by Penny Jordan
‘Try telling that to Briony,’ Polly had commented ruefully. ‘She’s eighteen, and she won’t want a mother who looks as though she’s trying to pretend she’s her sister.’
‘Listen to me,’ her stylist had told her firmly. ‘There is no way this style is anything other than absolutely perfect for you.’
As perfect for her as Briony seemed to think this young woman she had met was perfect for Marcus? This young woman. Determinedly Polly reached for a cloth to start wiping out the cupboard she had just emptied.
‘Anyway, what I was going to say to you is…’ Briony reached to the bowl on the table for an apple—one of their own, which had come from the trees in the small orchard behind the kitchen garden, an old-fashioned English variety which it was almost impossible to buy anywhere now but which Polly particularly cherished for its unique sweet-tart flavour. You could have a dinner party and invite Suzi to come and then she could get to meet Uncle Marcus and—’
‘A dinner party!’ Polly interrupted her daughter a little explosively. ‘Briony, this is a hotel and…’
‘And it’s half term, and you are never busy then,’ Briony reminded her. ‘And Suzi could recommend you to some of the people she knows and that way you would get more business,’ she pointed out craftily. ‘After all, when Uncle Marcus goes you’re going to have two more rooms to let…’
Polly gave a small sigh. Organising a formal dinner party at short notice was the last thing she felt like doing right now, but, knowing her determined daughter, she suspected that it might be easier to give in now and thus save the time she might otherwise have wasted in trying to reason with her.
Quite where Briony got her determination, her stubbornness from, she wasn’t really sure. Richard had had the sweetest nature imaginable and, as Briony and Marcus repeatedly pointed out to her, she had no backbone at all when it came to confrontations.
‘I’m not sure that Marcus is going to like this,’ she warned Briony. ‘You know how he hates being manipulated.’
‘Well, yes,’ Briony agreed, ‘but if I told him that it’s a special dinner for me, and that Chris is going to be there…’ She made a small face. ‘You know how fussy he’s always been about the boys I go out with, and he hasn’t really had much of a chance to meet Chris yet, since he was away on business when Chris and I first met and both of us have been away at college ever since…’
There was a good deal of truth in what her daughter was saying, Polly had to acknowledge. Whilst Marcus couldn’t exactly be accused of playing the heavy father with Briony, he certainly was very protective of her.
‘So, who exactly am I supposed to be inviting to this dinner party?’ Polly gave in.
Giving her a beaming smile, Briony responded, ticking the names off on her fingers.
‘Well, Uncle Marcus of course, and Suzi and her parents. Well, they are Chris’s godparents,’ she reminded her. ‘And Chris is staying with them whilst his own parents are away on business. That’s four. Oh, and you and me of course…’ She paused and gnawed at her bottom lip. ‘Oh, and I suppose we should really invite Suzi’s boss, otherwise he’s going to be left on his own, and—’
‘Suzi’s boss? Polly interrupted in bemusement. ‘But I thought you said she worked in the Caribbean…’
‘Well, yes, she does, but her boss has business interests over here as well, apparently. Anyway it’s okay; you’ll like him,’ Briony assured her mother sunnily. ‘He’s younger than you—thirty, Suzi told me—and single. He and Suzi were a bit of an item at one time, but that’s all over now.’
Polly gave her daughter a wry look.
‘So that makes eight of us, unless of course there’s anyone else you want me to entertain…’
Briony’s forehead pleated consideringly.
‘No, I don’t think so…’ she began.
‘No? Not perhaps Chris’s great-aunt and uncle, or his cousin four times removed and her husband?’ Polly suggested sweetly.
Briony looked perplexed.
‘Chris doesn’t have a great-aunt or uncle…’ she began earnestly, and then stopped, a rueful smile curling her mouth. ‘Okay, so perhaps I am being a bit managing,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s in a good cause, Ma,’ she wheedled. ‘Uncle Marcus needs a wife. You know that…’
‘Do I?’ Polly asked her dubiously, adding, ‘I don’t suppose that it’s occurred to you that he might just…just be perfectly capable of remedying his lack of one all by himself? After all, it isn’t as though he hasn’t had a stream of possible candidates through his life already,’ she added a little tartly.
Briony looked at her.
‘Do you know, Ma, you almost sound jealous?’
‘Jealous of Marcus’s women-friends. Certainly not,’ Polly declared immediately.
‘No, not jealous of them,’ Briony quickly corrected them. ‘No, I meant you sounded jealous of the fact that Uncle Marcus has had someone in his life…’
‘Someone—you mean several someones,’ Polly reminded her grimly.
‘Oh, come on, you aren’t really being fair,’ Briony objected. ‘There have only been a few, and all of them have lasted for quite a long time. Have you never, ever been tempted yourself, wanted yourself to…you know…meet someone? I mean, I know how much you loved Dad,’ she added hastily. ‘Everyone knows that. But there must have been times…’ She paused and bit her lip before saying defensively, ‘Well, you were only very young when Dad died, and, well, these days it isn’t…Women can…’
‘If you’re asking me if I’ve ever missed having sex—’ Polly stopped her pithily ‘—then yes, sometimes I have, but I’ve never missed it enough to…I loved your father very much,’ she told Briony simply, not wanting to delve too deeply into the exact whys and wherefores of her decision to remain single and celibate.
But then, to her dismay, as though somehow with uncanny and certainly unwanted perception she had actually picked up on her private thoughts, Briony reminded her mischievously, ‘I know you’re no sexpot—remember the time we celebrated the first year of the hotel being in business and Uncle Marcus gave you that gold bracelet? When he went to put it on for you he started to kiss you, and you backed away from him as though he was the devil incarnate!’ She chuckled. ‘Poor Uncle Marcus. That must have been the one and only time he got that kind of reaction from a woman…’
Remember it…? Somehow or other Polly managed to force her lips into some semblance of a smile, at the same time ducking her head as she made a totally uncoordinated swipe at the interior of the cupboard she had emptied. Of course she remembered. But she hadn’t imagined that Briony would have done so. After all, she had been very much a child at the time—far too young to have noticed…registered…
‘When were you thinking of holding this dinner party?’ she asked her daughter huskily.
‘Well, it’s Wednesday today. How about Friday evening?’ Briony suggested. ‘You’re never very busy at half term, as you’ve always said this is the kind of place grown-ups come to relax, not to bring their children, and since Chris and I will be going back to college on Monday…’
‘Friday it is, then,’ Polly agreed hollowly.
‘Great. I’ll go and give Chris a ring so that he can organise things at his end. What time shall I tell him? Seven-thirty for eight?’
‘Yes, fine,’ Polly agreed.
As she watched her daughter slide her long legs off the table and hurry to the kitchen door, it wasn’t Friday evening’s proposed dinner party that was causing her to frown anxiously but the memories which Briony’s innocent comment had provoked.
She still had that gold bangle Marcus had given her. He had brought it home with him from the Middle East and the gold was heavy and of extremely fine quality, set with a sprinkling of exquisitely fine small diamonds. It was the kind of gift any woman would have been delighted to receive and to wear, but she had never done so. If she should be foolish enough right now to close her eyes and let her thoughts go back to that warm late spring evening she kne
w she would almost be able to smell the scent of the freshly mown grass coming in through the open French windows of the small sitting room which Marcus had insisted she retain for her and Briony’s own personal use.
‘I don’t need my own sitting room,’ she had protested when their plans for the reorganisation of the house had still been at the drafting stage.
‘Maybe you don’t, but Briony most certainly does,’ Marcus had insisted. ‘Fraser House is her home, Polly, and she needs to be able to grow up feeling that it is a proper home. It’s what Richard would have wanted,’ he had told her firmly, when she had been about to demur. And of course she had given in, and had been glad that she had done so in later years when she had recognised that he had been right to pinpoint Briony’s need to feel that at least a small piece of the house and her mother were hers exclusively.
‘Oh, Marcus,’ she had protested as she’d unwrapped the small gift box she’d held in her hand. ‘What…?’
‘It’s to celebrate our first year in business together,’ he had told her coolly.
He had only arrived back in the early hours of that morning. She hadn’t seen him arrive since she had been in bed, but she had heard the taxi drawing up outside and then this evening he had come down. All day she had been a little on edge wondering when he would put in an appearance, and then there he was, looking impossibly brown and male, dressed in a white tee shirt that positively hugged his broad male torso and a pair of faded jeans which…
Hastily she had averted her eyes as she’d realised, to her own chagrin and confusion, that for some reason her body was actually responding to the sight of his maleness.
Fortunately Marcus had been too busy hugging Briony to notice what was happening to her but, nonetheless, as her daughter had chattered excitedly to her favourite relative—bar none—Polly had instinctively and defensively wrapped her arms around her own upper body to make sure that Marcus neither saw nor misinterpreted the totally inappropriate provocative little thrust of her hardening nipples against the soft fabric of her top. And then he had given her the pretty gift-wrapped package—after he had given Briony an even smaller one, which had turned out to be exactly the right kind of delicate little gold locket for a young girl of her age.
Who had chosen their gifts for him? she had wondered a little sharply. A woman…And then, as she had thanked him for them, stumbling a little over the words, he had taken hold of her, his hands cupping the delicate balls of her shoulder joints and frowning a little as he explored them, before saying almost accusingly, ‘You’ve lost weight.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ she denied, before admitting as she saw the look in his eyes, ‘Well, just a little. I’ve been so busy, there just hasn’t—’
‘Mummy gets too busy to eat,’ Briony informed him trenchantly, much to her dismay.
‘No, that isn’t true,’ she began, as she turned her head from looking at her daughter to look at him, and then stopped when she realised that he was much, much closer to her than she had imagined. So close, in fact, that his mouth was just near enough…
She tensed and gulped, and then, finding that she couldn’t breathe in enough air to her oxygen-starved lungs, she opened her mouth, and Marcus somehow or other totally misinterpreted what that meant. To her shock, he lowered his head, covering her mouth with the warm, firm pressure of his own.
Richard, as a husband and lover, had been tender and gentle, so that sex for Polly had been a happy joyful experience—playful loving in the warm shallows of intimacy and romance, during which she had never once felt unsafe or out of her depth. But instinctively she knew, had always known, that Marcus was not like her husband, that there was to him a much darker and far more passionate maleness.
Sex with Marcus would not be conducted in the shallows. No. It would be conducted in the deepest depths, all she would have to cling to if those waters threatened to submerge and overwhelm her would be Marcus himself. As a wife, and then a widow, Polly had deliberately closed her mind to Marcus’s sexuality, refusing to admit even to herself that it was there or that she was aware of it; but, as his mouth covered hers, she was suddenly made very potently aware of it—and of him.
She panicked, jerking her head back from his and raising her hands to ward him off.
Just for a second before he released her, Marcus had looked right into her eyes. His own were almost black, obsidian, with an anger he wasn’t bothering to conceal, his mouth—the same mouth which had just burned hers—twisting into a dismissive grimace.
‘You’re a woman now, not a girl, Polly,’ she heard him telling her angrily. ‘Richard is dead and—’
‘I don’t care.’ She interrupted him wildly, her heart beating in frantic, nervous little thuds as though she was in fear of her life and fleeing from some terrible threatening danger. ‘To me he is still my husband and he always will be.’
‘Such noble sentiments,’ Marcus scoffed, ‘and so very naive. Richard may have been your husband, Polly, but I suspect he never really awakened you as a lover, because if he had—’
‘How dare you?’ she almost screamed at him, backing away from him like a threatened hind fearing the approach of the hunter. ‘Of course Richard was my lover. How else do you think that Briony…?’
She stopped, almost choking on her own tears, suddenly realising that Briony could see and hear everything they were saying to one another.
‘He was your husband, yes, and you conceived his child, yes, but that was a long time ago and in many ways Richard was only a boy,’ Marcus agreed flatly, before continuing in a soft, almost mesmeric voice, ‘But look at you now; you’re trembling like a virgin confronted with her first experience of an adult man and all because I kissed you. Is that how a woman who has experienced a lover’s—a man’s—passion would react?’
He started to shake his head but Polly wasn’t prepared to listen to any more. Reaching out protectively to draw Briony closer to her, she told him shakily, ‘You have no right to say such things to me. I loved, still love, always will love Richard more than someone like you could possibly understand.’
The look he gave her before he walked past her and out of the room lived with her for a long time afterwards, long after Marcus himself had left again on his travels.
Well, at least Briony had been right about one thing, Polly reflected a couple of hours later, her kitchen cupboards restored to their normal immaculate order: the hotel was relatively quiet at the moment. Not that she minded. They had a very busy season coming up, with Christmas to contend with. They had guests who regularly booked themselves into Fraser House for Christmas and the New Year, and if the conversion of Marcus’s room was finished in time for the Christmas season they had a respectably long list of guests already for their occupancy. Christmas at Fraser House was, Polly acknowledged with her customary modesty, something a little bit special.
Yes, she was glad that Marcus had decided to give up his rooms here, she told herself firmly as she glanced round her now immaculate kitchen, and not just because of the extra guests it would allow them to have. The architect they had hired had made the suggestion that the stable block could perhaps be renovated and extended to provide even more rooms, but for once Polly had demurred, explaining that she felt it would detract from the hotel’s unique ‘feel’ if they expanded too much. A little to her surprise, Marcus had actually endorsed her opinion. She hadn’t as yet been to see the house he had bought nearby, although Briony had, returning to tell her mother enthusiastically that it was ‘ace’.
Built in the early days of Victoria’s reign it had originally been a part of the Fraser estate, built to house the widowed mother of the then owner.
Whilst not a dower house in the traditional sense of the word—Fraser House was not a great house in the style of Chatsworth and its ilk—it had been built in a similar if later style to that of the main house and was less than a mile away from it. After the end of the First World War the family had sold off the house, but now the opportunity had arisen for Marc
us to buy it back along with the small acreage of land which had been sold with it.
In some ways Polly quite envied him the opportunity to bring the pretty ivy-clad house back to life again—its last owner had been elderly and after her death the house had been left empty for some time whilst her executors decided what to do with it.
Its five bedrooms and spacious ground floor meant that it would make an ideal family house. Was Marcus perhaps thinking of settling down at long last? At forty-two he was very visibly in the prime of his life. His career and financial future were assured, his physical appearance such that no right-thinking, intelligent, heterosexual woman would hesitate to snatch him up as potential-mate material and father to her unborn children. The current scientific evidence was that a woman naturally and instinctively chose the strongest and best-looking mate she could find in order to secure the best genes possible and thus the best chance of survival for her offspring. And no doubt Marcus would be similarly influenced when he chose the woman he wanted to marry. She would be young, intelligent and, of course, stunningly beautiful. According to Briony, her candidate filled all of those requirements.
Lost in thought, Polly made her way slowly to what had always been her favourite spot in the house’s grounds—a small dell surrounded by mature trees and with its own natural pond. It was off limits to their guests and could only be reached by a narrow private footpath. It was a spot that Richard had loved, and his last gift to her before his death had been a painting of it done in the spring when the bluebells were out. Now it was autumn and the trees were shedding their leaves, giving the small, enclosed space a haunting, almost melancholy air that was so much in tune with her own mood that Polly could feel her always easily aroused emotions bringing unwanted tears to her eyes.
She had brought so many of her problems and her heartaches, large and small to this spot over the years, but none had come anywhere near the magnitude of the agonising despair she was suffering now.
So much in her life was changing…Briony had already left home and was quickly becoming an adult and no longer in need of her in the way she had once been. Her staff were so well trained that sometimes she felt almost as though they didn’t need her either. And then there was Marcus…