Mistress And Mother

Molly took the pointed invitation to escape with alacrity and rose in a rush. ‘Yes…I’m pretty cold and wet. The bathroom’s upstairs, isn’t it?’

She staggered slightly and then lurched past him like a fleeing fawn before the hands he put out to steady her could make contact.

‘Can you make it up there on your own?’ he enquired in her wake as he switched on the hall light, illuminating the stark narrow staircase with its worn runner.

‘Yes…thanks,’ she mumbled, and fled.

First left at the top of the stairs. She remembered that, teeth now free to chatter with cold and reaction. She also remembered, before she was married, creeping downstairs and standing outside the door of Freddy’s study, hearing the old man sigh worriedly and say, ‘She’s as sweet and innocent as a Labrador puppy, Sholto. A country girl with the bloom still on her cheeks. I can see the attraction. But does she have the slightest idea what she’s getting into and have you got the patience to stay the course?’

‘Not if she listens behind doors like the servants,’ Sholto had purred, whipping the door wide to entrap her with burning cheeks and guilty eyes. And he had laughed softly and drawn her forward. ‘Answer for yourself, cara. Have you the courage to take me on?’

Sholto Cristaldi had been born into one of Italy’s most formidable business dynasties. At eighteen he had come into a vast inheritance. She pictured him now, downstairs, as she ran water into the iron claw-footed bath, her breath misting in the punishingly cold air. Tight black jeans sheathing his long, long legs, a thick cream sweater accentuating his olive-toned skin, luxuriant black hair and magnetic dark eyes. He had the kind of raw physical impact that hit the unwary like a car crash.

What was he doing here in Freddy’s bare little house? Sholto had staff to do everything, half a dozen luxurious residences scattered across the globe and a jet-set lifestyle that came as naturally to him as breathing. Shivering, she removed her damp clothes and sank down into the warm water.

Maybe, if she prayed very, very hard, Sholto would be magically gone when she had finished her bath. Cowardice, complete cowardice… But she was terrified of exposing her emotions to a male so frighteningly accomplished at concealing his own. She needed to be polite and distant but what she really wanted to do was scream, ‘Why did you do it? Why did you marry me and then go back to her?’

But she was afraid that she already knew why. Afterwards… when it had been all over…only then had she begun to recall and suspect the true meaning of the sly whispers and innuendos that had once gone over her innocent head. Appalled comprehension had come too late, much, much too late for her to protect herself from hurt and harm. Little country girl, naive and blindly trusting and head over heels in love.

With a flying knock, the bathroom door opened and her head jerked round in shock.

‘I thought you might appreciate something warm and dry to wear.’ With a graceful hand, Sholto cast a couple of folded garments down on the chair by the door.

‘Get out!’ Molly gasped in horror, whipping protective arms over the embarrassing fullness of her breasts and diving lower in the water, feeling fat and ugly, thinking of Pandora in sudden tearing anguish, slim and slender as a willow wand, without a single ounce of superfluous flesh.

The minute the door closed, Molly scrambled hurriedly out of the bath. Drying herself, she looked in the small mirror above the sink. Tangled hair the colour of autumn leaves fell round her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face with smudged river-green eyes. Outstandingly ordinary. She was lucky Sholto had recognised her. On their wedding day, she had been rakethin and her hair had been tinted white-blonde and cut very, very short like a boy’s. Living up to Sholto with Pandora’s haunting presence in the background had driven her to strange and increasingly desperate measures.

His jeans and sweater drowned her five-foot-four-inch frame. After anchoring the jeans to her waist with the belt of her skirt, she rolled up the legs several times. The green sweater fell to her knees. Her shoes were so sodden there was no way she could put them on again. She looked like a refugee from a disaster.

Downstairs, the sitting room was empty. She draped her damp clothes over a chair-back and set her shoes by the hearth to dry. From the study next door, she heard a faint noise like a drawer closing and she went into the kitchen. A rough board had been wedged into the aperture of the broken window, blocking out the icy blast of the wind. She set the big kettle on the range. She would make coffee. That was civilised. She wouldn’t let the hatred and the pain and the bitterness out. She would match his sublime indifference if it killed her.

But what about her brother, Nigel, and that wretched loan? Molly grimaced. Four years ago, shortly before their wedding, Sholto had given Nigel a simply huge loan. He had used the money to turn their late grandfather’s small market garden into a modern garden centre. But late last year her brother had got into debt and he had fallen behind with the loan. Sholto’s bankers had refused to allow Nigel any more time in which to make good those missed payments and indeed were now threatening to repossess both his home and his business.

Until now Molly had been extremely reluctant to make a direct appeal to Sholto on her brother’s behalf. Nigel was grasping at straws in his naive conviction that his sister could somehow work a miracle for him and his family. Molly had had no wish to raise false hopes, or, if she was honest, to lay her pride on the line for nothing, for she was certain that Sholto wouldn’t pay the slightest heed to anything she said. However, having found herself under the same roof as Sholto, she knew she wouldn’t be able to look her brother in the face again if she didn’t at least try to persuade Sholto to listen to her.

She pressed the study door open. Sholto was standing looking out of the uncurtained window at the snow, an expression of such grim bleakness etched into his bold, sun-bronzed features that she wished she had left him alone. He studied the beakers on the little tin tray. His wide, sensual mouth hardened, tawny eyes cynically raking her flushed face.

‘The answer is no,’ he breathed with ice-cold clarity.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But Molly was most terribly afraid that she did and that he was an entire step, if not a complete flight of stairs, ahead of her.

‘When you lie, you can’t meet my eyes. I used to think that was incredibly sweet.’ The cynical laugh he used to crown the admission made her squirm.

Molly’s hands shook slightly as she set the tray down on the cluttered Victorian desk that half filled a small room already packed tight with bookshelves and an old swivel chair. Lifting one of the beakers, she turned on her heel.

‘Sit down, Molly.’ Sholto spun out the swivel chair with deliberate purpose.

She hovered. ‘Look, I—’

‘Sit down,’ he said again, innate authority in every measured syllable.

Molly gave an awkward face-saving shrug. ‘OK…fine.’

Sholto braced a lean hip against the edge of the desk and stared down at her, much too close for comfort. ‘How did you find out I was here?’

Molly blinked in confusion. ‘I hadn’t the slightest idea you would be here.’

‘Why drive several hundred miles to collect that vase…indeed, why come at all when the solicitor told you that it could be delivered?’ Sholto enquired very drily.