In the car, Violet had alternated between bursts of conversation about nothing in particular to break the silence and long periods of sober reflection that the task she had undertaken seemed to be spinning out of control.
She was travelling with a stranger to an unknown destination, removed from everything she knew and was familiar with, and would have to spend the next few days pretending to be someone she wasn’t. If she had known what this so-called arrangement would have entailed, would she have embarked on it in the first place? Regrettably, yes, but knowing that didn’t stop her feeling like a sacrificial lamb as the powerful car roared down the motorway, eating up the miles and removing her further and further from her comfort zone.
While Phillipa was taking time out in Ibiza, doing very little in a tapas restaurant and no doubt enjoying the attention of all the locals as she wafted around in sarongs and summer dresses, here she was, sinking deeper and deeper into a situation that felt like quicksand, all so that her sister could carry on enjoying life without having to pay for the mistakes she had made.
‘Maybe she should have had her stint in prison,’ Violet said, apropos of nothing, and Damien shot her a sideways glance.
Locked in to doing exactly what he required of her, he could sense the strain in the rigid tension of her body. She would rather be anywhere else on earth than sitting here in this car with him. Naturally, he could understand that. More or less. After all, who wanted to be held hostage to a situation they hadn’t courted, paying for a crime they hadn’t committed? Yet was his company so loathsome that she literally found it impossible to make the best of a bad job? She was pressed so tightly against the passenger door that he feared she might fall out were it not for the fact that the doors were locked and she was wearing a seat belt.
There had been times over the past week and a half when some of her resentment had fallen away and she had chatted normally to him. There had also been times when, in the presence of his mother, he had touched her and his keenly attuned antenna had picked up something—something as fleeting as a shadow and yet as substantial as jolt of electricity. Something that had communicated itself to him, travelling down unseen pathways, announcing a response in her that she might not even have been aware of.
‘You don’t mean that,’ he said calmly.
‘Don’t tell me what I mean! If it weren’t for Phillipa I wouldn’t be here now.’
‘But you are and there’s no point dwelling on what ifs. And stop acting as though you’re being escorted to a torture chamber. You’re not. You’ll find my mother’s estate a very relaxing place to spend a few days.’
‘It’s hardly going to be a relaxing situation, is it? I don’t feel relaxed when I’m around you.’ When she thought about seeing him for hours on end, having meals in his company, being submerged in his presence without any respite except when she went to bed, she got a panicky, fluttery feeling in the depths of her stomach.
Without warning, Damien swerved his powerful car off the small road. They were only a matter of half an hour away from the house and the roads had become more deserted the closer they had approached the estate.
‘What are you doing?’ Violet asked warily as he killed the engine and proceeded to lean back at an angle so that he was looking directly at her. In the semi-darkness of the car, with night rapidly settling in around them, she felt the breath catch painfully in her throat. Apprehension jostled with something else—something dark and scary, the same dark, scary thing that had been nibbling away at the edges of her self-control ever since he had told her about Devon.
‘So you don’t feel relaxed around me. Tell me why. Get it off your chest before we reach the house. Okay, you’re not here of your own free will, but there’s no point lamenting that and covering old ground. It is as it is. Have you never been in a position where you had to grit your teeth and get through it?’
‘Of course I have!’
‘Then tell me what the difference is between then and now.’
‘You’re scary, Damien. You’re not like other people. You don’t feel. You’re so...so...cold...’
‘Funny. Cold is not a word that any woman has ever used to describe me...’
Violet felt her heart begin to race and her mouth went dry. ‘I’m not talking about...what you’re like in bed with women...’
‘Would you like to?’
‘No!’
‘Then how would you like me to try and relax you?’
Violet couldn’t detect anything in his voice and yet those words, innocuous as they were, sent a shiver of awareness rippling up and down her spine. She had a vivid, graphic image of him relaxing her, touching her, making her whole body melt until she was nothing more than a rag doll. Was this the real reason why she was so apprehensive? Terrified even? At the back of her mind, was she more scared of just being alone with him than she was of playing a game and acting out a part in a place with which she was unfamiliar? Did her own responses to him, which she constantly tried to squash, frighten her more than he did?
It didn’t seem to matter than he was cold, distant, emotionally absent. On some level, a part of her responded to him in ways that were shocking and unfamiliar.
She could feel the lazy perusal of his eyes on her and she wished she hadn’t embarked on a conversation which now seemed to be unravelling.
‘I’m just nervous,’ she muttered in a valiant struggle to regain her self-composure. ‘I’ll be fine once we get there. I guess.’
‘Try a little harder and you might start to convince me. You get along well with my mother. Is it Dominic?’ The question had to be asked. He hadn’t been in this position for a very long time. He had brought no one to Devon. He had vowed to never again put himself in the position of ever having to witness a negative reaction to his brother. However, this was an unavoidable circumstance and he felt the protective machinery of his defences seal around him like a wall of iron.
‘What are you talking about?’ Violet was genuinely puzzled.
‘Some people feel uncomfortable around the disabled. Is that why you’re so strung out?’ It had taken Annalise to wake him up to that fact, to the truth that there were people who shied away from what they didn’t know or understand, who felt that the disabled were to be laughed at or rigorously avoided. The ripple effect of those reactions were not contained, they always spread outwards to the people who cared. It was good to bring this up now.
‘No!’
‘Sure about that, Violet? Because you know me, you know my mother...the only unknown quantity in the equation is Dominic...’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting your brother, Damien. The only person who makes me feel uncomfortable is you!’ This was the first time she had come near to openly admitting the effect he had on her. She glared at him defensively, feeling at once angry and vulnerable at the admission and collided with eyes that were dark and impenetrable and sent her frayed pulses into overdrive.
All at once and on some deep, unspoken level, Damien could feel the sudden sexual tension in the air. Her words might say one thing but her breathlessness, the way her eyes were huge and fixed on him, the clenching and unclenching of her small fists...a different story.
He smiled, a slow, curving, triumphant smile. Whilst he had privately acknowledged the unexpected appeal she had for him, whilst he had been honest about the charge he got from a woman who was so different in every possible way to the type of women he had become used to, he had pretty much decided that a Hands Off stance was necessary in her case.
But they were going to be together in Devon and, like an expert predator, he could smell the aroma of her unwelcome but decidedly strong sexual attraction towards him. She was as skittish as a kitten and it wasn’t because she was nervous about spending a week in the company of his mother. Nor was she hesitant about his brother. He had detected the sincerity in her voice when he had sug
gested that she might be.
He took his time looking at her before turning away with a casual shrug and turning the key in the ignition. Her presence next to him for the remainder of the very short drive felt like an aphrodisiac. Potent, heady and very much not in the plan.
The drive up to the grand house was tree-lined, through wrought-iron gates which he could never remember being closed. Having not been to the estate for longer than he liked to think, Damien was struck by the sharp pull of familiarity and by the hazy feelings he always associated with his home life—the sense of responsibility which was always there like a background refrain. Having a disabled brother had meant that any freedom had always been on lease. He had always known that, sooner or later, he would one day have to take up the mantle left behind by his parents. Had he resented that? He certainly didn’t think so, although he did admit to a certain regret that he had failed to extend any input for so long.
Was it any wonder that his mother had been so distraught when she had been diagnosed, that she might leave behind her a family unit that was broken at the seams? He had a lot of ground to cover if he were to convince her otherwise.
‘What an amazing place,’ Violet murmured as the true extent of the sprawling mansion, gloriously lit against the darkness, revealed itself. ‘What was it like growing up here?’
‘My parents only moved in when my grandfather died, and I was a teenager. Before that, we lived in the original cottage my parents first bought together when they were married...’
‘It must have seemed enormous after a cottage...’
‘When you live in a house this size you get used to the space very quickly.’ And he had. He had lost himself in it. He had been able to escape. He wondered whether he had been so successful at escaping that a part of him had never returned. And had his mother indulged that need for escape? Until now? When escape was no longer a luxury to be enjoyed?
Not given to introspection, Damien frowned as he pulled up in the large circular courtyard. The house was lit up like a Christmas tree in the gathering darkness and they had hardly emerged from the car with their cases when the front door was flung open and Anne, the housekeeper who had been with the family since time immemorial, was standing there, waving them inside.
Violet wondered what her role here was to be. Exactly. Sitting by a hospital bed, she had known what to do and the impersonal surroundings had relieved her of the necessity of trying to act the star-struck lover. A few passing touches, delivered by Damien rather than her—more would have seemed inappropriate in a hospital room, where they were subject to unexpected appearances from hospital staff.
But here she was floundering in a place without guidelines as they were ushered into the grandest hall she had ever seen.
The vaulted ceiling seemed as high and as impressive as the ceiling of a cathedral. The fine silk Persian rug in the hall bore the rich sheen of its age. The staircase leading up before splitting in opposite directions was dark and highly polished. It was a country house on a grand scale.
The housekeeper was chatting animatedly as they were led from the hall through a perplexing series of rooms and corridors.
‘Your mother is resting. She’ll be down with Dominic for dinner. Served at seven promptly, with drinks before in the Long Room. You’ve been put in the Blue Room, Mr Damien. George will bring the bags up.’
Looking sideways, Violet was fascinated at Damien’s indifference to his surroundings. He barely looked around him. How on earth could he have said that a person could become accustomed to a house of this size? She had initially been introduced to Anne as his girlfriend and now, as though suddenly remembering that she was trotting along obediently next to him, he slung one arm over her shoulder as the housekeeper headed away from them through one of the multitude of doors, before disappearing into some other part of the vast family mansion.
‘An old retainer,’ he said, dropping his arm and moving towards a side staircase that Violet had failed to notice.
‘It’s a beautiful house.’
‘It’s far too big for just my mother and Dominic, especially considering that the land is no longer farmed.’ He was striding ahead of her, his mind still uncomfortably dwelling on the unexpected train of thought that had assailed him in the car, the unpleasant notion that the grand house through which he was now confidently leading the way had been his excuse to pull away from his brother. He had never given a great deal of thought to his relationship with Dominic. Was he now on some kind of weird guilt trip because of the circumstances? Had he shielded himself from the pain Annalise had inflicted on him when she had rejected his brother by pulling ever further away from Dominic? He should have been far more of a presence here on the estate, especially with his mother getting older.
‘It would be a shame to sell it. I bet it’s been in your family for generations...’ She was barely aware of the bedroom until the door was thrown open and the first thing that accosted her was the sight of a massive four-poster bed on which their suitcases had been neatly placed. While he strode in with assurance, moving to stand and look distractedly through the windows, she hovered uncertainly in the background.
‘Well?’ Damien harnessed his wandering mind and focused narrowly on her.
‘Why are both our suitcases in this room?’ Violet asked bluntly. She already knew the answer to that one, yet she shied away from facing it. She hadn’t given much thought to the details of their stay. In a vague, generalised way, she had imagined awkward one-to-one conversations with Damien and embarrassing economising of the truth with his mother, along with stilted meals where she would be under scrutiny, forced to gaily smile her way through gritted teeth. She hadn’t gone any further when it came to scenarios. She hadn’t given any thought to the possibility that the loving couple might be put in the same bedroom. She had blithely assumed that such an eventuality would not occur because surely Eleanor belonged to that generation which abhorred the thought of cohabitation under their roof. Eleanor was a traditionalist, a widow who still proudly wore her wedding ring and tut tutted about the youth of today.
‘Because this is where we’ll be sleeping,’ Damien replied with equal bluntness. His unaccountably introspective and dark frame of mind had not put him in the best of moods. Having questioned his devotion as a son and on-hand supportive presence as a brother, the last thing he needed was to witness his so-called girlfriend’s evident horror at being trapped in the same bedroom as him.
‘I can’t sleep in the same room as you! I didn’t think that this would be the format.’
‘Tough. You haven’t got a choice.’ He began unbuttoning his shirt, a prelude to having a shower, and Violet’s eyes were drawn to the sliver of brown chest being exposed inch by relentless inch. She hurriedly looked away but, even though she was staring fixedly at his face, she could still see the gradual unbuttoning of his shirt until it was completely open, at which point she cleared her throat and gazed at the door behind him.
‘There must be another room I can stay in. This place is enormous.’
‘Oh, there are hundreds of other rooms,’ Damien asserted nonchalantly. ‘However, you won’t be in any of them. It’s a few days and my mother has put us together. Somehow I don’t think she’s going to buy the line that we’re keeping ourselves virtuous for the big day.’ He pulled off his shirt and headed towards his case on the bed, flipping it open without looking at her. ‘We have roughly an hour before we need to be downstairs for drinks. My mother enjoys the formal approach when it comes to dining. It’s one of her idiosyncrasies. So do you want to have the bathroom first or shall I?’
Violet hated his tone of voice. It was one which implied that he couldn’t even be bothered to take her concerns into account. He was accustomed to sharing beds with women, she thought with a burst of impotent anger. In his adult life, he had probably slept with a woman next to him a lot more often than he had slept alone. It
wasn’t the same for her. Did he imagine that she would be able to lie next to him and pretend that she was on her own? The bed was king-sized but the thought of moving in the night and accidentally colliding with his sleeping form was enough to make her feel like fainting.
‘I hate this,’ she whispered, filled with self-pity that the last vestige of her dignity was being stripped away from her. ‘You’ll have to sleep on the sofa.’
Damien glanced at the chaise longue by the window and wondered whether she was being serious. ‘I’m six foot four. What would you suggest I do with my feet?’ He raised his eyebrows and watched as she struggled in silence to come up with a suitable response. ‘I’ve spent hours driving. I’m going to have a shower. Don’t even think of trawling the house for another bedroom.’
With that, he vanished into the adjoining bathroom, leaving Violet to fight off the waves of panic as she stared at her lonesome suitcase on the bed. Everything about the bedroom seemed designed to encourage a fainting fit, from the grandeur of a bed that would have been better suited to the lovers they most certainly were not, to the thick, heavy curtains which she imagined would cut out all daylight so that the intimacy of the surroundings became palpable.
Wrapped up in a series of images, she almost forgot that he was in the shower until she heard the sound of water being switched off, at which point she raced to her suitcase, extracted an armful of clothes and then stood to attention by the window, with her back pointedly turned to the bathroom door.
She heard the click of the door opening and then she froze as his voice whispered into her ear, ‘You can look. I’m decently covered. Anyone would think that you were sweet sixteen and never been kissed.’
He was laughing as she unglued her eyes from his bare feet and allowed them to travel upwards to where he was decently covered in no more than a pair of boxer shorts and his shirt, which he was taking his own sweet time to button up.
His Temporary Mistress Page 8