LITMIR.BIZ

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care very deeply for her stepmother. Sheila Armitage had been their housekeeper, joining the household three years after her own mother’s death. Lindsay had been ten at the time and had responded readily to Sheila’s warm mothering. She had responded even more readily to Lucas’ affectionate toleration of her. Seven years her senior, Sheila’s son by her first marriage, Lucas had been Lindsay’s god and when he and her father had struck up a close rapport, nothing could have pleased her more. Lucas took the place of the son her father had always wanted. He was old fashioned in that he considered all women to be delicate plants to be shielded from the harsh realities of life, and because he was her father and she loved him Lindsay went along with the role he had devised for her. After leaving school, her father intended that she was to go to Switzerland to be ‘finished’. His business was expanding rapidly, and Lucas was his right hand man. Despite the traumas of being a teenager, Lindsay was conscious of being happier than she had ever been in her life. Sheila provided a buffer between her and her father, shielding Lindsay from the full force of his determination. Lindsay had been able to tell Sheila how unsettled she felt; how much she would have preferred to use the brain God had given her and go on to University rather than finishing school, and Sheila had been gently sympathetic.

      In fact when she looked back on that last summer before everything had changed so dramatically, she could think of only one jarring note.

      It had happened one hot afternoon—a Saturday in July. Over lunch her father had been talking about her future, telling her that he hoped while she was at finishing school she would make the right sort of contacts. He had never made any secret in the family circle of his plans for her, but listening to him Lindsay remembered how she had glanced at Lucas and been shocked by the bitter, grim expression darkening his eyes. It had gone almost the moment she saw it, and later she had wondered what Lucas could have been thinking about. That was before she had known about Gwendolin.

      She had gone into the herb garden after lunch, curiously restless and wishing she had the courage to explain to her father that the life he was equipping her for was not necessarily the one she wanted. But she knew how bitterly disappointed he would be … how hurt … and she just could not bring herself to deliver the blow. She would tell him later, she comforted herself. Somehow before the summer was over she would find a way … She had been lying face down, full length on the small camomile lawn when a shadow fell across the sun. Rolling over, she had squinted up into Lucas’ shuttered face, her own breaking into a warm smile. Lately whenever she saw Lucas it had become oddly difficult to breathe whenever she was close to her stepbrother. It had occurred to her to wonder if she was suffering from some sort of crush on him, but she had dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Lucas was her brother … or as good as. As he came down beside her she studied him carefully. Looking at Lucas always gave her a special kind of pleasure. There was something so strong about his features that just to look at them comforted her. Lucas would never allow anyone to push him into a situation he didn’t want. He was as dark as she was fair, his hair thick and straight where hers waved. There had been some sort of crisis at the office which had necessitated both him and her father working late, and as a consequence he had not had time to get his hair cut and it curled thickly down over the collar of his shirt.

      His face was all planes and angles, hard boned and very male. There were times like now when she wanted to reach out and touch him; to see if the living flesh felt as hard as it looked, but something always stopped her. Lucas had always had a certain remoteness about him; an air which warned against taking too many intimacies. His eyes, searched her face with cool grey precision, almost as though he were looking for something, and Lindsay felt herself tremble.

      ‘I don’t want to go to Switzerland.’ The words burst from her before she could stop them, a childish plea, which she regretted instantly. She was sixteen, not six, she told herself angrily.

      ‘Then you must tell your father so.’ Lucas sounded cold and remote. He wasn’t going to help her, Lindsay could see that.

      ‘He won’t listen to me … I don’t want to hurt him.’

      She could feel thick tears blurring her throat, closing it up and she hung her head in anguish.

      ‘And because of that you’ll sacrifice yourself to marriage with some idiotic county type who’ll marry you for your father’s money. Is that really what you want from life Lindsay?’

      It was so unlike him to be so cruel to her that Lindsay could say nothing. Tears flowed hotly down her face, but she made no move to check them, or to hide them from him. She heard the thick exclamation he made in his throat and through her own pain was dimly aware of something in his eyes that could have been pity and then she was in his arms, being comforted and rocked as she had been on countless occasions in the past. Much as he loved her, her father was not a demonstrative person, and it was always to Lucas that she turned for warmth and physical affection.

      ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’ His fingers, rough and slightly calloused brushed away her tears, ‘But Lindsay, can’t you see what’s going to happen to you if you don’t take charge of your own life. Can’t you see what you’ll be missing if you go along with your father’s plans for you?’

      She had managed a watery smile and asked mistily, ‘Like what?’

      ‘Like this.’

      The sensation of having Lucas’ mouth moving against her own almost robbed her of the ability to breathe. She was dimly conscious of her heart racing madly, thudding against her chest wall. Her lips softened beneath the cool assault of Lucas’ and then abruptly he was pushing her away and standing up, his expression morose and brooding as he looked down at her.

      ‘If you settle for the life your father’s planning for you that’s what you’ll be missing Lindsay … reality and all the pleasures and pains that go with it.’

      He was gone before she could speak, and she remembered she had touched her mouth wonderingly. Lucas had kissed her many times before but never like that. A little shiver ran down her spine, and she was conscious of a sudden restlessness, an excess of energy that demanded some outlet.

      It seemed hard to believe that the man who had spoken to her like that was the same one who eighteen months later was urging her to accept the proposal of the son of a neighbouring landowner; a young man who fulfilled all the qualifications her father wanted for her in a husband and yet who sexually left her completely cold. Tears stung her eyes and Lindsay was surprised to find them there. She was aware that Jeremy had gone quiet and raised her eyes to meet his.

      ‘Where were you?’ he questioned coolly. ‘You know Lindsay you’ll have to stop going off into daydreams like that, otherwise my family’s going to think you’re not quite right in the head.’

      ‘But since I’m an extremely wealthy heiress, they’ll be prepared to overlook it?’ She said the words with a smile, but knew she had shocked Jeremy from his expression.

      ‘You know you’re beginning to get quite a hang-up about this money,’ he told her curtly.

      ‘Would you want to marry me if I didn’t have it?’

      Be honest with me Jeremy she prayed inwardly, I’m so sick of sycophantic men whispering words of love when what they love is not me but my bank balance … And yet she wanted to be married … to have children, a home, roots … perhaps because of the loss of her mother when she was so young and then the double blow of her father and stepmother’s deaths in a plane crash that summer she was seventeen. Those losses had left her with a deep-seated need for security perhaps, but not at any price.

      She saw Jeremy’s slightly uncomfortable expression, but he responded with dogged honesty. ‘I don’t know … All my life I’ve been brought up with the responsibility that the family needs money,’ he told her half curtly. ‘That’s just the way it is. I’m thirty years old Lindsay and you’re twenty-four … can’t you accept that we’re both the type of people whose passions don’t run very deep. That doesn’t mean to say that because …’

      ‘Sexually we don’t turn one another on?’ Lindsay supplied wryly for him, watching the angry colour creep up under

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