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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 [email protected] and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.
Tangled Tapestry
Anne Mather
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
DEBRA came out of the apartment building into the early warmth of a spring day. The faint mist which shrouded the harbour promised to lift quite soon, and then the magnificent vista from this vantage point would be spread out panoramically below her. When she had learned she was to come to San Francisco on the west coast of the United States she had, at first, been disappointed. She had wanted to see New York and Washington, and all the famous cities crowding the eastern seaboard, but since her arrival here she had forgotten all her earlier misgivings in the satisfying knowledge that she was to live for six months in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. For years poets and writers alike had tried to put into words the beauty of its bays and bridges, clanging street cars, modern skyscrapers and rambling family dwellings, all spreading up and down the almost perpendicular streets of the city. That they had had little success Debra thought was due to the fact that the real thing was so much more warming and exciting and alive. In the three months since her arrival she had learned that every street corner could produce an unexpectedly enchanting scene, and below the geographical curve of the peninsula with the silver lance of its bay slicing a cleft through the land mass provided a constant challenge to the artist. She supposed she had fallen in love with the place, and the thought of returning home to England and Aunt Julia filled her with dismay.
Smiling at the friendly mailman who was passing, she began to walk slowly down the steep slope towards the Filbert High School where she was a teacher. She had come from Valleydown in Sussex on an exchange scheme, much to the annoyance of Aunt Julia, her only relative. For some obscure reason Aunt Julia disliked anything to do with America, and besides she had rarely allowed Debra much freedom in England, despite the fact that her niece was now twenty-two and quite capable of taking care of herself. Debra, not wanting to annoy Aunt Julia unnecessarily, had usually fallen in with her wishes. She was not the kind of girl to want to go out a lot, anyway. She loved books, and reading, and classical music, and although her clothes were modern, she was really quite old-fashioned in many ways due of course to Aunt Julia’s overpowering influence.
But when this chance had come her way to see something of the world, Debra had determined to take it. After all, there seemed little opportunity of her being able to afford to travel far in the normal course of events. Aunt Julia commandeered most of her salary for housekeeping, and as she knew that Aunt Julia only had a pension to support herself with, Debra did not object. But it meant that she had to make all her own clothes, and it was as well that she used little make-up. Fortunately, her complexion was smooth and creamy, and her eyes, green and slightly tilted at the corners, already had sooty lashes to match her thick dark hair. Although her hair was straight, its length and silkiness required no adornment. In the right clothes, with carefully applied make-up, she could have been quite beautiful, but Debra, engrossed in her small world of books and teaching, was completely unaware of herself.
She swung now round the corner of Maple Vine, and entered the tall gates of the Filbert School. Scarcely above medium height, she looked more like one of the students than their teacher, and sometimes her exuberant pupils took advantage of the fact. But whenever she could she made their lessons so interesting that they forgot to be troublesome. This morning, for example, she had arranged a visit to some television studios, where they were filming a new series of detective stories. The studios were in Market Street, a wide thoroughfare that ran diagonally through the city. At the eastern end of Market Street was the long waterfront which curved past the dozens of piers from where hundreds of ships sailed every month. Debra loved this area; the colourful fishing vessels manned mainly by Italians whose home base was there gave the harbour an almost cosmopolitan appearance, and there was always plenty to see. Sometimes, on Sundays, she took sandwiches for her lunch and spent the whole day browsing about the tiny shops that abounded on the quayside, admiring the tourist stores with their stacks of souvenirs, and sometimes joining a trip that was going out in the bay so that she could look back at the city and imprint it firmly in her memory for when she must return home.
The Filbert School was huge and impressive, but