by Penny Jordan
‘Marcus! What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to be with you,’ he told her simply and truthfully. It didn’t matter why he had originally left London. Now he was here with her, seeing the way she reacted to him, seeing the emotion, the love in her eyes. All that seemed important was that he was here with her.
He could see the sheen of tears in her eyes and the way her mouth trembled, and suddenly he ached for her with an intensity it was hard to control.
‘Oh, Marcus… Marcus…’ he heard her whisper huskily as he took hold of her.
Later, curled up against him in the huge bed in the suite he had booked, Eleanor asked him sleepily, ‘Tell me again who’s looking after Vanessa.’
He told her briefly, nuzzling the soft, vulnerable skin of her neck as he did so.
‘Sondra Cabot?’ Eleanor repeated. ‘Isn’t that the American girl you said was over here on an exchange?’
‘Mmm.’
He was working his way down the slope of her breast now, and already her nipple, her skin was quivering in delicious anticipation of his caress, but she still felt the slight change in his breathing, the hesitation… the tension almost, and the hand she had slid into his hair as she caressed the back of his skull stilled for a second as she looked down at him, puzzled slightly by his reaction.
‘Marcus, wh—?’
‘Forget Vanessa,’ he told her thickly, brusquely she recognised, as a tiny chill of foreboding ran through her.
His daughter, it seemed, was still a dangerous subject between them, and she felt too vulnerable, too afraid of spoiling what they had just shared to raise it. Vanessa wasn’t an issue that was going to go away, she reminded herself, but the thought was hazy, the issue one she did not really want to pursue. Not now… not when Marcus was slowly teasing the erect nub of her nipple with his tongue, its warm, moist lap providing an almost unbearable sensual contrast to the cool dryness of his breath.
She couldn’t even manage to tug herself free of the sensual spell he was weaving around her for long enough to explain to him that it hadn’t been Vanessa she had been about to mention, but the American. Dizzily she told herself that there would be time enough later to ask him how she came to be looking after Vanessa… For now… She gave a soft half-smothered murmur of pleasure as Marcus abandoned his delicate teasing to draw her nipple fully into his mouth, sucking slowly and lingeringly on it and then far more fiercely and with far less control as she moved urgently against him, her fingers clutching at his hair.
They had two blissful days together before Marcus announced that they had to return, and it was only on the flight home that Eleanor recognised that, while their time together had proved to her that Marcus still desired her, it had done nothing to resolve the other problems and fears.
She had wanted to talk to Marcus about them, and yet a part of her had almost been afraid to do so. Last night she had started to tell him how anxious she was about the house, but he had frowned immediately, exclaiming irritably, ‘Do we have to discuss that now, Nell? Is it really so important?’
He had apologised almost immediately, but his attitude had left her feeling slightly edgy and wary.
When they got home the house was empty. It was an odd feeling to Eleanor to walk into its silence, and its neatness. She ought to have been pleased, relieved to have been spared a potential confrontation with Vanessa immediately on her return, she knew, and yet as she walked into the kitchen, saw its immaculate order, she could feel the tiny hairs on her arms and her nape starting to lift antagonistically.
The house even seemed to smell different, she recognised, although it wasn’t until half an hour later, when Sondra returned with Vanessa and Sasha, that she recognised why. The alien smell was the American girl’s perfume, she realised with a sharp thrill of dislike.
Dislike? Why on earth should she dislike her? Or was it not dislike but jealousy she was suffering from? she wondered as she listened silently to the teasing comments exchanged with both teenage girls.
It had been Marcus who had gone to let them in and now the three of them and Marcus were standing to one side of the kitchen table while she remained on the other, feeling alien, an outsider in her own home.
‘You look well,’ she heard Sondra saying to Marcus. ‘You’ve even got a tan. We made fudge brownies this morning,’ she added, still smiling at him. ‘Would you like to try one?’
It was almost three hours before she finally left. Eleanor knew because she had counted every minute of them; and most of the final sixty minutes upstairs alone in the bedroom, unable to endure any more of the scene being played out downstairs in her kitchen, her home, with her husband, without betraying what she was feeling.
She tensed as she heard Marcus come upstairs and walk into the bedroom.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I’m feeling fine,’ she told him angrily. ‘But I don’t like being made to feel that I’m an outsider in my own home.’
Marcus was frowning at her, but he was an astute, experienced man, and he must have recognised what was going on as easily as she had done herself. The girl had hardly been subtle about her interest in him. Eleanor was not an overly jealous or possessive person, but to have to sit in her own kitchen and watch another woman not merely flirting with her husband but making it plain that she was very sexually interested in him was not something she was prepared to tolerate. And what made it worse was that Marcus had done nothing to stop her; even Sasha and Vanessa had recognised what was going on. Her stomach churned sickly as she recalled the triumphant gloating look Vanessa had given her. No wonder Vanessa had taken so well to the American. She would take well to anyone who she thought might displace her in Marcus’s life, Eleanor thought bitterly. She turned away from Marcus and stared out of the window.
‘Nell?’
She swung round. ‘Why did you let her stay here, Marcus?’
He frowned as though he did not understand her question and then, as he pushed his fingers into his hair in a gesture of irritation, he told her, ‘You know why. So that she could look after Vanessa.’
‘Having perhaps already looked after you…’
The sentence, the accusation was out before she could stop it, the look that crossed Marcus’s face mirroring her own shock and distaste.
She wanted to stop herself but she couldn’t; it was as though some alien and destructive force had taken her over as she heard herself demanding bitterly, ‘Tell me again why you came to Provence, Marcus. To be with me, you said. Because you wanted me? Because you wanted me… or because you wanted to compare me with her? Well, there isn’t any comparison, is there? Ask Vanessa.’
Marcus stared at her, caught between anger and guilt. He had done nothing… nothing to merit the accusations Eleanor was flinging at him. On the contrary, he had done everything any man could to resist the temptation offered.
And yet Eleanor was still accusing him… blaming him.
And if he had been tempted, was that his fault? Didn’t Nell realise what she was doing to him, to their relationship with her obsession with that damned house? Didn’t she realise how it made him feel to know how low down he came on her list of priorities? Even in Provence all she had really wanted to do was to talk about the house. Couldn’t she see how he felt? Didn’t she realise that he didn’t even damn well want to move?
But he couldn’t tell her that… it meant too much to her.
‘I am not having an affair with her if that’s what you’re trying to imply. I haven’t even thought of—’
‘She has,’ Eleanor interrupted him fiercely, ‘and if you’re going to tell me that you didn’t know that, don’t bother, Marcus. You must have. You should never have let her come here.’
She was close to tears now, her anger gone, to be replaced by shock and pain. Marcus might not have slept with the American, but he had not discouraged her from believing that he found her attractive. He couldn’t have done. If he had…
> If he had, she would not have been standing there in her kitchen, flirting with him, teasing him… behaving as though Eleanor herself simply did not exist.
When Marcus came to bed later, she pretended to be asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘NELL… How are you?’
Eleanor sighed as she recognised her accountant’s voice.
‘I’m fine, Charles,’ she told him. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine. Look, I’m having one or two problems with the finance for the house, which I need to discuss with you and Marcus. I’ve got a conference to attend this weekend, but I’ll be back early next week and—’
‘Marcus will be in The Hague then,’ Eleanor interrupted him. ‘He’s got a case there. He’s not sure how long it’s likely to go on for.’
‘Mmm. Well, we really do need to get this finance sorted out. I’m putting as much pressure on the lenders as I can. Perhaps you and I can get together, then. How would Tuesday morning suit you?’
‘Fine,’ Eleanor told him wearily.
As she replaced the receiver she could feel the beginnings of a tension headache cramping her neck and forehead, the pain a jarring discord to the music thumping from Vanessa’s room.
The weeks had gone agonisingly slowly, but now it was only another couple of days until Julia returned. Sasha, thank goodness, had gone shortly after Eleanor’s and Marcus’s return from France, shrugging aside Eleanor’s anxious questions about how she intended to travel back to school and whether her foster parents needed to be contacted.
‘Sasha does her own thing. She doesn’t let her foster parents, or anyone else tell her what to do,’ had been Vanessa’s contemptuous response when Eleanor had commented over dinner on her concern at the other girl’s behaviour.
Things had not been easy since their return from Provence; the brief hiatus of happiness they had shared while they were there had been exactly that.
On the surface they might have appeared to make up their quarrel over Sondra. Marcus had admitted that he had been aware of the American girl’s interest in him, but he had also insisted to Eleanor that she was wrong in suspecting him of returning it, and for her part Eleanor had admitted that she had perhaps over-reacted a little.
Today, after she had dropped the boys off at school, she was taking Vanessa shopping, a ‘treat’ she suspected neither of them was looking forward to.
Monsieur Colbert had rung her the previous evening asking if they could bring forward the commencement of their contract, as he had some urgent translation work for her to do.
Later, worrying about what she had taken on, she had tried to explain to Marcus her anxiety that she would not be able to cope with the amount of work he wanted done without the regulation of a proper office environment where she could shut herself away from all other interruptions. Working here at the house, where she was guiltily aware that she was, reluctantly at last, taking over Marcus’s study, and where there were so many other distractions, was making it impossible for her to achieve her normal output. The work Pierre Colbert required was extremely complex and involved, requiring her full concentration, and how could she give that, she asked Marcus, when she had so many other worries on her mind?
What she had hoped to do was to delay the commencement of the contract until after their house move was settled, but now she was forced to acknowledge that it would be many months before she was able to even contemplate working at Broughton House and, moreover, supervising and overseeing all the work the house needed was going to mean she would be physically as well as mentally unable to give her full time and attention to her work.
And yet increasingly she was forced to acknowledge that the expense involved in buying the house and making it properly habitable was going to mean that they would need the extra income her new contract provided.
Vanessa had repeated her loathing of the idea; said that the last thing she wanted was to have to spend any time in some falling-down dump of a house in the country, and, far from being thrilled at the idea of having her own room and being given a free hand in its décor, all she could talk about was Sondra and how the American girl had never liked her own stepmother.
‘Her father divorced her in the end, and Sondra said it was obvious why. He’s married again now to someone much younger and she and Sondra get on really well together…’
Eleanor was trying not to lose her sense of humour, but the fear was there that, despite Marcus’s assurances, he was not as indifferent to Sondra as he had said.
‘You haven’t forgotten that it’s this weekend I’m going to The Hague, have you?’ Marcus asked her as he came into the kitchen.
‘No, I haven’t.’
She kept her back to him, her voice registering tension. Despite the fact that they had made up their quarrel and that she believed him when he said there was nothing between him and Sondra, she still couldn’t stop herself from feeling hurt.
‘Look, Nell…’
She tensed as he came up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her round to face him.
‘Why don’t you come with me?’ he suggested gently. ‘I know I won’t be free to spend much time with you, but there are some wonderful galleries and museums in the area, and we’d have the evenings together. There’s a reception being given by our ambassador one night; you’d enjoy that… it would give us—’
‘Marcus, I can’t,’ she protested, her voice shaking a little as she acknowledged how much she would have liked to be able to go with him.
His hands lifted from her shoulders, his face hardening.
‘I can’t leave the boys,’ she told him. ‘And then there’s the house… Charles phoned earlier and—’
‘Forget the damned house,’ Marcus interrupted her furiously. ‘For God’s sake, Nell, can’t you think about anything else? All I ever hear is the house, the house. It’s only a pile of bricks and mortar, for heaven’s sake, and not even a particularly attractive or stable one at that. I know how much the place means to you, but the way you’re carrying on about it… It’s almost as though it’s become the most important thing in your life.’
Eleanor stared at him, shocked by his explosion of anger. ‘That’s not fair, Marcus,’ she told him. ‘I want this house because I know how much better it will make things for all of us. I…’
‘Will it?’ Marcus asked her cynically. ‘Or will it just make them better for you? I’ve seen plenty of instances where property can destroy a relationship, Nell, but none where it can mend one. What is it you’re really hoping to achieve? A better relationship with Vanessa? She doesn’t want to move, she’s told you that, but you won’t listen. More freedom and space for the boys? But at the same time you’ll be removing them from schools where they’ve already established themselves, from friendships they’ve already made. They’re only just beginning to adjust to our marriage… security doesn’t come from living some story-book, romanticised idyll of childhood in the country; it comes from the people you live with; from knowing you’re loved and valued by them.
‘Right now the message you’re giving off is that Broughton House is a lot more important to you than they are. Think hard, Nell. Do you want this house for them or do you want it for you…?’
Eleanor looked at him silently for a moment and then said shakily, ‘You don’t want to move there, do you? You never have.’
‘No,’ Marcus agreed quietly. ‘I don’t. It’s too far away, for one thing, Nell—I’d spend more time than I want to commuting; for another, I don’t think we can afford it. Ultimately, there’d come a time when perhaps both of us would resent the amount of time and money we’d need to spend on it.
‘I’m not even sure it would provide the kind of environmental benefits you seem to think. And it isn’t just the practical things. You’re investing far too much hope and importance in the effect it will have on the rest of us. It’s a house, Nell, not a magic formula for instant family happiness.’
He paused as he saw the way she was
looking at him.
‘All this time,’ Eleanor told him huskily, her eyes almost blank with pain. ‘All this time you haven’t wanted it and yet you said nothing. What were you going to do, Marcus? Wait until we were on the point of exchanging contracts, or were you just going to let me go ahead and then turn round later and say, “I told you so” the minute anything went wrong?’
She was trembling now, pale with emotion and anger, her reaction causing Marcus to curse himself under his breath for his lack of timing.
‘Well, look, I…’
He stopped as Tom and Gavin came noisily into the kitchen, arguing over the ownership of some pencils.
‘We can’t talk about this now,’ he told Eleanor quietly. ‘I have to go… This evening…’
Stiffly Eleanor turned away from him, ignoring him as she spoke to her sons.
He had hurt her and made her angry, Marcus acknowledged as he pulled on his jacket. He hadn’t intended or wanted to, but, if she had been less engrossed in the house, surely she would have recognised for herself that he didn’t share her enthusiasm for it? After all, he had given her enough hints.
As he walked out to his car he was uncomfortably aware that somewhere at the back of his mind, beneath his regret at hurting her, was a small, slyly sanctimonious voice that whispered egotistically that if she had not been so wrapped up in the needs of others she would have recognised his feelings long before now. Angrily he squashed it, refusing to acknowledge what its existence was telling him.
* * *
‘What about this?’ Eleanor suggested tiredly, holding up a pretty apple-green cotton seersucker shorts-suit.
‘Yuck, it’s gross,’ Vanessa informed her. ‘There isn’t anything in here,’ she added contemptuously. ‘Can’t we go somewhere else?’
Was there anywhere else left to go? Eleanor wondered as she obediently put the suit back and followed her stepdaughter towards the shop door. They must surely by now have been in every shop there was, without Vanessa being able to find a single item she liked—but no, apparently there were one or two places still left to try.