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Game Of Love
PENNY JORDAN


Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.His game, her rules. Tasha couldn't refuse to help – not when her favourite cousin's happiness was at stake! But pretending to be someone she wasn't was risky business… Especially when it involved trying to fool Luke Templecombe.And Luke was fooled.In fact, he found Tasha's act so convincing he expected to become her lover. What he couldn't believe was that she turned him down. Tasha wasn't interested in just an affair. With Luke, she wanted more.But was this too much to ask of a man who only played games of love?










Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.




About the Author


PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.




Game of Love

Penny Jordan







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CHAPTER ONE


‘TASHA, I think I’m going to need your help.’

‘What, again?’ Natasha Lacey queried humorously, looking up from her work to smile at her cousin. ‘What is it this time? Another crisis over the bridesmaids’ dresses? If you want my honest opinion, my love, you’re never going to make your Richard’s sister look anything other than the little dumpling she is. Poor girl. I can well remember what it feels like to be fourteen, chubby and detesting every female in the world who isn’t.’

‘When you add to that the fact that she virtually worships Richard, it’s no wonder that she isn’t exactly overjoyed about your marriage.’

‘No, it isn’t Sara…not this time,’ Emma Lacey interrupted hastily. ‘Nothing so simple. I only wish it were.’

Natasha’s frown deepened. Three years her own junior, Emma had always been more like her sister than her cousin. They had lived in the same small cathedral city all their lives, their parents close friends as well as relatives, both of them glad to have a peer with whom to share the burdens of growing up.

Perhaps because she was the elder, she had always been the calmer, the more logical of the two of them, her emotions and moods controlled and predictable where Emma’s were subject to wild variations and swings.

In the family it was tacitly acknowledged that the death of Emma’s father when she was fifteen years old had to have been the cause of the sudden wild streak which had then developed in her behaviour—a wild streak which had led her into scrape after scrape, some of them so serious that they had led to a rift developing between the two cousins. Emma, bored and rebellious, had insisted on leaving school at sixteen, while Natasha had gone on to university, calmly and determinedly working her way towards the qualifications she needed while Emma had played her way around the world.

However, if Emma had been a little wild, that part of her life was behind her now, and no one could be more pleased than she was herself that she had fallen in love with Richard Templecombe.

It was true that the Templecombes were not perhaps as happy with the match as Emma’s family. For one thing, the Laceys were not and never had been part of the ecclesiastical life of the city, and even though both families had lived there for several generations they inhabited two very different worlds. The Laceys represented commerce and worldliness, the business which the first Jasper Lacey had established on the outskirts of the city over seventy years before being, after the church, the largest employer in the area. The Templecombes, on the other hand, prided themselves on being above such materialistic things as commerce. Their connections with the cathedral and the church went back even further than the Laceys’ connection with the city. Richard’s father was dean of the cathedral, he and Richard’s mother acknowledged leaders of local ecclesiastical society, and it was generally accepted that, one day, hopefully Richard would follow in his father’s footsteps.

A thought struck Natasha and her heart sank. The wedding was less than a week away now, but her sudden fear had to be expressed. ‘You haven’t…you’re not having second thoughts, are you?’ she asked.

Emma shook her head and gulped. ‘No, I’m not…but Richard probably will, once Luke tells him what I’ve done.’

‘Luke?’ Natasha questioned her, snapping off a thread with expert care, and frowning over the repair she had just completed. It seemed ironic that, having spent all those years qualifying and then travelling the world as an embryo news reporter, she should suddenly discover when she was twenty-five years old that the place she really wanted to be was here in this quiet cathedral town, and the thing she really wanted to do was to work with the rich fabrics and embroideries of that world.

She was establishing quite a name for herself now. A couple of prestigious magazines mentioning the quality of her stock, and the sudden demand for fabrics more suitable for the refurbishment of the ancient piles now being acquired by the migrant tide escaping from London, had helped—as had the fact that she had been able to bully her father into expanding the range of ecclesiastical fabrics the company produced so that they had a more general appeal.

‘Luke?’ she repeated encouragingly. ‘I don’t think…’

‘He’s Richard’s father’s cousin.You won’t know him, but he’s a typical Templecombe,’Emma told her tearfully. ‘Narrow-minded, bigoted, just waiting for me to do something wrong so that Richard will break our engagement.’

Being used to her cousin’s emotional highs and lows, Natasha merely said calmly, ‘Emma, Richard is twenty-seven years old, and quite plainly besotted with you. I can’t imagine what this Luke—’

‘You don’t understand,’ Emma interrupted, and then told her dramatically, ‘Luke saw me leaving Jake Pendraggon’s house.’

Now Natasha did begin to understand and her heart sank a little, although she didn’t allow Emma to see it.

Jake Pendraggon had arrived in the city just over a year ago, as colourful a figure as his name suggested, Cornish by self-adoption rather than actual birth, or so Natasha suspected. Certainly he had cleverly, if not too subtly played up the effect of tanned skin, wildly curling black hair and eyes so blue that she thought he must wear contact lenses.

Certainly anyone knowing Emma as Natasha knew her must have realised immediately that Emma would be drawn to Jake Pendraggon like a lemming to a cliff. Certainly it came as no surprise to Natasha to learn that the acquaintanceship between the two of them had obviously developed into something far more intimate.

She herself had been travelling to Italy, Portugal and Spain for much of the time Jake Pendraggon had been living in Sutton Minster, looking for samples of the kind of cloth she wanted her father’s factory to reproduce for her, suitably adapted for a non-ecclesiastical market. Her travels had produced some marvellous fabrics, so rich, so mouth-wateringly desirable that her eyes grew dreamy as she remembered the pleasure of discovering them, of—

‘Tasha, you must help me. It was all a mistake—I’d only gone to see Jake to tell him that everything was over between us, that I loved Richard. But he was right in the middle of one of the most important parts of his novel. He begged me to stay and type up his notes for him and we worked all night on them. Nothing else happened. But of course Luke would have to be walking down the close just as I opened Jake’s door to leave, and, of course, I would have to be wearing the evening dress I’d had on for our engagement party.’ She pulled a face. ‘I loved that dress…Richard’s mother hated it, of course.’

Natasha brushed aside this incidental chatter and demanded fatalistically, ‘You don’t mean you went straight from your own engagement party to Jake Pendraggon’s house, and were then seen leaving it first thing in the morning by Richard’s cousin?’

‘He’s Richard’s father’s cousin, but in essence…yes.’

‘And you never said a word to Richard…never explained.’ Natasha frowned. ‘But, Emma, if this Luke didn’t say anything to Richard at the time, what on earth makes you think he’s going to do so now?’

‘I heard Richard’s mother talking to him. I’d gone round there to see Sara, and the sittingroom door was open. Neither of them knew I was there. Richard’s mother was saying how much she wished Richard were marrying someone more suitable.’ Emma pulled a face. ‘Well, I already knew she doesn’t approve of me, and I’m not bothered about that, but then I heard him—Luke—saying in a sort of sinister way, “Well, you don’t know—they aren’t married yet. Maybe Richard will have a change of heart,” and I knew instantly…’

She paused dramatically while Natasha wrinkled her forehead and asked patiently, ‘You knew what?’

‘That Luke had been waiting until the last possible minute to tell Richard what I’d done, and I know when he’s going to do it—tonight at the pre-wedding party. The one your parents are giving for us.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Natasha tried to comfort her. ‘I haven’t met this Luke, but I’m sure if he had wanted to tell Richard he would have done so months ago—as you should have done yourself,’ she added forthrightly. ‘It’s still not too late,’she continued more gently, knowing her cousin’s stubbornness of old. ‘Why don’t you simply explain to Richard what happened? After all, if it was as innocent as you say—’

‘What do you mean “if”?’ Emma demanded belligerently. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

Natasha sighed faintly. ‘Yes, I do,’ she confirmed. ‘But—’

‘Exactly!’ Emma pounced. ‘And it’s that “but” that stops me from telling Richard. Everyone knows that Jake and I went out together a few times that time when Richard and I broke up.’ She ignored the ironic look Natasha gave her at her deceptive description of the ragingly public and passionate affair Emma had had with the writer while he was supposedly researching his latest blockbuster. ‘But I explained to Richard that if he hadn’t got cold feet about loving me I’d never have even looked at Jake.’ She ignored the look Natasha gave her and added miserably, ‘I know he’d want to believe me, but given my reputation and the fact that Luke saw me leaving Jake’s house…’

‘I can see the difficulties,’ Natasha admitted. ‘You know, you should have explained to Richard right away.’

‘I should have but I didn’t,’ Emma said morosely, ‘and now, because of that, Luke is going to tell Richard, and then Richard will break our engagement, and my life will be ruined, unless…you must help me, Tasha. Please…’

‘I think the best person to help you is yourself, by confiding in Richard,’ Natasha told her severely. ‘He is an adult, Emma, and I’m sure this Luke whoever he is won’t be able to stop Richard from loving and marrying you.’

‘You don’t know him,’ Emma told her starkly. ‘He’s a typical Templecombe, only worse.’

‘Worse?’ Natasha questioned. ‘How?’

‘Well, for a start he’s completely anti-women. Oh, not in that way,’ she hastened to assure her cousin, when she saw Natasha’s expression. ‘According to Richard he’s had women virtually coming out of his ears, since his early teens. And for all that he’s even more strait-laced than Mrs T now. According to Richard there was a time when the family almost disowned him, he was so wild.’

‘Well, then, he should sympathise with you,’ Natasha murmured, picking up another piece of embroidery and examining it lovingly, wondering how it would look hanging on the wall in her own small house, perhaps over the fifteenth-century oak coffer she had been lucky enough to buy at a local auction.

‘Not him,’ Emma assured her bitterly. ‘He’s the original reformed rake. He’s already advised Richard that we’d be far better waiting another year to marry, and he’s told him that he’s not sure that I’m the right wife for him, given his calling. Who says that a vicar’s wife has to be like Mrs T?’ Emma began indignantly.

‘Who indeed?’ Natasha agreed sotto voce, knowing that if she let her cousin run on for long enough she would eventually run out of steam.

‘You will help me, won’t you?’ Emma pleaded, her face suddenly crumpling with real emotion as she said shakily, ‘I couldn’t bear to lose Richard now, Tasha. I really couldn’t. Before…before we were engaged and we had that row, and I got involved with Jake…well, I thought I could live without him, that he was just another man, but it isn’t like that. I really do love him. I know he loves me too, but—’

‘But you don’t think he’ll believe you if you tell him what you were doing with Jake Pendraggon.’

‘He’d want to, but he is only human, and if our situations were reversed…Well, I know how I’d feel if I heard that he’d been seen coming out of an ex-lover’s house at that time in the morning.’

‘What is it you want me to do?’ Natasha asked her. ‘Kidnap this Luke and keep him out of sight until after the wedding?’ she suggested facetiously.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Emma said severely, making Natasha reflect that her cousin had changed a little. Time was when she would very probably have suggested just such an outrageous solution to her present problem. ‘No, all I want you to do is to pretend to be me—that is, I want you to pretend that it was you Luke saw leaving Jake’s house. After all,’ she continued, warming to her theme and ignoring the stunned look in Natasha’s eyes, ‘we do look alike. We’re both blonde and we both have grey eyes; we’re both around the same height—’

‘We’re cousins, not twins,’ Natasha interrupted her drily, ‘and we don’t look anything like that similar. I’m taller than you for one thing, and—’

‘Tasha, please listen. Luke doesn’t know me all that well. He only saw me briefly.’

‘He saw you wearing the same dress you had worn for your engagement party,’ Natasha reminded her very firmly. ‘Emma, love, much as I want to help—’

‘No, you don’t,’ Emma interrupted her bitterly. ‘You want to stay nice and safe in your own cosy little world. I bet you think just like Luke really, that I don’t deserve someone like Richard. Everyone knows that, if Richard had to marry into our family, Mrs T would have much preferred to have you as a daughter-in-law. After all, before you went off to university you and Richard dated for a while.’

‘I like Richard as a person, I’m delighted that the two of you are in love, and as for being like this Luke…’ Natasha began, determined to nip any further emotionalism in the bud. ‘What exactly does he do, by the way?’

‘He’s an artist,’ Emma told her truculently, totally stunning her. ‘He paints landscapes. He’s quite well known, apparently.’

‘Luke Templecombe? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.’

‘You won’t have done, he uses another name—Luke Freres.’

‘Luke Freres? The Luke Freres?’

‘Tasha, please help me. My whole life’s happiness could depend on it,’ Emma added theatrically.

‘What do you want me to do? Wear a placard tonight saying, “It was me you saw leaving Jake Pendraggon’s house, and not Emma”?’

‘That’s not funny. I just want your permission, if Luke does say anything, to deny it by saying that it wasn’t me and that it must have been you. After all, what does it matter to you?’ Emma pleaded when she saw her cousin’s face. ‘It isn’t as though there’s anyone in your life at the moment.’

‘And so my reputation doesn’t matter, is that it?’

Emma looked cross. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, must you be so old-fashioned? Honestly, Tasha, you’re archaic. You must be the only twenty-seven-year-old virgin left.’

‘A situation which you want me to claim I tried to rectify via a night in Jake Pendraggon’s arms,’ Natasha derided, ignoring the jibe. ‘Come on, Emma. There might be certain similarities between us, but Luke Freres is an artist. Do you honestly think for one moment he’s going to believe he saw me when he saw you?’

‘It doesn’t matter what he believes, only what Richard believes,’ Emma told her fiercely. ‘But, of course, I should have known you would refuse to help. After all, you don’t want to lose your reputation as Miss Pure-and-goody-goody, do you?’ she added nastily. ‘Oh, no, you’d rather Richard broke our engagement and my heart.’

‘Stop being so dramatic. I don’t think for one moment that Luke Freres will say anything to Richard. Not at this stage, but in the unlikely event that he does—’

‘You’ll do it! Oh, Tasha, thank you. Thank you!’

Natasha grimaced. She hadn’t been about to volunteer to do any such thing, merely to advise her volatile cousin to put her trust in Richard and tell him the truth, but Emma was on her feet, dancing round the attic workroom of the four-storey building which housed Natasha’s home, office and work-place, blowing extravagant kisses at her as she headed for the door.

‘You don’t know what this means to me. I knew you’d help me. I’m so relieved. Let Luke do his worst—he can’t hurt me now. Oh, Tasha, I’m so relieved!’

‘Emma, wait,’ Natasha protested, but it was already too late.

Her cousin had opened the door and was hurrying downstairs, calling back, ‘Can’t, I’m afraid, I’ve got a final fitting for the dress and I’m already late. See you tonight at home.’

‘Tasha, where on earth have you been? You know everyone’s due at eight. It’s half-past seven now.’

Natasha stopped on the threshold of the bedroom which had been hers all the time she was growing up and which she still used whenever she had occasion to stay at Lacey Court overnight.

Emma was standing in the middle of the room, dressed in a fetching confection of satin and lace, delectably designed to show off the prettily tanned curves of her breasts and the slenderness of her thighs in a way that was just barely respectable.

‘If you’re planning to wear that for dinner, then I think you’re making a mistake,’ Natasha told her thoughtfully, eyeing the camisole and its matching French knickers consideringly.

Emma grinned at her. ‘Don’t be silly—as though I would.’

‘No? Am I or am I not talking to the girl who appeared at her own eighteenth birthday party wearing a basque and little more than a G-string?’

‘That was for a dare,’ Emma pouted, ‘and, anyway, it was years ago.’

‘A millennium,’ Natasha agreed drily, adding, ‘But, if you don’t want Richard’s parents to catch you wearing such a fetching but highly inappropriate outfit, I suggest you go back to your own room and finish getting dressed.’

‘Not yet. I wanted to see you first, and besides, my dress is silk and will crease if I sit down in it. Listen, I’ve been thinking—tonight you’d better wear your hair like mine, and if you could wear this as well…’

She reached behind her back and lifted something off the bed, holding it up in front of her.

‘That’s the dress you wore for your engagement party,’ Natasha recognised.

‘Exactly. I thought if you wore it tonight it would help to convince Luke that it was you he saw and not me.’

‘But, Emma, he must know that you were the one wearing it the night you and Richard got engaged. And, besides, it won’t fit me. I’m at least five inches taller than you, and two inches wider round the bust.’

‘Yes, it will—the top was very loose and skirts are being worn shorter this year.’

‘Not that short, and certainly not by me.’

‘But you promised,’ Emma began, and, to Natasha’s exasperation, large tears filled the soft grey eyes so like her own. Even knowing they were crocodile tears and a trick Emma had been able to pull off from her cradle didn’t lessen the effect of them. The trouble was that she was programmed to respond to them, Natasha decided grimly. Well, this time she was not going to. She would look ridiculous in Emma’s dress. Her cousin loved bright colours and modern fashions, but, for some reason, when she and Richard got engaged she had decided that a sober, sensible little dress in black was bound to appeal more to his parents than her usual choice of clothes. No doubt it would have done so if Emma had stuck to her original decision and not been swayed by the appeal of a dress which, while it was black, shared no other virtues in common with the outfit she had gone out to buy.

True, the dress did have long sleeves, but it also had a bodice which was slashed virtually to the waist front and back. True, it was not made of one of the glittering, eye-popping fabrics Emma normally chose. Instead it was made of jersey—not the thick, sensible jersey as worn by Richard’s mother and aunts, but a jersey so fine, so delicate that it was virtually like silk. Worn over Emma’s lissom young body, it had left no one in any doubt as to its wearer’s lack of anything even approaching the respectability of proper underwear between her skin and the dress—a fact which had obviously been appreciated by the less strait-laced of the male guests at the party.

It was the kind of dress it took an Emma to carry off with aplomb and certainly not the kind of dress Natasha herself would ever dream of wearing. She was just about to tell Emma as much when her bedroom door opened and her mother walked in. Like Emma, she adored clothes, and they adored her, Natasha acknowledged as she studied her mother’s appearance admiringly. Tall and still very slim, her mother was wearing pale grey silk, the simplest of styles and one which Natasha suspected had had a far from simple price-tag. Diamonds glinted discreetly in her ears, her hair and makeup were immaculate; she looked the epitome of the elegant and understated wife of a rich and indulgent man.

She frowned when she saw them, exclaiming, ‘Emma, here you are! Darling, you ought to be ready. You’ll want to make an entrance. I’ll keep everyone in the hall when they arrive and then you’ll come downstairs—’ She broke off when she saw that Emma was crying. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Tasha. I wanted her to wear this dress, but she won’t. She says she’s going to come down to dinner in that awful beige thing she’s had for years. You know how we planned everything so that we’d all be in white, grey and black so that the table would look just right with the Meissen dinner service, and now Tasha’s going to spoil it all.’

‘Really, Tasha,’ her mother disapproved. ‘You are being difficult. You can’t possibly wear that dreadful beige.’

‘Neither can I wear this,’ Natasha told her mother through gritted teeth. Emma was an arch manipulator when she chose. She’d deal with her later, though. ‘Remember it—the discreet little number Emma wore for her own engagement party, the dress that virtually gave the archdeacon apoplexy every time Emma leaned forward.’

‘Oh, that dress—’

‘Tasha’s exaggerating,’ Emma interrupted. ‘It wasn’t that bad. I only want her to wear it because I want her to look her best. She never makes the most of herself—you’ve said so yourself. With her hair done like mine instead of screwed up at the back of her head, and this dress…It’s time people saw how attractive she really is. Do you know, I heard Mrs T actually telling Sara that she needn’t worry about how she looked in her bridesmaid’s dress because Tasha was bound to look worse, and, while Sara is still young enough to improve, Tasha is virtually on the shelf.’

Natasha closed her eyes and mentally cursed her cousin. If her mother had one fault, it was an almost obsessive antipathy towards Mrs Templecombe, coupled with a desire to upstage her on each and every opportunity—a discreet and very ladylike desire, of course, but nevertheless…

‘Oh, did she?’she declared grimly now. ‘Emma is right, darling. That dress would look wonderful on you. You’re tall enough to carry it off.’

‘Am I? And what do you propose I should do about this?’ she demanded grittily, picking up the dress and holding it in front of her by the shoulders so that her mother could see the full effect of its plunging neckline.

‘It’s perfectly decent,’ Emma interposed quickly. ‘It only looks as though—’

‘It’s about to fall off,’ Natasha finished acidly for her. ‘I am not wearing this dress.’

‘Oh, dear, I’m afraid you’re going to have to,’ Emma told her, managing to look both guilty and triumphant at the same time. ‘You see, I went through your wardrobe when I arrived and…’

Natasha rushed past her and threw open her wardrobe doors, staring at the empty space where her clothes should have been. She always kept a few things here—her formal evening clothes, her gardening wear and one or two other outfits.

As she closed the door she was more angry with Emma than she had ever been in her life. ‘I am not wearing that dress, Emma,’ she told her icily. ‘Even it if means staying up here all night,’ she added fiercely.

‘Oh, darling, you can’t do that. Think how it would look. Imagine what Richard’s mother would say. No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do as Emma says and wear the dress. I’m sure it will look stunning on you.’

‘Yes, it will,’ Emma agreed eagerly. ‘And we’ve just got time to do your hair.’

‘Thank you, Emma, I’m quite capable of doing my own hair,’ Natasha told her grimly.

She was trapped and she knew it, but she could cheerfully have murdered her cousin when Emma paused by her bedroom door to remind her dulcetly, ‘Remember your promise…If Luke…’

Just for a moment, Natasha was tempted to tell her she had changed her mind, but she didn’t. She knew quite well that if Luke Freres did try to make trouble between Emma and her fiancé, she would have to stop him. Emma, for all her flightiness, her giddiness, genuinely did love Richard, and really had toned down her wild behaviour as she tried to conform to the standards expected by Richard’s family.

Privately Natasha thought that, the sooner Richard and Emma were free of the constraint of Richard’s family, the more chance of success their marriage would have. It was fortunate indeed that Richard’s first parish was so very far away in Northumberland, where there would be no risk of criticism and interference from his mother. Given the chance, Natasha suspected, Emma would make a very good, if somewhat unorthodox vicar’s wife. She genuinely cared about people and understood them, which was more than anyone could ever say for Mrs Templecombe, who expected everyone to live up to the same impossibly high standards as herself.

Twenty minutes later, as the first guests arrived, Natasha stood despairingly in front of her bedroom mirror wondering if she was out of her mind.

She had washed her hair, and blown it into the same stylish bob in which Emma wore hers, although minus the raffish spiky fringe which Emma adopted. With her hair worn in this style she acknowledged that there was a fleeting resemblance between Emma and herself, if one discounted the disparity in their heights.

Yes, the hair was all right, but as for the dress…

On, it looked even worse than she had expected. The hem finished at least a couple of inches above her knees, the deep décolleté Vs at the front and back of her bodice somewhere that fell just short of her waist. Cleverly sewn into the front of the dress were two pieces of soft shaping which allowed the observer to entertain himself while imagining that the slightest movement of her torso was likely to expose far more of her obviously naked breasts than merely the cleavage between them, yet ensuring that such a sartorial disaster was simply not possible, so that she could not claim as she had intended that she could not wear the thing for fear of disgracing them all by baring her chest to the entire assembled Templecombe clan—something her mother, whose taste was very sharp-edged, would never have allowed.

‘Oh, you’re ready, then.’

Natasha swung round, her appearance forgotten as she stared at her cousin. Emma was wearing something that looked as though it had been designed for a prim little puritan; grey silk with a huge white collar and cuffs and a delicate bell-shaped skirt that made her look fragile and delicate.

‘I’ve brought you these,’ Emma told her. ‘Black, silk stockings and satin shoes. I know you don’t have any.’

Gritting her teeth, Natasha threatened, ‘I don’t know why I’m letting you get away with this, Emma. You had it all planned, didn’t you? I look like the original scarlet woman, a fitting contrast to my demure little cousin.’

‘No, you don’t. You look stunning,’ Emma told her flatly, and a little wistfully. Her cousin would much rather be wearing the black dress than the grey, Natasha recognised, humour coming to her rescue, while she would have felt much more at home in Emma’s puritan outfit.

‘Your mother chose this for me. She said it was bound to create a good impression.’

‘Oh, it will,’ Natasha agreed humorously. ‘Pity she got her faiths mixed up, though. As I recall there never was much love lost between the aficionados of the high church and the Plymouth brethren.’

She saw that she had lost her cousin and sighed a little. ‘All right, I’ll wear your dress, Emma, but only…only because you haven’t given me any option, and only because I realise how important it is to you that Richard’s family accept you, although you know I suspect that Mrs T would respect you far more readily if you stood out against her and were your own person. Richard loves you for yourself, you know. If he’d wanted a carbon copy of his mother he’d have chosen—’

‘Louise Grey. Yes, I know that, but his mother doesn’t. She’s still convinced that a miracle is going to happen between now and the wedding day, and that Richard is going to open his eyes and realise that it’s Louise he loves and not me. And with that beast Luke to help her…If you’d been at the engagement party and seen the way he looked at me…’

‘In this? Come on, Emma, be your age. Any man—’

‘No, not that kind of way,’ Emma interrupted her irritably. ‘He looked at me…as though…as though I were a bad smell under his nose. Horrid man. You weren’t there…you don’t know.’

Natasha had missed the engagement party because she had been away on business, persuading a very difficult and jealous Italian manufacturer to allow her father to reproduce some of his designs for the English market.

‘Look, I’ll have to go down in a minute. I am grateful to you, Tasha. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t offered to help.’

‘Offered?’ Natasha protested indignantly, but Emma was already closing the door behind her.




CHAPTER TWO


SHE had never liked wearing stockings, Natasha reflected crossly—a fact which Emma had obviously remembered, since she had supplied her with a suspender belt as well as the impossibly fine black silk hosiery she was now wearing. And as for the height of these heels…She felt as though she were perched on stilts, towering above all the other women present.

Was it just her own self-conscious awareness of how very much more provocative the dress was than anything she would personally have chosen to wear that made her feel as though she were the cynosure of all eyes, or was it just because she was taller than Emma that she felt that the dress, startling enough when Emma had worn it, on her was not so much teasingly sensual as a direct and flamboyant statement of availability?

She had never in the space of one short half-hour collected so many admiring male glances nor so many disapproving female ones, nor was it an experience she would want to repeat, she decided irritably after she had fended off the fourth attempt of one of Richard’s ancient uncles to detach her from the rest of the guests.

‘I see Uncle Rufus has been making a play for you,’ Emma commented teasingly as she came up to her.

‘At his age, he ought to know better,’ Natasha retaliated acidly, and then added, ‘And don’t think I haven’t realised exactly why you blackmailed me into wearing this…this garment, Emma. With you dressed as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth and me looking like the original scarlet harlot—’

‘In black,’ Emma interposed dulcetly and then giggled. ‘I can’t wait to see Richard’s face when he arrives and sees us. He’s been delayed and he won’t be here until after dinner. He’ll be bringing Luke with him.’ She twisted her engagement ring nervously with her fingers. ‘You won’t let me down, will you, Tasha? I couldn’t bear to lose Ricky—not now. I never thought I’d ever feel like this. I never imagined I could ever become so emotionally dependent on anyone. It frightens me a little bit.’

Natasha’s stern expression softened. ‘I’m sure Luke Freres doesn’t have any intention of trying to come between you, but I won’t go back on my word, Emma. Even though I positively hate you for making me wear this appalling outfit. Stockings as well, and you know how much I loathe them.’

‘Really?’ Emma giggled again, giving her a coy look. ‘Men adore them. Richard said—’ She broke off and groaned. ‘Oh, no, here’s Mrs T bearing down on us, I’m off.’

‘Coward,’ Natasha whispered after her, as Emma adroitly whisked herself out of the way, leaving Natasha to face Richard’s mother alone.

‘Well, Natasha, this is a surprise,’ Mrs Templecombe said critically as she frowned at her. ‘We don’t expect to see you wearing that kind of outfit.’

Natasha had never particularly cared for the dean’s wife, although she had never attracted her criticism in the same way as Emma. That was the trouble about living in a small place where you had spent all your life. You knew everyone, and everyone knew you and felt free to air their opinions and views of your behaviour—even when you were long past the age when such views were welcome or necessary.

‘Anyway, isn’t that the dress Emma wore when she and Richard became engaged? I told her then it was most unsuitable.’

‘Which is why she passed it on to me,’ Natasha told her evenly. Much as she herself might sometimes disapprove of Emma’s behaviour, she was not going to aid and abet Mrs Templecombe in criticising her cousin.

‘Well, I must say I’m surprised to see you wearing it.’

‘I’m a career woman, Mrs Templecombe, and setting up my own business doesn’t allow me either the time or the money to waste on clothes shopping. To tell the truth I was grateful to Emma for offering to lend it to me.’

A lie if ever there was one, but Richard’s mother seemed to accept it at face-value.

‘Yes. I must say it was rather adventurous of you to open your own shop, and selling ecclesiastical fabrics to the general public.’

Her face suggested that what Natasha was doing was somehow or other in rather poor taste, making Natasha itch to say rebelliously that the cloth wasn’t sanctified, but instead she contented herself with murmuring, ‘Well, they’re very much in vogue at the moment, and are being snapped up by people with a taste for traditional fabrics who can’t afford to buy the original antiques.’

‘Ah, there you are, Lucille. Such a pity there isn’t time to show you round the gardens before dinner. I particularly wanted to show off the new section of the double border. We’ve planted up part of it with a mixture of old-fashioned shrub roses, underplanted with campanula and a very pretty mallow.’

Smiling gratefully at her aunt, Natasha adroitly excused herself, marvelling on the unsuitability of some people’s names as she walked away. Surely only the most doting of parents could have chosen to name Richard’s mother Lucille. Her second name was Elsie, which she much preferred and which everyone apart from Emma’s mother was wise enough to use.

If her aunt and mother were nothing else, they were certainly marvellous and inspired cooks, Natasha admitted when the main courses had been removed from the table and the sweet course brought in.

Another bone of contention between the ecclesiastical fraternity and her own family was the large pool of temporary domestic assistance her mother and aunt could call upon from the wives and daughters of some of the factory’s employees, who would cheerfully and happily help out on the domestic scene when necessary. This willingness to do such work stemmed as much from her aunt’s and mother’s treatment of those who supplied such help as from the generous wages paid by her father, both women being keen believers in the motto ‘Do unto others…’

It was a constant source of friction at the deanery and elsewhere in the cathedral close that they, who were frequently called upon to involve themselves in all manner of entertaining, were hard put to it to get so much as a regular cleaner, but then, with Mrs Templecombe to set the tone for the whole of the cathedral close, it was not perhaps surprising that they would find it difficult to hold on to their domestic help.

His mother, as Richard cheerfully admitted, had been born into the wrong century and adhered to an out-of-date and sometimes offensive policy of ‘us and them’.

As it was a warm evening, once the meal was over the guests were free to wander through the drawing-room’s french windows, on to the terrace overlooking the gardens. Natasha escaped there, avoiding the fulsome compliments of her coterie of elderly admirers, and the fierce glares of their wives.

Really, she reflected, as she stood breathing in the scented night air, she had had no idea that being a siren involved such hard work. It was just as well she had no ambitions in that direction.

In the distance, the cathedral bells tolled the hour. The bells were one of the first things she missed when she was away from home. Her little house inside the city was almost in the shadow of the bell tower, and she had grown used to timing her telephone calls to avoid clashing with their sonorous reminder of the passing hour.

However, much as she loved the cathedral, much as she enjoyed the pomp and ceremony of its religious feast days, much as she adored the richness of its fabrics and embroideries, if she ever got married she would want a simple ceremony: a simple, plain church, flowers from her aunt’s garden, a few special friends and only her very closest family.

She didn’t envy Emma her big wedding in the least, and she certainly did not envy her all the palaver that went with it. What she did envy her in a small corner of her mind was having found someone she loved and who loved her in return. Sighing to herself, Natasha wondered if she was ever going to totally grow out of what she now considered to be a silly, immature yearning for that kind of oneness with another human being.

She had lived long enough now to recognise that marriage was a far from idyllic state, one that should only be entered into after a long, cool period of appraisal and consideration, and preferably only if one had developed nerves of steel and was devoid of all imagination; and yet, even though she knew all this, there were still nights like tonight when the soft, perfumed air of the garden led her into all manner of impossible yearnings…

She slipped off her shoes and walked to the edge of the terrace away from the haunting scent of the roses climbing on the wall, and it was while she was standing there, looking out across the shadowed garden, that she heard a familiar voice exclaiming, ‘Emma, darling, there you are!’ and felt a pair of male hands on her shoulders.

Immediately she turned round, saying wryly, ‘Sorry, Richard, I’m afraid it’s not Emma, but Natasha.’

‘Tasha? Good heavens!’

At another time, the disbelief in his voice would have amused her, but now for some reason it merely served to underline her own aloneness.

‘For a moment I thought…You and Emma normally look so different. I’d never have mistaken the two of you. I… You look so different…’

Richard faltered into the kind of silent eloquence of a man who had confidently flung himself off the top of the highest diving-board, only to discover that the pool below him was empty of water, but Natasha took pity on him and said drily, ‘Luckily for you, I’m prepared to take that as a compliment, even if it was a rather back-handed one. I think you’ll find Emma’s in the drawing-room talking to your mother.’

‘Tasha, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘I know you didn’t,’ she agreed wryly, and then added severely, ‘Just don’t do it again.’

‘I suppose I’m so much in love with Emma that I can’t think of anyone else. I saw you out here wearing her dress—Why are you wearing it, by the way?’ he asked awkwardly. ‘I mean, it isn’t your sort of thing at all, is it?’

‘Oh, isn’t it?’ she asked quizzically, watching him flush uncomfortably, irritated without knowing why that he should automatically assume that she didn’t have either the ability or the desire to be seen as a sensual woman.

In fact, she was so engrossed in the shock of discovering that she could feel such illogical irritation that she didn’t realise they weren’t alone until he looked abruptly away from her and said eagerly, ‘Luke, come and meet Emma’s cousin, Natasha. Natasha, I’d like to introduce you to my, or rather my father’s cousin, Luke.’

Without knowing why, as she turned round Natasha felt both vulnerable and nervous.

The man walking along the terrace towards her had the familiar Templecombe features of a tall, athletic frame, good bone-structure and a shock of dark hair, but in him some rogue genes had added features which neither Richard nor his father possessed, she recognised uneasily.

Whereas the most common expression on the faces of Richard and his father was one of benign, almost unworldly kindness, on this man’s face was an expression of hard cynicism; his eyes, unlike Richard’s, weren’t brown, but a light, pale colour which seemed to reflect the light, masking his expression. He was taller than Richard, and broader, somehow suggesting that beneath his suit his body was packed with powerful muscles and that it had been used in far more vigorous and dangerous ways than playing a round of golf. Natasha, who had never in her life experienced the slightest curiosity or arousal at the thought of the nude male body, suddenly found herself wondering helplessly if the dark hair she could glimpse so disturbingly beneath the crisp whiteness of his shirt cuff grew as vigorously and as masculinely on other parts of his body, and if so what it would be like to feel its crispness beneath her fingertips.

She stiffened as though her body had received a jolt of electricity, and heard him saying evenly and without any inflexion in his voice at all, which somehow made it worse, ‘Emma’s cousin. Ah, yes, I thought I recognised the dress.’

‘Yes, so did I. In fact I thought for a moment that Tasha was Emma.’

‘Really?’

Natasha watched, fascinated, as the dark eyebrows rose indicating polite disinterest, and then said hurriedly, ‘I think we’d better go in. Emma will be wondering—’

‘If you’ve borrowed her fiancé as well as her dress,’ the cynical voice suggested, causing Natasha to grit her teeth and force back the sharp retort springing to her lips. He might move in the kind of circles where people swapped lovers as easily as they changed clothes, but if he thought that he could come here and insult her by suggesting…But what was the point in quarrelling with him? As a painter he might be worthy of her admiration, she thought angrily as she stalked past both men, realising too late that she had not retrieved her shoes, but as a man…

‘Won’t you need these?’

Seething, she turned round to discover that he was holding her shoes. Damn the man; he must have eyes like a hawk. Of course, as a painter he would be used to monitoring every tiny detail. Her heart started to jump erratically as he came towards her. His wrist and hand were tanned a rich brown, and as she put out her own hand to retrieve her shoes she noticed how pale and somehow delicate her own skin looked against his, how fragile her wrist-bones—so fragile that, if he were to curl his fingers around her wrist, he could break it as easily as he might snap a twig.

She gulped and swallowed, furious with herself for her idiotic flight of fantasy, almost snatching the shoes from him with an ungracious mutter of thanks.

Richard, keen to find Emma, had already gone inside, and she wished that his cousin would follow suit, she decided resentfully as she put the shoes on the terrace and then started to step into them.

As she slipped on the first one, the heel wobbled alarmingly and she kicked the other shoe over. Cursing the uneven paving of the terrace, she started to bend down to pick it up and then tensed as Luke Templecombe said coolly, ‘Allow me.’ He was already holding the shoe and there was nothing she could do other than grit her teeth and stoically concede defeat as he suggested mockingly, ‘I think it would be much simpler if you put your hand on my shoulder to steady yourself. The ground here is very uneven—hardly suitable for this kind of footgear, but then when ever did a woman consider suitability of prime importance when choosing what to wear?’

Natasha opened her mouth to deny his unfair comment, and then closed it again, her whole body going into shock as she felt his fingers close round her ankle.

‘Silk stockings,’ she heard him murmur, and then, unbelievably, his hand travelled up her leg, resting briefly on her knee before travelling expertly along her thigh, stopping on a level with the hem of her skirt.

For almost thirty seconds Natasha was too mortified to speak, to do anything other than tremble in furious indignation. When her parlysed vocal cords were working again, to her intense chagrin all she could manage was a very mundane and choked, ‘How dare you? What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I thought I was accepting the none too subtle invitation I was being given,’ he told her laconically. ‘No woman who wears black silk stockings and that kind of dress is doing so because she doesn’t want to be looked at and touched.’

Natasha was furious.

‘How dare you?’ she repeated, almost stammering in her rage. ‘I suppose you’re the kind of man who believes that women are never raped—that when they say no, they always mean yes. For your information, I am wearing this dress and these stockings, not for the disgusting reasons you have just suggested, but because—’

She stopped then, realising that she could not tell him exactly why she was dressed as she was. She looked wildly at him and saw that he was still watching her with cynical amusement, waiting for her to go on, and instead of completing her sentence she said thickly, ‘Oh, go to hell!’ and stormed rudely past him, ignoring the mocking laughter that followed her, so upset that she was physically trembling, that she wanted nothing more than to rip the dress from her skin and to consign it and the stockings to the fire, and then to bury her head under her bedclothes and give way to the relief of a prolonged bout of tears.

No one…no one had ever infuriated her like that, nor insulted her like that…no one had ever made her feel so many confusing or violent emotions within such a short space of time.

Emma had been right; the man was loathsome, abhorrent, dangerous…

Very dangerous, she acknowledged, giving a tiny shiver. Very, very dangerous indeed.




CHAPTER THREE


IT WAS the dress, Natasha told herself shakily half an hour later on her way back downstairs from her bedroom, to which retreat she had escaped to recover her poise and pull herself together.

It had to be the dress. It couldn’t be anything else. Surely nothing in her manner could possibly have given him the impression that she actually wanted…She swallowed hard, furious with herself for the shaky, nervous feeling invading the pit of her stomach—the feeling that said that underneath her anger, underneath her shock and fury had lain a very discernible and disturbing quicksilver flash of pleasure in the way his fingers had brushed her skin.

As she paused just inside the open drawing-room door, taking in the normality of the scene in front of her, it seemed impossible to believe it had actually happened.

The trouble with you, my girl, she told herself shakily, is that you’re too used to men regarding you as being as sexless as an elderly maiden aunt. Where’s your sense of humour? No doubt scores of women would have been highly flattered by his approach.

As she skirted the room, keeping a wary eye out for Luke Templecombe and wondering what on earth Richard’s mother was likely to say if she told her what had happened, she saw her cousin and Richard standing hand in hand gazing foolishly into one another’s eyes, the epitome of a young couple in love.

‘Stopped sulking, have you?’

She froze as the softly spoken words just brushed the tip of her ear. Intense waves of sensation washed right down over her body from that spot to the tips of her toes, making her want to curl them in protest.

She just—just—managed to stop herself from turning round, and instead gritted with acid sweetness, ‘I wasn’t aware that I was. If you’ll excuse me, I must go and help my mother.’

‘Not just yet.’

This time she couldn’t prevent herself from swinging round as she felt the now familiar sensation of those lean fingers clamping her wrist and holding her captive.

She panicked immediately, hissing furiously at him, ‘Will you let me go? What is it with you? Does it turn you on to…to force yourself on women?’

The smile he gave her was feral, making her shiver inwardly.

‘Does it give you a thrill to force yourself on men—visually, at least?’

Natasha discovered that she had clenched her fingers into a fist; she also discovered that nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to hit the hard male face staring into her own with the open palm of her hand—a discovery which shocked her into stunned silence. No man had ever made her feel like this…infuriated her like this…insulted her like this.

‘For your information, I am wearing this dress because I happen to like it,’ she lied flagrantly.

‘Do you, or is it the sensation of male eyes following your every movement that you like? Come on, be honest—no woman wears a dress like that unless she wants a man to look at her and be sexually aware of her.’

There was nothing she could say. In her heart of hearts, she knew what he was saying was perfectly true.

‘Admittedly I suppose it’s possible that a naïve woman might perhaps foolishly wear such a dress for one particular man, forgetting in the heat of her—er—desire that something intended to arouse only one particular male was likely to have the same effect on every male who sees her in it.’

Natasha stared at him and then said huskily, ‘If that’s meant to be an apology—’

‘It isn’t,’ came back the crisp response. ‘I don’t consider I have anything to apologise for.’

He had released her wrist and as she stepped back from him, rubbing her wrist as she glared at him, even though the pressure he had exerted had not hurt her at all, he bent his head and murmured softly against her ear, ‘Think yourself fortunate it was only your leg I touched. The combination of that black silk jersey and the knowledge that you aren’t wearing a damn thing underneath it tempts far more than a man’s gaze to linger on your breasts. Personally, I’ve always considered that a woman with anything over a thirty-two B chest should never be seen in public without her bra, but I must admit that you’ve gone a long way to change my mind, sexually if not aesthetically, although I would suggest that such a cleavage is rather gilding the lily; a simple high neckline would have been just as alluring and far more subtle.’

Natasha gaped at him in disbelief.

‘You look like a little girl who’s suddenly seen her grandmother turn into the wicked wolf,’ he taunted her. ‘Surely you knew the effect your outfit was going to have?’

Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha saw Mrs Templecombe watching them frowningly. The last thing she wanted was for Richard’s mother to realise how upset she was, and so, ignoring his remark, she said brittly, ’Richard and Emma make a good couple, don’t they? I think they’ll be very happy together.’

‘Do you?’ He gave her a sardonic look. ‘Personally I’d have thought them exceptionally ill suited.’ He saw the outrage darken her eyes and added cruelly, ‘Your cousin has to be one of the most light-minded females I have ever come across, while Richard is destined to be a Templecombe in the same mould as his father and his before that. He’s a dedicated, very serious young man, who at the moment is infatuated by a pretty face and a willing body. Do you honestly want me to believe that they have the remotest chance of happiness together? I give them six months or less before she’s as bored as hell with playing at being the vicar’s wife and is looking around for the kind of diversion I caught her enjoying last year—on the very night she and Richard announced their engagement.’

Natasha discovered that her heart was thumping frantically, as though she had suddenly and frighteningly come face to face with something she found dangerous. And this man was dangerous, she recognised inwardly, both to Emma’s happiness and to her.

‘What exactly are you trying to say?’ she asked him unevenly.

He gave her a long look.

‘Oh, come on, don’t tell me you don’t know about your cousin’s premarital fling with Jake Pendraggon. I myself saw her leaving his house the very morning after she and Richard announced their engagement.’

As she looked into his face, any thoughts of trying to explain, to make him understand vanished, and she heard herself saying coldly, ‘I think there must be some misunderstanding…’

‘I don’t think so—the facts spoke for themselves. Facts which I suspect Richard remains ignorant of, poor fool. And if she was unfaithful to him on the very night they got engaged…She was wearing that dress you’ve got on tonight.’

Without stopping to think, Natasha drew herself up to her full height and lied determinedly.

‘You mean you think you saw Emma. In actual fact I was the one you saw. I arrived home too late to attend the party. I rang Jake and he invited me to go round. Emma had come home by then. She knew I didn’t want to drive back to my own place and get changed, so she offered to lend me her dress. Jake likes his women to look…’

‘Available?’ he supplied silkily for her.

’Hello, Luke. You two certainly seem deep in conversation.’

Both of them swung round at the sound of Emma’s voice. Richard was standing beside her and, as though she had been fabricating lies all her life, Natasha said smoothly, forcing a light laugh, ‘Emma, you’ll never guess what—Luke saw me leaving Jake’s house last year, after your engagement party, and he actually thought I was you.’

Somehow or other Emma managed to look not just shocked but affronted as well. ‘I did help Jake out with some research on his book,’she said stiffly, ‘and there was some silly gossip at the time. I think you found it quite amusing, didn’t you, Tasha? Are you still in touch with Jake?’

‘No,’ Natasha told her curtly, suddenly very annoyed with her cousin. It was one thing to help Emma out of a difficult situation; it was quite another for her cousin to openly brand her as Jake Pendraggon’s lover.

‘Richard tells me you won’t be able to make it for the wedding, Luke,’ Emma was saying.

‘No, I’m afraid not. I’m tied to a commission I accepted some time ago.’

It was said so urbanely and with so little regret that Natasha couldn’t help reflecting that he was not really sorry to be missing the ceremony at all.

Suddenly she felt so exhausted, so drained that she could barely stand up. The pit of her stomach felt as though it were lined with lead; her head ached and all she really wanted to do was to go somewhere where she could be alone. Excusing herself, she hurried towards the door. Some fresh air might help to clear her head. Not on the terrace this time—that was too public, too visible. No, she could creep out of the back door and wander round her aunt’s closed kitchen garden.

In the porch off the kitchen, she hesitated long enough to put on an old pair of trainers and the Barbour jacket her aunt used when she was gardening. She felt cold inside. Cold and empty in some way that made her want to hug her arms round her body.

As she let herself into the kitchen garden through the wooden door, she paused to breathe in the cleansing smell of her aunt’s herbs. She wished it might be as easy to cleanse her mind, her soul of the besmirchment it had suffered tonight. It was no use telling herself that Luke Templecombe didn’t know the first thing about her, that the woman he had insulted and scorned was not really her at all. She still felt sore, humiliated, defiled…

There was enough light from the moon for her to see the brick paths quite clearly. There was a seat under the wall, framed by an arbour of grapes which her aunt kept out of sentiment, claiming that the fruit they produced was worse than useless. She went and sat down on it, leaning back and closing her eyes, breathing deeply as she tried to unwind. It took her several concentrated minutes of forcing herself to breathe evenly and deeply before she felt she was properly back in control of herself.

That infuriating man. She prided herself on her calm, unflappable nature, but he had well and truly pierced the barrier of her self-control and revealed a woman of emotions and feelings even she had not known existed. Don’t think about him, she warned herself as she felt her tension returning, but it was a very difficult mental command to obey when his cynical, vaguely piratical features insisted on forming themselves against the darkness of her closed eyes.

‘Ah…Titania by moonlight.’

The too familiar, drawling voice shocked her into opening her eyes and staring in disbelief as she saw the object of her thoughts standing in front of her.

Too disturbed by his presence to guard her words, she said acidly, ‘Well, you’re certainly no Oberon, but we’re definitely ill met.’

She stood up abruptly, intent on escaping from him just as quickly as she could. He was standing several feet away from her and it should have been easy, but for some reason her feet seemed to be stubbornly glued to the path, while he moved easily and lithely towards her, blocking her exit.

‘What is it you want?’ Natasha heard herself asking breathlessly, helplessly almost, and inwardly she railed against the weakness in her voice, and her folly in asking the question.

He seemed to think so too, because he laughed, a soft, dangerous sound that raised the flesh on her arms, his teeth a brief flash of white in the dimness of the garden.

‘Such sweet innocence. You sound about sixteen years old, but it won’t wash, my dear. You know exactly what I want.’

He took a step towards her and then another, while she stood there like a transfixed rabbit, unable to move.

When he took hold of her, his hands sliding beneath the heavy fabric of her borrowed Barbour, she shuddered deeply, and, as though he found the sensitive reaction of her flesh intensely satisfying, he murmured against her ear, ‘I’ve been wanting to do this all evening.’

Distantly Natasha was aware of his sliding the heavy jacket off her shoulders, and binding her to him with arms hard with muscles she could feel even through the fabric of their clothes. His head angled towards her, blotting out the moon. Panic attacked her as she suddenly recognised her own foolishness in not escaping earlier. Her mouth had gone dry; her lips felt stiff and cold. She badly wanted to touch them with her tongue, a nervous reaction, and one which she was well aware he would read as intensely provocative. She could see the clear white of his eyes and the light reflective gleam of his iris. She could even see the hard angle of his jaw and the firm curve of his mouth. Soon that mouth would be touching hers…Soon…Was she mad? she wondered in a frantic surge of reality. Had he cast some sort of spell over her, to render her so quiescent and submissive?

His mouth only a breath away from her own, he told her softly, ‘I’ve been wanting to do this all evening, wondering how you would feel and taste.’

‘Well, I haven’t,’she countered jerkily, trying to pull back from him and escape, but it was too late.

As she turned her head to avoid his kiss, he caught hold of it, sliding his palm along her jaw, imprisoning her so that she couldn’t move her head without hurting herself, his voice edged with mockery and cynicism as he told her, ‘You’re a liar.’

And then he was kissing her—not roughly or cruelly as she had always naïvely imagined men did kiss women for whom all they felt was an emotionless physical ache, but with such great subtlety, such instinctive awareness of her own needs and responses that it was as though the whole world had caved in around her, leaving her floating helplessly in a dimension she had never even imagined existed.

The pressure of his mouth moving against her own was at once so caressive, so knowing, so persuasive, that she simply didn’t have any defences against it. Despairingly she recognised that, while her mind might not have wanted this intimacy, her body certainly had, and, humiliatingly, he must have been aware of that wanting even though she herself had not.

Helplessly unable to stop herself giving him the response he demanded, she heard him make a small sound deep in his throat, and felt her own flesh thrill in recognition of what it meant. His hand was no longer cupping her face; instead it was caressing her throat, pushing aside the shoulder of her dress so that his fingers could caress the smooth, pale flesh he had revealed.




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