This hadn’t been provided by the hotel, Lucy reflected, as she picked up the box and started to unwrap it. And it was too large to contain her earrings. Her suspicions turned to certainty when she removed the wrapping paper and opened it to find inside the bangle they had been shown in the shop.
Marcus had bought it for her? As well as the earrings? He really was spoiling her. Materially, yes, he was spoiling her. But she would much rather have been spoiled by his love.
In the end they decided that they might as well stay in their robes for dinner. There was no one to see them, after all, and besides, it added a special intimacy to their evening. Lucy looked down at the bangle she was now wearing. The full moon was bathing the terrace in its cool sharp light. Lucy picked up one of her prawns and dipped it in mayonnaise, licking her fingers after she had finished eating it, and then smiling.
‘What’s the smile for?’ Marcus asked.
‘I was just thinking about that scene in Henry Fielding’s
Tom Jones
—you know, the sex and food one...’
‘Oh, yes? Is that a hint?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Certainly not,’ she retorted self-consciously, but when he stood up and started to walk very purposefully towards her, her heart did a backflip in giddy excitement and anticipation.
But when he stopped in front of her it wasn’t to take her in his arms, as she had been hoping. Instead he produced the small box that contained her earrings.
‘I should have given you these.’
He sounded so abrupt and cold that Lucy frowned. He might have said that he wanted to marry her, but he certainly wasn’t behaving as though he did.
‘You shouldn’t have got me this as well,’ she told him, touching her bangle. ‘The earrings are more than enough.’ As she spoke she reached for the box, but to her surprise Marcus shook his head and reached for her hand, pulling her firmly to her feet.
She had to hold her breath as he carefully inserted the earrings into her earlobes. Not because she was afraid he might be too rough, but because she was afraid that she might betray to him just how she felt about him. The sensation of his warm breath on her bare skin was so sensuously erotic that it made her whole body melt with longing for him. She knew that she was trembling inside with the intensity of her feelings, and that very soon she would be trembling outwardly as well.
The earrings were in place, and, had he loved her, this surely should have been the moment when Marcus bent his head and kissed her—a truly special and intimate moment they would both remember for ever—but instead he was moving away from her.
And then, so suddenly, so shockingly that her whole body thrilled erotically, he came back to her, pushing the robe off her shoulders with hard knowing hands that kept her arms straight so that it could fall away completely, while he kissed her so fiercely that she could feel the heavy, erratic thud of his heartbeat as though it were throbbing inside her own chest.
The only sound to break the silence was the acceleration of their combined breathing, and then, as abruptly as he had taken hold of her, Marcus released her mouth and began to caress her eagerly responsive flesh.
Moonlight celebrated the beauty of her naked body. The terrace was private enough for Lucy to know that they could not be overlooked, and there was something gloriously erotic and exciting about standing naked in the moonlight as Marcus caressed her skin with delicate fingertips, brushing his lips against her throat.
‘You’re wet,’ Marcus murmured thickly as his fingers dipped into her sex.
‘You made me like that,’ Lucy answered him shakily. After all, it was true.
Marcus looked at the night-dark peaks of her nipples and then bent his head to suckle erotically on one of them, whilst his fingers stroked deeper and more firmly. Still caressing her, he arched Lucy back against his arm so that her whole body was offered up to him.
He could feel her moving urgently against him as her desire quickened.
‘Marcus,’ Lucy moaned, ‘I think I’m going to come...’
‘Good,’ he told her thickly, as he lifted his mouth from her breast to her lips. ‘I want you to.’
‘I want you inside me,’ Lucy begged.
‘Later. Don’t talk now,’ he told her. ‘Just enjoy.’
Don’t talk.
Lucy closed her eyes and gasped as her body tightened and pleasure began to shudder through her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘M
ARCUS
,
are you sure we’re doing the right thing?’
They had just returned from visiting her parents, who were overjoyed about the fact that they were to marry, and yet despite the delight with which everyone had greeted the news of their engagement, since they had returned to London Lucy had begun to be gripped by an increasingly intense feeling of sadness and foreboding.
Her vision was clouded with emotional tears as the October sunshine shone in through the windows of the pretty breakfast room overlooking Marcus’s garden and bounced off the facets of her engagement ring. She had fallen in love with the simple rectangular diamond with its emerald cut facets the moment she had seen it, and when Marcus had picked it up and said quietly, ‘I rather like this one, but of course it must be your choice,’ she had been so thrilled she had almost cried with happiness. She had been happy—then!
In Majorca, swept away on a tide of sex and fantasy, she had felt as though anything was possible—even Marcus coming to love her—but now, back in London, certain realities were refusing to go away.
‘What exactly do you mean?’ Marcus demanded. He was frowning at her with that familiar blend of impatience and irritation that always cramped her stomach and squeezed her heart with pain. ‘I should have thought from the response we’ve had from our families to the news of our impending marriage that it is obvious that we are very much doing the right thing.’ He stood up and strode to the window, and Lucy gripped her mug of coffee with tense fingers. It was clear that he didn’t want to continue the discussion, but she needed to. She needed... She needed his love, she admitted helplessly. And in the absence of that she needed some kind of acknowledgement of her own fears, and his reassurance that there was nothing for her to fear. She needed hope, and the belief that he could grow to love her. But she couldn’t tell him any of those things, she admitted painfully, because she knew that he wouldn’t understand her needs and that he would be irritated by them.
‘Our families assume that...that we care about one another,’ she told him carefully instead. ‘They don’t know the truth. And I don’t know if a...a relationship—a marriage—without love can survive.’
‘Love?’ Marcus shook his head, his expression darkening. ‘Why is everyone so obsessed by this delusion that what they call love is something of any value? It isn’t,’ he told her harshly. ‘You should know that. After all, you married Blayne because you
loved
him, and look where that got you.
‘You and I have the kind of practical reasons for marrying one another that are far more important than love. I need and want a wife who understands my way of life and who shares my desire for children—I certainly do not want to be the first Carring not to produce an heir or heiress. Sexually, as we have both already shown, we are compatible. You want children, and you are not the kind of woman who would want them outside a committed relationship. You married once for so-called love, Lucy. I should have thought you were intelligent enough to recognise that that was a mistake, and not want to repeat it.’
‘But what if one day you fall in love with someone else, Marcus?’
‘Fall in love?’ He looked at her as though she had suggested he murder his own mother. ‘Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve been saying? So far as I am concerned sexual love is merely a cloak to cover juvenile and selfish—self-obsessed!—emotional folly, allied to lust. My father fell in love, or so he claimed, when he left my mother. He abandoned her and us because of that
love
, and if it hadn’t been for the accident that killed him he would have destroyed the bank as well as my mother’s happiness. I saw then what
love
was, and I swore that I would never ever allow myself to indulge in such a thing.’
But you were six years old!
Lucy wanted to protest. But wisely she refrained from doing so. She had had no idea that Marcus held such strong and bitter views about love, or that he was so antagonistic toward it.
Her coffee had gone cold, but she still kept her hands wrapped around her mug, as though she was trying to seek warmth and comfort from it.
‘What is it?’ he demanded when he looked at her and saw the despair in her eyes.
She shook her head. ‘I...I’m not sure we should get married, Marcus.’
‘It’s too late for second thoughts now,’ he told her sharply. ‘For one thing your mother is busily planning the wedding, and for another...’ He paused and then reminded her, ‘Let’s not forget that you could already be carrying my child. We are getting married, Lucy,’ he reinforced calmly. ‘And nothing is going to change that.’
Just as nothing was going to change the way he felt about love, or his antagonism towards it, Lucy recognised with despair. How could she have deceived herself into believing that he would grow to love her? Marcus would never love her. Marcus didn’t want to love her. He didn’t want to love anyone.
‘I want to talk to you about Prêt a Party,’ he continued briskly.
Lucy tensed. She didn’t want to talk to Marcus about her business. She had had a letter from Andrew Walker, reiterating that he didn’t want her to discuss their meeting with anyone and explaining that he was still out of the country on business and would be in touch with her on his return. Of course there should be no secrets between husband and wife, but she had given her word and she had no intention of breaking it—and besides...Nick’s betrayal of her trust had left a painful scar. She knew that Marcus would never cheat her financially, but her growing insecurity about the future of their marriage made her want to hold on tightly to the security of Prêt a Party. If at some future date Marcus chose to decide that their marriage wasn’t working with the clockwork efficiency that he had decided that it should, she might need her business—not just to support herself financially, but to validate her as a person.
‘I’ve decided that the simplest way to deal with the current situation would be for me to inject enough capital into the business to clear its debts,’ he said.
‘No! No—I don’t want you to do that.’
Lucy could see that her outburst had surprised him.
‘Why not? Less than two months ago you begged me to let you utilise what was left of your trust fund to put into the company.’
‘That was different,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘That was my money, not yours. And besides...’ She bit her lip. She couldn’t tell him about Andrew Walker—not yet—and even if she did she suspected that he would not understand why she felt able to accept both financial assistance and financial involvement from someone else, but not from him. Having one husband involved in her business and virtually destroying it, and her, had taught her a harsh lesson. It wasn’t one she wanted to repeat.
Marcus frowned as he looked at her. It was obvious to him that Lucy was having second thoughts about their marriage. Was it because, despite all that he had done to her, she still loved Nick Blayne? And why was she rejecting his offer to pay off Prêt a Party’s debts?
‘Lucy...’
She stopped him fiercely. ‘Prêt a Party is my responsibility, Marcus, and I want to keep it that way.’
Her responsibility and her salvation, perhaps, should he ever decide to end their marriage.
A feeling of intense inner aloneness filled her. Sometimes it seemed as though her whole emotional life involved keeping painful secrets she could not share with anyone else. She badly wanted to cry, but of course she must not do so. Her two best friends had been so lucky, finding men who were their soul mates and true partners—men with whom they could share every part of their lives and themselves, from their most mundane thoughts to those that were most sacred and private to them. But not her. She never had and now would never be able to share her innermost longings and feelings with anyone.
She gave a small shiver. Marriage to Marcus would mean closing the door on the deepest of her feelings and shutting them away for ever. But she knew she simply wasn’t strong enough to let him walk away from her and find someone else. The pain would simply be too much for her to bear. And, as Marcus himself kept reminding her, it could already be too late for her to back out of their coming marriage. She might already have conceived.
* * *
Lucy looked at her watch. Marcus would be in Edinburgh by now. He had said that he would only be away for a couple of days, but already she was missing him.
Tonight was the launch of the new football boot—the last of Prêt a Party’s major events. She was pleased with the response she had received to the invitations she had sent out, and even Dorland was going to be there. Although corporate events, no matter how lavish, were not really his style.
Her mobile rang, jerking her out of her thoughts, and her heart leapt when she saw that it was Marcus who was calling.
Although she wasn’t officially living with him yet, she was spending more nights in Marcus’s bed than she was her own.
‘Has your mother sent out the wedding invitations yet?’ he asked.
‘They went out yesterday,’ Lucy told him. Her mother had spent several afternoons cloistered in the Holy Grail of stationery requisites that was the basement of Smythson’s Sloane Street premises, poring over samples of wedding stationery. ‘Although she’s telephoned people as well, in view of the lack of time. You do realise just how many guests are going to be at our wedding, don’t you, Marcus?’ she cautioned him.
‘Two hundred and rising at the last count—and that isn’t including my second cousins four times removed from Nova Scotia—at least according to my mother and Beatrice,’ he relied promptly.
‘What? No, Marcus.’ Lucy panicked. ‘It’s more like—’
‘Two hundred
each
. That is to say,
my
mother is planning on inviting two hundred guests, whilst I understand
your
mother can’t get her list down under two hundred and fifty.’
‘Oh, Marcus,’ Lucy wailed. ‘We said we wanted a quiet wedding.’
‘Talk to your mother—apparently that
is
a quiet wedding,’ Marcus told her dryly.
Lucy sighed. ‘Thank goodness it isn’t summer. Ma said the other night that if it had been she thought it would have been a good idea to tent over the gardens in your square.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen it done.’
‘So have I, and I know exactly what hard work it is. Anyway, I thought we both agreed that we just want a simple wedding breakfast, somewhere like the Lanesborough—not five hundred people and a ballroom at the Ritz.’
‘Well, maybe
we
do, but we aren’t our mothers. Stop worrying about it,’ Marcus advised her, ‘and let them get on with it and enjoy themselves. I don’t want you too worn out to enjoy our honeymoon.’
Lucy could feel her face stating to burn.
‘If I am, that won’t be because of the wedding preparations,’ she told him valiantly.
‘Shagged out already?’ Marcus asked her directly.
‘Totally,’ Lucy agreed lightly. There was no point in wishing he had spoken more lovingly. ‘When will you be back?’
‘Oh, not so shagged out that you don’t want more?’
‘I was asking because of the christening,’ Lucy told him in a dignified voice.
‘Uh-huh? Well, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten that we’re driving down to the christening on Thursday.’
Julia and Silas were having their three-month-old son christened at the weekend, and Lucy had been asked to be one of his godmothers along with Carly, the third member of their trio.
Although Silas was based in New York, he and Julia spent as much time as they could in England, mainly because of Julia’s elderly grandfather, and the christening was being held in a small village close to his stately home.
‘I’d better go; take care of yourself,’ Marcus told her calmly, before ending the call.
No
I love you
; no
do you love me
... But then, how could there be? Marcus didn’t love her.
‘I’m going now, Mrs Crabtree,’ Lucy called out to the housekeeper, forcing back the threatening tears clogging her throat.
Marcus’s housekeeper had made it plain that she welcomed the idea of Marcus being married, and she and Lucy had spent several very happy afternoons discussing how best to renovate the slightly old-fashioned kitchen.
‘There’s a parcel just arrived for you, Lucy,’ she called back.
‘Oh?’ Lucy hurried into the kitchen and stared at the large box sitting on the table.
There was a note attached to it, in Marcus’s handwriting.
Hope that this will make our mornings together worth waking up to.
Slightly pink-cheeked, Lucy started to open it. Marcus had already ensured that she thought he was worth waking up to, and it was difficult to imagine how he could make their mornings any more of a sexual pleasure than they already were.
But she realised that had been wrong as she opened the box to reveal not some
outré
sexual toy, but an espresso coffee machine.
‘Oh, Marcus!’ she whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by the emotions she had been trying to suppress.
‘He said as how you were missing your espresso in the morning,’ Mrs Crabtree told Lucy with a wide smile.
She desperately wanted to ring him and thank him, but she contented herself instead with simply texting him—in case he was already with his client.
* * *
Lucy exhaled slowly in relief. It looked very much as though the evening was going to be the success her corporate clients had hoped for. Having half a dozen Premier League football stars here had certainly been a good draw, and the models and It Girls clustered around them were making heavy inroads into the orange and red striped cocktail invented to match the orange and red flash on the new football boots being promoted.
If so far as the female guests were concerned the footballers were the main attraction, then her clients were equally delighted by the number of media people attending, and had told her so.
The cheerleaders had done their bit and been wildly applauded, and even her tongue-in-cheek curry and chips mini-suppers had been greeted with enthusiasm—especially by the footballers.