He tilted his head in acknowledgement of her bewildered echo. ‘The lady here was considered a great beauty of the day, but she was trade—the daughter of a wealthy mill owner. The marriage caused quite a scandal when Percy there brought her home.’ He glanced at the twin of the portrait he held still sitting in its stand. ‘It turns out that old Percy started a trend in the family, though I’m afraid the other heiresses that subsequent male heirs married were not always so easy on the eye as Henrietta here.’ He studied the painting, taking a moment’s pleasure from the masterful brush strokes and eye for detail shown by the artist. ‘He really caught her…Such a sensual mouth, don’t you think? Personally I think this is better than the Reynolds on the staircase.’
His eyes were trained, not on the portrait in his hand as he spoke, but her own mouth. The effect of the dark-eyed stare was mesmerising. Zoe didn’t respond, mainly because she could barely breathe past the hammering of her heart against her ribcage, let alone speculate on how he knew so much about the history of the house and family.
‘Maybe they were in love?’ Her voice sounded as though it were coming from a long way away.
He laughed. The throaty sound shivered across the surface of her skin, raising a rash of goosebumps. ‘A romantic.’
The amused mockery in his voice made Zoe prickle with antagonism. What was she doing discussing love with a possible art thief? Was he? He certainly seemed to know more than she did about the artwork in the house.
‘Actually, no, I’m not.’ Her chin lifted. ‘But if I was I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. Now, Mr…I have things I need to attend to. If I could ask you to—’
‘Shame is a very personal thing,’ he mused, cutting across her. ‘I wonder if Percy was ashamed of his heiress? You call it love, but I call it symbiosis.’
She compressed her lips. ‘I wasn’t calling it anything. I was simply not discounting the possibility.’
He tilted his dark head in acknowledgement of her interruption. ‘Well, there is no doubt that she had money and he had social position, the ability to guarantee her acceptance into society, though maybe looking at that mouth there might have been other factors involved?’
He levelled his obsidian gaze on Zoe.
‘Do you not think she has a sensual mouth?’
Now there was a case of pot calling kettle, she thought, dragging her gaze from the firm sculpted outline of his own mouth.
‘I’m no expert on sensuality.’
‘I’m sure you are being modest.’ He arched a satiric brow and the speculation in his smoky stare sent a rush of embarrassed heat over her body. ‘Well, I shall continue to think that our Henrietta was a woman of passions…and that perhaps Percy was a lucky man? We will, I suppose, never know. What we do know is that when there were no more rich social-climbing heiresses, the family sold off treasures and land until finally there was nothing left. There is a certain sense of continuity in seeing this pair back where they started.’
‘That’s very interesting but…’ She stopped, the colour fading from her face. His manner, his accent, the fact he displayed no sign of discomfort being caught in the house…Of course he had acted as though he owned the place, because he did!
How could she have been so stupid? Because he wasn’t what she had been expecting, of course—if she’d walked into a room and found a short, balding man using expensive tailoring to hide an affluent middle-aged spread she would immediately have considered the possibility that she was looking at her employer.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Small wonder the stable girl who had shown the double-page spread to her in the society magazine had looked at her oddly when she’d responded to the Welsh girl’s enthusiastic, ‘Isn’t he utterly unbelievably lush?’ with a polite but surprised response that he wasn’t really her type. He hadn’t been the man in the photo handing out the cup at the polo tournament—he’d been the one receiving it!
She had left the stables that morning reflecting sadly on the number of people who saw a man’s bank balance before anything else. If the stout, balding man handing over the cup to the Latin-looking polo captain had not had the odd billion in the bank pretty Nia wouldn’t have looked twice, and there she was acting as if he were some sort of centrefold pin-up.
My God, he was the centrefold!
Struggling to accept the evidence of her own eyes and lose the invented image in her head, she watched the polo-playing captain put the portrait back in its place.
I just knew this job was too good to be true.
CHAPTER THREE
‘MY NAME IS Zoe Grace.’ She lifted her chin and clung to a shaky façade of calm. ‘I’m your new housekeeper, Mr Montero. I’m sorry, we weren’t expecting you,’ she apologised stiffly.
‘So I was looking for Zoe after all.’ He met her confused blue stare before his glance fell to the hand extended to him and, ignoring it, he continued in the same conversational tone. ‘I think you’ll find you’re my ex-housekeeper. You may have managed to con Tom…’
Zoe’s shock at the calculated insult was followed swiftly by anger that she couldn’t check. ‘I didn’t con anyone!’
‘Then I can only assume you’re sleeping with him because I can’t think of any other reason why Tom would employ someone so stupendously unsuited to this or, as far as I can see, any other position of trust. And before you waste your time fluttering your eyelashes at me I have to tell you I’m not Tom. I enjoy a good body and—’ he paused, his eyes making a cynical sweep of her face before he delivered a crushing assessment ‘—passably pretty face, but when it comes to staff I prefer to keep the lines firmly drawn. It cuts down on confusion and time-consuming, messy litigation.’
Zoe hated him before he was halfway through the scathing tirade.
Dismay widened her blue eyes. He was already turning away. In the grip of panic she surged after him, catching hold of his arm. ‘You can’t sack me!’
He arched a brow and looked down at her hand.
Zoe let it go, biting down on her full under lip as she backed away, shaking her head.
‘I mean, you can, obviously you can, but don’t…’ She swallowed and bit her lip. Unable to meet his eyes, she lifted her chin, a note of sheer desperation creeping into her voice as she added huskily, ‘Please.’
There were times when a person had to swallow her pride and this was one of those occasions.
Of course, if it had been just her she would have told him where to stuff his awful job. In fact if there had been just herself to consider she wouldn’t be doing the job to begin with.
But there was more than herself to consider now.
Even if she could get some sort of job locally that would enable the twins to continue going to their school—they’d had enough disruption in their lives without being snatched away from everything that was familiar—Zoe couldn’t have afforded the rent on a property within the catchment area. As for buying—she would have been laughed out of any bank.
The property prices were inflated in the village because of the number of affluent parents eager to move into the area due to the success of the local state school. Laura and Dan had frequently joked that they were sitting on a fortune, but their lovely little thatched cottage had been taken by her brother-in-law’s creditors along with everything else they had.
Though his expression did not soften, Isandro did after a short pause turn and face her.
‘I need this job, Mr Montero,’ she said, wringing her white hands in anxiety at the prospect of being jobless and homeless.
His expression held no hint of sympathy as he read the earnest appeal in her blue eyes.
‘Perhaps