LITMIR.BIZ

       Table of Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      ESCAPE! Juliet savoured the word even as she felt a faint pang of self-recrimination. She ought not to be feeling so happy just because she had managed, for the first time in her life, to get the better of her father. Even now, at the thought of his anger when he discovered what she had done, she shivered, and hoped with urgent intensity that he would have time to cool down before he discovered her whereabouts. There was little doubt in her mind that he would find her; in his thorough, painstaking way he would explore every avenue until some small clue gave him the necessary lead. But at least for a time, a few months perhaps, she would have the chance to do what she wanted to do for a change.

      She looked through the window of the island-hopping hydroplane, finding relief from her thoughts in the unbelievably beautiful panorama spread out below her. Since they left Bridgetown that morning the whole tapestry of islands and deep, deep blue sea had enchanted her, more now than ever before, and she thought for the umpteenth time that the advertisement in The Times which she had answered had been made for her. She knew they were nearing Venterra, the dark-skinned steward had already warned her to fasten her safety belt, and she tried to pick out which island it might be. Surely in so many islands her father would never find her without her assistance.

      For Juliet, everything now was a novelty. She had never travelled alone before, there had always been the accompaniment of her father’s train of assistants, secretaries and servants, luggage and sporting equipment to attend to. It had been exciting to carry her own bag, to hire her own porter, to stay at a small hotel instead of a luxury club, and to choose her own meal.

      Mandy, of course, would have been horrified to think of her ewe-lamb staying alone in even so British an island as Barbados, and it was as well that she believed, as indeed did her father, that she was staying with friends for a couple of days. Mandy, or Miss Jane Manders, to give her her correct name, was the nearest person to a mother that Juliet had ever known. Her own mother had died when she was born, much to her father’s anguish, and Juliet supposed that maybe that was why he treated her so possessively, placing her in her mother’s shoes. Mandy had been thirty then, just recovering from the grief of her own mother’s death, and she had taken care of Juliet at once, lavishing all the love she had on the child. Sometimes, Juliet had wondered why Mandy had never got married, and then again she had speculated as to whether her nurse and companion cherished some vain feelings towards her father. But Robert Lindsay certainly gave her no encouragement, and the arrangement which had begun as a temporary thing had lengthened into more than twenty years, and now Mandy could only be regarded as one of the family. It was Mandy who Juliet disliked deceiving most, but as Miss Manders had, over the years, taken over the reins as housekeeper in the large rambling house in Hampstead which had been the home of the Lindsay family for many many years, Juliet knew that her position in the household would not be in jeopardy because she had left.

      Thrusting back these thoughts, she allowed her mind to dwell on the immediate future and recalled with some amusement her interview with a firm of solicitors in London. The advertisement had called for a young woman, of good family, to act as companion to a girl of sixteen, recently orphaned, with some degree of disability, who was at present living with her uncle in Venterra, an island not many miles distant from St. Lucia in the West Indies.

      Juliet had thought the advertisement suited her lack of capabilities perfectly. ‘Oh, she had many attributes, she supposed; she was well read, could arrange flowers decoratively, spoke several languages, was used to acting as her father’s hostess on occasions of importance, and was well able to deal with the sometimes amorous advances of young men her father had chosen as escorts for her.

      But basically, she had had no training to follow a career. Her father had never wanted her to become an intellectual, and so her eager mind had had to content itself with learning from books, and the core of dissatisfaction with her empty way of life had been born.

      She might never have been courageous enough to do something about it, however, had not her father decided that it was high time she was thinking of getting married. In his

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