was—just as you said—using Haughton as a weapon against them—my only weapon.’ Her gaze shifted again, became shadowed. ‘But when I came back here after leaving you I knew...’ She paused, then made herself go on. ‘I knew that I’d changed—that you’d been right to say that I was poisoning myself in my battle against them. That it was time...finally time...to let go. They had won and I had lost and all I could do was leave and make a new life for myself somewhere else. Anywhere else.’ She took another searing, painful breath. ‘This—today—was to be my very last visit, my last sight of my home.’
He drew her towards him again and his voice was gentle...very gentle. ‘And now it is yours for ever.’ His eyes poured into hers. ‘No one can ever threaten it again.’ His mouth curved into a smile. ‘Look around you, Ellen—it’s yours, all yours.’
A strangled sound was torn from her throat, and then a sob, and then another, and then tears were spilling from her eyes and Max was wrapping his arms around her, and she was clinging to him, shaking with emotion, with the relief and disbelief that all this was really true, that all the stress and fear and anguish at losing her home was over—over for ever. Because Max—wonderful, kind, generous Max—had made her dream come true. Haughton was hers, and it was safe for ever now.
He held her while her body shook with the tears choking from her, convulsing her, while her hands clutched at him and she was finally purged of all that her stepmother and stepsister had done to her for so long. And when she was finally done he stroked her hair with his hand, murmured things to her in Greek.
She didn’t know what they were, but knew that he was the most wonderful man on earth. And that she had now taken from him something he had wanted from the moment he’d first set eyes on it.
Her thoughts whirled in her head, troubling her. She lifted her face from his shoulder, looked up at him with an anxious look.
‘Max, I still don’t understand. You’ve given me this miraculous gift and I still don’t understand why. Why would you do it when you’ve told me yourself that you fell in love with Haughton and wanted to make your home here? How can you bear to give it away to me like this?’
He looked down at her, his deep, dark eyes holding an expression she could not recognise.
‘Well, you see, Ellen, I’m forced to admit that I am a shamefully devious character.’ He cradled her to him, his hands resting loosely around her spine. ‘Shamefully devious. Yes, it’s absolutely true that I was...devastated...’ his voice was edgy suddenly ‘...when I realised how wrong I’d been about you—about your behaviour towards Pauline and Chloe over this house—how deceived I’d been by their appearance of solicitude towards you, how disgusted I felt at their exploitation of your father and their cruelty to you. It made me absolutely determined to redress this final wrong, to restore your home to you, out of their clutches. But...’
His voice changed again, softening now, taking on a hint of wry humour.
‘But even while I was set on being the one to save Haughton for you, because you love it so much and have been through so much because of it, I also knew perfectly well that I had... Well, let’s say an ulterior motive all along.’
There was a glint in his eyes now, blatantly visible. It did things to Ellen’s insides that even the flood of emotion over regaining her home could not quench—things that took her back instantly to the time she’d spent with Max abroad, setting loose a quiver inside her, a quickening of her pulse that made her all too aware of how Max’s body was cradling hers, of the lean strength of him, the taut wall of his chest, the pressure of his hips, the heat of his body...
‘I told you when you signed my contract restoring Haughton to you how much I was still hoping to make it my home,’ he was saying now, ‘but that it would depend entirely on you. So...’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘What do you think? Could you bear to share Haughton with me?’
She looked at him, not understanding. ‘Do you mean some kind of co-ownership?’ she ventured.
He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t want you ever to have to worry about not owning Haughton one hundred per cent,’ he said. ‘I was thinking,’ he went on, and now the glint was even more pronounced, and she felt a sudden tightening of the arms around her spine, ‘of a different way to make this my home.’
‘I don’t understand...’ she said again. But her voice was weaker this time. Her whole body was weaker.
‘Then maybe,’ said Max, ‘this will make things clearer.’
He let her go suddenly, and she felt herself leaning back on the desk as his hold on her was relinquished. She clutched the edge of the desk with her hands. Saw him reach into his jacket, draw out a tiny square box. Felt her heart rate slow...slow almost to a standstill. The breath in her lungs was congealing.
Before her very eyes she saw him lower himself upon one knee and look back up at her.
‘Will you...?’ he said, and his eyes pinioned hers as she gazed down at him, her own eyes widening until they could widen no further. ‘Will you, my most beautiful, most wonderful, most lovely and fit and fabulous and incomparable Ellen, do me the honour, the very great honour, of making me the happiest of men? Will you...?’ he asked. ‘Will you marry me?’
He flicked open the box and her eyes went to the flash of red within. She gave a gasp.
Max quirked an eyebrow again. ‘I’m sort of hoping,’ he said, ‘again quite shamelessly, that this might help persuade you.’
He took the ring out, got to his feet, lifted Ellen’s nerveless left hand and held it. His other hand held the ring. The ring she’d worn at the Edwardian ball that had changed her life for ever. The ring that had been her mother’s engagement ring, given to her by her father. The ring that had once belonged to her grandmother and her great-grandmother.
‘How did you get it...?’ Her voice was faint again.
‘I bought the ruby parure you wore to the ball. And by the same token I also bought back all your mother’s jewellery that Pauline and Chloe helped themselves to—it was in the fine print of the terms and conditions of their sale contract. As for everything else—all the other jewellery and antiques and paintings they sold—I’ve got a team searching them out and I will buy them all back as and when we find them.’ And now that glint was blatant again. ‘You see, Ellen, I want to do absolutely everything in my power to persuade you to do what I want you to do more than anything else in the world—and, my sweet Ellen, you haven’t actually answered me yet.’
Was there tension in his voice, lacing through the humour, turning the glint in his eyes to something very different?
She gazed at him. Her heart was suddenly in her throat—or something was. Something huge and choking that was making it quite impossible for her to do anything at all except gaze at him. And force out one breathless whisper.
‘Did...did you just propose to me?’ she asked faintly.
A tidal wave of disbelief was sweeping up through her—the same as when he’d told her he’d gifted his newly acquired share of Haughton to her.
A rasp broke from Max. ‘Do you want a replay?’ he said, and he started to go down on his knee again.
She snatched at him to stop him. ‘No! No—no!’
He
