in the lions’ den now, and he had put her there.
She didn’t fit in with these people, should never have come here. Just the house was enough to frighten the life out of her! It was certainly nothing like the small flat Jeff had shared with her for the last four years.
The man she assumed to be Sir Charles Spencer looked no more welcoming than the house did, seeming slightly surprised by her. ‘Miss Day …?’ He looked at her with narrowed blue eyes.
She put her overnight case down on the gravel and slammed the boot shut, hoping it wouldn’t shoot up again as it often did. It didn’t and she gave a relieved smile as she straightened. ‘Yes, I’m Caroline Day,’ she confirmed breathlessly.
‘Charles Spencer.’ He thrust his hand out at her.
‘I’m pleased to—meet you,’ she faltered in her warm greeting as he barely touched her hand before releasing it again.
‘Come into the house.’ He didn’t return her polite greeting, but bent to pick up her small suitcase. Suddenly he frowned. ‘I had no idea you were so—–young,’ he said bluntly.
Callie held herself back from saying she hadn’t realised he was so old! ‘I’m twenty-two,’ she felt she almost had to defend herself.
‘My dear, in my book that is young.’
Maybe it was to a man of fifty, but plenty of her friends were already married with children of their own. ‘Jeff always said—–’
‘Jeff?’ Sir Charles pounced. ‘Do you mean my brother Jeffrey?’
‘Er—yes. He always said that you’re only as young, or old, as you feel.’
His mouth twisted contemptuously. ‘Looking at you, Jeffrey must have felt very young indeed,’ he drawled.
She didn’t like this man, not his manner towards her, or his derogatory way of talking about Jeff. No matter what their differences, and from Sir Charles’ manner there had to have been a lot, Jeff had never made a single criticism of his brother. Jeff had only ever talked of the good times, of the times when he, Charles, and Cicely were all children.
‘He was always lots of fun,’ she said stiffly, walking through the door the manservant held open for her.
‘Take this upstairs to Miss Day’s room,’ Sir Charles handed her case over as if it had stung him. ‘Come through to the drawing-room, Miss Day, and meet my wife and son.’ He strode forward, pushing open the double oak doors.
So the nephew was here after all. If he was as pompous as his father then this was going to be a really fun weekend!
A woman stood up as they entered the room, or rather, she flowed up, moving with a liquid grace that drew attention to the perfection of her tall figure. She was a beautiful woman, although obviously of middle age, her black hair perfectly coiffured, her beautiful face made up in dark and light shades that gave her an ageless appearance. The grey silk dress she wore looked as if it were real silk. Thank goodness, Callie thought, she had put on something smart herself!
‘My wife Susan,’ Sir Charles introduced needlessly. ‘Susan, this is Miss Day.’
Lady Spencer’s handshake was as fleeting as her husband’s had been, her slender fingers barely touching Callie’s. And had it been her imagination, or had Sir Charles emphasised the ‘this’ in the introduction, almost as if she weren’t what they had been expecting. Maybe they just weren’t used to the lower classes, they didn’t either of them look as if they got off their pedestal very often. No wonder you got away from this lot, Jeff, Callie thought ruefully. They would have suffocated him with their stuffy attitudes and falsely polite manners.
‘Please call me Callie,’ she invited, not one to stand on ceremony, even if they were. ‘Everyone does.’
‘Including—Jeff?’ Sir Charles drawled.
She flushed, although she had no idea why. ‘He never called me anything else.’
‘But your name is Caroline, isn’t it?’ Lady Spencer spoke for the first time, her accent so terribly-terribly English that Callie’s eyes widened. She hadn’t thought anyone really spoke like that.
‘Yes, it’s Caroline. But—–’
‘Then that is what we will call you,’ Lady Spencer said dismissively.
Whether you like it or not, Callie thought resignedly. ‘As you wish,’ she shrugged.
‘Would you care for tea?’ the other woman asked languidly.
‘Oh—er—yes. Tea would be lovely.’
She occupied herself with looking around the room while Lady Spencer rang for the tea, guessing the paintings on the wall to be originals, the antique furniture and ornaments all genuine too. The room was exactly what television and films always portrayed for the English gentry, and to Callie it was all like being in some terrible play, with her as the main character, ignorant of the roles of her fellow-actors.
‘Donald is in the study taking a telephone call,’ Lady Susan said in answer to her husband’s question.
Sir Charles’ face darkened. ‘I’ll go and get him.’
Callie was curious about Donald Spencer, wondering what was so terrible about him that James Seymour disliked him. Maybe he grew his hair too long, that was sure to annoy the balding lawyer.
‘Jeffrey was alone in the car at the time of the accident, I believe,’ Lady Spencer interrupted her thoughts.
Pain flickered across her face before she could control it. ‘Yes, he was alone.’ Fun-loving Jeff, who was never alone, who hated to be alone, had been trapped in his car for over an hour before he died; the rescuers had been unable to get to him in time to save him, and his chest had been crushed so that he drowned in his own blood. Callie shuddered with the horror of it. The way Jeff had died often came back to haunt her in horrific nightmares. ‘All alone,’ she repeated harshly.
‘I—–’
The doors swung open and Sir Charles came in, a younger version of himself at his side. Callie looked at Donald Spencer with interest, seeing the youthful handsomeness that had once been Sir Charles’, the only difference being that Donald’s hair was as fair as her own, and there was perhaps a certain weakness about the chin that wasn’t present in the father.
But neither of these men bore any resemblance to Jeff, Jeff of the laughing blue eyes, the unruly dark hair, denims and a casual shirt his usual attire.
Donald Spencer was dressed as formally as his father, and he looked as if he were never dressed any other way. Did no one ever relax in this family?
‘This is my son Donald,’ Sir Charles told her needlessly.
A frown creased her brow. Why was it she had the feeling there should have been a fanfare attached to that announcement?
Donald was looking at her with stunned eyes. ‘You aren’t what I was expecting,’ he blurted out, and received a scowl from his father, a warning look from his mother, and a ruddy hue coloured his cheeks as he muttered an apology.
So she had been right about the weakness about the chin. Donald Spencer was nowhere near as self-confident as his parents. She instantly felt a sympathy for him. ‘You aren’t what I was expecting either,’ she smiled.
‘Did Uncle Jeffrey talk about us, then?’ he wanted to know.
How could she say never? She had had no idea Jeff even had a nephew, let alone who Charlie was. How Sir Charles must have hated being called that. And how Jeff would have loved to taunt him with it! Jeff had loved to tease, had a warped sense of humour that she shared, a sense of humour she hoped was going to get her through this.
‘Sometimes,’ she compromised.
‘But you never felt impelled to meet any of his family?’ once again it was Lady Spencer who asked the probing question.
Callie sensed reprimand, and bristled resentfully. ‘As you never felt compelled,’ she returned waspishly.
The other woman’s mouth twisted mockingly. ‘You are hardly family, Caroline,’ she drawled insultingly.
Callie blanched, the shaft going home. ‘No, I’m not, am I?’ she said stiffly.
Lady Spencer looked down her haughty nose at her. ‘You see, we feel—–’
‘Tea, my dear,’ Sir Charles interrupted as the maid wheeled in the tea-trolley, almost thankful for the interruption, it appeared to Callie.
‘Please sit down, Miss Day,’ Lady Spencer invited graciously as she took charge of the silver teapot. ‘Cream or lemon?’ she looked up to enquire.
A spark of rebellion entered Callie’s eyes, the gold flecks instantly more noticeable. It was obvious that this family thought she was something rather unpleasant that had momentarily entered their lives, and that they also expected her not to even have the social graces.
‘Is it fresh lemon?’ she asked coldly.
Her hostess looked affronted. ‘Of course.’
‘Then I’ll have lemon,’ she accepted abruptly, moving back from her perched position on the edge of the chair to lean back against the soft leather, so that Lady Spencer had to bend forward to give her the steaming cup of tea. ‘Thank you.’ Her tone was still curt.
‘Sandwich, Miss Day?’ Donald Spencer held out a plate to her, tiny squares of bread arranged invitingly on the delicate china. ‘These are salmon, and these cucumber,’ he pointed out.
Of course, what else? ‘Thanks.’ She took two of the tiny sandwiches, wondering if she was actually supposed to eat them. No one really lived like this, did they? It was so unreal, so—so pompous.
‘We were talking about the accident, Caroline.’ Lady Spencer spoke again, looking at her enquiringly from beneath arched brows as Callie choked on her sandwich. ‘Donald, pat her on the back—gently!’ she instructed after the first painful thump landed in the middle of Callie’s back.
‘I’m all right,’ she choked as Donald went to hit her again, sitting on the arm of her chair to do so. She blinked back the tears and swallowed hard. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
Lady Spencer nodded regally. ‘Donald, don’t sit on the arm of the chair like that,’ she said waspishly.
He at once moved back to his own armchair. Just like an obedient child, Callie thought with a shake of her head. Donald must be about thirty, his late twenties at least, and yet he still seemed to live here with his parents, something she found unbelievable for a man. Perhaps he had a home of his own in London, was only here for the weekend as she was, although she doubted it. Donald had the look of a devoted son, too much so in her opinion.
It had been the mention of Jeff’s accident that had sparked off her choking and coughing fit. Why did this woman persist in talking about it? Jeff was dead, no amount of talking could bring him back, as could no amount of crying, although when she was alone she couldn’t seem to stop the latter.