The Hostage Heart

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Contents

  Cover

  Forthcoming Titles in this series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Forthcoming Titles in this series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House

  DIVIDED LOVE

  THE HOSTAGE HEART

  Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  First published 1997 in Great Britain under the title Dangerous Love.

  Copyright © 1997 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

  Author’s Note copyright © 2017 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

  The right of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8736-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-902-2 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  With love to Angie and Wendy,

  who took such good care of my mother.

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader

  When I was a little child, I was mad about ponies. Unfortunately, we lived on the top floor of a council flat in London, far away from riding stables and green fields, and my parents couldn’t afford riding lessons anyway. So it was down to the local library for pony stories.

  Ruby Ferguson, the Pullein-Thompsons, Monica Edwards – I gobbled them up. And when I had read every pony book in the library system, there was nothing for it but to write my own. Thus was born my impulse to write. Between the ages of ten and eighteen I wrote nine pony novels. Then at eighteen I left home and went to university, and when I discovered adult life held just as many disappointments, it was natural for me to start writing adult novels.

  After winning the 1972 NEL Young Writers’ Award with The Waiting Game, I began to develop ambition. I wanted to write a great literary novel; I wanted to win the Booker Prize; I wanted to feature in works of reference, for my books to be studied in universities.

  But between a one-book Young Writer and great literary status there would obviously be a long and stony road. I was offered a contract to write three modern romances, and accepted it gratefully. A second publisher offered me a contract for another three, and a third for four more. I was developing the skills that can only come from doing, and making a name for myself in the publishing world as reliable and professional; and when that won me the contract for the Morland Dynasty Series, I was finally able to give up work and become a full-time writer.

  This year will see the publication of my ninetieth book. I have come a long way from those first romances. I have not won the Booker Prize or written the great literary novel, but I have learned a lot, earned my living, and I hope, in my small way, given people pleasure. I still write two books a year. The compulsion to write is as strong as ever: life will always hold disappointments, and the escape into fiction is a comfort, for the writer as well as the reader.

  This book is the work of a very young me; but it’s the product of an energetic, enthusiastic and optimistic self in what seemed a simpler world, and I’m very pleased to see it back in print. If you know my later books, I hope you will uncouple your expectations, and just enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  © 2017 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Chapter One

  The third time Emma saw the advertisement, she stopped and read it more closely. It had appeared in the Guardian and the Times Educational Supplement without causing her more than an amused glance, but finding it again in the trade journal she wondered if it could be serious after all.

  It was the word ‘governess’ that intrigued her: so very Jane Austen, so unexpected in the nineteen-nineties.

  Governess wanted to teach and care for girl aged 10. Large house. Other help kept. Excellent pay and conditions for dedicated person. Mrs Henderson, 3 Audley Place, W1.

  It was the ‘large house’, she thought afterwards, that made her decide to write off. Not because she had ambitions that way, but because in conjunction with ‘girl aged 10’ it seemed to her infinitely pathetic. She pictured a poor little only child rattling round in a vast, echoing mansion. She had grown up one of seven – an unfashionably large family even in those days – in a three-bed terraced house in Hoxton. She shared a bedroom with her two younger sisters; her four younger brothers had the large bedroom; and Mum and Dad had the smallest room, which was only just big enough to take a double bed, so that their wardrobe had to stand out on the landing, a hazard to shins in the night when you had to go to the bathroom.

  Downstairs was a front room – designated the quiet room where homework was done – a back room where everything else happened, and the tiny kitchen. Outside in a minute square of garden the grass struggled unequally against an army of tramping, scuffing feet, for it provided the only play area apart from the street.

  In this confined space they had tumbled over each other, played and quarrelled, helped and hindered each other; nine mouths jabbering, eighteen eyes precluding privacy, thirty-six limbs always in the way whenever you tried to move. Noisy it was, inconvenient always, exasperating often – but lonely, never. In moments of high irritation with the brothers who made a noise like a Panzer division when she was trying to revise for an exam, or the sisters who borrowed and spoiled her tights and her lipstick and her favourite sweater, she would cry out for peace and quiet and a room of her own. But she always knew how lucky she was to belong to so many souls. The old saying was: Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to let you in. When you had six siblings, you knew there would always be a lot of places you could call home.

  So she thought how sad it must be to be a child, aged ten, in need of a governess. Was Mrs Henderson disabled in some way? Or was she away from home a lot? Perhaps she was in the Diplomatic Corps: Audley Place was May fair, where a lot of embassies were situated. A poor little rich girl, presumably. Well she would send off a letter and her CV, and see what happened. It would be interesting, at least.

  Her flat-mates did not see it in quite the same way.

  “Ar
e you crazy, or what?” Suzanne said, staring at her over the coffee-tray she was bringing in. She was thin, dark and intense, with eyes that bulged slightly behind her rather John Lennon-ish, wire-rimmed glasses, and fine, straight hair that was always slipping out of its pins.

  “What’s crazy about it?” Emma said mildly.

  “Going into service is crazy,” Suzanne said, banging the tray down on the coffee table. “This is the twentieth century. Governess! You’re not Jane Eyre, you know.”

  “Oy, look out!” Alison said, annoyed. She was painting her fingernails, her left hand laid out flat on a pile of books on the table which Suzanne had jogged. “You’ll have the bottle over.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t do that in here,” Suzanne retorted. “It’s disgusting. Some of us eat on that table.”

  “Blimey, I’m only painting them. It’s not contaminating,” Ali said. “It’s not like Rachel cutting her toenails in the bathroom and leaving the bits all over the floor.”

  “One bit, once. Don’t exaggerate,” Rachel said, without looking up from the stack of homework she was marking. “I missed it. It wasn’t deliberate.”

  “What is that colour anyway?” Suzanne said, staring now at Alison’s hand. “It’s nauseating. You aren’t going to work like that tomorrow?”

  “Of course I am,” Ali said. “It’s the latest thing: Amazon Green.”

  “Gan Green more like,” Suzanne said. “Are you taking sugar or not today, Rache?”

  “Yes. No, wait – make that no. I’ll try without again.” Rachel dieted on and off, though nothing she did seemed to make much difference one way or the other. She was a full-bodied sort of girl: not fat, but no Kate Moss either. Emma thought she worried too much, but Suzanne and Ali were both walking twigs, and Rachel looked at them wistfully when they swapped size eights and passed by the bra department without pausing. She took the mug from Suzanne and sipped it flinchingly. “Ugh! I wish I could get used to the taste.”

  “You don’t persevere, that’s your trouble,” said Alison, waving her hand about to dry it. “Put two in for me, Suze. Anyway, go on, Em, what’s all this about?”

  Emma, who had been waiting patiently for all the sidetracking to end, passed the copy of the advert round for them to look at.

  Suzanne frowned over it. “I’m sure I know that address.”

  “This Mrs Henderson a mate of yours, then?” Alison asked innocently. She liked baiting Suzanne.

  Suzanne rose to it. “No, of course not. You don’t think I mix socially with the types who live in Audley Place do you?” She had fiercely left-wing principles, and sometimes had difficulty in squaring them with her job with a top interior designer, where inevitably her customers were drawn from the ranks of the wealthy.

  “Perhaps you did a job for her?” Rachel suggested soothingly.

  “Maybe,” Suzanne said, still frowning. “I’m sure I know the address, but Henderson – no,” she shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “So you’ve got nothing against the Hendersons personally?” Emma said.

  “I don’t need to have,” Suzanne said. “You’d be mad to have anything to do with this. Even if it’s genuine—”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “Why should it be! Nobody has governesses nowadays. Nannies or childminders, maybe, for when they’re little. Then the kid goes to school. Either there’s something wrong with it, or the whole thing’s weird. I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.”

  “It’s probably white slavers, Emma,” Rachel remarked conversationally. “They’ll drug your tea and whisk you off to the nightclubs of South America.”

  Suzanne raised her brows. “You think that sort of thing doesn’t go on? I could show you an article—”

  Alison intervened. Suzanne always had an article on every kind of human exploitation. “Well, anyway, you wouldn’t want a live-in job, would you, Em? I mean, it’d make you like a servant. You’d probably get roped in for housework and all that sort of thing. You know how people treat their au pairs.”

  “And running about after some horrible bratty rich kid,” Suzanne put in, “who’ll treat you like dirt—”

  “Why should she be horrible?” Emma asked, amused.

  “Bound to be,” Suzanne said briefly.

  “I agree with Suze,” Alison said. “You’d be no better than a servant.”

  “Better a servant to one kid than thirty,” Emma said. “Whatever this child’s like, it can’t be as bad as being a class teacher. I’ve had my fill of that, thank you very much.”

  Rachel looked up at that point. She and Emma had taught at the same school for three years, but Emma had given in her notice to leave at the end of this term. Neither of them had been physically assaulted yet, but they had endured most other things from the increasingly unruly children. “I know you want a change,” Rachel said in her gentle way, “but isn’t this a bit drastic? I mean, living in and everything, your time won’t be your own. The kid’ll be sick in the night and you’ll have to change the sheets and all that sort of thing.”

  “Oh well, that’ll be nothing new to me,” Emma said lightly. “You forget I had six brothers and sisters. Anyway,” she tired of the argument, “this is all a bit previous – I haven’t got the job yet. I probably won’t even get an interview.”

  And with that she changed the subject firmly, and a little while later when the conversation had picked up between the other three she slipped out of the room and sought the privacy of her own room.

  Each of the girls had a bedroom to herself in the large, shabby flat in Muswell Hill, and they shared the living-room, kitchen and bathroom. The lease was in Rachel’s name, but they shared the rent and the bills equally, and on the whole the arrangement worked very well. Of course, they had their quarrels. Suzanne tended to use other people’s things without permission; Alison was very bad at clearing up after herself and had to be nagged to do her share of the housework; both of them tended to put upon Rachel, who was mild and gentle and would always sooner clean the bath herself than have an argument with the person whose turn it was; and all three thought Emma was neurotic because she couldn’t bear dirt or mess in the kitchen.

  But none of the arguments was serious, and the four girls rubbed along happily enough. Emma loved the flat. After her overcrowded childhood, it was paradise to have all this space, a room of her own where no one messed with her things; and after eight raised voices, three constituted peace and quiet to her. There was a big garden out at the back which strictly speaking belonged to the ground floor flat, but in which they were allowed to sunbathe and eat al fresco in the summer. And best of all, there were the wide green spaces and towering trees of the Alexandra Park right on her doorstep, so to speak. She was a Londoner by birth, a real townie, but she liked a bit of nature as much as the next man.

  She could see the tops of the trees from her bedroom window, as she sat on her bed and started to prepare the next day’s lessons. Her heart wasn’t really in it, and she had to struggle to keep her mind from wandering to more enjoyable subjects. So she wasn’t too upset at being disturbed when there was a tap on the door and Alison appeared.

  “Are you busy? Can I come in?”

  “Yes, if you like.”

  Alison leaned against the chest of drawers and fiddled with things. She was thin and red-haired and rather kooky-looking, given to wild clothes and outlandish makeup. Today she was wearing a leather miniskirt and a sort of sleeveless vest in purple lycra, and her hair stood out round her head in the through-a-hedge-backwards style which was currently fashionable amongst the bright young things. She worked for an very exclusive clothes shop in Bond Street which catered to the ‘Daphne’s’ set, and blackish-green lipstick and nail varnish were nothing out of the ordinary there.

  “Did you want something?” Emma asked at last.

  “Oh, not really,” Alison said, and wandered over to the window. “Did you get the Guardian today?”

  “Yes, did you wan
t to borrow it?”

  “No, I just wondered.”

  Emma waited patiently. Alison was never direct about anything. She was one of those people who, when you asked if they wanted a cup of tea, would answer, ‘Well, are you having one?’ Obviously there was something on her mind, but it would take a while to get to.

  At last she said, “You know Phil?”

  Phil was Ali’s boyfriend. “That’s a rhetorical question, I take it?”

  “Well,” Ali went on, “you know Phil works for British Airways? Well, he’s got a friend who owns a travel agency.”

  “Really?” Emma said politely. Alison turned from the window.

  “Em, you’re not really going to apply for this job, are you?”

  “Yes, I really am.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. I mean, I know you want a change and everything, but – well, why not make a real break, go into something else? I mean, teaching is bad enough, but this job you’re talking about – I bet the pay’s lousy, and the hours’d be terrible. What you want is a job that’ll let you get out and about and meet people.”

  “And you’ve got something in mind?”

  Alison looked eager. “This friend of Phil’s – he’s doing awfully well and he wants to take on an assistant.”

  “In the travel agency?”

  “Yes. OK, he might not pay great bucks to start with, but it’d be an opportunity, because when he opens another branch, you’d be in line for manager. Plus you’d get all the cheap travel and holidays.”

  “And you think he’d take me on?” Emma said drily.

  “I know he would, if Phil put in a word. They’re great mates.” Alison’s eyes pleaded. “Only, if you go for this other thing, you’d be living in, wouldn’t you, and you’d leave the flat, and we’d have to get someone else.”

  “Ah,” said Emma significantly.

  “Well, that’s not the only reason,” Alison said indignantly. “We all get along so well, it’d be terrible to break us up. I mean, we’d miss you. And I want you to be happy, do the right thing. Will you think about it at least?”