Permission to Love

by Penny Jordan

  His direct attack flustered her. 'No game . . . why should I. . . .?'

  'That's what I keep asking myself,' he agreed dryly, 'and I still haven't come up with a satisfactory answer, so suppose you answer the question for me.'

  'Gwen told me about your marriage being annulled,' she told him baldly, dropping her glance from his face to his chest, as she flinched from the cold unmoving scrutiny of his eyes. 'She told me that you . . . she ... that you never slept together,' she floundered on. Damn him why wasn't he helping her? Why was he deliberately making it harder for her.

  'Did she? Then she lied,' he told her impassively, 'As I recall it sleeping together was one of the few things we did do. All right Lindsay,' he said curtly, 'So you know that our marriage was annulled . . . so what's the big deal?'

  'I also know why it was annulled,' Lindsay told him bravely taking a deep breath and praying that her courage would hold out. He was deliberately using his experience and male power to try and beat her down ... to make her back down but she wasn't going to do so.

  'So . . . Lucas shrugged. 'The very fact that it was annulled speaks for itself. The marriage was never consummated.'

  'No ... not that . . . I didn't mean . . . what I

  meant was I know ... I know why it wasn't consummated,' Lindsay interrupted desperately. Dear God, this wasn't turning out at all as she planned. By this stage Lucas should have been the one on the run, admitting to her that he had loved her. Instead . . .

  'Oh?' She had all his attention now, every narrow eyed, nerve racking ounce of it. Licking dry lips anxiously Lindsay fought not to shy away from the intensity of his gaze.

  'Gwen told me your marriage was annulled because . . . because you . . . because she considers that you were impotent,' she managed at last. 'I know that isn't true ... So I went to see Tom and he . . . that is ... He told me he thought you love me,' she said baldly at last.

  The silence that followed her statement was appalling.

  'I see.' Lucas said the words softly, in a tone infused with a taunting mockery that made Lindsay's blood freeze. 'My, my what a romantic little mind you're hiding away under that modern exterior. Do tell me how you managed to deduce from the brief facts available to you, this marvellous theory that I'm in love with you? That was what you said wasn't it?' he asked with cool irony. 'Fantastic . . . Ever thought of taking up fiction writing for a living?' His glance lashed her over-sensitive nerves. She could have cried with pain and anguish, but pride would not let her. She had handled it all wrong and now l.ucas was punishing her. Punishing her in such a way would ensure that she never, ever raised the subject again.

  There's no need for all the play-acting Lucas,'she managed to interrupt. 'If I'm wrong then all you have to do is tell me quite simply that you don't love me.'

  'I thought that was exactly what I was doing,' he returned with acid irony.

  She wanted to turn and run then, to bury herself away where no one could find her and witness her agony. How could she ever have been deranged enough to persuade herself that he could actually care. Anger . . . resentment . . . these she had been prepared for but not this cool mocking sarcasm, that burned agonising pain into her heart and soul.

  'Do enlighten me further,' he continued in that same icily derisive tone, refusing to end her ordeal. 'When was I supposed to have er . . . conceived this grand passion for you?'

  When I was seventeen.' Lindsay felt her skin burning beneath his raised eyebrows and surprised look.

  'Really?' Tom told you that did he?'

  'He said he thought you loved me years ago,' Lindsay told him tiredly, too beaten to care any more what she betrayed to him. 'He felt that you'd married Gwen in part to protect me from gossip.. .'

  'That much at least has some slight spark of truth in it,' he agreed, 'At the time it seemed a reasonable course to take. Gwen had made it plain that she coveted the role of my wife. She was, and is, as you say, a very beautiful woman ... It was time I was married ...'

  "You let me think you loved her . . . That you still! loved her . . .'

  He shrugged aside her comment and Lindsay said despairingly, 'Why can't you be honest with me ... Why did you make love to me if you don't care for me ...'

  'Why did you let me?'

  It was curtly spoken and Lindsay held her breath, wanting to retain this last final barrier of pride, but knowing that if relinquishing it was what it took to win Lucas' love, then relinquish it she must.

  'Because I love you,' she told him quietly. 'I realised the truth when you were ill,' she continued dispiritedly. 'When I look back I can see now that I always loved you, but I wouldn't face up to the truth because ...'

  'Because it didn't fit in with what you'd been brought up to expect. Marriage to a man who fitted all your father's specifications. Unlike me.'

  'But daddy loved you ... He respected and admired you,' Lindsay burst out. 'You know he did.'

  'He also appointed me as one of your Trustees to make sure that his wishes in respect to your marriage were carried out,' Lucas reminded her hardily. 'Even if I did love you would you honestly expect me to break the trust he placed in me?'

  'Yes,' Lindsay whispered in agonised pain. 'Yes, Lucas, if you loved me the way I love you then you would do so, because to live without me would be impossible.' She turned away from him unable to bear to look at him any longer. What a fool she had been. He didn't love her and never had. Tom had been completely wrong about that.

  'I'd better leave,' she said quietly, standing up. 'There's no point in my staying on here now.'

  'None at all,' Lucas agreed curtly A small muscle beat sporadically in his jaw, and his eyes

  were veiled from her so that she couldn't read his expression. She was a fool to go on hoping that by some miracle he would change his mind and tell her that he loved her. A complete and utter fool.

  It didn't take her long to go upstairs and bring down her cases. She had thrown her clothes haphazardly into them, not really caring what she packed and what she left. Clothes could always be replaced.

  She stowed them in the boot of her car and started the engine. Dusk was falling, and she refused to look in the direction of the drawing room window to see if Lucas was watching her. He wasn't. He was striding towards the car, and even now, ridiculously, hope flared, only to die as she saw his set, tense expression.

  'You may think you love me now, Lindsay,' he said tersely, 'but one day you'll thank me for this...'

  'For what?' she demanded tersely, 'Breaking my heart and my pride, throwing my love back in my face . . . How will I thank you Lucas. By making things easy for you by marrying someone my father would have approved of? If you really feel like that why didn't you encourage me to marry Jeremy. He was everything Daddy wanted for me.'

  'He didn't love you.' He said it slowly, as though the words were being dragged out of him under torture.

  His pseudo-concern made Lindsay shake with hysterical laughter. It pealed out wildly into the thick silence of the evening. Her fingers curled round the steering wheel, her foot jabbing hard on the accelerator as she turned her car round. Before she drove away she called out bitterly, 'You've got

  what you wanted Lucas. I'm leaving, and you're safe ... safe from me ... safe from my love.'

  Once she was clear of the village she had to pull in and get her body back under control. She was shaking violently with reaction and pain. He didn't love her . . . how could he?

  Tom was an astute man, another inner voice contradicted her. He would not have told her he thought Lucas loved her if he had been in any doubt at all. But how could he love her and send her away like that? Perhaps because he was desperate. Desperate men have been known to do almost superhuman things. Telling herself that she was weak and stupid Lindsay re-started her car and drove on.

  She was half-way back to London before she admitted she wasn't going to complete the journey. She had to go back and see Lucas. She had to hear from his own lips the words, 'I do not love you'. She had to.
/>   Telling herself she was all kinds of fool made no difference. She had already taken the next turn off the motorway and was heading back.

  When she reached it the house was all in darkness. For a moment she thought Lucas must be out, but then she saw his car. She parked her own next to it, making no attempt to muffle the sound of her arrival. The front door was unlocked and she walked nervously into the dark hall snapping on the lights. A quick tour of the downstairs rooms proved that Lucas wasn't in any of them. In the study she found an empty tumbler and she sniffed it curiously. Whisky. Lucas rarely drank. But where was he?

  She went upstairs slowly, already regretting her

  own impetuosity but too stubborn to back down and leave.

  A thin band of light showed under Lucas' bedroom door. As his room faced the rear of the house, she hadn't seen the light when she drove up. She knocked and held her breath. There was no response. Pushing open the door, Lindsay halted on the threshhold. Lucas was lying across the bed, his shirt unfastened, his hair ruffled and untidy.

  A half empty bottle of whisky stood on the bedside table, an empty glass on the floor at his feet. He had made no attempt to get undressed other than to unfasten his shirt and kick off his shoes, and as she walked over to him Lindsay could smell the strong odour of the spirit he had drunk. Lucas drunk? It seemed impossible, and yet the heavy torpor of his sleep bore out her suspicions as did the half empty bottle beside him. She snapped off the overhead light and switched on the softer bedside lamp, a wave of mingled tenderness and pain washing over her. Of their own volition her fingers reached out and smoothed the tousled hair back off his forehead. Lucas moved restlessly beneath her touch, frowning heavily.

  'Lucas ...' She called his name softly, but there was no response other than another frown. Quickly Lindsay removed his clothes, and then shed her own, without giving herself time to mull over the morality of her actions.

  Covering them both with his duvet she reached out and touched him lightly, stroking her fingers over his skin, murmuring his name over and over again.

  In his sleep his body relaxed against her. He muttered something under his breath and she held her own, watching his lashes flicker. What would she say when he woke up?

  'Lindsay?' He stared at her in the dim light, his voice slurred and hesitant.

  'Yes, it's me Lucas.' She was still touching him and she pressed herself up against him now, placing her lips to his shoulder. She felt the frisson of response that ran through him and knew a heady satisfaction. Sexually at least he was responsive to her; he couldn't deny that.

  'You came back.' His voice was stronger now. 'Why?'

  'Because I love you,' she said quietly, 'and I won't believe you don't love me until you hold me like this and tell me so . . . Do it Lucas,' she invited huskily, moving her body against his. 'Tell me you don't want me . . . That you don't love me. I love you Lucas,' she continued before he could speak, 'and if my father had lived he'd have realised that no one else could make me happy. I can't make you love me in return, I know that, but maybe I'm already carrying your child... a part of you that no one can take away from me. I hope so. What would my father think of that Lucas? Do you think he'd approve of you leaving me to bear your child alone?'

  'Damn you Lindsay, you can't do this to me.' The words were thick and unsteady, his body responding mindlessly to the feminine enticement of her own. His fingers locked round her upper arms—to thrust her away Lindsay was sure, but instead they held her against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, stimulated by the erotic contact with his flesh. She kissed his shoulder and then his neck, letting her tongue trace a delicate line upwards. She could feel him shuddering against her and knew a tiny thrill of pleasure that she was able to arouse him.

  'Lindsay, for God's sake, what are you trying to do to me?' His mouth covered hers, his kiss that of a man starved for the feel of the woman he loves in his arms. Lindsay responded to him mindlessly, saying nothing, letting their bodies communicate for them. He made love to her with passion and need, overwhelming her with a hunger so intense that she trembled beneath it. He still hadn't answered her question an hour later when he fell asleep in her arms. Sighing faintly, Lindsay curled up against him. Tonight he had made love to her. . . who knew perhaps tomorrow he might tell her with words as well as actions that Tom had been right and that he did care. Too exhausted to think any more she fell asleep.

  It was Lucas' voice in her ear that woke her the next morning.

  'So I didn't dream it,' he said slowly. 'Did I dream you saying you loved me, and that you hoped you'd conceive my child?'

  Lindsay couldn't see his face, so she shook her head and said huskily, 'No you didn't dream it, any more than I dreamed you saying last night that you didn't love me and that you couldn't marry me because my father would not have approved,' she finished bravely.

  Lucas curled his fingers round her jaw and tilted her head up so that he could look into her eyes. He looked extremely masculine and slightly raffish with a night's beard darkening his jaw, Lindsay thought dreamily.

  'Part of that at least was the truth,' he said wryly, 'and after last night I'm sure I don't need to tell you which part.'

  'Well I know you believe my father would not have approved of us marrying,' Lindsay ventured, 'but we don't need his approval Lucas, and besides, I'm nearly sure, and Tom agrees with me, that if he'd lived nothing would have pleased him more than for us to marry. You were the son he never had.'

  'Cast in his own image,' Lucas admitted, 'but not the man he wanted for his daughter ... no matter how much than man might want her.'

  Lindsay's heart leapt at this tacit admission that he did care, but she didn't take him up on it, teasing him instead. 'Which do you think my father would have preferred Lucas—that you married his daughter or that you seduced her.'

  'I seduce you?' But he was smiling at last. 'When you were seventeen I sent you away, cut myself off from you because I thought it was the right thing to do ... but I've never stopped wishing things could have been different . . . I'm not the man your father would have wanted for you Lindsay."

  'You're the man I want,' she told him gently, 'and besides you owe me something ... I haven't forgotten that it's partially your fault that I lout Jeremy. You could have told him that we weren't lovers, but you didn't did you?'

  'If he really thought so little of you he deserved to lose you,' Lucas said contemptuously. 'Dear God couldn't he see what you were ...how innocent ...'

  'Why should he,' Lindsay teased. 'You didn't. You thought I'd had umpteen lovers ...'

  'Umm, and tormented myself with jealousy over every one of them. Every time you mentioned a man's name I imagined you going to bed with him ... I dreaded you coming down here and telling me you were getting married

  'You did a remarkable job of keeping your feelings hidden,' Lindsay told him. 'I thought you loved Gwen. I thought you were just using me as a substitute for her.'

  'The idea was correct, you just got the cast the wrong way round.' He grimaced slightly. 'Have you any idea what it was like not being able to make love to my wife because I was obsessed with a seventeen-year-old teenager—and one who was my stepsister. Your father wouldn't have wanted this for you, Lindsay,' he told her wryly.

  'I want it for myself.' She sounded fiercely stubborn. 'Do you really want to see me married to someone like Jeremy. Forced to make the same mistakes in my marriage that you made in yours. Only women aren't men Lucas,' she reminded him cruelly. 'Their bodies don't protect them from the consequences of their actions. Unlike yours my marriage would have to be consummated.'

  She winced when she saw his expression, hating herself for causing him such pain. How had she ever thought him uncaring or hard?

  'God, Lindsay, you don't know what it does to me to think of you with someone else ... anyone else.'

  'Then don't think of it,' she said softly, 'whether you want me or not Lucas, I won't marry anyone else. I can't. Neither can I make you love me enough to put
aside what you consider to be your loyalty to my father.'

  'No, you can't make me do that,' he agreed, touching her face, tracing its outlines with tender fingers. 'I can fight myself, Lindsay, but I can't fight you. I can't look into your eyes and see them looking at me with love and need, and turn you away. You're all I've ever wanted from life, Lindsay. Right from the first time I looked at you, my funny little stepsister, and saw I was looking at a woman and not a child, and if I'm condemned to eternal hell for it, I still have to have you. I want you with me for the rest of my life, as my wife . . . the mother of my children ... as my woman, the other half of me . . . and if that brands me as a traitor to your father, then so be it.' He bent his head and kissed her slowly, as though placing a seal upon his words. For a moment neither of them spoke and then Lindsay reached up to embrace him, to welcome him to the realm of their love.

  A week later they were married by special licence. Tom Henry was there, and after the small informal wedding breakfast, he asked if he could see them both for a few minutes.

  The reception had been held at the house, and slightly mystified Lucas and Lindsay followed him into the study. He held an envelope in his hands which he gave to them both. 'A wedding present from your father,' he told Lindsay quietly.

  At first she thought it was the Trust Deed, transferring her father's wealth into her own name, but Tom still hadn't finished speaking.

  'Three days before your parents' accident, your father called in to see me and gave me this letter,' he told Lindsay. 'I do know what it contains, but I promised him I would never speak of it—to eitherof you, and although just lately that's been rather hard, I stuck by that promise. You see Lindsay,' he continued, forestalling her questions, 'Whether your father had some indication of what was to happen or not I shouldn't like to say. All I will say is that he came to see me and told me that he'd been having second thoughts about the wisdom of revenging himself against your mother's people by pushing you into marriage with one of them. In fact it wasn't just second thoughts he'd had, but a complete change of heart. I don't know whether he guessed how you felt about Lindsay or not, Lucas, but he'd become convinced that you were the ideal man to take charge, not only of his business empire, but his daughter as well. In short he wanted the pair of you to marry, but he was wary of pushing you towards each other, because he felt so guilty about what he'd already tried to do. He made me promise to say nothing to either of you about his hopes. He wanted it to happen naturally, he told me. He wanted you to marry for love or not at all. What neither of us had bargained for was that the pair of you should stick so stubbornly to his original wishes. Many many times I've longed to be able to tell you the truth, but I gave him my word.' He sighed faintly. 'It isn't always easy playing deus ex machine.''