Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
About the Author
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Copyright
“I’m paying court to you!” Guy announced sardonically.
Jane was sure her face must be blood-red, and it wasn’t even as if it were the truth…
“That’s a very strange thing to say,” she muttered stiffly. ‘People don’t say things like that these days.”
“It’s an explicit and accurate term. I like it.”
“Yes…but it isn’t true.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Because you’re making no attempt to be nice to me!”
Jenny Cartwright was born and raised in Wales. After three years at university in Kent and a year spent in the United States, she returned to Wales, where she now lives. Happily married with three young children—a girl and two boys—she began to indulge her lifelong desire to write when her lively twins were very small. The peaceful solitude she enjoys while creating her romances contrasts happily with the often hectic bustle of her busy household.
Forsaking All Reason
Jenny Cartwright
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS obvious that it hadn’t worked. For a start, the moment Jane arrived at the top of the wide, curving staircase she found herself blinking madly, as if she’d just emerged from the cinema on a sunny afternoon. The big square hallway beneath was as brilliantly lit as an operating theatre, and just about as enticing. She stood mournfully on the top stair, her hand resting lightly on the mahogany banister rail, and sighed.
With an unfamiliar click of high heels her mother appeared in the space below. ‘Ready, darling?’ she called, smiling up at her daughter.
‘Yes. I’m on my way down now, Mum,’ Jane replied brightly.
‘What do you think?’ her mother returned uncertainly. ‘Do you think it’s done the trick?’
Jane fingered the small sapphire stud on one earlobe and turned it slowly before replying. ‘Er…well, it’s a bit difficult to judge from up here…’
‘But it does look brighter, doesn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes, Mum,’ said Jane comfortingly, twisting the earring a little faster. ‘It certainly looks much…brighter.’
She started to descend the shallow, curved steps, her pretty feet in their navy and silver sandals carefully judging distances on the burgundy carpet, while her eyes remained transfixed by the scene below. Perhaps it would look different once she got lower down. Perhaps the new high-wattage light bulbs, which her mother had specially ordered, and which had taken them all morning to install, would create a much kinder effect at ground level. Perhaps it would look cheerful and welcoming and airy, just as Mum had intended.
It didn’t. It looked harsh and cold, the stone-flagged floor scoured by the cruel white light.
‘It was so very gloomy before…’ her mother continued with a frown, looking about her.
‘It was,’ agreed Jane, nodding seriously.
And then her mother’s bright blue eyes met Jane’s dark brown ones and they both stared at one another for a moment before bursting into gales of laughter.
‘Oh, well,’ shrugged Wendy Garston at last, ‘it was worth a try. And anyway, no one will be looking at the house. They’ll only have eyes for you, darling. You look absolutely stunning.’
Jane spun around, pleased by her mother’s approval. Her dress, which clung to her slight, neat-waisted form, swirled from the hips where the midnight-blue silkpricked here and there by a silver thread—flared out into an amazing fullness as it was captured by the whirlwind of air.
‘You don’t think Daddy will disapprove?’ she asked worriedly, coming to a breathless halt and tucking in her chin to look down at the neckline.
‘Oh, probably…But don’t worry. He ought to be jolly glad that you’ve got such a nice cleavage to distract the guests.’
Jane pulled a rueful face. ‘Everybody’s been here hundreds of times. I can’t imagine they’ll give a hoot about the light bulbs—or my appearance, come to that.’
‘They haven’t all been before,’ murmured her mother vaguely. ‘There’s that chap Daddy and I had dinner with at the country club last week. He’s coming…and I rather think your father wants to impress him. We’ll have to sit him next to your bosom and see if that does the trick.’
Jane smiled broadly, her eyes twinkling. ‘If he gets his sunglasses out, I shall take lots of deep breaths,’ she announced, giving a demonstration, then added teasingly, ‘It’s a good job I put my hair up tonight. It won’t spoil the view!’ and she patted her glossy, black hair, which was twisted into a stylish topknot.
They were sitting in the floodlit drawing-room, sipping sherries, when the doorbell rang for the first time. They sighed, and exchanged wry glances before standing up and smoothing down their dresses. It was going to be a deadly evening, and they both knew it. Jane’s mother loathed giving parties. The trouble was that having lived all her life in the same house she was still considered a bright young thing by the now ageing friends of her late parents—and had too strong a sense of loyalty to leave them off the guest list. In fact, the parties these days were thrown almost entirely for their sakes—if only they knew it. Wendy Garston herself would much prefer to be spending her evening sitting quietly in front of the fire with a good seed catalogue.
By contrast, Jane, at twenty-one, usually looked forward to parties. As long as they weren’t her parents’ parties, that was. She crossed the room to take her father’s arm as he hurried in to join them.
‘Langfords have arrived,’ he huffed. ‘Early as usual. One of those little girls in black from the agency is doing the honours—she’ll show them through in a minute, no doubt…’ and he ran a finger around his starched collar. Then his eyes dropped to take in Jane’s neckline. ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit—?’
‘Daddy! What do you think of the lighting?’ interrupted his daughter, mischievously catching her mother’s eye.
‘Lighting?’ he asked, obviously baffled. ‘Where?’
He was still blinking his bewildered grey eyes when the long, thin, middle-aged Langfords appeared. They were soon followed by the short, stout MacMillans and then Sir Richard with his elderly mother and Colonel Fish. Anthea Legate with her diminutive husband, Stefanie and Brad Hogg, and the alarmingly intellectual Rene Britten soon followed. By nine o’clock the drawing-room and hall were filled with enough people to soak up any amount of excess light—except that they didn’t. The unforgiving luminescence made the men look ill and the women garish. Everyone’s nose cast a dark shadow. Only Jane, with her honey-gold skin and blue-black hair, managed to look as if she was bathed in sunshine.
By ten o’clock Jane had switched to mineral water. She had been around the cold buffet twice and was wishing that the caterers would hurry up and produce the profiteroles which she had spied earlier in the kitchen. Like her mother, she was a dutiful and enthusiastic hostess, but despite their joint efforts the evening was proving as boring as they had both known it would be. She leant her bare shoulders against a vacant bit of wall and closed her eyes. When she felt a warm, dry hand lay itself on her arm she thought it must be her father.
She didn’t bother to open her eyes. ‘Hi…’ she said warmly. ‘Just taking a breather…’
‘Good,’ returned a deep male voice. ‘I thought you might be feeling unwell.’
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nbsp; Jane lazily opened her large, almond-shaped eyes very wide. ‘Oh, dear…’ she said, feeling a smile dimpling her cheeks. That most certainly hadn’t been her father’s voice!
However, when she looked beyond the starched and pleated shirt-front, up past the clean square jawline, to the slaty, blue-black eyes which were looking down on her from a great height, the desire to smile disappeared altogether.
The man’s own mouth, though naturally well-shaped, made a straight, unyielding line across the hard planes of his face. His dark brown hair was cut very short, his skin was tanned, and his eyebrows, which were smooth and straight and very, very black, gave as little away as the severe line of his mouth. It was a very masculine face. And for some unaccountable reason Jane had the feeling that, despite its well-governed expression, the face was disapproving of her.
‘How do you do?’ she said politely, making her own mouth remember its manners and smile again. ‘I’m fine, as it happens. Just a little tired, thank you all the same.’
The man’s hand still lay lightly on her upper arm. She had to fight the urge to turn her head to look at it. It might seem as if she was suggesting it had no right to be there, when in fact she was the ill-mannered one, closing her eyes on the guests. There would have been no need for him to have touched her if she’d been behaving as she ought.
‘How do you do?’ returned the dark, gravelly voice, perfectly correctly. ‘You certainly don’t look ill, now that you’ve opened your eyes.’
‘Unlike…’ She stopped herself. She had been going to say humorously, Unlike all the men here tonight. But the fact was that this man, with his taut, bronzed skin, didn’t look the least bit pale. His straight nose cast no shadow. Instead, the light on his face enhanced the clean sweep of his brow and gave prominence to his cheekbones, lending no more than a faint umbra to the hollows of his cheeks, and emphasising the hard angularity of his countenance. He was extremely good-looking, she decided privately.
‘So you find parties tiring, do you?’ enquired the man.
‘Er…not all parties. But this one has been rather hard work, I have to admit.’
‘The food’s very good. Worth the effort.’
‘Oh. I didn’t mean that. Actually the food’s all been done by caterers.’ It was her mother’s one indulgence.
‘Then what did you mean?’
‘Oh…you know. I’m the daughter of the house, so I’ve been been doing all the introductions and socialising and that sort of thing.’
‘And you consider that hard work?’
Jane opened her mouth to reply. But before she could get the words out he said drily, ‘Don’t bother to explain. I started working for real when I was just eight years old. I’m afraid you and I are likely to have very different ideas on the meaning of the word.’
Jane gave a tight smile. She felt well and truly put in her place. ‘Well,’ she said briskly after a moment’s pause, ‘to get back to work—my kind of work, that is—let me introduce myself. I’m—’
‘Jane Garston. I know,’ he said matter-of-factly. One eyebrow had flickered slightly, warning her of his intention to interrupt. It was the first time his features had betrayed anything at all. ‘I’m Guy Rexford. I dined with your parents last week.’
‘Uh-huh…I remember them mentioning it.’ So this was the man Jane was supposed to be impressing…?
Unthinkingly, she lowered her dark eyes and surveyed the swooping neckline of her dress. The lights were casting the deepest, darkest shadow imaginable between her high, rounded breasts. Oh, drat! She wished now that she and her mother hadn’t make that silly joke. She didn’t much like the idea of distracting Guy Rexford with her cleavage. He was much too young—well, compared to the other guests, anyway—and much too austere to be the butt of such humour. She wouldn’t even have worn the dress had she not thought the entire company would consist of respectable old fogeys. She hunched her shoulders slightly and tried her hardest not to breathe deeply.
‘What are you looking at?’ asked Guy Rexford levelly. There was something about his dark, well-modulated voice which was disconcerting. It was, so far at any rate, as well-controlled as his features, and yet there were nuances and depths to its timbre which disconcerted her.
Jane looked up guiltily. She hadn’t realised her inspection was so obvious. The warmth of her embarrassment began to soak into her skin, but luckily, given her colouring, her blushes rarely showed.
‘Nothing,’ she said sheepishly.
‘You were,’ he contradicted.
‘I…um…I dropped a peanut earlier…’ she said hastily, and then the warmth intensified as she realised that she had only made matters worse. ‘It’s all right, though. I—er—I think it went on the floor. I expect somebody’s trodden on it by now,’ she continued balefully.
She looked up into his eyes, expecting to find… lechery? Scorn? Instead she found them as enigmatically neutral as before.
‘Then you won’t want me to try to find it for you?’
‘No, thank you,’ she muttered falteringly.
He let his hand fall away from her arm almost disdainfully. ‘Are you sure that doesn’t mean ‘yes, please”?’
Now she understood just what it was that his voice had intimated moments before. He spoke so caustically that she felt grazed by his words. His voice was a tool. A sharp-edged tool. She felt as if he had just drawn it menacingly across her throat. And yet his features still gave nothing away.
Jane swallowed, then bit hard on the inside of her tilted upper lip. ‘I didn’t mean…’ She clenched her fists defensively. What on earth could she say? The man seemed to be suggesting that she positively wanted him to look down the front of her dress…‘No, of course it doesn’t! What an absurd idea—trying to find a lost peanut.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ he said laconically.
‘Is it?’ she returned, fierily. ‘I don’t happen to think it’s all right at all. I’m not used to having men talk to me like that, Mr Rexford.’
‘Like what?’ he countered wryly. ‘Don’t the gentlemen of your acquaintance usually offer to help you, Miss Garston?’
‘The gentlemen of my acquaintance…’ she began haughtily, and then began to flounder. ‘Well, they are gentlemen. That’s all.’
‘And I’m not?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she muttered guardedly. This was awful. She seemed to have started an argument—and yet she had no idea what the argument was about. Except for a mythical lost peanut, of course…‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed, looking up at him for a clue as to how to set things right. But his features were unreadable again, unreadable but not forgiving. Suddenly she wanted to walk away from him very fast, her chin high.
But he beat her to it. ‘It’s been nice meeting you, Jane Garston…’ he drawled, turning to go. His dark blue eyes swept scathingly over her bare shoulders, before very obviously, and not the least bit salaciously, studying the shadow between her breasts.
‘Er…goodbye…’ she said.
He made his way swiftly through the gaggle of guests. Annoyingly, she found her eyes following him. He was several inches over six feet, much taller than the rest of the company, and he remained perfectly visible until he reached the front door. He turned a little as he twisted the heavy iron ring on the solid-oak door. To one side of his face, just below his left cheekbone, was a dark mole. It lent that particular aspect of his face a surprising beauty. But when the door came open he tilted his head the other way and the vision fled. The man who closed the door behind him was big, powerfully built, with such an uncompromisingly granite cast to his features that he could never, ever be described as beautiful.
Jane remained leaning against the wall for a few moments, waiting for her skin to cool down. Then she hailed Colonel Fish as he staggered by, biting a squidgy profiterole. She allowed him to bore her rigid for the rest of the evening. There was a lot to be said for being bored, after all.
When the last guest had gone, Wendy and Sidney Garston
occupied their usual chairs on either side of the fireplace. Both had eased off their shoes, and looked tired.
‘Come to say goodnight, sweetheart?’ asked her father, as Jane brought her cocoa through to join them.
‘Yes. I’ll drink this in bed. I’m worn out. It went very well, though, didn’t it?’
Her father pulled a face. ‘It took a nosedive just before ten. I thought that Rexford chap wasn’t going to turn up until then.’
‘Didn’t you want him to come?’
Sidney Garston ran a blue-veined hand through his thinning fair hair. ‘Not really, love. I was hoping he’d lost interest in me. I’ve got a nasty feeling he’s planning to take over Garston’s, you see. He tried to poach a couple of my top design engineers a couple of weeks ago, and then when we went out for that meal with Molly and Leonard it turned out he’d wangled an invite. He spent the whole evening asking about the firm—though why he bothered I can’t imagine. He already knew as much about it as I do.’
‘But that doesn’t mean he’s going to take you over, Dad, surely? Anyway, Garston’s is a private company, and there are still plenty of shares in family hands. I thought that made you safe?’
Sidney Garston shrugged. ‘So did I. But it’s not actually impossible for someone to take us over. Only improbable.’
Her mother sighed. ‘If only Aunt Florrie hadn’t left all those shares to that wretched cats’ home…I suppose we can’t blame her, because the poor soul was quite batty, but it has meant that something like this has been a possibility for years now.’ She nibbled her lip. ‘We should have tried to get hold of those shares, Sidney.’
Her father shrugged dispiritedly. ‘I’ve always invested whatever capital I have in the business, love. It’s one of the reasons I’ve managed to keep it buoyant through all these recessions. If I’d used our money to increase our holding we wouldn’t have been able to invest in all those computerised lathes for a start, and we might well have gone under. It’s never felt like much of an option.’
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