by Sara Craven
‘When I want your advice on how to conduct my personal life, ma femme, I will ask for it.’ There was a tiny muscle jumping beside his grim mouth. ‘However, I have no intention of spending the night anywhere but here.’
There was another profound silence. Philippa swallowed. ‘When you say “here”,’ she began. ‘I hope you don’t mean …’
He gave her a brief hard smile. ‘I mean exactly what you think, ma belle.’
‘No—oh, no!’ She took another dismayed step away from him. ‘You promised me …’
‘Listen to me,’ he said harshly. ‘My first task when I left you earlier was to inform my uncle of our marriage. When he had managed to overcome his chagrin a little, he insisted that we dine with him tomorrow evening—so that he and his family may meet you, Philippa.’ He shrugged. ‘I could hardly refuse.’
‘But he can’t do that!’ She gave him an imploring look. ‘Please—you’ve got to put him off. It’s too soon—I’m not ready to face anyone yet.’
‘Exactly the point I am trying to make,’ Alain drawled. ‘They are expecting, my uncle, my aunt and my cousin Sidonie, to meet my loving and loved wife, not some frightened shrinking virgin. So we will need to present them with a normal marriage, not a pretence a child could see through. You begin now to see the necessity, perhaps?’
‘No,’ she said hoarsely. ‘No, I don’t. I can’t meet them yet. You’ll have to think of some excuse.’
‘Au contraire,’ Alain said quite gently, and put down his glass. The green eyes swept over her, making her feel, terrifyingly, as if the concealing satin no longer existed. ‘I think I shall have to see what I can do to—persuade you.’
‘Get out of my room.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Don’t come near me—or I’ll scream the place down!’
‘Vraiment?’ His brows lifted mockingly. ‘And who do you imagine will hear you—or care? The Giscards are far too well trained to interfere.’
‘You—bastard!’
‘Calling me names will change nothing. We have a bargain, you and I. On my side at least it has been generously fulfilled, and will continue to be so, as long as I receive equal—generosity from you, ma chère.’ He beckoned. ‘Now, come here to me.’
‘I’ll see you in hell first! You gave your word—and you lied to me.’ Panic was pounding in her chest, almost closing her throat. ‘You can’t do this! You don’t even want me …’
‘What,’ Alain said softly, ‘do you know of desire, petite innocente?’
‘I know I don’t want you.’
The words hung in the air between them. He gave her a long, considering look, then, without haste shrugged off his waistcoat and let it drop to the floor before beginning to unfasten the buttons of his shirt.
His lithe, muscular body was deeply tanned, his chest darkly shadowed with hair. Philippa watched him, petrified, hardly able to breathe as he began to unbuckle his belt. She’d seen men naked before in the life classes at art school, but Alain—this stranger she’d married—stripping in front of her like this was shockingly different.
He looked deep into the confusion in her hazel eyes. He said gently, almost mockingly, ‘Shall I make you beg me to take you?’
She gave a cry like a small hunted animal, and threw the wine she was holding straight in his face.
He was very still for a moment, then he picked up his discarded shirt and dried the moisture from his face and chest, his eyes never leaving hers.
He said quietly, ‘You should have more respect for good wine, ma belle. And more respect for me, also. I see I shall have to teach you.’
The glass dropped from her shaking hand and rolled away on the thick carpet as he came towards her. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him, his fingers hard on her flesh, brooking no resistance. Then his mouth closed ruthlessly on hers.
When he’d kissed her before, he had been gentle. There’d been nothing to prepare her for this—onslaught. She tried to move her head, to escape from the suffocating pressure, but he would not allow that. One lean hand lifted to tangle in her hair and hold her still, while his kiss deepened, inevitably, inexorably.
He parted her lips with his, allowing his tongue to invade her mouth with devastating sensuality, plundering her warmth and sweetness with insolent mastery.
There was no point in fighting him—in struggling, Philippa realised from some whirling, fainting corner of her mind. He was too experienced, and more significantly, too determined. She was made aware once more of his physical power, the sheer muscularity of his body.
And her shocked consciousness told her that in these first brief moments, he was demonstrating to her with swift and frightening emphasis what passion could mean, and what other demands might be made of her before the night was over.
The heat of his hard body scorched through her thin nightgown, and even as she stiffened in helpless outrage she felt his other hand stroke down her body from the point of one shoulder to the curve of her hip, lingering on the way to shape her small, pointed breast in his palm.
She was not prepared for that, or for her body’s shaken, helpless reaction to the first intimate caress it had ever received. She might hate him for what he was doing to her, but she couldn’t control the hardening of her nipple under the subtle play of his fingers, or the swift onrush of moist heat through her whole body.
Then, his mouth still locked to hers, he lifted her and carried her to the bed. He placed her on the cool linen sheet and lay beside her. He stroked her cheek, turning her to face him so that he could kiss her again, slowly and explicitly, his hand travelling unhurriedly from her excited, tumescent breasts to explore with tantalising precision the exposed length of her silken thigh through the deep side-slit of her gown.
When he lifted himself away from her, she thought for one moment of agonised hope that he had relented, only to realise in the next second that he was simply removing the rest of his clothing. She turned away with a gasp to bury her heated face in the pillow.
She felt the slight dip of the mattress as he came to lie beside her again, and her whole body tensed, fear quivering through her, as his hand touched her shoulder.
‘Relax,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘Another promise?’ Philippa demanded bitterly, keeping her back rigidly turned to him.
‘One I intend to keep.’ His mouth touched the nape of her neck, blowing away the soft strands of hair to bare her skin for his caress. A shudder that had nothing to do with revulsion ran through her body.
She was not proof against this, she thought wretchedly, yet she had to be if she was to retain the least element of her self-respect.
He’d lied to her, broken a solemn promise, and she could not forgive him for that. If he wanted her, he would have to take her, she told herself bravely. Because she would not give, no matter what it might cost her.
When his hand began to slide the hem of her nightgown up towards her thigh, she stopped him with a little cry.
‘Don’t!’
‘Then take it off for me.’
‘No!’
‘What is the problem?’ Although she wasn’t looking at him, she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘You have some deformity that you’ve been keeping from me, mignonne?’
‘You know quite well I haven’t,’ she said bitterly.
‘How can I know?’ he said. ‘When I have only uncovered your body in my imagination—until now.’
Philippa, quivering with shame and indignation, found her nightgown deftly drawn over her head, and discarded on the floor beside the bed.
‘Oh, God,’ she said, half sobbing. ‘At least put out the light.’
‘No.’ Gently but implacably he turned her to face him again. ‘I want to see what my money has bought me.’
She closed her eyes, sinking her teeth into her lower lip as she endured his lingering scrutiny.
‘What are you so afraid of?’ he asked at last.
‘I’m not afraid. I—I’m disgusted.
I thought I could trust you, but you lied to me.’
He laughed softly. ‘And now I’m going to lie with you, my little one. Why don’t you stop fighting me in that stubborn mind of yours, and learn a little about yourself? Who knows? You might get a pleasant surprise.’
‘Being betrayed and degraded hardly features on my list of enjoyable experiences,’ she said raggedly.
‘So you find my presence here with you a degradation.’ His voice held a sudden chill. ‘My profound regrets, madame. But it changes nothing. You can behave as childishly as you wish, but tonight you are going to learn what it means to be a woman. You might find it easier if you made a conscious effort to stop hating me,’ he added drily.
‘Never!’ she said fiercely. ‘I won’t forgive you for this!’
His teeth glinted in a brief, unamused smile. ‘Tant pis,’ he said, and began to kiss her again, his lips warmly, deliberately arousing as they moved on hers, then down the long line of her slender throat to her breasts.
The touch of his mouth, the stroke of his tongue against her flesh was a revelation—a pleasure that was almost pain.
I can’t stand this, Philippa thought, as his lips delicately encircled each throbbing nipple in turn.
‘Don’t,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Just—do whatever it is you’re going to do, then leave me in peace.’
‘In my own good time, mignonne.’ Alain’s fingers feathered against her rounded thighs and lingered with persuasive purpose. ‘Couldn’t you defy your stern principles and meet me halfway?’
There was a new, almost disarming warmth in his voice. Philippa found herself shivering suddenly, tempted beyond all bearing to yield, to let him lead her down whatever sensuous path he wanted.
Her lashes lifted slowly, and she looked into the dark face so close to her own, registering just in time the flicker of amused triumph in the green eyes as he recognised her inner struggle.
It was the expression of a man, she thought dazedly, who was used to succeeding with women. The arrogant seducer who did not intend to fail with his—bargain basement bride.
She brought up her hand and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.
His head jerked back almost incredulously, then he swore under his breath, and his hands came down hard on her shoulders, pinning her to the bed.
She began to fight him in earnest then, her body struggling to be free of the weight of his, her hands flailing at him, nails clawing at his shoulders and chest.
He snatched at her wrists, pinioning them above her head, with one hand.
‘Philippa.’ There was a kind of anguish in his voice. ‘In the name of God, no! Not like this, je t’en prie’
‘I hate you.’ She hardly recognised her own voice. ‘And I always will.’
He said harshly, ‘So be it, then,’ and parted her thighs without gentleness.
She cried out as he entered her, but it was more surprise than actual pain. In some crazy way, she wanted him to hurt her—wanted him to know the guilt of having torn her—made her bleed. But even in this she was thwarted.
Almost as soon as she’d registered that initial discomfort, it was over, and all she had as a focus for her anger and resentment was the bewildering unfamiliarity of what he was doing to her—the incredible sensation of his hardness and strength sheathed inside her.
She kept her eyes closed so tightly that bright dots began to dance behind her lids. She tried, in her head, to rehearse her nine times table, to remember poetry she had learned at school—anything that would stop her thinking about Alain, and the stark driving force of his body within hers.
But she couldn’t remain totally impervious. She was only too aware of the graze of his sweat-dampened body on hers, and she could hear the urgent rasp of his breathing. In some strange way, that urgency seemed to be communicating itself to her. Deep in the centre of her being, in spite of herself, she could feel a spiral of dark, shamed excitement beginning slowly to uncoil …
A sound was torn from Alain’s throat, harsh, almost agonised, then his body slumped against hers, shuddering in spasm after spasm as he buried his face in her breasts.
For a moment, she knew a disappointment, a yearning so intense that her body was nearly rent apart. Then she lay in utter stillness under his relaxed weight, while eternity seemed to pass.
At last, convinced that he had fallen asleep, she began slowly, and by degrees, to edge away from him.
Immediately, Alain’s arms tightened around her. ‘Qu’est-ce que tu as?’
She said stiltedly, ‘I’d like to get up. I want to go to the bathroom.’
Alain propped himself on one elbow and studied her for a long moment, his face cold and derisive.
‘Why? So that you can wash all trace of me away from you?’
‘Something like that.’ Philippa bit her lip.
‘I wonder if you can,’ he said mockingly. ‘But perhaps, my sweet bride, I don’t want you to leave me so soon. Maybe, in a little while, I shall want you again.’
She stared up at the dark face above her, her eyes widening endlessly, and he laughed harshly.
‘But again, perhaps not,’ he said, and lifted himself away from her.
Philippa slid out of bed, grabbing at her discarded nightdress and huddling it on over her head. She was trembling violently, and her whole body ached in a totally alien way.
She was aware of Alain’s gaze tracking her all the way to the bathroom, and was terrified that he might follow—might insist on forcing further intimacies on her.
Fortunately, the door bolted from the inside, and she slid the bolt into place, uncaring whether or not he heard it.
She dragged off her nightdress, hurling it on to the floor, then walked into the shower cubicle and turned on the hot spray, methodically soaping and rinsing every inch of her body, as she stood under the tingling jets of water.
Then she wrapped herself in a towel and sat down at the vanitory unit, staring at herself in the mirror.
With her wet hair plastered to her skull, she looked like a half-drowned kitten, her eyes enormous in her pale face. She lifted a corner of the towel and blotted some of the moisture from her face and neck, watching herself almost warily as if afraid she might break if she pressed too hard. She had heard, or perhaps read somewhere, that you could tell a woman’s sexual knowledge from her eyes. But she could see nothing reflected in her own but pain and confusion.
She swallowed, noticing almost clinically that there were marks on her shoulders and breasts which would probably be bruises tomorrow. But then she bruised easily.
But not any more, she thought, lifting her chin. From now on, she would neither bruise nor break. She had become, through no choice of hers, Alain de Courcy’s wife in every sense of the word. She knew now the worst that could happen to her, and, God help her, what she could expect from him in the future. She knew …
No one would ever say she looked untouched again.
It was a long time before she could force herself to go back to the bedroom, but when she did so, Alain had gone. She stood for a moment staring at the pretty, empty bed, with its dishevelled covers and tumbled pillows, then slid under the sheet, pulling it up to her neck. She turned out the lamp beside the bed, and lay in the darkness, curled up defensively, her arms clasped round her body.
The ache inside her had intensified, but what else, she thought bitterly, could she expect?
She had, after all, been violated.
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip until she tasted blood. All Alain’s charm—all the consideration he’d shown her had been nothing but a façade. I am not a savage, he’d said that first evening in Lowden Square, but he’d lied. He was worse than that. He was a brute—an animal.
And you, said a small hard voice in her head. What about you? You threw wine at him, you hit him, you tried to scratch his eyes out. Is it really any wonder he reacted with anger? And you were angry too, not with him but yourself, because you’d actually started to enjoy what he was
doing to you—you’d begun to want him—and your pride wouldn’t allow that. So you fought him instead, and you lost.
Philippa moved restively in the bed, her head turning on the pillow in violent negation, as she tried to shut out the unwanted memories crowding back to torment her of Alain’s mouth against her body—his hands …
No, she thought, it wasn’t like that—it wasn’t. He was vile—he forced me. I hate him for that, and I always will.
And as if in mockery of her unspoken words, she felt the fierce hardening of her nipples, and the swift tumultuous clench of her body in a need she’d never known existed until then.
With a groan, she rolled on to her stomach, burying her face in the pillow.
Damn him, she wailed silently. God damn him!
It was hours before she fell into a troubled sleep. When she woke, the small clock beside her bed told her it was past ten o’clock.
As she made to sit up, her bedroom door opened, and, as if programmed, Madame Giscard appeared with a tray.
‘Oh, thank you,’ Philippa said awkwardly in French, trying to use the sheet to conceal the fact that she was naked. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve caused any inconvenience.’
The housekeeper gave her a look of polite astonishment. ‘At your service, madame.’
She went to the wardrobe, selected a robe and brought it back to the bed, her face expressionless.
‘Monsieur de Courcy left for the day some hours ago, madame. He asked me to tell you he will join you for lunch.’
Philippa thanked her again quietly, colour rising in her face, and watched her leave.
The woman’s whole manner indicated that she was quite accustomed to serving breakfast in bed at all hours of the day to naked girls in Alain de Courcy’s establishment. And the fact that he was legally married to the current occupant made no difference at all.
Philippa drank her chilled peach juice, and sampled the hot chocolate in its tall pot, and the crisp croissants wrapped in a napkin, without particular appetite.
During the wakeful hours before dawn, she had come to terms with the fact that she was caught in a trap of her own devising. However disastrous her marriage, she couldn’t walk away from it as every fibre of her being was urging her to do, because otherwise the money for Gavin would cease. Alain had made that clear the previous night. So, somehow, she would have to get through the days—and endure the nights. Somehow.
