by Penny Jordan
So James wasn’t a Deveril! Jenna’s head was whirling. All of a sudden she remembered her vivid dream and her seducer’s shocking revelation that he was not his father’s son, merely his mother’s. But she had believed that to be just the imaginings of her dream…She abruptly brought herself back to the present. Why, she wondered, had James been so furious when she had commented on his Deveril blood? And why, when his connection with the family was so vague, was he so determined to possess the old Hall?
In view of his recent disclosures she felt that the latter question was one she could quite reasonably put to him.
He looked at her briefly before replying, his mouth grim. ‘Let us just say that I do have my reasons—more valid and justifiable than yours, I suspect,’ he added, his glance flicking dispassionately over her half-averted face.
In other words, he wasn’t going to tell her, Jenna thought wryly. Well, it was scarcely any of her business, but she was still curious to know. You know what curiosity did to the cat, she reminded herself, and James Allingham did not strike her as a man who would deal lightly with anyone trying to pry into his personal life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JAMES didn’t speak again until he turned off the main road and into a private entrance leading to an underground car park. Sensing her tension he said easily, ‘I thought you might care to look over the sketches and other documents while the layout of the Hall is still fresh in your mind.’
It was true that she did want to see the papers—after all, wasn’t that the whole purpose in agreeing to allow him to accompany her today? Stop being so stupid, she told herself, as he stopped the car. All right, so he had kissed her once, in anger, as a form of punishment and not an expression of desire. It was hardly likely to happen again. Despite the taunts she had thrown at him, she knew quite well that James was not a man who would ever need to go short of feminine companionship—and certainly never to the extent that he would need to force himself on any woman. She might not like him herself, might even have to admit to a faint trace of fear of him, but that didn’t totally obliterate her common sense, which told her quite plainly that James was no Charles Deveril.
‘Stiff?’
He got out of the car and opened her door for her, leaning across her to release her seat-belt. The gesture was no more than common politeness on his part, she suspected, because he performed the small service easily and quickly, but she was all too conscious of the bulk and maleness of him as he leaned across her, his body blocking out both light and air. She could see the conformation of the muscles in his arms as he released the seat-belt catch, and the beginnings of his beard along his jaw.
As he moved away from her his arm brushed against her breasts. Instantly she recoiled, her pupils dilating in shocked recognition of the unexpected contact.
‘Are you all right?’ He was frowning as he put out a hand to help her from the car. No doubt he wasn’t used to her sex withdrawing from his touch, Jenna thought acidly, ignoring his hand and determinedly stepping past him.
‘I’m fine.’ She gave him a brilliant, but totally false, smile as he locked the car and led the way to a small private lift.
The atmosphere inside it to Jenna was almost claustrophobic. She hated the enforced intimacy of having to be so close to him, and it brought back all the old nighttime terrors she had suffered after Rachel’s death.
Often in those early days she had dreamed of her sister…dreamed she heard her screams and cries for help, but that in going to her aid was attacked herself, smothering in a blanket of fear and revulsion as Charles Deveril turned from Rachel to her. Over the years those dreams had faded, but they had left their scars, and now, enclosed in the small space with James, Jenna was vividly reminded of them.
She could feel the tension building up inside her, and for one crazy moment was tempted to throw herself at the closed door and hammer it open. As she fought to get control of herself the lift stopped and the doors opened. She gulped in air, her body bathed in perspiration.
‘Are you okay?’
There was concern and puzzlement in James’s eyes as he touched her elbow. ‘You almost look as though you’re about to faint.’
‘I’m fine,’ she managed a tight smile, spoiling her impression of total control as she jerked nervously away from him. ‘I just don’t like lifts,’ she lied.
His apartment surprised her. As she followed him inside the drawing-room and saw the elegant shape of the windows, she realised it was in one of the Regency terraces fronting on to the park. Beyond the window she could see a wrought-iron balcony, and, more surprising still, the drawing-room was furnished with the comfortable shabbiness that spoke of a home rather than the living quarters of a bachelor.
A richly hued nineteenth-century Persian carpet covered the floor and Jenna bent instinctively to touch the silky fibres. Bookcases flanked an ornate marble fireplace. She studied the room slowly, admiring the elegant, inlaid-marquetry Regency card table. The room was quite sparsely furnished, but all the pieces apart from the huge leather chesterfield were antiques.
When she eventually remembered the purpose of her visit she turned and looked at her host, and found that he was studying her with raised eyebrows.
‘Does it pass the expert’s tests?’ he mocked lightly.
‘It’s very comfortable and homely.’ She couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of her voice, but if he recognised it he was not going to comment.
‘The antiques and the carpet came from the house I inherited from my grandfather on St Justine—it’s one of the Virgin Islands,’ he added.
‘Is that where you’re developing the new holiday complex?’
His eyebrows lifted again, and Jenna defended herself quickly. ‘I read about it in the papers.’
She was annoyed with herself for betraying that she knew anything about him. He was vain enough to think now that she was actually interested in him.
‘Yes, it is. The development’s coming along quite nicely. I’m due to go out there soon to check up on progress.’ He frowned. ‘It’s going to be quite a problem, I can’t take Sarah with me, and I’m not too happy about leaving her here alone. A nurse, no matter how skilled and well-trained, is no substitute for a family. It’s at times like these that I regret our mutual lack of relatives.’
‘Perhaps you should get married,’ Jenna told him idly. ‘That way you could leave her in the care of your wife.’
She had intended the comment as a mild form of mockery, but to her surprise, his expression became extremely thoughtful.
‘The papers,’ she reminded him hastily. She wanted to get away from him and the warm ambience of his flat that reminded her all too uncomfortably of the lack of male companionship in her own life.
‘Yes. I’ll get them for you, and you can browse through them while I make us some coffee. Can I offer you anything to eat?’
Jenna wasn’t particularly hungry and she shook her head, following him over to a beautiful Sheraton lady’s writing desk.
‘This belonged to the wife of the man in your portrait,’ he told her, opening it and removing a folder.
‘These are photocopies of the originals, but I think you’ll find them interesting. Do you have any plans for what you’re going to do to the old Hall?’
This was ground on which she felt relatively safe, and Jenna explained to him that she wanted all her restoration work to be as authentic as possible. ‘I want to be able to use the house as a display-case for our work.’ She broke off, laughing rather self-consciously. ‘I’m afraid I tend to get rather carried away when I’m talking about my work!’ She made a small face. ‘I must be boring you.’
‘Not at all. It makes quite a change to get more than half a dozen reluctant words from you. The Hall means an awful lot to you, doesn’t it?’ he asked quietly.
When she would have denied it, he added, ‘Listening to you then I could hear it in your voice, see it in your face. You look quite different when you’re animated…softer…younger. It�
�s very intriguing, a woman of hidden passions…’
Jenna tensed and looked away from him, picking up the folder. For a moment she had almost felt relaxed, but he had spoiled it all by that blatantly sexist remark.
‘I’ll go and make the coffee.’
She opened the folder and started to look through it, and was soon lost in its contents. There were photocopied extracts from the diary of the granddaughter of the man in her portrait, fine, delicate sketches she had made from her grandfather’s memories of his English home. It seemed that he had talked to her about it a great deal in his last years and Jenna was thrilled and amazed by the accuracy of his memory. The drawings and sketches of the rooms were remarkably accurate when she thought that the artist had never seen them, and she read on, excited by references to particular pieces of furniture and colours.
The French drawing-room, as the diary called it, had been decorated in that shade between blue and green so popular during the Regency. The ceiling had been painted in what Jenna suspected from the description in the diary had been an allegorical theme in a trompe l’oeil effect. She had wondered if this might be the case from her knowledge of the period, but it was intensely exciting to see down on paper a description of the original painting. Judging from what she read, Jenna suspected that the ceiling had been decorated with the astrological signs of the family—a popular theme at the time—combined with the artist’s impression of the Deveril crest. She was very familiar with this type of work and knew a brilliant young artist who was making a name for himself in restoration and reproduction work in the field.
As for the green silk hung on the wall panels and used to cover the chairs and Egyptian sofa, that would have to come from a firm who specialised in reproducing traditional patterns and dyes.
The original carpet would probably have been to a design specified by Robert Adam, almost certainly with a background of the same green as the silk, bordered in that subtle browny-pink he had been so fond of using, and decorated with shell and other motifs to match the ceiling in a soft cream. Lost in mentally viewing the room as it had once been and would be again she jumped when she heard James’s voice.
He was holding a mug of coffee which he handed to her. ‘Any good?’ He looked at the papers spread out on the desk in front of her.
‘Marvellous.’ She was far too excited to dissemble. Her cheeks glowed with it, her eyes sparkling a deep and clear green. ‘It’s fascinating how she managed to reproduce the rooms so accurately without seeing them.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘Would it be possible for me to have copies of these papers?’
There was no reason on earth why he should help her. After all, hadn’t he already made it clear that he resented her ownership of the Hall and that he intended to take it from her? The only reason she was being allowed to see these papers now was because of the trade-off they had agreed.
‘I don’t see why not.’ His mouth curled in a teasing smile. ‘At a price, of course.’
Instantly her excitement dimmed, washed out by the apprehension crawling along her spine. She stood up, moving jerkily, tensing as he reached out an arm to steady her. Instinctively she jerked back from him, her eyes dilating as fear swamped her. He was standing far too close to her—she could hardly breathe. She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself, and immediately a vision of the man in the portrait filled the darkness—not looking as he did in the portrait, but as he had in her dream: the lawn shirt open to the waist, the blue eyes dark with a mixture of anger and desire. Jenna shuddered deeply forcing her eyes open.
‘My God, you are frightened of me, aren’t you?’ She heard James mutter disbelievingly. ‘What ..?’ He reached out to touch her arm and a totally uncontrollable sense of oppression and terror blotted out reason completely. She heard herself scream and then she was falling into an endless black void, terrorised by some nightmare fear she could not subdue.
Consciousness returned slowly. She was aware of having fainted and now of lying on something firm and comfortable, of a sense of weakness, but most overpoweringly of all she was left with a vivid memory of those seconds before she had fainted: of seeing in her mind’s eye the face and figure of the man she had dreamed of as a lover, suddenly transferred to the man who had been standing opposite. It had been a shatteringly unnerving sensation, but one she was over now. She struggled to sit up, opening her eyes, to discover James crouching down beside her, his forehead creased in a frown.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded bitingly. ‘You reacted to me then as though you feared I was about to rape you.’
The strong note of distaste in his voice warned her that she wasn’t going to escape without explanation. She could hardly tell him the truth—Jenna felt her skin grow hot just at the mere thought of telling anyone about that intensely disturbing dream.
Thinking quickly she went instinctively into the attack. ‘It would hardly be surprising if I did after the way you…kissed me the other night.’
His eyes locked cynically on hers. ‘Possibly, if you were an adolescent virgin on the verge of womanhood I might just buy that, but you’re not…You’re an adult woman with a teenage daughter.’
‘And because of that I can be mauled and abused as your sex pleases, is that it?’ Jenna flung at him, bitterly furious.
‘I kissed you because it was either that or hit you,’ James told her bluntly. ‘And you know it. It was a ploy your sex has been known to use when they want a man’s attention,’ he told her mockingly, watching her shocked reaction with eyes that comprehended the tiny movement of her throat as she registered her revulsion. ‘All right, I acquit you of that!’
Jenna managed to regain control of herself sufficiently to say rustily, ‘Well, thanks very much…’
Just that effort was enough to drain her of energy and she let her head fall back on to the cushions of the leather chesterfield, closing her eyes for a moment.
She heard James’s soft laugh, and sensed that he had moved, but she was too exhausted to open her eyes until she felt his hand on her neck.
As his fingers slid into her hair, pinning her head, her eyes flew open.
‘If it was my kiss that frightened you so much, perhaps I’d better do something about it.’
He was going to kiss her and there was nothing she could do about it. Her body tensed as he bent his head, her eyes staring blankly into his, her mouth compressed in rigid rejection of his intent. His breath sighed lightly against her skin, sensitising the tiny delicate hairs and making her shiver. His mouth touched her eyes forcing her to blink and then close them. His body wasn’t touching hers in any way at all, and yet she was acutely conscious of him. She wanted to raise her hands to push him away but she was frightened of the contact with his maleness.
His mouth touched hers, lightly, delicately, caressing the corners. His hand released its hold of her head and slid round to cup her jaw. Apprehension crawled along her spine as the soft pad of his thumb slowly caressed her bottom lip. Her mouth felt dry. She wanted to open it and touch her lips with her tongue. She fought the impulse shuddering with shock as she felt the warmth of James’s mouth caressing her own. His teeth tugged gently on her bottom lip and then his tongue ran lightly over its swelling contours, softly probing for entrance.
Another deep shudder racked her and Jenna knew she could not endure any more, raising her palms to his chest she pushed hard, opening her mouth to say fiercely, ‘No!’
The sound was silenced beneath the smothering heat of James’s kiss. His tongue stroked and cajoled her own, the shock of the unexpected intimacy of what he was doing to her causing the strength to drain out of her arms as they dropped from his chest. Against her mouth, James made a softly sensual murmur of protest. His fingers grasped her wrist and then slid to entwine with hers, lifting her palm back to his body, and holding it there. The pressure of his mouth on hers was slowly increasing, deepening.
In stunned shock she felt him move her hand, so that it was resting against bare skin instead of
his shirt front. His body felt hot, alien and intensely masculine. She wanted to draw away from him and yet the movement of his mouth against her own was inducing a mind-drugging languor that felt like falling into warm cotton wool. She wanted to protest, to resist, but she felt unable to drag her mouth away from his.
When she tried his teeth nipped sharply at her skin, bruising her mouth as he refused to let her go. Fear clawed at her stomach and suddenly she was trembling wildly, reality sliding into fantasy so that it was not James who held and kissed her but that other——Fear and panic mingled sickeningly inside her, and then totally unexpectedly she was free. She blinked in dazed stupefaction as James drew away from her, conscious of a strange ringing in her ears.
‘Some people choose the damnedest times to phone,’ James commented wryly standing up. He was looking at her in a way that disturbed her, and she shivered, wondering if he had known that she was so lost in his kiss that she hadn’t even heard the phone.
As he went to answer it reality came back. If she stayed now he might well take it that she was tacitly inviting him to make love to her. Shivering, she got up; he had his back to her. She found her bag and headed for the door, closing it softly behind her. As she ran through the hall and out to the lift she prayed that he would not come after her. By luck she managed to find a cruising taxi right outside the apartment. Clambering into it she gave the driver her address.
When she eventually got home she was still shaking. What had possessed her, she wondered as she unlocked her front door. Why had she allowed James to kiss her, to touch her at all? As she stepped inside, the phone rang. She didn’t answer it and when it stopped she took the receiver off the hook. In all probability James would not ring her; she had made her position plain enough by leaving, but she was not taking any chances. James did not really desire her, she knew that…but something about him disturbed her, and she didn’t as yet know what it was.