by Penny Jordan
‘How many?’ Liz asked crisply.
‘A complete new wardrobe. Oh, and a wedding dress as well,’ and for some reason she heard herself saying firmly, ‘Something really stunning, Liz.’
‘I know the very place; they specialise in Cinders-shall-go-to-the-ball-type things that are out of this world. Look, how soon can you get down here? I can park Lucy with Ma-in-law for a couple of days and we can concentrate totally on getting you kitted out … When is this wedding taking place, by the way?’
‘In four weeks’ time.’
There was a breathless pause and then, ‘Nell, you’re not …’
‘No,’ she interrupted, her breath catching high in her throat on a hysterical laugh. The thought of Joss being so overcome by desire for her that he accidentally made her pregnant was so totally unlikely that it caused her body to burn and tears to film her eyes.
‘No, nothing like that …’ she assured her friend. ‘And I can come down on Monday and stay for as long as need be …’
‘Well, a week should do it; that gives us some time for fittings. I know how tiny you are, and whatever we buy is bound to need alterations. We’re lucky down here … There are plenty of fabulous shops. What about attendants?’
‘Only Grania, I expect, and I’m sure she’ll have her own ideas on what she should wear.’
‘I’m sure,’ Liz agreed drily. ‘But the choice isn’t hers, but yours … I know the very thing. Pink … the kind of baby pink that turns her kind of skin yellow and does horrendous things to dark hair. Yes … I can see her in it now …’
‘Liz,’ Nell protested, but laughing despite herself. Liz had always had this effect on her, her wicked sense of humour making Nell smile even when she felt least like it. Nell could picture her now, her red hair in untidy disarray, her too wide mouth curled into a smile, her lissom body dressed in jeans and one of her husband’d discarded sweaters, and, no matter what she dressed in, nothing could disguise Liz’s feminine sensuality. It was no wonder that Robert had fallen fathoms deep in love with her.
‘How are the family?’ she asked.
‘Well, your god-daughter is fine—noisy, impossible, and at times a pest, but fine … Jane’s OK, but we’re both worried about Paul. On the surface he seemed to accept our marriage very well, but there are problems at school. It can’t be easy for either of them, seeing someone take their mother’s place.’
‘But they love you, Liz.’
‘Yes, I know, and that makes it all the harder for them, poor loves. In loving me they probably feel they’re betraying their mother. It’s not so bad with Jane … I can talk to her, but Paul is just at that age when he’s finding it difficult to articulate his emotions. How will you travel down?’
‘I’ll drive. I should arrive some time after lunch.’
‘Excellent. We can spend the afternoon doing a recce and that will leave us with plenty of time on Tuesday for the serious shopping.’
It was the final wedding at Easterhay on Saturday, and so Thursday and Friday were busy with its preparation, which pleased Nell because it gave her less time to think.
Joss arrived late on Friday evening, just when she had almost given him up. Nell was in the hall when Johnson let him in. She had been arranging the last of the Michaelmas daisies in an ancient blue and white vase. She was just standing back to study her handiwork when she heard his car outside.
He came in moving with his usual lithe grace, but tonight it was underlaid by tense, restless energy. His shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, revealing corded muscles and brown skin.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he apologised tersely, dropping his briefcase on to the floor. ‘I got held up with a business meeting, otherwise I’d have been here after lunch.’
‘Is everything all right?’ Nell asked him. She had seen Joss exhibit that restless energy once or twice before, normally when he was in the throes of negotiating a new deal.
‘Fine,’ he responded, and then added mockingly, ‘What’s wrong, Nell? Hoping for a reprieve—been praying that financial disaster would overtake me, have you?’
‘Why should I?’ she asked, keeping her voice deliberately controlled and neutral. She had lain awake almost the whole of the previous night thinking about their future together.
Joss wasn’t going to allow her to back out of this marriage, she knew that. It was imperative that he never guessed how she felt about him, and so she had decided that the safest thing she could do was to adopt a manner of cool self-control behind which she could hide her real emotions.
It was all very well to plan out in the sleepless darkness of the night what she intended to do, but now, confronted by the reality of Joss, she wondered whether she was going to be able to carry it off. His eyebrows lifted in the questioning way with which she was so familiar.
‘Why should I want you to lose your money, Joss?’ she asked him quietly. ‘After all, I’m hardly likely to find a second millionaire willing to marry me, am I?
He gave her a narrowed look, mouth hard. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose there must be any number of self-made men willing to buy what I’m buying from you, Nell.’
Johnson had disappeared discreetly the moment he had let Joss in, but, conscious of the fact that he could reappear at any moment, Nell said quickly, ‘I wasn’t sure what your plans were. It’s Mrs Booth’s night off, but I could make us a cold supper’, if you’re hungry.’
Something—was it surprise?—flashed momentairly in the golden eyes, and then he said silkily, ‘How wifely of you, Nell. No, thanks, I already have a supper engagement.’ She turned away quickly so that he couldn’t see her face.
Of course, she should have known, given the circumstances of their coming marriage, that he would still continue seeing those other women who hung so fragilely on his arm, but somehow or other she had managed to forget, or perhaps had deliberately not wanted to remember that they would continue to have their place in Joss’s life.
‘Of course,’ she said emotionlessly, ‘I should have realised that you probably had a previous engagement.’
‘Should you?’ The dark eyebrows rose again. ‘I didn’t realise you were telepathic, Nell, or are you trying to tell me something else?’
She picked up the few stems of Michaelmas daisy that she hadn’t put in the vase and fidgeted with them nervously. When he was in this kind of mood, Joss reminded her of a caged lion, restless and also very dangerous.
‘Who exactly do you think I’m having supper with, Nell?’
She forced herself not to betray her feelings as she turned to look at him, deliberately curving her lips into a remote little smile as she said quietly, ‘Your private life really isn’t any concern of mine, Joss.’
To her shock, he reached out and grabbed hold of her, his fingers encircling her wrist with painful force. ‘Isn’t it?’ he demanded harshly. ‘By God, Nell …’
He broke off abruptly when her face went white, releasing her wrist with a mock-delicate care.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised drily. ‘For a moment I had forgotten that I am trying to turn myself into a gentleman. How right you are to remind me, Nell. As a lady, you won’t wish to concern yourself with the sordid details of my life, other than where it touches upon your own. Fiona tells me that you’ve arranged to go to Cambridge,’ he added abruptly.
Still stunned by the bitterness she had seen and heard, Nell said hopefully, ‘Yes, I thought I’d spend a few days with an old school-friend.’
She badly wanted to touch her wrist where he had gripped it. Her flesh ached and throbbed, and, now that the warmth of his fingers had been removed, her skin actually felt chilled.
‘I thought Liz could help me refurbish my wardrobe.’
‘Liz?’ Joss frowned, and then his forehead cleared. ‘Oh, yes, the redhead. A few days away from this place would probably do you good. I’m sorry about all the hassle you’ve been receiving from the Press, but only to be expected I’m afraid. I told Johnson to let me know if things threatened to
get really out of hand.’
Nell stared at him. Johnson had not said anything to her about that.
‘Keeping tabs on me, Joss?’ she enquired bitterly. ‘There’s really no need, you know.’
Once again anger flared in his eyes. ‘When do you plan to leave for Cambridge?’ he asked tersely.
‘Monday morning. I’ve got a wedding here tomorrow, and then there’s the clearing up.’
‘I’ll get Audlem to take you down in the Rolls.’
‘There’s really no need,’ Nell told him coolly. ‘I’m perfectly capable of driving myself there, Joss.’
‘And I’ll have to see about sorting out a new car for you as well,’ he added, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Is there anything particular you fancy?’
‘Nothing,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I already have a perfectly good car, Joss. There’s no need for you to buy me another one.’ She emphasised the word ‘buy’ and he looked at her with cold eyes, a mirthless smile curling his mouth.
‘Perhaps not,’ he agreed, ‘but it’s three years since I bought the Daimler, and …’
Nell couldn’t help it. Her face betrayed her. She cried out sharply, ‘What do you mean? Gramps bought that car.’
‘No, I bought it,’ Joss told her.
Nell felt shaky and sick. All this time she had been driving around in a car Joss had bought, and she had never known.
‘It hurts, doesn’t it, Nell, to be the recipient of someone else’s unwanted charity? Oh, yes, I know all about that feeling,’ he told her, watching her face. ‘I grew up on it, and it made me determined that one day I’d be the one doing the giving. Have you drawn up your guest list for the wedding yet?’
‘Yes,’ Nell told him tonelessly. ‘It’s in Gramps’ study.’ She walked into the room, knowing that Joss was following her, for once not intimidated by the sensation of having him so close to her. The list was on the desk. She picked it up and handed it to him in silence.
‘Very impressive,’ Joss said curtly when he had finished reading it.
‘Perhaps we ought to be getting married in Westminster Abbey, not the local parish church, so that even more people can know how well you’ve done for yourself, Joss. Be careful, you might find they’re laughing at you, not envying you.’ She meant because she herself was so different from the lovely women he normally escorted, but he went white with an anger surely far out of keeping with her taunt, his eyes flat with rage and his mouth a hard, thin line.
‘Laughing at me? Why, Nell? For aspiring to a higher social station than that to which I was born, because I don’t have the right accent and I haven’t been to the right school? Maybe I don’t have those things, but my son will, and when he’s at school with the sons of the people who are doing the laughing, well … let’s just see how they feel then.’
Nell was appalled at the flood of bitterness she had released. She had had no idea that Joss felt his background so keenly, no idea how on earth to reassure him that he was wrong, that she had never given the supposed difference in their station a thought.
‘Here,’ he said curtly, reaching into his pocket and extracting a small square box. ‘You had better have this. After all, this is the reason why I am here.’
He handed it to her, not deigning to open it himself, but her fingers trembled over the catch of the old velvet-covered box and she almost let it fall to the floor. She heard Joss cursing under his breath and then he took it from her, flipping the lid back dexterously, so that the ring inside it caught the light and shimmered. As he handed it back to her, she caught her breath. She had no idea what she had expected him to give to her as an engagement ring—a very valuable solitaire probably, something expensive but discreet like his own gold watch—but this was nothing like that.
The ring was old and heavy, the gold red and worn. The sapphire, that was it central stone, gleamed brilliantly, diamonds surrounding it, a sea of white fire. She stared at it in disbelief and heard Joss saying to her, ‘Don’t you recognise it?’
‘Recognise it?’ She stared from the ring to him, bemused, and another of his hard, cruel smiles curled his mouth.
‘You don’t, do you, Nell? Has anyone ever told you how good you are at destroying a man’s ego. Come with me.’
He led her from the study to the huge formal dining-room that was hardly ever used these days. Over the fireplace hung a portrait of the Countess of Strathmarr. She had been a Macdonald before her first marriage, and on the wrong side during the Rebellion of 1745. She had supported Bonny Prince Charlie, not just in secret with money and men, but in public in the salons of London, where she had let it be known how she felt about George of Hanover, the usurper on the English throne.
She was married at the first time at sixteen to a man older than her own father, one of the Glaswegian tobacco lords, who had died six months after the wedding, leaving his young bride immensely wealthy.
After the Rebellion had been crushed and Bonny Prince Charlie had fled, King George had the countess arrested. It had been Nell’s ancestor who had saved her; one of Cumberland’s men, he had fallen in love with her on sight, but in those days she had been far, far above him both in station and in wealth. Now, with her lands proscribed and her wealth filling the king’s coffers and her person languishing in one of the king’s prisons while she awaited trial, which would almost certainly send her to her death, Sir Henry had stepped in. Despite the fact that he strongly supported King George, he had hated the cruelties inflicted on the Highlanders, and when Cumberland praised him for his bravery during the battle of Glencoe and offered to reward the quick thinking that had saved his own life with an earldom, Sir Henry had turned it down, and requested that instead he be allowed to marry the Countess of Strathmarr.
Nell knew this story almost as well as she knew the story of her own life. She had looked at the portrait of the young countess at least a hundred thousand times and, while she had often noticed the soft droop of her mouth and the sadness in her eyes, until Joss stood her in front of it and pointed it out to her, she had never really noticed the sapphire she was wearing on her left hand.
‘She was given that ring by her tobacco lord when he married her,’ Joss told her, ‘and your ancestor bought it back for her from the king because it was the same colour as her eyes. Your grandfather should have given it to your grandmother, but he had to sell it to pay death-duties. How your family have suffered under that burden, Nell.’
‘Like many others,’ she told him quietly, but inwardly her heart was beating frantically.
‘I managed to trace the ring, and I think it fitting that you should wear it as a symbol of our future together.’
Nell smiled and thanked him mechanically, but all the time her mind was on the countess and her story. How ironic that a ring that should originally have been given by her ancestor to the woman he loved should now be given to her by a man who had no feeling for her at all.
‘So polite and self-controlled,’ Joss mocked her. ‘I shall expect more than polite words and smiles from you after you are my wife, Nell.’
‘I’m not a child, Joss,’ she countered. ‘I know exactly what our marriage will entail, and there’s really no need to hold it over me like a threat. You have already stressed that you want a son.’
‘And?’ Joss prompted.
‘And the days are long gone when women of my class were kept ignorant and virginal until they married.’
Something leapt in the darkness of his eyes. She automatically took a step back from him.
‘What are you trying to tell me, Nell?’ he asked evenly.
Outside the room, the telephone in the hall rang sharply, splintering the tense silence. Glad of the excuse to escape from him, Nell opened the door and hurried to pick it up.
It was Grania, which surprised her, as her stepsister very rarely rang her up unless she wanted something.
‘Nell, what on earth’s going on?’ she demanded sharply now. ‘You can’t be engaged to Joss.’
‘Well, ac
tually, I am,’ Nell told her; her lips formed the words, while her mind was occupied with a hundred different thoughts. ‘I’m glad you rang, Grania. The wedding will be at the end of the month, here in the village, of course. I didn’t know if you’d want to be an attendent.’
‘How brave of you, darling,’ Grania trilled at the other end of the line. ‘I suppose I shall have to be, shan’t I? I promise I shall try not to outshine you. Is Joss there, by the way?’ she added lightly. ‘He left some papers here at my flat the other night when he came round.’ Nell stiffened, remembering how she had once thought that Joss’s visits to her grandfather might be because he hoped to marry her stepsister.
‘He is here,’ she said distantly. ‘I’ll just put him on to you.’
She handed the receiver to Joss and turned away blindly, but she had hardly taken three steps before Joss was replacing the instrument.
‘Don’t go, Nell,’ he demanded. ‘We haven’t finished our discussion.’
‘I’m afraid I must,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ve got rather a lot to do for this wedding tomorrow, and you did say something about having a supper date.’
‘How cool you are, Nell. Cool and remote like a rarefied atmosphere. What will you do when I take you to my bed? I wonder. Close your eyes and tell yourself that you are doing it for the sake of the family?’
It hurt that he should think her so incapable of normal feelings and emotions, but, even as the muscles cramped with the pain controlling her reaction to his words, she knew that to deny them was the most dangerous thing she could do. So instead she offered him a brief, tormented smile.
‘You’re the one who proposed this marriage, Joss,’ she reminded him. ‘If you’ve changed your mind …’
‘No … and neither will you change yours. Remember that, Nell,’ he warned her as he walked to the door. ‘You are committed to me now. And if you try to avoid that commitment, I shan’t rest until I’ve found you.’