An Enticing Debt to Pay. Annie West
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Jonas recalled the day he’d come home unexpectedly to Deveson Hall from London and found the housekeeper in his mother’s suite, in front of a mirror, holding an heirloom choker of sapphires and pearls to her throat. Instead of embarrassment at being caught out, she’d laughed and simply said no woman could have resisted the temptation if she’d found the necklace lying there. Without turning a hair she’d put it down on the dressing table and turned to plump the cushions on a nearby settee.
‘No.’ This time Ravenna’s low voice sounded scratchy as if with shock. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’
‘Wouldn’t she?’ He looked around the over-stuffed room, wondering how many of the pieces were what they appeared. Money had obviously been tight enough for his father to cash in the more valuable pieces.
‘Of course not.’ Ravenna’s certainty tugged his attention back to her. No longer flushed but pale and composed, she stared back with infuriating certainty.
‘Then how do you explain the fact she forged my father’s signature in a cheque book she shouldn’t even have had access to?’
‘Why blame my mother?’
‘No one else had access. Piers would have kept it safely by him, believe me.’ He let his gaze rove the room. ‘I’m sure if we search the apartment we’ll find it.’
‘There’ll be no searching the apartment. And even if it was here, what’s to say it wasn’t Piers’ signature? His handwriting could have changed when he got ill.’
Jonas shook his head. ‘That would have been convenient, wouldn’t it? But it won’t wash. Unless you can explain how he managed to cash a cheque the day after he died.’
Her eyes widened, growing huge in her taut face.
‘I don’t believe you.’ It was a whisper but even that was like a flame to gunpowder. How could she deny her mother’s wrongdoing even now?
‘I don’t care what you believe.’ It was a lie. Her blind faith in the gold-digging Silvia was like salt on a raw wound. Perhaps because he’d never known such loyalty from his own parents. Why should she lavish it on a woman so patently undeserving?
Piers had been an absentee parent, finding plenty of reasons to stay in the city rather than at the Hall. As for his mother—he supposed she’d loved him in her own abstracted way. But she’d been more focused on her personal disappointment in marrying a man who loved not her but the wealth she’d brought with her.
Jonas slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew the photocopied cheques.
‘Here.’ He held them out, daring her to take them. ‘I never lie.’ His father had been an expert at distorting the truth for his convenience. As a kid Jonas had vowed never to do the same.
He watched Ravenna swallow, the movement convulsive, then she reached out and took the papers. Her head bowed as she stared at them.
The sound of her breath hissing in told him he’d finally got through to her. There was no escaping the truth.
The papers moved as if in a strong breeze and he realised her hands were trembling.
In that instant guilt pierced his self-satisfaction. Belatedly it struck him that taking out his anger on Silvia’s daughter was beneath him.
His belly clenched as he reviewed their encounter. Even given his determination to make Silvia pay for her crime, he’d behaved crassly. He’d stalked in, making demands when a simple request for information would have done. Worse, he’d been too caught up in own emotional turmoil to spare a thought for the shock this would be for Ravenna.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ The words shot out like bullets, rapid and harsh with self-disgust.
She didn’t say anything, just stood, head bowed, staring at the papers in her shaking hands.
Hell! Was she in shock?
He leant towards her, trying to read her expression.
All he registered was the stiff set of her jaw and the scent of warm cinnamon and fragrant woman.
And the way she bit her bottom lip, pearly teeth sinking deep in that lush fullness.
Jonas breathed in slowly, telling himself the heat whirling in his belly was shame, not arousal.
The idea of being turned on so easily by any woman was anathema to a man who prided himself on his restraint. When she was the daughter of the woman who’d destroyed his mother... Unthinkable!
‘Ravenna?’ His voice sounded ridiculously hesitant, as if the ground had shifted beneath his feet.
She looked up, her eyes ablaze as they met his. Then her gaze shifted towards the window.
‘You’re mistaken.’ Her voice sounded wrong, he realised, tight and hard. ‘Silvia had nothing to do with this.’
‘Stop denying, Ravenna. It’s too late for that. I’ve got proof of her forgery.’
‘Proof of forgery, yes. But not Silvia’s.’ She shifted, standing taller.
Jonas shook his head, weary of the unexpected emotional edge to this interview. ‘Just tell me where she is and I’ll deal with her.’
Those warm sherry eyes lifted to his and he stilled as he saw how they’d glazed with emotion.
‘You don’t need to deal with her. She had nothing to do with it.’ Ravenna tilted her chin up, her gaze meeting his squarely. ‘I did it. I took your money.’
CHAPTER THREE
RAVENNA’S PULSE KICKED as Jonas stiffened. Her throat dried so much it hurt to swallow. But she didn’t dare turn away. Instead she met his stare unflinchingly.
She feared if she showed even a flicker of the emotions rioting inside, he wouldn’t believe her.
He had to! The alternative, of pinning the theft on her mother, was untenable.
With Jonas’ revelation so much fell into place—Piers’ remarkable generosity in not just covering her medical costs these last months, but funding the long convalescent stay at an exorbitantly expensive Swiss health resort.
Only it hadn’t been Piers making that final, massive payment, had it? It must have been Silvia—breaking the law to help her daughter.
Ravenna’s heart plummeted as she recalled her mother’s insistence that she needed total rest to recuperate. That without the health resort there was a danger of the treatment failing. Ravenna, too weary by then to protest when all she wanted was to rest quietly and get her strength back, hadn’t put up much resistance.
She’d never sponged off Piers’ wealth, and had silenced her protesting conscience by vowing to pay back every last euro. It was only when she’d arrived at the Paris apartment the other day that she realised they were euros Piers and her mother could ill afford.
Guilt had struck Ravenna when she saw how much they’d sold off. But she’d never for a moment thought her mother had purloined money that wasn’t hers!
Oh, Mamma, what have you done?
Through the years Silvia had gone without again and again so Ravenna could have warm clothes and a roof over her head. And later, so she could go to the respected school her mother thought she needed. But to take what wasn’t hers...!
‘You’re lying.’ Jonas’ frigid eyes raked her face and a chill skimmed her backbone.
Ravenna smoothed damp palms down her trousers and angled her chin, trying to quell the roiling nausea in her stomach.
‘I don’t lie.’ It was true. Maybe that was why she hadn’t convinced him. Her muscles clenched as desperation rose.
She couldn’t let him guess the truth. Already a broken woman, Mamma would be