Leopard In The Snow

Leopard In The Snow
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. Wild at heartHelen can’t believe her eyes when, stranded in the snow, she finds herself confronted by a leopard! Luckily, it’s a tame one, and its owner, the mysterious Dominic Lyall, offers Helen shelter in his remote Cumberland house.Helen soon realises that while his beautiful leopard may be tame, there is something wild, and yet undoubtedly compelling, about Dominic… Her fears increase when she grasps that she is virtually a prisoner! But as time goes by and she falls ever more deeply under his spell, does she even want to get away from Dominic…?

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.

Leopard in the Snow

Anne Mather

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

Table of Contents

Cover (#u4bd2cc04-9be9-51d8-8d60-0d8aa6f0d65b)

About the Author (#u7d626fd0-4c84-500b-867e-308ae109fef5)

Title Page (#u5fa0fd91-b5c2-5f05-9498-16441c8b692a)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#uba095624-59ac-5ab6-a9c6-fb9aec5fd116)

IN spring and high summer the lofty fells and mountain-shadowed lakes echoed with the sounds of tourists, eager to escape from the steel and concrete jungles of the cities. They came in their thousands, car after car, picnicking and camping, and towing their caravans behind them like an invasion of giant snails. Climbers, many of whom had never before put on spiked boots, trekked to Wast Water and Skafell Pike. Traffic jammed the narrow roads which skirted the more frequented lakes like Ullswater and Windermere. There were card shops and gift shops, and exhibitions of local crafts. On the lakes themselves the white sails of yachts mingled with orange-sailed dinghies and noisy outboard motors. Almost everywhere one looked there were people in parkas and sailing gear, all trying to look as though this was their natural habitat. The hotels were filled to capacity – the bars did a roaring trade.

And the locals watched and waited and longed for the city dwellers to return to their city homes and their city jobs, and leave the Lake District to those whose heritage it had always been.

It was that summer lakeland that Helen remembered. When they had had their home in Leeds her father had kept a boat at Bowness, and in the summer holidays when she was free from school, he had taught her to sail. In retrospect, it seemed an idyllic period in her life. It was in the days before her father became ambitious, before he allowed his small company to be amalgamated with Thorpe Engineering, before he married Isabel Thorpe and became such a rich and influential man with interests in more sophisticated sports than sailing …

But now the fells were clothed in snow. It had apparently been snowing for days, and even the lakes themselves had a film of white coating their surfaces. When she had stopped at the last village for directions to Bowness she had found herself well off her original route which wasn’t altogether surprising when half the signposts had been covered with snow, too, and she had been too warm and snug in the car to bother to get out and wipe it away. She had been foolish, she acknowledged it now, but her memory did not go as far as recalling the dozens of minor roads that spun off the so-called major ones, and as they all looked much the same in these ghastly conditions she had obviously taken several wrong turnings.

Still, she consoled herself, with a glance at her wrist watch. It was only two o’clock and she had plenty of time to find a hotel before nightfall. Any hotel would do, just so long as it provided food and shelter. She could continue on her way tomorrow.

Tomorrow!

She spared a thought for her father. By tomorrow he would have discovered she had gone away. What would he do? Would her note that she needed to get away on her own for a while satisfy him, or would he institute some sort of search for her? The latter seemed the most likely. Her father was not the kind of man to be thwarted, and he would, no doubt, be furious that his daughter, his only offspring, should try to defy him.

But the chances of him discovering her here were slim. In fact, Helen congratulated herself, deciding to come north had been an inspiration. In recent years her most usual haunts had been the West Indies and the South of France, and if her father looked anywhere for her it would be somewhere warm. He knew how she loved the sun, how she enjoyed swimming and sailing, all water sports. He would never expect her to remember the small hotel where he had taken her as a schoolgirl in the years following her mother’s death when they had been everything to one another. And he would certainly not expect her to drive into a raging blizzard …

The snow was thickening on her wiper blades, causing them to smear the windscreen rather than clear it. It seemed ages since she had passed another vehicle and she paused to wonder whether in fact the road she was following led anywhere. It might simply be the track to some farm or a private dwelling of some sort, and how on earth would she be able to turn in such a narrow space?

She frowned. If it was a farm track she would go and knock at the door and ask whether they could give her some firm directions as to how to reach the nearest village. She no longer expected to reach Bowness tonight.

The wipers got worse and with an impatient exclamation she stopped the car and leaving the engine running climbed out and brushed the snow away. It clung to her fingers. It was so cold, and with a shiver she clambered back inside again. Maybe she had been foolhardy in bringing the car. Perhaps she should have used the train. But she had not wanted to risk someone at the station recognising her and possibly remembering this when her father discovered she was missing and started making a fuss.

To her annoyance, the wipers stuck again, and she was forced to get out again and attend to them. She had taken off her long boots with their platform soles because they were impossible for driving and when she had attended to the wipers the first time she had balanced on the door valance. But this time she stopped to put her boots on and while she did so the engine idled to a halt.

Shaking her head, she got out and stood in the snow. It was quite deep, even on the road, and brushed the turnups of her flared scarlet pants. Drops of snow melted on her shoulders as she quickly cleared the snow from the windscreen and satisfying herself that the wipers would at least work for a short period, she got into the driving seat again.

It took several more minutes to divest herself of the boots again and then she turned the ignition. It revved, but nothing happened. Cursing silently to herself, she tried again, allowing it to go on for a long time, but still nothing happened. A pinprick of alarm feathered along her veins. What now? Surely the car wasn’t going to let her down? It never had before. And it wasn’t old. But it hadn’t actually encountered conditions like these before.

Several minutes later she gave up the attempt to try and start the car again. It was getting later all the while and pretty soon it would start to get dark. She dared not risk staying here any longer in the vain hope that someone might come along and rescue her. There were no visible signs that anyone had passed that way that day although the steadily falling snow hampered any real inspection of the road’s surface. Nevertheless, her most sensible course would be to leave the car and go in search of assistance, she decided. If she stayed where she was and no one came, the car could well be buried by morning and she had heard of motorists freezing to death in this way.

Thrusting such uncomfortable thoughts aside, she reached for her boots and began to pull them on again. It was quite an adventure, she told herself, in an attempt to lighten her spirits. Who would have thought when she left London this morning that by late afternoon she would be the victim of an abandoned car in a snowstorm? Who indeed? Her earlier self-congratulation that her father would never look for her here might rebound on her in the most unpleasant way possible.

She shook her head and got out of the car. At least her coat was warm. Made of red suede and lined with sheepskin, it showed up well against the whiteness of the snow. Maybe someone would see her, even if she didn’t see them. She drew the hood up over her head, and tucked inside the long strands of black hair which the wind had taken and blown about her face. Well, this was it! Sheepskin mittens to warm her hands, her trouser legs rolled up almost to the knee, her handbag – what more could any intrepid explorer want?

She looked up and down the deserted road. There seemed no point in retracing her tracks. She knew there was nothing back there – at least, not for miles. Forward it would have to be!

The snow stung her cheeks, and the wind whistled eerily through the skeletal branches of the trees and bushes that hedged the track. She was tempted to penetrate the hedge and climb the sloping fields beyond in an attempt to see some form of habitation in this white wasteland, but a preliminary reconnaissance landed her in snow at least two feet deep and was sufficient to deter any further forays in that direction. It wasn’t possible, she told herself, that one could walk so far without encountering either a house or another human being, but she had. This winding road which had quickly hidden the car from view might be circling a mountain for all she knew. Certainly she was going uphill, her aching legs told her that, but what alternative had she?

She stopped and looked back. It was impossible to distinguish anything beyond a radius of a hundred yards. She was totally and completely lost and the greyness in the sky was not wholly due to the appalling conditions. Evening was approaching and she was no nearer finding a place to stay than she had been an hour ago. A fluttery sense of panic rose inside her. What was she going to do? Was this how fate repaid her for challenging her father’s right to choose her a husband?