‘You don’t love her, then?’
She wasn’t sure why she had to be so clear on this point, only that it was very, very important.
‘Love!’ he laughed harshly. ‘Love died for me a very long time ago.’
When her cousin had died, Sara amended silently. Of course, that would account for some of his bitterness, for some of the austerity she so often glimpsed in him. Having already been married to the woman he loved, having known love and lost it, he was quite prepared to marry for a second time because he knew it was what her grandmother wanted.
In that moment, Sara knew that nothing she would say was going to change his mind. As though he had read hers, he told her softly. ‘Don’t get any foolish ideas into your head, will you? You and I are going to be married, and if I even suspect that you’re thinking of running out on me, I’ll keep you locked up until we’re man and wife.’
Sara had no doubt that he meant every word he was saying. She looked at him with stunned green eyes, and knew with a sudden surge of sensation that the reason she was not objecting far more vociferously that there was no way she was going to marry him was because a tiny part of her wanted to.
It shocked her to her heart, cutting through all her previous self-knowledge. Where had it come from, this foolish romantic desire to teach this hard, unmovable man to believe in her, and more, to teach him to love her?
She shuddered with the enormity of it, knowing with every scrap of sanity she possessed that what she wanted was impossible; that if she had any sense she would fight with everything she possessed to make Luke change his mind about this marriage. But, instead of opening her mouth and telling him so, she simply stood there, almost transfixed, while he released her and strode back to his desk.
That evening he presented her with an engagement ring. She had no doubt that he had gone into Chester especially to get it, but what did surprise her was its perfect fit.
It was a flawless, antique emerald in a twisted gold setting, and she loved it immediately.
‘Thank you,’ she said shakily, resisting a fierce temptation to turn her head away as his lips touched hers.
It wasn’t like that other kiss; this one was cool and clinical, and yet she still couldn’t stop her mouth from trembling beneath his. She swayed slightly, freezing as she heard her grandmother’s soft happy laugh.
‘Don’t overplay your part too much,’ Luke advised her in a cool breath against her ear. ‘The hunted virgin bit is taking it a little too far.’
She hated the cynical way he was looking at her, but it was too late now to protest her innocence.
She was dreading telling Cressy about what had happened but, as though fate had decided to relent, on the very next morning her stepsister rang to announce that she wouldn’t be coming that weekend, nor for several weekends to come, as she had, after all, got an audition for the American soap.
‘I shall stay over there for a few weeks. It will give Luke an opportunity to miss me.’
She rang off before Sara could pluck up the courage to tell her, and it was only later in the evening that she realised that Luke might want to break the news to Cressy himself.
Gran had taken to leaving them alone together in the evenings, and Sara dreaded this ordeal more and more each evening. It was always a relief when Luke stood up and announced that he had work to do, thus freeing her to either go to bed, or find some alternative way of passing the evening.
It struck her that already she was beginning to wilt under the silent war of nerves she and Luke seemed to be engaged on. He delighted in deliberately tormenting her, it seemed; his kisses in Gran’s presence were always so studiedly tender and reverent, yet holding all the acid content of his dislike, making a mockery of all that she had always believed a relationship between a man and a woman should be.
What hurt most of all, though, was her own inability to stop her treacherous body from responding to his touch. It seemed he only had to look at her mouth and her whole nervous system went into overdrive.
It was useless telling herself that it was only desire; she knew herself too well for that.
Somehow or other, she had managed to fall in love with him. How was it possible to love a man she didn’t like? A man who, moreover, despised and disliked her?
Luke claimed that she had caught him in a well-planned trap, but in reality she was equally trapped. Those kisses, those small, delicate intimate touches of his fingertips against her skin; they were all a deliberate torment. She knew that. Somehow he had recognised her physical responsiveness to him, and now he was playing on it, using it to hurt her.
She could only be thankful that he felt no corresponding physical desire for her. She didn’t know how on earth she could ever have brought herself to endure his lovemaking, knowing it was only generated by physical desire.
They were married exactly three weeks after Gran had found them together in Luke’s bedroom.
It was a small affair, with friends of Gran’s and a few neighbours. Sara’s aunt did not fly back from Australia, but no one had expected her to.
She would not want to see her daughter’s husband marrying someone else, Sara suspected.
She wondered if Gran missed her son but, when she broached the subject, Alice Fitton shook her head.
‘It is always the women who have loved Fitton Place best. It is always the women of this family who have cherished and kept it. I had thought your mother…’
They weren’t having a honeymoon.
Gran had to go to London to see her specialist almost immediately after the wedding, and they were going with her.
No one seemed surprised that they were marrying, although Andrew had been openly disappointed. Sara had liked him, but that was all. She glanced now at the tall, dark-suited man at her side. She had decided against a traditional wedding dress, not wanting to remind Luke of his first wedding.
Instead, she was wearing a slightly twenties-style, cream lace two-piece, with a very simple, flower-trimmed hat.
The village church wasn’t large. The sun was shining for them, and the village turned out in force. So why did this sense of unreality persist? Why was she having so much trouble in actually believing she was Mrs Luke Gallagher?
There seemed to be a frozen emptiness of space where her heart normally was, all normal emotion had been completely suspended from the moment she had entered the church. Now they were all back at the house, eating the delicious buffet Anna had prepared. Tom was hovering importantly at her side. He was almost as thrilled as Gran about the wedding.
‘It’s time for us to leave.’
Sara stared stupidly up at the man who was now her husband.
‘It is the customary thing for brides and grooms to do…’
‘But I thought we were staying here…’
‘Not tonight,’ Luke told her quietly. ‘I’ve booked us into a local hotel. Don’t say anything. You don’t want your grandmother to think we’re falling out already, do you?’
Sara glanced helplessly from his set face to her grandmother’s caring one. Of course he was right, and she supposed she should have guessed that they would be expected to spend at least one night alone together, but she had been so bemused by everything…
The very last thing she wanted was this—to be alone with him, she admitted half an hour later, as his powerful Jaguar saloon pulled away from the house. The very last thing!
CHAPTER SIX
THE ROAD LUKE took was unfamiliar to Sara, heading away from Chester and the Welsh hills rather than towards them, and slightly south.
Any normal bride at this juncture would surely be asking her new bridegroom where they were going, if she didn’t already know.
For goodness’ sake, stop acting like a mouse, she chided herself valiantly, after darting a timorous glance at Luke’s unforthcoming profile.
She cleared her throat and tried to pretend he was merely an acquaintance with whom she was sharing a brief car ride, and to treat him accordingly.
&n
bsp; They were married; there was nothing she could do about that. For her grandmother’s sake, she had to find a way of living with that fact.
Strange, the tricks even the most logical of human brains could play on one. Up until now she had barely given a thought to the future. Her fears, her doubts—these had all centred round the threat Luke had made when he had warned her against trying to defy him.
Now that they were married, it was as though a befuddling fog had cleared from her mind, and she was left with an appalling mental picture of what her future life was going to be.
Luke was never going to believe that she had not deliberately inveigled him into marriage. The small, burgeoning tendrils of emotional response she had felt towards him; that frisson of excitement-cum-apprehension she experienced whenever he came close to her; that awareness of him as a man and her wholly female response to him; these would surely wither and fade in the arctic wasteland of his contempt for her.
Love needed time to grow, to mature; hers would not be given that time. Better, surely, to have stood firm, faced her grandmother with the truth and prayed that her disappointment did not have an adverse effect on her health, than to endure what was to be.
Luke turned the car into what could have been the drive to a private house, had it not been for the small, discreet brass plate set into one of the gateposts.
Butterflies exploded in her stomach. There was no point in wishing she could turn back the clock; this was now, and somehow it would have to be lived through.
She stole another quick glance at Luke’s profile. He had not uttered one word to her since their journey had commenced. She wished she could borrow from him a little of his will-power, his ability to put aside his own feelings; then she could ignore his own contempt for her, and concentrate instead on her grandmother and the happiness their marriage would bring her.
She shivered as she recognised the strength of such a will-power and wondered, a little sadly, if Luke ever succumbed to the very human weakness of emotional self-indulgence. Even in his contempt for her, he was controlled, apart from that one occasion when he had kissed her.
Her eyelashes flickered rapidly, a frantic pulse beating in her throat.
She had nothing to fear, she reassured herself as he brought the Jaguar to a standstill. That had been a momentary aberration, a strong and very angry male’s only release for the powerful rage generated in him by a weaker and female foe.
No, Luke would not kiss her again. So why did she feel this odd breathlessness, the jumpy, tense edginess?
She made to get out of the car, impressed by the ivy-clad stone exterior of the hotel.
The building looked Victorian and immaculately cared for, with smooth green velvet lawns stretching down to a small lake.
She reached for her door-handle, startled to see that Luke was already opening it for her. Even though he thoroughly despised her, his manners were impeccable. Noblesse oblige, she thought a little acidly, wondering how he would react if he ever came to realise how much he had misjudged her. She ought to find the prospect of his discovery very satisfying, but it was rather like indulging in the romantic daydream of pretending one was on one’s way to a tropical island, when in reality one was sitting on the Underground on the way to work—a pleasant, but hardly realistic exercise.
A uniformed porter came out to take their cases. Who had packed hers, she wondered, and what with? Luke’s hand under her arm made her feel like a prisoner being escorted to the guillotine. She subdued the hysterical bubble of laughter welling up inside her throat. Unlike her, Luke appeared perfectly calm and relaxed. But then, he had been through this before, she reminded herself bitterly, and hated herself for her cynicism.
Luke’s first marriage to her cousin had been a love match. No doubt, even before they went on honeymoon, they would have been lovers.
She tried not to show her shock as her mind suddenly relayed to her a mental image of Luke’s naked and aroused body. She shivered and closed her eyes, trying to dismiss the image, but it only came clearer.
‘You’re not running out on me now.’
The harshness of his voice brought her back to reality. The porter was too far away to have heard him, but Sara looked round instinctively.
‘This way.’ Luke’s grip on her arm tightened, as though he suspected that she might actually try and make a run for it.
The thought of doing so made her grimace a little wanly. It was too late for running now.
A curious numbness overcame her, a sense of drugging recognition of the inevitability of her fate. So must many, many of her sex have felt through the ages, and this, no doubt, was why she herself was so susceptible to the sensation now. It was part of the feminine psyche, a primitive inheritance that carried with it the weight of the past.
Over the centuries, there must have been many women from her family who had been married to men against their will. Perhaps that was even why she had not objected more strenuously. Perhaps…
Her wild, disordered thoughts were scattered like doves in the face of an attacking hawk, as Luke directed her towards the stairs. He had signed in for them both she realised, her mind still dazed.
‘This way,’ he told her curtly.
The hotel foyer was comfortably furnished, in the manner of a rather luxurious country home.
The other guests were mainly middle-aged, elegantly dressed women and their husbands.
Through an open doorway, she caught a glimpse of the restaurant, leaded windows overlooking the gardens, tables set with crisp cloths and truly beautiful flowers.
The whole place had the ambiance of a privately owned country manor, she recognised as Luke directed her toward the stairs.
If there was a lift, it was tucked discreetly out of the way somewhere. As they went upstairs, there were no chattering maids about, no busy waiters; no evidence that the place was a hotel at all.
In other circumstances, she would have been thrilled by the luxury of the place, but right now…
Luke stopped outside one of the panelled doors and unlocked it.
They had a suite, Sara recognised, subduing a sense of awe as she walked into the beautifully furnished sitting-room.
Someone with both flair and money had planned this décor, this muted blending of blues and terracottas, to achieve such a harmonious and individual whole.
A fire burned in the open fireplace, and a log basket was filled with logs. A bucket of champagne and two glasses on a silver tray caught her eye.
The intimacy of the sitting-room, with its fire and its two chairs pulled up beside it, suffocated her. She wanted to run towards the door and pull it open; she wanted to deny that she and Luke had any reason for sharing these surroundings. Surroundings discreetly designed for lovers, she recognised now; whether of the well-married and comfortably established variety, or the new, slightly nervous kind.
The whole ambiance of the room was chosen to lap one in warmth and security, to provide a retreat from reality and the outside world.
Here one could pretend that no one else existed, that the world was excluded and that it could not break in.
What on earth had made Luke choose such a place? He must surely have known.
A discreet tap on the door signalled the arrival of their luggage. The porter carried their cases through into a room beyond the sitting-room.
A room… Her heart thumping, Sara waited until Luke had tipped him and he had gone, and then demanded baldly, ‘How many bedrooms does this suite have?’
‘One,’ Luke responded imperturbably, plainly not the slightest bit disconcerted by her question.
‘One, but… Why aren’t we having separate rooms?’
‘On our honeymoon?’ One dark eyebrow lifted, his mouth curving in a smile of cynicism.
‘But…’
‘I told you the night you trapped me into this marriage that you would have to pay a price,’ Luke reminded her grimly. ‘Now is that time.’
And the price would be… Her eyes widen
ed, and she backed away from him, her hand going protectively to her throat.
‘You can’t mean…’ She looked wildly and betrayingly at the bedroom door and swallowed, unable to finish putting her fears into words. Luke couldn’t mean that he intended that they should consummate their marriage, could he?
She looked at him, desperately seeking for some sign in his face that he was simply tormenting her, threatening her, but there was none. He meant what he had said.
‘I’m not staying here,’ she told him unevenly, picking up her bag. ‘I’m leaving right this minute!’
‘How?’
The calm disinterest in his voice stopped her.
‘You don’t have any means of transport, nor, I suspect, do you have much money—this hotel is ten miles from the nearest town, and closer to thirty from Alice’s. And even if you did leave, where could you go? Back to Alice? What would you tell her? That the marriage was a mistake? After four hours?’
Every word he said pushed home to her how trapped she was. Every word was perfectly true. Her handbag contained less than five pounds. She had not even got her credit cards with her. Oh, he had planned this so well! He had brought her here deliberately, knowing exactly what her reaction would be. If they were still at home… She swallowed, desperate to prevent him from seeing her fear. He would enjoy that, she acknowledged; he would like knowing that she was afraid of him.
‘You can’t make me do this,’ she told him quietly. ‘If you… if you go through with this, it will be rape.’
She looked defiantly at him as she said it. After all, she was speaking no less than the truth. What he was planning was rape. All right, so his possession of her was legalised by the marriage vows they had so recently exchanged. Vows that… Suddenly, tears stung her eyes as she called to mind the exact words of the service: ‘With my body I thee worship…’
Only what he planned for her wasn’t worship, but punishment… a punishment of the most damaging and cruel kind.
‘Rape?’ His eyebrow lifted again. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’
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