Silver Fruit Upon Silver Trees

Silver Fruit Upon Silver Trees
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.Four weeks soaking up the sun in Trinidad - how could she refuse?All Sophie has to do is pose as the grand-daughter of super-wealthy Brandt St. Vicente. It should be easy – and will earn Sophie some much-needed cash to boot – except she hadn’t counted on the disturbing presence of Edge St Vicente… As a powerful attraction develops, Sophie realises that this task is going to be harder than she thinks! But how can Sophie back out now?

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.

Silver Fruit upon Silver Trees

Anne Mather

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

Table of Contents

Cover (#u5ad2bad3-2571-5897-a6c8-e27f7c0b0818)

About the Author (#u7cf61c28-e22b-57f9-ac70-9a101261d497)

Title Page (#ued7d6402-9ea1-542e-be5e-7a028806bb40)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#u4fbee9f2-7067-598c-8708-2b6d243974a0)

SOPHIE thought she must have been mad to agree to come. What was she doing here in Port of Spain, waiting with palpitating heart for Eve’s grandfather to come and fetch her? How could she hope to play this role so well that no one would suspect she was not Eve Hollister? Wasn’t it a criminal offence to impersonate someone else? Or did that apply when the person involved had given her permission, indeed had begged her to do it? Sophie gave a helpless little shrug. Her palms were moist, a rivulet of pure sweat was running into the small of her back, a damp trembling unsteadiness seemed to have invaded her legs. She paced restlessly about the hotel room trying to calm her nerves, going over and over in her mind the things Eve had impressed upon her.

She had nothing to worry about, she told herself, but without much conviction. The St. Vincentes had never seen Eve, so how could they possibly know what she looked like, know anything about her other than what she had chosen to tell them in her letters? And after all, she and Eve did have similar characteristics. They were both blonde to begin with, but whereas Eve’s hair had a silvery lightness, Sophie’s was corn-gold with streaks of a darker shade. They were both slightly above average height, slim, and if Sophie’s slimness was slightly more pronounced, that was because she hadn’t always paid enough attention to food. But there had been so many more important things on which to spend the small salary she earned as stage manager and general dogsbody of the Pier Playhouse in Sandchurch that looking after herself had not figured highly amongst them. Eve had thought she was crazy slaving away for such a pittance, but then Eve had never known what it was to have financial problems.

Sophie had first met Eve four years ago when she was eighteen and in her first job in London. Although becoming an actress had always been her first choice for a career she had been sensible enough to realize that she would need some other means to support herself. Consequently, she had taken a course in shorthand and typewriting and had been at that time working in the typing pool of one of the independent television companies.

Eve was a journalist, a young and successful journalist, who had already made quite a name for herself in Fleet Street. Sophie had been seconded to her when she came to do an article about the television company, and the two girls had become friends right away. Whether it was that they were so similar in age – Eve was only three years older than Sophie – or whether Sophie’s extreme unsophistication in the face of Eve’s worldliness attracted them to one another neither could say, but from the beginning they had enjoyed each other’s company. Thus it was that when Sophie confided her desire to become an actress to Eve, she had used her influence to get Sophie the chance of stage manager at the Sandchurch Playhouse. Of course, Sophie had realized that Eve did not really expect her to stick at it, but she had, and for the past three and a half years she had been happy in her own way. She hadn’t had a lot of money, but she had made some good friends, and from time to time there had been a weekend in London with Eve to look forward to.

Eve seemed to lead a much more exciting life than Sophie, despite the younger girl’s association with the theatre. Eve was always being invited to parties or having all-expenses-paid holidays covering some feature or other. She had lots of boy-friends and never seemed to spend much time with her father, who Sophie knew was retired and lived alone in Kensington. She had casually mentioned that her mother had died when she was born, and she felt her father had never really forgiven her for being the cause of her mother’s death.

To Sophie, brought up by an elderly aunt, this was a tragic situation. She had never known what it was to have parents, and she felt sure that in the same circumstances she would have had to have tried to show her father that because there were just the two of them they should mean more to one another. But it was not her affair and aside from mentioning occasionally that she thought that Eve ought to visit with her father more often, there was nothing she could do.

Then about six months ago Eve’s father had died. She had attended the funeral accompanied by Sophie, and afterwards had confided that she supposed she would have to let her mother’s family know. This was the first Sophie had heard of Eve’s mother’s family, and she had been fascinated when she had learned that they were wealthy plantation owners in Trinidad. The further information that Eve’s mother had run away to marry James Hollister when she was only eighteen years old had explained why, until then, Sophie had never heard Eve mention them. But now the whole story came out. Eve’s father had been an engineer, working on a constructional job in Trinidad, when he and her mother met. Compared to the wealthy St. Vincente family, James Hollister had been considered a very poor match, and besides, Eve’s mother was already engaged to the son of another of the wealthy families on the island.

But, rather cynically, Eve had gone on to explain that it was love at first sight, and the young couple had run away to England and never returned to Trinidad. Of course, her grandfather had cut off his daughter completely, and not even the knowledge that she had died in childbirth had softened the hardness of his heart. Eve’s father was heartbroken at the death of his wife, and apart from ensuring that Eve was well cared for, he had paid little attention to her. She had grown up with a series of nannies, progressed through boarding school, and had finally displayed the fine talent for writing which had enabled her to obtain one of the highest paid posts in British journalism.

Sophie had heard nothing more about the St. Vincentes until a few weeks ago when Eve invited her to spend a weekend at her flat. Then she had confessed that she had been corresponding with her grandfather for the past few months. He must have softened with the years, because he had replied almost by return to her brief missive concerning her father’s death, and since then he had written several times.

Sophie had been delighted at this news. She had thought that at last Eve was to know the pleasure of belonging to a real family. But, as usual, Eve was unpredictable.

She admitted that in the beginning the idea of effecting a reconciliation with her mother’s family had amused her, but now her grandfather had suggested that she should go to Trinidad, to their house at Pointe St. Vincente, and spend several weeks getting to know her relatives.

“Can you imagine it, darling?” she had asked Sophie, with that wide-eyed stare which men seemed to find so appealing. “Me, cutting myself off from civilization for several weeks! Heavens, I’d go mad! I really would.”

Sophie had not known what to say. She had been able to understand Eve’s consternation in one way. She was simply not the type to exist without the hectic whirl of her present life, but on the other hand she had written to her grandfather and virtually invited just this situation.

“So what do you intend to do?” she had asked at last, and that was when Eve had exploded her bombshell.

“I thought you might like to go instead of me, Sophie,” she said, and before giving Sophie a chance to utter any protest, she went on: “Don’t say no straight away. Give it some thought.”