Christmas At His Command

She risked a sidelong glance under her long lashes, aware she was dripping water all over the seat and that the melted snow from her boots had created a pool at her feet.

His face was hard, as though it had been carved from solid rock; he didn’t seem quite human. Marigold suddenly became aware she was completely at this fierce stranger’s mercy and she swallowed deeply. Somehow the idea of a noisy, crowded Christmas ensconced in the womb of her parents’ home didn’t seem so bad.

‘Don’t look so nervous; I wouldn’t touch Maggie’s granddaughter with a bargepole in case you’re harbouring thoughts of rape and pillage.’

The deep voice had a thread of amusement running through it and immediately it put steel in Marigold’s backbone. She reared up in her seat, her face, which had been pale a moment ago, now flushed with high colour, and her voice sharp as she lied, ‘Nothing was further from my thoughts.’

‘Hmm.’ It was just one low grunt but carried a wealth of disbelief.

Loathsome man! Marigold drew her usually soft, full lips into a tight line and warned herself not to respond to the taunt. In a little while she would be at the cottage and he would be gone. She could see about bathing her ankle and strapping it up, and then she would sort herself out for the night. This snowstorm wouldn’t last forever, and come morning she could make her way back to Myrtle and see if the little car could be persuaded to start. If not…well, she’d just have to carry everything to the cottage herself somehow. She didn’t dwell on the thought of how she was going to lug her suitcase and the bags of food, let alone the sack of coal and other things she’d brought with her, through deep snow with an ankle that was hurting more every minute and now so swollen she wondered how she was going to get her boot off.

Nor did she linger on the fact that if the snow continued to fall as it was doing, two inches could rapidly become two feet. Coping with this angry, aggressive individual at the side of her was more than enough for the moment.

The ground had been dipping downwards almost from the spot where she’d first heard the car, and now, as they turned a corner on the winding road, Marigold saw they were in a wooded valley and that to their left in the distance was what must be Emma’s cottage. It was set back some fifty yards from the track in its own garden, complete with neat picket fence and small gate. The cottage itself was painted white, from what Marigold could see, and it was the slate roof which was most clearly visible through the swirling snow.

She breathed a silent sigh of relief and gingerly flexed her injured ankle, knowing she had to climb out of the vehicle and walk to the cottage door in a few moments. The immediate stab of white-hot pain was worrying, but again she told herself it would be all right once she could strap it up.

‘Your inheritance.’ It was caustic.

She turned her head and looked at the granite profile. ‘What makes you think it might be put on the market?’ she asked evenly.

‘Well, apart from the fact that you and the rest of your family have already shown you have no soul, you were heard talking about it in the pub down the road when you came up before,’ he said shortly.

‘People eavesdropped on a private conversation and then had the gall to repeat it?’ Marigold asked with genuine disgust.

Her tone evidently rattled him. ‘From what I heard, this “private” conversation was all but yelled to the rafters after you and your partner had consumed a bottle of wine each. If you don’t want people to overhear what you say, don’t get drunk. You can perhaps moderate your voice better that way. And the comments about the “yokels” didn’t win you any friends in these parts either,’ he added scathingly.

Oh, Emma, Marigold winced inwardly. She’d known Emma for a little while, but since she had met her current boyfriend—a high-flier with a sports car and a big opinion of himself—she’d changed.

Fortunately the car had just pulled up outside the little garden gate and Marigold was saved the effort of having to think of a reply. She took a deep breath and prayed this could end right now and that she would never set eyes on this man again in the whole of her life. ‘Thank you for giving me a lift,’ she said stiffly, conscious of the drips of water trickling off the cagoule hood and hitting her nose.

‘A pleasure,’ he drawled with heavy sarcasm, un-hooking her knapsack, which had somehow managed to jam itself to one side of the controls, after which he opened his door and walked round the bonnet to open her door for her.

The courtesy surprised her, especially in view of the content of their conversation to date, and flustered her still more, highlighting, as it did, the dark attractiveness she had been trying to ignore for the last few minutes. She would have liked to ignore the outstretched hand, too, but in view of the pain in her ankle and the height of the car she decided to err on the side of caution as she rose, putting her weight onto her good foot.

She had stripped off her wet gloves in the car, stuffing them in her pocket, and now as she put one small naked paw into his large fingers the contact of skin on skin brought an unwelcome little tingle of awareness in her flesh. She hesitated for a second, wondering how she was going to land on her injured ankle and whether she should try and shift her weight onto it now so she could land on her good foot.

‘How bad is the ankle feeling?’ he asked flatly.

He had obviously noticed her uncertainty and guessed the reason for it, and, in her immediate desire to convince this brute of a man that she was perfectly all right and didn’t need his assistance a second longer, Marigold did what she later admitted to herself was a very silly thing. She stepped down from the vehicle, hoping her ankle would support her for the brief time it took for her to bring her other foot to bear. It didn’t, of course.

She lunged sideways, the pain unbearable for a few sickening moments, and because he still had hold of her hand she swung like a plastic-wrapped rag doll on the end of his arm, her hood falling off her hair as she twisted against him. He almost overbalanced, too, saving himself just in time and gathering her against him in seconds as he half lifted her against his hard male frame.

Marigold had always bewailed the straight, sleek silkiness of her hair, which utterly refused to allow itself to be curled or put up in elegant, sophisticated styles, but now as the rich chestnut veil swung over her hot face she was immensely glad of the thick, concealing screen. Her reluctant good Samaritan was swearing under his breath, but then, as the world steadied and righted itself and his voice died away, she nerved herself to flick back her tousled hair and look at him.

He was looking at her too and his face was just inches away. Close to, his lips appeared more sensuous than hard, she found herself thinking—totally inappropriately—and the lines carved into the tanned skin radiating from his eyes and his mouth added a depth to the good looks he wouldn’t have had in his teens and early manhood. And his eyelashes; she hadn’t realised how long and thick they were—utterly wasted on a man.

Marigold felt her nerve-ends begin to prickle and it was the subtle sexual warning that enabled her to draw back in his arms, forcing more space between them, as she said breathlessly, ‘I’m all right now, really. I’m sorry, I just lost my footing…’

‘Can you walk?’ His eyes had moved to her hair and then back to the wide violet eyes, and there was a smoky quality to his voice which hadn’t been there before. It caused the most peculiar sensations to flutter down every nerve and sinew.

‘Yes, yes…’ She tried to prove it by pulling free and hobbling a step, but found to her dismay that the brief period of inactivity in the car had made the ankle feel ten times worse, not better.

As her lips went white with the pain he swore again, lifting her right off her feet with the same effortless strength he had shown on the road. She was being held close to the broad masculine chest for the second time in as many minutes, and she found it more than a little surreal as he strode over to the gate, kicking it open with scant regard for Emma’s property and striding up the snow-covered path towards the front door.

He didn’t glance down at her again until they reached the door, and then he said crisply, ‘Key?’

‘What?’ She had seen his lips move and heard the sound but somehow the word hadn’t registered in her brain. She was conscious of being held by him, of the leashed power in the hard male frame next to her and the subtle and delicious smell of his aftershave, and everything else seemed to have faded to the perimeter of her awareness.

‘The key. For the door.’ It was said with a derisive patience that brought her out of the stupor more effectively than a bucket of cold water.

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She knew she was as red as a beetroot. ‘You…you’ll have to put me down. It’s in my pocket and I can’t reach it.’

‘Stand on one foot; I’ll hold you. And don’t try to walk until we’ve taken a look at that ankle.’

We? We? If her pulse hadn’t been thudding so crazily and her throat hadn’t been so strangely dry she might have challenged him on the ‘we’, but as it was she assumed a pose she had seen the pink flamingos adopt in a recent wildlife documentary as he lowered her gently down, and fumbled for the key. She was horribly conscious of his hands round her waist, and although she told herself he was only steadying her it didn’t help.

The trouble was he was too male a man, she thought distractedly. It wasn’t just that he was big, very big, but he was larger than life somehow. Very tall, very hard and handsome and muscled, very everything in fact. In the most disturbing and unnerving way.

‘Here it is.’

He adjusted his stance slightly, sliding one arm round her, positioning her against his masculine thigh as he took the key from her nerveless fingers. It was ridiculous, truly ridiculous, she told herself feverishly, in view of all the layers of clothing between them, but it felt shatteringly intimate.

As the door swung open he picked her up again and stepped into a small square hall, clicking on a light switch to one side of the door as he did so. He obviously knew his way around the cottage, Marigold thought, and this was borne out in the next moment when he opened a door to their right and entered what was clearly the sitting room, turning on the light again as he did so. The room was crowded with old, heavy furniture, smelt fusty and damp and had an unlived-in air which was chilling in itself as he placed her on a sofa in front of an empty fireplace.

It was awful. Marigold cast despairing eyes over her temporary home. Absolutely awful. And so cold. And no doubt the bedroom was just as damp and chilly. Whatever was she going to do? She looked sideways at the man standing to one side of the sofa and saw he was looking at her in an uncomfortably speculative way.

‘Lovely,’ she said brightly. ‘Well, I think I can manage perfectly well now, thank you, and I’m sure you want to get home—’

‘Sit still while I light a fire; the place is like a damn fridge. We’ll attend to the ankle in a moment.’

He had disappeared out of the door before she could bring her startled mind to order, and as she heard another door open and close she called desperately, ‘Mr Moreau? Please, I can manage now. I would much prefer to be left alone. Mr Moreau? Can you hear me?’

It was a minute or two before he returned, and then with a face as black as thunder. ‘There’s no coal or wood in the storehouse,’ he said accusingly. ‘Did you know?’

She could have told him it was because Emma and Oliver had had coal fires every night when they’d been here—despite it having been high summer. ‘So romantic, darling,’ Emma had cooed. ‘And Oliver just loves to enter into the whole country thing.’

Instead she just nodded before saying, ‘There’s some in my car.’

‘But your car isn’t here,’ he ground out slowly.

‘I can see to it in the morning.’

He shut his eyes for a moment as though he couldn’t believe his ears, before opening them and pinning her with his gaze as he said, ‘Ye gods, woman! This isn’t the centre of London, you know. There’s not a garage on every other corner.’

‘I’m well aware of that,’ Marigold said as haughtily as she could; the effect being ruined somewhat by her chattering teeth. ‘I’m hoping Myrtle will be all right tomorrow.’

The eagle eyes narrowed, a slightly bemused expression coming over his dark face. ‘One of us is losing the plot here,’ he murmured in a rather self-derisory tone. ‘Who the hell is Myrtle?’

Marigold could feel her face flooding with colour. ‘My car.’

‘Your car. Right.’ He took a long, deep and very visible pull of air, letting it out slowly before he said, in an insultingly long-suffering voice, ‘And if…Myrtle decides not to fall in with your plans, what then? And how are you going to walk on that foot? And what are you going to do for heat tonight?’

Marigold decided to just answer the last question; of the three he’d posed it seemed the safest. ‘Tonight I’m just planning on a hot drink and then bed,’ she said stoutly.

‘I see.’ He was standing with his legs slightly apart and his arms crossed, a pose which emphasised his brooding masculinity, and from her perch on the sofa he seemed bigger than ever in the crowded little room. ‘Let me show you something.’

Before she could object he’d bent down and picked her up again—it was getting to be a habit to be in his arms, Marigold thought a trifle hysterically as he marched out of the sitting room and into the room next to it. This was clearly the bedroom and boasted its own share of clutter in the way of a huge old wardrobe, ancient dressing table and chest of drawers, two dilapidated large cane chairs with darned cushions and a stout and substantial bed with a carved wooden headboard. If anything this struck damper and chillier than the sitting room.

‘That mattress will need airing for hours even if you use your own sheets and blankets,’ he said grimly. ‘Did you bring your own?’

He looked down at her as he spoke and she felt the impact of the beautiful silver-grey eyes in a way that took her breath away.

This man was dangerous, she thought suddenly. Dangerous to any woman’s peace of mind. He had a sexual magnetism that was stronger than the earth’s magnetic field, and she’d sensed it even when he was being absolutely horrible on the road earlier. And he was ruthless; it was there in the harshly sculpted mouth and classic cheekbones, along with the square, determined thrust to his chin and the piercing intensity of his eyes. The sooner he left the more comfortable she’d feel.

‘Well?’

Too late Marigold realised she’d been staring up at him like a mesmerised rabbit, and now she shook her head quickly, her cheeks flushing. ‘No, Em—I mean, I didn’t think I’d need any with there being bedding here,’ she said quickly as he turned abruptly, striding through to the sitting room, whereupon he deposited her on the sofa again.

‘Your grandmother kept a fire burning in the sitting room and bedroom day and night from October to May,’ he said flatly, ‘and the cottage was always as warm as toast when she was alive. But this is an old place with solid walls; not a centrally heated, cavity-walled little city box.’

He was being nasty again; his tone was caustic. Marigold tried to summon up the requisite resentment and anger but it was hard with her body still registering the feel and smell of him. ‘Be that as it may, I’ll be fine, Mr Moreau,’ she managed fairly firmly. ‘I noticed one of those old stone bed warmers on the chest of drawers in the other room; I’ll air the bed with that tonight and—’

‘There’s nothing else for it. You’ll have to come back home with me.’ He didn’t seem to be aware she’d been talking.

As a gracious invitation it was a non-starter; his voice couldn’t have been more irritated, but it wasn’t his obvious distaste of the thought of having her as a guest which made Marigold say, and quickly, ‘Thank you but I wouldn’t dream of it,’ but the lingering, traitorous response of her body to his closeness.

‘This is not a polite social suggestion, Miss Jones, but a necessity,’ he bit out coldly. ‘Now personally I’d be happy to leave you here to freeze to death or worse, but I know Maggie wouldn’t have wanted that.’

‘I shan’t freeze to death,’ she snapped back.

‘You have no heat, no food—’

‘I’ve a couple of tins of baked beans and a loaf of bread in my knapsack,’ she interrupted triumphantly.

The expression in the crystal eyes spoke volumes. ‘No heat and no food,’ he repeated sternly, ‘and you can’t even walk on two feet. You’ve obviously damaged your ankle severely enough for it to be a problem for a few days, and without fuel and food your stay here is untenable.’

‘It is not untenable!’ She couldn’t believe the way he was riding roughshod over her. ‘I’ve told you—’

‘That you have two tins of baked beans and a loaf of bread. Yes, I know.’ It was the height of sarcasm and she could have cheerfully hit him. ‘Let me make one thing clear, Miss Jones. You are coming with me, willingly or unwillingly; of your own volition or tied up like a sack of potatoes. It’s all the same to me. I shall send someone to see to the car and also to start getting the cottage warm and aired; believe me, I have as little wish for your company as you seem to have for mine. Once we’ve ascertained the extent of the damage to your ankle we can consider when you can return here.’

And it couldn’t be soon enough for him. Marigold stared up into the cold, angry face in front of her, reminding herself it was Emma he was furious at—Emma and her family. And if they had neglected the old lady as he suggested he probably had good cause for his disgust, she admitted, but he was a hateful, hateful pig of a man and she loathed him. Oh, how she loathed him.

‘So, what’s it to be? With your consent or trussed up like a Christmas turkey?’ he asked in such a way she just knew he was hoping for the latter.

She glared at him, almost speechless. Almost. ‘You are easily the most unpleasant individual I have ever come across in my life,’ she said furiously.

Her smouldering expression seemed to amuse him if anything. ‘I repeat, Miss Jones, are you coming quietly and at least pretending to be a lady or—?’

‘I’ll come,’ she spat with soft venom.

‘And very gratefully accepted,’ he drawled pleasantly, his good humour apparently fully restored.

She eyed him balefully as she struggled to her feet, pushing aside his hand when he reached out to help her. ‘I can manage, thank you, and don’t you dare try and manhandle me again,’ she snapped testily.

‘Manhandle you? I thought I was assisting a…lady in distress,’ he said mockingly, the deliberate pause before the word ‘lady’ bringing new colour surging into Marigold’s cheeks. ‘How are you going to walk out to my car?’

‘I’ll hop,’ she determined darkly.

And she did.

CHAPTER TWO

‘SO, MISS JONES, or can I call you Emma, as you have so graciously consented to be a house guest?’ They had just driven away from the cottage and the snow was coming down thicker than ever, Marigold noted despairingly. She nodded abruptly to his enquiry, earning herself a wry sidelong glance. ‘And you must call me Flynn.’

Must she? She didn’t think so. And there was a perverse satisfaction in knowing he didn’t have a clue who she really was.

‘So why, Emma, have you decided to spend Christmas at your grandmother’s cottage and all alone by the look of it? From what I’ve heard from your grandmother and more especially from the “yokels” after your last visit, it just isn’t your style. What’s happened to the yuppie boyfriend?’

Oliver was a yuppie, and Marigold couldn’t stand him, but hearing Flynn Moreau refer to the other man in a supercilious tone suddenly made Oliver a dear friend!

Marigold forced a disdainful shrug. ‘My reasons are my own, surely?’ she said coolly.

He nodded cheerfully, not at all taken aback by the none-too subtle rebuke. ‘Sure, and hey, there’ll be no objections from anyone hereabouts that lover boy’s not with you,’ he added with charming malice. ‘He didn’t exactly win any friends when he swore at the landlord and then argued about the bill for your meal.’

Oh, wonderful. Emma and Oliver had certainly made an impression all right, a bad one! Marigold sighed inwardly. Her ankle was throbbing unbearably, she didn’t have so much as a nightie with her, and it was Christmas Eve the day after tomorrow; a Christmas Eve which Dean and Tamara would spend under a hot Caribbean sky, locked in each other’s arms most likely.

She wasn’t aware her mouth had drooped, or that she appeared very small and very vulnerable, buried in the enormous cagoule with her shoulder-length hair slightly damp and her hands tightly clasped in her lap, so it came as something of a surprise when a quiet voice said, ‘Don’t worry. My housekeeper will look after you once we reach Oaklands and her husband can take a load of logs and coal to the cottage tonight and begin drying it out. He’s something of an expert with cars, too, so Myrtle might respond to his tender touch.’

Marigold glanced at Flynn warily. The sudden transformation from avenging angel breathing fire and brimstone to understanding human being was suspect, and her face must have spoken for itself because he gave a small laugh, low in his throat. ‘I don’t bite,’ he said softly. ‘Well, not little girls anyway.’

‘I’m a grown woman of twenty-five, thank you,’ she responded quickly, although her voice wasn’t as sharp as she would have liked. Hateful and argumentative he had been disturbing; quiet and comforting he was doubly so. When she had been fighting him she had felt safer; now she was on shifting ground and the chemical reaction he had started in her body before was even stronger.

‘Twenty-five?’ Dark brows frowned. ‘I thought Maggie sent you a present for your twenty-first just before she died?’

Oops. Marigold decided to bluff it out. ‘I can assure you, I know how old I am,’ she answered tartly, and then, seeing he was about to say more, she added quickly, ‘Is Oaklands your house?’

He didn’t reply for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘I bought it from a friend of mine who decided to emigrate to Canada a couple of years ago,’ he said shortly. ‘Your grandmother might have spoken of him; apparently they were great friends. Peter Lyndon?’

Marigold nodded vaguely and hoped that would do.

‘She missed him when he left,’ Flynn continued quietly. ‘His children used to come across the valley and visit her often and they were a substitute for her real family, I suppose.’ The accusing note was back but Marigold chose to ignore it. ‘Certainly when I called to see her it was photographs of Peter’s family that she showed me. She never showed me any of yours—too painful probably.’

Marigold felt she ought to object here. ‘How can you say that when you have just admitted you didn’t know her very long?’ she asked in as piqued a voice as she could manage, considering all her sympathies—had he but known it—were with Emma’s poor grandmother. The family seemed to have behaved appallingly to the old woman, and although as a work acquaintance Emma was perfectly pleasant it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility to imagine her disregarding the fact she’d got a grandmother if it suited her to do so.

‘Peter was a good deal older than me and he’d known Maggie for a long time,’ Flynn said evenly. ‘I think he knew your father, too. They didn’t get on.’ There was a pregnant pause.

Again Marigold felt she ought to say something. ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said truthfully, and then she stopped abruptly, aware they were passing through large open gates set in a six-foot dry-stone wall which had appeared suddenly out of the thick cloud of snow in front of them. This must be the grounds of his home.

The car was travelling along a drive flanked by enormous oak trees, stark and beautiful in their winter mantle of feathery white, and she could just make out a house in the distance. A very large, very grand house. Marigold swallowed hard as Emma’s casual comment about the other dwelling in the valley came back to her—a manor house. And this was a manor house all right.