Satan's Contract. SUSANNE MCCARTHY

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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘MORNING Miss Pippa. Riding out on that young piece o’yourn, are you? You be careful—he’s a mite frisky this morning. Want a hand to saddle ’im up?’

      Pippa responded to the gruff offer with a warm smile. ‘No, thanks, Miller—I can manage.’

      The stables were at the side of the house. Half of them had been converted into garages long ago, and the only equine occupants now were Fury, her beautiful chestnut gelding, and an elderly grey mare who had retired from active service some years ago, and now lived out a peaceful existence between her warm stable and the meadow on the other side of the lane.

      Miller, who did most of the heavy work in the stables as well as taking care of the gardens, had already put the two horses out into the paddock, and Pippa leaned over the gate, calling to them softly. With a whicker of joy they gambolled over, eager to see if she had brought them a titbit.

      ‘You greedy thing,’ she murmured fondly, stroking Fury’s sleek neck as he snaffled the apple she had brought him. ‘Why can’t you be polite about it, like Lady here?’

      The magnificent horse nuzzled at her shoulder, as if in apology for his lapse of manners. She took his head-collar and brought him through the gate into the stable-yard, saddling him up quickly and leading him over to the mounting-block, pausing only briefly to fasten the strap of her hard hat before slipping lightly up on to his back.

      He was full of frisk this morning, but she let him dance—she too was feeling restless. Not bothering to open the five-barred gate into the lane, she set him at it, and, sensing her mood, he soared over it with ease, lengthening his stride as she leaned low over his withers, feeling his powerful motion beneath her.

      So what if people might think she was being disrespectful, riding on the day of Gramps’s funeral? It was a pity her parents hadn’t shown him a little more respect while he was alive, she reflected bitterly. True, he had been a little difficult to cope with these past few years, suffering increasingly from the dementia that had gradually robbed him of most of his mental faculties. But if you just took the trouble to be a little patient with him, instead of constantly scolding him for being so forgetful, it had still been possible to manage some kind of conversation with him.

      It had been the cause of many of the rows between her and her parents, the way they treated her grandfather; she had always thought of him as that, even though he wasn’t really a blood relation—just her father’s stepfather. She had never known him in his prime, of course, but he must have been quite a man to have built up the small family company he had inherited from his own father into the huge corporation it now was. It was sad that his private life hadn’t been so successful.

      Everyone always said that Pippa took after her grandmother; they probably thought it was a compliment—she had been quite a beauty when she was young, to judge by the portraits that still graced the walls of the house. She had certainly inherited her delicate features and fine porcelain skin, as well as eyes of so deep a blue that they were almost violet. And she had inherited that fiery red-gold hair that warned of a similarly fiery temperament.

      But she hoped she hadn’t inherited her grandmother’s selfish, demanding nature. Lady Elizabeth Corbett Morgan, as she had never tired of reminding the world, had been the daughter of an earl; and her first husband, though not quite of the highest ranks of the aristocracy, had been a baronet of the most respectable lineage. Unfortunately, both these fine gentlemen having been inconsiderate enough to die without leaving her a farthing, she had been obliged to marry a common industrialist in order to ensure that she could be maintained in the style she considered her due.

      She had led poor Gramps a dog’s life. He might have hoped that after her death, six years ago, he would have been allowed a little peace to live out the last years of his life. But his stepson had seen to it that that was never to be...

      The sound of a powerful car, approaching fast, startled her out of her thoughts. She pulled Fury up sharply as it appeared, and he reared up in alarm. Pippa struggled to retain her seat, but the horse’s hoofs were slithering on the grassy bank that lined the lane, and with a small scream she felt herself slipping from the saddle.

      She landed in an undignified heap, her hair tumbling from its neat coil at the nape of her neck to fall in a tangle around her shoulders. But at least Fury was all right—she had kept an instinctive grip on his rein, and the car had braked out of his way. Cursing furiously at her own dangerous folly in galloping in the lane, she struggled to sit up—and found herself confronted by a pair of tan cowboy boots, placed firmly apart.

      ‘Just what the goddamn hell did you think you were doing?’ an angry voice demanded. ‘You could have killed your horse, careering down the middle of the road like that.’

      Her eyes flashed in sparkling anger—she didn’t need him to tell her that! ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to be driving up here like a bat out of hell,’ she retorted hotly. ‘Apart from anything else, it’s a private road—and you’re trespassing.’

      ‘So throw me off,’ he challenged, his voice a laconic drawl.

      She lifted her eyes to glare up at him—and up; over long, lean legs clad in tight denim jeans, a thick leather belt buckled with half a pound of silver, to appreciate—in spite of herself—a pair of powerful shoulders under a casual blue-checked shirt. Maybe it was just the angle at which she was looking at him that made him seem so big—but she certainly wasn’t going to let herself be intimidated.

      ‘I’ll let my father do that,’ she returned with frosty disdain. ‘Or possibly the СКАЧАТЬ