Passionate Possession

Lucy put down her spoon. Was she imagining it, or had that really been antagonism in his voice? And what an extraordinary thing for him to say. It was well over fifty years since her family had last owned land.

‘Er—yes…once…’ she began, but was interrupted as the man to her left turned towards her and began talking to her.

Verity, as always, had produced an excellent meal, but Lucy was conscious that she did not do it justice. She could not understand why Niall Cameron was having such an extraordinary effect on her or why he was making her feel so nervous…so anxious.

She knew that he didn’t like her, but she didn’t like him, and so that was no reason for the tiny darting sensation of panic she could feel building in her stomach, spoiling her enjoyment of her meal.

Everyone else was now pleasantly relaxed and mellow. Perhaps she should have drunk her wine after all, Lucy thought grimly. She certainly couldn’t remember the last time she had felt as on edge as this. Normally she was quite comfortable socially. Even when she had gone to France on business, she had not experienced this degree of tension and anxiety.

Now, with the plates cleared away and the conversation general as people enjoyed their coffee, Verity called down the table to her.

‘Have you managed to do anything about the cottage yet, Lucy?’ And then before Lucy could reply she was explaining for Niall Cameron’s benefit, ‘Poor Lucy is in the most wretched situation. She recently inherited a property from a cousin, a pretty little cottage, really, and in the most glorious setting, but it’s tenanted by this appalling old man.’

Verity always liked to embroider her stories, Lucy reflected wryly as she mentally compared Verity’s almost lyrical description of the cottage with its reality.

‘And he’s behaving dreadfully, isn’t he, Lucy? Demanding that she makes all sorts of alterations, threatening to take her to court. Of course, the rent he pays is next to nothing. He shouldn’t be living there at all, really. He ought to be in a home. From what Lucy’s seen, it’s obvious that he isn’t fit to live alone, and if he would only move out Lucy could—’

‘Sell the cottage and its land to some speculative builder,’ Niall Cameron interposed grimly.

Lucy stared at him, and even Verity looked a little perplexed. One or two of the others were listening now as well, obviously as aware as Lucy was herself of the dislike and the condemnation in Niall Cameron’s voice.

‘Oh, Lucy wouldn’t do anything like that,’ Verity told him, obviously shocked. ‘She just wants to—’

‘To what?’ Niall demanded. ‘To bully a frail old man of almost eighty into leaving his home so that she can sell it and make a nice profit?’

Verity was gaping at him now.

‘Oh, but you don’t understand,’ she began helplessly. ‘Eric Barnes is the most obnoxious man, and poor Lucy—’

‘Oh, but I do understand,’ Niall told her softly. ‘You see, that obnoxious old man, as you call him, just happens to be my uncle.’

He turned to Lucy, who was staring at him in shock, and told her grimly, ‘I am beginning to see now why he is so afraid of you. I warn you, Miss Howard, there are laws to prevent people like you from defaming people, just as there are laws, very strong laws, to force landlords to fulfil their obligations towards their tenants. But then I’m sure, as a landlord you are perfectly well aware of those laws, hence your determination to remove my uncle from his home.’

Lucy could say nothing. She was too stunned; too appalled. She glanced uncertainly round the table. Verity looked unhappy and upset, and Lucy could see on the faces of the others the interest and speculation Niall Cameron’s comments had caused.

It was no secret, of course, that she had inherited the cottage, nor indeed was the state it was in, but, just as she had barely recognised the cottage from Verity’s description, so she had hardly been able to recognise herself or her motives in Niall Cameron’s denunciation of her.

Eric Barnes…afraid of her? She remembered how he had treated her, her eyes blank with disbelief as she turned her head to look at her accuser.

‘There seems to have been some misunderstanding,’ she told him as calmly as she could. She was not going to argue, to verbally brawl with him here in public, abusing Verity’s hospitality, but his accusations could not be allowed to stand.

‘I’m glad you understand that,’ he told her, deliberately misunderstanding her. ‘You might believe that your family’s position locally entitles you to behave as you wish, but I do not intend to stand by and see my uncle bullied and threatened, just so that you can make a nice fat profit on his home.’

A nice fat profit. Had he seen the cottage? Did he have any idea of what it would cost to make it habitable? Did he really expect her or anyone else who knew his uncle to believe the picture he was drawing of Eric Barnes?

She stood up awkwardly, her face white with temper and strain. Turning to Verity, she said fiercely, ‘Verity, I am sorry about this. I think I’d better leave.’ How dare he do this to her? How dare he ruin Verity’s dinner party like this? How dare he try to blacken her reputation? For the first time in her adult life she realised that she was in the grip of an almost uncontrollable surge of temper. Had it been there she could have willingly picked up her soup bowl and tipped the contents over him. She was bitterly, furiously, savagely angry in a way that was totally outside her experience of her own emotions.

And she had to get away now before she gave way to those feelings.

At the other end of the table, Don was trying to speak, saying uncomfortably, ‘I think there’s been a mistake here, Niall,’ but Lucy silenced him, shaking her head.

‘No, Don,’ she said fiercely. ‘Let Mr Cameron say what he thinks. After all, he’s obviously extremely well versed in the subject,’ she added bitterly.

She refused to allow Verity to persuade her to stay, escaping to her car as quickly as she could. She was, she realised, shaking with temper and lack of self-control.

Oh, God, but she would love to see Niall Cameron’s face when he found out the truth about his precious uncle. And about her. He seemed to think she was some kind of wealthy local would-be socialite.

Oh, but the arrogance of the man. And the rudeness! Using Verity’s party to attack her. But then honesty made her acknowledge that it had been Verity who had first brought up the subject of the cottage and its inhabitant.

She drove home far too fast, too angry to care that she was exceeding the speed limit, finding some small sense of release in driving her car a little too recklessly.

Oh, but she was so angry. She had known from the first moment she had set eyes on him that she wasn’t going to like Niall Cameron, but this…She had never, ever imagined anything like this.

She was far, far too wrought up to sleep and impulsively, once she was home, she changed into her jeans, a thick sweater and her trainers. Despite the dark, she was going for a long walk, the only way she knew of ridding herself of the demons of anger and pride that were savaging her.

A tiny corner of her mind told her what she was doing was reckless and dangerous, but she was in no mood to heed them. The whole area was crisscrossed with footpaths, but instinctively her feet chose only one of them.

She knew already where it would take her, and her eyes stung with tears as urgency impelled her, so that she was almost running rather than walking, past the small church where there was a small plaque in memory of her parents, across the small strip of common ground down the lane, and there it was: the house where she had grown up.

An ordinary enough house. Detached, but not particularly large. One of half a dozen down this cul-de-sac, surrounded by fields.

Theirs had been the last house in the row. She stopped outside it, her body trembling with tension, the tears hot and salty in her throat.

How could it have happened? How could anyone have made such vile accusations against her, and in front of her friends, people who knew her, who knew her family? And how many of them would wonder secretly if there weren’t some grain of truth in what he was saying? She shivered a little; the tears had stopped now. She could feel the tightness on her face where they had dried.

She felt slightly calmer and dreadfully tired, but coming here had soothed her a little as she had known it would. It was here that she had spent her happy, loved childhood years…here that she had felt safe and protected.

She turned round and began to walk home.

She saw the Discovery the moment she reached home. It was parked beside her own small car. She stopped, tense with fear and sickness as she watched Niall Cameron climbing out of it, but it was too late; he had seen her.

Pride made her walk tensely towards him, her head held high.

He made no comment on her changed appearance but his look registered it, and as he focused on her face she recognised, too late to do anything about it, that he had probably seen the traces of her tears as well.

That knowledge made her glower at him, tilting her chin firmly as she waited for him to speak.

‘I’ve just been speaking with Don,’ he told her tersely.

‘Oh, yes. Why? Were you demanding that he sacked me?’ she asked him acidly.

It gave her a great deal of pleasure to see the angry burn of colour run up under his skin.

‘He explained your situation to me,’ he continued coldly. ‘And it seems that—’

‘That what?’ Lucy interrupted him sarcastically. ‘That I’m not the wealthy money-dominated landlord you described over dinner tonight?’

She made no effort to hide her resentment or her bitterness.

‘I have no intention of trying to evict your uncle or to sell the cottage,’ she told him fiercely. ‘Even if it were in a fit state to be sold, which it most certainly is not.’

‘I agree,’ he told her tightly. ‘In fact—’

‘In fact what? In fact, that’s why you’re here now…to demand your pound of flesh, or rather your saintly, timid uncle’s pound of flesh.’

Lucy was well into her stride now, half of her marvelling, half of her appalled by where her temper was taking her. Never had she felt like this or behaved like this before.

‘I’m surprised I didn’t guess the relationship between you,’ she told him acidly. ‘I ought to have recognised the resemblance immediately. You’re obviously two of a kind.’

She heard his indrawn breath and knew that she had pushed him too far, but she didn’t care. How dared he have said the things he had said to her? Inwardly she wept with pain and shame over them. Inwardly she was bitterly, deeply hurt, but she would never, ever allow him to see that.

‘Now just a minute,’ he began. He was coming towards her and immediately Lucy panicked, stepping back from him, tensing as she saw the anger darkening his eyes. He reached for her, grabbing hold of her, while she tried to pull away, demanding to be let go.

No man had ever touched her in anger…no man had ever taken hold of her against her will. No man had ever imposed himself on her senses as this man was doing, and she fought frantically against him, driven by fear and panic.

‘For God’s sake, you little fool. Will you keep still?’ she heard him saying, and then he was dragging her against him and she could smell the hot male scent of him, feel the anger and power in his body.

She reacted instinctively to it, lifting her hand, hitting him as hard as she could, feeling the stinging sensation in her palm as it connected with his face.

The sound of the blow shocked her into sharp awareness. A feeling of sick dismay drowned out her fear and anger. How could she have behaved in such an uncontrolled way, even with such provocation?

She was aware that he was still holding her, but it no longer seemed to matter. She made tiredly to pull herself free. She would have to apologise, she acknowledged miserably, and then she realised that he wasn’t going to let her go, and as she looked uncertainly up at him she saw that, unlike hers, his anger still burned furiously.

‘My God, I’m not going to let you get away with that,’ he told her thickly, and then before she could stop him he twisted both her hands behind her back, holding her imprisoned frighteningly easily with one hand, while he used the other to hold the back of her neck.

And even then she had no realisation, no warning of what he intended to do. She was too taken off guard by his physical imprisonment of her to realise what was going to happen.

All she did know was that she had to apologise to him now before the whole thing got completely out of control. She looked up at him and her heart suddenly missed a couple of beats, shock arcing through her as she finally recognised his intention.

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