The Marriage Demand

by Penny Jordan

  She was, she discovered vaguely, trembling…shaking. Not with fear but with anger…temper…rage…fury…pride…that Nash should dare to speak to her as he had. But somehow she managed to control the desire to give vent to her feelings and instead to say, as calmly as she could, ‘There may not be a child.’

  The look he gave her was as vitriolic as pure acid.

  ‘Because it was your first time?’ he derided her, watching in grim satisfaction as her face flooded with colour. ‘As I’ve just told you,’ he continued coldly, ‘that is not the whole issue.’

  ‘Yes, I know. You’re doing this because I was a virgin,’ Faith repeated flatly. She couldn’t keep the furious disbelief out of her voice. ‘Nash, that’s…that’s—’ She stopped, unable to find the words to convey her feelings to him. ‘What if I wasn’t really a virgin? What if you just thought that I was?’ she challenged.

  ‘You’re getting hysterical,’ Nash told her dismissingly. ‘Overreacting…’

  ‘I’m overreacting?’ Faith exploded. Why was she bothering arguing with him when it was plain that he had made up his mind and that he wasn’t going to change it?

  Well, she didn’t have to go along with his plans…his orders. She was a free agent. She could walk out of this room, get into her car and…

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she heard Nash advise her warningly, somehow managing to place himself between her and the door, as though he had read her mind. ‘Tomorrow morning you and I are getting married,’ Nash repeated. ‘And whatever has to be done to achieve that will be done.’ He gave a small brief shrug. ‘I’m surprised you’re making such a fuss. After all, you’re getting what you’ve already proved you want.’

  His words, uttered with such a careless lack of compassion, caused Faith to feel as though her heart was being squeezed in a giant vice.

  Had he guessed, then? Had she shown…? Did he dare to think that just because she had been foolish enough to give in to her desire for him she was still idiotic enough to harbour her teenage infatuation for him? Did he even, perhaps, think that she’d still been a virgin because of him…because of wanting him…loving him?

  Faith opened her mouth to tell him furiously that he was wrong and then closed it again, her body going weak with relief as he added, ‘You wanted to marry for money, Faith, and that’s exactly what you are doing.’

  Money. Nash thought…Shakily she closed her eyes, too caught up in her own feelings to deny Nash’s insulting insinuation.

  ‘Oh, and just in case you should try to do anything stupid, perhaps I should warn you now that until we are married I shan’t be letting you out of my sight.’

  ‘Until…But that means…’ she began to protest, and then stopped.

  ‘Yes?’ Nash encouraged her.

  ‘We aren’t going to get married until tomorrow. What are you planning to do, Nash? Sit up all night outside my bedroom door to make sure I don’t escape?’

  Faith realised the moment she looked at him in the silence that followed that she had dangerously overreached herself in attempting to challenge him.

  ‘Outside your bedroom door?’ The look he gave her was pure purgatory. ‘Don’t be naïve, Faith. Since we’ve already anticipated our marriage vows there’s precious little point in us not sharing the same bed, and it will certainly make it easier for me to ensure that you don’t do anything…foolish…’

  ‘By what?’ Faith challenged him furiously, ‘Handcuffing me to—?’

  She stopped as Nash purred dangerously, ‘Don’t tempt me. Is bondage something you like to fantasise about, Faith?’ he asked her shockingly.

  ‘No,’ Faith denied immediately.

  ‘No? So you don’t like the idea of emotionally enslaving a man…of making him long for your love. Bondage needn’t be just physical,’ he added tauntingly.

  ‘I don’t like the idea of any relationship where the two people in it don’t meet as equals,’ Faith managed to find the courage to tell him. She couldn’t believe that any of this was really happening. That Nash really intended they should marry, for the most idiotic, impossibly antiquated reasons she had ever heard.

  And by special licence—like two desperate lovers whose greatest need was to be together.

  Well, she was certainly going to feel and look the most unbride-like bride the local vicar had ever married, she told herself defeatedly, considering the workman-like clothes she had brought to Hatton with her.

  If it had been anyone other than Nash who had proposed such an impossible alliance she would have argued and fought to get them to change their mind. But, as she had good cause to know, once Nash had adopted a position, an attitude, a judgement, nothing and no one could shift him from it.

  ‘You can’t possibly want this marriage,’ she protested in one final attempt to persuade him to see reason.

  ‘This has nothing to do with what I want,’ he retaliated immediately. ‘It’s what I have to do.’

  ‘But we don’t love one another, and if there’s no child…’ Faith protested.

  ‘You’ll what?’ Nash asked cynically, misunderstanding her question. ‘Take a lover? If you do, Faith, you’d better make sure that he really wants you and that he can afford you, because I shan’t tolerate any unfaithful wife—and with our past history…’

  Their glances met and clashed, but to her intense fury and chagrin Faith discovered that hers was the first to fall away.

  Nervously Faith pulled the bedclothes up to her chin and lay facing the bedroom door. She had taken two of the herbal sleeping tablets she occasionally used and was praying that she would be fast asleep before Nash carried out his threat to join her.

  She had no chance of escaping. Nash’s car was blocking her own in and he had the keys to the house. A tiny inner voice warned Faith that she wasn’t making as much attempt to escape as she should, but she dismissed it as illogical and unhelpful.

  What was she supposed to do—jump out of her bedroom window?

  And besides, if she should be pregnant…She had grown up without her father and, even worse, she had seen at first hand how much her mother had missed having the support of the man she loved. The husband and the father who had not been there had cast a shadow over both their lives.

  Her tablets were beginning to take effect. Faith could feel her thoughts slowing down, her eyelids growing heavy. Tomorrow she was going to marry Nash. A soft tremor ran through her body. Nash…His name was on her lips as she finally slid into sleep.

  Downstairs Nash stood motionless in front of the study window, looking out into the now dark garden.

  He knew that to a lot of people—no doubt to Faith herself, included—what he was doing would seem old-fashioned and unnecessary. But Nash believed in taking his responsibilities seriously, and what could be more of a responsibility to a man than the knowledge that he could have fathered a child?

  It had shocked him and caught him more off guard than he liked to acknowledge to discover that he was Faith’s first lover. If he closed his eyes he could even now visualise her as she had been at fifteen. But it had been a woman he had held in his arms two nights ago, a woman he had made love with.

  A woman who had not previously activated her sexual self and yet, for some reason, had chosen to do so with him. Him—the very last man she might logically have chosen. Why?

  Irritably he turned away from the window. When had there ever been a logical reason for what Faith chose to do? She had kept her virginity to use as a bargaining counter—and then thrown it away on him.

  Perhaps, like him, she had found herself in a situation over which she had had no control. Perhaps, like him, she too…

  She too what? Explosively he cursed under his breath and frowned as he caught sight of his briefcase. He had brought it in with him from the car. Almost reluctantly he opened it and removed a small file from it, taking out the papers inside and spreading them out on Philip’s desk.

  The contents of the reports from Faith’s tutors were so familiar to him he c
ould almost have quoted them verbatim. She’d been a hard-working, dedicated scholar, determined to do her best. ‘A young woman with integrity as well as intelligence’, was what one of her tutors had written about her.

  How easily she had deceived them. As easily as she had deceived his godfather…Nash’s glance fell on a separate piece of paper. Frowning, he reached for it.

  It was a letter which Faith had written to the trustees shortly after she had been informed of Philip’s bequest. In it she expressed her surprise and gratitude and made a promise that she would do everything in her power to repay Philip’s faith in her—‘You cannot know how much it means to me to know that Philip believed in me and in my innocence…’

  Her innocence! If only she had been innocent.

  She had known of his concern for Philip’s health. He had talked to her about it only days before she and her little gang had broken into the house, his anxiety having caused him to drop his guard and confide in her. And in doing so had he unwittingly been as instrumental in what had happened to Philip as she had been herself?

  She had known that he was going to be away from the house and that Philip would be on his own. He had told her so himself. And she had known too of the older man’s increasing frailty. There had been certain little warnings. Philip had complained on a couple of earlier occasions about a ‘weakness’ in his arm—a classic sign that he might even then have been suffering from very minor strokes, according to his doctor.

  What had Philip thought when he had first seen her…when he had first let her in? He would have been pleased to see her, delighted by her unexpected visit, Nash knew. How many times had he tormented, tortured himself, imagining what Philip must have gone through when he had finally realised the truth? That Faith’s visit had not been motivated by love but by greed. And for what? Philip had never kept more than a hundred pounds in cash in the house—never!

  A hundred pounds.

  Nash could still remember his godfather’s solicitor’s bewilderment when Nash had told him what he intended to do.

  ‘You want to pay for this young woman’s education and you want her to believe the money has come from your late godfather’s estate?’

  He had been bemused…perplexed, dubious even, but Nash had been insistent—and insistent, too, that Faith was to believe that her inheritance was being handled by several anonymous ‘trustees’.

  At first it had given him a certain grim sort of pleasure to know that he had so much control over her life…her future…to know that, if he should so choose, with one word he could destroy her. He could take away from her the golden opportunity she had been given. And while Philip’s death and his own feelings of guilt about it were still raw, Nash had needed that kind of savage mental satisfaction.

  Later, as the reports had started to come in from her tutors, praising Faith not just for her dedication to her work but also for the way she herself was as a person, his feelings had changed, veering between contempt and anger that she should so easily deceive them and a dark, bitter sense of loss.

  His own weakness towards her had infuriated him then and still did now. Why the hell couldn’t he accept what she was instead of wishing…wanting…? What if she was carrying his child? How was he going to protect that child from the disillusionment of knowing what his or her mother was?

  He didn’t know, but somehow he would have to find a way.

  Picking the papers up from the desk, he replaced them in the folder and locked it in his briefcase. He took it out to his car and opened the boot, placing it inside and at the same time removing the other contents of the boot: a large hat box embossed discreetly with the name of a very expensive milliner, a dress bag bearing the name of an even more expensive designer, plus a box containing a pair of shoes with heels so high and spindly they had made his eyebrows arch. But the exclusive store’s personal shopper had been insistent and so he had given in.

  After carrying them back into the house he locked the door and then took them upstairs.

  When he walked into her bedroom he saw that Faith was sleeping with all the innocence of a young girl.

  Putting the packages down on the floor, he left the room.

  Downstairs in Philip’s study he poured himself a glass of whisky, lifting it to his mouth and then putting it down again untasted. That wasn’t going to solve his problems.

  Faith woke up abruptly. Last night she had forgotten to close her curtains and now the sun was shining in. Nervously she turned her head, but to her relief the other side of the bed was empty, its pillow un-dented. And then she saw the packages on the bedroom floor.

  What on earth…?

  Pushing back the bedclothes, she slid out of the bed and padded towards them.

  She opened the shoebox first, her eyes widening as she saw the delicate cream satin stilettoes. They were in her size, though she would never have bought anything so fragile nor so expensive. She turned to the hat box, holding her breath as she eased off the lid. She had to remove several layers of tissue paper before she could lift out the hat.

  Disbelievingly she stared at it. Cream, like the shoes, it was a froth of fine straw and raw silk. A wedding hat. Her heart slammed heavily against her ribs. Very carefully she restored it to its box. Her hands were shaking and she had to blink several times. Not because she was crying. No. The only tears she was likely to shed today would be tears of rage and resentment—and not because Nash had touched her emotions. How on earth could he? How on earth could she be foolish enough to let him?

  She stared at the dress bag for several minutes before she could bring herself to unzip it.

  The dress and coat inside it were also cream—exactly the right shade for her particular colouring and the right kind of style for her build. At the bottom of the dress bag was a small cache of tissue-wrapped items—underwear and sheer hold-up stockings. Nothing, it seemed, had been forgotten. Nothing overlooked to equip her for her role of bride.

  For a moment Faith was tempted to bundle the whole lot up and fling them out of her bedroom window. How dared Nash do this? How dared he make a mockery of everything that a wedding day should be? How dared he compel her into making meaningless vows for a marriage that was a desecration of everything that love should rightfully be?

  It was early, not even seven o’clock yet. Quickly she showered and then pulled on her own clothes—a soft cotton top, jeans—slipped her bare feet into her shoes.

  They were going to have another hot day.

  The hat, the dress and the shoes were all back in their original containers. It was a struggle for her to carry them all but somehow she managed it.

  Nash was sleeping in the same room he had always used. Faith was so angry that she didn’t even bother to knock warningly on the door, simply thrusting it open and marching in, going over to the bed, where she dropped everything carelessly onto it, and at the same time announcing furiously, ‘You may be able to force me to marry you, Nash, but there’s no way that you can force me to do so wearing…wearing these.’

  Nash was sitting up in his bed, his face darkening.

  ‘So what are you going to wear?’ he asked her sarcastically. ‘Your jeans?’

  ‘I’m not a child or a doll, to be dressed up to…to suit your whims,’ Faith exploded.

  Behind her anger lay tears, and the sharp, despairing misery she was determined she was not going to allow Nash to see. Her wedding outfit was something she should have chosen herself, with excitement and pride and joy and love. Not…not something Nash had felt obliged to buy because he knew she wouldn’t have anything suitable in her wardrobe. And if he had really loved her it wouldn’t have mattered to either of them what she wore when they exchanged their vows, because all that would matter would be their shared love.

  Their shared love? She didn’t love Nash.

  ‘I’m not wearing that outfit, Nash,’ she reiterated.

  ‘No? Then what will you do when our son or daughter asks to see our wedding photographs?’

  Weddi
ng photographs! What photographs? Faith wanted to challenge him, but irresistibly she had a mental image of the child Nash had conjured to life with his words. Their child…Nash’s daughter or son—and hers.

  A hot, sweet, dangerously yearning feeling spread through her, transfixing her.

  ‘I’ve brought you your tea, Mr Nash, and the papers. Oh—’

  Faith could feel the heat burning her skin as the housekeeper came into the room. The knowing smirk she was giving them made Faith cringe. There was something about the woman that she really did not like. It made her feel not just acutely uncomfortable but somehow vulnerable as well. It was obvious that Nash, though, did not share her feelings, nor her embarrassment. ‘Thank you, Mrs Jenson,’ he greeted the housekeeper. ‘You can be the first to congratulate us. Faith and I are getting married this morning—aren’t we, darling?’ he added, and he leaned forward and took hold of Faith’s hand, drawing her down towards him before Faith could stop him, his mouth brushing with deliberate slowness against her own.

  The speculation in the other woman’s eyes as she sidled towards the door was almost more than Faith could bear.

  ‘Why did you have to tell her,’ Faith asked Nash angrily as soon as she had gone.

  ‘Would you have preferred her to think we were just having sex and to spread it all over the village? You may not care very much about your reputation, Faith, but I can assure you that I care a great deal about mine.’

  ‘I now pronounce you man and wife…’

  Faith was shaking from head to foot, tiny shudders of tension and emotion running seismically through her body.

  The sunlight through the stained glass windows of the old Norman church glinted on the rings she was wearing—a single solitaire diamond of breathtaking clarity that somehow reminded her of her earrings, and a matching plain gold band. They were married. She was Nash’s wife.

  Nash’s wife! Another deeper shudder shook her.

  All those years ago when she had fantasised about marrying Nash she had never imagined she would do so feeling like this.