Some of the things Nicholas had said to her came back to tease her as she showered. She felt astonished all over again, scarcely able to credit that he found her attractive. Bridget was bewildered. Remembering his reputation, she supposed that most women would be flattered, but instead she felt obscurely insulted, especially when she recalled all the other definitely unflattering things he had been saying to her ever since they had met.
There could be no avoiding Nicholas, however much she wished she could, so Bridget went along to the dining-room when she was dressed, having put on the first clean garment that had come to hand, a plain saffron-coloured dress with a straight knee-length skirt. A flush warming her cheeks, but with her head held high, she sat down and shot Nicholas a smouldering glance as he followed suit, his smile complacently speculative.
She knew she lacked the finesse to be sophisticated or casual about what she was determined to say, but there was no point in trying to be something she wasn’t.
‘I don’t want you to touch me again,’ she submitted directly, and it sounded as gauche as she had known it would.
‘Why not?’ he enquired with idle interest.
‘I don’t want you to. I don’t like it,’ she emphasised, and saw his black eyebrows rise in mockery.
‘You liked it very well, Bridget,’ he reminded her softly. ‘And I liked it too.’
‘I don’t like you,’ she struggled on, longing for a more articulate explanation of her wishes but unable to come up with one.
Sita arrived to serve them at that point, and Nicholas waited until she had departed before speaking again.
‘I suppose the truth is that you still imagine—or want me to imagine—that you’re in love with my cousin and you’d be betraying his memory by feeling something for anyone else.’
‘Oh, of course, in your world people only ever imagine they’re in love,’ Bridget flared accusingly, remembering his comments about Virginia in that regard.
‘In the real world, Bridget,’ he corrected her sardonically. ‘So Loris seduced you; I don’t suppose he pretended to be in love with you, though, and I don’t believe you were really in love with him either.’
‘Loris and I never had an affair!’ she protested indignantly.
‘No, you’re not really his usual style, but, knowing Loris as well as I do, whatever was between you has to have been consummated, so I imagine he took you to bed for a night.’
‘You’re incredible!’ Fury finally made Bridget eloquent. ‘You’ve gone from one wrong perception of me to another. Is that what you want to do now? Take me to bed for a night?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Nicholas snapped irritably, startling her, and, searching his dark face, she realised that he had inexplicably veered from relaxed self-congratulation to being on the verge of losing his temper.
‘There’s actually something you don’t know?’ she mocked.
‘Obviously. Oh, perhaps we can let it last for as long as we’re both here,’ he suggested rather distractedly, before digressing abruptly, ‘Was Loris your first lover?’
‘He wasn’t my lover,’ she insisted.
‘I know my cousin, Bridget,’ he asserted on a flatly contradictory note. ‘What was the attraction for you, though? Just the family name, or the wealth that goes with it?’
‘I fell in love with him,’ she began sharply.
‘No, darling, you couldn’t respond to me as you do if you had. Hasn’t the lesson sunk in yet? Well, admittedly it’s incomplete as yet.’
A feeling of despair oppressed Bridget as she accepted the futility of arguing. The words he had used a minute ago about Loris taking her to bed for a night, so reminiscent of what she had overheard Loris saying about her in London, were an indication of how well he did know his cousin, while he didn’t know her well enough to believe her against that knowledge. His conviction was probably hardened by his own present interest in her, which was presumably as temporary as Loris’s would have turned out to be.
‘It’s always someone—me for now—taking advantage of your family, isn’t it?’ she accused furiously. ‘First it was Virginia, now it’s Loris and of course I had to be after his name or money! How do you know it wasn’t the other way round and he took advantage of me?’
‘What happened? Did you let him into your bed before you found out that he only ever plays for a while and moves on?’
‘And now you want to play for a while?’ Bridget derided in a rage. ‘But get this, Nicholas! I am not interested in having an affair with you, or a one-night stand, or anything else either, and you can’t force me to!’
‘Right now you’re having dinner with me,’ Nicholas pointed out silkily, ‘and I’ve always felt that arguing over the dinner-table was uncivilised. But I wouldn’t dream of forcing you, Bridget.’
‘I know that!’ she returned scornfully.
Grey eyes studied her curiously for a moment before he smiled at her. ‘Thank you. I just hope your faith is specific rather than general, or you could find yourself in sad trouble some day.’
‘With a less civilised man than you?’ she taunted, aware that her faith in him in this instance came from her recognition of his self-respect because, of course, he probably could force her in a literal, physical sense.
‘Exactly,’ he confirmed, a wicked gleam appearing in his eyes. ‘No, I won’t force you into my bed, Bridget, but I can show you—convince you—persuade you—that you’d enjoy yourself once you got there, because you would.’
‘Seduce me?’ Anger rose in response to his arrogance. ‘You have no right—’
‘But I have. Your delightful response to me earlier gave me the right,’ he claimed confidently. ‘Plus the way you’ve been looking at me ever since we met, as it now seems that you did have practical knowledge of what you were inviting. Bed is where you want to be with me, and knowing that entitles me to coax you there. Fair?’
‘To someone like you, it would be!’
Because he made no allowance for the untidiness of emotions or the natural prejudice that emotional people like her had against his kind.
‘But you can relax for tonight, as I don’t like emotion in the bedroom and you’re in a definitely emotional state right now.’ Nicholas promptly confounded the conviction by making allowance for hers. ‘But from tomorrow you can expect to find yourself…under siege, Bridget.’
Somehow the phrase was evocative, and she was conscious of an inner clenching in resistance to all that was suddenly glittering in his eyes—ruthless resolution, anticipation, and a complex desire she knew she simply couldn’t cope with.
‘I’ll leave the house,’ she threatened wildly and Nicholas laughed softly.
‘Go to a hotel? I doubt if Virginia has budgeted for such an expense. That’s why she makes Delhi her base between buying excursions to other parts of the country—staying here cuts costs, and I’ve always encouraged her to use the house.’
He was right. Even more wildly, Bridget contemplated throwing herself on the mercy of one or other of her Delhi acquaintances, but she knew few people here, none of them well yet, and quite apart from the practical considerations she shrank sensitively from the embarrassment she knew she would feel asking them, and perhaps forced to explain why she needed the shelter of alternative accommodation.
She didn’t think she cared about any embarrassment to Nicholas, if he was even capable of feeling such a thing, when he so diligently eschewed all forms of emotion.
‘Of course, this is your company house.’ Fake humour curved her mouth. ‘Do I get thrown out if I fail to be seduced?’
His mouth tightened and Bridget felt a pang of compunction, already aware that it had been an unfair crack.
‘What do you think?’ he countered tautly.
‘No, I’m sorry, not with your over-developed sense of responsibility for everyone around you—’ Seeing the flicker of amusement that crossed his face, she halted the soft rush of words. ‘I mean, not with the way you believe no one can manage their own
life without your despotic interference, not forgetting your weird idea that I’m somehow going to sabotage Virginia’s business interests if you don’t keep an eye on me.’
‘I’m letting Loris manage his own life by leaving him stuck in England, aren’t I?’ Nicholas challenged derisively, his expression altering as he paused, his jaw tightening implacably. ‘Incidentally, I don’t share, Bridget, and especially not a woman’s attention, so I shall expect you to leave him outside the bedroom door. Perhaps we should agree to make my bedroom the scene of any future action, as you’ve already spent nights crying over him in yours.’
‘One night,’ she asserted, prompted by the tentative new-found pride that kept surfacing, albeit only intermittently. ‘But as there isn’t going to be any action we will be occupying our separate bedrooms.’
‘Oh, there’s going to be plenty of action, Bridget,’ he contradicted her softly, ‘and I think you really know it too.’
He sounded so confident that she knew it would be pointless, a waste of breath, to keep arguing.
As if the matter were settled, Nicholas dropped the subject and began questioning her about her trip to Madras. And it was the same newly discovered pride that kept Bridget sitting there answering him politely, although with none of the enthusiasm she had felt earlier when she had been so eagerly looking forward to sharing her experiences with him.
She felt drained and emotionally battered, anxiety about the future the only thing she was capable of feeling intensely at the moment.
What was she going to do if Nicholas started to make love to her, as he obviously would, and she forgot to resist him again? What would happen then?
Above all, what was the matter with her? She didn’t like Nicholas, she had no romantic interest in him, so why her helpless response to him earlier? Bridget refused to believe she was just naturally concupiscent; the fact would have manifested itself long before now if she were, and she would at least have had some kind of affair behind her, if not a promiscuous history.
The absence of acceptable answers to all these questions troubled her. Her thoughts and emotions were all so confused, save for the one thing she knew with absolute certainty: that, unable to rely on herself to resist Nicholas, she had somehow to ensure that he wasn’t given the opportunity to seduce her.
Luckily she was going to Varanasi on Friday morning, but that still left her with tomorrow, day and night, and thinking about it added a panicky edge to her apprehension because she simply didn’t know how she was going to deter or distract this arrogant, compelling man sitting opposite her.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WHERE have you been?’
Nicholas had emerged from the living-room at one side of the entrance hall as Bridget was letting herself into the house the following night.
She was conscious of her own immediate tension as she turned from closing the exquisitely carved double doors and faced him warily, noting his irritable expression resignedly.
Her luck had finally run out, she accepted. She had managed to be so late for breakfast that he had already left the house by the time she did arrive on the veranda that morning. Then, when her new friend from the Embassy had fortuitously phoned to invite her for dinner tonight, she had dared to believe that fate might be on her side in assisting her to avoid Nicholas, and she had gratefully helped it along by asking Jolyon to fetch her directly from the late appointment she had with a customs official, due to some small changes to the export regulations since Virginia’s last buying trip.
‘Having dinner with a friend I’ve made at the Embassy,’ she answered the question honestly, but with a hint of involuntary defiance flavouring her voice.
Grey eyes swept over her simple outfit of a pretty skirt and matching fitted jacket-style top in off-white cotton with a neat pattern of soft maroon.
‘You should have let me know,’ Nicholas asserted critically.
‘It wasn’t any of your business.’ It was disconcerting to hear herself sounding so unfamiliarly aggressive, and as it occurred to her that he might think her totally inconsiderate she added placatingly, ‘I did let Sita know.’
And why should she care what this man thought of her manners? Bridget was suddenly furious with herself.
‘Just that you wouldn’t be here for dinner, not where you’d be or with whom,’ he condemned.
Fiery sparks drove the shadowy aspect from her eyes, making them much greener than usual, as she stepped past him to enter the living-room, dropping her bag and a big envelope of papers on to the exquisitely inlaid top of one of the low tables that the room contained.
‘You don’t own me, Nicholas,’ she stated sharply, turning to face him again as he followed her in.
‘No?’
The vestige of a smile convinced her that it was deliberately meant to provoke, but still she couldn’t manage to suppress a fresh surge of rage.
‘No, you don’t! Nobody does that!’ she emphasised, her pride so unconscious that it held an oddly innocent ring. ‘And you don’t have the right to question or criticise me like this either, or any rights at all, because you’re not—you’re not part of my life.’
‘I’m going to be, though,’ Nicholas claimed, his tone softly challenging.
‘Why would I want to get involved with you?’
‘Out of a sense of adventure?’ he suggested flippantly. ‘And a healthy sex drive?’
‘Oh, right! The way you look at it, anyone who isn’t attracted to you has to be unadventurous and undersexed,’ Bridget mocked bitingly. ‘But there’s an opposite view, you know—that anyone who is interested in you is lacking in discrimination.’
‘As you are?’ he derided, a slight edge to his voice now. ‘Since you happen to be attracted to me, Bridget.’
It forced her to hesitate because she wasn’t sure if what she had felt in his arms the night before could really be classed as attraction.
‘I’m too—too fastidious to want anything to do with a man like you,’ she offered finally, choosing to ignore the claim.
His mouth had tightened perceptibly. ‘And what am I like, sweetheart? What sort of man am I?’
‘Cynical, and decadent, and incapable of proper feelings!’ This bit was easy and she thought she could go on forever. ‘Over-experienced, someone who uses women—’
‘Aren’t they using me in return?’ Nicholas cut in tautly. ‘Assuming they enjoy me, which they do. If they’re free, and I’m free—’
‘Troy Varney wasn’t free!’
‘Troy and I didn’t have an affair.’
Bridget had to laugh at such a blatant lie. ‘I do read the newspapers, you know.’
‘And believe every word they print, evidently.’ He held up an authoritatively silencing hand when she would have argued. ‘All right, that particular story was intended to be believed. I don’t owe you any explanations, Bridget, but as that business seems to be one thing that bothers you particularly, and as I happen to agree with you about married people being out of bounds, although my reasons are probably a lot less admirable than yours— triangles have sharp corners and I’ve never found them aesthetically appealing; relationship-wise they’re plain untidy—I’ll tell you…
‘Troy is an old friend, and this is all she has ever been, never anything else. She got involved with someone who occupied such a sensitive position that the slightest breath of scandal would have destroyed him professionally. A certain section of the media, as well as her husband, knew for a fact that she was seeing someone, but not who, and her husband was pretty unstable and vengeful at the time, as this was prior to his famous sojourn in the rehab clinic. Troy imagined herself sufficiently in love with the other guy to want to protect him from the exposure her husband was threatening, and so I agreed to help her lay a false trail and let myself be called some choice names by her husband. End of story. As you know, it all blew over, Varney got help for his habit and they’re back together again.’
Bridget regarded him curiously, accepting the story but fin
ding herself unexpectedly troubled by a feeling of indignation on his behalf.
‘But doesn’t it bother you—make you angry?’ she questioned him concernedly, searching the handsome grey eyes for clues. ‘You went to all that trouble for her and this other man, and nothing came of it.’
The dark face expressed nothing more complex than amused interest as he studied her in silence for a moment. Then he shrugged dismissively.
‘Well, I certainly wasn’t surprised that it burnt itself out, as all such impractical, emotion-based obsessions tend to do, and that may even have been at the back of my mind when Troy came to me asking for help. I thought for her lover as he clearly wasn’t thinking for himself—why sacrifice a whole career for so-called love when it’s such an ephemeral thing? Troy and her husband have a much more practical relationship, because one addiction neither of them is ever going to kick is their craving to be noticed and, as a fashionable couple, the publicity they’d attract as individuals is doubled.’
Nicholas paused reflectively, a cynical twist to his lips. ‘It was no trouble to me. I don’t care what people think of me and I knew any damage done to my reputation couldn’t hurt me professionally. I didn’t think it would affect me personally either, and it hasn’t done—until now. You’re the only person I’ve told what really went on, and I assume you do understand that I’ve done so in confidence, as we don’t want anyone digging around trying to find out who the real lover was. That really would render the whole exercise a waste.’
‘Of course I won’t tell anyone,’ Bridget confirmed almost absently, her mind running ahead to the more important things she had to say to him. ‘But if you think telling me makes any difference to anything, Nicholas—’
‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’ he interrupted harshly, dark head jerking upwards and his eyes blazing.
‘Unlike you, I don’t go around suspecting everyone of lying about everything,’ she derided angrily. ‘I believe you. You’ve just said you don’t care what anyone thinks of you, so why would you make up something like that?’
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