Bridal Bargains (11 page)

By then she had wilted weakly into the corner, eyes closed, heart fighting to regain control of itself.

He seems to like pinning me up against walls, she found herself thinking, and choked on a laugh that wasn’t really a
laugh. She couldn’t believe she could be thinking such ridiculously flippant things at a time like this!

‘Don’t,’ he rasped softly, and his fingers threaded themselves into her hair so his thumb pad could stroke gently across the new pulsing fullness he had brought to her mouth.

Don’t—what? Claire asked herself half hysterically. Don’t laugh? Don’t cry? Don’t fall apart at the seams in confusion because what just happened was not supposed to happen?

‘Don’t look to yourself to find the culprit …’

He thought she was blaming herself? Claire glared at the floor between their two pairs of feet and mulishly refused to answer.

After a few taut seconds of this stubborn refusal to offer him a single word, he sighed heavily and his hand fell away, leaving her traitorous mouth pulsing all the hotter. ‘It is my fault, not yours. I am—attracted to you,’ he confessed, seemingly forced into saying that by her silence. ‘But you can trust me not to let this—situation get out of control …’

Could she? At last she found the strength to straighten away from the wall. There had been no control in either of them only a few moments ago. And it was getting worse every time they kissed like that!

‘I do not seduce innocent virgins,’ was his final stiff offering of what she presumed was supposed to be reassurance.

Where it came from she did not know, because she had never done anything like it before. But, like a cobra rearing up for a sudden attack, she came away from that wall and pushed him violently out of her way, then stalked angrily off, shaking and trembling and wishing the pompous devil in hell!

It was the word ‘innocent’ that had triggered her reaction; she knew that because the condescending sound of his voice saying it was still buzzing inside her head!

Because the last thing she felt right now was
innocent!
She thought crossly as she paced the pale grey carpet in her room. What she did feel was hot and restless and excited!

If it hadn’t been for Lissa, the little maid, coming to offer to show her where the nursery was, she probably would have started throwing things just to ease her wretched frustration!

I hate him, she thought as she went off to spend the next couple of hours helping where she could with Melanie.

I hate him! she repeated after spending ages arming herself ready to face him across the dinner table, only to find that the lucky devil had escaped to calmer places. ‘A business dinner,’ the staff called it.

Claire begged to differ. She already recognised the tactics. Playing the advance and retreat game was just another fetish of his. So, having advanced, he was now in retreat, hiding, because he was afraid she might decide to call the whole thing off if he stayed around to let her!

The next morning she came awake to find Althea standing over her with a breakfast tray carrying her usual tea and toast. Surprised, she pulled herself up the pillows then blinked the sleep from her eyes. ‘Hello. When did you arrive?’ she asked curiously.

‘Late last night.’ Althea smiled. ‘Andreas wanted to leave you to sleep this morning,’ she then explained apologetically. ‘But his grandmother is already asking for you. So …’

Enough said, Claire acknowledged ruefully as she watched Althea place the tray across her lap and begin pouring her tea for her, just the way she liked it.

After that, the two of them fell back into a harmonious routine they had perfected during her stay at the London house. Half an hour later, showered, dressed in a pair of tailored pale blue trousers and a simple white top, she was walking along the gallery to attend the royal summons.

Althea was with her, by order of the grandmother, so Claire had been told. Knocking lightly on the old lady’s door, they then waited for the terse, ‘Enter!’ before stepping inside.

The room looked quite different this morning. The tall screen had been moved from the window to allow the morning
sun to stream in, and was now shielding a corner of the room.

And what had looked like heavy and dark old-fashioned bits and bobs yesterday suddenly looked interestingly aged, making Claire want to walk around the room and study them.

But the old lady was sitting there in her chair by the window looking cross and impatient. ‘What time do you call this?’ she snapped. ‘We get up at dawn in this country, not the end of the day.’

Knowing it was only nine o’clock in the morning, Claire smiled at this gross piece of exaggeration. ‘But at least I came here first and without even going to see my baby,’ she remarked, taking her lead from the way Andreas had spoken to his grandmother yesterday, and deciding to take her on when she snapped.

‘What baby?’ the old woman shot back.

‘The …’ Ah, Claire thought, biting back the sarcastic reply she had been about to make. Taboo subject, she recalled as those beady eyes dared her—just dared her to say anything more about Melanie.

The frail old head nodded when Claire remained wryly silent. Then she was turning her attention on Althea. ‘Althea, go into my bedroom and bring the dress that is hanging on my wardrobe,’ she commanded.

With an obedient nod, Althea hurried away, and Claire was ordered to come and sit down in the chair set beside the old woman.

‘Now,’ Andreas’s grandmother said once Claire was seated, ‘you will explain to me, please, while Althea is away, what you have done to upset my grandson. He was here an hour or two ago,’ she informed Claire, ‘and he was bad-tempered and restless. Have you two argued?’

No, Claire thought ruefully, we just kissed each other senseless. Then I pushed him away and he went off in a huff! ‘I haven’t even seen him since I left here with him yesterday.’ She avoided the straight answer.

‘You mentioned his first wife to him; that is what you did,’ the old woman decided.

Claire immediately stiffened. ‘I did not,’ she denied.

Those amber eyes that had so much life left in them while the body they belonged to was wasting away fixed on her narrowly, looking at her as if they had the ability to see right through the blueness of her eyes to the brain that worked behind them.

‘Then take my advice, young woman,’ she said eventually. ‘If you care anything for Andreas, then never mention her to him, do you hear?’

Yes, I hear, Claire thought, inwardly shocked by the amount of passion the old lady had fed into her words. But I don’t understand.

And she was not offered enlightenment—except … ‘He needs no more heartache dishing out to him—especially by a nubile young English girl with independent ways and legs that reach up to her armpits! Ah!’ she then exclaimed in pleasure as Althea came back into the room. ‘This is what I want to show you!’

And the other subject was dropped, leaving Claire sitting there wondering bleakly just how deeply Andreas had loved his first wife for even his grandmother to worry about the fragile state of his emotions.

But—nubile? she then repeated to herself with a grin. Such an old-fashioned word! Yet, coming as it had from this hypercritical old woman, she found it rather a compliment.

‘Why the grin?’ the sharp tongue demanded. ‘You don’t like my dress? You think it is funny?’

Dress—what dress? Claire frowned, clicking her eyes into focus on what Althea was carefully holding up so the long skirt didn’t touch the ground.

‘Oh!’ she cried out as she jumped to her feet. ‘How absolutely lovely!’

‘You like it,’ the old woman sighed in satisfaction—then
instantly went back to being stern. ‘It was my wedding dress. Now it is yours.’

‘Oh, but I can’t—’

Even as Claire turned to gasp out her protest, the old lady was talking over her. ‘Of course you can!’ she snapped. ‘It is my wish! So try it on—try it on and let us see how little different my young figure was to yours at your age!’

She sounded so animated—alive and excited—that Claire didn’t have the heart to protest a second time. But as she looked back at the long, soft lines of the beautiful dress she felt like a dreadful fraud.

A deceiver of a vulnerable old woman.

But, by the time she emerged from behind the tall screen, having had Althea help her out of her clothes and into the dress, she was already head over heels in love with the dress.

Made of an intricately worked handmade lace worn over the finest silk under-dress, it skimmed her slender body as if it had been made for it. The neckline scooped gently over her breasts. The long fitted sleeves fastened by tiny pearl buttons that ran from wrist to elbow—one of which had to remain unfastened because of her cumbersome plaster-cast. The skirt was a little short, finishing just above her ankle, but even that didn’t seem to matter.

It was the nineteen twenties at its most poetic. It was simply exquisite.

And just to see that sheen of tearful joy enter those tired eyes made wearing it a pleasure.

The old lady sighed, then ran on in hushed Greek that didn’t need translating for Claire to understand that she was overwhelmed by what she was seeing.

Herself maybe? Claire pondered. Was this old woman who was so very close to the end of her life suddenly seeing herself when she was at the beginning?

‘You will do—you will do,’ the old lady murmured huskily. Then she said, with a return of her old sharpness, ‘Nubile, eh? Was I not nubile also?’ she declared triumphantly.

And Claire couldn’t help laughing even though she was still feeling like a terrible fraud.

‘You will wear it next week when you marry my grandson and he will bless the day he found you because that dress is lucky,’ she promised, having no idea that Claire had switched off from the moment she’d mentioned marriage next week, which was news to her. ‘I had fifty years of happiness with my husband before the cancer took him. You will have the same luck. You mark my word, child. That dress is lucky …’

‘But this whole thing is getting out of control, Andreas!’

Claire was pleading with him across the width of his study desk, having come to search him out the moment she had been dismissed from his grandmother.

‘She wants me to wear her own wedding dress!’

‘You don’t like it?’ Sleek eyebrows arched in haughty enquiry.

‘Like it?’ Claire repeated incredulously. ‘It’s old, it’s handmade, it’s utterly unique and it’s exquisite!’ she sighed. ‘But she
loves
that dress, Andreas!’ she told him painfully. ‘And she loves you! Yet here we are intending to dupe her any which way you want to look at it!’

The only response she got to that was the slow lowering of lazy lashes then the same slow lifting of them again. But then, he was the ice man today, Claire noted impatiently. Yesterday hadn’t happened. He had clearly dismissed it from his mind.

‘Do something!’ she snapped in sheer frustration.

‘What would you like me to do?’ he asked quietly. ‘Go and tell her that this is all nothing but a lie?’

‘No,’ she sighed, hating him for his smooth simplicity! ‘I just feel—’ She sighed again, and turned her back on him so she could slump wearily against the desk. ‘I hate liars,’ she said. ‘Yet here I am, lying to everybody I speak to.’

‘Is she happy?’

Claire dipped her head to stare at her shoes. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Did the dress fit you as it must have fitted her more than seventy years ago?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, seeing the joy in that old woman’s face when she’d seen herself as she would have looked all those years ago.

To her consternation he gave a soft laugh. ‘She told me it would.’ He explained the reason for the laugh. ‘Last night, after having met you, she laid a wager with me that if the dress fitted you then I must buy it from her for you to wear on our wedding day. Oh, don’t misunderstand,’ he said quickly as Claire turned to stare at him. ‘She is a shrewd old thing, and she loves a good wager. The dress is a museum piece and practically priceless. She knows this. She means to fleece me, and will enjoy doing so.’

And thereby keep the weak lifeblood flowing through her veins that little bit longer while they haggle, Claire concluded, beginning to see again what her guilty conscience had blinded her to—the fact that this man was willing to do anything to keep his grandmother alive.

Today it was a wedding dress. Tomorrow it would be something else. Then there was a wedding to plan and a great-grandchild to meet and …

Without really knowing she was doing it, she began planning and plotting herself. ‘She wants the wedding to take place next week.’ She frowned. ‘Perhaps, if I insist that we put it off until my plaster-cast comes off, it will—’

But already Andreas was shaking his dark head, the expression on his suddenly grave face enough to tell her why.

‘She hasn’t got that long?’ Claire questioned thickly.

He didn’t answer with a straight yes or no. ‘She knows what she is doing,’ he murmured. ‘Let her set her own timetable, hmm?’

A timetable … She shivered, hating the concept so much
that she sprang abruptly away from the desk. ‘I’m going to see Melanie,’ she told him as she walked quickly to the door.

For at least Melanie was everything that was bright and optimistic about life, whereas—

‘Claire—one more moment of your time before you go, if you please,’ that infuriatingly level voice requested.

It reminded her of a softly spoken headmaster she’d once had, who’d used to intimidate everyone with the simple use of the spoken word. Resenting the sensation, she spun around to glare at him. Seeing the glare, he responded with that brief grim smile she despised so much.

‘At the risk of infuriating you even more,’ he drawled, ‘I have to warn you that there will be a party here tomorrow night. My family wish to meet you before the wedding takes place,’ he explained, watching the varying changes in expression cross her face. Annoyance, trepidation then eventually dismay. ‘It will take the form of a—betrothal celebration.’ Smoothly he poured oil on the burning waters.

‘No,’ she refused, point-blank and unequivocally.

The leather chair he was sitting in creaked slightly as he sat back into it, the morning sunlight pouring in through the window behind him putting his features into shadow so she couldn’t see whether he was smiling that smile.