Unwed and Unrepentant

‘Forget about what passed between you and me,’ Cordelia said, ‘it’s quite irrelevant. If I had not happened to be here when you called, this would not have happened. I am very, very sorry that I was. I am sure that when my father comes to his senses and realises that you will walk away from this contract rather than marry me...’

‘I’ve no intentions of walking away from this contract.’

‘Yes, I know. I mean I assumed— You told me, remember? You said that you needed new markets. I know how important this must be to you, but I merely meant you would call his bluff.’

‘Oh, I’ll do that all right.’

‘Good. Excellent.’ Cordelia picked up her bonnet again.

Iain took it from her and set it back down. ‘You remembered, didn’t you? The minute you crashed into me, you remembered that day. That night.’

‘I said we should forget it.’

‘I haven’t been able to forget. Have you?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. No! Are you happy now?’

‘Do you remember, I had to tell you to wheesht?’ Iain closed the tiny space between them. His voice was soft, a whispering burr without any trace of the Lowland growl. If it were not for that look in his eyes, she would have said it was seductive. He took one of her artful curls and began to twist it round his finger. He had an artist’s hands, the fingers long and delicate, though the skin was rough.

The muscles in her belly clenched. ‘You were every bit as— You enjoyed it every bit as much, as I recall.’

‘I did.’ He let her curl slip from her finger, only to cup her jaw in his hand, his thumb running along the length of her bottom lip. ‘Too right I did,’ he said, and covered her mouth with his.

She almost surrendered. His mouth fit so perfectly with hers, as no other ever had or would. Her lips clung to his, her mouth opening, her hands reaching automatically to twine around his neck, her body arching into the hard length of his. Cordelia yanked herself free and delivered a very hard slap.

* * *

Iain staggered back, his hand cupped to his throbbing cheek. Cordelia had not been messing about, and to judge by the way she was glaring at him, she would have hit him a deal harder if she’d had a chance. Or more precisely, she’d hit him again if he took another chance. He was forced to laugh. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me I deserved that.’

She folded her arms across her chest and stuck her nose in the air. ‘You know perfectly well that you did.’

‘And I suppose that you’ll also tell me you didn’t want me to kiss you?’

She raised her brows and pursed her lips, giving him one of those looks that managed to be both sceptical and challenging. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone whose ego is in less need of pandering than yours, Mr Hunter.’

This time his laugh was spontaneous. ‘Come now, hasn’t the very man just left the room! But since we’re talking extremes, let me tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman quite like you, Mrs—Lady Cordelia.’

‘Is that a compliment?’

Iain shrugged. ‘It’s the truth. I take it you had no more idea than I of what your father was going to suggest today?’

‘I am pretty certain my father had no idea either, until your card was sent in. It was a surprise attack. He was ever fond of Wellington you know, even though the duke has fallen from favour. And with him my dear father,’ Cordelia said sardonically.

‘They say that the king is in poor health. When he dies, there will be another General Election, though I doubt the Tories will win, even with Peel in charge.’

‘No, my father’s star is finally on the wane. We will have a woman on the throne too. The influential Lord Armstrong is now past his prime and stripped of influence.’ Cordelia’s smile was twisted. ‘Not that I believe that for a second. My father will bend with the wind, even if he can no longer direct it.’

‘What’s more, he’s sharp enough to see it’s men like myself who’ll be doing the directing in the future.’ Iain grinned. ‘I have to admire the devious old bugger, even if he is deluded. I’ve no interest in earning a fancy title, and I’ve certainly no desire to rub shoulders with those who’ve nothing better to do than spend their ill-gotten gains on clothes and parties and horses.’

‘Good heavens, are you a revolutionary? Perhaps you have ambitions to put my father’s neck on a guillotine?’

‘No, but I suspect you would. You’ll forgive me being blunt,’ Iain said, ‘but you don’t hold the old man in much esteem, do you?’

‘I doubt you are ever anything else but blunt.’ Cordelia turned towards the desk and began to footer with the blotter, aligning the pen holder and inkstand up. ‘No, I don’t have much respect for him. About as much as he does for me.’

He could not see her expression, but something in the hunch of her shoulders made him guess at the hurt she was attempting to disguise. ‘If he means so little to you, why do you let him upset you?’

She turned at that, and he saw he was right. Pain shadowed her eyes, though she was fighting it. ‘My sister Cressie said something similar to me recently. She seems to have found a way of overcoming nature which I have as yet to discover, despite my attempts to do so.’

‘I must consider myself fortunate not to be encumbered by parents then,’ Iain said gruffly.

‘You are an orphan?’

It was his turn to shrug. He had no desire to add a discussion of his pathetic history into the conversation that was already convoluted enough. ‘He may be your father, but you’re a grown woman, Cordelia, he can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

‘All very well for you to say that. You are a man.’

‘Aye, and when you look at me like that, I’m very glad I am,’ Iain replied, because the mocking look was back in her eyes, and there was something irresistible about the challenge of it, and in the sensual downward curl of that mouth of hers.

He caught her arm and turned her towards him, losing his train of thought in the scent of her, and the rustle of her gown against his legs, and in the way she reacted to the heat of his gaze, neither shrinking from it nor denying her own reaction.

‘I’m not going to kiss you,’ she said.

She spoke coolly, though her words were belied by the tempting tilt of her mouth. He slid his hand up her back, finding the delightful patch of naked skin at her nape, under her hair. ‘You’d better not hit me again.’

‘What, will you hit me back? I should warn you, Iain, I am not the sort of woman to take that sort of pleasure.’

‘Firstly, I never hit any woman, no matter what kind.’ Iain put his other arm around her waist, pulling her close. The perfume she wore was exotic, though the scent eluded him. The way she spoke his name made him shiver, made the muscles in his belly tighten, sent the blood coursing to his groin. ‘And secondly, you seem to have forgotten that I know very well what particular kind of pleasure you like.’

She did not move. He knew, despite her denial, that she would kiss him back this time. It shocked him, the fierce possessiveness he felt just touching her, so much so that he let her go. ‘I want that business, Cordelia. What has he got on you? I’m not daft, you wouldn’t still be here talking to me if he didn’t have some sort of hold over you. What is it?’

She hesitated, returning to her compulsive straightening of the desk furniture, aligning the already aligned pen holder and inkpot. Then she turned, her mouth tight with anger. ‘My family. My aunt. My half-brothers I have not seen since I left nearly ten years ago, the half-sister I have never met. And most of all Celia and Cassie. They were his trump cards.’ The pen in her hand snapped. ‘My two elder sisters,’ she explained with a curl of her lip. ‘Both are married to Arabian princes. I knew Caro and Cressie—they are my other sisters—would pay no heed to my father’s decree. Indeed, I was fairly certain his disowning me was sufficient for them to make a point of keeping in touch, but as to Celia and Cassie—’

She broke off, obviously near to tears. Iain wrestled with this completely unexpected revelation. ‘Your father disowned you? What on earth for?’

‘I refused to marry a man of his choosing.’

Iain shook his head in bemusement. ‘You wouldn’t marry the man he picked for you and he took the hump?’

‘I wouldn’t marry any man he picked for me. And if by taking the hump you mean he was offended—he was furious.’ Cordelia cast the broken pen on to the desk. ‘I know it sounds mediaeval, but he really could have ensured that all doors were closed to me if I’d given him the pleasure of trying to open them.’

Iain stared at her in horror. ‘Your own flesh and blood! Who does he think he is—some sort of god?’

‘One of my other sisters calls him a puppet master,’ Cordelia said wryly.

‘So they don’t condone what he did? But you said the eldest two...’

‘Celia and Cassie. It’s not that they condone it exactly, but to respond to any overture of mine would require them to keep it secret from their husbands. I have never met Cassie’s husband, and Celia’s but once, but the code of honour with desert princes is strong. No matter what they may think of the circumstances, my father’s will must be respected. That is the ace he was going to play, I suspect,’ Cordelia finished contemptuously.

Iain shook his head in disgust. ‘I can’t believe he would stoop so low. To keep your own sisters from you, and him your father.’

‘Which is exactly why he does not see it as anything other than his natural right, to order my life,’ she replied bitterly. ‘Cressie—my middle sister—used to say that we were his pawns in the game of matrimonial chess. She was right, Iain, believe me.’

‘And unless you do as he says, you won’t get to see your sisters in Arabia?’

‘I don’t know. I had hoped today that I could persuade him to—but that was before he came up with this ridiculous idea. Now—I simply don’t know.’

She shook her head, biting her lip and screwing shut her eyes, and Iain cursed himself for being so blunt. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve nothing to apologise for.’

‘He’s a right wee shite, your father.’

She laughed tearfully. ‘I have no idea what that means, but I suspect you’re right.’

‘Aye, sorry about the language. You can take a man from the docks, but you can’t take the docks from the man.’

She smiled at this quip, but seemed suddenly at a loss. ‘I’d better be off.’

‘You’re not staying here?’

She shuddered theatrically. ‘Good heavens, no. I have rooms at Milvert’s on Brook Street. I suppose this is goodbye. I wish you luck with your contract.’

‘We’ve both got too much to lose to turn our backs on this. I’ll walk with you.’

He was not fooling himself. That day over a year ago had been in every way extraordinary. He had never, before or since, experienced that instant of certainty, that deep connection that had led them both to believe they’d met before, that had transformed into the most intense attraction he’d ever known. Circumstances had colluded to put them together on the docks at the Broomilaw at the same time in the same frame of mind. Since then, he had thought of it as a day—and night—out of time. It had not occurred to him that they would ever meet again, but now they had done so, under the strangest of circumstances, Iain couldn’t help thinking that fate must have taken a hand. Not that he believed in fate, though his mother had been a great one for it.

‘I beg your pardon?’

He realised, as he took his hat and gloves from the footman, that he’d spoken his mother’s words aloud. ‘What’s for you won’t go by you,’ he repeated tersely, as they ascended the steps into Cavendish Square.

‘You think that fate has brought us together?’ Cordelia asked.

She had a smile that did things to his insides. Provocative, that was the word for it. Iain never spoke of his mother. His memories of his family were so painfully tarnished that he rarely allowed himself to remember the few happier times when Jeannie was still alive. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed, and he automatically closed his mind to that memory. He had always been driven, but this last year, he had immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of all else. He hadn’t realised he’d missed Cordelia until he saw her today. It didn’t matter that their entire acquaintance spanned less than twenty-four hours either. At some elemental level, he and she were the same.

Iain took her hand and tucked it into his arm. ‘You want to know what I really think?’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I think we should tell your father we’re getting married.’

* * *

Cordelia’s rooms at Milvert’s exclusive hotel were on the corner of the second floor. Pushing open the window of her sitting-room, she gazed out on to the busy street, her head whirling. With the Season starting to get into full swing, there was a steady flow of carriages and horses making their way past Grosvenor Square to Hyde Park.

‘You haven’t said what you thought of my suggestion,’ Iain said, throwing his hat and gloves on to the table.

She pulled the casement closed and began to wander disconsolately about the room, tidying her notebooks, folding her cuffs, wiping her pen, absent-mindedly straightening the various objects which sat on the tables, the mantelpiece, the hearth, before finally taking a seat opposite him. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘Do you have an alternative plan?’

She shook her head, pursing her lips. ‘Though I am more determined than ever to act, despite the fact that my father could make things very difficult. What’s more, now that he has set his heart on this ridiculous idea of us marrying, he will not listen to any alternatives.’

‘Which is all the more reason to pretend to give him what he wants.’

‘Pretend we are engaged, you mean?’ Cordelia asked, for she was still unsure about how serious Iain had been. ‘Lie to him, make him think we are doing exactly what he wants, so that we get exactly what we want, and then, when we have succeeded, tell him it was all a ruse?’

‘Strictly speaking, it would not be a lie. “Ally yourself with my daughter” is what he said, not “marry her”.’

‘Semantics.’

Iain shrugged. ‘He’s a diplomat—or he was. Don’t they trade in semantics?’

‘When you put it that way...’ He really was serious, Cordelia mused. It really was a scandalously attractive idea. She really could not believe he meant it. ‘But I thought—you said it yourself, Iain, you are a plain-talking man, an honest man. I can’t believe you are contemplating this. You are so—so straight.’

‘Unlike your father, who is as crooked as a bent pin,’ Iain said with a grin.

She spluttered. ‘No, no. Devious, scheming, but never criminal.’

‘He deserves to be locked up for the way he treated you.’

‘Yes, I quite agree, but I rather think this would be better punishment.’ Her laughter faded. ‘You really want this business badly enough to achieve it by deceit? I confess, you surprise me.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment. The man I’ll be dealing with will be Sheikh al-Muhanna, and I’ve no intention of deceiving him.’ Iain stretched his long legs out in front of him, tugging at his neckcloth as if it was too tight. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Cordelia. This deal means a lot to me. It’s not just the money—in fact, it’s not about the money at all. It’s what we talked about that day in Glasgow, you remember?’

‘Your turning point.’

‘Aye.’ He smiled at her. ‘The engineering challenges alone would have tempted me to go in at a loss. I don’t just want the deal, I need it.’

‘And you could have it, can have it, if I tell my father I won’t marry you. I’m sure he wants it as much as you.’

‘I’m sure he does, but after today, I’ll be damned if I’ll let him have anything the way he wants. I won’t be manipulated, and I won’t have you pay the price of my victory. You’re a feisty wee thing, and you’ve been hard done to.’

She threw back her head and glared at him, immediately on the defensive. ‘I don’t need your pity, Iain.’

‘I don’t feel sorry for you. I admire you, and I don’t see why you should sacrifice yourself so that I can have what I want, when we can both win. He’s no right to keep you from your own flesh and blood. Your own sisters. If I wasn’t the best person for the job, it would be different,’ Iain said earnestly, ‘but I am, and I’m not about to lose it because the likes of your father wants to stick his oar into my business. Chan eil tuil air nach tig traoghadh.’

‘Is that Gaelic?’

He seemed somewhat disconcerted, as if he had not intended her to hear the words. ‘It means every flood will have an ebb. Your father’s day is coming to an end. It’s not blood that will count in the new age, it’s science, and industry, and people like me who aren’t scared to get their hands dirty.’

Cordelia shivered. ‘Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you.’

‘We are both on the same side. Don’t you want revenge?’

She stared at him, sifting her responses, measuring them carefully. ‘If you had asked me a few hours ago, I would have said revenge was the last thing on my mind,’ she said finally. ‘I went to Cavendish Square today thinking to achieve reconciliation. Foolish of me, but I had to try. One last time. I shouldn’t have bothered, but at least I can be in no doubt of his feelings. Not even I could persuade myself he cared after that.’

Fury, red-hot and vicious, caught her suddenly in its grip. The muscles in the backs of her legs actually trembled from it. Her hands were clenched into painful fists. What had she been thinking of! He would never, ever agree to what she wanted from him because he simply didn’t care. ‘He doesn’t love me.’

There, she had said it out loud. Cordelia looked out of the window. The sky had not fallen down. ‘My father doesn’t love me. My father doesn’t give a damn about me!’ It felt good. It felt very good. There could be no excuses, no mitigating factors. He had been cruel, deliberately so, and malicious too. She forced herself to recall in great detail, every word he had said, determined this time to etch it on to her mind, a sort of memory-prompt should she retract, as she had so often in the past. He didn’t love her, but he thought, he still thought, he owned her, and it was that fact she had until now never truly questioned. Every act of hers had been in defiance. She had never felt entitled to her own life even when she had acted as if she did.

‘My God, what a fool I have been.’ It really was as if she had lifted the shutters on a darkened room, allowing the light to filter in, displaying the murky contents for what they were. She owed him nothing. What she had taken for love had been a sense of duty, a habit, nothing more. She didn’t love her father. Right now, thinking of how he had so nearly managed to manipulate her, she almost hated him.

‘So you’ll do it?’

She had almost forgotten Iain in the heat of her anger. It faded now, replaced by something else. She came back across the room towards him, smiling. Power, that’s what she felt, and it was intoxicating. ‘A double coup,’ she said. It was a very satisfying notion. ‘You know, it is really very liberating, being freed from guilt.’ She stretched her arms wide, laughing as she twirled round, the skirts of her gown whirling around her. ‘I feel quite giddy with it.’

‘I can see that.’ Iain got to his feet, catching her as she stumbled. ‘Mind you don’t fall.’

‘I can mind myself perfectly well. Just because we have an—an alliance doesn’t mean that I can’t fight my own battles.’

She spoke more aggressively than she intended, but Iain merely smiled. ‘I know that fine, and it’s one of the things I like about you.’

‘You mean there’s more than one?’

She meant it simply to deflect the compliment, to distract her from the realisation that it would be very nice indeed to have someone fight her battles for her, just once. But it was a mistake.

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