Christmas At His Command

‘I understand you came once before to look over the cottage when I was abroad. I was sorry to have missed you then.’

The words themselves could have been friendly, however, the tone in which they were spoken made them anything but, and Marigold blinked at the quiet enmity coming her way.

‘I promised myself after that occasion that if I ever had the chance to give you a piece of my mind, I would,’ he said with soft venom.

‘Look, Mr…?’

‘Moreau,’ he provided icily.

‘Look, Mr Moreau, I think I ought to explain—’

‘Explain?’

Marigold had heard of incidents where one person could freeze another into silence and she hadn’t actually experienced it until now, but in the last moment or two he had shifted slightly in his seat and now the grey eyes had taken on a silver hue which turned them into two flares of cold white light.

‘Explain what?’ he continued curtly. ‘The reason why not one of your family, you included, saw fit to visit an old lady in the last twelve months before her death? The odd letter or two, the occasional phone call to the village shop that delivered her groceries every week was supposed to suffice, was it? Messages delivered secondhand can’t compare to flesh and blood reality, Miss Jones. Oh, I know she could be difficult, recalcitrant and obstinate to a point where you could cheerfully have strangled her, but didn’t any of you understand the fierce plea for independence and the pride behind it? She was an old lady, for crying out loud. Ninety-two years old! Didn’t any of you have the imagination and the sensitivity to realise that behind her awkwardness and perversity she was crying out to be told she was still loved and wanted for the woman she was?’

‘Mr Moreau—’

‘But it was simpler and easier to write her off as bigoted and impossible,’ he bit out savagely. ‘That way you could all get on with your nice, orderly lives with your consciences clean and unsmirched.’

Anger was beginning to surface inside Marigold, not least because of this man’s arrogant refusal to allow her to get a word in edgeways. He had clearly been seething about what he saw as the neglect of Emma’s family towards the old lady for a long time, but he wasn’t giving her a chance to explain who she was or what she was doing here!

‘You don’t understand. I’m not—’

‘Responsible?’ Again he cut her off, his eyes like polished crystal. ‘That’s too easy a get-out clause, Miss Jones. It might suit you to give out the air of helpless femininity in the present situation in which you find yourself, but it doesn’t fool me. Not for a second! And while you are considering how much you can make on selling your grandmother’s home—a home she fought tooth and nail to keep going, I might add—you could consider the blood, sweat and tears that went into her remaining here all her life. And there were tears, don’t fool yourself about that. And caused by you and the rest of your miserable family.’

‘You have absolutely no right to talk to me like this.’ Marigold was at the point of hitting him.

‘No?’ His voice was softer now but curiously more deep and disturbing than its previous harsh tone. ‘So you aren’t looking to sell the old lady’s pride and joy, then? The home she fought so hard to keep?’

Marigold opened her mouth to fire back a rejoinder but then, in the next instant, it dawned on her that that was exactly what Emma was planning to do and for a moment the realisation floored her.

‘I thought so.’ She was at the receiving end of that deadly stare again. ‘How someone like you can have the same blood as that courageous old lady flowing through their veins beats me, I tell you straight. You and the rest of your family aren’t worthy to lick her boots.’

Marigold stared at him through the snowflakes that had settled on her eyelashes. She was about to tell him she didn’t have the same blood, that she was in fact no relation at all to Emma’s grandmother, when the hot rage which was bubbling checked her words. Let him think what he liked, the arrogant swine! She would rather struggle on all night than ask him for help or explain he’d got it all wrong. The man was a bully, whatever the facts behind all he had said. He knew she’d had to abandon her car and that she had hurt herself, yet he’d still been determined to browbeat her and have his say. Well, he could take a running jump! She wasn’t going to explain a thing and he could drive off in his nice warm car, knowing that he had had his pound of flesh. The rotten, stinking—

‘Lost for words, Miss Jones?’ he enquired softly, the tone of his voice making the icy air around Marigold strike warm.

‘Not at all.’ She drew herself up to her full five feet four inches and never had she wished so hard she was half a foot or so taller. ‘I was just wondering whether it was worth wasting any breath on such an unsavoury individual as you, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ He smiled, but it was just a twist of the hard carved lips. ‘And what have you decided?’

She glared at him for one moment more, her blue eyes sparking with the force of her emotion, and then turned and began walking up the road, trying not to limp in spite of the excruciating pain in her ankle, which seemed worse now she had rested it for a few moments.

She heard the engine rev behind her and fully expected the big vehicle to roar past her in a flurry of snow, so when it drew up beside her, keeping pace with her limping gait, she bit her lip hard but didn’t turn her head from the white landscape in front of her.

‘You said you fell over and twisted your ankle,’ the hateful voice said flatly at the side of her.

She ignored it, along with the urge to burst into tears as waves of self-pity made themselves known.

‘Get in.’ This time the touch of raw impatience was very obvious, but again Marigold ignored him, struggling on, her face set resolutely ahead.

‘Miss Jones, I think I ought to point out that you are extremely lucky I had an appointment elsewhere today which necessitated my leaving this morning. There is absolutely no chance of anyone else using this road and the cottage is at least another mile. Need I say more?’ he added condescendingly.

‘Get lost,’ she bit out through gritted teeth.

There was a moment’s pause and then his voice drawled, with disparaging amusement, ‘Out of the two of us I would say that’s a more likely occurrence for you. Get in the car, Miss Jones, and let’s cut out the drama. It might be unpleasant for you to be told the truth for once, but you are old enough, and I’m sure tough enough, to survive.’

‘I would rather freeze to death than accept a lift from you.’ She turned for just an instant to meet the silver-grey eyes and her face spoke for itself.

‘Now you are being ridiculous.’

‘Well, that’s just one more thing you can add to my list of crimes, then, isn’t it?’ she returned tartly.

‘Get in the car.’

At this point Marigold so far forgot herself as to come out with an expletive she had never used in her life before. He thought he could order her about, tell her what to do after he had spoken to her the way he had? OK, so he might think she was Emma, and Marigold had to admit she didn’t know all the ins and outs of this matter, but he had known she was asking for help and that she was hurt, and he had just left her standing in the snow while he’d given her a lecture on family responsibility. Nothing, but nothing would induce her to accept any form of assistance from this arrogant swine.

‘Don’t force me to make you get into the car, Miss Jones.’

‘You think you could?’ she spat derisively.

‘Oh, yes.’ It was cool and even and more than a little menacing, but the rage caused by his previous misplaced contempt and male arrogance was still hot enough to keep Marigold walking on, her head held high under its covering of wet plastic and the bottom of the cagoule flapping round her knees.

If he laid one finger on her, just one, he’d get a darn sight more than he’d bargained for, Marigold promised herself with silent fury as the vehicle drew level with her once again.

‘Your grandmother was a woman in a million.’

Marigold ignored him completely.

‘For her sake I don’t intend to leave the only child of her son to freeze out here, even if it is exactly what you deserve.’

‘How dare you?’ She glared at him again, her eyes narrowed and shooting blue sparks but her lips were bloodless with the pain she was trying to conceal and her face was as white as a sheet. He stared at her for a second, the piercing eyes taking everything in, and then he sighed irritably before springing out of the vehicle with an abruptness which took Marigold by surprise. One moment she was standing glowering at him, the next she found herself whisked right off her feet as he lifted her up into his arms as though she weighed nothing at all.

‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at? Put me down this instant!’ she hissed furiously, struggling violently as she pushed at the solid male chest.

‘Keep still,’ he muttered exasperatedly, striding round the vehicle and depositing her in the passenger seat none too gently. She immediately tried to scramble out again, catching her injured foot as she did so and crying out with pain before she could check the yelp.

‘Miss Jones, I have a length of rope in the back and I warn you I will have absolutely no compunction about securing you in your seat, all right?’ he ground out tightly. ‘You will sit there until we reach Maggie’s cottage and then as far as I am concerned it’ll be good riddance to bad rubbish, and I’ll have done my duty.’

‘You’re despicable!’ It was all she could manage with the pain now excruciating, but added to the physical discomfort was the shock which had gripped her in the last few moments. This man must be all of six feet four, and his tall, lean height and powerfully muscled body had convinced her she didn’t have a hope of fighting him, but close to—and she had been close, how close she didn’t dare dwell on right at this moment—he was aggressively and compellingly handsome with no sign of softness about him at all.

His face above the massive, thick oatmeal sweater he wore was darkly tanned and finely chiselled, his eyes of silver-grey ice set under black brows thrown into more startling prominence when taken with the jet-black hair falling over his forehead. He was…well, he was quite amazing, Marigold thought weakly after he had slammed the passenger door shut.

She watched him walk round the bonnet before he climbed in the open driver’s door, unconsciously shrinking away slightly as he slid into the vehicle. If he noticed the instinctive withdrawal he made no sign of it, merely easing the car forward—the engine of which he had kept running—as he said, his voice curt, ‘Did you arrange for food and fuel to be delivered to the cottage beforehand?’

No, because she hadn’t known she could. Emma hadn’t mentioned it when she’d offered her the use of the place over Christmas when Marigold had confided, a couple of weeks ago, that she was dreading the big family Christmas her parents always enjoyed. Their enormous, sprawling semi was always full of friends and relations over the holiday period right up until the new year—a kind of open house—which was great normally, but in view of her broken engagement and cancelled wedding was not so good. Everyone would be trying to be tactful and treading on eggshells. Poor, poor Marigold—that sort of thing.