Penny Jordan Collection(33)

                ‘You shouldn’t have come here on your own,’ he cautioned her as he came down the corridor towards her.

                ‘Why not? The house isn’t haunted, is it?’ she mocked him sarcastically.

                ‘Not as far as I know,’ he agreed, ‘but the floors, especially on these upper two floors, aren’t totally to be trusted, and if you should have had an accident—’

                ‘How very thoughtful of you to be concerned, Ran,’ Sylvie interrupted him. ‘Almost as thoughtful as it was of you to commission these reports.’

                As she spoke she removed the reports from her bag and waved them under his nose. ‘Or am I being naive and would “self-interested” be a much truer description?’

                Ran started to frown.

                ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, Sylvie,’ he began, but she wouldn’t let him go any further, challenging him immediately,

                ‘Don’t you, Ran? I read the reports from the surveyors this morning. Tucked in at the back of the estimates you’d obtained was this...’

                Coolly she handed him the costing for the work on the Rectory.

                ‘So?’ Ran shrugged after he had scanned the piece of paper she proffered.

                ‘This particular costing relates to work that needs to be carried out on the Rectory, your own private house,’ Sylvie pointed out patiently.

                ‘And...?’ Ran demanded, frowning at her before telling her, ‘I’m sorry, Sylvie, but I’m afraid I’m at a loss to understand exactly what it is you’re driving at. The Rectory needed some work doing on it to put right the dry rot the surveyors found, and—’

                ‘You decided to slip the bill for that work in amongst the bills for the work that was needed on Haverton Hall, to lose it amongst the admittedly far greater cost of the work needed here!’

                ‘What?’ Ran demanded ominously quietly, his expression as well as his voice betraying his outrage.

                ‘I don’t like what you’re trying to suggest, Sylvie,’ he told her sharply.

                She shook her head and told him thinly, ‘Neither do I, Ran. But the facts speak for themselves.’

                ‘Do they?’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘I rather think it’s your overheated imagination that’s doing the “speaking” through your totally erroneous interpretation of them,’ he told her through gritted teeth.

                ‘You can’t deny the evidence of this report,’ Sylvie reminded him sternly.

                ‘What evidence?’ Ran demanded. ‘This is a report and an estimate for work on the Rectory—work which I have had carried out at my own expense; the only reason the report and costing is there at all is because I omitted to remove it when I had the documents copied for you...’

                ‘You’ve paid for the work on the Rectory yourself?’ Sylvie queried in disbelief.

                Ran’s mouth thinned.

                ‘Perhaps you’d like to see the receipts,’ he challenged her.

                ‘Yes, I would,’ Sylvie responded doggedly, refusing to let him cow her even though she could feel her face starting to burn self-consciously and her stomach beginning to churn as she contemplated just how foolish she was going to look if Ran did produce such receipts.