by Ruthie Knox
No such luck. He returned his hand to the wheel to change lanes, and she tried in vain to smooth out her wrinkled lap. The rings on her left hand caught her eye, and just like that she broke out in a sweat. It was what theater people called “flop sweat.” The sweat of the doomed.
Nev had given her the rings after work a few nights earlier. He didn’t make a ceremony of it, just tossed the jewelry boxes into her lap before leaving the room to pour her a whiskey, but the instant she lifted the lid on the engagement ring, she wanted it. Wanted this whole thing to be real with an intensity that horrified her.
The ring was a beautiful art deco cabochon sapphire set in platinum and surrounded by tiny diamonds. Exactly the sort of thing she might’ve chosen for herself if she’d been a girl who got sappy over engagement rings. Which she wasn’t. It was just that this particular one was very pretty. And he must have gone to some trouble to pick it out for her—and spent more money on it than she wanted to think about. It felt special in a way that frightened her so much, she’d put it back in its box without comment and refused to look at it again until he reminded her to wear it this morning.
She didn’t want to be married to Nev. She didn’t want to be married ever again, to anyone.
Except one tiny part of her did.
She definitely didn’t want to pretend to be married to Nev, but she was on her way to spend a long weekend with a household of strangers doing exactly that.
She had a bad feeling the whole episode was going to end in another tattoo.
When had she invited such stupidity into her life? She’d been trying to figure it out ever since she’d agreed to go along with his bizarre plan. Lying awake in his bed in the middle of the night, turning the situation over in her mind, she’d only been able to boil it down to the bare bones. He’d asked if she trusted him, and she did. He’d asked her for a favor, and she’d agreed to do it.
Beyond that, she remained clueless. She didn’t understand why he needed a fake bride. He hadn’t refused to tell her, but he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming on the subject, either. The only explanation he’d really given was that he needed her help to prove a point to his mother. When she pressed him, he evaded. Told jokes. Distracted her with sex. Said he wasn’t prepared to talk about it. She’d finally given up after making him promise she wouldn’t be committing any felonies, which had made him laugh until his cheeks turned pink.
He could laugh. He didn’t know about the arson thing.
She’d thought about digging around online to see what she could learn about the Chamberlains, but it felt wrong. Nev had been so patient with her secretive ways. If there was something he didn’t want her to know, no doubt he had his reasons.
And then there was the whole money issue. He’d promised that by the end of the weekend, he’d be handing her a check for fifty thousand pounds made out to the V&A. A totally aboveboard donation to the museum in his parents’ name to celebrate their son’s marriage. To her—a woman he’d met when she was three sheets to the wind.
It was the most completely bonkers, insane, outlandish, absurd, ridiculous plan she’d ever heard. She could never take the money. It would be morally bankrupt for her to accept a donation from a noted art patron to support a fascinating and important exhibit at one of the world’s premier museums. Or maybe not morally bankrupt. Maybe morally questionable. Morally suspect. It was a moral gray area, anyway. This whole trip was a moral gray area.
Fitting, considering that the way she felt about Nev had become an emotional gray area.
She could really use a candy bar. Better yet, a stiff drink.
“I’m never going to be able to pull this off,” she said, giving the ring a nervous twist it had done nothing to deserve. “I don’t know enough about you. I don’t know how to act rich. Tell me again why we have to be married, not just engaged? I’d be better at engaged. If we were engaged, it wouldn’t be such a big deal that I don’t know your birthday.”
“It’s March the seventh. And I already told you, we can’t simply be engaged, because if Mother doesn’t like you, she’ll spend the entire weekend trying to find ways to force me to break it off. Whereas if we’re married, her horror of divorce will make her be civil to you long enough for us to coax a check out of my father.”
He flashed her his shark smile. “Also, if we’re married, we get to share a bed.”
“Oh, no. No way am I sleeping with you at your parents’ house.”
“Of course you are. You can’t possibly expect me to keep my hands off you for three nights running. I’d never survive it. I’ve spent half the morning trying to work out what you’re wearing under that dress.”
He’d come back from his shopping excursion with more clothing than she knew what to do with and a drawerful of new lingerie that she suspected was strictly for his own benefit. It wasn’t as if she’d be doing a striptease on his parents’ dining room table. To fortify herself for this morning’s adventure, she’d put on a beautiful shell-pink bra trimmed with coffee-colored lace, as well as a matching thong and sheer stockings held up by a lacy garter belt. Not that she was about to tell him that. She didn’t need him getting ideas.
“Don’t worry, love,” he added. “It’s a big house, and you’re capable of being quiet, so long as you have something to bite.” He pursed his lips. “I rather like it when you bite.”
Cath fidgeted against the leather seat. One more sin to chalk up against her—she was going to arrive at the in-laws’ both wrinkled and aroused.
“You’re not helping. I already know you have a thing for sexy underwear. What I need to know is married-people stuff, so I can talk to your mother without giving everything away.”
“I should hope sexy underwear is married-people stuff. If not, I feel sorry for them.” Cath snorted but refused to comment. “All right, then. What shall I tell you about myself?”
“How old you are, for starters.”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Seriously?”
“Did you think I was older or younger?”
“Older, definitely. Or, I don’t know, maybe not. I guess I never really thought about it. Maybe twenty-eight is about right.”
“And how old are you?”
“Twenty-six. How rich is your family?”
He chuckled. “I can’t possibly answer that question. Well-off, certainly.”
“Where does the money come from?”
“Banking and finance now. Originally, manufacturing. My great-great-grandsire made his fortune with a piano felt factory.”
“What on earth is piano felt?”
“Have you ever looked inside a piano? Hundreds of little bits and pieces of felt are in there. Someone has to make it.”
She smiled. “So you’re new money. That’s good. I don’t think I could handle being married to an aristocrat.”
“Hmm. Perhaps this is the time to admit my father is a lord.”
Her stomach clenched. “Please tell me that was a very bad joke.”
“He’s only a baron, darling. There are loads of them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Does this mean I should be calling you ‘Lord Chamberlain’?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s my father’s title, and even he only uses it on ceremonial occasions. At any event, Winston is the one who will inherit it. I’ll remain a nobody.”
The thought of Nev passing as a nobody amused her. There was about as much chance of that happening as of her passing as the sort of well-bred girl he was destined to marry.
Yikes.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the title sooner. What else aren’t you telling me? Do you live in a castle?”
“No,” he said, his dimple showing.
“Do you have a tight-lipped butler?”
“No.”
“How about a domineering housekeeper? A frowsy cook who tipples in the sherry?”
“No. You watch too much television.” When she frowned, he brushed the back of his hand across
her cheek. “Quit worrying, sweetheart. You’ll be perfect.”
At least his mother opened the door herself, Cath thought a few minutes later. The house was huge, an English manor straight off the pages of a novel. Cath had given Nev a look with daggers in it when they pulled into the half-moon at the end of the driveway, but he’d remained unfazed, simply smiling and saying, “Welcome to Leyton, darling.”
Evita Chamberlain didn’t look a bit like her son. She was all sharp angles and flat planes: tall, thin, and fashionable, she reminded Cath of Cruella de Vil. His father, on the other hand, was an older, softer version of Nev.
While Cruella fussed over Nev’s arrival in shrill tones of delight, the baron was quiet, taking it all in. But his eyes were kinder, more welcoming than the quick, flat glance she’d gotten from Mum. If I have to choose, I pick Dad.
“But Neville, we’re being unforgivably rude,” his mother said eventually, turning to Cath. “Won’t you introduce us to your guest?”
“Of course.” He snaked his arm around Cath’s waist, drawing her forward to stand next to him. “Cath, I’d like you to meet my parents, Richard and Evita Chamberlain. Mother, Father, allow me to present my wife, Mary Catherine Talarico.”
Surprise wiped the Chamberlains’ faces blank, and for a long moment there was no sound in the entry hall but the air moving in and out of her lungs. Presumably, everyone else had quit breathing. Cath braced herself for the shouting that would surely follow, but second after second ticked by, and the silence took on a life of its own. Was this how they handled the unforseen in Nev’s family? It was so chilly. Utterly foreign to her.
Brazen it out. “Chamberlain,” she said, breaking the silence. “It’s Mary Catherine Chamberlain now, darling.” And she smiled up at Nev as if blissfully unaware that he’d just dropped a bomb.
“Right, love. I’m not used to it yet. We were only married Wednesday,” he explained for his parents’ benefit.
Cath readied the explanation she and Nev had agreed on—that they’d married at the registry office, wanting the ceremony to be quiet and private, just between the two of them—but the conversation dropped dead all over again. If she and Nev had been in Chicago, her aunt Nina would have asked a dozen questions by now, and her uncle Pete would have either thrown a punch or broken out the alcohol. Cath didn’t know what to think about all this polite silence.
Evita had managed to plaster her social mask back in place, and she smiled icily at Cath. “Well, it sounds like we have a lot of catching up to do. Let’s get settled in the parlor, where we can talk properly.” She began leading the way, her heels tapping on the marble floor.
Richard spoke, bringing her to a halt. “I think congratulations are in order first.” He offered his hand to Nev and gave it a hearty shake. “Married. I can scarcely believe it.” Pulling Cath into a loose approximation of a hug, he said over her shoulder, “And to such a lovely bride. Welcome to the family, Mary Catherine.”
“Please, call me Cath. Only Nev calls me Mary Catherine, and he does it just to tease me.”
Evita had no choice but to follow suit. She hugged her son and planted an air kiss on either side of Cath’s face, saying, “Congratulations, to be sure. I’m so looking forward to our getting better acquainted.”
The grip of her fingers on Cath’s shoulders was not the least bit friendly.
The parlor looked like it had been plucked from a Jane Austen novel, uncomfortable Regency settees and all. She couldn’t possibly sit in this room. The furniture belonged in a museum. Stalling, she escaped to the bathroom to “freshen up.” It seemed the best way to describe clutching the vanity top and taking deep breaths until she’d convinced herself she wasn’t about to lose her lunch.
Once she had that under control, she checked her reflection in the mirror. The woman staring back at her was Not Her. Her hair waved softly around her face, and her dress was elegant despite the slightly wrinkled lap. A long strand of freshwater pearls and irregular chunks of amber looped twice around her neck, glowing against the cocoa backdrop. With lips a bit swollen from Nev’s kisses in the driveway—his misguided attempt to calm her down, or so he’d claimed—and cheeks suffused with nervous color, she looked every inch the fresh, pretty bride Nev’s father supposed her to be.
God, but inside she was dying to get out of this place. It was one thing to pretend to be New Cath until the habits of respectability sank in and quite another to try to pass as the woman looking back at her in the mirror.
You can do this, Talarico. How hard can it be, pretending you want to spend the rest of your life with Nev? Grow a pair and get your ass back out there.
Thus encouraged, she returned to the parlor.
Nev was fielding a rapid series of questions from his mother when Cath sat beside him on the stiff sofa. He took her hand and squeezed it, but he felt about a million miles away. He was pure City in this parlor. Super cool. Super smart. Super rich.
She tried not to notice that she didn’t like this Nev all that much.
“And how did you two meet?” Evita asked.
Nev stilled, as if he hadn’t seen the question coming. She had. As soon as it had sunk in that she’d be meeting Nev’s mother, she’d invented a more appropriate backstory for the two of them. “We met at the Tate, actually—the Tate Modern, I should say. There was a reception for the new exhibit on Dadaism, and Nev and I literally bumped into each other. He was so charming and apologetic”—here she gave him a loving look—“that I let him take me on a walk along the South Bank. We ended up having crêpes from one of those riverside vendors. Banana Nutella, wasn’t it, darling? And we talked for hours.”
“She let me take her on a proper date the next day,” Nev added, rising to the challenge.
“Love at first sight, was it?” Richard asked, sounding bemused.
“Pretty much,” Cath agreed. Nev smiled at her, and the ice thawed. She stopped caring about her dress, and started thinking instead about how much she wanted him to lean down and kiss her, to cup her face in his hand the way he did when he planned to make torturously slow love to her, and then—
But this is all an act, you dope. Let’s not get carried away.
Thank Christ for the voice of reason. Cath tore her eyes away so she could stare at her feet, ensconced in a very pinchy, very boring pair of brown-and-tan pumps.
“What a charming story,” Evita said, her tone conveying she wasn’t the least bit charmed. “Tell me, Cath—”
But Richard came to the rescue again. “Evita, why don’t we let Nev and Cath get settled in their room? They must be tired from the drive. We’ll have plenty of time to talk this evening.”
Evita’s tightly clamped lips said she wasn’t happy about this plan, but she’d been outmaneuvered. “Brilliant, Richard, of course that’s what we must do. Now let’s see, where shall we put you? I don’t suppose your old room will do, Neville? I was going to put Winston and Rosemary there, but we can get another room ready for them.”
“That will be fine, Mother. If you’ll show Cath the way up, I’ll retrieve our things from the car.”
Evita led her to a large corner room on the top floor of the house. A four-poster bed in dark wood dominated the furnishings, while windows on both outer walls offered a beautiful view of the surrounding area. Cath spotted a formal garden, as well as paths leading to a small copse by a stream.
“Perhaps Neville will give you a tour of the grounds before dinner,” Evita remarked.
“I’d like that.”
The fifteen-year-old Chicago urchin in her head laughed. A tour of the grounds. How chaaarming.
“I’ll leave you to your unpacking then. I do so look forward to our getting better acquainted later on.” She squeezed Cath’s hand, crushing her rings rather painfully against her fingers. “I’ve longed to have Neville married. I would’ve liked to have had the wedding here, of course, but he’s never shown much regard for my wishes. In any case, it will be good to have him settled.”
S
he sounded as if she might actually mean it. Cath smiled sweetly. “We’re going to be happy together, Nev and I. We’re very much in love.”
“Yes,” Evita said in a strange, almost distracted voice. “Yes, I can see that. Well, dinner will be at seven. We can talk then.” And with another shoulder clutch and an air kiss, she was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
He must have passed his mother in the hall, because he showed up with their bags then. Dropping them inside the door, he pulled it shut behind him and flipped the lock. When he turned and met her eyes, she saw that City had taken a hike. Nev stood across the room, hot as the infernal regions, and he was looking at her like he wanted to screw her six ways from Sunday.
“Take it off,” he said.
He stepped toward her, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it onto a chair. She backed toward the window. “Take what off?”
“Cath, if you don’t take that dress off right now, I won’t be blamed for what happens to it.”
Another advance, another retreat. He wore a summery blue-checked shirt, open at the throat, tucked into dark blue jeans that had probably cost a mint. Prince Charming in casual wear. Only this royal personage had just popped open the clasp on his belt.
“No.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Quit being so bossy.”
He paused, studying her for a long moment, and then grinned and yanked the belt out of the loops with one quick tug that made his biceps bunch. And her slightly faint. “You like it.”
“I don’t.”
She did.
He unbuttoned his fly, and her pulse kicked into high gear. “Your mother thought you might like to show me the grounds.”
“Later. This won’t take long. Lose the dress.”
“I’m not having sex with you in this room. It’s too creepy. You grew up sleeping in here, didn’t you? You probably have teenager porn under the bed.”
“I grew up away at school. I only ever slept here on holiday.” He pulled his shirttails out and pointed to the four-poster. “And now we’re going to sleep here, and I’m going to have sex with you in that bed.” As he scanned the rest of the room, his fingers worked loose the top button of his shirt. “Or quite possibly up against that wall, if you don’t behave.” He took a step closer, freeing another button. “Bent over and clinging to the bedpost.” Another step, another button. “Sitting on top of the chest of drawers.”