by Penny Jordan
When once she would have laughed, now Lucy could only manage the paltriest of wan smiles, Marcus noticed bitterly.
Why? Because secretly she was thinking she wanted to spend her Christmas with Blayne? The pain that thought caused him was almost beyond bearing. Where had it come from and what did it mean?
She still hadn’t said a word to him about seeing Blayne, and Marcus wondered how much contact there had been between them since then.
‘No.’ Lucy gave him a rueful look. ‘Mother is talking about us all going to Framlingdene and staying there.’
Framlingdene was the National Trust Property that had originally been the country seat of Lucy’s father’s family. The family had retained the right to use a suite of rooms there.
‘Will there be enough room for all of us?’
‘No, not really. I think it would be better if we simply stayed here in London. We normally have a big family party at Great-Aunt Alice’s on Boxing Day, since she’s got the space, and I imagine we could all have dinner there quite easily.’
‘Well, it certainly makes more sense than driving up to Yorkshire. Lucy—is something wrong?’
His question shocked and surprised Marcus almost as much as it obviously did Lucy. Since when had he wanted to talk about emotions?
Lucy’s colour came and went whilst she struggled between truth and fear—and love.
In the end, love won out.
‘No, of course not. Why should there be?’
‘No particular reason—other than that you don’t exactly look like a glowing newly married,’ Marcus heard himself saying curtly.
‘Glowing newly marrieds are normally glowing because they are in love with one another,’ Lucy told him lightly. ‘And we aren’t.’
She would have to tell him soon that she wanted to end their marriage. Soon, but not yet. Please, just let her have a little more time with him. One birthday, one Christmas…she would tell him before the New Year, she promised herself.
Lucy hesitated outside the jeweller’s. It was Marcus’s birthday today, and tonight they were going out for dinner with his family. She had already bought him a new silk tie, and she certainly couldn’t afford to buy him one of the expensive watches displayed in the window in front her.
Besides, he would replace his stolen Rolex himself in due course. It had been insured.
Even so…There was a discreet sign in the window saying that they also sold good quality ‘previous owner’ watches.
She could always go in and enquire.
Half an hour later she was back on the pavement outside the shop, huddling into her coat to protect herself from the icy blast of the wind, the Rolex watch on which she had just spent virtually every penny she had in her bank account safely tucked in her handbag.
It was exactly the same model as the watch Marcus had had stolen, and she was thrilled to be able to give it to him for his birthday. Would he keep it for ever? Even after they were divorced? The pain caught her breath and held her immobile in its grip.
They were going for dinner at the Carlton Towers—mainly because in Marcus’s opinion they served the best steak in London.
Marcus arrived home just as Lucy stepped out of the shower. By the time he had reached the bedroom she had wrapped herself in a towel and was seated on their bed, his watch carefully gift wrapped beside her.
‘What’s this?’ he demanded as she handed it to him.
‘Your birthday present.’
‘I thought I had that this morning.’
‘Your tie? Yes, I know. But this is something extra,’ Lucy told him huskily.
She was beginning to have an effect on him that wasn’t what he had planned, Marcus acknowledged as he sat down beside her and unwrapped his present.
He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. But when he removed the paper and saw the familiar Rolex box he was surprised.
‘It isn’t new, I’m afraid. I couldn’t…But it’s just like the one you lost.’
It wasn’t—not quite—because the one he had lost had originally belonged to his father. But he didn’t tell her that. Instead he put the watch on without a word, and then took hold of her and kissed her fiercely.
It seemed to have been such a long time since he had kissed her like this—even though in reality they had only been back from their honeymoon a fortnight. And if he had not made love to her as passionately since their return then that was very probably down to the fact that she had not encouraged him to do so. Lucy had that brief thought, and then she stopped thinking about anything as he rolled her down onto the bed beneath him and kept on kissing her.
Yearningly Lucy kissed him back. She loved him so very much…
‘You two are late. What kept you?’ Lucy’s mother asked, when Lucy and Marcus hurried into the restaurant of the Carlton Towers hotel.
Automatically Lucy looked at Marcus. Thank goodness it was too dark in here for anyone else to notice the look Marcus was giving her.
‘Marcus, you’ve got your watch back,’ Beatrice announced halfway through dinner.
‘Actually, no. Lucy gave me this for my birthday.’
Again he looked at her, and this time Lucy suspected that Beatrice had seen the gleam in his eyes, and had guessed exactly what the giving of the gift had led to, because she suddenly grinned and said quietly to Lucy, ‘Aha—now I think I know why we weren’t the last to arrive for once. I thought it was unlike my normally prompt brother to be late.’
It was gone midnight when they finally got home.
‘Only another three weeks to Christmas,’ Lucy said sleepily.
‘Mmm. Early in the New Year would be a good time for us to start looking for that country house we’ve been thinking about, I suspect.’
Lucy’s heart missed a beat. Early in the New Year their marriage would be as good as over, thanks to Nick and Andrew Walker.
‘What’s wrong?’ Marcus asked her sharply.
‘Nothing. What makes you think there is?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that the emotional temperature has just dropped by ten degrees might have something to do with it,’ Marcus responded, his voice every bit as cool. ‘Something’s on your mind, Lucy.’
‘Nothing is on my mind. I’m just tired, that’s all,’ she lied.
‘I want to get this business of Prêt a Party’s debts sorted out before the New Year,’ Marcus announced. ‘I think we should go and see McVicar together and—’
‘No!’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve already told you. Prêt a Party is my business and I want to keep it that way. And—and I don’t want to be bullied into doing something I don’t want to do!’
Marcus didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. The look he gave her said it all.
Lucy wanted to plead with him to understand, but how could she do that? Dorland had not been joking when he had said to her that Andrew Walker was a bad man. People’s happiness, people’s lives meant nothing to him, or to those he worked for; she knew that. Ending her marriage to Marcus was the only way she had of protecting him. It was like…it was like performing an amputation to save a person’s life, she told herself. But whilst Marcus would survive that amputation, and probably go on to make a perfectly happy life for himself without her in it, she knew that losing him would leave her bereft for the rest of her life.
Only a week now and it would be Christmas. All the Knightsbridge shops and of course the big stores—Harrods and Harvey Nicks—had been flaunting their Christmas finery for weeks. Lucy had done all her shopping—her cards were posted, and her presents wrapped. Mrs Crabtree had taken some extra holiday so that she could spend more time with her daughter and her grandchildren, and Lucy had been enjoying showing off her domesticity to Marcus via her cooking—even if he had turned the tables on her by cooking for her last night.
He hadn’t mentioned Prêt a Party again, but there was a tension between them that hurt her—though at the same time she was clinging to every second of the ti
me she had with him.
At least he was still making love to her—every night, in fact—with skill and passion and determination. But not, of course, with love.
The doorbell rang as she was on her way through the hall. Automatically she went to answer it, and then froze as she saw Nick standing on the steps.
She tried to close the door, but Nick pushed it open and stepped into the hall, telling her sullenly, ‘What are you doing? I thought you’d be pleased to see me. Andrew said you would be when he told me to come round.’
Andrew Walker had sent him here? Why was she not surprised?
‘Nick, you shouldn’t have come here,’ she protested. ‘If Marcus saw you…’
‘He isn’t here, is he?’
‘No, he’s at work. But if he were here—’
‘But he isn’t,’ Nick cut her off. His earlier sullenness had been replaced by the slick, facile falsity of what Nick considered to be charm and what she knew to be a shallow pretence of it.
‘You know, Lucy, Andrew’s right—we did rush into divorcing without giving our marriage a proper chance. I admit that I was a bit thoughtless, and selfish…’
Had Andrew Walker made him repeat those words until he had them off pat? Lucy wondered cynically. They certainly didn’t ring true, and neither did they accord with the look of patronising conceit she could see in Nick’s eyes as he looked at her.
‘I’m not surprised you regret marrying Carring. I suppose when you compare him to me, you’re bound to find him wanting—especially in bed.’ He smirked. ‘Bed is my speciality, after all—remember?’
Lucy longed to tell him that all she remembered of his so-called speciality was how barren and empty it had been, in every single way, but of course she could not do so.
‘You were my first lover,’ she told him quietly instead.
‘Yeah, and I guess you took it for granted that all men would be as good as me—right? Silly little Lucy.’ He shook his head mock-playfully. ‘But never mind. Pretty soon you and I can start making up for lost time. In fact…’ He looked towards the stairs. ‘Why don’t we start right now, eh? Why don’t I take you upstairs and give you a very special Christmas present?’
Lucy wanted to scream at him to leave before she was physically sick. But if she caused him to think that she loved Marcus then she would be putting Marcus in very great danger—and giving Andrew Walker something to blackmail her with.
‘Not here,’ she demurred, trying to look regretful. ‘Perhaps if I came to you…’ Never in a thousand years.
‘Came to me? How about I make you come for me, Lucy? And it wouldn’t take long, would it? I can see in your eyes how much you want me. Come on…’
Nick was reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him. She could smell the too-strong scent of his cologne, overpoweringly unpleasant after the familiarly of Marcus’s cool freshness.
‘Nick—no! I was just on my way out…to meet my mother,’ she fibbed.
‘Andrew told me to give you a message from him,’ he told her, abruptly releasing her. ‘You told him that you planned to leave Carring, but you’re still living here with him.’
‘I can’t just walk out,’ Lucy protested.
‘No…’ Nick gave a speculative look around the hallway. ‘I dare say you want to make sure you get a nice fat slice of his millions before you leave, and I don’t blame you for that.’
‘Yes. That’s…that’s exactly what I’m planning to do,’ Lucy agreed untruthfully. ‘And I can’t meet up with Andrew at the moment, Nick. Marcus might get suspicious. In fact he’s already suspicious because I won’t let him become a partner in Preêt a Party.’
‘Well, Andrew’s getting very impatient—and so are the men he represents. Andrew said to tell you that if you don’t get rid of Marcus voluntarily, then he’s going to have to make arrangements to do it for you. Oh, and he said to tell you not to even think about telling Carring what’s happening, because that will be as good as signing his death warrant.’
Lucy had no idea how long it was since Nick had left. And she didn’t know either that her body was cramped and stiff from sitting on the stairs, her arms locked tightly around her knees as though she were trying to stanch a wound that would not stop bleeding. She did know—vaguely—that it must have gone dark outside, because the hallway was in darkness.
Dissociated thoughts and images jumbled together inside her head. The first night she and Marcus had been to bed together; the fact that this weekend they had planned to go and look for a Christmas tree—Lucy wanted a real one and, although he had grimaced, Marcus had given in and promised to take her out to get one. The espresso machine he had bought her—the thrill it had given her the first time she had woken up beside him here in this house, as his wife; the pleasure it gave her just to look at him and watch him and the pain it gave her too, as she stored every second of time she had with him with the greed that only the deprived and starving knew.
Soon now all that would be over. It had to be. Otherwise…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WHAT!’
‘You heard me, Marcus,’ Lucy repeated shakily. ‘I want a divorce.’
She could see how shocked he was, how unbelieving and how white-faced with anger, even in the soft lighting of their bedroom.
‘We’ve only been married a month.’
He couldn’t believe the intensity of the pain ripping him apart.
‘I know. I’ve counted every day of it. Every hour,’ Lucy told him truthfully. ‘It isn’t working, Marcus. And I won’t—I can’t—stay in a marriage that doesn’t make me happy. I’ll find somewhere to live, and then we can start divorce proceedings…’
‘No!’
Lucy looked up at him.
‘I warned you when we married that I was making a lifetime commitment to you, Lucy, and that I expected the same commitment back from you. There won’t be any divorce,’ Marcus told her furiously.
He wasn’t going to let her go. Not ever. She was his and he loved her.
He loved her? He loved Lucy?
But that wasn’t possible. He had sworn years ago that he was not going to allow himself to fall in love. It was as though there was a vulnerable fault inside him, similar to those responsible for causing earthquakes, and his emotions—those emotions he had buried and denied and stubbornly refused to acknowledge could exist—were causing so much pressure within him that they simply could not be controlled.
Pain, grief, jealousy, and a determination never to let her go exploded inside him with a subterranean force that sent a mighty surge of love and need roaring through him, crashing through every barrier he had erected against them.
He loved Lucy!
His passionate refusal caused Lucy to waver between wild hope and joy—and the stark, horrifying reality of what his refusal meant. She hadn’t expected this kind of reaction from him. She had expected him to tell her to pack her things and leave straight away.
‘All right, don’t divorce me, then,’ she told him, making herself scowl and shrug, and keeping her voice cold and sharp. ‘But you can’t stop me leaving you, Marcus, and that is exactly what I intend to do. So far as I am concerned, our marriage is over.’
Marcus struggled to suppress an unfamiliar desire to break something—because something inside him was breaking. His heart?
He had known ever since they had come back from honeymoon that Lucy wasn’t happy, and he had believed he knew why. But he had not known then what his own feelings were. He did now! Why should he let Blayne take her from him and ruin her life a second time? She was so much better off with him—even if she was too besotted with her ex-husband to see that herself. One day she would thank him for what he was doing; one day she would come to realise, as he saw with such blinding clarity himself now, that they were meant for one another. He wanted to reason with her, to plead with her, but the unfamiliarity of dealing with such intense emotions was too much for him. He could feel jealousy, burning too high and too hot. It burst out o
f him in a slew of bitter, angry words as he warned her savagely:
‘Don’t think I don’t know what all this is about, Lucy. Because I do. I know exactly what’s been going on behind my back.’
Marcus knew? Her heart was hammering. He couldn’t, could he?
‘It’s Blayne, isn’t it?’
He heard her give a small, betraying gasp of shocked admission.
‘I saw you with him at the airport.’
Marcus had seen that? And he thought…
‘That was a coincidence!’
What else could she say? Lucy wondered, as she struggled to grasp what Marcus was saying to her. Initially she had thought he meant he knew about Prê a Party and Andrew Walker, but now she realised that Marcus thought she wanted to end their marriage because she was still in love with Nick. And wasn’t it better that he should continue to think that, rather than have him become suspicious and start to ask questions she could not answer?
‘A very unhappy coincidence—as I believe your common sense would tell you if only you would let it,’ Marcus was continuing bitterly. ‘Surely you can’t have forgotten what he did to you?’
‘It’s different now,’ Lucy told him. How true that was. ‘He’s changed.’ And how untrue that.
‘He’s changed? But have you, Lucy? Are you sure you really know what you want? After all, in my bed you wanted me…’
‘No!’
Yes. Yes…
‘I thought I did, but I didn’t. Not really.’
Yes, really—now and for ever. Only you and always you, Marcus. This is killing me, and I can’t bear it. I love you so much.
‘You’re lying, and what’s more I intend to prove it to you.’
Marcus could hardly believe what he was saying and doing. He was a man out of control, driven mad by love.
He had reached for Lucy before she could stop him, dragging her against his body whilst his mouth took and then savaged hers in a kiss of furious male anger.
Downstairs, the Christmas tree they had bought at the weekend, and which Lucy had spent all day yesterday dressing, shimmered in the window, its lights twinkling softly with promise and hope. Upstairs, in the bedroom above it, there was no promise and no hope. Only a man and a woman locked together in an embrace devoid of both, and the savagery of Marcus’s anger.
