‘She was on my ward, weren’t you, love?’ Roddy looked at her for confirmation.
Megan blushed, the look in her eyes willing him not to reveal any more about their previous meeting. ‘Yes,’ she nodded, her gaze still on Roddy.
‘Before she was ill, of course?’ Jerome Towers enquired coolly. ‘If she had you for a patient, Roddy, I can quite understand her not being strong enough to carry on,’ he added mockingly.
Roddy looked at Megan with amusement. ‘I didn’t realise.… I wondered why you suddenly disappeared,’ he taunted.
Megan gave him a resentful glare. ‘Well, now you know,’ she snapped.
‘Yes,’ he grinned, ‘now I know.’
‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to the kitchen, Miss Finch?’ Jerome Towers asked harshly. ‘I’m sure Freda could do with your help.’
Colour flooded her cheeks at his intended rebuke. ‘Yes, of course. If you’ll excuse me.’
‘Gladly,’ he drawled.
‘Megan?’ Roddy Meyers stopped her at the door. ‘Can I take it that our drive is on for this afternoon?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘You—–’
‘Maybe then you could tell me about your illness,’ he added mockingly.
Megan gave Jerome Towers a sharp look, biting her lip as she read the contempt in his gaze. What gave him the right to be so high and mighty? ‘Yes, all right,’ she agreed to Roddy’s blackmail—for that surely was what it was. But she would tell him a few home truths this afternoon! ‘What time?’ She couldn’t look at either of them in her anger, but stared down at her hands.
‘About two-thirty?’
‘Okay. I’ll meet you downstairs.’ She didn’t want her mother and Brian getting to know of the meeting, especially Brian. If he found out their connection he was likely to seek the younger man out and challenge him to a fight. Then there would be no possibility of hiding the past.
‘I’ll pick you up at your home,’ he insisted.
‘No! No,’ she said less sharply, knowing that Roddy could be deliberately troublemaking if he knew how much she wanted to keep him away from her home. ‘I’ll enjoy the walk over.’
‘All right,’ he shrugged. ‘She knows her own mind,’ he told his brother laughingly.
Jerome Towers’ expression remained grim. ‘So I’ve noticed.’
Megan shot him a resentful glare before leaving the room, running down the wide flight of stairs as if the devil himself were after her. Seconds later she felt as if he were!
‘Miss Finch!’ Jerome Towers stood at her side as she reached the bottom step.
It took all her courage to turn and face him, to face the disapproval that she knew would be in his face. Why should he be so disapproving? He was the one who had lied and deceived her. She felt an absolute fool now when she thought of the way she had acted with him, the things she had said. And she had let him kiss her! No!—she had let Jeff Robbins kiss her, not this arrogant stranger.
‘Yes, Mr Towers?’ she asked in a stilted voice, looking steadily into those censorious brown eyes.
‘Freda said you took Roddy’s breakfast up fifteen minutes ago,’ he said curtly.
Whatever she had been expecting him to say it hadn’t been this. She frowned her puzzlement. ‘Yes?’
‘If you are to continue deputising for your mother until she is well enough to return I would advise you not to spend too much time in my brother’s bedroom, no matter what your relationship may have been with him before you came here.’
Megan gasped. ‘What has Roddy been saying?’
‘He’s hardly had time to say anything,’ Jerome Towers said dryly. ‘But your own response points to my assumption being a correct one. And the other staff will draw their own conclusions if you take fifteen minutes to deliver his breakfast every morning.’
‘Why, you—–’
‘I’m only telling you this for your own good,’ he interrupted her angry outburst. ‘It’s up to you whether or not you take my advice.’ He walked past her, turning when he reached what she assumed to be his study, or office, door. ‘And, Miss Finch,’ he paused when he had her attention, ‘I think I can take having a date turned down without the girl having to resort to her mother’s illness as an excuse. You had only to say you had something going with Roddy. Unless of course you were trying to decide whether the richer brother might be a better bet.’ He went into the room and closed the door firmly behind him.
Megan didn’t give herself time to think, marching angrily across the marble tiled hallway and bursting into what turned out to be a study. ‘Now you just listen to me, Mr Towers!’ she stormed at the man standing just inside the room. Almost as if he had expected her … ‘I—–’
Her words were cut off in mid-flow as she was pulled against the rigidness of a male body, her mouth captured and parted as Jerome Towers bent his head and kissed her.
‘Oh!’ she gasped as he released her, still held in the firm grip of his hands.
He looked down at her. ‘I knew that would get you in here.’
Her eyes were wide. ‘Is that why you …?’
‘Mm,’ he nodded, his warm gaze on her parted lips.
Megan pushed hard against him, struggling to be free. ‘You obnoxious, overbearing—–’
He let her go, moving to sit in the leather chair behind the desk. ‘I could hardly kiss you out there in the hallway. Anyone could have come along and seen us.’
‘You didn’t have to kiss me at all!’ she snapped, still breathless from the touch of those firm lips on hers.
‘But I did,’ he said calmly. ‘Now, what is your relationship to Roddy?’
‘I’m not telling you!’ her eyes flamed with feeling. ‘And just in case you haven’t heard about it, the Squire no longer gets the first night of love with the local maidens!’
He raised dark eyebrows. ‘Are you a maiden?’
‘Mind your own damned business!’ She slammed out of the room, the sound of his mocking laughter following her.
Freda was busy preparing lunch when Megan entered the kitchen a few minutes later, so she took over the peeling of the potatoes.
‘Are you all right?’ the cook asked. ‘You’re looking a bit flushed,’ she explained her query.
‘I’m fine,’ Megan mumbled.
‘Young Roddy hasn’t been making passes at you, has he?’ Freda tutted. ‘He is a lad!’ She shook her head, a smile on her lips.
‘Is he in the habit of making passes?’ Megan couldn’t help her curiosity.
‘Well, he made a couple of advances towards Patsy when he stayed here last. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that isn’t the reason she’s off sick today—you know how her Donald can be. Roddy wouldn’t leave the poor girl alone, that’s why I wondered if he’d—–’
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Megan cut in briskly, wondering what Freda would say if she knew she was in more danger from Jerome Towers than from his young brother.
‘That’s all right, then.’ Freda was obviously relieved. ‘Would you get some mint in from the herb garden out the back?’ she asked, the makings of pastry in her mixing bowl. ‘I do like my potatoes to have a bit of mint in them.’
‘But