‘Just because,’ she began carefully, ‘other women seem to find you irresistible, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, it doesn’t mean that I do. I have no intention of jumping in the queue.’
‘There’s no queue,’ he replied mildly, ‘and you flatter me. I don’t have hordes of screaming women banging on the front door for me. I’m not a pop star. I’m a barrister.’
He sat on the desk and shot her a smug look.
‘You’ve got at least one woman banging on the front door for you,’ Leigh said pointedly.
‘Jessica.’ Nicholas stood up and went across to the window, parting the curtains and peering distractedly outside.
‘That’s right.’
‘We’ve decided to stop seeing each other for the time being.’ His words were clipped, and she couldn’t make out whether the decision had been his or his girlfriend’s.
Not that it mattered a great deal. Whether he was involved or not with someone else, she thought, made no difference whatsoever. If anything, she would have to be doubly on her guard now, because without the restraining figure of a girlfriend in the background she might find herself all too malleable when it came to his attentions.
She gave him a cool, distant smile.
‘And I thought the two of you were so well suited,’ she remarked honestly.
‘Which just goes to show that how two people blend physically is no indication of how well they blend emotionally.’
He faced her, and his eyes were unsmiling.
Immediately she felt the weight of the silence bearing down on her, making her breath catch in her throat, and fine prickles of awareness spring up on her forearm. She had the most awful feeling that if he so much as feathered her arm with his finger her will-power would desert her, the way it always seemed to whenever he was around.
And she didn’t want that to happen. More than anything else she didn’t want that to happen.
She glanced across to the door.
‘Stop acting like a trapped animal,’ he said irritably, following the direction of her gaze. ‘I don’t want to frighten you.’ Then he did what she had been fearing. He knelt next to her, his head slightly below the level of hers, and touched her on her arm.
She knew instinctively that it was not meant to be erotic in any way. In fact, part of her suspected that he was hardly aware of what he had done. But she felt her body stiffen nevertheless. He felt her response, and the expression in his eyes changed from easygoing friendliness to a searing warmth that sent her pulses racing.
She bared her teeth in what she hoped would pass for a casual but distant smile, and frantically tried to think of something innocuous to say that would break the tense atmosphere between them.
He allowed the silence to stretch between them, until she felt that something would explode, and then he raised his hand to her face and stroked her cheek, his finger tracing the contours of her face.
‘No!’ she exploded. ‘No way!’
‘Why not?’ His voice was hard and urgent. ‘I want you. I’ve wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. And now there’s no longer any Jessica in the background to complicate things.’
‘You’re missing the point,’ Leigh informed him angrily.
‘And what exactly is the point?’
‘I’ve already told you, I’m not into bed-hopping.’
‘And I’m not into marriage! That doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy one another.’
‘Don’t think that you can talk your way into bed with me!’ she broke out vehemently. ‘You might have persuaded me to come down to London, but that’s as far as it goes! If you and Lady Jessica are finished, and you’re looking for a replacement, then you’re looking in the wrong place!’
She pushed him, her action catching him unawares, and she took advantage of the fact to run past him towards the door. Now that she was on her feet, she could feel panic clawing at her heels, spurring on her frantic desire to get out of the library before those sensuous grey eyes made her do something she knew she would live to regret.
She pulled open the door, and ran quickly outside, her feet making no sound on the thick carpet. She glanced around and her heart skipped a beat as she saw him following her, his dark, tall body moving like a shot of lightning.
A soft cry escaped her lips and her feet took wings, sending her flying through the darkened corridor into the hallway. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness in the house, and she skirted around objects, anxiously aware that he was bearing down on her.
Any minute now, and I’ll feel his arms around me, she thought desperately. She was a quick runner, had done a lot of track training when she was in school, but even so he was taller than she was, his legs longer, and he was fast.
But she couldn’t let him catch her. She knew her weakness for him, and it was that knowledge that made her all the keener to escape him. She shot up the stairs and raced towards her bedroom door, but as she pushed it open she felt him behind her and she gave a groan of alarm and defeat.
She was breathing quickly from the exertion of running, and he was too.
‘What are you so scared of?’ he asked. Leigh stared at him, wide-eyed, and reached to switch on the light, but he drew her hand away.
‘No, leave it off.’
In the shadowy darkness, they looked at each other, and she realised that there was nowhere left to run.
‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ he reminded her softly.
‘I’m not scared of anything,’ Leigh said, with a stab at bravado. ‘But you weren’t listening to a thing I was saying…’
‘I heard everything you were saying,’ he said brusquely, ‘and all the things that you weren’t.’
‘I meant it all, Nicholas. I don’t want a relationship with you; I don’t care whether or not Lady Jessica has vanished from the scene.’
‘That’s not what I see in your eyes.’
She turned away and he coiled his fingers into her hair, applying gentle pressure so that she was forced to look at him.
‘And when I touch you,’ he said softly, ‘it’s not what your body says.’
‘But you don’t even like me!’ she protested. ‘You’ve been suspicious of me ever since I moved down here!’
‘It’s part of my nature,’ Nicholas said shortly. ‘Only a fool lives life on trust.’
‘But you can’t go through life never trusting anyone.’
That sharp edge of panic was fading, and she looked at him with interest.
‘I don’t normally discuss my private life,’ Nicholas began, ‘but take it from me that I have had certain experiences that—well, put it this way, that have jaundiced my view of the fair female sex.’
‘I know,’ Leigh murmured and he shot her a quizzical look. ‘Your grandfather told me,’ she explained quietly.
‘He tells you a lot of things, doesn’t he?’
‘Please, don’t start that again!’
He grinned, and she felt the ground shift ever so slightly beneath her. ‘Then you understand,’ he said flatly. ‘I’m a careful man.’
Leigh gave a little smile. ‘For careful one can some-times read cowardly.’
Nicholas shook his head with a wry expression. ‘You’re so damned blunt. I can’t think of anyone else who would dare apply that adjective to me. Anyway, would you call it cowardly to chase you through this house at four in the morning?’
His voice was husky, and his eyes when she met them were warm and glittering. ‘Just stupid,’ she said stiltedly.
‘Stupid? Stupid, maybe, but certainly not cowardly. Look, I won’t pretend that I haven’t had my fair share of women, and it’s never been my experience to have chased any of them.’
‘They drop like ninepins?’ Leigh asked drily and he laughed, shrugging his powerful shoulders.
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, modesty certainly isn’t your strong point, is it?’
‘No, but I’ve got quite a few others, if you’d like to find out…’
What answer could there possibly be to that blatant invitation? She opened her mouth to say something, anything, when she became aware that they were no longer alone.
The sight of Lady Jessica standing in the open doorway made her blood freeze in her veins. It would have been better if she could have moved a few inches back, out of that suggestive pose with his hands firmly clasped in her hair, but she found that her legs refused to cooperate.
Nicholas slowly turned around and she felt his body stiffen imperceptibly.
‘What the hell do you want?’ he asked tersely, thrusting his hands into his pockets, but making no move to leave the room.
Lady Jessica wasn’t looking at him at all. Her eyes were fixed on Leigh, scathingly assessing the thinly clad body, pinning the blame for their incriminating situation firmly in her corner.
‘I heard a noise,’ Lady Jessica said in a high-pitched voice. ‘I hardly expected to find this!’
‘If you go prowling through a house at this hour in the morning, then you should be prepared to find anything,’ Nicholas said tersely.
‘You two? In each other’s arms?’ Lady Jessica laughed hysterically. ‘What a touching sight.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Nicholas muttered under his breath. He walked towards her and grabbed her by the wrist. ‘This is no place for a scene,’ he bit out.
Lady Jessica shrieked with laughter, but it was laughter bordering on tears. ‘Me? A scene?’
Nicholas turned back to Leigh. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ he said abruptly. He pulled Lady Jessica, and she flopped against him, her head resting on his chest, as though she was thoroughly drained.
It was such an unexpected end to the night, or rather morning, that Leigh remained where she was for a few minutes, before moving towards the door and quietly shutting it.
Outside the sky had lightened, and she realised with shock that it would be daylight in a couple of hours, if that. She had slept not a wink all night, and there was no chance that she was going to now. She felt too confused to sleep.
She recalled every word they had spoken, the atmosphere of peculiar companionship that had stretched between them right here in the bedroom only moments before.
What she felt for him wasn’t purely physical, as she had tried to convince herself. No, it was more than that. Leigh drifted across to the large bed, and watched the sky through the open curtains. Disparate thoughts were gradually beginning to knit together. Little things that she had shoved to the back of her mind were slotting into place.
She realised that whenever she was in his company she felt more alive, even when they were arguing, even when she felt so angry at something that he had said that she wished she could lift the nearest heavy object and hurl it at him. He ignited little sparks inside her, and when those sparks weren’t ignited she was like a hollow shell, talking, walking, carrying out her daily chores but without momentum. It dawned on her that even when she was thinking of him she was fired with some strange inner flame.
I’ve fallen in love with him, she thought in bitter awareness. After all the hours spent reasoning why he was the very last person in the world I should even like, I’ve fallen in love with him.
No wonder she had become addicted to following his every movement greedily, surreptitiously, delighting in all those idiosyncrasies which she had been so determined to hate.
She tossed restlessly on the bed, unable to get to sleep, but unable to focus on anything other than him. She wondered what was going on in the green room between him and Lady Jessica. He had told her that their relationship had been broken off, but now a thousand sneaking suspicions began to filter through her mind.
Leigh busily worked on every connotation of what had happened between them, trying to figure out when exactly she had stepped beyond the line of physical attraction to that of emotional need.
Not, she thought wearily, that it mattered. Nothing had changed, only her awareness of the situation, and it would have been much better if that had remained the same. It was true what they said about there being bliss in ignorance.
She was just beginning to drift into a light doze when there was a sharp rap on the bedroom door, and Leigh sat up abruptly. Her first thought was that it was Nicholas, and she buried herself into the bedclothes before shakily telling him to enter.
It was even more important now that she would not give in to him, because she stood to lose far more than she had ever thought possible. So she adopted her very primmest look, pursed her lips tightly together, and mentally rehearsed her speech about feeling deeply exhausted.
The door was pushed open, but it wasn’t Nicholas at all. It was Lady Jessica, and Leigh felt a sudden stab of apprehension. ‘I think you’ve come to the wrong room,’ she said in what should have been a haughty voice, but what sounded like an uncoordinated squeak.
Lady Jessica closed the door quietly behind her and pulled the chair from the dressing-table to the side of the bed. From this angle, Leigh felt her initial stab of apprehension mushroom into something decidedly more foreboding.
The small bedside lamp was switched on, and it threw a pattern of light and shade across Lady Jessica’s face, turning it into an angular and threatening mask.
Leigh looked around for some object of self-defence. Who could tell what was going to ensue? she thought. One minute, the semblance of a rational conversation, the next minute a frenzied attack. She laughed nervously to herself and decided that too little sleep was beginning to have a disastrous effect on her imagination.
Nevertheless, she continued to eye Lady Jessica with wary discomfort, and she found herself unconsciously edging towards the side of the bed until she could go no further unless it was on to the floor.
‘I think it’s time we had a chat,’ Lady Jessica said in an icy voice.
Leigh licked her lips and ventured a polite smile. ‘Couldn’t we leave it until the morning?’
‘It is morning.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Leigh murmured. ‘What I meant was, couldn’t we leave it until another morning…?’
‘I don’t think so. There is, after all, no time like the present.’
Personally, Leigh could think of a thousand times much better than the present, but she kept her observation to herself. It didn’t take the IQ of a genius to realise that Lady Jessica was in no mood for weak attempts at humour.
‘I suppose you think you’re clever,’ Lady Jessica said in a hard voice, ‘to have wheedled your way into the Reynolds’s house, pretending to be the hard-done-by little country girl who couldn’t tell a fish-knife from a chain-saw. You must have thought it would be a cinch to get in touch with the wealthy friends the minute your grandfather died, and wangle an invitation to London. After all, who could resist all that clear-skinned, freckled, rustic stupidity? Certainly not Nicholas. As I told you once before, he always was a push-over when it came to down and outs, especially pretty little ones like you. Though what he sees in those cowlike, innocent charms, God only knows.’ She paused to take a deep breath.
Leigh stared at her in amazement. She had been prepared for vitriol, but the depth of the other woman’s hatred left her open-mouthed. She was almost too surprised to feel anger.
‘Well, you misjudged him.’ Lady Jessica’s eyes narrowed, giving her a malevolent appearance. ‘He knows you for what you are—a pitifully obvious little fortune-seeker.’
Lady Jessica gave a harsh, abrupt laugh, then she bent forward, and Leigh was deeply grateful that she had put as much distance between them as she had been able. That glare at close quarters would have been enough to rival anything Medusa had to offer.
Her eyes widened in alarm, but when she began to speak she found that nothing emerged except for an indecipherable grunt. Her normally quick-witted brain had failed her, and the repertoire of biting repartees revolving in her head were staying there, leaving Lady Jessica a
wide-open, silent field in which to parade her venom.
‘Don’t think that I’m so stupid as not to have seen your pitiful attempts to attract Nicholas’s attention. You’re attracted to him, aren’t you?’
Lady Jessica noticed the mounting red colour, and her lips tightened.
‘I see you can’t deny a word I’m saying,’ she said in low, sharp tones, ‘and I suppose if the little scene I broke up here a few minutes ago was anything to go by you must be in your element, but I wouldn’t start counting chickens as yet…’
There was a leaden pause as Lady Jessica fastened her eyes triumphantly on Leigh. She looked ghastly in the early grey morning light creeping into the room, her features distorted by a deep, burning resentment.
‘I’m sorry,’ Leigh ventured, ‘that you had to witness it…’
Her voice trailed off, as she realised that the first intelligible sounds to emanate from her mouth only appeared to confirm everything that Lady Jessica had just accused her of.
‘What I mean…’ she began.
‘I know precisely what you mean,’ Lady Jessica replied, her words razor-sharp, ‘but believe me when I tell you that I’m not at all sorry that I was fortunate enough to walk in and disturb your little game of seduction…’
‘Game of seduction…?’ Of all the nerve, Leigh thought, her anger finally beginning to find an outlet. Seduction! Her! Anyone would think that she had been caught red-handed parading in black stockings and suspenders and a come-hither smile on her face.
True, their interlocked bodies did not exactly spell out an accidental encounter, but it made her furious to know that she was being cast into the role of the seductress.
She spluttered angrily and was about to defend herself when she was cut off by Lady Jessica, in full flow and determined, Leigh thought, not to allow any attempts at interruption to her wrath.
‘You heard me,’ she snapped, throwing her head back, her dark eyes flashing with hatred. ‘You must have thought it the climax to your little act. Did you stay up until you realised that Nicholas wasn’t coming up to bed, then go down to the study to confront him? I supposed you played on the fact that, even if he suspected your motives, he was still a man, and most men find a willing female very difficult to reject. Which is why you ended up here in the bedroom.’
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