Ruthless in All

  Ruthless in All

  By

  Jessica Steele

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  RUTHLESS IN ALL

  Whisked off into the Welsh mountains, without so much as a by-your-leave, by the overpowering Blane Hunter, Arden had plenty of time to reflect—and plenty of time to fall in love with him too. But it soon became painfully obvious that the only woman in Blane's life was, and always would be, his dead wife Delcine. How could Arden ever fight her memory?

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  JESSICA STEELE

  IMPRUDENT CHALLENGE

  Her parents' marriage, Kelsey had always thought, was one of those that had been 'made in heaven'—so she was appalled when, on a visit to her father in Japan, she discovered that they were on the verge of breaking up. And it rather looked as if the only thing that could save their marriage was Kelsey herself marrying the objectionable Serle Falconer. Even for her parents' sake, could she do it?

  TOMORROW—COME SOON

  For six years Devon had been a cripple—and when she found a surgeon who was able to cure her, her joy knew no bounds. Until she discovered how it had all been achieved—and learned the price that the formidable Grant Harrington was demanding!

  RELUCTANT RELATIVE

  Alandra Todd was honouring her mother's deathbed wish by going to visit her estranged family's home. She was all set to dislike her relations on sight, and the atmosphere on her arrival was less than welcoming. But slowly her first opinion of them began to change—all except the dislike she felt for the objectionable Matt Carstairs, who made it obvious that he didn't trust her or her motives…

  TETHERED LIBERTY

  It wasn't Cally's fault that she had been stranded in Mexico with no money and no return ticket home; it wasn't her fault that her brother Rolfe had jilted the girl he had been going to marry. So why did the lordly Javier Zarazua Guerrero act as if it was? Did he expect Cally to pay for her brother's sins?

  First published 1984

  Australian copyright 1984

  Philippine copyright 1984

  This edition 1984

  © Jessica Steele 1984

  ISBN 0 263 74595 3

  CHAPTER ONE

  Arden climbed out of bed on the morning of New Year's Eve with the hope in her heart that tomorrow would see the start of a year that would be far more rewarding, financially, than the year about to end had been.

  In general, she mused, taking a quick shower prior to getting dressed and going down to start the breakfasts, things at Hills View Guest House had not gone at all well this last twelve months. Apart from a week in June when the annual three-day Three Counties Show had been held in Malvern, they had been nowhere near fully booked the whole season. That in a world recession people everywhere were feeling the pinch, was no consolation.

  Hills View Guest House was situated in the pleasant village of Chalmers Hollow, which lay on the outskirts of Worcester. The guest house had been Uncle Tam's idea when, years ago, newly married to Aunt Louise, her mother's sister, he had been too much in love with his bride to want to leave her for eight hours or so each day to follow other employment. Louise, equally in love with her Tam, had thought the guest house a brilliant idea.

  That the guest house must have been struggling when at the age of ten Arden had gone to live with them was something of which she had no idea; nor, she guessed, had her aunt—until some six years later. There always seemed to be money available, Uncle Tam saying cheerfully, 'Try looking in the Bank of England,'—a hollow at the back of a loose brick in the pantry wall behind which spare cash was kept—when either of them wanted anything new.

  Arden had been inconsolable when her parents had drowned while holidaying in Cornwall, her adventurous mother declaring that the sea looked quite safe and that they must have forgotten to take the warnings down; but she had got into difficulties and both she and Arden's father had perished when he had gone in to try and save her.

  Without hesitation Aunt Louise and Uncle Tam had come for her, Louise telling her later that in the sadness of losing a beloved sister, a seal had been set on her happiness with Tam. For Louise being unable to have children herself, vague and impracticable as both she and Tam were, they had left it too late to apply to adopt the daughter they had always wanted.

  Arden was sixteen when tragedy struck again, this time in the shape of darling Uncle Tam, a perfect specimen of health, suddenly and without warning, suffering a massive heart seizure from which he had died. Arden had then had to come quickly to terms with her own grief at losing the man who had been like a father to her, and to step in and do the little she could to help her utterly bereft aunt over the numbing blow of losing half of herself.

  Quite bright where figures were concerned, it had not taken Arden long, even without any book-keeping training, to see that they were on their beam ends.

  'But we can manage, can't we, dear?' Louise had asked tentatively when, doing her best to cope with her own grief, Arden had been forced to mention a spike-full of unpaid bills.

  The still dazed look on her aunt's face had Arden giving her a gentle smile as a resolve set in her. Clearly Louise had no inkling how bad things were. And Uncle Tam could never have wanted her to know, otherwise he would have told her the true position while he was alive.

  'Of course we can manage,' she had lied stoutly.

  But Arden let another few days pass so that Louise should have time to forget she had spoken of money, and might possibly put two and two together, before she told her of the decision she had come to. The funeral was over, and Tam's ghastly relatives had gone back to Matlock when, Hills View their own again, Arden said:

  'Would you mind very much, darling, if I didn't go to university after all?'

  'But we plan…' Louise Browning broke off, biting her lip, realising that she wasn't 'we' any more, but 'I'.

  Tears were in her eyes, and Arden had her in her arms, comforting her for some minutes before Louise was able to remember that there had been a subject under discussion.

  'Don't you want to go to university after all, Arden?' she asked.

  It had been Arden's dearest wish. Her studies had come easily to her, and she was far in advance of her class, already having a couple of 'A' levels to her credit.

  'I'd much rather stay here with you,' she lied, and smiling, 'I guess at heart I'm a home bird!' And seeing that the moment was right, she went on, 'I thought, if you wouldn't mind, that I'd like to give you a hand with the guest house.'

  'A hand' was perhaps an understatement, Arden thought, as down in the kitchen she took bacon from the refrigerator prior to beginning cooking breakfast for three; herself, her aunt, and their one and only guest, Colonel Meredith. For it had taken a long time for Louise to get over the loss of her Tam and to be able to speak his name without tears. And in those days of her wandering around like a lost soul, Arden had taken almost total charge of running Hills View.

  What a joy it had been to one day see that at last Louise looked to be rising from her shattering blow. And if, six years on, her aunt was still as impractical as ever, it was wonderful to hear her laugh again.

  'I meant to be up first this morning.' Her aunt's voice had Arden leaving the bacon she was trimming, and turning to see gentle-eyed, curly-topped Louise closing the door behind her and coming into the kitchen.

  'You're on kitchen fatigues tomorrow, if you remember,' teased Arden, and seeing that her vague aunt plainly didn't remember, 'I'm going
to that New Year's Eve dance with Simon Berry tonight, and you promised I should have a lie-in tomorrow.'

  'As if I'd forget!' said Louise, and they giggled, for they both knew she had a shocking memory.

  'You'll remember to cook breakfast for three then,' Arden suggested dryly.

  'I'm well aware that we have the Colonel staying,' her aunt replied, the touch of pink that came to her face, for all she was fifty-two, telling Arden that the Colonel had again proposed.

  Arden resisted the urge to ask. Louise had always been open with her, and if her answer to him this time had been 'yes', then she knew that she would have been the first to hear of it.

  'You've told him you're going away next week to have a holiday with Uncle Tam's people?' she asked instead, watching as Louise went to check that the kettle had been put to boil.

  'Mmm,' murmured Louise, lifting the lid of the teapot and looking inside. 'He's offered to give me a lift.'

  Crafty old devil, Arden thought, restraining a grin. 'He's—er—not going to Brynmoel, then?' she asked, covering her delight that the old fox was grabbing at every opportunity to weaken her aunt's defences. Colonel Owen Meredith, a widower, had been a regular visitor ever since he had stayed one night when his car had played up between his home in Northampton and his fishing cottage in his native Wales.

  'He's having guilt feelings,' was the reply, her aunt now contemplating the coffee pot. 'His daughter in Chesterfield asked him to spend Christmas with her, as you know. But with him coming here for Christmas because his grandchildren drive him up the wall, he thinks he'd better go and make his peace with Heulwen.'

  'It'll be nice for you not to have to hang about for trains,' murmured Arden to her non-driver aunt, not deceived for a minute by the Colonel's sudden desire to make peace with his daughter.

  'You should have a holiday too,' Louise was just saying, when the Colonel, a privileged visitor to the guest house, a smart upright man just turned sixty and with a definite twinkle in his eye, joined them.

  'Everybody should have a holiday,' he took up, trying to keep the affectionate look out of his glance as his eyes went straight to Louise.

  'Don't suggest that Arden come with me to the Brownings',' said Louise, her motherly protective feathers ruffling—the last thing he was likely to suggest, Arden was sure. His plan, she didn't doubt, was to have the sole company of her aunt on the drive. 'They've never forgiven Tam and me for taking her in when her parents died,' she said in her open way. 'They have no idea how much Arden has given us, and they'd make her life hell if I let them.'

  The Brownings, Arden thought, having met Uncle Tam's mother, father, and his spinster sister Pauline, when they had come for Uncle Tam's funeral, had not an atom of warmth between them. Coldly angry that Louise had stood firm and insisted that Tam be buried where he had been happy and not in Matlock as they wanted, she had been little short of amazed that the happy-go-lucky, come-day go-day man he had been should come from such stock. Aunt Louise had been too upset to protect her then, and their hangover from the Dickensian era attitude that she should be grateful for every crust of bread that had come her way had simply bewildered Arden. She loved Aunt Louise and Uncle Tam, they loved her; gratitude had not come into it.

  Colonel Meredith had said over a week ago that he would prefer to eat his meals with them rather than in the dining room on his own, and because he was their solitary guest they had agreed. But as the three of them sat down to breakfast, so he resumed.

  'If you don't want Arden to come with us next week, Louise,' giving Arden a hard time to keep her face straight that, old campaigner that he was, he was trying to get her aunt to think of the two of them as 'us', 'she can take a break at the cottage in Brynmoel—I shan't be using it, and this weather it could do with a few fires. Would you fancy that, Arden?' he asked, turning his attention to her.

  Arden smiled at him because she liked him. 'From what you've said in the past, it's—er—a bit—isolated, isn't it?' she questioned, wishing he'd got a cottage in the Bahamas, although she would never afford the air fare.

  'You like solitude,' put in Louise, which was true, but only up to a degree. And the Colonel, thinking that this might be a point in favour of his idea, came in to persuade:

  'You wouldn't be disturbed there. It's the only cottage for miles. Why,' he enthused, 'you could die there and nobody would ever find you!'

  'What a delightful thought,' said Louise dryly. But she was as enthusiastic as him as she coaxed, 'It would make me feel so much better, Arden, if you spent the same time away from here as me. You work so hard…'

  'But,' interrupted Arden, 'you've told Uncle Tam's people that you'll stay a month. I don't need a month…'

  'You do.' She was cut off this time, though Louise was no longer smiling as she thought of her in-laws and what, in a dutiful but weak moment, she had let herself in for. 'And,' she added, determined not to dwell on the bleak prospect, 'when we come back, we can set about redecorating some of the bedrooms. Some of them are quite shabby, dear, it's no wonder we haven't been able to let them so often this year.'

  That there was no money for redecoration was a subject Arden did not particularly want to bring up with the Colonel present.

  Though when breakfast was over, she discovered that she had committed herself to driving Uncle Tam's old Morris Traveller into the mountains of Wales on the same day that the Colonel set out for Chesterfield, via Matlock, with her aunt.

  'I think I'll go and tidy up the grounds,' Louise announced. 'The decaying leaves are a disgrace, it's no wonder no one has tried to book in for tonight—the place looks like a tip!'

  With her aunt arguing with the Colonel as she went, and he went with her, that it was not a guest's place to assist with the gardening, and the Colonel stating that he hoped he was looked on as more than a guest, Arden got stuck into the washing up.

  What a vain hope it had been that New Year's Eve revellers might think to book in rather than risk being caught driving after imbibing too freely! Even slightly drunk guests would have been preferable to no guests at all, she thought. Though in her view it was not the leaf-littered lawns that were putting prospective guests off, but the peeling paint that gave Hills View a rundown look. It was going to cost the earth to have a paint job done. She fell to wondering if she could paint the outside herself. Maybe if Hills View was looking prosperous it would bring people in. But what was she going to do for money? The Colonel's account was booked towards the electricity bill.

  Mentally tired of trying to make ends meet, while at the same time preparing menu's to make it look as though business was thriving, Arden went into the wide hall with its small sectioned-off reception area, thinking that maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to have a break no matter how remote Colonel Meredith's cottage was. Perhaps while she was there in the tranquillity of the Welsh hills, she might come up with some brilliant idea for filling the guest house with visitors. It was a cinch, for all Aunt Louise's optimism, that the Colonel was going to be their only overnight guest this New Year's Eve. But in that surmise, Arden was to find herself never more wrong.

  During the afternoon, the Colonel having dropped the hint that he would like to welcome the New Year in with a champagne toast to her aunt, Arden had to leave her task of tidying the linen cupboard to dash into Worcester so as to have a bottle of champagne ready in stock for when he called for it. She hoped one bottle would be all he would require. She saw no sense in spending more of their limited resources on a second bottle only to have it sit on their shelves for another twelve months.

  Back at Hills View, she entered by way of the kitchen door, the idea with her to bring up the subject, as she had done before, of finding a job to supplement their income. Though with Louise saying, 'But you have a job, dear,' the last time she had broached it, she saw that this time she would have to give more than the gentle hint she had given before on how hard pressed for cash they were.

  But any thought of tactfully trying to get through that they were gettin
g near desperate for money went straight from her mind. For her aunt was looking more than pleased with herself, and it just wasn't in Arden to take that pleased look away.

  'We've run out,' she said, indicating the champagne she placed on the table, while wondering in the face of her aunt's delighted look if it would be used to toast a newly engaged couple. 'You look happy,' she added lightly, sensitive to Louise if she was feeling a little bashful about what she had to tell her.

  'And why shouldn't I look happy?' Louise replied, her look changing to one of self-satisfaction which told Arden that her imagination had gone up a wrong street. 'I told you we were sure to get some New Year's Eve revellers wanting a bed for the night.'

  'You've booked some people in!' Instantly she was sharing her aunt's pleasure. 'How many? Do they…'

  'Well, only one, actually,' Louise said quickly before Arden was halfway through her conversion from revenue to gallons of paint. 'I've given him the green room—it seemed, more masculine than any of the others,' Louise went on, Arden's uplifted spirits not dampened any; one guest in her book was better than none at all. 'And he is a very masculine man, I'd say.'

  'Where's he parked his car?' Arden thought to ask, knowing she would have been tipped off about the arrival of a new guest had it been parked at the rear by the Colonel's car, where she had just parked the Morris.

  'He doesn't have a car,' replied her aunt, which, since Chalmers Hollow wasn't on a main route, had the faint stirrings of unease taking the edge off Arden's uplifted spirits.

  'But he did have luggage—an overnight bag?' she questioned, it being not unknown for Aunt Louise to overlook such things and leave them stuck with an unpaid bill.