Sophisticated Seduction

by Jayne Bauling

  His gaze seemed to circle her face, as if he was fascinated by her hairline, the pure curve of her cheeks and youthful flawlessness of her fine-grained skin, but for once she failed to be disconcerted by a man’s bold scrutiny, too absorbed in the sensation of his fingers stirring so warmly against the curve of one shoulder and, more disturbingly, against her thigh.

  Bridget’s lips had parted and her eyes started to droop languidly. She knew what she was feeling and yet it surprised her. She had associated desire with sparking, crackling fire, a conflagration of the senses, not with this slow, stirring, liquid heat that was making her feel almost lethargic, passive and yet responsive.

  Her breath came in shallow sighs that somehow controlled the sensation she was experiencing, and it seemed as if some part of her was maintaining that control deliberately, wanting to savour and cherish every aspect of this astonishing new feeling, and to register every minute progression of her increasing helplessness under the idle, almost indifferent touch of this man.

  She wanted his kiss and she wanted his lazily stroking hand even closer to the vulnerable fork of her body than it was at present. The supple sway of her body turning in towards his signalled these desires, and the hand she lifted to his hard chest was equally eloquent.

  Her head fell back and Nicholas bent his. Eyes closed, she waited for what was to come, and first felt the brush of his lips against the taut satiny curve of her throat, followed by their sweet sting along one side of her fragile jaw. Then Nicholas was swallowing another soft sigh of pleasure, his mouth covering hers, tongue dipping between her trembling lips in fleeting exploration, the momentary caress brief as a salute and yet sensual enough to add a tingling urgency to the meltingly honeyed sensation in the deep secret core of her being.

  It was barely a kiss, so swiftly was it over, and yet it reached down into Bridget in a way that the kisses of the two boyfriends of her teenage years had never done, her inability to enjoy honestly those boys’ clumsily selfgratifying kisses responsible for the early termination of the relationships, and for her initial uncertainty when Loris had shown an interest in her, until he had proved so restrained—for the most cynical of reasons, as it had turned out.

  Nicholas had released her and stood up while she was still lost in wonderment, and she looked up at him with a helplessness that came close to an acceptance that whatever he chose to do next would be done.

  ‘Oh, yes, I think you should definitely keep well away from me, Bridget, except that for my sister’s sake I can’t let you,’ he explained tautly, following it with a derisive laugh. ‘This just proves what I’ve suspected—that you’re not safe let loose on your own. You may have imagined you were seducing me, but I hope this has taught you that you’re the one in danger here. I could have had you in bed quite easily and you wouldn’t have had second thoughts until the deed was done, and then they’d be the regrets of real experience that I was mentioning.’

  ‘You flatter yourself!’ Bridget flared, the drowsy desire that had numbed her mind receding as she began to be angry and embarrassed. ‘I’d have remembered who you were long before—long before anything serious happened!’

  ‘I take it from that that you were pretending I was your lost love or whatever he is,’ Nicholas guessed with an edge to his voice. ‘You’d soon have discovered very differently if I’d accepted your invitation to proceed, sweetheart.’

  But Loris hadn’t entered her mind until the kiss was over and, as incapable of proper, coherent thought as she had been all the while he had been touching her, she had nevertheless been vividly aware through every moment that it was Nicholas Stirling who was making her feel—so much.

  ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ she protested candidly. ‘I meant I’d have remembered what sort of man you are—the kind who obviously just uses women, and doesn’t let it make any difference if they happen to be married, and doesn’t believe that people can have feelings that occur above the waistline, and—and everything! I’m never going to let myself be used like that; I’d never want to have anything to do with a man who does those things.’

  Nicholas was standing in front of her, very still and tense, every line of his body taut with rejection—of her impertinence, Bridget assumed, and as his next silky words confirmed.

  ‘Are you presuming to lecture me on morality? Wait until experience has earned you the right to do so, until you’ve faced temptation a few times, and you might not be so censorious—or so unrealistically idealistic, once you’ve discovered for yourself that emotional relationships never last, assuming that so-called love even exists to begin with. Am I shocking you again?’ he added, the coolly superior tone becoming laced with impatiently dismissive mockery. ‘Oh, take yourself off to your maidenly bed, Bridget, before I decide to give you the short, sharp lesson you’re so obviously in need of if you’re to have any chance of surviving the world’s harsh realities. I suppose I might even have a responsibility to do so.’

  ‘Oh, is that how you’ve decided to justify your behaviour?’ she mocked furiously, sensibilities outraged by his arrogance, and she rose swiftly to her feet.

  ‘I don’t need to justify anything.’

  ‘I suppose Wanda sent you home early and you’re bored. I must have been wrong about her, and she has got loads of discernment after all,’ Bridget suggested wildly.

  ‘No woman sends me anywhere. Leave Wanda out of this, please.’

  ‘And you can leave me out of your attempts to amuse yourself.’

  ‘You’re certainly not amusing me at the moment with this tantrum,’ he stated, but his tone was slightly more tolerant now. ‘It’s superfluous. Go inside, Bridget.’

  ‘I’m going! And if there’s anything you need you can get it for yourself!’ she added defiantly, recalling his mockery when she had served his coffee the night before.

  ‘That you should even think of such a thing right now! You’re incredible! That instinct betrays you every time, doesn’t it?’ Nicholas taunted with spurious gentleness, his ensuing soft laughter unendurable to her.

  Bridget had never been sure what flouncing really was, except that it sounded petulant, but, reflecting on her departure from the courtyard a little later, she rather suspected that she had flounced into the house. It was all his fault! She would be slamming doors next! Nicholas Stirling made her behave in ways that were wholly foreign to her peace-loving nature, but her most acute anger and embarrassment stemmed from the way she had reacted to his casually curious touch.

  Lying in bed in the dark, still in a rage and unable to settle, Bridget lifted her fingers to her lips, wondering how they could have taken such pleasure from his. So hard and unromantic, he was as alien to her as the behaviour he caused, and yet she had liked his touch, and his fleeting kiss, wanting more.

  How could she like anything that came from such a man? She could only suppose it was his experience and skill that had elicited her response. He knew his way around the female body; the way he had touched her and that single kiss had probably been quite automatic.

  Such an explanation was more humiliating than comforting because it reduced her to a mere body, emotional and intellectual considerations subordinate to the carnal, and that infuriated her even further, so that it was a long time before Bridget slept that night.

  Nor could she stop the memory of what she had felt springing to the forefront of her mind when she found him breakfasting once more on the veranda the next morning.

  Nicholas observed the soft flush that glowed in her cheeks with an interested gleam in his grey eyes.

  ‘What’s embarrassing you so much?’

  ‘As if you didn’t know!’ she snapped tempestuously as she sat down, incapable of pretending she wasn’t embarrassed or of inventing some cause that had nothing to do with him.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I do. With someone like you, it couldn’t be anything else,’ he conceded disparagingly, before assuming an authoritative manner. ‘Forget what happened last night, Bridget. It meant nothing to eithe
r of us. You’re still in love with the guy you cry over in the night, remember. You will get over him, though, you know, and with your rose-tinted vision of life and relationships you’ll fall in love with some equally idealistic young man and marry him and probably make a reasonable success of it too, just as long as your vision never clears.’

  ‘Always the sting in the tail,’ she mocked, embarrassment subsiding to make room for simple resentment. ‘But thank you for those kind words of encouragement, Nicholas—although they sound strange coming from you, because I don’t think you really believe in marriage at all, do you?’

  ‘Or the sanctity thereof?’ Nicholas prompted sardonically. ‘No, as a mere spectator to the rite, I can’t honestly say I do, especially having observed for myself that none of the participants seems to go on believing in it for any length of time either. Marriage doesn’t last.’

  ‘You’ve been spectating at the wrong marriages if you can generalise like that,’ Bridget retorted, thinking of her parents’ happy marriage. ‘Some of them are more durable than you think. What about Troy Varney? She’s back with her husband.’

  ‘I doubt if it’s for reasons of the heart,’ he returned indifferently.

  ‘And your parents? Your uncle and aunt? You said they were all together when they were killed,’ she reminded him almost eagerly, but his expression didn’t alter.

  ‘Those two particular marriages lasted because they were contracted for practical reasons such as suitability, security, status; so no one involved had any unrealistic expectations. Oh, I’ll admit that such marriages can be stable affairs, if somewhat cold and unexciting.’

  ‘But if you don’t even believe in that kind for yourself, and if your cousins think like you, as ‘Virginia says they do, there are never going to be any official little Stirlings to take over Stirling Industries some day,’ she mocked smilingly. ‘And I’ve heard Virginia saying she doesn’t want any children of her own, either.’

  ‘She’ll probably change her mind, now she imagines she’s in love—and end up regretting it. But I haven’t set any hard and fast rules for myself,’ Nicholas went on. ‘Of course, if I did decide to marry, someone like you would be ideal—young enough for me to mould to suit my tastes.’

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ Bridget was indignant and he looked amused.

  ‘The only problem is that girls bore me,’ he drawled, examining her critically, noting her unmade-up face and the way fine silky strands of dark hair were already escaping from the scrunchy she had used to secure her ponytail, descending in shining tendrils about her ears and the nape of her neck. ‘You really do look incredibly young with your hair like that.’

  ‘Well, why not? I don’t have to suit anyone’s tastes but my own,’ she told him with blistering triumph, really angered by his arrogance, but Nicholas was unperturbed.

  ‘No need to be so emphatic, Bridget. I wasn’t criticising, nor was I seriously considering you as my wife.’ Now he paid brief attention to the white sleeveless blouse with pretty vertical pin-tucks that she was wearing with a simple skirt she had made herself, the material patterned with tiny primary-coloured flowers scattered over a black background. ‘What are you doing today?’

  ‘Sabotaging Virginia’s business? No, not today. As I’ve told you, I’m going to Madras tomorrow.’ It required an effort to wrench her fulminating mind free of the resentment that held it and answer the question.

  ‘Yes, you’re more or less keeping to ‘Virginia’s schedule, she told me, and she always spins these trips out as she’s in a position to indulge herself. It’s Sunday anyway, and although India has no official sabbath, since religion is such an integral everyday matter here, as natural and taken for granted as eating and sleeping, I presume you’ve discovered that this is the day work stops and offices close. It means the crowds will be out, but that doesn’t matter. I’d meant to take you to Qutb Minar yesterday, so we’ll go today instead.’

  Bridget regarded him warily.

  ‘To keep me out of mischief?’ she prompted with a touch of hostility.

  Nicholas shrugged. ‘What else?’

  ‘If I can’t do any business today, I can hardly do any damage either, can I?’ She was scathing. ‘Anyway, I told you, Virginia has changed her mind about your taking care of me. I can find my own way there quite easily. It’s something I was planning to do while I was here.’

  ‘So come with me today,’ he said easily.

  ‘No, thanks. I—’

  ‘I want you to.’

  A trace of irritation could be heard now and Bridget was unexpectedly amused by it. Someone so selfsufficient couldn’t possibly be lonely, but it was quite likely that he was bored, or expecting to be, unable to attend to any business matters today, and had decided that any company was better than none. Presumably Wanda was unavailable.

  She hesitated a moment longer. Why should she let him use her to alleviate his boredom? And did she really want to cope with the cynicism she found so abrasive and the way he disturbed and embarrassed her so frequently, especially now that she had the persistent memory of her reaction to him last night to exacerbate her disturbance?

  ‘Well, I suppose you were a good guide yesterday,’ she yielded grudgingly. ‘All right, but I am not one of your family, Nicholas. I don’t want you trying to manage me. You are not responsible for me.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he conceded lightly.

  Humouring the child, Bridget thought furiously. It was humiliating enough to have to accept that he didn’t feel she was capable of doing Virginia’s business, but his insistence on seeing her as a child was utterly galling.

  Nevertheless, a kind of peace held between them that morning, although she was occasionally uncomfortably aware of him studying her intently, and embarrassed when he caught her staring at him in her turn, fascinated by his dark attraction and still awed and bewildered by the feelings he had somehow awoken in her the night before.

  But she did also enjoy wandering round Qutb Minar, about which she had heard so much. A tower of amazing artistry and sheer building genius, it dated back to the thirteenth century, the ruined mosque at its foot to the twelfth, and they explored the latter after visiting the tower, strolling speculatively among its pillars and arches.

  ‘But the real mystery is this iron pillar here in the courtyard,’ Nicholas explained as they returned to it. ‘It was erected in the fifth century by some Hindu king and, quite apart from the superstition attached to it and the incongruity of the Muslims having chosen to use such a site, no one knows why it should have stayed free of rust for fifteen hundred years.’

  Above them the sun blazed from a vivid blue sky, beating down on the colourful crowd in the courtyard in which the iron pillar, twenty-four feet high and inscribed with lines of Sanskrit, was a focus of attraction for the Sunday visitors, many going up to it and attempting to put their arms round it, several posing for tourist-type camera shots while doing so.

  Bridget looked at Nicholas after a few moments, relieved to find him presently absorbed in the scene before them. The sun picked out blue lights in the midnightblackness of his hair, and the proud way he held his head was eloquent of his arrogance. An odd, catchy little feeling afflicted her throat. She disliked that arrogance and hated his cynicism, and yet she felt drawn to him, and confused and resentful in consequence. Together, such feelings kept her in a state of nervous apprehension. She had never known anyone like him in her safe, simple life; never known a man so alien and abrasive, and yet so dangerously attractive too.

  He drove her back to the house at the end of the morning and announced briefly that he was going out immediately once more.

  ‘Wanda again?’ Bridget prompted mischievously before getting out of the car.

  ‘Yes.’ Nicholas gave her a slow, thoughtful smile.

  Something occurred to her. ‘Am I really preventing her staying here with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Did Wanda also see her as a child, then?

  ‘I’m qui
te—’

  ‘Oh, no, Bridget, I am not having you moving out and making it difficult for me to keep a watch on what you’re up to. Unfortunately I have urgent business coinciding with your Madras trip, but I’ll want a full report when you get back.’ Unexpectedly his manner became kinder as he noted her tense, mutinous face, and mistook the cause. ‘Don’t worry about Wanda. She’s not your concern, only mine.’

  Bridget didn’t see him again that day or the next morning, an early departure for the airport denying her the questionable pleasure of a shared breakfast.

  Her contact in Madras was hospitable and her business there successful. Despite her natural shyness, the fact that she obviously liked people made them like her in return, so she got on well. She got some bargains without exploiting anyone, and if one or two suppliers conversely made a healthy profit nobody cheated her, Virginia having coached her well as to where the line between acceptable business practices and rip-offs lay.

  Returning to Delhi on the Wednesday evening, Bridget was surprised and a little perplexed to find herself looking forward to seeing Nicholas again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHE was only so eager to see Nicholas again because he was someone from home with whom she could share her excitement over this wonderful adventure on which Virginia had sent her, Bridget reasoned. The Indians she met tended to be blasé when she enthused about their magical country, but had she arranged to meet her new friend from the Embassy she would have been looking forward to seeing him with just the same anticipation, or more.

  But all Nicholas was likely to be interested in was interrogating her as to the business she had done on Virginia’s behalf, she reminded herself. Well, she had no qualms about that, not that he had any right to ask!

  Sita had already told her that Nicholas was planning to dine at the house that night, and Bridget was showering when she heard him arrive. Hearing a phone ring on emerging and realising that he was talking to whoever it was in the small, informal study across the hall from the living-room, she fetched herself a glass of lime juice from the kitchen where Sita was busy with dinner and wandered out to the fountain courtyard.