It Started With a Kiss

by Mary Lyons

  Angelica gave her a reluctant nod. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. But, even to achieve that sort of happiness, I couldn’t possibly… I wouldn’t dream of selling myself, in any way?’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Kim agreed. ‘And nobody’s asking you to. All you have to do is to stop being so damned stubborn and listen to your heart. I’ve known you most of my life, Angelica, and I’m as certain as I can be that you are madly in love with the guy. No—let me finish,’ she said quickly as the other girl opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘I know you say that he doesn’t believe in love— but even the cleverest men can fool themselves about a thing like that. They can convince themselves that it’s childish, and would somehow weaken them to admit the truth. But since you’re mad about him, and he clearly fancies you rotten, he’ll soon get around to seeing that love isn’t such a bad thing after all!’

  Sitting at her desk now, and staring down at the long white envelope which she’d just sealed ready for the post, Angelica realised just what a good friend she had in Kim.

  Now that the other girl had made her face reality, Angelica knew that she’d wasted all this time denying her love for Luke—and to what purpose? She’d sent him away, and ever since his departure her life had been nothing but dust and ashes. Even if a fairy godmother had arrived, and waved a wand to solve all her problems, she’d still be feeling every bit as miserable and unhappy as she did at this minute.

  But it had taken her a long time, trying to work out what she could possibly do about the situation. She really couldn’t face having to call Luke on the telephone and tell him that she’d changed her mind. He might be in the middle of a business deal, for instance, and then she’d look all kinds of a fool. And, in any case, maybe she was too late? Maybe he’d got back together again with that awful Eleanor Nicholson?

  At the thought of the beautiful dark accountant, Angelica had felt such a sharp pang of jealousy that she’d nearly doubled up in agony. She couldn’t let that happen. She’d known that she must try and find a way to contact Luke, and yet not be seen as caving in too easily…

  Continuing to stare down now at the thick envelope, she still found herself hesitating as to whether she should post it after all. Although she’d written the letter as carefully as possible, just simply acknowledging that she was willing to marry him, and not mentioning her feelings in any way, it was still a massive loss of face on her part. Could she cope with the humiliation if Luke chose to rub in that fact?

  And then Angelica took a deep breath before quickly seizing up the letter. Jumping to her feet, she ran out of the study, across the hall and out of the door. Tearing down the street, her heart pounding with nerves, she knew that if she didn’t put it in the postbox, which lay on the other side of the road, right this minute, she’d never again be able to find the courage to do so.

  And that was why, without a sideways glance, she was racing blindly across the road—and why she neither saw nor heard the fast-approaching vehicle until it was far too late.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANGELICA didn’t like hospitals. It wasn’t really anything to do with the buildings themselves, she thought as she gazed around at the freshly painted cream decor. It was just that the stark walls, the bustling nurses and the sheer helplessness of being trapped in an uncomfortable bed all reminded her so forcefully of her only previous visit to such an institution.

  When, aged ten, she had suddenly developed acute appendicitis, only a few weeks after her mother and father’s death in a car crash, she’d been whisked by ambulance into the nearest hospital. There, amid all the pain of the operation itself, together with her naked misery and anguish at the loss of her beloved parents, she had spent some of the most miserable days of her young life. Even now, it only needed the pungent smell of antiseptic to take her straight back to that grief-stricken, desperately unhappy time.

  Muttering grumpily under her breath, she tried to make herself more comfortable. But with her left leg in plaster, from her ankle to halfway up her thigh, it was proving to be a difficult task.

  Although there was no doubt that she’d been very lucky, Angelica was heartily sick of everyone telling her that she’d had a miraculous escape from certain death. Mainly, she supposed, because she was so ashamed of having behaved like a small child, in dashing across the road without having the sense to keep an eye out for traffic. Foolishly careless, she’d neither seen nor heard the car with which she’d collided, nor had she any real recollection of what had happened after that, until groggily waking up in this hospital bed with a splitting headache and her leg In plaster.

  However, It was due to the fact that she’d been unconscious for some time that the doctors had insisted on her remaining here, so that they could carry out a number of tests. And, until they were quite convinced that she was well enough to go home, here she had to stay.

  ‘I’m perfectly well,’ she’d told the young houseman earlier in the day. ‘I’ve only got a broken leg, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you out of here just as soon as we can. Believe me, we need the bed!’ he’d grinned, before adding his name and a small drawing to the others on her plaster cast. ‘If all goes well, you can probably leave tomorrow morning,’ he’d added, before dashing off to see to another patient.

  Glancing down at her watch, Angelica gave a heavy sigh and lay back on the pillows, It was almost visiting time, and Betty should be here any minute. At least then she might learn what had been going on at Lonsdale House in her absence. The garbled phone call yesterday had been thoroughly unsatisfactory. Her old housekeeper had appeared to be strangely excited, and full of heavy hints about a change in all their fortunes. But other than wondering whether Betty had at last managed to back a winner—an unlikely event, since the elderly housekeeper always seemed to put her money on horses with only three good legs and a tendency to come in last—Angelica didn’t have a clue what was going on.

  However, she’d had plenty of visitors, including both Kim and David Webster, but, although they had been kind enough to bring her fruit and bunches of flowers, nothing could match the enormous bouquet of crimson roses which had arrived yesterday afternoon.

  Glancing at the huge vase on her bedside table, filled with blooms whose heady scent seemed able to banish even the smell of antiseptic, she reached over to pick up the card which had accompanied the roses. It was an exact replica of the small, by now rather creased and crumpled white business card which Luke had tucked into her pocket over three weeks ago. There was no signature and no message. Only the delivery of the bouquet acknowledged the fact that he’d obviously heard about her accident, and that he must know she was now in hospital.

  What else did you expect? she asked herself roughly. It had, after all, been kind of Luke to send her these magnificent flowers. So it was stupid to keep on wishing that he’d taken the trouble either to write a short note, or personally sign his business card. And it was probably just as well that he hadn’t paid her a visit. What would she have said to him if he had? Besides, although the bruise on the side of her face was slowly beginning to fade at last, she would hate to have him see her look so awful!

  In fact, since she obviously hadn’t managed to post her letter—and he’d therefore had no reason to try and contact her—Angelica was still wondering how Luke had heard the news that she was in hospital. And what had happened to her letter? It would be hideously embarrassing if it had been picked up and read by anyone else. She’d tried questioning various people, including Betty, but no one seemed to have any recollection of a long white envelope lying on the road at the scene of the accident. So, like many other things in life, she told herself gloomily, it had undoubtedly been swept up by the rubbish collectors, and—-

  ‘Well! You look like a wet weekend and no mistake!’ Betty’s voice broke through her dismal thoughts, and she turned to see her old nanny standing beside the bed, beaming down at her with a broad smile.

  ‘Never mind, you lo
ok cheerful enough for both of us,’ Angelica muttered glumly, sighing as she levered herself up against the pillows. ‘What’s happened? Don’t tell me that you’ve actually managed to back a winner for the first time in your life?’

  ‘Ooo, no, something much better than that!’ she told the girl excitedly,’ swaying slightly as she turned to look for a chair, before dragging it up to the bed.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ Angelica demanded incredulously, gazing at Betty’s flushed red face in astonishment as her nostrils became aware of the sharp, pungent smell of whisky fumes.

  ‘Well, what if I have?’ Her old nanny laughed. ‘You just wait until you hear what I’ve got to tell you—and then see if you don’t feel like breaking out the champagne as well!’

  However, by the time Betty had finished relating her startling piece of news, Angelica wasn’t at all sure how she felt. Her brooding silence went. unremarked upon by the older woman, who was too carried away by euphoria—and whisky—to notice anything amiss.

  ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather,’ Betty said for the umpteenth time, taking a small flask from her bag and tipping another slug of alcohol down her throat. ‘I’ve never been so gobsmacked in all my life! If only I could see the expression on Lady Marshall’s face when she hears the news—talk about a laugh! Serve the old cow right, that’s what I say,’ she added with a loud hiccup.

  ‘Look here, I think you’ve probably had enough of that stuff,’ Angelica told her sternly, leaning over to take the flask from Betty’s hands, and putting it firmly back into the older woman’s handbag. ‘And for goodness’ sake take a taxi home. You’ll never manage to get yourself on a bus—not in your present state.’

  ‘You could be right,’ Betty giggled, before giving the girl a kiss, and making her way unsteadily out of the ward.

  Someone had once told Angelica that there were far more extraordinary coincidences to be found in real life than in fiction. After what Betty had just been telling her, she could well believe it! For it now appeared that the missing heiress, who shared the inheritance of Lonsdale House with Angelica, had been traced at long last.

  But it seemed a particularly cruel twist of fate to discover that Mrs Elizabeth Eastman had apparently died well over a year ago. So Angelica would never know if the American woman—whom she’d never met—might have enjoyed either Sir Tristram’s old house or its unusual contents. However, she did know that the dead woman’s only child, a son by her first marriage’s was very much alive. Astonishing as it might seem, it was Luke Cunningham who had now inherited a half-share in Lonsdale House!

  ‘It appears that he knew nothing about a possible inheritance,’ Betty had explained. ‘Not until he was sitting in our kitchen some weeks ago, and you was telling him all about the missing American lady, Mrs Eastman, and how you was trying to track her down. And it’s no wonder the poor woman couldn’t be found, seeing as how she was dead all the time. It seems a crying shame, doesn’t it?’ Betty had sighed, taking another sip from her flask.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, Mr Cunningham told me that the reason he didn’t say anything at the time was because he reckoned there must be thousands of people by that name in the United States. But he got his lawyers on to it, and now it seems he owns the other half off the house. How about that?’ Betty had laughed happily.

  How about that, indeed! Angelica thought, lying in her hospital bed latter that night, and staring blindly up through the darkness at the ceiling, Of course, it had to be good news as far as Lonsdale House itself was concerned. There would be nothing to stop Luke spending his money on bringing the old place into the twentieth century, employing a curator, and generally putting the museum in good order. And, of course, never again would Lady Marshall be able to dictate terms or crack the financial whip quite so stringently as she’d done in the past.

  But there was another side of the coin, about which she was not so happy—a large question mark hanging over her future. Because there was now nothing to stop Luke from doing very much as he pleased with Lonsdale House. And the thought suddenly occurred to Angelica that she might well have exchanged one dominant personality for another. Only Luke was likely to be a whole lot tougher and far more difficult to cope with than horrid old Lady Marshall.

  However, it was the situation regarding her relationship with Luke which was first and foremost in her mind.

  On the one hand, it was a relief to know that there was no mystery about how he’d discovered that she was in hospital. Since he’d obviously been in touch with Betty over the past two days, the older woman was bound to have told him all about the accident. But… she and Luke had parted on such bad terms that even now—all these weeks later— she could feel her cheeks reddening at the recollection of her furiously angry words. It was, to say the least, going to be both extremely awkward and embarrassing having to face him once again.

  In the event, and to her great relief, it proved to be not nearly as awkward as she had feared.

  It had been very kind of Luke to send his chauffeur, Colin, to pick her up from the hospital, Angelica mused the next morning. Luckily, Betty had provided her with a crisp cotton dress and a matching cardigan in her favourite colour of sapphire-blue. And she’d also managed to wash her long hair before leaving the hospital, All of which helped her to feel slightly more confident when she arrived home to find Luke waiting to help her up the steps of Lonsdale House.

  As he greeted her with a friendly smile and came to her aid, giving her some good advice as she struggled with the unfamiliar crutches, Angelica found their meeting much easier than she’d imagined. She was, in fact, very grateful for his steady arm, which prevented her from falling on the slippery floor off the hall, and the care with which he guided her into the study.

  ‘You must be exhausted. Would you like a drink?’ he asked as she tried to settle herself comfortably into a high-backed chair beside the fireplace.

  ‘No—um—just coffee, please,’ she muttered breathlessly, bending down to place her crutches on the floor, deliberately allowing the silken weight off her long blonde hair to shield her finished face from his view.

  ‘Is you leg very sore?’ he asked, coming back into the room with two mugs of coffee.

  ‘No. It was at first, of course, but now I can’t really feel very much. It’s just this cast which sometimes drives me up the wall,’ she explained. ‘I nearly go mad when my leg begins to itch, because there’s no way of doing anything about it—not with this heavy lump of plaster in the way!’

  ‘I’ve got the solution to that little problem,’ he said, and when she looked at him in surprise he explained that he knew exactly what she was going through. ‘When my shinbone was smashed in a college game of football—I’m talking about American football, which is more like English rugger—my mother came up with the idea of using one of her knitting needles so that I could scratch my leg. It really worked, and kept me sane!’ He grinned. ‘We’ll have to see if Betty has any knitting tucked away somewhere.’

  Angelica hesitated for a minute, not quite knowing what to say, but realising that in mentioning his mother he’d given her the opportunity to raise the subject.

  ‘I was so sorry to hear about your mother. I had no idea that it was only recently that she’d died. Were you—er—were you very close?’

  ‘When I was much younger and living in the States, we certainly saw a lot of one another. Like any mother and son, I suppose. Although I very much regret that we hadn’t seen a lot of each other over the past few years. I was generally too tied up in business over here to be able to spend much time at home in America.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  He shook his dark head. ‘No. I was her only child. She and my stepfather—of whom, incidentally, I was very fond—never had any children of their own. It was quite a shock, standing at her graveside and realising that I no longer had any living relatives—that I was finally alone in the world,’ he mused quietly. ‘Maybe that�
��s what started me thinking about my present way of life?’

  Remembering their last, very acrimonious conversation in the garden, which had been mainly concerted with his desire to re-think his lifestyle, Angelica quickly diverted their conversation towards the matter of his new inheritance.

  ‘Betty and I were both amazed to hear that you’re the missing heir to this house. We’e absoluttely— er—-delighted by the news, of course,’ ‘she added hurriedly, slightly thrown when she saw his shoulders shaking with laughter.

  ‘According to Betty, I understand that the correct word is gobsmacked!’ he grinned. ‘I’m afraid that the poor old girl has been suffering from a dreadful migraine this morning, Which is why I saw to our coffee.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that Betty is suffering from nothing more than a raging hangover,’ Angelica told him drily. ‘After celebrating your good news, she was practically as drunk as a skunk when she came to see me in hospital yesterday. Quite frankly, I’m amazed that she managed to find her way home!’

  He laughed, and then lapsed into silence for a moment, seemingly buried deep in thought.

  For her part, Angelica fiddled nervously with her empty coffee-mug, wondering what on earth to say or do next. Although she’d never really had any serious doubts in the matter, it was now fairly obvious that Luke hadn’t received her letter. And therefore he could have no idea that she’d caved in over the question of their marriage. So, where did they go from here?

  Luke had been very pleasant and friendly so far. And if she hadn’t been able to recall vividly their last explosive meeting, there wouldn’t be any problem. Unfortunately, with his tall figure lounging in a chair across the room, she couldn’t seem to rid her mind of everything they’d said to each other on that occasion—or the memory of that passionate kiss. Just the sight of the slim-fitting dark trousers over those long legs, and the broad shoulders covered by a soft grey cashmere sweater over a casual, open-necked shirt, was enough to set her heart pounding like a tom-tom.