by Penny Jordan
‘But, Joss …’
‘I said forget it. Have the rest of my family here if you must … if you can, but leave it at that, Nell.’
She fell silent, wondering if he was telling her the truth or if he secretly did feel hurt by his mother’s indifference towards him. Probably not, she acknowledged, remembering a woman she had known who had spent several years of her life looking for her own mother, only to discover when she did that she had far, far more in common with the adopted parents who had brought her up, and who had confided in Nell that she sincerely wished she had left the past alone.
They circulated among the guests, together and then separately. David Williams approached Nell uncertainly. He had a glass of champagne in his hand, and she realised as he came up to her that he was slightly tipsy.
‘So, he’s got you then, Nell,’ he said, slurring his words slightly. ‘All nice and legally bought and paid for …’
‘David … please …’
She reached out to touch his arm, but suddenly Joss was there between them, glowering at her.
‘I was just congratulating Nell on her good fortune,’ David told him, trying to focus on him.
‘You could have done that without touching her,’ Joss replied, and Nell was astounded by the muted savagery in his voice.
As he led her away he told her curtly, ‘Forget him, Nell. You’re married to me, and whatever he might have meant to you before …’
‘He meant nothing to me,’ Nell protested, too shocked to lie. ‘He was just a friend, Joss …’
He looked at her, and as though something in her face told him she was telling the truth he said drily, ‘To you—but I doubt that he would have put his feelings for you under the heading of friendship. Don’t encourage him, Nell.’
‘I wasn’t,’ she told him crossly, glad of the opportunity to escape from him when a business colleague claimed his attention.
David seemed to have gone, and although there were several people she ought to have sought out, to talk to and thank, instead Nell sought refuge in the protective shadow of one of the deep windows.
Three women walked past her, their clothes spelling Knightsbridge and designer boutiques, elegant, enamelled women of a type she found particularly intimidating.
‘Clever Joss,’ she heard one of them purr. ‘It took Alan hundreds of thousands of pounds and fifteen years to get a peerage in the Honours List; and of course it isn’t hereditary. Joss has managed it in less than a tenth of that time and probably only had to spend half as much.’
So much for convincing the rest of the world that they had married for love, Nell thought, watching them walk right past her without even realising she was there.
‘Nell.’ She looked round to see Liz standing beside her, looking anxious. ‘It’s time you were getting changed.’
She allowed Liz to lead her upstairs like a docile doll, obediently putting on the light wool dress she had put out for her. Not one she recognised as having bought; it was bright red, with a matching, slightly shorter coat with a tiny black velvet collar.
‘It’s Valentino,’ Liz told her. ‘Joss chose it for you himself. He rang me a couple of weeks ago and asked me what size you are.’
Nell stiffened, aching to tear the dress off and throw it on the floor. She didn’t want to wear clothes bought for her by Joss. God, wasn’t it enough that he had bought her home … her family name … herself … did he have to make it clear to the world just what she was by buying her clothes as well?
‘Nell, is something wrong? Don’t you like it?’
She forced a smile.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said unemotionally, and it was … quite the most beautiful outfit she had ever seen, and it fitted her perfectly, the red wool stunningly vibrant with her hair and skin.
Her hair no longer floated round her shoulders but had been brushed and confined in a pearl-studded snood and, as Liz offered her a lipstick that was almost exactly the same colour as her outfit, she reflected bitterly that Joss had left nothing to chance.
‘Be happy, Nell,’ Liz whispered tearfully as she bent to kiss her. ‘And don’t forget, I want to be godmama to your first …’
Nell gave her a wan smile, pausing at the door of her bedroom to look round it.
When she and Joss returned from wherever it was he was taking her, this would no longer be her room. This place that had been her refuge in times of despair while she was growing up … She swallowed hard on the uncomfortable lump in her throat and proceeded through the door.
Joss was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. He, too, had changed, into a fine silky wool suit with a discreet self-stripe and a cotton shirt which she suspected must have been made for him. Unlike the majority of the male guests she had invited, he had no old school tie to discreetly sport against his shirt, but the tie he was wearing was silk and striped, and the formality of his clothes made her even more aware of the abyss between them.
They said their goodbyes together, Nell only faltering once, when Joss’s secretary came up to them, and kissed Joss full on the mouth.
Her lipstick had smeared his skin and she produced a pretty lace handkerchief and made a flamboyant show of wiping it off.
Joss was frowning, and Nell had the distinct impression that he wasn’t pleased, but if Fiona was aware of his displeasure she gave no sign of it, smiling triumphantly at Nell and then ignoring her to link her arm through Joss’s and press up against his side while she said softly, ‘I’ve got your address … so if anything should need your attention …’
Nell saw several of the guests giving them speculative looks, and her skin burned hot and then cold with resentment.
When they were out of earshot of everyone else she said coldly to Joss, ‘Was that really necessary?’
‘What?’ he asked her blandly.
‘That …. that display with your secretary.’
She deliberately made her voice sound cold with distaste, refusing to allow her hurt to show through.
‘Jealous, Nell, because she knows how to act like a woman and you don’t?’
After that she couldn’t do more than force herself to give a rather shaky smile at the last dozen or so of their guests who had come to wave them off.
They were travelling in the Rolls, but without the chauffeur. Joss might have made his way up the ladder from the bottom; he might not have had the advantages of birth, money and position that many of her acquaintances shared, but some things were either instinctive or simply not there, and could not be learned or assumed: like the easy way with which Joss dismissed his chauffeur and thanked the staff for their hard work; like the way he behaved to people around him, treating them with courtesy and consideration, whatever their position in life.
She had noticed that about him almost from the first time they had met; to her it was worth more than any amount of money, or centuries of family history.
So why, when it came to her, was he so icily polite … so … so hard? He must realise how difficult all this was for her. In fact, she knew he did. Was this abrupt change in his manner because he now realised how very difficult their life together was going to be … because making love to her had opened his eyes to what a marriage without desire and certainly without love would mean?
She had been tempted to get into the back seat of the Rolls, but Joss opened the front passenger door for her. She looked up at him and saw the hardness of his mouth. His eyes seemed to be warning her that they had a fiction to maintain, although she was miserably sure that very few people had been deceived.
‘I should try and sleep if I were you. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us,’ he told her briefly as they pulled away from the house.
In other words, he didn’t want to talk with her … He wanted to be left alone.
Nell couldn’t sleep. She was far too tense, but at the same time she was conscious of being achingly exhausted. The interior of the Rolls was warm, and she wanted to remove her coat, but she felt she simply did not have
the energy.
Where were they going? she wondered restlessly, her lacklustre gaze resting sombrely on the grey uniformity of the motorway. Heathrow most probably, and then a flight to some undoubtedly exotic and fashionable location, where they could simply pretend to be just another bored married couple. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, obedient to Joss’s suggestion.
A jumble of images danced behind her closed eyelids. Her own reflection in the mirror in her wedding dress … the noise of the reception … the unfamiliar faces … the bright, artificial chatter of the conversation of the men, deep-voiced discussions on financial matters and deals, broken up by disjointed phrases from the marriage service until it ran through her mind like a jumbled and meaningless refrain.
What had she done? Oh God … what had she done? Her eyes burned. Her body ached. She felt slightly light-headed. She yawned once and then again, her eyelids heavy, the almost noiseless purr of the engine distinctly soporific.
‘Nell.’
The hand on her shoulder was familiar and yet alien, drawing her into a world she would rather not inhabit, and so she resisted it, tensing against it as the voice insisted she wake up.
Outside it was dark, the scene unfamiliar. They were in the car, and to one side of them lay the bulk of a large boat.
‘Where are we? This isn’t Heathrow …’ she said, confused.
‘No. It’s Dover. We’re just about to board the cross-Channel ferry.’
‘Where are we going?’
She was still confused, still half asleep and unable to assimilate what she was being told.
‘Northern France,’ Joss told her, his voice clipped. ‘The Château des Fleurs.’
He saw that the words meant nothing to her, and as he set the car in motion to board the ferry he explained that he was taking her to a château he had rented in northern France, where they would spend their honeymoon.
‘A château? I thought we’d be going somewhere like the Caribbean.’
‘Is that what you’d have preferred, Nell?’
They were on board now, and she allowed him to help her out of the car.
She dozed for most of the crossing and the drive that followed it, waking up properly only when the car stopped. It was dark outside. She could see a pathway of silver cast by the moon, and the shapes of formally clipped yews bordering a gravel path.
She felt stiff and uncomfortable, her head aching slightly. At her side Joss said curtly, ‘Just in case you’re interested, this château was once the home of one of your ancestresses, Catherine de Chambertin. It’s still owned by a branch of the Chambertin family, although it isn’t their main home. It’s one of several châteaux which one can rent complete with staff. Since not to have had a honeymoon would have caused unnecessary comment, I thought you would prefer this to a more commercialised venue.’
He had gauged her tastes exactly, and in different circumstances—if she had never heard those spiteful words of Fiona’s for instance—she would have been thrilled at the thought that he had taken so much trouble in choosing this château.
As it was, all she could feel was an aching relief that here at least she would be under no pressure to play the role of the deliriously happy bride.
She got out of the car, refusing Joss’s aid, watching the way his mouth tightened in anger at her rebuff with a tiny spurt of rebellious satisfaction. Let him see what it felt like to be rejected, if only in a very small way.
The château was behind them, small and turreted, its sharp roofs glinting under the moonlight; a fairy-tale place of silver roofs and golden walls set against a backdrop of gardens whose splendour she could only imagine in the darkness.
The door opened and a man came out.
‘Monsieur.’ He gave Joss a brief, formal bow and then introduced himself. ‘I am Henri. My wife, Gabrielle, and I will take care of you while you are with us.’
As he spoke, he removed their two suitcases, so ill-matched that Nell suspected he must either guess that they were newly married or suspect that they were lovers escaping for an illicit holiday together.
‘If you will come this way …’
The hall was oval, with a marble-tiled floor and a curling flight of white marble stairs. The silk on the walls was fading in places, but was still very beautiful, the wrought-iron banister rail rich in fleur de lys and other emblems of heraldry, and as she studied it Nell remembered vaguely that there had been a suggestion that one of Catherine’s relations had borne a child by a prince of the ruling family of France.
As they climbed the stairs, Gabrielle came to meet them. She was dark and very French, her glance snapping sharply over Nell’s outfit, approving and admiring it. Her English was not quite as good as her husband’s.
They had given them the state apartments, she told Nell. A light supper had been prepared for them as arranged by monsieur, and if there was anything else they required then they only had to ring.
Petit déjeuner would be served in the morning when they requested it, she added diplomatically, with a faint smile that made Nell’s face burn.
The state apartments consisted of a sitting-room, a dining-room, a huge bedroom with two dressing-rooms and a bathroom, all of which were decorated in rich reds and gold, the Aubusson carpet in the sitting-room woven with the arms of the family.
Nell suspected that visitors were not normally given such opulent surroundings, and she wondered a little cynically how much Joss had had to pay to secure this special concession.
Why had he done it? To show her that there was nothing his money could not buy? Not even her family’s past.
A cold buffet had been laid out in the dining-room, but the sight and smell of it made Nell feel acutely sick.
‘It’s been a long day, Joss,’ she said huskily. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go straight to bed.’
If he didn’t mind? Of course he wouldn’t mind. He’d probably be only too delighted, or so she thought, but she was wrong.
‘If you’re trying to tell me in a delicate and ladylike fashion that you want to sleep alone tonight, Nell, then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. In the first place, these rooms possess only one bed. In the second, despite the due pomp and ceremony with which we were married this morning, until our marriage is consummated, it cannot legally exist.’ He saw her wince and his face hardened. ‘Unfortunate, I agree, but a necessity, none the less. I shall endeavour to be as brief as possible,’ he added with fine irony, and Nell thought bitterly of the many women who must have begged him to prolong every second they spent in his arms.
‘I’ll go and get undressed, then,’ she said quietly, as polite and distant as a child.
He turned his head and she saw the gleam of mockery in his eyes.
‘Surely that is the bridgroom’s prerogative, Nell … to undress his bride.’
‘Perhaps,’ she agreed bravely, ‘in a different kind of marriage. As you have already said, where we’re concerned there seems little point in prolonging things …’
She saw that she had made him angry, although she had no idea why. Just for a second she thought he was actually going to reach out and take hold of her, but he pushed his hands into his pockets and turned away from her instead.
Her suitcase was on a small cupboard several feet away from the bed.
Joss had primed Liz well, she recognised as she saw the clothes her friend had packed. Her new separates, a couple of semi-formal dresses, low-heeled shoes, suitable for the country but still smart, a warm jacket and then, beneath her top clothes, several layers of underwear, but not underwear that Nell had ever bought.
She flushed slightly, her eyes widening as she removed the wispy satin and lace garments.
There was a nightdress in dusky rose satin, cut on the bias, and cut very low at the back, the bodice tiny cobwebs of the most exquisite lace through which her skin must surely be almost completely visible.
There was another … different in style but every bit as revealing.
She picked up the rose satin one with hands that trembled and went into the bathroom.
The bath was enormous, easily large enough for two people. Her body went hot at the thought and she refused to give in to the temptation to soak in the luxury of gallons of perfume-scented hot water, and showered briskly instead, rubbing her skin almost roughly with a towel until it glowed and stung slightly.
Her hair, released from its chignon, fell straight and shining; the nightdress slid easily over her head and clung to her skin.
On her, it was even more revealing than she had anticipated, dipping almost to the base of her spine at the back, the lace bodice cut to mould her breasts, the pearly sheen of her skin clearly discernible beneath the lace panels, the lace flowers that comprised the bodice designed in such a way so that two of the tiny pieces of lace that were the central stamens of the flowers were centred over her nipples, the panels so small that they didn’t quite manage to cover the entire aureole of flesh. A deliberate oversight, Nell felt sure. Had Liz been aware of that when she chose it?
She heard Joss moving about in the bedroom, and wondered wildly if she dared dress in her clothes, but no … he would be expecting her to be undressed, to be …
Taking a deep breath, and suppressing the panic inside her, she opened the bathroom door.
Joss was standing with his back to her, facing the window. He had a glass in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other.
Although she hadn’t said a word, he must have heard her, because he turned round and said harshly, ‘It’s normally the bride who needs the fortifying glass of champagne, not the groom.’
He studied her body in its provocative veiling of satin and lace.
‘Liz chose it,’ Nell told him huskily, not wanting to think that she was stupid enough to believe that she could make him want her by wearing something so provocative.
‘Wrong,’ he told her succinctly. ‘I chose it. I thought about how your skin would look against it, Nell,’ he told her, ignoring her shock. ‘Of how it would gleam like mother of pearl, iridescent as silk, warm and sweet as honey. But there’s no warmth inside you, is there, Nell? At least not for me. Tell me something, my wife,’ he demanded with sudden savagery. ‘Does it really give you pleasure to look at me with such cool contempt? Is that your revenge for our marriage, Nell? Or perhaps this is how all well-bred wives behave. Like hell,’ he ground out fiercely. ‘Oh, you can look at me with your cool, disdainful eyes, but let me tell you something about your peers, my lady … Once between the sheets they’re as hot and willing as …’