The Innocent's One-Night Confession

‘Zandor,’ she repeated under her breath in total incredulity. Zandor?

No, it couldn’t be. Not possibly. She was nervous so she’d misheard. That’s all it was.

‘I apologise, Grandmother. To you and my cousin’s beautiful friend. We must all take care that no harm comes to her.’

Not just the name, she thought dazedly. But the voice—low-pitched and tinged with that same note of faint amusement. Instantly and hideously recognisable. Shockingly, horribly unmistakable.

As, God help her, she must be to him.

She forced herself to look up and meet the gaze of the tall figure, dark against the setting sun, framed in the French windows.

The man from whose bedroom she’d fled all those months ago, leaving her with memories that had haunted her ever since.

And for the worst of all possible reasons.

CHAPTER TWO (#u1182604d-97a7-5b1e-81c1-8b32dca8d57d)

HE CLOSED THE French windows behind him with elaborate care and strolled forward, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, long-legged in close-fitting black pants, his matching shirt casually unbuttoned halfway to the waist, affording Alanna an unwanted view of his bronze chest, and an even more disturbing reminder that, when she’d left his bed at their previous encounter, he’d been wearing no clothes at all.

He said softly, ‘Perhaps we should properly introduce ourselves. I am Zandor.’ He paused. ‘Zandor Varga, and you are...?’

She produced a voice from somewhere. A husky travesty of her usual clear tones. ‘Alanna,’ she said, and swallowed. ‘Alanna Beckett.’

He nodded, those astonishing, never forgotten pale grey eyes studying her, hard as burnished steel.

‘It is a delight to meet you, Miss Beckett...’ He paused, and she swallowed, waiting for him to say ‘again’ and for the questions to begin.

His faint smile told her he had read her thoughts. He said silkily, ‘But then my cousin Gerard has always had exquisite taste.’ And turned away.

She felt limp with relief, but knew that was only transitory. That she was by no means off the hook.

And that the day which had started badly had just got a hundred—a thousand times worse.

She realised now that it hadn’t been her imagination playing tricks that day in Chelsea. That as the owner of the Bazaar Vert chain, he’d been visiting the King’s Road branch and must have just left when she caught that brief but dangerous glimpse of him. And that Gerard had been seeing him off the premises when he came to her rescue.

It was also apparent, from Gerard’s passing remarks and his aunt’s irritable comment about last minute changes, that Zandor had indeed not been expected at the birthday celebrations.

Oh, God, she thought, panic clawing at her. If only he’d stayed away...

And wondered why he’d changed his mind.

But even so, they’d have been bound to meet eventually, that is if she went on seeing Gerard. And how could she—under the circumstances? When that night with Zandor would always be there, a time bomb lethally ticking its way down to disaster.

Because the way he’d looked at her had told her quite plainly that he was not simply going to let bygones be bygones.

Presumably her hasty and unheralded departure had offended his masculine pride. That he was usually the one to walk away. Well, tough. She owed him nothing, as she would make clear when the time inevitably came.

However, Mrs Harrington could not have detected anything amiss in the recent exchange as her lilting tones had reverted to the subject of books.

‘Middlemarch, now,’ she was saying. ‘Did you ever read that? A wonderful book, but what a fool young Dorothea to be marrying that dried-up stick of a man. And then leaping out of the frying pan into the fire with the other fellow.’ She snorted. ‘A ne’er do well, if ever there was one. And what in the world is it that draws a decent girl to the likes of them?’

Somehow, Alanna managed a smile. ‘I’ve no idea. But it’s still a great novel.’

As I told your grandson who bought it for you around this time last year...

She was grateful when they were interrupted by Mrs Healey.

‘Isn’t it time we all got ready for dinner, Mama? I know we’re not actually dressing tonight, but I’m sure Miss Becket, for one, would like to tidy herself,’ she added with a look suggesting that Alanna had recently been dragged through a hedge backwards. ‘Joanne can show her to her room.’

Alanna found her hand being patted. ‘I have to let you go, dear girl,’ said Niamh Harrington. ‘But there’ll be plenty of time for another grand chat.’

Joanne turned out to be the blonde who’d been sitting beside her grandmother, not just pretty but clearly disposed to be friendly.

‘Rather you than me for the cosy chats,’ she confided as they went upstairs. ‘Grandam has a way of asking questions when she already knows the answers. But that won’t happen with you.’

Oh, God, I hope not, thought Alanna, her heart sinking.

‘And you know about literature,’ Joanne went on. ‘It’s as much as I can do to get through Hello! in the hairdresser’s, and Kate’s as bad, although she can use Mark and the baby as an excuse for being too busy to read.’

At the top of the impressive stone staircase, she turned left. ‘We’re down here—spinsters’ alley, I suppose, although you don’t really qualify as you and Gerard are an item.’

‘It’s a bit early to call it that,’ Alanna said carefully. ‘We’ve only been going out together for a few weeks.’

‘But he’s brought you here. Exposed you to the entire Harrington onslaught.’ Joanne giggled, naughtily. ‘I bet Grandam gave you the full once-over, checking for childbearing hips. Her father owned a stud farm in Tipperary, and she practically claims to be descended from Brian Boru, so she’ll want to know all about your family—suitable blood lines and all that. No dodgy branches on the family tree.’

Alanna gasped. ‘You are joking.’

‘Not altogether.’ Joanne pulled a face. ‘She does take the whole thing horribly seriously, and I’ve never had a boyfriend I’ve dared bring here in case he turns out to be spavined or sway-backed or something equally ghastly.’

She opened a door. ‘Well, this is you. I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ she added dubiously. ‘The bathroom’s between us. It’s only small, because it used to be a powdering room for people’s wigs, but the water’s always boiling, and there’s a door into the bedrooms on each side which we can bolt, so no need to sing loudly during occupancy.’

She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll be back to collect you in forty minutes. Will that do?’

Alanna could only nod.

Left alone, she sank down on to the edge of a rather hard mattress on a three-quarter-size bed, and looked around her. It was an old-fashioned room with a narrow window, and made even darker by cumbersome furniture dating from the beginning of the previous century, and wallpaper covered in flamboyant cabbage roses in a shade of pink Nature had overlooked.

Her bag had been placed on the foot of the bed, so she unfastened it and extracted tomorrow evening’s dress, removing its tissue paper wrapping before hanging it in the cavernous wardrobe.

Joanne, she decided, was undoubtedly indiscreet as well as cheerful, and she would probably need to be on her guard. But the other girl could be a valuable source of information and a few casual questions could do no harm.

Because it was clear that Niamh Harrington’s other grandson, whose arrival for her birthday party had caused such a disturbance to the arrangements as well as destroying her own peace of mind, was also something of an outsider.

Her first instinct was, once again, to run. To invent some work-related emergency involving an imperative summons back to London. But that would, quite correctly, lead Zandor Varga to suppose she was scared of him, and what was left of her pride forbade it.

Besides, the Harrington family en masse now seemed more of an advantage than a problem. By the time she’d done the rounds and met them all, it should be perfectly possible to lose herself among them, thus avoiding any further contact with Zandor.

And, of course, Gerard would be her shield too, she told herself, wondering why that was an afterthought.