.

me what had happened.’

      ‘You told him you’d got married?’ Nathan’s tone had sharpened.

      ‘There’s no need to sound so tough! I was very upset over the way you had been treated! I told him my father had defaulted on some money he’d promised a businessman—er—who was down on his luck—to marry me. But I never said who the man was, and I never would. Nor, you can be sure, would my father.’

      Nathan nodded. ‘So you told Henry Scott that you’d married, and why?’ he prompted.

      ‘And I’m glad I did,’ she answered. ‘Henry’s got a shrewder head than me. He asked if I’d seen my grandfather’s will. I hadn’t, of course. So Henry then asked me what the letter from my grandfather’s solicitors had said.’

      ‘But you hadn’t received any letter from them,’ Nathan stated.

      ‘You’re shrewder than me too,’ she commented.

      ‘You were standing too close to the picture to see it as Henry Scott and I see it.’

      ‘I suppose you’re right. Anyhow—’ she broke off. ‘I must be boring you with all of this.’

      ‘Don’t you dare stop now,’ Nathan ordered. ‘I’ve waited eight years to hear this!’

      Phelix flicked him a sharp look. Oh, my, was he owed! ‘I’m—er—trying not to be too disloyal to my father here…’ she began—and had her ears scorched for her trouble.

      ‘Good God, woman!’ Nathan snarled fiercely, halting in his stride. ‘You think that man deserves your loyalty?’ Phelix stopped walking too and looked up into Nathan’s angry grey eyes. ‘For his own ends—whatever they were—he used you! In doing so he thereby gave up all right to any loyalty from you!’ But suddenly then Nathan seemed to pause in his anger, somehow seeming to collect himself, and he was much less angry when, quietly, he promised, ‘You have my word, Phelix, that whatever it was your father was up to I won’t broadcast it.’