Thief of love (eBook)

Barbara Cartland (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
411 Seiten
Barbara Cartland eBooks Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78867-880-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Alloa never meant to fall for a thief - especially one as dangerously charming as Dix. She caught him once, poised to steal a priceless miniature from a wealthy heiress's bedroom. But she could not forget him even after he had vanished from her life as swiftly as he had stolen her heart - was he merely a thief, or something far worse?

When Alloa's work takes her to Europe, fate intervenes, and she finds herself face-to-face with Dix once more. But this time, their reunion comes with peril. Dix is entangled in crime, and getting close to him could cost her everything - including her life.

As danger closes in and a knife finds her throat, Alloa must confront the truth about the man she thought she could save - will she walk away, or trust the man she never stopped loving?  All is revealed in this tale of passion, deception and courage, where love is tested against all the odds. 

Textauszug

CHAPTER ONE

As her hands were full, Alloa was glad to see that the door of the suite was half open.

She sidled through it into the entresol and walked through another open door into the bedroom. It was only as she was putting the freshly ironed clothes down on the bed, that she realised a man was standing by the dressing-table.

He must have been aware of her at the same moment as she noticed him, for he turned and she saw, with a sudden shock of surprise, that he was holding in his hands the little diamond encircled miniature that usually stood beside Lou’s gold-topped scent bottles.

With a throb of fear Alloa realised what he was. For a moment they only stared at each other. Tall and dark, he was good looking in a rather raffish sort of way.

“What are you doing in this room?” Alloa asked.

She realised with a sense of satisfaction that her voice did not betray the sudden agitation within her breast and the fact that her knees were trembling.

There was a perceptible pause before the stranger answered,

“You must forgive me if I am trespassing.”

“Put that miniature down at once,” Alloa said.

He glanced down at it with an air almost of astonishment that it should be in his hands. Then obediently he set it down on the table.

“You are a thief!” Alloa said accusingly. “I am going to ring the bell and hand you over to the hotel attendants.”

She looked round a little wildly for the bell and realised that it was on the other side of the bed where she could not reach it.

“I promise you I have stolen nothing,” the stranger said smoothly.

Alloa thought that for a moment there was a faint smile at the corner of his lips. She guessed that he was laughing at her helplessness, knowing that she was at some distance from the bell and that although she stood between him and the door, she would prove a very small and insignificant obstacle should he wish to escape. But because she was frightened she would not allow herself to be intimidated.

“You may not have taken anything yet,” she said. “But you will have great difficulty in explaining why you are in this room and what you are doing here, especially as you were holding that miniature when I came in.”

She remembered, as she spoke, how she had said to Lou Derange only yesterday,

“That miniature is far too valuable to leave lying about.”

Lou had laughed at her.

“You can trust all the staff here,” she said. “Besides, they are not to know the diamonds are real. Personally, I enjoy looking at myself framed in such opulence. Encircled in diamonds! What more could any girl want?”

There was just a hint of bitterness behind Lou’s joking, but Alloa ignored it and laughed as was expected of her.

Now she thought how right she had been. Such valuable things should not be left lying about in a hotel.

“I think you are being unduly harsh with me,” the stranger said. “May I confess that, seeing the door open, it was only curiosity that brought me into this room?”

He smiled as he spoke and the smile transformed his face, making him not only measurably more handsome but almost irresistibly attractive.

‘He is a crook all right,’ Alloa thought to herself. ‘Only a crook would contrive to be so charming in such a very difficult situation.’

“My father has often said that curiosity is the first step towards temptation,” she said severely.

“Your father must be a very wise man.”

“He is a Minister of the Church of Scotland,” Alloa said.

She felt that in some way her father’s calling gave her an authority that was otherwise lacking.

The stranger smiled again.

“In which case he would doubtless add, in this instance, ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’. Are you going to forgive me?”

“If I did my duty,” Alloa replied, “I should report your presence here immediately. Oh, I know you are thinking that you could escape before I could reach the bell, but there is nothing to stop me from screaming. There are always waiters and chambermaids on duty on this floor. They would hear me and come running.”

“I can see that I am completely in your hands,” the stranger said meekly. “But I am not attempting to escape. Instead I am throwing myself on your mercy and asking you to give me another chance.”

“Then you admit you have done wrong?” Alloa said quickly. “That you are a thief?”

“You can hardly expect me to admit anything so incriminating,” he replied. “That would be very indiscreet on my part and would, in fact, saddle you with a very uncomfortable responsibility. Suppose I turned out to be a desperate dangerous criminal!”

He smiled.

“If in a week’s time you saw my photograph in the papers as being wanted for murder or arson, then you would never forgive yourself for having let me go. No! I promise you that my presence here is due, as I have already said, entirely to curiosity.”

“You wanted to see what the suite was like?” Alloa asked.

“Shall I say I wanted to see the suite in which the attractive Miss Lou Derange was staying?” the stranger answered.

“How have you heard about her?” Alloa enquired.

The stranger smiled again.

“Dare I confess it? I read the gossip columns!”

“Oh, of course!”

Alloa looked relieved. There had been many paragraphs about Lou and her great fortune and the parties that had been given for her and her mother since they arrived in England.

“And so, you see,” the stranger went on, “as I was passing down the corridor and saw the door of the suite open, I decided to look inside. Reprehensible, I must admit, but not criminal.”

“Then why were you holding that miniature in your hand?” Alloa asked accusingly.

“Because I had an idea that the portrait might be of Miss Derange. Am I right?”

“Yes, yes, it is,” Alloa admitted.

He seemed to have an answer for everything, and yet that made her even more suspicious of him.

“What do you do? I mean, what is your job?” she enquired.

“Oh, I do a lot of different things from time to time,” he answered evasively.

“And you are working here in this hotel at the moment?”

“I am here for the moment,” he admitted.

“Why don’t you get a proper job?” she asked. “You are young, you are healthy, you are well-spoken – and yet, as you admit, you are drifting from one thing to another. That is not the way to be successful.”

“Do I want success?”

“Of course you do,” Alloa said severely. “Everyone wants to make something of their life.”

“And if I tell you that I am doing what I enjoy doing, that I haven’t any ambitions?”

“But that is just what you mustn’t think,” Alloa said. “You see, one is not put into the world just to enjoy oneself, but to make the very best of one’s talents, whatever they may be, and in that way to be a good citizen.”

“You almost convince me,” he said slowly.

His voice was serious, but the corners of his mouth betrayed him.

“You are laughing at me!” Alloa exclaimed. “I suppose I am a fool to think I can alter you when you are already set in your ways, when you have already found it easier and more amusing to make money by crooked means than by honest ones. Well, if you won’t be saved from yourself, I suppose nothing that I can say will make any difference.”

“No, please, you are not to speak like that,” the stranger pleaded. “I wasn’t laughing at you, I was thinking how sweet you looked as you tried to point out the futility of my behaviour. You are very young to be a reformer, and perhaps I am too old to be reformed.”

“No one is ever too old,” Alloa replied. “I have seen my father convert men who were over sixty and they have become absolutely reformed characters.”

“I expect that was because they were too old to enjoy the pleasures of youth,” the stranger smiled.

Alloa gave a little gesture of hopelessness and irritation.

“It is easy to sneer,” she said. “But sooner or later you will find out that you are making a fool of yourself. There is no real happiness in wrong doing.”

“Are you sure of that? Perhaps you have never done anything wrong.”

“If I did I should be sorry, and I should try at once to make amends.”

“Yes, I am sure you would do that,” the stranger said. “And perhaps because you are so persuasive I will try, too, to make amends for the faults I have committed in the past.”

Alloa’s little face lit up.

“You will try to get a decent job?” she pleaded. “I wish I could help you, but I don’t know many people in London. You see, I have only been here six months. If we were in Scotland, my father would help you. He has helped lots of young men to start a new life.”

“I think perhaps I can manage to find employment without your help,” the stranger said. “But I shall always be grateful to you because you concerned yourself with me, not knowing what I am really like.”

“I am sure you are good at heart, even if you are...” Again Alloa stopped and looked embarrassed.

“...a thief,” the stranger finished. “For that is how you think of me.”

“I am sorry about that, but I won’t think hardly of you in future,” Alloa said earnestly. “Not now that you have promised me you will reform and will try and find yourself a proper job – a real job. You have promised, haven’t you?”

The stranger nodded.

“Yes, I promise.”

Again she fancied there was a touch of laughter in his voice, but his eyes, watching her,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.12.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: enemies to lovers • Psychological romance • thriller romance
• ISBN-10: 1-78867-880-X / 178867880X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78867-880-3 / 9781788678803