Reluctant Relation Read Online Free PDF

Meg thought she detected anger in the set of the pretty mouth.
    Presumably Leigh Sontigan had gone, but as she came further down the stairs, she saw that he was standing in the hall a little aimlessly.
    He looked up, as he had before, at the sound of her footsteps. And then, as Meg reached the bottom stair, he came across and asked abruptly,
    “Did you say you looked after Pearl?”
    “Yes.” Meg drew back slightly at the almost harsh question.
    “May I go up and see her?”
    “No.”
    “Why not? Pearl and I are good friends. She’ll think badly of me when she learns I’ve been here and I didn’t go up and see her.”
    “She won’t hear about your coming,” Meg replied dryly. “I shall see to that.”
    “You will?” He seemed staggered, as well as angry, that she should take so much on herself. “Why should you concern yourself with this?”
    “Because Pearl’s welfare is my business now,” Meg said shortly. “I don’t doubt that you and she are good friends. But it seems that the child has been told she won’t see you again. She was upset about it but I’m not prepared to have her put on a sort of emotional seesaw by your appearing again.”
    “I may be coming back into the picture permanently, for all you know.” He spoke with a touch of angry amusement.
    “Mr. Sontigan, that isn’t my affair until it happens.” Meg spoke coolly and decisively. “My information is that you are not going to figure in Pearl’s life any more. Until I have her mother’s instructions to the contrary, I am not going to have the child upset by confusing that issue.”
    “So, as far as you’re concerned, I don’t exist, eh?”
    “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t exist,” agreed Meg dryly.
    He looked half amused, half incredulous. Then, narrowing those bold, dark eyes consideringly, he asked, with real curiosity, “What’s your name?”
    “Does that matter?”
    “I’d like to know it. Unless there’s some mystery about it.” He looked even more mocking now, as though he thought she was making this absurdly heavy.
    “There’s no mystery about it.” Meg slightly raised her chin and look up at him defiantly. “My name is Meg Greenway.”
    “Meg ... Greenway?” He repeated the name, as though it struck a chord in his memory. “Good lord! Meg Greenway? Then you and I are some sort of relation!”
    “Indeed we aren’t,” Meg assured him with cool emphasis. “But my, sister, Claire, has just married your father.”
    “That doesn’t make us relations.”
    “But some sort of connection.”
    She was silent. And after a moment, he laughed rather wickedly, and said,
    “A connection you’re not anxious to emphasize, I take it?”
    “Are you?”
    “I don’t know.” He ran an amused glance over her. “I never thought about it until this moment.”
    “Well, I don’t know that there’s much point in thinking about it now,” Meg said, as composedly as she could in the face of that faintly mocking interest. “We’re not very likely to meet each other again.”
    “Don’t be so sure of that!” His momentary anger seemed to have passed completely. “You’ll see me again, my reluctant little relation.”
    And, with a slight gesture of farewell, he laughed, turned on his heel and went out of the house, leaving behind him such a strong impression that it was a moment before Meg could shake off the curiously compelling effect which he had had upon her.
    She was actually trembling a little, as she turned towards the kitchen and found an approving Cecile standing in the doorway.
    “Ah, that was well done, Mademoiselle.” Cecile nodded vigorously. “I did not hear what was said, for I am not the eavesdropper. But I saw that this time you sent him about his business.”
    “Did I?” said Meg doubtfully, for that was not at all what it had felt like. But neither with Cecile nor with anyone else was she anxious to discuss her encounter with Leigh Sontigan, so she handed over the tray and went back