Count Valieri's Prisoner

But she’d never allowed him to get away with any implication that they’d been childhood sweethearts.

‘Arrant nonsense,’ she’d teased, the first time it was mentioned. ‘You thought I was a total pain in the neck, and went out of your way to ignore me.’

‘But I’ve made up for it since,’ he’d whispered, drawing her close. ‘Admit it.’

Yet her most abiding memories were not of Jeremy at all, even though her initial crush had lasted well into her early teens.

What she recalled very vividly was the way the atmosphere of the house underwent a subtle change when Nigel Sylvester came home.

He was a man of just above medium height, who somehow gave the impression of being much taller. He had gone prematurely grey in his late twenties, or so Jeremy had told her, adding glumly, ‘I hope it doesn’t happen to me.’

Maddie had stroked his cheek, smiling. ‘You’d look extremely distinguished.’

But if she was totally honest, she’d always found Nigel Sylvester’s silver hair, which he wore slightly longer than was fashionable and swept straight back from his forehead, to be in odd and disturbing contrast to his curiously smooth, unlined face, and dark brown heavy-lidded eyes.

Nor was it just his appearance that used to unnerve her. His standards were exacting, he missed nothing, and although she had never heard him raise his voice in displeasure, Maddie often thought it would have been better if he had shouted occasionally.

Because, there was something about his quietness which dried Maddie’s throat when he spoke to her, and made her stumble over her words. Not that she ever had too much to say to him. She’d divined fairly soon that her presence at Fallowdene was tolerated by him, rather than welcomed, and tried to keep out of his way.

It wasn’t too difficult. She’d been given the old nursery as her room, and this contained a glass-fronted bookcase, crammed with children’s books by well-known authors in a range that appealed from tots to teens.

At first, when she was very young, Aunt Beth had read them as bedtime stories. Later, she’d been happy to while away solitary hours in their company.

But her happy childhood had been brought to an abrupt and tragic end one terrible winter night when an icy road and a driver who’d drunk too much at an office party had fatally combined to take both her parents from her.

She’d been staying with Aunt Fee, her mother’s younger sister, at the time, and her aunt had immediately assumed charge of her, only to be approached after the funeral by Aunt Beth with an offer to adopt her god-daughter.

But the offer had been refused. Instead Aunt Fee and Uncle Patrick, her big genial husband had been quietly adamant that Maddie belonged with them, and she’d been loved, allowed to grieve then eventually find healing in their comfortable untidy house.

Her visits to Fallowdene, however, continued as before, although the question of adoption was never raised again and, in hindsight, Maddie was sure that Nigel Sylvester had probably opposed the idea from the outset.

She realized since that, although she’d been too young to recognize it at the time, he had represented her first brush with real power.

And she’d often wondered what had persuaded her godmother, with her quiet prettiness and sudden mischievous, enchanting smile, to marry him.

She had been in her first year at university when Aunt Beth died very suddenly in her sleep of a heart attack. She’d attended the funeral with her aunt and uncle and haltingly attempted to express her sorrow to Mr Sylvester, who’d muttered an abrupt word of thanks, then turned away.

And she was realistic enough to know that she would no longer be welcome at Fallowdene.

A week or so later she was astonished to receive a letter from a law firm informing her that Aunt Beth had left her a sum of money substantial enough to get her through her degree course without having to seek a student loan, with an additional bequest of the entire book collection from the nursery, which somehow meant far more than the money.

‘Oh, how wonderful of her,’ she’d said softly, wiping her eyes. ‘She always knew how much I loved them.’ She paused. ‘But won’t Jeremy want them?’

‘It seems not,’ Aunt Fee said rather drily. ‘I gather if you’d refused the bequest they’d have gone to a charity shop.’ She pursed her lips. ‘No doubt they reminded Nigel too much of the wonderful career he’d interrupted.’

‘Career?’ Maddie repeated. ‘Was she a writer once?’ She frowned. ‘She never told me.’

‘No, that wasn’t her talent. She was a very successful editor with Penlaggan Press. She found the authors of all those books, encouraged them, and published them.

‘Your mother told me Penlaggan did their best to coax her back on numerous occasions, even offering to let her work from home.’ She shook her head. ‘But it never happened. Sylvester wives, it seems, do not work.’

‘But if she was so good at her job …’

‘That,’ said Aunt Fee somberly, ‘was probably the trouble.’

It was an insight into Aunt Beth’s marriage that Maddie had never forgotten. And now it had a renewed and unpleasing resonance.

Well, I’m good at my job too, she thought, and I’m damned if I’m giving it up whatever Jeremy or his father may say about it.

She still felt raw when she remembered how Nigel Sylvester, having mourned for barely a year, announced his engagement to a widow called Esme Hammond and married her only a month later.

But then, quite unexpectedly, she’d met Jeremy again at a party in London. He’d expressed delight at seeing her and asked for her phone number, but if she felt this was more out of politeness than serious intent, she soon discovered she was wrong. Because he’d not only called but invited her to dinner. After which, events had seemed to snowball, she remembered, smiling.

Jeremy had changed a great deal from the taciturn, aloof boy who’d so consistently avoided an annoying small girl. He seemed to have inherited much of his mother’s charm, but in spite of three years at university and a spell at the Harvard Business School before joining Sylvester and Co, he still seemed under his father’s thumb.

But while Maddie did not delude herself she would have been his daughter-in-law of choice, at least Nigel Sylvester had not openly opposed the engagement.

But she still didn’t call him ‘Uncle Nigel’, she thought, pausing at the office’s street entrance to punch in her entry code. Nor, after the wedding, would he ever morph into ‘Dad’, ‘Pa’ or ‘Pops’.

And he had put a spoke in their wheel in another way.

If Maddie had assumed that Jeremy would immediately want her to move into the company flat with him, she soon found she was wrong..

‘Dad says he needs to use the flat himself on occasion,’ he told her. ‘And it would make things—awkward if you were there. And anyway he feels we should wait to live together until we’re actually married.’

Maddie had stared at him. ‘But who on earth does that nowadays?’

Jeremy shrugged. ‘I guess he’s just old-fashioned about these things.’

But Maddie was convinced ‘hypocritical’ was a better description, and would have wagered a year’s salary that his father and the glamorous Esme had been sharing a bed even while Aunt Beth was alive.

‘And what happens after the wedding?’ she asked. ‘Because, we’ll be living there then, or will your father expect me to move out any time he plans to stay overnight?’

‘No, of course not,’ he said impatiently. ‘He’s talking of taking a suite at a hotel.’ He pulled a face. ‘And, believe me, sweetie, it could be worse. When it began, Sylvester and Co was Sylvester, Felderstein and Marchetti. You could be having all sorts of foreign directors dropping in.’

‘Might have been fun,’ Maddie said lightly. ‘So why aren’t there any now?’

Jeremy shrugged again. ‘The families died out, or started new ventures of their own. That’s what Dad said, anyway. We only became fully independent in my grandfather’s day.’

Since when Nigel Sylvester had achieved success in the corridors of power, joining various government think-tanks and advising on banking and economic affairs.

So much so that, rumour had it that he would be offered a life peerage in the next New Year Honours’ List.

I wonder if he’ll expect me to call him ‘My lord’ she mused as she took the creaky elevator to her office on the first floor. Or curtsy when we meet. While Esme will be even more insufferable when she’s Lady Sylvester.

But I’ll deal with that when I have to, she told herself. For now, I’m concentrating on this dream assignment that’s come my way.

Italy in May, she thought with an ecstatic sigh. Boy, I can hardly wait.