by Julia James
‘It’s a magnificent ring,’ said Alexa politely.
The girl grimaced. She was pretty, a dusky brunette, but the gown she was wearing was too overpowering for her, Alexa thought critically. It was in a very stiff lemon silk, with a sweeping panelled skirt and a tight bodice that seemed to crush the girl’s breasts.
‘It doesn’t suit me,’ the girl said flatly, still eyeing the ring.
‘Well, perhaps you need only wear it for formal occasions,’ Alexa answered tactfully. ‘Maybe you could ask your fiancé for something simpler, more to your taste, for everyday wear.’ Judging by the vastness of the gems, providing a second engagement ring for casual wear would not be a problem for what was evidently a very wealthy fiancé.
The girl’s expression changed. ‘No, he wouldn’t do that. I have to be formal all the time.’ She looked down at her dress. ‘Like this dress. It doesn’t suit me either.’
Alexa frowned slightly. It seemed a shame that the girl couldn’t choose a gown she liked. Something in a more youthful style, in a softer material. ‘Your gown’s beautiful!’ the girl said impulsively. Then she grimaced again. ‘But that wouldn’t suit me either—I’m not tall enough for it. Anyway,’ she went on, her expression downcast once more, ‘I don’t like evening clothes. I’m too clumsy for them.’
‘Oh, you don’t seem clumsy at all!’ Alexa said immediately. The girl seemed to do nothing but deprecate herself, which was completely unfair—just because she was wearing a dress that no one with any sense should have put her in.
‘I am,’ responded the girl. ‘My mother always says so! And my fiancé thinks it—I can tell.’
Alexa frowned again. ‘Surely not?’
‘He does. I know,’ the girl averred. ‘And if he doesn’t think me clumsy, he thinks me very gauche and boring, even though he tries to hide it. He’s used to beautiful, elegant women. Women like you,’ she said artlessly. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’ She gave a heavy, resigned sigh. ‘Because he’s marrying me all the same—it’s all arranged.’
Alexa felt her unease mount. Part of her knew she should not really be allowing this conversation, but part of her—the greater part—could not help but feel disquieted by this artless but clearly self-deprecating girl and what she was depicting about her engagement.
‘You know, these days,’ she ventured carefully, busying herself wiping her fingers on the handtowel, ‘women don’t have to marry men they’ve been “arranged” to marry…’
The girl only shrugged. ‘Well, it’s better than the alternative. Being nagged to death by my parents! They’re actually pleased with me for the first time in my life—even though my mother keeps going on at me about how to behave, and so on and so on. My fiancé won’t take any more notice of me when we’re married than he does now—he’ll keep a mistress, one of those beautiful, elegant women that he prefers. I won’t mind, really.’ She lifted her chin, as if to confirm her assertion, but Alexa saw a bleakness in her eyes and felt her disquiet increase.
She opened her mouth to say something, but what she didn’t know—because what could she say? Before she could speak, someone came into the area.
‘Louisa! There you are! We were about to send out a search party!’
It was a middle-aged woman with the cut-glass voice of the English upper-class. The girl Alexa had been speaking to started, as if caught out doing something she shouldn’t have been.
‘I’m just coming,’ she said hastily, immediately looking flustered. She threw a glance at Alexa, the bleakness in her face replaced by a fleeting awkward smile, then she was gone, ushered out by the older woman, who hadn’t wasted a glance at Alexa.
Slowly, Alexa dropped the used handtowel into the basket provided. She felt a pang of pity for the girl, stranger though she was. It was none of her business, obviously, but no girl who was betrothed should be that downcast. She should be brimming with happiness, radiant with joy. The last thing that poor girl looked was radiant…
She sighed. Life was seldom as happy as people wanted it to be. Hers included. The exchange with the girl, disturbing as it had been, had served to distract her from her own situation, but now, as she forced herself to return to the ballroom, she felt the weight of it tear at her. Misery enveloped her. Why, oh, why had she had to see Guy again? How was she to do what she knew with every fibre of her being she must do? Free herself from the hopeless mire she’d fallen into and get her life together again, put Guy de Rochemont behind her, into the past, where he had to be.
I thought I was making a start! Thought that I was finally making myself move on, leave him behind me.
But it had been fool’s gold, that hope. All it had taken to rip every frail tatter of that hope had been a bare few moments…
An ache scoured inside her, physical in its impact.
Hopeless in its longing for something that could never be.
One of his party had said something to him, but Guy hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. He had hardly noticed when Louisa had returned to his side. There was only one thing that he was aware of—burningly, corruscatingly aware.
He was angry.
It was inside him, lashing like the tail of a tiger. His replies to conversation grew more abstract, his mood more impatient. He needed to get out of here. He needed to get rid of these people—Louisa included. In a remote corner of his mind he knew he was being brutishly unjust, because none of this was her doing. It was not her fault she was standing beside him, gauche and awkward, saying so little her lack of conversational ability was almost painful. It was not her fault that her father had got his damn bank into deep water, and it was not her fault that she just happened to be Heinrich’s daughter. It was not her fault that she was going to marry Guy.
Above all—and he could feel the lash of his anger catching him on the raw, castigating him—it was not her fault she was not Alexa…
Into the mesh of anger another emotion speared—an emotion he did not want to feel, as he did not want to feel this lashing within him. An emotion that he wanted to push away, deny, ignore, disregard—any word would do, so long as he got rid of it. Disposed of it. Just the way he had disposed of his affair with Alexa Harcourt with a stark, effective severing. He had moved her out of his life because she could no longer be part of it—because his life had moved on.
Into the tunnel. The tunnel that was funnelling him forward to a marriage he could not avoid, to a future mapped out for him just as it had been for his parents, Louisa’s parents, and so many more of his family over the generations, across the centuries.
Anger speared again, more intense. More intense, too, the other emotion—the one that was focussed like a dark, burning flame on what he had put aside to enter the tunnel. What he could not have again.
And what, with sudden consuming heat, he wanted once more…
One last time…
CHAPTER SIX
‘THANK you so much, Richard, for a lovely evening.’ Alexa infused warmth into her voice. It was a little forced, but she hoped Richard hadn’t noticed. Just as she hoped he hadn’t noticed her abstraction during the remainder of the evening.
She’d tried hard to be a good guest, the pleasant evening companion owed to someone as nice as Richard Saxonby, but her mind had had a will of its own. It had wanted her to wander off, wanted her to seek and find the object of its attentions, and she’d had continually to rein it back. So, too, her gaze. The knowledge that Guy was somewhere in this vast gathering, with scores of tables and hundreds of people, had been a constant torment to her. She had felt herself disastrously, damningly, wanting to seek him out with her eyes, searching through the mass to see if her eyes could light on him again…feast on him again. But they mustn’t! She must not. That was all there was to it.
But it might be the very last time I see him in the flesh…
The plea came from somewhere deep inside her. She fought to crush it back, push it back where it had come from, but it kept trying to find its way out.
I’ve go
t to be strong! I’ve got to!
The admonition was fierce, the intent resolute.
Just don’t look for him—don’t try and see him. Leave him alone. He’s nothing to do with you any more—nothing!
That was all she must hold on to. That time in her life, when Guy de Rochemont had been with her, was over. Gone. Finished. That was all there was to it.
But it was one thing to tell herself that, another to do what she was told—stop trying to see Guy somewhere in all this crowd.
In the end it had been a relief when Richard’s party had started to break up and disperse. So focussed had she been on Guy’s disastrous presence at the gala that she’d given no thought to what Richard might be thinking about how the evening should end. But now, as he helped her into a taxi in the hotel’s forecourt, he said solicitously, after she’d thanked him for the evening, ‘Would you like me to see you home?’
It was lightly said, no more than a polite offer, and Alexa was grateful. He was not going to chance anything this early, and it was yet another sign of how nice he was. Since she knew he lived in Highgate, quite a different direction from Notting Hill, she assured him she’d be absolutely fine, thanked him again for the evening, and waved him goodbye as her taxi pulled away. But once she was on her own, the taxi threading along Park Lane, she was instantly prey to her emotions. She sat back, her eyes shut, wishing she could shut out her thoughts as easily.
But it was impossible. Impossible to suppress, as she knew she must, the swirl of emotions in her head. Oh, why had she had to see Guy again? It had been the very last thing she’d needed!
I thought I was starting to get over him. Get him out of my system. Move on. Make new connections, put him behind me finally…
Her eyes shadowed.
I thought I was starting to make myself fall out of love with him…
Her hopes had been real, fervent—but all it had taken was a single, shocking sight of him to know just how useless those hopes had been. In anguish, the thought resolved in her head. Hollowing her out with hopelessness.
I’m still in love with him… And there’s nothing I can do about it…
The truth, stark and painful, stared bleakly back at her, scraping at her heart with razoring pain. Guy was gone—gone from her life…
As the taxi deposited her on the pavement outside the house she lived in, she felt an empty longing in her, a hopeless tearing. She opened the front door into the entrance lobby. Dolefully, her feet leaden, she gathered her narrow skirt in one hand and headed heavy-hearted up the stairs. Never had life seemed so bleak.
A pall seemed to be hanging over her, slowing her steps. And what was there to speed up for? An empty flat awaited her. A lonely night.
A hopeless skein of yearning unwound in her. Heartache and hollowness.
In her head, as it had been over and over again, she saw Guy’s image and felt her heart squeeze—but Guy wasn’t there. Would never be there. Never again. Never—
The ache in her heart worsened.
At the door to her flat she paused, summoning the mental energy to open it and go in. When she did, she closed the door behind her, feeling the emptiness of the flat all around her. Dropping her evening bag on the hall table, she shrugged off her fake fur evening jacket and walked listlessly into the sitting room, intent on reaching the kitchen beyond to make herself a cup of herbal tea to retire with—and stopped dead.
Guy de Rochemont was there.
Her pulse froze. Then surged. She must have made some small noise in her throat, her hand flying upwards. Did she try and speak? She didn’t know. Only that Guy had cut right across her.
‘Where is he?’ he asked, his voice casual. But there was the edge of a whip in it.
‘Who?’ Alexa’s brow furrowed as she tried to breathe. Tried to reel in all her senses, emotions that were suddenly flying haywire, as if an electric field had arced through the room.
Guy—Guy is here—here!
The consciousness of his presence transfixed her. Stifled her lungs.
‘Lover-boy,’ said Guy.
Alexa stared. Stared at the figure seated as she had seen him so often, shadowed by the dim light. She didn’t answer—couldn’t answer. Had no idea what he was talking about. No idea about anything at all other than the overpowering consciousness of his presence.
With a sudden fluid movement he jack-knifed to his feet, crossed towards her. His pace was feral, and Alexa felt a flare deep within her.
‘You didn’t bring him back here?’ The voice was harsh.
The question had tormented him all the way here—all the time since he had ushered Louisa to the steps of her friend’s house, bade her goodnight, his mouth saying words that were appropriate, his mind somewhere completely different.
Making his decision.
Issuing the requisite instructions to his driver.
He still had the keys to Alexa’s flat, and as he’d walked in he had known that the only thing on his mind was whether she was going to come back here alone, or go home with the man who had replaced him. Or bring the man back here.
Now, with a surge of raw, visceral emotion, he knew she had done all that he’d desired—come here, and alone.
Alexa still looked blank. Was still incapable of any coherent thought at all. Only of raw, surging emotion.
A rough sound came from him, as if dismissing his own question. He closed in on her, and Alexa felt raw emotion surge again. His hands clamped on her upper arms—hard, like a vice. Her eyes flew to his. She felt that surge seize her lungs. Felt her eyes arc into his, burning green, burning into her. He was saying something to her. Something she did not understand. Whatever language it was, the words were beyond her. Everything was beyond her. She knew only the emotion surging in her, only the hard clasp of his hands on her bare flesh, only the drowning of her eyes in his.
And the feral curve of his lips as he held her, pinioned. There was an unmistakable, irrefutable message in his burning eyes. To which she could give no answer other than the one her own eyes were giving.
For one long, timeless moment he held her, as her lungs seized, frozen, unbreathing, and then slowly, achingly, agonisingly slowly, his mouth started to lower.
‘No man but me, ma belle Alexa,’ he breathed. ‘No man…’
Then his mouth was branding hers with his possession.
And in his tensed, steel-coiled body, the lash of his anger was finally extinguished. The hard, unbroken armour of his iron self-control finally pierced.
It was later. Much, much later. How much later Alexa didn’t know. Couldn’t know. Time had stopped.
Only her senses were alive. Senses once submerged, suppressed, for four long, empty, meaningless months.
Now released again. As if from a casket, buried deep.
Broken open.
Limbs splaying, spreading; hands clasping, holding; mouths seeking, devouring; bodies winding, binding. Fusing.
Fusing into one. One living, moving body. Arcing. Moulding. Melding.
On, and on, and on.
Until all was gone. All. And now she lay there, in the slackening circle of his arms, her hair a shroud around his shoulder, her brow against the smooth, damask marble of his chest, with nothing left in her. Only the plunging of her heart.
Then, into the pulsing silence, Guy spoke. His voice was rough, distanced, speaking out into the darkness around them.
‘This has changed everything.’ The words fell into the pounding silence between them. ‘Everything,’ he repeated, and his voice was harsher than ever. ‘I will not do without you.’ A heavy breath escaped him, his chest rising and falling. ‘It will be…difficult. I cannot be with you often. Even less than I was able before. You must understand that. Accept that. It will be when I can. As I can.’
His hand around her fastened on her hip, tightened.
‘It cannot be as it was. You must understand that too. But what I can do, I will.’ She heard a scissoring breath. Then the voice speaking out into the dark
ness continued. ‘I will come to you—there can be no other way. Discretion is essential—I am sorry, but it must be so. No one must know that I have taken up with you again. There can be no breath of suspicion.’ She felt his chest beneath her brow rise and fall again. Then he spoke again. Still into the darkness. Staccato, disjointed. ‘Then later…later…afterwards… it will be easier. It will be understood. Accepted. By everyone.’ He paused again. ‘Including Louisa. My intended bride.’
His voice hardened.
At his side, in his arms, Alexa felt her blood thicken and congeal.
He was still speaking. ‘Until then—’ He fell silent. ‘Until then only this is possible,’ he finished. His voice was flat.
For a while, as the blood began to sluggishly force its way through her, bringing no heat but only a chill, draining cold, she just went on lying there, her head resting on him, her hand across the flat, taut plane of his abdomen as his arms encircled her.
Imprisoned her.
He said nothing more, only gazing upwards into the darkness above them. After a while he moved, lifted one arm to glance at the circle of gold around his wrist. Then with another scissoring breath he removed himself from her, reaching for his scattered clothes, pulling them on wordlessly. She watched him—watched him with nerveless limbs, numb. When he was dressed again he looked down at her.
‘I am sorry—I have to go right now. Immediately. I should not be here—not with Louisa in London. There is too much danger of discovery—too great a risk that she might find out, be informed of where I went after the gala.’ He took another heavy, distracted breath. ‘I will need to talk to you, evidemment, to explain all the arrangements, the necessities… But right now I must go. It’s unavoidable. And tomorrow I’m returning to Paris. Then everything will be impossible for at least one—two weeks. Then perhaps a possibility—that is all.’ His voice was still flat. ‘I will phone you when I can.’ His expression changed minutely. ‘You can no longer phone me. You must understand that.’ He broke off, then with a rasp said, ‘It is the very devil, but it is the only way. The only way! For now there can be no other, and I will take what I can. I am sorry—but it is all that is possible now.’