by Penny Jordan
Re-read this classic romance by New York Times bestselling author Penny Jordan, previously published as Capable of Feeling in 1986
Jon Phillips needs a wife in name only to help care for his niece and nephew, and his beautiful employee Sophy already loves the children as if they were her own. So it isn’t hard for Sophy to agree to what seems like the perfect convenient arrangement.
But in sharing a roof together, Sophy becomes increasingly aware of her husband and her desire to make their marriage real in every sense. Can she ever be more than his untouched bride?
His Untouched Bride
Penny Jordan
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER ONE
‘DARLING, I DO HOPE you’re going to wear something a little more attractive than that for dinner. You know we’ve got the Bensons coming and he is one of your father’s best clients. Chris is back by the way.’
Sophy had only been listening to her mother with half her attention, too overwhelmed by the familiar sense of depression, which inevitably overcame her when she had to spend longer than an hour in the latter’s company, to resist the tidal flood of maternal criticism but the moment she heard Chris Benson’s name mentioned she tensed.
They were sitting in the garden on the small patio in front of the immaculately manicured lawns and rosebeds. The garden was her father’s pride and joy but to Sophie it represented everything about her parents and their life-style that had always heightened for her the differences between them. In her parents’ lives everything must be neat and orderly, conforming to a set middle-class pattern of respectability.
She had spent all her childhood and teenage years in this large comfortable house in its West Suffolk village and all that time she had felt like an ungainly cuckoo in the nest of two neat, tiny wrens.
She didn’t even look like her parents; her mother was five-foot-three with immaculate, still blonde, hair and plumply corseted figure, her father somewhat taller, but much in the same mould; a country solicitor, who had once been in the army and who still ran his life on the orderly lines he had learned in that institution.
It was not that her parents didn’t love her, or weren’t kind, genuinely caring people. It was just that she was alien to them and them to her.
Her height, the ungainly length of her legs and arms, the wild mane of her dark, chestnut hair and the high cheekboned, oval face with its slightly tilting gold eyes; these were not things she had inherited from her parents, and she knew that her mother in particular had always privately mourned the fact that her daughter was not like herself, another peaches and cream English rose.
Instead, her physical characteristics had come to her from the half American, half Spanish beauty her great-grandfather had married in South America and brought home. Originally the Marley family had come from Bristol. They had been merchants there for over a century, owning a small fleet of ships and her great-grandfather had been the captain of one of these.
All that had been destroyed by the First World War, which had destroyed so many of the small shipping companies and Sophie knew that her parents felt uneasy by this constant reminder of other times in the shape and physical appearance of their only child.
Her mother had done her best…refusing to see that her tall, ungainly daughter did not look her best in pretty embroidered dresses with frills and bows.
She had disappointed her mother, Sophy knew that. Sybil Rainer had been married at nineteen, a mother at twenty-one and that was a pattern she would have liked to have seen repeated in her daughter. Once too she…
‘Of course, Chris is married now…’
Her mind froze, distantly registering the hint of reproach in her mother’s voice. ‘There was a time when I thought that you and he…’ her voice trailed away and Sophy let it, closing her eyes tightly, thinking bitterly that once she too had thought that she and Chris would marry. Chris’s father was a wealthy stockbroker and she had known him all through her teens, worshipping his son in the way that teenage girls are wont to do.
She had never dreamed Chris might actually notice her as anything other than the daughter of one of his father’s oldest friends. The year he came down from university, when she herself was just finishing her ‘A’ levels, he had come home.
They had met at the tennis club. Sophy had just been finishing a match. Tennis was one of the few things she excelled at; she had the body and the strength for it and, she realised with wry hindsight, he could hardly have seen her in a more flattering setting.
He had asked her out; she had been overwhelmed with excitement…and so it had started.
Her mouth twisted bitterly. It was not how it had started that she was thinking of now, but how it had finished.
It hadn’t taken her long to fall in love—she was literally starving for attention…for someone of her own and she had been all too ridiculously easy a conquest for him. Of course she had demurred when he told her he wanted to make love to her but she had also been thrilled that he could want her so much. Seeing no beauty or desirability in her own appearance, she could not understand how anyone else could either.
She had thought he loved her. She had wanted to believe it. She had thought he intended to marry her. God, how ridiculous and farcical it all seemed now.
Inevitably she had let him make love to her, one hot summer night at the end of August when they were alone in his parents’ house…and that night had shattered her rosy dreams completely.
Even now she could remember his acid words of invective when he realised that she was not enjoying his lovemaking, his criticisms of her as a woman, his disgust in her inability to respond to him.
Frightened by the change in him, her body still torn by the pain of his possession she had sought to placate him offering uncertainly, ‘But it will get better when we are married…’
‘Married!’ He had withdrawn completely from her, staring at her with narrowed eyes. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last woman on earth, darling,’ he had drawled tauntingly. ‘When I get married it will be to a woman who knows what it means to be a woman…not a frigid little girl. You’ll never get married, Sophy,’ he had told her cruelly. ‘No man will ever want to marry a woman like you.’
Looking back, she was lucky to have come out of the escapade with nothing worse than a badly bruised body and ego, Sophy told herself. It could have been so much worse. She could have been pregnant…pregnant and unmarried.
‘Darling, you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying,’ her mother complained a little petulantly, ‘and why do you scrape your hair back like that? It’s so pretty.’
‘It’s also heavy, Mother…and today it’s very hot.’ She said it patiently, forcing a placatory smile.
‘I wish you’d have it properly styled, darling…and get some new clothes. Those awful jeans you’re wearing…’
Sighing faintly, Sophy put down her book. If only her mother could understand that she could not be what she wanted her to be. If only…
‘I’ve told Brenda to bring Chris and his wife round to see us. She’s a lovely girl, Brenda was saying. An American…they got married last year while we were away on that cruise.’ She looked across at her daughter. ‘It’s time you were thinking of settling down, darling, after all you are twenty-six…’
S
o she was, and wouldn’t Chris just crow to know that his cruel prediction all those years ago had proved so correct.
Not that she wanted to get married. She moved restlessly in her deck chair, unwanted images flashing through her mind…pictures of the men she had dated over the years, and the look on their faces when she turned cold and unresponsive in their arms. She had never totally been able to overcome the fears Chris had instilled in her—not of the physical reality of male possession, but of her own inability to respond to him…her own innate sexual coldness. Well it was something no other man was ever going to find out about her. It was her own private burden and she was going to carry it alone.
No male possession meant no children, though. Sighing once again, she opened her eyes and stared unseeingly at her father’s neat flower border. Just when she had first felt this fierce need to have children of her own she wasn’t quite sure but lately she was rarely unaware of it. She very much wanted children…a family of her own. But she wasn’t going to get them, as Chris had so rightly taunted her. No man was going to want a woman who was physically incapable of responding to him sexually.
The sharp ring of the telephone bell on the wall outside the house cut through her despondent thoughts.
Her mother got up and hurried into the house via the french windows. Several seconds later she reappeared, beckoning Sophy, a frown marring her forehead.
‘It’s Jonathan,’ she told Sophy peevishly. ‘Why on earth does he need to ring you at weekends?’
Jonathan Phillips was her boss. Sophy had been working for him for two years. She’d first met him at a party thrown by a mutual acquaintance to which she had gone in a mood of bitter introspection having finally come to the realisation that the happiness and fulfilment of marriage and children would never be hers. She had also been well on her way to getting drunk. She had bumped into him on her way to get herself yet another glass of wine, the totally unexpected impediment of a solidly muscled chest knocking her completely off balance.
Jonathan had grasped her awkwardly round the waist looking at her through his glasses with eyes that registered his discomfort and shock at finding her in his arms.
She had pulled away and he had released her immediately, looking very relieved to do so. She would have walked away and that would have been that if she had not suddenly betrayed her half inebriated state by teetering uncertainly on her high heels.
It was then that Jon had taken charge, dragging her outside into the fresh air, procuring from somewhere a cup of black coffee. Both were acts which, now that she knew him better, were so alien to his normal vague, muddledly hopeless inability to organise anything, that they still had the power to surprise her slightly.
They had talked. She had learned that he was a computer consultant working from an office in Cambridge; that he had his orphaned niece and nephew in his care and that he was the mildest and most unaggressive man she had ever come across.
She, in turn, had told him about her languages degree—gained much to the disapproval of her mother, who still believed that a young woman had no need to earn her own living but should simply use her time to find herself a suitable husband—her secretarial abilities, and the dull job she had working in her father’s office.
She had eventually sobered up enough to drive home and by the end of the next week she had forgotten Jonathan completely.
His letter to her offering her a job as his assistant had come totally out of the blue but, after discussing it with him, she had realised that here was the chance she needed so desperately to get herself out of the rut her life had become.
It was then that she realised that Jonathan was one of that elite band of graduates who had emerged from Cambridge in the late ’sixties and early ’seventies, fired by enthusiasm for the new computer age about to dawn, and that Jonathan was a world-renowned expert in his field.
Against her mother’s wishes she had accepted the job and on the strength of the generous salary he paid her she had found herself a pleasant flat in Cambridge.
She went into the hall and took the receiver from her mother, who moved away but not out of earshot. Her mother disapproved of Jonathan. Tall, and untidy with a shock of dark hair and mild, dark blue eyes which were always hidden behind the glasses he needed to wear, he was not like the bright, socially adept sons of her friends. Jonathan never indulged in social chit-chat—he didn’t know how to. He was vague and slightly clumsy, often giving the impression that he lived almost exclusively in a world of his own. Which in many ways he did, Sophy reflected, speaking his name into the receiver.
‘Ah, Sophy…thank goodness you’re there. It’s Louise…the children’s nanny. She’s left…and I have to fly to Brussels in the morning. Would you…?’
‘I’ll be there just as soon as I can,’ Sophy promised with alacrity, mentally sending a prayer of thanks up to her guardian angel.
Now she had a valid excuse for missing tonight’s dinner party and inevitable conversation about Chris.
‘What did he want?’ her mother questioned as Sophy replaced the receiver.
‘Louise, the nanny, has left. He wants me to look after the children for him, until he comes back from Brussels on Wednesday.’
‘But you’re his secretary,’ her mother expostulated. ‘He has no right to ring you here at weekends. You’re far too soft with him, Sophy. He’s only himself to blame… I’ve never met a more disorganised man. What he needs isn’t a secretary, it’s a wife…and what you need is a husband and children of your own,’ she added bitterly. ‘You’re getting far too attached to those children…you know that, don’t you?’
Mentally acknowledging that her mother was more astute than she had thought, Sophy gave her a brief smile. ‘I like them, yes,’ she admitted evenly, ‘and Jon is my boss. I can hardly refuse his request you know, Mother.’
‘Of course you can. I wish you weren’t working for the man. I don’t like him. Why on earth doesn’t he do something about himself? He ought to tidy himself up a bit, buy some new clothes…’
Sophy hid a smile. ‘Because those sort of things aren’t important to him, Mother.’
‘But they should be important. Appearance is important.’
Maybe for more ordinary mortals, Sophy reflected as she went upstairs to re-pack the weekend bag she had brought with her when she had come home, but the rules that governed ordinary people did not apply to near geniuses and that was what Jon was. He was so involved with his computers that she doubted he was aware of anything else.
At thirty-four he epitomised the caricature of a slightly eccentric, confirmed bachelor totally involved in his work and oblivious to anything else.
Except the children. He was very caring and aware where they were concerned.
As she went back downstairs with her case she frowned slightly. Louise would be the third nanny he had lost in the two years she had worked with him and she was at a loss to understand why. The children were a lovable pair. David, ten, and Alexandra, eight, were lively, it was true, but intelligent and very giving. The house Jonathan lived in had been bought by him when his brother and sister-in-law died, and was a comfortable, if somewhat rambling, Victorian building on the outskirts of a small Fen village. It had a large garden, which was rather inadequately cared for by an ancient Fensman and the housework was done by a woman who came in from the village to clean twice a week. Jonathan was not an interfering or difficult man to work for.
‘You’re going, then!’
Her mother made it sound as though she was leaving for good.
‘I’ll try and get down the weekend after next,’ she promised, aiming a kiss somewhere in the direction of her mother’s cheek and jumping into her newly acquired Metro.
Leaving the house behind her was like shedding an unwanted burden, she thought guiltily as she drove through the village and headed in the direction of Cambridge. It
wasn’t her parents’ fault there was this chasm between them, this inability to communicate on all but the most mundane levels. She loved them, of course, and knew that they loved her…but there was no real understanding between them. She felt more at ease and comfortable with Jonathan, more at home in his home than she had ever felt in her own.
Of course it was impossible to imagine anyone not getting on with him. He could be exasperating, it was true, with his vagueness and his inability to live in any sort of order but he had a wry sense of humour…a placid nature…well, at least almost. There had been one or two occasions on which she had thought she had seen a gleam of something unexpected in his eyes. Best of all, he treated her as an equal in all respects. He never enquired into her personal life, although they often spent the evening talking when she was down at his home—which was quite often because, although he had an office in Cambridge, there were times when he was called away unexpectedly and he would summon Sophy to his side to find the papers he was always losing and to generally ensure that he was travelling to his destination with all that he would require.
It was through these visits that she had got to know the children, often staying overnight, and this was not the first time she had received a frantic telephone call from Jonathan informing her of some domestic crisis.
Her mother was right, she thought wryly, what he needed was a wife but she could not see him marrying. Jonathan liked the life he had and he appeared to be one of that rare breed of people who seemed to have no perceptible sexual drive at all. His behavior towards her for instance was totally sexless, as it seemed to be to the whole of her sex—and his own; there was nothing about Jonathan that suggested his sexual inclinations might lie in that direction.
In another century he would have been a philosopher, perhaps.
However much her mother might criticise his shabby clothes and untidy appearance, Sophy liked him. Perhaps because he made no sexual demands of her, she admitted inwardly. Her conviction as a teenager that she was ugly and plain had long been vanquished when she had gone to university and realised there that men found her attractive; that there was something that challenged them about her almost gypsyish looks. A friend had told her she was ‘sexy’ but if she was, it was only on the surface, and by the time she had left university she was already accepting that sexually there was something wrong. When a man touched her she felt no spark of desire, nothing but a swift sensation of going back in time to Chris’s bed and the despair and misery she had experienced there.