Chapter Twenty-Eight

The man’s voice grated through her consciousness. It was a cold, slightly raspy voice, filled with barely suppressed anger and the threat of violence. Rosalie remembered it, and just like when she was little, it triggered one panicked thought inside her.

Leave. Escape. Now.

She opened her eyes to pitch darkness, felt the soft mattress and a cotton duvet beneath her and knew she was on a bed. She wasn’t tied up, but someone had removed her boots. As her eyes got used to the darkness, she started distinguishing shapes. A window with the curtains drawn. A wardrobe, a dressing table. The room smelled of plastic, of new furniture and cleaning products. No sound came from outside, other than from the wind lashing at the window.

She must be in a holiday let, possibly even in the same lodge she’d visited before with Marc. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she sat up and slid her legs sideways so her feet touched the floor. Every move made her head spin and her shoulder throb with pain, and brought tears to her eyes. Slowly she rose to her feet and, her legs wobbly, tiptoed towards the door.

The men now seemed to be arguing, then the one whose voice made her skin crawl with cold shivers spoke. ‘If Cheryl and Joe don’t find that blasted diary, I’ll have to go back down there myself.’

The diary. Rosalie’s blood froze. If that’s what he was after, then she knew exactly who he was – but Geoff had said he was in prison.

‘Damn,’ he snarled. ‘Things haven’t worked out the way I’d planned. That idiot Rupert is hopeless. When I ordered him to dispatch McBride to a better world so that he would inherit that bloody castle and could then tear it apart, he wasn’t even capable of doing a proper job of cutting the brake lines of the Porsche.’

Rosalie pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. So it was Rupert who’d sabotaged the Porsche! On Jake Tyler’s orders.

There was the sound of a match being struck, and the smell of cigarette smoke drifted through the bedroom door.

‘And last night he botched things up again and knocked the girl out, so we had to bring her here and Cheryl had to give her some sedative to keep her quiet all day until we figure out what to do. What a bloody mess.’

So she’d been drugged … No wonder she felt weak and sick.

‘I suppose we can always cut our losses,’ the other man suggested, ‘go back to London pronto before the probation officer pays you a visit, and make a few bob selling whatever Cheryl and Joe manage to grab from the castle. They took the inventory of valuables Rupert drew up when he was working for McBride. That will help them. Rupert is a liability indeed, but he can be fixed. As for the diary, perhaps the woman never had it, or she lost it. It’s been a long time.’

‘Hmm. She had it all right. I know she did. And she would have kept it as leverage against me, in case I ever found her again. No, I can’t let it hang over me. You know what would happen if the Russians found out about it. I must get my hands on it.’

‘What about the girl? She may know where it is.’

The girl. Rosalie held her breath. They were talking about her. Well, she wouldn’t wait in the dark for them to come and get her. She may have wanted to run away before, but now she would show him she wasn’t afraid.

She pushed the door open and stepped into the living room.

‘What about me?’ she asked, trying hard to ignore the burning pain in her shoulder, her throbbing headache and the fear that, despite her earlier resolution, made her heart beat too fast.

Both men swung round to stare at her. One of them, a short, bulky man with dark cropped hair and ruddy cheeks, sprang to his feet. It was one of the men she had seen at the Stag’s Head the day of the accident on the mountainside.

The other man drew on his cigarette and narrowed his eyes to consider her as she walked towards him.

So here he was, at last. Jack Tyler. Her father.

‘Well, well. It looks like sleeping beauty is awake at last.’ He leaned back against the back of his armchair and blew a cloud of smoke that hid his blue eyes and his pale, handsome face for a few seconds.

‘Are you not even going to ask who I am, princess?’

‘I know who you are.’

He rose to his feet, and she was able to take a good look at him for the first time. He was tall and lean. He had deep grooves on either side of his mouth, a straight nose and very clear blue eyes. Despite the grey streaks in his dark hair, it was difficult to guess his age. He could just as easily be in his early forties as in his late fifties. What was obvious, however, was the icy threat radiating from his person.

He flicked the butt of his cigarette on to the floor and put it out with the heel of his boot, not caring that he’d burnt a hole in the beige carpet, then he looked up and smiled. It transformed his whole demeanour from ruthless to charming. It was odd and disturbing and she watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion.

‘You’d better take a seat, princess,’ he said, gesturing to the armchair vacated by his friend. ‘We have a lot of catching up to do – the best part of twenty-five years, to be exact. How did you work out who I was?’

‘You were in the lodge with that girl the evening I came, weren’t you? It was your voice I recognised – your voice I must have heard countless times shouting at Mum when I was little, before she left you.’

His jaw clenched but he said nothing.

‘I have nothing to say to you. You disgust me.’ She forced herself to remain still as he stepped forward, even though fear tightened her insides and all she wanted to do was to run away. There was nowhere to run to, anyway. He stopped smiling.

‘I asked you to sit down.’

‘Do as he says.’ The other man took her arm and pushed her into an armchair. ‘Sit down,’ he growled.

Rosalie cried out in pain.

‘Leave us alone, Sam. Go have a smoke outside, or take a walk. My girl and I have things to talk about.’ Jake Tyler sat opposite her, and lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘You don’t look much like me.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’

He arched his eyebrows, then smiled again. ‘I looked for you everywhere, do you know that? I’ll never know how she managed to elude me all these years. She’s the only one who ever ran away from me. The only one.’

He was talking about her mother with so much spite and hatred, it made Rosalie go cold. ‘She even died before I could get to her, and deal with her, the bitch.’

Rosalie felt the insult like a slap to the face. Suddenly the fear was gone. There was only loathing. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, she leaned forward too.

‘My mum was the bravest, the kindest, the most wonderful woman who ever lived. What she ever saw in a man like you, I’ll never know. You’re nothing but a thug and a criminal. Don’t even try to play the long-lost father sentimental rubbish because I really don’t care.’

Surprise flickered in his blue eyes. He whistled between clenched teeth. ‘And I thought you were just a dumb girl in pink. I guess I was wrong. Nobody talks to me like that. You’ve got guts, girl.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me how I found you?’

‘It was the article about Love Taxis, wasn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘It was indeed.’

No wonder Geoff had got so mad at her when he’d found out.

‘I was in the nick then. I can’t tell you how happy I was to finally find out what had happened to you and your mother.’

Rosalie swallowed hard. She was this man’s daughter. She had his blood, his genes. ‘How could my mother fall in love with a man like you, how could she throw away her relationship with her family, her career, her hopes for the future, just to be with you? It makes me sick.’

A twitch appeared at the side of his face. ‘Careful, princess, I may be willing to tolerate a bit of tongue-lashing from you, but don’t push your luck. Anyway, how’s your head, and your shoulder? That idiot Rupert hurt you pretty bad. He’ll pay for that, don’t you worry. Nobody touches my girl.’

‘Your girl?’ She shuddered. ‘I’m not your girl, I was never your girl,’ she said between clenched teeth. ‘The only father I ever had is Geoff, the man you have been blackmailing for months.’

He smiled. ‘What touching words … Would you like anything to drink or to eat?’ he asked. ‘We had to give you something to keep you asleep all day and you’ve been out cold for hours. I bet you’re hungry.’

She rose to her feet, flinching as pain lanced her neck, shoulder and back. ‘I want my boots and my coat and I want to go home.’

He slid his cigarette between his lips and got up too. ‘That, my dear, is out of the question. I haven’t finished with you yet. You see, your mother took something from me all those years ago, something very valuable, and I want it back.’