Rachel Lindsay - Love in Disguise by Rachel Lindsay

Author:Rachel Lindsay [Lindsay, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-10-26T23:07:28.486000+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

With trepidation Anthea went in search of Mark Allen as soon as her father and stepmother had left. The hour she had spent with them had been a difficult one, not so much because of what they had said to her but because of what they had left unsaid. She had overheard enough of Maude's conversation with her employer to know that he must realise that her appearance was a fraud and that she had lied to her parents regarding the work she was doing for him. She could not blame him for being very angry about it and hoped he had sufficient sense of humour to see the funny side of the situation.

One look at his face as she went into the library told her he was not amused at all. Indeed she had never seen him more angry, though it was a controlled anger which seemed to come from deep within him; a fact confirmed by his opening remark.

'You're exactly like the rest of your sex—out to get what you want—and you don't give a tinker's cuss how you do it!'

'There was no ulterior motive in what I did, Mr. Allen.'

'Do you expect me to believe that?'

'It's true.'

'You came here to act as my housekeeper; you dressed up like something out of a Victorian orphanage! You told your parents you were my secretary and that I was an old man, and you expect me to believe you had no ulterior motive? My God, Miss Wilmot, I'd more easily swallow a whale than that lot!'

'I don't see why you should be so annoyed,' she murmured. 'After all, I haven't done anything criminal.'

'You don't think it was wrong to come here under false pretences?'

'They weren't false pretences. I came here to save the job for Miss Evans. That's perfectly valid. The only thing that—the only way I pretended was by trying to make myself look older.'

'As well as uglier and more stupid!' he spat out.

'I don't think you ever believed me to be stupid,' she said quietly.

He paused momentarily. 'That's true. I found you surprisingly intelligent and But I appear to have underestimated even that. You are not only intelligent but enterprising. It was a stroke of genius to insinuate yourself into my life the way you did. To pretend you didn't care about clothes and the way you looked; to encourage me to relax with you and to be off my guard. When I think of it I could…' He banged his hand on the desk and swung round to face the window, as if he could not bear die sight of her.

Anthea stared at his back in astonishment. Only now did she begin to understand why he was so bitter. His anger was not directed against her so much as all the other women he had known; women who had pretended to be what they were not in order to penetrate his guard. The sort of women who had seen him as a bank balance and not as a man.

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