Mistress And Mother

‘But that’s not the only reason you’re feeling like this.’ With instinctive tact, Donald averted his attention from her strained face. ‘I have no idea what passed between you and Sholto but obviously the encounter caused you a lot of distress.’

Molly studied him with growing discomfiture. Donald looked so mild and unassuming that people were invariably surprised by the forthright character and plain speech which were as much a part of him as his caring nature. He was immensely popular with his parishioners. Indeed, since her stepfather’s retirement and Donald’s subsequent appointment as rector, the congregation had increased in strength. ‘Donald—’

‘And I know you won’t be offended when I admit that after careful reflection I’m grateful you had the good sense to decide that we wouldn’t suit. I would still very much like to have a wife to come home to at night…I rattle like a pea round the vicarage and I am lonely,’ he admitted without sentimentality. ‘But you are too young to settle for that sort of marriage. I’m afraid it was wishful thinking on my part but please don’t let that proposal of mine make you feel uncomfortable with me now.’

Her eyes stung. His continuing friendship and understanding made her swallow hard and finally nod.

‘So I hope I may still speak as a friend,’ Donald continued wryly. ‘Molly…for your own sake, start living in the present and try to forget that Sholto ever existed. It’s the only way and I do know what I’m talking about.’

Both the reminder and the blunt advice made Molly bite painfully at her lower lip. The woman Donald had loved had returned his feelings but had shrunk from the prospect of becoming a clergyman’s wife. The relationship had trailed on unhappily for months before Donald had finally gathered the strength to cut his losses and end it.

‘I’m not still in love with Sholto, Donald.’ Molly lifted her chin with fierce pride. ‘In fact I dislike and despise him!’

‘Yet even now you change into a different person when you’ve been with him,’ Donald sighed. ‘He winds you up like a battery toy and then he leaves you flailing around like a lost soul.’

Molly shivered as if an icy hand had trailed down her spine. ‘That’s not a very comforting analogy.’

‘But it’s a true one. Don’t forget that I was a spectator to the after-effects of the first time around. I’ve seen you like this before…one day you loved him, the next you seemed to hate him with equal passion.’

Molly paled, her fingers curling on the chair-arm. She had no desire to recall those dark days following an even darker one four years ago, when the agony of betrayal and humiliation had almost ripped her apart.

‘Sadly nobody gave you impartial advice to begin with,’ Donald said regretfully. ‘People whom you trusted and who should’ve known better encouraged you to take a hostile, embittered stance for various reasons of their own. Your stepfather disliked Sholto and was delighted to stand in judgement. Your mother backed up your stepfather. And that girl, Jenna, your so-called best fnend…’ Donald pursed his lips expressively and continued, ‘Jenna was bitterly envious of you from the day you met Sholto and was scarcely an unprejudiced bystander.’

Molly had stiffened defensively. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing, Donald. Other people’s opinions didn’t influence me.’

‘Well…I’ve said enough for now and I do have another call to make this evening.’ Donald stood up unhurriedly. ‘But has it ever occurred to you that had you allowed Sholto the chance to tell you his side of the story then the whole miserable affair would have been considerably less acrimonious?’

With a slight squirming sensation, Molly recalled Donald’s unwelcome advice. He had urged her to seek such a meeting with Sholto but Molly had been deeply offended by a suggestion which had seemed to take no account of the fact that she was the injured party. It was only as she had got to know Donald better that she had learnt he could be a sincere and worthwhile friend.

She saw him out to his car. Donald was now talking cheerfully about his upcoming six-week vacation to visit relatives in New Zealand. He had been saving up for a long time to make the trip and was very much looking forward to it.

As Molly got ready for bed, she realised that Donald had made not one single reference to her brother Nigel’s plight. Yet his sympathy had been pronounced…until she’d told him what Sholto had told her at Freddy’s house. Perhaps Donald now thought that foolish Nigel was receiving his just deserts for playing Russian roulette with Sholto’s money. But Molly’s heart still ached for Nigel and his family.

Nigel didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body and he had all but cringed when she had confronted him with Sholto’s accusation of fraud. Yes, Sholto’s bankers had taken a similar stance, her brother had finally admitted, but he had sworn that he had had no intent to defraud anyone and had not even realised that the money was not entirely his to do with as he wished. But then he had not even studied the loan agreement, an admission which had made Molly, who was a legal secretary, grind her teeth in exasperation.

The next morning Molly felt even more exhausted than she had the day before. She drove the five miles to the small market town where she worked in a solicitor’s office and climbed the stairs with a heavy heart. Her boss, Mr Woods, who had little patience with mistakes, greeted her with a long legal brief which needed retyping because she had misspelt the name of the client concerned.

Shortly before one o’clock she heard steps on the stairs and glanced up with a frown, hoping it wasn’t a client because Mr Woods didn’t like her to take her lunch break while he still had someone in his office. On the other hand, regardless of how late she might leave, he would still expect her back at her desk by two.

The opaque glass door swung back, framing Sholto on the threshold. In shock, Molly’s heart leapt up into her throat, something akin to raw panic assailing her. He looked devastatingly handsome in a superbly cut dovegrey suit that smoothly outlined his broad shoulders, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. His thick black hair was brushed back off his brow, sleek stockbroker style, the gleam of a white silk shirt accentuating the exotic gold of his skin. Everything she had told herself she wouldn’t, couldn’t, mustn’t ever feel again hit her in a tidal wave.

CHAPTER FOUR

RIVETING dark eyes rested on her, whipping down to the left hand bare of rings which Molly had braced on the edge of her desk. A wolfish smile drove the impassivity from Sholto’s dark and vibrant features. ‘Are you free for lunch?’

‘L-lunch?’ Molly stammered incredulously, the tip of her tongue stealing out to moisten her dry lips as she struggled to suppress the most terrifying surge of soaring excitement.

‘What a drab and depressing working environment.’ Sholto scanned the small, shabby reception area with its line of battered filing cabinets and the single narrow window which overlooked the roof of a neighbouring building. ‘My employees would riot if I asked them to function in surroundings like these. I imagine you’re overworked and underpaid too. You probably think it’s better for your character.’

Still paralysed, Molly continued to stare at him, heart thundering, mouth dry as a bone. ‘How on earth did you find out where I worked?’

‘Freddy told me.’ Sholto gave her a glinting look that was utterly unreadable. ‘He had a habit of dropping little titbits unasked and I have a good memory.’

Molly flushed uneasily, wondering just how many ‘little titbits’ Freddy had passed on before her desultory correspondence with him had finally trailed to a halt. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve already covered that angle,’ Sholto reminded her gently.

But why on earth would he ask her to join him for lunch? Her fine brows pleated as she stood up, fighting her own drowning, desperate selfconsciousness with all her might. ‘Was there something you—?’