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The dizzy Fiona would be no help, she thought ruefully, totally preoccupied as she was by nausea and vague aches and pains all over her body. And Joa
She had forgotten Simon’s propensity for taking the easy way out of any difficulty, she thought, with an inward sigh.
‘So when are you pla
‘He’s coming here tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Here?’ Joa
Simon shrugged, his expression pettish. ‘It wasn’t my choice. When I telephoned him, his secretary simply gave me the appointment. There was no consultation about it. She just told me what time he’d be arriving.’
‘I can believe it,’ Joa
It was the first time a Blackstone had ever set foot in Chalfont House, she realised with a sense of shock. And, if there was anything she could do, it would also be the last.
She said, ‘We’ll have to try and fend him off, Simon.’
‘How?’
Joa
‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve done everything I can think of. I tell you, Jo, it’s hopeless.’
‘No!’ Joa
‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to,’ Simon suggested hopefully. ‘You are rather taking his intentions for granted, you know. Condemning him without a hearing.’
Joa
‘Hell, yes. But I’d better pop up and see Fiona first. She didn’t have a particularly good night.’
Poor old Si, Joa
She moved over to the sofa and plumped up the cushions which Simon had crushed. As she straightened, she looked up at the big portrait of Jonas Chalfont which hung over the ornate mantelpiece. A harsh face looked down at her, its expression arrogant and dominating, thick grey brows drawn together over his beak of a nose.
She took a breath. The portrait had been painted in her grandfather’s heyday, when the Chalfont family were a force to be reckoned with in the Yorkshire woollen industry. Master of all he surveyed, she thought wryly, studying the sitter’s proud stance.
It had been soon after the portrait had been finished, however, that Jonas had sacked Callum Blackstone following a violent argument, and evicted him and his small son from their tied cottage. Holding the frightened child in his arms, as bailiffs dumped their possessions into the street, Callum had publicly sworn revenge.
‘As you’ve taken from me, Jonas Chalfont, I’ll take from you,’ he’d declared, standing bareheaded in the rain. ‘Aye, by God, down to every last stick and stone!’
And nothing’s gone right for us since, Joa
Know your enemy, had been one of Jonas’s favourite maxims, but he had totally underestimated his former overlooker’s sheer force of will and determination to succeed. Just as Simon had failed to assess Cal Blackstone’s deviousness of purpose in offering to help the Craft Company financially.
But then Si had never taken the family feud too seriously anyway, Joa
‘Isn’t it time we started to live and let live?’ he’d demanded angrily when Joa
‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ Joa
But, as she’d grown up, she’d found it was well-nigh impossible to avoid Cal completely. The Chalfonts were no longer the powerful social mentors they’d once been, and Cal, single, wealthy and darkly attractive, was a welcome visitor to every household in the area except theirs.
Joa
But none of these people had been hounded and cheated by the Blackstones, Joa
And once she and Cal Blackstone had been formally introduced, he took pains to remind her of the fact by seeking her out to greet her at every encounter. In fact, Joa
And the fact that she had ignored all his overtures and was never anything but icily civil in return seemed only to amuse him.
If she continued to keep him rigidly at a distance, eventually he would get tired of his cat-and-mouse games with her, she’d assured herself.
But she’d been wrong about that—totally wrong. Which was why she knew, none better, just what Cal Blackstone’s real motives were, and exactly what he had pla
She shivered, wrapping her arms defensively across her body, as she made herself relive once more in nerve-aching detail that rain-washed autumn afternoon on the high moor road above Northwaite when she’d discovered for herself how ruthless, how relentless an enemy he was …
‘Damnation!’ Joa
The rain was sweeping in sheets across the Northwaite valley below, and the hills were dankly shrouded in low cloud and mist.
By the time she’d fetched the jack, and squatted uncomfortably in the road beside the car, the rain had plastered her tawny blonde hair to her skull, and droplets of water were ru
She’d never had to change a tyre before, and she realised, to her shame, that she only had the haziest idea of how to go about it. Watching other people was not the same as personal experience, she decided wretchedly, as the jack stubbornly refused to co-operate with her efforts to fix it in place.
Send me someone to help this time, she bargained silently with her guardian angel, and I promise I’ll sign on for a course in car maintenance this winter.
The thought had barely formed in her mind when the sleek grey Jaguar materialised silently out of the mist and slid to a halt behind her. She looked round eagerly, pla
‘Having trouble?’ Cal Blackstone asked pleasantly, as he emerged from the driver’s seat, shrugging on a waterproof jacket.