Free For Revenge or Redemption? by Elizabeth Power Page A

brought his tall, lithe frame to his feet.
    ‘She sold you down the river, Grace.’ His words were hard, blunt, unsparing. ‘So did your precious Harringdale.’
    ‘He isn’t mine ,’ she flared, hurting, wondering how he—how both of them—could have pulled the plug on her and left her and the company to the mercy of a man like Seth Mason. ‘It’s over between us—as you so subtly pointed out at that launch party. It was over months ago.’
    ‘Ah, yes. What really happened there? Did you just get tired of him?’ he asked, sounding bored suddenly, while ignoring her barbed accusation. ‘Or were you as butterfly-minded and fickle as Harringdale said you were? What was it?’ His thick brows pleated as he pretended to search for the words which were obviously at the forefront of that shrewd, keen mind. ‘“Grace Tyler’s only interested in having fun and when that wears off, which is surprisingly quickly, so does her sense of loyalty”.’ His mouth compressed. After all, hadn’t he been on the receiving end of what could only be described as her capricious behaviour? Perhaps he did have reason to think badly of her, she accepted painfully. But that was all in the past.
    ‘I don’t think my relationship with Paul is any of your business,’ she murmured, catching her breath after the hurtful remarks her ex-fiancé had made to the press when she had broken off their engagement only a few weeks before their wedding. Wearily, she added, ‘Perhaps you’re just too influenced by what you read.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ he concurred, without sounding wholly convinced. ‘Perhaps Harringdale was just being spiteful, in view of the way you jilted him. Or perhaps he was right. Perhaps loyalty and respect are two things you still need to learn.’
    His words had an ominous ring to them. ‘Believe that if you want to,’ she objected, so tense that she flinched as the clock on the mantelpiece suddenly struck the half hour. ‘Just like every sensation-seeking journalist I’ve come across, you’ve got your own prejudiced opinions and nothing I say will change them.’
    ‘Try me.’
    ‘Why?’
    He didn’t answer, but his eyes were so commanding in their intensity that she found the words slipping away from her before she could stop them.
    ‘If you must know, it was something I drifted into with Paul as much as anything else. I thought we had a lot in common, so it seemed like a good idea for the two of us to get engaged and to merge our business interests. It was what both our families wanted, my grandfather in particular.’ She couldn’t forget the hints Lance Culverwell had dropped, the silent but eternal pressure he’d applied to see her settle down with the heir to the Harringdale fortune.
    ‘And, with dear Granddad out of the way, you didn’t have to.’
    ‘No, strange though this may seem to you, I consider principles to be more important than doing something just because it’s expected of me.’
    ‘Really?’ Dark, winged brows lifted mockingly. ‘And when did you first cultivate that admirable virtue?’
    ‘You can scoff all you like. It’s true.’
    ‘And your stepmother?’
    ‘Step- grand mother,’ she corrected with emphasis.
    The look he sliced her left no doubt that he had picked up on that unintentional censure in her voice, and his mouth pulled at one corner, as though he were weighing up the age difference between the ex-model Corinne Phelps and Lance Culverwell, questioning the whole viability of the match.
    ‘It’s peculiar how sex drives a man—or a woman, for that matter—isn’t it, Grace?’
    She regarded him warily. ‘Meaning?’
    ‘Meaning he wasn’t prepared for someone from my background to soil the pedigree of his precious family, but he had no such qualms when it came to himself and a woman who didn’t mind being photographed in some of the more, shall we say, graphic newspapers.’
    ‘What my grandfather found out after they were married had no bearing on his