Mistress And Mother

‘Don’t embarrass me, Molly. I have no time for anyone who tries to rip me off,’ he informed her flatly. ‘Nigel used that loan as if it was his personal piggybank and still contrived to run up debts everywhere. If his problems had resulted from any other cause, I might have rescheduled the loan, but only a fool throws good money after bad...and I am not a fool.’

Having absorbed that intimidating tone of absolute finality, Molly wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Sholto had just laid her down and walked over her as if she were a carpet for his arrogant feet; she felt as if he had. Intense mortification filled her. His detachment was somehow horribly humiliating. They might never have had a relationship. He seemed to have wiped it out of his mind as if it had never been.

He had realised their mistake before the ink was dry on the marriage licence. Desperate to hit back in any way she could, she had tried to divorce him for adultery. Instead she had found herself having an annulment forced on her because their marriage had not been consummated. The tabloid newspapers had had an ecstatic field day with that titillating revelation. SHOLTO DITCHES FRIGID BRIDE, had run one unforgettable headline. His lawyers had chewed her up and spat out her self-esteem in so many battered pieces.

‘When did you get engaged?’ Sholto demanded now with startling abruptness.

Like a woman in a dream, Molly glanced down at the tiny solitaire still so new and fresh to her finger. It had belonged to Donald’s mother. ‘See how you like the feel of it,’ Donald had suggested wryly, neither romance nor passion having the slightest thing to do with their friendship. But at this moment, quite unbearably, she was recalling another opulent emerald and diamond engagement ring, the one which Sholto had given her, and the feelings she had had then...her wild excitement, the joy, the sheer floodtide of love. Her stomach lurching sickly at the memory, she stood up.

‘Where do I sleep?’ she asked baldly.

The silence lay as thick and heavy as the blanket of snow outside.

‘Door facing you at the top of the stairs,’ Sholto responded in a voice as polished and smooth as silk.

She reached the door.

‘Who is he, your fiancé?’ he murmured intently.

She didn’t turn her head. ‘You met him once but you probably won’t remember him. Donald Seaton.’

‘Your stepfather’s curate?’ Sholto gritted in a tone of explosive incredulity.

‘I’ve known him a long time and he’s a very special person,’ Molly retorted, stiff with resentment and bitter chagrin. ‘Goodnight, Sholto. I’ll sort out something about the car first thing in the morning. It’s not damaged but I may need a tow to get it back on the road.’

‘Dio...you’re planning to marry a guy you used to call Donald Duck?’

Molly yanked the door shut so fast, it closed with a resounding slam. Donald... He’d been out when she’d tried to ring him earlier. She should phone him to tell him where she was. She glanced round the hall. There was no sign of the telephone she recalled. She checked the sitting room and then hovered uneasily outside the study door again. Taking a deep breath and resisting the temptation to knock, she opened it.

Sholto swung round, shimmering dark eyes alighting on her in a look as shockingly physical as a ringing slap across the face. ‘Dio mio...what now?’

Molly was as taken aback by his temper as by his sudden rudeness. ‘I was looking for the phone.’

‘Freddy had it disconnected when he went into hospital.’

‘Could I use your mobile?’

Sholto expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘Who do you have to call?’

‘Donald.’

Sholto’s hand froze halfway towards the mobile phone lying on the desk and then, with a soft, oddly chilling laugh, he grabbed it up and tossed it carelessly into her hands. ‘Be my guest,’ he said without any expression at all, and strode out of the room.

Donald answered the phone only after it had rung a dozen times. Molly told him where she was and what had happened. He made soothing sounds.

‘Sholto’s here too!’ The admission exploded out of her with quite unnecessary force.

‘I’m glad to hear that you’re not up there alone in this weather,’ Donald admitted after a brief pause for thought. ‘And I imagine a man who’s been up Everest can take some snow in his stride! I expect he’ll help you with your car too.’

Molly’s teeth clenched. ‘Somehow I don’t see Sholto digging out my car, Donald. Don’t you think you’re being just a little insensitive?’ Her strained voice shook.

‘I wish you hadn’t asked that question, Molly. I also wish you didn’t sound so upset.’ Donald sighed. ‘It’s an overreaction after this length of time. You would be far better occupied mending fences with Sholto.’

‘Mending fences?’ Molly echoed shrilly.

‘Infinitely wiser than continuing to brood and hold spite,’ Donald told her with characteristic candour. ‘Leave the past where it belongs, Molly. You’ll feel a whole lot better if you do, and if you were to make a special effort to forgive Sholto...’

Molly clamped a hand across her mouth like a gag, not trusting herself to speak.

‘I expect the concept fills you with horror but I honestly believe that that act of forgiveness would resolve much of what you’re feeling right now,’ Donald continued with determination. ‘Take that extra step, Molly. Ultimately it will bring you the peace of mind you need.’

For the first time ever, Donald had let her down. He did not, could not comprehend the torment she was in! To be faced with Sholto again, to be slaughtered by his galling, inhuman indifference—it was ripping her apart. Anger, contempt, hostility she could’ve borne far more easily—but not his lack of response, which suggested she had been a mere inconvenient hiccup in his life, an aberration swiftly forgotten when he had taken her heart, broken it and somehow held the remains ever since. Poor, foolish, pathetic Molly still hopelessly, obsessively hooked on a male who had branded her with a craving and a need that she still fought with every breath that she drew!

In her flying exit from the study, she almost tripped over Sholto. ‘Here!’ she gasped, shoving the mobile phone at him in feverish rejection and then pounding up the stairs two at a time before he could see the tears of rage and self-loathing in her eyes.

CHAPTER TWO

IN A tempest of stormy emotion, Molly switched on the lamp beside the massive Victorian double bed. The bed looked like a ship forcibly squeezed into a too small bottle. The carved mahogany headboard stopped only a foot short of the ceiling and the bed itself was so high, she suspected it enjoyed the benefit of more than one mattress.

A snug little fire glowed in the cast-iron grate on the facing wall. She frowned in surprise, only then noticing the suitcase sitting below the window. How very kind of Sholto to give her the room he had clearly planned to occupy himself! So considerate, so incredibly decent all of a sudden!

Snatching up the case with a shaking hand, she plonked it out on the landing. Forgive him? She tore at the jeans, wrenched at the sweater and then slowly, painfully dug her fingers into the garment, bringing it up to her face and breathing in deep. The elusive scent of him engulfed her like a dangerously addictive drug and, hating herself and hating him for being able to exert that evocative power over her even after so long, she flung the sweater aside, horribly ashamed of her lack of control.

Naturally Donald was not worried about her being alone here with Sholto. Sholto might have an exceedingly dangerous reputation with women but Donald and indeed the whole world knew that the one woman Sholto Cristaldi had cheerfully contrived to keep his lustful hands off was Molly! Even when she and Sholto had been engaged he had not made one single serious attempt at seduction.

Deeply humiliated by that awareness, Molly climbed naked into the big bed. She sank into what felt like layer upon layer of feathers. To think that all those years ago she had actually been grateful for what she’d naively seen as Sholto’s respectful restraint! But Sholto simply hadn’t wanted her enough. And it was also possible, although she cringed at the same suspicion, that all the time he had had another far more satisfying outlet for his sexual needs.

She heard light steps on the stairs, the soft thud of the bathroom door and then she dug her head frantically under the pillow, muffling her ears with two determined hands. Temptation pulled at her and she resisted it. Donald was right. How could she ever go forward if she couldn’t overcome this pitiful fascination with a male who had long since given his heart to another woman? And that woman might not be his wife, she might indeed not even be his lover, but she still held Sholto more securely than any prison bars of steel.

Molly reared up with a startled squawk as the bedding she had wrapped around her was suddenly wrenched sideways and redistributed. The bedside lamp was on again and momentarily she was blinded by the light. ‘What on earth...?’

Her soft mouth fell open as her vision slowly cleared. Sholto reclined like an indolent tiger against the backdrop of the pillows beside her own. The soft glow of the lamp gleamed over wide brown shoulders and powerful pectoral muscles hazed with curling black hair. Something clenched low in her stomach and all of a sudden she felt like someone hurtling down in a runaway lift, made utterly helpless by disbelief and paralysis.

‘This is the only bed in the house,’ Sholto said softly.

‘It...it can’t be,’ Molly whispered weakly.

‘Freddy had a horror of visitors who might expect to stay overnight. The other bedroom has not a single stick of furniture,’ Sholto informed her, stretching with a long, languorous shifting of limbs. ‘Downstairs there are several hard wooden chairs. On a night as cold as this, I am not prepared to sit up until dawn in any one of them.’

Belatedly becoming conscious that she was exposing a rather bountiful amount of bosom. Molly snatched the linen sheet all the way to her shoulders. ‘You’re not sharing this bed with me!’

An ebony brow climbed. ‘Now why is it that I am experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu?’

Thoroughly unnerved by that leading question, Molly felt the burn as a slow, painful flush of appalled comprehension crawled up her throat.

‘Sì...I have it now...the wedding night we never had,’ Sholto supplied for himself in the same considering tone from which any hint of emotion had been ruthlessly erased. ‘All those weeks and weeks of anticipation and then? Nothing...Something of an anticlimax, cara.’

Molly’s heart sank like a concrete block inside her. In an involuntary flash she recalled that night, his murderously quiet but cold fury when she had tried to lock him out of the bedroom, her hysterical anger and tears. In a sharp, defensive movement, she turned her head away, fiercely burying the memory deep and shutting it back out of her mind again.