"The best solution is that you and I get married as soon as possible.”
About the Author
Books by Jacqueline Baird
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Copyright
The best solution is that you and I get married as soon as possible.”
At the mention of marriage Josie’s mouth fell open. He looked so cool, as though he were discussing the weather—instead of asking an almost complete stranger to marry him.
“Marry you! You must be mad! ” Josie exclaimed. She could not believe what she was hearing. But Conan’s dark eyes trapped and held her own, and she knew he was deadly serious.
“Mad, no. Practical, yes,” he drawled hardily.
“No. Definitely not. Charles was—” Josie had been going to say he was the father of her unborn child, but Conan continued.
“You are to have a child. A Zarcourt. My father wants the child, and he usually gets what he wants. There is no way my father will allow his grandchild to be born out of wedlock....”
JACQUELINE BAIRD began writing as a hobby when her family objected to the smell of her oil painting, and immediately became hooked on the romantic genre. She loves traveling, and worked her way around the world from Europe to the Americas and Australia, returning to marry her teenage sweetheart. Jacqueline now lives in the North of England, with her husband, Jim, and they have two grown sons.
Books by Jacqueline Baird
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JACQUELINE BAIRD
A Husband of Convenience
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
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CHAPTER ONE
‘I’M SORRY, Josie. But Charles is dead.’
‘But he can’t be. I’m pregnant!’ Josie exclaimed, tearing her gaze away from sinfully deep, assessing eyes to glance frantically around the room, unaware of the stunned silence her comment had caused. Her father was seated on the sofa, while Major Zarcourt was at his desk, but there was no sign of Charles Zarcourt. The look of shock on her father’s face registered and to her horror she realised she’d spoken out loud, before the sound of sardonic laughter broke the silence.
Her violet eyes swung back to the tall, dark man standing by the drinks cabinet. It was Conan Zarcourt who had delivered the thunderbolt. And, of course, it was Conan who’d laughed! She might have guessed; he must have a penchant for outrageous statements, she thought angrily.
Immaculate in a dark business suit and crisp blue shirt, Conan was leaning against the cabinet with a glass of amber liquid in his hand. As she watched he raised the glass to his mouth and drained it. Then he slammed the empty glass back down with unnecessary force, the expression on his ruggedly attractive face hard to define. He looked more than angry, Josie thought, he looked positively venomous, and for a second she saw a flash of what looked like anguish in his dark eyes. But she must have been mistaken, as he smiled a grim smile.
‘Let me get you a drink. You’re going to need one,’ he offered bluntly:
‘No. No alcohol for me. An orange juice.’ Even in her shocked state Josie still had the sense to realise she couldn’t drink in her condition.
‘As you wish.’ Conan’s mouth turned down in a wry grimace as he filled a glass with juice and then walked towards her.
He held the glass out to Josie. She looked down at his large hand and back up into his face. Was it only a couple of minutes ago that she’d walked into the study, and been stopped in her tracks by Conan’s outrageous response to her casual enquiry, “Has Charles arrived early?”
Her fingers brushed against Conan’s as she took the glass he offered, and her hand trembled slightly. What was it about Conan that even when he was at his most vile, cracking stupid jokes about his half-brother Charles, her body reacted alarmingly when he was around?
She stared up at the man towering over her. With thick black hair, broad forehead, a straight, rather large nose, and wide mouth and square jaw, Conan wasn’t conventionally handsome; his was a face too rough-hewn for that, but it was still strangely compelling. To her certain knowledge he had visited Beeches Manor only twice in the ten years Josie had lived in the area.
The first time she’d met him she had been looking after the jumble stall at the church summer fair. Charles was supposed to be helping her, but had gone to get her a cold drink when a man impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit had appeared.
‘The only thing here that would fit me...is you.’ His deep, sexy drawl had shivered along Josie’s nerves, giving her goosebumps, and her startled gaze had locked with his for a second, before his eyes had swept over her body in blatant male scrutiny. ‘Tell me, are you for sale?’ Josie had fought back a chuckle at his cheek, but before she could respond Charles had returned.
‘No chatting up the local girls,’ Charles had told the stranger, and much to Josie’s surprise he’d slipped an arm around her waist, adding, ‘And certainly not mine.’
‘I might have guessed,’ the man had murmured, and he’d walked away.
‘You know him?’ Josie had asked Charles.
‘You could say that. But never mind him; how about having dinner with me tonight?’
Josie had had a crush on Charles Zarcourt for years, and the disturbing stranger had been forgotten as she’d jumped at the chance of a date with Charles.
Forgotten until the second time she’d seen Conan, when she had almost died of embarrassment.
She dismissed the disturbing memory with a shake of her small head. She could not think about that now. She needed to discover why Conan was here. But then why not? Technically it was his home, she supposed. Conan was right about her needing a drink. Today had been the worst day of her life so far, and she had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that it wasn’t going to improve.
She’d taken the afternoon off work and driven from Cheltenham to Oxford to visit the clinic attached to the hospital there, and had her worst fear confirmed. She was pregnant. She had returned home to Low Beeches farmhouse to find an urgent message asking her to go to the Manor House. She had naturally presumed her unofficial fiancé, Charles, had returned from active service in the Army a day early. But looking at the grim faces around her she’d begun to wonder.
Josie took a great gulp of the juice and almost choked as it went down the wrong way, so her father’s words barely registered.
‘You have to be brave, Josie.’
‘Brave,’ she murmured. She glanced around again but there was no sign of Charles. Josie blinked and rubbed one damp palm against her thigh. She hadn’t eaten all day and was feeling light-headed. Her puzzled gaze sought Conan’s. He looked angry and deadly serious, but he couldn’t be...
‘If this is another one of your outrageous comments masquerading as a joke, Conan, I don’t find it funny!’ she said curtly.
‘No joke. It’s true. There’s been an accident. Charles is dead,’ he affirmed, his glittering dark eyes holding h
er own.
She stared at him in disbelief, all the colour draining from her face. ‘An accident?’ Josie repeated parrot fashion. There certainly had been an accident, and she was carrying it. Nervously she licked her dry lips. Charles dead! It was unthinkable and, raising the glass to her mouth, she downed the rest of her juice.
She hardly noticed Major Zarcourt’s, ‘Thank God for small mercies,’ before darkness enveloped her, and for the first time in her life she fainted.
Her eyes fluttered open minutes later; she wasn’t sure where she was, or what had happened, only aware of the strong arm around her shoulders and the comforting feel of the broad chest her head rested upon.
Then her memory flooded back. Someone had said Charles was dead. But he couldn’t be; she was pregnant with his child. She stiffened guiltily. Horrified at her purely selfish thought and raising her head, she jerked out of Conan’s protective hold to sit tensely on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap. She glanced at her father sitting beside her, his elbows resting on his knees, head in hands. She turned back to Conan. She did not need to ask the question. The answer was there in the compassion that was evident in his dark eyes.
‘Is it true?’ she demanded unevenly.
Conan covered her hands with his own large hand and squeezed lightly as he replied. ‘I’m sorry, Josie, so sorry, but yes.’
She wanted to cry—she should cry—but the tears would not come, not yet...
How did it happen?’ she managed to ask almost normally, and, shrugging his hand away, she sat up straighter, amazed at her own control.
‘Don’t think about it now, Josie. Are you all right? That’s the important thing,’ he prompted.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine, but please, I want to know,’ she demanded, her glance sliding from one man to the other in her agitation. Major Zarcourt was sitting in the hard-backed chair behind his desk, while Conan, her father, and herself were seated in a row on the sofa—like the Three Stooges, she thought wildly, before her eyes were drawn back to Conan’s face, waiting for his answer.
‘I think I should let my father explain. I’m sure he can tell you the correct story much better than I,’ Conan drawled cynically, lounging back against the arm-rest, his long body angled towards her, dark eyes ranging slowly over her small face and down over her slender body perched on the edge of the seat.
Josie felt the colour rise in her cheeks, and for a second she remembered the last time she’d seen Conan. But now was not the time to give way to embarrassment, and deliberately she turned her attention to the Major. Then she listened in mounting horror as he confirmed Charles’s death.
Two days ago, while travelling in a Jeep, Charles had driven over an unmarked landmine. He’d died instantly. The family had been informed at lunchtime, but as Josie had not been at work all afternoon they hadn’t been able to contact her.
A lump lodged in her throat, threatening to choke her. Her lovely eyes glistened with unshed tears as the Major’s voice droned on.
‘It was the way he would have wanted to go. On active service with his regiment. He was a hero.’
She heard the words, but all Josie could think of was poor Charles. All her doubts about him were put aside as the desperate horror of his death hit her. Charles—blond, blue-eyed, handsome Charles—was dead. It was unbelievable. So swamped was she by the enormity of what had happened and all its ramifications, she saw nothing odd in the Major’s next words and answered him without thinking.
‘Tell me, Josie, is it true? Are you carrying Charles’s child? Is it confirmed?’
‘Yes, I was at the clinic this afternoon; that’s why you couldn’t find me,’ she explained, her tears overflowing and slowly running down her soft cheeks.
‘My God! Father, can’t you see the girl is in shock?’ Conan prompted scathingly. ‘Are you really so desperate that you have to question the poor girl at a time like this?’
Poor girl indeed! Conan’s comment was just what she needed to stop herself wallowing in self-pity. She might have just lost her boyfriend, and be pregnant, but no one was going to call her a ‘poor girl’, and certainly not an arrogant devil like Conan.
‘I’m taking her home.’ Conan’s voice penetrated her chaotic thoughts. Raising her head, she saw the derisory glance he flicked at her father before he added, ‘She is your daughter, Mr Jamieson. Instead of sitting there as if the weight of the world rested on your shoulders, you could try looking after her. She sure as hell needs someone to.’
‘No. No.’ Josie finally found her voice and, jumping to her feet, she brushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
She was a small girl, just five feet tall, but perfectly proportioned. Her blue-black hair hung in a profusion of curls down past her shoulders. Her violet eyes were large and outlined with thick sooty lashes, her nose was small and straight, her mouth full-lipped and gently curving. Dressed in a simple blue cashmere sweater, a colour-coordinated short straight skirt that ended some four inches above her knees, and her feet encased in classic navy blue high-heeled pumps, she had no idea how lovely she looked, or how courageous, to the three men whose startled eyes were fixed upon her.
‘You’re in shock, Josie.’ Conan unfolded his impressive length from the sofa, and in one lithe stride was beside her. ‘Let me take you home; your father is in no state to drive.’
Her father might not be, but no way was she letting Conan take her home. She remembered the last time he had driven her to the farmhouse all too clearly. He had made it very obvious he didn’t approve of her relationship with Charles, and she didn’t need his false sympathy.
‘No thank you. I am perfectly capable of driving.’ Turning to look at her father, she added, ‘Come on, Daddy. I’ll drive us home.’
A large hand curved around her upper arm. ‘Don’t be stupid, Josie; you’re in shock. Let me...’
‘Let go of me!’ she cried, and violently she pulled her arm free from Conan’s grasp, staggering slightly as she did so. ‘I don’t need your help.’ Again turning to where her father still sat, she added, ‘Please, Dad. I want to leave.’ The trauma of the last few weeks, the doctor’s confirmation of her pregnancy this afternoon, and the ultimate irony—the death of Charles—were threatening to make her break down completely. She had to get away from Beeches Manor, and more importantly she had to get away from Conan.
Luckily her father, finally sensing her real need to leave, agreed.
How she drove the old Ford car home she would never know. Tears blurred her eyes, but whether they were for herself or Charles she wasn’t completely sure.
Later that night, Josie lay in her small bed, unable to sleep. The events of the past few weeks flickered through the windmills of her mind in a series of brief pictures, ending with the tragic death of Charles Zarcourt. Their engagement was supposed to have been made official this weekend. But Josie knew, if she was honest with herself, that she’d had every intention of cancelling the arrangement. Within days of Charles’s departure, she had realised she didn’t love him. Like thousands of girls before her, she’d been blinded by a romantic ideal and had made a stupid mistake. It was only when she’d begun to suspect she might be pregnant that the full enormity of her mistake had been brought home to her. Even so she’d decided there was no way she was marrying Charles. Her plan had been to explain to Charles in person when he arrived tomorrow—Friday—and hope he would understand. But not any more. He was dead... But from deep in her subconscious a devilish little feeling of relief surfaced. She’d been spared the arguments that refusing to marry Charles would have fuelled. And there would have been arguments, simply because her father and the Major had been friends for years.
Charles and his father lived at the Beeches Manor House not far from the village of Beeches, in the heart of the Cotswolds. After the death of Josie’s mother, her father had moved from London and rented Low Beeches farmhouse from the Major. The old men played chess every Tuesday, and Josie had known Charles for t
en years and had harboured a schoolgirl crush on him for almost as long. He was not at home very much, but he’d been back for a month in the summer before being posted overseas. He’d asked Josie out three times in all, and she supposed one could say they’d been courting, but only just. Until the fatal night of his going-away party at the Manor House...
Josie stirred restlessly on the bed and groaned out loud as the memory came back to haunt her. It had been the most humiliating experience of her life.
She’d been sad at the thought of Charles leaving, but hardly broken-hearted. But all that had changed when he’d danced with her, plied her with drinks, and sworn he loved her, wanted to many her, later leading her to his bedroom and finally into his bed.
Afterwards he’d patted her bottom, leapt off the bed, saying, I need a drink,’ and had left the room, muttering, ‘Stay here; I’ll be back in a minute.’
It had been the first time for Josie, and if she hadn’t drunk so much it would never have happened. Making love was nothing like she had expected; in fact she had been horribly disappointed. But worse had been to follow.
Suddenly the bedroom door had opened, the light from the hall illuminating a path across the room. She’d hastily sat up and wrapped the sheet firmly around her, wishing she had dressed and left. She’d glanced towards the door and gasped, her mouth falling open in astonishment.
‘Very nice—a joke of Charles’s no doubt, but I’m not in the mood tonight. Go peddle your wares downstairs, sweetie,’ a cynically mocking voice drawled lazily.
It wasn’t Charles but a total stranger, although the voice had sounded vaguely familiar. But Josie was not about to hang around to find out who it was. She swung her feet to the floor, desperate to hide anywhere away from the dark man standing in the doorway. Then the bedroom light clicked on.
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