hell it was!’ he sneered, glaring at her down the length of his nose. ‘If I’d spoken to Tudor first I’d have threatened him with the law before I let him anywhere near my family. And I wouldn’t have let Father know he’d had the nerve to phone. You don’t tell a sick man that his enemy is about to knock on his front door!’
‘Enemy?’ She was aware that she was repeating almost everything he said, but could do nothing about it. Dom wasn’t making any sense. Martin didn’t have an enemy in the world, surely? She’d never heard of Adam Tudor before this evening... Or had she? She shook her head to clear it, her strong brows clenched perplexedly, and her cousin told her,
‘Exactly. The man’s a creep. Always on the look-out for hand-outs. He’d do my father down as soon as look at him—ask Mother, if you don’t believe me.’
Selina bit down on her lower lip. She did believe him. His words had the unmistakable ring of veracity. And she said miserably, ‘I didn’t know. If Martin has an enemy I should have been warned. How could I have known if I was never told?’
‘Sure.’ Dominic levered himself away from the door, obviously thinking better of the accusatory stance he had taken and, in an unprecedented gesture of solidarity, draped an arm around her shoulders. ‘I shouldn’t have blamed you, but I was upset. Adam Tudor’s existence isn’t something we talk about. So—’ he took the car keys from her unresisting fingers and pushed them back into her bag ‘—in the circumstances, it would be best if you stayed here, wouldn’t it? Give Father the chance to get over the shock of that message before you visit, hmm? Tomorrow should be OK. And when Tudor does show up you can give him a piece of your mind. You can be pretty formidable when roused! But if you’re going to have to do that you’ll need a few facts—needless to say, you must promise they won’t go any further.’ He gave her a tired smile, gave her shoulder a final squeeze. ‘As I said, the man’s an importuning creep, and if he could see Father—all of us—in the bankruptcy courts he’d do it. Not that he’ll get that opportunity, of course, I’ll see to that.’
‘But why?’ Selina’s golden eyes mirrored her perplexion. How could someone as straightforward and gentle as Martin have made such an enemy?
And Dominic’s mouth twisted down in a vicious sneer as he told her, ‘Because he’s a bastard. My father’s bastard, to be precise.’
* * *
It was almost nine. Outside the wind was rising, buffeting the house, roaring through the bare branches of the trees. It was going to be a wild night.
And the wildness within Selina’s loyal heart rose to meet it, only to be subdued by an icy determination to treat Adam Tudor with the disdainful contempt he deserved.
After Dominic had left with the things Vanessa needed she had phoned the hospital and spoken to her aunt, apologising for not being around when she’d been needed, asking after Martin, promising to visit tomorrow.
‘It happened so quickly, there was nothing you could have done,’ Vanessa assured her. ‘Your uncle knows that, and he’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.’
‘Dominic explained,’ Selina said quickly on a fresh wave of a guilt which, even though she knew it to be misplaced, she couldn’t entirely get rid of. ‘I’m so sorry. I would never have passed that message on if I’d known the details—who the man really is.’
‘Of course not.’ Vanessa’s voice was tight and Selina guessed how painful the subject must be for her. ‘It’s not something we bring into everyday conversation. I take it you’re staying there to show him the door if he actually has the gall to turn up?’
‘Exactly.’ Selina’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the receiver, and her aunt said heavily,
‘Don’t blame yourself. You weren’t to know. I honestly thought we’d seen the back of the greedy wretch all those years ago. And be careful,’ she warned. ‘He could turn nasty. Have Meg around to back you up if he does put in an appearance.’
Which was something Selina had no intention of doing. The fewer people dragged into the affair, the better, and she was quite capable of handling the creep on her own. And Vanessa’s reaction had borne out everything Dominic had told her. Every word he had said before he’d left had been burned into her brain.
‘Mother’s told me a lot about him, but I only saw him once. I must have been about seven at the time. He came to the house—we were living in Watford in those days—and even then, as a kid, I knew he was a threat. Big, black-haired, wild-looking. The aggression was the first thing I picked up. He demanded to see Father. Said he wanted to tell him he had a place at university. And I remember Mother saying that Father was out, telling him that now his slut of a mother was dead there would be no more money. He was eighteen, she said, old enough and big enough to earn his own living like everyone else, and if he couldn’t afford to take his place at university then that was tough, but hardly his father’s concern. She told him to go. And he did.
‘It was years later when Mother told me the full story—how Tudor and his promiscuous mother had tried to drain us dry, how Father had paid a thousand times over for a youthful indiscretion. How he’d been led astray by an older, much more experienced woman. And Father, being the man he is, took her word when she said the child she was carrying was his. Though not even he could bring himself to marry a slut like that, but he supported them both very generously to the end of her life, which must have been just before he came to the house that time, griping because the hand-outs had stopped.’
So Selina was ready for him. The way he had used her, an unknowing pawn, to get to Martin, made her angry enough to kill. The blame for her uncle’s attack was his, and his alone. And for that he would have to pay.
He was probably short of money and had decided to try to force Martin to make a handsome payment in return for his silence about their true relationship. Well, he’d be in for one hell of a shock! Mention of bringing in the police would be the least of her threats!
Every nerve working on overdrive, she picked up the sound of the front doorbell and, just for a moment, the supple length of her body as she paced the fine Persian carpet went quite rigid. He was here.
She’d warned Meg to expect a visitor, asking her to bring him directly to the sitting-room. And now Selina braced herself, forcing herself to walk calmly over to one of the tapestry-covered, high-backed armchairs which flanked the huge stone hearth.
Seating herself, she turned her face to the crackling fire and then deliberately took a magazine from the low table at her side, opening it on her lap as she heard Meg’s unhurried footsteps cross the huge hall.
When Dominic had recalled that importuning visit they hadn’t been living here. When the creep saw the quality of this house and its environs he would probably double his demands! Her ears aching with the strain of listening for his approach, she disgusted herself by remembering how she’d warmed to his voice, how her body had quickened at its sensual quality—how she’d lain in bed fantasising about the man, wondering if his looks could possibly measure up to the way he sounded.
Hastily, she thrust the unwelcome memory aside and composed her striking features into a mask of icy hauteur. Whatever he looked like, Adam Tudor would get what was coming to him!
And then he was actually in the room with her and, totally oblivious of Meg’s formal, ‘Adam Tudor to see you, Miss Selina,’ her breath shook in her lungs.
He was everything his voice had promised, and more. No sign of the down-at-heel, surly weakling
