Читать книгу: «Diamonds are for Marriage: The Australian's Society Bride»
Diamonds
are for Marriage
The Australian’s Society Bride
Margaret Way
Manhattan Boss, Diamond Proposal
Trish Wylie
Australian Boss: Diamond Ring
Jennie Adams
The Australian’s Society Bride
About the Author
MARGARET WAY, a definite Leo, was born and raised in the subtropical River City of Brisbane, capital of the Sunshine State of Queensland. A Conservatorium-trained pianist, teacher, accompanist and vocal coach, she found her musical career came to an unexpected end when she took up writing, initially as a fun thing to do. She currently lives in a harbourside apartment at beautiful Raby Bay, a thirty-minute drive from the state capital, where she loves dining alfresco on her plant-filled balcony, overlooking a translucent green marina filled with all manner of pleasure craft—from motor cruisers costing millions of dollars and big, graceful yachts with carved masts standing tall against the cloudless blue sky, to little bay runabouts. No one and nothing is in a mad rush, so she finds the laid-back village atmosphere very conducive to her writing. With well over a hundred books to her credit, she still believes her best is yet to come.
CHAPTER ONE
“LEO, YOU KNOW they don’t want me, but they feel obliged to ask me,” Robbie, her stepbrother said. As usual, he was making himself comfortable, lolling back on her brand-new sofa, dark head on a cushion, his long legs slung languidly over the other end.
This was a familiar theme between them, causing Leona, always the peacemaker, to answer automatically, “You know that’s not true.” Sadly, it was true. “You’re good company, Robbie. You’re an asset to any house party. Besides, you’re on Boyd’s polo team, which counts for a lot, and you’re a darn good tennis player—my best doubles partner. We can and do beat the rest of them.” The rest of them being the close-knit Blanchard clan, many of whom would be attending the weekend house party.
“Except Boyd,” Robbie chipped in. “Now, Boyd is a man to marvel over—a business dynamo, IQ off the charts, superb athlete, a serious heartthrob with the women. What more could a man hope for? They could have cast him as the new James Bond.”
“Forget Boyd,” said Leona. “I rather like the new guy.” As always, she was masking the deep feelings she had for Boyd—feelings she thought she would never get past—as she chucked a cushion at Robbie. “Though I will concede they don’t come any more perfect than Boyd.” This was said very dryly.
Robbie laughed, deftly fielding the silk cushion and depositing it on the floor. “Sure you don’t actually love him?” He lifted his head to flash her a bright challenging look. Robbie was teeming with intuition and he frequently caught her out.
“Now, that would be a turn-up, wouldn’t it?” she answered, hoping her white skin wasn’t showing tell-tale bright flags of colour. “He is my second cousin.”
“Well, not strictly speaking. You’d have to give or take a few ‘steps’,” Robbie reminded her. “There’ve been so many deaths, divorces and remarriages in the Blanchard family.”
That was certainly true. Triumph and tragedy aplenty. She and Boyd, for instance, had both lost their mothers. She when she was eight. His beautiful mother, Alexa, had become Leona’s honorary aunt after that until she’d died when Boyd was in his mid-twenties. Boyd’s father, Rupert, Chairman of Blanchards, had remarried two years later, not to a nice sensible woman somewhere near his own age, as the family had dared to hope, but to a flamboyant divorcee, the daughter of one of Rupert’s old cronies who sat on the Board of Blanchards. She was just a handful of years older than Rupert’s only son and heir, Boyd.
The family had been reduced to a state of shock at the speed of the new alliance. Robbie privately referred to the newcomer as the Bride of Frankenstein. And he wasn’t the only one in the family to gloat. Most expected the marriage would end in a ferocious court battle and a huge settlement. All had the great good sense to keep their opinions to themselves, except Geraldine, Rupert’s older unmarried sister who didn’t hesitate to speak her mind, as befitted her position. Despite that, Rupert had married his Jinty—short for Virginia—regardless. Rupert Blanchard was a law unto himself. And so, as it had transpired, was Jinty.
“Anyway, we’re not talking about Boyd, we’re talking about you,” Leona picked up the conversation. “Why you keep writing yourself off, I don’t know.”
“Ah, but you do know, Leo.” Robbie sighed. “Low self-esteem.” The unhappy, rebellious six-year-old he had been when Leona had first laid eyes on him fourteen years before glittered out of his dark eyes. “The problem is, I don’t know who I am. Carlo didn’t want any part of me. Didn’t even bother to toss a coin for me. ‘Heads me, tails your mother’. Your dad, my stepfather, is a good man, a gentleman of the old school, but he still doesn’t know what to make of me. Just hopes things don’t get any worse. Mother dearest has never loved me. No need to ask why. I don’t make her proud and I don’t look a scrap like her. I keep reminding her of Carlo and their failed marriage. To top it off, I’m not a Blanchard, am I, all these years later?” Robbie’s intense young face took on a bitter cast. “I’m the misfit in your midst, the emotionally neglected adopted son.”
In a way he was absolutely spot on, but Leona didn’t hold back on the groans. “Please, Robbie, not again!” She allowed her still coltish frame to collapse into an armchair opposite him, feeling weighed down by her constant anxiety for him and his well-being. “Do you really have to sprawl all over my new sofa?” she asked, not really minding. As usual Robbie was immaculate, very sharply groomed and dressed. Nothing scruffy about Robbie, not that it would have been tolerated. Robbie, for all his moans, well knew on which side his bread was buttered.
“How can I not?” he responded, not moving an inch. “It’s so darn comfortable. You have superb taste, Leo. You’re a super girl altogether. Best of all, you’re as tender-hearted as you’re beautiful. Lord knows how I would have made it in this family without you—my big sister, my most trusted confidante and supporter. You’re the only one who doesn’t think I’ll turn out a rogue like Carlo.”
“No, no!” she automatically denied.
“Yes, yes!” said Robbie. “They’re all just waiting for me to prove it. Probably the best thing I could do, so far as the family is concerned, is fall under a bus.”
And he didn’t have it all that wrong, Leona thought dismally. For that reason, she couldn’t let the opportunity go past. “You might consider your gambling is a worry, Robbie. You have to get a grip on that.” She couldn’t bring herself to throw in drugs again. Not so soon after their last confrontation. Robbie ran with a fast, moneyed, mostly mindless young crowd, hell-bent on pleasure, or what they considered pleasure, which didn’t include work. She knew for a fact he dabbled with pot, like so many of his peers. She was fairly certain it hadn’t gone any further than that. Not yet anyway. Like her, Robbie carried the burden of the Blanchard name, which meant pressure as well as prestige, power, mega-wealth. But, unlike her, Robbie wasn’t the most stable of people.
The only person he seemed to be able to commit to was her, his “big sister.” They hadn’t used the “step” for years and years. Robbie just referred to her as his sister, as she called him her brother. It didn’t seem to matter that there was no bond in blood. Her father had legally adopted Robbie directly after he’d married Robbie’s mother, Delia. Newcomers who didn’t know Leona and Robbie’s background always commented with perplexed frowns, “But you’re not a bit alike.” Maybe the fact that Robbie—christened Roberto Giancarlo D’Angelo—strongly resembled his Italian father while she was a porcelain-skinned redhead had something to do with it.
“Pure art nouveau,” Boyd had long since labelled her looks, consigning her to the romantic, overly sentimental Pre-Raphaelite lot—the willowy springtime woodland nymph with her loosely pinned mane of red-gold hair, flowing floral diaphanous dress, away with the fairies. Not his usual cup of tea—slick, elegant, the perfect brunette, all long legs and womanly curves, whereas she had as many curves as her ironing-board.
Don’t think of Boyd.
It was excellent advice. She’d do well to follow it. Even being around him was dangerous enough.
Robbie’s voice brought her out of her discomfiting thoughts. “I promise you I will, Leo. Have there been more whisperings about me in the family? ‘What else is Robbie doing’?” he mimicked a female family voice.
There had been plenty of those, she thought. Shocked horror from the older generation. Delia, his mother, reduced to fat crocodile tears over her son’s misconduct. “Remember there’s Boyd to consider. Nothing gets past him, Robbie. He has eyes and ears everywhere.”
“Spies, spooks!” Robbie laughed as if it was funny. It wasn’t. Robbie sustained himself with cynical, sometimes bitter banter, when in reality Boyd Blanchard was everything he yearned to be. “Scion of generations of multi-millionaires, now billionaires,” he continued, dangling an arm to the floor. “Now there’s a man for you.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Leona pursed her finely cut, sensitive lips.
“Come off it.” Robbie grinned wickedly and swung upright with the strength and elegance of the university champion gymnast he was. “Maybe he’s the one to awaken you—”
“He is not!” Leona protested, uncharacteristically cross.
“Well, you do a good job of covering up, but I know you, remember? You admire him as much as everyone else. Problematic old me included. He might bawl me out from time to time, but I know he means well by me. I’m simply not in his league. He’s cast in the heroic mould. I’m the one everyone is waiting to see unravel. No wonder Boyd is worshipped by the family. He’s probably the most eligible bachelor in the country, all the women love him, not yet thirty—”
“He is. A month ago,” Leona confirmed, not giving Robbie a chance to go on. Counting off Boyd’s attributes was a sure way to madness.
“Fancy that! I wasn’t invited to the party, then?”
“There was no party. He was much too busy.”
“Well, that would be true enough.” Robbie was always fair. “He’s a workaholic. Just think what he’s achieved. He’s ready to step into Rupert’s shoes right now. Boyd and Jinty—one of my least favourite women, as I’ve told you umpteen times—are the only ones in the entire clan who don’t go in fear and awe of old Rupe. And there’s you,” he pondered thoughtfully. “The odd thing is, the ruthless old devil is very fond of you. That’s the only thing about him I like. He despises me.”
“Not true.” Again Leona shook her red-gold head when she knew the autocratic Rupert considered Robbie “worthless”. “He’s ready to take you into the firm as soon as you complete your degree.”
And why not? Robbie was very clever and he was right about one thing: Rupert had always shown a marked interest in her since she was a little girl. Intimidating with most people, he had always been very gentle with her, especially after she had lost her mother, Serena, in that fatal riding accident on the Brooklands estate. In those far off days Boyd, six years her elder, vividly handsome and clever, already at fourteen six feet tall, had made a special effort to take her under his wing as if she were a stray fluffy duckling. He had always looked after her at family functions and gatherings, without any need for prompting. He had just done it. In those days Boyd had been her hero. She told herself she had long run out of hero worship. These days, Boyd affected her so powerfully, so painfully, she could scarcely make eye contact with him. He made her nervous and excited. He challenged her and honed her already sharp wits. It was torture to be physically near him, yet she couldn’t seem to draw back. The fact was, she was mesmerised by his whole persona—those piercing, incredibly beautiful blue eyes that wooed as they wounded. She was a seething mass of contradictions where Boyd was concerned. He stirred her and she feared him. Any liaison between her and Boyd would never be accepted. Not that he had ever looked at her in that way. Well, how did he look at her, exactly? Sometimes he made her feel extraordinarily beautiful. Inside and out. Other times he seemed to go out of his way to alienate her. The cool tongue. The blazing eyes. Face it: it was her fantasy, not his.
Robbie broke into her errant thoughts again. “I expect I get invited because they want to keep an eye on me.”
“Same way they keep an eye on all of us,” she said with a smile.
“Just like royalty! At least they acknowledge you for the clever, creative young woman you are. The fact you’re a genuine beauty is always an enormous help, and you have the wonderful gift of being able to get on with all sorts of people.”
“Except Boyd.” The fact she had voiced it aloud made her twitch with self-disgust.
Robbie laughed. “I expect there’s a very good reason for that. I ask myself—all that sparring the two of you go on with. Are you both playing a part? Is it all a sham?”
“Funny sort of sham.” She spoke as though the very idea of being secretly in love with Boyd was utterly ridiculous. “We bring out the worst in each other.” How proficient she had grown at crushing down all other explanations. It was bad enough they lurked on the outskirts of her brain.
“Personally, I think you’re a good match,” Robbie announced as though he had given it serious consideration. “Boyd needs a woman with fiery red hair. You’re good at keeping him in line. Well, I’d best be off.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean to the races.” Leona stood up. It was Saturday and the Spring Carnival was underway.
A little colour rose to Robbie’s olive cheeks. “I don’t do much harm. I’m taking Deb. Barrington and his current squeeze are coming along. Just a fun afternoon and a chance for the girls to dress up. I’m surprised you’re not going. Old Rupe’s glamour two-year-old is bound to win its race. Shall I put a couple of bob on for you?”
Leona shook her head, her beautiful hair loosely caught back in a high knot. “I’ve never felt the slightest urge to gamble, Robbie. With money, that is. I certainly play my hunches. That’s the right side of my brain. Money makes money for the likes of Rupert.” She planted an affectionate kiss on Robbie’s cheek. He wasn’t tall and she was for a woman. “If I were you, I’d put my boot down firmly on what you’ve got.” Robbie was on a generous allowance from her father but she knew he made short work of it. He often borrowed from her, promising he would pay her back. Sometimes he did. More often he didn’t.
The two of them walked to the door of Leona’s very attractive open-plan apartment, which took full advantage of its marvellous location overlooking Sydney Harbour. The apartment had been a twenty-first birthday present from “The Family”. It was their way of showing their approval of the way she conducted herself and brought credit to the family name. No way could she have afforded it herself, although with her latest promotion to personal assistant to Beatrice Caldwell, a fashion icon and overall Director of Blanchards Fashion, she had now hit an income high.
“You deserve it, girl. Like me, you have the eye!”
High praise from the autocratic and incredibly difficult to please Beatrice.
“So you are coming to the house party?” Leona needed to double-check. “You’re expected to reply.” Good manners ranked high on the Blanchard expectations list.
“Naturellement! And that just about exhausts my French for the day. Just for you, Leo. No one else.”
“Don’t be difficult, sweetie.” She hugged him in the sisterly, protective way she had with him.
“Maybe if Carlo had stuck around instead of abandoning me,” Robbie suggested unhappily. “But he couldn’t wait to get back to Italy, remarry, father several more children.”
“Let’s hope he’s done a better job with them than he did with you.” Leona’s tone was uncharacteristically hard. Was it any wonder her heart ached for Robbie? How could she not recognise his emptiness? Delia appeared to feel little or nothing for her only child, incredible as that seemed. Perhaps, if Robbie had taken after Delia—blonde, blue-eyed … Carlo D’Angelo had never contacted his first born over the years, much less invited him to visit and meet his half-siblings. “It’s his loss, Robbie,” she said, resorting to a brisk confident tone. “Believe in yourself, like I do.” Robbie had to buck up. With her hand resting on his arm, she thought she detected an inner agitation he wasn’t allowing her to see.
“Everything okay?” She frowned. “You would tell me if it weren’t?”
“Everything’s fine!” Robbie gave a brief laugh. “Well, then, Leo love, next time I’ll see you will be next weekend at Brooklands.”
She smiled back. “Bring your racket. We’ll lick ‘em, same as always.”
“Satisfying, isn’t it?” he smirked.
“Very.”
If only everything was fine, Robbie thought dismally as he strolled off to the lift. All sorts of anxieties were settling heavily in his stomach. Leo was wonderful. He loved her dearly. The only one in the world he did love, actually. In the end he hadn’t had it in him to ask her for another loan. Hadn’t he already asked enough of her? In fact he still owed her. But he was desperately in need of money and, to be honest, becoming increasingly frightened of the people he had got involved with. Basically, they were thugs, even if they moved freely through high society. God knew what they might do to him if he couldn’t keep them happy. Or happy enough. He had the horrible feeling a trap was closing around him. Leo was right. His love of gambling, yet another unfortunate trait he had inherited from Carlo—were there any good ones?—had pitched him headlong into a maelstrom of danger. Old Rupe’s brilliant two-year-old—Blazeaway—was practically guaranteed a win this afternoon. He’d put the few thousand he had left on its nose.
Characteristically, Robbie shrugged off his nightmares and began to whistle an old tune to keep up his spirits.
CHAPTER TWO
ON THE FOLLOWING Saturday morning Leona decided to let the parade of Blanchards get away from the city before she started out on her drive to the Blanchards’ splendid country estate. In one way she was thrilled to be going back—she adored the house and its magnificent gardens and parkland, spreading over several square kilometres—in another, meeting up with Boyd again left her unsettled in mind and body. It seemed an age since she had seen him, in reality, just over a month, but he had been overseas on family business. Since Rupert had reached his sixties with such a splendid heir, the older man was happy to spend a lot more time at Brooklands. The result was that the mantle of power and responsibility had fallen more heavily on Boyd’s shoulders.
Then again, Boyd knew all about power and taking over the reins. He had been groomed for the role. There had never been the possibility, or even the fear, that he might not possess his father’s brilliant business brain; or when the time came, that he might opt out of a lifetime of hard work and enormous responsibility. Such a life might not have appealed to him. With a lavish trust fund set up by his grandfather, Boyd could simply have walked away and enjoyed a life of leisure, doing anything he wanted—Lord knew he was clever enough—but Boyd had shown even in his early teens that he was more than capable of bearing the burdens of a great business empire. His ambition, to the family’s immense relief, was to continue his forebears’ achievements.
Everything Boyd tackled he did with brilliance and determination, she thought, fixing her eyes on the road ahead. He was far more than a chip off the old block. Boyd, if the truth be told, was Rupert’s superior in every way. Certainly he had that wonderful polish he had inherited from Alexa, along with her stunning sapphire eyes. At just turned thirty, he was right on top of his game, on course to outperform Rupert and the original family fortune builders and their achievements. Boyd commanded genuine liking, love and respect, whereas Rupert was rather more famous for commanding fear.
Extraordinary, then, that Rupert had taken such a fancy to her. The one time Rupert had ever been seen to break down was at her mother’s funeral, when a stiff upper lip at his own wife’s funeral had prevailed. Extremely odd, that. She remembered Alexa, a close friend of her mother, always so poised, had been in floods of tears that day too. Even as a stunned and grief-stricken little girl she’d remembered.
A wonderful rider, her mother, Serena, had broken her neck in a freak fall, taking an old stone wall at the upper reaches of the Brooklands lake. It was a wall she had jumped dozens of times before. Only that last time she and her horse had taken a catastrophic tumble. It was later discovered the horse’s hoof had snagged in a strong loop of ivy clinging to the wall.
Sixteen years ago, Leona thought with familiar sadness. Sixteen years I’ve been without my mother. She still remembered how her mother had bent to kiss her before she had gone out on her ride.
“Won’t be long, my darling. When I come back, we’ll all go for a nice long swim.”
Serena didn’t know—couldn’t know—she wouldn’t be coming back. Not alive, anyway.
The entire family had taken her mother’s death badly. Serena had been so deeply mourned that it seemed there had been no love left over for Delia, her successor, her father’s second wife. The family had considered no one good enough to replace Serena. Certainly not Delia, who had “ambushed” her grieving father, bringing with her a difficult small son to boot. Perhaps that was why she, Leona, was held close to the Blanchard core. She wasn’t a member of the main family. But she was the image of her mother. That seemed to accord her a special grace.
The great wrought iron gates to the estate were standing open. A mile long private road led to the house. Magnificent trees of an immense height lined the way, their outermost branches interlocking so that the road beneath formed a wonderful golden-green tunnel.
Minutes later, she was out of the tunnel and driving over an arched stone bridge that spanned the shimmering green lake. Fed by an underground river, the lake, very deep in some places, spread out over three acres, dotted here and there with picturesque little islands, which had become the breeding grounds for wild duck and other waterfowl. Today a flotilla of black swans sailed under the bridge. The lake’s calm waters, glassy green with a multitude of flashing silvers, were spectacularly fringed by deep banks of pure white arum lilies, Japanese purple iris and a wealth of other aquatic plants.
Up ahead was the house. Built in the style of an English manor house, with various extensions added over the years in the same style, it had evolved into a very grand property indeed. A vast sweep of lawn and formal gardens lay before it, the whole estate surrounded by undulating hills and valleys, brooks and streams. When she was a child she had counted the rooms—thirty-two, including a beautiful big ballroom where many large family and charity functions had been held over the years. Alexa had made the annual Brooklands Garden Party one of the most memorable events on the social calendar, a feat Jinty had never attempted to emulate. The glorious grounds were ideal for the purpose.
No one could match Alexa, Leona thought. It was a tragedy she had died so young. She had often pondered her private belief that Alexa had not been at all happy in her marriage but the subject had never been broached. In public Rupert and Alexa had played the role of the perfect couple. It was only as Leona had grown to womanhood that she’d begun to sense the very real distance between the two. They’d practically lived their lives apart, although Alexa had obviously decided to make the best of her marriage, always looking out for her beloved son, and applying her considerable skills and energies to running a large estate and numerous charities close to her heart.
If a woman like that couldn’t have her happy ever after, forget the romantics, she thought. Marriage was a huge risk.
The presence of water was everywhere at Brooklands. The many brooks on the estate had, in fact, given it its name. Water was magic.
Way off to Leona’s right were the three polo fields, covering a huge area given that one polo field had an area equivalent to ten football fields. The boundaries of the fields were deeply shaded by massive plantings of trees, both natives and exotics weaving in and out of one another. A world-famous landscaper had been brought in by Boyd’s great-grandparents, who had determined on and succeeded in creating a world class garden. Many years on, another celebrity landscaper had worked with Rupert when he’d decided he wanted polo fields on the estate. A splendid polo player in his day, Rupert now left it to Boyd to carry on the tradition. Boyd freely admitted he found the dangerous, fast paced sport great relaxation.
A match had been organised for Sunday afternoon with a visiting team. Though he was a marvellously dashing player, she always found herself praying that Boyd would not be harmed. It was such a fast, rough game, though very thrilling for the spectator, especially those who adored horses.
All of them desperately needed Boyd to succeed Rupert. None of the other male cousins, even the really clever ones, and there were quite a few, could possibly take his place.
Even as she thought of him, she was conscious of a kind of panic moving through her. Her heart was beating faster. She could feel its mad flutter. The big thing was not to allow her schoolgirl panic to ruin the weekend. Think positive.
Boyd.
Damn, damn, damn. Just his name did her in. Head and heart. She didn’t want it. It wasn’t right. The very strength of her feelings made her afraid. Did anyone realise how hard it was for her to act normal around him? Robbie, maybe. But then Robbie saw too much.
At twenty-four, wasn’t it high time she started to move past her feelings for Boyd? Give other guys a chance? There were plenty of them standing in line—no doubt the Blanchard name was an added attraction. But she was no heiress. She was one of the worker bees. It was a terrifying feeling to be held in thrall, for that was how she had come to think of it. It was every bit as bad an addiction as Robbie’s gambling.
She wondered if Boyd was still seeing Ally McNair. Ally was lovely and great fun. There had been Zoe Renshaw before Ally. Jemma Stirling. Not to forget Holly Campbell. She hadn’t liked Holly. Such a snob. And, of course, there was Chloe Compton, heiress to another great retailing fortune, therefore judged by Rupert as very suitable.
Everyone in the family liked Chloe, including her. Rupert had gone out of his way to give her his nod of approval. There had barely been a time when Boyd didn’t have the most beautiful girls chasing after him. Some, like Ally and Chloe, turned out to be regulars, but Boyd didn’t seem in any hurry to commit himself. In any case he was, as Robbie said, a workaholic. Come to that, she worked pretty darn hard herself.
Even her boss had been known to comment on the fact. And Bea hadn’t signed her up because she was one of the Blanchard clan. She had been given the job on merit alone. Although many in the country’s fashion world would have given their eye teeth to land the job, most of Leona’s colleagues found Bea immensely difficult—some days she was chillier than a travelling iceberg—but all in all Leona liked and greatly admired her boss. Bea was a huge driving force in fashion, and her own personal guru, and Leona knew in her bones that one day—all right, it was years off—she would be able to take over from Bea.
Jinty made a theatrical business of greeting her—hugging and kissing her with practised insincerity. “Lovely to have you with us again, Leo,” she gushed. “Your outfit is perfect.” Jinty’s large, rather hard china-blue eyes comprehensively studied Leona from head to toe. “You know precisely what fashion is all about. But of course you have that extraordinary figure. What I wouldn’t do to be as skinny as you!”
“Give up the champagne, Jinty?” Leona suggested with a teasing smile, knowing Jinty’s big show of affection was sadly all an act. Everything was an act with sexy, bosomy Jinty, including her marriage. In the very next instant, as expected, Leona was waved away as of no consequence as Jinty’s eyes flashed towards the door, brilliant with expectation. Instantly Leona had the gut feeling that it was Boyd arriving. Boyd was of infinitely more interest than she could ever hope to be. Boyd, the family superstar. She realised he must have left Sydney not long after her.
As though someone was physically shoving her in the back, Leona hurried up the grand sweep of the staircase. She wasn’t ready to meet up with Boyd yet. Maybe she never would be.
She was in the same room she usually occupied. It had its own bathroom and a small sitting room—more a suite than just a bedroom. She had loved this room in the old days but Jinty, once installed in a position of power, had decided that new brides had a pressing obligation to sweep clean. At least Rupert had stopped her from doing anything much on the ground floor, with its beautiful welcoming reception rooms and library, but she had been given carte blanche on the upper floor. As a consequence Jinty had suffered a wild reaction. She had gone about her task like a woman possessed.
