by Penny Jordan
Lucy felt Marcus’s hands tugging at her clothes whilst she stood motionless and numb with despair.
She heard the sound of fabric tearing as he wrenched a button from its fastening, saw the dark burn of colour staining his skin as his hands gripped the soft flesh of her bare arms.
‘Have you been to bed with him since we’ve been married, Lucy? Have you?’
Please, God, let her say no.
‘No.’ At least there she could be honest.
‘Not yet? But you intend to? Is that it?’ Why was he torturing himself like this?
Not ever. Never. Ever again. Not with anyone if it can’t be with you, my dearest, only love. ‘Nick…’
‘Stop it. I don’t want to hear his name,’ Marcus told her thickly, crushing his mouth over hers to silence the words he did not want to hear in the only way he could.
Lucy trembled—not with cold, and not with fear either, she recognised. Even though it would have been very easy to be afraid of Marcus in this mood.
But how could she fear what she longed for so much? How could she fear what she craved so desperately? One last time. One last memory. One last sip from the chalice of bittersweet desire.
She could feel the edge of the bed behind her, she could feel, too, Marcus pushing her down against it, his removal of her remaining clothes and his own almost brutally efficient.
‘I can make you want me, Lucy,’ he warned her. ‘And I shall do so.’
‘No.’
Yes. Yes, Marcus, do it…do it now. Take me now. I want you.
He had never taken her like this before, in an angry passion that burned and seared, but she was still responding to him. Her flesh, her emotions. Her whole self was still welcoming and wanting him, ignoring his dark rage, discarding it like the shell of something sweetly craved, focusing instead on what lay within it, on what she wanted within it, taking her, transforming her, holding her in thrall to it as her body held him in thrall to her, if only for those few precious seconds out of time.
‘No!’ The raw denial was dragged from his lungs to burst between the sounds of their breathing, the bed moving.
What the hell was he doing? Sweat beaded Marcus’s forehead as he fought against the hot tide of his own rage, pushing it back heartbeat by heartbeat, as he superimposed over his savage image of Lucy with Nick Blayne a softer, gentler image of just Lucy herself.
He must not—would not give way to his furious bitter pain.
‘Yes!’
She was not going to let him go now. Not when he had brought her so close. Not when, within a heartbeat, she could take the base metal of his anger and, like some fabled alchemist, turn it into the pure gold of shared need and equally shared fulfilment. Lucy clung to him and refused to let him go, holding him with her will and her muscles, mentally and physically, as he tried to withdraw from her, moving with him, against him, on to him, slowly and rhythmically, creating a physical tune that soothed her aching need and stoked the sweet hot fires of his desire as well as her own. In this she would have her way—and she would have him. For now if not for ever, Lucy knew, as she tightened her muscles around him and drew from him the response she needed him to give.
Marcus watched Lucy, broodingly aware of how thin and fragile she looked, her face too fine-drawn and her neck so slender it looked almost too delicate to support the drooping weight of her head.
He had reiterated to her that he would not divorce her, and he had demanded from her too a commitment not to say anything about her desire to end their marriage to any members of their families over Christmas.
‘Have you forgotten that there could be a child?’ he had demanded harshly
‘There won’t be,’ Lucy had told him. But she wasn’t sure if that was true. They had had sex since her last period after all.
Marcus had seen the tears bleeding from her eyes then, and he had seen them there again on Christmas Eve, when they had gone to Midnight Mass with her parents and his mother.
On Christmas Day they had joined Lucy’s family for lunch, and so had his mother, Lucy’s great-aunt, and his sister Beatrice and her family. Lucy had barely spoken or eaten, and Marcus had seen the surreptitious looks all the other women had given her, obviously sharing his own knowledge that she was too thin and too sad to be a happily married new bride.
The Christmas presents they had bought one another still lay beneath the tree unopened. He had declared that it was pointless for them to open them, causing Lucy to run out of the room in tears.
He wanted so desperately to keep her with him; to take her by the hand and make her look into the future; to see how happy they could be if only she would accept his love and reject Blayne.
He loved her so damn much.
Did he? Surely if he loved her, really loved her, then happiness, her desires, her tears, should matter more to him than his own?
They did, he insisted stubbornly. That was why…
That was why he was trying to force her to stay with him, was it? That was the measure of his love for her, was it?
Blayne would destroy her. He would hurt her again and again; he was just using her…
And he hadn’t hurt her? He hadn’t used her? He hadn’t almost taken her by force physically and he wasn’t now trying to do so emotionally?
Lucy looked at Marcus.
‘We ought to leave. You know what Great-Aunt Alice is like.’
They were due to attend her great-aunt’s traditional Boxing Day family get-together.
Lucy was wearing a soft velvet dress in a mossy green. It had lace cuffs and she was wearing a little lacy cardigan thing embroidered with pink rosebuds over it, Marcus noticed.
She looked wonderful—and heartbreakingly fragile.
‘Lucy?’
He saw the apprehension in her eyes as she looked at him and he hated himself. ‘I’ve been thinking…’
He was going to say that he wanted them to try again, that he wanted their marriage to continue, that she meant so much to him he could not give her up. Bittersweet tears filled Lucy’s eyes. If only she could go to him and tell him how much those words meant…
Marcus took a deep breath. He had made up his mind and he wasn’t going to falter now. He had to prove his love to himself and to Lucy by putting her needs first, by accepting that she must have free choice.
‘You’re right. It’s pointless allowing our marriage to continue. As soon as we get into the New Year I’ll instruct my solicitor to start divorce proceedings…’
Because I love you enough to let you go. Because that’s what love is. It’s more than a person’s own feelings—it’s putting the one they love first. And I do love you, my Lucy. So very, very much.
He was going to divorce her!
Lucy’s stomach churned and she felt acutely sick.
But this was what she wanted.
No, not what she wanted. This was what she had to have in order to protect him.
‘Lucy, you’re shivering.’
‘I’m cold,’ she answered her mother truthfully.
‘Cold? But it’s lovely and warm in here. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
I’m dying inside and I will never, ever be all right again. Marcus is leaving me—for ever.
‘Lucy!’ Lucy managed to force a smile as Johnny came swaggering over, bringing a pretty, shy-looking girl with him.
‘Meet Tia. Tia—this is my cousin, Lucy. Want some champagne, Lucy?’ he offered, showing her the bottle he was holding.
Lucy shuddered sickly. She couldn’t even drink coffee any more, she felt so unwell, never mind champagne. And besides, champagne reminded her of that first night she had spent with Marcus.
‘Have you heard about Andrew Walker being the mastermind behind some gang trafficking in immigrant workers?’ Johnny asked, continuing blithely without waiting for her to reply, ‘Apparently the police have been watching him for months, and now they’ve got the whole gang. They were involved in all sorts of dodgy scams—money lau
ndering, prostitution, extortion. I’d no idea he was involved in that kind of thing. Dessie Arlington told me. His father’s a barrister, and he was saying that the likelihood is that he’ll probably end up spending the rest of his life in prison, along with the rest of the gang—I say, Lucy? Lucy!’
It was Marcus who caught her just before she hit the floor. Marcus too who insisted tersely that nothing was wrong, she just hadn’t been feeling very well lately. But Lucy wasn’t aware of that because she was still in a dead faint.
When she came round, several seconds later, she was lying on her great-aunt’s parquet floor with Marcus crouched down beside her.
‘It’s all right, Lucy. You fainted, that’s all.’
‘Marcus, I feel sick,’ she managed to whisper to him. ‘Please don’t leave me.’
An hour later she was tucked up in one of her great-aunt’s spare beds, in a large chilly bedroom, while her own mother, Marcus’s mother and Beatrice all vied with one another to say excitedly that they had had their suspicions but of course hadn’t wanted to say so.
Lucy lay motionless in the cold bed, trying to come to terms with what her great-aunt’s doctor, summoned from his house around the corner, had just told her.
A baby. She was having Marcus’s baby. Why hadn’t she guessed?
‘Of course I was just the same,’ Lucy heard her mother pronouncing. ‘Just the same with both Lucy and Piers. So I had already guessed.’
‘Well, I felt sure the moment I saw Lucy at Midnight Mass,’ Marcus’s mother insisted, not to be outdone. ‘She had that unmistakable look about her.’
Lucy closed her eyes and let the tears seep out from under her eyelids. She felt so tired, so shocked…and Johnny’s comment about Andrew Walker had—
Andrew Walker!
She struggled to sit up.
‘Lucy, dear, do lie down.’
‘Where’s Marcus?’ she demanded.
‘Dr Holland said that you were to have a rest and that you must eat a little more.
‘A good nourishing soup is what she needs.’
‘Chicken broth.’
‘Oh, yes. Nanny always used to say that chicken broth cured anything.’
Miserably, Lucy closed her eyes and let sleep claim her. The next time she woke up Marcus was seated beside the bed.
‘Oh, Marcus…’
More tears. It must be her hormones. Marcus was holding one of her hands with both of his own.
‘Marcus, we’re going to have a baby.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Still more tears.
‘How do you feel about it?’ he asked her.
Lucy looked at him.
‘I…I’m glad that I’m having your baby. How do you feel about it?’
‘I feel that I want to take you in my arms and hold you there for ever,’ he told her simply. ‘I love you.’
‘Marcus!’ Lucy stared at him in disbelief. Surely she must be imagining she had just heard him say those words?
‘You love me?’ she said shakily. ‘But…’
‘Yes, I love you, Lucy. Even if I’ve been too much of a fool to recognise what was happening to me, never mind admit it. I love you so much. I want to beg you to let me show you how much. I know you’d rather be with Blayne—’
‘No! Never!’ Lucy interrupted emphatically. ‘I still can’t believe that you love me, Marcus. I knew you wanted me in bed…’ Her face suddenly turned pink. ‘Nick might have said that I was sexless and boring because I was a virgin, but you made me feel like a woman, Marcus.’
She looked longingly at him, and then said huskily, ‘Oh, Marcus, I don’t want to divorce you—and I certainly don’t want to be with Nick.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘It gave me such a shock when I saw him at the airport. I hoped that he hadn’t seen me, but then he came over and he said—’ She broke off and bit her lip.
‘I’m glad it’s just you here with me,’ she told him. ‘I felt so tired when our mothers and Beatrice were here. They all said that they had guessed—but I hadn’t. I thought I felt so sick all the time because…’
‘Because of Andrew Walker?’ Marcus prompted her.
‘Oh, Marcus! I haven’t told you…I haven’t explained…’
‘It’s all right, Lucy. I know what’s been going on. At least, I think I do,’ he told her gently. ‘I’ve just been having a long talk with your cousin Johnny, and he told me about how Walker asked him to introduce you to him, and how he wanted to invest in Prêt a Party.’
‘Is he really going to go to prison for a long time?’
‘A very long time, according to George. It seems that the authorities have known what he’s been up to for a while, but they’ve had to wait to get enough information together to convict him and the other members of the gang.’
‘George? What does he know about it? I thought he was a civil servant.’
‘He is—he’s a mandarin in the Home Office. That’s the department responsible for granting work visas and immigration documents,’ he added dryly.
Lucy gave him an old-fashioned look.
‘I do know that. I’m not dumb. Marcus, I’ve been so scared. Andrew Walker wanted Prêt a Party so that he could use it to launder money and give work to the illegal immigrants he was bringing into the country. Nick was involved as well…’ Lucy shuddered.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Was it because you wanted to protect Blayne?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘I don’t care what happens to Nick,’ she told him, bluntly and truthfully. ‘I should never have married him, Marcus. I only did because…’
‘Because what?’
‘Because I loved you so much and you didn’t want me, and I was scared that I might do something silly, like burst into your office and beg you to make love to me. I thought that if I had a husband it would make me start behaving like an adult and not like a teenager with a silly crush. And besides, I’d felt such an idiot still being a virgin, because I didn’t want to do it with anyone else but you…Marcus?’ she whispered shakily. ‘You’re crying.’
‘Lucy, Lucy.’ He was holding her tightly, his voice muffled against her hair as he rocked her in his arms.
‘Well, you wouldn’t have liked me still being a virgin,’ she told him practically. ‘Nick didn’t. And marrying Nick didn’t work at all—it just made me want you even more. And when Nick didn’t want to have sex with me I was glad.’
‘Lucy, why didn’t you tell me about Walker?’
‘It didn’t seem important. Not at first. And then…then it was too late. I didn’t realise what he was involved in or what was going to happen until Dorland told me—and even then I just thought that once I’d told Andrew Walker I wasn’t interested in a partnership with him…But he wanted Prêt a Party, and he told me that he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone stand in his way. Not even you…especially not you.
‘He knew about Prêt a Party before Johnny told him, too. Nick had told him. When Nick saw me at the airport when we came back off honeymoon, he told me that Andrew Walker and he had sent that video. Oh, Marcus. I was so frightened.’
‘And I saw you with Blayne and I thought…’
‘I would have thought the same thing.’ Lucy tried to comfort him when she saw how angry with himself he looked.
‘I thought you’d decided that you wanted him and not me,’ Marcus told her ruefully.
‘No. Like I said, I never wanted him.’
‘And you married him because of me,’ Marcus couldn’t stop himself from saying bleakly.
‘Yes, I did,’ Lucy admitted. ‘And that was a dreadful thing for me to do, Marcus, because I was cheating on him just as he went on to cheat on me. I knew I could never love Nick the way I do you when I married him. I met Nick and he seemed to like me and I just thought…But it never worked, and that was my fault. Because I never loved him. I just married him because I didn’t want to be a nuisance to you. And then I wanted to protect you from Andrew Walker. He told me that he’d arranged for you to be mugged i
n Leeds. He said that he would kill you unless I left you and let him have a partnership in Prêt a Party…Oh, don’t, Marcus,’ Lucy protested as she saw the shine of emotion in his eyes. ‘Please don’t…’
‘Lucy, I’m the one who is supposed to protect you. Not the other way around. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, my sweet little love.’
‘Your love?’ Lucy repeated wonderingly.
‘My love—my one and only and for ever love,’ Marcus agreed tenderly. ‘And before we go any further just let me tell you one thing. Regardless of anything else—Andrew Walker, Nick Blayne, even our baby—I love you. I know that now. And I know too that I always will love you. Nothing can ever change that, and nothing will ever change that.’
‘Oh, Marcus!’
EPILOGUE
One year later.
‘SO, LET me propose a toast, to my wife, Lucy, Business Woman of the Year, mother of my son—and holder of my heart,’ Marcus added in a lower, deeper voice that only Lucy could hear as all around them everyone else raised their glasses and cheered.
‘I would never have had the courage to set up a new business if it hadn’t been for you, Marcus,’ Lucy told him lovingly.
‘Don’t underestimate yourself, Lucy. You are an extremely talented woman. Junior Prêt a Party proves that.’
‘I wonder what Andrew Walker would think if he knew how I’d used his idea,’ Lucy said mischievously. ‘It had never occurred to me before he suggested it to even think of franchising event hire, and yet really it was so obvious. And with a baby of my own, I could see that there was a real need for women to help one another organising children’s parties and christenings, and for passing on not just their expertise but also practical things, like marquees, clothes, party costumes, everything. It just makes so much sense for mothers to gather together and share the cost of everything they need for parties and to plan them together in a group. That way every child within that group gets the party they want and every mother knows she has a team of supporters she can turn to.’