by Penny Jordan
‘Well, it’s either that or nothing,’ Louise told her mischievously, and because it was far easier to give in than to argue Jenneth unwillingly stepped into it, and then into the silk dress, and was hustled downstairs to where Luke was waiting for her, calm and somehow very intimidating.
As he led her towards the waiting car, she panicked and turned round, saying quickly, ‘Angelica…the twins…’
‘All taken care of,’ Luke assured her. ‘Eleanor’s going to stay and keep an eye on them. We shan’t be away very long…’
Jenneth gave a perceptible shudder. However long it was, it would be too long for her. Why was Luke doing this? Because his own pride demanded it? Because he didn’t want people saying that he had only married her for Angelica’s sake? Because it was expected of him?
She was too exhausted to care, only to resent that it had been necessary.
Somehow or other she was seated in the front passenger seat of the car, and they were moving off before she realised that she ought to have insisted on sitting in the back. At least that way she would have had some privacy…some precious time to try and come to terms with her new role in life.
She felt battered and exhausted. Too exhausted to ask where they were going, and, more importantly, why. If the wedding had been a farce, then how much more so was this cruelly unnecessary honeymoon?
When Luke stopped the car some miles outside the village, she sat apathetically, not questioning what he was doing until he released his seat-belt and from inside his jacket produced a familiar leather-covered box.
He heart lurched sickeningly as he flicked it open and she saw, lying on its bed of velvet, the engagement ring he had given her.
She had sent it back to him, unable to bear the sight of it. How could he have kept it and, even worse, produced it now, when he must surely realise what the sight of what she had once believed was a symbol of shared love and wanting would do to her?
Apparently he did not, because while she trembled and shuddered he took hold of her hand and said slowly, ‘I think it’s time this ring went back where it belongs, don’t you, Jenneth?’
As he slid the ring over her knuckle, she wanted to claw and scream at him, to wrench it off and fling it away from her. The pain she felt inside was like a volcano erupting, but she knew that if she gave way to it now she would lose complete control of herself.
Her whole body went rigid with what she was feeling, and in a voice thick with loathing and bitterness, she said fiercely, ‘Take it off…I won’t wear it.’
Luke looked at her. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
‘Jenneth,’ he said quietly, but she ignored him and demanded again,
‘Take it off.’
‘No,’ he told her curtly, turning away from her and restarting the car.
Impetuously, Jenneth tugged at it herself and found that for some reason she couldn’t get it past her knuckle. The harder she tugged, the more swollen her knuckle became, and in the end, trembling with rage and resentment, she had to concede defeat. After that, neither of them spoke. The miles sped by, eaten up by the powerful engine of the Jaguar. They were travelling northwest, in the direction of the Yorkshire Dales.
It was early evening when Luke drove through a small, picturesque Dales village. On the other side of it he turned off the main road and along a narrow lane signposted ‘Overdale House’.
The house was hidden from the lane by banks of rhododendrons. At the bottom of the valley below them snaked the silver ribbon of a river, and when the house eventually came into view its walls seemed to absorb the colour of the evening sun, so that the building was bathed in soft pink light.
It was an idyllic spot for a hotel, Jenneth acknowledged as Luke stopped the car. She guessed that the house had once been a private home—it had that air about it. Informal gardens fell away from the house down into the valley, an expanse of green lawn tempting the eyes and the feet.
The front door of the hotel opened and a man came towards them.
‘Mr Rathby?’ he enquired as Luke opened the car door. ‘Your suite is ready for you, sir. Shall I take up your bags?’
Jenneth was impressed by the attention to detail that made it possible for Luke to be greeted by name, and wondered how many guests the hotel catered for. Probably not very many. It had an air that suggested it was both discreet and very, very expensive. She wondered how Luke came to know about it, and what had made him choose it. It seemed to breathe peace and tranquillity, and the kind of privacy she would have thought he most wanted to avoid.
This was a hotel for lovers, she thought bitterly, avoiding the hand he stretched out to her as she got out of the car.
The interior of the hotel was every bit as attractive as the exterior, and in other circumstances Jenneth would have appreciated the gentle ambiance of tranquillity reflected by the panelled walls of the comfortable square foyer.
A smiling receptionist welcomed them and, like the porter, addressed Luke by his name.
‘I’m afraid we don’t have a lift,’ she apologised with a smile that included Jenneth. ‘Your suite is on the second floor.’
The stairs rose up to what had once been a minstrel’s gallery, but Jenneth paid scant attention to the hotel’s historical detail, glancing only briefly at the enormous window that dominated the stairs.
It was heavily leaded with various armorial bearings picked out in stained glass, something which normally would have fascinated her, but she was too wrought up to listen when Luke started to explain that the house was built on the site of a much older building.
As she deliberately looked away from him, she thought she saw his mouth compressing slightly, but she ignored it, just as she was determined to ignore him.
He had got what he wanted…a mother for Angelica. Why he had considered it necessary to go through this farce of an honeymoon she had no clear idea at all. It could only be a refined form of purgatory for both of them: Luke because it must remind him of his first wedding…his first wife…his first honeymoon with the woman he had loved; she because it could only underline the fact that Luke did not love her.
Only half a dozen doors opened off the second-floor landing. Luke stopped outside one of them and inserted the key they had been given, standing back to allow Jenneth to precede him inside.
The room was furnished in keeping with the period of the house. Its windows stood open to the small balcony almost opposite the door, and the view beyond.
A suite, the girl on reception had said, and Jenneth had visualised two bedrooms, perhaps connected by a small, dull sitting-room. Instead she was standing in what would have passed for an elegant drawing-room, furnished with two comfortable sofas, a writing desk and chair, a large reproduction cabinet which she guessed probably housed a TV set and a small oval dining-table, large enough to seat four.
The room was decorated in shades of blue and yellow, reflecting the golden sunlight pouring in through the open french windows.
Someone knocked on the door. Luke opened it, and a man came in with their cases.
‘I’ll put them in the bedroom, shall I, sir?’ he asked, and Luke nodded.
It wasn’t until Luke had discreetly tipped him and the door had closed behind him that Jenneth realised the potential significance of that word ‘bedroom’—in the single.
‘A shower, I think, and then possibly dinner, unless you’d prefer to explore the grounds a little first…’
The bland casualness of Luke’s remark deflected her concentration and Jenneth stared uncertainly at him.
She must have misunderstood. Luke would never have booked only one bedroom. She was panicking unnecessarily.
‘I think I’d like to unpack. How long will we be staying?’ she responded.
‘Only a couple of days, I’m afraid. I can’t take too much time off at the moment. Someone at the hospital recommended this place. Apparently they have a marvellous chef, and a comprehensive range of outdoor activities… riding, fishing in season, tennis, walking, golf.
‘I thought we’d have dinner up here tonight. It would give us both time to adjust to our new status…’
He gave her a slightly crooked smile, and because it tugged unbearably at her heartstrings, making her feel as though he was actually daring to pretend that this was as new to him as it was to her, she said bitingly, ‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d have needed to do much adjusting. After all, it isn’t as though this is the first time you’ve been married.’
She turned her back on him and walked towards the french windows, fiercely blinking away the tears that threatened to betray her. What on earth had possessed her to make such a stupid comment?
‘Jenneth…’
She hadn’t heard him move, and froze when she felt his hands on her shoulders, shrugging quickly away from him, saying distantly, ‘I’ll go and unpack…’
And then, hesitating as she crossed the room to the door the porter had disappeared through, she turned back to ask, ‘Which is my room?’
There was a long pause while Luke looked at her calmly and thoughtfully before saying evenly, ‘It is customary for bride and groom to share a room.’
She withstood his gaze for as long as she could, and then whispered disbelievingly, ‘You’ve only booked one room…?’ Betrayed by the emotions seething inside her, the reality of his rejection of her, she demanded huskily, ‘Why? For convention? After all, we both know that it isn’t because you…’
Inexplicably, the final denouncing words stuck in her throat, refusing to be uttered. Why was it so difficult to say ‘it isn’t because you desire me’? After all, it was the truth.
Luke, though, didn’t seem to share her disability.
‘What is it we both know, Jenneth?’ he asked her softly, walking towards her. ‘What were you going to say? That I don’t want you?’
He looked at her without smiling, a look with which she was totally unfamiliar, a brooding male look that made her stomach quiver and heat start to pour through her body.
‘Are you really so blind?’ he said mockingly.
And, before she could stop him, he had crossed the space that divided them and she was in his arms, his mouth smothering the protests she would have made, his hands moving swiftly and impatiently over her body as he moulded her against him, and for a startled second she felt the hardening evidence of his arousal.
Luke, aroused by her? Impossible. And yet the evidence, tangible and erotic, was there. Not just in his arousal, but in the dark flush that burned his skin and the febrile glitter that darkened his eyes.
‘I think we’ll forget about unpacking and dinner, don’t you?’ he said softly against her mouth and, before she could deny what he was suggesting, he picked her up and carried her through into the bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him.
It was furnished in the same colours as the sitting-room. Heavy net curtains cast a veil over the sunlight outside, and the smell of beeswax and pot-pourri hung evocatively on the air.
As soon as he put her down on the bed, Jenneth opened her mouth to tell Luke to let her go—to tell him to leave her alone, that she didn’t want him; but before she could frame the words he was kissing her, fiercely, savagely almost, bearing her back against the mattress, his movements those of a man gone totally beyond restraint, his voice raw and unfamiliar as he muttered thickly against her mouth that he wanted her…ached for her…needed her so badly.
Before she could stop him, he had unzipped her dress and eased it away from her body.
She shuddered as his hands touched her breasts, fierce, sheeting sensation running through her, her body tightening and coiling in remembered anticipation of the pleasure he had already shown it.
This was crazy…impossible…totally wrong, but as she fought to hold on to that knowledge her body was caught up in the unstoppable surge of a different, older knowledge, and, while she tried frantically to deny what was happening to her with her mind, her body turned traitor on her, and the touch of Luke’s mouth burning her skin through the fine silk that covered it brought a haunted moan to her lips and caused her body to arch eagerly into his hands.
This was wrong…wrong…but how could it be when it felt so right…when she ached so much for the possession of Luke’s hands…his mouth…his body? When he wanted her, as she had always dreamed of him wanting her? Surely she had the right to take what she was being offered?
‘Touch me, Jenneth…I want to feel your hands on me…your mouth…’
His hot breath burned against her ear, his demands fragmented and urgent, making her senses spin dizzily out of control. She reached for him instinctively, obeying the urgent summons of his desire and her own.
He had already discarded his jacket, and she unfastened the buttons on his shirt with impatient, eager fingers, her heart pounding frantically as he impeded her progress by biting the tender flesh of her throat, by cupping her breasts and rubbing his thumbs rhythmically and urgently over her nipples, so that beneath the fine silk of her underwear they peaked and hardened.
When he sat up to shed his shirt he took her with him, his eyes burning hot and dark, never leaving her face, as he dealt swiftly and almost roughly with the removal of his clothes.
As he had pulled her up with him one of the shoulder straps of her teddy had been dislodged. She felt its silken pressure against her arm, and broke the fierce visual contact of his concentration to glance down at it.
Luke’s gaze followed hers, too quickly for her to prevent him seeing the rosy darkness of her nipple where it was revealed above the edge of her teddy.
Blushing furiously, she reached for the strap, but Luke stopped her, lowering both his hand and then, with a husky, impatient sound of need, his mouth to the exposed aureole of flesh.
Unprepared for both the intensity of passion generated by the fevered heat of his mouth as he drew fiercely on her sensitive flesh, and her own instinctive reaction to it, she cried out sharply, a low, tormented sound that mirrored the savage stab of sensation that arced through her body and which made Luke hold and taste her almost frenziedly as he responded to its sound.
She had felt desire before, had known what it was like to suffer the unbearable ache of physical need and physical deprivation, but she had never known anything like this…had never expected to see Luke held so fast in the grip of that same need that he could not stop himself from compulsively, obsessively almost, caressing every inch of her skin, stroking it, tasting it, arousing it so that she had no ability to even think about resisting him.
His mouth followed the progress of the silky teddy as his hands drew it down her body. When his tongue traced the round indentation of her navel, she moaned and twisted despairingly on the bed, reaching down to curl her hands into his shoulders as, all inhibitions and restraints stripped away, she cried out to him that she couldn’t stand what he was doing to her, that her body was going to break apart under the pressure of the fierce need that pulsed inside it.
But her pleas hadn’t stopped him, and when at last she lay naked and boneless on the bed, watching him through heavy-lidded, slumbrous eyes, he took her hands and placed them against his own flesh, watching her while he told her how he wanted her to touch him, and she had seen in his eyes the same raw, aching need she knew had been betrayed by her own.
His muscles jerked savagely beneath her stroking fingers, his pores springing sweat that carried his scent and caused her to caress him eagerly with her lips and tongue while Luke trembled and cried out beneath her touch. His hands abruptly reached for her hips, sliding down her thighs and then upwards until he was touching her intimately, learning her and then stroking her, making her cry out with longing and reach blindly for him, needing the sensation of his body within her own so desperately nothing else mattered.
She sobbed with relief as she felt the blissful thrust of him within her, but its relief was short-lived and she craved another and then another, moving with him, accommodating him so that the brief, tearing pang of pain was quickly absorbed and gone, and her body wa
s free to hold him as she had always wanted to hold him, to move with him until the driving urge that possessed them both made her cry out and arch up to him as the tense spiral inside her wound on and on, and the harsh sound of his breathing excited the fierce drumming of her heart. Suddenly the spiral tightened one last time and then exploded into convulsions of such unbearable pleasure that her body shook with the effort of enduring them and tears ran from her eyes. Luke moved, one last, urgent movement that intensified the convulsions to the point where the pleasure was so great that she couldn’t quite believe it was real. Luke cried out, a savage, triumphal sound that thrilled her flesh and her spirit, and their bodies shuddered into exhaustion, still gently rocked by echoes of sensation.
‘Jenneth …’
Reluctantly, Jenneth opened her eyes and looked into Luke’s.
‘You do know why I married you, don’t you?’ he said huskily, and immediately Jenneth realised what she had done, and her heart and flesh chilled to ice.
‘Yes,’ she told him curtly, and then, before the misery she could feel burning inside her could betray her any further, she turned her back to him and said bleakly, ‘I suppose what just happened was necessary, Luke? After all, without it our marriage wouldn’t be valid, would it? But I want to make it clear to you that I will never, ever permit it to happen again!’
She felt him move behind her and tensed, dreading having him touch her. He must know that what she was saying was motivated purely by pride… She could understand why he had felt it necessary to ask her if she knew why he had married her. After that uncontrollable way she had reacted to him, he was probably terrified that she had misunderstood his motives. It was different for men; they could feel physical desire without any emotional commitment, and she suspected bitterly that Luke would be quite happy to avail himself of the physical relief her body offered when the need arose, even if at the same time he was making it clear to her that he didn’t want any kind of emotional commitment.