by Sara Craven
He said quietly, ‘I want all of you, Caroline. No protests and nothing held back. And no less will do.’
She swallowed. ‘I—think I just lost my appetite.’
‘Unfortunate,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll just have to watch me eat instead.’ He paused. ‘Tell me something, Cally. Is it the whole idea of sex that repels you, or merely the thought of having it with me?’
She stared down at the table. ‘I ran away from you,’ she said, expressionlessly. ‘I’d have thought that made my feelings clear.’
‘No, darling,’ he said. ‘Now, as always, your emotions remain an enigma.’ He lifted his beer glass mockingly. ‘To marriage,’ he said, and drank.
In spite of her previous disavowal, Cally found that lunch, when it came, was irresistible. The pies arrived, golden-brown in individual earthenware pots, accompanied by dishes of vegetables, and were served by the waitresses onto their plates. As the crusts broke, spilling their fragrant contents across the porcelain, the aroma literally made her mouth water.
There was no way she could refuse to eat. Nor would she achieve anything by starving herself, she admitted resignedly.
She was expecting a sarcastic comment from Nick as she reached for her cutlery, but he only permitted himself a swift, ironic glance before applying himself to his own food.
‘Dessert?’ he asked, when she finally put down her knife and fork.
She said stiltedly, ‘Just coffee, please. Black, no sugar.’
‘I’ll have the same.’ Nick offered a brief smile to the girl who’d come to clear their plates, then bent to help retrieve the cutlery she’d instantly and blushingly dropped on the grass.
‘Poor girl,’ Cally commented as the waitress retreated. ‘You seem to have a devastating effect on women.’
‘Not often,’ Nick returned silkily. ‘And certainly not on you, my sweet.’
Ah, but that’s not true, she thought. Or how did you so easily persuade me to marry you—against all my better judgement? I wasn’t proof against your smile either—or the way you looked at me. Or the kisses and caresses that always left me aching for more.
‘You’re attracting a lot of attention yourself,’ Nick added, breaking into her reverie. ‘But that’s hardly surprising. In that dress, you look like part of the sunlight.’
Cally flushed and looked away self-consciously from the sudden intensity of his gaze. ‘Please—don’t say things like that.’
‘I’m not even allowed to pay you a mild compliment?’
‘Not,’ she said, ‘in our kind of bargain.’
‘Yet it’s no more than the truth,’ Nick said. ‘Just look around you if you don’t believe me.’
She said tautly, ‘If people are staring, it’s only to wonder what the hell someone like me is doing with someone like you, and we both know it.’
‘I know nothing of the kind.’ There was a new harshness in his tone. ‘Why do you constantly denigrate yourself, Cally?’
‘I think they actually call it being aware of one’s limitations,’ she said. ‘I learned it quite early in life.’
‘From your grandfather, I suppose,’ he said with faint grimness.
‘You can hardly blame him.’ She shrugged. ‘After all, he didn’t have the grandson he’d set his heart on, so the next best thing was a replica of the daughter he’d lost—someone beautiful, vibrant and glamorous, with real star appeal. I—fell a long way short of his expectations.’
He said, slowly, ‘My God.’
‘It’s understandable.’ She took a breath. ‘My mother was—a very hard act to follow. She and my father worshipped each other. In a way, it was a blessing the accident took them both, because they’d never have survived alone.’
‘They wouldn’t have been alone.’ His voice was very quiet. ‘They had you.’
‘As it was, I was left with Grandfather. In the aftermath of it all we were both grieving, but we couldn’t seem to comfort each other. Still, I think—eventually—he came to love me—in his way.’ She paused. ‘And he wanted me to be looked after when he’d gone. To have the financial security that he hadn’t been able to provide himself at the end.’ Her voice faltered slightly.
‘Which, of course, is where I came in.’ Nick ironically supplied her unspoken words.
‘Grandfather’s final act.’ She forced a smile. ‘To arrange my future. Hand me one of the glittering prizes. He even managed to make me believe, for a while, that it was what I wanted too.’
‘And then Cinderella tried on the slipper and found it was the wrong size,’ he said softly. ‘Poor Cally.’
‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘I won’t be wearing it for long. So there’s really no need to pity me. Whatever you force me to do, I’ll survive.’
She turned deliberately in her chair and stared at the river. Its still waters were golden-green in the brightness, shading to oily darkness in the overhang of the willows that fringed it. A small group of ducks was quarrelling noisily over the bread some diners had thrown for them, and from the opposite bank a diminutive but stately moorhen emerged from the reeds, her brood of chicks strung out behind her, all paddling frantically to keep up.
In spite of herself, Cally found some of the tension seeping out of her, her lips curving with pleasure.
She said, half to herself, ‘It’s just so beautiful here.’
‘Would you like to stay the night?’ Nick asked quietly. ‘They have rooms, and it’s early in the season, so there are probably vacancies.’ His smile touched her skin, warming it in spite of herself. ‘We could have a mini-honeymoon.’
Cally stiffened, her heart thudding. ‘No,’ she stated with cool clarity. ‘I don’t want to stay. Thank you.’
‘As you wish,’ he said equably. ‘I just wanted to demonstrate that force isn’t an essential element of our time together.’
There was an odd silence that Cally hastened to fill. ‘Anyway, I thought you were desperate to get back to Wylstone.’
‘Not that desperate,’ he said softly. ‘After all, my love, you seem to have an affinity with the banks of rivers that might be worth exploiting.’
Her flush deepened. ‘An isolated incident,’ she said grittily, ‘that I’d prefer to forget.’
‘And one of my most treasured memories,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve often thought since that I should have taken you then—when I had the chance.’
Cally sent him a fulminating glance, and was relieved to turn her attention to the arrival of their coffee.
As she filled their cups from the cafetière, she said stiltedly, ‘Is your mother well?’
‘According to her last letter, she’s bursting with health,’ Nick returned drily. ‘She’s also planning to pay us a visit.’
Cally digested this piece of news uneasily as she passed Nick his coffee. She had never met Cecily Tempest, who was a distinguished archaeologist, whose working life was concentrated in the jungles of Central America. She’d thought that she never would.
She said, ‘I thought she was in Guatemala.’
‘It seems the present excavations need a new injection of funding. She’s coming back to do a series of lectures, and raise some more cash.’ He paused. ‘And, at some point, meet her new daughter-in-law.’
‘I see,’ Cally said slowly. ‘Yet another reason for you to need my urgent return.’ She swallowed some hot coffee. ‘Have you told her that we’ve been living apart?’
‘I decided against that. After all, I’d only just told her that we were getting married. The news that I was a bachelor again so soon might have aroused her latent maternal instinct and brought her hurrying home to investigate, so I thought it best not to burden her.’
‘Of course.’ Her voice was tight. ‘And now there’s no necessity for embarrassing explanations. Because I’m back.’ She paused. ‘I presume I’m required to play the part of the loving and dutiful wife?’
‘I certainly hope so,’ he said silkily. ‘But she’s not arriving immediately, so you’ll have plenty of t
ime to rehearse. And you’ll need it. When it comes to digging, my mother isn’t solely interested in Mayan artefacts.’
Cally bit her lip. ‘You certainly have everything worked out in advance.’
‘If I had,’ Nick said tersely, ‘I would not have spent my wedding night alone last year.’
‘I’ve only your word for it that you did,’ Cally fired back without thinking, and paused, appalled at her own indiscretion. Remembering too late that she’d forbidden herself any reference to Nick’s infidelity with Vanessa Layton.
Oh, God, she groaned inwardly. I’ve just broken my own taboo. Now he’s going to ask what I mean—and I don’t know what to say. How to find an explanation that doesn’t make me sound like some pathetic, jealous idiot.
‘Are you crazy?’ The grey eyes were like steel. ‘My attention was fully occupied in looking for you, darling, not choosing a substitute bedmate. Besides, you’re going to atone fully for any previous disappointment you caused me,’ he added harshly.
Cally drank the rest of her coffee and put down the cup. She said, ‘I—really don’t need any further reminders.’
His smile was as hard as his gaze. ‘In that case, shall we be leaving?’
As he pushed back his chair and rose she said bitterly, ‘And let’s not pretend I have a choice.’
She was aware of the envious glances following her as she walked at his side back to the inn to pay the bill.
She thought If you knew—if you only knew… And could have wept.
They travelled in silence. Cally sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring sightlessly through the windscreen, her thoughts caught on the same weary treadmill.
The car was her cage. The motorway her path to her own personal hell. And there was nothing more she could do. No argument—no appeal she could offer—carried any weight with him, as he’d made mockingly clear from the beginning.
Nick had bought her, and now he expected to see a return on his investment—however temporary.
She leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes, listening to the smooth hum of the motor, images from the past dissolving and reforming as the edges of her consciousness started to blur.
‘I suppose you know that you’re trespassing?’
And her own reply, made defensive by guilt, as she stared down from the back of her horse at the tall young man confronting her on the path. ‘I was just taking a shortcut across the edge of the wood. Sir Ranald never objected.’
‘Unfortunately Sir Ranald’s no longer around to express an opinion either way,’ he said. ‘But I am, and I came out after pigeon.’ He indicated the gun he was carrying. ‘Supposing I’d accidentally winged you instead? Or your horse? In future, sweetheart, take the long way round.’ The strange silver-grey eyes flickered over her, absorbing the damp cotton shirt outlining her small breasts, her slender denim-clad thighs. He added quietly, ‘You’ll find it safer.’
And with another long, considering look he turned and vanished as abruptly as he’d appeared, leaving Cally to lean forward on Baz’s neck, gasping as if she’d been winded after a gallop, instead of merely taking a gentle hack across someone else’s land as she’d done so often before.
But never again, she swore as she clicked her tongue to Baz and they set off again. In future she’d give the Wylstone estate, and its new owner, a very wide berth.
And she’d meant it, Cally thought. From then on she’d scrupulously avoided any diversions through the dappled shade of the Home Wood.
And then she’d come in from shopping one day to find her grandfather entertaining a visitor in the drawing room.
‘Ah, come in, my dear,’ Robert Naylor had hailed her. ‘Tempest, I don’t think you’ve met my granddaughter, Caroline. Cally—this is poor Ranald’s cousin, Sir Nicholas Tempest. He plans to live at Wylstone, so the rumours were wrong. We’re going to have neighbours after all.’
‘No, we haven’t been formally introduced.’ Nicholas Tempest’s mouth was solemn as he shook hands with her, but the grey eyes were sparking with amusement. ‘I came to ask your grandfather to dine with me next week,’ he went on, his fingers still holding hers. ‘I hope you’ll be able to accompany him.’
‘Of course she will,’ Robert said robustly. ‘She must find life damned slow down here, spending her time with an old fogey like me.’
Nicholas Tempest’s brows lifted. ‘Then we shall have to find some means of keeping her entertained,’ he said softly.
Cally freed herself hastily, murmured something about unpacking the groceries, and escaped. But even as she busied herself, stowing things away in the larder and the big old-fashioned refrigerator, she found herself assailed by the memory of the touch of his hand on hers. And scared by it too, in a way that was both unfamiliar and totally unwelcome.
And that, she thought tiredly, was how it had begun. Meeting him socially at dinners and parties in the locality, and when he came to visit her grandfather for reasons she’d never been able to fathom—not then. Occasionally she’d encountered him when she went riding, and he’d joined her astride a smart bay gelding that was a marked contrast to her own gentle, ageing Baz.
That had been the only time they’d ever met alone. Their conversation had always been general, and Cally had been astute enough to realise that she was being kept at a distance mentally as well as physically. Because he’d made no attempt to touch her again.
Yet before long she’d found herself looking out for him—hoping that she’d see him. Finding herself curiously at a loss when the business of his various companies had called him away. Shyly delighted when she’d learned of his return.
She’d never found the visits to Wylstone Hall much to her liking, particularly as Sir Ranald’s widow Adele had still been snugly ensconced there, acting as Nick’s hostess. Cally had been discomposed to find herself pinpointed by Lady Tempest’s contemptuous violet gaze on more than one occasion, and the crimson lips had been quite capable of uttering limpid remarks, supposed to be teasing, yet designed to make Cally feel like a gauche schoolgirl. She’d found herself half-dreading those uncomfortable occasions.
‘Says she doesn’t want to be known as a dowager because it sounds so elderly,’ Robert Naylor snorted after one of them. ‘But Nicholas should pack her off to the Dower House just the same, and be quick about it—before the gossip starts. All this drooping around in black doesn’t fool anyone, and I’d put money on her not having shed a single tear for poor Ranald. God only knows where he found her, but she’s no intention of going back there.’
He shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if she was banking on becoming Lady Tempest for a second time.’
‘You mean Sir Nicholas might marry her?’ Cally was startled in a number of ways, not all of which she wanted to examine too closely. ‘But she’s older than him.’
‘Well, he’s thirty, so there can’t be more than a few years in it,’ her grandfather said with a grunt. ‘And she’s a looker. I’ll grant her that. No one could blame her for trying.’ He gave another wag of the head. ‘And proximity’s a damned dangerous thing.’
‘Yes,’ Cally conceded with an odd feeling of numbness, ‘I suppose it must be.’
Lying in bed that night, she thought of Adele, her beautiful face crowned by the sheen of her red-gold hair, her voluptuous body set off by the designer wardrobe that managed to make mourning seem a sexual experience. It was whispered locally, with nods and winks, that it was her excessive physical demands which had hurried her late husband into a relatively early grave.
‘There’s a woman who won’t want to find herself in an empty bed,’ was a remark Cally had overheard in the village shop.
But perhaps she isn’t alone, Cally thought, lying awake, tormented by her imagination.
Looking back now, it seemed ludicrous that she could have been jealous of Adele.
But I was, she thought. And, being on my guard against her, I was diverted from seeing where the real danger lay.
Her unhappy musings were inte
rrupted when she realised that Nick had once again turned off the motorway.
She sat up. ‘Is this the right junction?’
‘No, but it will do,’ he returned briefly. ‘I want to stop off in Clayminster first.’
He parked in a side street near the cathedral close and turned to her. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
Cally examined a non-existent fleck on her nail. ‘Thank you, no. I’d prefer to remain here.’
‘Very well.’ She watched him remove the keys from the ignition and pocket them. ‘I won’t be too long.’ He paused. ‘Please don’t do anything stupid, or I might get angry.’
‘God forbid,’ she bit back at him. ‘Why don’t you have me electronically tagged?’
His mouth twisted in wry acknowledgement. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’
Left alone, Cally examined and reluctantly discarded the idea of running away again. Both the bus and train stations, she knew, were right on the other side of town, and he would catch her before she’d gone half the distance.
Besides, in spite of her bravado, she didn’t really want to make Nick angry, she admitted. The coming hours would be quite difficult enough without that. And sex as punishment was a terrifying possibility, which could destroy her, she thought, with a sudden convulsive shiver.
She got out of the car and stretched, then, leaving the door open, went for a restless stroll, up one side of the street and back down the other.
It didn’t take long. It was mostly terraced housing, with a few shops, none of which tempted her to linger. A self-styled antiques gallery, offering mostly junk, was probably the star turn, she thought wryly, with a place called Needlewoman selling knitting wool and sewing requisites a close second.
Reaching the car, she leaned back against the doorframe with a sigh. The memories she’d allowed herself had been unsettling, reminding her of things best forgotten or treated as a temporary aberration.
I was just eighteen then, she thought blankly. A child trying not to fall in love with a man. And failing miserably.
In spite of the warmth of the day, she found she was wrapping protective arms round her body. Swallowing back the tears in her throat. Nick had said he would not be long, and she couldn’t afford to let him find her crying.