An Enticing Debt to Pay. Annie West

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      CHAPTER THREE

      RAVENNA’S PULSE KICKED as Jonas stiffened. Her throat dried so much it hurt to swallow. But she didn’t dare turn away. Instead she met his stare unflinchingly.

      She feared if she showed even a flicker of the emotions rioting inside, he wouldn’t believe her.

      He had to! The alternative, of pinning the theft on her mother, was untenable.

      With Jonas’ revelation so much fell into place—Piers’ remarkable generosity in not just covering her medical costs these last months, but funding the long convalescent stay at an exorbitantly expensive Swiss health resort.

      Only it hadn’t been Piers making that final, massive payment, had it? It must have been Silvia—breaking the law to help her daughter.

      Ravenna’s heart plummeted as she recalled her mother’s insistence that she needed total rest to recuperate. That without the health resort there was a danger of the treatment failing. Ravenna, too weary by then to protest when all she wanted was to rest quietly and get her strength back, hadn’t put up much resistance.

      She’d never sponged off Piers’ wealth, and had silenced her protesting conscience by vowing to pay back every last euro. It was only when she’d arrived at the Paris apartment the other day that she realised they were euros Piers and her mother could ill afford.

      Guilt had struck Ravenna when she saw how much they’d sold off. But she’d never for a moment thought her mother had purloined money that wasn’t hers!

      Oh, Mamma, what have you done?

      Through the years Silvia had gone without again and again so Ravenna could have warm clothes and a roof over her head. And later, so she could go to the respected school her mother thought she needed. But to take what wasn’t hers...!

      ‘You’re lying.’ Jonas’ frigid eyes raked her face and a chill skimmed her backbone.

      Ravenna smoothed damp palms down her trousers and angled her chin, trying to quell the roiling nausea in her stomach.

      ‘I don’t lie.’ It was true. Maybe that was why she hadn’t convinced him. Her muscles clenched as desperation rose.

      She couldn’t let him guess the truth. Already a broken woman, Mamma would be destroyed by the shame and stress of gaol.

      For a moment Ravenna toyed with blurting out the whole truth, revealing why her mother had stolen the funds and throwing them both on Jonas Deveson’s mercy.

      Except he didn’t have any mercy.

      That softer side he’d once shown her years before had been an aberration. In the six years Silvia and Piers had been together, Jonas hadn’t once condescended to acknowledge his father’s existence. He had ice in his veins rather than warm blood, and a predilection for holding a grudge.

      Now it seemed he had a taste for vengeance too.

      That might be ice in his veins but there was fire blazing in his eyes. It had been there since he shouldered his way into the apartment, prowling the room with lofty condescension as if his father’s death meant nothing to him.

      His hatred for her mother was a palpable weight in the charged atmosphere.

      He blamed Silvia for his father’s defection. He’d sided with the rest of his aristocratic connections in shunning the working-class foreigner who’d had the temerity to poach one of their own.

      Ravenna had to keep this from her. If Mamma found the theft had been discovered she’d come forward and accept the penalty. Ravenna couldn’t let her do that, not when she saw the violence in Jonas Deveson’s eyes. She couldn’t condone what Mamma had done but could understand it, especially since she must have been overwrought about Piers.

      ‘You haven’t got it in you to do that, Ravenna.’ He shook his head. ‘Theft is more your mother’s style.’

      Fury boiled in her bloodstream. She didn’t know which was worse, his bone-deep hatred of her mother or that he thought he knew either of them when at Deveson Hall family hadn’t mixed with staff.

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