Loe raamatut: «Mistress And Mother»

is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon^® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Mistress and Mother

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

AS THE snow became a blinding white blur, the wipers struggled to keep a wedge of the car windscreen clear. Then, finally, the narrow, twisting road began to climb. Not much further now. Molly cut down another gear, praying that the tyres would keep a grip on the treacherously slippery gradient.

That petrol-pump attendant had warned her that it would be crazy to attempt the lake road in snow but Molly often flew in the face of sound advice. And her stubborn determination to reach Freddy’s isolated home had its deepest roots in guilt. She hadn’t gone to his funeral. Her fiancé, Donald, had offered to go with her as moral support but she still hadn’t been able to face such an ordeal.

The small car slid slowly back down the hill again. Molly gritted her teeth and started up it again. She was almost there. The house sat at the top of the hill overlooking the lake. Over four years had passed, but she still remembered that misty view of the moorland running down to the water’s edge. Her face stiffened and shadowed, fingers clenching round the wheel. She also remembered the slavish way she had tried to follow Sholto out of the room when a call had come for him. Freddy had caught her back, his wise old eyes almost pitying as he scanned her anxious, adoring face.

‘Don’t cling, my dear. It’ll put wings on his feet. You can’t tame a wild bird and keep it in a cage... Sholto isn’t a domesticated animal. This is all new to him. Hasten slowly.’

But she hadn’t listened, she conceded sickly, hadn’t seen, hadn’t been able to focus on anything but her own desperate need to be as close to Sholto as his skin. And the more he had stepped back from her, the harder she had pushed, not even knowing then, not even suspecting that Sholto’s heart could never, ever be hers. She wore another man’s ring now but remembrance still cramped her stomach and her tired legs trembled, the foot she had on the accelerator pressing down with sudden involuntary force.

She cried out in fright as the car slewed violently sideways and then skidded with unnatural, terrifying grace off the road. Her heartbeat thundered in her eardrums as she brought the hatchback to a shuddering halt, headlights gleaming out over the daunting expanse of dark water only yards away. Swallowing hard, she tried to reverse back up onto the road but the tyres spun on the boggy, snow-slick ground and the car stayed where it was.

Finally, she detached her seatbelt and climbed out into the teeth of the wind. She would walk up the hill. Dear heaven, she might have killed herself! The car might have kept right on going and the lake was deep.

Grabbing up her shoulder bag, shivering convulsively as the wind blew snow into her face and snatched up her long fall of russet hair to whip it across her eyes and mouth, she pulled up the hood of her light jacket and locked the car. It was well after eight. Freddy’s housekeeper wasn’t even expecting her and now Molly would have to ask her for a bed for the night into the bargain.

Stupid, stupid, Molly castigated herself as she toiled up the hill. Why avoid the funeral and then drive all the way to the Lake District just to collect the old vase which Freddy had left her and leave a few flowers at the cemetery? Her brother, Nigel, had been stunned when he’d realised she could have gone to the funeral and the scene which had followed that revelation had left Molly feeling sick with irrational guilt.

‘The perfect opportunity...and you didn’t take it?’ Nigel had condemned in disbelief. ‘But Sholto would’ve been there! You could’ve talked to him then.’

‘Don’t, Nigel...’ his wife, Lena, had begged, her strained eyes swimming with tears. ‘This isn’t Molly’s problem. It’s ours.’

‘Will you still feel like that when you and the kids have no roof over your heads?’ Nigel had demanded, the stress of recent months etched in his thin, boyish features. ‘What would it cost Molly to go and eat a bit of humble pie? I’d do it...but I can’t get near him!’

Now the snow was falling thicker and heavier, crunching over the sides of her shoes and freezing her feet. In no mood to dwell on her brother’s desperate financial problems, Molly dug icy hands into her pockets and plodded on up the hill. The dark, unadorned bulk of the house loomed just where the road dropped down again and she felt quite weak with relief. There were no lights visible but on a bad night like this an elderly woman might already be tucked up warm in her bed.

The freezing wind slashing with cruel efficiency through her inadequate clothing, Molly rushed to press the old-fashioned doorbell. A couple of endless minutes later, she hit it again, and then more quickly the third and the fourth time, dismay powering her as she stood back and peered up at the black, unrevealing windows in search of an encouraging chink of light.

She had assumed that the housekeeper would be here for at least another week. But maybe she didn’t live in. As that possibility occurred to Molly for the very first time, she could’ve kicked herself for blithely assuming that Freddy’s housekeeper lived on the premises. If the house was empty, she was in deep trouble. She might freeze to death spending the night in the car. She didn’t even have a travel rug to wrap around herself. When she had left home after lunch it had been a beautiful sunny day and she hadn’t paid the slightest heed to the weather forecast.

Panic firing her, Molly trudged round to the back of the house. Obviously there was nobody inside. She peered at the snow-covered ground, prowling up and down until she found a suitable stone. Fingers almost numb, she yanked off her jacket and wound it round her arm, her hand fiercely gripping the stone as she braced herself in front of the small window beside the back door. Taking a deep breath, she swung her arm up full force and smashed the pane. Stepping back, she breathed out in a rush, shook herself free of broken glass and dragged on her jacket again.

Reaching inside with great care, she undid the latch and the frame swung out. Planting her chilled hands on the stone sill, she hauled herself up with a groan of effort and crawled on her knees through the open window, slowly feeling her way onto the kitchen worktop. A startled yelp of pain escaped her as a splinter of glass pierced her knee. But even as she stilled in exasperated acknowledgement of her own foolishness she had the terrifying sense of something big moving fast towards her in the darkness.

As a pair of powerful hands snatched her up into midair, she screamed so hard she hurt her throat. Then she was hitting the stone floor face down, all the breath driven from her body by the impact, hands flailing in wild terror as a suffocating weight dug into her spine. Hard, imprisoning fingers raked down her arms to entrap her frantic hands and then as quickly loosened their grip and freed her again.

A burst of Italian invective assailed her ears at the same time as the knee braced on her back was removed and the fluorescent light above flickered on. Quivering with stark terror, Molly jerked up and rolled back against the cupboards like a cornered animal bracing itself for another attack. When her glazed eyes focused on the male standing over her, she simply stared, wide-eyed with disbelief.

‘Madre di Dio...I could have broken every bone in your body!’ Sholto raked down at her in driving condemnation.

So deep in shock, she was incapable of response, Molly’s huge green eyes clung to the six-foot-three male towering over her as if he were a terrifying apparition, her cheekbones prominent with stress, her complexion bone-white, her lips bloodlessly compressed.

With a stifled imprecation, Sholto dropped down into an athletic crouch and ran lean brown hands gently down over her limp arms and thighs. His startlingly handsome features clenched as he saw the blood seeping messily through the torn knee of her black tights. He completed his check for any further injury before he drew back.

Molly still couldn’t move. Slowly, she closed her eyes, meaning to open them again and see if he was still there but the impersonal touch of his beautifully shaped hands still lingered like the kiss of fire on her frozen flesh, blocking out all rational thought. Four years since she had seen him, not since that fateful night he had walked out on her to go to his cousin, Pandora. Her paralysis gave and she started to shake uncontrollably, the aftermath of choking fear and horror at his appearance combining to threaten a tidal wave of emotion.

‘What the hell were you playing at?’ Sholto bent down and scooped her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather. ‘And what are you doing here at this hour of the night?’

Her teeth bit down on her tongue, releasing the sickly sweet tang of blood into her dry mouth. The pain helped, controlling the great lump blossoming in her throat, the acrid stinging at the back of her eyes. But it was nothing to the pain she remembered. That had been pain like a poisoned knife, slipping in on a cruel, teeth-clenching thrust and then teaching her that there was yet worse to come and that the human mind could suffer as much agony as the human body.

He was settling her down on a hard chair and abstractedly she recalled Freddy’s eccentric loathing of any form of soft comfort or cosiness. No central heating, wide-open windows even in winter, no clutter and not one single piece of unnecessary furniture. She had felt as if she was stepping back in time when she had first walked into this house all that time ago, Sholto’s fiancée coming to be introduced to Freddy, his elderly great-uncle.

There was a ripping sound as Sholto widened the tear in her tights to get a better look at her knee. Flinching, her spine pushing into the hard spindles of the chair-back, Molly came alive again, shaken green eyes flying wide on Sholto’s downbent dark head. The overhead light gave his thick black hair the iridescent sheen of silk.

‘It will hurt when I take the glass out,’ he informed her bluntly, sliding fluidly upright again and striding out of the bare little sitting room and into the connecting kitchen.

Molly stared into space, fighting to get a grip on herself again. First things first, that was Sholto. From his aristocratic English mother he had inherited deep reserve, innate practicality and a daunting, chilling self-discipline. But the other side of his ancestry, like his spectacular dark good looks, were pure volatile Italian. Below the ice seethed the fire but she had never ignited that fire, nor experienced the heat of its flames. His heart and his beautiful body hadn’t burned for her as she’d burned for him. Rejection, betrayal, unspeakable humiliation... she had experienced them all at his hands.

A long tremor ran through her. He returned with a bowl of disinfectant, the sharp scent stirring her over-sensitive stomach. He crossed the room, dominating it with his sheer size and presence, his every movement inherently graceful. The silence didn’t appear to be bothering him. If her descent had shocked him, he had yet to betray the fact...and how deeply ironic it was that she had cravenly stayed away from Freddy’s funeral to avoid Sholto only to end up plunging into a far more embarrassing and intimate meeting with him.

In the blink of an eye he had extracted the glass, cleaned away the blood and fixed a plaster to her cut. A male who had made pioneering, death-defying trips into some of the world’s most dangerous places would not find a cut knee much of a challenge. Or the unexpected arrival of an ex-wife. Molly chewed at her wobbling lower lip, still white as parchment. But then she had never been Sholto’s wife, not his real wife; within a day of the wedding he had made her a laughing stock in the world press.

As he sprang upright again, his impassive tawny eyes, fringed by luxuriant ebony lashes, rested on her. ‘I thought you were a burglar. I’m sorry I gave you a fright...but do you really have to look at me as if I’m a cobra about to strike?’

Her lashes fluttered down, delicate colour staining her cheekbones as her fingers tightened on the chair-arms. In the background she heard the clink of glass. A tumbler was held in front of her. Lifting an unsteady hand, she snatched at it. The brandy hit her aching throat and burned a fiery trail deep into her chilled flesh. Shock; she was still in shock.

‘Do you realise that you still haven’t uttered a single word?’ Sholto drawled with controlled impatience.

The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her taut lower lip. ‘You rather took my breath away...’ And as soon as the careless words left her lips her skin flared with such cringing embarrassment, she wanted to sink through the floor. Those had been the exact words she’d used when she’d first told him how much she loved him, rushing to confess what he himself could never have confessed even after he had asked her to marry him. Sholto didn’t tell lies but he was a master craftsman at evasion.

‘How did you get here? I was asleep but a car pulling in would certainly have awakened me.’

She gulped more of the brandy, trying to be cool about her desperate need for something to settle her jangling nerves. ‘My car skidded off the road at the foot of the hill. I walked the rest of the way. I thought Freddy’s housekeeper lived in—’

‘Dio...are you kidding? For thirty-odd years Mrs Mac rode out here every morning on her trusty bicycle. Freddy couldn’t have stood anything else. He was fanatical about his privacy. She ate in the kitchen. He ate in here. They only spoke when they had to.’

It was a fuller response than she had expected. She caught the faint roughening of pain in Sholto’s deep, dark voice, the Italian accent which thickened only in times of stress, the only barometer she had ever had to what went on deep down inside him. She bowed her head, knowing that aside of Pandora Stevenson the only human being alive who had ever got close to Sholto had been Freddy.

‘I rang the doorbell—’

‘It hasn’t worked for years.’

‘I couldn’t see a light.’

‘There wasn’t one on. I assume you’ve come up here to collect your legacy in person.’

‘I told the solicitor I’d come before this but...but something came up.’ She stared down at the tattered remnants of her tights, at her exposed knee with its childish plaster, feeling foolish, and awkward, the way she so often had in Sholto’s radius, and still not quite believing that she was actually here with him. Worse, taking part in a ludicrously inane conversation for two people who had parted in the most violent acrimony and never met face to face again.

‘I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey,’ Sholto delivered softly, and her head shot up. ‘The vase isn’t here. It’s being delivered to you by courier.’

Colour flooded her cheeks and then receded again, all that went unsaid in that assurance filling her with intense discomfiture. She hadn’t come when she had said she would, hadn’t bothered to ring in advance, had simply set off from home on an emotion-driven impulse because she had an uneasy conscience.

‘You look like death warmed up. I suggest that you take a hot bath,’ Sholto murmured.

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.

Molly dropped her head and stared a hole in the worn rug. ‘I wanted to call in at the cemetery and leave some flowers,’ she admitted uncomfortably.

The silence stretched.

‘I don’t believe you, Molly. Your brother has made repeated attempts to contact me. And now, at the eleventh hour, when he is facing repossession, you show up right on my doorstep—’

‘Freddy’s doorstep!’ Chagrin and anger combined in her contradiction as she realised where his suspicions lay. ‘If you must know, I refused to approach you when Nigel asked me to because I knew it wouldn’t do any good and I didn’t see why I should make a fool of myself just for your amusement!’

‘Go home and tell your brother that he is extremely lucky not to be facing fraud charges,’ Sholto delivered with silken emphasis. ‘And, believe it or not, he does owe that generosity in part to my former relationship with you.’

Molly leapt up, coffee slopping out of the beaker she still clutched tightly in one hand. ‘Fraud?’ she repeated incredulously. ‘What on earth are you accusing Nigel of doing?’

Long, sure fingers detached hers from the beaker and set it safely aside. He gazed down at her shocked and angry face and then dense lashes dropped low on his hard, dark eyes.

‘Sholto?’ Her wary gaze clung to his lean, dark features. Cheekbones to die for were bisected by a fine-boned, aristocratic blade of a nose and matched by a mouth as passionate and wilful as sin. Her heart turned over inside her breast and then beat out a helplessly accelerated tattoo. Almost sick with shame at her response to his sheer animal attraction, she dropped her head again.

‘What I’m saying is that when I make a business loan on exceptionally generous terms I don’t expect the recipient to plunge a good percentage of the funds I made available into renovating and extending his house and running a top-of-the-range Mercedes!’

Molly’s expressive face fell by a mile and slowly she sat down again, seeming to have shrunk in stature even as he spoke. ‘But the house is part of the property...and he sold the Merc a couple of months back,’ she muttered tautly, uncertainly. ‘Was using some of the money that way...fraud?’

‘Yes.’ The confirmation was level and unemotional. ‘As a businessman, Nigel’s not a paying proposition and I don’t intend to lose any more money on the enterprise. If I chose not to prosecute, it was more for my own benefit than yours. Prosecuting your brother could only have invited the kind of press attention which I most dislike.’

His inhuman cool made her shiver. Molly bit the inside of her lip, a great weariness engulfing her as her thumb absently toyed with Donald’s ring, rubbing it as if it might yet be a good-luck talisman. She genuinely hadn’t realised that Nigel had misused what was clearly a substantial part of the loan. Nobody had shared that salient and shameful little fact with her.

‘I think he must have got carried away...having all that money,’ she whispered, and then said with greater force, ‘Sholto—?’

‘Don’t embarrass me, Molly. I have no time for anyone who tries to rip me off,’ he informed her flatly. ‘Nigel used that loan as if it was his personal piggybank and still contrived to run up debts everywhere. If his problems had resulted from any other cause, I might have rescheduled the loan, but only a fool throws good money after bad...and I am not a fool.’

Having absorbed that intimidating tone of absolute finality, Molly wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Sholto had just laid her down and walked over her as if she were a carpet for his arrogant feet; she felt as if he had. Intense mortification filled her. His detachment was somehow horribly humiliating. They might never have had a relationship. He seemed to have wiped it out of his mind as if it had never been.

He had realised their mistake before the ink was dry on the marriage licence. Desperate to hit back in any way she could, she had tried to divorce him for adultery. Instead she had found herself having an annulment forced on her because their marriage had not been consummated. The tabloid newspapers had had an ecstatic field day with that titillating revelation. SHOLTO DITCHES FRIGID BRIDE, had run one unforgettable headline. His lawyers had chewed her up and spat out her self-esteem in so many battered pieces.

‘When did you get engaged?’ Sholto demanded now with startling abruptness.

Like a woman in a dream, Molly glanced down at the tiny solitaire still so new and fresh to her finger. It had belonged to Donald’s mother. ‘See how you like the feel of it,’ Donald had suggested wryly, neither romance nor passion having the slightest thing to do with their friendship. But at this moment, quite unbearably, she was recalling another opulent emerald and diamond engagement ring, the one which Sholto had given her, and the feelings she had had then...her wild excitement, the joy, the sheer floodtide of love. Her stomach lurching sickly at the memory, she stood up.

‘Where do I sleep?’ she asked baldly.

The silence lay as thick and heavy as the blanket of snow outside.

‘Door facing you at the top of the stairs,’ Sholto responded in a voice as polished and smooth as silk.

She reached the door.

‘Who is he, your fiancé?’ he murmured intently.

She didn’t turn her head. ‘You met him once but you probably won’t remember him. Donald Seaton.’

‘Your stepfather’s curate?’ Sholto gritted in a tone of explosive incredulity.

‘I’ve known him a long time and he’s a very special person,’ Molly retorted, stiff with resentment and bitter chagrin. ‘Goodnight, Sholto. I’ll sort out something about the car first thing in the morning. It’s not damaged but I may need a tow to get it back on the road.’

‘Dio...you’re planning to marry a guy you used to call Donald Duck?’