Sophisticated Seduction

by Jayne Bauling

  ‘It’s my business while you’re living under my roof,’ he stated inexorably. ‘You can come home with me when this is over.’

  ‘No—’ Bridget broke off as Jolyon joined them, holding out a glass for her. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Stirling,’ he greeted Nicholas, got the same sort of greeting in return, and then favoured Bridget with a caressing smile. ‘Enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve never been to a diplomatic affair before,’ she confided, managing to return the smile.

  ‘I want to be your diplomatic affair,’ Jolyon claimed, looking like a wicked angel. ‘How are you, Stirling? I heard you were around.’

  ‘Not enough, evidently,’ Nicholas suggested significantly, swiftly rescuing the glass from Bridget’s badly shaking hand. ‘I’ve told Bridget I’ll take her home.’

  ‘No need,’ Jolyon insisted, his face lit with unholy enjoyment. ‘Anyway, Bridget’s other clothes and shopping are still sitting there in my car. Aren’t you eating, Stirling? It’s a fairly decent spread tonight, although I took the precaution of feeding Bridget back at my place.’

  Bridget could almost feel the antagonistic challenge going back and forth between the two men. It was probably just that she couldn’t take any more, but it came to her as an old-fashioned conviction that she had no business being here between them in whatever primitive male ritual this was, and she turned abruptly and walked away from them.

  It was Jolyon who came after her a minute or two later.

  ‘Stirling is still hanging on to your drink so I’ll fetch you another in a moment,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Why?’ Bridget looked at him almost hopefully. ‘Why do you think he was like that? He doesn’t care about me, so why was he so—so possessive? Or protective?’

  ‘Haven’t you ever heard of sexual jealousy?’ The gently dismissive explanation put out the light in her eyes because it rang all too humiliatingly true. ‘He suspects me of wanting you in my bed, if I haven’t had you there already—and I know that was evil of me, encouraging him in the belief, when the thing I like best of all about you, sweet, is the fact that you’ve got no interest whatsoever in either hauling me off to bed or smothering me with good and truth and righteousness, which is what most females have been trying to do to me since I could walk—or before, if you count my doting mother. But Nicholas Stirling is cool, I’ll give him that! I thought I’d get the time-honoured threat about breaking every bone in my body if I laid a finger on you, but not a word to that effect!’

  Bridget shook her head helplessly, too depressed to be intrigued.

  ‘Because he doesn’t care. I don’t understand men,’ she admitted humbly.

  The radiant, dissipated face, like that of a sinning saint, softened. ‘Poor baby, don’t worry; men don’t understand women either. That’s why it’s a war.’

  When Bridget looked for Nicholas again, he had gone, but he was waiting for her when Jolyon delivered her to the house at the end of the evening, emerging from the living-room as she turned from closing the double doors.

  ‘Nice time?’ he enquired in a glacially annoyed voice.

  ‘Nicer than you must have had, evidently, as you left so early,’ she returned, judging that he must have been back some time, since he had discarded his jacket and tie.

  ‘But then, I didn’t have a fascinating partner,’ Nicholas pointed out, and Bridget’s pulses jumped apprehensively as she realised that the apparent coldness was deceptive.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you being like this?’ she demanded defiantly, not even contemplating ignoring the anger she could see burning at the back of his eyes. ‘This morning you were hoping I’d get over you quickly. So maybe I have!’

  ‘Let’s put that to the test, shall we?’ he suggested tautly, reaching for her, and the bag containing the clothing she had worn earlier in the day dropped from her grasp.

  ‘No!’

  Suddenly Bridget was frightened. His dark face was a stranger’s and there was no gentleness in the hands that held her by the upper arms, his fingers steely and merciless.

  ‘Yes! Does Methven excite you the way I do, Bridget? Did he touch you like this?’ Nicholas took one hand away to run it over the length of her body in an insolent caress. ‘And kiss you like this?’

  His mouth was hard and hot, the swift, uncaring way it invaded hers an insult, while his arm had become a prison, binding her to him. Bridget could only stand there, enduring the intrusive kiss, feeling violated. Her fingers bit into his shoulders and she was shaking frantically, not with passion or desire, because she could feel none under this angry onslaught, but with sheer distress. Nicholas held her so tightly, her body crushed to the tautness of his, forcing on her an acute, panicky awareness of his fury and tension.

  ‘Nicholas… Oh, don’t!’ she gasped achingly, when at last he snatched his mouth away from hers in a manner that was an outright rejection. ‘Please stop it!’

  ‘I’ve stopped,’ he snapped, and laughed harshly, ‘since I’m not getting an appropriate response from you. So you really have got over me! You’re pretty fickle in your infatuations, aren’t you, Bridget? First Loris, then me, and now Methven.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she protested in a whisper, with no thought of dissembling. ‘You—you scared me.’

  The arms still holding her slackened abruptly and, as Nicholas stared at her, Bridget saw his eyes go absolutely blank; his face too might have been cut from stone, so expressionless was it now.

  Feeling the anger drain out of him, she slid her arms round him unthinkingly. After a moment or two, he bent his head the small distance necessary for their cheeks to rest against each other. They stood like that for a time, both anger and desire absent for the moment, whatever linked them for now something subtler and calmer. Bridget had no conscious thought, just standing there and loving him, and after a while she lifted a hand to the back of his neck, fingers gently caressing, gradually straying to the black hair.

  Nicholas let her indulge herself that way for a while, but too soon he was putting space between them by moving her gently away from him, although still keeping hold of her by the upper arms.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said, and she heard the current of wry amusement running through his voice, ‘or we’ll be in even worse trouble than we are now. Oh, Bridget, what am I going to do about you, girl? Anyone else would have pretended that, yes, she had got over me, out of pride if nothing else, after the way I’ve behaved.’

  Bridget flushed slightly. ‘I’m not very good at…pride.’

  ‘No, well, perhaps you have no need to be,’ he allowed, with a faint sigh that might have been either of frustration or exasperation as he finally freed her. ‘Run away to bed now.’

  ‘There’s a good child?’ she tacked on mockingly as she retrieved her bag from where it had fallen.

  ‘Incidentally,’ Nicholas added in a more familiar tone, ‘I’ve invited Anand and Mirabai Bhandari to dinner here tomorrow night. Can you be here?’

  She looked at him, her resentment fully restored to her now. ‘Why should I be?’

  ‘They’re hoping you will,’ he went on casually. ‘They both adore you.’

  Bridget shook her head at the exaggeration. ‘Then I will, but it’s only for them, because they were both so kind when I first arrived, and I’d like to see them again and thank them before I leave.’

  He was studying her assessingly. ‘You could cook for us if you like.’

  ‘Why should I want to?’ she demanded indignantly.

  ‘Because it’s something you like doing?’ he suggested with a smile.

  ‘And something I can do for you, because of course I’d want to, being so madly infatuated with you?’ she flared bitingly.

  ‘Oh, God, if the thought can even occur to you, then it’s probably true.’ Nicholas sounded sharply disgusted. ‘Go to bed, Bridget. Go now! And lock your door.’

  Bridget went, wondering what might have happened if she had stayed,
but aware that it would have been damaging to both of them to have tried to find out. Nicholas didn’t want to make love to her, probably because he believed she would become a nuisance when he tired of her, and he was right. She would never be able to let go gracefully because she loved him too much. But then again, she didn’t want to know him as a lover unless he loved her, because she knew herself too well not to be sure that it would destroy her.

  In bed a little later, her mind went into a compulsive and repetitive replay of the evening’s events. Nicholas had definitely evinced a certain jealousy where Jolyon was concerned, but Bridget could derive no gratification from it because she knew Jolyon was right and it had only been the kind of unreasoning, instinctive possessiveness men went in for. Nicholas probably only still thought he wanted her because he had decided he couldn’t have her, and while he found her so-called infatuation irritating he was also possessive of it.

  It might not be admirable, but it was the way men were, and Bridget loved him too much to resent it.

  She supposed it was probably just as well that Nicholas didn’t believe in love, dismissing her feelings as infatuation, because a man who believed in love would be sensitive enough to be horrified and perhaps embarrassed by what he had done to her.

  As it was, she could imagine his disgust if he had been aware of the fantasy in which she was indulging the following evening, when he got back to the house and brought his drink out to the fountain courtyard in which she was sitting: Nicholas was her husband, come home to his wife and partner… Bridget just wished she knew where he lived in England so that she could transfer the dream to his more permanent environment.

  Perhaps Nicholas did guess what she was doing.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded suddenly, surveying her moodily.

  ‘Like what?’ she returned as dismissively as she could, feeling guilty.

  ‘I don’t like being… worshipped,’ he muttered.

  ‘I can promise you that I do not worship you,’ she snapped. ‘Doesn’t worship imply a degree of blindness? I’m aware of every single one of your faults, Nicholas.’

  ‘I have to doubt that.’ The sardonic smile faded. ‘So you’re not nurturing any hopes where I’m concerned, then? And you carefully locked your door last night?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she admitted shortly.

  ‘Because you were hoping I’d succumb to temptation and come along and ravish you?’ he guessed mockingly.

  ‘You really are back to being your usual offensive, arrogant self, aren’t you?’ Bridget flared. ‘No, I was not hoping for any such thing, Nicholas, and I never have. Have you forgotten already that I was ready to lie, or at least not tell you the truth, to prevent it happening? It’s what I least want in the world, because I know how bad it would be for me in the end.’

  ‘At least you’ve got that much sense. But aren’t you running something of a risk, relying on me to stop it happening now?’

  ‘I have to.’

  She was aware as she said it that it was the stark truth: that if Nicholas ever did decide to make love to her after all there would be nothing she could do to prevent it, because she loved and wanted him too much to deny him.

  ‘I know,’ he acknowledged in a slightly kinder tone. ‘So just don’t do or say anything to tempt me, Bridget.’

  It was still astonishing to her that he should ever have known a moment’s temptation, and the conversation was disconcerting her.

  She said stiltedly, ‘Please excuse me. I must shower and dress if we’re still expecting the Bhandaris.’

  ‘We are,’ Nicholas confirmed.

  Dressing, she took her time, deliberately choosing the most sophisticated dress she had with her, a contingency purchase her sister Frances had helped her choose and which she had only worn once before, at the most recent Ginny’s preview. Short and straight, it was absolutely plain, with a round neckline, and sleeveless. It caressed the slender curves of her body without clinging, but the real allure lay in its shade, an absolutely clear coral-red, and the things it did for her colouring. Slender high heels that would make her as tall as Nicholas and a pair of delicate, dangling silver earrings from Dariba Kalan completed the outfit, and she sat down to attend to her face. Her skin needed no make-up, but the glossy red colour on her lips gave her tender mouth an added sensuality, and a little smoky eyeshadow and mascara made her eyes even more mysteriously shadowy than usual.

  She tried putting her hair up, since Nicholas seemed to equate her ponytails with her youth and lack of experience, but decided that was overdoing it, quite apart from the likelihood of the arrangement coming adrift during the evening. As the same fate usually met her various braids, because her arms got tired trying to keep them tight, in the end she simply pulled her hair back from the sides of her face with two tortoiseshell combs.

  Bridget took a last look at herself in the mirror. She didn’t think she would be overdressed. Mirabai wore the most gorgeous saris with plain chotis by day, so she was likely to be even more glamorous at night.

  Anyway, she intended treating tonight’s dinner as her own private celebration, as she was turning twenty-two tomorrow, and a special meal, either at a restaurant or prepared by her mother and sisters, was a tradition.

  Bridget found Nicholas in the living-room.

  ‘What have you done to yourself?’ he asked warily as she paused just inside the door, still in the shadows.

  ‘What I think you might have been wanting me to ever since we met,’ she submitted limpidly, taking a few steps forward.

  Nicholas met her, taking hold of her arm and pulling her forward into the light, then turning her this way and that as he studied her in ominous silence. Mouth suddenly dry, Bridget couldn’t speak, growing hotly uncomfortable as she suffered his scrutiny. She could almost feel his gaze on the smooth curve of her shoulders, following the straight, satiny fall of her almost black hair, then tracing the delicate line of her body from her tender neck and throat over breasts and narrow waist, and the essentially feminine circle of hips so slender, but still designed to receive and hold and carry, to the fit tautness of slim young thighs… And up again to her face. To her dismay, all she could see was distaste hardening his eyes, pulling at his face and curling his lips as he inspected her soft, reddened mouth and probed the secret shadows of her eyes.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve seen you wearing make-up. I hope it comes off?’ he said finally.

  Despair squeezed at her heart, but she lifted her chin rebelliously as she snatched her arm out of his grasp.

  ‘It does, but it’s not going to—not now,’ she averred, and a hollow little laugh escaped her. ‘I can’t win with you, can I, Nicholas? You hate it, don’t you?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he countered savagely. ‘I am a man, after all. But if you start going about like this, Bridget, believe me, you’re going to be inciting the lust of all sorts of superficial characters who won’t hesitate to take advantage of you—at best!’

  It was too much for her. For a moment she teetered precariously between anger and humiliation. The anger won, and Bridget lost her temper.

  ‘And who are you to be so patronising about all these superficial characters who are going to fancy me? You do, and you’re the shallowest person I know. You don’t even believe in real feelings!’

  ‘Like infatuation, I suppose?’ Nicholas derided, eyes stabbing at her contemptuously.

  ‘And I am not going about like anything,’ she swept on in her rage. ‘I’m dressed like this in the privacy of this house, where you are here to look after me.’

  He stared at her a moment, eyes boring relentlessly into hers. Then he laughed, the sound as hollow as her own laugh of a few seconds ago, and as dry as desert dust.

  ‘Ah, but this should be a healthy lesson to both of us. I really did think I wished you were different, more sophisticated, but it was never a matter of clothes and make-up, Bridget, and I regret this more than you can know.’

  Brid
get’s temper subsided as she heard him, but the admission puzzled her. There was no chance to ask him what he meant, however, because the Bhandaris had arrived.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT OUGHT to have been some comfort to Bridget to know that Anand and Mirabai admired her new look.

  ‘You look fabulous, darling! Doesn’t she?’ Mirabai, in a lovely oyster silk sari, appealed to the two men.

  ‘Totally,’ Anand promptly confirmed gallantly. ‘I’m knocked out, Bridget. You too, Nicholas?’

  I’ve had time to get over the shock,’ Nicholas drawled. ‘Incidentally, Bridget is one of the few truly modest people I’ve met, but if you two carry on like this that’s rapidly going to become a thing of the past.’

  That was it, then. Bridget dropped her eyes to conceal the bleak despair she felt. Physically, Nicholas desired her as a woman, and wished she were more experienced, but any vague liking he might feel was obviously for the gauche child he thought she was.

  Then she drew her shoulders back, smiling happily at Anand and Mirabai, determined not to let Nicholas spoil the evening for her.

  Dinner was prepared and served by Sita, and the evening passed pleasantly as the men were good friends, and Bridget liked both Bhandaris as much as they seemed to like her. Thus she was able to keep her nervous tension under some sort of control, but she was acutely conscious of it once more the moment they had gone, and Nicholas turned to her after closing the hall doors.

  ‘Thank you for being here, Bridget,’ he said quietly. ‘They enjoyed your company.’

  Not we, she noted acidly.

  ‘I enjoyed theirs.’ She too could make pointed exclusions, she decided defiantly. ‘I like listening to people—and talking to them—when they’re nice people.’

  His face had hardened. ‘But if you get yourself up like this, conversation is going to be the last thing on most people’s minds—most men’s minds, at least.’

  Bridget looked at him, trying to gauge his altered mood. One of her tortoiseshell combs felt as if it was coming loose and she put up a hand to remove it, the movement pulling the fabric of her dress tautly across one breast for a moment. Then, released from the comb, her hair came cascading down over her shoulder in a shining sheet, and she saw his eyes turn dark and glittering.