by Penny Jordan
‘And as for Renauld, did he think to tell you, I wonder, while he was flirting so assiduously with you, that both his and Héloise’s family have assumed for years that the two of them will eventually marry? They’re distant cousins with complex property and business connections—a marriage between them would tie things up very nicely as far as the families are concerned. Not that that would have stopped him bedding you, of course.’
‘Stop it…stop it…’ Rosy protested shakily, lifting her hands to cover her ears as she turned her face towards him.
‘Why do you always have to be so critical, so cynical?’ she demanded passionately. ‘Why do you always have to spoil everything for me? I’m not a complete fool, Guard, whatever you might think. Just because I choose—because I prefer—to see the best in people, that doesn’t mean that I’m not aware.’
As she blinked back the angry tears threatening to flood her eyes she turned away from him, her voice low and slightly rough with pain as she told him, ‘All right, so maybe Ralph would have agreed to marry me if I’d offered him Queen’s Meadow, but at least he wouldn’t have wanted the house for himself. He would—’
‘He would have destroyed it just as surely as Edward,’ Guard interrupted her flatly. ‘Grow up, Rosy. Do you honestly, truly believe that Ralph would have cared a single jot for the house or its history? That he wouldn’t have quite happily torn out the panelling and boarded up the staircase if that was what it would have taken to get the place passed as an institution?
‘Do you know what would have happened to Queen’s Meadow in those circumstances?’ Guard demanded harshly. ‘It would have had to comply with fire regulations, with safety regulations and with God alone knows what else as well. And if you think that anything—anything at all—of the original house would have been recognisable to your father or grandfather by the time Ralph and his cohorts had finished with it, then you’re a fool.’
‘You’ve never liked Ralph, have you?’ Rosy accused furiously. ‘You’ve always made fun of him, sneered at him. Well, don’t think I don’t know why, Guard—’ Rosy stopped abruptly as she half turned towards Guard to see how he was receiving her furious tirade.
He didn’t look as she had expected—neither furiously angry nor mockingly contemptuous.
His jaw was clenched as though he was holding himself under immense control and, as she watched him, Rosy saw a small muscle jerk slightly, pulsing against his skin, and the look in his eyes when he turned his head…
An involuntary shudder seized her as Rosy heard him invite her softly, ‘Go on, Rosy…’
Oh, how she wished she’d never started this conversation, but it was too late to back down now…Much too late.
‘You resent the fact that he isn’t like you, that he doesn’t care about money or material things,’ Rosy challenged him bravely. ‘Because he’s—’
She tensed as Guard started to laugh, so confused by his unexpected reaction that it actually alarmed and upset her more than if he had actually raged furiously at her in denial of her assertion.
‘Ralph, not care about money? Then how come he’s constantly bombarding me with requests for donations for his precious shelter?’ Guard taunted her.
‘That’s different,’ Rosy objected. ‘He doesn’t want it for himself. He—’
‘No? Is that what you really think, Rosy? All right, I agree he doesn’t want money to spend on himself, on possessions for himself, but he certainly wants the glory he knows damn well he can get by lifting that pathetically amateur outfit of his into something much more high-profile and professional.’
Rosy bit her bottom lip and looked away from him. Cruel though Guard’s comments were, they held a certain hard, gritty core of truth which she herself was far too honest to be able to deny.
To her relief, she realised that they had reached the entrance to the chateau. With any luck, Madame would be lurking in the hallway awaiting their return—or rather Guard’s return.
‘What—nothing to say for yourself, no passionate defence of your precious Ralph? And why is that, I wonder?’ Guard observed cynically as he brought the car to a smooth halt in front of the château.
Rosy did not deign to answer him. What, after all, was the point?
Tiredly, Rosy reached for the zip of her dress. Madame had not, after all, been waiting for them but, once they had reached their suite, Guard had announced that he had some work to catch up on, and had promptly seated himself at the desk, totally ignoring her.
Which, of course, was exactly what she wanted. So quite why it should have made her feel so bad-tempered and irritable, she had no idea. It couldn’t be because she had lost an argument to him, nor even because she was beginning to feel so oppressed by the burden of her unfamiliar and unwanted role.
She frowned as the zip on her dress ran smoothly for a couple of inches and then jammed. Irritably, she tried to work it free.
Ten minutes later, with her arms aching and the zip still well and truly jammed, she admitted defeat, acknowledging that she now had only two options open to her: either she would have to go to bed in the dress, or she would have to ask Guard for help.
Reluctantly, she walked towards the bedroom door and opened it, standing uncertainly just inside the doorway whilst she studied Guard’s downbent head.
He was seated with his back towards her, making notes on whatever it was he was reading, his concentration so intense that Rosy hesitated to interrupt him.
Perhaps if she tried the zip one more time…
‘Yes, Rosy, what is it?’
Rosy’s startled gaze flew to meet Guard’s as he put down his pen and turned towards her.
‘It’s the zip on my dress,’ she told him awkwardly. ‘It’s stuck and…’
‘You’d better come over here and stand in the light where I can see what I’m doing properly,’ Guard informed her, motioning her to the centre of the room as he correctly anticipated her request. ‘Perhaps you are growing up after all,’ he added wryly, as he took hold of her shoulders and turned her round so that he could examine the back of her dress.
‘What do you mean?’ Rosy demanded stiffly, sensing a fresh taunt and trying to turn round, but Guard was holding her shoulders too firmly for her to move.
It was an odd sensation to feel his fingertips on her bare skin, to see in the mirror over the fireplace the pair of them standing together in a pose which could almost have been one of intimacy…of lovers…
A tiny frisson of sensation ran over her skin, an odd and unfamiliar awareness of Guard, not as she always thought of him, but as a man. If it had been Guard whom she had met at the party tonight, for instance, Guard who had flattered her, flirted with her…
Mortified by the extraordinary direction of her own thoughts, she looked down at the floor.
‘When did it happen, Rosy?’ Guard asked her softly. ‘When did preserving a dress become more important to you than preserving your hostility towards me?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Rosy fibbed. Was that a sign of maturity, to decide it was preferable to ask Guard to help rather than tear her dress?
If so, she was beginning to wish that she had made a more immature decision, she acknowledged; she could feel the tension crawling along her spine as she felt the warmth of Guard’s breath on the skin of the nape of her neck, as he pushed the weight of her hair out of the way so that he could investigate the jammed zip.
She had read books in which the heroine virtually swooned in ecstasy as the hero pressed impassioned kisses against her nape, but had scornfully dismissed such descriptions as being wildly exaggerated.
Now…She swallowed hard, curling her fingers into two small, shocked fists while the warmth of Guard’s breath against her skin, as nebulous as mist floating across a meadow, nevertheless had an effect on her senses that was so potent that she—
It was Guard’s irritated, ‘Keep still, Rosy,’ that made her realise what she was doing; she was moving her body back into his as though…as though she a
ctually wanted…as though she was actively seeking to intensify that soft frisson of sensual warmth which had bathed her skin in such unexpected sensation.
‘Oh, leave it, Guard,’ she protested, trying to pull away from him, frantically aware that something had gone wrong, that somehow her body had got its messages all tangled up and that, for some inexplicable reason, it had suddenly decided to react to Guard, to respond to Guard as though—
‘Keep still. I can see what the problem is now. There’s a small piece of cotton caught in the zip. I think I can work it free, though.’
‘Where? Let me see it—I can probably do it myself,’ Rosy protested, trying both to pull away from Guard and to swivel round so that she could see over her shoulder but, as she moved forward, Guard managed to free the zip, leaving the soft, supple velvet to slither free of her shoulders and her upper body.
Frantically, Rosy grabbed hold of the velvet, her face flushing as deep a pink as the exposed peaks of her nipples as she stood in mesmerised shock while Guard made a slow and very thorough visual inspection of her half-exposed body.
‘Stop it, Guard. Stop looking at me like that,’ she blurted out huskily, her voice trembling as much as her body. She wanted to turn and run but for some reason she couldn’t move. She could only stand there while Guard’s gaze slid lingeringly over her body.
‘Like what?’ he asked her softly. ‘I am, after all, your husband, Rosy, and in reality…’
As he took a step towards her Rosy stared at him with huge, shocked eyes, her nakedness—the original reason for the feeling of excited, nervous sensation crawling slowly through her stomach—forgotten as she felt herself trembling in the golden heat of Guard’s gaze, unable to look away from him.
‘In reality,’ he continued softly, ‘have you any idea what it would be doing to me right now, seeing you like this, if we really were man and wife? If you’d deliberately wanted to do so, you couldn’t have chosen a more sensually provocative pose, do you know that? The injured innocent clutching her clothes to her body, and yet at the same time exposing—’
Rosy shivered as his gaze dropped to her breasts, hot colour scorching her face as she felt her nipples start to ache.
‘If I really were your husband, Rosy, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you,’ Guard told her roughly, ‘and it wouldn’t just be your mouth that would be left swollen and sensitive from my kisses…
‘What’s wrong?’ he taunted her, when he heard the small, shocked gasps she gave. ‘Surely you’re not so innocent, so naïve, that you didn’t know that it isn’t just the feel of a woman’s breasts and nipples in his hands that turns a man on; that the sensation of caressing and suckling a woman’s breasts, the sound of her soft cries of pleasure, the—’
‘No…No…’ Rosy moaned in protest, finally tearing herself free of her imprisonment and turning round to run almost headlong into her bedroom, slamming the door closed behind her and leaning on it while her body shook as though she had a fever and her heart pounded so hard that it made her feel sick.
The hot tears of anguish that crawled silently down her flushed face from behind her closed eyelids had nothing to do with outrage or embarrassment, or anger against Guard for what he had done.
Just for a moment, while she had listened to the hypnotic softness of his voice, she had actually seen his dark head bent over her body, his mouth caressing her—
Her stifled denial left her throat raw and aching. Shock, bewilderment, guilt, fear—all of them formed a lump of incomprehensible pain and panic that hurt physically as well as emotionally. She had not just mentally visualised Guard’s dark head bent over her body, she had also felt…
Trembling from head to foot, her face white with shock, Rosy slowly levered herself away from the door.
What was happening to her? What had happened to her?
She showered quickly.
She walked slowly from the bathroom and got ready for bed, refusing to meet her own reflection in the mirror, conscious of the way the fabric of her nightshirt seemed to rub against the suddenly sensitive peaks of her nipples.
Her face burned with renewed colour.
There was something wrong with her, there had to be, imagining Guard caressing her like that…Imagining herself wanting him to, her body aching for him…needing him…
It was just a trick of her imagination, she assured herself; tomorrow she would feel differently, be back to her normal self…
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WHAT’S wrong, Rosy? Not still sulking because I broke up your flirtation with Bressée, are you?’ Guard asked drily.
Cautiously, Rosy turned her head to look at him, reaching for her seatbelt as she did so, when the stewardess announced that they would shortly be landing.
Had Guard really forgotten what had happened last night? The way he’d looked at her, the things he had said to her?
He was frowning slightly as he fastened his own seatbelt, a hint of impatience tightening his mouth.
It seemed almost impossible this morning to believe that he was actually the same man who had made her so shockingly, so sensuously—aware of him, and of herself, of her sexuality, her vulnerability.
Had she perhaps overreacted to the whole incident, built it up in her own shock and embarrassment into something much more than it had actually been? Had she been lying awake half the night, dreading having to face Guard in the morning, dreading what he might say, unnecessarily?
It had almost been something of a let-down when he had made no reference at all to the incident, calmly behaving towards her just as he had always behaved, treating her more like an irritating child than a—
Than a what? A woman? A nervous skein of hair-fine sensations tightened ominously in her stomach, her face and body suddenly uncomfortably hot.
‘Come on, Rosy,’ Guard instructed her as the plane bumped down on to the tarmac. ‘The last thing we need now is to arrive back looking as though we aren’t speaking.’
‘I’m not sulking,’ Rosy told him stiltedly. ‘I’m just…tired, that’s all.’
‘Tired—after a two-day business trip? That will raise a few eyebrows,’ Guard derided tauntingly, ignoring her self-conscious flush to continue, ‘Once we’ve picked up the car, I’ll drop you off at Queen’s Meadow, and then I want to go on to my office to go through a few things, and to the apartment. Did you sort out a room with Mrs Frinton?’
Rosy shook her head. She was behaving a bit like an ostrich, she knew, but so far she had not been able to bring herself to deal with the practicalities thrown up by their marriage.
On the night of their wedding she had slept in the room she had occupied since childhood, while Guard had slept in one of the guest-rooms, but she knew that there was no way they could continue to preserve the fiction that their marriage was a love match if they continued to sleep in separate rooms with almost half a mile of corridor between them.
‘I—I thought—There are two guest-rooms with an interconnecting door and, if I made up the beds myself, then Mrs Frinton won’t—’
‘Mrs Frinton won’t what?’ Guard interrupted her. ‘Mrs Frinton won’t guess that we’re sleeping in separate beds? That’s fine, Rosy, just as long as she doesn’t. If it ever gets out that you and I are sleeping separately, you can depend upon it that Edward will have his lawyers on to us so fast…’
Rosy shivered.
‘Aren’t there any rooms with twin beds?’ Guard asked her.
‘Only in the attic bedrooms,’ Rosy told him, ‘and it would look odd if we slept up there.’
‘Indeed,’ Guard drawled.
‘Cheer up,’ Guard mocked her later, once they were on their way home. ‘Remember, it’s only for a year and—who knows?—you might even get to like it.’
‘Never,’ Rosy told him vehemently, and then immediately flushed a bright and betraying red as she remembered how last night, just for a second, she had experienced that dismaying and extraordinary flood of physical desire.
‘Be ca
reful, Rosy,’ Guard warned her, adding obliquely, ‘Some men might be tempted to take that as a challenge, to prove to you that—’
As Rosy stiffened automatically in rejection of his taunt, Guard turned into the drive, breaking off to ask her, ‘Isn’t that Edward’s car?’
‘Yes,’ Rosy agreed flatly.
‘Mm…I wonder what he’s doing here. Staging a welcome-home party, do you think? How very thoughtful of him.’
‘Edward never does anything thoughtful,’ Rosy told him grimly. ‘He always has an ulterior motive.’
‘Mmm…Well, there are no prizes for guessing what it is this time, are there?’
When Rosy looked questioningly at him, Guard explained.
‘The house, Rosy, the house.’
‘But it’s too late for that. He knows we’re married.’
What was Edward doing at Queen’s Meadow? she wondered, worried, as Guard opened the car door for her and she got out. He knew how much she disliked him, how unwelcome his presence would be.
‘Smile, Rosy,’ Guard reminded her as he opened the heavy front door. ‘Smile.’
As he held the door open for her she had to walk so close to him that it looked almost as though his arm was actually draped possessively across her shoulders and, as she turned towards him to tell him that the last thing she felt like doing was smiling, he looked down at her and murmured dulcetly, ‘That’s better. Now, if you move a bit closer towards me and open your mouth a little, who knows? It might almost appear to an onlooker that you’re waiting for me to kiss you.’
To kiss her!
Indignation flashed in Rosy’s eyes but, before she could say anything, Mrs Frinton came hurrying into the hallway, looking very upset and anxious.
‘Oh, Rosy…I mean Mrs…’
‘Rosy is still fine, Mrs Frinton,’ Rosy assured the older woman. ‘You look upset. Is something wrong?’
Before Mrs Frinton could answer, Rosy heard someone coming downstairs. As she look upwards, she realised that it was Edward, smiling his fake, crocodile smile at them.