Return of the Forbidden Tycoon

by Penny Jordan

  She reached for the telephone and dialled Harry’s number. Liz answered the phone, her cheerful, warm tones helping to banish the tense mood which had enveloped her. They chatted for several minutes while Liz sent someone to fetch her husband from his workshop.

  ‘I’m really glad that you’re going to go into partnership with Harry, love,’ Liz told her. ‘It’s given him a new lease on life… He’s as excited about it as a little boy.’ She gave a rich chuckle and added. ‘He can’t stop talking about it for two minutes together! Oh, here he is now,’ she told Kate, relinquishing the receiver to her husband.

  Briefly Kate told Harry about her meeting with Vera, and the other’s interest in her work, adding that she had an appointment to see Vera the next day.

  Harry was as enthusiastic as she had known he would be, banishing her self-doubts with his praise of her work and ideas, restoring some of the self-confidence in herself which seeing Dominic had destroyed.

  ‘Don’t make the mistake of going for something too heavy and stylised,’ Harry warned her. ‘It’s surprising how well the modern free-form designs go with these traditional conservatories. Remember that one I showed you with the climbing roses?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I must admit I was thinking of something along those lines, but quite what, I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Mmm…or there’s always the alternative of a picture window. I saw a fantastic one the other day, where was it now…?’

  As always when she was listening to Harry, Kate found her tense muscles relaxing as she allowed herself to be drawn into the magic of their shared interest. By the time she replaced the receiver her mind was seething with ideas.

  Reaching for a piece of paper, she began to sketch quickly, and then more slowly as she became absorbed in what she was doing.

  The dam of creativity that seeing Dominic had sealed in her mind, once broken, seemed to unleash a positive torrent of inspiration, and it was gone nine o’clock when she finally lifted her head, flexing tired fingers as she put down her pencil.

  The late afternoon and evening had gone without her even being aware of it, and now she felt both tired and slightly hungry, but it was a good tiredness; not the exhaustion of misery and hopelessness that she knew so well from the past.

  Tidying up her papers and putting them in a folder, she went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee and a light chicken salad supper which she took back to the library with her, this time curling up into the deep leather chair beside the fire with one of the books she had got from the library on her knee.

  It was gone eleven when she finally went upstairs, her mind relaxed, warmed by the knowledge that the work she had done this evening was good.

  Perhaps it was because she was feeling so relaxed and off her guard that she allowed herself to give in to the malign impulse that took her not to her own bedroom door, but to the door of the guest suite, which she pushed open.

  From the doorway she could see the bed with its immaculate duvet and pillows.

  After Ricky’s death on an impulsive whim she had thrown out all the bedding from this room and replaced it. Her mouth twisted with wry self-mockery as she wondered what had made her replace the previous gold and brown colour scheme with a completely fresh one in pale lemons, greys and white. Her glance lingered on the traditional mahogany bed with its head and footboards. There was no doubt that the crisply laundered white cotton and linen duvet and pillows set off the room’s delicate colour scheme, but had there been some deeper mental reason for her choosing white, the colour of purity, for the bedding in this particular room?

  All at once her pleasantly relaxed mood was gone, the tension she had experienced earlier returning with full force. She wasn’t going to think about Dominic, she told herself sternly as she closed the door and made her way to her own room. She had tortured herself enough over the past as it was; made herself pay a penance in lost self-respect that still left scars, but it was over now.

  The house had five bedrooms, and the one that she now used had once been the nursery. She had moved into it immediately after Ricky’s death, unable to bear the thought of going back to the room where he had taught her how undesirable he had found her as a woman. Had there again been some subtle motive in her picking this room out of them all? she wondered cynically as she started to undress. Had she chosen it knowing that as long as she owned the house, there would never be any need for nurseries?

  * * *

  As she turned into the drive leading to The Grange, Kate expelled a faint sigh of relief. Her little car had been more than usually reluctant to start this morning and in fact, on more than one occasion on the way here, the engine note had wavered ominously as though about to cut out. She would have to call at the garage on the way back, she decided, admitting to herself that it was high time she changed her car. Perhaps once she had sold the house there might be enough money to spare for her to do that. Certainly she needed a reliable vehicle now that she was working.

  Signs of the Bensons’ occupation were already present in the gardens where Kate could see a local contract gardening firm at work on the overgrown lawns and flower beds.

  The Grange was one of the darkly pebble-dashed ugly square houses of which the Victorians had seemed inordinately fond, as though their sheer size and bulk was impressive enough without any considerations needing to be made to artistic design. Kate had been inside on a couple of occasions before many years ago when her father had been alive, but the musty, dusty smell of disuse which she associated with the house was no longer in evidence when Vera opened the front door to her knock.

  Instead she could smell new paint, her eyes widening admiringly over what she remembered as a darkly gloomy hall, which Vera had transformed completely.

  ‘Vera, this is lovely!’ Kate exclaimed enthusiastically, formality forgotten as she went closer to examine the newly rag-rolled walls. Two shades of the same colours had been used; a soft bluey green, ragged with pale gold; the lighter colours used above the dado rail and the darker below. She looked upwards and saw that the ceiling had been flat-painted in the darker bluey green, the cornice picked out in white.

  ‘I’m glad you like it.’ Vera’s face lit up and she grinned conspiratorially at Kate. ‘Ian thought it might be a bit over the top.’ She gestured towards the staircase and added wryly, ‘This monstrosity was put in just after the First World War, and I’ve decided to have it marbled, along with the dado rail—what do you think?’

  ‘I think it will look stunning,’ Kate told her honestly. ‘And after all, ragging and marbling, and in fact all these finishes they’re using nowadays, are very traditional arts, so it won’t be at all out of keeping.’

  ‘Mmm, that’s what I thought. Come on into the drawing-room. We haven’t touched it yet, but it’s the only place where there’s any furniture.’

  Kate hadn’t been in the drawing-room on her previous visits and she discovered that it was a well proportioned room with two of the deep bay windows the Victorians were so fond of, both overlooking the rear gardens, while two smaller windows on the fireplace wall overlooked the wide lawns.

  The room looked as though it hadn’t been touched in years. The walls were a filthy grey-cream, the carpet threadbare.

  ‘The estate agent explained to us that the Colonel lived here on his own for over twenty years before he died,’ Vera commented to Kate. ‘And then the house was empty for three years.’

  ‘Mmm…his nephew was asking an exorbitant price for it. The rumour was locally that the Colonel had stipulated that the property was not to be sold for development, but that his nephew was holding out for a high price, hoping in the end that it would remain empty for so long that it would have to be sold for the land. The gardens are quite extensive, aren’t they?’

  ‘Almost four acres, and with the number of people now ready to commute this far to London, any houses built on it could have commanded a very good price. It’s going to take years to get it the way we want it, but it will be worthwhile
in the end. The children will love it.’

  Vera saw Kate’s surprise and smiled again. ‘They’re both at boarding school, I’m afraid. One of the reasons we’ve moved out here is that it will be much easier for them to go to day school.’ She mentioned the name of a very famous school, and added, ‘They take pupils as non-boarders. Ian and I were both boarders, and we both hated it.’ Vera paused and added diffidently, ‘As a matter of fact, Ian and Dominic were at school together, which must have meant that Ian knew your husband, although of course Ian is four years older than Dominic, and your husband, I believe, was younger?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kate could feel the tension creeping through her body. She didn’t want to talk about the past, about anything to do with Dominic Harland, but Vera seemed to be oblivious to her reluctance to pursue the subject, for she continued slowly, ‘Poor Dominic, he had a most tragic childhood. His mother left his father for another man. Dominic was only two at the time, and after that he only saw his mother on a handful of occasions.

  ‘His father was very bitter, he never let Dominic forget what his mother had done. In fact he brought him up to think of all women as treacherous and devious, and sending him to an all-boys school didn’t help.’

  Stonily Kate refused to comment or sympathise. If she had heard the story about anyone other than Dominic she knew she would have felt an instant empathy towards them, a sense of fellow feeling, but she would not allow herself to feel like that towards Dominic.

  ‘I’m sorry you and Dominic seemed to get off on the wrong foot the other night,’ Vera continued quietly. ‘I’ve honestly never seen him behave quite like that before. Oh, he’s always been very cool and wary if a woman comes on to him strongly, but…’

  ‘Please could we change the subject?’ Kate offered her hostess a wry smile to palliate the curt effect of her request. ‘What happened in the past is past as far as I’m concerned,’ she added, striving for a more relaxed note. ‘Ricky’s been dead for almost six years, and whatever our differences were, they’re now over and done with. I can’t criticise a man who’s no longer alive to defend himself. All I will say is that I never encouraged or incited Ricky to gamble.’

  Vera looked quite horrified, reaching over to cover one of Kate’s hands with her own.

  ‘Oh, my dear, no… I never thought for a moment that you had,’ she exclaimed in a shocked voice. ‘As I said, my husband doesn’t remember Rick from school, but he is aware of who he was and how he lived…’ She frowned slightly and added, ‘As far as Dominic is concerned…’

  Kate had heard enough. Already her stomach was knotted with pain and anxiety. ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘may we just drop the whole subject? I…’ To her consternation tears blurred her eyes. She blinked quickly, but not before her hostess had seen them. As she lowered her head defensively, Kate was dimly conscious of her hostess looking over her shoulder, but the reason for the arrested expression on Vera’s face was lost on her until she heard her exclaiming, faintly apprehensively, ‘Oh, Dominic, there you are! I thought you’d gone out…’

  As she grappled with the implications of Vera’s greeting, Kate was just glad that she had her back to the door. She would have hated him to see her like this, weak and tearful…vulnerable…

  For heaven’s sake, she chided herself, sitting up straighter and refusing to look around. What was the matter with her? Dominic could not hurt her now. So once she had believed herself attracted to him; had thought she had seen in him all the compassion and security lacking in her husband, and she had been wrong. So once he had spurned her, humiliating and hurting her badly, but that was all in the past, she told herself firmly, her back stiffening slightly as a sixth sense told her that he was getting closer to them.

  ‘Dominic is staying with us for a while,’ she told Kate brightly. ‘He and my husband…’

  ‘I’m sure that Mrs Hammond isn’t interested in my reasons for being down here, Vera.’

  Kate wasn’t surprised to see the older woman colour slightly under the cool hauteur of Dominic’s voice, and, angry on Vera’s behalf, she turned sharply to face him, catching her breath as she realised how far back she had to tilt her head to look into his face, her voice as cool as his had been as she said, ‘You’re quite right. I’m not the least bit interested.’

  The distantly polite smile she gave him was all that saved the words from being downright rude, but she was beyond caring about that now, and turning her back on him she said calmly to Vera, ‘Perhaps it isn’t convenient for me to discuss the conservatory with you now. I’ll…’ She made to get up, but Vera protested quickly,

  ‘Oh no… of course it is.’ She got up. ‘Please come through and have a look at it.’

  In order to follow her, Kate would have had to brush past Dominic, almost touching him, but instead, she made a deliberate detour, not even looking at him as she followed her hostess’s hurried footsteps.

  The conservatory was attached to the opposite side of the house, very traditional in design, with a typical, high vaulted roof, the glass panels supported by delicate wrought iron work.

  ‘I’ve had the gardening contractors clean everything out,’ Vera told Kate as they stepped on to the marble-tiled floor. She wrinkled her nose slightly. ‘It looks awful at the moment, but…’

  ‘But the potential’s there,’ Kate finished for her with a smile, banishing from her mind her mental image of Dominic’s darkly brooding features as she forced herself to concentrate on the conservatory.

  She had brought her portfolio with her, and sitting down on a wrought iron bench she opened it to show Vera.

  Half an hour later Vera said enthusiastically, ‘Kate, they’re all lovely, but I think you know I’ve fallen for the freestyle design of the cottage garden flowers.’

  Kate knew the one she meant; a rather over-the-top design which would cover all three sides of the conservatory with the glowing colours of traditional cottage garden plants.

  ‘It will be expensive,’ she warned Vera now.

  ‘Mmm… I can see that, but could you leave the sketch with me to show Ian?’ Vera made a slight face and added wryly, ‘In his business he has to do a certain amount of entertaining—the kind where it’s important to create a good impression. It’s not really my style, but it is something I have to do. Your design for the conservatory would make a stunning visual impact—you know how it is, there’s a certain amount of vying for supremacy among that sort of set, and I suspect our American visitors will be particularly impressed, but I do want Ian to see it before I commit myself.’

  ‘I quite understand that,’ Kate assured her, her brain ringing with the implications of what Vera was saying. The sketch she had favoured had been one Kate had only done on a last-minute impulse, loving the idea of it, but knowing that very few people would be able to afford such extravagance. It had never occurred to her that Vera Benson might actually opt for it. It just went to show how much money there was in merchant banking, Kate thought wryly, collecting her sketches together. The cost of implementing her design into the conservatory would probably have enabled her to run the house for another three or four years, but then she was not in the Bensons’ income bracket, nor had ever wanted to be, she acknowledged.

  Now that the first shock of hearing Vera say she liked the design had passed, she was beginning to realise what a challenge implementing it would be, and what a marvellous opportunity for Harry and herself as one of their first ventures in their new partnership.

  All of a sudden she couldn’t wait to get home and tell him all about it.

  There was no sign of Dominic as Vera showed her to the front door, and imperceptibly the tension that had gripped her as they left the conservatory eased. Having thanked Vera and made her farewells Kate got into her car. Vera stood in the open doorway, frowning slightly as she witnessed Kate’s unsuccessful attempts to get the recalcitrant vehicle started.

  It wasn’t going to start, Kate recognised balefully after ten fruitless minutes trying to ge
t a response, and what was more, with each attempt the battery was getting flatter and flatter.

  At last she was forced to recognise defeat, and getting out of the car, she asked Vera if she might use her phone.

  ‘Of course… I’d run you home myself, but I’m afraid Ian’s got the car.’

  Kate was just about to follow Vera back into the house when Dominic walked round the side of it, frowning as he saw Kate’s car and the two women.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked crisply, his question directed at Vera, not at herself, Kate recognised. In some strange way it was almost as though Dominic himself considered his outburst on the evening of the dinner party as some sort of mental aberration, to judge by the way he was now studiously ignoring her.

  ‘Kate’s car won’t start,’ Vera told him worriedly, ‘and I can’t offer her a lift because I don’t have my car…’

  Before she could say anything else Kate interrupted quickly, ‘That wouldn’t have been necessary in any case, thanks, Vera. I can get the garage to pick me up and drop me at Sue’s. She’ll give me a lift home.’

  Quite by chance she caught a glimpse of Dominic’s face as he registered her remarks. The scorn and contempt in his eyes was almost like a physical blow. It hurt so much that the intensity of the pain froze her as she waited like a trapped animal for it to subside. What was wrong with her? Why should anything this man said either to her or about her have the power to hurt now? Once she had acted irrationally and stupidly and she had paid for that mistake… Oh, how she had paid… but she had paid.

  ‘There’s no need to do any of that,’ he announced laconically, his eyes on Kate’s face, but his words directed to Vera, as he added, ‘I can give Mrs Hammond a lift home. I was just about to go into the village anyway… I assume that’s where the garage is,’ he asked Kate, continuing before she could confirm or deny his remark. ‘We can call there on the way and get them to come out to your car… What’s wrong with it, by the way?’