Blackmailing the Society Bride

‘Never mind your flowers—what about my chocolates?’ Piers told her ruefully.

‘Piers thought Johnson was probably still working in Fahrenheit,’ Lucy’s father chipped in. ‘So he told him to set the temperature gauge at sixty-eight. None of us realised what had happened until Johnson came back and said that the gauge only went to forty.’

Lucy joined in the good-natured laughter at her brother’s expense, and then suddenly froze as the door opened and Marcus walked in.

Was it her imagination or was there really a small, sharp silence—as though not just she but everyone else was aware of just how formidable and commanding Marcus was?

It wasn’t only that he was tall—just nicely over six foot—or even that he was sexily broad-shouldered and taut-muscled. It wasn’t even that combination of thick dark hair and striking ice-grey eyes which could sometimes burn almost green.

So what was it about him that made not just her own sex but men as well turn and look towards him? Turn and look up to him, Lucy amended.

Could it have something to do with the fact that he ran the merchant bank which had been in his family for so many generations? Because of that he was in a position of great trust, responsible not just for the present and future of his clients, but in many cases for the secrets of their ancestors as well.

But even if one took away all of that—even if he had walked in as a stranger off the street—women would still have turned their heads to look at him and would have gone on looking, Lucy acknowledged. Because Marcus was sexy. In fact, Marcus was very sexy. Her heart attempted to do a high dive inside her chest, then realised it was attempting the impossible and ended up crashing sickeningly to its floor. She gulped at the glass of champagne Piers had handed to her as much for something to do—some reason not to have to look at Marcus—as for Dutch courage.

He was wearing one of his customary hand-made plain dark suits, a typical banker’s white shirt with a blue stripe, and a red tie.

She took another gulp of her champagne.

‘Want another?’ Piers asked her.

Lucy shook her head. She wasn’t much of a drinker anyway, and her work meant that it was essential she kept a clear head in social situations, so she had quickly learned to simply take a small sip from her glass and then abandon it discreetly somewhere. The up side of this was that she always had a clear head, but the down side was that her body was simply not up to dealing with anything more than one small glass of anything alcoholic. But right now the numbing effect of a couple of glasses of champagne was probably just what she needed to help her cope with Marcus’s presence, intimidatingly up close, if not exactly as personal as her foolish heart craved.

‘Oh, good. Marcus has made it after all,’ Lucy heard her mother exclaiming to Lucy’s great-uncle in a pleased voice. ‘Charles, do go over and ask him to join us.’

‘Goodness, it is hot,’ Lucy said wildly. ‘I think I’d better go and get these poor flowers into some water.’

Her heart was thumping its familiar message to her as she made her escape, champagne glass in hand, heading for the rambling patchwork of corridors and small rooms to the rear of the huge apartment which her great-aunt still referred to as the servants’ quarters.

How on earth did Johnson and Mrs Johnson, aided only by a daily, manage to cope with looking after somewhere this size? Lucy wondered sympathetically as she hurried down one of the corridors and into the ‘flower room’. A row of vases had already been assembled on the worktop, ready filled with water, and Lucy unwrapped her own offering and busied herself placing the flowers stem by stem into water.

Was she really so afraid of seeing Marcus? Her hands trembled. Did she really need to ask herself that question? How old was she? Twenty-nine. And how long had it been since she had come down from university and looked at Marcus across the width of his desk and known…?

Tears suddenly blurred her vision.

Oh, yes, she had known then, immediately, that she had fallen in love with him, but she had known with equal immediacy that he did not return her feelings—that in fact, so far as he was concerned, her presence in his life was an inconvenience and an irritation he would far rather have been without.

She had been young enough then to dream her foolish dreams regardless, to fantasise about things changing, about walking into Marcus’s office one day and having Marcus look at her as though he wanted to drag her clothes off and possess her right there and then. She had whiled away many an irascible lecture from Marcus by allowing herself the pleasure of imagining him standing up and coming towards her, taking hold of her and putting his desk, or sometimes his chair, more often than not both of them, to the kind of erotic use for which they had definitely not been designed.

But the reality was, of course, that she was the one who wanted to tear his clothes off. And then one day she had looked at him and seen the way he was looking at her. And she had known that her foolish erotic fantasies and her even more foolish romantic daydreams were just that. Marcus did not either want or love her, and he was never going to do so. That was when she had decided that she needed to find someone else—because if she didn’t one day her feelings were going to get too much for her and she was going to totally humiliate herself by declaring them to Marcus.

A husband and then hopefully a family of her own would stop her from doing that, surely? she’d thought. But she hadn’t even managed to get that right, had she? Her marriage had been a disaster—privately and publicly. Very publicly.

She wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to be alone. She loved children, and had known from a young age that she wanted her own. Although she loved them both dearly, sometimes she felt wretchedly envious of the love and happiness her two best friends had found with their husbands. And one day she knew Marcus would marry—and when he did…A shudder of vicious pain savaged her emotions.

When he did, she made herself continue, she hoped to be protected from what she knew she would feel by the contentment and love she had found with another man and her family. How foolishly and dangerously she had deluded herself.

She couldn’t stay here in the flower room for ever, Lucy realised, and with any luck Marcus might actually have already left by now. Giving her flowers a final tweak, she turned to leave.

As soon as she opened the door into the drawing room the first person she saw was her cousin Johnny, who grabbed her arm and announced eagerly, ‘Great—I’ve been looking for you. More champagne?’ Without waiting for her to respond, he took a glass from a passing waiter and handed it to her.

‘Must say the old girl isn’t stinting with the champers. It must be costing her a pretty penny to put this do on. Champers…waiters. Did you organise it?’

‘Yes,’ Lucy said ruefully, remembering the hard bargain her great-aunt had driven over costs, and how in the end she had given in and suggested she give Great-Aunt Alice the business cost as her birthday present, provided her great-aunt supplied the champagne, the hors d’oeuvres and the waiters’ wages. Which probably explained the lack of any food, Lucy decided.

She tried not to look at Marcus, who was standing the full width of the room away from her but facing towards her, and watching her, she could see, with a very grim look tightening his mouth. She took a quick, nervous, sustaining sip of her champagne, and then another. She couldn’t bear to think about what would happen if Marcus ever got to hear about that idiotic lie she had told Mr McVicar. In the absence of a miracle, she was going have to dispose of her supposed investor as speedily as she had invented him.

‘Actually, Luce, there’s something I need to discuss with you.’

‘What?’ Somehow or other Lucy managed to drag her attention away from Marcus.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Johnny repeated patiently.

‘You do?’ Immediately Lucy was alert to her own prospective danger. ‘Johnny, if it’s a loan you’re after,’ she began warningly, ‘I haven’t forgotten that you still owe me fifty pounds from last time. Even if you have.’

‘It isn’t anything like that,’ Johnny assured her earnestly. ‘Fact is, sweet cos, it just so happens that a business acquaintance of mine has asked me if I would introduce you to him.’

‘He has?’ Lucy said cautiously.

‘Mmm. Have another glass of champagne,’ he added encouragingly, removing Lucy’s half-empty glass before she could refuse or protest and summoning the still-circulating waiter so that he could hand her a fresh glass.

On the other side of the room Marcus’s unwavering focus on her had hardened into a grim-mouthed coldness that caused Lucy’s hand to tremble so much she almost spilt her champagne.

‘If he’s thinking of commissioning Prêt a Party to do an event for him…’ she began, trying to move round so that she couldn’t see Marcus, and failing as he moved too.

‘No, what he’s got in mind is making an investment in Prêt a Party.’

‘What?’ Now she did spill a few drops of her champagne, before managing to take a steadying gulp of it.

‘Oh, yes. He’s a bit of an entrepreneur. He’s made absolutely stacks of money from this turnkey business he owns. You know the kind of thing…’ Johnny enlarged. ‘He employs cleaners, cooks, someone to wait in for the gas man, someone to collect your cleaning—all that kind of stuff—for these rich City types who can’t afford the time to do it themselves. He saw the spread in A-List Life, and heard that you’re my cousin, and he said that Prêt a Party is exactly the kind of investment he’s looking for. So I said I was seeing you today and that I’d sound you out.’

‘Johnny…’ Her head was spinning, and it didn’t occur to her to connect that with her unfamiliar consumption of champagne.

‘Why don’t you let him talk to you and tell you what he’s got in mind himself? I could give him your office phone number…’

When she had reflected that she needed a miracle she’d never imagined she would get one—and certainly not one of this potential magnitude. She felt positively light-headed with relief, almost dizzy.

‘Well, yes—okay, Johnny,’ she agreed gratefully.

‘Great.’ Johnny looked at his watch, announcing, ‘Lord, is that the time? I’ve got to go. His name’s Andrew Walker, by the way.’

She hadn’t finished her champagne, but she put her glass on the tray as the waiter went past, absent-mindedly picking up a fresh glass and wincing slightly as she did so. She knew she shouldn’t have worn these high heels. Shoes were Julia’s thing, not hers, and she had only been persuaded into buying the strappy sandals with their far too high thin heels because they were the perfect shade of cornflower-blue to wear with one of her favourite dresses.

Unfortunately, though, they were not parquet-floor-friendly—especially when that floor had been polished in the old-fashioned way and was as slippery as an ice rink.

She looked round the room, but she couldn’t see either her parents or her brother, and she was just wondering if she could make her own escape when suddenly Marcus was standing in front of her, announcing grimly, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

Enough of what? Lucy wanted to ask him. Enough of loving you? Enough of wanting you and aching for you? Enough of dreaming of you whilst the man I married because I couldn’t have you slept in bed beside me? Enough of knowing that you are never ever going to love me? Oh, yes, she’d had enough of that.

‘Actually, Marcus, no—I don’t.’ The familiar pain was back, and it was intensifying with every second she had to spend in his company. It seared her and drove her, maddening her with its agonising ache so that she barely knew what she was saying.

Marcus was looking at her with familiar contempt and irritation. Lucy gasped in dismay as someone standing behind her accidentally bumped into her. The combined vertiginous effects of stilettos and Marcus-induced heartache was definitely not good for one’s balance, Lucy thought miserably, as Marcus gripped her arm firmly to steady her.

‘Just how much champagne have you had?’ Marcus demanded grimly.

‘Not enough,’ Lucy answered, with a flippancy she didn’t feel.

Marcus was looking at her with a blend of irritation and impatience. ‘You can hardly stand,’ he told her critically.

‘So what?’ Lucy tossed her head. She was defying Marcus—baiting him, in fact! What on earth was happening to her? She was winding him up, and pushing her luck as she did so. She knew that, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Somehow she needed to see that look of angry irritation mixed with contempt in his eyes just to remind herself of the futility of dreaming impossible dreams.

‘Actually, I rather think I’d like some more champagne. I’m celebrating, you see,’ she heard herself telling him, uncharacteristically and recklessly emptying her glass before he could remove it and then looking round for the waiter with what she didn’t realise was champagne-induced vagueness. Her lips did feel slightly numb, it was true, but then so did her toes, and they hadn’t had any contact whatsoever with the champagne, had they?

‘Celebrating what?’ Marcus demanded tersely, his hold on her arm tightening.

‘My miracle,’ Lucy responded, forming the words very carefully.

She might have imagined it, but she thought Marcus actually swore softly. ‘The only miracle here is that you’re still standing,’ he muttered.

The waiter was almost level with her. She reached out to pick up a full glass of champagne from the tray he was carrying, but Marcus got there before she could lift the glass, the fingers of his free hand closing hard on her own.

‘Leave it where it is, Lucy,’ he commanded her calmly.

‘I’m thirsty,’ Lucy protested. Thirsty for the nectar of his kiss, thirsty for the feel of his mouth on her own, on her skin, everywhere, whilst she drank in the taste of him. She looked at his hand, at his long, strong fingers curled around her own. She wanted to put her other hand on top of it, so that she could touch him. She wanted to lift his hand to her mouth so that she could breathe in the scent of his skin as she explored it with her lips and with her tongue. Longing burned through her, leaping from nerve-ending to nerve-ending until she was filled with it, possessed by it…

‘I think it’s time we left.’ The cool hardness of Marcus’s voice chilled her overheated thoughts.

‘We?’ she queried warily.

‘Yes. We. I was just about to leave—and, unless you want the remainder of your great-aunt’s guests to witness the unedifying sight of you sprawled on her parquet floor, I rather think you would be wise to leave with me. In fact, I am going to insist on it.’

‘You’re my trustee, Marcus, not my guardian or my keeper.’

‘Right now, I’m a man very close to the edge of his patience. And besides, I need to talk you about Prêt a Party.’

Lucy stiffened defensively.

‘If you’re going to lecture me about Nick again—’ she began, but Marcus simply ignored her and continued as though she hadn’t interrupted him.

‘You may remember me mentioning some time ago that my sister Beatrice wants to plan a surprise party for her husband’s fiftieth birthday?’

‘Yes,’ Lucy agreed. Beatrice was Marcus’s elder sister, and her husband George was something very important in the mysterious highest echelons of the civil service.

‘I have to go and see Beatrice later this week, and she suggested that I should take you along with me so that she can discuss her party with you. I thought you might want to check your diary before we fix on a date.’

Lucy exhaled weakly. She was grateful to be given any business right now—even if it meant having to spend time with Marcus in order to obtain it.

‘I’ve got a fairly free week,’ she responded, as nonchalantly as she could. The truth was that she had a wholly free week; in fact the only event she had coming up in the whole of the next month was a launch bash for a sportswear manufacturer.

Somehow or other they had actually reached the door to the hallway, where her great-aunt was already saying goodbye to some of her other guests, and it was obvious that Marcus had every intention of hauling her through it. If she dug in her heels, would he literally drag her across the parquet?

‘You’re walking too fast,’ she told him breathlessly, and then gave a small startled ‘oof’ of exhaled breath as he stopped so suddenly that she cannoned straight into him.

She was standing body to body with Marcus, and he had one hand on her arm whilst his other was pressed into the small of her back. She could smell the faint lemony scent of his cologne, mixed with warm man scent. Suddenly the back of her throat prickled treacherously with tears. How many hours had she wasted after she had first smelled it on him haunting the men’s toiletries departments of upmarket stores? Sniffing and testing and searching, hoping that she might recognise it and find out just what it was he wore, so that she could buy some and put a little on her pillows, so that she could wear it herself if necessary—anything just to be able to feel closer to him. But she had never discovered what it was.

Body to body with Marcus. If only by some miracle he would draw her closer now, and bend his head and cover her mouth with his—if only, if only…

‘Marcus, dear boy—so good of you to come. And Lucy…’

Lucy could feel her face burning as Marcus stepped back from her but still continued to hold on to her arm.

The almost flirtatious warmth of her voice as her great-aunt had greeted Marcus chilled quite distinctly over her own name, Lucy noticed cynically. Was there any woman on the surface of the earth who was immune to Marcus’s personal brand of male charm?

‘A truly delightful occasion, Alice. Thank you for inviting me.’

‘My dear boy, how could I not? After all, your family have been taking care of our family’s financial affairs since before the Peninsular War. Of course there should have been food, but I’m afraid Lucy rather let me down there.’

Lucy gasped in outrage.

‘That—Ouch!’ she protested as Marcus trod on her toes, then hustled her out into the street—just as though she were a prisoner under armed guard, Lucy decided indignantly.

‘You do realise that you stood on my toes, don’t you?’ she objected, as she breathed in the familiar scent of the sun-warmed city.

‘Better my foot on your toes than your foot in your own mouth, don’t you think?’ Marcus suggested.

It took Lucy several seconds to recognise what he was saying, but once she had she glowered indignantly and told him, ‘It was Great-Aunt Alice herself who decided not to have any food. It was nothing to do with me.’

‘You amaze me sometimes, you know, Lucy,’ Marcus told her grimly. ‘Has no one ever told you that a little tact goes a long way towards oiling the wheels of business and reputation?’

‘You’re a fine one to talk! You never bother using tact when you talk to me, do you?’

‘Some situations call for stronger measures,’ Marcus answered grimly.

‘If you mean my marriage—’ Lucy began hotly, and then stopped.

Her marriage was just not something she felt safe discussing with Marcus. The last thing she wanted was to have him probing into the whys and wherefores of her relationship with Nick. There was no point in allowing herself to be drawn into an argument she already knew she was not going to win.

‘You can let go of me now, Marcus,’ Lucy hissed valiantly several seconds later, when he was still holding on to her. But Marcus ignored her, keeping a firm grip on her arm as he flagged down a taxi and then opened the door for her, almost pushing her inside it. Lucy resentfully moved as far away from him as she could as he sat down beside her.

‘Where to, guv?’ the taxi driver demanded.

‘Wendover Square. Number twenty-one.’

‘Arncott Street.’

They had both spoken together.

‘Make yer mind up,’ the cabbie complained.

‘Wendover Square,’ Marcus repeated, before Lucy could speak, leaving her to glower angrily at him.

‘It would have been easier if he’d dropped me off first, Marcus.’

‘I want to talk to you,’ Marcus told her coolly.

‘So talk,’ she said recklessly.

‘In private,’ Marcus informed her in a very gritty voice.

The taxi driver was turning into Wendover Square, its elegant Georgian houses overlooking one of London’s most attractive private squares.

Marcus’s house—the same house his grandfather and his great-grandfather had lived in, in fact all his ancestors right back to the Carring who had first begun the bank in the days of the Peninsular War—had just about the best position in the whole square. Four storeys high and double fronted, with a proper back garden, it was a true family house, and Lucy could see how impressed the cabbie was as he pulled up outside it and unlocked the door for them.

‘I do hope that whatever you want to say to me isn’t going to take too long, Marcus.’ Lucy was trying to sound as businesslike as possible—a difficult task when suddenly, for no discernible reason, her tongue seemed to be slipping and sliding over her words, and the motion of the taxi had made her feel very dizzy indeed.

‘No Mrs Crabtree?’ she managed to articulate, when Marcus opened the door and there was no sign of his housekeeper. As Lucy knew, the woman treated her employer as though he were at the very most one step down from god status.

‘She’s gone to stay with her daughter, to help look after her new baby.’

‘Oh!’ Lucy gave an exclamation of surprise as she semi-stumbled in the hallway.

‘I told you you’d had too much to drink,’ Marcus said grimly. ‘And you’re certainly in no fit state to go anywhere on your own.’

His accusation stung—and all the more so because it was just not true. She didn’t drink! But before she could say so, he was continuing curtly, ‘You’re out of touch, Lucy. The tipsy, thirty-something, Bridget Jones-type female is over. The in thing now is the committed working mother with two children and a husband—and if you don’t believe me take a look at your own friends. Carly and Julia are both married now, and both mothers.’

As though she needed reminding of that! Lucy thought miserably.

‘I am not thirty-anything,’ she told him crossly instead. ‘And, just in case you had forgotten, I’ve been married.’

‘Forgotten? How the hell could anyone forget that?’

‘And I have not had too much to drink,’ Lucy added forcefully.

The look Marcus gave her made her whole body burn, never mind just her face.

‘No? Well, all I can say is that if this is the state you were in when Nick Blayne picked you up, it’s no wonder—’

‘It’s no wonder what?’ Lucy stopped him. ‘No wonder that I went to bed with him? Well, for your information, I went to bed with him because—’

‘Spare me your reminiscences about how much you loved him, Lucy,’ Marcus told her flatly. ‘Blayne saw you coming and took advantage of you—financially, emotionally, and for all I know sexually as well. He used you, Lucy, and you let him. Couldn’t you see what he was?’ he demanded in exasperation. ‘I should have thought even a sixteen-year-old virgin could have recognised that the man was a user.’

‘Sixteen-year-old virgins probably have better eyesight than twenty-plus unmarrieds,’ Lucy retaliated flippantly. How many times had she used flippancy as her defence against the powerful blasts of Marcus’s irritated broadsides? Surely more than enough to know how much they increased his ire. But what else could she do? Without her protective shield of nonchalance she might just break down into a sobbing wreck of pleading female misery, and he would like that even less!

‘I loved Nick,’ she lied wildly.

‘Did you? Or did you just want to go to bed with him?’

‘A girl doesn’t have to marry a man in order to have sex with him these days, Marcus. She doesn’t even have to love him. All she needs to do is simply do it.’