Yuletide Bride. Mary Lyons
discovered Max Warner—together with the house agent, Mr Glover—standing on her front doorstep. Even now, two weeks later, there seemed nothing she could do to calm her tense, edgy body, while her brain appeared to be frozen rigid with fright. In fact, with her nerves at screaming point, she wasn’t able to think about anything, other than Max’s sudden reappearance in her life—which had to be one of the most catastrophic and potentially disastrous twists of fate she’d ever experienced!
She’d hardly been able to believe the evidence of her own eyes. Almost paralytic with shock, the breath driven from her body as if from a hard blow to the solar plexus, it had taken her some moments to realise that it truly was Max, and not an evil figment of her overheated imagination.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Stanhope. It was very good of you to agree to see my client at such short notice,’ the estate agent had murmured pompously, his voice seeming to be coming from somewhere far away. ‘I...er...I hope you haven’t forgotten our appointment?’ he added hesitantly, gazing with apprehension at the young woman, who was staring silently at both him and Mr Warner in such a wide-eyed, unnerving manner.
‘An appointment...?’ Amber echoed helplessly, her mind in a chaotic whirl as she stared past him to where a sleek, glossy black sports car was parked beside Mr Glover’s vehicle on the gravelled drive outside the house. ‘I don’t understand. Do...do you mean you want to see over the house?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Mr Glover gave a nervous laugh, clearly wondering if the young widow was entirely ‘all there’. ‘I made the arrangement with your mother this morning, and...’
‘Oh, no!’ Amber gasped, suddenly realising that her mother was likely to appear on the scene any minute. ‘I’m sorry—you can’t possibly see around the house today. It’s absolutely out of the question!’ she babbled hysterically, glancing nervously behind her as she tried to close the door. ‘I haven’t yet told my mother, you see. She doesn’t realise...she has no idea that the Hall is for sale. You’ll just have to go away, and...and maybe come back some other time.’
Unfortunately, Max Warner had quickly taken a firm grip of the situation. Swiftly placing a well-shod foot in the door, he thanked Mr Glover for his services, smoothly informing the estate agent that he was quite capable of coping with the ‘delicate’ state of affairs at the Hall.
‘There’s no need to worry or disturb Mrs Grant. I’m quite confident that her daughter will be pleased to give me a personal conducted tour around the house.’
Oh, no, I won’t! Amber screamed silently at him as the house agent gave a helpless shrug of his shoulders, walking back down the steps as Max pushed the door open, moving calmly past her trembling figure into the wide, spacious hall.
Completely stunned, Amber could only stare at him with glazed eyes, quite certain that she must be in the midst of some awful nightmare.
‘I should have been in touch with you before now,’ Max told her quietly. ‘But I’ve been abroad and only recently heard the news.’
‘”The news”?’ she echoed blankly.
‘I merely wanted to say that I was very sorry to learn about Clive’s death.’
‘Yes...um...it was a long time ago, of course. So much seems to have happened since then,’ she muttered with a helpless shrug.
‘However, it does seem as though you’ve done very well for yourself, Amber,’ he drawled, glancing around at the old family portraits in their heavy gilt frames and the warm, comfortable effect of copper vases filled with greenery against the highly polished, old oak panelling.
The unexpectedly cynical, scathing note in his deep voice acted as a dash of freezing cold water on her shocked, numb state of mind. Her hackles rising, she was just about to demand an explanation for his sudden appearance—surely he couldn’t really be interested in buying the house?—when her mother floated into the hall.
‘How nice to see you. Have you come far?’ Violet murmured, giving the tall man a welcoming smile.
Amber nearly groaned aloud. This was definitely not the time for her mother to be putting on a performance of her ‘gracious hostess’ routine!
Max took the older woman’s outstretched hand and smiled warmly down at her. ‘It’s some time since we’ve met. However, I think that you’ll probably remember my father, the Reverend Augustus Warner. He was the vicar here at Elmbridge some years ago.’
Violet beamed up at the man towering over her slight frame. ‘Of course, I remember him. And you must be Max. The naughty boy who was always in trouble,’ she added with a twinkling smile.
‘Indeed I was!’ he agreed with a grin.
‘Well—you’ve certainly grown since those days! It looks as though you’ve done very well for yourself,’ Violet told him, casting an approving glance over his expensive, obviously hand-tailored, dark grey suit. ‘Now—I’m sure that you must have had a long drive. How about a nice cup of tea?’
‘Mother! I really don’t think...’
‘Nonsense, dear,’ Violet murmured, ignoring her daughter’s husky, strangled protest as she placed a hand on his arm, leading Max towards the large sitting room. ‘If he’s driven some distance, I’m sure the poor man must be simply dying of thirst.’
‘Mother...!’ Amber whispered urgently, but the older woman clearly had no intention of taking any notice of her desperate plea. As for the ‘poor man’—he merely turned his dark head to give her a cool, sardonic smile before accompanying the older woman into the sitting room.
Left standing alone in the hall, Amber could feel her initial shock and dismay rapidly giving way to long-suppressed feelings of rage and anger. How dare Max swan back into her life, completely out of the blue like this? Not only intimating that she’d married poor Clive for his money, but with absolutely no appearance of regret—let alone an abject apology for the way he’d treated her in the past.
However, just as she was telling herself fiercely that she’d never sell the Hall to Max—not even if he offered her a million pounds—Amber caught sight of herself in a large mirror hanging on the wall.
Nearly fainting with shock and dismay, it was all she could do not to shriek out loud in horror! The woman gazing back at her looked as though she’d been drawn through a knot-hole backwards, her face hot and flushed from the heat of the stove, and her apron covered with smears of flour and mincemeat. No wonder Max had been looking at her with such a caustic, scathing expression on his handsome face!
Realising that it was far too late to worry about his initial impression, Amber flew back along the corridor into the kitchen. Slinging the kettle on the hot plate of the ancient Aga, and practically throwing a tea tray of cups and saucers together, she ran back to the hall and up the wide curving staircase, taking the steps two at a time as she raced towards her bedroom.
Now, when it was almost too late, the shock waves of Max’s unexpected arrival were gradually clearing from her mind. And it was the sharp, sudden awareness of the fresh danger she was facing that lent wings to her feet as she hastily stripped off the grubby, sticky apron and ran into the adjoining bathroom to wash her hands and face. Dragging a brush through her tangled hair, she could feel her heart pounding like a sledgehammer, just as if she’d been doing an exhausting aerobics workout. And it looked as if she was going to need all the agility of just such an exercise, she told herself breathlessly as she desperately tried to pull herself together.
Unless she could put a gag on her mother’s garrulous tongue, there was a strong possibility that she was going to find herself in the middle of an utterly disastrous situation. The only chink of blue in an otherwise dark, ominous cloud was that she could hear the faint sounds of footsteps and movement overhead—evidence that Lucy and Emily were still playing happily together up in the attic.
Fervently praying that the little girls would stay safely out of sight, Amber quickly checked her appearance in a large,