- -
- 100%
- +
‘Don’t get your hopes up!’
‘Not before I’ve sampled the fare, anyway,’ he retorted, with one of those quick, scintillating smiles that kept upsetting her perception of him as an arrogant archcynic.
‘What do you think?’ she ventured, when they had begun their meal in the beautiful dining-room which was furnished in western style, the teak table bearing a bowl of pale pink roses from the garden, and then wished she hadn’t because she didn’t want him getting the idea that his opinion mattered to her; it didn’t!
Nicholas regarded her with detached amusement. ‘How much of it was you and how much Sita? I’m just wondering what’s behind this. Possibly the fact that having realised that you cannot divert, let alone seduce me in the most obvious way, you’ve decided to turn what is clearly a real talent to distracting me from finding out what my sister is really up to.’
This further evidence of his absolute cynicism had an unexpected effect on Bridget. She felt weighed down by something very close to despair.
Strangely enough, the feeling gave her the courage to return his look steadily.
‘And why in the world would I want to seduce you?’
‘On the surface, for the reason I’ve just cited—to distract me from asking any more awkward questions about Virginia. Then again, you must be about the age when girls start thinking it’s high time they acquired some experience, and you wouldn’t be the first to look to me to supply it.’
‘Experience for experience’s sake?’ Bridget was scathing. ‘Not this girl!’
‘If you want me to believe that, you’d better stop those speculative looks I keep catching from you,’ he advised her coolly. ‘Not that they’d get you anywhere. I’m not interested in initiating innocents. So what are you really hoping for with all this?’
‘If anything, that once you’ve got a good meal inside you you’ll become human enough to respect the promise I made Virginia,’ she said flatly, following it with a shrug. ‘If not, I’m sorry—but I’m still sorry; you’ll just have to wait until she phones with an explanation.’
‘If she phones.’ Nicholas spoke equally flatly and was then silent, scrutinising her mercilessly for some time before apparently deciding to abandon the topic, if only for now. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one.’ Bridget concentrated on the delicately flavoured pink-tinted chicken on her plate.
The fact that his surprise was entirely genuine was hardly flattering.
‘I was imagining you as about eighteen, and probably still living at home with your parents.’
‘Then perhaps you’ll realise at last that you’re wrong about a lot of other things as well,’ she snapped.
‘All the same, I hardly think the twenty-one counts for much,’ he remarked slightingly. ‘If anything, it increases the likelihood that you are in fact hoping either to satisfy your curiosity, or at least to make some sort of gesture that will proclaim you irrevocably an adult woman.’
‘I can promise you I don’t feel the least curiosity about you, and I don’t know why you think being thirty-four makes you so superior. It just makes you cynical and decadent and—and used!’ she concluded inarticulately.
‘Do you mean used up?’ he quipped. ‘Not yet, darling. Not by a long way.’
‘Obviously not,’ she allowed tartly, ‘judging by Wanda and your army of female fans who’ve been arriving at the door all week, hoping they’d find you, when they realised someone was living in the house. You’d better gladden their hearts by letting them know you’re in town, hadn’t you? There was an air hostess, and someone from the Embassy, and a girl from AIR.’
Laughter lurked in his eyes. ‘Are you very shocked?’
‘Why should I be? They didn’t say so, but they all struck me as being single—not like Troy Varney,’ she added impulsively, picturing the rock star’s wife who managed to be one of the most glamorous women in England despite a downbeat style that somehow mixed raggle-taggle with Goth.
It banished the amusement and she saw his features tauten slightly.
‘Ah, so that did shock you,’ Nicholas surmised silkily. ‘Are you expecting me to defend myself, Bridget?’
‘Hardly!’ she snapped.
‘At least you possess that much intelligence.’ Somehow the insolent comment carried a warning edge, cautioning her against trespassing further, but then his mood changed as something else occurred to him. ‘Tell me one thing. I think you can do it without breaking your promise. This man Virginia is supposedly in love with. Is he married?’
‘Separated years ago,’ she answered him, hoping it wasn’t something Virginia would count as a betrayal, but sensing real concern behind the question.
Now she thought she detected a flicker of relief in the grey eyes, and she supposed the way he managed and directed his family’s lives could be ascribed to protectiveness, even if he did take it too far, to the point of interference. Of course, given his own past relationship with Troy Varney, he couldn’t have any moral objections to Virginia’s becoming involved with a married man, so presumably he simply wanted her to be spared the sort of pain that was integral to relationships in which one partner wasn’t free.
During the remainder of the meal, Nicholas questioned her about the materials she would be buying for Ginny’s. Bridget had a feeling that he was testing her, but she responded equably, talking about the heavy silks in brilliant contrasting colours that Virginia wanted from the south, white voile with chikan embroidery from Uttar Pradesh, Benares or Varanasi brocades, lovely off-white shot with gold from Bengal, Chanderi cottons with their tiny floral motifs in gold, expensive and beautiful Jamdani muslins, an inch of which it might take eight men a day to weave, summer material from the Deccan, the variations in texture rather than patterns favoured by the Maheshwari, and the intricate designs woven by a secret process handed down from generation to generation that characterised the Baluchar fabrics.
‘Show-off,’ Nicholas murmured when she paused, and Bridget laughed.
‘Just trying to ease your suspicious mind,’ she corrected him limpidly.
‘So you know a bit, but I still don’t trust you, Bridget, and I mean to keep an eye on you, at least until I have Virginia’s assurance that you haven’t somehow manoeuvred her into giving you this assignment,’ he warned her casually.
‘Because my word on that isn’t good enough for you?’ she challenged scathingly.
‘I don’t know you,’ he pointed out.
‘Whereas you know your family are always honest?’ she prompted bitterly, with a thought for the way Loris had misled her, not with outright lies, admittedly, but through his silence about the other woman in his life. ‘Sita says you don’t like puddings, so there isn’t one. Shall I make coffee?’
‘I’ll do it, as you helped cook.’
He started to, but she swiftly began to suspect that he was doing it to avoid having to offer to help clear the table as it became obvious that he was not at home in a kitchen.
‘You’re in the way,’ she told him softly after a few minutes.
A slow smile transformed his face as he stood still, regarding her curiously.
‘That’s a very old-fashioned attitude, but then I suppose you’re too young yet to have been domestically exploited by my sex… And this makes you look even younger! Why are you blushing?’
He had reached round behind her to tug gently at her long, shining plait, the action catching her unawares. Suddenly incapable of moving, Bridget stood staring at him. She could feel his long, lean fingers against the back of her neck, and she was pierced by a sharp needle of sensation, oddly pleasurable and yet utterly disconcerting at the same time, dismaying and embarrassing her.
‘I’m… Nothing! It’s you! I’m just not used to—to living with anyone else,’ she prevaricated, aware of how gauche it sounded and blushing even more deeply.
Nicholas took his hand away, a speculative gleam in his eyes as Bridget retreated a step.
‘This isn’t exactly living together. Believe me, you’d find it a revelation if we were.’
‘I meant I’m not used to sharing a house with a stranger,’ she corrected herself, just before resentment got the better of her. ‘You take delight in trying to embarrass me, don’t you?’
‘Judging by this emotional reaction, I gather you find the whole situation embarrassing—or improper, Bridget?’ he taunted, his eyes seeming to study her hairline, observing the silky dark hair shadowing her temples, fine as a baby’s, the growth too new and short to be pulled back with the rest of her hair. ‘Relax—as I’ve said, I’m not interested in young, untouched girls, however lovely they promise to be, so you’re not in any need of a chaperon.’
It incensed her, goading her to rash retaliation. ‘Are you sure you don’t need one, though, Nicholas?’
Somehow she didn’t just see his slashing smile. She felt it too, cutting into some tender centre of sensitive emotion deep within her.
‘Oh, I think I can cope should you decide to leap on me in some frenzy of girlish lust,’ he claimed sardonically, and paused deliberately. ‘Nevertheless, I’m seriously advising you not to get any ideas of that sort where I’m concerned, sweetheart, because you wouldn’t enjoy my method of dealing with either infatuation or curiosity.’
‘You—’ Bridget was too enraged to find words. ‘Arrogant—I wouldn’t!’
‘What was that?’ He pretended not to understand, slanting her another brilliantly mocking smile. ‘You’re somewhat incoherent. Calm down, you baby. As I’m in the way, I’ll remove myself.’
But Bridget couldn’t calm down. She had never met anyone so utterly and deliberately provocative, and her fury was exacerbated by her confusion over the sensation that had assailed her when she had felt his fingers against the back of her neck so briefly.
When the coffee was ready, she took a tray through to the living-room, the faint fragrance of sandalwood that permeated the room for once failing to soothe her. Nicholas was scanning the front page of a newspaper and she would have liked to slam the tray down on to the low table beside him, but she had too much respect for the intricate inlay of delicate slivers of pastel semiprecious stones that adorned its upper surface.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ he asked, noticing the single cup and saucer.
‘Not with you,’ she snapped, and his face hardened visibly. ‘And I’ve only brought this here for you because I was the one who told you you were in the way!’
‘How very fair-minded of you! Off to your lonely bed to spend the night crying over your lost love or whatever he is again?’ he prompted unkindly.
‘No!’ Bridget denied it fiercely.
‘Here’s some free philosophy for you. I’ve often thought it might be of comfort to those of you who play this game of love.’ His tone had grown thoughtful. ‘I believe it evens out eventually, like bad line-calls in tennis. Next time around, it’ll be someone agonising over you, and even if the guy you’re crying over at present isn’t suffering over you he will be some day, over someone else.’
He wouldn’t say that if he knew it was his cousin Loris who had been responsible for her tears, Bridget reflected with wan humour. He would know Loris too well to believe in such an eventuality. Stirling men were all alike.
‘That’s horrible,’ she protested, unthinkingly dropping gracefully to her knees, her back straight, and beginning to pour his coffee, causing Nicholas to shoot her a startled look from beneath thick black eyelashes.
‘It’s about as much revenge as anyone can realistically hope for,’ he asserted.
‘I don’t want revenge,’ she insisted angrily. ‘I wouldn’t want someone to—to suffer over me the way I… Or over someone else either. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’
‘You’re unbelievable!’ Nicholas was insultingly astonished. ‘Come on, Bridget, it’s unnatural not to want whoever has broken your heart to know what it feels like.’
‘He’s never likely to,’ she said in a dry little voice. ‘Milk and sugar?’
He laughed abruptly, startling her, and she lifted her eyes from her task to look at him. They were very close, so close that she could see the texture of his dark skin and the day-old stubble that darkened his jaw and upper lip. Nicholas stared back at her with cynically amused curiosity.
‘You really do believe in the helpless male, don’t you? No one else I know, however good-natured, would be serving me like this, and especially not if they were so furious with me that they weren’t prepared to join me. You’re doing it quite instinctively too, without a thought—’ Nicholas broke off, an irritable expression manifesting itself as he noted her sudden bewilderment. ‘I can assure you that I’m perfectly capable of putting sugar in my coffee and stirring it myself, Bridget.’
She rose with unconscious grace, bewilderment giving way to rage.
‘You’re right, I wasn’t thinking!’ she confirmed acidly, and walked out of the room, the sound of his soft laughter following her.
He quite clearly thought her an absolute idiot, she realised self-consciously, but he had been right in one respect. The instinct to tend to the comfort of others was so deeply ingrained that not even her angry resentment had stopped her doing it. She hadn’t even paused to wonder what she was doing, waiting on him like that, until he had pointed out the incongruity of the action.
Well, in future he could beg her on his knees and she still wouldn’t do a thing for him!
His mockery rankled and she was even more furiously convinced than before that he was the most unfeeling, offensive monster in existence. That was what made that strange pleasure she had taken from the touch of his fingers so shaming.
Bridget was restless that night, but at least there were no tears, mainly because she was too busy resenting Nicholas to spend more than a few minutes thinking about Loris, and then only to reflect that Nicholas was even worse than he was. At least Loris had seemed nice, but Nicholas had started out being offensive, and careless of her feelings, and had kept right on the same way.
Some sound woke her early in the morning, a telephone ringing, she thought, but by the time she was sufficiently awake and orientated to know who and where she was the house was silent and she soon went back to sleep.
When she woke again, she found Sita in the kitchen.
‘I heard your shower running, so your juice and coffee are waiting for you on the veranda, Bridget,’ she told her. ‘Mr Stirling is having his out there too.’
Bridget sighed, wondering what sort of mood she would find him in today, and taking a few seconds to check that no strangely coloured or patterned underwear was showing through her thin cotton dress, which was a deep shade of cream with touches of matching embroidery, calf-length and sleeveless.
But it seemed that it was her face that won her Nicholas’s attention this morning, at least to begin with.
‘You’re one of the few women over twenty I’ve seen who looks good without a scrap of make-up,’ he observed, perhaps meaning it as’ a compliment, but it seemed more likely, considering his reputation, that it was simply habitual for him to notice how a woman looked and comment on it, especially as he went on immediately, ‘My sister rang.’
‘Oh.’ Sinking gracefully into a chair, Bridget gave him a tentative smile, her dark green eyes hopeful. ‘Did she tell you anything?’
‘She did,’ he confirmed grimly. ‘Once she’d got over her horror at finding me here. It seems you’re right. The fool really believes she has fallen in love, and that was the reason for opting out of her Indian trip and sending you in her place—although I have to wonder how much encouragement, not to mention pressure, she had from you. Either way, there’s not much I can do about it at present, as she refused to tell me where she was except that it’s somewhere in the States. She wanted to talk to you, but I told her she’d have to try again later because you were still asleep. She’d got the time-difference slightly wrong, but she was too clever to be trapped into telling me even which time-zone she’s in.’
‘You could have woken me,’ Bridget suggested, betraying a trace of anxiety. ‘She might have had something important to tell me.’
‘Then she could have told me and I’d have passed it on.’
Briefly, Nicholas examined the way she had chosen to wear her hair today, in a single plait pulled to one side and hanging over her shoulder.
‘I’m not one of your relatives. I don’t need you running my life for me.’
Where had this touchy mood suddenly sprung from, making her feel she needed to keep on the defensive or surrender her entire life and personality to his direction?
Nicholas shrugged indolently, unperturbed by her resentment, and Bridget was aware of something tightening within her, in resistance to his forceful personality. He was casually dressed and he looked what she knew him to be—a virile, powerful man accustomed to running people’s lives for them.
‘Virginia seems to think you do.’ His expression had grown inimical. ‘She asked me to… look after you.’
‘She had no right to do that!’ Bridget was indignantly resentful.
‘I can assure you I found the request as unwelcome as you do, but, as I’ve told you, I do intend keeping an eye on you—for Virginia’s sake! I’m not having you messing up her business for her when I know how much it means to her. Incidentally, she also confirmed that you have recently been disappointed in love.’
He gave a quick, sharply derisive smile as he noted how Bridget stiffened, her face paling slightly. ‘Oh, she didn’t go into any embarrassing detail, if that’s what’s worrying you. She was far too busy kidding herself, and trying to kid me, that she was doing you a favour, sending you here; I suppose it was you who planted the idea in her mind in the first place as she so obviously had doubts about it… I’ve never understood why a change of scene is supposed to be a cure for a so-called broken heart. If it’s broken, it’s broken wherever you are, and will mend in its own good time. She hasn’t really got herself convinced, though; both her doubts and her guilt came through. Hence, I imagine, the demand that I look after you. You may have used her idiocy over this man and the excuse of your own broken heart to wangle this trip for yourself, but my sister is using you equally, Bridget.’
‘The way all your family use people,’ she retorted, thinking particularly of the way Loris Stirling had referred to both her and the woman he was expecting to tire of at some stage.
‘Is there something wrong with that?’ Clearly it was all right for Nicholas to criticise his relatives, but no outsider was permitted to do so. ‘If people are stupid enough to let themselves be used?’
‘Why not take advantage?’ she supplemented it for him caustically. ‘Some people aren’t as cynical as—’
‘Some people are just too damned trusting,’ Nicholas corrected her with all the cynicism of which she had been accusing him.
‘Don’t sound so condescending about it,’ Bridget mocked, in a tone of such sizzling rage that she scarcely recognised herself. ‘Where would you be in a world of cynics? If there weren’t people who let themselves be used, you wouldn’t have half the women you’ve got in your life. And what about your success—Stirling Industries?’
Rejection made his expression remote and she felt almost as if he had pushed her away physically.
‘I would never deny the former charge—’
‘Yes, I know, and I should never have said the other bit,’ Bridget rushed in, albeit with a trace of reluctance, her sensitive conscience compelling the admission, although she hated having to back down when he was so arrogantly sure of himself. ‘Your sort of industry is boring to me, but I do read about it and listen, in case I meet someone and have to talk about it, because people feel uncomfortable if you don’t understand, and sometimes they only know one subject… And I know absolutely everyone says it’s things like drive, initiative, integrity and caring about your personnel that have made Stirling Industries so big—built it up. And that was you, wasn’t it? It was a small domestic thing before. I thought your grandfather had started it, but you said he was an engineer out here. Your dad?’
Nicholas was studying her with faint, sardonic incredulity.
‘And his younger brother,’ he added eventually. ‘Oh, they’d probably have extended their activities in time, but the two of them, my mother and aunt with them, were killed when I was eighteen, my younger cousin only eleven, and the other two somewhere in between. The four of them were all on their way to India for a holiday when it happened.’
Then he seemed to dwell on some private irony, staring down into his half-full coffee-cup for a few moments.
Bridget wanted to reach out and touch him. He was so alone, and had been alone since he was eighteen, she suddenly knew intuitively, unable to share in the grief of the other three, Virginia, Loris and Adrian, because he had had to comfort them and take control, of the family and of the business, untimely head of both. But shyness prevented her because they were strangers.
Instead, she started to say, ‘Anyway, I shouldn’t have—’
‘No, you shouldn’t have,’ Nicholas agreed with a harshness she hadn’t heard from him before, but in the next moment he had resumed the interrogative manner with which she was more familiar. ‘What are you doing today?’
‘Not much, today or tomorrow, except that I must pay a courtesy visit to the Embassy. Virginia says she always does. So you can relax, can’t you? I’m not likely to get Ginny’s into any trouble before Monday. That’s when I’m going to Madras to look at cotton.’
‘When I have business appointments, unless I can rearrange them.’ He was frowning. ‘How well do you know your way around Delhi?’
‘A bit,’ Bridget responded cautiously. ‘Mrs Bhandari and Sita have both taken me round a little, and the taxidrivers have been amazingly helpful.’
‘You don’t need to use taxis. I’ll tell Anand to let you have the use of a car and driver.’
‘I don’t—’
‘I want to make sure you know your way about well enough to be safe, so finish your coffee and we’ll go before the day gets too hot,’ Nicholas swept on decisively, ignoring her protest.
‘I don’t need you to do that either,’ Bridget asserted in a stronger voice.
‘As my sister has temporarily lost her senses, that makes her business my responsibility, and that includes ensuring that her employees know what they’re doing,’ he stated decisively.
She regarded him curiously, perception beginning to work. Perhaps he needed someone to bully and direct, with his sister and cousins so far away. After all these years, it must be habitual.
‘Won’t Wanda—?’
‘Wanda can take care of herself. She doesn’t need me. I rang her at her hotel last night to make sure, but I’m seeing her later today anyway.’
‘I can take care of myself. I don’t need you. You and Virginia are both wrong,’ Bridget emphasised tartly. ‘But as you’ve been kind enough to offer to show me around—thank you, Nicholas, I accept.’
He merely laughed at her tone, but Bridget was half regretting her submission. She was subject to a sense of being taken over, sucked into a community in which lives were directed by this man, and where autonomy was smothered and personal will counted for nothing.
‘Then be ready as soon as I’ve finished phoning my cousin Adrian in America.’ Nicholas pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I don’t suppose Virginia will have been in touch with him, but I’d better check.’
His tone wasn’t quite weary, but he definitely sounded disenchanted, and Bridget stared at him in surprise. He had paused beneath one of the veranda’s ornately carved arches to look out at the morning, or perhaps the lavish expanse of roses, and a stray shaft of sunlight had found his head and was trapped in the darkness of his hair, turning it glossy blue-black—so different from hers, which would have revealed the odd darkly red highlight.
‘Nicholas?’
He turned at the sound of her soft voice and Bridget’s breath caught in her throat as she saw him against the light. He was tall and so dark and—beautiful, a word she had never before associated with his sex, and yet it was true of him and did nothing to detract from his masculinity. But how could it be that she saw him thus, when deep shade obscured his features from her?