Forbidden or For Bedding?

by Julia James

  She’d broken off, and to her dismay, Imogen had stared silently at her. Then spoken.

  ‘You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?’ Her voice had been hollow.

  Alexa had answered too fast. ‘No—’

  But Imogen had only shaken her head. ‘Oh, hell,’ she’d said.

  Then she’d given a huge, heavy sigh, and gazed pityingly at her friend.

  The pity was back in her voice now, audible down the line. So was a hesitation that was unusual for her. Alexa cut through it.

  ‘Yes, he’s getting married. I know.’

  The silence on the phone was eloquent. ‘The bastard!’ hissed Imogen. ‘The absolute bastard!’ Then she launched. ‘It’s on one of those gossip websites! I’ve only just logged on. There’s a huge pic of Carla Crespi, and then one of him, and then it says about how Carla can give up all hope of getting him back now, because he’s just about to announce his engagement. And underneath that is the story about who she is—the fiancée of your precious Guy de bloody Rochemont! It’s some cousin or other of his. One of the Lorenz lot. They’ve dug up some pic of her at some schloss. She looks like a painted dummy. Daddy’s got one of the family banks, so they’re keeping all the money in the family—nice and convenient!’ Imogen’s voice was scathing.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s how they’ve always stayed so rich,’ replied Alexa.

  There was so much calmness in her voice that it astonished her. Beneath the calm she could feel the information that Imogen was forcing on her pushing into the interstices in her brain. She tried to force it out—she didn’t want to know anything about who it was that Guy de Rochemont had chosen to marry—but it was there, vivid in her consciousness. All she could do was ignore it. Turn away from it.

  Imogen had cottoned on to another thing now. The fact that Alexa already knew about the engagement.

  ‘So did he deign to tell you?’ she demanded. ‘Or did you find out the way I did?’

  Of course she hadn’t found out the way Imogen had! She never looked at such sites, or picked up the kind of magazine that followed the rich and famous in their glamorous lifestyles. Imogen, she knew, even when she’d realised just what was going on between Alexa and Guy de Rochemont, still made a point of being assiduous in her perusal of such sources.

  ‘Believe me, Alexa, if that man is up to stuff you should know about, I’ll be on to it!’ she’d said, way back. ‘I can tell you straight off that it’s plain as my face that Carla Crespi is dead set on picking up with him again, for a start.’

  But Imogen’s vigilance had not been necessary. Nor had Alexa ever thought it would be. For why should Guy conceal anything from her? Let alone the fact that their affair had run its course, as she knew it must one fine day…

  ‘He told me this morning,’ she said. The calmness was holding.

  There was an intake of breath from Imogen.

  Alexa went on, pre-empting any outburst from her friend. ‘So, obviously I wished him well, gave him my felicitations, and said goodbye to him. We parted perfectly amicably.’

  There was another eloquent silence down the line. Alexa realised that she was gripping the phone hard, yet try as she might she could not make her fingers slacken. Instead, she concentrated on holding that calmness in her voice.

  ‘Imogen, I knew this day would come, and that’s that. Now it has. That’s all there is to it. There’s absolutely no point my making a fuss about it. Guy de Rochemont walked into my life, and now he’s walked out of it. End of story. And I’m fine. Absolutely fine. Honestly. Completely fine. Fine.’

  Again she tried to slacken her grip on the phone, and again for some annoying reason her fingers would not obey her. Something seemed to be gripping her throat as well. Choking her.

  At the other end of the line she could hear her name being spoken. Then again. Then, ‘I’m coming over,’ said Imogen. And underneath, as she was disconnecting, Alexa heard a sibilant, hissing expletive. ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Guy! Servus! Wie gehts, wie gehts?’

  The voice greeting him was jovial and welcoming. Guy’s arm was taken, and he was all but steered in the direction his host wanted. Guy’s jaw tightened. But then that was, after all, exactly what Heinrich von Lorenz was doing—steering him in the direction that suited him personally. And suited his damn investment bank. His tottering investment bank, brought to the brink of ruin.

  Familiar anger bit within him. Deep and highly masked. Why the hell hadn’t Heinrich come to him earlier? Why had he bluffed it out for months, getting more and more mired in toxic debt? Pride, that was why, Guy knew. Expensive, unaffordable pride.

  Then his anger veered round to target himself. He should have picked up on the depth of the problems Lorenz Investment was having. Dammit, that was his job—taking the helicopter view of everything—everything!—that fell within the labyrinthine world of Rochemont-Lorenz. It was the job he’d inherited from his father, and the job he was stuck with.

  A caustic glint showed temporarily in his eyes. How many people envied him? Not just those outside the Rochemont-Lorenz behemoth, but even those within. How many considered his position one they would love for themselves? The titular and de facto head of a vast, powerful, immensely rich dynasty.

  Well, it was nearly ten years since the heavy mantle had fallen on his shoulders, in his early twenties—thanks to the premature death of his father. It was a death to which, Guy knew bitterly, the role he had passed on to his son had contributed in its ceaseless demands on him. Guy was no longer—if he ever had been—a willing occupier of that grandiose position. It might sound good—and, yes, it certainly came with wealth and power, with a social cachet and a historical heritage that lent glamour to the name and role—but it came with a weight of responsibility that exacted its own heavy price.

  A price that had suddenly become crippling.

  But I have no option but to pay it! No damn option!

  His mouth tightened as he went into the ritual of greeting Heinrich and his wife Annelise, in the baronial hall of their Alpine schloss. It was Heinrich’s residence of choice, for it had once belonged to an archduke and still bore Hapsburg arms above the mantel—arms which, defunct as they were, nevertheless intimated an association with royalty that Heinrich took pleasure in emphasising. The Lorenz quarterings might not have reached further back than a bare century and a half, but Heinrich took inordinate pride in them. Suppressed anger flared again momentarily in Guy. Just as Heinrich took inordinate and clearly unjustified pride in his financial acumen.

  Pride goeth before a fall.

  The sobering words of the Bible stung Guy’s consciousness. Lorenz Investment was as near to falling as if it were a metre away from a precipice. But from the expansiveness of Heinrich’s greeting it was impossible to tell how perilously positioned he was. Yet he knew, all right, just how bad things were, despite all his avuncular bonhomie. Again Guy’s eyes darkened. He’d taken his eye off the Lorenz Investment balance sheet, targeted his attention at other parts of the operation that had seemed to be in more serious straits courtesy of the global recession, and by the time he’d knocked together the requisite heads, re-set the vulnerable financial thermostats to ‘sound’ across the multiple divisions and corporations that formed the complex corpus of Rochemont-Lorenz, the window of opportunity for a far less painless rescue package for Lorenz Investment had passed.

  And now Heinrich had done what he should have done six months ago, and disclosed the full state of affairs.

  And called for the ultimate rescue package.

  One that would not just bail out his bank, but achieve his dearest wish…

  Had Heinrich been planning this all along? Guy would not have put it past him. He had always known that Heinrich had ambitions to further his branch of the family by any means at his disposal—but Guy had always been uncooperative. Not just for business reasons—Heinrich’s mismanagement at Lorenz Investment was proof that had been wise—but for far more cogent reasons. Heinrich’s love of royal residence
s was not the predominant evidence of his fondness for the way royalty did things.

  Dynastic marriages were.

  For years Guy had simply ignored the subtle and less than subtle comments, insinuations and outright hints. So Heinrich had no sons, only a daughter to inherit his place within Rochemont-Lorenz? So what? This was the twenty-first century. Heinrich might think it impossible, but there was already a sprinkling of highly competent female Rochemonts and Lorenzs taking their place in the higher corporate echelons of the family, and there was no reason why Louisa, if she showed any talent, shouldn’t join those ranks in time.

  Not that—from what he recalled of Louisa—she seemed to have shown any signs of financial acumen. She was studying something like ecology, he vaguely remembered, and his impression of her was that she was quite shy.

  But, shy or not, she should surely be in evidence this evening—as yet, she was not. Guy’s brows drew together. Despite the effusiveness of Heinrich’s greeting, and the benign graciousness of Annelise’s, Guy had seen the latter’s eyes go repeatedly towards the staircase curling around to the upper floors of the schloss.

  Of Louisa there was conspicuously no sign. Guy’s initial reaction on realising she was not there was momentary relief, but as the minutes wore on, and he was subjected to the kind of irrelevant and time-filling social conversation on the part of his hosts that he found as hypocritical as it was irksome, he could feel irritation piercing through the predominant emotion of anger at Heinrich’s machinations and the unacceptable fall-out from his incompetence. He could see Heinrich and Annelise getting tenser about their daughter’s continuing absence even while they were determinedly not mentioning it.

  Impatiently, Guy decided to cut through the flam. ‘Where is Louisa?’

  His blunt question brought an instant prevaricatory response, which only irritated him further.

  ‘You must make allowances,’ added Annelise in a saccharine voice. ‘Of course she is anxious to make the very highest impression on you, Guy, knowing how demanding your taste in the fairer sex is. She is bound to want to look her very best for you. Your reputation is quite formidable, as you must well know. Ah, look—’ the relief was plain in her voice as her eyes went to the staircase, ‘—here she is now!’

  Guy turned. Descending the staircase was Louisa.

  His intended bride.

  And anyone looking less like the prospective Madame Guy de Rochemont it would have been hard to find.

  For a moment, as vivid as a splash of scarlet in a monochrome photo, another image imposed itself—elegant, soignée, superbe…

  He thrust it away. He had done with it now.

  At his side, he heard Louisa’s mother give a click of exasperation and dismay. And he could see why. Her daughter had clearly made no effort whatsoever for the occasion. She was wearing jeans, a jumper and trainers, her hair was in a ponytail and her face was bereft of make-up.

  ‘Louisa, what are you thinking of?’ demanded her mother.

  Her father had gone red—a mix of chagrin and anger.

  Wariness flared in the wide brown eyes as Louisa approached. ‘I didn’t have time to change,’ she answered. ‘And what’s the point, anyway? I’ve known Guy for ever. He knows what he’s getting.’

  There was a flicker of defiance in her question, and Guy felt himself in sympathy. Louisa’s preference for casual style might not fit with what he himself preferred, or what the world would expect of his wife—every eye would be pitilessly upon her—but that was not her fault any more than her father’s ambitions for his daughter were—or the mess Heinrich had made of his bank.

  Guy’s frustration worsened. If there had been any way—any at all—of calling Heinrich’s infernal bluff, he would have done so. But the damnable thing was that the man was right. Any visible sign of a bail-out—internal or otherwise—of Lorenz Investment would, at this delicate stage in consolidating Rochemont-Lorenz against the recession, send danger signals ricocheting around and beyond the confines of the dynasty. The potentially disastrous consequences could, at worst, have a domino effect, taking down a lot more than Heinrich’s bank. With sufficient time Guy knew he could nail any potential danger, ring-fencing Lorenz Investment, but time was not what he or the bank had. Which was why Heinrich—damn him!—had argued the case for this archaic and Machiavellian dynastic solution.

  ‘My dear boy…’ It was a form of address that had set Guy’s teeth on edge when Heinrich had disclosed his master plan for not just saving his bank and his own skin, but achieving personal advancement within the clan. ‘It is the perfect solution! A union between our two branches provides the perfect occasion for closer financial ties—what could be more reasonable? There will be no occasion for press speculation or undue attention from the financial analysts. Any financial…adjustment—’ his choice of anodyne term for bail-out had further angered Guy, already feeling the edges of a man trap closing around him ‘—can be made entirely painlessly,’ Heinrich had concluded breezily, blithely skipping over the punishing financial cost of what it would take to protect Lorenz Investment against its toxic debts, incurred solely because of Heinrich’s rash and greedy strategy for over-expansion.

  He had provided in an unwise coda. ‘Why, a hundred years ago such an…investment—’ now he was presenting the bail-out as a commercial opportunity, Guy had thought viciously ‘—would have been regarded as a fitting bride-price! Cemented, of course—’ he’d smiled with bland optimism at his prospective son-in-law ‘—with a position at your right hand on the senior global executive board.’

  Guy’s answer had been short and to the point.

  ‘This is a salvage operation, Heinrich. Nothing more. And be aware, very aware, that I undertake it solely for the good of us all. This debacle is of your making—survival is your only reward.’

  Heinrich had bridled, then changed umbrage to bonhomie.

  ‘And yours, my boy, is my daughter. It’s an ideal match!’

  His words had rung hollow, and now, as Guy’s gaze rested on Louisa, their echo rang even more hollow. Louisa was a pretty girl, and the casual outfit suited her brunette, gamine looks, but Guy knew with a sharpening of the knife that had been stuck between his ribs by Heinrich that they were not the looks he sought in a woman.

  The image he had banned from his mind because it belonged to the past, not the future, tried to gain entry. Once more he thrust it aside. Alexa had been an affair, nothing more, he reminded himself brutally—that was all he must remember about her.

  Now, like it or not, he had to come to terms with what his future was going to be. A future with Louisa von Lorenz in it. She was standing there, her unvarnished appearance making her look more suited to being a chalet girl than chatelaine of a hundred-room schloss.

  Louisa’s father barrelled forward, seizing her arm. ‘Get back upstairs and get changed immediately!’ he hissed at his wayward daughter.

  Guy stepped forward.

  ‘Quite unnecessary,’ he said. ‘Louisa—’

  His eye contact with her was veiled, concealing his simmering frustration. He did not want to take it out on the hapless Louisa. Then he turned back to Annelise.

  ‘Shall we go in to dinner?’ his hostess said brightly, clearly wanting to move the evening on.

  Wordlessly, Guy slipped his hand beneath Louisa’s woolen-clad elbow to lead her forward towards the vast panelled dining room beyond.

  With iron self-control, he tamped down the dark, bitter emotions scything through him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ALEXA was painting. Painting and painting and painting. She’d been painting all week. A new commission had arrived, and she had gone into overdrive. Imogen had lined up at least two more portraits, and Alexa was thankful, knowing that her friend had done it deliberately. So far she’d managed to hold herself together, though when Imogen had come round that first evening she’d come very close to cracking. Imogen had urged her on—but Alexa would not oblige her. Would not even let her call Guy a bastard.
Let alone allow her to give all the details about his forthcoming marriage.

  ‘You should know!’ Imogen had wailed.

  But Alexa had only said, ‘What for?’ and refused to let her friend say more.

  Even so, it had been impossible to silence her completely.

  ‘According to the internet and the press, quoting the girl’s mother, this Lorenz cousin has been groomed to marry Guy de Rochemont for ever! There was a really yukky bit about how the daughter had been brought up to take her place at the head of the whole damn dynasty. Like they were royalty or something!’

  ‘Well, there are some titles washing around,’ Alexa had pointed out, keeping her answer reasonable—for being reasonable was essential. So was being composed. And calm. Very calm. ‘And obviously there is the “de” and the “von” in the names. So they are clearly aristocracy in that sense.’

  ‘Inbred, too!’ Imogen had muttered darkly.

  Alexa had not responded. Her consciousness had been filled with a memory of Guy, walking out of the shower, his honed, water-beaded torso as perfectly planed as his face. ‘Inbred’ was not a word to describe him…

  Then, something Imogen had said snapped her mind back.

  ‘…their only daughter—just turned nineteen…’

  ‘What?’ She stared at Imogen. ‘What did you just say?’

  Imogen nodded, glad she had finally pricked Alexa’s calmness. She thought Alexa should be spitting with rage against Guy for having so unceremoniously dumped her. ‘Yup, his precious family bride is only nineteen!’

  Alexa had paled, shocked by the disclosure. ‘She can’t be! Guy’s in his thirties. She’d be almost fourteen years younger than him. Nearly a whole generation!’

  Imogen smiled nastily. ‘So, cradle-snatcher as well, then—plus complete bastard!’