Edge Of Temptation

Edge Of Temptation
Anne Mather

Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release. Unearthing her heart…When Catherine returns to the idyllic Welsh valley of her childhood, she finds it threatened with destruction. She is determined to stop ruthless Rafe Glyedower – who also happens to be her former lover – from mining the land for profit.But Catherine soon finds that her passion for her home is warring with her renewed attraction for the off-limits Rafe… Catherine knows she should leave before her life as well as her home is destroyed – so why does she feel compelled to stay…?

Mills & Boon is proud to present a fabulous collection of fantastic novels by bestselling, much loved author

ANNE MATHER

Anne has a stellar record of achievement within the

publishing industry, having written over one hundred

and sixty books, with worldwide sales of more than

forty-eight MILLION copies in multiple languages.

This amazing collection of classic stories offers a chance

for readers to recapture the pleasure Anne’s powerful,

passionate writing has given.

We are sure you will love them all!

I’ve always wanted to write—which is not to say I’ve always wanted to be a professional writer. On the contrary, for years I only wrote for my own pleasure and it wasn’t until my husband suggested sending one of my stories to a publisher that we put several publishers’ names into a hat and pulled one out. The rest, as they say, is history. And now, one hundred and sixty-two books later, I’m literally—excuse the pun—staggered by what’s happened.

I had written all through my infant and junior years and on into my teens, the stories changing from children’s adventures to torrid gypsy passions. My mother used to gather these manuscripts up from time to time, when my bedroom became too untidy, and dispose of them! In those days, I used not to finish any of the stories and Caroline, my first published novel, was the first I’d ever completed. I was newly married then and my daughter was just a baby, and it was quite a job juggling my household chores and scribbling away in exercise books every chance I got. Not very professional, as you can imagine, but that’s the way it was.

These days, I have a bit more time to devote to my work, but that first love of writing has never changed. I can’t imagine not having a current book on the typewriter—yes, it’s my husband who transcribes everything on to the computer. He’s my partner in both life and work and I depend on his good sense more than I care to admit.

We have two grown-up children, a son and a daughter, and two almost grown-up grandchildren, Abi and Ben. My e-mail address is mystic-am@msn.com (mailto:mystic-am@msn.com) and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.

Edge of Temptation

Anne Mather

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u8d3f418a-6fa1-503d-8d45-4c6795c759e4)

About the Author (#u41ef1a50-2b4b-5c42-8de4-5e543c5c0311)

Title Page (#uf54dd2e1-cdb8-539e-b2db-d8537814a762)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#u4580d0f3-cf02-51d1-a3e6-c09a0a4ff0fd)

IT was surprising how small the valley looked from the helicopter. Perhaps it was the fact that it was a valley that accounted for that feeling of compression, of compaction, of hills giving on to hills with little between but the restless waters of the Llanbara. The sweeping slopes where he had ridden all his life, the high pastures where Powys herded his sheep and Meredith had his forestry plantation, were telescopically condensed into narrow bands of green and brown, the trees so close the sun could not penetrate. It was an illusion, of course. As the blades of the propellers swept them lower, the rocky outcrop of Morfa Crag could clearly be seen, the sun-dappled hillside a patchwork of shifting shades and shadows, with the roofs of farm buildings clustering together in settlements dotted about the valley floor. Penwyth. His home, and his heritage. And what was it worth?

‘Lead has always been in demand, of course,’ Sir George Marland was saying now, ‘but really, it’s only during the last few years that we’ve turned back on our own resources. I think the oil crisis in 1974 alerted the government to its dependence on other countries for its essential needs, and awakened a kind of national determination to avoid any exploitation of that kind in the future.’

Rafe nodded. In all honesty, he was not paying a great deal of attention to what Marland was saying. Marland was a government official, and like all government officials, in Rafe’s opinion, he said what he had to say in as many words as possible, instead of as few.

‘Man is a hungry individual, Glyndower—some might say greedy. He’s a consumer, and in this day and age, he consumes more than he has ever done before. World mineral deposits are running low. Even the oil we’re presently pulling out of the North Sea may not see us to the turn of the century. We must constantly be on the alert for new sources, new deposits, and lead is a very valuable commodity.’

Rafe glanced at John Norman, his eyes expressive. What did Marland think he was? A moron? He knew the state of the world’s economy—who better, when it was brought home to him constantly in the day-to-day demands of the estate. He knew that cash was in short supply, and that any substantial deposit of ore on his land would benefit him and the country both. Ever since they lifted off, Marland had been expounding in this vein, and quite frankly, Rafe was sick of the sound of his cultivated tones. He didn’t need some pompous bureaucrat implying where his duties lay, explaining the situation to him as if he was some ignorant schoolboy, not conversant with the simple mathematics of economics.

‘I think Mr Glyndower understands your position, Sir George,’ Norman interposed now. ‘However, Penwyth has belonged to his family for many generations, and the farmers—the tenant farmers, that is—–’

‘Farmers!’ Marland’s tones mirrored the contempt he felt for such an interruption. ‘My dear John, the wealth accrued from such land is negligible. What is it? Sheep country at best! There’s your equation. In my view, there is no problem. And let us not forget that it’s Lord Penwyth’s decision, not Glyndower’s.’

‘My father has put the affair into my hands,’ retorted Rafe tersely, pulling a case of the narrow cheroots he smoked out of the pocket of his tweed hacking jacket. When both men declined his offer of the case, he put one of the slim cigars between his teeth, and added: ‘Conversely, I’m of the opinion that there are conflicting interests here. Interests of humanity, and ecology. This country of ours—and I mean Wales, not England, or Great Britain, as it sometimes suits the government to call us—has been torn apart by mining of one sort or another. Pits, spewing slag and slurry all over our hillsides, belching black dust into air that was once clean and pure. Is that an equation, Sir George? Is that what you mean by mineral wealth?’

Marland’s plump shoulders stiffened. He was not used to such plain speaking. His heavy jowls above the starched white collar of his shirt visibly stiffened. Brushing an imaginary speck of dust from the ironed crease in his pin-striped trouser leg, he adopted an air of frosty forbearance.

‘I trust you’re not about to enter that as a serious point of opposition, Glyndower,’ he observed sourly. ‘With your apparent concern for humanity, you should be the first to realise that without the coalmines, the people you so staunchly defend would have starved.’

Rafe put away the lighter he had used to light his cheroot and drew deeply on the tobacco, exhaling a cloud of aromatically-flavoured smoke into the enclosed cabin of the helicopter. He supposed it was impolite of him to smoke in such a confined atmosphere, when neither of his colleagues was doing so, but right now he needed the sustenance it gave him. Lucy would not approve, he knew that, but then there were a lot of things he did of which Lucy did not approve, and at the moment her approval was not in question.

Of course, he knew he had been a fool, bringing up the subject of coalmining. Marland could cut any argument he might make to ribbons, and the humane aspects of rheumatic diseases and silicosis were more than compensated by the rewards offered. Or so it seemed. There were still plenty of men willing to risk life and limb to bring up the energy-bearing carbon, and his own ancestors had not been unwilling to take their fair share of the patrimony offered. It was as well Marland knew nothing of his own history, and besides, what bearing did it really have on what was happening here?

‘I’m simply saying that—enough is enough,’ he replied now, weariness descending like a shroud. ‘I don’t know that in this case, the end justifies the means.’