Maximilian Danvers hadn’t been a kind or yielding man, hated to be thwarted in any way, and when she had been born instead of the son he had wanted he had received the biggest setback of his life.
Heather grew up knowing he resented her gender, that she was a disappointment to him. She had been sent away to school when she was eight, rarely seeing him after that, even when she came home for the holidays. She hadn’t been able to understand how her mother could have loved and married such a coldly self-centred man, let alone had a child by him. But as she got older, and her mother told her the truth, she had respected the fact that at the time her mother had believed she was doing the right thing for everyone.
Pregnant, the father of her child already married and not interested in her pregnancy, her mother had been working for Max Danvers’ newly established airline at the time and hadn’t known who to turn to for help when she realised she was to have a child. The airline had been small then, with the owner playing quite a large part in the running of it, and Joyce had broken down one day and told Max Danvers of her predicament, her complete desolation. After that, he had begun to take her out, to offer her comfort when she felt so frightened of what the future held for her, until finally he had offered her and her child a home and his name. It had seemed like a miracle to her mother, believing that Max Danvers had come to love her as she had him, and she had gratefully accepted his proposal, determined to be as good a wife to him as she possibly could.
It was only after the birth of her child that Joyce had realised what had been expected of her; a daughter was not what Max Danvers wanted at all. It had been then that he had told his wife of his sterility, of the son he had wanted to continue his name, to one day inherit the empire he intended building, and that he had only married her because she was already pregnant!
But, unless he divorced Joyce and found another pregnant woman to become his wife, a daughter was what he had got, and in the end he had decided that even that was better than no child at all, everyone believing Joyce had been pregnant with his child when they were married. Only Uncle Lionel and her parents had known the truth, and it had remained that way until Heather’s mother told her about her real father.
She had understood Max’s resentment towards her then, his disappointment in her, and she had learnt to live with the fact that he practically ignored her existence most of the time, his barbs only becoming painfully obvious after the death of her mother six years ago, and then only in the privacy of their home where people wouldn’t learn that he wasn’t her father at all.
Maybe if he had been, the pain of what he was doing to her would have been too much to bear, but over the years, she had learnt to armour herself against the hurt he inflicted.
But he had known how she felt about Daniel, had somehow guessed at the love she felt for him, she was sure, and he was giving her the final punishment for not being the son he wanted, making it impossible for Daniel ever to feel anything but contempt or hate for her; contempt because if she agreed to the marriage she was obviously marrying him for the money she would inherit, or hate because if she refused to marry him she forced him to lose control of his airline.
It was a situation she couldn’t possibly win, and her father had known that!
HEATHER had often wished she could return the hate her father seemed to have for her, but she had grown up believing he was her father, and it was very difficult for a child to hate its parents, no matter how cruel they were. Even when her mother had told her the truth she had pitied him rather than hated him, had tried, despite his indifference, to be the sort of daughter he could be proud of. After her mother died she had known he needed her more than ever, although his bitterness was deeper than ever; too.
She had liked Daniel from the day her father first brought him home to dinner, but as it soon become apparent that her father disliked the younger man, she knew that if her father ever learnt of her feelings for his business partner it would be yet another black mark against her and, as Daniel was totally uninterested in her, it had never been necessary. But the day her father’s will—she could never think of him in any other way!—was read, she had realised she couldn’t have kept her secret hidden very well, for he had made sure she never had the one thing she had always wanted—Daniel’s love.
She and Daniel were trapped now, forced to marry each other. She would have gladly given up the inheritance she felt she had no entitlement to anyway, if it wouldn’t have hurt Daniel for her to do so. But she doubted, knowing his opinion of her privileged background, that he would ever believe her motives could be that unmercenary. To convince him she would have to tell him of her love, and pity was the one emotion she refused to accept from him.
‘Well, it’s all settled now,’ she answered her uncle with a bright smile.
‘I always thought you and Phillip——’
‘I wasn’t in love with him, if that’s what you mean,’ she interrupted with a feeling of betrayal towards the other man. It was true that she had made it clear to Phillip that she didn’t care for him in that way, but that hadn’t stopped him professing to care for her.
She would have liked to have spared Phillip the painful humiliation she knew he must be feeling at having to witness her engagement to Daniel, but as all the airline’s executives had been invited, it would have looked worse to have singled him out in that way.
‘I’m glad about that at least,’ her uncle squeezed her arm.
‘Which isn’t to say,’ she drawled drily, ‘that you aren’t going to have a very angry young man working at Air International for a while!’
Her uncle grimaced. ‘Maybe I’ll give some thought to sending him up to the Manchester office for a while.’
‘Sending who up to Manchester?’ Stella joined them, light brows arched mockingly. ‘Surely you aren’t trying to get rid of Daniel already, Heather?’ she taunted maliciously.
Heather shook her head, steadily meeting the other woman’s gaze. ‘We have all the wedding arrangements to sort out yet. Besides, Daniel owns the airline, I doubt he could be sent anywhere!’
Stella shrugged. ‘Then who is being sent into exile?’ she drawled.
‘We were just discussing poor Phillip, my dear,’ her husband put in with a sigh.
‘He left, you know,’ the other woman snapped at Heather. ‘I think you used him shamefully——’
‘Stella——’
‘She’s been leading him around by the nose for almost a year now, Lionel,’ his wife reminded him waspishly. ‘And now, just because that savage——’
‘Stella, that will be enough!’ her husband said with quiet authority. ‘Heather is doing the only thing she can in the circumstances.’
‘I always did think Max was slightly vindictive where she was concerned,’ Stella scorned, completely unperturbed by her husband’s disapproving frown. ‘It’s the only reason I can think of for wishing a man like that on his only daughter!’
The first part was true and undeniable, but ‘a man like that’ rankled; Stella had no reason to malign Daniel in that way. ‘He’s a good man——’
‘He’s uncouth!’ the other woman dismissed disparagingly. ‘That remark he made about your not being being pregnant, for instance——’
‘And wasn’t that what Rita was thinking?’ Heather’s eyes were deep purple. ‘Wasn’t that what almost all the people here had assumed?’ she scorned.
‘I think you’re being a little unfair to some of them,’ her uncle chided.
‘Well, I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘And all because we’ve decided to marry soon!’
‘With