The Mistress Assignment. PENNY JORDAN

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      ‘It’s not fair,’ Eve had once protested. ‘You got all our inherited share of charisma... Look at the way women are always running after you.’

      ‘That isn’t charisma,’ Brough had corrected her dryly. ‘That’s money...’

      In addition to the money both Brough and Eve had inherited from their parents, Brough’s own business acumen and foresight now meant that if he had chosen to do so he could quite easily have retired and lived extremely well off his existing financial assets.

      Perhaps it was his fault that Eve was as naive and unworldly as she was, he reflected a little grimly. As her brother, stand-in father and protector, he had perhaps shielded her too much from life’s realities. Every instinct he possessed told him that Julian Cox simply wasn’t to be trusted, but Eve wouldn’t hear a word against the man.

      “You don’t know him like I do,’ she had declared passionately when Brough had tried gently to enlighten her. ‘Julian is so kind, even when people don’t deserve it. When I first met him he was being stalked by this awful woman. It had gone on for months. She kept telling everyone that she was going out with him, calling round at his flat, ringing him up, following him everywhere. She even tried to arrange a fake engagement party, claiming that he’d asked her to marry him...

      ‘But despite all the problems she’d caused him Julian told me that he just couldn’t bring himself to report her to the police and that he’d tried to talk to her himself...to reason with her... He’d even taken her out to dinner a couple of times because he felt so sorry for her. But he said that he simply couldn’t get through to her or make her understand that he just wasn’t interested in her. In the end he said the only way to get her to accept the truth was for her to see him with me. Luckily that seems to have worked.’

      When he’d heard the passionate intensity in his sister’s voice Brough had known that it wouldn’t be a good idea to give her his own opinion of Julian Cox. Certainly the man seemed to be very attractive to the female sex, if the number of women’s names he peppered his con- . versation with were anything to go by.

      No, he wasn’t looking forward to this evening one little bit, Brough acknowledged grimly—and he owed Nan a visit as well.

      Nan, their maternal grandmother, was coming up for eighty but was still fit and active and very much a part of the small Cotswold community where she lived, and thinking of her reminded Brough of something he had to do.

      His grandmother had in her glass-fronted corner cabinet a delicate hand painted porcelain teapot, together with all that was left of the original service which went with it. It had been a wedding present passed on to her and Gramps by her own grandparents, and Brough knew that it was one of her long-held wishes that somehow the teaset might be completed. Brough had tried his best over the years, but it was not one of the famous or well-known makes and it had proved impossible to track down any of the missing pieces. The only avenue left to him, according to the famous china manufacturers Hartwell, whom he had visited in Staffordshire, was for him to buy new pieces of a similar style and have them hand-painted to match the antique set.

      ‘The original manufacturers we amalgamated with produce a small range of antique china in the same style, but unfortunately we do not produce either that colour nor the intricate detail of the landscapes painted into the borders,’ the sympathetic Hartwell director had told him. ‘And whilst we could supply you with the correct shape of china I’m afraid that you would have to find someone else to paint it for you. Our people here have the skill but not, I’m afraid, the time, and I have to tell you that your grandmother’s set would be extremely time consuming to reproduce. From what you’ve shown me I suspect that each of the tea plates probably carried a different allegorical figure from Greek mythology in its borders, so your painter would have to be extremely innovative as well as extremely skilled. Your best bet might be someone who already works on commission—paints and enamels and that kind of thing.’

      And he had suggested to Brough that he get in touch with a particularly gifted student they had had working with them during her university days. No one had been more surprised than Brough when he had tracked down the young woman in question only to find she lived and worked in Rye-on-Averton.

      The telephone number and the young woman’s name were written down on a piece of paper on his desk. First thing in the morning he intended to get in touch with her. Time was running out; his grandmother’s eightieth birthday was not very far away and he desperately wanted to be able to present her with the missing items from the teaset as a surprise gift.

      Although his grandmother hadn’t been able to take on Eve full time after their parents’ death—her husband had been very ill with Parkinson’s disease at the time—she had nevertheless always been there for them, always ready to offer a wise heart and all her love whenever Brough had needed someone to turn to for advice. She had a shrewd business brain too, and she had been the one to encourage Brough to set up his first business, backing him not just emotionally but financially as well.

      She still took a strong interest in current affairs, and Brough suspected she would be as dismayed by Eve’s choice of suitor as he was himself.

      And tonight Eve was expecting him to put aside his real feelings and to pretend that he was enjoying Julian Cox’s company, and no doubt, for her sake, he would do exactly that.

      Eve might be a quiet, shy young woman, but she had a very strong, stubborn streak and an equally strong sense of loyalty, especially to someone who she considered was being treated badly or unfairly. The last thing that Brough wanted to do was to arouse that stubborn female protectiveness on Julian Cox’s behalf when what he was hoping was that sooner or later Eve’s own intelligence would show her just what kind of man he really was.

      He looked at his watch. Eve was already upstairs getting ready. First thing tomorrow he would ring this Miss Harris and make an appointment with her to discuss his grandmother’s china. For now, reluctantly he acknowledged that if they weren’t going to be late it was time for him to get ready.

      

      Seven miles away from town, in the kitchen of an old house overlooking the valley below and the patchwork of fields that surrounded it, Dee Lawson turned to her cousin Harry and demanded sternly, ‘You know exactly what you have to do, don’t you, Harry?’

      Sighing faintly, he nodded and repeated, ‘To drive into town and pick Kelly up at seven-thirty and then escort her to the charity ball. If Julian Cox makes any kind of play for her I’m to act jealous but hold off from doing anything to deter him.’

      ‘Not if, but when,’ Dee corrected him firmly, and then added, ‘And don’t forget, no matter what happens or how hard Julian pushes, you must make sure you escort Kelly safely back to the flat.’

      ‘You really ought to do something about those maternal instincts of yours,’ Harry told her, and then stopped abruptly, flushing self-consciously as he apologised awkwardly, ‘Sorry, Dee, I forgot; I didn’t mean...’

      ‘It’s all right,’ she responded coolly, her face obscured by her long honey-blonde hair.

      Seven years his senior, Dee had always been someone Harry was just a little bit in awe of.

      Dee’s father and his had been brothers, and Dee had been a regular visitor to the family farm when Harry had been growing up. It had surprised him a little that she had chosen to continue her career in such a small, sleepy place as Rye-on-Averton after her father’s death. But then Dee had never been predictable or particularly easy to understand. СКАЧАТЬ