Mills & Boon is proud to present a fabulous collection of fantastic novels by bestselling, much loved author
ANNE MATHER
Anne has a stellar record of achievement within the
publishing industry, having written over one hundred and sixty books, with worldwide sales of more than forty-eight MILLION copies in multiple languages.
This amazing collection of classic stories offers a chance
for readers to recapture the pleasure Anne’s powerful, passionate writing has given.
We are sure you will love them all!
I’ve always wanted to write—which is not to say I’ve always wanted to be a professional writer. On the contrary, for years I only wrote for my own pleasure and it wasn’t until my husband suggested sending one of my stories to a publisher that we put several publishers’ names into a hat and pulled one out. The rest, as they say, is history. And now, one hundred and sixty-two books later, I’m literally—excuse the pun—staggered by what’s happened.
I had written all through my infant and junior years and on into my teens, the stories changing from children’s adventures to torrid gypsy passions. My mother used to gather these manuscripts up from time to time, when my bedroom became too untidy, and dispose of them! In those days, I used not to finish any of the stories and Caroline, my first published novel, was the first I’d ever completed. I was newly married then and my daughter was just a baby, and it was quite a job juggling my household chores and scribbling away in exercise books every chance I got. Not very professional, as you can imagine, but that’s the way it was.
These days, I have a bit more time to devote to my work, but that first love of writing has never changed. I can’t imagine not having a current book on the typewriter—yes, it’s my husband who transcribes everything on to the computer. He’s my partner in both life and work and I depend on his good sense more than I care to admit.
We have two grown-up children, a son and a daughter, and two almost grown-up grandchildren, Abi and Ben. My e-mail address is [email protected] and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.
Scorpion’s Dance
Anne Mather
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MIRANDA COULD remember clearly the first time she saw Jaime Knevett.
It was on the occasion of her tenth birthday, and as a special treat, Lady Sanders had agreed to a birthday party on the lawn, out of sight of the house, of course. Miranda could recall the excitement with which she had anticipated her birthday. Until that time, birthdays had been very little different from any other day, with perhaps a trip to the pictures in the evening, after her mother had finished the preparations for dinner.
But that was hardly unusual in the circumstances. After all, housekeepers’ children should be seen and not heard, or so she had always been led to believe, and no one could deny that Lady Sanders had been kind to her mother when her father died so suddenly, leaving his wife with a three-year-old daughter, and no visible means of support.
Her father had been a farm worker and their cottage was tied to his job. Naturally, when he died the cottage was required for his replacement, and Miranda’s mother had been desperate when Lady Sanders, who incidentally owned the estate on which their cottage stood, had suggested she should come and live at the Hall. Her housekeeper was getting near retirement age, Lady Sanders explained, and reliable help was so hard to find these days.
By taking in Lucy Gresham and her fatherless little daughter, Lady Sanders assured herself of ‘reliable help’ for numerous years to come, but it was only as she got older that Miranda got more cynical. At ten, she was still young enough to take kindness at its face value, and at three she had no opinion at all.
Lady Sanders was a widow. Her husband had been killed in a road accident a year after Miranda was born, and the less charitable people in the village had been heard to express the opinion that it was fortunate he had only wrapped his own car round the tree and not someone else’s. It seemed the late Lord Sanders had imbibed rather freely, and it was chance rather than good fortune which had kept him alive as long as it did.
After his death, Lady Sanders assumed the running of the estate with an assurance that revealed she had been doing so surreptitiously for years. She had one son, the new Lord Sanders, and she was determined that his inheritance should in no way suffer through the death of his father.
Miranda saw Mark Sanders rarely during her formative years. The local prep school, followed by succeeding boarding schools, took care of his education, and in the holidays his mother took care never to let him out of her sight. Mrs Gresham explained that Lady Sanders worshipped the boy, and now that her husband was dead, she had no one else. It seemed a lonely existence to Miranda who, in spite of the strictures impressed upon her at home, led quite an active social life outside. She had friends in plenty, and she pitied the pale-faced youth she occasionally glimpsed playing by himself on the lawns.
A week before Miranda’s tenth birthday, Lady Sanders gave a dinner party. It was the beginning of June, the night of the Hunt Ball, and Mrs Gresham had worked solidly for over a fortnight getting the Hall ready for Lady Sanders’ guests who were staying overnight and going home the following day. There had been such an orgy of cleaning and polishing, and even Miranda had been roped in to fetch and carry for the domestics hired for the purpose. The meal itself had taken hours to prepare—smoked ham and melon, delicately-battered scampi, roast duckling, with peas and new potatoes, and Mrs Gresham’s special orange sauce, and peaches soaked in brandy. The wines, too, had been specially chosen, chilled to perfection, and Miranda had been enchanted by the sight of the table, its silver and crystal gleaming in the light of half a dozen scented candles.
The dinner party was a success, and in gratitude for the work she had put in, Lady Sanders had suggested that as it was Miranda’s birthday the following week, perhaps Mrs Gresham might like to organise a small party for her.
In later years, Miranda was to speculate upon the character of a woman