Lovers Touch

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Nell agreed, a hard knot of agitation suddenly twisting her stomach.

  ‘Well, he hasn’t. He’s come for you himself.’

  ‘Probably to make sure I don’t try to renege on our arrangement,’ Nell told her quickly, suppressing an instinctive urge to rush over to the window and see for herself that her friend was right. Her stomach was doing somersaults, and she had to give herself a very severe lecture, reminding herself of exactly why it was that Joss was marrying her, and warning herself that if she was going to react like this just at the thought of seeing him then she was going to have a hard time maintaining her supposed indifference to him once they were actually married.

  ‘Come on. We’d better go down,’ Liz urged her.

  Although she had only met Joss on a couple of previous occasions, it was Liz who greeted him with an easy warmth that Nell envied, welcoming him in with a smile and a friendly kiss of congratulation on one lean cheek.

  ‘Nell told us you were sending your chauffeur for her,’ she commented as she led the way to her sunny kitchen.

  ‘That was my intention,’ Joss agreed carelessly, ‘but I found I had a free afternoon, so I decided to drive down myself.’

  Just being in the same room with him was making Nell’s head spin. He was dressed casually in jeans, the neck of his checked shirt open beneath his sweater; he looked fit and healthy, a man more used to living outdoors than working in an office, his skin tanned and moulded firmly to his bones. Every movement he made was lithely efficient; he didn’t fidget when he sat down, or betray any of the other nervous mannerisms Nell knew were hers. In fact, he looked as though he felt more at home in Liz’s kitchen then she did herself.

  ‘Well, now that you are here, why don’t you both stay and have dinner with us?’

  Nell knew he would refuse. He must obviously want to spend as little time in her company as possible. Once they were married, she expected she would barely see him.

  ‘Marvellous, but insist on being allowed to take you and Robert out. Can you recommend anywhere good locally?’

  So far he had done no more than merely acknowledge her presence, Nell reflected, listening to the brief argument between Liz and himself as to who ought to pay for dinner. He won, as Nell had known he would … What had she been expecting? That he would take one look at her in her new clothes and be transfixed with amazement at the change in her?

  ‘Shopping all done?’ he asked her at length, turning to look at her.

  ‘I think so.’

  Why on earth did she have to sound so strained and tense? She was behaving like a piqued child, betraying to a man of his sharp intelligence the very thing she wanted to conceal.

  ‘Oh, we’ve done marvellously well,’ Liz told him, coming to her rescue.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, giving Nell a narrow-eyed look. ‘I can see that. Congratulations.’

  ‘Don’t congratulate me,’ Liz told him, instantly nettled. ‘It wasn’t very difficult. After all, I did have excellent raw material.’

  To Nell’s astonishment, Joss said urbanely, ‘I agree. And I wasn’t congratulating you on the effect you’ve achieved, but merely on persuading Nell to allow the transformation to take place. My wife-to-be possesses an extraordinarily determined stubborn streak upon occasions.’

  ‘So do most women if they think they’re in danger of being treated like doormats,’ Liz returned crisply.

  Joss’s eyebrows rose and he looked directly at Nell. ‘Is that what you think, Nell? That I’m going to treat you like a doormat?’

  To her horror, she flushed uncomfortably and couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘No, of course not,’ she told him in a husky voice.

  ‘Good. Because I certainly intend that our partnership shall start off on an even footing. Of course, which one of us manages to wrest a major share of it from the other during the course of our marriage remains to be seen.’

  A subtle threat to warn her that he intended to be the dominant partner in their marraige? If so, it was unnecessary; she already knew it, and he had an advantage he didn’t even dream yet that he possessed. That he would never know that he posssessed, if she had anything to do with it.

  The four of them dined at a small local restaurant which Liz had recommended.

  To judge from the others’ appetites, the food was excellent, but Nell barely touched hers. She still wasn’t at ease in Joss’s company; she didn’t feel engaged to him … didn’t feel as though she was going to become his wife. She turned her head slightly and studied him out of the corner of her eye.

  Robert and Liz were talking and, under cover of their conversation, Joss said quietly to her, ‘What’s wrong? Checking to make sure I’m using the right cutlery?’

  Colour stung her face. ‘No,’ she told him in a choked voice.

  ‘It’s all right, Nell,’ he told her quietly. ‘You needn’t keep watching me like an anxious sheepdog. Poor Nell,’ he mocked her. ‘Life’s full of unexpected pitfalls, isn’t it?’

  Before she could say anything, Robert had broken off his conversation with Liz to address Joss, and soon the two men were engaged in a discussion of their differing childhoods.

  Robert had been brought up by elderly parents and had rebelled by leaving home as young as he could to go to medical school.

  ‘Of course, I was wildly out of my depth. I thought I was adult, but in fact I was totally naïve. I look around me at some of the kids I see today. They’re terrifyingly adult. Too adult. I don’t envy them.’

  ‘I grew up in the tenements of Glasgow,’ Joss told them, ‘as I’m sure Nell has already told you.’ He looked sharply at her, but Nell said nothing. ‘My mother was sixteen when I was conceived. My father the same age. I was brought up by my grandparents and I was only two years younger than my grandmother’s youngest child.

  ‘My mother left home when she was eighteen. She’s living in Canada now … married with children. We keep in touch in a desultory sort of fashion, but there’s no real closeness between us. My father was killed in a motorbike accident when I was five.

  ‘My grandmother had eight children while I was growing up, and my grandfather was out of work. I ran wild … despite the thrashings I got from my grandfather. I was lucky enough though to have a schoolteacher who thought he saw a glimmer of intelligence behind the belligerence. He …’

  Nell blinked away the tears threatening to blur her vision.

  She could picture him so easily; a small, lonely, aggressive little boy, dirty and perhaps a little scruffy, treating life with defiance because it was his only means of defence.

  ‘Not hungry, Nell?’ he asked her.

  She gave him a wan smile.

  ‘Wedding nerves, I expect,’ Robert interrupted. ‘I suffered from them myself. In fact, I lost so much weight that after we were married, Liz nearly had to carry me over the threshold.’

  They all laughed but Nell felt drained and tired, and she wanted the evening to come to an end.

  If she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she was envious of her friends’ ability to get on with Joss much more easily than she could herself. He had opened up to them in a way he never had to her.

  To her relief, she saw him glance at his watch and announce that it was time they were on their way.

  Robert persuaded them to stay for a final coffee and liqueur, Joss refusing the liqueur since he was driving.

  Nell recklessly allowed Robert to order a brandy for her, downing the fiery liquid in four nervous gulps. She didn’t normally drink a great deal since she had a catastrophically weak head, something she had discovered in her teens. This evening, though, she felt she needed the numbing release of the powerful alcohol, and it certainly seemed to be having an effect, she acknowledged drowsily as they walked back to the Rolls.

  ‘No, you get in the front with Joss,’ Liz told her, pushing her gently towards the front passenger seat when she would have joined her friends in the back.

  It was only a few minutes’ drive fro
m the restaurant to the house; Nell’s shopping and suitcases had already been stowed away in the boot, and, after having said their goodnights and arranged when Liz would arrive for the wedding, Joss turned the car in the direction of their journey home.

  Neither of them spoke, Nell because she felt too drowsy, Joss, she suspected, because he had nothing to say to her. Why had he come to collect her himself? Had he really thought she might try to renege on their agreement?’

  She would have had to return home some time. Sleepily she snuggled down in the seat, breathing in the rich scent of the leather, mingled with the warm maleness of Joss’s skin. Her eyelashes fluttered softly as she fought against the waves of sleep and then gave in to them, a small, inarticulate sound half parting her lips as she subsided into sleep.

  As she slept, she turned away from Joss, and, catching the movement out of the corner of his eye, he depressed the brake slightly and turned to look at her, his face grim and shadowed, and for the first time in recent weeks he questioned the validity of his own sanity. He was gambling more dangerously then he had ever gambled before. And why? Because …

  He cursed as a car coming the other way cut the corner and blinded him with its headlights, dismissing his private thoughts in favour of concentrating on the heavy traffic. It was too late now to have doubts and second thoughts. Aim high, his teacher had told him. Aim as high as there is, and don’t think about the consequences of falling.

  Twice before in his life he had been lucky. Once in that teacher who had selflessly and generously given him his time and attention, teaching him, nurturing his intelligence until he was able to see for himself that there could be a life for him beyond the confines of that experienced by the rest of his family. Over the years he had treated them generously, tried to encourage them to reach out and grasp life’s opportunities as he had done, but they did not share his ambition, and they were content to remain where they were, enjoying his generosity.

  He felt alien to them now, and they to him. He saw them rarely, and when he did he sensed that they were uncomfortable with him.

  Now that his grandparents were both dead there was nothing to take him back. He wondered what his grandfather would think if he could see him now. How many times had he prophesied that Joss would come to a bad end, as he wielded the leather strap he kept for chastising his male offspring. There had been no sadistic cruelty behind the blows; it was merely that his grandfather knew of no other way of disciplining an unruly child.

  Not really wanting to pursue such a potentially uncomfortable train of thought, he switched his concentration to the future, and the faint but disturbing rumours which had come to his ears that there were potential problems with an American corporation he had invested heavily in. This gift he had for playing the stock and commodities markets was one he treated with respect.

  He drove on into the night.

  The Rolls purred to a halt outside Easterhay. Nell stirred briefly in her sleep, murmured something unintelligible and snuggled back against the leather.

  Joss reached across to wake her and then changed his mind, instead unfastening his seat-belt and then hers, and then striding round to her side of the car to lift her bodily out of her seat.

  Johnson had the door open before he reached it, and as he shook his head at the old man’s look of consternation, he whispered, ‘She’s only asleep. I thought I wouldn’t wake her. Which is her room?’

  As he told him, Joss reflected that despite the fact that he probably paid his staff well over double what Nell paid hers he would never command the affection and concern from them which Nell’s gave to her.

  Of course, they had been with the family for a long time, and staff could be notoriously snobbish. Doubtless there was far more to be said to be working for Lady Eleanor then there was for plain Joss Wycliffe.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he was breathing harder then he had been originally, but Nell was hardly any weight at all. In fact, she was too thin. He frowned slightly. These last months had taken their toll on her, visibly so. Her bedroom door was open. He walked in, grimacing over its shabbiness and lack of heat.

  The house had no central heating. A needless expense, her grandfather had called it. He flipped back the coverlet and placed her beneath it, pulling it round her still fully clad body.

  And then, before quitting the room, he stood for several minutes looking down at her. Was he doing the right thing? For himself or for her?

  Only time would tell.

  Closing her door quietly, he set off for the stairs and then paused, turning back. He knew the layout of the house because her grandfather had once shown him round it. He walked down the corridor, and hesitated for a few seconds before finding the door he wanted.

  It opened into a large room positioned at the corner of the house, so that its windows overlooked both the front and the side of the park. The air in the room tasted of dust and emptiness; the bed was stripped; the furniture unpolished. Off this room were a bathroom, a dressing-room and a small sitting-room.

  It was the suite traditionally occupied by the master and mistress of the house.

  Nell’s grandfather had moved out of it when his wife had died and, by the looks of it, it had been empty ever since.

  He tried to visualise himself sharing it with Nell and found, depressingly, that he could not. It was too late to turn back. He had promised her grandfather that he would look after her, and besides …

  His mouth compressing, he walked out of the room and closed the door.

  Downstairs, Johnson was waiting to let him out.

  ‘I’ll just bring in Nell’s cases and parcels,’ Joss told him. ‘Tell Mrs Booth to let her sleep in in the morning,’ he added brusquely. ‘She’s not had an easy time of it lately.’

  Nell stared at the delicate face of the small travelling alarm Liz had given her as a twenty-first present in consternation. Ten o’clock! It couldn’t be!

  She got up and dressed quickly, dismayed by the state of her new clothes. She had no memory of arriving home or being put to bed, but she suspected it must have been Joss who had carried her there.

  No wonder he had left her fully dressed.

  She pulled a face at herself as she put on one of her old skirts and sweaters, shocked to discover how frumpish they were. Those few days in Cambridge had certainly opened her eyes. She longed to put on her new jeans and one of the bright tops, but they must still be in the boot of Joss’s Rolls.

  She went first to the kitchen, demanding crisply to know why she hadn’t been woken at her normal time.

  Mrs Booth looked flustered and, when pressed, confessed that it had been Joss who had given the order that she was to be allowed to sleep.

  Compressing her lips, Nell refused her offer of breakfast. Was it silly of her to resent the fact that the staff were already paying more heed to Joss’s commands than to hers?

  Making herself a cup of coffee, she went into the library to check over the mail. While she was there, the phone rang, and a cool, feminine voice asked, ‘May I speak to Lady Eleanor?’

  ‘Speaking,’ Nell told her.

  ‘Ah … I’ve been asked to ring you by Mr Joss Wycliffe’s secretary. She’s commissioned me to draw up some schemes for the interior design of Easterhay, and I was wondering when I could come round to look over the house.’

  Nell stared at the telephone in disbelief, too angry to speak. How dared Joss do this to her? She was perfectly capable of finding her own interior designer … In fact, she was perfectly capable of doing the work herself. She longed to simply tell the woman her services were not needed, but she had been brought up from childhood to be polite and deferential, no matter what her own private feelings, and so she said calmly, ‘Not at the moment, I’m afraid. May I come back to you?’

  When she did, it would be to tell her that her services were not required. She might be forced to marry Joss, she might be idiotic enough to love him, she might have allowed her friend, on his behalf, to revamp her wardrobe
and her appearance, but she was not going to allow someone else to dictate to her how her home should be decorated and furnished, she decided wrathfully, completely overlooking the fact that she had been contemplating doing just that only a very short time ago. That had been different. Then the designer would have been chosen by her instead of inflicted on her by Fiona.

  She had scarcely replaced the receiver when Johnson arrived to tell her that a Miss Howard had arrived.

  Nell looked at him blankly.

  ‘I believe she’s Mr Joss’s secretary,’ he informed her.

  Joss’s secretary, here.

  Before Nell could say a word, the elegant brunette was walking past Johnson and into the room.

  She gave Nell a dismissive look from frosty blue eyes, one dark eyebrow lifting in elegant disdain as she surveyed the room.

  ‘Joss said that the place was rather run-down. Just as well you’re holding the reception in a marquee. That’s what I’ve come to discuss with you, by the way. I’ve brought menus from several caterers. I expect you’ll want to have the usual Sloaney-type thing,’ she added contemptuously. ‘Watercress soup, salmon, strawberries and cream …’

  She said it as though she decision was hers and hers alone; the menu already a fait accompli, and a burning shaft of anger exploded inside Nell.

  ‘You’re a little out of date,’ she told her coolly, refusing to give in to the intimidating frown turned on her, and added calmly, ‘Thank you, Johnson, Perhaps you could ask Mrs Booth to provide us with coffee,’ thus dismissing their interested audience.

  ‘That would be perfectly acceptable for a late spring or early summer wedding,’ she added, ‘but not for the autumn. You must have been reading too many out-of-date copies of the Tatler. And as for holding the reception in a marquee, it will be held in the ballroom,’ she announced, her head held high.

  As the words left her lips, she was astounded at her own temerity. What on earth had happened to her? It was plain from her face that Joss’s secretary was as stunned as she was herself. Dark colour streaked her elegantly made-up cheekbones, and she suddenly looked older and harder.