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СКАЧАТЬ gesture. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would make that much difference.’

      Jason moved away from the door, annoyed to find that it was he who was disconcerted here. The correspondence he had had with Durham’s solicitors had not been explicit. Obviously, in the circumstances, they had assumed that he would know the age and sex of the child. Child? His lips tightened. Even after so short an acquaintance, Jason could see that Alexandra Durham was not a child. How old was she? Charles had never mentioned a wife in all the time he had known him, and consequently Jason had assumed he had married after returning to England. That would make the boy—girl!—twelve at most, whereas this girl was obviously fifteen or sixteen at least. A shorter guardianship than he had expected perhaps, but what a complication!

      ‘Do you live here?’ the girl was asking now, and Jason forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying.

      ‘No, of course not,’ he retorted, rather snappishly. ‘You know my home is in Santa Vittoria.’

      ‘I meant while you were in England,’ she explained politely, her reasonableness irritating Jason even more. ‘I’ve never stayed in an hotel. The nuns didn’t approve of that sort of thing. Some of the girls used to spend holidays with their parents, you know, at places like St Moritz and Chamonix in the winter, or Nice or St Tropez or Cap d’Antibes in the summer, but I’ve never been to those places. Daddy was always on some dig or other——’

      ‘Just a minute.’ Jason halted this monologue with a curt intervention. ‘Don’t you think you ought to explain why you chose to leave me in ignorance of the fact that you’re female, and what the hell you expect me to do about it as you are?’

      She frowned then, a furrow appearing on the smooth brow. ‘What I expect you to do about it?’ she repeated softly. ‘What do you mean? You’re my guardian, aren’t you? Whatever sex I happen to be.’

      Jason expelled his breath on a heavy sigh. ‘I can’t believe you’re that naïve, Miss Durham. You know as well as I do that I expected a boy!’

      ‘So you keep telling me, but I don’t see what I can do about that,’ she retorted, half laughingly, and her amusement was the last straw as far as Jason was concerned.

      ‘Then I’ll tell you,’ he snapped angrily. ‘Your father was a good friend to me when I needed one, and I’ve never forgotten it. When I heard that he’d died leaving his—child—in my care, I was prepared to do everything in my power to give the boy a decent start in life——’

      ‘I know,’ she exclaimed, covering the space between them and laying a hand on the sleeve of his mohair jacket, but he brushed her away, continuing:

      ‘My correspondence with you was addressed to Master Alex Durham, and you know it. All my arrangements, all my plans, have been for a boy of perhaps twelve, thirteen years of age——’

      ‘Well, I can’t help that,’ she protested now, the movement of her head spilling the swathe of silky hair across the dark green suede of her jacket. ‘I didn’t ask to be willed to you. I couldn’t choose what sex I was. If I could, believe me I’d have satisfied you in every detail!’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Only that my father never wanted a daughter, any more than you want me now,’ she retorted, and Jason felt a twinge of remorse for the pained anguish in her eyes. ‘I’d have been a boy all right. Then perhaps Daddy might have taken me with him on his trips to Greece and South America, instead of leaving me in the convent until I thought I should die of boredom!’

      Jason’s eyes narrowed. ‘Exactly how old are you?’

      ‘Seventeen!’

      ‘Seventeen?’ He stared at her disbelievingly. ‘But—but——’

      ‘Daddy never mentioned me?’ She shrugged, but he could tell she was fighting her emotions. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. He never wanted to get married, you know. He never should have. Then—then when my mother died when I was born—well …’ She shrugged again. ‘He put me in the care of the nuns at Sainte Sœur.’

      Jason shook his head. ‘You speak very good English. But the convent was in France, I gather.’

      ‘Yes. Just outside Paris, actually. My mother was French, you see. But many of the nuns at the convent were English, and my father insisted that as he spoke little French, I should be educated in his language.’

      ‘I see.’ Jason ran an impatient hand round the back of his neck, trying to restrain the sense of injustice that was threatening to erupt once more. How could Durham have ignored his child’s existence to the extent that never once in the two years he had known him had he mentioned the fact that he had a daughter? It was cold and callous; and totally out of keeping with the man he had thought he had known. But perhaps that was exactly why Durham had helped him, out of a sense of guilt towards this—girl, this child, who could have been little more than an infant when Durham was excavating at Los Lobos. Then: ‘You say—your father mentioned me?’

      ‘Yes!’ Animation entered the girl’s features again. ‘I don’t know whether he wrote you about his expeditions, but towards the end, when he was confined …’ she faltered, ‘… confined to his bed, he spoke about you a lot.’

      Jason drew a deep breath and gestured towards one of the low comfortable couches that faced one another across the width of the hearth. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think you’d better sit down. We have to talk, and I guess—I guess it would be easier if we at least tried to understand one another.’

      ‘Of course.’ The girl’s smile reappeared, and she subsided obediently on to cushions of dark blue brocade. As she did so, the lapels of her jacket parted to reveal the dusky hollow between her breasts, and their rounded fullness pressing against the soft suede was an added indication of her burgeoning maturity. Jason hesitated a moment, and then, with some reluctance, took the couch opposite her, stretching his long legs out in front of him, his fingers curving loosely over the cushions on either side of him.

      ‘Now,’ he said, when she raised inquisitive eyebrows, ‘tell me a little about what happened to your father—after he returned from Mexico.’

      ‘Oh …’ Alexandra frowned. ‘Well, that isn’t too easy. I didn’t always know where he was or what he was doing. I think he financed an expedition to Egypt, but I’m not sure.’

      ‘But the institute,’ said Jason patiently. ‘What about the research institute?’ The girl looked puzzled now, and his own frown returned. ‘Your father intended to use the money he gained from our successful excavation at Los Lobos to create a research institute,’ he explained, but Alexandra clearly had no knowledge of this.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘If—if you think my father died a wealthy man——’

      ‘I didn’t say that!’ retorted Jason shortly, stung by the implication, and she went on:

      ‘Every penny he had went to finance his last expedition. It was to Turkey—a remote valley in the Taurus mountains. That was where he was taken ill, you see. A chill, followed by a lung infection. They’d been living in tents at the dig, and by the time they got him down to the hospital in Maras it had developed into pneumonia. He recovered, of course, but he wasn’t strong enough to go on, and he was flown back to London. That was when he sent for me.’

      ‘And СКАЧАТЬ