by Penny Jordan
‘How do you feel about having dinner here on the terrace this evening? We can go out, if you like, or dine in the hotel restaurant. But I thought in view of the fact that we shall be returning to London tomorrow morning, in our new role as an engaged couple, this evening might be a good opportunity to discuss any concerns you might have about the future.’
‘Dinner on the terrace sounds wonderful,’ Lucy told Marcus truthfully. They were in her suite, having just returned from Palma.
‘We’re going to have to talk about Prêt a Party, and how you visualise its future at some stage,’ Marcus continued.
Prêt a Party! Lucy realised with shock that she had barely given her business a thought since she had Marcus had stepped onto their flight to Palma.
‘Oh, you don’t—’ She began immediately to reassure Marcus that he did not need to worry that she would be expecting him to rescue her ailing business from debt, and then stopped. Andrew Walker had said that he didn’t want her to mention their discussion to anyone at this stage, and until he actually came back to her with a firm offer there wasn’t really anything to discuss, was there? If she told Marcus now that her problems with her business were over, that Prêt a Party had a potential investor, and then had to tell him that she had been let down, she was going to look very silly and gullible. Just as she had done when Nick had cheated her. She could still remember how angry and contemptuous Marcus had been then. She didn’t want that to happen a second time.
‘Must we talk about Prêt a Party tonight?’ Lucy asked him. ‘Only…’
‘Only what?’ Marcus probed.
‘Only I thought that tonight could be for…us,’ Lucy whispered, pink-cheeked. She could feel her blush deepening as she saw the way he was looking at her.
‘For us? Well, it certainly might be a good idea if we discuss some of the practical issues we need to sort out.’
Disappointment filled her. That was not what she had meant at all.
‘Practical issues?’ Did he mean things like contraception? Lucy wondered uncertainly. If so, she would have to find the words to tell him that she relished the experience of feeling him inside her without anything between them so much that she would prefer it if she made herself responsible for that side of things and took the contraceptive pill.
‘Yes. Practical issues,’ Marcus repeated. ‘Such as where we are going to live. I’d prefer to keep my Wendover Square house as our London home. After all, it’s been in my family for nearly two hundred years.’
‘It is a lovely house,’ Lucy agreed, ‘especially with the garden. But I’ll want to redecorate it. And I’ll definitely want an espresso-maker in the kitchen,’ she added teasingly.
‘The decorating I do not have a problem with,’ Marcus returned dryly. ‘The espresso machine might require some in-depth discussion and a compromise. Perhaps even some compensation. But I like the idea of us looking for a house in the country,’ he continued.
‘Mmm, I’d like that too. Though I’ll want to continue to work, Marcus.’
‘Of course. So shall I,’ he agreed drolly, before looking at his watch and telling her, ‘But remember, since we have been having sex without contraception, you could already be pregnant. Running a business and caring for a new baby wouldn’t be easy. Look, it’s six o’clock now and I need a shower. Why don’t I go to my own suite, order dinner for eight, have a shower, get changed, make a couple of phone calls and then meet you outside on the terrace at, say, seven-thirty?’
‘Perfect,’ Lucy told him, although she was disappointed when he walked over to the communicating door, opened it and walked through it without kissing her before he left.
She would have a shower herself, she decided. Then a small smile curled her mouth as she glanced towards the bath. The thought of enjoying a long lazy soak was very tempting, especially with her memories of the erotic pleasure it had led to later.
She hadn’t brought any ‘occasion’-type clothes with her, which was another reason to prefer having dinner on their own terrace.
She reached for the telephone and pressed the numbers for Room Service, so that she could order some coffee, then closed the shutters and pulled out the folding door that enabled her to close off the shower and bathroom area from the rest of the bedroom. Being surprised in the bath by Marcus was one thing; having one of the waiters walk in whilst she was in the shower was something else again—and something that she most definitely did not want to happen.
It didn’t take her long to shower. She loved the luxury of thick, fluffy and constantly replenished hotel towels and bathrobes, she reflected, as she dried herself and then smoothed her body with delicious-smelling lotion before pulling on her robe and folding back the sliding doors.
Her coffee had arrived, and she went over to the occasional table to pour it, pausing with a small frown when she saw the dark green, gold-embossed gift-wrapped box lying on the table next to the coffee tray, beside the complimentary hand-made chocolates provided by the hotel. She recognised the name embossed on the ribbon immediately. It was the name of the jewellers they had been in that afternoon.
This hadn’t been provided by the hotel, Lucy reflected, as she picked up the box and started to unwrap it. And it was too large to contain her earrings. Her suspicions turned to certainty when she removed the wrapping paper and opened it to find inside the bangle they had been shown in the shop.
Marcus had bought it for her? As well as the earrings? He really was spoiling her. Materially, yes, he was spoiling her. But she would much rather have been spoiled by his love.
In the end they decided that they might as well stay in their robes for dinner. There was no one to see them, after all, and besides, it added a special intimacy to their evening. Lucy looked down at the bangle she was now wearing. The full moon was bathing the terrace in its cool sharp light. Lucy picked up one of her prawns and dipped it in mayonnaise, licking her fingers after she had finished eating it, and then smiling.
‘What’s the smile for?’ Marcus asked.
‘I was just thinking about that scene in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones—you know, the sex and food one…’
‘Oh, yes? Is that a hint?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Certainly not,’ she retorted self-consciously, but when he stood up and started to walk very purposefully towards her, her heart did a backflip in giddy excitement and anticipation.
But when he stopped in front of her it wasn’t to take her in his arms, as she had been hoping. Instead he produced the small box that contained her earrings.
‘I should have given you these.’
He sounded so abrupt and cold that Lucy frowned. He might have said that he wanted to marry her, but he certainly wasn’t behaving as though he did.
‘You shouldn’t have got me this as well,’ she told him, touching her bangle. ‘The earrings are more than enough.’ As she spoke she reached for the box, but to her surprise Marcus shook his head and reached for her hand, pulling her firmly to her feet.
She had to hold her breath as he carefully inserted the earrings into her earlobes. Not because she was afraid he might be too rough, but because she was afraid that she might betray to him just how she felt about him. The sensation of his warm breath on her bare skin was so sensuously erotic that it made her whole body melt with longing for him. She knew that she was trembling inside with the intensity of her feelings, and that very soon she would be trembling outwardly as well.
The earrings were in place, and, had he loved her, this surely should have been the moment when Marcus bent his head and kissed her—a truly special and intimate moment they would both remember for ever—but instead he was moving away from her.
And then, so suddenly, so shockingly that her whole body thrilled erotically, he came back to her, pushing the robe off her shoulders with hard knowing hands that kept her arms straight so that it could fall away completely, while he kissed her so fiercely that she could feel the heavy, erratic thud of his heartbeat as though it were throbbing inside her
own chest.
The only sound to break the silence was the acceleration of their combined breathing, and then, as abruptly as he had taken hold of her, Marcus released her mouth and began to caress her eagerly responsive flesh.
Moonlight celebrated the beauty of her naked body. The terrace was private enough for Lucy to know that they could not be overlooked, and there was something gloriously erotic and exciting about standing naked in the moonlight as Marcus caressed her skin with delicate fingertips, brushing his lips against her throat.
‘You’re wet,’ Marcus murmured thickly as his fingers dipped into her sex.
‘You made me like that,’ Lucy answered him shakily. After all, it was true.
Marcus looked at the night-dark peaks of her nipples and then bent his head to suckle erotically on one of them, whilst his fingers stroked deeper and more firmly. Still caressing her, he arched Lucy back against his arm so that her whole body was offered up to him.
He could feel her moving urgently against him as her desire quickened.
‘Marcus,’ Lucy moaned, ‘I think I’m going to come…’
‘Good,’ he told her thickly, as he lifted his mouth from her breast to her lips. ‘I want you to.’
‘I want you inside me,’ Lucy begged.
‘Later. Don’t talk now,’ he told her. ‘Just enjoy.’
Don’t talk. Lucy closed her eyes and gasped as her body tightened and pleasure began to shudder through her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘MARCUS, are you sure we’re doing the right thing?’
They had just returned from visiting her parents, who were overjoyed about the fact that they were to marry, and yet despite the delight with which everyone had greeted the news of their engagement, since they had returned to London Lucy had begun to be gripped by an increasingly intense feeling of sadness and foreboding.
Her vision was clouded with emotional tears as the October sunshine shone in through the windows of the pretty breakfast room overlooking Marcus’s garden and bounced off the facets of her engagement ring. She had fallen in love with the simple rectangular diamond with its emerald cut facets the moment she had seen it, and when Marcus had picked it up and said quietly, ‘I rather like this one, but of course it must be your choice,’ she had been so thrilled she had almost cried with happiness. She had been happy—then!
In Majorca, swept away on a tide of sex and fantasy, she had felt as though anything was possible—even Marcus coming to love her—but now, back in London, certain realities were refusing to go away.
‘What exactly do you mean?’ Marcus demanded. He was frowning at her with that familiar blend of impatience and irritation that always cramped her stomach and squeezed her heart with pain. ‘I should have thought from the response we’ve had from our families to the news of our impending marriage that it is obvious that we are very much doing the right thing.’ He stood up and strode to the window, and Lucy gripped her mug of coffee with tense fingers. It was clear that he didn’t want to continue the discussion, but she needed to. She needed…She needed his love, she admitted helplessly. And in the absence of that she needed some kind of acknowledgement of her own fears, and his reassurance that there was nothing for her to fear. She needed hope, and the belief that he could grow to love her. But she couldn’t tell him any of those things, she admitted painfully, because she knew that he wouldn’t understand her needs and that he would be irritated by them.
‘Our families assume that…that we care about one another,’ she told him carefully instead. ‘They don’t know the truth. And I don’t know if a…a relationship—a marriage—without love can survive.’
‘Love?’ Marcus shook his head, his expression darkening. ‘Why is everyone so obsessed by this delusion that what they call love is something of any value? It isn’t,’ he told her harshly. ‘You should know that. After all, you married Blayne because you loved him, and look where that got you.
‘You and I have the kind of practical reasons for marrying one another that are far more important than love. I need and want a wife who understands my way of life and who shares my desire for children—I certainly do not want to be the first Carring not to produce an heir or heiress. Sexually, as we have both already shown, we are compatible. You want children, and you are not the kind of woman who would want them outside a committed relationship. You married once for so-called love, Lucy. I should have thought you were intelligent enough to recognise that that was a mistake, and not want to repeat it.’
‘But what if one day you fall in love with someone else, Marcus?’
‘Fall in love?’ He looked at her as though she had suggested he murder his own mother. ‘Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve been saying? So far as I am concerned sexual love is merely a cloak to cover juvenile and selfish—self-obsessed!—emotional folly, allied to lust. My father fell in love, or so he claimed, when he left my mother. He abandoned her and us because of that love, and if it hadn’t been for the accident that killed him he would have destroyed the bank as well as my mother’s happiness. I saw then what love was, and I swore that I would never ever allow myself to indulge in such a thing.’
But you were six years old! Lucy wanted to protest. But wisely she refrained from doing so. She had had no idea that Marcus held such strong and bitter views about love, or that he was so antagonistic toward it.
Her coffee had gone cold, but she still kept her hands wrapped around her mug, as though she was trying to seek warmth and comfort from it.
‘What is it?’ he demanded when he looked at her and saw the despair in her eyes.
She shook her head. ‘I…I’m not sure we should get married, Marcus.’
‘It’s too late for second thoughts now,’ he told her sharply. ‘For one thing your mother is busily planning the wedding, and for another…’ He paused and then reminded her, ‘Let’s not forget that you could already be carrying my child. We are getting married, Lucy,’ he reinforced calmly. ‘And nothing is going to change that.’
Just as nothing was going to change the way he felt about love, or his antagonism towards it, Lucy recognised with despair. How could she have deceived herself into believing that he would grow to love her? Marcus would never love her. Marcus didn’t want to love her. He didn’t want to love anyone.
‘I want to talk to you about Prêt a Party,’ he continued briskly.
Lucy tensed. She didn’t want to talk to Marcus about her business. She had had a letter from Andrew Walker, reiterating that he didn’t want her to discuss their meeting with anyone and explaining that he was still out of the country on business and would be in touch with her on his return. Of course there should be no secrets between husband and wife, but she had given her word and she had no intention of breaking it—and besides…Nick’s betrayal of her trust had left a painful scar. She knew that Marcus would never cheat her financially, but her growing insecurity about the future of their marriage made her want to hold on tightly to the security of Prêt a Party. If at some future date Marcus chose to decide that their marriage wasn’t working with the clockwork efficiency that he had decided that it should, she might need her business—not just to support herself financially, but to validate her as a person.
‘I’ve decided that the simplest way to deal with the current situation would be for me to inject enough capital into the business to clear its debts,’ he said.
‘No! No—I don’t want you to do that.’
Lucy could see that her outburst had surprised him.
‘Why not? Less than two months ago you begged me to let you utilise what was left of your trust fund to put into the company.’
‘That was different,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘That was my money, not yours. And besides…’ She bit her lip. She couldn’t tell him about Andrew Walker—not yet—and even if she did she suspected that he would not understand why she felt able to accept both financial assistance and financial involvement from someone else, but not from him. Having one husband involved in her busines
s and virtually destroying it, and her, had taught her a harsh lesson. It wasn’t one she wanted to repeat.
Marcus frowned as he looked at her. It was obvious to him that Lucy was having second thoughts about their marriage. Was it because, despite all that he had done to her, she still loved Nick Blayne? And why was she rejecting his offer to pay off Prêt a Party’s debts?
‘Lucy…’
She stopped him fiercely. ‘Prêt a Party is my responsibility, Marcus, and I want to keep it that way.’
Her responsibility and her salvation, perhaps, should he ever decide to end their marriage.
A feeling of intense inner aloneness filled her. Sometimes it seemed as though her whole emotional life involved keeping painful secrets she could not share with anyone else. She badly wanted to cry, but of course she must not do so. Her two best friends had been so lucky, finding men who were their soul mates and true partners—men with whom they could share every part of their lives and themselves, from their most mundane thoughts to those that were most sacred and private to them. But not her. She never had and now would never be able to share her innermost longings and feelings with anyone.
She gave a small shiver. Marriage to Marcus would mean closing the door on the deepest of her feelings and shutting them away for ever. But she knew she simply wasn’t strong enough to let him walk away from her and find someone else. The pain would simply be too much for her to bear. And, as Marcus himself kept reminding her, it could already be too late for her to back out of their coming marriage. She might already have conceived.
Lucy looked at her watch. Marcus would be in Edinburgh by now. He had said that he would only be away for a couple of days, but already she was missing him.
Tonight was the launch of the new football boot—the last of Prêt a Party’s major events. She was pleased with the response she had received to the invitations she had sent out, and even Dorland was going to be there. Although corporate events, no matter how lavish, were not really his style.