Sommersgate House (35 page)

Douglas
ignored her look, determined to move to the next phase in his
strategy and went on. “Julia, I intend to be your lover.” With
Julia’s soft warmth pressed so close, he could smell her. Both the
feel of her and her scent made his body begin to tighten in an
intensely pleasant way so that, when he spoke, his voice deepened,
became hungry, as he, again, made his intentions clear but this
time, he made them
clearer
. “I
intend to sleep in sheets that smell of tangerines and jasmine. I
intend to have your naked body squirming under mine. I intend to
touch you everywhere with my hands and my mouth. I intend to
memorise the taste of you, to make you call my name while I’m
moving inside you, to make you so excited you beg me to let you
come…”

“Stop it,” she
whispered but her voice was husky, her frame had softened, moulding
to his and, in her eyes, there was a mixture of warmth and
panic.

Progress.

Now,
Douglas
thought,
to
make myself perfectly clear.

“I’ll do
whatever I have to do. Even break our rule,” he promised, thinking
about Lizzie.

The warmth in
her eyes gave way to the panic.

“You
wouldn’t!” she gasped.

“I would,” he
assured her bluntly and her eyes widened then narrowed.

“That’s low,”
she accused.

“I get what I
want,” he vowed. “I’m a patient man but my patience is running
out.”

“Why do you
want to marry me? Be my lover?” Her voice rose hysterically.
“Douglas, it’s mad!”

He stared at
her quizzically. Could she not know her effect on him, on Nick, on
Oliver, on men in general?

The thought
was ludicrous, all women knew. They knew it and they used it.

All of
them.

“Don’t ask
ridiculous questions,” he clipped, his voice impatient. “It doesn’t
suit you.”

Her mouth fell
open and then snapped shut.

Suddenly, she
dropped her head and exerted gentle pressure on his arm.

“Okay, fine,
you’ve made your point. No truce, no compromise, the battle still
rages.” She was talking quietly but sarcastically. He could not
read her mood, couldn’t see her face but something in her tone made
him let her go.

She quickly
took several steps away.

“You should
know,” she said when she looked at him, her face carefully
controlled but her eyes were still glittering with something he
could not read, “that there will be consequences to all of this. I
doubt you’ll understand it, that it will even penetrate that
reserve of yours, but it will happen.”

He had no idea
what she meant and when he started to ask she shook her head.

She moved
toward the dressing room. “Please, just go. For tonight, let me be
the winner.”

Without
looking back, she entered the dressing room and closed the door
behind her.

After a moment
of gazing at the door, he did as she asked and left.

On his way
back to his rooms, he found himself thinking that, even though she
said his leaving would make her the “winner”, he knew by her words,
her tone, the line of her body as she walked away that she was
wrong, he had won.

Not just
tonight, but eventually, he knew that she understood that he’d be
the ultimate victor.

And somehow,
instead of making him satisfied, it made him vaguely uneasy.

The
Emerald

The next three
weeks were bedlam.

Mrs. K got the
flu and Ronnie and Julia became acutely aware of just how much
Sommersgate depended on her when they tried to make it run as
efficiently as its housekeeper, and failed.

Furthermore,
Julia and Ronnie weren’t about to let Mrs. K suffer without
constant vigilance (Mr. K admitting he was hopeless playing
nursemaid) so they took turns running up the hill through the wood
to the Groundskeeper’s Cottage to make certain she was fed, watered
and medicated.

Adding to
this, Douglas informed Veronika that Nick was going to move into
the Gate House as soon as possible. The Gate House hadn’t been
touched in over three years. So Veronika and Julia had to find
someone they trusted to clean it and give it a fresh coat of paint.
Both women refused to bother Mrs. K for her contacts, which, Mr. K
explained “she keeps in her head”. Hiring a cleaning team and
decorator was far more difficult than expected and Nick was forced
to stay in Sommersgate House in the interim. This meant one more
mouth to feed for Julia (who took over the cooking after one look
at Veronika’s borsht) and one more bed to make for Veronika (who
always made the beds).

It was the
Christmas season and all that was Christmas, decorating, shopping,
wrapping, baking, cards and the kids with a variety of parties to
attend. Julia had to get her presents bought, wrapped and mailed to
The States. She also wanted to be certain the children, in this
first Christmas without their parents, felt loved and cared for so
she danced attendance on them especially.

Julia’s
personal shipping came from home, boxes and boxes of clothes and
shoes, mementos, photos and things of Gavin’s that she and Patricia
wanted the children to have. Most of it was to go directly into
storage but as Mrs. K controlled all storage issues in the house
and she was unavailable for two weeks and catching up on backlog
when she came back. The result was that Julia’s rooms were a
mess.

Through all
this, Julia was working longer hours than she promised, scouring
through budgets, creating reports and writing business plans.

To her
surprise, Douglas had retreated completely. There were no more
insane conversations filled with marriage proposals and salacious
innuendo.

Not that the
last conversation was innuendo at all.

He had been
quite clear, concise and detailed about everything he wanted.

Indeed,
he’d been
crystal
clear,
perfectly
concise and
exceptionally
detailed.

Just the
thought of it made Julia blush and, sometimes, squirm (but, she had
to admit, most times she thought of it, she’d shiver, in a
good
way).

And she
thought about it a lot.

Too much.

In fact, all
the time.

There had been
times when he could have, and in the past would have, made some
kind of advance, but he didn’t.

Making
matters worse, it seemed that Lizzie was throwing herself into a
matchmaking role. If Douglas walked into the lounge while the
children and Julia were watching television and Lizzie was sitting
next to Julia, Lizzie would shoot to her feet and call out to him,
“Uncle Douglas, sit here.” Or if they were out to dinner or all
getting into the Bentley, she’d boss Ruby and Willie so Julia would
have no choice but to slide into the booth or car next to Douglas
or else make a scene. Or if Julia was talking about anything at
all, Lizzie would declare, “Uncle Douglas is good at that,” or
“
You
should ask Uncle
Douglas,
he’s
the
expert!”

Douglas didn’t
seem to be the slightest bit aware of Lizzie’s endeavours, though
that didn’t stop her from trying. Julia knew that Lizzie was trying
to recreate the loving family she once had and even if this would
ultimately lead to nothing, it was far better than her despondency
so Julia’s heart went out to the girl, so much so she couldn’t
bring herself to disabuse her niece of her notions.

In the
meantime, Douglas took them to London to fulfil his promise to Ruby
and so they could go Christmas shopping. Monique had (thankfully)
been in Paris. While they were there, Charlie helped Julia find a
gown for Tamsin’s charity ball.

Douglas even
spent time with them during this trip but all the while he was an
utter gentleman. He often took Julia’s elbow or put his hand in the
small of her back to guide her but that was it.

However,
sometimes, when she would talk to him on a crowded pavement or in a
store, she noticed that he’d lean down to hear her and his eyes
would be so warm and intimate, just looking into their dark depths
made her belly melt. In those seconds, she believed he was still up
to his tricks. But they were just seconds and nothing would come of
it.

They had been
photographed in London twice by the paparazzi and both times it had
been in the papers (which was something else Julia didn’t need as
it was sure to set Monique stewing). One time, it was late in the
afternoon, outside Harrods, while they were waiting to get into the
Bentley. Ruby was exhausted and Douglas had picked her up and was
carrying her as if she weighed no more than a doll. He’d had his
sling removed the week before and behaved as if nothing had ever
happened, including heaving Ruby around. The little girl had put
her head on his shoulder and her arms around his neck. While
holding Ruby, Douglas put his hand on the small of Julia’s back to
guide her just as she was herding the other two children into the
car.

Lord Ashton out shopping with his new
family including stylish
sister-in-law, Ms. Julia Fairfax,
the caption had read.

She’d clipped
the picture for reasons she wouldn’t allow herself the time or
energy to consider (though Julia had to admit to liking the
adjective “stylish” being attached to her). In the picture, he
looked so handsome and devoted to his “new family” that if she gave
herself a moment, she would have talked herself into believing what
the picture looked like what it showed.

They were also
photographed in Bristol when he took them all out to a South
American restaurant for dinner. This, too, was printed in the
paper. Willie had said something funny and Julia had lost herself
for a moment, grabbed Douglas’s upper arm and laughed. All three
children were giggling and even Douglas was smiling.

Lord Douglas Ashton, now familiarly accompanied by Ms.
Julia Fairfax and their nieces and nephew,
that caption had read.

She’d clipped
that one too and kept it in the upper drawer of her writing desk
with the other as well as the one from the night at the gallery,
which she also, for some reason, couldn’t allow herself to part
with.

While
recuperating, Douglas was home all the time but after a few days,
he’d fallen into his earlier pattern of being at the breakfast
table, going out during the day and returning home, now usually by
suppertime.

Through all of
that, no brazen advances.

He was
spending more time with the children, taking Lizzie and Willie out
to ride the horses, answering questions about their homework,
sharing the responsibility of getting Ruby to bed, taking them all
out to dinner, ferrying them to parties, wading in to handle
arguments. All of this he did with natural skill, innate fairness
and extraordinary negotiating ability and, again, if Julia allowed
herself to think about it, she knew she would be undone.

So, she didn’t
think about it.

But he had
retreated.

Julia knew
it.

She knew it
because, just the night before, Julia had approached Douglas in his
study. He was reading through some documents, striking things out
boldly with his Mont Blanc pen and writing things in the margins.
The children were in bed and she and Douglas were alone.

She hadn’t
knocked before going in, simply walked up to his desk. His head
came up when he caught sight of her movement and she knew she’d
startled him. It had always felt like he felt her very presence in
a room, even if he hadn’t seen her, not only since she’d moved
there but before, all those times she visited. Something about
knowing he’d dismissed her so thoroughly made something inside her
die. She hated to admit it, but the fact was, it was true.

“
Julia,”
he mutte
red, putting his
pen down, her name on his lips sending unwanted pleasant shivers
across her skin.

She pushed
these thoughts to the back of her mind.

“I wanted to
ask a favour.” Julia had stopped in front of his desk, she was
holding her business plan for the charity and he looked at it.

“Another
list?”

This was
said without humour or teasing, just polite curiosity. It made her
even more nervous, both about asking him what she was going to ask
him and about the fact that if he was going to go back to his
insolent ways, now would be his golden opportunity. And she had no
idea how she would respond, most especially if he
didn’t
.

“I’ve written
a business plan,” Julia informed him.

He quirked an
eyebrow.

Anxiously, she
continued. “I’m going to present it to the trustees after Christmas
and I wondered if… well, if you had time, could have a look?”

She extended
the plan to him and he automatically reached out and took it.

She held her
breath but he did nothing but nod. Then he set her plan atop a pile
of other papers and looked back down at his own.

That was
it.

She didn’t
move, frozen to the spot, disappointment so keen it felt like a
pain in her chest.

When he
realised she hadn’t left, he looked up again.

“Is there
something else?” he inquired politely.

Was
there
something else?

Yes, there bloody well was!
Part of her mind cried.

“No, nothing,”
she replied and tried her damnedest to saunter casually from the
room.

Now, she was
being primped and primed to go to Tamsin’s ball. Sam had hired a
stylist and makeup artist for her. It was unnecessary; somewhere in
her heart she knew the only person she wished to impress was
unimpressible.