by Penny Jordan
If he had, would she have believed him? Her heart gave a tiny jerk at the thought of Joss playing the would-be lover. She might not have been able to believe him, but she would have allowed herself to seem as though she did. Possibly. Where was her pride? Where was her backbone?
Work … work was the only panacea, and there was plenty of that still to be done.
Her appetite, never large at the best of times, seemed to have completely deserted her, and she laboured over the evening meal Mrs Booth had provided in the solitary chill of the small dining-room.
This was a room off the cold, panelled ladies’ withdrawing-room, and as she studied its dull walls Nell tried to imagine how she might best brighten it up.
So far she had simply concentrated on those rooms she knew they would need to use.
Her grandfather had never approved of a heated dining-room and so there was not even a basic electric heater. After toying with her dinner, she reloaded the tray Mrs Booth had left and took it back to the kitchen.
The kitchen was as old-fashioned as the rest of the house, although Mrs Booth claimed that she preferred the Aga cooker now that she had grown used to it.
It was her evening off and Nell washed her own china and cutlery, drying them methodically and putting them away. A dishwashing machine would be a necessity if Joss planned to entertain, and they could do with a new freezer. The existing one had been bought second-hand, when Nell had deemed it a necessity so that they could store some of the fruit and vegetables produced in abundance by the kitchen garden.
The kitchen did not have units, but huge oak dressers built into the walls which housed the family china and glassware. Provisions were stored in the pantry, on shelves which ran all round the walls.
If she went into it, Nell knew she would find bottles of preserve and fruit from her great-aunt’s day, all neatly labelled and dated. Although she and Mrs Booth still made jam and marmalade, the freezer had proved a boon when it came to preserving their fruit.
The stone-slabbed floor felt chilly when she stepped off the rug, and she shivered a little. If there was enough money left over from the sale of the dinner-service, she would find out about a more practical and warm floor-covering for the kitchen. Mrs Booth wasn’t getting any younger, and it was unfair to expect her to put up with such uncomfortable conditions.
No doubt Joss’s designer would have taken one look at the kitchen and condemned the whole thing. Just for a moment Nell allowed herself to dream of a light, airy kitchen with pretty units and labour-saving devices; and the kind of kitchen that was large enough to have a table in it … the kind of kitchen where she could work, and at the same time keep an eye on their children.
All the muscles in her stomach tensed. Joss’s children … Her body pulsed and ached as though already it longed for them. She must not make the mistake of smothering them with the love she could not give Joss. She must allow them to be free. She could see so many pitfalls in the years ahead … If they had sons, would Joss want to send them to her grandfather’s old school, or would he agree with her that boarding-school was not always the best environment for children?
The pulsing ache turned to panic. There were so many things they hadn’t discussed … so much about him she didn’t know. She had no idea even what he liked to eat, only how he liked his coffee. What papers did he read? The Financial Times, no doubt …
Vague, confusing thoughts whirled through her mind.
She heard the doorbell ring and went to answer it. Joss was standing outside. He frowned down at her, and she bit her lip, realising she was still wearing the same old clothes he had seen her in earlier.
He, in contrast, had changed, and as he stepped inside she saw that he was wearing a leather blouson jacket in a dark jade colour, the leather so soft-looking that she almost reached out and touched it.
He brought in with him the scent of woodsmoke and autumn, and when she frowned, looking into the courtyard for his car, he said wryly, ‘I walked. After the transatlantic flight I felt I needed the exercise.’
As he stood towering over her, all her doubts and fears coalesced, and without even knowing she was going to do so she heard herself saying huskily, ‘I can’t marry you, Joss. It won’t work. I don’t know the first thing about the way you live your life. I’m not like your secretary, I …’
‘Nell.’
The harsh warning note in his voice silenced her. His mouth grim, he looked up and down the hall.
‘What’s the matter with you? You’re practically hysterical. Besides, this isn’t something we can discuss here, where we could be overheard.’
She walked towards the library door, but he stopped her.
‘No, not there. Is our sitting-room finished yet?’
‘Our sitting-room?’ She looked at him.
‘The one off the master bedroom.’
‘Oh, no. Not quite.’
‘Never mind. We’ll go up there anyway. We’re not likely to be disturbed there.’
The look he gave her made her skin flush.
‘It wasn’t my fault we were interrupted this afternoon. She’s your secretary.’ And much, much more, her voice implied, but she held the words back.
‘Fiona hasn’t accustomed herself to the fact that I’m going to be a married man yet,’ he said smoothly. ‘Is that why you can’t marry me? Because of Fiona?’ he asked her. ‘Or is it because of Williams?’
They were at the top of the stairs and Nell tensed, but refused to look at him. ‘This has nothing to do with David. Naturally I’m not too happy about the obviousness of your relationship with Fiona,’ she agreed coolly, ‘but no, that it isn’t the reason. The reason is the one I gave you. We don’t know enough about one another.’
They had reached the master suite. Joss opened the door and stepped back, forcing her to precede him.
As he closed the door, he said calmly, ‘What is it you want to know?’
‘Oh, Joss, it isn’t like that. You must know what I mean,’ she protested huskily.
But he wouldn’t let her continue, interrupting her harshly to say, ‘What I know is that in ten days’ time you and I are going to be married. No one welches on a deal with me, Nell,’ he told her curtly, ‘and that includes you. I’m sorry if you’re suffering from an attack of virginal timidity!’ He saw her face and laughed sourly. ‘Oh, come on, Nell. You didn’t think I wouldn’t know, did you? I promise you, if it’s any comfort to you, that I could take you to bed here and now and within a very short space of time indeed make you forget what the very word doubt means, in spite of Williams.’
His voice had dropped to a husky, almost mesmerising tone that made the blood pulse hotly through her veins and her heartbeat increase into frantic little thuds that robbed her of breath and made her tremble slightly.
‘Don’t think I don’t know what all this is about.’ He looked at her mouth, and to her embarrassment Nell found her lips were parting softly. ‘I could spend the next ten days telling you that there’s nothing to be worried about … that I’m not a monster … that I’ve no intention of hurting you or frightening you, but I really think it would be much easier to banish all those doubts of yours if I just showed you.’
When he had come so close to her, Nell looked up at him and felt her world lurch and spin wildly out of control as she saw the dark glitter of his eyes: tawny-gold, predatory, the eyes of a male animal hunting its prey.
‘You and I will be married, Nell,’ he told her, his voice little more than a whisper against her ear, but the words reverberated into her heart. ‘Did I frighten you this afternoon? I didn’t mean to.’
And his lips caressed the soft shell of her ear, sending shock shivers racing through her.
‘I haven’t forgotten how little you know about the male animal.’
His mockery shocked her back to reality. She attempted to pull away from him and said huskily ‘I’m twenty-four, Joss. Hardly a child.’
‘But not yet truly a woman,’ he suggested delicately, and
her defiance fled.
She wanted to protest that there was more to being a woman than mere sexual experience, but the words formed a choking ball in her throat, as though she herself, in some deep secret place, feared that she was somehow less of an adult because of her sexual inexperience.
‘Perhaps that’s what’s actually bothering you,’ he suggested with a tiny smile. ‘Not so much bridal nerves as bridal impatience, eh, Nell?’
She froze and glared at him. ‘So, first I’m frigid and then I’m sex-starved. Well, it may interest you to know, Joss, that when I said I couldn’t marry you because I knew nothing about you, sex was the very last thing on my mind.’
It wasn’t quite the truth, but she was angry enough to ignore the tiny flutters of her conscience.
‘After all … if I really want to know what you’re like in bed, it wouldn’t be very hard to find out, would it?’ she added scornfully, knowing she was flirting with danger, but too angry to care. ‘I’m sure your secretary, for instance, would be able to furnish me with a first-hand account of …’
She gasped as he grabbed and shook her.
‘Why, you little … Fiona is not and never has been my lover,’ he told her acidly.
‘That’s not what you said before,’ Nell challenged him, and nor was it what Fiona’s whole demeanour had told her, either. The other woman had made it plain that she considered Joss to be very much her private property.
‘I said nothing,’ Joss corrected her. ‘You were the one who made the claim. I simply …’
‘Implied that it was correct,’ Nell cut in brittly. ‘Joss, whether she has or has not shared your bed isn’t really relevant. When you first proposed to me, I was too confused to think it through properly.’
‘You mean you were too relieved to have the burden of worrying about the tax bills lifted from your shoulders to think about having to endure my lovemaking,’ he said harshly. ‘Well, it’s too late for maidenly shrinking now, Nell. Do you really think I’d let you make a fool of me by calling the whole thing off? Oh, no …’
‘You can’t stop me,’ Nell told him bravely, and then quailed beneath the look he gave her.
‘Oh, I think I can,’ he said softly, and it was only when he reached her for that she realised exactly what it was he intended to do.
She cried out as she felt the bed depress beneath her, trying to squirm away from him, but the gold eyes held an implacable purpose that warned her that there would be no escape.
‘If our first child arrives a little early, I shan’t mind, and you won’t take the risk of sullying the family name by giving birth to a bastard, will you, Nell?’
‘No, please, Joss … don’t do this. I will marry you. I …’
‘Words, Nell, and you’ve already proved to me that they mean nothing. This way, there’ll be no more second thoughts.’ He imprisoned her with one arm, while he stripped her with his free hand. She refused to struggle or to give in to the frantic fear thudding her heart. She had been weak and stupid enough already. If he expected her to cry or plead, if he expected anything from her other than unmoving acceptance of his superior strength …
When she had imagined their first night together, she had pictured herself dressed more romantically; the scene set with flickering candles, her body relaxed perhaps by champagne. Now the only feeling she could experience was one of sheer shock, laced with humiliation as she saw herself revealed to Joss’s unreadable gaze in the clean but most definitely unglamorous underwear that had been chain-store bought and was serviceable rather than attractive. She felt none of the arousal she had experienced during the afternoon. None of the pleasure and excitement, only a shocked resignation, laced with misery.
She refused to close her eyes, but looked steadfastly instead at a point beyond Joss’s shoulder, so that to feel the softness of the quilt which unexpectedly covered her trembling body made her look directly at him.
‘There’s really no need to be nervous. I’m not doing this to hurt you, Nell, but I won’t take the risk of losing you now to Williams or anyone else.’
Of losing her … Of losing the title, didn’t he mean? But she held back the bitter words and swallowed painfully, doing nothing to correct his apparent belief that she was in love with David.
She was free now, and could have got up quite easily, but she doubted if she did that she would get as far as the door, and she wasn’t going to heap further humiliation on her own head by being dragged back to the bed, which she was quite sure he would do.
Joss was ruthless; she had always known that, and at the back of her mind perhaps she had also feared it.
She tried to blot out the alien sounds of a man undressing, refusing to turn her head and look at him, even when she heard him laugh softly.
‘Modest, Nell? What an anachronism you are in these times. Truly a pearl beyond price.’
Sure that he was mocking her, Nell turned her head sharply, her eyes widening in shocked awareness of his maleness as he bent to flip back the cover and join her on the bed.
His body was tanned, or at least almost all of it was, she acknowledged, remembering that brief strip of paler flesh that had drawn her gaze so betrayingly. It was also packed with muscles that moved and rippled beneath his skin, making him suddenly seem totally different from the other men she knew.
As he moved close to her she was immediately aware of the scent of his skin, and the clean, fresh smell of some masculine soap underlaid by a more primitive, faint odour of maleness, musky and alien, heightening her awareness of him, making him at the same time more vulnerable, as human as she was herself, and also more intimidating in the way that such a powerfully sensual man must always be slightly awe-inspiring.
He bent his head close to her own, so close that she could see the pores of his skin and the shape of the bones that underlay it.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said as he had said before. ‘I’m not doing this to hurt you, Nell, but you must see that I can’t lose you now.’
Oh, yes, she could see it, and for the space of a heartbeat she contemplated telling him the truth, letting him see how impossible their marriage would be for her with the burden of her love for him, but she stopped herself, seeing the relentless determination darken his eyes, and wondering if he might not simply choose to use her love for him as another means of binding her to him.
What must it be like to want something so much that no human feelings, however intense, could stand in the way of that wanting?
Ambition … Once, long ago, her forebears must have possessed it … must have fought for it and killed for it; but none of that need burned her blood with its icy heat. She had been brought up to uphold the traditions of her name and family, but she knew that she would gladly abandon them all if in doing so she could gain Joss’s love.
His mouth touched her skin, his fingers feather-light as they smoothed the hair back off her face.
‘You’re trembling. There’s really no need, Nell.’
No need for him, maybe.
His hands traced the sharp jut of her collarbone, his mouth teasing its way across the smooth curve of her jaw.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ he murmured against her mouth.
She was surprised he’d noticed, but forebore to say so. Apart from the light caress of his hands and mouth, he wasn’t touching her at all, and when she looked at him it seemed to Nell that just for a moment there was a grave tenderness in his eyes.
‘This isn’t how I intended it to be, Nell. But who knows … maybe it’s for the best. At least this way the ordeal will soon be behind you. What did they tell you about this when you were growing up, Nell? That it was a lady’s duty to submit to her husband and to provide him with sons?’
The wry tone of his voice hurt her. Did he really think her so cut off from reality … so archaic? Did he actually believe that at twenty-four she had neither the intelligence nor the insight to form her own views and beliefs?
‘I might be physically inexperienced, Joss,’ she t
old him quietly, ‘but that doesn’t mean that I’m not aware that sex can be one of life’s richest pleasures.’
She chose the word deliberately, forcing herself to look directly at him and not flinch beneath the look in his eyes.
‘If that’s so, why have you never experienced it, I wonder?’ She hesitated for a moment and then said coolly, ‘I don’t know. Maybe because as yet I haven’t met a man who’s made me want to?’
‘Is that a challenge, Nell? Because if so …’ She tensed as she felt his fingers bite slightly into her arms.
But before she could even draw a breath to protest his mouth was on hers, caressing it into sensuous recognition of his mastery as he teased and coaxed from her an unwilling response.
She tried to fight back the tide of sensation beating through her, but desire, once aroused, as she was beginning to discover, was not so easily dammed.
Joss’s mouth left hers, and she saw him studying its soft shape before he traced it tantalisingly with his forefinger. As though it had a mind of its own, her flesh clung to his. She made a tiny sound deep in her throat, unconcsciously trying to prolong the physical contact, and, as though it was a sign he had been waiting for, Joss moved, covering her body with his, saying her name huskily and unevenly as he kissed her again. This time not gently or carefully, his hand sliding from her arms to her body, shaping it beneath him as he sucked fiercely on her tongue, drawing it into his mouth, caressing it, until Nell was driven by her need to reciprocate the caress, not even realising what she had done until she felt the groan he stifled in his throat vibrate against her fingertips.
She stopped abruptly then, shocked by her own lack of self-protection. What had happened to her determination not to betray how she felt? She trembled tensely beneath the heat of his body, waiting for him to make some flippant, taunting comment, but instead he moved her so that he could slide his hand along her ribcage and cup her breast, his voice rough against the ear.
‘I want you, Nell.’