Liz Fielding - His Little Girl

“Just how many laws have you broken?” “Just how many laws have you broken?” “I wasn’t counting. Let’s see. There’s removing a child from a refugee camp without permission. Then there is the small detail of smuggling her across more international borders than I can at this moment recall....” “Is that it?” “Apart from breaking and entering, of course. But you already know about that one. Will you press charges, Dora?” “Don’t get smart with me, Gannon. I’m already an accessory after the fact in that one. I meant serious stuff. If I’m going to ask friends for favors, I need to know that you’re not...” A crook. Using Sophie as a shield. Using me. “Well, I don’t know a whole lot about you,” she finished, somewhat lamely. “I just wanted to get my daughter to safety, Dora. Bring her home.” “But if she’s your daughter, Gannon, why didn’t you just go through the proper channels?” “Have you any idea how long it would have taken? I was desperate. It was that or leave her there while the wheels of bureaucracy ground ever so slowly.” Despite the pain and weariness his look was suddenly razor sharp. “You wouldn’t have left her in there, would you, Dora?” About the Author Born and raised in Berkshire, Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve when she won a hymn-writing competition at her convent school. After a gap of more years than she is prepared to admit to, during which she worked as a secretary in Africa and the Middle East, got married and had two children, she was finally able to realize her ambition and turn to full-time writing in 1992. You can visit Liz Fielding’s Web site via Harlequin at: http://www.romance.net Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases. Harlequin Reader Service U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3 Title Page His Little Girl Liz Fielding www.millsandboon.co.uk CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“Just how many laws have you broken?”

“I wasn’t counting. Let’s see. There’s removing a child from a refugee camp without permission. Then there is the small detail of smuggling her across more international borders than I can at this moment recall....”

“Is that it?”

“Apart from breaking and entering, of course. But you already know about that one. Will you press charges, Dora?”

“Don’t get smart with me, Gannon. I’m already an accessory after the fact in that one. I meant serious stuff. If I’m going to ask friends for favors, I need to know that you’re not...” A crook. Using Sophie as a shield. Using me. “Well, I don’t know a whole lot about you,” she finished, somewhat lamely.

“I just wanted to get my daughter to safety, Dora. Bring her home.”

“But if she’s your daughter, Gannon, why didn’t you just go through the proper channels?”

“Have you any idea how long it would have taken? I was desperate. It was that or leave her there while the wheels of bureaucracy ground ever so slowly.” Despite the pain and weariness his look was suddenly razor sharp. “You wouldn’t have left her in there, would you, Dora?”

Born and raised in Berkshire, Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve when she won a hymn-writing competition at her convent school. After a gap of more years than she is prepared to admit to, during which she worked as a secretary in Africa and the Middle East, got married and had two children, she was finally able to realize her ambition and turn to full-time writing in 1992.

You can visit Liz Fielding’s Web site via Harlequin at: http://www.romance.net

Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

SOMETHING woke Dora. One minute she was sleeping, the next wide awake, her ears straining through all the familiar night noises of the countryside for the out-of-place sound that had woken her.

She had fled to the country for peace, but after the constant traffic noise of London she’d found the quiet almost eerie the first night she’d stayed alone at Richard and Poppy’s cottage. Soon, though, her ears had adjusted to the different sounds of the countryside, and she’d realised that what had at first seemed like silence was subverted by all manner of small noises.

Now she lay quite still, listening to the familiar night time orchestra. The gentle gurgling of the small river less than a hundred yards from the door of the cottage as it swirled through the reeds; the slow trickle of rain along the guttering; the sombre dripping as the trees shed the water dumped by a passing scurry of rain.

Punctuating these watery sounds there was the irritable grumbling of a duck, itself disturbed by something. A fox, perhaps? The first time Dora had heard the unearthly rattle made by the night-time hunter her blood had run quite cold; after a week at the cottage she was not so timid.

She swung out of bed and crossed swiftly to the window, ready to fling abuse, and whatever else came to hand, at the marauding intruder. But the landscape, momentarily bleached by a high, white moon as the scudding rainclouds cleared, revealed the dark humps of sleeping ducks. On the surface the riverbank seemed peaceful enough. Not a fox, then.

She propped her elbows on the window ledge for a moment, resting her chin on her hands, and leaned forward to breathe in the night air. It was full of the rich, mingled scents of honeysuckle, stocks and the roses climbing against the wall beneath her window, underscored, after the sudden shower of rain, by the heavy sweetness of damp earth. It was such an English smell, she thought, something to be treasured after the stomach-churning horrors she had encountered in the refugee camps.

Then, in the far distance, there was a glimmer of lightning followed by a low rumble of thunder moving away with the rainclouds. Dora gave a little shiver and pulled the window shut. It was undoubtedly the thunder that had woken her, and, trapped in the Thames Valley, it would be back. The thought raised gooseflesh that shivered over her skin.

She rubbed her arms and turned quickly from the window to reach for her silk wrap, knowing that with thunder on the loose she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Downstairs she could switch on the hi-fi to drown out the noise, and she could always catch up on sleep later—one of the many pleasures of being entirely on her own, with a telephone number that no one but close family knew.

She raised the latch on the bedroom door, stepped onto the landing. She’d make some tea first and then...

And then she heard the sound again, and knew that it hadn’t been thunder that had woken her.

It had sounded almost like a cough, a harsh, crackling little cough—the kind a sick child would make—and it had been so close that it could have been inside the cottage.

But that was ridiculous. The cottage had a comprehensive security system. Her brother-in-law had fitted it after a vagrant had got in and made himself at home. It wouldn’t happen again, and any casual burglar would be put off too. And she was sure she hadn’t left a window open.

Almost sure.

She leaned forward over the stairs, listening for what seemed an age. But there was nothing, only a quiet so intense that the nervous thudding of her heart began to pound in her ears.

Had she imagined the sound? She took one step down. The cottage was miles from the nearest road, for heaven’s sake, it had been raining on and off all evening and no one in their right mind would have a child out so late, certainly not a sick one. She glanced at her watch, it was too dark to see but it had to be long past midnight.

She took another step. She’d noticed how oddly sound carried across the river. Perhaps, after all, it had been the cry of some small animal, the sound magnified in the deep silence of the night. Yet still she hesitated on the stairs.

Then a rumble of thunder, low and threatening, almost overhead as the storm bounced off the hills and swung back down the valley, drove everything else from her head and sent her racing down the stairs to seek the sanctuary of the living room. But even as she reached for the light switch she knew that thunder was the least of her problems, and her hand instead flew to her mouth as, momentarily illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through the windows, she saw a child, a little girl, her thin face gaunt with tiredness.

She was standing in the middle of the living room, and for one ghastly moment Dora was quite certain that she had seen a ghost. Then the child coughed again. Dora was no expert on the subject, but she was pretty sure that ghosts didn’t cough.

Yet, shivering beneath the thin blanket that she clutched about her, dark untidy hair clinging damply to her sallow skin, tiny feet quite bare, the child was quite the most miserable looking little creature that she had ever seen outside a refugee camp.

For a moment she was riveted to the spot, uncertain what to do—not scared, exactly, but unnerved by the sudden appearance of this strange child in the middle of her sister’s living room, her eyes enormous in her thin little face as she stared at Dora. There was something unsettling about the child’s wary stillness.

Then, as common sense reasserted itself, she told herself there was nothing to fear. No matter where the child had come from, she was in need of warmth and comfort, and she surged across the carpet, her own bare feet making no sound as she swept the child into her arms, holding her close to warm her with her own body.

For a moment the little girl’s eyes widened with silent fear, and she remained rigid against her, but Dora made soothing little noises, as she would have done to any small, frightened creature.

‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ The child stared at her, flinching momentarily as Dora’s hand stroked her forehead, pushing back the damp tendrils of hair. Her skin was hot and dry, her complexion unhealthily flushed despite her sallow skin.

Whoever she was, one thing was certain: she should be in bed, not wandering about on a stormy night, straying into strange houses. And she needed a doctor.

‘What’s your name, kitten?’ she murmured, leaving the other questions that were crowding in on her to be answered in their own good time. Not least, how she had managed to get into the cottage.

The little girl stared at Dora for a moment, and then, with something between a sigh and a moan, she let her head fall against Dora’s shoulder. She weighed nothing, and most of that was blanket. Dora pushed the horrible thing away and enveloped the child in her silk wrap. Who was she? Where on earth—?

The question remained unasked as there was a sudden crash from beyond the living room door, a low curse in a man’s voice.

The child, it seemed, was not alone. And Dora, suddenly quite shockingly angry, decided that she wanted a few words with whatever kind of burglar dragged a sick child about with him on his nocturnal activities. Without considering the possibility that her second uninvited guest might, unlike the child, present a very real source of danger, she flung open the door and snapped on the light.