Christmas At His Command

Oops. Marigold decided to bluff it out. ‘I can assure you, I know how old I am,’ she answered tartly, and then, seeing he was about to say more, she added quickly, ‘Is Oaklands your house?’

He didn’t reply for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘I bought it from a friend of mine who decided to emigrate to Canada a couple of years ago,’ he said shortly. ‘Your grandmother might have spoken of him; apparently they were great friends. Peter Lyndon?’

Marigold nodded vaguely and hoped that would do.

‘She missed him when he left,’ Flynn continued quietly. ‘His children used to come across the valley and visit her often and they were a substitute for her real family, I suppose.’ The accusing note was back but Marigold chose to ignore it. ‘Certainly when I called to see her it was photographs of Peter’s family that she showed me. She never showed me any of yours—too painful probably.’

Marigold felt she ought to object here. ‘How can you say that when you have just admitted you didn’t know her very long?’ she asked in as piqued a voice as she could manage, considering all her sympathies—had he but known it—were with Emma’s poor grandmother. The family seemed to have behaved appallingly to the old woman, and although as a work acquaintance Emma was perfectly pleasant it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility to imagine her disregarding the fact she’d got a grandmother if it suited her to do so.

‘Peter was a good deal older than me and he’d known Maggie for a long time,’ Flynn said evenly. ‘I think he knew your father, too. They didn’t get on.’ There was a pregnant pause.

Again Marigold felt she ought to say something. ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said truthfully, and then she stopped abruptly, aware they were passing through large open gates set in a six-foot dry-stone wall which had appeared suddenly out of the thick cloud of snow in front of them. This must be the grounds of his home.

The car was travelling along a drive flanked by enormous oak trees, stark and beautiful in their winter mantle of feathery white, and she could just make out a house in the distance. A very large, very grand house. Marigold swallowed hard as Emma’s casual comment about the other dwelling in the valley came back to her—a manor house. And this was a manor house all right.

She glanced speculatively at Flynn under her eyelashes; the expensive and clearly nearly new vehicle, the thick, beautifully cut leather jacket she’d noticed slung in the back seat, the overall quality of his clothes suddenly making an impression on her buzzing senses. Her eyes moved to the large tanned hands on the steering wheel—was that a designer watch on one wrist? It was. A beauty. Oh, boy… Marigold stifled a groan. This guy was loaded.

A couple of enormous long-haired German shepherd dogs suddenly appeared from nowhere, barking madly and making Marigold jump. ‘Sorry, I should have warned you.’ Flynn was looking straight ahead but he must have noticed her involuntary movement. ‘That’s Jake and Max; they pretend to be guard dogs.’

‘Pretend?’ Marigold looked out of the window at the enormous faces with even more enormous teeth staring up at her, and shivered. ‘They’ve convinced me.’

Flynn turned and grinned at her as he brought the car to a halt, the dogs still leaping about the vehicle. ‘Don’t tell anyone but they sleep in front of the range in the kitchen,’ he said softly, ‘and they’re scared stiff of my housekeeper’s cats.’

Marigold managed a smile of her own but it was a weak one. Did he know what sort of effect the softening of the hard planes and angles of his face produced? she asked herself silently. It was dynamite. Sheer dynamite. ‘I…I’ve never had much to do with dogs,’ she said weakly.

And then his face changed. ‘I’d gathered that,’ he said shortly.

Now what had she said? Marigold stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m sorry…?’

‘It was made plain through the solicitors that any animals Maggie had were to be got rid of, but then you’re aware of that,’ Flynn said coldly, ‘aren’t you? Sold if anything could be got for them; put down if not. Of course, there weren’t too many buyers for a few scruffy chickens and an ancient cow, nor for her dog and cat.’

Oh, no. Emma hadn’t…

‘Don’t tell me that was something else your father kept from you?’ Flynn asked flatly, his eyes smoky dark now in the muted twilight.

‘I…I didn’t know.’

‘No?’ His eyes were holding hers and she couldn’t look away. ‘I don’t know if I believe that.’

Marigold had suddenly decided she didn’t like Emma’s family at all and was heartily wishing she hadn’t taken the cottage for Christmas, even if she was paying Emma well for the privilege. ‘I didn’t know,’ she repeated weakly, her tone unconvincing even to herself, but she was still thinking of poor Maggie’s pets.

He surveyed her for a moment more, and Marigold was just about to tell him everything—that she wasn’t Emma, that she had taken the cottage on impulse when it was offered and only knew the barest facts about Emma and her grandmother and the family—when he shrugged coolly. ‘It’s history now,’ he said evenly. ‘Let’s get you inside.’

As she watched him walk round the bonnet of the car the fate of the animals was lost in the panic that he was going to hold her again. She’d felt faintness wash over her a couple of times when she had hopped out to the car, the movement jarring her injured ankle unbearably, but right now that was preferable to being held next to that muscled body again. Being nestled close to his chest had caused a reaction inside she still couldn’t come to terms with.

She had never responded to a man’s body or presence like this before, not with Dean, not with anyone, and her brain was still reeling from the unwelcome knowledge that underneath the panic and alarm was forbidden pleasure. Pleasure and excitement.

She would tell him she could hop into the house, she decided as he came towards the door. It wasn’t quite the entrance she would have wished for, what with his housekeeper and her husband watching—not to mention the two dogs with their slavering jaws—but it couldn’t be helped. What did it matter about a little lost dignity or the dogs thinking her dangling leg was a new toy?

As it happened, Flynn didn’t give her the chance to make her feelings known one way or the other. The car door was pulled open and she was in his arms in the next moment and being carried towards the front door of the house, which was now open, the dogs gambolling about them and barking madly at this new game and Flynn swearing at them under his breath.

The lady who had opened the front door met them on the second step, her plump, plain face concerned as she said, ‘Oh, Mr Moreau, whatever’s happened?’

‘I’ll explain inside.’

And what an inside. As the warmth of the house hit Marigold, so did the opulence of the surroundings. The entrance hall was all wooden floors and expensive rugs and a wide, gracious staircase that went up and up into infinity, passing galleried landings as it did so.

However, she only had time for one bemused glance before she was carried into what was obviously the drawing room, and placed on a deep, soft sofa which had been pulled close to the blazing log fire. One arm had been round Flynn’s neck, and although he had held her quite impersonally every nerve in her body was vitally and painfully alive and for a crazy second—a ridiculous, insane second—she had wondered what he’d do if she’d tightened her hold on him and pulled his mouth down to hers. It had been enough to keep her as rigid as a plank of wood when he’d lowered her carefully onto the sofa.

‘This is Miss Jones, Bertha.’ Flynn turned to the housekeeper, who had been right behind them. ‘Maggie’s granddaughter. Her car broke down a mile or so from the cottage and she’s hurt her ankle. Take care of her, would you, while I find Wilf and tell him to go and take a look at the car? He can take John with him; I’d like them to get it back here if possible. And we’ve got a few spare electric heaters dotted about the place, haven’t we? They can take those and start warming the cottage. And get John to deliver a load of logs and a few sacks of coal tomorrow morning.’

‘Please, it’s not necessary…’ She had to tell them she wasn’t Emma. She didn’t know now why she hadn’t told Flynn before, except that it had suited something deep inside to let him make a fool of himself when he had been so obnoxious on the road at first. And then she’d felt backed into a corner somehow, and there had never seemed to be a suitable moment to confess the truth. But this was getting more embarrassing, more awful, by the minute.

Flynn was already walking towards the door when Marigold said urgently, ‘Mr Moreau? Please, I need to explain—’

‘First things first.’ He turned in the doorway, his face unsmiling and his voice cool. ‘I need to get Wilf and John along to the car before it’s completely dark, and you need that foot seen to. And the name’s Flynn, as I told you before.’

‘But you don’t understand…’ Her voice stopped abruptly. He had gone. Marigold looked up at the housekeeper, who was peering down at her over her apron, and said dazedly, ‘I need to talk to him.’

‘All in good time, lovey. You look like you’ve been in the wars, if I may say so. Now, let’s get your things off and then we’ll try and ease that boot off your poorly foot, all right? I’ll be as careful as I can but I reckon we might have a bit of a job with it if your ankle’s swollen.’

At least there was someone who didn’t think she was horrible, Marigold thought gratefully as she returned the older woman’s friendly smile. And after the last hour or so that felt wonderful.

In the event they had to cut the wellington boot off her foot, and when her ankle was displayed in all its glory the housekeeper drew the air in between her teeth in a soft hiss before saying, ‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. You’ve done a job on that, lovey.’

‘It will be all right.’ Nothing was going to keep Marigold in the house a second longer than was absolutely necessary. ‘Once it’s strapped up and after a good night’s rest I’ll be fine.’

The housekeeper shook her grey head doubtfully as she looked at the puffy red and blue flesh, and then bustled off to get two bowls of hot and cold water—‘to bring the bruise out’, she informed Marigold before she left.

Marigold thought it was coming out pretty well all on its own. She lay back on the sofa, her foot now propped on a leather pouffe, and shut her eyes, trying to ignore the sickening pain in her foot. What a pickle, she thought despairingly. She was an unwelcome guest in the home of a man who loathed her—or loathed the person he thought she was at least—and if she wasn’t careful she’d impose on him over Christmas. But she wouldn’t, no matter how her ankle was tomorrow, she promised herself fervently. She’d make sure she went to the cottage tomorrow if she had to crawl every inch of the way. But it was going to be a pretty miserable Christmas by the look of it. At least she’d had the foresight to call her parents from a big old-fashioned red phone box at the side of the road just after the pub, and let them know she was within a few miles of the cottage and that she was all right but that she wouldn’t be calling them again.

Once she’d got herself sorted at the cottage she could sit in front of the fire and read Christmas away while she nursed her ankle. There were people in much worse situations than she was in, and she had plenty of food in the car, and now she was going to have an excess of fuel by the sound of it. She’d pay him for the logs and coal, and his trouble, she thought firmly. If nothing else she could do that. And thank him. She twisted uncomfortably on the sofa, more with the realisation that she hadn’t even acknowledged his—albeit reluctant and grudging—kindness in offering her sanctuary for the night.

‘When Bertha said it was bad, she meant it was bad.’

Marigold’s eyes shot open as she jerked upright. Flynn had reappeared as quietly as a cat and was now standing surveying her through narrowed silver eyes. For a moment she thought he was going to be sympathetic or at least compliment her on her stoicism, but she was swiftly disabused of this pleasant notion when he continued, his tone irate, ‘What the hell were you thinking of, trying to walk on it once you’d hurt yourself so badly? Didn’t you realise you were making it a hundred times worse with each step, you stupid girl?’

‘Now, look—’ a moment ago she’d been feeling weak and pathetic; now there was fire running through her veins ‘—I didn’t know you were going to come along, did I? What was I supposed to do? Hobble back to the car and freeze to death or try and reach the cottage where there was—?’

‘Absolutely no heat or food,’ he cut in nastily. ‘And why didn’t you try phoning someone anyway? Anyone! The emergency services, for example. Do you have emergency insurance?’

‘Yes.’ It was a snap.

‘But you didn’t think of asking for help? It was easier to march off into the blizzard like Scott in the Antarctic?’

She bit hard on her lip. He was just going to love this! ‘I’d left my mobile at home,’ she admitted woodenly.

He said nothing at all to this—he didn’t have to. His face spoke volumes.