AllFreeNovel
Share Us
During her lifetime she'd had precious little to thank her father for. He and her mother had already been divorced by the time she'd reached her first birthday. In all those years she'd never received so much as a postcard from him. But now she sent a private prayer of thankfulness because he had remembered her at the end of his life.
From the head of the room someone called for silence and after a buzz of quickening interest the room became unnaturally quiet as the auctioneer took his place.
After banging his hammer he looked at the sea of faces, announced the reserve price set by the client and went on to extol the virtues of the house, quoting from the catalogue when he said that Monk's Hall had been built in the reign of Queen Anne on the site of an ancient monastery.
As he opened the bidding a gaunt-eyed man whom Annie recognised as one of the local vets raised his catalogue, and the auctioneer nodded.
'I have a bid of one hundred and five thousand, ladies and gentlemen.'
Annie's fingers clenched tightly around her own catalogue, the paper feeling smooth and cool. Normal interest would push the bidding a fair bit higher. She would wait for the faint-hearted to be weeded out.
Carefully, she watched the back of Luke's head, sleek, dark, relaxed. He hadn't made a move. But, like her, he wouldn't join battle just yet. Her heart was pattering wildly as she tried to work out just how much he would be willing to pay. There had to be a certain line beyond which the profitability of the enterprise would become doubtful, she supposed.
The bidding had stuck now with a florid-faced man in the centre of the room, and Annie raised her catalogue.
'Two hundred thousand,' the auctioneer intoned expressionlessly.
From the front of the room Luke drawled, 'And ten.'
From then on the bidding went on relentlessly, with only the two of them in combat. The room was silent save for Annie's cool tones, Luke's drawled responses and the occasional hiss of indrawn breath from the onlookers as the tension mounted and thickened.
Outwardly calm but inwardly panicking, Annie calculated the amount of her own savings plus the surrender value of her life insurance policy, and made what would have to be her final bid.
For long, agonising moments her breath stuck in her throat, hurting her. Had Norman been here, she thought wildly, pressing the clammy palms of her hands together, then she could have asked him to add a little of his own financial weight.
But he wasn't here, and even if he had been, she acknowledged sickly, he would have been aghast at the amount she had already put on the table. Norman liked a bargain, and at the price Monk's Hall was going to fetch it wasn't one.
The sound of Luke's voice, topping her final bid by yet another ten thousand, came as no real surprise to Annie. In her heart she supposed she had always known that he would emerge the victor in any confrontation between the two of them.
She had lost Monk's Hall and would have to watch as it was turned into an hotel—yet another means of profit for the loathsome Luke Derringer. The blood draining from her face, she sat on her hard wooden seat and hated him as she had never hated anything or anyone in her life.
CHAPTER THREE
'I'm sorry about that.' Chris Howard's smooth tones penetrated Annie's raging mind as she tried to slot the key into the car door. She had been the first to walk out of the house, not daring to look to right or left because, if she had, she would have burst into tears. Luke Derringer had stolen the house she'd wanted for herself and Norman. That Norman had finally relented and told her to go ahead and bid had seemed like a good omen. But Luke had come on the scene and spoiled everything.
Chris had stepped into his father's shoes a few years ago, buying up the opposition in the small town, making the old-fashioned, family-owned firm the most successful estate agency and auctioneers in the area.
He looked genuinely concerned as he added, 'I know how you'd set your heart on owning Monk's Hall. Mind you…' his prematurely lined face softened wryly '…even if you'd managed to get it, you'd have had a hell of a job winkling Norman out of his cosy nest on the other side of town!'
She was about
to put him straight, to tell him that Norman had already given in, told her to go ahead, even promising to make himself responsible for any structural repairs that needed doing. But Chris was in there before her.
'As a matter of fact, Norman phoned me yesterday. He said you'd be bidding and asked me to look out for you afterwards. He guessed you'd be upset when Derringer walked away with the house you'd wanted and he suggested I take you for coffee. Would you like some? Or something stronger?'
'Why should he do that?' Annie shoved the car key back in her handbag, afraid that her shaky attempts to unlock the door would give her feelings away.
Chris looked embarrassed and that didn't surprise her. She understood what had happened and a new, slower, deeper anger was born. She said tightly, 'Norman only gave me his blessing because he knew I didn't stand a chance against that cousin of his.'
Chris didn't deny it. He looked over her head, his face uncomfortable.
'Giving you false hope was a lousy thing to do. I told him as much. Come on, I'll buy you that coffee.' He took her arm, but she found a smile from somewhere and tugged gently away.
'There's no need, but thank you all the same. There are one or two things I have to do.'
Turning briskly on her heel, she walked away, her back rigid, her footsteps firm and undeviating as she turned on to the narrow, steep walkway that led down beside the grounds of Monk's Hall to the shore.
She needed to be alone to come to terms with what Norman had done, and at this time of the year the beach would probably be deserted. The wide stretch of sand was backed by high unscalable cliffs, the only access from the town itself a narrow road to the small harbour, through the ravine, which was why Seabourne had never grown as a popular tourist resort.
