Книга - The Marriage Demand

The Marriage Demand
PENNY JORDAN


Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.Suddenly, millionaire Nash Connaught was back in Faith's life, sharing Hatton House with her, only this time, he was also sharing her bed!When Nash discovered he had taken Faith's virginity, his reaction was swift. He arranged their wedding! But was Nash marrying Faith for honour? Or was it part of his vengeance for something that happened ten years ago?







Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan's novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan's fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.







Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon's most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan's characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women's fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.




The Marriage Demand

Penny Jordan







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CHAPTER ONE


‘DID you really think I wouldn’t recognise you?’

The ice-cold darts of numbing, mind-blitzing shock pierced Faith’s emotions as she stood staring in horrified nauseous disbelief. Nash! How could he be here? Wasn’t he supposed to be living in America, running the multi-billion-pound empire she had read in the financial press he had built up? But, no, he was quite definitely here, all six foot-odd male animal danger of him: the man who had haunted her nightmares both sleeping and waking for the last decade; the man who…

‘Faith, you haven’t met our benefactor yet, have you?’

Their what? So far as Faith had understood, the huge Edwardian mansion so belovedly familiar to her had been handed over to the charity she worked for by the trustees of the estate that owned it. If she had thought—guessed—suspected—for one single moment that Nash…Somehow she managed to repress the shudder tearing through her and threatening to completely destroy her professionalism.

The Ferndown Foundation, begun originally by her boss Robert Ferndown’s late grandfather, provided respite homes for children and their parents who were living in situations of financial hardship. The Foundation owned homes in several different parts of the country, and the moment Faith had seen their advertisement for a qualified architect to work directly under the Chief Executive she had desperately wanted to get the job. Her own background made her empathise immediately and very intensely with the plight of children living in hardship…

She tensed as she heard Nash speaking.

‘Faith and I already know one another.’

A huge wave of anger and fear swamped Faith as she listened, dreading what he might be going to say and knowing that he was enjoying what she was feeling, relishing it, almost gloating over the potential pleasure of hurting her, damaging her. And yet this was a man who, according to Robert, had, along with the other trustees of the estate, deeded the property as an outright gift to their charity—an act of such generosity that Faith could scarcely believe it had come from Nash.

She could feel Robert looking at her, no doubt waiting for her to respond to Nash’s comment. But it wasn’t Robert’s attentive smiling silence that was reducing her to a fear-drenched bundle of raw nerve-endings and anxiety. Grittily she reminded herself of everything she had endured and survived, of what she had achieved and how much she owed to the wonderful people who had supported her.

One of those people had been her late mother and the other…As she looked around the study she could almost see the familiar face of the man who had been such an inspiration to her, and she could almost see too…She closed her eyes as she was flooded with pain and guilt, then opened them but refused to look at Nash; she could almost feel him willing her to turn round and make herself vulnerable to his hostility.

‘It was a long time ago,’ she told Robert huskily, ‘over ten years.’

She could feel her fear sliding sickly through her veins like venom, rendering her incapable of doing anything to protect herself as she waited for the first blow to fall.

She knew Robert had been disappointed by her hesitation and reluctance when he had told her that he was giving her full control of the conversion of Hatton House.

‘It’s absolutely ideal for our purposes,’ he had enthused. ‘Three floors, large grounds, a stable block that can be converted alongside the main house.’

Of course there had been no way she could tell him the real reason for her reluctance, and now there would be no need—no doubt Nash would tell him for her.

The sharp ring of Robert’s mobile phone cut through her thoughts. As he answered the call he smiled warmly at her.

Robert had made no secret of his interest in her, and had made sure that she was included as his partner at several semi-social events he had to attend as the charity’s spokesperson. But so far their relationship was strictly non-sexual, and had not even progressed to the point where they had had a proper date. But Faith knew that that was only a matter of time—or at least it had been.

‘I’m sorry,’ Robert apologised as he ended his call. ‘I’m going to have to go straight back to London. There’s a problem with the Smethwick House conversion. But I’m sure that Nash, here, will look after you, Faith, and show you over the house. I doubt I’ll be able to get back here tonight, but I should be able to make it tomorrow.’

He was gone before Faith could protest, leaving her alone with Nash.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nash demanded harshly. ‘Or can I guess? Guilt can’t be an easy bedmate to live with—although you seem to have found it easy enough—and just as easy to sleep with Ferndown, by the looks of it. But then morals were never something you cared much about, were they, Faith?’

Faith didn’t know which of her emotions was the stronger, her anger or her pain. Instinctively she wanted to defend herself, to refute Nash’s hateful accusations, but she knew from experience what a pointless exercise that would be. In the end all she could manage to say to him was a shaky, proud, ‘I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.’

She knew immediately she’d said the wrong thing. The look he gave her could have split stone.

‘You might have been able to convince a juvenile court of that, Faith, but I’m afraid I’m nowhere as easy to deceive. And they do say, don’t they, that a criminal—a murderer—always returns to the scene of their crime?’

Faith sucked in a sharp breath full of shock and anguish. She could feel her scalp beneath the length of her honey-streaked thick mane of hair beginning to prickle with anxiety. When she had first come to Hatton Nash had teased her about her hair, believing at first that its honey-gold strands had been created by artifice rather than nature. A summer spent at Hatton had soon convinced him of his error. Her hair colouring, like her densely blue eyes, had been inherited from the Danish father she had never met, who had drowned whilst on honeymoon with her mother, trying to save the life of a young child.

Once she was old enough to consider such things, Faith had become convinced that the heart condition which had ultimately killed her mother had begun then, and that it had somehow been caused by her mother’s grief at the loss of her young husband. Faith acknowledged that there was no scientific evidence to back up her feelings, but, as she had good and bitter cause to know, some things in life went beyond logic and science.

‘What are you doing here?’ she challenged Nash fiercely. No matter what he might believe, she was not—she had not—

Automatically she gave a tiny shake of her head as she tried to break free of the dangerous treadmill of her thoughts, and yet, despite her outward rejection of what she knew he was thinking, inwardly she was already being tormented by her memories. It was here, in this room, that she had first met Philip Hatton, Nash’s godfather, and here too that she had last seen him as he lay slumped in his chair, semi-paralysed by the stroke which had ultimately led to his death.

Faith flinched visibly as the nightmare terror of her ten-year-old memories threatened to resurface and swamp her.

‘You heard your boss.’

Faith froze as she listened to the deliberately challenging way in which Nash underlined the word ‘boss’. Whilst she might have the self-control to stop herself from reacting verbally to Nash’s taunt, there was nothing she could do to stop the instinctive and betraying reaction of her body, as her eyes darkened and shadowed with the pain of further remembrances.

At fifteen a girl was supposed to be too young to know the meaning of real love—wasn’t she? Too young to suffer anything other than a painful adolescent crush to be gently laughed over in her adulthood.

‘As a trustee of my late godfather’s estate, it was my decision to gift Hatton to the Ferndown Foundation. After all, I know how beneficial it is for a child—from any background—to be in this kind of environment.’

He started to frown, looking away from Faith as he did so, the hard angry glaze she had been so aware of in his eyes fading to a rare shadowy uncertainty.

He had thought he was prepared for this moment, this meeting, that he would have himself and his reactions totally under control. But the shock of seeing the fifteen-year-old girl he still remembered so vividly transformed into the woman she had become—a woman it was obvious was very much admired and desired, by Robert Ferndown and no doubt many other gullible fools as well—was causing a reaction—a feeling—within him that was threatening the defences he had assured himself were impenetrable.

To have to admit, if only to himself, to suffering such an uncharacteristic attack of uncertainty irritated him, rasping against wounds he had believed were totally healed. He had, he knew, gained a reputation during the last decade, not just for being a formidable business opponent, but also for remaining resolutely unattached.

He closed his eyes momentarily as he fought against the anger flooding over him and drowning out rationality. He had waited a long time for this—for life, for fate, to deliver Faith into his hands. And now that it had…

He took a deep breath and asked softly, ‘Did you really expect to get away with it, Faith? Did you really believe that Nemesis would not exact a fair and just payment from you?’

He gave a wolverine smile that was no smile at all but a cold, savage snarl of warning, reminding Faith of just how easily he could hurt her, tear into the fragile fabric of the life she had created for herself.

‘Have you told Ferndown just what you are and what you did?’ he demanded savagely, causing Faith to drag air painfully into her lungs.

‘No, of course you haven’t.’ Nash answered his own question, his voice full of biting contempt. ‘If you had there’s no way the Foundation would have employed you, despite Ferndown’s obvious “admiration” for you. Did you sleep with him before he gave you the job, or did you make him wait until afterwards?’

The sound Faith made was more one of pain than shock—a tight, mewling, almost piteous cry—but Nash refused to respond to it.

‘Have you told him?’ he demanded.

Unable to lie, but unable to speak either, Faith shook her head. The triumph she could see in Nash’s eyes confirmed every single one of her growing fears.

Giving her another of those feral, intimidating smiles that made her shake in her shoes but made her equally determined that she was not going to give in to his manipulative method of tormenting her, Nash agreed smoothly, ‘No, of course you haven’t—from what I’ve heard from your besotted boss it seems that you managed to omit certain crucial facts from the CV you submitted to the Foundation.’

Faith knew exactly what he meant. Her throat dry with tension, she fought with all her emotional strength not to show him how afraid she now was.

‘They had no relevance,’ she insisted.

‘No relevance? The fact that you only just escaped a custodial sentence; the fact that you were responsible for a man’s death? Oh, no, you’re staying right there,’ Nash rasped as Faith, her self-control finally breaking, turned on her heel and tried to leave.

The shock of his fingers biting into the soft flesh of her upper arm caused her to cry out and demand frantically, ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘Don’t touch you?’ Nash repeated. ‘That’s not what you used to say to me, is it, Faith? You used to plead with me to touch you…beg me…’

A low, tortured sound escaped Faith’s trembling lips. ‘I was fifteen—a child.’ She tried to defend herself. ‘I didn’t know what I was saying—what I was doing…’

‘Liar,’ Nash contradicted her savagely, his free hand lifting to constrain her head and hold it so that she couldn’t avoid meeting his eyes.

The sensation of Nash’s lean fingers on her throat evoked a storm of reaction and remembrance. Her whole body started to shudder—not with fear, Faith recognised in shock, but with a heedless, wanton, inexplicable surge of feeling she had thought she had left behind her years ago.

How often that summer she had first seen Nash had she ached to have him touch her, want her? How many, many times had she fantasised then about him holding her captive like this? Imagining the brush of his fingers against her skin, picturing the feral glitter in his eyes as his gaze searched her face, his body hard with wanting her.

She shuddered again, acknowledging the naïvety of her long-ago teenage self. She had believed herself in love with Nash and had felt for him all the intense passion of that love, wanting to give herself to him totally and completely, longing for him, aching for him with all the ardour and innocence of youth.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he had dismissed once, when she had been attempting to tell him how she felt and what she wanted.

‘Then show me,’ she had responded boldly, adding frantically, ‘Kiss me, Nash.’

Nash froze in disbelief as he heard the words Faith had unwittingly whispered aloud, repeating her own thoughts. Kiss her? What kind of game was she trying to play? He started to move his hand away from her throat, but as he did so Faith turned her head, her lips grazing against his fingers.

Faith gasped as she felt the warm texture of Nash’s flesh against her unguarded lips. She heard the low sound he made deep in his throat, felt him close the small gap that separated them, his body hard and undeniably male against the shocked softness of hers. His hand was pressed into the small of her back, imprisoning her against him, his mouth firm and cool as it covered hers—

Nash felt the shock of what he was doing all the way right down to his toes. Faith’s body felt unbelievably vulnerable against his own, all soft womanly curves, her mouth sweet and warm. He could feel the temptation to touch her, give in to her, weakening him. His whole purpose in being here was to see justice done, to make sure she was punished for the crime she had committed. He owed it to his godfather to do that much at least for him—and yet here he was instead—

As he felt Faith’s response to him Nash shuddered deeply, fighting to remind himself that the sweet, innocent girl he had so stupidly believed Faith was had never really existed, that the woman she was now knew exactly what she was doing and what effect she was having on him. But even telling himself that couldn’t stop him from answering the passion in her kiss, the invitation of her softly parted lips.

When Faith felt the hot fierce thrust of Nash’s tongue opening her lips, seeking the intimacy of her mouth, stroking sensually against her own tongue, she felt as though she was drowning in wave after wave of increasingly urgent desire. It filled her, stormed her, drew her down to a place of deep, dark, velvet sweetness, a place of hot, bold, dangerous, sensual savagery, a place where she and Nash…

She and Nash!

Faith suddenly realised what she was doing and immediately pulled herself free of Nash, her face flooding with the betraying colour of her distress and confusion, her eyes haunted and dark with the pain of it. She had kissed him as the girl she had been, loving the man he had been, Faith acknowledged as she tried to reconcile what she had just experienced in his arms with the reality of the enmity and distrust that now lay between them.

As she’d pulled away from him Nash had stepped back from her. Faith could see the way his chest was rising and falling with the harshness of his breathing, and she quailed beneath the bitter contemptuous look he was giving her.

‘You’re wasting your time trying those tactics on me, Faith,’ she heard him saying cynically to her. ‘They might work on other men, but I know what you’re really like…’

‘That’s not true. I wasn’t,’ Faith defended herself passionately. ‘You have no right—’

‘Where you and I are concerned, Faith,’ Nash cut across her warningly, ‘right doesn’t come into it.’ What the hell was he doing? Angrily Nash reminded himself of just what Faith was.

Faith bit her bottom lip.

‘My godfather had a right to have the trust he placed in you respected,’ he continued grimly. ‘And he also had a right to expect justice to be done—a right to have just payment made for his death.’

‘I wasn’t responsible for that,’ Faith protested shakily. ‘You can’t make me—’ You can’t make me admit to something I didn’t do, she had been about to say, but before she could do so Nash was interrupting her.

‘I can’t make you what, Faith?’ he asked her with soft venom. ‘I can’t make you pay? Oh, I think you’ll find that I can. You’ve already admitted that you lied by omission on your CV to the Ferndown Foundation. Given their much-publicised belief in old-fashioned moral standards, you must know as well as I do that there’s no way you would have got that job if they’d known the truth. Oh, I’m not trying to say that Ferndown himself wouldn’t have still taken you to bed, but I think we both know it would have been a very different kind of business arrangement he’d have offered.’

‘I was never convicted.’ Faith tried to defend herself helplessly. She felt as though she had strayed into a horrific waking nightmare. Never had she imagined anything like this might happen. She had always known how much Nash blamed and hated her, of course, but to discover that he was now bent on punishing her as he believed the law had failed to do threw her into a state of mind-numbing panic.

‘No, you weren’t, were you?’ Nash agreed, giving her an ugly look.

Faith swallowed against the torturous dryness of her aching throat. Someone had interceded on her behalf, pleaded for clemency for her and won the sympathy and compassion of the juvenile court so that all she had received was a suspended sentence. She’d never known who that person was, and no one would ever know just how heavy she found the burden of the guilt she had denied to Nash. No one—and most of all not the man now so cruelly confronting and threatening her.

‘You knew I was coming here,’ was all she could manage to say, her voice cracking painfully against the dryness of her throat.

‘Yes. I knew,’ Nash agreed coolly. ‘That was a cunning move of yours, to claim that you had no close family or friends to supply a character reference for you and to give the name of your university tutor—a man who only knew that part of your life that came after my godfather’s death.’

‘I did that because there wasn’t anyone else,’ Faith responded sharply. ‘It had nothing to do with being cunning. My mother was my only family, and she…she died.’ She stopped, unable to go on. Her mother had lost her long battle against her heart condition two days after Faith had heard the news of Philip Hatton’s death, which was why she had not been able to attend his funeral.

‘Well, it certainly seems that your tutor thought highly of you,’ Nash continued, giving her a thin-lipped, disparaging smile. ‘Did you offer yourself to him just like you did to me, Faith?’

‘No!’ Her voice rang with repugnance, her feelings too strong for her to conceal and too overwhelming for her to notice the glitter that touched Nash’s eyes before he turned away from her.

When Robert had been briefing her about the project he had told her that the house was being looked after by a skeleton staff whom the Foundation would keep on whilst it was being converted, and Faith tensed now, as the housekeeper walked into the study.

She wasn’t the same housekeeper Faith remembered from all those years ago, and, giving Faith a cold stare, she turned away from her to Nash and told him, ‘I’ve made up your usual room for you, Mr Nash, and I’ve put the young lady in the room you indicated. I’ve left a cold supper in the fridge, but if you want me to come in during the evening whilst you’re here…’

‘Thank you, Mrs Jenson.’ Nash smiled. ‘But that won’t be necessary.’

Faith stared at the housekeeper’s departing back, her heart sinking as she recognised the other woman’s antagonism towards her. But she had more important concerns to address right now—far more important! Swinging round to confront Nash, she whispered, white-faced, ‘You can’t stay here.’

The smile he gave her sent another burst of white-hot fear licking along her veins.

‘Oh, yes, I can,’ he told her softly. ‘I made it a condition of the hand-over, and naturally the Foundation’s board fully understood that I would want to oversee the conversion. Especially since it was being handled by such an inexperienced young architect.’

Faith looked blindly at him. ‘But I’m staying here—I have to—it’s all arranged. You can’t do this to me,’ she protested. ‘It’s…it’s harassment,’ she accused him wildly. ‘It’s…’

‘Justice,’ Nash supplied with soft deadliness.




CHAPTER TWO


‘I’VE instructed Mrs Jenson to put you in your old room.’

Her old room. Hugging her arms around herself for protection, Faith recalled the openly challenging way in which Nash had delivered that piece of information. It had been obvious to her that he was expecting some kind of hostile reaction, but she refused to allow him to manipulate either her actions or her emotions.

Her old room. Pensively she walked across to the small window and looked down at the elegant mini-patchwork of the gardens.

This room had once been part of the house’s original nursery, tucked away in the faux turret that formed such a distinctive part of the house’s architecture. It was an amusing piece of fantasy on the part of its designer, and at fifteen Faith had still been young enough to imagine herself as a fairy tale princess, enjoying the solitude of her private tower.

‘I expect you’re disappointed that the tower isn’t surrounded by a lake,’ Nash had teased her when she had tried to express her pleasure at being given such a special room, but to Faith the tower room Philip Hatton had chosen for her was perfect as it was, and she had struggled to find the words to tell him so.

That night, her first night in the room’s comfortable and generously proportioned bed, she had closed her eyes and thought about her mother, whispering to her in her thoughts, telling her how lucky she felt, describing the room to her and knowing how much pleasure her mother would have had in sharing with her the wonder of everything she was experiencing. She had wished passionately that her mother could be there with her.

But of course she couldn’t. And tears had filled her eyes, Faith remembered, and she had cried silently into her pillow, knowing with the maturity that the last painful and frightening six months had brought her that her mother would never see Hatton.

Restlessly Faith moved away from the window. The room had hardly changed; the bed in it looked exactly the same as the one she remembered, although the curtains at the window and the covers on the bed were different. Even the faded old-fashioned rose-coloured wallpaper was the same. Tenderly she reached out and touched one of the roses.

Her bedroom in the tiny Housing Association flat she and her mother had shared had had pretty wallpaper. They had papered it together just after they moved in. She had known how much her mother had hated leaving the small cottage they had lived in since Faith’s birth, but the garden had become too much for her and the flat had been closer to the hospital, and to Faith’s school, and much easier for her mother, being on the ground floor.

There was something almost frightening about the power one event could have to change a person’s whole life, Faith acknowledged now as her thoughts focused on the past. It had only been by the merest chance that she had ever come to Hatton at all.

Shortly after the move to their flat, her mother’s doctor had announced that she had to have a major operation and that after it she would be sent to recuperate at a special rest home, where she would have to stay for several months.

At first her mother had flatly refused to agree. Faith had only been just fifteen, and there had been no way she could be left to live on her own for the time the doctors had said her recuperation would take. The doctor’s response had been to suggest that the Social Services be approached to find a place for Faith temporarily at a local children’s home, where she could stay until her mother was well enough to look after her.

At first her mother had refused to even consider such an option, but Faith had seen for herself just how rapidly and painfully her mother’s health was deteriorating, and despite her own dread and fear she had set about convincing her mother that she was perfectly happy to do as the doctors were suggesting.

‘It will only be for a while,’ Faith had tried to reassure her mother. ‘And it will be mostly during the summer holidays. It will be fun having some other girls to talk to…’

And so it had been arranged. But right at the last minute, on the very day that Faith’s mother had been due to be admitted to hospital, it had been decided that instead of going to the local children’s home Faith would have to be sent to one almost fifty miles away.

Faith could still remember how apprehensive she had felt, but her fear for her mother had been greater. Even worse had been the discovery that she would not be allowed to visit her mother, either after her operation or whilst she was recuperating.

Although on her arrival at the home the staff there had been kind, Faith had felt overwhelmed by the anonymous busyness of the place, and the hostility of one particular group of girls who had already been living there.

She had been allowed to speak to her mother by telephone after her operation, but Faith had determinedly said nothing about the crude attempts of this group of girls to bully her and demand money from her. The last thing she’d wanted was for her mother to worry about her when Faith knew she needed all her strength to get better.

A week after she had first arrived at the home Faith had been thrilled to discover that they were being taken out for the day to visit a nearby Edwardian mansion and its gardens. Her father had been an architect, and it had been her secret dream to follow in his footsteps—although with her mother’s meagre income she had known it was unlikely that she would ever be able to go to university and get the necessary qualifications.

It had taken a little of her pleasure away to discover that the girls who had taken such an open dislike to her were also going on the trip—as well as surprising her, since they had all been extremely and crudely vocal about their favourite ways of spending their time.

Faith had known that her mother would be horrified if she knew about them. Faith had heard them boasting openly about their criminal activities. She had even heard whispers from some of the other girls about them going into the local town and stealing from the shops there.

‘Why don’t you tell someone?’ Faith had asked the girl who had told her. The other girl had shuddered.

‘They’d kill me if they found out, and anyway, like Charlene says, even if they do get caught they’ll only be sent to a juvenile court.’

‘Only!’ Faith hadn’t been able to conceal her own shock, but the other girl had shrugged dismissively.

‘Charlene’s brother’s already in a remand home. She says he says it’s great…they can do what they like. He got sent there for stealing a car. Charlene hates it here because she says there’s nothing worth thieving—only bits of stuff from shops.’

Faith had been appalled, and even more determined to give the girls in question a wide berth. They’d seemed to take a delight in taunting and tormenting her, but her mother’s illness had given her a maturity that had helped her to ignore them and to treat them with a dignified silence.

The theft from her room, though, of the delicate silver brooch her mother had given to her—a tiny little fairy—which had originally been given to her by Faith’s father—had been very hard to bear. Especially when Faith had been pretty sure of who was responsible for taking it. She had reported her loss to the home’s harassed staff, though she had sensed it was a waste of time.

Hatton was virtually within walking distance of the home, although they had been taken there by coach, and Faith could still remember the wave of delight that had swept her as she’d seen the house for the first time.

Designed by Lutyens, it had a magical, storybook air that had entranced Faith even whilst her quick intelligence had registered the architectural features favoured by the famous designer.

Whilst the other girls had hurried in bored impatience through the house Faith had lingered appreciatively over every room, and it had been when she had sneaked back for a second look at the study that Philip Hatton had found her.

He had been elderly then—in his mid-seventies—thin and ascetic-looking, with kind, wise eyes and a gentle smile, and Faith had been drawn to him immediately.

She had spent the rest of the afternoon with him, listening to him talk about the house and its history, drinking in every word and in return telling him about her own circumstances.

Much to the bemusement of the carer in charge of them, Philip had insisted that Faith was to remain after the others had left, to have tea with him.

‘But how will she get back to the home?’ the poor woman had protested.

‘I shall send her back in my car,’ Philip had responded.

Faith smiled now, remembering the lordly air which had been so much a part of him.

Faith could remember every tiny detail of that shared supper.

After sending her upstairs to ‘wash her hands’, in the kind care of his elderly housekeeper, Faith had returned to the study to find that Philip Hatton was no longer on his own.

‘Ah, Faith.’ Philip had beamed at her. ‘Come in and meet my godson, Nash. He’s spending the summer here with me. Nash, come and say hello to Faith. She’s a fellow Lutyens fan.’

And so it had begun. One look at Nash, tall, impossibly good-looking, with his muscular sexy body and his shock of thick dark hair, his amazing topaz eyes and his stunning aura of male sensuality, and Faith had fallen headfirst in love. How could she not have done so?

They had dined on fresh asparagus, poached salmon and strawberries and cream—Philip’s favourite summer supper, as she had later discovered—and even today the taste of salmon, the smell of strawberries always took her straight back to that meal.

It had seemed to her then that the very air in the room was drenched in some special magical light, some wonderful mystical golden glow, that suddenly she was grown-up, an adult, with both Philip and Nash listening attentively to her participation in their shared conversation.

The misery she had experienced at the home had been forgotten; she had felt somehow like a caterpillar, emerging from its constricting chrysalis to experience the exhilaration and freedom of flight.

It was Nash who had driven her back to the home. Faith could still remember the way her heart had started to race with frantic excitement when he had stopped the car just outside the entrance. It had been dark by then, and in the shadowy privacy of the quiet lane, seated next to Nash in the car, Faith had held her breath. Was he going to touch her…kiss her? Did he feel like she did?

A mirthless smile stretched the soft fullness of her mouth now as she relived her naïve emotions and the sharpness of her disappointment when Nash had simply thanked her for her kindness to his godfather.

‘But I enjoyed talking to him,’ she had insisted truthfully.

Less than a week after that she had been living full time at Hatton—an arrangement that had been made after Philip had written to her mother, inviting Faith to spend the rest of the school holidays at Hatton as his guest.

She had been speechless…ecstatic, unable to believe her good fortune when the news had been broken to her. If only she had known then what the outcome of her stay was to be…

Automatically Faith walked back to the window, pushing her memories away. From up here she had a wonderfully panoramic view of the Gertrude Jekyll-designed gardens that were at their very best at this time of the year. She could well remember the long sunny hours she had spent alongside Philip, weeding out the magnificent long borders either side of the path that led to the pretty summerhouse.

Faith froze as a large car pulled up outside the house and Nash got out. Where had he been? Had she known he was out she would have gone downstairs and got herself something to eat. She didn’t want to eat with Nash.

Prior to her arrival Robert had told her that arrangements had been made for her to live in the house, but that she would have to fend for herself so far as meals were concerned.

‘The kitchen is fully equipped, and you’ll be able to make use of its facilities, but we shall also give you an allowance in order that you can eat out if you wish—and I hope you will wish.’ Robert had smiled at her. ‘Especially on those occasions when I come down to the house for our progress meetings.’

Faith had smiled, but Robert’s interest in her was a complication she hadn’t allowed for when she had initially applied for her job.

Faith believed she had every right not to inform her prospective employers about the events leading up to Philip’s death. But to conceal them from someone with whom she might form a close personal relationship was something she would never consider doing.

To Faith, loving someone meant being honest with them, trusting them, and had she and Robert met in different circumstances she knew there would have come a stage in their relationship when she would have wanted to open up to him about her past.

She liked Robert. Of course she did. And, yes, one day she hoped to marry and have children. But…A troubled frown furrowed her forehead.

Why had Nash had to reappear in her life? She shivered as she remembered the way he had looked at her when he had told her that he was determined to seek justice for Philip’s death.

Inadvertently her gaze was drawn downward, to where Nash was striding towards the house, and as though some mysterious force linked them together he stopped and lifted his head, his gaze unerringly focusing on the tower and her window.

Immediately Faith stepped back, but she knew that Nash had seen her.

The summer she had stayed here she had spent more time than she wanted to remember waiting…watching for Nash to arrive. From here there was an excellent view of the drive, and in those days Nash had driven a racy little scarlet sports car.

Although officially he had been spending the summer helping his godfather, he had also, even then, been working on the business venture upon which he had eventually built his current empire.

In those days whenever he’d seen her watching for him he would stand underneath her window and smile up at her, teasingly telling her that if she wasn’t careful one day he might scale the wall to reach her.

Faith had prayed that he might, so deeply in love with him by then that there had scarcely been any room in her thoughts or her emotions for anyone else but him. He had been her ideal, her hero, and as the girl in her had given way to the growing woman her longing for him had increased and intensified.

From hardly daring to look at his mouth, for fear of blushing because of her desire to feel its hard male strength against her own, she had found herself focusing boldly on it, the words she had known she must never speak pleading in silent longing inside her head.

Kiss me.

Well, today, ten years too late, he had kissed her, but not as she had longed for him, dreamed of him doing then, with love and tenderness, a look of bemused adoration in his eyes as he begged her for her love. Oh, no. The kiss he had given her today had been hard, angry, pulsing with the violence of his emotions and his antagonism towards her.

So why, then, had she responded to it with a passion that she had never given to any of the other men she had dated?

The sharp irritation of her inner voice unnerved her. She had responded to him because her memories had tricked her, that was all. She had thought…forgotten…She had believed that it was Nash as she had once imagined him to be that she was kissing. And as for those other men—well, they had just been casual dates, nothing serious, and she had kissed them more out of a sense of fair play than anything else. Kisses were all that she had wanted to share with them.

Only with Robert had she sensed that maybe…just maybe something deeper and stronger might eventually grow to life between them. But these days Faith was very protective of her emotions, very cautious about who she allowed into her life. These days a man like Nash Connaught would have no chance whatsoever of bedazzling her into making the same dangerous mistakes she had made at fifteen.

So far as Faith was concerned now, the most important cornerstone for a relationship was mutual trust. Without that…Without that there could be nothing—or nothing that she would want, that she would ever consider worth having, as she had good and bitter cause to know.

In her bleakest moments after the death of Philip and her mother the only thing that had kept her going had been the knowledge that Philip had trusted her—enough to make that wonderfully unexpected provision in his will for her.

When she had first learned that Philip had left money specially to finance her studies and her passage through university Faith had hardly been able to believe it. Prior to that she had told herself that the only way she had any hope whatsoever of qualifying as an architect would be to find herself a job and then study in her spare time, which she had known meant that her goal would be virtually impossible for her to reach.

But it hadn’t just been the discovery that Philip had left her the money that had meant so much to her. What had mattered even more was knowing that despite everything that had happened he had, after all, believed in her. There was, in Faith’s opinion, no price that could be put on that. It was a gift beyond price; a gift so precious that even now just to think about it filled her eyes with tears and an emotion she knew someone like Nash would never in a million lifetimes be able to understand.

Nash, to whom everything was black or white…Nash, who could condemn a person without allowing them to defend themselves…Nash, in whose eyes she was a thief and a murderer…



Angrily Nash headed towards the house. Just for a heartbeat then, seeing Faith standing at the window, the sunlight dancing on her hair, lingering on its stunning and unique mixture of differing shades of blonde, from purest silver to warmest gold, he had been inexorably swept back in time.

He had known right from the moment his godfather had announced that he intended to invite her to spend the summer at Hatton that she spelled trouble, but he hadn’t imagined then just how fatally accurate his prediction was going to be. The kind of trouble he had anticipated had had nothing to do with theft and…and murder.

His mouth hardened, the expression in his eyes bleak. Like his godfather, he had been totally taken in by Faith, believing her to be a naïve young girl, never imagining…Bitterness joined the bleakness in his eyes. Hell, he had even wanted to protect her, believing then that her advances to him were totally innocent and that she’d had no idea of what she was really inviting when she’d looked at him, her face burning hot with the thoughts he could see so plainly in those limpid dark blue eyes.

He had even derived a certain amount of painful amusement from the way she’d looked at his mouth, semi-boldly, semi-shyly, but wholly provocatively, wondering just what she would do if he actually responded to her invitation and gave in to the fierce heat of desire she was creating inside him.

But she had been fifteen, a child, as he had sternly and furiously reminded himself more times than he cared to count during that brief summer, and no matter how much his body might have reacted, telling him in increasingly urgent and physical terms just how it viewed her, his mind had known that to give in to what he was feeling would have been dishonourable and wrong.

She would not always be fifteen, he had told himself. One day she would be adult, and then…Then he would make her pay over and over again for every one of those naïvely tormenting looks she had given him, pay in kiss after kiss for all those kisses he had ached to steal from her but had known he must not.

How many nights had he lain awake, tormented by the heat of his own need, virtually unable to stop himself from groaning out aloud at the thought of how she would feel lying against him? Her skin silken soft, her mouth as perfect and perfumed as Gertrude Jekyll’s warmly scented roses, her eyes as blue as the campanula that grew amongst them. God, but he had wanted her, ached for her, longed for her. Hell, he had even been stupid enough to make plans for his future that had included her…for their future…

Initially not even to himself had he dared to acknowledge just how much he’d looked forward to seeing her waiting for him, standing at her turret window, a modern-day Rapunzel imprisoned away from him, not by her father but by her age and his own moral convictions.

It had left a residue of bitterness to be forced to recognise that the innocence he had striven so hard to protect from his own desire had been little more than a fiction created to conceal the real Faith. But his personal bitterness was nothing to the anguish and the anger he felt on behalf of his godfather. The anguish, the anger and the guilt. If he had not been so bemused by Faith, nor so wrapped up in the excitement of beginning the property empire that had now made him such a wealthy man, he might have seen more clearly what was happening and what Faith really was.

But there was no way he was going to fall into that same trap a second time.

The shock of discovering that she was working for the very foundation he had chosen to benefit from his godfather’s bequest had caused him to take the first flight from New York to London, despite the fact that he had been in the middle of lengthy discussions involving the sale of leases on some of his most expensive properties. His initial intention had been to warn Robert Ferndown of just what Faith was, but then he had heard Robert eulogising about her abilities, and Faith herself, and he had been caught up in a flood of savage anger against her.

It had been then that he had decided to punish her for the crime she had committed, to punish her not swiftly and immediately, with a clean, sharp cut, but to give her a taste of what his godfather had suffered…to keep her on a knife-edge of fear and dread, never knowing when the final blow was going to fall.

He let himself into the house and paused as he walked past the open study door. He could still taste Faith’s kiss on his lips, still almost feel her against his body, feel his own unwanted reaction to her. Angrily he turned on his heel. What the hell was he trying to do to himself?




CHAPTER THREE


FAITH flexed her fingers and moved tiredly away from her laptop. It was still far too early for her to begin her preliminary report on the house, but looking down into the garden had reminded her not just of the pretty little summer house but of the many statues in the garden as well, some of which she knew were extremely valuable.

She would have to check with Robert to see whether or not they were to remain in the garden, and if they were how best they could be protected from damage and theft. Tomorrow she would list them all properly and contact Robert to get his advice.

She tensed as she heard a knock on her door, knowing who it would be and hesitating warily before going to answer it.

‘Yes?’ she questioned Nash hardly as she saw him standing outside the door.

He had changed his clothes since she had seen him getting out of his car and was now wearing a white tee shirt that clung to his torso in a way that suddenly made her feel far too hot. She could almost feel her face burning as her senses reacted to the maleness of him. As a girl she had adored him, longed for him, worshipped him almost, but now, as a woman, she was aware of the air of raw sexuality that clung to him—aware of it and resentful of it too.

‘The supper Mrs Jenson left is still in the fridge. She’ll be offended if we don’t eat it,’ Nash told her abruptly.

The words ‘I’m not hungry’ were burning on the tip of Faith’s tongue, but before she could say them her traitorous tummy gave a very audible and very hungry gurgle.

Unable to meet Nash’s eyes, Faith told him tersely, ‘I’ll be down shortly. I’m just finishing something.’

Faith waited until she was sure he had gone before racing to close her bedroom door. Her hands were trembling violently. Was she imagining it or could she really scent danger in the air? Danger and something else—something that was wholly and hormone-activatingly Nash.

She quickly sluiced her hot face in the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom, brushed her hair and reapplied the minimal amount of make-up she favoured. After what he had said to her she could scarcely believe that Nash had actually bothered to concern himself about the fact that she had not had any supper. Or perhaps he wanted to make sure she ate it where he could ensure that she didn’t make off with the cutlery and crockery, she told herself cynically.

And yet when she walked into the kitchen and discovered that it was empty of Nash’s presence her predominant feeling was one of…of what? she asked herself sharply. Not disappointment…no way. No, she was glad he was at least giving her the privacy to eat alone, without his tormenting presence.

But as she opened the fridge she realised she was wrong, because Nash was walking into the kitchen.

‘Asparagus and salmon,’ Faith murmured as she saw the food that had been left for them. Her eyes filmed with tears, forcing her to keep her head down so that Nash couldn’t see them whilst she blinked fiercely to disperse them.

Philip’s favourites.

Suddenly Faith knew that despite her hunger the food would taste like sawdust to her.

Shakily she closed the fridge door.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she told Nash. ‘I’m not hungry.’

The look of male incomprehension he gave her might have amused her under different circumstances, but when she headed for the kitchen door she saw it change to frowning anger as Nash moved lithely past her to stand between her and her exit.

‘I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing—’ he began ominously.

Faith felt her self-control starting to fray. It had been a long day, beginning with her being buoyed up with excitement and pride at the knowledge that Robert had entrusted her with such an important project, then going from that to deep, numbing shock when she had first seen Nash. Then had come the trauma of reliving searingly painful memories—and that was without taking into account everything she had experienced when Nash had kissed her.

‘I’m not the one who’s playing games,’ she refuted fiercely, her voice trembling with the intensity of her feelings. ‘You’re the one who’s doing that, Nash. Why have you come here? Why are you staying here? That wasn’t part of the arrangement Robert made with the trustees of the estate.’

‘You seem to know an awful lot about his business for a relatively new employee,’ Nash countered smoothly, and Faith suspected that despite her anger he could tell that underneath it she was feeling very vulnerable. ‘But then, of course, you aren’t just his employee, are you, Faith? Why the hell do you think I’m here?’ he demanded with an abrupt change of tone. ‘Do you really think for one moment that once I learned you’d be here I would allow you to stay on your own?

‘This house is full of almost priceless architectural features—panelling, architraves, fireplaces, to name just a few items that would fetch thousands if they were removed and sold to some unscrupulous builder who wasn’t worried about checking where they’d come from.’

Faith knew that what he was saying was true, but it appalled her that he should actually consider her capable of perpetrating such a crime. Before she could defend herself Nash was attacking her again, although in a very different way this time.

‘Are you going to tell Robert that you asked me to kiss you?’ he asked with acid softness.

‘What? I…I did no such thing,’ Faith denied with vehement indignation, her face pink with anger.

‘Liar,’ Nash taunted her. “‘Kiss me”—that’s what you said to me.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Although of course it’s typical of you that you should deny it.’

Her face was now scarlet with mortification as she had a sickening memory of actually thinking those words. Surely she hadn’t…couldn’t have said them out aloud? But she must have done—unless Nash had read her mind, which in truth she wouldn’t entirely put past him.

‘The next thing you’ll be doing is trying to pretend that you didn’t enjoy it,’ Nash goaded her tauntingly.

Now Faith really had had enough.

‘I didn’t,’ she denied flatly.

‘No? Well, there’s one very sure way to prove whether or not you’re telling the truth, isn’t there?’ Nash retaliated.

The way he was watching her, looking at her like a hungry lion eyeing up its prey, made Faith wish with all her heart that she had never become involved in a verbal battle she knew Nash would not allow her to win.

‘Fortunately for me Hatton doesn’t have a torture chamber,’ she told him with angry scorn.

‘I don’t need a torture chamber to prove you a liar,’ Nash told her smoothly. ‘This is all it’s going to take…’

Faith’s eyes widened in disbelief as he took hold of her, imprisoning her against his body and holding her captive there as he bent his head.

Grittily she closed her lips tightly together, fiercely refusing to close her eyes, letting them tell him all that her lips could not as they glittered with angry contempt and female pride, daring him to do his worst.

‘Open your mouth.’ Nash seemed impervious to the intensity of the rage and hostility emanating from her tense body. ‘Open your mouth Faith,’ he repeated as he drew his tongue-tip oh, so lightly across the closed line of her lips.

The sensual way in which the warm, wet tip of his tongue was stroking almost lovingly against her lips was so shockingly distracting that Faith found her thoughts releasing their hold on her anger and sliding with shaming wantonness to concentrate instead on the sensations Nash’s expertly seductive attack was having on her.

If she closed her eyes that sensation magnified a hundredfold, and that surely must be the reason she was starting to tremble as treacherously as a young girl experiencing her first real awareness of what a kiss could be. But Nash wasn’t even kissing her yet—not really. He was just playing with her, teasing her, tormenting her. She could feel his breath against her skin, smell the unique Nash smell of him, feel…

On a low moan of defeat Faith didn’t even know she was making, her lips started to part.

Achingly Faith clung to Nash, her mouth moving eagerly against his, her hand sliding behind his head so that she could hold him close to her.

Nash, Nash…Silently she breathed his name in a sharp female cry that held all the pent-up longing of her teenage desire, of the nights when she had lain awake aching for him without knowing exactly what it was she was aching for. She had known about the mechanics of sex, of course, but the actuality of it had still been a mystery to her, and she had passionately believed Nash was the only man who could ever hold the key to unlock that mystery for her.

Had been a mystery?

Faith shuddered and felt the sharp intake of breath Nash made, as though somehow that fierce reaction of her body had affected his.

They were kissing as she had so often imagined they might, their mouths clinging, stroking, tasting, caressing, feasting, and the little murmurs of appreciative pleasure she could hear herself making were running through their kisses in a soft, disjointed paean of pleasure.

Then, abruptly, shockingly, Nash was pushing her away from him, his chest rising and falling sharply as he demanded in a voice that grated against her ears, ‘How much more do I have to do to prove you a liar, Faith? Take you to bed? You’d certainly have let me.’

Appalled, sickened, disbelieving, Faith could only stand blank-eyed and shamed as he denounced her. She could offer him no defence nor any explanation. White-faced, her eyes huge and dark with pain and humiliation, she didn’t know which of them she hated the most. Him or herself.

Nauseously she waited for the blow to fall, for Nash to tell her that he fully intended to reveal to Robert what she had done, but sinisterly he made no move to do so.

Faith could feel her anxiety start to increase. Her stomach was churning, her head ached and her eyes felt gritty and sore from the tears she refused to allow herself to cry.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Nash demanded as she turned on her heel and hurried blindly towards the kitchen door.

‘My room. I’m tired and I want to go to bed,’ Faith told him shakily. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours, Nash. I’m not answerable to you. You don’t have any control over me.’

There was the smallest pause before he responded, his voice silken with a menace that made the tiny hairs lift on the back of Faith’s neck.

‘No? Oh, I think you’ll find that you are very much answerable to me, Faith, and that I have a great deal of control over you. If, for instance, I were to tell Robert what you had just done…’

‘If?’ Faith couldn’t manage to keep the note of soft pleading out of her voice as she turned round to confront him.

‘I thought you wanted to go to bed,’ Nash taunted her smoothly.

He was enjoying this, Faith recognised. Well, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of pleading with him…begging him…

‘I do,’ she agreed fiercely, turning her back on him, walking determinedly towards the door and opening it.

As he watched her departing back Nash finally let out the pent-up breath he had been holding.

Where the hell had she learned to kiss like that…and who with…?

No other woman had ever kissed him like that, as if he was their life, their soul, their one desire. Their soul mate for this life and every life to come, their world…their everything. She had kissed him as though she had waited out an eternity for him…as though she had been starving for him…as though she loved him and only him.

A woman like Faith was a living, breathing mortal danger to a man when she kissed him like that. A woman like Faith…

Angrily Nash tried to dismiss her from his thoughts. Hadn’t what she had done to his godfather taught him anything? Of course it had! What was she trying to do? Offer him sex to prevent him from telling Ferndown about her?

Alongside his anger and contempt Nash could feel the sharp savage heat that burned through his body. How could he possibly want her, given all that he knew about her? He had never merely wanted a woman for sex. Never. And he didn’t want Faith—not really. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. Some bizarre and treacherous effect of seeing her here at Hatton and reactivating memories of the past. A past when he had wanted her.

How many men had there been in her life since then? How many men had experienced the dangerous witchery of her? If that kiss she had given him was anything to go by…no wonder Ferndown was so besotted with her!

But he had come here to finally put the past to rest, Nash reminded himself savagely—not to reactivate it.



Upstairs in her room Faith sank down onto her bed, wrapping her arms protectively around her body as she rocked herself helplessly to and fro.





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