Blackmail

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.

About the Author

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.

Blackmail

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘ARE you okay?’

Lee smiled, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. Her parents had named her, rather foolishly she sometimes thought, ‘Annabel-Lee,’ but she was ‘Lee’ to everyone who knew her, a tall, slender girl with long brown hair the colour of beechwoods in autumn, and as glossy as polished chestnuts. Her eyes were green, faintly tip-tilted and fringed with thick curling lashes—witch’s eyes, her father had once called them, and her mouth curved generously. No one looking at her mouth could doubt that she had a warm, deeply passionate nature.

Below them the Channel glinted silver in the morning sun. Excitement bubbled up inside her, as frothy and tingling as champagne.

‘There’ll be a hire car waiting for us at the airport.’ Michael Roberts, her boss, told her. ‘We’ll drive straight down to the Loire.’

Michael was the chief wine buyer for a prestigious supermarket chain and Lee was his assistant. She had been working for him for six weeks, but this was her first ‘field trip’, so to speak. Michael was in the middle of some delicate negotiations with a wine-grower in the Loire Valley, who so far had been reluctant to allow his grand and premier cru wines to be sold anywhere but in the most exclusive specialised wine shops. Michael was hoping to persuade him that while these first-class wines should quite rightly continue to be sold to the connoisseur, the English wine-drinking public was growing considerably more discerning and deserved to be able to purchase good wine.

There was considerable rivalry between the various supermarket chains concerning the quality of wines their buyers managed to secure for their customers, and to be able to add the Château Chauvigny label to their range would be a feather in Michael’s cap.

After lengthy negotiations the Comte de Chauvigny had invited Michael to visit the vineyards and taste the new wines, and Michael was hopeful that this meant that the Comte was prepared to do business with them.

‘At this time of the year we’re likely to be the Comte’s only guests,’ Michael warned Lee, as the seat belt warning lights flashed up, signalling the end of their journey. ‘The grand and premier cru wines will be tasted later in the year by the connoisseurs lucky enough to be able to buy them. What does that fiancé of your’s think about you and me flying off to France together?’ he asked with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘You’re quite a career girl, aren’t you? How will that tie in with marriage to a Boston Brahmin with a banking empire to inherit?’

‘Drew knows how much my career means to me,’ Lee said firmly. She had first met her fiancé when she had been working at a vineyard in Australia. They had fallen in love almost at first sight, and there had been little time to discuss such mundane matters as the finer details of their future together. Their time had been short. Lee had already been accepted for her present job, and Drew had been tied up in delicate negotiations for the amalgamation of the banking empire headed by his father, with a Canadian associate.

Until these negotiations were completed there could be no question of their marriage taking place. Drew’s family came of Pilgrim stock and their wedding would figure largely in Boston’s social calendar. Lee had been a little amused by Drew’s insistence that their wedding should be so formal, but had good-naturedly agreed to all Drew’s proposals. She frowned slightly as she remembered that it was her turn to phone him. Their transatlantic phone calls were a weekly ritual, and she had already warned Drew that this week’s would have to be brief as she would be in France.

The aircraft was descending. Soon they would be landing. She was in France to do a job, Lee reminded herself, and not daydream about her fiancé. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. This job was important to her and she badly wanted to do well. So far she knew that Michael was pleased with her, so why did she have this vague feeling of anxiety?

Their hire car was a dark blue Renault, and they were going to share the driving. It would take them several hours to reach Chauvigny Michael had warned her. The bright May sunlight touched her hair, burnishing it with gold, and Michael smiled appreciatively. For the journey she was wearing a soft rose-pink linen suit—smart and casual—toned with a cream georgette blouse. She moved with a natural elegance, her legs long and slender as they carried her towards the car.

By mutual consent they had decided not to stop for a meal en route. French lunches were notoriously long-lasting affairs and they had already eaten on the plane. After Orléans Lee took over from Michael. She was a good driver; careful but with enough élan not to be panicked by the French habit of disconcerting overtaking, and soon learned to leave enough room between the Renault and the car in front to allow for any mishaps.

Michael Roberts watched her as she drove, amused by her total concentration. He had never had a female assistant before, but her qualifications and experience had been far superior to those of the other applicants for the job. A wine buyer needs a love of wine; a knowledge of its creation, and most of all that unlearnable ability to discern the superior from the very good, plus a large helping of intuition. The applicants for the job had all been requested to sample several different wines and then make their observations on them. Lee’s observations had been far superior to those of the other contenders. She had what was known in the trade as a ‘nose’. At first Michael had been dubious about her appointment. Above all else buying wine was a serious business, and who could behave seriously with a beautiful woman like Lee? Especially Frenchmen, by whom the buying of wine was taken very, very seriously indeed. However, he had soon discovered that his fears were groundless. As his assistant Lee took her duties very seriously; her manner towards their suppliers was as crisp and fresh as a good Muscadet. He had been both amused and pleased by the way she handled the one or two suppliers who had tried to palm her off with an inferior wine. She had given them very short shift indeed, but in such a way that they were never aware that they had been manipulated.

Lee wasn’t as unaware of Michael’s covert regard as she pretended. Her parents had emigrated to Australia when she was in her first year of university, mainly to be with her brother who had made his home there, and she had very quickly become independent, aware of the fine line which divided a pleasant but casual friendship with members of the opposite sex from something more intimate, and she was equally skilled in making sure that that line wasn’t crossed unless she expressly wished it to be. She had been so engrossed in her career that there hadn’t been time for serious relationships—until she met Drew. Her parents had been at first amused and then doubtful when she told them what she wanted to do. A school holiday spent in France had sparked off her ambition, and when they realised that she was serious they had done all they could to help her, and now, just when she was realising her first goal, Drew expected her to give it all up. And it wasn’t even as though they were to be married yet. It would be some time before he was able to leave Canada, and Lee had planned to save up all her holidays so that they could spend some time together, getting to know one another properly. She glanced at the diamond solitaire on her left hand—discreetly expensive without being flashy; the sort of ring considered appropriate by the Talbot family, no doubt. Dismissing the thought as unfair, she studied their surrounds. Chauvigny was closer to Nantes than Orléans and they were driving through the Loire Valley proper now, past huge châteaux, relics of the time of François I, but it was the vineyards that captured Lee’s attention.

In Saumur the valley narrowed, the hills honeycombed with caverns offering wine for sale. At one point the caverns had actually been turned into homes, but the road was too narrow for Lee to give them much attention. They drove through Angers where the Loire widened. Men were working in the vineyards, spraying the precious vines with water to create a protective layer of ice in case of a night frost.

‘As soon as they think the frosts are over they’ll begin spraying against pests,’ Michael told her. ‘The recipe for being a good vintner includes such qualities as patience, a thorough understanding of the soil and climate, its benefits and drawbacks, as well as all the complicated processes that go to making a first class wine, plus that indescribable something with which one either is, or is not, born. It can’t be learned.’

‘We turn off here,’ he instructed, indicting a steep right fork off the main road.

They climbed steadily through gently rolling hills, flattening out in the distance to Nantes and the coast, vines growing on either side of the road; through a small, almost mediaeval village, and then the château was in front of them, the smooth cream walls rising out of the still waters of a moat, fairy-tale spires, shining pale gold against the azure evening sky, the whole thing so impossibly beautiful, like a mirage floating on a calm oasis, that Lee could not understand why she felt this renewed sensation of nervous apprehension spiralling through her.

‘Well, well, it looks like the real thing,’ Michael commented, obviously impressed. ‘When a Frenchman talks about a château it can be anything from a country cottage to Buckingham Palace. It looks as though this one really meant it. All it needs is Errol Flynn to come flying through the window to complete the Hollywood image!’

A permanent ‘drawbridge’ spanned the moat; the Renault disturbed two elegant swans who had been gliding slowly below. Odd how such graceful water birds could look so clumsy on land, Lee thought absently, watching them.

The drawbridge gave way to an arched gateway, beyond which stretched an enclosed courtyard. She had seen homes equally impressive in Australia, she reminded herself, trying not to be quelled by the château’s air of ancient grandeur, coupled with an aura of discreet wealth. Wisteria blanketed the cream walls, racemes of purple-blue flowers smothering the gnarled branches, reminiscent in shape and size of the bunches of grapes themselves.

The sound of the car alerted the dog who had been sleeping in front of the large double doors. Lee stopped the car and wound down the window. The evening air was clean and fresh after the staleness of the Renault. She could hear the sound of water, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the creeping shadows she saw the shallow stone basin with its fountain, a boy holding—not a water jar, but a bunch of grapes from which sprang the droplets which filled the basin beneath, sparkling like champagne.

Tubs of geraniums and lobelia added a colourful splash to the cobbled courtyard, and as she looked about her, Lee realised that they were at the back of the château in what had probably once been the stables and outbuildings. She looked up at the house. Blank windows stared back at her, the circular towers she had noticed from the road having only narrow arrow slits, proclaiming their great age.

The double doors opened, the dying sun blinding Lee momentarily as it was reflected in the leaded windowpanes. A man emerged from the château dressed in an expensively tailored dove grey suit, his black hair brushed back off a face which was stamped with the indelible marks of centuries of breeding. He spoke sharply to the dog, which was still barking noisily, a wolfhound almost as high as the lean hips encased in the pale grey mohair. Nervous tension crawled sickeningly through Lee’s body, causing her hands to lock whitely on the steering wheel. Michael climbed out of the car and opened her door. She followed him on legs which suddenly seemed to have turned to cotton wool.

‘Michael Roberts,’ Michael announced, introducing himself, ‘and my assistant,’ he turned to Lee and smiled, ‘Lee Raven, and you, of course, must be …’

‘Gilles Frébourg, Comte de Chauvigny.’

He spoke perfect, accentless English—but then of course he always had, Lee thought numbly, battling against the shock that had locked her muscles in mute protest, the moment she looked into—and recognised—his arrogant features. After all, his mother was English.

‘Lee.’

His pronunciation of her name betrayed none of her shock. The hand he extended towards her was tanned, the fingers lean, his grip powerful.

‘Gilles.’ She murmured his name in the same perfunctory tone he had adopted, adding carelessly, ‘How is Aunt Caroline?’

His eyes gleamed, as though he was well aware that beneath her calm words lurked nerve-racking chaos.

‘Very well, and enjoying the Caribbean. Lee and I share an aunt in common,’ he explained to Michael, who was looking increasingly baffled. ‘Or at least, she is my aunt and …’

‘My godmother,’ Lee supplied, taking a deep breath and willing herself to appear calm. Talk about coincidence! She had never dreamed when she left England that their destination was also the home of Gilles Frébourg. And if she had nothing would have brought her within a thousand miles of it, she thought with a bitter smile.

‘Come inside.’ Gilles’ smile mocked her, as though he had read her mind. ‘My housekeeper will show you to your rooms. Tonight we do not dine formally, as it is your first in my home. I am sure you must be tired and will perhaps want an early night. Tomorrow we shall tour the vineyards.’

Thin gold slats of sunshine touched precious antiques, as they stepped into a vast square hall, its floor covered in a carpet so soft and beautiful that it seemed criminal to walk on it. The Chauvigny arms were cut in stone above the huge fireplace, and Lee remembered now, when it was too late, Aunt Caroline mentioning that her sister’s brother-in-law was a Comte.

They had all been at school together, her mother, Aunt Caroline, and Aunt Caroline’s sister, Gilles’ mother, although she, of course, had been several years older than the other two. Lee glanced at Gilles. It was almost six years since she had last seen him. He hadn’t changed, unless it was to become even more arrogantly male. Did he find her altered? He must do, she reflected. She had been sixteen the last time they met, shy, gawky, blushing fiery red every time he even looked at her, and now she was twenty-two with a patina of sophistication which came from living alone and managing her own affairs. That summer when she had met Gilles he had been staying with his aunt, following a bad bout of ‘flu. He had been twenty-five then.

The housekeeper, introduced as Madame Le Bon, was dressed in black, plump hands folded over the front of her dress as she obeyed Gilles’ summons, cold eyes assessing Lee in a way which she found unnerving.

There was a portrait facing them as she and Michael followed the woman upstairs. The man in it was wearing the uniform of Napoleon’s hussars, but the lean body beneath the dashing uniform and the face below the tousled black hair—worn longer, admittedly, than Gilles’—were quite unmistakably those of their host. Even Michael was aware of the resemblance, for he drew Lee’s attention to it as they passed beneath the huge painting. The man in the portrait seemed to possess a rakish, devil-may-care quality which in Gilles had been transmuted into a careless arrogance which Lee found less attractive, and which seemed to proclaim to the world that its opinion of him mattered not one jot and that he was a man who lived only by rules of his own making. A man whom it would be very, very, dangerous to cross—but then she already knew that, didn’t she?

‘You are on the same floor,’ the housekeeper told Michael and Lee. ‘If you wish adjoining rooms …’

Lee felt the colour burn along her cheeks at the manner in which the woman quite deliberately posed the question. She glanced at Michael, pointedly.

‘Miss Raven and I are business associates,’ he pointed out very firmly. ‘I’m sure that whatever has been arranged will be admirably suitable. Adjoining rooms are not necessary.

‘Not that I wouldn’t want to share a room with you,’ he told Lee a little later when he had settled in and come to see how she was progressing with her own unpacking. Her bedroom faced out on to the formal gardens in front of the château, although with the dusk creeping over them it was impossible to make out more than the shadowy outlines of clipped hedges, and smell the scent of early flowers. ‘Always supposing you were willing, which I know quite well you’re not, but it doesn’t say much for the morals of our countrymen and women, does it? Perhaps they’ve had a surfeit of visitors with ‘‘secretaries’’,’ he added with a grin.

It could well be that Michael was right, Lee reflected, but there had been something about the way the housekeeper had looked at her when she had spoken which had made Lee feel that the remarks had been directed specifically towards herself. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

‘You never told me you had connections in high places,’ Michael teased. ‘Had I known you knew the Comte personally we needn’t have bothered coming down here. You could have used your influence to get him to agree.’

‘I didn’t know he had inherited the title,’ Lee told him. ‘As you’ve probably guessed, our relationship, if you can call it that, is very tenuous, and there’s certainly no blood connection. I’ve only met him once before. I couldn’t even call us acquaintances.’

But there was more to it than that—much more, Lee reflected when Michael had left her to finish her unpacking and change for dinner. Such as her foolish sixteen-year-old self imagining she was in love with Gilles. It must have been the crush to beat all crushes. A small private boarding school where many of the girls were the daughters of strict Spanish and South American parents was not the ideal place to gain an adequate knowledge of sexual matters. She had been greener than grass; completely overwhelmed by the powerful attraction she felt for Gilles. Had he asked her to lie down and die for him no doubt she would have done so. Her infatuation had been of the order that asks no more of the beloved being than merely that he existed. There had been no sexual awareness in her adoration apart from that which goes hand in glove with a girl’s first love. She put it all behind her long ago, especially its grubby, sordid ending, which had done so much to sully her memories of that year.

Her bedroom was vast. Their visit to the château was to be a short one—three days—which would allow them to see the vineyards, the cellars where the wine was stored, and still allow some time for the negotiations which Michael hoped would result in them securing the Chauvigny label for Westbury’s. She wondered if she ought to alert Michael to the fact that her being his assistant might seriously detract from his chance of doing so, and then decided against it. She was remembering Gilles with the eyes of a sixteen-year-old child. It was surely hardly likely that an adult male of thirty-one would bear a grudge against a child of sixteen.

Gilles certainly believed in treating his guests lavishly, she reflected, hanging the neat, understated toning separates she had brought with her in the vast fitted wardrobes which lined one wall of the room, their fronts mirrored and decorated with delicate panel mouldings to match the rest of the bedroom, which was furnished with what she suspected were genuine French Empire antiques. It wasn’t hard at all to imagine a provocatively gowned Josephine reclining on the pale green satin-covered chaise-longue, waiting impatiently for her lover.

Everything in the room matched; from the self-coloured design on the pale green silk wall coverings, to the curtains and bed covers.

A beautiful ladies’ writing desk was set beneath the window with a matching chair; the dressing table was French Empire, all white and gold with delicate spindly legs, the table lamps either side of the huge double bed the only modern touch, but even these might have been made for this room.

Lee wasn’t a fool. The furnishing in this room—from the precious silks down to the faded but still beautiful pale green and pink carpet which she suspected must be Aubusson—must surely be worth a king’s ransom; and this was only one of the château’s many rooms. Gilles must obviously be a very wealthy man; a man who could afford to pick and choose to whom he sold his wine. No doubt after the vintage he would hold those dinner parties for which French vignerons are so famous, when the cognoscenti gathered to partake of lavish dinners conducted in formal surroundings, all carefully designed as a paean of tribute to the evening’s guest of honour—the wine.

This was the first time Lee had visited such an exclusive vineyard. In Australia, where she had spent a year working alongside a grower in his own vineyards, things were much more casual, in keeping with the young vigour of their wines. Now she was grateful for the momentary memory of her teenage visit to a French vineyard which had urged her to pack a slender sheath of a black velvet dress.

Her bedroom had its own private bathroom; so blatantly luxurious that she caught her breath in bemusement as she stared first at the sunken marble bath and then the gold fittings. Even the floor and walls were marble, and she felt as decadent as a harem girl whose one desire in life was to pleasure her master, as she sank into the deep, hot water and luxuriated with abandoned delight. In London she shared a flat with two other working girls, and there was rarely time for more than a workmanlike shower, and the odd long soak when she had the flat all to herself.