Ravensdale's Defiant Captive. Melanie Milburne

took felt like she was trying to lift a bookcase. She couldn’t speak. Her throat was closed with a stranglehold of panic.

      ‘It’s breath-taking, isn’t it?’ Sophia said. ‘It’s only been recently renovated. You can probably still smell the fresh paint.’

      A shudder passed through Holly’s body like an earthquake. Her legs went cold and then weak as if the ligaments had been severed with the swing of a sword. Beads of perspiration trickled down between her shoulder blades, as warm and as sticky as blood. Her stomach was a crowded fishbowl of nausea. Churning. Rising in a bloated tide to her blocked throat.

      ‘I—I don’t need such a big room,’ she said. ‘Just put me in one of the downstairs rooms. We passed a nice one on the second floor. That blue one back there. That’ll do me. I don’t need my own balcony.’

      ‘But there are nice views all over the estate and you’ll have much more privacy. It’s one of the nicest rooms in the—’

      ‘I don’t care about the view,’ Holly said, stepping back from the door to stand near a marble statue that felt as cold as her body. ‘It’s not as if I’m an honoured guest, is it? I’m here under sufferance. Your employer’s and mine. I just need a bed and a blanket.’ Which was far more than she’d had in the not-so-distant past.

      ‘But Señor Ravensdale insisted you—’

      ‘Yeah, yeah, I know—be put as far away from his room as possible,’ Holly said, hugging her arms across her body. ‘Why? Doesn’t he trust himself?’

      The housekeeper’s mouth pulled tight like the strings of an old-fashioned evening purse. ‘Señor Ravensdale is a gentleman.’

      ‘Yeah, well, even gentlemen have hormones.’

      Sophia let out a frustrated breath. ‘Will you at least look at the suite? You might change your mind once you see how—’

      ‘No.’ Holly swung away and went back down the stairs, one flight after another, her feet barely landing long enough on each step before it clipped the next one. She didn’t draw breath until she got to the nearest exit. She stopped once out in the sunshine, bending forward, hands on her knees, her lungs all but exploding as she gasped in the warm summer air.

      There was no way she was going to sleep in a room with a balcony.

      No way.

      * * *

      Julius was standing at his office window when he saw Holly striding off towards the lake past the formal part of the gardens. Was she running away already? Absconding as soon as she saw an opportunity? He was supposed to call her caseworker if there was an issue. He glanced at his phone and then back at Holly’s slight figure as she stopped in front of the lake. If she’d wanted to escape she surely would have gone in the other direction. The wide, deep lake and the thick forest fringing it behind were as good a barrier as any. He watched as she bent down and picked up a pebble and skimmed it across the surface of the water. It skipped several times before sinking, leaving a ring of concentric circles in its wake. There was something poignant and sad about her slim figure standing there alone.

      There was a tap on his door. ‘Señor? Can I have a word?’

      Julius opened the door to Sophia. ‘Is everything all right?’

      ‘Holly won’t have the room I prepared for her,’ Sophia said.

      He tilted his mouth in a sardonic arc. ‘Not good enough for her?’

      ‘Too big for her.’

      He frowned. ‘Is that what she said?’

      Sophia nodded. ‘I made it all nice for her and she won’t have it. She stalked off as if I’d told her she’d be sleeping in the stables.’

      ‘Whose idea was it to bring her here again?’ he said with mock rancour.

      ‘I’m sure she’ll grow on you,’ Sophia said. ‘She’s a spirited little thing, isn’t she?’

      ‘Indeed.’

      ‘Will you talk to her?’

      ‘I just spent the last half hour with her.’

      ‘Please?’ Sophia, for all that she was close to retirement, had a tendency to look like a pleading three-year-old child when she wanted him to do things her way.

      ‘What do you want me to say to her?’

      ‘Insist she take the room I prepared for her,’ Sophia said. ‘Otherwise where will I put her? You told me you didn’t want her on your floor.’

      ‘All right.’ Julius let out a long breath of resignation. ‘I’ll talk to her. But you’d better get the first aid kit out.’

      ‘Come, now. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

      He gave her a wry look as he shouldered open the door. ‘No, but our little guest looks as if she could stick a knife in you and laugh while she’s doing it.’

      * * *

      Julius found her still skimming rocks across the surface of the lake. She was damn good at it, too. The most he could get was thirteen skips. Her last one had been fourteen. She must have heard him approach as his feet made plenty of noise on the pebbles at the edge of the lake but she didn’t turn around. She kept skimming pebble after pebble with a focussed, almost fierce concentration.

      ‘I believe you have an issue with the accommodation I’ve provided,’ he said.

      She threw another pebble but not as a skimmer. It went sailing overhead and landed with a loud plop in the centre of the lake. ‘I don’t need a suite in first class. I belong in steerage,’ she said.

      ‘Surely that’s up to me to decide?’

      She turned and faced him. It unnerved him a little to see she had a stone rather than a pebble clutched in her fist. Her eyes flashed at him. ‘What are you trying to do? Conduct your own Pygmalion experiment? Well, guess what, Mr Higgins? I’m no fair lady.’

      ‘No; you’re a bad tempered little miss who seems intent on biting the hand that’s generously offered to feed you.’

      She glowered at him with her chest rising and falling as if she was only just managing to control her fury. ‘You didn’t offer me anything,’ she shot back. ‘You don’t want me here any more than I want to be here.’

      ‘True, but you’re here now and it seems mature and sensible to make the best of the situation.’

      Holly turned and flung the stone at the lake but it hit a tree on the left-hand side with a loud thwack. ‘How are you going to explain me to your fancy friends or family?’ she said.

      ‘I don’t feel the necessity to explain myself to anyone.’

      ‘Lucky you.’

      Where was the cheeky little flirt now? he wondered. In her place was a woman brooding with anger. Anger so thick he could feel it in the air like the humidity before a violent storm.

      Julius picked up a pebble and sent it skimming across the surface of the lake. ‘That’s a personal best,’ he said as he counted fifteen skips. ‘Think you can match it?’

      She turned and looked at him with a watchful gaze. ‘What about your girlfriend? What’s she going to say when she hears you’ve got me living with you?’

      He bent down and picked up another pebble, rolling it over to check its suitability. ‘I don’t have a current girlfriend.’

      ‘When was your last one?’

      He glanced at her before he skimmed the pebble. ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’

      ‘I know you’re not gay because no gay man would look at me the way you did back in your office,’ she said. ‘You fancy me, don’t you?’

      Julius