But then she’d known that from the start. It had been her reaction to him that had made things so uncomfortable…
‘If you’d be so kind…?’
Glancing up, anticipating his need, she pulled the small table into place.
Sliding the tray on to it, he asked, ‘How do you like your coffee?’
‘A little cream, please. No sugar.’
She noticed he took his own black, with neither cream nor sugar.
While they drank, they sat staring into the leaping flames and listening to the sizzle of snowflakes falling down the chimney on to the burning logs.
The silence had become easy, almost companionable, and the prospect of spending the rest of the evening in his company was no longer quite so daunting.
When their cups were empty, Gideon asked cheerfully, ‘Now, what shall we do until bedtime?’
‘Perhaps I’d better start by washing up.’
He shook his head. ‘We have a dishwasher when there’s sufficient electricity to run it. I meant what shall we do by way of entertainment? There’s television, of course, but the living-room is bound to be as cold as charity, and I’m not sure that the generator will take the strain.’
Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t care much for television. I’ve always preferred books.’
‘I’m with you there! Well, if it’s books you want, there are certainly plenty of those. Apart from the library itself, my father half filled the study with his own personal collection of first editions.’
‘Really?’
‘Though I’m not particularly knowledgeable on the subject,’ Gideon added levelly, ‘it’s an interest I share. So if you’d care to see the collection some time, I’ll be happy to show you.’
The offer was made casually, but she answered with undisguised eagerness, ‘Thank you. I’d like that.’
‘As you may imagine, going through catalogues and suchlike took up a great deal of time; that’s why Mary Morrison became his secretary.’
‘I’d no idea that your father was a collector,’ Anna remarked.
Just for an instant she saw a look that might have been angry disbelief on Gideon’s face, then it was gone.
‘You astonish me,’ he said coolly. ‘I’d always presumed it was common knowledge, at least among the people who knew him reasonably well.’
‘As I said earlier I didn’t know him personally. I just knew of him.’
‘All the same,’ Gideon persisted, ‘as you and he were presumably competitors in the same market, I would have expected you to have at least heard his name mentioned in that connection.’
Wondering why it mattered, why he was making an issue of it, she shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. You see, if it becomes known that a wealthy collector is interested in a certain item it can push the price sky-high, so a lot of the more serious collectors find it better to buy through an agent rather than get involved on a personal level.’
She couldn’t tell whether she’d convinced him or not. His face was expressionless, his green eyes hard and opaque as jade, hiding his thoughts.
After a moment, he shrugged and admitted lightly, ‘That makes sense, I suppose. Buying and selling is business, whatever commodity is involved.’
She was pleased that finally he seemed to have accepted what she’d told him.
Still the puzzle remained—why had he looked as though he disbelieved her in the first place? What possible reason could she have for lying about a thing like that?
CHAPTER THREE
ALL at once a log slipped and rolled on to the hearth in a shower of bright sparks. Gideon got to his feet and used a large pair of tongs to replace it.
Having resumed his seat, he gave her a lopsided smile that did strange things to her breathing and pulse rate before remarking, ‘Now, after getting sidetracked, suppose we continue with our discussion?’
Wits scattered, she said vaguely, ‘Our discussion?’
‘If you remember, we were trying to decide on our evening’s fun. We’ve just dismissed television, so that rules out two possibilities…’
‘Two?’
He gave a sideways glance at the mistletoe, then watched with undisguised amusement while the colour rose in her cheeks.
Gritting her teeth, she asked as evenly as possible, ‘Are there any playing cards? Or a chess set, perhaps?’
‘There used to be, but I’ve no idea whether they still exist.’ His face suddenly wintry, he went on, ‘The only games my father enjoyed playing were with women… Or rather with a succession of girls, most of whom were young enough to be his daughter.’
Catching sight of her expression, he commented, ‘You look surprised.’
‘I am.’ Without thinking about it, she had always presumed that Sir Ian was the epitome of respectable upper-class morality.
The green eyes pinned her. ‘Then you had no idea?’
Shaking her head, she said, ‘No.’
‘Now it’s my turn to be surprised. Though he was always very careful to be discreet, more often than not that kind of thing gets about, and mud sticks, especially in a small town like Rymington.’
Again she shook her head. ‘I’ve never heard a word breathed against him.’
Gideon shrugged, and changed the subject to query casually, ‘How much of Hartington Manor have you seen?’
Wondering why he was asking when he knew quite well, she answered, ‘The hall, the kitchen, and the library.’
‘You haven’t seen the rest of this wing, or the older part?’
‘No. I didn’t know there was an older part.’
‘It’s quite spooky,’ he said with relish. ‘There are sliding panels and a secret passage. I’ll show you round if you like. It’s just the sort of thing to do on a dark and snowy Christmas Eve.’
Anna found herself wondering if he was trying to wind her up. Or had he perhaps, in his youth, read too many adventure yarns?
Perhaps her expressive face gave away what she was thinking, because he grinned at her and added, ‘Then we’ll come back and sit round the fire and tell each other true-life ghost stories.’
Carefully, she said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know any true-life ghost stories.’
‘No personal experience? You’ve never actually met a ghost?’
‘Not
