by Penny Jordan
By her marriage to Guard she was depriving him of his opportunity to inherit Queen’s Meadow. Only, if Edward inherited, there would no longer be a Queen’s Meadow for him to inherit.
She clung to that knowledge for comfort as she finally reached Guard’s side.
The raucous, inappropriately joyful peal of the bells was making her feel sick, Rosy acknowledged as she blinked in the sharp clarity of the sunlight. Or was it the shock of that moment when Guard had thrown back her veil and looked so deeply into her eyes as the vicar pronounced them husband and wife that, for a fraction of time, even she had almost been deceived that the emotion, the intensity, the passion which had darkened his eyes as he looked into hers had been real.
There were people milling all around her. Where had they come from? Dizzily she recognised some of the women from the shelter, people who had known her father and grandfather, all of them smiling, laughing, making teasing comments about the suddenness of her marriage. All of them apart from Edward.
Rosy tensed as she saw the malevolence in his eyes.
She had always known he didn’t like her, but it had never worried her. She did not like him, but now she recognised his dislike was different. Now she was standing between him and what he coveted, what he had assumed would be his.
A small shiver ran over her.
‘What is it, what’s wrong?’
Rosy tensed in surprise at Guard’s question. She hadn’t expected him to notice her small, betraying frisson of apprehension. He had appeared to be deep in conversation with Peter, too deeply involved to be aware of her.
‘Nothing,’ she told him guardedly, aware that Edward was still watching her, watching them both.
‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ someone commented to her.
‘Thank you. It was my mother’s,’ she responded absently.
‘I thought I recognised it.’
That was Guard, catching her unaware for a second time, making her mouth open in a small ‘O’ of astonishment as she turned to face him.
‘Your father had a photograph of her wearing it on his desk,’ Guard reminded her. ‘It suits you. The colour complements your skin. It has the same warm tint…’
He reached out and brushed his fingers lightly against her throat as he spoke.
‘Edward’s watching us,’ Rosy warned him in a small, stifled voice.
‘Yes. I know.’
‘Do you think he suspects?’ Rosy asked him nervously.
‘If he does, this should stop him,’ Guard assured her.
‘This…?’ Rosy looked up at him questioningly and then went still as she recognised the slow accomplished movements of his body, performed like some magical sleight of hand so that, to their onlookers, it must seem as though the way he took her in his arms, the way he held and kissed her, were the actions of a man so deeply in love with his bride that not even their discreetly curious observation could prevent him from exhibiting his feelings.
Unexpectedly, behind her closed eyelids, she could feel the hot burn of tears.
This was no time to go stupidly sentimental, she warned herself shakily. No time to compare the emotions her mother must have felt when she wore this dress to her own—
‘Oh, I think it’s all so romantic,’ Edward’s wife sighed enviously, as Guard released Rosy. ‘It’s just such a shame that your father…’
‘John knew how I feel about Rosy,’ Rosy heard Guard saying calmly.
He certainly had, Rosy acknowledged, but not in the way that Guard was implying. She could well remember her father once making an idle and half-envious comment about Guard being able to have any woman he wanted.
Rosy had been just seventeen then and she had reacted accordingly.
‘He couldn’t have me,’ she had told her father challengingly.
Her father had laughed.
‘You aren’t a woman yet, poppet, and I doubt very much that Guard would want you anyway. He knows you far too well…what a little shrew you can be at times…’
‘Where are you going for your honeymoon? Or aren’t we allowed to ask?’ Rosy heard Edward enquiring.
‘We aren’t,’ Guard replied for her. ‘At least not yet. I have a meeting in Brussels in two days’ time which I couldn’t put off. Rosy and I fly out there tomorrow morning.’
They flew out there? Rosy stared at him, but Guard was looking in the opposite direction, answering some comment that the vicar’s wife had made to him, and Rosy had to wait until they were alone in the bridal car to ask him uneasily, ‘Why did you tell Edward that we’re both going to Brussels? He’s bound to suspect something if he discovers that I haven’t gone.’
She whispered the question, even though the glass panel between them and the driver was closed. That was what deceit did to you, she recognised mournfully. It made you cautious…wary…guilty.
‘There won’t be anything for him to discover,’ Guard told her promptly. ‘I meant what I said.’
‘You mean you’re expecting me to go to Brussels with you—without even asking me?’ Rosy demanded indignantly. ‘But I can’t—I’m supposed to be working at the shelter…’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rosy,’ Guard told her dampeningly. ‘Dedicated though he is, Ralph is hardly likely to expect you to go back to work quite so quickly.’
‘But I want to,’ Rosy told him aggressively.
‘If you do, you’ll be putting us both at risk,’ Guard warned her. ‘It takes more than a church service to make a marriage, Rosy.’
Angrily, Rosy turned her head away from him. She knew full well what it took to make a marriage, but their marriage wasn’t going to include that particular ingredient, and Guard knew it.
‘It takes,’ Guard continued calmly, ‘a degree of intimacy which most couples develop in bed, but which you and I will have to find another way to manufacture. We need some time on our own to establish ourselves in our new roles, Rosy…’
When she didn’t respond, he continued inexorably, ‘You were the one who wanted this marriage—’
‘To save the house,’ Rosy interrupted him angrily. ‘Not because…’
In her heart of hearts she knew that Guard was right that the awkwardness she felt when she was with him was bound to betray her, but the last thing she wanted to do was to spend time on her own with him. In her view, that would only exacerbate the problem, not solve it.
‘I don’t want to go away with you, Guard,’ she told him dangerously now. ‘I don’t want to come back and have people looking at us…speculating…imagining…believing…’
‘What?’ he challenged her, his eyebrows lifting.
‘You know what,’ Rosy muttered, avoiding looking directly at him.
‘Thinking that we’ve been to bed together? Most of them assume that we’ve already done that. Imagining that we’ve spent the whole of the time we’ve been away making love…that my supposed business meeting is just a fiction and that in reality the hours I should have spent seated behind some boardroom table have been spent exploring every inch of your body, stroking and caressing it until I know every contour of it, every hollow and curve.’
Out of the corner of her eye Rosy could see the way his glance was lingering on her breasts and immediately the hot, agitated colour flared in her face.
‘Such embarrassment,’ Guard mocked her. ‘You’d burn with that colour from the tip of your toes to the top of your head if I told you exactly what I’d expect and want the woman I loved to do to my body the first time we went to bed together,’ Guard told her outrageously. ‘Have you ever even seen a naked man, Rosy? Never mind—’
‘Of course I have,’ she lied hotly, interrupting him. ‘I realise how much you like making fun of me, Guard,’ she added with angry dignity. ‘Yes, I do get…embarrassed when you talk about such—such intimate things. And no, my experience doesn’t come anywhere near matching yours but, contrary to what you seem to believe, I prefer to be the way I am. Anyone can get sexual experience,’ she added, gathering confidence when h
e didn’t make any attempt to interrupt her or mock her. ‘And just because I choose not to do so—’
‘Just as a matter of interest, Rosy, why have you chosen not to do so?’
‘You know why,’ Rosy told him huskily.
‘Because you’re saving yourself for the man of your dreams,’ Guard mocked her. ‘What happens if you never meet him, Rosy? Have you ever asked yourself that?’ Guard demanded with such unexpected savagery in his voice that his anger shocked her.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘BUT this isn’t a hotel,’ Rosy protested as Guard swung their hired car up the drive and stopped in front of the entrance to an impressive, stone-built château.
Ever since Guard had made his announcement that she was going to Brussels with him Rosy had protested and argued that she didn’t want to, but it hadn’t made any difference.
‘And what am I supposed to do,’ she had exploded angrily, ‘while you’re in your meetings?’
‘You’ve never struck me as a person so uninterested in her fellow human beings that she suffers from boredom, Rosy, far from it…’
Rosy had glared suspiciously at him. Compliments from Guard? He must have some ulterior motive, and she suspected she knew quite well what it was. She wasn’t a complete fool.
‘I’m not going with you, Guard,’ she had told him. ‘I don’t want to go with you.’
But, somehow or other, all her protests had been overruled and now here she was, glaring frustratedly at Guard’s profile, thoroughly incensed by his ability to remain calm when all her emotions were a seething mass of churning chaos.
She wasn’t used to being married; she wasn’t used to having a husband, to being part of a pair…a couple, and she resented Guard’s apparent assumption that he should be the one to decide what they should and should not do—what she should and should not do.
‘No, it isn’t a hotel,’ he responded calmly now. ‘It’s a private home. Madame, the châtelaine, is French and, rather than sell the property after her husband’s death, she decided to supplement her income by taking in paying guests. Like most Frenchwomen, she is not just an excellent cook, but a first-rate hostess and extremely skilled in the art of making one comfortable.’
Rosy frowned. Something in Guard’s voice when he spoke about the owner of the château irked her a little. Without his having described her in any detail, Rosy immediately had a mental image of one of those elegant, ageless Frenchwomen whom she, personally, had always found particularly intimidating.
‘But you said you had business in Brussels,’ she objected. ‘This place is miles away.’
‘A little over two hours’ drive,’ Guard told her. ‘That’s all. And staying here gives me an excuse not to get involved in the Brussels political scene, which can be as pedantic as the people involved in it. I thought you’d like it here. You’ve always said you prefer the country to the city.’
Rosy looked away from him. It was true that she did prefer the country, and normally she would probably have enjoyed such a trip, but normally she would not have been making it with Guard—as his wife.
Guard was already climbing out of the car and going round to open her door.
Unwillingly, she had exchanged her normal favourite wear of leggings and a comfortable top for a long jersey skirt with a matching waistcoat. Beneath it she was wearing a soft, cream shirt. The outfit had a matching knitted jacket which she had brought with her just in case she felt cold.
She had worn the outfit knowing that it wasn’t likely to crease, a fact of which she was uncharacteristically glad as the door of the château opened and Guard’s Frenchwoman appeared.
Predictably, she was dressed in black—a wool, crêpe skirt which Rosy suspected must have come from one of the couture houses, teamed with a plain satin shirt and a cashmere knit draped flatteringly round her shoulders. The pearls gleaming at her throat—all three rich ropes of them—had to be real, just like the diamonds on her fingers and in her ears, but it wasn’t her elegance that struck Rosy as she reluctantly fell into step beside Guard, it was her age, or rather her lack of it.
The woman was not, as she had expected, somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties, but far closer to forty—closer, in fact, to Guard in age than she was herself, Rosy recognised.
Quite why that knowledge should cause her to feel so hostile towards Madame, she had no idea, but that she was not alone in that feeling became quite clear.
Madame turned to Guard, totally ignoring Rosy, to say coolly to him, ‘Oh, I hadn’t realised that you would be bringing a…friend with you.’
‘Rosy is my wife,’ Guard explained firmly, drawing Rosy forward and introducing her.
Friend or wife, it plainly made no difference as far as Madame was concerned; she was obviously not pleased about Rosy’s presence.
‘I had put you in your normal suite,’ she told Guard, somehow or other managing to stand in between them so that she was facing Guard but had her back to her, Rosy observed, as she listened to the Frenchwoman speaking to Guard in her own tongue.
Rosy’s own French was extremely fluent. She had a gift for languages which had been fostered during the years her father had been stationed in Germany. Her French was, in fact, far more fluent than Guard’s.
‘However, if you should prefer another room…’ Madame was saying.
Another room. Rosy’s heart thumped uncomfortably.
She had assumed that they would be staying in Brussels in a large, anonymous hotel and that they would, as a matter of course, have separate rooms. After all, Guard could have as little desire to share the intimacy of a bedroom as she did.
‘No, my usual suite will be fine,’ Guard was assuring their hostess.
The large, draughty hallway of the château made Rosy glad of her long skirt.
Queen’s Meadow was kept relatively warm by its low ceilings and thick panelling, but this place, with its lofty rooms and bare stone walls, must be a nightmare to heat, Rosy reflected as Madame preceded them up the stone staircase.
Its carpet, although well-worn, was decorated with what Rosy presumed were the arms of her late husband’s family. Rosy paused to examine them more closely, wondering if she was correct in interpreting that the bend sinister in one quarter of it with the fleur-de-lys meant that at some point in history one of the château’s châtelaines had been a Royal mistress and had borne her lover a son.
Up ahead of her, Madame was walking side by side with Guard, saying something in French about regretting the fact that his wife’s presence meant that they would not have their normal tête-à-tête dinner together.
Guard’s urbane and English, ‘No, I’m afraid not, but I’m sure that Rosy will thoroughly enjoy sampling your wonderful culinary skills,’ made Rosy glower at him. There was surely no need for him to practise his role of supposedly loving husband here.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that, as far as she was concerned, he and Madame could enjoy as many tête-à-têtes as they wished, but instead she suppressed the impulse, contenting herself with a less-than-warm smile in Madame’s direction and telling her in her own fluent French that she was indeed thoroughly looking forward to such a treat.
Apart from a narrow-eyed look and a faint pursing of her artfully carmined mouth, Madame made no comment. But she was no longer talking to Guard in French, Rosy noticed, as the older woman walked them along a corridor, stopping outside a heavy, wooden door.
‘I trust everything will be to your liking,’ she told Rosy formally and without conviction.
This time it was Rosy’s turn to be distantly unresponsive.
As the woman left them the thought crossed her mind that the relationship between her and Guard could have been far more intimate than that of hostess and guest but, oddly for her, it was a suspicion that she didn’t voice.
Her impetuosity had always been something of a joke in the family, and she was ruefully aware that she did have a tendency to speak before she thought, but when it came to Guard’s persona
l life, and his sexual experience, it wasn’t just reticence that held her back.
Just thinking about Guard and sex made her stomach clench nervously and her body grow hot and wary. There was, she admitted, something simply far too dangerous about the whole subject for her to risk making any kind of unguarded comment about it, to risk giving Guard the opportunity to taunt her about her own comparative innocence and ignorance.
And yet with other men she felt no such discomfort—quite the opposite. As she walked past Guard and into the suite’s sitting-room she was immediately aware of the scent of Madame’s perfume, lingering on the air. Silently, she studied her surroundings—the giltwood furniture, the hugely ornate gilded mirror above the fireplace, the rococo work and the silk wall-hangings in a pale green moire that seemed to shimmer with a life of its own.
Vases of white, waxy lilies added to the room’s elegance; it would have been easy to find such a setting quite intimidating, Rosy recognised as she frowned down at the faded Aubusson rug on the floor.
‘I normally use this bedroom,’ she heard Guard saying from behind her as he opened one of the two doors leading out of the room. ‘It has an adjoining bathroom; the other one does not, but if you’d prefer…’
What she’d prefer would be to be at home, on her own, Rosy recognised grimly, as Guard well knew.
‘I don’t care,’ she told him dismissively and then couldn’t resist adding, ‘Hadn’t you better have the one with the bathroom? After all, I’m sure Madame will expect you to be properly groomed before you join her for your usual tête-à-tête.’
‘Jealous?’
The soft taunt, so unexpected and so impossible, shocked her into silence.
Jealous…How could she be? Guard meant nothing to her. The only emotions that existed between them were a dismissive contempt for her on his part, and an impotent antagonism towards him on hers.
Jealous…It was impossible, unthinkable, and Guard knew it. So why had he said it?