LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t go in for that sort of thing.’

      He looked impatient. ‘It won’t just be for locals. Haven’t you been listening? The people who buy the cottages will use it mainly, although it will be open to outsiders. Monty opened a similar place in the southwest two years ago. It’s been incredibly successful, and this will be too. He has all the right contacts.’

      Courtney’s mouth moved stiffly. ‘And he has you.’

      ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He had glared at her.

      ‘So this is what he wanted. You—to act as front man for him. I suppose he thought if the word got out that he wanted the estate, the price would go sky-high.’

      ‘Well, naturally. And he has business rivals. He doesn’t want any of them getting ahead of him.’

      ‘Oh, naturally,’ Courtney said bitterly.

      They had argued all evening, and she’d sat up for most of the night going through the file over and over again, trying to derive some crumb of comfort, but in vain.

      And it looked no better in the pallid sunlight of a February morning.

      She said, ‘What are you going to tell Daddy?’

      ‘I’ve already told him.’ Another flash of triumph.

      She looked at him helplessly. ‘And how did he react.’

      Robin shrugged. ‘Generally in favour. He knows what it will mean for all of us. And he’ll get out of that damned nursing home. On the salary I’ll be getting for managing the country club, I can afford a live-in nurse for him.’

      Courtney said drily, ‘It all sounds too good to be true.’ And it did. What did Rob know about managing anything that could justify the kind of salary he was talking about? ‘And when you say “all of us”, please don’t include me. I don’t want any part of this, or anything else that Monty Pallister has dreamed up.’

      He gave her an impatient look. ‘Don’t be a fool! Of course you’re included. There’ll be plenty of secretarial work once it gets started—reception too, if you fancy it.’

      ‘The hostess with the mostest,’ Courtney said ironically. ‘But I don’t fancy it, Rob. I don’t want any of it. I like my job, and I’ll stick to that, thanks.’

      He stared at her. ‘You can’t be serious!’

      ‘What makes you think that?’ She gave him a straight glance. ‘I’d have been against this scheme if a complete stranger had been involved, and the fact that it’s you makes no difference at all. When the news gets out locally, everyone will be against you. Don’t you realise that?’

      He said savagely, ‘If you think I’m going to stay a loser all my life just to please the neighbours, then you can think again. Where were they when we needed them?’

      ‘That’s not fair,’ said Courtney in a low voice. ‘We’ve received a lot of kindness—this cottage, for example. And although he’s not a neighbour, Uncle Philip …’

      ‘Uncle Philip!’ Robin was derisive. ‘You sound like a child! I suppose if Geoffrey Devereux were to walk in through that door now, you’d call him “Uncle” too.’

      Courtney sighed. ‘I probably would at that. I can’t just shake off the habit of a lifetime. And he always was like an uncle to us, after all.’

      There was a trace of malice in Robin’s smile. ‘And his nephew who was such a constant visitor in the old days. How would you greet him? As Cousin Blair?’

      For a long bleak moment a disturbing image rose in Courtney’s mind—a lean, tanned face cast in bitter lines, hard hazel eyes, glittering with anger and contempt, and on one high cheekbone, a trickle of blood. Just for that moment it was as if Robin’s words had evoked him, and he was there in the room, a physical presence rather than a figment of her imagination. And just for that moment she was back in the study at Hunters Court, her father slumped greyfaced in the chair beside her, while she screamed, ‘Get out of here! Get out! Leave us alone. Haven’t you done enough harm? Can’t you see he’s ill?’

      And his voice—not the faintly amused drawl she had always hated, but harsh and raw. ‘He deserves to be ill—and more.’

      It had sounded like a curse, as if he was predicting some future vengeance, and it had frightened her. And when James Lincoln had collapsed with his first stroke not long afterwards, she had always remembered.

      She controlled a shiver. Why had Robin had to remind her of him now? It was a long time since she’d allowed herself to think of Blair Devereux.

      Aloud she said coolly, ‘I think not. I was never prepared to go to those lengths, even in the old days. I dislike Blair Devereux more than I do your friend Mr Pallister, and that’s saying something.’

      It had always been there, she thought, ever since Blair had come into their lives. Not so much dislike at first as a bewildered resentment. Geoffrey Devereux had been a childless widower, and over the years he had become a close part of the family. He came and went at Hunters Court as if it was his own home, and Courtney in particular saw him as a surrogate uncle.

      Blair’s arrival on the scene had been a shock and a disappointment. She’d been used to thinking of Uncle Geoffrey as being alone in the world, and now it seemed he had a nephew with a prior claim on his time and attention, because Blair’s parents were dead.

      If he’d been a child like herself, she could have understood, perhaps, but he was already a man, ten years older than herself, seven years older than Robin. An attractive man, she had come unwillingly to realise as time passed, tall and slim with thick tawny hair which curled slightly, and hazel eyes mocking under heavy lids.

      When Blair was at Hunters Court, together with her father and Geoffrey Devereux, he seemed to complete a charmed circle from which she and Robin were excluded as children. Courtney didn’t want to feel excluded. Because she and her brother were at boarding school, their time at Hunters Court was limited, and Blair’s visits during the holidays always seemed to cast a shadow over her happiness.

      Nothing seemed to work—either behaving outrageously in order to attract attention, or pretending that he didn’t exist. Whatever she tried made little difference. The most reaction she ever got from him was a bored, ‘Don’t be more of a brat than you can help, Courtney.’

      She simmered with loathing of him, and it wasn’t helped by Robin undergoing a type of adolescent hero-worship for him, making her feel more isolated than ever.

      That passed, of course, and as she herself moved through her own adolescence towards womanhood, she found reluctantly that her feelings towards Blair were becoming more ambivalent. But his abrupt arrivals were always a shock, setting her at odds with herself, overturning her fragile girl’s poise. She had come to think of him as a kind of bird of ill omen, hovering and dangerous on the corner of her life, and later, as that life had crashed in ruins about her, she had realised how accurate that perception of him had been.

      But he had been the sole shadow in the last golden summer before everything had slid so suddenly and frighteningly away. She’d been having such a wonderful time. She’d been reckless with invitations to stay and Hunters Court had been filled with her school friends. Patterson who looked after the grounds had fixed up a badminton net on the lawn at the side of the house, and they’d played desultory matches in the heat, then lounged with cold drinks beside the small lake, talking about everything and anything—their forthcoming examinations, their dreams and aspirations.

      Then Blair had arrived, and all that closeness and empathy had been shattered. She saw it happen, saw the other girls looking at him, sidelong glances at first and then quite openly. Saw the focus of attention slip away making them all not so much friends as rivals. Saw him spoil everything.

      Once again she felt that she was the outsider, and she hated him for it. It made no difference that he never actively encouraged any of them. He was civil, but aloof, and not even the most blatantly flirtatious

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