So after lunch she left a sleepy Henry with a clucky Mrs Burchett and took herself off to meet the head gardener. If Marc was off planning his future as an aquatic engineer, she told herself firmly, then maybe she’d better meet a few trees.
The head gardener was older even than Dominic. Otto spoke scant English, but he and Tammy had a common love of gardens. Language aside, here was an instant friend. The old man had been discouraged from doing anything new with the garden for years, but half an hour after they’d met they were poring over plans-Otto’s dreams laid out for the garden of the future.
The plans were wonderful. Language difficulties were forgotten, and so was time as they strolled around the property, checking sites for every one of Otto’s wonderful fantasies.
‘This is amazing,’ Tammy breathed as she stood on the site of a proposed avenue of Manchurian pear. ‘Marvellous.’
‘If M’sieur Marc permits…’
‘M’sieur Marc permits,’ Tammy said roundly. ‘Of course he’ll permit.’
‘What does M’sieur Marc permit?’ a voice asked behind them, and Tammy gave a start. She whirled to find Marc approaching through the trees. He was dressed in a suit, as though for business, and that was how he seemed. Businesslike. No nonsense.
But Tammy refused to be intimidated. After all, she’d seen him in his full royal regalia back in Australia, so how could a mere business suit throw her off-stride? The fact that the man himself threw her off-stride had to be ignored. ‘Have you seen these plans?’ she demanded. ‘They’re wonderful.’
‘What plans?’
But Otto was already rolling them up, as if ashamed. Undeterred, Tammy took them from him and unrolled them, refusing to listen to his protests. ‘Otto has so many things he wants to do in this garden,’ she told Marc. ‘I can’t understand why he hasn’t been permitted to do this before. Look at this hill we’re standing on. Most of the trees came down in some huge storm ten years ago-at least I think that’s what Otto’s telling me. But no one’s given him permission to replant, and erosion’s starting to be a problem. We need to get onto this straight away. It’d be a crime if we lost any more topsoil.’
‘A crime?’ There was a strange look on Marc’s face, but Tammy ignored it and kept right on going.
‘Yes. And it’s not as if money’s a problem. Otto’s has been propagating plants for years and has enough seedlings to plant a small forest. All you have to do is say the word and we can start.’
‘We?’
Tammy flushed, but she couldn’t deny her excitement. This estate was huge. There was so much to do.
‘I’ll help. Of course I’ll help.’
‘And you’ll love helping?’
‘Yes,’ she said tilting her chin in an unconsciously defiant reaction to the strangeness in Marc’s voice. ‘I can help all I want. Once my living quarters are sorted out.’
‘You’ll stay in the castle.’
She closed her eyes. Here it was again. ‘I won’t stay in the castle. You’ll stay in the castle.’
‘This,’ he said softly-dangerously-as Otto looked on in confusion, ‘has the makings of a children’s argument. I will. No, I will.’
‘So stop being childish,’ she snapped.
‘No one’s accused me of being childish.’
‘I can’t imagine why not,’ she declared, her chin still tilted in the way he was starting to recognise. ‘That’s just what you are. Offloading your responsibilities onto a mere girl…’
‘Now, that,’ he said carefully, ‘is nonsense. Has anyone ever called you a mere girl?’ He surveyed her thoughtfully. ‘I’d imagine you wouldn’t have been a mere girl even when you were three. What do you think, Otto?’ He turned to the old man and motioned to Tammy. ‘Fantastique?’
‘Oui,’ the gardener said definitely, grinning. ‘Et belle. Très belle.’
‘That too,’ Marc said thoughtfully, surveying Tammy with care. He reached out and removed a grass seed from her hair. ‘Very definitely.’
‘If you two don’t mind?’ Tammy said, flushing, and Marc smiled.
‘Mind? Why should we mind? Two men discussing a beautiful woman…’
‘Yeah, with grass seeds in her hair, a stained T-shirt and the knees out of her jeans. You’re out of your minds.’
‘I don’t think we are,’ Marc told her, his smile intensifying. But he needed to move on. ‘Plans aside…and don’t think I don’t approve-I do…but I’m here to inform you that Mrs Burchett’s planning soufflé as entrée, so we mustn’t be late for dinner.’ His smile turned quizzical. ‘She also tells me she was planning on serving quail, but the lady of the house changed the menu to chicken.’
‘I didn’t,’ Tammy said, horrified, and then thought about it. ‘I mean…I did, but I didn’t mean…’
‘It’s fine,’ Marc said grandly. ‘Planning gardens. Organising menus. You’ll be at home before you know it, and then I’ll be free to lead my own life.’
Oh, great.
CHAPTER EIGHT
INGRID wasn’t there.
Tammy walked into the dining room and stopped, stunned. There was only Marc, standing in his dinner suit before the enormous fireplace, a curious smile curving the corners of his mouth.
‘What?’ she said crossly before she caught herself and made a recovery. ‘I mean, good evening, Your Highness.’
‘Good evening, your ladyship.’ He gave her a formal bow which from someone else might be seen as a mockery, but from him was as natural as taking a lady’s hand and kissing it.
Which wasn’t exactly natural, Tammy thought, seriously ruffled. How many men had she ever met who kissed the back of a lady’s hand? Approximately none.
And how many men could smile at her and make her insides do these really strange things?
‘Where’s Ingrid?’ Her tone was more curt than she’d intended, and his smile faded.
‘Ingrid had urgent matters calling her home.’
‘To your home?’
‘To her home.’
She thought about that. Part of her-the silly part-was very, very pleased. The other part had to be sensible. She should accept this announcement for what it was worth. ‘So it’s as Mrs Burchett says? You’ve moved on?’
‘I’ve done nothing of the kind.’
‘Will she be coming back? Ingrid, I mean?’
‘I don’t see that Ingrid’s whereabouts need concern you.’
‘It’s only this dress,’ she said apologetically, looking down at the little black number she was wearing. ‘If it’s just you here from now on then I can go back to jeans.’
His lips twitched and laughter flashed into his dark eyes. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘Merci du compliment.’
‘Think nothing of it.’
‘I thought women dressed for men?’ he said curiously, and she raised her brows in a look of incredulity.
‘Only if they’re trying to attract them,’ she told him seriously, taking the champagne he offered and trying to keep her composure as their fingers touched. How he had the capacity to shake her just by touching, she didn’t know. ‘Which I’m not.’
Was that true? Was she trying to attract him? No, she told herself flatly. Or…not very much, anyway. Not any amount she was prepared to admit.
Somehow she made herself continue the conversation-which was really, really hard. ‘Women dressing when there are other women around is a very different ballgame,’ she managed. ‘My mother and sister could dissect a woman’s wardrobe from a hundred paces.’
‘And you hated it?’
‘I did,’ she agreed cordially. ‘Can we go find this soufflé? And this chicken?’
‘Why did you knock back quail?’ he asked curiously, and she flinched. But she made a recovery. Somehow.
‘I never liked quail.’
‘And if I do?’
‘If you put me in charge of menus then you eat what I like.’
‘You’re a hard woman.’
‘I am.’ She grinned, suddenly
enormously cheered by Ingrid’s unexplained absence. It didn’t make any sense, but then she was just about past making any sense to herself at all over anything.
It was a fabulous dinner.
The kitchen staff could cook chicken any night they pleased while she was here, Tammy thought dreamily. The chicken casserole had been luscious, as had the salmon soufflé for entrée. So was the flaky quince tart for dessert, and the tiny meringues Dominic was serving with coffee were melt-in-the-mouth wonderful.
This was like no food she’d ever eaten. Wow! She ate another meringue and thought the belt on her little black dress would have to expand a notch or two if things stayed like this.
‘What?’ Marc asked, and she looked across the table to find him watching her. This was a crazy dining room for just the two of them. It was truly splendid. Twenty-foot ceilings, gilded walls, crimson brocade drapes, a vast open fireplace, candles, paintings of ancestors looking sternly down, silverware, crystal, a vast silver epergne on the heavily ornate sideboard…
A woman might well be intimidated by all this, Tammy thought, and then looked into Marc’s eyes and thought, No, this was what was more likely to intimidate her. Not the room. The man. Specifically, the way he smiled at her.
It made her catch her breath and more.
‘I was just wondering what happened to the poor quails we were supposed to have,’ she lied, and he smiled again-which made her catch her breath all over again.
‘Do we care?’
‘I like quails.’ She forced her face into a frown. ‘I don’t like them to eat, though. I like them flying about. I found one once, when I was a little girl. He’d been wounded and lost a wing and he became my pet. Querky Quail. I loved him.’
‘So you’re not intending to eat Querky’s relatives?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with chicken instead of quail,’ she told him severely. ‘If I’d had to decide before either had been killed then there’d have been no choice, but if the quail have already been killed then we shouldn’t waste them.’
‘So you’ll serve them up at breakfast?’
‘Um…maybe not.’
But he’d come to a decision. ‘Then you’ll have to eat them by yourself for dinner tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘Or let the servants eat them.’ He pushed his empty coffee cup away and rose to assist her to do likewise. As she stood, he pulled her chair back for her. Which unnerved her all over again. Good grief! A man assuming that she-a tree surgeon-needed help climbing from a chair? What next?
But she couldn’t exactly say she disliked the sensation. In truth, it was an amazing feeling. For a start it brought him so close to her that her dress brushed the fine cloth of his suit. His hand brushed her bare arm and she felt a rush of heat straight through her body-a rush of heat she’d never felt before.
What was it with her? she asked herself desperately. She was acting like a teenager.
‘I’ll have to eat them myself?’ Damn, why was her voice not working properly? Why was she finding it so hard to think past how close he was? ‘You won’t be here?’
‘I’m going home.’
Home. Back to his own independent life.
That changed things. A cold, hard knot of anger settled in the pit of her stomach and the heat faded to nothing. ‘Why?’
‘I told you. I can’t stay here.’
‘But you live here.’
‘No. You live here now,’ he told her. ‘You made that decision when you decided to come back with Henry. Your home is here. My home is ten miles away.’
‘Then you brought me here on false pretences,’ she said angrily. ‘Nothing was said about this when I decided to come. You made it sound as if your home was here.’
‘If you hadn’t decided to accompany Henry, then my home would have had to be here.’
‘Then what’s changed?’
‘You, of course.’ He was looking down at her, and his face was still. Expressionless. He was showing no emotion at all-in fact he was so carefully showing no emotion that she wondered just what was going on behind that carefully maintained façade. ‘You,’ he repeated. ‘And me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He was far too close for comfort, and suddenly she was finding it hard to breathe.
‘You’ve said it’s impossible.’ Still that expression that said he was holding himself under rigid control.
‘So it is,’ she managed. Damn, she was still too close. He was still too close! ‘I need my own space.’
‘So do I.’
‘Surely this castle is big enough for both of us?’ She felt suddenly desperate. Overwhelmed by the enormity of what he was suggesting. That she be left alone… ‘If you’ll agree to me turning part of it into a self-contained apartment…’
‘I won’t do that. It’s not necessary. I hate this place.’
She eyed him with caution. There was still no emotion on his face at all. Hate? He said the word like a carefully rehearsed line in a play.
‘So you farm out your responsibility…?’
‘I do nothing of the kind. It’s not my responsibility.’
‘Neither is it mine.’
‘You chose to come here,’ he told her.
‘I chose to care for Henry. Not your whole damned castle. Not your whole damned kingdom.’
‘Principality,’ he snapped, and she gasped.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m trying to be serious and you’re fiddling with semantics.’
‘I’m not fiddling with anything. I’m leaving.’
‘You never said you were leaving so soon.’ They were standing chest to breast, anger emanating from each in waves. ‘I can’t take on the castle. It’s way too soon. I’m hardly accustomed to Henry yet.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Dominic and Madge will help you through.’
‘So why won’t you stay longer?’
‘I have to leave.’
‘Why?’ She was practically yelling as she battled something she hardly understood. ‘Why do you have to leave? What do you mean-you and me? Why are you running? Is it this castle? For heaven’s sake, you’d think there were ghosts here.’
His face set. Hardened. ‘Now you’re being ridiculous. I’m not afraid of ghosts.’
‘Then what are you scared of?’
‘Nothing,’ he snapped. ‘I have responsibilities at my own château.’
‘Which can’t be handled from here? I don’t believe you.’
‘Believe it or not, it’s the way it is.’
‘No,’ she snapped. She was breathing hard, trying to work things out in her mind. It wasn’t making the tiniest bit of sense. ‘Before we left Australia there wasn’t a hint that you weren’t staying here. Now you say you’re leaving tomorrow. There must be a reason why you’re going so fast. For heaven’s sake, why?’
Why?
The word hung around them. The whole world seemed to draw in its breath, waiting for his response.
Why?
He stared down at her, goaded beyond belief. Why?
She was gazing up at him, her brown eyes dark with anger. Her skin was flushed. Her breast was rising and falling in angry passion, and her brilliant curls were tumbling onto her bare shoulders. She looked…
She looked…
It was too much.
Why?
He knew exactly why, and he could bear it not one minute longer.
He’d sworn not to. The first time had been a damnable mistake. He never should have done it. She’d been too sweet, too vulnerable, too… Too Tammy.
But how could he not? She was here in his hands, gazing up at him, and this thing between them…
He didn’t understand it one bit, but he knew what he had to do.
Of course.
Once again he kissed her.
Afterwards he couldn’t believe he’d done it. It was the last thing he wanted-wasn’t it?
Of course it was. He’d kissed her back in Australia and it had been a mistake. Then he’d kissed her as an affirmation of a promi
se. But this…this was no affirmation. This was the age-old attraction between man and woman. Quite simply he wanted her as he’d never wanted a woman in his life.
Sense had nothing to do with it. Logic had flown out through the vast French windows. He was crushing her to him with a longing and a passion that had nothing to do with any sense or logic or…or anything.
For now there was only his absolute need.
He needed her. For this moment he needed her like life itself. She was his home. His heart. His life.
His hands gripped her with the fierceness of possession, and in joy he felt her melting into him. Her face was tilting up to his and it seemed she was as desperate as he was-desperate to find his mouth-desperate to reach him.
She was responding! Her lips were beneath his. Her mouth was opening, demanding, searching for something that he’d thought was only his to need-but it seemed the need was hers as well.
This woman was his life, he thought incredulously. He could feel it. She was the other half of his whole. When she smiled, her smile reached his heart in a way it had never been reached. Ever. She was wild and free and untrammelled. Bare of make-up, no pretence about her, fiercely independent…
Yet when she held her little nephew there was such softness about her that she melted his bitter heart.
All through this dinner he’d sat, and he’d wanted her. Worse. All through this day-or had it started on the aeroplane, or even before? The sight of her bare toes on the grass this morning. The thought of her smiling down at him from that damned tree when he’d first seen her.
He was wild with the wanting of her. She should push him away, he thought fiercely. She should fight him. But her body was yielding to his with such infinite sweetness that he practically groaned aloud.
She set him on fire. All he could feel was the wanting, and a fierce heat was coursing through every part of his body. His hands gripped her shoulders tighter and then slid downward. As if compelled, his fingers moved so that he could feel the soft swell of her breasts. The perfect symmetry of her… The perfection…
Tammy.
Had he said her name aloud? He scarcely knew. All he knew was that his body was dissolving in a surge of desire he scarcely recognised.
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