MAX’S EYES WERE holding hers and not letting them go—not letting them go for an instant...a single second.
‘You see...’ he said, and he spoke in the same measured tones, but now there was something else in his voice—something that was an emotion rising up to break through, an emotion that was possessing every cell in his body. ‘You see, I am selling you the two-thirds share of Haughton I have already purchased from your stepmother and stepsister. Which, Ellen—’ and now the emotion broke through finally, unstoppably, blazing through him, lighting up his eyes with the fire he had banked down with every ounce of his strength since he’d watched her walk up to him across the lawns ‘—which I now restore to you.’
For one last moment he held on to his self-control.
‘I’ve given you a very good price,’ he told her. ‘I believe even on your teacher’s salary you can afford to pay me a hundred pounds. How does that sound? I hope it’s acceptable—because you’ve just put your signature to it.’
She wasn’t saying anything. She was just staring at him as incomprehension, shock, disbelief, all flashed across her face.
‘I don’t understand...’ It was a whisper, faint and scarcely audible.
For one long, timeless, endless moment the tableau held. Max standing there, his face expressionless, and she seated across the desk from him, as white as a sheet with shock etched across her features. Then, like a dam breaking, all the emotions Max had been holding in check burst from him.
‘Did you truly think I would take your home from you—after you’d ripped the scales from my eyes?’
He took a shuddering breath, making himself calm. His gaze was on her, holding her like a magnet.
‘The moment you hurled what you did at me, before you stormed out, I knew there was only one thing to do. Only one! And now...’ A sigh of profound relief went through him. ‘Now it’s done. I put my legal team on to it straight away, the minute you’d gone, and they got hold of your stepmother out in Spain and told her I’d buy their share even without yours.’
A hard, cynical look entered his eyes.
‘She jumped at the chance like I was dangling a diamond necklace in front of her. My lawyer phoned me their agreement when I was in the Gulf, and then I knew, finally, that I was free to do what I have just done.’ He paused, and an expression moved across his face that showed all that had possessed him until this moment, the driving urgency to accomplish what he had. ‘Make Haughton safe for you,’ he finished.
She heard him, yet still she dared not believe what he was saying. Dared not believe that she had just bought her beloved home back for herself—for a song—for a gift...
For of course it was a gift! How could it be otherwise at so paltry a price? A gift that Max had given her—a gift so wonderful, so precious that it took her breath away, squeezed her lungs so tight she could hardly breathe, could hardly feel the beating of her heart, though it was hammering in her chest.
‘Why?’ It was the only word she could say, as faint and low as her breath could make it. ‘Max—why?’
She took a searing breath through the constriction in her throat and made herself speak again, forced the words from her though they were still low and faint.
‘Why should you care what Pauline and Chloe did to my father and me? Why should you give me so fabulous a gift?’
He was looking at her still, and the expression in his face made the hammering in her heart pound in her ears.
‘Why?’
His voice echoed hers. But he gave her no answer. Only strode around her father’s desk, catching at her hand and drawing her to her feet. Her legs were like jelly and she had to cling to his arm lest she collapse, so overpowering was the shock shaking her.
In her head she kept hearing her own voice, saying over and over again—Haughton is mine! It’s mine! It’s mine! Dear God, it’s mine for ever now!
It was a paean, an anthem, ringing in her head like bells. She gazed helplessly up at Max. At the man who had done this, made this happen. Into her head, flashing like a strobe light, came the memory of the moment Max had given her that first wonderful, miraculous gift—the moment when he’d shown her her reflection the night of the ball, transformed beyond recognition. Made beautiful by him.
He freed me from Chloe’s hex—and now, oh, he’s freed me from Pauline’s too!
Emotion overwhelmed her. Gratitude and wonder and so much more.
‘Why?’ His voice came again, husky now. He caught her other hand, held it, cherished it. He towered over her, his strong body supporting her stricken one. ‘Oh, Ellen—my beautiful, lovely, passionate, wonderful Ellen... Have you really not the faintest idea why?’
He held her a little way from him, the expression on his face rueful.
‘Did you not hear me when I told you that the moment I saw this house I wanted to live here? That something about it called to me? That after all my years of wandering, never having had a home of my own, having existed only on sufferance at my stepfather’s taverna and having lived in hotels and apartments anywhere in the world, I had finally come across a place that urged me to stop...to stop and stay. Make my life here.’
Now the rueful expression deepened.
‘That was what drove me so hard to buy it—to make it mine. What drove me to do all I could to achieve that aim. Including...’ his eyes met hers wryly ‘...whisking you off to London to show you how good your life could be if only you would let go of the place I wanted for myself.’
He gave a regretful sigh.
‘I went on and on at you. I know I did. But you see...’ and now a different note entered his voice ‘...I’d sought an explanation for your stubbornness, your refusal to agree to sell your share, from your stepmother and stepsister.’ His eyes shadowed as he remembered that scene in the drawing room when he’d made his initial offer for Haughton. ‘And they told me that you’d become obsessed with the house, that you’d never accepted Pauline’s marriage to your father, that you had rejected them from the very first, seen them as interlopers, invaders.’
He gave a shake of his head.
‘I remembered my own childhood—how my stepfather never wanted me, never accepted me into his home, always resented my presence even though he made use of it. I was always the outsider, the unwanted brat of my mother. Maybe,’ he said slowly, ‘that was why I was so ready to believe what Pauline and Chloe told me. So, while I could make allowances for your reaction to your father’s remarriage, all I could see was how that resentment was poisoning you....chaining you to this place. Making you think it was the only way you could punish Pauline for marrying your father, seeking to take your mother’s place.’
He felt Ellen draw away slightly. Her eyes were full of grief. Her voice when she spoke was low and strained, her glance going to her father’s empty chair by the hearth.
‘I was glad when my father told me he was marrying again. So glad! He’d been grieving for my mother and I desperately wanted him to be happy again. If Pauline made him happy, then I knew I would be happy. I tried to welcome them, tried to befriend Chloe...’ A choke broke in her voice. ‘Well, I told you how they reacted. But even then if they’d only made my father happy I could have borne it! But within months of marrying Pauline my father realised that her only interest in him was his money.’
Her mouth set.
‘He was powerless to do anything about it. If he’d divorced Pauline she’d have taken half of everything he had—forced him to sell Haughton and split the proceeds. So he kept on paying out and paying out and paying out. I had to hide from him all the spite and venom that came from them—hide from him how Chloe had tried to make my life hell at school, and how she constantly sneered at me because I’m tall and sporty, told me how repellent I was because of it until I believed her completely...’
Her voice broke in another choke before she could continue.
‘I had to hide it all from my father because he’d only have been hurt all the more, worried about me more, and felt yet more trapped by Pauline. So when he died I was almost relieved, because finally I didn’t have to pretend any longer. I could find my backbone and resolve that even though I knew it was impossible to stop Pauline and Chloe from getting their claws into Haughton eventually I would do everything in my power, for as long as I could, to make it as hard and as expensive as possible for them to force a sale.’
She took another choking breath.
‘I 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 halted, looked at her quizzically. ‘Is that no, you won’t marry me?’ he asked her.
She shook her head violently. She could not speak. Emotion was pounding her, crashing in on her consciousness, overwhelming her.
‘So, that’s a yes, then, is it?’ Max pursued. He paused. ‘I’d just like to clarify this, if you don’t mind. Because it is, you see, somewhat important to me.’ His expression changed suddenly. ‘It’s going to determine my entire future happiness.’
She swallowed. That huge, choking lump was still in her throat, and the tidal wash of emotion was still pounding in her.
‘Why...?’ The single word was faint, uncomprehending.
‘Why, what?’ he said blankly.
His self-control was under the greatest pressure he’d ever experienced in his life. Even worse than that very first night of the revelation of her beauty to him, when she had offered her mouth to him and he had swooped upon it with all the hunger of a starving man—and then, with the feast before him, had had to draw back, let her go and get the hell out of her bedroom before he’d succumbed to the most intense temptation he’d ever known.
Even worse than that...
‘Why...?’ She swallowed. ‘Why are you asking me to marry you?’
And Max lost it. Finally lost it. It had all been just too damn much. Too damn much from the moment Ellen had laid into him in his hotel suite, telling him the truth about the vultures who were feeding off her. In that single instant he’d known exactly what he was going to do—and he’d spent the last fortnight pulling out every stop, racing to get the paperwork done, the contracts drawn up and completed, and to drive down here to do what he had just done. Hand her back her home and gain her for himself.
‘Will this help you understand?’ he demanded.
He swept her up to him, his strength easily crushing her against him, his mouth swooping down on hers. And instantly she went up in flames, her mouth opening to his, melding with his. Her arms wound around him, her fingers spearing into his hair. She was hungry for him. Desperate for him. When finally he released her she was shaking, breathless.
Max’s hands splayed around her face. ‘I’ve fallen in love with you,’ he said.
His voice was quiet but there was an intensity in it, a strength that came from the very core of his being.
‘Somewhere along the way I’ve fallen in love with you. Oh, I admit that my motives in taking you to London were entirely self-interested—you knew that...knew I was seeking to open your eyes to what your life could be like beyond the narrow confines you’d imprisoned yourself in with your vendetta against your stepmother and stepsister once you’d discovered your own beauty. But once I’d discovered it too—and helped myself to it!’ His voice was wry. ‘Once I’d whisked you off to enjoy it to the full... Well...’ Warmth infused his voice now. ‘It dawned on me that I was enjoying your company in a way I’d never experienced with any other woman.’
‘Even Tyla Brentley?’ Ellen breathed.
A dismissive sound came from his throat. ‘Tyla was lovely to look at, glamorous to be with—and totally self-absorbed. You... Ah, you were utterly different. Even before you had your makeover I knew that. You’re intelligent, clear-sighted, and I approve of your efforts with all those deprived city children.’
He dropped a kiss on her nose.
‘We had a good time together, Ellen, on our travels. We were good together—incredibly, fantastically good. And when you stormed off I wasn’t just appalled to discover how vicious your step-relations were, I also knew I desperately didn’t want you to leave me! I knew I had to try and get you back—get you back so we could go on being good together. Good together for the rest of our lives, Ellen—that’s what I so hope for.’
Something changed in his voice again now, and an urgency speared it.
‘And if somewhere along the way you happen...just happen to come to feel for me what I feel for you... Well...’
She didn’t let him finish. She reached up her hand, snaked it around the back of his head, hauled his mouth down to hers again. She pressed her lips hard against him to silence him. Then, as she drew back again, emotion burst in her.
And so did a storm of weeping.
For the second time in a handful of minutes she clutched at him as wave after wave of emotion swept through her yet again—and again and again. Max loved her—he loved her! He’d given her the inestimable gift of her home to her, and he’d given her a more incomparable gift as well.
Himself. His heart. His love.
‘Max! Oh, Max!’ It was all she could say. But it seemed to satisfy him.
As she finally came down on the other side of the tsunami inside her he patted her back and reached for the ring box, sitting abandoned on her father’s desk.
‘That’s got to be a definite yes,’ he told her, with satisfaction in his voice and the love in his eyes pouring out over her, embracing her and caressing her.
‘Of course it is!’ She gulped. ‘I kept telling myself that because you were the first man in my life of course I’d get the idea in my head that I’d fallen in love with you—but it wasn’t just that. It was real. Completely real what I was feeling for you. When I stormed out on you it was tearing me to pieces, and being out in Canada, facing the rest of my life without Haughton and without you—I... I just couldn’t bear it!’
Tears threatened again, spilling into her watery eyes.
‘And now I’ve got both—I’ve got my beloved home and I’ve got something even more desperately precious to me.’ Her face worked. ‘I’ve got you. And you, my dearest, most adored and most wonderful Max, are my heart, my life—the love of my life.’
‘Excellent!’ he said, and his satisfaction was total now. ‘So,’ he said to her, taking the ruby ring from its case, ‘do we finally get to the ring bit now?’
He took her hand again and, not waiting for an answer, slid the ring carefully over her finger. But he did not relinquish her hand. Instead he gazed down at her.
‘When I first walked into this house I knew it was the place I wanted to call my home,’ he told her. His face was serious now—completely serious. ‘I had a sudden vision...a vision of myself here, with the woman I love, making our home here together, raising our family here together.’ His eyes had a rueful glint in them again. ‘I thought that I would have to bring her here, having found her somewhere out in the world beyond. And yet all along—’ His voice changed, and there was a crack in it, he knew. ‘All along she was here. Waiting for me to find her. Waiting,’ he said, ‘to find me.’
He paused minutely.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘we’re done with waiting. Done with finding. We can just enjoy, Ellen. Enjoy the rest of our lives together.’
His mouth lowered to hers and he kissed her softly, gently, before withdrawing. He felt her fingers tightening over his as his lips brushed hers, felt the sudden constricting of her throat, saw the misting of her eyes as he drew his head away.
‘So...’ he said, because he wanted to make sure—to make absolutely, totally sure of his future happiness...a happiness that was already flooding through him, soaking through every cell in his body, radiating from him like a beacon. ‘Have we finally got everything sorted? I love you, you love me, and we’re going to marry and live here together in this house we both love, make it a home again, for you and for me and for all the children we are most definitely going to have! A happy family home for a happy family—just as we both wanted. Did I leave anything out?’ he asked.
Ellen leaned into his shoulder. Her sigh was pure happiness. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think you’ve just described heaven on earth.’
Max smiled. A warm, approving smile that melted her all the way through.
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. He dropped another kiss on her nose. ‘I do like to be right,’ he told her.
He straightened up.
‘OK, it’s a lovely day—actually the best day in my entire life so far—let’s get outdoors. Let’s get into the sunshine—the sunshine of our lives, my adored, beautiful goddess and lioness.’
She looked at him. ‘Can I be both?’ she queried, with a teasing smile in her eyes.
Max’s mouth quirked, his expression doting. ‘You can be everything you want, my beloved, providing you go on loving me.’
He started to lead the way out of the library and across the hall, his hand wound in hers and hers in his. Side by side and shoulder to shoulder.
‘And you me,’ said Ellen.
He paused at the door. ‘Deal,’ said Max, and kissed her once again.
Then, with a squeeze of her hand, he opened the front door and they stepped through it, into the sunshine, into the happiness of their life together, into their love for each other.