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He was vastly experienced in the ways of property development, even though it was only one of the many strings to his bow, and a recently acquired interest at that. With an inherited fortune behind him, he had nevertheless succeeded in making his own mark on the world of finance, and at the age of barely thirty had reached the enviable point from which he could pick and choose where he decided to invest his money.
Which wasn’t to say that he ever made the mistake of investing unwisely.
‘Impressive building,’ he murmured, slowing the motorbike to a halt and spinning it gracefully to a complete stop.
‘Yes. It is.’ By her reckoning, she would be seeing Louis Jumeau far too soon for her liking. In the spirit of encouraging the blossoming romance between Rose and Nicholas, their mother—the dreaded Mrs Sharp, whom Louis would discover soon enough was her mother—had organised a dance at the town hall for all the local big wigs and some from further afield. Furthermore, Nicholas had imported his sisters, a small additional down side which Louis would discover soon enough.
Lizzy cringed at what had all the promise of being a nightmare evening. Her mother might not be a gold-digger but she was very upbeat about Rose getting married to someone who was financially secure. In fact, it was a pleasant fate she often wished for all her daughters. Lizzy’s runaway imagination instantly foresaw all manner of tricky conversations should the man now dismounting her motorcycle catch even the slightest whiff of that.
Oh Lord! She had made the effort to return home all the way from London—had taken a whole week away from school so that she could meet the fabulous Nicholas, about whom she had heard everything there possibly was to know—and it was just her luck that her arrival coincided with a six-foot-two avenging angel on some mission of mercy to protect his gullible best friend from the claws of an unsuitable woman.
And he still had no idea who she was! Not that that was a situation that could continue for ever. The second he let it be known that an unknown motorbike rider had rescued him from the perils of a frozen Scottish countryside, her secret would be out. She had told positively everyone in her family that she couldn’t wait to get back on her motorbike and enjoy the wide open spaces and the beautiful, never-ending silence so wildly different from the crowded streets of London.
Lizzy felt the urge to groan out loud.
‘How long will it take you to get back to your house?’
He turned to face her and she had that suffocating feeling again as she peered at the stunning angles of his face from behind the safety of her helmet.
For once the feisty spirit, the never-back-down attitude, deserted her, leaving her dry-mouthed and strangely unable to think clearly.
With a sigh of resignation, she reached up and began unbuckling the helmet.
‘So you’ve finally decided to show yourself?’ Louis said with biting sarcasm. ‘Wise move. I would have found out who you were sooner or later anyway, but don’t bother; I won’t report you back to your parents for reckless speeding on that bike which is way too …’ With his mind caught halfway between wondering how he was going to retrieve his possessions from the rented car several miles back, and speculating on the condition of what he would find inside the rambling manor house, he was one-hundred percent not prepared for the tumble of long dark hair that fell out of the helmet as it was finally unclasped and pulled off.
For once in his life Louis Christophe Jumeau was rendered utterly speechless. He had expected a teenage lad. Instead, standing in front of him, her head defiantly thrown back and her dark eyes glittering with unconcealed hostility, he found himself looking at a woman with fine, stubborn features, a full mouth, which at the moment was pursed in blatant disapproval, and the graceful, slender body of a dancer.
‘You’re not a boy.’ He heard himself state the obvious.
‘No.’
‘You’re a girl on a motorbike.’
‘Yes. I happen to like motorbikes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ His tone was accusatory.
‘Why should I? What difference would it have made?’ A brisk gust of icy air made her shiver. ‘Besides,’ Lizzy continued, stoking the flames of her anger as she remembered the arrogance and contempt in his voice as he had made his sweeping generalisations about her family, ‘I was interested to hear everything you had to say about your friend.’
For a fleeting second, Louis wondered whether this was the object of Nicholas’s infatuation, but it was an idea he dismissed before it had time even to take root. Nicholas had waxed lyrical about a beautiful blonde, sweet tempered and gentle. On all counts, the woman standing in front of him failed to meet the bill.
‘You know the woman, do you?’
Lizzy decided to evade that question for the moment. ‘I know that you’re the most arrogant, high-handed, unbearable person I have ever met in my whole life!’ Her mother would kill her for saying that. Grace Sharp had been eagerly looking forward to the arrival of this man. She had heard a lot about him and—Lizzy was ashamed to admit even to herself—a lot about his fabulous wealth and legendary status. Alongside Nicholas, he was to be the glittering highlight of the carefully arranged dance—and the reason why so many people were coming, Lizzy suspected darkly.
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘You’ve never met any of the people from here and yet you think it’s okay to make lots of assumptions about them. You’re a snob, Mr Jumeau, and I can’t bear snobs! ‘
‘Mr Jumeau? Surely we should be on first names at least, considering the circumstances? And maybe we should go inside to carry on this conversation. It’s bitter out here.’ Another frozen gust tossed her hair around her face, and he watched in some fascination as she pulled it back and twisted it into a long coil to hang over her shoulder.
He had never considered himself a judgemental sort, but he had to admit that preconceptions he’d been unaware of were being trampled underfoot. Why shouldn’t a woman be on a motorbike—a reasonably powerful one, at that? Why shouldn’t she enjoy the same feeling of freedom that he himself could remember enjoying years ago when he’d still been a university student? And why shouldn’t she be able to speak her mind? Although, granted, this did afford him a slightly bigger problem.
‘I don’t think so,’ Lizzy said tartly, momentarily sidetracked by his sudden change of tone. She folded her arms and glared at him.
‘Fair enough.’ He shrugged, and in the shadowy darkness she was aware of a shiver of apprehension racing like cold water down her spine at the menacing glitter in his dark eyes. ‘You’ve just accused me of being a snob.’
‘Which you are! ‘
‘And I’m not sure that I appreciate that.’ His eyes drifted to that full, defiant mouth. Under the leather jacket, the jeans and the mid-calf hiking boots, he couldn’t make out her figure; it was no wonder that he had mistaken her for a boy. He wondered what she looked like out of the masculine garb, then he impatiently snapped back to the point at hand. He wasn’t here to win a popularity contest. He was here to size up Crossfeld House, to see how much money it would cost to bring it up to scratch, and to put any aspiring fortune-hunters in their place. Whether the girl in front of him considered him a snob because of that was entirely beside the point.
Lizzy wanted to jeer at him, to make some disparaging remark about how men like him, born into wealth and privilege, weren’t entitled to ride roughshod over people they considered their social inferiors. But she was mesmerised by the stark, angular beauty of his face. It kept making her lose her train of thought, which she hated. Out of all the girls in her family, she had always prided herself on being the level-headed one, the one who was least likely to pander to a man.
‘That’s not my problem,’ she managed to tell him in a lofty voice.
‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ Louis countered smoothly. ‘But, while we’re on the subject of prejudices, maybe you might want to stop and think about your own.’
Lizzy’s mouth fell open. ‘Me, prejudiced? I’m the least prejudiced person on the face of the earth!’
‘You’ve just accused me of being a snob. Yet you don’t know me.’
Bright colour flamed her cheeks and she scrambled for something to say. ‘You’re right. It’s bitter cold out here and I have to be getting home,’ she eventually muttered in a stiff voice. ‘You can find the local garage in the Yellow Pages and call them to get the car, or bring your stuff to the house or whatever. Do you have any idea how long you’ll be staying here?’
A spark of hope ignited at the thought that his hideous experience at the hands of his broken-down car might spur him on to make a faster than anticipated return to city life; in which case, there would be no risk of her bumping into him again. But any such hope was squashed when he shot her a half-smile, leaving her in little doubt that he had read her mind and knew exactly what had been going through it.
‘No idea.’ He glanced over his shoulder to the brooding enormity of Crossfeld House. ‘Who knows how long it’ll take to go through every room in that place?’
‘But … but surely you’ll need to head back down to London? And Nicholas, isn’t he the surveyor who would have already checked out all that stuff?’
‘One can’t be too careful.’ He looked at her narrowly. ‘Why? Are you scared that you might accidentally run into me again? It’s a small place, as you’ve pointed out; steel yourself for the prospect. And, by the way, spread the news that I’m in town and I’ll be keeping a sharp eye out for the Sharp woman and her brood of grasping harpies.’ Louis had no idea what had propelled him to tack that on. He wasn’t a believer in being overtly threatening; there was usually far more to be gained by being subtle.
‘You can always tell them yourself when you see them at the dance you’ve been invited to,’ Lizzy returned, head flung back. ‘And, as for the brood of grasping harpies, you’ve already made yourself perfectly clear to one of them!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Let me introduce myself.’ Although her hand remained firmly where it was. ‘My name’s Elizabeth Sharp and Rose is my sister.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘HE’S awful. Arrogant, overbearing …’ Lizzy yanked on one knee-high boot and glared at her reflection in the mirror. Lounging on the bed, fully dressed, fully made-up, and looking as though she had just stepped out from the centre of a magazine, Rose caught her eye and smiled.
‘He can’t be that bad. Nobody’s that bad. Besides, he’s Nicholas’s friend and I know Nicholas would never have a friend who was as horrible as you say he is.’
‘Why do you always give everyone the benefit of the doubt?’ Lizzy grumbled good-naturedly. ‘It’s a terrible trait! Some people weren’t born to be given the benefit of the doubt and Louis Jumeau is one of them.’ She pulled on the other boot and made a quick mental comparison between herself and her older sister. Mental comparisons had become almost second nature ever since, at the age of fifteen, she had overheard her mother describing her to a friend as the odd one out. ‘Too brainy,’ Grace Sharp had lamented. ‘And if only she’d do something about her appearance, take a leaf out of her sister’s book …’
Where Rose was angelically pretty, with rosy cheeks, huge blue eyes and blond hair that fell in ringlets around a heart-shaped face, Lizzy was darker, more angular, more like her father in appearance. She had always made a point of turning a deaf ear to anything her mother had to say about the way she looked. She had fulfilled her brief as the clever one, fleeing to university as fast as she could; she had pursued a teaching career while Rose had stayed in Scotland and settled for working in a boutique in one of the bigger towns fifteen miles away.
From every perspective, they could not have been more different, but in spite of that they were close. If Louis Jumeau had made a point of telling her how loyal he was to his friend, then he had no idea how loyal she was to her sister—which was why she had kept quiet about the reasons for her animosity; not a word about gold-diggers. Rose would have been appalled to think that anyone could see her as the sort of girl who would chase a man for his money and, worse, she would have been hurt.
‘You’ve gone all out with your clothes tonight, Liz.’ Rose stood up, five feet ten inches of radiant beauty in a long-sleeved emerald-green dress and a little faux fur throw that matched her high black shoes. Lizzy didn’t think that she had ever possessed any item of clothing in emerald green. She tended to stick to black and grey; it was impossible to be too much of a fashion disaster in blacks and greys. Bright colours she left for her sisters, who could pull them off a lot better than she ever could.
But tonight she had taken a leap of faith and borrowed a slim-fitting deep blue dress from her sister. The deep cowl neck showed just a hint of cleavage and made the most of her long, graceful neck. Her boots elevated her from a modest five-foot-four by at least four inches and, yes, she was wearing make-up: a light dusting of powder, blusher, mascara, eye shadow, lip gloss, most of which she had cadged from Maisie, who possessed enough make-up to open a small store.
‘Have I?’ Colour bloomed in her cheeks. ‘I just thought that I’d save Mum from having a go. You know how she is …’
‘Are you sure it’s not because you want to impress the arrogant, overbearing Mr Jumeau?’ Rose teased, smiling because she had noticed that faint flush on her sister’s cheeks when she had casually described him as ‘all-right looking, if you go for the tall, dark handsome cliché.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ But that weird, tingly feeling she had had two nights before when she had looked up at him was back. ‘I could never be attracted to a man like him, Rose! I like kind, thoughtful men.’ She thought of her most recent boyfriend, a five-month romance that had dwindled into friendship, which was probably where it should have stayed in the first place. He had been kind and thoughtful. Maybe too much so. Was that possible?
There was the sound of clattering up the stairs and then Maisie and Leigh laughing and talking over one another, while from somewhere else their father shouted at them to keep it down, that he didn’t want complaints from the neighbours. It was a familiar routine. Maisie and Leigh were noisy and high-spirited, like puppies that had yet to be trained into good behaviour—although at least Vivian wasn’t around to scowl and lecture, which usually had the effect of sending them into overdrive.
It felt strange, being back in the family home when she had become so accustomed to her own space, and she assumed that it was a feeling shared by all her sisters. Maisie and Leigh were on their holidays from university. Rose shared a flat with their old friend, Claudia, but from all accounts had been spending more time recently with her parents thanks to the fact that their house was closer to Crossfeld.
She should be enjoying the familiar hustle and bustle, but Louis Jumeau had unnerved her. She didn’t like him; she hadn’t appreciated his threats, she had nothing but scorn for his antiquated snobbishness, but she still hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind.
‘And stop looking at me like that.’ She threw a cushion from her bed at Rose, and was relieved when the conversation was brought to an end by her mother threatening to leave without them unless they hurried.
The drive to the venue took half an hour. Six people piled into one reliable seven-seater which had seen off fifteen winters and was still going strong.
On the way, Grace Sharp could barely contain her excitement, while Lizzy stared through the window and tried to block out her mother’s voice. She cringed at the breathless speculation about Louis and ignored her mother’s demands for more information. Grace had revelled in Nicholas’s attention to Rose. He was new to the area, he was wealthy and his family apparently owned a large estate somewhere in Berkshire. Could it have got any better?
Lizzy toyed with the entertaining thought of what would happen if Rose decided to dump him and run off with one of the hired help from Crossfeld House instead. Her mother, she suspected, would have a heart attack on the spot. But there was no chance of Rose doing that. She might have decided to play down how she felt, because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself by throwing herself at a guy who might, just might, not be as serious about her as she was about him, but Lizzy knew that her sister was in love.
She surfaced to find that they had arrived. At once her stomach tightened and her mind, which had been pleasantly drifting this way and that, zoomed into the inevitability of seeing Louis Jumeau again.
The long drive was already lined with cars and, even as she played with the idea that she might just get away with avoiding Louis altogether by cunningly circulating in whichever circle of people happened to be furthest away from him, she stepped into the tiled hallway to find herself standing directly behind him.
Then, as several more people piled in behind her, eager to escape the ferocious cold outside, literally pushed into the back of him.
With a gasp of dismay, she tried and failed to right herself before he could spin around and find her clutching his jacket.
‘Ah. So we meet again. And this time you’re literally throwing yourself at me.’ Louis had not been looking forward to this event, and already after five minutes it was living down to all his expectations. Lots of people were enthusiastically greeting Nicholas and were openly curious about the rest of his group, namely himself and Nicholas’s two sisters—who, Louis had discovered as soon as he had poled up to Crossfeld House, had been invited to visit so that they could meet Rose Sharp.
‘If you would just move on, you wouldn’t be causing a pile-up,’ Lizzy hissed under her breath. She felt hot and bothered and took a step sideways to avoid the crush of people arriving behind her.
‘Are these events usually so well attended? Or are the local folk so desperate to meet the southerners that they’re willing to brave Mother Nature for the experience?’ He leant down, eyes drawn to the creamy smooth hint of cleavage. So this is what she looked like in a dress. He had to admit that he had wondered.
‘You’re unbearable.’
‘So you’ve already told me. You’re in danger of becoming repetitive.’
Lizzy chose not to answer. Instead, she swerved away from the entrance hall and made her way quickly and breathlessly towards the large room at the back which had been decked out with tables and chairs and a long trestle table which was manned by six girls, well positioned to spring into action the minute food was required.
Pausing by the door, she glanced over her shoulder and grimaced when she saw Louis looking at Rose, then at her family, who were introducing themselves, and then back at Rose. She could imagine the wheels in his head whirring around as he jumped to all sorts of conclusions.
The rise and fall of voices around her did little to calm her nerves, and not even the prospect of meeting some of her old gang could dispel the sickening knot in her stomach.
‘He seems lovely.’ Rose’s voice from behind made her jump and she spun around and allowed herself to be led away to a quiet corner. ‘I don’t know why you were so worried!’
‘He’s pretending.’
‘Don’t be silly. Why would he do that? Have you met Nicholas’s sisters, though?’ She glanced quickly to the left and Lizzy followed her sister’s eyes to where two tall blonde girls were looking around them with undisguised contempt. Whilst everyone had dressed up, they were in jeans and thick sweaters and were making no attempt to mingle.
‘Have you spoken to them?’ Lizzy asked anxiously, and she could see tears begin to gather in the corner of her sister’s eyes.
‘They hate me. I can tell from the way they spoke to me. Oh, they were very polite, but I just got the impression that they didn’t think that I was good enough for their brother.’
‘Nicholas is lucky to have you,’ Lizzy said stoutly. She wondered whether Louis had infected them with his scepticism or whether they were all in a similar conspiracy of hunting down the worst-case scenario on Nicholas’s behalf.
‘Maybe. Or maybe he feels the same. Deep down.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzy could see Louis looking around him. In a heartbeat of a second, their eyes tangled and then he was bearing down on them, cutting a swathe through the crowds, drink in hand.
‘Speaking of Nicholas, why don’t you go and see if you can find him …?’ Lizzy murmured. ‘Louis is coming towards us and I want to have a word with him.’
‘What about? You won’t say anything, will you?’
‘Don’t panic, Rose. You know how tactful I am.’
Now that she was looking at him approach, she found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away. He, at least, had made an effort with his clothes: a dark suit which fitted so perfectly that it could only have been made to measure, and a white shirt, on which he had undone the top two buttons. It might be freezing outside but the place was warm, warm enough for everyone to have disposed of their coats, jackets, cardigans and scarves.
He was spectacularly good-looking, she reluctantly registered to herself, and he moved with the easy grace of an athlete. As he walked by, heads swung in his direction and a fair few of them lingered. Of course, he would know the effect he had on people. It was probably just one of the things that contributed to his arrogance. She rallied her fighting spirit at the thought of that and took a swig of her drink, white wine which had become tepid over the course of the hour.
‘Are you having a good time?’ She greeted him coolly when he was finally standing in front of her, affording her the sort of undiluted attention that made her pulses race.
Louis took his time answering. ‘It’s always illuminating to watch and observe.’
‘Watch and observe? You mean in the way a scientist watches and observes bacteria on a Petri dish?’
‘You’re very different from your sisters.’
Lizzy’s eyes narrowed. ‘How so?’
‘Well, your two younger ones are obviously party animals without a care in the world, and Rose …’
‘What about Rose?’
‘Very sweet-tempered, or at least that’s the image she’s trying to project.’
Lizzy bristled, but before she could jump in with a suitable retort he was talking again, his voice a low, lazy drawl, his incredibly dark eyes roving over her flushed, angry face.
‘And your mother seems delighted with the fact that she’s going out with Nicholas. In fact, I think she can hear wedding bells in the air … True or false?’
Lizzy tried not to grimace. Gracie Sharp had always aspired to financial security. She had been the driving hand behind their father’s work ethic, always pushing him to go a little further, do a little better and aim a little higher, and Lizzy could understand that. In fact, she could feel a grudging empathy, because her mother had grown up in a series of foster homes, relying on her looks to pull her through in the absence of any real education. She had duly chosen to launch herself into the world of acting, but it had been a struggle, and one she had from all accounts abandoned the day she had met their father. The legacy of poverty had lived on, however, so was it any wonder that she was now thrilled with Nicholas? At least one of her daughters was achieving what she had supposedly been born to achieve.
‘All mothers can’t help but think about their kids, um, finding happiness …’ She wished he would move back a little, so that there was some chance their conversation would be interrupted. But his stance repelled anyone who might want to join them, broad back to the room, and she wondered whether it was deliberate.
‘Really? She didn’t seem all that bothered by the fact that there’s no guy in your life.’