The Price of a Wife

by Helen Brooks

  'No—no, thank you,' she said hastily as she reached for a magazine at her elbow. 'I'm fine.'

  For the rest of the short flight she kept her eyes very firmly on the magazine on her lap, although she didn't take in a word of what she professed to read as she repeated the ground rules she had drummed into herself over and over again in her mind.

  This was a business trip, pure and simple. Admittedly she was staying at his house—she hadn't been able to get out of that one, despite two or three phone calls, the last of which had been both abrupt and terse on Luke's side-but that shouldn't be too much of a problem if she remembered she was an employee in his service, nothing more. She was here to work—he had women like that voluptuous brunette, Catherine, for his other activities—and she had no doubt at all that the dark-haired siren would know exactly how to please an experienced man of the world like Luke. Whereas she… She wouldn't have a clue, she admitted silently. Not a due.

  'Here we go. The car should be waiting outside.' As they left the plane Luke took her elbow in a firm grip, and he steered her through the airport formalities, his large bulk protecting her from the carelessly carried suitcases and sharp elbows that her tininess always seemed to bring her into contact with. She was vitally conscious of him at her side, every nerve in her body sensitised and tight as she struggled to maintain her aplomb.

  As they stepped through the massive glass doors of the airport terminal the light outside was blinding, a sizzling hot sun blazing down from a sharp, crystal-clear blue sky in which there wasn't the faintest trace of a cloud. The air was dry and scorchingly fierce, the lack of trees and mile upon mile of parked cars creating their own mini furnace.

  'It will be better in the car.' Luke had seen her wince as the heat attacked the sensitive pale skin that went with her colouring. 'Have you brought some sunblock?'

  'Sunblock?' She stared at him in surprise. She should have done—she always, always did when she went abroad— but this time she had forgotten. And it would be this time, wouldn't it? she thought balefully, acutely aware of those silver-grey eyes watching her so knowingly. 'I thought I'd get some here,' she lied airily, just as a stunningly beautiful pale gold Rolls-Royce drew up beside than, complete with chauffeur in matching livery.

  'On time as always, Louis.' The chauffeur nodded and smiled a greeting before busying himself with the suitcases. Luke glanced down at her lazily. 'The car has an excellent air-conditioning system, so you should be more comfortable inside, and the suncream is no problem. We have a number of creams and oils at the house—a necessity through the summer here. My housekeeper's grandchildren visit several times a week to play in the pool and they are all very fair, so I'm sure there will be something suitable.'

  'Oh, right. Thank you.' As she slid into the magnificent car she almost felt like royalty for a moment, before she reminded herself that she was in exactly the same position as the chauffeur in front. She was a paid employee, nothing more, and this seductive style of living—and it was seductive, she admitted to herself—was just a brief glimpse of how the other half lived. But she could enjoy it while she had the opportunity, she thought wryly as the big car purred out of the airport. She would probably never get the chance to travel in such luxury again.

  Luke's chateau was situated halfway between St Tropez and Toulon, with its own private stretch of beach and small harbour, and they drove straight there, past grand casinos and luxury hotels and mile upon mile of golden sand fringed by an azure-blue sea, with waving palm trees completing a picture of pure fantasy.

  'It's beautiful here,' Josie said quietly as the cool car whisked them through streets in which every other vehicle was a Mercedes or a Ferrari.

  'You think so?' Luke smiled down at her, faintly amused by her rapt contemplation of the view beyond the window. 'I guess it has its own type of charm, but the real South of France is inland, and that really is beautiful. I spent a good deal of my childhood exploring the region with John on our bikes—we'd take off for days at a time.'

  'You wait till you see lavender fields in full bloom, or smell the perfume of mimosa and thyme and scented olive groves on a still summer's evening as you sit on a hill overlooking a sleepy medieval village—' He caught her look of astonishment and stopped abruptly, his mouth curving in a sardonic smile. 'We were perfectly ordinary little boys, Josie,' he said softly, 'and we did the camping trips and nights under the stars that all children enjoy.'

  'Perfectly ordinary'? she asked herself in disbelief. Did he really believe that? Those 'perfectly ordinary' children had been the sole heirs to a vast empire that provided daily bread and butter for thousands of people. He really couldn't say that was ordinary, could he? And when he'd ridden home after one of those camping trips he had stepped back into a world of wealth and power and servants, where his every need had been taken care of. 'Didn't your parents worry that something might happen to you both?' she asked quietly, careful not to betray her thoughts.

  'Not really…' He paused reflectively. 'Well, perhaps my mother on occasion. My father was a very tough individual and he brought John and me up to think and act for ourselves, but my mother was born in Italy to a family of considerable wealth. When she was a little girl one of her brothers was kidnapped by the local mafia and held to ransom; he was returned unharmed once the price for his freedom had been met but I think the incident still haunts her to this day.'

  'However, she was and is a sensible woman, and she knew she couldn't keep two boys wrapped up in cotton wool. Once she had drilled us in basic road sense and the inevitable 'no talking to strangers' she had the sense to let us go. Claude, our gardener's son, who was eight years older than us, used to come with us at first, but once we reached eleven or twelve we used to give him the slip.'

  'We were little terrors sometimes,' he added softly as he looked back on golden summer days that could never be repeated. 'Real little terrors.'

  'Did John look like you?' she asked tentatively, unsure of how much she could ask without raking up painful memories.

  'We were identical.' He said nothing more for a full minute as he remained deep in reminiscences of his own, and then suddenly he shook himself out of it, turning to her with a dry smile. 'I bet you find it hard to imagine two of me, don't you?' he said, with a mocking cynicism that told her he had no doubt as to what her opinion of him was. 'But I often think it must be hard for my mother when she looks at me and sees only one of us; she was so proud of her two boys. The Italian in her,' he added indulgently. 'She is a firm believer in families of eight or nine children, but due to complications when she had John and me more children were out of the question.'

  'I see.' She forced her voice not to betray the kick in the stomach she had felt at his words. 'So that's where your approval of big families originates, from your mother's genes?' Don't continue this, she told herself silently. Stop now.

  'I'm half-Italian,' he agreed easily. The silver eyes had narrowed on her face but she could read nothing in their glittering depths. 'I think four or five children is nice. I'm not quite in the 'barefoot and pregnant' league, but my wife will have to produce at least one little male Hawkton to carry on the family name—to satisfy my relations if nothing else. The rest can be girls as far as I'm concerned,' he added magnanimously. 'I like little girls better than little boys on the whole.'

  'And big girls too, no doubt.' She didn't know what power was enabling her to sit still and smile as if his words had meant nothing at all, but she blessed it anyway.

  'The odd one.' He had become still as he looked at her, the strange hue of his eyes making them seem like piercing lasers. 'The very odd one these days. I find I like them tiny, with hair like tangled red silk and eyes that hold a whole host of shadows I can only guess at—'

  'Luke—'

  'And here's the chateau.' They had just approached enormous gates set in a high stone wall through which the car passed smoothly and with a stately flourish that proclaimed it was home. A long, winding drive snaked through bowling-green-smoo
th lawns dotted with tall, gracious trees and carefully positioned flowerbeds, and beyond the chateau itself, which was a vision of elegant turrets and domes, Josie caught a glimpse of the turquoise-blue sea, shimmering in the noon-day sun.

  'It's something of a fake, I'm afraid,' Luke continued as the powerful car drew up outside the massive studded front door, 'My great-grandfather had it built as a second home just over a hundred years ago in the likeness of an ancient chateau he admixed, but due to the fact that the Hawkton name was only just beginning to establish itself the original building was considerably smaller than what you see now. My grandfather added a complete wing to house the ballroom, and then my father developed the grounds at the back of the house leading down to the sea to include a swimming pool and tennis courts and so on. A French hotch-potch,' he added smilingly.

  'Hotch-potch?' Josie stared at him in disbelief before turning to the truly beautiful building of mellow old stone topped by deep red domes and turrets and threaded with tall, narrow windows in which leaded glass glittered and shone. 'You don't mean that,' she said accusingly.

  'No, perhaps I don't.' His voice was very deep now, and soft. 'You like it, then?'

  'It's exquisite,' she said very definitely.

  'Come and see inside.' After he'd helped her from the car she was disconcerted to find that he kept a casual arm round her waist as they walked to the door, which had just been opened by a pretty little maid complete in black dress, white apron and cap.

  'Bonjour, monsieur, bonjour, mademoiselle.' Bright black eyes flashed interestedly over Josie's face before being demurely lowered as the girl stood aside for them to enter.

  'Bonjour, Josephine.' As they stepped through the door into a huge sun-splotched hall a large woman in a severe black dress hurried forward, hands outstretched. 'Madame Marat, my housekeeper,' Luke whispered in her ear. 'If you get on the right side of her she'll be a great help to you.'

  And if I don't? Josie thought wryly as she smiled and nodded at the somewhat dour-faced Frenchwoman who had clasped one of Luke's large hands in her own plump fingers.

  'Monsieur, you have been away too long. We have wondered when you would come.' There was no doubting the large woman's pleasure at seeing her employer, and when she was joined by the cook—a thin, angular woman with a tall, bony body who was the very antithesis of Josie's idea of the average cook—she too fairly bubbled with delight.

  Well, his staff like him, Josie thought drily as, once the greetings were over, they walked through into a large drawing room. Luke gestured for her to be seated in one of the massive winged armchairs facing the French doors, which were open onto the garden, as he walked across to the drinks cabinet in the far corner of the room. 'What would you like to drink before lunch?' he asked quietly as he turned to face her. 'Sherry, white wine or perhaps a cocktail?'

  'Could I have a soft drink, please?' She had decided, after the Germany disaster, that she would never drink alcohol when she was with him again. She needed all her mental faculties working and unimpaired, and the fact that she didn't even like the taste of the stuff was an added incentive. And if he thought that was naive and unsophisticated so be it; she couldn't keep pretending otherwise. 'I don't really like the taste of alcohol,' she added defiantly, in much the same manner as one might throw down a gauntlet.

  'No? And you expect me to disapprove of that?' he asked softly, with that intuitiveness she had come to expect.

  'I— No, of course not,' she said quickly. 'I was just explaining, that's all.'

  'And your rather enthusiastic consumption in Germany?' He had paused with his hand on the cabinet as he held her eyes across the room. 'That was to convince me that you were a seasoned woman of the world, perhaps? A Charlotte Montgomery or someone equivalent?'

  'You know Charlotte well?' she asked in surprise, but she chose to ignore the rest of his questions, her heart beating fiercely.

  'I don't have to,' he said grimly as he watched the colour stain her pale, creamy skin. 'Charlotte Montgomerys are ten a penny, my deceitful little siren; it is the Josie Owenses that are hard to find and even harder to understand.'

  'I—' She searched for something to say, something that would defuse the sudden electricity in the air. 'I just fancied a drink that night, that's all,' she said hastily, her gaze falling away from the directness of his..

  'And pigs fly,' he growled darkly. 'Josie, I don't give a damn whether you drink or not, but I do care that you seem determined to present a shallow facade to me at every available opportunity. I don't know the first thing about you, do you know that? You never talk about your family—'

  'I told you, I don't have a family any more,' she said tightly. 'I was an only child and both my patents are dead—'

  'What about grandparents, old schoolfriends, then?' he asked levelly. 'Who do you spend Christmas with? The New Year?'

  'I—' She paused as she fought the panic that was gripping her throat in a stranglehold. When she had left the little village after her mother had died she had said goodbye to everyone who knew her history—apart from one distant old aunt on her mother's side with whom she still corresponded and whom she visited occasionally, simply because the old woman had no other family of her own.

  Her own parents had been only children themselves, and both sets of grandparents were long since dead. When she had moved to London it had been a fresh start; it had had to be—she couldn't have coped with anything else. 'I have lots of friends,' she said as calmly as she could, 'but no grandparents or immediate family.'

  She raised her eyes and stared at him steadily. 'And I really don't see what it has got to do with you anyway,' she added quietly, praying that the thundering in her ears and rapid beating of her heart weren't obvious to those silver-grey eyes watching her so closely. 'I don't mean to be offensive but it's really none of your business—'

  'Perhaps I want to make it my business,' he said softly, his eyes glittering and sharp. 'You intrigue me, Josie Owens. This virginal, don't-touch air is very sexy, do you know that?'

  'No.' Her cheeks were burning now but she kept her eyes fixed on his, willing herself not to falter before the rapier-like gaze. 'This virginal, don't-touch air.' What would he do if he knew she was in actual fact a virgin? Laugh his head off, no doubt.

  'No, I don't think you do, at that.' He looked at her for one more moment before he indicated the cabinet. 'Lemonade, iced orange, lemon and lime…?'

  'Orange.' Her hands were shaking, she suddenly noticed, and she quickly buried them in her lap, willing the trembling in her body to cease. She was a challenge to him, that was all, and every word Andy had spoken returned in stark red letters in her mind. There was a physical attraction between them and that was all it was. The way it affected her was regrettable, but perhaps that was her own fault. If she hadn't shut her emotions away after the accident, refused to let herself get romantically involved with anyone, then perhaps she would be in a better position to put this whole thing into its right perspective.

  But because she was who she was she couldn't have done anything else, she argued silently to herself as Luke poured the drinks. She wasn't made for light affairs and the accident had robbed her of the chance to find the sort of man who would want a family, children—the only type of man she could fall in love with, she acknowledged bitterly. Thousands, millions of women the world over might be happy for life with a partner who wanted nothing more than a comfortable lifestyle without the complication of children getting in the way, but without exception she had found that such men did not even stir her to friendship. It wasn't their fault; there was just some essential ingredient missing with them as far as she was concerned.

  And she was no use to the other kind. Oh, she had often acknowledged that she might meet someone who would say that it didn't matte, that he still wanted to stay with her even when he knew the truth, but then the relationship would be built on one sacrificing something infinitely precious for the sake of the other, and she couldn't handle inflicting that on someone sh
e loved, seeing a man for whom she cared deeply battling with the demons that had afflicted her simply because he loved her.

  And what if, as time went on and they grew older, he grew bitter and disillusioned about the choice he had made? She lived with the knowledge that she could never be a mother because she had to; to ask a man to make the same decision about being a father when be was able to have natural children of lids own would be too cruel.

  'Here.' Her eyes shot upwards from where they had been focused on her clenched hands as she heard Luke's voice, and as he placed the glass of ice-cold orange juice in her hand she saw that his eyes were hooded and remote, un-fathomable. 'You are going to drink this and have the excellent lunch Madame Marat has ordered, and later, when we are full and replete, we will doze most of the afternoon away down by the pool under the big umbrellas I bought specially for that purpose. We will swim a little and maybe doze again in the warmth of the evening before wandering back up here to eat an enormous dinner.'

  He smiled lazily. 'And you will relax, Josie Owens. The world outside, all that has gone before, will not touch you here. I will not allow it, you understand?'

  Madame Marat's entrance to call them to lunch saved Josie the necessity of a reply, but as he took her arm and led her through to the magnificent dining room, with its heavy antique furniture gleaming and polished and the walls hung with the sort of paintings Josie knew Mr White would kill for, she knew there was no way she would fall in with his suggestion to laze the afternoon away. It was too dangerous a temptation. Far, far too dangerous. Every instinct, every nerve, every sinew in her body was telling her so.

  So… she would defy him—again. And she would go on defying him because that was all she could do, her only defence against the treacherous inclination of her heart, which had leapt and raced as he had spoken, frightening her with its longing.