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taught her a valuable lesson.

      Hard on the heels of that came another, disturbing image. The image of him in bed, making love to her. She looked away hurriedly. Thank heavens she was immune to his charm, she thought. If James had been a catastrophic mistake, then the likes of Victor Temple would have been ten times worse. He was just in a different league, the sort of man destined to be a danger as far as women were concerned.

      She licked her lips and put such silly conjecture to the back of her mind.

      ‘He probably doesn’t even live in the area any longer,’ she heard him say.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘The man you had your affair with. The one you were working for.’

      She knew that he was taking a shot in the dark, and she opened her mouth to contradict him, then closed it. Let him go right ahead and think that. It suited her.

      ‘I can’t imagine you having a wild, passionate fling,’ he said with slow, amused speculation. He looked across at her and their eyes met for a brief moment, before he turned away with a little smile on his lips.

      ‘What sort of time scale do we have for this project?’

      ‘Not a very adroit change of subject, Alice.’

      She could discern the laughter in his voice and was unreasonably nettled by it. Just as she had been earlier on. He had categorised her, stuck her on a dusty shelf somewhere. Another spinster-to-be, past her sell-by date. Age had nothing to do with it but, reading between the lines, she was, to him, so unappealing sexually that she disqualified herself from the marriage stakes.

      ‘I don’t have to explain my private life to you.’

      ‘Do you to anyone? Is there another man in your life now?’

      ‘No, and I’m quite happy with the situation, as it happens.’

      ‘Really?’ He was enjoying this conversation. She could hear it in his voice. ‘I thought all women wanted to get married, settle down, have children. Keep the home fires burning, as they say.’

      Alice winced inwardly at that.

      ‘Not all, no. This is the twentieth century, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are lots of women around who prefer to cultivate their working lives.’ She had never spoken to him like this before, but then their conversations had never touched on the personal before. Or at least not this personal. On a Friday he might ask her, in passing, what plans she had for the weekend, but he had never shown the least interest in delving any further.

      ‘I think that’s something of a myth,’ he said comfortably. ‘I personally think that most women would give an arm and a leg for the security of a committed relationship.’

      Alice didn’t say anything, not trusting herself to remain polite.

      ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’ he persisted, still smiling, as if pleasantly energised by the fact that her common sense was struggling to hold back a desire to argue with him.

      She shouldn’t say anything. She knew that. She should bite back the urge to retort and, if she had to speak, should take refuge in something utterly bland and innocuous.

      ‘You seem to find ones who don’t want committed relationships,’ she was horrified to hear herself say.

      ‘What on earth do you mean?’

      Alice wished that she could vanish very quickly down a hole. She had gone too far. There was nothing in his voice to imply that he was annoyed, but he would be. Cordial though he could be, he kept a certain amount of space around himself and barging in with observations on his private life was the most tactless thing she could have done. He was her employer after all, and she would do well to remember that. She could have kicked herself.

      ‘Nothing!’ She almost shouted it at him in an attempt to retrieve her remark. ‘I didn’t mean anything.’

      ‘Oh, yes, you did. Go on. Explain yourself. I won’t fly into a fit and break both your arms, you know.’

      Alice looked warily at him, the way she might have looked at a tiger that appeared friendly enough for the moment, but could well pounce at any minute.

      ‘I—I was being sarcastic,’ she stammered eventually. ‘It was uncalled for.’

      ‘Right on at least one of those counts, but, before you retreat behind that cool facade of yours, tell me what you were thinking when you said that. I’m interested.’

      Interested, she thought suddenly, and unlikely to be offended because she was just his secretary, and when you got right down to it her opinions would not matter to him one way or the other. She felt stupidly hurt by that.

      ‘Okay,’ she said with energy. ‘You said that most women want commitment. In which case, how do you feel about breaking hearts when you go out with them and refuse to commit yourself?’ This was not boss/secretary conversation. This was not what they should be talking about. They should be discussing the route they were taking, the weather, holidays, the cinema, anything but this.

      ‘I give them a great deal of enjoyment.’

      Alice could well imagine what nature of enjoyment he had in mind, and more graphic, curiously disturbing images floated into her head.

      ‘Well, then, that’s fine.’

      ‘But would be more fine if I slotted a ring on a finger?’

      ‘Not for you, I gather.’

      ‘Or necessarily for them. What makes you think that they don’t tire of me before I have a chance to tire of them?’ He looked across at her and grinned at the expression on her face. ‘Well, now, I expect I should take that as a compliment.’ Which made the colour crawl into her face, because she knew that he could see perfectly well what she was thinking. That he was the sort of man a woman could not possibly tire of. When, she wondered in confusion, had she started thinking like that?

      ‘I recognise where we are now,’ she said. She closed the map on her lap. ‘We should be coming into the town in about fifteen minutes. Highfield House is on the other side. I can show you which signs to follow.’ She stared straight ahead of her, and before he could return to their conversation she began talking about the town in great detail, pointing out places she remembered as they drove slowly through, covering up the lapse in their mutual detachment with a monologue on the charms of the town she had left behind.

      As they headed away from the town and back out towards the countryside, she began mentally bracing herself for what lay ahead of her.

      The sight of Highfield House, rising up in the distance like a matriarch overlooking her possessions, made her feel faint with apprehension. Her voice dried up.

      ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ he murmured, misreading her sudden silence.

      ‘Yes, it is.’

      ‘And you can breathe a sigh of relief. We’re out of the town now and I take it there were no sightings of your past...?’

      ‘No. No sightings.’ Breathe a sigh of relief? If only!

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE car pulled smoothly up into the huge courtyard outside Highfield House and Alice fought the urge to slide very low down into her seat, so that she would not be visible to whoever happened to approach them.

      Which, as she saw with a great wave of relief, wasn’t James, but a girl of about nineteen, dressed in a pair of jeans and a jumper and holding a duster in one hand. She pulled open the door, stood there with one hand on her hip, and waited for them to emerge. Alice wondered what had happened to the staff who had been in attendance when Henry had been alive. There had been a middle-aged couple who had lived in permanently, and three cleaners who came in twice a week, in addition to the gardeners and a cook.

      Victor was the first to open his car door and as he walked up to the house

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