Christmas At His Command. Helen Brooks

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СКАЧАТЬ a dear friend!

      Marigold forced a disdainful shrug. ‘My reasons are my own, surely?’ she said coolly.

      He nodded cheerfully, not at all taken aback by the none-too subtle rebuke. ‘Sure, and hey, there’ll be no objections from anyone hereabouts that lover boy’s not with you,’ he added with charming malice. ‘He didn’t exactly win any friends when he swore at the landlord and then argued about the bill for your meal.’

      Oh, wonderful. Emma and Oliver had certainly made an impression all right, a bad one! Marigold sighed inwardly. Her ankle was throbbing unbearably, she didn’t have so much as a nightie with her, and it was Christmas Eve the day after tomorrow; a Christmas Eve which Dean and Tamara would spend under a hot Caribbean sky, locked in each other’s arms most likely.

      She wasn’t aware her mouth had drooped, or that she appeared very small and very vulnerable, buried in the enormous cagoule with her shoulder-length hair slightly damp and her hands tightly clasped in her lap, so it came as something of a surprise when a quiet voice said, ‘Don’t worry. My housekeeper will look after you once we reach Oaklands and her husband can take a load of logs and coal to the cottage tonight and begin drying it out. He’s something of an expert with cars, too, so Myrtle might respond to his tender touch.’

      Marigold glanced at Flynn warily. The sudden transformation from avenging angel breathing fire and brimstone to understanding human being was suspect, and her face must have spoken for itself because he gave a small laugh, low in his throat. ‘I don’t bite,’ he said softly. ‘Well, not little girls anyway.’

      ‘I’m a grown woman of twenty-five, thank you,’ she responded quickly, although her voice wasn’t as sharp as she would have liked. Hateful and argumentative he had been disturbing; quiet and comforting he was doubly so. When she had been fighting him she had felt safer; now she was on shifting ground and the chemical reaction he had started in her body before was even stronger.

      ‘Twenty-five?’ Dark brows frowned. ‘I thought Maggie sent you a present for your twenty-first just before she died?’

      Oops. Marigold decided to bluff it out. ‘I can assure you, I know how old I am,’ she answered tartly, and then, seeing he was about to say more, she added quickly, ‘Is Oaklands your house?’

      He didn’t reply for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘I bought it from a friend of mine who decided to emigrate to Canada a couple of years ago,’ he said shortly. ‘Your grandmother might have spoken of him; apparently they were great friends. Peter Lyndon?’

      Marigold nodded vaguely and hoped that would do.

      ‘She missed him when he left,’ Flynn continued quietly. ‘His children used to come across the valley and visit her often and they were a substitute for her real family, I suppose.’ The accusing note was back but Marigold chose to ignore it. ‘Certainly when I called to see her it was photographs of Peter’s family that she showed me. She never showed me any of yours—too painful probably.’

      Marigold felt she ought to object here. ‘How can you say that when you have just admitted you didn’t know her very long?’ she asked in as piqued a voice as she could manage, considering all her sympathies—had he but known it—were with Emma’s poor grandmother. The family seemed to have behaved appallingly to the old woman, and although as a work acquaintance Emma was perfectly pleasant it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility to imagine her disregarding the fact she’d got a grandmother if it suited her to do so.

      ‘Peter was a good deal older than me and he’d known Maggie for a long time,’ Flynn said evenly. ‘I think he knew your father, too. They didn’t get on.’ There was a pregnant pause.

      Again Marigold felt she ought to say something. ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said truthfully, and then she stopped abruptly, aware they were passing through large open gates set in a six-foot dry-stone wall which had appeared suddenly out of the thick cloud of snow in front of them. This must be the grounds of his home.

      The car was travelling along a drive flanked by enormous oak trees, stark and beautiful in their winter mantle of feathery white, and she could just make out a house in the distance. A very large, very grand house. Marigold swallowed hard as Emma’s casual comment about the other dwelling in the valley came back to her—a manor house. And this was a manor house all right.

      She glanced speculatively at Flynn under her eyelashes; the expensive and clearly nearly new vehicle, the thick, beautifully cut leather jacket she’d noticed slung in the back seat, the overall quality of his clothes suddenly making an impression on her buzzing senses. Her eyes moved to the large tanned hands on the steering wheel—was that a designer watch on one wrist? It was. A beauty. Oh, boy… Marigold stifled a groan. This guy was loaded.

      A couple of enormous long-haired German shepherd dogs suddenly appeared from nowhere, barking madly and making Marigold jump. ‘Sorry, I should have warned you.’ Flynn was looking straight ahead but he must have noticed her involuntary movement. ‘That’s Jake and Max; they pretend to be guard dogs.’

      ‘Pretend?’ Marigold looked out of the window at the enormous faces with even more enormous teeth staring up at her, and shivered. ‘They’ve convinced me.’

      Flynn turned and grinned at her as he brought the car to a halt, the dogs still leaping about the vehicle. ‘Don’t tell anyone but they sleep in front of the range in the kitchen,’ he said softly, ‘and they’re scared stiff of my housekeeper’s cats.’

      Marigold managed a smile of her own but it was a weak one. Did he know what sort of effect the softening of the hard planes and angles of his face produced? she asked herself silently. It was dynamite. Sheer dynamite. ‘I…I’ve never had much to do with dogs,’ she said weakly.

      And then his face changed. ‘I’d gathered that,’ he said shortly.

      Now what had she said? Marigold stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m sorry…?’

      ‘It was made plain through the solicitors that any animals Maggie had were to be got rid of, but then you’re aware of that,’ Flynn said coldly, ‘aren’t you? Sold if anything could be got for them; put down if not. Of course, there weren’t too many buyers for a few scruffy chickens and an ancient cow, nor for her dog and cat.’

      Oh, no. Emma hadn’t…

      ‘Don’t tell me that was something else your father kept from you?’ Flynn asked flatly, his eyes smoky dark now in the muted twilight.

      ‘I…I didn’t know.’

      ‘No?’ His eyes were holding hers and she couldn’t look away. ‘I don’t know if I believe that.’

      Marigold had suddenly decided she didn’t like Emma’s family at all and was heartily wishing she hadn’t taken the cottage for Christmas, even if she was paying Emma well for the privilege. ‘I didn’t know,’ she repeated weakly, her tone unconvincing even to herself, but she was still thinking of poor Maggie’s pets.

      He surveyed her for a moment more, and Marigold was just about to tell him everything—that she wasn’t Emma, that she had taken the cottage on impulse when it was offered and only knew the barest facts about Emma and her grandmother and the family—when he shrugged coolly. ‘It’s history now,’ he said evenly. ‘Let’s get you inside.’

      As she watched him walk round the bonnet of the car the fate of the animals was lost in the panic that he СКАЧАТЬ