Christmas at His Command

Marigold had heard of incidents where one person could freeze another into silence and she hadn’t actually experienced it until now, but in the last moment or two he had shifted slightly in his seat and now the grey eyes had taken on a silver hue which turned them into two flares of cold white light.

‘Explain what?’ he continued curtly. ‘The reason why not one of your family, you included, saw fit to visit an old lady in the last twelve months before her death? The odd letter or two, the occasional phone call to the village shop that delivered her groceries every week was supposed to suffice, was it? Messages delivered secondhand can’t compare to flesh and blood reality, Miss Jones. Oh, I know she could be difficult, recalcitrant and obstinate to a point where you could cheerfully have strangled her, but didn’t any of you understand the fierce plea for independence and the pride behind it? She was an old lady, for crying out loud. Ninety-two years old! Didn’t any of you have the imagination and the sensitivity to realise that behind her awkwardness and perversity she was crying out to be told she was still loved and wanted for the woman she was?’

‘Mr Moreau—’

‘But it was simpler and easier to write her off as bigoted and impossible,’ he bit out savagely. ‘That way you could all get on with your nice, orderly lives with your consciences clean and unsmirched.’

Anger was beginning to surface inside Marigold, not least because of this man’s arrogant refusal to allow her to get a word in edgeways. He had clearly been seething about what he saw as the neglect of Emma’s family towards the old lady for a long time, but he wasn’t giving her a chance to explain who she was or what she was doing here!

‘You don’t understand. I’m not—’

‘Responsible?’ Again he cut her off, his eyes like polished crystal. ‘That’s too easy a get-out clause, Miss Jones. It might suit you to give out the air of helpless femininity in the present situation in which you find yourself, but it doesn’t fool me. Not for a second! And while you are considering how much you can make on selling your grandmother’s home—a home she fought tooth and nail to keep going, I might add—you could consider the blood, sweat and tears that went into her remaining here all her life. And there were tears, don’t fool yourself about that. And caused by you and the rest of your miserable family.’

‘You have absolutely no right to talk to me like this.’ Marigold was at the point of hitting him.

‘No?’ His voice was softer now but curiously more deep and disturbing than its previous harsh tone. ‘So you aren’t looking to sell the old lady’s pride and joy, then? The home she fought so hard to keep?’

Marigold opened her mouth to fire back a rejoinder but then, in the next instant, it dawned on her that that was exactly what Emma was planning to do and for a moment the realisation floored her.

‘I thought so.’ She was at the receiving end of that deadly stare again. ‘How someone like you can have the same blood as that courageous old lady flowing through their veins beats me, I tell you straight. You and the rest of your family aren’t worthy to lick her boots.’

Marigold stared at him through the snowflakes that had settled on her eyelashes. She was about to tell him she didn’t have the same blood, that she was in fact no relation at all to Emma’s grandmother, when the hot rage which was bubbling checked her words. Let him think what he liked, the arrogant swine! She would rather struggle on all night than ask him for help or explain he’d got it all wrong. The man was a bully, whatever the facts behind all he had said. He knew she’d had to abandon her car and that she had hurt herself, yet he’d still been determined to browbeat her and have his say. Well, he could take a running jump! She wasn’t going to explain a thing and he could drive off in his nice warm car, knowing that he had had his pound of flesh. The rotten, stinking—

‘Lost for words, Miss Jones?’ he enquired softly, the tone of his voice making the icy air around Marigold strike warm.

‘Not at all.’ She drew herself up to her full five feet four inches and never had she wished so hard she was half a foot or so taller. ‘I was just wondering whether it was worth wasting any breath on such an unsavoury individual as you, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ He smiled, but it was just a twist of the hard carved lips.

‘And what have you decided?’

She glared at him for one moment more, her blue eyes sparking with the force of her emotion, and then turned and began walking up the road, trying not to limp in spite of the excruciating pain in her ankle, which seemed worse now she had rested it for a few moments.

She heard the engine rev behind her and fully expected the big vehicle to roar past her in a flurry of snow, so when it drew up beside her, keeping pace with her limping gait, she bit her lip hard but didn’t turn her head from the white landscape in front of her.

‘You said you fell over and twisted your ankle,’ the hateful voice said flatly at the side of her.

She ignored it, along with the urge to burst into tears as waves of self-pity made themselves known.

‘Get in.’ This time the touch of raw impatience was very obvious, but again Marigold ignored him, struggling on, her face set resolutely ahead.

‘Miss Jones, I think I ought to point out that you are extremely lucky I had an appointment elsewhere today which necessitated my leaving this morning. There is absolutely no chance of anyone else using this road and the cottage is at least another mile. Need I say more?’ he added condescendingly.

‘Get lost,’ she bit out through gritted teeth.

There was a moment’s pause and then his voice drawled, with disparaging amusement, ‘Out of the two of us I would say that’s a more likely occurrence for you. Get in the car, Miss Jones, and let’s cut out the drama. It might be unpleasant for you to be told the truth for once, but you are old enough, and I’m sure tough enough, to survive.’

‘I would rather freeze to death than accept a lift from you.’ She turned for just an instant to meet the silver-grey eyes and her face spoke for itself.

‘Now you are being ridiculous.’

‘Well, that’s just one more thing you can add to my list of crimes, then, isn’t it?’ she returned tartly.

‘Get in the car.’

At this point Marigold so far forgot herself as to come out with an expletive she had never used in her life before. He thought he could order her about, tell her what to do after he had spoken to her the way he had? OK, so he might think she was Emma, and Marigold had to admit she didn’t know all the ins and outs of this matter, but he had known she was asking for help and that she was hurt, and he had just left her standing in the snow while he’d given her a lecture on family responsibility. Nothing, but nothing would induce her to accept any form of assistance from this arrogant swine.

‘Don’t force me to make you get into the car, Miss Jones.’