Monkshood

Monkshood
Anne Mather

Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release.  Room for two…? Melanie is intrigued when a distant relative leaves her his remote house in the Highlands of Scotland. She is even more intrigued by the man who is trying to claim the property as his own – the handsome but formidable Sean Bothwell. Melanie can’t just give up her life in London – and her fiancée – to move to the middle of nowhere, can she? But something about Monkshood and the prickly Sean is compelling her to stay…

Mills & Boon is proud to present a fabulous

collection of fantastic novels by

bestselling, much loved author

ANNE MATHER

Anne has a stellar record of achievement within the

publishing industry, having written over one hundred

and sixty books, with worldwide sales of more than

forty-eight MILLION copies in multiple languages.

This amazing collection of classic stories offers a chance

for readers to recapture the pleasure Anne’s powerful,

passionate writing has given.

We are sure you will love them all!

I’ve always wanted to write—which is not to say I’ve always wanted to be a professional writer. On the contrary, for years I only wrote for my own pleasure and it wasn’t until my husband suggested sending one of my stories to a publisher that we put several publishers’ names into a hat and pulled one out. The rest, as they say, is history. And now, one hundred and sixty-two books later, I’m literally—excuse the pun— staggered by what’s happened.

I had written all through my infant and junior years and on into my teens, the stories changing from children’s adventures to torrid gypsy passions. My mother used to gather these manuscripts up from time to time, when my bedroom became too untidy, and dispose of them! In those days, I used not to finish any of the stories and Caroline, my first published novel, was the first I’d ever completed. I was newly married then and my daughter was just a baby, and it was quite a job juggling my household chores and scribbling away in exercise books every chance I got. Not very professional, as you can imagine, but that’s the way it was.

These days, I have a bit more time to devote to my work, but that first love of writing has never changed. I can’t imagine not having a current book on the typewriter—yes, it’s my husband who transcribes everything on to the computer. He’s my partner in both life and work and I depend on his good sense more than I care to admit.

We have two grown-up children, a son and a daughter, and two almost grown-up grandchildren, Abi and Ben. My e-mail address is mystic-am@msn.com (mailto:mystic-am@msn.com) and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.

Monkshood

Anne Mather

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u4fa5c82b-3519-517e-8103-93b705be8120)

About the Author (#u4cf41ee8-ebb8-5137-908b-53b84685264a)

Title Page (#u496a5c4c-9549-5432-b3d8-d63b204c6a5a)

CHAPTER ONE (#u0226548b-c3aa-5c76-aa42-8611f415f50e)

CHAPTER TWO (#u5ed708ad-d41c-5549-81a2-23bf6162467f)

CHAPTER THREE (#u5b8f2bcc-0ae0-553a-b047-a8c2eba57a3d)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_7170bb39-1f09-578f-8857-7eee4ad081fd)

IT had been snowing when Melanie left Fort William, small, driving grains of white that filmed the windscreen of the car and kept the wipers at full urgency, but nothing like this. Now the flakes were large and soft and unwieldy, apparently impervious to the slowing scrape of the wipers, settling in heavy cumbersome drifts against the windscreen, almost obliterating her view.

Melanie quelled the sense of panic the situation aroused in her, comforting herself with the thought that she could not be far from her destination. After all, she had passed the sign for Loch Cairnross some time ago, and even allowing for the delay, she must have covered several miles since then. But darkness was drawing in, and although it was not late in the afternoon, Melanie found it all rather unnerving. Even so, she was loath to admit that Michael had been right when he had called her foolish and irresponsible driving all the way to Cairnside from London in the middle of December.

Now she peered grimly into the blizzard, trying to distinguish some sign of civilization in the wilderness ahead. Surely there must be some habitation somewhere. Surely someone lived in these remote wastes, even if it was only a shepherd or a farmer. She thought of stories she had read of the Scottish Highlands; of descriptions of the lonely lives of crofters in isolated valleys between the hills, and her spirits plummeted. Hard on the heels of these thoughts came others of motorists and climbers imprisoned in their cars or in lonely hostelries and found days later dead from cold and starvation …

She heaved a deep breath. She was allowing her imagination to get the better of her and there was absolutely no reason to suppose that she was going to be trapped in a snowdrift or anything else, and so long as the car kept moving she was perfectly safe.

Another thought struck her, causing her to slow the car almost involuntarily. Once darkness came down what was to stop her from leaving the road altogether and maybe driving into bog or marshland, or even into one of the lochs themselves? Coated with snow, how would she be able to distinguish her way?

A moment later her wheels began to spin. The slowing of the car combined with an impulsive depression of the accelerator caused by a desperate desire to reach her destination as soon as possible had achieved what her careful driving had avoided until now, and she realized that to continue revving her engine would simply embed the wheels deeper in the snow and slush.

Fastening the top button of her sheepskin coat closer about her throat and pulling on the fur hat which had been lying on the seat beside her since she left London the day before, she pushed open her door and emerged from the warmth and comfort of the car into the blinding chill of the blizzard. For a moment the sudden icy blast took her breath away, but then she wasted no more time trying to look about her when it was impossible to see more than a few yards and bent instead to the rear wheels of the car. As she had already suspected, the wheels were caked with snow and had no grip against an already slippery surface. Sighing, she straightened and wiped tendrils of hair back from her forehead, wet now in the driving flakes of snow that melted against the warmth of her skin. What was she to do? She had no real idea where she was, never having visited Scotland before, never mind this remote area of the Highlands, and being alone seemed infinitely worse than having someone with whom she could have commiserated.

Deciding she might as well keep dry while she considered her desperate position, she climbed back into the car again and consulted her watch. It was only a little after three-thirty, but already it seemed like early evening in this wintry wasteland. She glanced about her, shivering, and her eyes alighted on her suitcases in the back of the car. Inside these were her clothes, and an idea occurred to her. If she could take out some garment, some old garment, and spread it under the rear wheels of the car, she might just succeed in getting the vehicle moving again, and then she would have to try and keep moving until she reached some kind of habitation.

Turning, she knelt on the seat and extracting her keys from her handbag she used them to open one of the cases. As she surveyed the mass of woollens and lingerie that confronted her, she wondered how she could use any of these things for such a purpose, knowing that whatever she did use would have to be written off as she would be unable to stop and pick it up again. She bit her lip. She was not thinking constructively. What use would any of these clothes be to her if she froze to death instead?

With determination, she drew out two sweaters, made of wool, which she thought might serve the purpose. Then she climbed out of the car again and bent to push the woollens hard against the rear tyres. The wind whistled through the pines at the side of the road and the biting particles of snow stung her cheeks. She was trying desperately to remain calm when everything around her seemed determined to arouse a sense of panic inside her, and she was concentrating so hard on what she was doing that she did not see the glimmer of headlamps through the gloom or distinguish the sound of a vehicle’s engine above the roaring of the wind.

Awareness came swiftly, and she had only just enough time to get out of the way as a huge Range-Rover ground to a halt beside her on the narrow track, showering her with slush. Shivering and breathless, as much with shock as with cold, Melanie saw a man climb out of the driving seat and stride heavily round the bonnet of the vehicle to her side. It was impossible to make out his features as she blinked rapidly in the blinding blizzard, but she could see that he was reasonably tall and broad and male and relief overwhelmed all other emotions.