I mind,’ Rosy told him fretfully. ‘But what can I do? You know the terms of that idiotic will Gramps made as well as I do. In the event of both his sons predeceasing him, the house and his estate go to the closest of his blood relatives to be married within three months of his death and capable of producing an heir. He made that will years ago after Uncle Tom died, and if Dad hadn’t—’
She had broken off then, her throat choked with tears. Her father’s death so unexpectedly from a heart attack just weeks before her grandfather had slid from a coma and into death was something she still hadn’t fully come to terms with.
‘Edward fulfils all the terms of that will and he—’
‘You are your grandfather’s closest blood relative,’ Peter had reminded her quietly.
‘Yes, but I’m not married. And not likely to be, at least not within the next three months,’ Rosy had told him drily.
‘You could be,’ Peter had told her slowly, ‘with an arranged marriage. A marriage entered into specifically so that you could fulfil the terms of your grandfather’s will. A marriage which could be brought to an end very easily and quickly.’
‘An arranged marriage?’ Rosy had stared blankly at him. It sounded like something out of one of her favourite Georgette Heyer novels; fine as the theme for a piece of romantic froth, but totally implausible in reality.
‘No,’ she had told him impatiently, shaking her head so hard that her dark curls had bounced against her shoulders. Irritably she had pushed them off her face. Her hair was the bane of her life—thick, so dark it was almost black, and possessing of a life of its own.
A little gypsy, her grandfather had often fondly called her. But whenever she had tried to have her wild mane tamed, it had rebelled, and reverted to its tumbling mass of curls almost as soon as she had closed the hairdresser’s door behind her, so that eventually she had given up trying to control it.
‘It’s out of the question and, besides, it takes two to make a marriage—even an arranged one—and I can’t think of anyone who—’
‘I can.’ Peter had anticipated her quietly.
Was she imagining it, or did his words have a slightly ominous ring to them? She paused, shifting her gaze from the Grinling Gibbons carving on the staircase to her solicitor’s face, eyeing him suspiciously.
‘Who?’ she demanded warily.
‘Guard Jamieson,’ Peter told her. Rosy sat down abruptly on the stairs.
‘Oh, no,’ she announced firmly. ‘No, no, never.’
‘He would be the ideal person,’ Peter continued enthusiastically, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘After all, he’s never made any secret of how much he wants this place.’
‘Never,’ Rosy agreed drily, remembering how often Guard had bombarded her grandfather with requests—demands, almost—that he sell Queen’s Meadow to him. ‘If Guard wants the house that badly, he can always try to persuade Edward to sell it to him,’ she pointed out.
Peter’s eyebrows rose. ‘Come on, Rosy. You know that Edward hates Guard almost as much as he did your grandfather.’
Rosy sighed.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. It was true. Guard and Edward were old business adversaries and, as her father had stated on more than one occasion, there hadn’t been a confrontation between the two men yet out of which Guard had not come the winner. ‘The mere fact that he knows how much Guard loves this place would only add to his pleasure in destroying it.’
‘We’re only talking about a business arrangement between the two of you, you know, some simple basic formalities which would enable you to fulfil the terms of the will. In time the marriage could be dissolved. You could sell the house to Guard and—’
‘In time? How much time?’ she had asked him suspiciously.
‘A year—a couple of years…’ Peter had shrugged, ignoring her dismayed gasp. ‘After all, it isn’t as though you want to marry someone else, is it? If you did, there wouldn’t be any problem, any need to involve Guard.’
‘I can’t do it,’ she told Peter positively. ‘The whole idea is completely ridiculous, repulsive.’
‘Well, then, I’m afraid you’ll have to resign yourself to the fact that Edward will inherit. Your grandfather’s already been dead for almost a month.’
‘I can’t do it,’ Rosy repeated, ignoring Peter’s comment. ‘I could never ask any man to marry me, but especially not Guard…’
Peter had laughed at her.
‘It’s a business proposal, that’s all. Think about it, Rosy. I know how ambivalent your feelings towards Queen’s Meadow are, but I can’t believe that you actually want to see Edward destroy it.’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ Rosy had agreed.
‘Then what have you got to lose?’
‘My freedom?’ she had suggested hollowly.
Peter had laughed again. ‘Oh, I doubt that Guard would interfere with that,’ he had assured her. ‘He’s much too busy to have time to worry about what you’ll be doing. Promise me that you’ll at least think about it, Rosy. It’s for your sake that I’m doing this,’ he had added. ‘If you let Edward destroy this place, you’re bound to feel guilty.’
‘The way you do for putting all this moral blackmail on me?’ Rosy had asked him drily.
He had had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable.
‘All right, I’ll think about it,’ she had agreed.
And ultimately she had done more than just think about it, Rosy acknowledged, as she dragged her thoughts back to the present.
‘The trouble with you is that you’re far too soft-hearted.’ How often had she heard that accusation over the years?
Too often.
But Peter was right. She couldn’t let Edward destroy Queen’s Meadow without at least making some attempt to save it. By sacrificing herself. A wicked smile curled her mouth, her eyes suddenly dancing with bright humour. Oh, how chagrined Guard would be if he could read her mind. How many women were there who would look upon marriage to him in that light? Not many. Not any, she admitted, at least not from what she heard.
Well, all right, so she was peculiar—an oddity who for some reason could not see anything attractive in that magnetic sexuality of his which seemed to obsess virtually every other female who set eyes on him. So she was immune to whatever it was about him that made other women go weak at the knees, their eyes glazing with awe as they started babbling about his sexy looks, his smouldering eyes, his mouth and its full, sensual bottom lip, his shoulders, his body, his awesome charismatic personality, his single state and the subtle aura not just of sexual experience, but of sexual expertise which clung to him like perfume to a woman’s body.
Oddly, the last thing that most of them mentioned about him was his wealth.
Well, she could see nothing remotely sexually attractive about him, Rosy decided crossly, and she never had. As far as she was concerned, he was an arrogant, sarcastic pig who enjoyed nothing more than making fun of her.
Only last month at a dinner party, when the hostess had been remarking to her that the male cousin she had had visiting her had begged her to seat him next to Rosy at dinner, Guard, who had overheard their hostess’s remark, had leaned over and said sardonically, ‘Well, if he’s hoping to find a woman somewhere under that mass of hair and that very unflattering outfit you’re wearing, Rosy, he’s going to be very disappointed, isn’t he?’
Since the ‘unflattering outfit’ he referred to had been a very carefully chosen collection of several different layers of softly toning shades of grey, all determinedly hunted down in a variety of charity