His Independent Bride: Wife Against Her Will / The Wedlocked Wife / Bertoluzzi's Heiress Bride

CHAPTER SEVEN

I KNEW, THOUGHT Darcy, that an engagement party was a bad idea.

She’d just gone up to dress when her father tapped on her door to tell her that Joel’s flight from Paris had been delayed, and that he was going to be late.

For a moment she felt totally blank, then she shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. And most of the guests are coming to say goodbye to Aunt Freddie anyway.’

‘Well, it matters to me,’ Gavin said testily, and went off to his own room.

He was looking tired, she thought, and he seemed to have lost a little weight. Maybe the hand-over of power to Joel wasn’t going as smoothly as he wanted.

Another reason why she had to go along with this marriage. If she backed out, it could have repercussions all the way to Werner Langton’s boardroom. Provide ammunition for all those opposed to Joel’s appointment, and create problems that her father didn’t need.

So perhaps her decision had been the right one, for the company, if not for herself, she thought, and sighed under her breath.

As she’d expected, her forthcoming marriage was inevitably the major talking point of the evening.

I’ve never been the target of so much goodwill, she thought with a slight pang of guilt as she displayed her engagement ring to another battery of admiring glances. Thank heavens, they’ll never know the truth.

‘And where’s your fiancé?’ They all wanted to know, of course, and she unfailingly replied, ‘Delayed on business, I’m afraid,’ even managing a note of suitable regret.

And if that didn’t win her the Hypocrite of the Year award, she’d no idea what would.

But the pressure of maintaining the happy façade of the bride-to-be began to tell after a while, and she was glad to take a glass of champagne and slide unobtrusively away into the peace and quiet of the large conservatory that opened off the dining room.

It had always been one of her favourite places, its air humid, rich and raw with the scent of earth and greenery, and she breathed in deeply, pausing by the collection of miniature palms, touching the glossy fronds with a meditative forefinger.

Just a few moments, she promised herself. Then I’ll go back and do my duty again.

‘So this is where you’re hiding. I’ve been looking for you.’

She’d have known that voice anywhere, and her jerky, startled movement as she turned sent some of the champagne splashing onto the tiles at her feet, and scattering droplets on the skirt of her dark green taffeta dress.

Harry Metcalfe was standing in the doorway, watching her.

She swallowed defensively. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

He shrugged. ‘You once gatecrashed my party, honey. I thought I’d repay the compliment.’ He watched her stiffen, and grinned. ‘Only kidding. I’m staying with the parents, so I’m here, courtesy of their invitation. They cleared it with your old man first. Didn’t he mention it?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He didn’t.’

He said smoothly, ‘Then it must have slipped his mind.’ He paused.

‘It’s not really my sort of do, but I found I was extraordinarily keen to see you again.’

Her throat tightened. ‘Not a view I share.’

His smile widened into malice. ‘Not now, maybe, but once you couldn’t get enough of me—remember?’

She felt faint nausea stir inside her, but kept her head up. ‘No—I don’t.’

He sighed. ‘Sad how fickle women are.’ He wandered across and stood in front of her, looking her over from the smooth fall of hair brushing her shoulders, down to the slender legs revealed by the brief skirt of her dress, his gaze lingering on the first soft curves of her breasts, exposed by the deep square neckline.

Darcy moved restively under his scrutiny, and his eyes narrowed a little. ‘Also I gather I’ve been replaced in your affections by Em’s cousin Joel, of all people,’ he went on. ‘So that makes us almost relatives, flower-face. Doesn’t it?’

‘Not,’ she said, ‘as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Actually, I was convinced that Joel would stay single,’ Harry went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Carrying his torch for my wife to the grave. And, as I’ve always found his “Rottweiler with a bone” act a bit of a bore, I suppose I should be grateful to you for turning his thoughts in a different direction.

‘Of course, Joel’s devotion to Em has never involved lifelong fidelity on his part,’ he added musingly. ‘On the contrary, he’s known as quite a connoisseur when it comes to bedtime. So your performance must have improved by several hundred per cent in the last couple of years, my pet. My congratulations.’

He gave her a long, lascivious look. ‘Fancy allowing me to extend your repertoire even further before the happy day?’

Her voice was suddenly thick. ‘You are revolting.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Just a little curious, that’s all. You certainly weren’t much fun when I had you before. In fact, I was surprised you went to all those lengths to seek me out again afterwards. But maybe I’d aroused your curiosity too.’

Darcy’s face was ice. ‘Or perhaps I wanted to let your friends know exactly what kind of a bastard you were.’

‘Don’t fool yourself, sweetheart,’ he advised brutally. ‘Most of them would have been far more interested in watching me give you some more of the same. Only dear Cousin Joel decided to play knight in shining armour instead.’

Darcy put her glass down on a ledge with extreme care.

‘I’m afraid you must excuse me.’ Her tone was stony. ‘I need to get back to our guests. So will you let me pass, please?’

For a moment, he did not move. Then, to her surprise, he stood aside, waving her past him with a flamboyant gesture.

Darcy took one step, then another, only to find herself grabbed, his hands hard on her arms as Harry pulled her against him.

‘I’m one of your guests, sweetheart,’ he said thickly. ‘I need some entertaining too.’

Shock immobilised her. Turned her rigid. His face seemed to swim in front of her, the grinning mouth descending towards hers. Instinctively she closed her eyes to blot him out, as bile rose acridly in her throat.

Then, above the roaring in her ears, she heard Joel’s voice saying quietly, ‘Good evening.’

The punishing grip was suddenly released, and she stepped quickly back, stumbling as her heel caught on a tile, her eyes turning towards the doorway, where he stood, watchful and unsmiling.

Her heart seemed to lurch suddenly.

‘My dear Joel,’ Harry drawled. ‘I was just mentioning your capacity to intervene at exactly the wrong moment, and here you are again.’ He flicked Darcy’s chin with a casual finger. ‘Sorry, my pet. It seems that our little reunion will have to wait for a more auspicious moment.’

‘No,’ Joel said, without expression. ‘It will not. And don’t feel constrained to stay for the rest of the party,’ he added, walking slowly into the conservatory. ‘I’ll gladly make your excuses.’

‘You mean you’re throwing me out?’ Harry mocked. ‘I suppose it is one of your specialities, old boy.’ He paused, his smile calculating. ‘But all the same, there’s no need to lose your cool. Just because I had her first.’

Darcy saw Joel’s facial muscles tense, and his eyes go blank. Violence suddenly hung in the air like the smell of burning, so real and fierce that she almost choked on it.

‘Joel, no.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Please don’t. You mustn’t…’

As the silence lengthened, Harry walked jauntily past him, and disappeared. Leaving them alone together.

‘What’s the matter?’ Joel said at last, his voice of steel. ‘Afraid I might damage that pretty face of his?’

Afraid, she echoed silently—numbly. Yes, she’d been scared out of her wits, but for a very different reason.

She lifted her chin. Met the harsh blue ice of his gaze. ‘I know what you must be thinking.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you do. At least I hope not.’ She swallowed, then tried again. ‘But it wasn’t as it looked. Really.’

‘No?’ he queried coldly. ‘You mean you hadn’t sneaked out of our supposed engagement party to be alone with him? And you weren’t in his arms, with your eyes closed, waiting for him to kiss you?’

She said huskily, ‘You really believe that I deliberately invited that?’

‘Why not? We can hardly pretend that you and Metcalfe don’t have unfinished business.’ His tone was molten. ‘But, apart from the fact that you’re nominally engaged to me, did you conveniently forget that he has a wife—a girl worth twenty of him—who’s about to give birth to their first child? Or did nothing matter to you but the passion of the moment?’

Darcy went on staring back at him, her head feeling suddenly hollow. Was it passion? she wondered. This feeling that you’d been smeared with slime? That you’d been made unclean? And that nothing would ever make it right?

Of course, she thought. That’s it. To Joel, I’ll always be suspect. The spoiled little tramp who chases other women’s men.

It would never occur to him that Harry was going to kiss me against my will. Or that it could have destroyed me.

His only concern is ensuring there’s no betrayal of the girl he loves.

The cousin who chose someone else instead of him.

It’s Emma that he wants to protect, her capacity for hurt that must be shielded at all costs. Not mine. Not ever mine. Because I only cause pain. I don’t feel it.

She felt a soft moan rising inside her, and bit it back.

‘The saintly Emma,’ she said, her tone light and hard, as she fought the unexpected, unwanted pain inside her. ‘No, I certainly wouldn’t forget about her.’ Or, my God, the torch you’re carrying for her. Harry was so right about that at least.

‘And that’s all you have to say?’ he asked harshly. ‘No excuse to make?’

She shrugged. ‘I could say a great deal, but what’s the point? And now that I’ve been tried and condemned all over again,’ she added defiantly, ‘maybe you’ll allow me to rejoin our guests.’

Her heels clicked on the tiles as she headed almost blindly for the door.

‘Darcy—wait.’ Joel suddenly came after her. His hands were on her shoulders, turning her squarely to face him. His voice was strained. ‘If you want me to understand, why not try to offer an explanation? Talk to me. I’m ready to listen.’

To other people, she thought with sudden anguish. But not to me. Your mind is made up.

She shook herself free, her face and voice cool with challenge. ‘Joel, surely you must know that you’re the last person I’d ever confide in about anything. Now may I get back to the party? Please?’

‘Presently,’ he said harshly. ‘But first I think you need a reminder of exactly whose wife you’re going to be. And that if you attempt to play around elsewhere while you share my name, then you’ll suffer the consequences. So, sweetheart, if you’re that desperate to be kissed…’

He jerked her towards him, and his mouth came down hard on hers, with none of the consideration he’d shown her before.

This time she was being punished, she realised wretchedly, and there was little she could do but stand, unmoving and unmoved, while he possessed her trembling lips, forcing them apart so that his tongue could enjoy the moist inner warmth of her mouth with a relentless pagan sensuality that was totally outside anything she’d ever experienced before.

And which scared her in a way that almost—almost bordered on excitement.

She was pinned ruthlessly against him, the heat of his hard, strong body surging through the thin taffeta of her dress as if she were naked.

Every bone, every muscle of him seemed to be imprinted on her, as if they were part of each other.

Darcy was trembling violently inside, her stomach churning and her legs turning to water. It would have been so easy in that moment to give in. To succumb to the warm weakness pervading her body, and sapping her resistance. To slip to the floor at his feet, and stay there.

But that might have seemed like an appeal for mercy, and she couldn’t let him think that. There could be no quarter asked for in this battle between them.

No matter what he did, she told herself desperately, she had to maintain her stance of total indifference.

So she had to stay there, and endure. To steel herself against the calculated insult of this brutally invasive kiss that he was deliberately inflicting on her, because she could not risk making him angrier than he already was by attempting to struggle free from the imprisonment of his hands.

And as she mutely endured she found suddenly, incredibly, that she wanted very badly to weep.

And then, at last, Joel raised his head and looked down at her. A flush was staining his cheekbones, and the blue eyes had darkened stormily, almost to the colour of ink.

She heard him say something half under his breath that might have been her name.

For a moment she felt again that curious stammer in her heartbeat, as if her entire being had shifted slightly off its axis, then, summoning all her strength, she stepped backwards, shrugging off his grasp with as much contempt as she could muster.

Her breathing was still ragged, but she managed to find her voice.

‘Thanks for the warning,’ she said. She lifted her clenched fist, and wiped it across the new-made tenderness of her mouth, trying not to wince.

Her breasts felt crushed inside the tight taffeta that sheathed them, their rosy peaks hard and painful. There was an aching hollow inside her too, which scared her by its frank intensity.

‘Now that I know what to expect,’ she added, ‘I’ll make damned sure I don’t transgress again.’

‘That—might be wise.’ His voice followed her, raw and husky, as she walked away from him, neither hurrying nor looking back. ‘Because I have no intention of letting you go, darling, and don’t you forget it.’

Darcy stood at her bedroom window, looking down at the bare garden. The sun had been shining a few hours ago when she’d come out of church, a married woman. Mrs Joel Castille.

But since then the clouds had gathered, and the view was sombre, threatening rain.

An omen, perhaps? she thought, her mouth twisting. Under the circumstances, that was entirely possible.

Lois had offered to help her change out of her bridal white, but she’d told her quietly that she’d prefer to be alone. She had not missed the anxious glance her friend had given her as she turned away.

But then she’d been well aware of Lois’s concern, ever since the night of the restaurant get-together the previous week, and its aftermath.

Darcy had frankly dreaded meeting the Latimers, who were clearly among Joel’s closest friends. And her nervousness was exacerbated by the fact that, since the party, contact between Joel and herself had been spasmodic, brief and formal.

And when they had met, there’d been no reference to any of the events of that evening, least of all that degrading kiss he’d forced on her.

He’d probably forgotten all about it, she thought, smouldering with resentment. But she could not. It was a constant shadow on the edge of her mind, waking and sleeping. And she found this disturbing.

As he’d driven her to the restaurant she’d sat beside him, her hands clasped tensely in her lap, wishing with all her heart that she’d ignored Lois’s prompting and never suggested this.

Joel noticed, of course. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘I’m just wondering what your friends will be thinking about this patched-together marriage.’ Darcy bit her lip. ‘They must realise it’s not the genuine article.’

‘Not all hasty weddings are business arrangements,’ Joel returned coolly. ‘They might think that we met and fell so madly in love that we can’t bear to wait.’

‘That’s hardly likely.’

‘Certainly not while you’re giving the impression that you expect to be hanged in the morning.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ She sent him a muted glare. ‘You, of course, are wasted in engineering. You should have been on the stage.’

‘I won’t take that as a compliment,’ he said drily. ‘Because I’m sure that’s not your intention. But years of overcoming tricky terrain, plus dealing with corrupt regimes and reluctant workforces, has taught me to make the best of things, or at least pretend they’re better than they are.’ He paused. ‘If all else fails tonight, try and enjoy the food.’

In other circumstances, Darcy thought, she might easily have warmed to Greg and Maisie Latimer. He was tall, fair and laid-back, while she was small, dark and cheerfully direct.

‘Well, you’re not what I was expecting,’ she told Darcy when they found themselves alone in the powder room at one point.

Darcy carefully replaced the cap on her lipstick. ‘Is that a good thing or a bad?’

‘Good, I think.’ The other girl considered her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, good absolutely.’ She paused. ‘You know, of course, that Joel and Emma Norton had this thing about each other?’

‘It’s been—mentioned.’

Maisie lowered her voice confidentially. ‘The family didn’t want them to marry, of course, because of the first-cousin thing. So she went off and hitched up with this other guy—Harry somebody.’

‘Metcalfe,’ Darcy supplied woodenly.

‘That’s the one. Joel had to go to their wedding, of course, and it hit him really hard. He was like a stranger for some time afterwards, and that’s when he began freelancing—staying away so much.’

Her smile suddenly beamed. ‘And as he’s far too good to lose, thank you for bringing him back to the real world. Giving him something to live for again.’

Oh, God, thought Darcy, if you only knew. Because you and Greg are his friends, and you really love Joel, and I’m such a fraud.

She forced a smile of her own. ‘I think Joel is well able to resolve his own problems without help from anyone.’

Maisie gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Oh, I think Joel could be as vulnerable as the next man when it comes to affairs of the heart.’

Darcy hesitated as Maisie fastened her bag and turned to the door, then said in a little impulsive rush, ‘Is she pretty, Joel’s cousin?’

‘Well, yes,’ Maisie said slowly. ‘In a fragile sort of way.’ Then she grinned. ‘Bit too needy for my taste, but I’m not a man. And the exact opposite of you, I’d say, so don’t run away with the idea you’re some kind of carbon-copy consolation prize. I’m sure Joel knew exactly what he was doing when he saw you.’

Yes, Darcy told herself unhappily as she followed the other girl back into the restaurant, I’m sure he did.

Joel had clearly set out to win over Lois and Mick, and, judging by the laughter from their end of the table, he was succeeding admirably. Except at one point she saw that Lois had sat back in her chair, and was frowning a little as if bewildered about something.

And at the end of the evening, when they were all departing in their separate cars, she drew Darcy to one side, keeping her voice low. ‘Honey, do you really and truly know what you’re doing?’

‘Why do you ask?’

Lois shook her head. ‘On a scale of dangerously attractive men, Joel scores lethal. And he’s quite definitely someone who knows what he wants, and how to get it too.’ She gave her friend a searching glance. ‘You could seriously have bitten off more than you can chew.’

‘Trust me,’ Darcy had returned equally quietly, but more stoutly than the situation deserved. ‘It will all be fine.’

Well, she had thought, she’d said it. Now all she had to do was make herself believe it.

And had turned, smiling, to say goodnight to Maisie and Greg.

Now here she was, with Joel’s plain gold wedding ring on her left hand, and all the clothes for her new life packed beautifully into the elegant luggage, already taken downstairs for the journey up to the Chelsea house where she would live while her temporary marriage lasted.

Her father’s remaining clothes and possessions had already been packed up and brought down to the country, while a team of painters and decorators had been installed in London to refurbish the main reception rooms. Also, she understood, the master bedroom. Which, naturally, was none of her business.

She’d examined the paint cards, along with the snippets of fabric and wallpaper she’d been sent, without the slightest interest. After all, she thought, she was only going to be the lodger. And her own room was not to be touched. She’d been quite specific about that, and received Joel’s casual agreement.

Which, she supposed, was reassuring. Why, then, did she still have this vague feeling of unease?

I don’t like it, she thought, her mouth twisting ruefully. It’s all going too well.

There was a rap on the door, and, to her surprise, Joel walked in. He halted a few feet away from her, the dark brows lifting questioningly as he registered her, standing motionless by the window.

He’d changed out of his wedding gear too, she realised, her heart suddenly thudding, and was wearing charcoal trousers with an open-necked shirt, and a light tweed jacket slung round his shoulders.

His voice was sardonic. ‘Planning to throw yourself out, my

sweet?’

‘Not at all,’ Darcy returned coolly. ‘Dad would never forgive me if I damaged his precious rose bushes.’

His mouth twisted in wry acknowledgement. ‘There is that, I suppose.’ He paused. ‘People are waiting to say goodbye. It’s time we were leaving.’

‘Then we mustn’t keep them waiting.’ She fastened the remaining jacket buttons on her pale grey woollen suit, and picked up her gloves and bag.

Joel was looking at her wardrobe door, where her discarded wedding dress and veil still hung.

‘What are you doing with those?’

‘They’ll be dry-cleaned, and returned to the hire company. Lois is seeing to it.’

‘Ah,’ he said, and there was a pause. ‘No one could ever accuse you of harbouring sentimental feelings, Darcy.’

‘It’s served its purpose,’ she returned with faint defensiveness. ‘Sentiment doesn’t feature.’

‘All the same,’ Joel said quietly, ‘allow me to tell you how incredibly beautiful you looked in church today. You quite took my breath away.’

But you barely looked at me. The words hovered unspoken on her lips.