Count Valieri's Prisoner. Sara Craven

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      ‘Career?’ Maddie repeated. ‘Was she a writer once?’ She frowned. ‘She never told me.’

      ‘No, that wasn’t her talent. She was a very successful editor with Penlaggan Press. She found the authors of all those books, encouraged them, and published them.

      ‘Your mother told me Penlaggan did their best to coax her back on numerous occasions, even offering to let her work from home.’ She shook her head. ‘But it never happened. Sylvester wives, it seems, do not work.’

      ‘But if she was so good at her job …’

      ‘That,’ said Aunt Fee somberly, ‘was probably the trouble.’

      It was an insight into Aunt Beth’s marriage that Maddie had never forgotten. And now it had a renewed and unpleasing resonance.

      Well, I’m good at my job too, she thought, and I’m damned if I’m giving it up whatever Jeremy or his father may say about it.

      She still felt raw when she remembered how Nigel Sylvester, having mourned for barely a year, announced his engagement to a widow called Esme Hammond and married her only a month later.

      But then, quite unexpectedly, she’d met Jeremy again at a party in London. He’d expressed delight at seeing her and asked for her phone number, but if she felt this was more out of politeness than serious intent, she soon discovered she was wrong. Because he’d not only called but invited her to dinner. After which, events had seemed to snowball, she remembered, smiling.

      Jeremy had changed a great deal from the taciturn, aloof boy who’d so consistently avoided an annoying small girl. He seemed to have inherited much of his mother’s charm, but in spite of three years at university and a spell at the Harvard Business School before joining Sylvester and Co, he still seemed under his father’s thumb.

      But while Maddie did not delude herself she would have been his daughter-in-law of choice, at least Nigel Sylvester had not openly opposed the engagement.

      But she still didn’t call him ‘Uncle Nigel’, she thought, pausing at the office’s street entrance to punch in her entry code. Nor, after the wedding, would he ever morph into ‘Dad’, ‘Pa’ or ‘Pops’.

      And he had put a spoke in their wheel in another way.

      If Maddie had assumed that Jeremy would immediately want her to move into the company flat with him, she soon found she was wrong..

      ‘Dad says he needs to use the flat himself on occasion,’ he told her. ‘And it would make things—awkward if you were there. And anyway he feels we should wait to live together until we’re actually married.’

      Maddie had stared at him. ‘But who on earth does that nowadays?’

      Jeremy shrugged. ‘I guess he’s just old-fashioned about these things.’

      But Maddie was convinced ‘hypocritical’ was a better description, and would have wagered a year’s salary that his father and the glamorous Esme had been sharing a bed even while Aunt Beth was alive.

      ‘And what happens after the wedding?’ she asked. ‘Because, we’ll be living there then, or will your father expect me to move out any time he plans to stay overnight?’

      ‘No, of course not,’ he said impatiently. ‘He’s talking of taking a suite at a hotel.’ He pulled a face. ‘And, believe me, sweetie, it could be worse. When it began, Sylvester and Co was Sylvester, Felderstein and Marchetti. You could be having all sorts of foreign directors dropping in.’

      ‘Might have been fun,’ Maddie said lightly. ‘So why aren’t there any now?’

      Jeremy shrugged again. ‘The families died out, or started new ventures of their own. That’s what Dad said, anyway. We only became fully independent in my grandfather’s day.’

      Since when Nigel Sylvester had achieved success in the corridors of power, joining various government think-tanks and advising on banking and economic affairs.

      So much so that, rumour had it that he would be offered a life peerage in the next New Year Honours’ List.

      I wonder if he’ll expect me to call him ‘My lord’ she mused as she took the creaky elevator to her office on the first floor. Or curtsy when we meet. While Esme will be even more insufferable when she’s Lady Sylvester.

      But I’ll deal with that when I have to, she told herself. For now, I’m concentrating on this dream assignment that’s come my way.

      Italy in May, she thought with an ecstatic sigh. Boy, I can hardly wait.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT WASN’T UNTIL the plane had taken off that Maddie really believed she was going to Italy.

      In view of the events of the past ten days, she would hardly have been surprised if Nigel Sylvester had found some way to have her bodily removed from the aircraft.

      It had all come to a head over dinner at the company flat. She had believed with pleasurable anticipation that she and Jeremy would be alone, and was shaken to find his father and Esme waiting for her too, with Mr Sylvester telling her, with his thin-lipped smile, ‘We feel we should all get to know each other a little better, Madeleine.’

      Heart sinking, as she realised Jeremy was avoiding her gaze, she’d replied, ‘By all means,’ and accepted the dry sherry she was offered.

      Conversation had been light and general over dinner, but she’d only picked at the excellent meal, cooked by the housekeeper Mrs Palmer, and watched with trepidation as the good woman was thanked and dismissed once the coffee and brandy were on the table.

      The door had barely closed behind her when Esme leaned forward. ‘I think, Madeleine, if the men will forgive us boring them with feminine affairs, we need to discuss your wedding dress as a matter of urgency.’

      Maddie put down her coffee cup, bewildered. ‘But that’s all in hand.’

      Mrs Sylvester’s arched brows lifted. ‘Indeed? I am not sure I understand.’

      ‘I’ve chosen my dress and it’s already being made by Janet Gladstone, who owns the bridal shop in the village. You must have seen it.’

      ‘Not that I recall.’ Esme’s tone suggested she had not noticed the High Street either. ‘And, anyway, I’ve made an appointment for you with Nina FitzAlan in three days’ time.’ Her smile was complacent. ‘As I’m a favoured client she has agreed to drop everything in order to supply us with a gown of her own exclusive design. But there is no time to be lost.’

      ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Maddie said evenly. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t possibly alter my arrangements, especially as Aunt Fee and Uncle Patrick are paying for my dress, and those of the bridesmaids.’

      ‘And naturally you feel that a top London designer is beyond their reach, financially.’ The older woman nodded. ‘Well, don’t concern yourself about that. Nina’s СКАЧАТЬ