“Come on, Rosy, don’t start playing games. I’m not in the mood for it.”

The verbal warning was accompanied by a forbidding, hooded look that reminded her of former peccadilloes and his merciless punishment of them.

She swallowed nervously. It was too late to back out now.

Screwing up her courage, she took a deep breath.

“Guard, I want you to marry me….”

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Unwanted Wedding
Penny Jordan

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CHAPTER ONE

‘GUARD, will you marry me?’

Rosy paced the floor of her bedroom, a fixed, strained expression on her face, her hands gripped into two small fists at her side and her normally clear, guileless dark blue eyes shadowed as she repeated the same four words over and over again under her breath. Even now she still wasn’t sure she was actually going to be able to say them out loud.

‘Will you marry me? Will you marry me? Will you marry me? Will you marry me?’ There, she had said it and, even if the words hadn’t sounded quite as firm and assured as she would have liked, at least they had been spoken. She was over the first hurdle, she told herself bravely, and if she could manage that one, then she could surely manage the other.

She swallowed hard and looked at the telephone beside her bed. There was no point in shilly-shallying; she might as well get the whole thing over and done with.

But not up here. Not sitting here on her bed in the privacy of her bedroom while she…

Quickly, she averted her eyes from the pretty girlishness of her flower-sprigged bedcover, virginal white with a scattering of flower posies. She had been fourteen the year she had chosen it; she was almost twenty-two now.

Twenty-two, but as naïve and unworldly as a girl still—or so she had been told.

Her throat closed nervously. She didn’t need to remind herself exactly who it was who had said those words to her.

Quickly, she opened her bedroom door and hurried downstairs. She would use the phone in the room which had been her father’s study and, before that, her grandfather’s. To say those words in that room would be appropriate somehow, would lend them weight and dignity.

She picked up the receiver and punched in the numbers jerkily, her body tensing as she heard the ringing tone.

‘Guard Jamieson, please,’ she told the girl on the other end of the line. ‘It’s Rosy Wyndham.’

As she waited to be connected to Guard she nibbled nervously at her bottom lip—a childhood habit she had thought she had outgrown.

‘Only children do that,’ Guard had warned her the year she was eighteen. ‘Women…’

He had paused then and looked at her mockingly, causing her to ask him unthinkingly, ‘Women do what?’

‘Don’t you really know?’ he had quizzed her mockingly. ‘Women, my dear, innocent Rosy, only carry these kind of scars—’he had leaned forward then and slowly run the tip of his finger along her swollen bottom lip, with its two small tooth indentations, pausing to touch them in such a way that the sharp frisson of sensation that had run through her had actually become an open physical convulsion of her whole body ‘—when they’ve been left there by a lover… A very ardent lover…’

Of course he had laughed at the scorching colour that had stained her skin. Guard was like that. In the old days he would have been a freebooter, a pirate—a man who cared for no one and made his own laws, his own rules, so her grandfather had always claimed. Her grandfather, although he would never admit it, had always had something of a soft spot for Guard, Rosy suspected.

‘Rosy, what is it? What’s wrong?’

The sound of his voice reverberating roughly in her ear caused her to tighten her grip on the receiver as her body rebelled against the knowledge of how unsettling she still sometimes found him—even though, with maturity, she had learned to ignore the taunting, loaded comments with which he still sometimes liked to torment her.

He wasn’t like that with other women; with other women he was all sensual charm and warmth, but then, of course, he didn’t see her as a woman, only as—

‘Rosy are you still there?’

The irritation in his voice jerked her back to reality.

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I’m still here, Guard… Guard, there’s something I want to ask you. I…’

‘I can’t talk now, Rosy. I’ve got an important call waiting. Look, I’ll call round tonight and we can discuss whatever it is then.’

‘No.’ Rosy started to panic. What she had to ask him was something it would be far easier for her to say at a safe distance; she thought of asking him to marry her, of proposing to him face to face— She gave a small, worried gulp, but Guard had already replaced the receiver and it was too late for her to tell him now that she didn’t want to see him.

As she replaced her own receiver she stared sadly around the room.

Four hundred years of history were encapsulated in this room, this house. It had stood here since Elizabeth I had bestowed the land on Piers Wyndham, a gift, so the official story ran, for courtly services; a gift, so the unofficial one went, for something far more personal and intimate.

Piers had called the house he had built Queen’s Meadow, in acknowledgement of Elizabeth’s generosity. It wasn’t a very grand house, nor even a generously large one, but in Rosy’s view it was certainly far too extravagantly large for one person or even one family—especially when she knew from her work at the shelter how many people were homeless and in desperate need of a roof over their heads.

‘So what would you do, given free choice?’ Guard had taunted her the last time she had raised the subject. ‘Turn the place over to them? Watch them tear out the panelling and use it for firewood; watch them…?’

‘That’s unfair,’ she had protested angrily. ‘You’re being unfair…’

But even Ralph, who was in charge of the shelter, had commented on more than one occasion that she wasn’t streetwise enough; that she was too soft-hearted, too idealistic, her expectations and beliefs in others far too high. She suspected that Ralph was inclined to despise her, and at first he had certainly been antagonistic towards her, deriding her background and her accent, condemning her comparative wealth and lifestyle and comparing it to those of the people who used the shelter.

‘Makes you feel better, does it,’ he had jeered, ‘spending your time doing good works?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Rosy had told him honestly. ‘But my money—my wealth, as you call it—is in trust and I can’t touch the capital even if I wanted to. If I found a “proper” job, paid work, I’d be taking that job away from someone who needs to earn their living.’

She and Ralph got on much better these days, although he and Guard loathed one another. Or rather Ralph loathed Guard; Guard wasn’t human enough to allow himself to feel that kind of emotion about anyone. In fact, she sometimes doubted that Guard had ever felt a human emotion in his entire life.

She knew how much Ralph resented having to go cap in hand to Guard for money towards running the shelter, but Guard was the wealthiest man in the area, his business the most profitable.

‘He’s a very rare combination,’ her father had once told her. ‘An entrepreneur—successfully so—and an honest man as well, highly principled.’

‘An arrogant bastard,’ was what Ralph called him.

‘Sexy,’ was what one of Rosy’s old school-friends had breathed enthusiastically when she had come down to pay Rosy a visit. Married, and bored with her husband already, apparently, she had eyed Guard with an open, hungry greed that Rosy had found not just embarrassing, but somehow humiliating as well. It was as though Sara, with the hot, burning looks she was constantly throwing Guard’s way, the none-too-subtle hints and sexual innuendoes, the physical contact of deliberately contrived touches, was somehow underlining her own sexual immaturity, and reinforcing all the taunts that Guard had ever made about her.

She was well aware that Guard thought her naïve and unawakened—but so what? All right, so his comments and taunts might fluster and sometimes even hurt her, but she had made a vow to herself a long time ago that she was not going to rush into a sexual relationship before she was ready for it; that she was not going to experiment with sex for sex’s sake; that when she finally explored the world of her own sexuality it would be with a partner who felt as she did, a man who loved her and who was not ashamed to acknowledge that fact and with whom she could let down her guard and reveal the vulnerable, romantic, loving side of her nature.

So far she had not met that man, but when she did, she would know him, and she was not, after all, in any hurry. She was only twenty-one. Twenty-one and still a virgin. Twenty-one and about to propose marriage to Guard, who was most definitely not anything of the kind and who—

She glanced at her watch. Four o’clock. She knew that Guard often didn’t leave his office until well after everyone else had gone, which meant it could be seven o’clock or even eight before he came round. All those hours to wait. All those hours nerving herself to deliver her proposal.

What would he say? Laugh himself silly, no doubt. Her face burned hotly with chagrin at the thought.

It was all her solicitor’s fault, she decided crossly. If Peter hadn’t suggested—

She walked over to the window, remembering Peter’s last words to her before he left: ‘Promise me that you’ll at least ask him, Rosy.’

‘Sacrifice myself to save this place? Why should I?’ she had demanded angrily. ‘It isn’t even as though I want the house. You know how I feel…’

‘You know what will happen if Edward inherits it,’ Peter had countered. ‘He’ll destroy this place simply for the pleasure it will give him.’

‘And to get back at Gramps. Yes, I know that,’ Rosy had agreed.

Edward was her father’s cousin; he and her grandfather had quarrelled long before Rosy was born—a bad quarrel over money and morals which had resulted in her grandfather’s banning Edward from ever setting foot inside the house again.

Every family had its black sheep; theirs was no exception. Even now, in middle age, despite his outward air of respectability, his marriage and his two sons at prep school, there was something unpleasant about Edward.

He might never have actually broken the law in his financial dealings, but he had certainly crossed over the line under cover of darkness on one or more occasions, her father had often stated.

Her father.

Rosy turned her attention away from the window and looked towards the desk. Her father’s photograph was still on it. The one he had had taken in uniform shortly before his older brother’s death.

He had left the army then and come home to be with his father—he had been no stranger to death himself since the death of Rosy’s mother.

Queen’s Meadow had meant everything to them, her father and her grandfather. She loved the house, of course—who could not do?—but she felt no sense of possessiveness towards it, far from it.

It wasn’t pride she felt as she walked through its rooms, but guilt.

If only things had been different. If only Edward had been different, she could have so happily and easily have walked away from here and bought or rented herself a small place in town and given all her time and attention to working at the shelter.

But how could she do that now?

‘Edward will destroy this place,’ Peter had warned her. ‘He’ll tear the heart out of it, sell off everything that’s worth selling, and then he’ll tear it down brick by brick and sell off the land to one of his cronies who’ll—’

‘No, he can’t do that,’ she had protested. ‘The house is listed and—’

‘And, knowing Edward, he won’t find it at all difficult to find someone who’s willing to claim that they misunderstood the instructions they were given. Just how long do you think this place could stay standing once it was assaulted by half a dozen determined men with bulldozers? And of course Edward would make sure that nothing could be connected with him. He hated your grandfather, Rosy, and he knew how much Queen’s Meadow meant to him and to your father.’

‘Too much,’ Rosy had sighed. ‘No, this place is an anachronism, Peter. No matter how beautiful it is, for one family to live in a house this size… Oh, why couldn’t Gramps have listened to me and deeded it to a charity? Why couldn’t he?’

‘So you don’t care what happens to the house? You don’t mind Edward inheriting it and destroying it, destroying four hundred years of history?’

‘Of course I mind,’ Rosy told him fretfully. ‘But what can I do? You know the terms of that idiotic will Gramps made as well as I do. In the event of both his sons predeceasing him, the house and his estate go to the closest of his blood relatives to be married within three months of his death and capable of producing an heir. He made that will years ago after Uncle Tom died, and if Dad hadn’t—’

She had broken off then, her throat choked with tears. Her father’s death so unexpectedly from a heart attack just weeks before her grandfather had slid from a coma and into death was something she still hadn’t fully come to terms with.

‘Edward fulfils all the terms of that will and he—’

‘You are your grandfather’s closest blood relative,’ Peter had reminded her quietly.

‘Yes, but I’m not married. And not likely to be, at least not within the next three months,’ Rosy had told him drily.

‘You could be,’ Peter had told her slowly, ‘with an arranged marriage. A marriage entered into specifically so that you could fulfil the terms of your grandfather’s will. A marriage which could be brought to an end very easily and quickly.’

‘An arranged marriage?’ Rosy had stared blankly at him. It sounded like something out of one of her favourite Georgette Heyer novels; fine as the theme for a piece of romantic froth, but totally implausible in reality.

‘No,’ she had told him impatiently, shaking her head so hard that her dark curls had bounced against her shoulders. Irritably she had pushed them off her face. Her hair was the bane of her life—thick, so dark it was almost black, and possessing of a life of its own.

A little gypsy, her grandfather had often fondly called her. But whenever she had tried to have her wild mane tamed, it had rebelled, and reverted to its tumbling mass of curls almost as soon as she had closed the hairdresser’s door behind her, so that eventually she had given up trying to control it.

‘It’s out of the question and, besides, it takes two to make a marriage—even an arranged one—and I can’t think of anyone who—’

‘I can.’ Peter had anticipated her quietly.

Was she imagining it, or did his words have a slightly ominous ring to them? She paused, shifting her gaze from the Grinling Gibbons carving on the staircase to her solicitor’s face, eyeing him suspiciously.

‘Who?’ she demanded warily.

‘Guard Jamieson,’ Peter told her. Rosy sat down abruptly on the stairs.

‘Oh, no,’ she announced firmly. ‘No, no, never.’

‘He would be the ideal person,’ Peter continued enthusiastically, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘After all, he’s never made any secret of how much he wants this place.’

‘Never,’ Rosy agreed drily, remembering how often Guard had bombarded her grandfather with requests—demands, almost—that he sell Queen’s Meadow to him. ‘If Guard wants the house that badly, he can always try to persuade Edward to sell it to him,’ she pointed out.

Peter’s eyebrows rose. ‘Come on, Rosy. You know that Edward hates Guard almost as much as he did your grandfather.’

Rosy sighed.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. It was true. Guard and Edward were old business adversaries and, as her father had stated on more than one occasion, there hadn’t been a confrontation between the two men yet out of which Guard had not come the winner. ‘The mere fact that he knows how much Guard loves this place would only add to his pleasure in destroying it.’

‘We’re only talking about a business arrangement between the two of you, you know, some simple basic formalities which would enable you to fulfil the terms of the will. In time the marriage could be dissolved. You could sell the house to Guard and—’

‘In time? How much time?’ she had asked him suspiciously.

‘A year—a couple of years…’ Peter had shrugged, ignoring her dismayed gasp. ‘After all, it isn’t as though you want to marry someone else, is it? If you did, there wouldn’t be any problem, any need to involve Guard.’

‘I can’t do it,’ she told Peter positively. ‘The whole idea is completely ridiculous, repulsive.’

‘Well, then, I’m afraid you’ll have to resign yourself to the fact that Edward will inherit. Your grandfather’s already been dead for almost a month.’

‘I can’t do it,’ Rosy repeated, ignoring Peter’s comment. ‘I could never ask any man to marry me, but especially not Guard…’

Peter had laughed at her.

‘It’s a business proposal, that’s all. Think about it, Rosy. I know how ambivalent your feelings towards Queen’s Meadow are, but I can’t believe that you actually want to see Edward destroy it.’

‘No, of course I don’t,’ Rosy had agreed.

‘Then what have you got to lose?’

‘My freedom?’ she had suggested hollowly.

Peter had laughed again. ‘Oh, I doubt that Guard would interfere with that,’ he had assured her. ‘He’s much too busy to have time to worry about what you’ll be doing. Promise me that you’ll at least think about it, Rosy. It’s for your sake that I’m doing this,’ he had added. ‘If you let Edward destroy this place, you’re bound to feel guilty.’

‘The way you do for putting all this moral blackmail on me?’ Rosy had asked him drily.

He had had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable.

‘All right, I’ll think about it,’ she had agreed.

And ultimately she had done more than just think about it, Rosy acknowledged, as she dragged her thoughts back to the present.

‘The trouble with you is that you’re far too soft-hearted.’ How often had she heard that accusation over the years?

Too often.

But Peter was right. She couldn’t let Edward destroy Queen’s Meadow without at least making some attempt to save it. By sacrificing herself. A wicked smile curled her mouth, her eyes suddenly dancing with bright humour. Oh, how chagrined Guard would be if he could read her mind. How many women were there who would look upon marriage to him in that light? Not many. Not any, she admitted, at least not from what she heard.

Well, all right, so she was peculiar—an oddity who for some reason could not see anything attractive in that magnetic sexuality of his which seemed to obsess virtually every other female who set eyes on him. So she was immune to whatever it was about him that made other women go weak at the knees, their eyes glazing with awe as they started babbling about his sexy looks, his smouldering eyes, his mouth and its full, sensual bottom lip, his shoulders, his body, his awesome charismatic personality, his single state and the subtle aura not just of sexual experience, but of sexual expertise which clung to him like perfume to a woman’s body.

Oddly, the last thing that most of them mentioned about him was his wealth.

Well, she could see nothing remotely sexually attractive about him, Rosy decided crossly, and she never had. As far as she was concerned, he was an arrogant, sarcastic pig who enjoyed nothing more than making fun of her.

Only last month at a dinner party, when the hostess had been remarking to her that the male cousin she had had visiting her had begged her to seat him next to Rosy at dinner, Guard, who had overheard their hostess’s remark, had leaned over and said sardonically, ‘Well, if he’s hoping to find a woman somewhere under that mass of hair and that very unflattering outfit you’re wearing, Rosy, he’s going to be very disappointed, isn’t he?’

Since the ‘unflattering outfit’ he referred to had been a very carefully chosen collection of several different layers of softly toning shades of grey, all determinedly hunted down in a variety of charity shops, carried home triumphantly and repaired and laundered, Rosy had shot him an extremely bitter look.

‘Not all men judge a woman on how she performs in bed, Guard,’ she had told him through gritted teeth.

‘Luckily for you,’ he had responded, not in the least bit fazed by her retaliation. ‘Because, according to all the gossip, you wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do there.’

She had flushed, of course, the hot colour crawling betrayingly over her skin, not so much because of what he had said—after all, she was not ashamed of the fact that she was not prepared to jump into bed with every man who asked her—but because of the way Guard was watching her, because of the amusement and mockery in his eyes, because, oh, so shamingly and appallingly, just for a second, she could actually almost see him in bed with some anonymous woman, his body bare and brown, his hands stroking the woman’s paler, softer skin while she clung to him with small, pleading sounds of need…

She had blinked away the vision immediately, of course, telling herself that it must have had something to do with the sexy film she and a friend had been discussing earlier in the day.

She and Guard had continued their argument later in the evening, just before Guard had left with the extremely glamorous and elegant-looking blonde who was accompanying him.

‘Anyway,’ Rosy had told him, her small chin jutting out defiantly as she felt herself losing ground, ‘it makes sense these days not to have too many sexual partners.’

‘The present climate is certainly a convenient hedge to hide behind,’ Guard had agreed suavely. ‘Especially when…’

‘Especially when what?’ Rosy had challenged him.

‘Especially for you,’ he had told her blandly.

The return of his companion had prevented Rosy from saying anything else.

An arranged marriage with Guard. She must have been mad to let Peter talk her into such a crazy idea. But he had talked her into it and she couldn’t back out now. Did Guard want Queen’s Meadow enough to agree? Half of her hoped not. And the other half…

‘All right, Rosy, what’s this all about? And if you’re after another donation to that charity of yours, I’m warning you that right now I’m not feeling in the most generous of moods…’

Dumbly Rosy watched Guard walk into the hall. Her heart was beating so heavily it felt as though it was going to force its way through her chest wall.

She couldn’t remember ever, ever feeling so nervous before—not even when Gramps had found out about her sneaking out at night to go poaching with Clem Angers. She had had Guard to thank for that, of course, and—

Firmly, she brought her thoughts back to the present.

Guard was slightly earlier than she had expected, and if the sight of him wearing the expensively tailored dark suit with its equally expensive, crisp white cotton shirt had not been one that was already familiar to her, she suspected she would have found it extremely daunting.

But then Guard could be daunting, even when he was casually dressed, she acknowledged, and it wasn’t just because of his height, nor even because of those broad shoulders and that tautly muscular physique over which her female friends cooed and sighed so stupidly, either.

There was something about Guard himself—an air, a manner, a certain intangible something—that set him slightly apart from other men, made him stand out from other men, an aura of power and control, of…of sheer maleness, so potent that even she was acutely aware of it, she admitted. Aware of it, but not attracted by it, she reminded herself sharply. She could never be attracted by Guard; he was not her kind of man. She liked men who were softer, warmer—more approachable, more…more human, less…less sexual?

Nervously, she cleared her throat.

‘What’s wrong?’ Guard asked her drily. ‘You’re staring at me like a rabbit at a dog.’

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ Rosy retorted, stung.

‘I’m extremely glad to hear it. Look, I’m due to fly out to Brussels in the morning, Rosy, and I’ve got a briefcase full of documents to read before I do. Just tell me what you want, there’s a good girl, and don’t start backtracking now and telling me it isn’t important. We both know that there’s no way you’d get in touch with me if it weren’t.’

The irony in his voice made her frown slightly but he was watching her impatiently, unfastening his jacket, reaching up to loosen the knot in his tie.

As she focused on the movement of his hands, she could feel the knot in her stomach tightening.

‘Come on, Rosy, don’t start playing games. I’m not in the mood for it.’

The verbal warning was accompanied by a forbidding, hooded look that reminded her of former peccadilloes and his merciless punishment of them.

She swallowed nervously. It was too late to back out now.

Screwing up her courage, she took a deep breath.

‘Guard, I want you to marry me…’

CHAPTER TWO

ROSY had automatically closed her eyes as she spoke, but in the silence that followed her stammered request she was forced to open them again.

‘What did you say?’

The words, evenly spaced out and ominously soft, were snapped out between Guard’s strong white teeth, and he was looking at her as though it was her bones, her body, he would really like to inflict that punishment on, she recognised nervously as she cleared her throat a second time.

‘I—I asked you if you’d marry me,’ she repeated quickly, suppressing her body’s physical instinct for flight.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’

He sounded very angry, Rosy recognised, which rather surprised her. She had spent most of the last few hours trying to envisage exactly what his reaction to her request was going to be. That he might be angry had never even entered her head. Amusement, mockery, contempt, disdain, an outright refusal—all of these things she had expected, but anger…

‘No, it isn’t a joke,’ she told him, adding grimly under her breath, ‘I only wish it were.

‘It was Peter’s idea,’ she continued doggedly. ‘I told him it was crazy, but he says it’s the only way we can stop Edward from inheriting the house and destroying it. You know the terms of Gramps’ will.’

‘I know them,’ Guard agreed, ‘but I hadn’t realised this place meant so much to you that you’d be prepared to fulfil them. What happened to all that insistence that you weren’t going to marry until you fell in love, until you were sure that your love was returned? Or was that just a girlish fantasy that faded in the reality of losing this place?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Rosy told him angrily, ‘but…’

He had taken off his jacket and gone to stand in front of the huge, open fireplace which, along with the Grinling Gibbons carving on the stairs, dominated the hallway.

Guard suited the house, Rosy recognised, before hurriedly looking away from him. With his height and the aura of power and authority which he wore with much the same swagger and flair with which her original ancestor must have worn his cloak, he looked much more at home here than she did herself.

The large rooms, the dark panelling, overshadowed her. In looks and build she took more after her mother’s family than her father’s. Whereas most of the portraits of her ancestors showed stocky, sturdy-looking individuals, she was small and slender—thin, Guard had once disparagingly called her.

It was still her home, though, and a part of her, much as she was reluctant to admit it, would hate to see it destroyed. She was honest enough to recognise that, despite her own feelings towards Guard, the house would be safe in his hands.

‘But what…?’ he demanded. ‘But you love this place so much that you can’t bear to give it up? But you love me so much that…?’

He threw the last question mockingly at her, already knowing the answer, but Rosy still gave it to him.

‘No, of course not,’ she denied vehemently.

Why was he looking at her like that? Watching her with those hooded, eagle-sharp eyes that made her feel so uncomfortable.

‘So, you don’t love either the house or me, but you’re prepared to marry me to keep it.’

‘To save it,’ Rosy corrected him quickly, ‘from Edward and… And it would be an arranged marriage,’ she added carefully, turning her back slightly towards him. For some reason, she found it easier to talk to him like that. She felt safer knowing that he couldn’t see her face, and that she didn’t have to see his.

‘An arranged marriage. And it needn’t last very long. Peter said we could probably even get an annulment and that we need not— That we wouldn’t be—’ She broke off awkwardly, so anxiously conscious of the uncomfortable quality of his silence that unwarily she turned round to look at him.

‘We wouldn’t be what?’ he encouraged her mockingly. ‘Cohabiting…intimate…having sex…making love…?’

Rosy hated the way he almost caressed the words, rolling them over his tongue, purring over them almost, enjoying every second of her own discomfort, she was sure.

‘If that’s supposed to encourage me to agree, you don’t know very much about the male sex and its ego, Rosy. Do you really think that a man—any man—wants to stand up in court and tell the world that he isn’t man enough to take his wife to bed? Do you honestly believe that anyone, but most especially that repulsive cousin of yours, is going to believe the fiction that you and I are genuinely husband and wife when the very mention of the word sex is enough to turn you into a physical embodiment of the traditional, trembling, untouched virgin? Oh, no, my dear. If I were crazy enough to agree to this fraudulent marriage of yours—and it’s a very big “if”—in the eyes of the rest of the world it would have to look as though it was very much the real thing, even if that did mean that ultimately, you’d have to undergo the indignity of going through a divorce.’

Rosy’s heart had started thumping heavily as he spoke, but when she realised that he wasn’t, as she had expected, going to refuse her proposal outright, she stared uncertainly at him, her face still flushed from her earlier embarrassment. It was only Guard who made her react like that when he talked about sex, she admitted crossly. Not even when the teenage boys who used the shelter made what were sometimes extremely blunt and often crude comments did she get as embarrassed or self-conscious as she did with Guard.

‘But it wouldn’t be a real marriage,’ she insisted, turning round to focus watchfully on his face. You were supposed to be able to tell what was really in a person’s mind from their eyes, but that rule didn’t apply to Guard. She could never tell what he was thinking. ‘I mean, we wouldn’t be…’

‘Lovers,’ he supplied for her. ‘It would certainly be very hard to imagine. The only time I’ve ever held you in my arms, you damned near scratched my eyes out,’ Guard reminded her grimly.

‘You terrified me,’ Rosy defended herself. ‘Picking me up like that. It was dark and I…’

‘You were out clandestinely with Clem Angers, poaching your grandfather’s salmon.’

‘Clem had been promising to take me out for ages to show me the badgers’ sett. And then you had to interfere and spoil everything,’ Rosy remembered indignantly. ‘He had been promising me that he’d take me just as soon as I was sixteen.’

‘Really? I do hope you didn’t use that unfortunate turn of phrase when you were explaining what you were doing to your father. Sweet sixteen,’ he continued, ignoring the angry flush darkening Rosy’s face. ‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Just refresh my memory for me, will you, Rosy? How old are you now?’

‘Twenty-two almost,’ she told him impatiently.

‘Mmm…and presumably now well-experienced in the art of kissing, if nothing else. You certainly ought to be after the practice session I witnessed last New Year’s Eve at the Lewishams’ ball.’

Rosy’s flush deepened as she remembered the incident he referred to. One of the Lewisham cousins, a rather intoxicated, impressionable young man, who had been gazing adoringly at her from the other side of the dance floor all evening, had caught up with her just as she tried to make her escape, grabbing hold of her in the semi-darkness of the passageway that led to the cloakroom, imprisoning her in his arms for a few brief seconds while he pressed impassioned kisses against her determinedly closed mouth. It had been a harmless enough episode. He had presented himself rather sheepishly and shamefacedly at Queen’s Meadow the following afternoon, full of remorse and apologies, and begging for a chance to make a fresh start, which Rosy had tactfully refused. But up until now she had had no idea that Guard had even witnessed the small incident.

She turned away from him, pacing the room edgily.

‘Why on earth don’t you buy yourself some decent clothes? After all, it’s not as though you can’t afford it. Your father left you very well provided for. Or wouldn’t it impress dear, sanctimonious Ralph if you turned up looking like a woman rather than a half-grown child?’

‘Ralph is not sanctimonious,’ Rosy denied angrily as she turned to face him. ‘And as for my clothes…’ She frowned as she glanced down at her well-worn leggings and the thick, bulky sweater which had originally belonged to her father.

‘I dress to please myself, in what feels comfortable. Just because you’re the kind of man who likes to see a woman humiliating herself by dressing up in something so skin-tight she can barely walk in it, never mind run, teetering around in high heels… Mind you, I suppose at your age that would be your idea of style,’ she added disparagingly.

‘I’m thirty-five, Rosy,’ Guard reminded her grimly, ‘not some ageing fifty-year-old desperately fighting off middle-age, and as for my ideas of style, personally I think there’s nothing quite so alluring as a woman who has enough confidence in herself to dress neither to conceal her sexuality nor to reveal it—a woman who wears silk or cashmere, wool or cotton, clothes cut in plain, simple styles—but then you aren’t a woman yet, are you, Rosy?’

For some reason Rosy couldn’t define, his comments, his criticism had hurt her, making her leap immediately to her own defence, her voice husky with emotion as she told him fiercely, ‘I am a woman, but you can’t see that. You only think of women in terms of sex—the more sexual experience a woman has had, the more of a woman it makes her. Well, for your information—’

She stopped abruptly. Why was she letting him get to her like this? Why did they always end up quarrelling, arguing, antagonists?

‘For my information, what?’ Guard challenged her.

‘Oh, nothing.’ Rosy retreated. She had been a fool to listen to Peter. If, as he said, the only way to save the house was via an arranged marriage, then it would have to be with someone else. Anyone else, she decided savagely. Anyone at all just so long as it wasn’t the arrogant, hateful, horrid man standing in front of her, watching her with those mesmeric, all-seeing, all-watchful golden eyes.

‘All right, I know,’ she told him bitterly. ‘It was a stupid idea, and I was a fool to think you’d agree, no matter how much you might want Queen’s Meadow. I’d be better off advertising in the personal columns for a husband…’

Something flickered briefly in Guard’s eyes, a tiny movement so swiftly controlled that Rosy felt she must have imagined it.

‘I haven’t given you my answer yet.’

Rosy looked up at him.

‘You’re talking about taking a potentially very dangerous course,’ he continued warningly, as Rosy remained silent. ‘Edward is bound to be suspicious.’

‘But he can’t do anything. Not so long as I’ve fulfilled the terms of my grandfather’s will.’

‘Mmm… Edward is a very tricky character. It wouldn’t be wise to underestimate him. There’s an element of fraud in this whole plan of yours.’

‘Fraud?’ Rosy interrupted him anxiously. ‘But…’

‘I’ll be back from Brussels the day after tomorrow. I’ll give you my answer then. And, Rosy,’ he told her as he turned to leave, ‘in the meantime, no ads in the personal columns, hmm?’

It wasn’t fair, Rosy reflected indignantly when he had gone. Why did he always have to make her feel like a child? And a particularly stupid child at that.

‘You’ve forgotten to put sugar in my coffee again,’ Ralph reproved Rosy. He frowned slightly, his sandy eyebrows lifting almost into his hairline as he added, ‘In fact you’ve seemed very preoccupied altogether these last couple of days. Is something wrong?’

‘No…no, nothing,’ Rosy denied untruthfully.

‘Mm. You know, Rosy, it’s a pity you didn’t work a bit harder at persuading your grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to us. Hallows, the engineering place, is closing down next month and that’s bound to put more pressure on us. God knows how many more it’s going to make homeless. We haven’t got anything like enough beds here as it is. When I think of that damned big house and all those rooms…’

‘Yes, yes I know,’ Rosy agreed guiltily. She hadn’t discussed with Ralph the terms of her grandfather’s will and, since Edward had already made it plain that he expected to inherit the house, Rosy had simply allowed Ralph to believe that as well.

When she had first announced that she was going to do voluntary work at the shelter, she knew her father had been a little concerned but, needless to say, it had been Guard who had taken it upon himself to warn her that, in view of her family connections and her comparative wealth, Ralph might put pressure on her to help fund the shelter.

‘Ralph would never do anything like that,’ she had protested then, indignantly. And she had believed it… Had believed it… Still believed it, and if Ralph was cross with her because he felt she ought to have persuaded her grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to their charity, well, she could understand why.

She could never walk into the old, run-down shabby building on the outskirts of the town without a small pang.

They all did their best to make it as homely as possible, but the rooms still had that air about them that reminded her of the boarding-school she had attended when she and her father had first returned to England from his army posting in Germany. She hadn’t stayed there long, but it had left a lasting impression on her.

The first spring she had worked at the shelter she had arrived one morning with the boot of her small car filled with vases she had ‘borrowed’ from home and the back seat covered in a mass of daffodils.

Ralph had found her just as she was placing the last vase in position.

She winced even now when she remembered how angry he had been.

‘You waste money on flowers when we barely have enough to buy them food,’ he had shouted at her.

She had never made the same mistake again, but sometimes the sheer austerity of the shelter weighed her down, her own feelings adding to the compassion and anguish she already felt at the plight of the young people they took in.

Today, though, she was guiltily aware that her mind was more on her own problems than those of the homeless. Guard was due back this afternoon. What would his decision be? What did she want his decision to be?

She knew quite well what Ralph would say were she to ask him for his advice, and the modern, aware part of her agreed with him: there were far more important things to worry about than a house; there were people, her fellow human beings, in far more need than a building and yet, when she walked round the house, something she had found herself doing increasingly frequently recently, she was also emotionally aware of the love, the care, the human effort that had gone into making it what it was. It wasn’t the material value of the Grinling Gibbons carving on the staircase that smote her with guilt at the thought of its destruction, it was her knowledge of the work, the craftsmanship which had gone into its carving. If she closed her eyes she could almost instantly be there, smell the fresh, pungent odour of the new wood, feel the concentrated silence of the busy apprentices as they watched their master, see the delight and pride in their faces when they were finally allowed to make their contribution, when their work was finally inspected and passed, the experienced hands of the master running critically over their carving while they held their breath and waited for his verdict.

The plasterwork on the ceilings, the furniture in the rooms—all of it had been created with human endeavour, with human pride.

Ralph would no doubt see another side of it, of apprentices injured and maimed, thrown out of work to starve, of workmen paid a pittance by their rich patrons.

‘What’s up, boyfriend giving you a hard time?’

Rosy turned her head to force a smile in the direction of the thin, pimply boy watching her, ignoring his companion’s snigger and clearly audible, ‘I’ll bet if he was she wouldn’t be looking so miserable,’ without even a hint of the betraying colour that Guard could conjure so easily with a comment only a tenth as sexual.

‘Have you heard anything about that job you went for yet, Alan?’ she asked, ignoring both comments.

‘Nah… Don’t ‘spose I’ll hear owt, either.’

‘You could try getting some qualifications,’ Rosy suggested, ‘going to night school.’

She already knew what the answer would be and wasn’t surprised when the boy shook his head in denial of her comment. When a system had failed you as badly as it had failed these youngsters, it must be hard to have any faith in it, Rosy acknowledged as she watched the two of them swagger off in the direction of the television lounge.

An hour later, as she drove home, her stomach was already cramping at the thought of hearing Guard’s decision. To her surprise, as she pulled up at the rear of the house in what had originally been the stable yard, she saw that an unfamiliar car was already parked there.

As she got out of her own car she eyed the bright red Rolls-Royce uncertainly. She went into the house through the back entrance, through a maze of passages, past a cluster of small, dark rooms.

She could hear voices in the front hall and she tensed as she recognised one of them. Edward, her father’s cousin. What was he doing here and, more important, how had he got in?

Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door into the hall.

Edward was standing with his back to her, his bald head shining in the light from the overhead chandelier which he had switched on.

Both he and the man with him were looking up at it.

‘Mmm…I suppose it could fetch a tidy bit, although there’s not so much call for that sort of thing now. Too big and too expensive. We’d probably be better shipping it abroad, finding an agent—’ He broke off as he turned round and saw Rosy, and touched Edward’s arm, drawing his attention to her.

‘Ah, Rosy…’

Edward’s genial manner didn’t deceive Rosy. It never had. She shared her grandfather’s and her father’s dislike and distrust of him.

‘What are you doing here, Edward?’ Rosy demanded, ignoring his pseudo-friendly overtures.

The man with him had moved slightly out of earshot and Edward’s expression changed as he glanced over to where his companion was studying the carved staircase, his eyes hardening as he recognised Rosy’s hostility.

‘Just checking out my inheritance,’ he told Rosy smoothly.

‘It isn’t yours yet,’ Rosy reminded him fiercely.

Edward gave a dismissive shrug. Unlike her father and her grandfather, Edward had run to fat in middle-age and the angry flush now mantling his face emphasised his heavy jowliness.

Her father had once remarked that Edward had a very nasty temper. On the few occasions when Rosy had met him, the tension that emanated from Edward’s wife seemed to confirm her father’s comment, but this was the first time she had witnessed any evidence of Edward’s temper at first hand.

‘Not yet, maybe, but it soon will be,’ he told her angrily. ‘And there’s not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it. For once in his life, the old man was too clever for his own good. How much do you reckon the staircase will fetch, Charlie?’ he called out to the other man, smirking when he saw Rosy’s expression.

As she watched and listened to him, any ideas Rosy might have had about appealing to his better nature died. He simply didn’t have one, she recognised. He would enjoy destroying the house.

She heard the heavy wooden front door creak as someone pushed it open, and turned round warily, but it wasn’t another of Edward’s ‘business associates’ who had walked in, it was Guard.

He walked over to the fireplace just inside the doorway, frowning as he studied the scene in front of him.

Rosy saw the antagonism and, along with it, the apprehension flare briefly in Edward’s eyes as he glared across at him, but Guard wasn’t even looking at Edward, he was looking at her—looking at her, Rosy recognised in sudden, dizzy confusion, in a way she had never envisaged seeing him look at any woman, but most especially not her.

She blinked a little, her own eyes darkening as they were caught and held in a gaze of such smouldering sensuality that it actually made her physically shiver. When had Guard’s eyes developed that ability to turn from cool, distant gold into hot, smouldering amber? Where had he learned to look at a woman in such a way that she and every other person in the room with her was instantly conscious of Guard’s desire for her? Only Guard didn’t desire her; he didn’t even like her, he—

‘Guard.’ Rosy exclaimed weakly, her hand going automatically to her throat to protect the small pulse beating so frantically there. ‘I…I didn’t think you’d be back until much later.’

‘I shouldn’t have been,’ Guard told her, ‘but I couldn’t bear to be away from you any longer.’

Rosy gaped at him. She could feel her skin burning. What was Guard trying to do to her? He must know as well as she did that—

She froze in shock as he crossed the hallway, dropping the briefcase he had been carrying with a small, heavy thud as he took hold of her, holding her so tightly against his body that she could feel the strong bite of his fingers against her flesh; her face was buried against his chest, any verbal response she might have wanted to make smothered, as he murmured throatily, ‘God, I’ve missed you.’

Rosy gulped in air nervously.

‘Have you told Edward our good news yet, my love?’

Their good news? What good news? Rosy jerked protestingly against Guard’s strong hold, lifting her head, the impulsive words clamouring for utterance.

But she never got to say them. Instead, the swift descent of Guard’s head and the hard, totally unexpected warning pressure of his mouth on hers stopped her.

Guard holding her. Guard kissing her. Kissing her? Was that what he was doing? It didn’t feel much like a kiss. She opened her eyes and looked anxiously into his. They were still that unfamiliar, heart-thumping, pulse-racing amber colour, and the mouth that had clamped so firmly on hers, silencing her, somehow didn’t feel anything like she might have imagined Guard’s mouth might feel if she had ever actually allowed herself to wander into the pitfall of such dangerous imaginings, which she hadn’t… It felt…it felt…

A dizzying wave of sensation hit her as Guard’s mouth moved slowly over hers.

Her eyes were still open and so were his, almost hypnotising her into obeying the silent commands he was giving her. She could feel her mouth softening beneath the sensual impact of his, her whole body relaxing, melting into his, relaxing and yet at the same time being invaded by a peculiar and unfamiliar frisson of sensation.

To her horror, Rosy could actually feel her nipples hardening and peaking. With a small cry of protest she tore her mouth away from Guard’s.

‘You’re right,’ he agreed, as though she had spoken. ‘This isn’t the time or place.’

His voice sounded soft, a husky purr that made small shivers of sensation run up and down her spine. He reached out and touched her mouth with his thumb.

‘What the hell’s going on?’

Dizzily, Rosy dragged her gaze away from Guard’s face and turned to look at Edward.

‘Hasn’t Rosy told you?’ Guard asked politely. ‘She and I are getting married. I’ve sorted out the special licence,’ he told Rosy softly, turning away from Edward, ignoring the anger emanating from him, the questions he was asking, behaving, Rosy recognised enviously, as though Edward simply wasn’t even there, as though the two of them were completely on their own, as though…

‘The wedding will be just the way you wanted it to be. Very small, very quiet. In church…’

In church! Rosy tensed, but this time she managed to hold back her shocked words.

‘You can’t do this,’ Edward was blustering angrily beside them. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what the pair of you are up to. Don’t think I won’t—’

‘Edward…’Without raising either his voice or his head, and still looking directly at her, Rosy marvelled, Guard had managed to silence Edward’s outpourings and to get his attention. ‘I think it’s time you left,’ Guard continued evenly. ‘I’ll show you out.’

Now Guard did move away from her and at another time Rosy might almost have been amused by the chagrin in Edward’s expression and the confusion of his friend, who was demanding to know exactly what was going on and why Edward had brought him out on such a wild-goose chase.

‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ Edward warned Guard threateningly, before turning to leave. ‘You aren’t married yet, and besides—’

‘Goodbye, Edward,’ Guard interrupted him suavely, firmly closing the front door.

‘Did—did you mean that?’ Rosy asked him, dry-mouthed in the heavy silence that followed Edward’s departure. ‘About our getting married?’

‘Yes,’ Guard told her calmly. ‘What is it, Rosy?’ he asked with an abrupt return to his normal, mocking manner towards her. ‘Having second thoughts?’

Rosy glanced towards the staircase and then up at the chandelier and shook her head numbly, not daring to trust her voice to make any vocal reply.

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