Man Of Stone

Man Of Stone
PENNY JORDAN

Could she ever prove her innocence? After her father's death, Sara Rodney thought she'd finally be safe at her grandmother's country home outside London. That was before she was forced to marry Luke Gallagher, almost a total stranger.Cressy, Sara's selfish stepsister, had filled Luke's head with lies, and now he believed Sara to be a despicable fortune hunter. There was no way to change his mind. But Luke's hatred was only part of the trouble.For despite her efforts to the contrary, Sara found herself falling in love with her new husband.

Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Man of Stone

Penny Jordan

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

Table of Contents

Cover (#u7341ca24-b4b6-56e1-87d9-342706148228)

Concept Page (#u3d5fe6b1-9168-560c-8eeb-f78a43819d99)

About the Author (#ub693166f-03c9-5560-b666-7d28fbf29297)

Title Page (#uaf093bdf-b8dd-5f12-a789-87ab5efbcb58)

Chapter One (#ulink_4391f188-574a-5ab8-9190-0909e4df8397)

Chapter Two (#ulink_dab47127-d356-597f-bb5b-845bef910b9b)

Chapter Three (#ulink_39864f18-66bf-586c-83b6-7bee9ce0f984)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

End Page (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_d9ecf89a-bd4b-5edd-948a-0d58a331da42)

‘SO THERE’S NO money, then; no money, no house, no anything.’

Her stepsister’s light voice had hardened fractionally, and Sara winced as she looked up and saw a matching hardening in Cressy’s pale blue eyes.

This was so difficult for Cressy, she acknowledged painfully. She herself had been more prepared. Her father had warned her only a few months ago about the precariousness of his financial position.

Once a fashionable and sought-after painter, he had no illusions about himself or his talent. In the days when he had commanded large sums for his paintings, he had spent lavishly. Now those days were gone, and it seemed that even the Chelsea house had not actually been owned by him, but was on a lease from someone else.

With his death that lease was cancelled, which meant… Which meant that from the end of the month they would all three of them be homeless, Sara recognised bleakly.

For herself, she could perhaps have managed. Although she had always been the one to run the house, to do her father’s books and take charge of the household, she had had a secretarial training that, with a little polishing, could equip her to earn her own living. But there were other things to be taken into consideration.

‘So what are you going to do about Tom?’ Cressy asked her in a hard voice. ‘There’s no way I can take charge of him, and he won’t be able to stay on at school. There won’t be any money for private school fees now.’

Tom, the eight-year-old half-brother born of the marriage between her father and Cressy’s mother. Tom, with his delicate constitution and his tendency towards asthma attacks. Tom, who, she had known since they first gave her the news of the accident, would be her responsibility.

It was pointless wishing that Cressy was different; Cressy was Cressy.

She looked across the kitchen at her beautiful stepsister and sighed.

‘I never understood why on earth my mother married your father,’ Cressy complained. ‘Mother was so beautiful. She could have married anyone.’

By anyone, Cressy meant a man with money, and Sara neglected to point out that when they had first married her father had been comparatively wealthy. Instead, she said softly, ‘They were in love, Cressy.’

‘Oh, love…’ She tossed her head, making shimmering beams of light dance off the carefully lightened curls. ‘Who cares about that? When I marry, it will be to a wealthy man. You’ll have to take charge of Tom, of course.’

Sara didn’t question her abruptness, nor the hard determination in her voice. She knew Cressy too well. Others were so easily deceived by Cressy’s sugar-sweet façade, she thought sadly. They saw the blonde hair and the blue eyes, the fragile bone structure and the deliciously curved body, and they didn’t look any further.

It wasn’t that she was jealous. Well, at least, not totally, she admitted painfully, unable to deny that it would have been rather nice to look as femininely precious as Cressy. She felt that she was plain in comparison, five foot four, with hair the colour of polished hazelnuts when the sun shone on it, and at other times a rather dull brown. Likewise, her eyes reflected the chameleon quality of her personality, green one moment, hazel another.

She was a quiet, rather shy girl, used to effacing herself, used to standing in the shadow of her far more self-assured stepsister, even though Cressy was her junior by two years.

Cressy’s father had been an actor, and Cressy was determined to follow in his footsteps. She had just left drama school, and had actually been cast in a very minor role in a West End play.

They had all gone to see it. Even Tom, who had been home from the private boarding-school he attended in Berkshire. Cressy had been very good. Her father had been very proud of her, Sara remembered with a faint tinge of loneliness.

There were times when she had thought that her father wished that Cressy had been his daughter, rather than herself. She took after her mother, apparently, but she had no real way of knowing if this was true, because Lucy Rodney had died when Sara was born.