Читать книгу Marrying The Enemy! - Elizabeth Power, Elizabeth Power - Страница 7

MOORLANDS stood in its own grounds on the fringes of a small Somerset resort, a beautifully grey-gabled, Cotswold-style house with fields rising to woodland on one side and the town stretching away to the sea on the other.

As they came up the long drive in York’s powerful saloon Alex was relieved that the journey from the church had been a short one, so that she hadn’t had to engage in much conversation with him.

‘The beech hedge was planted courtesy of Edmundo, our long-standing gardener,’ he commented about the copper-leafed boundary fence hung with cobwebs of frost on their right. ‘But then you wouldn’t remember him, would you?’ he breathed derisively, bringing the car around a triangular grassy island with an old and gnarled maple tree at its centre, testing her again—as he would continue to test her, she realised, every step of the way.

‘As a matter of fact I do,’ she shot back. ‘Portuguese, isn’t he?’ And the only person at Moorlands whom Shirley had spoken of with any affection, she remembered. ‘Didn’t he come to work here the year my mother was born?’

York slanted her a look that said it would take more than that to impress him. ‘Very good,’ he drawled. And then he added, ‘How old is his son?’

‘What?’

He had brought the car between two ivy-covered walls onto the deserted, cobbled forecourt, the look he gave her hard and inquisitorial when she didn’t immediately respond.

‘He didn’t have a son—just two daughters,’ she assured him after a long moment’s deliberation, colour swamping her cheeks as she went on heatedly, ‘If you think I’m going to spend my time here indulging in some sort of question-and-answer game with you, you’re very much mistaken, York Masterton! Either you accept me for who I am or you throw me out and let me go back to the hotel, which I’d be more than happy to do!’

He smiled knowingly. ‘I’ll bet you would!’ he said, cutting the engine of the BMW and turning towards her with his eyes anything but friendly. ‘Why didn’t you come here straight away instead of turning up at the funeral like some fugitive if you’ve got nothing to hide? Or would that have been too complicated? Did you imagine I’d be at more of a disadvantage meeting you in the churchyard like that, too unsettled by the occasion to think about much else, rather than if you’d faced me here, on my home territory?’

She hadn’t reckoned on his being quite so resolute in not believing her. But she had all the papers, so why was he managing to make her feel so unnerved?

‘This isn’t your home,’ was all she could think of to say at that moment. From what she had read in the papers, she’d thought that these days he lived in a luxury apartment in London.

‘It is now.’ Disconcertingly, his arm came across the back of her seat, and she almost hated herself for the small tingle that ran through her as he leaned across and murmured in a voice of mocking sensuality, ‘Mine and yours.’ She had to make a conscious effort to desist from inhaling the subtle, tangy spice of his aftershave. ‘That should make a very…interesting partnership.’

‘A partnership—with you?’ she choked, despising her body’s totally unwelcome awareness of him. ‘I’d rather go into business with a gorilla!’

He laughed without humour, that strong, masculine jaw hardening. ‘You’ve certainly come with some pretty well-conceived opinions about me, haven’t you…cousin?’ His tone derided the title. ‘Well, for your information, they’re all true. But who said anything about business?’

Alex felt her throat working nervously. Whoever he thought she was—his estranged cousin out for all she could get, or a total impostor—he had no qualms about using that powerful masculinity to try and scare her off.

Well, he wasn’t going to succeed!

Ignoring his innuendo, she uttered nonetheless unsteadily, ‘I told you—I didn’t come here for the money.’

‘Then what for—if you’re who you say you are?’ he demanded, allowing her to breathe again when he moved back, absently taking his keys out of the ignition. ‘And you haven’t answered my other question. Why were you talking round the graveyard instead of coming here to see me first?’

Alex bit her tongue to stop herself retorting that she hadn’t been ‘stalking’, as he had put it, advising herself that it would be in her best interests not to antagonise him deliberately.

‘I thought you’d answered that yourself. Why, I’m positively terrified of you, aren’t I, York?’ she couldn’t, however, resist tossing back sarcastically with a pale, beautifully manicured hand against her chest ‘The truth is, I didn’t get into Heathrow until breakfast time yesterday morning. It was a twenty-four-hour flight and I’m lucky if I slept for two. Consequently all I was fit for was to book into the nearest hotel and fall into bed, and I didn’t wake up until nine o’clock yesterday evening. I only found out then, when I picked up a paper someone had left in the lounge, that Page had died. How do you think I felt, finding out that his funeral was today?’

‘Immensely relieved, I would have thought.’ His own sarcasm was unrelenting.

‘You don’t have the slightest sympathy for how I might feel, do you?’ she breathed, her teeth clenched as she struggled to control her temper. At least that was one advantage she had over the fiery-natured adolescent he had known. She was more in control.

He would never have a good word to say about Shirley—or anyone connected with her. She should have expected it. ‘My mother was born here-even if I wasn’t—even if she was regarded as being outside the socially accepted circle for having me. And whatever Page did to her—he was my grandfather. You’re not the only one who’s been blessed with the ability to feell’

He waited patiently while she finished. She wasn’t going to add that she had strong doubts about the last point—doubts about whether he could feel at all—which only increased as he drawled cynically, ‘Congratulations on the performance. Do you expect me to believe that you didn’t wait until Page was safely out of the way before you risked coming here? Were you hoping I’d be less of a problem to manipulate? Because, if you were, you’re in for a pretty rude awakening, Alex Johns—or whatever your real name might be. So what is it if, as you say—’ his chin jerked roughly upwards ‘—it isn’t the money?’

Those grey-green eyes were penetrating, causing Alex’s tongue to stray across her top lip. Fortunately, though, another car was coming up the drive, drawing York’s attention mercifully away from her. What would he have said if she’d told him? she wondered as she opened her door and stepped out into the cold, glittering day.

Half of Moorlands. A generous allowance and a few shares in the business.

As the solicitor and his clerk left, Alex stood numbly by the long leaded window, her arms folded, watching the dark saloon drive away.

‘How does it feel—getting things the easy way?’

Alex swung round, her gaze skittering across the plush, classically furnished lounge.

Jacketless, York was standing in the doorway, his hands on his hips, his long, powerful legs astride beneath the tailored trousers. Not many people had come back to the house, but those who had had gone. All except Celia, who was upstairs somewhere getting changed.

‘If you need to ask any more questions, why don’t you have it out with your solicitor?’ she recommended, with a toss of her head towards the window. ‘He seemed perfectly satisfied that he was dealing with the right woman.’ She felt her throat contract as he came into the room, an animal of such impressionable strength and forcefulness that inevitably her pulses started to quicken.

‘I’m not surprised—when you had him eating out of your hand from the word go.’

‘That’s hardly true,’ she reminded him. In fact the solicitor had been a very pleasant but astute middle-aged man. ‘And I thought you said he couldn’t be charmed by my winning smile.’

His gaze flicked cursorily over her slender figure beneath the pearl-grey silk blouse and straight navy skirt—all that she had been able to find that morning amongst her possessions suitable for wearing to a funeral.

‘Maybe I was wrong.’ His gaze lifted to assess the creamy smoothness of her complexion, the darkly fringed sapphire of almond-shaped eyes, the wide, sensual mouth, all framed by the intriguing silver of her hair—and in a voice that was dangerously soft he said, ‘Is any man immune?’

The tightening in Alex’s throat became almost painful and she took an involuntary step back, only to feel the soft cushions of the window-seat against her leg.

‘You’ve got all the charm of a beautiful woman plus a cool, level-headed intelligence. That’s a dangerous combination. The Alexia I knew was guileless, passionate, impulsive…’

‘She was a child!’

Light played across the rich ebony of that arrogant, tilted head.

“‘She”?’ he repeated in a voice like soft, suffocating silk.

‘So now you’ve got me doing it!’ Impatience coloured her voice. ‘What do you think I did with her? Killed her off and stole her identity?’ she argued, barely able to keep her mind on what she was saying. He was so dangerously attractive, had such a fascinating lure for the opposite sex that she might have melted under the blaze of that powerful magnetism if she hadn’t been so aware of how insensitive he was. ‘You saw all my papers!’

‘Yes.’

And he had had little choice but to accept them, as the solicitor had—to accept them as authentic, she thought, with a small twist of satisfaction. ‘So why are you still insinuating I’m not telling the truth?’

‘Why indeed?’ He moved a disconcerting step closer, that aura of potent male energy about him as unsettling as his uncomfortable nearness. ‘Perhaps it’s because under that oh, so cool-as-a-cucumber faąde you’re remarkably edgy. Unless, of course, by some stretch of the imagination you’re telling the truth and it’s something much more basic than the need for circumspection that’s making you so uneasy in my presence.’ Cold mockery

gave an upward curl to his mouth. ‘Still find me sexy, Alex?’

Despite the bitter frost that seemed to have got through to her bones, even though the house was centrally heated, Alex felt herself grow sticky beneath her blouse.

‘Is your conceit innate? Or has it been specially cultivated?’ she challenged stiffly, hiding the nervousness that her voice could so easily have revealed.

He laughed. ‘All right, if that’s the way you want it,’ he said. ‘I suppose if I’d been Alexia I’d probably have wanted to conceal the more intimate details too.’

Alex swallowed. She knew what he was talking about. She just didn’t want to think about it, and for a moment she longed to blurt out what he wanted her to say—that she wasn’t Alexia Masterton, she was someone else entirely. But that would have been self-defeating as well as stupid, and, striving for that outward calm he had mentioned, she murmured wearily, ‘Have you quite finished?’

A muscle twitched in his jaw and she thought for a moment that he was going to slap her down—metaphorically at any rate—for that little display of audacity. But all he did was stoop to pick up a tissue—hers, she realised—that was lying on the carpet, and, handing it to her, he said, ‘You can freshen up upstairs and then we’ll drive down into town so that you can pick up your luggage. Then I’ll take you round and show you what I’m going to do all in my power to stop you getting your hands on. That’s, of course, if you aren’t still too jetlagged.’

So he’d noticed that weariness in her. As he’d notice everything, she couldn’t help deciding with a little shudder.

Refusing to be baited into any more arguments with him, though, all she said was, ‘No.’ And, when he didn’t give her any indication of where she was to go, uttered pointedly, ‘Could you at least show me where it is—the bathroom, I mean?’

An emotion—impossible to read—flitted across his face. ‘You’re supposed to have been here before. I would have thought in the circumstances you would have been able to tell me.’

‘Very funny,’ she returned. ‘That was ten years ago. People change their homes. Knock down walls. Build extensions…And anyway, my room had an en suite.’

She could see the question in those shrewd, perceptive eyes: was she guessing, or had she simply been informed?

‘In that case…’ With a gesture of exaggerated politeness he indicated for her to precede him out of the room, guided her across the sunny, tastefully furnished hall and up the curving staircase to the floor above.

‘This will be your room.’ He threw open one of the doors off the long landing. Sunlight streamed in from the leaded casement windows, spilling across the cream and floral duvet on the double bed.

This room overlooked the back of the house. Outside, the manicured gardens and the sweeping fields rising to the woods still glittered under a silver veil. A picturebook landscape. Lifeless, Alex decided, until she spotted a wisp of smoke drifting upwards from the chimney of a farm building in the distance.

‘The bathroom,’ she guessed, moving towards a door.

‘Wrong.’ His voice came, deep and relentlessly testing, from behind her. ‘My room. It might seem a little too cosy to you, but at least this way I can keep account of exactly what you’re doing.’

Alex’s feet pivoted on the pale, patently expensive carpet ‘Is that how you get your kicks?’ she breathed accusingly. ‘Listening to what your guests get up to?’

York’s mouth pulled down at the corners. ‘Not usually. But then we haven’t exactly established whether you’re a guest or not, have we?’

‘Haven’t we?’ she retorted, his suspicions beginning to test her reserves. And, though she hadn’t intended using it in any way as a defence, she couldn’t help adding, ‘I believe I’m co-owner, which surely gives me rights to come and go as I please, or even to bring friends back here if I so think fit?’

She had no intention of doing anything of the sort—she had said it only to show him that she couldn’t easily be cowed by his infernal arrogance—because although she got on well with people she was very much a loner. As for men, she had never met anyone who could break down her reserves enough to make her want to sleep with him. Only once. But she wasn’t even going to think about that.

‘You do and I’ll throw you both out,’ he rasped, interpreting her remark exactly as he wanted to. ‘No part of this house becomes yours until the necessary documentation’s drawn up to say that it does.’

‘So you’ll use strong-arm tactics? Like you did before. Sheer brute strength just so long as you could exercise Page’s every last whim in trying to separate Shirley from the one thing she cared about most—her daughter!’

His face appeared to turn savage beneath the raven sleekness of his hair. ‘Shirley didn’t care about anyone but herself—so don’t lay it on that thick, dear child. And never—never—breathe a denigrating word to me about my uncle in this house again. And if I’m not too mistaken—’ his voice was more controlled and, like his expression, suddenly coolly derisive ‘—I don’t think it would have taken very much persuasion on my part to induce her hot little daughter to stay.’

‘God! You’re conceited!’

‘Am I? Perhaps we ought to put it to the test.’

‘Don’t you dare!’

She didn’t know what happened next, only that he had caught the hands that flew up instinctively to fend him off, securing them behind her back, and primitive sensations rushed through her as she found herself locked against his hard body.

‘Let me go!’ She could barely drag the words past her lips, panic rising in her as he laughed harshly.

‘Why? Because it’s there now—that attraction, isn’t it…cousin dear?’ His words mocked, cruelly, relentlessly. ‘Is that why you’re putting on such a marvellous act of being affronted? Or is it the thought of sex between cousins? That never worried you before. But if Shirley didn’t make it clear enough—we’re only connected by marriage. Page and my father were only stepbrothers, so if the thought of any blood ties between us bothers you you can stop worrying about that right now.’

‘I’m not worried!’ she tossed up at him unthinkingly, her face defiant, though the startling reality of his hard strength was making her senses swim.

‘In that case—’ his mouth took on a sensual curve ‘—I don’t believe I exactly welcomed you the way a cousin should.’

She couldn’t have prevented what happened next if she had wanted to—the way his mouth suddenly covered hers, both gentle and yet shockingly erotic, those hands splayed across her back, holding her loosely but ready to turn hard and show their determined power if she dared to resist.

She sensed enough about that to stand still and take it, her mind struggling to reject the sickening excitement that was suddenly rising in her blood, a raw stirring of primitive needs she hadn’t anticipated or been prepared for, every cell tensing with her body’s acknowledgement of his hard power and his musky male scent beneath the subtle aftershave as his mouth played with leisurely insolence over hers.

His eyes were hooded, veiled by the thick sable of his lashes when he eventually lifted his head.

‘No response? And yet no resistance either.’

‘What did you imagine?’ The hard rise and fall of her breasts was the only indication of her shattered selfcomposure. ‘That if I was who I said I was there would be?’

He started to say something, but Celia’s voice in the corridor, exclaiming, ‘Oh, there you are!’ pulled them apart.

The woman came in, commenting to Alex, ‘I trust York’s doing everything possible to make you comfortable.’

‘Everything,’ she heard him drawl meaningfully, when she was still too shaken by his kiss to answer, and she was relieved when his mother, promising to see her downstairs, asked if she could have a word with York about her travel arrangements, which left Alex mercifully alone.

She didn’t have to take this! she thought, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. It smelt of his aftershave lotion and her lips were still tingling from his calculated humiliation. She could go home. Forget about why she had come. It was a long shot, anyway, that she would find those letters. She could go now. Pick up her case and get the train straight back to London. But that would be letting York Masterton get the better of her. And for Shirley’s sake—for her own sake—she wasn’t going to allow him to do that.

He was dangerously attractive, a threat to any healthy woman’s equilibrium, but she just had to make sure that she didn’t fall into the trap of succumbing to any tricks he might try and use to get her to weaken before that devastating and shockingly confident sexuality. If she did, she’d be courting trouble, she assured herself chasteningly, reminding herself of how York and his uncle had both played their part in driving Shirley away.

Well, she wasn’t going to let a Masterton man drive her away until she was good and ready! she resolved, with such vehemence that she scarcely noticed the jaded practicality of the en suite bathroom she finally found, or the lack of any really homely touches in this late millionaire’s home.

The red stone of the quarry gaped like an ugly mouth on the undulating Somerset landscape.

‘When my step-grandfather—Page’s father—started the company this was where it grew from,’ York stated, bringing the car to a standstill outside one of the Portakabins where all the site’s immediate administration was obviously carried out. ‘Just a small, family-run business he’d mortgaged to the hilt, supplying raw material to equally small local builders wherever he could.’

‘And from this he went into construction.’ Small office units at first, Alex remembered Shirley telling her, and, in Page’s time, larger, industrial sites, but only York had given the company the real hard-nosed drive and motivation that had made Mastertons the first name in multimillion-pound developments: sports complexes, inner city expansion, whole housing estates—the best in architectural design. She had found all that out herself. ‘Quite a success story,’ she couldn’t help saying appreciatively, with a little shiver of resentment as she pushed back a thick silver wave behind her ear.

York made a cynical sound down his nostrils. ‘And one that isn’t going to end with Little Red Riding Hood getting a bite-sized chunk of the apple,’ he promised, with sudden, soft vehemence.

She grimaced, glancing down at the redundant hood falling softly across her shoulder. ‘I thought that was Snow White—who ate the apple,’ she enlarged, with a tartness nonetheless, as if she had just bitten into some acrid fruit. ‘And my hood’s black. I’m afraid this little heroine isn’t afraid of the big, bad wolf. You’d still despise me, wouldn’t you, York, even if you were sure about me—for refusing to knuckle under to your demands and come back here like the dutiful granddaughter after Shirley died? For not bowing down to you and Page like you both expected me to?’

He didn’t answer, and, getting out, said only, ‘Wait here,’ his expression as cold as the icy draught through the car that persuaded him to shrug into his thick dark coat before throwing the door closed after him.

Tight-lipped, Alex watched him, her gaze reluctantly following his hard, arrogant physique as he mounted the steps to the Portakabin and disappeared inside.

Way down in the quarry she could hear the continual drone of heavy equipment, male voices shouting, could see the red dust cloud as the machinery ate into the hard rock.

After a while, restless from sitting doing nothing, she stepped out of the car, pulling up her hood and stuffing her hands deep into her pockets to protect them from the freezing air.

She was attracting a lot of looks from men coming in and out of another Portakabin, she realised after a few moments of pacing up and down, although she was used to being the object of men’s interest. It was fascination, she had convinced herself over the years, because of the uniqueness of her colouring, but in this instance she knew that a lot of the attention was generated by her having been seen arriving with York.

‘Hey, that’s nice, isn’t it?’

‘Um, very tasty.’

A soft wolf-whistle followed the rather sexist remarks she knew she had been intended to hear.

‘Cut it out, lads.’ It was an older man’s voice this time. A surreptitious glance from under her lashes showed that the ‘lads’ to whom he had spoken were barely out of their teens. ‘We don’t allow that sort of thing on site, and if we did we’d be a bit more particular about who we whistled at. Do you know who that is?’ A moment’s silence. ‘That’s Alexia Masterton. The old man’s granddaughter.’

‘Yikes!’

As surprised as the embarrassed-sounding youth, Alex caught her breath, and over the other sounds rising up into the Somerset hills heard the first youth utter, ‘You’re kidding! I thought she was dead.’

That carelessly uttered statement sent a cold emotion shivering through Alex.

She must have been mad to come here, she thought, her feet carrying her swiftly over the dusty ground back towards the car. Alexia Masterton had been dead and buried and she’d been a fool to resurrect her. But news certainly travelled fast! How could anyone have known?

‘Miss Masterton?’ She was so lost in thought that the man had to call the name again before she realised that someone was speaking to her. And as she turned he added, ‘Would you like a coffee while you’re waiting?’

‘N-no…thanks.’ She offered him a rather wan smile, still regretting what she couldn’t help deciding was a total lack of common sense on her part in coming here at all.

‘Come on. He could be some time,’ the man informed her, with a jerk of his chin towards the cabin where York had gone. He was fiftyish, with smiling, weather-worn features, and as she mentally replaced his thick donkey jacket with the suit in which she now vaguely remembered seeing him that morning it dawned on Alex that he must have overheard someone speak her name outside the church. ‘The lads won’t eat you. They might look vicious, but one smile from a pretty girl and they’d probably both run a mile.’

A harmony of guffaws rang out from what were now two very red-faced young men. They had been drinking out of tin mugs, but from somewhere had managed to produce a ceramic one for Alex.

The coffee was hot and tasted good, and she was glad the man, who introduced himself as Ron, had talked her into it.

‘I hope you’re going to be a regular visitor here. This place could do with brightening up a bit’ The man winked at the two youths, whose boldness had disintegrated and who were both totally dumbstruck now that Alex had moved into their sphere, but a small pang of guilt assailed her. She was misleading them—all of them—she thought. Ron was basically a nice man, and how could she explain that she had no intention of staying any longer than she could help, that really she had no right—no right at all—even being here?

‘Your grandfather always found time to look in to see how things were doing—when he was able to get about, that was. But then when Mr York—I mean Mr Masterton—took things over—and it’s been quite a time now—he never let things slide. He’s always kept up the family tradition in keeping himself aware of what’s going on here, big as he’s become. Even though quarrying—and this quarry in particular—is just a small part of what he’s involved with nowadays, he hasn’t forgotten those who’ve been loyal to him and his uncle—and even his father before him. He still likes to keep himself involved with any problems or difficulties the men might be facing down here.’

Which was one thing to be said for him, if nothing else! Alex conceded rather begrudgingly.

‘My…grandfather…’ She felt awkward even using that title to describe Page Masterton. ‘He was ill for a long time?’ She hadn’t got round to asking York just how long it had been.

‘Well…’ Ron pursed his lips, considering. ‘Probably about two or three months.’

She frowned, warming her hands around the hot mug, watching the steam rise, warm and aromatic on the air. ‘But I thought you said…’

‘Oh, because I said about him getting about?’ Ron grimaced. ‘Sorry to confuse you. No, I meant because of his wheelchair.’

‘His wheelchair?’ Alex’s frown deepened. She felt utterly flummoxed. ‘Oh—oh, of course,’ she said. How could she let these people—people who surprisingly but clearly had loved and respected Page Masterton—know that she, apparent claimant to much of his estate, didn’t know that he’d been disabled, a cripple? She felt a dryness in her throat that didn’t ease even when she swallowed. There was too much she didn’t know. Too much, she was gradually realising, that she hadn’t taken enough trouble to find out.

‘Didn’t you find him even a little bit difficult at times?’ She smiled, hoping she’d sounded blithe.

‘Not at all.’ Ron’s tone denied any suggestion of it. ‘He was the best employer any man could hope to work for. With some…’ his shoulders lifted, his mouth pulling down derogatorily into even deeper lines ‘…wealth goes to their heads and they won’t talk to the likes of us. ‘Course we always knew he was in charge. There wasn’t any questioning his authority. But he was a decent bloke. And I’m pleased to say Mr York—er—Masterton—is carrying on in the same way, although he’s got double the energy and the authority. ‘Course, he’s younger. But it’s a good thing with this lot if you ask me.’

Alex sipped the steaming coffee, her smile ruminative as she followed Ron’s gesture towards the two bashfullooking youths. It wasn’t the picture Shirley had painted of her father—or even of York.

‘So how long has it been exactly since Mr Mast—I mean Mr York,’ she corrected herself, ‘took over the running of things?’ Obviously it was a name used privately between the men, she realised, to distinguish between uncle and nephew. She had to find out, acquaint herself with facts she hadn’t gleaned simply from Shirley and the newspapers.

‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’

Hearing the deep, familiar voice, she whirled around, wincing as hot coffee slopped over her hand.

‘That was rather careless.’

Of course he’d noticed, and before she had realised it he was pressing a clean white handkerchief into her hand. It was slightly warm from his body heat and she knew that it would smell of his own personal scent. The scent that had lingered on her skin after he had kissed her…

‘Th-thanks,’ she stammered, feeling awkward, wishing he hadn’t, unable to look at him as he addressed the others.

‘Gary, Jason, I don’t pay you to stand around all day drinking coffee with the first nubile female that breezes in here.’ Like magic, his unquestionable authority had the two teenagers scuttling back to work. ‘Thanks for keeping her out of mischief, Ron.’ His tone held deep respect for the older man.

When they were back in the car, however, his coat discarded on the back seat, he said scathingly, ‘Asking a lot of questions, weren’t you?’ Suspicion burned in his eyes as he pulled away with more than a fair amount of aggression, the spinning wheels kicking up dust.

‘Why shouldn’t I ask questions about my family if I want to?’ Alex challenged indignantly.

He cast a sidelong glance across the car. ‘Your family?’ he sneered. ‘I don’t think there’s any way that I can be fooled into imagining that you have any right here.’ And before she could respond he said harshly, ‘And did you have to aim your questions at my employees?’

Perhaps I shouldn’t have, she thought, studying the nails of one hand which was resting in her lap. They were filed to their usual moderate length, enhanced only by a clear, protective lacquer. Edgily, though, she said, ‘Well, I knew the sort of response I’d have got if I’d asked you.’

He didn’t look at her as the car climbed the long road out of the quarry.

‘That doesn’t give you any right to go fraternising with them,’ he said. ‘Sharing their coffee-breaks, laughing and joking with them as if you were on their level. Familiarising yourself with my workforce, Alex, is, from now on, strictly taboo.’

Alex’s nostrils flared as she watched him stop at a junction. The lush Somerset valley dropped away below them, stretching for miles, green touched with silver, from the sparkling lower fields to the thick white caps over the surrounding hills.

‘You hypocrite,’ she murmured under her breath.

‘Hypocrite?’ Now, as he pulled away, he sent a questioning glance in her direction.

‘Ron said what a decent guy you were. That your position hasn’t made you put yourself above them—probably because of the act you put on in trying to convince them it hasn’t,’ she couldn’t refrain from adding, although, strangely, she didn’t really believe that. Instinctively she knew that York Masterton wouldn’t ever try to be anything but the man he was. ‘Now you’re implying I shouldn’t stoop even to talking to them.’

‘Corrupting is the word I’d use,’ he delivered with smooth precision. ‘And I was thinking more of them—not you.’

‘Thanks,’ she breathed, and stared belligerently at the road. Well, what could she expect from him? she thought. He didn’t trust her. And, even if he did eventually accept her as his long-lost cousin, because of his low opinion of Shirley and the gold-digger he obviously thought she, Alex, was he’d still continue to flay her verbally at the least opportunity.

‘I never knew Page was in a wheelchair,’ she said tentatively.

‘No? Didn’t you read it somewhere?’ he muttered with scathing emphasis.

Alex swallowed, trying not to be put off. ‘No.’

‘He was in it long enough,’ he rasped.

She took a deep breath, trying again. ‘How long?’

Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘Nine—ten years.’ ‘Ten years!’ Shock made a squeak out of her voice. ‘Did—did Shirley know?’ she ventured, puzzled, after a moment.

The striking contours of his profile hardened as he made some derisive sound through his nose. ‘I doubt very much, pretty…cousin…if the woman you claim was your mother ever actually knew. Or cared,’ he appended roughly.

The bitterness in him was tangible enough to make her recoil in her seat. He had been close to Page—far closer than she had ever begun to imagine, she was surprised to realise, sensing the deeply personal grief beneath that tough, impenetrable exterior.

‘What happened to him?’ she found enough courage to ask at length.

‘Do you really care?’

He looked so savage, gripping the wheel with those long dark hands whitening at the knuckles, that she was almost intimidated into silence. But if she wanted him to accept her claim to being a Masterton then she had to start acting like one, she told herself firmly, from somewhere finding the confidence to utter, ‘He was my grandfather. I’m interested, that’s all.’

‘Yes, and that’s about the size of it, isn’t it?’ he tossed angrily back at her. ‘Which is why you can sit there nonchalantly talking about a man you never knew without the first bloody idea of the pain he went through—what it’s like to suffer!’

His outburst made her flinch. Then she wanted to hurl at him that she knew enough about pain and suffering to last her a lifetime, but that would have revealed too much about herself, so she didn’t dare.

‘He had a stroke. Now let’s forget it,’ he said eventually, plunging them both into silence and driving the luxurious car with barely restrained vehemence for the rest of the journey home.