Yuletide Bride. Mary Lyons
ought to be thoroughly ashamed of a sudden, overwhelming urge to place her clenched hands tightly about her mother’s neck. ‘We’re...um...we’re all booked up,’ she lied wildly.
‘How can we be?’ Violet frowned. ‘Only this morning, you were saying that you wished we had some guests for the weekend.’
Amber gritted her teeth. She was just trying to think of some of their regular visitors, who might have arranged to stay at very little notice, when she caught sight of the chilly, mocking gleam in Max’s glittering blue eyes.
Her heart sank like a stone as she suddenly realised that he was actually enjoying her discomfiture. Although, what she’d done to deserve his enmity, she had no idea. After all, he was the one who’d abandoned her.
‘I’d be delighted to stay here at the Hall,’ Max drawled, his mouth twisting with sardonic amusement at the expression of consternation and dismay clearly visible on Amber’s face. ‘Unfortunately...’ he added after a long pause, ‘I have to return to London tonight. But I’d be very interested to see over this house.’ He turned to smile at Violet. ‘I understand that it dates from Tudor times, and is one of the oldest houses in Elmbridge.’
The older woman nodded her head. ‘Yes, you’re quite right, it is. I’m sure Amber would be delighted to show you around.’
Oh, God—he’s positively enjoying this! Amber realised, her body almost shaking with tension. Far from being prepared to accept that he wasn’t wanted, Max was clearly getting the maximum amount of grim enjoyment from this fraught situation. And time was running out. She had to get rid of him—as quickly as possible. But how on earth was she going to do it?
Just as she was coming to the conclusion that the sooner she showed him around the house—keeping well away from the attic, of course—the sooner he’d be gone, her desperate thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock.
‘Hello...?’ Rose Thomas put her head around the sitting-room door. ‘I’ve just come to fetch Emily. I hope she’s been behaving herself?’
‘Of course she has.’ Amber turned to smile at her friend, momentarily overcome with relief and euphoria at the welcome interruption. But, as she heard the sound of childish laughter only a second or two later, she realised there was nothing she could do to avoid a catastrophic disaster.
‘Mummy...Mummy! We’ve had a really stupendous time dressing up in Granny’s old clothes!’ Lucy called out as she ran full tilt into the sitting room, quickly followed by Emily. ‘We looked absolutely terrific!’
‘I’m sure you did,’ Amber managed to gasp, almost frozen with terror as she watched the little girls running excitedly around the room. She had no hope of being able to fool a clever, perceptive man like Max. But Rose, who’d known Lucy since she was a baby...? Would she notice the startling similarity between the two heads of dark, curly hair and sparkling blue eyes?
But her friend clearly hadn’t noted anything amiss as she gazed across the room at the tall, dark stranger who was rising to his feet.
‘Surely, it can’t be...?’ Rose exclaimed as the man gave her a broad smile. ‘Good Heavens—it really is Max Warner!’ she laughed, her cheeks pink with excitement as he crossed the room towards her. ‘I’d heard that you were now back in the country, but never expected to see you quite so soon. You hardly seem to have changed at all.’
‘Since I shudder at the memory of myself as a wild teenager, I sincerely hope that I have, my dear Rose,’ Max grinned, taking her hand and lifting it gallantly to his lips.
Despite her fright and panic, Amber felt a flash of indignation at this piece of quite outrageous flattery. Surely plain, calm, sensible Rose couldn’t be so silly as to fall for such a line? However, as they chattered together, with her friend sparkling beneath the awful man’s quite overwhelming charm, it really did seem as if she’d become momentarily transformed into a lovely woman.
You had to hand it to Max—he was a real con artist! she acknowledged grimly as Rose very reluctantly took her leave.
‘Well...!’ she exclaimed as Amber accompanied her and Emily across the hall towards the front door. ‘When I arrived and saw that glamorous car, it never occurred to me that it might be Max Warner. What a surprise!’
‘Yes, it certainly is,’ Amber agreed bleakly.
‘I don’t understand.’ Rose frowned. ‘If you weren’t expecting him—what on earth is he doing here?’
‘Don’t ask!’ she groaned. ‘It’s all to do with the sale of the house. But everything has become so compli-cated—’ Amber broke off, looking nervously back over her shoulder. ‘I...I’ll give you a ring tomorrow...explain everything,’ she added, quickly bending down to kiss Emily goodbye, before dashing swiftly back to the sitting room.
Unfortunately, on her return, she discovered that even those few minutes’ absence had proved to be fatal.
‘...of course, Lucy’s a very clever little girl,’ her mother was saying. ‘I’m hoping that she’ll be clever enough to get into the local grammar school. But, as she’s only seven years old, there’s still a few years to go yet,’ she added, smiling she patted the glossy, dark curls of the child sitting on her lap.
‘But I’m going to be eight years old in June,’ Lucy added quickly, jumping to her feet and running over to the tall man leaning elegantly against the mantelpiece. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m as old as my face—and just a little older than my teeth,’ Max retorted, waving aside her grandmother’s protest as he smiled idly down at the small girl.
‘That’s a very clever answer!’ Lucy grinned up at the man towering over her small figure. ‘Are you going to be staying with us for a while?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he murmured, his dark brows creasing into a puzzled frown as he gazed down at the little girl.
‘That’s a pity, because I really like riddles. My friend, Emily, told me a new one today—and I bet Granny won’t know the answer,’ she confided, before turning to skip back across the carpet to where Violet was sitting. ‘When is a pony not a pony?’
The older woman smiled and shook her head.
‘When it’s turned into a field!’ Lucy shouted before collapsing into a fit of giggles.
Standing frozen in the open doorway, Amber felt as if she were viewing the curtain rise on the last act of a Greek tragedy. Numbly waiting for nemesis to strike, she watched as Max turned his head to look into the large mirror over the mantelpiece. She saw his body becoming taut and rigid, his eyes narrowing to dark points of hard steel as he stared first at himself, and then at the reflection of the small girl on the other side of the room.
Paralysed by panic, and helplessly unable to prevent her whole world from crashing down about her head, Amber’s heart thumped wildly in her chest as Max continued to stare blindly into the mirror, his expression grim and forbidding. And then, as if coming to a decision, he turned to cross the room. Murmuring a polite farewell to Violet Grant, he glanced down intently at Lucy for a moment, before striding swiftly towards where she stood in the doorway. Grasping Amber’s arm in an iron grip, he barely halted his swift progress as he dragged her after him into the hall, then slammed the door shut behind them.
‘My God!’ he exploded, the sound of his angry voice reverberating loudly in the large, vaulted space of the hall. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’ she muttered, helplessly aware that she’d never been any good at telling lies as she felt the hot colour flooding over her pale cheeks. ‘I...I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, yes, you damn well do!’ he retorted harshly, his fingers tightening cruelly on her arm. ‘That little girl is obviously my daughter—for Heaven’s sake!’
‘No! No,