your hair the next day.’
‘Then neither of us is going to get what they want. Oh, boy, did you take a lot for granted! Even if I’d answered your advertisement, who’s to say I’d have wanted you when we met?’
Meryl’s answer was a smile. He’d asked the one question to which she knew the answer. He’d have wanted her, if she’d wanted him to. She knew that.
Jarvis read the smile without difficulty, as she’d intended, and felt a stirring of unease. Her confidence in herself as a woman was like a dark, unknown force. It had no place here, yet it seemed to confront him at every turn.
More troubling still was knowing that she was right to be confident. She should have been at a disadvantage but she’d mysteriously asserted herself with one silent gesture. Without the barrier of her money he’d have been almost uncontrollably attracted to her. And she knew it, confound her!
He spoke with difficulty. ‘A decent woman would cover herself.’
‘A decent man would have left my room by now.’
‘You’re very sure of the power of your money,’ he said slowly.
She smiled again. ‘Jarvis, it’s not my money that you’re looking at.’
‘But the money’s always there, as you well know. It’s behind everything you do. It gives you the arrogance to act as you please. One day you’ll come a cropper because of that arrogance. I just hope I’m there to see it.’
‘If you’re going to throw me out I don’t suppose you will be,’ Meryl retorted.
‘I’d almost marry you for the pleasure of seeing your face when you’ve got more trouble than you can cope with.’
Her eyes challenged him. ‘I’ve always been able to deal with trouble.’
‘Oh, yes, with an army of servants running around after you,’ he said grimly. ‘But you’re on your own here, with a man who doesn’t like you.’
‘But you want me,’ Meryl said softly.
‘Then it was even more stupid of you to put yourself at my mercy.’
‘Jarvis, understand me. I’ve never been at any man’s mercy, and I never will be.’
He didn’t answer, but stood there watching her, and suddenly her confidence began to slip away. This man knew how she looked naked. The memory was in his eyes, plus something else that made her realise she had her back to the fire, and her shape must show plainly through the thin material. Their battle had become a game, one that she’d thought she could easily play. But it was as he’d said. She’d walked alone into his domain with only her wits to help her. And perhaps they wouldn’t be enough.
‘I think you should go now,’ she said.
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Then perhaps it’s time I took myself to the Green Room,’ Meryl said decisively. The feeling of being at a disadvantage was unfamiliar, and hard to cope with. She moved past him, giving him as wide a berth as she could, but his hand shot out and grasped her bare arm.
‘Will you please let me go?’ she snapped.
‘I’d prefer not to.’
‘What about your honour as an English gentleman?’
His laugh had a dangerous edge that hadn’t been there before. ‘My what? My ancestors fought and subdued this countryside by force. What they wanted they took, and if the other side didn’t like it, they shrugged. I promise you, acting like a gentleman never came into it.’
Silence. She met his eyes, trying not to let him see how disturbed she was. Her heart was thumping with something that wasn’t fear but a kind of heady excitement.
At last he released her, very slowly, and stepped back. He was breathing hard, and she wondered if he could tell that her pulses were racing.
At the door he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder, not looking at her directly.
‘Tomorrow you leave,’ he said, and went out.
Meryl stood motionless, looking at the closed door, feeling him still there.
‘I don’t think so,’ she told Jarvis Larne’s image. ‘Not now, when I’m just starting to enjoy myself.’
She breakfasted alone next morning, Jarvis having already eaten and departed; to avoid her, she suspected.
She still had the feeling of his presence. It had been with her all night so that she’d awoken in the early hours to the mysterious conviction that he was there in the bed, holding her. Then she’d had to remind herself that he’d only held her arm, not encircled her body as she could feel him doing now, and as he would have liked to; she was certain of it.
It had begun as a demonstration of power, warning her to back off. But he was the one who’d backed off, because his own power had alarmed him. He’d been a whisper away from kissing her, but he hadn’t dared because he didn’t trust himself to stop.
She could have lured him into that kiss, but she too had retreated. Cold feet? Or just the instinct that said, Not here and now? But one day. Soon. And inevitably.
Her new wardrobe yielded up a pair of brilliant orange trousers and a loose shirt with a pattern of leaves. A scarf that matched the trousers exactly completed the set. She considered her battle attire with satisfaction.
Hannah evidently approved also, because when she served Meryl’s breakfast in the downstairs room she gave a brief nod of complicity.
‘You shouldn’t have put me in Lady Larne’s room,’ Meryl said. ‘He was none too pleased.’
‘Oh, him!’ Hannah snorted as though her employer’s opinion was no more than a minor irritant.
‘I think he feels I ought to move to the Green Room.’ Meryl’s tone invited conspiracy.
‘Well, maybe I’ll have time to shift your things this morning,’ Hannah said. ‘But I’m awfully busy.’
‘I wouldn’t want to disrupt your schedule.’
They understood each other.
‘Mr Ashton called to say he’ll pick you up in half an hour,’ Hannah added.
Meryl hurried her breakfast and was soon ready. As she left the morning room she became aware that the entire household was present. Most of the castle was closed for economy’s sake, but even the little that was open took a lot of work. Hannah kept it going with the help of a married couple, Seth and Annie, too old and slow to do very much, but whom Jarvis kept on because they had nowhere else to go.
They were all there, hovering in the hall or on the stairs. Eyes bored into Meryl as she appeared, then turned back to the open Library door, from behind which came the hum of voices.
‘Some of his lordship’s tenants have come to see him,’ Hannah muttered. ‘They’ve heard the news.’
‘What news?’
Hannah’s look spoke volumes. Meryl went closer to the door. She could see Jarvis standing there, facing what appeared to be a deputation of five men, one of whom, a burly individual, was speaking for the others.
‘My missus said it was the best news she’d heard for years,’ he was saying.
‘Hal, I don’t know exactly what you’ve heard-’ Jarvis said awkwardly.
‘Why, about this heiress who turned up in the storm-enough money to save us all, that’s what they’re saying. We all knew you would manage it, one way or another.’
‘Hal-’
‘There’s plenty who’ll sleep better tonight.’
‘Don’t take too much for granted,’ Jarvis said gently. ‘Nothing is settled.’
Another voice from the back of the group said, ‘We’ll just leave the details to you. Not another word until it’s sorted, eh?’
As they neared the door Meryl moved quickly back, but she wasn’t fast enough. They saw her, leaving her no choice but to come into the room. She tried not to meet Jarvis’s eyes, but she was intensely aware of him, tense with displeasure.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Lord Larne,’ she said, speaking more calmly than she felt.
The other five men regarded her as though she’d risen from the sea at that moment. She smiled back, and courtesy forced Jarvis’s hand.
‘Gentlemen, this is Miss Meryl Winters, my guest since she was stranded a couple of days ago.’
She shook five hands as the names washed over her. The men might have come out of the same mould. Their shapes varied but they were all middle-aged, roughly dressed, with hands that looked as though they worked hard.
