by Anne Weale
“I have an apartment in Venice,” Pierce went on. “We could spend our honeymoon there.”
About the Author
Books by Anne Weale
Title Page
FOREWORD
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Copyright
“I have an apartment in Venice,” Pierce went on. “We could spend our honeymoon there.”
For some seconds Holly couldn’t believe he had said what she thought he had said.
Reading her mind, Pierce added, “Yes, that was a proposal of marriage. Not a very romantic one, perhaps, but I can promise you a romantic honeymoon....”
“I can’t believe you’re serious,” Holly exclaimed. “Why would you want to marry me, of all people?”
“You’re the only one, of all people, I have ever wanted to marry.”
“But you’re not in love with me...are you?”
“I don’t think being in love is the best basis for marriage. Liking makes better sense. I like you very much, Holly.”
Anne Weale was still at school when a women’s magazine published some of her stories. At twenty-five she had her first novel accepted by Harlequin Mills & Boon. Now, with a grown-up son and still happily married to her first love, Anne divides her life between her winter home, a Spanish village ringed by mountains and vineyards, and a summer place in Guernsey, one of the many islands around the world she has used as backgrounds for her books.
Books by Anne Weale
HARLEQUIN ROMANCE
3108—THAI SILK
3132—SEA FEVER
3216—PINK CHAMPAGNE
3257—THE SINGING TREE
3318—THE FABERGÉ CAT
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A Marriage Has Been Arranged
Anne Weale
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN
MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
FOREWORD
Anne Weale writes: As this is my seventieth romance, an important milestone in my writing life, you may like to know something about how I reached it.
The ambition to be a storyteller was always there, from my childhood. But there are many directions a budding writer may take, and luck plays a major part in any career.
My first, most important piece of luck was to marry a man who was about to go to the other side of the world. At the time I was a twenty-one-year-old newspaper reporter and had never been out of England. Our honeymoon in Paris was my first experience of abroad, although my husband had been to most of the countries around the Mediterranean while he was in the Royal Navy.
Today, young people backpack to the farthest corners of the globe. When I was young, opportunities to travel, except in the services, were extremely limited. When, a few months after our wedding, I flew to Singapore, and from there to the small airfield in north Malaya where my husband was waiting for me, it was a great adventure, arousing a wanderlust that has never subsided.
After two years in Malaya, we came back to England and I turned my experiences into a romance. The unusual and authentic background gave it a better-than-average chance of being accepted.
My second piece of luck was being advised to send it to Mills & Boon, then a small family firm but now, forty years on, as Harlequin Mills & Boon, part of a vast publishing empire reaching a worldwide readership. It’s unlikely that, with any other publisher, I would have had my stories translated into twenty-six languages.
In creating exciting characters, it helps to be the wife and mother of men who do adventurous things. Many of my fictional heroes have been inspired by the real-life activities of my husband and son. Most of this book was written while they were planning the expedition undertaken by the hero of the story and his friend.
In an American book about successful women, I read, “The man who believes that he should share domestic chores equally with his working wife is as rare as a black swan.”
To have written seventy romances and five longer novels—more than four and a half million words—is a satisfying achievement. But I couldn’t have written all those books if I hadn’t spent the past forty-five years under the wing of a black swan.
One of the most poignant lines in literature was written by Robert Louis Stevenson: “Many lovable people miss each other in the world, or meet under some unfavorable star.” The young women in my romances meet their loves under a favorable star, as I did.
From this milestone of my seventieth romance, I’ve paused for a brief, grateful glance back at the happy past—one of its many rewards being letters from readers, some of whom write interesting comments on each new Anne Weale title to reach their library or bookshop.
Now it’s time to look forward, to enjoy that wonderful moment of writing Chapter One at the top of a blank screen on my word processor before typing the opening lines of another story.
CHAPTER ONE
THE last place Holly would have expected to meet Pierce Sutherland again was at half past six on a dark, chilly autumn morning outside New Covent Garden Flower Market, long since moved from its original My Fair Lady location near the famous opera house to an ugly modern building on the south side of the Thames.
Holly, obsessively punctual and usually too early for everything, had been the first person to join the organiser at the rendezvous outside Gate Four.
Now about twenty people, including several shyly smiling Japanese ladies who didn’t appear to speak English, were drinking hot coffee provided by the friendly young woman organiser with a clipboard and list of everyone who had booked for ‘A Guided Tour of Covent Garden with a Champagne Breakfast and Flower Demonstration’.
A luxurious, chauffeur-driven car glided to a halt a few yards away. A tall man stepped out on the offside, surveying the group of coffee-drinking women with the same arrogant stare that Holly remembered from the last time she had seen him, five years ago.
What in the world was he doing? she wondered. Her heart gave an involuntary lurch in case he recognised her. Not that it was very likely. He hadn’t changed, but she had. She was a different person from the nineteen-year-old who had deliberately tested his sense of humour and found him totally lacking in the all-important aspect of a man’s character.
‘Never lose your heart to anyone unless they have a good sense of humour,’ her father had warned her, in one of their last discussions about life and love. ‘Watch out you don’t get involved with a pompous ass. There are a lot of them about.’
Professor Nicholson had smiled as he’d said it, but his warning had been a serious one. He himself, after losing his first wife when Holly was three, had made a bad error of judgement in marrying her stepmother, the female equivalent of a pompous ass.
He knew it. His daughter knew it. His colleagues and friends knew it. Only the second Mrs Nicholson was unaware of it. Their relationship was not unlike that of Mr and Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice: an erudite man bound to a pea-brained woman whose younger daughters were as silly as she.
But Chiara, the eldest of Holly’s stepsisters, although not a clever girl, was both beautiful and sweet-natured. Together from early childhood, she and Holly had grown as close as real
sisters. Holly saw herself in the role of Elizabeth Bennet with Chiara as the lovely Jane Bennet.
So far their lives had not reached the happy conclusion of Jane Austen’s famous novel. Holly had yet to meet anyone as compellingly attractive as Mr Darcy and Chiara was in a relationship unlikely to lead to permanent happiness. Their lives, so much freer and fuller than the stiflingly restricted lives of Jane Austen and her contemporaries, were still beset by the same basic problem: how to find Mr Right in a world full of Mr Wrongs.
Five years ago, Chiara had thought Pierce Sutherland was her Mr Right. Holly had always had reservations about him, and her fears had proved correct. Three months after taking Chiara to bed, Pierce had replaced her with another beautiful girl. The end of the affair had left Chiara with many generous mementoes of his transient passion for her, and it was an exaggeration to say that he left her heartbroken. Not long after their breakup she had been involved in another affair.
But that didn’t alter the fact that Pierce had behaved like a rat, confirming Holly’s instinctive distrust for him.
The other passenger in the stately Rolls-Royce was an elegant Japanese lady who seemed to be someone of importance, judging by the excited twittering among her compatriots. She waited for Pierce to come round the back of the car to join her.
When he did, the top of her sleekly coiffed hair was barely level with his chest and her pale, exquisite complexion and delicate features were a striking contrast to his tanned skin and rugged bone structure. Yet they did have something in common. She was dressed in a reversible cashmere shawl draped over a soft wool suit which undoubtedly had a top designer’s label stitched inside it. Her leather boots and her bag were of the finest quality. She had style, and so did Pierce. Even Holly couldn’t deny him that. Today he was wearing black trousers and a black cashmere turtle-neck sweater under a pale grey jacket that matched his cold light grey eyes, which were in striking contrast to his black hair and eyebrows.
By birth an American, by inclination an Anglophile, Pierce had come to England as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. He had never returned to his own country, preferring to have his main base in London and two or three pieds-à-terre in other parts of Europe.
Unlike Holly’s father, who had spent his life on research projects of benefit to humanity, Pierce was a selfish man who used his brains for his own ends. When Chiara had met him, he had already been rich. By now he must be rolling. Whether he did a whit of good with his money, apart from giving lavish presents to his popsies, Holly was inclined to doubt.
Now, his hand under his companion’s elbow, he steered her towards the organiser. While she exchanged gracious bows with her compatriots and the Englishwomen, he had a low-voiced conversation with the girl in charge of the tour.
Holly was too far away to hear what was said but, while his attention was focused on the organiser, she was able to study his face, looking for evidence that his sybaritic life-style was beginning to tell on him. Surprisingly, she could see none of the usual signs of high living. His jawline was still clear-cut, his waistline as lean and taut as it had been the first time she’d met him. He must be thirty-five now, but looked as fit and tough as men ten years his junior whose lives were extremely active, not spent, as his was, behind a desk doing deals. The expression ‘fat cat’ had been coined for men like Pierce Sutherland. Yet he didn’t fit the image it conjured up. Physically, there was nothing soft, sleek or visibly decadent about him.
After he had dumped Chiara, Holly had forced herself to forget about him. It had been surprisingly difficult. He was one of those people of whom it could truly be said once seen, never forgotten. But she hadn’t thought about him recently and the last thing she wanted was to renew their acquaintance. She was still eyeing him with disfavour when the demonstrator arrived.
‘Good morning, ladies,’ she said loudly, ignoring Pierce’s presence. ‘As there are thirty of you, we’re going to split you into two groups. While I’m showing one group round, Lucinda will take the rest of you to the shops selling accessories. Then we’ll change over.’ She began to count heads.
To Holly’s relief, the outcome of this exercise was that she was in Lucinda’s group and Pierce and his companion were in Mrs Challoner’s group.
Inside Gate Four, the market was revealed as a huge hangar-like space divided into blocks by a grid arrangement of wide aisles. Suspended from the centre of the roof was a big blue clock with a bell above it. Mrs Challoner’s group went in one direction, Lucinda’s in another.
Her circuit of the shops selling many kinds of baskets and vases, reels of plastic ribbon, florists’ wire and Christmas garlands and decorations was over some time before Mrs Challoner had concluded her tour of the flower and plant stands.
While Lucinda’s group were wandering about, waiting their turn to go with her, a woman in a red jacket said to Holly, ‘I wonder who the tall guy is? Do you suppose he’s a bodyguard? The Japanese person with him looks as if she might be Mrs Mitsubishi or Mrs Toyota...one of their multimillionaires’ wives. Whoever she is, the guy with her speaks fluent Japanese.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Holly.
‘I passed them just now,’ said Red Jacket, with a gesture at the aisle intersecting the one where they were standing. ‘I heard him translating for her... with the other Japanese listening in. I’m surprised they come to a thing like this if they can’t speak English.’
‘Perhaps they can understand it better than they speak it,’ said Holly. ‘They may be married to businessmen and have time on their hands while their husbands are attending meetings.’
When it was time for the groups to change leaders, this took place without Holly being noticed by Pierce. Considering that he was notorious for his roving eye, and that, apart from Lucinda, she was the only young woman in either group, she found it a tad deflating that he hadn’t even given her a glance. But the parts of her which might have caught his eye—her legs and her figure—weren’t shown to best advantage by the warm clothing they had been advised to wear. In navy blue trousers and a yellow foul-weather jacket over a bulky sweater over a long-sleeved T-shirt, she had no visible shape, and her face had never been her fortune. There was nothing really wrong with it. Her skin was clear, her eyes large, her good teeth the result of a healthy diet and good dentistry. But even when she was made-up and dressed to kill she wasn’t a knockout like Chiara.
‘Pleasant’ and, possibly, ‘nice’ were the words she felt people would use if asked to describe her. She didn’t merit the superlatives applied to her stepsister, nor did it bother her. Holly had never longed to be beautiful. She was comfortable with the way she was. Her mother hadn’t been a beauty but her father had fallen in love the first time he’d seen her, and been desolated by her death. Someday, Holly hoped, someone would feel that way about her. Someone good, with decent moral values—not a womanising beast like Pierce.
The room where they were to have breakfast was up a staircase leading to the first-floor gallery.
It was an L-shaped room with a circular table in the angle of the L and several long tables filling the rest of the space. As soon as everyone was seated, staff began going round with bottles of champagne and jugs of chilled orange juice for those who wanted the wine in the form of Buck’s Fizz or what two Americans present called ‘mimosas’.
Holly preferred her champagne neat. As she had come by taxi, having stayed overnight at Chiara’s flat, to which she would return for lunch before catching a train back to Norfolk where she was living and working, she didn’t have to restrict herself to one glass like those who had come here by car.
Pierce was seated with his back to her at a table which, apart from him, was exclusively Japanese. He was holding forth in that language and evidently telling a joke for suddenly there was an outburst of laughter, not the sound made by Europeans but a gentle tinkle of titters as all the dark eyes gleamed with merriment and ivory hands covered their owners’ mouths.
After her first surprise that
Pierce should speak their language, Holly realised it was probably not because he was drawn to Japan by its culture but because of its power as a trading nation. The making of money was his principal interest. Very soon, so she had heard, Japan would be in control of all the world’s biggest and best electronics industries. No wonder he wanted the advantage of being fluent in that language.
As she ate croissants and crumpets and took a minor part in the conversation at her table, her gaze was repeatedly drawn to the broad shoulders and tanned quarter profile of the only male in the room, apart from a waiter serving coffee.
When most people had finished eating, Marisa Challoner rose to begin her demonstration.
‘I suggest that those of you sitting with your backs to me should turn your chairs round rather than craning over your shoulders,’ she began.
Holly had no need to move because from where she was sitting she had a good view of the demonstration table. But to her slight alarm she saw Pierce changing his position. From now on he would only have to turn his head a little to the left to be looking directly at her. She could only hope his role as an interpreter would keep his attention fixed on Mrs Challoner.
As she opened a small exercise book and prepared to make notes, Holly debated resting one elbow on the table and shielding her face with her hand. Then she chided herself for being stupid. Of course he wouldn’t recognise her. They had met only once, at that deadly stuffy dinner party when, according to her stepmother, she had behaved disgracefully, proving herself to be both bad-mannered and childish.