Just For A Night

IT WAS raining outside—a light drizzle more like a mist than real rain. And it was freezing, by Marina’s standards. After all, it was supposedly summer over here, unlike the actually warmer winter she’d left behind in Sydney. Of course it was still very early in the morning. Just going on six. The plane had landed in the dark, not long after five.

Still…

Marina thought of the clothes she’d brought and wondered if they’d do.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lord Winterborne said when she glanced up at the sky. ‘We have good heating inside. August can be like this. Very unpredictable. It will probably be fine and warm tomorrow. Ahh, here’s William with the car.’

A large and stately-looking dark green saloon pulled into the kerb with a properly uniformed chauffeur behind the wheel. He looked about fifty, with a full, florid face and a few too many pounds around his stomach.

‘Don’t get out, William,’ his employer called out, on opening the back door. ‘Just hand me the keys and I’ll put the luggage in the boot. This is Marina, by the way, all the way from Sydney, Australia.’

‘How do you do, miss?’ the chauffeur said, lifting his cap in greeting as she climbed in and settled in the most comfy brown leather seat.

They exchanged a smile in the rear-vision mirror. ‘His Lordship was over the moon when he found out you were coming, miss. It’s ever so good of you to do what you’re doing.’

‘That’s nice of you to say so, but I’m only doing what anybody would do, under the circumstances.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that at all.’

‘What wouldn’t you say, William?’ the man himself asked, on joining them and handing back the keys.

‘That not everyone would do what this pretty lady is doing for Rebecca. Or come this far to do it.’

‘You’re quite right. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Straight to the apartment, William.’

‘Very good, My Lord.’

His Lordship stayed well over on his side of the roomy back seat, Marina noted, which was a relief. There was something about being confined in a car with him which was even more disturbing than ogling him from behind, or conjuring up erotic little scenarios in her head. Their enclosed closeness meant she could not only see him. She could smell him.

No matter how often Shane showered he still smelt slightly of sweat and horses. This man smelt of something very expensive. An exotic, spicy scent which teased the nostrils and made you think of crisp clean air and pines covered in snow, of cool white sheets and freshly washed bodies and…

Oh, my God, I’m doing it again!

Marina wrenched her mind back from the abyss, turning her head away from the inspiration of her erotic thoughts and that damned cologne he was wearing. She stared out at the suburban London street and the rows of identical houses, and tried to pull herself together.

‘You mentioned your mother died of cancer…’

Darn it, he was speaking to her. She would have to turn her head back and look at him.

She did so. Slowly. Nonchalantly. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said, and their eyes met. He really did have riveting eyes, she thought. The blue was as intense as their expression.

‘Was it leukaemia?’ he asked.

‘No. She died from skin cancer. A couple of months back. Melanoma. It took her fairly quickly after it was diagnosed. Though it’s never quick enough, is it?’ she added, her heart contracting at the thought of her mother’s suffering.

‘And your father? How is he coping?’

‘My father died when I was just a baby. A horse he was breaking in threw him into a fence. Snapped his neck. That’s why I have no brothers or sisters.’

‘Your poor mother.’

‘Oh, Mum coped. Mum always coped. She was very strong. Very brave.’

‘Her daughter takes after her.’

Marina shook her head. ‘I wish I did. But let’s not talk about me. I want you to tell me about Rebecca and her background.’

‘What would you like to know?’

‘Oh…everything, I guess.’ She was very curious about the child, plus how she came to have such a young great-uncle.

‘It’s only a half-hour drive to Mayfair at this time of day,’ he said a touch ruefully. ‘I doubt I can fit the Winterborne saga into such a short space of time. But I’ll try. Though I’ll keep it down to the relevant details and leave whatever family skeletons I can in the closet. I want you to think well of us.’

‘I already think well of you,’ she said, before she could bite the words back.

But it was true. Aside from the unfortunate physical attraction, she did think well of him. This was no selfish man sitting across from her. A selfish man would not have personally taken himself in to Heathrow airport at five in the morning. A selfish man would not have given a hoot if his chauffeur had arthritis. A selfish man would not love a little girl as he obviously loved his great-niece.

His smile was ironic. ‘You don’t really know me, Marina.’

She shrugged. ‘A man is known by his actions.’

He nodded slowly up and down. ‘I’ll try to remember that. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Rebecca…’

Marina soon realised she could listen to the Earl of Winterborne talk all day. He had a wonderfully rich voice. And perfect vowels. She would never have imagined perfect vowels could fascinate her, but they did. The whole man fascinated her, if she was truthful. As did his story…

It turned out that James had not been born to be the earl of Winterborne. That honour had gone to his brother, Laurence, who was an amazing twenty years his elder.

This Laurence had apparently been a bit of a wild one, given to gambling and living the high life. Unfortunately, his father, the Earl, had dropped dead of a coronary soon after his elder son turned twenty-one, so Laurence had inherited the title at a young age.

Admittedly, Laurence had startled everyone by marrying almost immediately, but any hope that marriage would settle him down and make him face the responsibilities associated with his title, plus running the family estate, had soon evaporated—mostly due to his choice of wife.

Joy was the youngest daughter in a family of four daughters, all of them renowned for their wildly ambitious and social-climbing natures. With the high-flying Joy by his side, Laurence’s life had been even more flamboyant and extravagant than ever. They’d gambled together, travelled abroad, skied, shopped and partied. They’d hardly ever been at Winterborne Hall, which was a relief to Laurence’s mother, who was still grieving for her husband while trying to bring up a young son at the age of forty-five.

The birth of a daughter, Estelle, two years after their wedding, had done nothing to change the jet-setting lifestyle of Lord and Lady Winterborne. They’d merely installed their new-born baby at Winterborne Hall with a nanny and taken off again.

Because of their closeness in age, Estelle had been more like a little sister to James than a niece, and although he and his mother had done their best to fill the gaps of love in the child’s life Estelle had grown up feeling neglected and abandoned by her parents. She’d always imagined it would have been different if she’d been a boy, and heir to the title, but James doubted it. His brother didn’t give a fig about what happened to the title after he was gone.

Estelle had eventually left home and begun taking drugs, then, after her parents cut off her allowance, had paid for her habit through selling herself on the streets.

By this time James had been at university, at Cambridge, and Estelle would occasionally contact him when she was desperate for money. He would try to talk some sense into her but to no avail. It had only been when she’d fallen pregnant a few years later—father unknown—that he was able to talk her into going home.

She had, and, with her grandmother’s help, had stayed drug-free till she’d given birth to her daughter, Rebecca. Less than a month later, however, she had died of an overdose of heroin. She was twenty-five—two years younger than her uncle James.

Rebecca’s grandparents, who’d still been leading self-indulgent lives, had been no more interested in their granddaughter’s well-being than they had in their own daughter’s. A nanny had been hired and that was that. Unfortunately, when Rebecca was only one year old, her great-grandmother had passed away, and, with James leading his own life in London by then, little Rebecca had seemed doomed to grow up even more lonely and neglected than her own mother.

Fate had stepped in, however, when her grandparents were killed on the ski-slopes of Switzerland during an avalanche two years back, making James the new Earl of Winterborne. He’d taken over the reins at Winterborne Hall, plus the guardianship of his then five-year-old great-niece, and had just brought some real love and happiness into the poor tot’s life when she’d been diagnosed with leukaemia.

Her existence over the last couple of years had consisted of nothing but doing the rounds of specialists, stays in hospitals, chemotherapy and sheer misery.