Count Valieri's Prisoner - By Sara Craven Page 0,3

an enchanted place, especially when Jeremy, the Sylvesters’ only son, seven years her senior and light years older in every way, was there to be shadowed adoringly.

But she’d never allowed him to get away with any implication that they’d been childhood sweethearts.

‘Arrant nonsense,’ she’d teased, the first time it was mentioned. ‘You thought I was a total pain in the neck, and went out of your way to ignore me.’

‘But I’ve made up for it since,’ he’d whispered, drawing her close. ‘Admit it.’

Yet her most abiding memories were not of Jeremy at all, even though her initial crush had lasted well into her early teens.

What she recalled very vividly was the way the atmosphere of the house underwent a subtle change when Nigel Sylvester came home.

He was a man of just above medium height, who somehow gave the impression of being much taller. He had gone prematurely grey in his late twenties, or so Jeremy had told her, adding glumly, ‘I hope it doesn’t happen to me.’

Maddie had stroked his cheek, smiling. ‘You’d look extremely distinguished.’

But if she was totally honest, she’d always found Nigel Sylvester’s silver hair, which he wore slightly longer than was fashionable and swept straight back from his forehead, to be in odd and disturbing contrast to his curiously smooth, unlined face, and dark brown heavy-lidded eyes.

Nor was it just his appearance that used to unnerve her. His standards were exacting, he missed nothing, and although she had never heard him raise his voice in displeasure, Maddie often thought it would have been better if he had shouted occasionally.

Because, there was something about his quietness which dried Maddie’s throat when he spoke to her, and made her stumble over her words. Not that she ever had too much to say to him. She’d divined fairly soon that her presence at Fallowdene was tolerated by him, rather than welcomed, and tried to keep out of his way.

It wasn’t too difficult. She’d been given the old nursery as her room, and this contained a glass-fronted bookcase, crammed with children’s books by well-known authors in a range that appealed from tots to teens.

At first, when she was very young, Aunt Beth had read them as bedtime stories. Later, she’d been happy to while away solitary hours in their company.

But her happy childhood had been brought to an abrupt and tragic end one terrible winter night when an icy road and a driver who’d drunk too much at an office party had fatally combined to take both her parents from her.

She’d been staying with Aunt Fee, her mother’s younger sister, at the time, and her aunt had immediately assumed charge of her, only to be approached after the funeral by Aunt Beth with an offer to adopt her god-daughter.

But the offer had been refused. Instead Aunt Fee and Uncle Patrick, her big genial husband had been quietly adamant that Maddie belonged with them, and she’d been loved, allowed to grieve then eventually find healing in their comfortable untidy house.

Her visits to Fallowdene, however, continued as before, although the question of adoption was never raised again and, in hindsight, Maddie was sure that Nigel Sylvester had probably opposed the idea from the outset.

She realized since that, although she’d been too young to recognize it at the time, he had represented her first brush with real power.

And she’d often wondered what had persuaded her godmother, with her quiet prettiness and sudden mischievous, enchanting smile, to marry him.

She had been in her first year at university when Aunt Beth died very suddenly in her sleep of a heart attack. She’d attended the funeral with her aunt and uncle and haltingly attempted to express her sorrow to Mr Sylvester, who’d muttered an abrupt word of thanks, then turned away.

And she was realistic enough to know that she would no longer be welcome at Fallowdene.

A week or so later she was astonished to receive a letter from a law firm informing her that Aunt Beth had left her a sum of money substantial enough to get her through her degree course without having to seek a student loan, with an additional bequest of the entire book collection from the nursery, which somehow meant far more than the money.

‘Oh, how wonderful of her,’ she’d said softly, wiping her eyes. ‘She always knew how much I loved them.’ She paused. ‘But won’t Jeremy want them?’

‘It seems not,’ Aunt Fee said rather drily. ‘I gather if you’d refused the bequest they’d have gone to a charity shop.’ She