by Liz Fielding
Noah’s eyes were fastened on the girl’s face. ‘Then you must come with us tonight.’
‘We couldn’t possibly...’ Peter began, staring at Lizzie, his brows tugged together in a bewildered frown.
‘I have a box with two empty seats. It would be a pity to waste them.’
‘Oh, Peter, please!’ Fran begged. ‘Mr Jordan wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t mean it.’ She turned eagerly back to Noah. ‘Would you?’
Noah offered a reassuring smile. ‘We’d love to have you as our guests.’ He turned to Lizzie. ‘Wouldn’t we, darling?’
Darling? She was beginning to seriously hate that word. But before she could react he had slipped his arm about her waist. ‘Seven o’clock at the Coliseum. If we miss you in the foyer, I’ll leave a pass at the box office.’ He raised a hand, and before Lizzie knew what was happening she was being propelled across the lawn towards the house.
‘Lizzie...?’ Peter’s slightly puzzled voice trailed after her.
‘Don’t look back,’ Noah rapped out, quite unnecessarily. Lizzie had no desire to look back. The picture of Peter standing confused and unhappy beside his bride would haunt her for ever. The dreadful suspicion that he had married Francesca on the rebound simply to spite her... She half stumbled across the grass in her haste to get as far away from them as possible.
As they reached the French windows that led to the drawing room, Noah turned her to him. Tears were turning his image into a watery blur as his fingers touched her chin and raised it a fraction, exposing her to the full force of a pair of seeking grey eyes. And while she stood there, held like a rabbit helpless in a pair of headlamps, he bent and kissed her.
His lips were cool and firm and dry against hers, and she caught the faintest scent of something indefinable that seemed to be the very essence of Noah Jordan. Shock held her rooted to the spot. Peter had kissed her many times, tenderly, warmly. But Noah Jordan’s mouth was totally demanding, provoking a flicker of some undreamt-of desire...
She clutched at his wide shoulders as her head was forced back over his arm, shutting her eyes tightly in a desperate attempt to blot out what was happening, the realisation that it would be all too easy to respond. That she wanted to... But then it was over, his hand at her back as he swept her into the drawing room.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, turning on him angrily in her confusion. ‘How dare you kiss me like that?’
‘It’s something people do at weddings,’ he said carelessly. ‘Kiss the bridesmaid. Or hadn’t you noticed?’
She brushed aside his reference to the chaste salutes of family friends. ‘It wasn’t... the same.’
‘No?’ His expression was disquieting. ‘Perhaps not. I promise not to let it go to my head.’
‘You...’ She tugged at her arm. ‘Oh...let me go,’ she stormed. ‘I want—’
He swung her back into his arms, forcing her to face him, meeting her angry expression head-on. ‘Everyone within a hundred yards could see what you wanted, Elizabeth. Including his wife. That’s why I kissed you—to save the face of a young woman who has been pitch-forked by that young fool into a very awkward situation. You’ve made the start of one marriage difficult enough. I don’t intend to let you upset another. So you’d better go and change. Right now.’
So, she was right. Olivia had run to her brother and arranged this little plan to get her out of the way. It certainly explained his undisguised hostility. Well, she wasn’t about to fall into line and co-operate with her eviction from her own home. ‘Change?’ she demanded. ‘Why on earth would I want to change?’
‘Because I have no intention of driving to London with you dressed like that. I’ll come and pick up your bags in a few minutes. You’ll need something long for tonight, by the way. It’s a gala.’
She stood her ground. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mr Jordan. You’re not driving me to London, or anywhere else for that matter. And I loathe the opera,’ she added, without the slightest qualm at uttering such fiction.
‘Noah,’ he insisted, ignoring her protest. ‘My sister has married your father. We’re practically related. That’s why I have been lumbered with you.’
‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘And you can consider yourself unlumbered. I’m perfectly happy here.’
One dark brow kinked at the vehemence of her reply, then his hands grasped her shoulders and forcibly propelled her towards the hall. ‘Causing as much mischief as you can, no doubt. Think again. Staying here is not an option.’ The hard edge to his voice left no room for doubt.
‘But...’ It was ridiculous. When her father had first broached the idea that she should stay with Noah for a few weeks after the wedding she hadn’t made a fuss. She had made other plans—to visit New York with Peter...
She gave a little gasp as she was jolted back to reality. Her plans had been nothing but daydreams. But she still had a month while Olivia and her father were away to make her own arrangements. ‘The house shouldn’t be left empty,’ she objected.
‘I may have misread the situation, but I don’t think you were planning on house-sitting for the next month, Elizabeth.’
She flushed angrily. ‘My plans are none of your business.’
‘I wish that were true,’ he replied, with feeling. ‘However, if you’d had the good manners to stay and listen to Olivia, instead of making a fool of yourself over Hallam, you would know that there’s been a last-minute change of plan. She has been advised not to fly. Which is why, like it or not, you’re coming to London with me. Right now.’
‘Not to fly? Why on earth...?’ Lizzie felt the angry flush drain from her cheeks. There could be only one reason why a perfectly fit woman shouldn’t fly. ‘She’s pregnant!’
Noah eyed her sudden pallor. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘Obviously not. Presumably, after all the lectures about the dangers of unwanted pregnancies, Dad found it difficult to tell me.’
A small muscle tightened at the side of his mouth. ‘This baby may not have been planned, but if you believe that it’s unwanted I suggest you think again. When I had lunch with your father last week he was overjoyed at the possibility of a son. I certainly understand why he wouldn’t want any more daughters.’ He glanced around him. ‘Although I can see that you might be a little piqued at having to step aside and surrender all this for such a late arrival.’
‘Step aside?’ Lizzie repeated, too bewildered for a moment to respond more vigorously to his barely cloaked aggression. A baby? For a moment—just a moment—she thought that everything might, after all, work out. Then she knew, understood the full horror of that triumphant telephone call the day after the wedding had been announced, when Olivia had thought that she was in the house alone.
‘We’re saved, darling. I’ve got the man in the palm of my hand. Lord, but it took some acting to convince the old fool... But it’s the perfect cover...’
There had been a pause and Olivia had laughed softly. ‘I can’t run away from my honeymoon, my darling, much as I’d like to. But after that, well...I’m keeping my London flat so I can see you any time I want. The only fly in the ointment is Daddy’s little girl...she’s so protective...but I’m working on a little plan to deal with her...’ And after a few more seconds there had been the little ting as the phone had been replaced.
And Olivia hadn’t wasted any time putting her plan into action. The next day her father had called her into the study and suggested that she might like to spend a few weeks in London. It would give Olivia a chance to take control of the house, he had explained. With Lizzie there...well, the staff would naturally look first to her... He knew she would understand.
Olivia’s brother had kindly offered to put Lizzie up at his London home for a few weeks, he told her. There had been just a touch of awkwardness about his smile. She had spent too much time looking after her old dad, he’d said, and patted her hand. Noah would see that she had some real fun.
How reasonable it would have sounded if she hadn�
�t known better. It was then that she had made the mistake of trying to tell her father what Olivia was really like beneath that sugar-sweet exterior.
Now she stared at Noah. Whatever ‘little plan’ Olivia had devised, her brother was quite obviously a part of it. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, turning abruptly away.
‘Quick as you can, Elizabeth. And don’t forget the long dress.’
She glared at him, but didn’t bother to reply. She would be quick, but not because he demanded it. Her own desperate need to get away from all of them was encouragement enough. And she certainly wouldn’t be needing a long dress.
She regarded her reflection in the cheval-glass in the corner of her bedroom with distaste. Was it only a few hours ago when she had stood in that same spot, certain that if Peter responded to her olive branch, came to the wedding, it might just be possible to make a life for herself, to be strong for the time when her father would need her again?
She stripped off the cream silk dress and threw it on the bed, then tore the tiny rosebuds from her hair, angrily brushing it until she had obliterated every vestige of the hairdresser’s art and it hung as straight and plain as a yard of tap water down her back. Then she felt marginally better, back in control, because if they all thought that she was going to fall in with the plans Olivia had made to dispose of ‘Daddy’s little girl’ they could think again.
She would spend a few nights with an old school-friend who lived on the outskirts of London. It would give her time to sort herself out and make some decisions about the future. She certainly wasn’t going anywhere with Noah Jordan. Not even, she thought, with just the tiniest regret, to the opera.
Then she took a deep breath and, dressed in her most comfortable jeans and a defiant scarlet T-shirt, she descended to the hall.
Noah was waiting at the foot of the stairs. He took in her change of appearance with a single, exasperated glance, and for just a moment she felt a touch of something between anger and shame. She’d wanted to shout her rage to the world. Too late she realised that flaunting her pain was simply emphasising her humiliation.
But there was no time for self-analysis because he seized her arm and thrust her back up the stairs before she could utter more than the feeblest protest. He didn’t bother to ask which room was hers. He simply flung open every door he passed until he came to the one where her silk dress had slipped and crumpled into an untidy heap on the rosebud-strewn carpet, betraying her misery.
He stepped over it without comment, flung open her wardrobe and began to flip through the remaining contents.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded as she regained the use of her tongue, furiously pushing herself between him and her clothes.
‘I’m not about to walk out of here with you in a pair of jeans—’
‘Mr Jordan, you’re not about to walk out of here with me, full stop!’
He ignored this outburst and reached over her head to lift a soft voile print dress from its hanger. ‘Put this on.’ He turned back to the wardrobe. ‘Is this the only evening dress you have?’
She regarded the pink taffeta garment with loathing. ‘That’s none of your business.’
He flipped it across his arm without comment and glanced around. ‘Where are your bags?’
‘Downstairs. In the boot room,’ she said, crossing her fingers, fairly sure that he wouldn’t know where that was.
He glanced at his watch. ‘Very well. I’ll see you downstairs in three minutes.’
‘And if I refuse to change?’ she flung at his retreating back.
He turned in the doorway and regarded her with a slow look that travelled from the toes of her hard-worn trainers to the top of her defiant head, and quite unexpectedly her lips began to burn with the memory of that fierce kiss. Her hand flew to cover her mouth, as if somehow he might be able to tell. He followed the movement and his eyes snapped ominously. ‘I’ll change you myself,’ he said abruptly. ‘Anything else?’
‘I...’ She tried to speak, but the word came out as little more than a hoarse croak. She cleared her throat, but he wasn’t interested.
‘No? Two and a half minutes.’ Then he was gone.
And she made it, adding a dashing straw hat for good measure, and drawing on a pair of white lace gloves as she raced to the head of the stairs. Having decided to change, there was no point in being half-hearted about it. Then, as he heard her and turned, she slowed and sauntered down as if she had had all the time in the world. Noah’s face was in shadow, so even if she cared she could not have seen his expression.
‘Now we’ll go and say goodbye to Olivia and James,’ he said firmly.
‘I’m sure they won’t notice one way or the other,’ she said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.
‘Would you have it any other way?’ It was a rebuke, and it brought hot little patches of colour to Lizzie’s cheeks. ‘But then, if Peter Hallam had flung himself into your willing arms instead of spoiling the perfect scenario by arriving with his brand-new wife, you wouldn’t have been noticing much either, would you?’
‘How can you be so beastly?’
‘It takes years of practice,’ he assured her.
‘Don’t be so modest, Mr Jordan,’ she said fervently. ‘You clearly have a natural talent for it.’
His brows rose a fraction. ‘Careful, Miss Sweetness. Your claws are showing.’
‘Miss Sweetness’? What was that supposed to mean? She clenched her teeth, determined not to rise to such an obvious attempt to bait her. Why on earth did the man have to be so unpleasant? Even if Olivia had told him that she had tried to interfere with the wedding plans, surely he must know what his sister was like? It wasn’t her fault, so why was she attracting such venom from the man?
But he was right about one thing. Despite the fact that her father had barely spoken to her since her attempt to open his eyes, she wouldn’t make things worse between them. None of this was his fault. And he had misery enough in store.
So she took a deep breath and braced herself, knowing that there must be pitying speculation about her feelings since Peter’s arrival with his new bride. Every bead would turn as she made her way across the lawn. So she had better be smiling. Noah took her arm and tucked it into his, holding it there when she would have pulled away.
‘Forget any plans you have to make a scene, Elizabeth, or, I promise you, I will put you over my knee and spank you.’
Startled, she turned to stare at him. What did he think she was going to do—fling herself down on the grass and drum her heels like a spoilt child who’d lost her dolly? ‘I’d just like to get this over with,’ she said. ‘As quickly as possible.’
But Noah refused to be hurried. Despite his insistence that they were short of time, he stopped to shake hands and say goodbye to a number of new acquaintances, and she was able to witness at first hand his undoubted charisma. By the time he delivered her to her father she was certainly the object of considerable speculation. But pity had nothing to do with it.
How was it, everyone clearly wanted to know, that little Lizzie French was leaving the wedding on the arm of the one man that every other woman would have given her eye-teeth to be with?
CHAPTER TWO
JAMES FRENCH turned as his daughter approached. ‘Lizzie, there you are. Are you leaving now?’ he said, a little awkwardly.
She wanted to fling her arms about his neck and hug him—longed to be able to tell him how happy she was for him, but the lie would stick in her throat. Lord, how she wished that she hadn’t overheard that conversation.
‘Noah has explained about the honeymoon having to be cancelled,’ she said stiffly, turning quickly as she saw the painful reproach in his eyes. ‘If you’d told me sooner, Olivia, I could have arranged...’ She lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug. ‘But there’s plenty of food in the freezer. You won’t starve.’
‘Olivia has arranged a hamper...’ James French took hold of his new wife’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘She
’s been quite amazing.’
‘Amazing,’ Lizzie agreed dully. She had helped, encouraged, supported her father for the better part of five difficult years, until the long black tunnel of depression he had been living in had begun to open out and he had been able to begin to work again, to live again. But Olivia had picked up the telephone and ordered a hamper from Fortnum’s and she was ‘amazing’. Well, Olivia would soon discover that life at Dove Court was not the bed of roses that she had obviously imagined.
The object of her speculation was talking quietly to Noah. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask.’
‘It’s no trouble. Just forget about everything but yourself and James.’ Noah caught Lizzie’s blue eyes regarding him sceptically and he straightened. ‘Shall we go?’ he said abruptly.
‘If you’re quite ready,’ she murmured, and reluctantly submitted to the hollow ritual of cheek-kissing.
‘Lizzie...’ Olivia hesitated for just a moment under her expressionless eyes, then shook her head. ‘Nothing. Just...enjoy yourself,’ she urged. ‘You haven’t had much fun...’
‘Fun’. The word rang tauntingly in her ears as they made their way back to the house.
‘Noah...’ Olivia had followed them, and her summons made him pause and turn.
‘Get in the car, Elizabeth. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
She made her way towards the vintage drophead Bentley, gleaming silver, its top down in the glorious summer sunshine. Her pink dress lay on the back seat along with Noah’s top hat. He was welcome to it.
She kept walking until she was in the cooler shade of the garage. Her car was at the far end and she climbed in, fitted the key and turned it. The engine obediently whirred, but did not catch. She tried again. Shock was beginning to overtake her. She was trembling, and her fingers slipped on the key as she tried for the third time to start the car.
