she added, her mouth twisting. 'Have you warned your wife she may
shortly be homeless? Not to mention Dad, of course.'
Simon looked at her uneasily. 'Why should it come to that?'
'Because—to quote the words from his letter of today's date—Mr
Blackstone wishes to meet you to discuss the extent of your liabilities
to him.' She was silent for a moment, then said abruptly, 'He's closing
in for the kill, Si. He means to finish what his father and grandfather
began. The old man swore he'd see our family on its knees when
Grandpa fired him, and turned him out of his cottage all those years
ago. Cal Blackstone means to fulfil that pledge.' She shook her head.
'It's as well I came back when I did. I would have hated to return and
find all my clothes and other possessions dumped outside on the lawn
by the present Mrs Blackstone.' She paused again. 'I presume there is
one by now?'
'No one official,' Simon said moodily. 'He's apparently still quite
happy to play the field, lucky bastard.'
Joanna bit her lip. She had only been at home for a week, but it was
already clear to her that Fiona was not enjoying her pregnancy, and
resentment of her condition was making her querulous and
demanding. Joanna, torn between the amusement and irritation which
her blonde, brainless sister-in-law usually aroused in her, had decided
immediately that the prudent course would be to leave the couple to
paddle their own rather shaky canoe in privacy.
She had just made arrangements to view a cottage which had come on
to the market in the neighbouring valley when Simon had dropped his
bombshell about Cal Blackstone's loan.
Blind instinct told her to proceed with her own plans. To walk away
from Simon and the mess he'd created, and let him sort it out for
himself, while she began to rebuild her life at a safe distance from
Chalfont House, the mill, and everything and everyone concerned
with it.
But it wasn't as simple as that. Simon had been hard hit by Cecilia's
death, and although Joanna was four years his junior she'd learned, in
its aftermath, to mother him with almost fierce protectiveness. She
couldn't simply abandon him to his fate now.
The dizzy Fiona would be no help, she thought ruefully, totally
preoccupied as she was by nausea and vague aches and pains all over
her body. And Joanna was still a partner in the Craft Company,
although admittedly she'd taken little active part in the running of the
business since her marriage.
She had forgotten Simon's propensity for taking the easy way out of
any difficulty, she thought, with an inward sigh. 'So when are you
planning to see him?' she asked quietly.
'He's coming here tomorrow afternoon.'
'Here?' Joanna stared at him, appalled. 'Why not at the Craft
Company?'
Simon shrugged, his expression pettish. 'It wasn't my choice. When I
telephoned him, his secretary simply gave me the appointment. There
was no consultation about it. She just told me what time he'd be
arriving.'
'I can believe it,' Joanna said grimly.
It was the first time a Blackstone had ever set foot in Chalfont House,
she realised with a sense of shock. And, if there was anything she
could do, it would also be the last.
She said, 'We'll have to try and fend him off, Simon.'
'How?'
Joanna considered for a minute. 'Well—Martin left me some money,
not all that much, admittedly, but it's a start, and there's the
commission Aunt Vinnie paid me at the gallery. I saved most of it. If
we can keep him at bay for a few weeks with that, we might be able to
raise the rest of the capital elsewhere.'
'Do you think I haven't tried?' He shook his head. 'I've done
everything I can think of. I tell you, Jo, it's hopeless.'
'No!' Joanna said fiercely. 'There is hope—there's got to be. He's not
going to take everything away from us.'
'Perhaps he doesn't want to,' Simon suggested hopefully. 'You are
rather taking his intentions for granted, you know. Condemning him
without a hearing.'
Joanna gave him a level look. 'I have no illusions about Cal
Blackstone, or his intentions.' She glanced at her watch. 'Isn't it time
you were getting off to the workshop?'
'Hell, yes. But I'd better pop up and see Fiona first. She didn't have a
particularly good night.'
Poor old Si, Joanna thought as her brother left the room, his brow
furrowed with anxiety. Fiona's vagaries were just one more problem
for him to worry over. Troubles never seemed to come singly these
days.
She moved over to the sofa and plumped up the cushions which
Simon had crushed. As she straightened, she looked up at the big
portrait of Jonas Chalfont which hung over the ornate mantelpiece. A
harsh face looked down at her, its expression arrogant and
dominating, thick grey brows drawn together over his beak of a nose.
She took a breath. The portrait had been painted in her grandfather's
heyday, when the Chalfont family were a force to be reckoned with in
the Yorkshire woollen industry. Master of all he surveyed, she
thought wryly, studying the sitter's proud stance.
It had been soon after the portrait had been finished, however, that
Jonas had sacked Callum Blackstone following a violent argument,
and evicted him and his small son from their tied cottage. Holding the
frightened child in his arms, as bailiffs dumped their possessions into
the street, Callum had publicly sworn revenge.
'As you've taken from me, Jonas Chalfont, I'll take from you,' he'd
declared, standing bareheaded in the rain. 'Aye, by God, down to
every last stick and stone!'
And nothing's gone right for us since, Joanna thought wearily. Oh,
Grandfather, you didn't know what you were starting.
Know your enemy, had been one of Jonas's favourite maxims, but he
had totally underestimated his former overlooker's sheer force of will
and determination to succeed. Just as Simon had failed to assess Cal
Blackstone's deviousness of purpose in offering to help the Craft
Company financially.
But then Si had never taken the family feud too seriously anyway,
Joanna recalled.
'Isn't it time we started to live and let live?' he'd demanded angrily
when Joanna had flatly refused to attend a dinner party to which Cal
Blackstone had also been invited.
'Not as far as I'm concerned,' Joanna had returned with a toss of her
tawny hair. 'If people invite that man, they needn't bother to ask me as
well.'
But, as she'd grown up, she'd found it was well- nigh impossible to
avoid Cal completely. The Chalfonts were no longer the powerful
social mentors they'd once been, and Cal, single, wealthy and darkly
attractive, was a welcome visitor to every household in the area
except theirs.
Joanna had found to her exasperation that to keep out of Cal
Blackstone's way entirely was to risk social isolation. More and more
she'd found herself running into him at point-to-points, parties and
charity functions. To her annoyance, she'd actually been introduced
to him a number of times by a series of well- meaning people who
clearly shared Simon's view that it was time a truce was called in this
family war.
But none of these people had been hounded and cheated by the
Blackstones, Joanna thought violently. To them, Cal Blackstone was
simply a charming young man, if a trifle sardonic, who drove a series
of fast cars, dated all the most attractive girls in the West Riding, and
could always be relied on for a hefty donation to any good cause. No
one cared any more about past rights or wrongs, it seemed.
And once she and Cal Blackstone had been formally introduced, he
took pains to remind her of the fact by seeking her out to greet her at
every encounter. In fact, Joanna decided, he took an unpleasant
delight in forcing himself on her notice, engaging her in conversation,
and even inviting her to dance.
And the fact that she had ignored all his overtures and was never
anything but icily civil in return seemed only to amuse him.
If she continued to keep him rigidly at a distance, eventually he would
get tired of his cat-and-mouse games with her, she'd assured herself.
But she'd been wrong about that—totally wrong. Which was why she
knew, none better, just what Cal Blackstone's real motives were, and
exactly what he had planned for the remaining members of the
Chalfont family.
She shivered, wrapping her arms defensively across her body, as she
made herself relive once more in nerve-aching detail that rain-washed
autumn afternoon on the high moor road above Northwaite when
she'd discovered for herself how ruthless, how relentless an enemy he
was...
'Damnation!' Joanna stared down at the offside wheel of her Mini, her
heart sinking. 'Of all times to get a flat tyre!' she muttered to herself,
as she went to find the jack.
The rain was sweeping in sheets across the Northwaite valley below,
and the hills were dankly shrouded in low cloud and mist.
By the time she'd fetched the jack, and squatted uncomfortably in the
road beside the car, the rain had plastered her tawny blonde hair to her
skull, and droplets of water were running down her forehead into her
eyes, so that she had to pause every few seconds and brush them
away.
She'd never had to change a tyre before, and she realised, to her
shame, that she only had the haziest idea of how to go about it.
Watching other people was not the same as personal experience, she
decided wretchedly, as the jack stubbornly refused to cooperate with
her efforts to fix it in place.
Send me someone to help this time, she bargained silently with her
guardian angel, and I promise I'll sign on, for a course in car
maintenance this winter.
The thought had barely formed in her mind when the sleek grey
Jaguar materialised silently out of the mist and slid to a halt behind
her. She looked round eagerly, planning some self-deprecating,
humorous remark about her predicament. Then the relieved smile
died on her lips as she realised her rescuer's identity.
'Having trouble?' Cal Blackstone asked pleasantly, as he emerged
from the driver's seat, shrugging on a waterproof jacket.
'I can manage, thanlcs,' Joanna said shortly. It occurred to her that her
guardian angel must have a totally misplaced sense of humour.
'Then this must be a new method of wheel-changing of your own
devising,' he said urbanely, folding his arms across his chest, and
draping his tall, lean, elegant length against his own vehicle. 'How
fascinating! I hope you'll allow me to watch.'
Apart from striking him down with a convenient boulder, or even the
recalcitrant jack, Joanna could see no method of preventing him.
Seething, she gritted her teeth and soldiered on. It was raining harder
than ever now, and the damp was beginning to penetrate right through
her layers of clothing to her skin, making her feel clammy and
uncomfortable.
'You don't seem to be getting on very fast,' the hated voice
commented at last.
'I don't like having an audience.'
'I can believe you don't like having me as an audience.' She wasn't
looking at him, but there was something in his voice that told her he
was grinning. 'Come on, Miss Chalfont, why don't you swallow your
damned pride and say, "Help me"?'
'I didn't ask you to stop.'
'You wouldn't ask me to throw you a rope if you were drowning. As
you probably will if this rain keeps up—that, or die of pneumonia.'
He walked to her side, put his hand under her elbow and yanked her
to her feet, without ceremony.
'Leave me alone!' She wrenched herself free of his grasp.
'Willingly—once this wheel of yours is changed.' He was fitting the
jack into place with a deft competence that made her want to kill him
and dance on his grave. 'Go and sit in my car, and dry yourself off a
little,' he directed over his shoulder. 'If you look in the sports bag on
the back seat, you'll find a towel.'
Instinct prompted her to reply haughtily that she preferred to remain
where she was, but common sense intervened, reminding her that in
this weather she would simply be cutting off her nose to spite her
face, and that she was only laying herself open to further jibes.
The interior of the Jaguar smelt deliciously of leather upholstery
mixed with a faint tang of some expensively masculine cologne.
Joanna sniffed delicately, grimacing a little as she extracted the towel
from the bag, which was lying next to his squash racket on the rear