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.

Breaking Away
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

HARRIET grimaced to herself as she realised she was not going to make it to the village before dark.

It was her own fault; she had been later leaving London than she had planned, and then she had made that motorway stop midafternoon. Already it was dusk, and it would be a good half-hour yet before she reached the village and her new home.

Louise had told her she thought she was mad when she had announced her plans.

‘Leave London for a small remote village lost in the Scottish Borders?’ She had shuddered, even at the end of the telephone, but then she and her sister had never had similar tastes.

Thinking of her sister made Harriet feel uncomfortable and anxious, a legacy from those early years after their parents’ deaths when she had first started to shoulder the burden of her sister’s irresponsibility.

There were four years between them, and it had surely only been natural that when their parents died she should have immediately abandoned her own plans for teaching abroad, and instead taken a job in London, so that she could take care of her younger sister and provide a home base for her.

She had been twenty-two then and Louise eighteen. Louise had always been rebellious and self-willed, and when, after a few months, Harriet used her own half of their shared inheritance from their parents’ estate to buy a small house, albeit in a then unfashionable area of London, so that she could provide a home for her sister, Louise had announced that she was going to use part of her own inheritance to pay for an expensive modelling course.

Louise was a beautiful girl—Harriet had not been able to deny that—but she had still tried to dissuade her sister, knowing full well that Louise was attracted to modelling because she thought it a glamorous life. Privately Harriet had believed Louise lacked the application and dedication necessary for success in such a very competitive world.

Louise had refused to listen to her. She had flown into a temper and run out of the house, and despite all her attempts to find her Harriet had neither seen nor heard from her for six months. Six months of incredible anxiety and concern, coloured by guilt that she had not handled matters better.

And then, just as she was beginning to pick up the pieces of her own life—just beginning to settle down and find her way in the very large and busy comprehensive where she was teaching English, just beginning to make one or two friends, and to accept dates from a fellow teacher, Paul Thorby—totally out of the blue Louise had returned to announce that she had been living in Italy, modelling there.

There was not a word of contrition for the concern she had caused, or for the anxiety and anguish she had put her sister through; all she could talk about was herself and her own plans, but Harriet was too relieved to chastise her.

She was getting married, she told Harriet, to a wealthy Italian she had met in Turin, adding airily and thoughtlessly that the only real reason she was back in London was to buy her wedding dress.

When Harriet learned that Louise had only known Guido for six weeks, she pleaded with her to wait a little longer, but Louise, as always, refused to listen.

They were married in Turin, two months after they had met, and, while Harriet quite liked her new brother-in-law, she was very uneasy about her sister’s ability to adapt to living with her in-laws and the rest of Guido’s large family.

Paul Thorby reminded her that Louise was an adult and perfectly capable of making her own decisions. He was a nice man, but pedantic, and inclined to be petulant if he didn’t have her full attention. He was an only child, and when he took Harriet home to meet his mother her heart sank as she recognised that she and Sarah Thorby were never likely to get on well.

She was then just twenty-four years old and aware of a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with her life: what had happened to all her bright dreams of travelling or exploring a little of the world, before settling down to her career?

Her parents’ deaths had brought a halt to those plans but there was no reason why she shouldn’t fulfil them now. Louise was married. She had no one to account to but herself. Perhaps at the end of the school year…

Six months later she was just nerving herself to tell Paul that their relationship was by no means as permanent as he seemed to think, and to explain to him her dreams of being able to travel, when without warning Louise suddenly returned home, announcing that her marriage was over and that she was divorcing Guido.

Dismayed, Harriet tried to persuade her to return to her husband, but Louise was adamant. She found herself a lawyer and instituted divorce proceedings, telling Harriet that she would have to live with her, and when Guido came over to London to see her she shut herself in her bedroom and refused to come out, leaving Harriet to deal with the irate Italian.

From his complaints against his wife, Harriet suspected that Guido had fallen out of love with her sister with the same alacrity with which she had fallen out of love with him. Neither seemed too concerned about the breakdown of their marriage.

Guido returned to Turin, and Louise continued to inhabit the larger of Harriet’s two spare rooms.

Paul, who didn’t like her, announced to Harriet that she ought to tell her sister to find alternative accommodation, but Harriet was far too soft-hearted and besides Louise wasn’t well. She had been sick several times, and she was beginning to look almost haggard…Louise, who had never looked anything less than glowingly beautiful from the moment she was born.

Once, briefly as a teenager, Harriet had envied her younger sister her beauty. Louise took after their paternal grandmother, having thick, pale gold hair, and dark blue eyes, with the kind of complexion that never broke out in spots.

Harriet, on the other hand, took after her mother’s side of the family. She wasn’t quite as tall as Louise, barely medium height and finely boned. Her hair was dark, almost but not quite black, with odd red lights in it, so that Paul had once disapprovingly asked her if she dyed it. Her eyes were the only feature she shared with Louise, their density of colour startling against the framework of her pale translucent skin and dark hair.

Harriet had no illusions about herself, aware that she was nowhere near as attractive to men as her sister but with no real wish to be. A natural reticence and shyness had kept her from accepting the overtures made to her during her teenage and university years.

And now there was Paul in her life. If their relationship lacked excitement and passion—and if, deep down in a secret part of her, she deliberately kept it on a non-sexual basis because of some silly, romantic daydreams about being swept off her feet by a man who would arouse within her all the feelings that Paul never did—then she suppressed those feelings, and told herself that such an idealistic emotional commitment was not for her.

She was just wondering how soon she could break the news to Louise that she intended to sell the house and go and travel abroad for an indefinite period of time, when Louise dropped a bombshell of her own. She was pregnant, she told Harriet, and no, she had no intention of cancelling the divorce or even of letting Guido know about her condition.

When Harriet tried to counsel her to think about it, she became so hysterical that her sister gave in. Louise was still living with Harriet and after the birth of the twins made it plain that she intended to go on doing so.

How could she turn her out? Her own sister and two small babies besides! Harriet protested when Paul suggested that she ought to tell Louise to leave.

Paul had been furious with her and hadn’t spoken to her for almost a fortnight.

When he eventually did, she told him that their relationship, such as it was, was over. Then, in the years that followed, somehow or other there was no time in her life for any relationship other than to her role as the main breadwinner and financial support of her sister and her children.

Louise was as irresponsible a mother as she was a sister; one moment spoiling the twins to death, the next ignoring them.After their birth she never went back to work, although she always seemed to have enough money to buy clothes to go out with the various men who dated her.

Harriet loved the twins, but she had to admit they weren’t the easiest of children to deal with. Louise never disciplined them herself and refused to allow others to do so.

Life wasn’t easy for Harriet although she never complained. Unlike Louise, who seemed for some obscure reason to blame Harriet for her early marriage and the twins’ arrival… Then, just after the twins’ ninth birthday, something totally unexpected happened, or rather two totally unexpected things happened.

The first, and the more astonishing as far as Harriet was concerned, was that a publisher accepted the children’s book she had submitted to the firm.

For as long as she could remember she had scribbled down her ‘stories’, but it was an article she had read in a magazine that had encouraged her to spend the long winter evenings working on perfecting the short adventure story she had originally written for the twins.

Now, unbelievably, it was going to be published and she was commissioned to write four more.

The other surprise was an announcement from Louise that she was remarrying, to an American who was taking her and the twins back to California with him.

Harriet had known that Louise was involved in another of her brief affairs, but there had been so many that she had not thought this one any more serious than those which had preceded it. Her sister craved admiration in the way that an addict craved drugs or alcohol, and once the current man in her life failed to provide that admiration in full measure she usually lost interest in him.

This time, though, it seemed that she had at last found a man strong enough to cope.

Harriet attended their quickly arranged marriage in a daze of surprise. She hadn’t had time to announce her own good news; Louise had as always been too wrapped up in her own affairs to spare the time to listen.

For nearly ten years Harriet had supported her sister and her children, and now totally unexpectedly she was free of that burden. A burden she had willingly shouldered, partly out of love and partly out of guilt—a guilt that sprang from the belief that she was to blame for Louise’s flight from their home and her subsequent too early marriage, and that, had their parents not died, Louise would never have left home. Now that burden was removed from Harriet’s shoulders, and she was free!

She had never liked living and working in London, and indeed disliked city life, preferring the country. The Border country between England and Scotland had always drawn her, and the weekend after Louise had left for California with her new husband and the twins, Harriet found herself heading north, to spend a glorious week meandering along the peaceful Border roads, enjoying the first real personal freedom of her life, enjoying time to think about her future—to plan!

The decision to sell her London house and move north was made quickly, too quickly perhaps, but Harriet wasn’t going to allow herself to regret it.

She had found the house by accident one golden afternoon when she was driving through the tiny village of Ryedale. A mile or so outside the village she had seen the battered ‘For Sale’ sign posted beside the road, and had gone to investigate, following the lane that was little more than an overgrown and disused cart track, to find the cottage tucked secretly and securely away behind an enormous overgrown hedge.

She had driven straight back to her hotel and telephoned the agents, and by the end of the week she had committed herself to the purchase of the cottage.

The agent had warned her of its many defects: its loneliness, its lack of mains drainage, its unkempt, overgrown garden, and its need for a complete overhaul of the electrical and plumbing installations, but nothing could put her off. She was in love, and like anyone else in that dangerous state, she refused to admit to any flaws in the appearance of her beloved.

Nevertheless she had a full survey done on the house. Built of stone, small and squat with tiny windows and low-beamed rooms, it was surprisingly free of any structural problems.

The buoyancy of the London property market enabled her to sell her own house immediately for what seemed an enormous sum of money, most of which she intended to invest to bring herself in a small ‘security net’ income. This would keep her going while she discovered if she could actually earn her living as a writer, or if her first success had been merely a fluke.

Her headmaster, when she had told him her plans, had pursed his lips and frowned, pointing out to her the risks she was taking. Teaching jobs were not easily come by where she was going. She was in line for promotion…

Harriet refused to listen. All her life she had been cautious and careful; all her adult life she had been burdened with the necessity of putting others first.

She was almost thirty-five years old and she had had no real freedom, no real opportunity to express herself as an individual. Now fate had handed her this golden chance; if she refused to take it…but she wasn’t going to refuse.

She felt happier than she could ever remember feeling in her life; and yet nervous at the same time.

Via the agent, contractors were employed to put right the defects in the plumbing and wiring; a new kitchen was installed in the cottage; and a new bathroom, plus central heating; and now, as autumn set in, Harriet was driving north to begin her new life.

As a final gesture of defiance, she had bundled up all the neat plain skirts and blouses she had worn for school and given them away; and in a final splurge of madness had gone out and re-equipped herself with jeans and thick woollen sweaters bearing funny motifs and in brilliantly bright colours.

She had discarded the serviceable green Hunter wellingtons suggested by the saleswoman when she explained her new lifestyle, and instead had opted for a pair of bright, shiny red moon boots that matched almost exactly the bright red of her hooded duffel coat. Not for her the sombre and correct green of the county fraternity. From now on she was going to be her own person and not conform to anyone else’s ideas.

She smiled a little grimly to herself as she drove north. Surely almost thirty-five was rather old to start rebelling against society? Even if that rebellion was only a very small one…Anyway, remote in her small cottage, she doubted if she would see many people to disapprove of her vivid choice of colours.

Of course, it would be nice to make friends, she admitted wistfully. In London there had never seemed to be the opportunity. The other teachers were either younger than she and intent on having a good time when they weren’t at work, or older and involved with their families. Louise had sulked every time she had tried to point out that she had a right to her own free time, and in the end it had proved so difficult to have a life of her own, independent of those of the twins and her sister, that she had given up.

She felt guilty at how little she missed them. Louise had left without making any attempt to suggest that her sister visit them. She only hoped that this time Louise stayed married, Harriet reflected. The cottage only had one large bedroom now, the two smaller rooms having been knocked into one and the third bedroom having been converted into a bathroom.

Yes, she was free for the first time since her parents’ death. Free to write…to daydream…to enjoy the countryside…to do all those things she had wanted to do for so long…to…

Her thoughts sheered off abruptly, and she braked instinctively, feeling her small VW protest as it squealed to a halt, only just missing the man who had so unexpectedly emerged from the trees shadowing the road and who was even now bearing down on her.

She reacted instinctively to his totally unexpected appearance as any driver would, braking to avoid him, but now as he came towards her she realised two disturbing things simultaneously.

The first was that she had been very foolish to stop the car in the first place, and the second and even more frightening was that the man appeared to be totally naked, apart from a pair of extremely brief briefs.

As far as she could see in the gathering dusk he was also extremely wet, and extremely angry.

Too late she reached out to lock the car door, but he was already wrenching it open, his voice hard and furious as he said bitingly, ‘Trixie, what the hell do you think you’re doing? You’ve had your little joke, and now if you wouldn’t mind giving me my clothes—’

Two strong hands reached for her, grasping her arms unceremoniously. She gasped and tensed, fear flicking through her, and then almost immediately the hands were withdrawn and an icy male voice was apologising curtly.

‘I’m sorry. I mistook you for someone else. She drives the same model and colour car. Trixie, I could murder you!’

He stopped abruptly, almost visibly forcing back his anger, his forehead creasing into a frown.

He was a tall man, over six feet and powerfully built, as Harriet had every opportunity to see, and probably very good-looking when he wasn’t so angry.

He had dark hair, at present almost plastered to his skull as though he had just been swimming, which would explain the moisture dripping from his skin and his almost nude state—but what man in his senses would be swimming out here alone in the dark?

Lost in her own thoughts, Harriet suddenly realised that he was apologising to her, though rather brusquely, explaining that he had mistaken her for someone else. Someone else who drove the same make and colour of car.

She focused on him, uncomfortably aware of her own heightened colour as her brain made the automatic connections between his unclothed body, and his reference to believing her to be someone else. Someone else who was surely his lover, and had obviously been with him and then driven off leaving him.

Suddenly feeling hot and flustered, she was aware of an odd bleakness inside her, an uncomfortable and unwanted realisation that for her there never had been, and now probably never would be, the kind of interlude that might lead to a passionate quarrel such as had obviously provoked her companion’s present ire.

She judged him to be three or four years her senior, despite the hard leanness of his body, and wondered idly what his lover was like…attractive most certainly, sophisticated. How old? Mid-twenties? And then realised that he was asking her if she would give him a lift.

A lifetime of caution screeched loud warning bells in her brain urging her to refuse. He seemed safe enough, but…

‘I’m sorry,’ she began uncomfortably, wishing she had not allowed him to open the car door, and then trying to soften her refusal by adding, ‘I’m sure that your…your girlfriend will soon be back.’

Only she spoiled her attempt at assured sophistication by stammering a little over the words, and, far from having a palliative effect on him, to her trepidation they brought the anger back to his mouth as it tightened into a hard line.

He stared down at her, and demanded brusquely, ‘My what?’His mouth tightened even more and he told her acidly, ‘Trixie isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my niece. This isn’t some idiotic lovers’ tryst gone wrong, if that’s what you’re thinking, but a piece of deliberate manipulation.’

His mouth twisted suddenly and the look in his eyes was one of disgust.

‘I realise that the circumstances here don’t exactly encourage you to believe that I’m a perfectly respectable member of our local community, but do I look like the sort of idiot who’d go swimming with his girlfriend on a freezing cold autumn evening, and then let her walk off with his clothes? That kind of thing’s for teenagers, not adults…’

To Harriet’s surprise, he seemed more infuriated by her surely perfectly natural mistake about the nature of his predicament than by her refusal to give him a lift. Now that she looked at him a little more closely she saw that his face was that of a man who was more than likely rather autocratic, and used to controlling situations rather than to being controlled by them. Unlike her…but this was one occasion on which she intended to stand firm.

No matter how plausible and respectable he might seem, she would be a fool to give him a lift…She gave a tiny shiver, contemplating the kind of fate that could be hers, if he were not everything that he seemed.

Luckily she had kept the car engine running and now, as she looked nervously over her shoulder, wishing another car would appear on the quiet road, he seemed to read her mind.

‘For God’s sake, woman,’ he said irately, ‘do I look like a rapist?’

The look he gave her seemed to imply that, even if he were, he would scarcely choose the likes of her for a victim. Always sensitive to what she considered to be her own lack of sex appeal, a lack which she had always felt was underlined by Louise’s casual ability to attract men to her side like so many flies to honey, she flushed brilliantly and snapped at him, ‘How do I know? I’ve never met one.’And then the acid look he gave her made her add uncomfortably, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a lift. You must see that. I could give someone a message, though…the local police?’

The look he gave her was as corrosive as acid.

A cool wind had sprung up, and even within the comfort of her small car she could feel its chill. No wonder that he, standing outside it, should suddenly shiver, his skin lifting in a rash of goose-bumps.

She almost weakened then, the caring, vulnerable nature which had been her undoing so often with Louise urging her to help him, but even as the words were forming on her tongue he was straightening up, his eyes brilliant with anger.

He said curtly, ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ and then, sketching her a swift and insulting half-bow that oddly enough did not make him look in the least ridiculous, he said sarcastically, ‘That’s what I like so much about the female sex—its compassion and understanding…’

And then, as she reached for the car door to close it, he lifted his hand and stopped her, the unexpected contact of his cool, damp fingers touching hers, almost like an electrical impulse passing through her body, freezing her into immobility as she stared at him, her heart pounding like that of a terrified rabbit.

‘Do you really think that if I were intending you some harm I couldn’t quite easily have overpowered you already? You know damn well I don’t intend you any harm,’ he added with soft bitterness, ‘but, like the rest of your sex, you obviously enjoy torment for torment’s sake. A small act of human charity, that’s all I asked for.’

Her guilt increasing with every word he spoke, Harriet was just about to say she had changed her mind when, without warning, he removed his hand from hers and slammed the car door shut, leaving her feeling oddly bereft and hurt.

He had already turned his back on her and was disappearing in the direction from which he had come. Her car’s headlights briefly picked out the lithe, powerfully male body, and then he was gone!

A shudder wrenched through her, and she realised that she was sitting there like someone in a trance.

Jerkily she put the car in gear and drove away.

Half an hour later, when her heartbeat had still not returned entirely to normal, she drove through the village, and slowed down carefully, looking for the lane which led to her cottage.

In the village she hesitated, wondering if she ought perhaps to report the incident to the police, anyway. Then, recognising that to do so would probably cause the man more embarrassment than relief, she did not stop.

Embarrassment…she had been the one to feel that, not him, she admitted wryly, remembering the shock of her first realisation that he was virtually nude. Strange how one accepted the sight of men on the beach wearing the briefest of attire without giving it a second thought, and yet when one was confronted by the same image in totally different surroundings—

She swallowed nervously, remembering how difficult she had found it to keep her eyes focused on the man’s face without betraying her idiotic discomfort with his unclothed state. He should have been the one to feel discomposed, not her!

And as for telling her that it was his niece who was responsible for his plight…She frowned as she turned into the lane, forced to admit that both his anger and his words had held an undeniable ring of truth.

She had gained the impression that he was a man who did not have a particularly high opinion of the female sex. Why? she wondered. Given his looks, she would have thought that almost all his adult life he would have been surrounded by admiring women.

At last her car headlights picked out the shape of the cottage. It was properly dark now, and she wished yet again that she had not left it so late to leave London. There was something depressing about arriving alone and unwelcomed at her new home to find it all in darkness.

Apparently the cottage had originally been part of a large local estate, but had been sold off as being of no further use when the estate had been split up and sold several years ago, which accounted for the isolated position of the little house.

Previously it had been inhabited by the estate’s gamekeeper, the agent had told her, and then, after the gamekeeper’s death and until the estate had been broken up eighteen months earlier, the cottage had remained uninhabited.

Two local farmers had apparently bought most of the land, with the main house and its grounds being sold to a local businessman.

As Harriet unlocked the cottage door and switched on the lights, she felt a sense of relief. The light that flooded the small hall helped to banish the sense of apprehension and guilt that had filled her as she drove away from that uncomfortable interlude by the roadside.

Guilt… Why should she feel guilt? She had offered to report his plight…

She stood still, remembering the bitter look he had given her, his curt denunciation of her sex, and found herself hoping that, whoever he was, he lived far away enough to ensure that she didn’t run into him again.

It was still relatively early, barely ten o’clock, and despite her long drive she was filled with a restless urgency that drove her not only to unpack her personal possessions from her car, but also to set up her typewriter on the table in the cottage’s comfortably-sized kitchen-cum-living-room. There she started drafting out the beginnings of an idea which had occurred to her as she’d brought her things in.

Her furniture had arrived earlier in the week, and the relocation agency she had hired had ensured that it was installed exactly where she had wanted it. These last few days in a London hotel had not been particularly comfortable ones, but she had had an interview with her publisher yesterday morning and it had seemed pointless to move to her new home and then have to travel all the way back to London for a two-hour meeting.

She was soon deep in the grip of her work, and it was two hours before she stopped typing and realised how much her back and wrists were aching and how chilled she had become. Stifling a yawn, she put her typed papers tidily to one side and got up.

Time for bed now. She would check what she had written in the morning.

Smothering a second, wider yawn, she ensured that the doors were bolted and then made her way upstairs to the comfortable room with its sloping eaves, and its wonderful views of the rolling Border hills.

Her modern bed was out of place in these traditional surroundings. As soon as she could spare the time, she would have to comb the local antique shops for something more suitable, she decided tiredly as she prepared for bed.

This room with its sloping floor and uneven walls called for something heavy and oldfashioned—the sort of bed you virtually had to climb on to, the sort of bed that was stuffed with soft pillows, covered in crisp, lavender-scented cotton and topped with an old-fashioned faded quilt.

Everything was so quiet. Unlike London where the traffic never seemed to stop. Louise had told her scornfully that the silence would drive her mad and that she’d be back in London within six months, but she knew she wouldn’t.Already she found something indescribably soothing and peaceful about the vague, muted noises the house made as it settled down around her…already she was looking forward to her new life.

She frowned, fighting off sleep. She just wished she hadn’t met that man. His anger, his almost personal contempt of her, had struck a sour note she couldn’t hush. She felt stupidly as though she were in some way responsible for causing that contempt, as though he had looked at her, had found her lacking as a woman, and for that reason had shown his contempt of her. Which was all quite ridiculous when he had made it quite plain that he disliked women in general.

She was still trying to puzzle out why she should go on thinking about him when she fell asleep.

She woke up abruptly, confused by unfamiliar sounds and by the vividness of her dreams, her face slightly pink as she tussled with the extraordinariness of her sleeping thoughts.

She had been walking alongside a river, engrossed in watching its flow, her ears and eyes attuned to its sounds and sights, and then suddenly without warning as she turned a corner she saw a man coming towards her. He was dressed casually in jeans and a cotton shirt, and as he came towards her and she saw the way he was looking at her, she realised in horrified shock that she was completely naked.

Every instinct clamoured to her to conceal herself from him, but it was already too late, and above the now urgent sound of the river she heard him saying mockingly, ‘Now it’s your turn…See how you like it…’

She shivered as she sat up in bed, trying to dismiss the symbolism of the dream. Outside it was raining, and heavily, raindrops spattering against her windows; the cause of the ‘river’ she had heard in her dream, perhaps?

Angry with herself for allowing an incident which she ought by now to have dismissed completely from her mind to occupy so much of her attention, she swung her legs out of bed, and decided that it was time she got up.

The relocation company had provided a certain amount of food, but there were things she would need, a certain amount of stocking up to do, which meant driving to the nearest market town.

Breakfast first and then she would make plans later, she decided, finding and filling the coffee filter and switching on the machine.

Two mugs of fragrant coffee and a piece of toast later, she decided that she might as well brave the wet weather and investigate a little of her immediate surroundings. From the field at the bottom of her wilderness of a garden, ran a footpath that went from the village right through up into the hills. Harriet didn’t want to walk quite that far, but she decided that a breath of fresh air would help to settle her breakfast and her thoughts.

Pulling on her red boots, and adding a bright yellow shiny oilcloth jacket with a hood, she stepped outside.

Underfoot the ground was squelchy and muddy, and she was glad she had had the forethought to buy the boots. Her garden gate swung creakily as she opened it.

She walked through, across the lane and on to the footpath in the field beyond it.

CHAPTER TWO

HARRIET walked for almost half an hour without seeing or hearing anyone, in sheer bliss after London’s frenetic streets and busy, uncaring crowds. She had learned a long time ago that it was possible to be far more lonely in the midst of a great press of humanity than it was in solitude, but she knew that Louise could never have understood her feelings.

She wished her sister well in her new life, and felt that this time she had found in her American husband a man who would give her order and direction.

Wrapped up in her bright yellow oilskin and her waterproof boots, Harriet was not bothered by the heavy rain and cool wind, and, walking past her overgrown garden, she smiled a little ruefully, remembering how in London she had dreamily planned to spend those hours when she wasn’t writing in turning her small private wilderness into the kind of secret, romantic garden she had always dreamed of having.

Here, deep in this wet glade, it was impossible to look up clearly at the sky, but she suspected that the rain had set in for the day, which meant that, instead of wilfully wasting time walking, she ought to be at her typewriter. For the first of the four commissioned books her publishers had given her a deadline which should not prove too arduous to meet, but that did not mean that she could necessarily spend her time walking around dreamily in the rain, she told herself severely, deciding regretfully that it was time she returned to the cottage. She would have a certain amount of decorating to do over the next twelve months if she was to turn the cottage into the home she had envisaged, but decorating was a task she had set aside for the winter months.

Gardening…decorating…solitude…she was fast turning into the archetypal ‘old maid’ Louise had so often accused her of being. She would be thirty-five years old in three months’ time. Not old precisely, but not young either, and age was after all a state of mind, and while a man of thirty-five and even of forty might be considered to be in his prime, for a woman—even in these liberated days…She stopped walking, and found that somehow or other, without her knowing how it had happened, a mental image of a tall, dark, and very damp man had slipped into her head and refused to leave it. A very male man…a very angry man…a man who had plainly not seen her as a desirable woman at all, but rather as an object of irritation and contempt.

Would it really have hurt her to give him a lift? A neighbourly act of charity and kindness? Had the years of living in London, celibate, alone in so many ways, and with so many responsibilities, turned her into the kind of timid, over-imaginative single woman who thought that every man she met represented some kind of danger?

She didn’t like the picture her thoughts were drawing, and dismissed it as irrational. Of course she had been quite right to refuse his request. The police via the media were constantly warning women about the dangers inherent in exactly the kind of situation she had found herself in last night. No, she had nothing to reproach herself with, and yet—Her reverie was abruptly shattered as a large and very muddy chocolate-brown Labrador suddenly came crashing through the undergrowth towards her, hotly pursued by a small, slim red-haired girl, bare-headed despite the rain, and dressed in enviably well-worn and well-used dark green jacket, faded jeans and dark green wellingtons.

‘Come here at once, Ben,’ she shouted to the dog, her eyes rounding in surprise as she saw Harriet.

‘Oh! I didn’t know anyone else was here—I thought that Ben had got the scent of a rabbit. He never catches them, thank goodness, but I’m in enough trouble already, without having to spend half the morning chasing him all over the countryside. Oh, no, Ben…down, you bad dog!’

It was too late. Ben, evidently a gregarious animal, had flung himself enthusiastically at Harriet, almost knocking her over in the process, and was now proceeding to lick her, despite the girl’s attempts to call him to heel.

Harriet didn’t mind. She loved dogs and always had done. In London it had been impossible to keep one, but perhaps here…

‘Oh, dear, I am sorry,’ the girl apologised, rushing up to Harriet to rescue her from her pet.

She had wide-set hazel eyes, a retroussé nose, and the kind of warm smile that illuminated her whole face. She looked about sixteen or seventeen, and Harriet guessed probably had the kind of quick, almost intuitive intelligence that matched her manner. Altogether something of an enchantress, who would probably drive the male sex mad once she was old enough to recognise her own power, Harriet reflected, gently pushing the dog down and holding on to his collar for her.

‘Oh, goodness, look what he’s done to your jacket!’ The girl grimaced guiltily.

The front of Harriet’s yellow oilskin was covered in muddy pawprints, but she shook her head in dismissal of another apology.

‘They’ll wash off, there’s no real harm done.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ her companion said with disarming frankness. ‘All I need right now is someone to go complaining to Rigg about me. I’m in enough trouble as it is.’ She rolled her eyes theatrically, and giggled. ‘Right at this moment, I’m supposed to be in my room contemplating my sins. Have you ever heard anything so archaic? Rigg really is the end. I keep on telling him I’m an adult, not a child.’

Her mouth became stubborn and resolute all of a sudden, striking a vague chord of memory within Harriet. She frowned a little herself, but before she could say anything the girl was speaking again.

‘I’m Trixie Matthews, by the way, and this, as you’ve probably guessed, is Ben.’

Trixie. An unusual name, and now she had heard it twice within one single span of twenty-four hours…Not merely coincidence, surely? Could this be the niece of whom the man who had stopped her car last night had spoken so furiously?

The tempation to find out was almost overwhelming; it wouldn’t have been difficult, not with this girl, with her confiding, open nature, but Harriet had a very strict personal moral code, and to ask the questions teeming through her brain would undoubtedly break it—and, besides, what did it matter? Last night’s interlude by the roadside was over and done with, and had already occupied far too many of her thoughts.

Giving the girl a polite, dismissive smile, she turned round ready to head back to the cottage. The smile was one she had perfected over the years, for keeping other people at a distance, but the girl seemed unaware of that fact, and fell into step beside her. Ben, the Labrador, having drawn his mistress’s attention to the stranger in their midst, was apparently quite content to snuffle in the undergrowth a few yards ahead of them.

‘Are you staying in the village?’ Trixie asked Harriet interestedly. ‘Not that we’ve had much of a summer this year.’ She pulled a face. ‘I keep telling Rigg that I need a proper holiday.’ She gave Harriet a mischievous smile.

‘He’s so stuffy and old-fashioned…Loads of girls my age are living on their own, never mind going on holiday with a friend and her mother.’

Many girls were, Harriet acknowledged, but not girls like this one, whose every word and gesture betrayed how cherished and protected she was.

‘Where are you staying? At the Staple?’

The Staple was the village’s ancient pub, with a history dating back to the times when the village had been one of the staging posts on the long trek south to English markets for the shepherds who raised their flocks on the Border hills. Hence its name.

‘No…actually, I’m not a visitor. I’ve just moved up here from London.’

‘You’ve moved up here?’ Trixie’s expression said quite obviously that she was surprised. ‘From London, but…You must have bought the old gamekeeper’s cottage, then. Rigg said it had been sold. To a schoolteacher.’

The girl was frowning now, and for some reason she couldn’t truly explain, Harriet found herself saying, ‘I used to teach. I don’t now.’

She didn’t say what she did instead, and Trixie’s frown disappeared, to be replaced with a wide grin.

‘Thank goodness for that, otherwise Rigg would probably try to persuade you to give me extra lessons during the holidays.’ She pulled a face again. ‘He’s got this obsession about keeping me occupied. Just because both my parents were up at Oxford.’ She pulled another face. ‘I keep on telling Rigg that they may have been brilliant, but I’m not. Don’t you think that, at almost eighteen, I’m old enough to go on holiday with a girlfriend and her mother, without Rigg kicking up such a fuss?’ she then demanded indignantly.

Harriet, who suspected there was something she wasn’t being told, could only offer a gentle palliative. ‘Perhaps, but if your uncle has refused to give his permission…’

‘Refused! I thought he was going to have forty fits,’Trixie told her gloomily, ‘and all because of a silly mistake. I tried to tell him what had happened, but he wouldn’t listen, and then I tried to show him how easily circumstances can be misinterpreted, but instead of understanding what I was trying to prove he was furious with me…’

Indignation showed in the hazel eyes, and Harriet felt a sudden surge of sympathy for her uncle. The responsibility of a girl like this one could not be an easy one.

Trixie gave another faint sigh. ‘I suppose I’d better get back before he discovers I’ve broken out. Of course, he wouldn’t be like this at all if he wasn’t such a mis…such a missy…one of those men who hate women,’ she elucidated, leaving Harriet to supply the word automatically.

‘You mean a misogynist.’

‘Mmm…and all because some woman walked out on him years ago,’ Trixie told her, with all the scorn of youth.

Harriet knew she shouldn’t be listening to any of this, never mind wanting, almost encouraging the next confidence.

‘Of course, I suppose it wasn’t very nice, virtually being left at the altar, so to speak,’ Trixie allowed.

Left at the altar! Harriet blinked, wondering if after all she had jumped to erroneous conclusions about the identity of Trixie’s uncle. She couldn’t imagine any woman leaving at the altar the man she had met last night.

They were back in sight of her cottage and, guiltily aware that by rights she should have stopped Trixie’s confidences some time ago, she gave the girl another smile, and said quietly, ‘It’s been nice meeting you…I hope your uncle isn’t too angry when he finds out you’ve been out.’

‘Oh, Rigg doesn’t get angry. He just sort of looks at you…you know, as though you’re the lowest of the low. I suppose it’s true that I’m a bit of a trial to him. That’s what Mrs Arkwright, our housekeeper, says. She thinks the world of Rigg, and not a lot of me. I heard her telling her husband—he’s the gardener—that Rigg was a saint for taking me on after my parents were killed…A saint! He’s more like a devil,’ Trixie told her acidly. ‘He just can’t seem to understand that I’m almost eighteen…grown up…I like your outfit by the way,’ she added inconsequentially. ‘Rigg would have a fit if I bought anything like that.’

She scowled rebelliously at her own serviceable and eminently suitable country clothes, and it occurred to Harriet that had she herself been dressed in her normal sober clothes, this girl would probably never have been quite so forthcoming with her.

A twinge of guilt attacked her. She ought not to have allowed Trixie to tell her so much. Rigg! It was an unusual name. She longed to ask how he had come by it, but, although she suspected Trixie would have been quite willing to tell her, she firmly resisted the temptation.

They parted at Harriet’s garden gate, but later in the day, as she laboured over the outline for her new book, Harriet found it increasingly hard to subdue a sub-plot which involved a slender red-headed girl with hazel eyes, a confiding manner, and an ogre of an uncle.

In the end she gave way to it, and before the day was over she discovered that her book had changed direction completely, and that her plot had been taken over by her new characters.

It was four o’clock before she remembered that she had intended to go shopping.

The market town was a good three-quarters of an hour’s drive away. She had enough food for tonight…She looked at the telephone, trying to work out the time difference between England and California, wondering if she should ring Louise and check that she had settled into her new life happily, and then she dismissed the instinct, telling herself that Louise was an adult with a husband to take care of her. Odd, how, whenever she thought of Louise, she always thought of her in terms of needing to be looked after, when in truth Louise was far more resilient than she was—far more adaptable, far more able to take care of herself. Emotionally, at least.

As Harriet pushed away her typewriter, an unfamiliar sense of happiness filled her. Freedom…freedom to be what she wanted…to do what she wanted…with no other claims on her time or her emotions, with no need to put others first. It was the kind of hedonistic bliss that was totally unfamiliar to her, and, on the strength of it, she donned her wellingtons and her oilskin for the second time that day and marched purposefully out into the wilderness, where she spent a profitable and very muddy hour removing weeds from the crazy paving path that ran along the length of the front garden to the gate, before the growing dusk drove her inside.

Her work in the garden had produced hunger pangs which sent her straight to have a bath and prepare a meal.

The heavy rainclouds had brought an earlier dusk than might have been expected, and, having listened to the news and a weather forecast that suggested that the rain was going to continue for a few days, Harriet retired to bed with a shiny-covered, deliciously smelling, luxurious hardback copy of the latest book by one of her favourite authors.

However, for once the author’s skill failed to occupy all her attention and she found her mind wandering recklessly back not just to her meeting earlier in the day with Trixie Matthews but also to that unexpected exchange with her uncle.

‘Trixie,’ he had called her before realising his mistake, with anger and resignation in his voice. Poor man, it couldn’t be easy for him, apparently totally responsible for such a spirited teenager.

She fell asleep on the thought, a soft smile curling her mouth as she wondered how on earth even so obviously enterprising and resourceful a girl as Trixie had got a man like Rigg to strip down to his underwear in the first place, never mind leaving him stranded without either any clothes or any transport!

Well, supermarkets were obviously something that remained the same countrywide, Harriet reflected tiredly, as she collected her receipt from the girl on the checkout and wheeled her trolley out into the murky greyness of the wet autumn day and the unprepossessing expanse of the supermarket’s car park.

Had the day been pleasanter, she might have been tempted to explore a little more of the town, but the rain was falling heavily, and she felt chilled by the icy wind that whipped across the exposed tarmac.

So much for the mellow fruitfulness of autumn, she thought wryly as she packed her shopping away in the car and then drove away.

The Border hills looked bleak and alien as she drove homewards, and inside the warm capsule of her car Harriet shivered. She didn’t envy anyone working on those hills today, where the sheep would be protected from the rain by their oily coats, but the shepherds and their dogs…

The village was deserted, and she remembered that the agent had told her that Tuesday was their early closing day. Early closing…she smiled to herself. Living in London, she had almost forgotten that such things existed. She stopped the car to allow an old man to cross the road, watching him disappear into the old-fashioned telephone kiosk.

The wind buffeted her when she stopped the car on her drive and hurried to unlock the back door. Once it was unlocked she removed the keys and threw them and her handbag on to the kitchen table so that she could hurry back to get her shopping in.

The slam of the back door as she ran back to the car meant nothing to her until she returned to it, her arms fully occupied with the heavy cardboard box of groceries, and discovered that it wouldn’t yield one single inch to the pressure of her arm on the handle.

Telling herself not to panic, she put down the box and tried the handle again, realising too late, when the door wouldn’t open, that she had forgotten to snick back the Yale lock after opening the door, and that her keys were now locked inside the house and she and her groceries were locked outside it.

As she stood staring in self-condemnatory disbelief at the locked door, she suddenly realised that she was getting soaking wet. Staring at the door and expecting it to open by sheer will-power wasn’t going to work and, London-trained, she had of course made sure that all her windows were closed and locked before she went out.

So now what was she to do?

The agent? He might have a spare key. Failing that, he would be able to recommend a locksmith, perhaps…

Groaning to herself, she picked up the now damp cardboard box and shoved it back in the car, thankful that she had not yet had time to add her car keys to the same ring as her house keys.

The nearest telephone was in the village, and the thought that without them she would have had to walk the two miles there in this weather, dressed in her flimsy jacket and her court shoes, made her shiver even more than she was already doing.

The village and the telephone box were both empty. She had to ask for directory enquiries in order to get the agent’s number. Fortunately she could remember his address as well as his name.

His secretary listened to her problem and then told her sympathetically that he was out and not due back for over an hour. ‘Wait a minute, though,’ she added as Harriet was about to hang up. ‘I seem to remember that they held a spare key up at the Hall, because they were keeping an eye on the place while it was empty. Do you want me to ring through to them and check?’

Harriet thanked her and said no, explaining that she had her car and it would probably be quicker for her to drive straight round to the Hall and find out for herself.

She knew where it was, for the agent had pointed out to her the impressive wrought-iron gateway, fronting on to the main road a couple of miles past her own unkempt lane. As she thanked the girl for her help and hurried back to her car, Harriet could only pray that the Hall’s spare key had not yet been returned to the agent, and was glad that she herself had not had time to change the locks as she had fully intended to do.

Cursing herself for her own stupidity, she drove back through the village, past the entrance to her own lane, and on towards the immaculate, black-painted wrought-iron gates with their gold tips, and impressive crest.

The man who had bought the Hall, in what the agent had described to her as a very rundown state indeed, had apparently been almost as much a stranger to the area as she was herself, a very successful businessman whose ancestors had originally come from this part of the world, the agent had told her. He had gone on to explain that not only had this man bought the Hall and moved into it, but also he had transferred his business to the area as well, opening up a new factory on the small industrial estate just outside the market town.

‘Something or other in computers he is,’ Harriet had been told, and was glad that she had kept to herself her own method of earning her living. The agent did not mean any harm, but he obviously couldn’t resist discussing his clients, and she was still too unsure of her own ability to follow up her first novel with an acceptable second one to feel she justified being described as ‘a writer’.

She had to get out of her car to open the gates, but was too relieved to discover that they were not electronically controlled and thus impenetrable to her to care about the discomfort of getting even wetter.

Her thin jacket, adequate enough while she only had to dash from the car to the supermarket, was now soaked through, the dampness penetrating the thin T-shirt she was wearing underneath it, making her skin feel cold and clammy.

Her jeans were wet as well, the heavy denim fabric rubbing uncomfortably against her skin every time she had to change gear.

The Hall was not the imposing edifice she had anticipated, but a long, low, rambling affair of a similar period to her own cottage. Even with its stone walls soaked dark grey by the heavy rain to match the surrounding countryside, it still managed to exude an air of welcome and tranquillity.

Its warmth and beauty, indefinable and yet so very much there, took her breath away for a moment, so that she forgot the discomfort of her damp clothes and even momentarily forgot the irritation of locking herself out of the cottage, and the embarrassment of announcing as much to the strangers who lived here.

As she stepped out of the car and walked towards the ancient oak door, she found herself envying whoever it was who lived here—not because of the house’s size and privacy, but for its marvellous and totally unexpected aura of peace and happiness.

Someone was opening the door as she approached it. Trixie’s familiar, smiling face greeted her, the younger girl apparently completely unsurprised to see her.

Ben, the Labrador, welcomed her boisterously as Trixie almost pulled her inside.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come round,’ Trixie told her. ‘I’ve been bored out of my mind.’ She rolled her eyes and giggled. ‘Rigg has virtually banned me from going out.’

They were standing in a lovely square panelled hallway, with an enormous stone fireplace that actually had a fire burning in its grate.

Ben, having welcomed her, went and lay down in front of it with a luxurious sigh of pleasure.

A worn oak staircase went up one wall to a galleried landing, the staircase wall lined with paintings which looked frighteningly as though they might be originals and priceless.

Heavy damask curtains hung at the windows, their rich fabric adding an extra glow of warmth to the room. She was standing, Harriet belatedly recognised, on an antique rug that was surely never intended to be the recipient of wet and probably still muddy shoes.

She started to apologise automatically, but Trixie just laughed.

‘Come on. I’m dying to introduce you to Rigg. He’s always complaining that I never make any respectable friends…’

Harriet froze as the potential embarrassment of the situation struck her. Somehow or other she had assumed that Trixie’s uncle would not be here, that he would be at work. If he was the same man she had had that difficult confrontation with the other evening, she had no wish at all to meet him again, especially not under these circumstances—not an invited and welcome guest to his home, but rather a petitioner.

‘Oh, no…please…there’s no need to disturb your uncle. I’m sure he must be very busy,’ she protested, catching hold of Trixie’s arm and adding uncomfortably, ‘Actually I didn’t come here to see you, Trixie. I didn’t even realise you lived here.’ Although she ought to have done, she recognised; it had been obvious from Trixie’s engaging and informative conversation that she came from a wealthy background, and from what the agent had told her about the owner of the Hall she ought perhaps to have had the sense to put two and two together and recognise that it must be Trixie’s home. No wonder her uncle hadn’t wanted Harriet reporting his plight to the police.

Trixie looked at her, her expression clouding a little.

‘You haven’t come to see me, then?’

Quickly Harriet explained about locking herself out of her cottage.

‘I rang the agent I bought the house from, and his secretary told me that you used to have a key here.’

Neither of them heard someone also enter the room, but as Trixie furrowed her forehead and then said doubtfully, ‘I don’t know anything about it. I’ll have to ask Rigg.’

Then an all-too-familiar male voice sent shivers of despair racing down Harriet’s spine as it enquired dulcetly, ‘You’ll have to ask me what, Trixie?’

Without intending to, Harriet swung round towards the door, and suffered a heart-shaking jolt of sensation as she stared at the man standing there. He seemed familiar and yet almost totally unfamiliar in his formal business suit and immaculate white shirt.

The dark hair, no longer damp and clinging to his scalp but well cut and brushed, seemed to accentuate the maleness of a face which in the daylight she could see appeared to be almost carved in deep lines of cynicism.

‘It’s Harriet,’ Trixie told him. ‘She’s locked herself out of the cottage and she thought we might have a spare key.’

For a moment, from the dismissive way his glance flicked over her and then returned with hard intent to his niece, Harriet thought that he had not after all recognised her.

She was surprised by the strength of her chagrin that he, who had made such a dangerously lasting impression on her, had apparently no remembrance of her whatsoever.

‘Try for a slightly more logical explanation, Trixie,’ he suggested calmly. Although Trixie grimaced a little, it was obvious to Harriet that she had a healthy respect for her uncle, because after gritting her teeth and casting Harriet an appealing glance, she said quickly, ‘This is Harriet, Rigg. I met her the other…yesterday. She lives in the old gamekeeper’s cottage. Harriet, this is my uncle.’

‘Thank you, Trixie, Miss Smith and I have already met.’

Harriet started a little. Then she had been wrong in that first assumption that he had not recognised her, but how had he discovered her surname?

‘Oh, have you?’ Trixie gave them both a puzzled look, and said to Harriet, ‘You never said anything yesterday about meeting Rigg.’

It was Rigg who answered for her, saying silkily, ‘Perhaps the incident is not one she cares to recall. Miss Smith was, I’m afraid, the unfortunate victim of your idiotic behaviour the other evening. She has the misfortune to drive a car of the same make and colour as yours. When I emerged from the river, to discover her driving towards me, I thought for a moment that you’d come to your senses.’

As she glanced at Trixie, Harriet saw that that unrepentant young lady was trying hard not to laugh. Her uncle obviously didn’t share her amusement, though. He was looking grimly at both of them.

‘Oh, Harriet, no! Was it you who refused to give Rigg a lift?’ Trixie gasped, before her mirth overcame her. ‘See, it worked after all, Rigg!’ she crowed to her uncle. ‘Circumstantial evidence…and I’ll bet that Harriet didn’t believe—’

‘What Miss Smith believed was that I was either a lunatic or a rapist, or possibly both,’ Rigg interrupted Trixie in a hard voice.

‘Oh, Harriet, how brave of you—refusing to give him a lift.’Trixie’s eyes danced with laughter.

But Harriet couldn’t share her innocent amusement. Then Rigg had been the one to ask a favour of her, and she had refused, had refused to help or assist him, and now their positions were reversed, and she was the one needing his help…She shuddered inwardly, and wished it had been anyone else in the world she was having to confront right now rather than this cold, stern man. And even more than that she wished that her hitherto easily controllable imagination would not choose now of all times to become both rebellious and dangerous, by insisting on substituting for his immaculate business suit and shirt the vivid memory of how she had seen him in the headlights of her car, wearing nothing but…

She swallowed hard, and said huskily, ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, but the agent did say that you might have a spare key for the cottage here at one time, and I was wondering if you still had it?’

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