A Reluctant Wife. CATHY WILLIAMS

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      ‘Everyone needs a break from empire-building,’ he said, and the corners of his mouth twitched as though he was holding back a hearty laugh.

      ‘I didn’t think I’d said anything funny, Mr Wallace.’

      ‘Please stop calling me Mr Wallace. Not even my bank manager calls me that.’

      Probably, she thought, because he wants to bend over backwards to be chummy just in case you decide to take your valuable business elsewhere. Alan had had a similar effect on people. They had always pandered to his need to be admired. Instinctively she scowled, remembering her naïveté at the beginning of their relationship when her head had been somewhere in the clouds and she had thought that her personality had drawn him to her.

      Before she’d realised that all he’d wanted had been something strikingly ornamental to have draped on his arm. It made her hair curl now to think of how she had been so malleable. She had allowed him to dress her precisely as he had wanted—in dresses that she had found too revealing and shoes which had made her feel like a giant next to most of the other women with whom she had come into contact.

      ‘I’ve lost you,’ Gregory said, leaning against the counter with one hand tucked into his trouser pocket.

      ‘What?’ Sophie returned from her pilgrimage into the past and refocused on the man standing in front of her. She wished obscurely that she had never come into contact with him, then she reminded herself that she was being foolish because she hardly knew him and it was impossible for a complete stranger to have any sort of impact on her carefully regulated life. Still, it would help if he didn’t exude quite such powerful charisma.

      ‘You were a million miles away just then.’

      ‘Here you are.’ She ignored his remark and handed him his membership card, which he took and tucked away in his wallet.

      ‘So, now we’ve established that you needn’t stay here for lunch, will you accept my invitation?’

      She heard the magnetic, charming persuasiveness in his voice with a vague sensation of terror.

      ‘No.’

      He shook his head and gave her an impatient, perplexed look.

      ‘When do I need to get this book back to you?’ he asked, straightening and standing back from the counter.

      ‘Within two weeks or else I’m afraid I’ll have to apply a fine.’

      ‘Which is?’

      ‘I can’t remember. Everyone returns their books long before they become overdue.’

      ‘How virtuous of them.’

      ‘It’s a virtuous community,’ Sophie said politely, and he raised his eyebrows expressively.

      ‘Really…’ he said softly. ‘Yourself included?’

      She could feel the colour rush into her face and she fought back an instinctive urge to slap his face. He hadn’t said anything rude or insulting, but the mere fact that he had made her blush with embarrassment, which was something she hadn’t done for longer than she cared to remember, made her hackles rise.

      ‘Especially myself,’ she said, meeting his gaze without blinking. ‘You might want to remember that.’ After a few seconds of silence she turned away and began to return books to their respective shelves.

      CHAPTER TWO

      FOUR days later Sophie decided to see for herself what was happening at Ashdown House.

      She told herself that his was because she seemed to hear nothing but second-hand reports of massive reconstruction, and curiosity had finally got the better of her. Besides, she reasoned, she had a free day, with Jade at school and no work at the library. Despite the fact that it was bitterly cold, it was also temptingly sunny—too sunny to stay indoors, doing housework.

      More to the point, Gregory Wallace was safely ensconced in London, according to Kat who seemed to know details of the man’s movements with remarkable intimacy. That was nothing unusual in Ashdown. There was no such thing as a secret life in the village. The smallness of the place made any such thing a complete impossibility.

      As soon as she had returned to her cottage, having dropped Jade off at school, she hopped onto her bicycle. She’d made sure that she was securely wrapped up in as many layers of clothing as was humanly possible, without restricting movement, and headed off in the direction of the house.

      The place wasn’t far from the village, but set right back from the road and picturesquely positioned on the sloping crest of a hill so that it commanded views in all directions.

      In its heyday, before Sophie’s time, it had been the focal point of the village. Angela Frank had lived there with her son and her husband, and had entertained in grand style. Beautiful young things had gathered on the rolling lawns in summer, lazily sipping champagne and dressed to the nines. There had been croquet parties, which had started at lunchtime and supposedly meandered with ever more raucousness well into the late hours of the night. They were all second-hand and third-hand stories, which Sophie swallowed with a hefty pinch of salt since memories were usually unreliable when it came to accuracy.

      All she knew for certain was that on the day Angela Frank’s husband and son were killed in a car crash the glamorous life at Ashdown House had come to a grinding halt. That had been over three decades ago, and until the place had been sold old Mrs Franks had lived there, surrounded by memories, with the house pitifully neglected and falling into a gradual state of disrepair.

      Until now, Sophie thought as she cycled towards the house. The breeze whipped her hair around her face and promised at least two hours of hard labour to get the tangles out, and her hands, in their black fingerless gloves, gripped the handlebars of the bike. Until Gregory Wallace, that knight in shining armour, had descended on their village, kick-started it into a hum of activity and now, presumably, saw himself poised to become the lord of the manor.

      At that thought she instinctively gave a little frown of distaste, and was still frowning when she finally arrived at the house, cutting through the back way so that she emerged facing the rear of the house, with a forested patch behind her and the fields stretching down towards the road.

      She could hear the sounds of work in progress, drifting on the air towards her from the front of the house, but rather than head in that direction she climbed off her bike and left it lying on the grass. She began to stroll along the rear façade, peering into windows. Things were definitely happening inside. The carpets had all been ripped up and through some of the open doors she could see more signs of things happening.

      As they would be, she thought to herself, when the man in question was rich, powerful and involved in the construction business. He probably, she thought as she peered into a room but found it difficult to make out anything because timber boards were leaning against the windows, just had to snap his fingers and an entire design team would appear in front of him. Willing, able and, of course, committed to putting his little pet project ahead of whatever else they had on their calendar. Because, frankly, he owned them.

      He might come across as Mr Charm personified, but she knew enough about his type to know that any such charm was just a façade for the single-minded ruthlessness of the born opportunist. He would laugh and be warmly humorous to the СКАЧАТЬ