by Penny Jordan
God, the embarrassment of it! It had been bad enough to contemplate seeing him again when she had thought he was still the Luke she had known, but this man … this Luke … this sophisticated, successful and very male man was really a stranger to her. A stranger whom she had begged to teach her how to kiss, she thought feverishly.
‘Gemma teaches.’
She dragged her attention away from Luke and looked at her father. He said it as though he felt he ought to apologise for her, but despite his bonhomie she sensed that he wasn’t relaxed with Luke. Luke after all was not what her father would have termed ‘our sort’.
‘Oh,’ Moira Goldberg smiled at her. ‘Do you work locally then?’
Gemma could see that the American woman expected to hear that she taught at some small and exclusive prep or nursery school. If she hadn’t been so conscious of Luke watching her, she might almost have derived some amusement from the look in the older woman’s eyes when she replied calmly, ‘Not really. I work in Manchester, at a large comprehensive.’
But not for much longer, she acknowledged bitterly, unaware that her eyes had clouded again and that Luke was still watching her.
On the surface the meal was like many another business dinner she had suffered at her parents’ insistence, but all the time she was so acutely conscious of Luke seated on her right. She had to fight the temptation to turn her head and stare at him, to register at close quarters the difference in him.
After an hour and a half of Luke talking to her with the courtesy and distance that more than upheld his claim to her father that they had never met, Gemma painfully accepted the fact that, as far as Luke was concerned, their old friendship might never have been.
She had been half expecting it, of course. Luke was obviously a very successful and wealthy man, and she supposed that it was only natural that he should want to leave the hardship of the past behind him, but it still hurt that he could treat her as though she were a complete stranger.
She had a sudden and very clear picture of Luke as he had been, of his humour and determination.
‘You looked as though you had gone a long way from us, Gemma,’ she heard him saying, and turned to look at him just in time to register the cool mockery of the look he was giving her. ‘Pleasant thoughts I trust, whoever and whatever they were about.’
‘Oh, Gemma always was a terrible daydreamer,’ her mother interrupted with a warning look at her.
After Luke’s remoteness at the dinner table, Gemma was surprised when, following dinner, he excused himself to her father and the other two men and came over to where she was standing in front of the open patio window.
‘So you’re a teacher, Gemma. Do you enjoy your job?’
Her chin tilted, her eyes wary as she met the mocking scrutiny in his.
‘Yes, I do … very much.’
He smiled, and she was immediately conscious of how sensual his mouth was. The thought shocked her. She must have looked at it a hundred or more times before, but never with the awareness that jolted through her now. She could barely drag her gaze away. Impossible to think that that mouth had ever touched hers … had ever tutored and caressed …
‘Gemma, darling, why don’t you show Luke the rose garden? You can only really truly appreciate their scents at night,’ her mother told Luke, as she urged the pair of them towards the patio, causing Gemma to grit her teeth against her obviousness. Surely her mother couldn’t really be trying to pair her and Luke off with one another?
She was seething with a mixture of chagrin and resentment when Luke smiled warmly at her mother, for all the world as though there was nothing he wanted more than to fall in with her plans.
She was ready to burst out with an impassioned protest there and then, but the firm grip of his fingers on her arm stopped her, and it was only when they were out of earshot and sight of the drawing-room that he asked curtly,
‘What’s wrong, Gemma? Aren’t I socially acceptable enough to be here with you, is that it?’
His accusation took the breath from her lungs, leaving her to stare at him in dumbfounded shock.
When she did get her breath back she stared furiously at him through the soft dusk. ‘I don’t think I’m following your line of reasoning, Luke. You were the one who didn’t want to acknowledge me in there, remember. I’m not the one who doesn’t want to remember that the two of us were once friends.’
‘If I’d told your father that we already knew one another, he would have wanted to know how and where we met,’ Luke countered coolly. ‘Somehow I don’t think he would have been too pleased to learn that his teenage daughter spent almost an entire summer alone in the company of a “road gang navvy”, do you?’
His harsh repetition of the insult she had flung at him the last time they had met made her swallow hard. She had known at the time that her words had been unforgivable, but now, somehow, looking into his tightly bitter face, it was too late to tell him that she had never really meant them at all, and to ask for his forgiveness.
‘I couldn’t believe it when my mother mentioned your name. At first I thought you could never …’
‘Have made it to the top of the ladder?’ he suggested smoothly. ‘Why not? I told you I was going to. Didn’t you believe me, Gemma?’
She frowned, troubled by something in his voice, but unable to name it.
‘Yes … Yes, of course I did …’
She suddenly felt unutterably tired. She put out her hand in a weary gesture of defeat and unhappiness.
‘Luke, we were once such good friends, and now … I don’t blame you if you hate me for what I said … what I … what I did.’ She had to look away from him then. ‘I …’ She felt herself flushing like a schoolgirl as he moved, and his hand cupped the side of her face, exerting a firm pressure that forced her to turn back into the light.
She had already noticed his clean, well-cared-for nails, but the palms of his hands weren’t soft and flaccid; the skin was hard and faintly calloused and she found it comforting that there was still after all something of the old Luke left.
‘You’re still embarrassed about asking me to teach you how to kiss … is that what you’re trying to say?’
It was part of it, but not the most important part; but still it was a start, and she swallowed hard, and nodded her head.
To her chagrin he laughed, the sound warm, and vibrantly masculine. ‘Ah, little innocent Gemma. If you must know, I was very tempted to teach you far more than just how to kiss.’
While she was still trying to assimilate that, he added carelessly, ‘You’ll never know just how much I needed the ego boost of having you ask me to teach you something. It always seemed as though the boot was on the other foot. I owe you a lot,’ he told her quietly. ‘Your faith in me … your encouragement and help; they were what gave me the impetus to go on.’
‘I was unforgivably rude to you,’ Gemma told him in a quiet voice, biting her lip. ‘I didn’t really mean what I said to you, you know, Luke.’
‘It doesn’t really matter if you did.’ The smile he gave her was carelessly amused. ‘I’m not ashamed of my humble beginnings you know, Gemma. Now, we’ve talked enough about me and the past. Tell me about you. You teach at a Manchester comprehensive.’ One eyebrow rose. ‘By choice, or …’
‘By choice,’ Gemma told him firmly, her eyes suddenly darkening as she remembered that she would soon no longer have a job.
‘What’s wrong?’ He had obviously picked up on her mood.
‘Oh nothing really, it’s just that I saw my headmaster before term finished, and he has to shed one full-time member of staff.’
Without meaning to do so, Gemma found that she was confiding to Luke the dilemma she was in, just as she had confided in him in the past.
‘Have you told your parents?’
She made a negative gesture and shook her head. ‘No, they wouldn’t understand. They don’t like me working there as it is.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘Mother would prefer me to teach somewhere more suitable, or, even b
etter, to find myself a husband and settle down and produce children.’
‘And you don’t want that? You intend to remain single all your life?’
The question pulled her up short. It was true that she wasn’t ready to marry yet, but it was also true that she had always hoped at some point that she would meet a man with whom she could share her life on equal terms; someone whom she could love and who would love her in return.
Suddenly she was all too aware of the paucity of her personal emotional life, and because she knew instinctively that Luke was a man who would never be short of the adulation of the opposite sex, she hid the truth from him and said lightly instead, ‘Why not? It isn’t against the rules these days.’
His eyebrows rose again.
‘It is as far as your parents are concerned,’ he pointed out, adding thoughtfully, ‘So what will you do? I take it you are going to hand in your notice.’
‘I don’t feel I have much option.’
‘Oh, there’s always an option,’ Luke told her drily. ‘You could always refuse to be manoeuvred into leaving, and play a “wait and see” game.’
‘Someone has to go, and if I don’t leave, it could be someone else, someone who simply can’t afford to lose their job,’ Gemma pointed out desolately.
‘You’re too soft-hearted, Gemma,’ Luke mocked her lightly. ‘Maybe you should have settled for marriage to Tom Hardman, or someone like him, after all.’
‘Tom Hardman?’
She saw the white gleam of his teeth in the fast encroaching darkness. ‘Wasn’t that his name?’ he asked obliquely, and Gemma realised that he was talking about David’s friend, and that long-ago summer.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but …’
‘I think we’d better go in.’ He took her arm in a firm, but detached grip, that nevertheless set off small tingles of reaction all through her body.
‘We don’t want to worry your mother, do we?’ he taunted her as he escorted her towards the house. ‘I don’t think somehow that she quite approves of me.’
So he, too, had sensed that, despite her mother’s surface gush and friendliness, underneath she felt differently. What could she say? Not the truth, which was that her mother was prepared to tolerate him because of his business influence. Luke was intelligent enough to know that for himself.
God, how stupid and unthinkingly cruel people like her parents could be! She frowned as Luke opened the patio door for her and stepped to one side to allow her to precede him inside.
He was right behind her, and as he started to step forward his hand touched her waist, lightly checking her.
‘“Chapter Four. A gentleman on all occasions allows a lady to precede him, having first checked that the way is clear for her to do so.”’
He bent his head so that she could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear, as well as hear the words. Only the firm pressure of his hand stopped her from whirling round in amazement. He was quoting word for word, as far as she could remember, from the book of etiquette she had brought him from the library, and his voice was full of hidden laughter as he did so.
She felt her own spirits rise and she managed to turn her head and look at him. He was laughing; she could see it in his eyes, and she felt light-hearted enough to tease him back in return.
‘On this ocasion the gentleman did not look hard enough. My mother is heading this way.’
‘Ah well, in that case, I’m afraid I’m going to be extremely ungentlemanly and leave her to you, while I join your father.’
Her mother looked flustered and also rather concerned, Gemma recognised, and she wondered again at the petty snobbishness that ruled her parents’ lives.
‘Gemma, darling, there you are! Where on earth have you been?’
Gemma would have thought the answer to that question was self-evident with Luke walking away from her, but even so she replied as calmly as she could. ‘In the garden with Luke. You sent us there—remember?’
Instantly her mother’s frown deepened. ‘Gemma, I must warn you. Luke O’Rourke isn’t the sort of man your father and I would have anything to do with if it wasn’t for the fact that he and your father have business connections. He’s not our sort at all, my dear, and he doesn’t have a very good reputation where women are concerned. He isn’t married of course, but … we … one hears quite a lot of gossip about him. He …’
Gemma had had enough. She could feel her anger increasing with every word her mother uttered, and if she wasn’t going to have an outright quarrel with her, now was the time for her to interrupt.
‘Mother, I think I’m old enough and wise enough to know when a man’s trying to inveigle me into his bed, and I can assure you that Luke wasn’t, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘Gemma, really!’ Her mother looked round hastily, as though afraid that someone might have overheard.
‘What am I supposed to do, ignore him?’
Her mother’s mouth compressed. ‘Gemma, you are deliberately misunderstanding me. Luke O’Rourke is well known as a womaniser, and even if he wasn’t, he’s simply not our sort. No one knows who his family was.’
‘Does it matter?’ Gemma asked her hardily.
Her mother’s mouth thinned again. ‘Of course, one must admire the fact that he’s built up his business practically from nothing, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he isn’t one of us.’
Gemma had to grit her teeth together to stop herself from screaming. This was the side of her mother she detested the most. Her parents’ blinkered snobbishness caught at Gemma’s throat and made her long to point out to her mother that the upper-middle classes didn’t have an exclusive patent on brains and intelligence and that many of the people her mother so admired for coming from what she so archaically described as ‘old money’ were in fact the descendants of those Victorian entrepreneurs who had risen from obscurity to great wealth with the shipping, coal and railway industries.
‘We have to have him round here occasionally, of course, and your father insisted on inviting him to the wedding.’ Privately she was beginning to wonder if she had done the right thing in seating Gemma beside Luke O’Rourke for the wedding breakfast. She frowned again. Gemma could be so unpredictable. Who on earth would have thought she would have leapt to the defence of Luke O’Rourke so determinedly, and all on the strength of one brief conversation?
He was very attractive of course, if one liked that type.
‘Mother, Luke was simply being polite to me,’ Gemma interrupted now, tired of the argument, ‘not trying to get me into his bed.’
The minute the words were out, Gemma regretted them. In the background she could hear her mother’s shocked denials, but she wasn’t listening to them. Instead she was being overwhelmed by a mental image of Luke as she remembered him, his body hard and sleek as he came towards her from the river. He still had that same body now and it was all too easy for her to imagine it divested of its expensive clothes: flagrantly masculine, essentially male.
‘Gemma, you’re not listening to me at all.’
‘I’m sorry, mother, I’m tired. Would you mind if I went to bed?’
What on earth had possessed her to conjure up that sort of vision of Luke? It was an intrusion into his personal life of the worst sort; a kind of voyeurism that angered and disgusted her.
It must have been the shock of seeing him, she decided as she went upstairs. That must have temporarily unbalanced her in some way.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘THERE, that’s the last of the place cards.’
Gemma smiled at Sophy across the desk in her father’s study. Very wisely, in Gemma’s view at least, her father and David had elected to make the day before the wedding a normal working one, which left her and Sophy, and Sophy’s aunt, on hand at home to help her mother with any last-minute arrangements.
Any? Gemma grimaced to herself as her mother bustled in. ‘Gemma, the place cards. They’re waiting for them in the marquee.’
‘They’re all finis
hed now—do you want me to take them across?’
‘Would you, darling? I’m just on my way down to the church to check on the flowers. Sophy, you look exhausted, you poor child. Why don’t you and your aunt go home for a while and rest? Gemma, what time did your uncle say they would arrive?’
‘If you’re talking about Uncle George and Aunt Letty, they should be here just before dinner, and before you ask I’ve already checked at the Rose and Crown and their rooms have been reserved.
‘It’s such a pity that the Lord Lieutenant won’t be able to make it for dinner tonight, but they had a prior engagement. You haven’t met Lord Chalmers yet, have you, Gemma? He is the most charming man.’
She was glad to escape from the house, even if it was only a brief respite, Gemma reflected as she headed through the open french windows and across to where men in overalls were putting the finishing touches to the newly erected marquee.
Beneath her feet, the lawn glowed jewel-green, its surface perfectly smooth and completely unmarred by so much as a daisy. The men had arrived early in the morning and they had been working on the marquee all day.
Her mother was using the same company who had provided the marquees for the Duchess of Westminster’s twenty-first birthday party and Gemma had reached the stage where she could feel herself gritting her teeth every time she heard her mother relate this small titbit of information to her friends and family. Why was it that these small snobbishnesses in her mother irritated her so much when in someone else she could have by-passed them with no more than a wry smile? When she had first announced to her parents that she wanted to teach in a socially deprived area, her father had accused her of deliberately turning her back on their way of life and all the advantages they had given her, but her feelings went far deeper than mere adolescent rebellion against the values and lifestyle of her family.
It had been Luke who had first opened her eyes to the harsh reality of poverty. He had been the one who had made her see that there were as many crippling inequalities in her own country as there were in those abroad that she saw and wondered at in news bulletins.