Sara Craven - Devil At Archangel

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Former journalist SARA CRAVENpublished her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

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TITLE PAGE Devil at Archangel Sara Craven www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

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COPYRIGHT

‘LOT thirty-four—this fine pair of Staffordshire figures, ladies and gentlemen. Now what am I bid for …?’

The penetrating tones of the auctioneer were suddenly reduced to a subdued murmur as Christina quietly closed the dining room door behind her and began to walk slowly down the flagged passage to the rear of the cottage.

It had been a mistake to stay on for the sale. She realised that now. Mr Frith had warned her that she might find it an upsetting experience, seeing the place she had thought of as home for the past six years being literally sold up around her ears. She should have believed him and moved—not merely out, but away. It was only sentiment that had caused her to remain, she thought. A longing to buy just something, however small, from among her godmother’s treasures to provide her with a reminder of past happiness.

As it was, the prices that the china, furniture and other antiques were fetching had only served as a poignant and disturbing reminder of her own comparative pennilessness. She must have been mad even to think of joining in the bidding, knowing that she would be up against dealers and collectors.

One thing was certain—the Websters would be only too delighted with the results of the sale. She had seen them sitting together at the back of the room, exchanging smiles of triumph as the bidding proceeded. Everything, as far as they were concerned, was going entirely to plan. It was no good telling herself that they had every right to do as they had done. They had made that more than clear already in every interview she’d had with them. Legally, she had no rights at all, she knew, and morality didn’t enter into it.

She walked despondently into the back kitchen. Like everywhere else in the cottage, it had been stripped bare of everything saleable, and the big fitted dresser looked oddly forlorn without its usual complement of bright willow pattern and copperware.

Christina went over to the sink and ran the cold tap, cupping her hand beneath it, so that she could drink. She pressed the few remaining drops of moisture in her palm against her forehead and throbbing temples.

She still could not fully comprehend the suddenness of the change in her life and circumstances. She knew, because Mr Frith had endlessly told her so, that she must think about the future and make some kind of a plan for herself. But what? It seemed for the past six years she had been living in some kind of fool’s paradise. And for that she had to thank Aunt Grace, so kind and affectionate in her autocratic way, and so thoroughly well-meaning towards her orphaned goddaughter, but when it came to it, so disastrously vague.

After all, as Vivien Webster had patronisingly pointed out to her, what more could she expect, when she was not even a blood relation? It was a phrase Mrs Webster was fond of using, often with a delicate handkerchief pressed to her eyes, or the corner of her mouth, and if Christina thought it sounded odd coming from someone who had almost studiously held aloof from Aunt Grace when she was alive, she kept that strictly to herself.

Aunt Grace, after all, had been no fool. She had been well aware that she was regarded as a future meal ticket by her niece and her husband, yet it had made no difference, apparently. Her brief will had left everything unconditionally to Vivien Webster, while Christina who had been her constant companion, run the cottage for her with the spasmodic help of Mrs Treseder from the village, and done all her godmother’s secretarial work for the various charities with which she was connected, had not even warranted a mention.

Not that she had ever expected or wanted anything, she reminded herself. It had always been Aunt Grace who had insisted that she had seen to it that Christina would be well looked after in the event of anything happening to herself, although she had never specified what form this care would take. She had said so over and over again, especially when Christina had tried to gain some measure of independence by suggesting that she took a training course, or acquired some other type of qualification.

‘There’s no need for that, my dear,’ Miss Grantham would remark bracingly. ‘You’ll never want, I promise you. I shall see to that, don’t worry.’

And yet, Christina thought wryly, here she was without a job, a home or any kind of security—not even allowed so much as a breathing space in her old home to gather her wits and formulate some kind of plan for the future. She gave a little painful sigh and stared out of the window at the small vegetable garden where she and Aunt Grace had spent so many back-aching hours up to the time of that last but fatal illness.

Not for the first time she wondered if Aunt Grace had really known just how ill she had been. Certainly she had robustly rejected all suggestions that she looked tired, and all urgings to rest more and conserve her energy in the months preceding her death. In fact she had seemed to drive herself twice as hard, as if she guessed that she might not have very much time left, and she had driven Christina hard too.

Christina gave a slight grimace. She had a whole range of accomplishments to put in an advertisement—‘Capable girl, nineteen, can cook a little, garden a little, type a little, nurse a little …’ The list seemed endless. Yet she had to acknowledge that she was a Jill of all trades and actually mistress of none. Had she anything to offer an employer more stringent than Aunt Grace had been? This was her chief worry.

Up to now, of course, her not always expert services had been accepted, if not always with entire good humour, but she could not expect that a stranger would be prepared to make the same allowances for her.

She had been whisked off to live with her godmother when her own mother, widowed while Christina was still a baby, had herself succumbed to a massive and totally unexpected heart attack. Christina had stayed on at the same school, aware for the first time that the fees were being paid, as they had always been, by Aunt Grace. When she was sixteen, her godmother had commanded her to leave school to ‘keep her company’ and she had perforce to abandon any idea of further study and obey. Not that it had been such a bad life, Christina thought, sudden nostalgia tightening her throat. She had liked the small rather cosy village community of which Aunt Grace had been so active a member. She had learned to appreciate the changing seasons with a new and heightened awareness, and had come to enjoy the pattern of her year and its traditional festivities without any particular yearning for the discos and parties being enjoyed by her contemporaries.