Elizabeth Power - Marrying The Enemy!

‘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.

OVER the next couple of days Alex kept herself occupied by discovering her surroundings. She explored the town, reached from the long road that ran downhill from the house to the quaint and historic seafront which in summer, she knew, would be crowded because of the modern holiday centre with its fun-filled watershoots and garish colours. On the far side of the town, it was, she decided, the only thing to detract from the resort’s beauty. Now, though, while waiting for spring to arrive, the town still possessed a sleepy charm, although the waters washing its sandy beach were murky from the silt on this part of the coast, and nothing like the deep blue of the ocean she had become accustomed to in New Zealand.

The Somerset countryside, however, could not be equalled, and, wrapped up in a warm anorak, scarf and gloves, Alex enjoyed ambling alone along the quiet rural lanes and through the silent woods adjacent to Moorlands on tranquillity-restoring walks she remembered Shirley telling her about more than a decade before.

Enjoying herself, though, wasn’t the reason for her being here, she reminded herself firmly, no matter how much the moor beckoned or the country lanes offered a diversion from the house and her reluctant awareness of a man she despised and yet who, contrarily, could make her pulses throb with more than just angry resentment whenever she was in his company.

As had happened that morning, when he had left her, to all intents and purposes, browsing through the books in Page’s study.

Having caught sight of a photograph sticking out of one of the pigeon-holes in the bureau, she had been so absorbed by other things the bureau had to offer, which included more old photos—mainly of the family, she presumed—as well as some interesting postcards, that she hadn’t heard anyone come in until York’s voice had cut startlingly through the silence.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Alex started, knocking something off the blotter as she swivelled round on her chair.

‘N-nothing,’ she uttered inanely. ‘I—I saw a photograph I thought was of Shirley and I suppose I just got carried away.’

From the hard cast of his features, he clearly didn’t believe her.

‘Were you looking for something in particular?’

Alex swallowed, wondering if the dryness in her throat stemmed from guilt or just from his sheer vitality as he stood there in that immaculate grey suit. It was a hard, restless vitality that seemed at odds with the bleak austerity of the room, with its tall mahogany clock and bookcases and the imposing ambience of what had once been his uncle’s very private sanctum. But wouldn’t he enjoy hurting her if he knew!

‘Nothing in particular…’

‘Then what were you doing in here under the pretext of looking at books? And what’s this?’ Casually he fingered the pointed leaf of a potted miniature daffodil she hadn’t been able to resist in town the previous afternoon, and which she had placed on a low-standing bookcase just inside the door.

‘This place seems so cold. I was just trying to brighten it up a bit,’ she defended firmly, and guessed from the way he grimaced as his grey-green eyes scanned the room that he probably agreed with her. But he wouldn’t have admitted it in a thousand years, she thought grudgingly, before enquiring with a boldness that refused to be dampened, ‘My mother’s things…what happened to them?’

An eyebrow lifted sceptically as he came towards her and with one fluid movement picked up the little gold dagger letter-opener that was lying on the rug, placing it back on the desk. ‘Do we have them?’

She tried not to breathe, tried not to acknowledge that subtle masculine scent of him that played on her reluctant senses.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, York!’ She wasn’t going to let him wear her down with suspicion, no matter how much he might try to use that daunting, tyrannical streak to intimidate her. She had come for the letters which Shirley had once told her about in one of her weaker, more confiding moments, and until she found them—if they were here—he could go to hell!

‘What sort of things?’ he asked then, almost disinterestedly.

Now she had to think quickly. ‘Anything. Books. Old toys. Teenage scribblings. You know, girlhood things.’

The clock, indicating the quarter hour, made her jump as it suddenly whirred into motion, as though it were in conspiracy with him to make her more edgy, though she was determined not to let her tension show.

‘You’re not likely to find anything like that ransacking my uncle’s bureau.’

‘I hardly expected to! And I wasn’t ransacking!’ she threw back heatedly, her nerves stretched to the limit because of his disturbing proximity. He was standing too close, one immaculately clad arm outstretched, hard knuckles on the edge of the desk.

‘As far as I know, my cousin took everything with her when she left, and what she didn’t take I would hope Page would have happily burned long ago.’ There was nothing but hatred in his voice for his unfortunate cousin—a hatred so intense that it made Alex shudder.