Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

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.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

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.

French Leave
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

LIVVY EXHALED GRATEFULLY as she stopped her small car in the car park of the auberge. There were several other cars there with GB plates in addition to her own, she noticed as she got out and locked her door, but then the town was a popular stopping-off place for people en route, like herself, for the Dordogne.

She was glad now that she had had the foresight to book ahead for her one-night stay. She made a small moue as she picked up her overnight case, a tall slender woman in her mid-twenties with long, thick sunlight-streaked honey-blonde hair and intelligent wide-apart sherry-gold eyes.

No doubt there were those who would laugh at her far-sightedness, claiming that it was typical behaviour of her type: a teacher, a woman who liked uniformity and discipline in her life.

Those who thought like that didn’t realise what modern teaching was like, she reflected ruefully as she headed for the auberge. These days it could be more like a mental obstacle course designed to test even the strongest of temperaments.

She was lucky she had established a rapport with her current batch of pupils. If she took the promotion she had been offered, to assistant head, she might lose that.

She was supposed to be on holiday, she reminded herself sternly, even if one of the reasons she had given way to her cousin Gale’s insistence that she come to France and housesit for her while she sorted out her marital problems was the fact that the solitude of a small remote farm in the heart of the Dordogne would allow her the space to think through what it was she actually wanted from her career. Advancement to assistant head and the potential consequent loss of hands-on teaching experience, or…

Or what? Staying where she was, continuing to teach French?

She paused appreciatively, sniffing the evening air; it had that indefinable tang which she felt she would have recognised anywhere, even blindfolded and gagged, as being quintessentially French.

Her smile changed to a frown as a huge BMW swept into the car park, coming perilously close to her. The driver’s window was open, and through it she could see the harsh, almost hawklike profile of the man driving it. His hair was dark and thick, and something, an unfamiliar and disturbing frisson of sensation, tensed her spine as he turned and looked arrogantly at her. Perhaps because she was tired from her journey, or perhaps because something about him unsettled her, Livvy found herself immediately reacting to his lordly assumption that she would move out of his way.

Without pausing to think, instead of stepping back from the car she stepped up to it, gritting her teeth as she told him acidly, ‘This happens to be a car park, not the Le Mans circuit, just in case you weren’t aware of it.’

At close hand his appearance was even more harshly male than she had first realised, his eyes cold chips of hard ice in an angrily dangerous face, and a mouth with a bottom lip full enough to be shockingly sensual even when it was pulled in a hard line of keen dislike.

His eyes assessed her…assessed and dismissed her, Livvy recognised.

‘How kind of you to put yourself out so much on my behalf.’ The laid-back drawl wasn’t quite soft enough to mask the hard edge to his voice, and Livvy only just managed to stop herself from flinching visibly as it hardened and crackled with acid contempt when he added, ‘Perhaps it would have been safer and wiser to have used the footpath marked instead of the roadway. That way both of us would have been spared an unnecessary and unwanted altercation.’

He was driving on, closing his window, his face turned firmly away from her before she could make any response, leaving her gaping after him like an idiot, Livvy acknowledged, as she turned her head in the direction he had indicated and a wash of hot, embarrassed colour and the awareness that she had been the one in the wrong swept over her as she saw the footpath sign leading towards the auberge entrance.

What on earth had possessed her to challenge him like that in the first place? she asked herself irritably as she quickly hurried towards the footpath. It was so unlike her. Confrontation was normally not something she enjoyed and certainly never normally provoked, but there had been something about him…something about his attitude, his arrogance which had sparked off that fierce feeling of resentment inside her.

The disdain she had seen in his eyes as he drove past her had somehow become translated into something more personal, a disdain for her rather than for the world in general.

Now you are being ridiculous, she told herself firmly as she went into the auberge and up to the reception desk, giving her name in her fluent French, which came not just from studying the language but from having spoken it as a second language all her life. Her grandmother had been French and consequently not just Livvy but all the grandchildren, including Gale, had learned to speak the language as a matter of course…

Gale too had used it as a career before she had married George, not as a teacher like Livvy but as an interpreter working in Brussels. Her cousin had been a very high-powered career woman before she made the unexpected announcement, at thirty, that she was to marry George.

Apart from her, virtually everyone else in the family was a little in awe of Gale, including her husband and children. She had that effect on people, Livvy admitted, and she thrived on it.

Livvy was made of sterner stuff, though; her job as a teacher had seen to that. On the surface she might seem to give way to her cousin’s forceful demands simply to keep the peace, but Livvy’s outwardly placid nature masked a very strong will, and she never allowed Gale to get away with manipulating her the way she did other people. Take this ‘holiday’, for instance…

Livvy smiled as the receptionist handed her her key and explained that if she wanted to have dinner she would have to order within the next hour.

Thanking her, Livvy went up to her room. She would unpack later, she told herself, mindful of the receptionist’s warning. It had been a long time since she had eaten lunch and she was very hungry. Quickly brushing her hair, she grinned to herself as she saw her reflection in the mirror. Leggings and a soft, casual, baggy sweater might be the accepted uniform of nearly every female under forty, but Livvy suspected that if the pupils of Form IV could see her right now her appearance would surprise them.

Fully aware of how very youthful she actually looked for her age, Livvy was always meticulous about wearing formal, authoritarian clothes for school. Soft sloppy sweaters knitted in a fabric that looked as though it wanted to be touched, cut-off leggings in a mass of brilliant colours which complemented the sweater, her hair loose instead of being neatly confined; no, this was not an image of her that her pupils would recognise.

It was amazing how different casual clothes made her feel, how much more relaxed. She enjoyed her job, but the tension of it, the need to exert discipline and to command her pupils’ respect, could be very wearing at times, and it was a luxury to switch off that side of herself and to allow herself instead just simply to be.

A luxury indeed, and one that was having slightly disconcerting consequences, she reflected ten minutes later as she went back downstairs and found herself the subject of some unabashed and frankly appreciative male scrutiny from the two middle-aged men who had just walked into the hotel.

Their interest, flattering rather than threatening, increased her sense of well-being.

The auberge’s dining-room smelled appetisingly of French cooking. The early diners had finished and were just beginning to leave.

Livvy was shown to a small, comfortable table by one of the waiters. He spoke to her in such painstakingly careful English and with such pride that she hadn’t the heart to reply to him in her own perfect French, instead waiting patiently while he stumbled over some of the words, resisting the impulse to help him. She was not here as a teacher, she told herself firmly as she gave him her order.

While she waited for her meal to be served, there was a small commotion in the doorway as four rowdy French youths pushed past the waiter, who was trying to stop them from entering.

To judge from the state of them, if they weren’t actually drunk, then they certainly had been drinking, Livvy reflected. Their voices were loud, the language they were using vulgar and their opinion of the English tourists whose cars filled the car park and who sat nervously at their tables with their round-eyed children were stated in language which was not that which Livvy taught to her pupils.

To judge from the expressions of the other obviously British families dining, although they were aware of the youths’ aggression, their command of the language wasn’t sufficient for them to understand what was being said, which was probably just as well for Anglo-French relations, Livvy reflected as she firmly directed her attention to her own meal and away from the trouble that was obviously brewing.

The waiter had summoned the auberge owner, who now appeared to wrathfully chastise the young men, one of whom, Livvy recognised from their conversation, was apparently his son.

He was younger than the other three, eighteen or nineteen to their twenty-three or -four. In fact they were not as young as she had first supposed, Livvy realised, and because of that potentially rather more threatening.

The auberge owner was still trying to persuade them to leave, but now his son was insisting that they wanted to eat, demanding to know if his money and that of his friends was not just as good as that of the fat British tourists he seemed to favour so much.

The father gave way, casting anxious looks in the direction of the other guests, no doubt hoping that they could not, as she could, understand what was being said about them.

As they walked past her table, one of them, the oldest and most obnoxious, bumped into her table and then steadied himself against it.

Calmly Livvy went on with her meal. Common sense told her that the wisest and most sensible thing to do was not to make a fuss but simply to pretend he wasn’t there.

She had forgotten, though, that he was not the same age as her pupils, and that she was not dressed in her normal authoritative way, and, as he straightened up and made a drunken apology, to her fury she also heard him make a comment about her breasts that was both over-familiar and exceedingly coarse.

It was only the discipline of three years of teaching that prevented her from reacting, not just by furiously objecting to what he had said, but from allowing the hot stinging surge of mortified feminine colour to burn up under her skin.

Like all women, she had experienced unwanted male comments about her body before, but this was different; for one thing what he had said was a good deal more crude than the normal joking and sometimes funny remarks called out by van drivers and building site workers, and for another…

For another, she was unpleasantly aware of the man’s leering enjoyment of her defencelessness, his awareness not just of her inability to physically punish him for his rudeness, but of the fact that the manager appeared too afraid to challenge him either.

The temptation to stand up and demand the auberge owner call the gendarmerie was almost too strong for Livvy to resist, but then she reminded herself that she was on holiday and inevitably any kind of formal charge made now would result in delay to her resuming her journey in the morning.

Much as it irked her, she decided that on this occasion she would simply have to do nothing, other than finish her meal as quickly as she could and leave the dining-room.

Ten minutes later she realised that was not going to be so easy, and wished a little bitterly that she had demanded that something was done earlier, when the hotel owner had still been there for her to make demands on.

The little waiter who had been serving her was plainly terrified of the quartet; the other diners, like her, had obviously decided to finish their meals just as quickly as they could, and as the dining-room rapidly emptied Livvy felt disconcertingly conscious of the fact that she was soon going to be the only other occupant of the room.

The leader of the quartet was still making comments about her to his companions. She tried to comfort herself by reminding herself that he would only feel free to say things that were so vulgar and crass because he did not know she spoke French herself.

As a teacher, she was used to adolescent male aggression and thought she had learned to cope with it, but this was something different, she recognised. He was not an adolescent—here she had no authority…here, as his lewd, disgusting comments were making so plainly obvious, she was just another vulnerable, available woman.

She pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. Much as it went against the grain to be seen to be running away from them, she knew she had to go. The restaurant no longer felt safe; in fact it had become an alien, hostile place. All her feminine instincts warned her to leave. She got up as quietly and calmly as she could, ignoring the comments being shouted at her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her tormentor stand up, but she refused either to turn her head or to be betrayed into showing any fear.

Her room key was in her handbag, but as she heard the restaurant door open behind her she still walked over to the reception desk and asked the clerk behind it,

‘Are there any messages for me? It’s room number twenty-four.’

She knew of course that there would not be any messages, but standing at the desk gave her a legitimate reason for turning round and checking that she wasn’t being followed.

And if she was and he overheard her asking for messages, hopefully it might make him think that she was not, after all, alone.

‘No, there is none,’ the clerk told her, having checked the slot.

The leader of the quartet had left the restaurant after her and now he was standing several feet away, grinning insolently at her, but to her relief, although he paused with deliberate mockery as he drew level with her, he didn’t make any further attempt to speak to her or touch her, simply moving on.

Thanking the clerk, Livvy hurried towards the stairs. Her bedroom had a good, firm lock on it and she intended to make sure she used it.

As luck would have it, her room was the last one along the corridor, right opposite the fire escape. Later she told herself that if she had been more alert she would have remembered that fact and acted accordingly, but as it was, when she finally reached her door, she simply gave a small pent-up sigh of relief, turned her back to the fire escape and opened her bag for her key, while keeping a strategic eye on the corridor to make sure that she hadn’t been followed.

Because of this, it came as even more of a shock when she was grabbed from behind, her attacker laughing triumphantly as he swung her round to face him, pressing her body up against the wall with the weight of his while he taunted her with having tricked her…

He looked even less appealing close up than he had done in the restaurant, Livvy acknowledged as she fought down her panic and tried not to wince as he breathed garlic-and onion-laced fumes into her face.

His hands were round her forearms, exerting a pressure which would leave her with bruises, the weight of his body imprisoning her against the wall.

She didn’t make the mistake of trying to fight him, sensing that that was just what he wanted, that he would relish the opportunity physically to subdue her. He was talking to her, laughing at her as he told her in explicit detail what he intended to do to her. Fear flickered inside her, spreading a numbing, dangerous paralysis through her body, and yet at the same time she felt oddly distanced from what was happening, apart from it, the enormity of it such that a part of her brain simply refused to accept it was happening.

As he ground his hips against her body she tensed in rejection. The door opposite her own opened and the hand that had been groping for her breast stilled.

Livvy was just about to call out thankfully for help to the man emerging from the room to place his breakfast menu on the door-handle when she recognised him.

It was the man from the car park, the one who had arrogantly let her see how insignificant he had thought her.

He was wearing a towelling robe open to the waist, revealing hard, tanned skin roughened by silky, dark hair.

A tiny frisson of unfamiliar sensation ran through her. The man holding her bent his head and tried to kiss her, muttering loudly, ‘You know you want it. Downstairs you were showing it. Well, it won’t be long now, chérie, and I promise you I’ll show you what it’s like to have a real man, a Frenchman.’

Across the few feet separating them, Livvy could see the disgust in the other man’s eyes, the contempt. The man holding her was still talking, pouring out a stream of sexual obscenities which he appeared to deem suitable seduction talk.

The disgust on their observer’s face deepened. He had the most extraordinarily powerful, harsh bone-structure, Livvy recognised, and such an air of cold austerity about him that the look he was giving her actually made her feel as though the temperature had physically dropped.

As he turned his back on them and returned to his room, closing the door behind him, her awareness that he had dared to assume that she wanted the Frenchman’s obnoxious caresses made Livvy so angry that she was actually physically able to take him off guard and push him off her.

She wasn’t sure which of them was the more surprised by her show of strength, she or he. He stared at her and then shook his head, cursing her under his breath as he came towards her.

Livvy was not going to be taken off guard a second time. She bunched her fists as aggressively as she could, facing him down, speaking to him in French as she told him that she was going to report him to the police.

He was obviously shocked to hear her speaking perfect French, but Livvy doubted if that would have been enough to give her time to escape from him if the hotel manager and one of the waiters hadn’t suddenly emerged from the fire escape to take hold of him and forcibly march him away.

The manager returned later to apologise. He would not blame her if she went ahead and pressed charges, he told Livvy.

‘By rights I ought to do so,’ she returned crisply, ‘if only to ensure that some other woman doesn’t suffer the same fate, but since I can’t afford to delay my journey I shall have to leave it to monsieur to see that he is fittingly punished. He seems a rather old companion for your son,’ she added pointedly.

A long discussion about the problems of bringing up teenagers followed, leaving Livvy wishing she had simply closed her door and wished le patron a goodnight. The incident had shaken her more than she realised, she admitted as she prepared for bed. She was jumping at every tiny, unfamiliar sound and had been twice to check that the door was securely locked.

Additionally, for the first time in her life, she was going to sleep in a room with the windows closed. She might be on the second floor, but there was no point in taking any more risks, not after what had already happened. After all, as she had already discovered, she could scarcely rely on anyone to come to her rescue, could she?

She was still seething with bitter resentment over the reaction of the Englishman. How dared he assume that she had actually encouraged, never mind wanted, that lout’s attack on her? Surely he could see that she had been struggling against him, not abandoning herself to the mindless passion he seemed to think she had been experiencing, if the disgust in his eyes had been anything to go by.

What kind of women was he used to, for heaven’s sake, to have thought that?

The more she thought about the way he had behaved, the more angry Livvy became. She could have been raped and it would virtually have been his fault.

Much he would have cared what might have happened to her. Look at the way he had behaved in the car park—that should have warned her what kind of man he was. Arrogant pig. Thank goodness she had never been the type to be susceptible to that kind of darkly powerful male sexuality. It was personality that mattered to her, not looks. Uncomfortably, she suddenly remembered that odd and unwanted frisson of sensation she had experienced when he’d looked at her.

It had been caused by shock…fear…everyone knew that very strong emotions could have the most disconcerting effect on people. Her reaction had had nothing to do with the man himself. How could it have done? There had been nothing…nothing about him that she had found remotely attractive…nothing about him as a human being that could have caused that sharp, jagged lightning flash of sexual awareness.

She had probably imagined the whole thing…exaggerated the force of it. In her heightened emotional state it would have been strange if she had not done so, she comforted herself as she climbed back into bed.

She needed a good night’s sleep if she was to be fresh for her journey in the morning. Resolutely she told herself to put the evening and its entire events firmly out of her mind.

An hour later she had to repeat this admonition more severely to herself; she reminded herself that she was a teacher, and a firm fan of self-discipline, someone who prided herself on her logical, calm approach to life’s problems.

So what was going wrong? Why were the arrogant, contemptuous features of a certain man coming between her and her attempts to go to sleep? If the thought of anyone was keeping her awake, it should have been the man who had tried to attack her, but disconcertingly she could barely remember his features, while the other…the Englishman’s were so firmly etched on her memory that she might have known him for years, not merely glimpsed him for a handful of seconds.

No doubt, after closing his door on her, he had not even given her a second thought.

Across the hallway in his own room, the object of her thoughts was also trying to sleep. He moved irritably in his bed, his body tense and unrelaxed. This was the last thing he needed.

The whole purpose of this trip to France was to allow him to unwind, to give him a small breathing space, not to…

Not to what? Make him remember things he’d far rather forget?

Damn that woman. He had known she was trouble the moment he saw her in the car park, standing there, all lissom, delicate, provocative feminine sensuality.

He had watched her walking away from him, her movements confirming what his senses had already told him.

She had look so vibrantly, so sensually alive, her hair an unfettered banner against the sky, her skin soft, glowing, her body…

He turned over, cursing. What the hell was wrong with him? He had seen for himself what type she was. That soft, full-lipped mouth was not as vulnerable as it looked, and certainly nowhere near as untutored.

He felt his muscles bunch. Why the hell hadn’t she and the man she had so obviously picked up in the auberge waited to begin their lovemaking until they were inside her room? Lovemaking. What was it about some women that made them want to degrade themselves with that kind of involvement…?

To judge from the things her companion had been saying to her, theirs was no tender, emotional coming-together…He doubted that they had even bothered to exchange names.

He frowned as he turned his head towards the window. Why waste his time thinking about her…letting her get under his skin?

Why?

He already knew the answer, and it wasn’t just that, for a moment, outside in the car park, not only his body but his senses as well had responded to the feminine sensuality of her.

It was well over a decade, thirteen years ago today to be exact, since the ending of his marriage. His marriage…what a farcical black comedy of errors that had been. What a fool he had been, to fall for one of the oldest tricks in the book.

She had been taking precautions, Claire had assured him tearfully, but something had gone wrong, and now she was pregnant with his child.

His child…He had had no option but to marry her.

Thirteen years, and surely in that time he had come far enough down life’s road to know far better than to let himself be disturbed by his awareness of a woman, especially a woman like that one.

What would she have done if he had been the one to approach her, to…?

He cursed again. What in God’s name was he thinking? He didn’t want her really, of course he couldn’t want a woman like that.

Could he?

CHAPTER TWO

ONE O’CLOCK… Livvy sighed as she heard the town clock striking the hours, acknowledging that she was no closer to sleep now than she had been when she first came to bed.

And since she couldn’t sleep, why waste time trying…? Why didn’t she give some thought to the events which had brought her here to France instead?

Everything had happened in such a rush that she had barely had time to think everything through properly, a fact which her cousin Gale had used to her advantage, she reflected wryly as she admitted the way Gale had manoeuvred her into doing what she wanted.

Her pupils and her fellow teachers would have found it hard to believe that she had let Gale get her way so easily, but then the offer of several weeks’ holiday in such a lovely part of France had been too tempting to resist, even if she had initially had doubts about the reasons Gale had given her for wanting her to stay at the farmhouse.

It had all started three weeks ago, when Gale had rung her and said that she needed to talk to her urgently.

This on its own had surprised her. Gale was not in the habit of needing to talk to anyone, much less her ten years younger and in her eyes far less worldly cousin.

At that stage, Livvy had assumed that the ‘urgent talk’ must have something to do with her nephews, and that Gale, who despite her husband George’s having a well-paid job considered thrift not just a virtue but a positive pleasure, wanted to persuade her to give the boys some free private coaching.

Livvy had all her arguments ready. She was quite genuinely far too busy to be able to be of any help to her nephews. The fact that the long summer holidays were only three weeks away did not mean that she had time on her hands-far from it. Not only did she have to sit down and give some serious thought to whether or not she really wanted to take the job of assistant head which she had been offered, she also had to prepare the coming year’s work.

However, once Gale, in her normal self-confident, slightly bossy way had told Livvy that her Busy Lizzie needed re-potting and that she had known she had been right to warn her not to paint her kitchen that bright yellow, Livvy discovered that it wasn’t her sons whom Gale wanted to discuss, but her husband.

‘I’m worried about George,’ she announced once they were both settled in Livvy’s pretty sitting-room with their cups of coffee.

Gale had disapproved of Livvy’s choice of colour scheme for her small home. The soft pastel colours were not really suitable for a schoolteacher, Gale had told her; they did not create the right impression.

Livvy had laughed. Other members of the family often complained that Gale drove them mad with her bossiness, but Livvy liked her elder cousin and was often amused by her. Unlike other people, she refused to allow Gale to dominate her, dealing calmly and quietly with her cousin’s dominating personality.

‘There are other aspects to my life than my work,’ she had pointed out mildly, when Gale had said that a stronger, more purposeful colour scheme would have been more appropriate.

What she hadn’t gone on to say was that sometimes she needed the soft, pretty pastel comfort of her home, that sometimes, after a particularly difficult day at school, she needed to come home to a place that helped her to get back in touch with the more feminine and vulnerable side of her nature.

When she had first chosen teaching as her career, her counsellors had suggested that she might find the work too much of an emotional strain, that the work might be too stressful for someone of her rather gentle personality.

Being gentle was not the same thing as being weak, Livvy had countered. And in the years since she had qualified she had gone on to prove that her sometimes deceptively mild manner did not mean that she was incapable of exerting control and discipline.

Unlike Gale, Livvy had never felt any need to prove to others how strong-willed and dominant she was; it was enough that she know that, if necessary, she could summon up that strength from within herself.

Knowing that gave her a serenity that others often envied.

Not Gale, however. Gale, who for all her high IQ seemed to be pathetically lacking when it came to reading people’s personalities.

Perhaps that was why she was inclined to make allowances for her, Livvy reflected. Where others saw Gale as a bossy, demanding woman who steamrollered over everyone around her, Livvy saw her as someone who had never known what it was to have the gift of being sensitive to others’ feelings and, because of that, was disadvantaged.

‘George!’ she exclaimed in some surprise. ‘What’s wrong with him? Is he ill? Is he…?’

‘Ill? No, he’s not ill. But he’s changed completely, Livvy. He’s just not the man I married any more. Since the company was taken over last year…’ She pursed her lips. ‘Well, for a start we hardly ever get to see him any more, and when he is at home he locks himself away in his study, claiming that he needs to work. And now—would you believe?—he says that he wants to sell the farmhouse.’

‘But you only bought it last year,’ Livvy protested, remembering how thrilled and proud her cousin had been at its acquisition, and yes, perhaps a little boastful as well, but then that was Gale’s way; material things were important to her.

‘I know, but George claims that the loan he took out on it is costing him too much and that, with the boys about to go on to secondary school, the cost of their fees will mean that we have to cut down. I know for a fact that he’s just had a very good rise, and if Peter passes his common entrance when he sits it he’ll get a free place to Hadyards.’

‘Times are hard and getting harder,’ Livvy interrupted her firmly. ‘George has always been financially cautious, and you did say yourself that the farmhouse needed completely renovating…’

‘Yes, I know that, but there’s more to it than that. George knows how much the farmhouse means to me, and to threaten to sell it when he knows that I don’t want him to, and that I can’t do a thing to stop him…He borrowed the money from the company, you see, and because of the legal ramifications the deeds are solely in his name. I’m not going to let him do it, though, Livvy, and I’ve warned him that if he tries…Look, what I want you to do is to go and stay there for a few weeks just to…’

‘To what, Gale? I sympathise with you, but I can hardly stop George selling the place if that’s what he intends to do.’

‘No, but if you’re there it will give me a breathing space…time to talk to him and make him see how unreasonable he’s being. He’s always had a soft spot for you, Livvy. I’ll tell him that you need to get away somewhere peaceful because of all the stress of your job…’

‘Gale,’ Livvy protested warningly, ‘I’m perfectly capable of dealing with any stress I might suffer from by myself, thank you very much.’

She could see from Gale’s expression that her cousin knew she had pushed her too far. She changed tack.

‘Please, Livvy. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t so important to me. You know how I’ve always felt about France, and I know that you feel the same. It’s a part of us, after all…of our heritage, and I want to pass that heritage on to the boys…I want them to experience at least a part of their childhood growing up in the French countryside as we did…’

Wryly, Livvy mentally acknowledged the skill of her cousin’s argument. She had enjoyed those childhood times in France, and treasured the memory of them. They had given her a view of another nation’s way of life that she felt had broadened her horizons and her awareness in a way that very few people were fortunate enough to experience.

‘And it’s not just that,’ Gale continued, sensing victory. ‘I’m not just being sentimental. There’s the fact that their French is bound to improve, and by the time they’re adults the ability to speak a second language will be a very important career asset. You’re the one who’s always said that the inability to understand one another’s languages is one of the greatest barriers between peoples.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Livvy acknowledged.

‘All I want is enough time to make George see reason…To make him listen…If only we could get away ourselves, but it’s impossible at the moment. He’s working virtually twenty-four hours a day. Ever since Robert Forrest took over the company…’

‘Robert Forrest?’ Livvy was interested.

‘Yes. I told you, the millionaire entrepreneur who bought out the company last year. George thinks he’s wonderful. Personally I blame him for the way George has changed, the way he’s behaving. He’s completely dominating George, making him work virtually twenty-four hours a day. Just because he’s not married…

‘At least, not any more. He was once, but his wife left him for someone else. Small wonder. She got an enormous divorce settlement, apparently. She’s dead now…a car accident with her new man…’

She broke off as Livvy made a small sound of compassion and exclaimed, ‘Poor man, what a dreadful thing to have happened. It’s bound to have made him a bit bitter.’

‘A bit bitter? The man’s a misogynist. A marriage-wrecker,’ Gale stormed. ‘I’d love to tell him exactly what I think of him and what he’s doing to our marriage…to our children. He hasn’t got any of his own. Men like that never do, do they? Of course George defends him like a dog protecting a bone.’ Her eyes flashed, her face flushing.

She was a very striking-looking woman…commanding rather than pretty. Despite Gale’s bossy way, Livvy was genuinely fond of her cousin, who had been very generous with both her advice and more practical help in the form of rent-free accommodation in the early days when Livvy had first been teaching.

She was fond of George, too, and of their children, and a summer spent in the Dordogne was a tempting prospect.

There was nothing after all to keep her at home for the summer; no plans…no special relationship. Yes, a couple of months in the Dordogne was certainly a far more enticing prospect than the same period of time spent in her small flat.

Even so…

‘Look, Gale, are you sure that you’re not being a little bit unfair to George? With so many people losing their jobs…’

‘Unfair?’ Gale turned on her indignantly. ‘Just how fair am I supposed to be? How fair is he being to us, to me? I told him, Livvy…I told him that he owed it to us to spend more time with us…that he was neglecting us and that if he wasn’t careful he could lose us. I told him he had to tell Robert Forrest that he had a right to his private life; I even gave him an ultimatum and warned him that, unless he did so…’ She broke off, shaking her head.

‘That was last week, and since then nothing’s changed…nothing. He left for work at seven o’clock this morning and he won’t be back until close on midnight. That’s if I’m lucky…

‘You tell me, Livvy. Am I being unfair?’

Sadly, Livvy shook her head. No, Gale wasn’t being unfair, she reflected later as she drove home. But she could perhaps be more understanding…more compassionate…more aware? Wryly Livvy admitted that the chances of her strong-minded cousin’s exhibiting any of those emotions were very slim indeed.

‘Two months in the Dordogne, rent-free—you lucky thing,’ her colleagues had sighed enviously.

‘Mmm…maybe you’ll meet some gorgeous, sexy Frenchman,’ Jenny, the maths teacher, had teased her.

Livvy had laughed. ‘We’re talking about rural France, not Paris,’ she had told her. ‘Any Frenchmen I do meet, handsome or otherwise, will be very, very firmly attached to their wives and children.’

‘So?’ Jenny’s eyes had twinkled. ‘Who’s talking about anything permanent? What’s wrong with a small summer fling, an excitingly brief affair?’

‘What’s wrong with it is that I don’t want it,’ Livvy told her firmly. ‘Getting involved with a man who just wants to use me isn’t my idea of fun.’

‘You might not be able to stop yourself. What if you fall in love?’

‘In lust, you mean,’ Livvy had corrected her, shaking her head as she added determinedly, ‘No, I’d never do that. My self-respect wouldn’t let me. When I do love a man it will be because I admire and respect him intellectually and emotionally, not because I’m turned on physically by his body…’

She had left the staff-room with Jenny’s laughter still ringing in her ears.

‘Be careful,’ Jenny had called warningly after her. ‘You could be tempting fate, saying something like that.’

‘No way,’ Livvy had responded with a grin. ‘Tempting fate, or a Frenchman, is the last thing I intend to do!’

At twenty-five she considered herself far too responsible and mature to plunge into the kind of reckless, hedonistic, dangerous type of affair Jenny had teased her about. Such affairs, from what she had observed of them, inevitably led to someone being hurt, and badly, and she considered that she was far too cautious and self-protective by nature to risk bringing that kind of pain upon herself.

No, she would be far too busy preparing for the new term and thinking about her own future to have time for romance, even if it were something she wanted—which it wasn’t.

Not that her time in France was going to be completely taken up with work, though: she had promised herself some relaxation, some sightseeing trips and explorations. She had even generously offered to take off Gale’s shoulders the burden of liaising with the local tradesmen and suppliers in connection with some of the more urgent renovations Gale was organising, agreeing that it would be far easier for her to deal with the French contractors, since she was in situ.

‘Are you sure you actually want to go ahead with these alterations?’ she had asked her cousin when they had discussed Gale’s plans for modernising the existing bathroom and adding a new one. ‘After all, if George does insist on selling…’

‘He won’t. Not once I get him out of Robert Forrest’s clutches for long enough to make him see sense. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s the one who’s turned George against the farmhouse in the first place; he’s that kind of man,’ she added darkly.

Livvy had given her a thoughtful look. She hoped Gale was right about being able to persuade George to keep the property, because she could tell how important it was to her. She understood Gale’s desire for her sons to experience the same pleasure they had known as children, but at the same time she felt, fair-mindedly, that a smaller and more modest environment would provide those benefits just as well and be far less of a financial burden on George.

She wondered if Gale was right to lay the blame for George’s changed behaviour at the feet of his new employer. As the victim of an unhappy marriage, it was perhaps only to be expected that he should have a bias against marriage and feel suspicious or antagonistic towards the female sex.

She hoped Gale would not ride too roughshod over George’s views. He was a nice man and a good husband and father.

She stifled a yawn and moved sleepily beneath the duvet. The more she observed of other people’s relationships, the more wary it made her of that kind of commitment. She was glad she was not the type to fall drastically and dangerously head over heels in love.

Beneath the bedclothes she gave a small shiver. Knowing her luck, if she did it would probably be with entirely the wrong type of man.

Like the one across the hallway, for instance? Ridiculous—what woman in her right senses would fall in love with a man like that, who for all his spectacular aura of raw masculinity and power had shown by his attitude that he had as much awareness of and respect for the female psyche as she had of what went on inside the head of a man-eating tiger?

No, if she ever did fall in love, it would be with someone compassionate and caring, intelligent and aware, a man who valued her as an equal human being, not one who dismissed her as a sexual object, condemning her with cold-eyed disgust.

The BMW was still in the car park when Livvy left early the next morning. She gave it a dismissive look as she walked virtuously past it, reflecting on the laziness of its slothful owner and the fact that he was missing what was for her one of the best parts of the day.

Well, at least she was unlikely to come into contact with him again, she reflected thankfully as she let herself into her own car and pulled on her seatbelt.

Having planned her route carefully in advance, Livvy didn’t have any trouble in reaching Beaulieu, which was the nearest sizeable town to the farmhouse.

She ate a late lunch in the town and shopped for provisions, just enough to tide her over for the first couple of days. After all, one of the pleasures of being in France was the food. Her French grandmother had taught her how a Frenchwoman shopped and the important role that not just the consumption of food but its purchase and preparation played in the traditional French lifestyle.

It was mid-afternoon before she started the final part of her journey, taking her time as she carefully checked each road sign, not wanting to miss her way on the mass of narrow country roads which criss-crossed the countryside, and her diligence was finally rewarded when she drove into the small village closest to the farmhouse.

Although she had not visited it before, she had seen photographs of it and had agreed with Gale that it was idyllically situated, surrounded by lush countryside with a view looking out across a small tributary of the Dordogne river, its privacy assured by the farmland which surrounded it…

George had tentatively expressed the view that it might be a bit too isolated, but Gale had told him firmly that he was wrong and that its isolation only added to its appeal.

‘For us, maybe,’ George had conceded. ‘But the children…’

‘The children will love it,’ Gale had interrupted him. ‘Clean, fresh air, a simple country lifestyle will be very good for them; it’s exactly what they need.’

Now, Livvy wondered if after all George might not have had a point. Isolation was all very well for adults, craving the peace and quiet of the countryside, but children…teenagers…

If he had, it wouldn’t be easy getting Gale to acknowledge it, Livvy acknowledged. Rather sadly, Livvy wondered how much of the time George was giving to his work was actually being forced upon him by his new boss, and how much might be voluntary: a means of escape from a wife whose strong-mindedness might sometimes be rather wearying?

Just as she was beginning to wonder uneasily if she had after all taken a wrong turning, the thickly forested countryside through which she was travelling gave way to open land, the fields which Gale had told her went with the farmhouse and which, although presently neglected and unworked, she hoped to rent out to a local farmer.

‘The money we get from letting the land will help to pay for the work on the farmhouse,’ she had explained to Livvy.

Now in front of her she could see the shape of a building, its age betrayed by the soft, fading colour of the sandstone walls.

Thankfully, Livvy stopped her car in the unevenly flagged yard. It was just starting to grow dark, but there was still enough light for her to make her way to the heavy front door, the keys Gale had given her held firmly in her hand. Weeds had sprung up and rooted themselves firmly between the worn slabs of stone, evidence of the length of time the farm had been uninhabited.

Livvy was no stranger to rural France, although this was the first time she had visited the Dordogne, and she found the silence that surrounded her soothing rather than unnerving. She unlocked and opened the door, wincing as the unoiled hinges squeaked rustily.

The door opened directly into the kitchen, a large, rectangular-shaped room with small windows and a musty, slightly damp smell. As she switched on the light, Livvy winced a little in its harsh brightness.

‘The kitchen will have to be completely refitted,’ Gale had told her. ‘I want something very simple and sturdy—a free-standing kitchen range would be ideal.’

‘But very expensive,’ Livvy had warned her.

‘Mmm. Well, hopefully we’ll be able to find someone local whom I can organise to make exactly what I want. The farmer we bought the house from has the most wonderful armoire, and there was a dresser in the kitchen. It shouldn’t be too difficult to pick up some good antique pieces quite reasonably.’

Given her cousin’s determination and energy, it probably wouldn’t be too long before she did transform the kitchen, Livvy acknowledged, but right now…

It would probably look better in the morning when she had had a good night’s sleep, Livvy acknowledged as she surveyed the grimy, deep porcelain sink and the old-fashioned cooking range.

The fridge-freezer standing in one corner of the room, attached to a large Calor gas canister, looked oddly incongruous, as did the small stove adjacent to it. Incongruous but very welcome, Livvy acknowledged as she saw the kettle standing on it and went to pick it up.

The water which spurted from the tap was icily cold and slightly brownish in colour. The farmhouse had neither mains water nor electricity, the former being supplied via its own well and the latter from a generator installed in one of the outbuildings.

While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, she might as well bring in her things, Livvy decided.

She had brought one small case with her; the rest of the space in her car had been filled with the boxes of bedding, towels, kitchen utensils, food and other items which Gale had insisted she bring with her.

Gale and George had bought the farmhouse complete with its furniture. Rubbish in the main, Gale had snorted, but the beds, heavy, old-fashioned affairs with wooden head-and foot-boards, had been worth keeping, although she had of course had to replace the mattresses.

The sturdy, worn stairs led up from a room adjacent to the kitchen, the British equivalent of a comfortable family breakfast-room.

Wearily, Livvy climbed them.

‘You can use any bedroom you like,’ Gale had told her. ‘Although the double ones at the front have the best views.’

Livvy opened the first door she came to and switched on the light.

She would sleep well tonight, she acknowledged half an hour later when she had drunk her tea and finished making up the bed. She was almost too tired for even the briefest of sluices under the feeble trickle of the antiquated shower, only habit compelling her to go through the motions of getting ready for bed.

Ten minutes later, her body still glowing from the rough towelling she had given it, she curled up gratefully under her duvet.

Tomorrow her holiday could begin properly. Her mouth watered as she contemplated the pleasure of eating croissants fresh from the boulangerie, washed down with rich, fragrant coffee.

Mmm…it would make a delicious and welcome change from her normal rushed breakfast of a few mouthfuls of muesli eaten hurriedly between checking her diary, reading her post and generally getting ready for work.

Livvy could hear a noise. A car door slamming. She sat up groggily in bed frowning as she glanced at her watch. It was just gone nine. She had slept for longer than she had intended.

As she climbed out of bed and reach for her cotton wrap, she wondered who her unexpected visitor was.

She guessed that it would probably be the farmer from whom Gale and George had bought the house. Gale had described him to her, fifty-odd, short and gnarled, very good at playing dumb when he chose and even, ridiculously, trying to pretend at times that he could not understand Gale’s excellently fluent French, and with the financial acumen that many a finance director would envy.

Livvy smiled to herself now, remembering how she had guessed from the acid note of chagrin in Gale’s voice that for once her cousin had met her match.

It was a pity she had overslept; if the Dordogne was anything like the other parts of rural France she had previously visited its inhabitants would operate a code of behaviour almost Victorian in its formality. Appearing to greet a neighbour a nine o’clock in the morning not dressed, her hair tousled and still half asleep, would doubtless reinforce the French belief in their superiority as a race.

She was halfway across the kitchen when she heard someone turning a key in the door lock.

Frowning, she stood still. It made sense that the farmer should have a key so that he could keep a check on the property while it was empty, but Gale had told her that she was going to warn him to expect her, and, even though she had parked her car out of sight in one of the outbuildings, surely he might at least have knocked first.

The door opened and Livvy froze in shocked disbelief.

It couldn’t be, but it was: the man who had just let himself into the farmhouse was the same man she had seen at the auberge last night, the same man who had been so rude to her in the car park, the same man who had so contemptuously ignored her plight later.

As she stared into his cold, arrogantly handsome face and felt the shock of the invisible force-field which seemed to surround him, she was temporarily completely lost for words.

Distantly her mind registered the fact that, for some odd reason, her body was reacting to his presence in the most alarming and dangerous way.

Beneath her terry robe and the thin cotton T-shirt she had slept in, her nipples were peaking with unfamiliar and confusing intensity, a shock-wave of sensation exploding inside her.

Quickly, she pulled her robe protectively closer to her body. Her heart was beating fast and heavily; she felt confused and powerless, plunged into a situation which both alarmed and excited her.

What was he doing here? How had he found her? Why had he followed her?

Giddily her thoughts swirled dizzily through her brain, temporarily robbing her of her normal, calm control, and then chillingly she realised how dangerous the situation was, how vulnerable she was.

She was alone here, vulnerable and unprotected, and for all his apparent wealth and respectability he could…he might…

Firmly she swallowed back the fear and confronted him.

‘Never allow yourself to be intimidated or to show fear. Never let anyone else take control from you,’ she and her fellow students had been told before they went into teaching, and that advice applied just as much to this situation as it did to facing a class of pupils.

Forcing her tense throat muscles to relax, she demanded huskily, ‘What are you doing here…why have you followed me? If you don’t leave immediately, I shall call the police.’

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