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The right material wedded to the Durant genes.
Hence the proposal of marriage.
Except she couldn’t be the chosen one…never the chosen one.
There was one huge flaw in Richard Seymour’s selection of her as his bride, and Leigh wasn’t the only one who knew it. Her mother certainly did. Her four sisters might very well be aware of it, as well. They’d tell him soon enough, if it served their interests, and the evidence of her own observations pointed that way.
All five of them undoubtedly knew the contents of the will. Whomever Richard chose to marry would be sitting pretty in the world they knew. It explained why her mother and sisters had been so focused on courting his favour and not paying any attention to the return of the prodigal daughter. It was the same old sick game, sucking up to power.
Leigh found her gaze had dropped to the leg Richard had propped on the sandstone platform. The fine woollen fabric of his suit trousers was pulled taut over a strongly muscled thigh. Her mind fuzzed over an image of how he might look naked, all that male power energised by desire, wanting her…
Another fanciful dream turned to dust, she thought, feeling the same old ache of disappointment Richard had always left her with. If she told him the truth he wouldn’t want her, not as a wife. Even if he still fancied her—the woman she was now—she couldn’t allow anything to come of it, knowing he would inevitably choose to make one of her sisters his bride. Best to cut it dead right now.
She dragged her gaze up and kept it levelled on his as she delivered her rejection. “The answer is no, Richard. I won’t marry you.”
Then to emphasise the matter was closed, she was up on her feet with her back turned to him and heading towards the steps that led down to the next terrace, away from him, away from the house that had dominated much of her life, away from the family who cared more for what it represented than they’d ever cared for her.
“Why not?” Richard shot after her.
She waved a dismissive hand without glancing around. “You have four other daughters to choose from. You just struck out on me, that’s all.”
“I don’t want any of the others,” he declared vehemently.
She shook her head over the black irony of that statement and kept on walking, down the steps to the summer-house which presided over the terrace of rose gardens. She could hear his footsteps following her and fiercely wished he’d leave her alone.
It was so perverse of him to choose her ahead of the far more suitable daughters, the beautiful blonde accomplished socialites with the right blood in them, only too eager to snap him up and grace his arm, his bed, and his bank balance. Felicity, Vanessa, Caroline, Nadine…such pretty, feminine, classy names.
The impulse to shove one truth she’d had to accept down Richard Seymour’s throat made Leigh pause by the summer-house and cast a derisive look at him. He was already at the foot of the steps and striding towards her.
“You know, Richard, most people don’t get everything they want. You may not be used to that but I’m sure compromises sometimes have to be taken, even in your world.”
He kept on coming. “You can have everything you want from me, Leigh.”
The strong conviction in his voice clutched at her heart, but only for a moment. He wasn’t offering love. He probably didn’t know what love was, any more than she did. The sheer sweep of his extravagant promise suddenly evoked another wild laugh, peeling into a wind that carried it away from her as swiftly as it arose.
It didn’t stop him. His eyes didn’t waver from hers, determined on burning away her scorn and supplanting it with possibilities that could breed hope. But there was no hope.
“It’s very simple, Richard,” she said flatly. “Regardless of what you can give me, I can’t give you what you want.”
He came to a halt, barely a metre away, totally un-perturbed by her claim. His eyes challenged it with ruthless intent as he said, “Because you’re not Lawrence Durant’s daughter?”
Shock reverberated through her. “You know?” The words spilled from her lips before she could catch them back. Had he guessed or had he pushed her into admission? His proposal made no sense if he knew. A churning turmoil of shame and pride robbed her of any movement as he stepped towards her, a mesmerising satisfaction written on his face.
“I knew the day I first met you, Leigh. You didn’t belong to Lawrence, not physically, not mentally, not emotionally. No bond at all and nothing of him in you. Nothing.”
It wasn’t proof, she thought, but he went on, shattering that thought.
“Lawrence confirmed it when you went away and I suggested someone should be hired to keep track of you in case you were in need. ‘She’s my wife’s child, not mine!’ was what he said, then swore me to silence on the subject. A proud man like Lawrence didn’t care to have it known that you weren’t his.”
The power of his total self-assurance held her still, though her heart was pounding wildly and tremors of shock were still running through her.
“Legally, you are his.”
“No.” Her voice sounded hollow but the words had to be said now. “He disinherited me when I left.”
“He made no provision for you in his will, Leigh, but nowhere is there a claim that denies you are his child. And since Lawrence was cremated today, there can be no DNA tests to prove you aren’t. I can marry you in good faith with the terms of his will.”
Instinctively she fought against the relentless beat of his logic. “My mother could name my real father.”
A grim little smile curled his mouth. “It’s not in her best interests to do so.”
The manipulation of wealth! Leigh’s hatred of it spurred her to argue. “What makes you think my real father wouldn’t come forward if he saw money in it?”
That killed the smile. Yet, even more disturbing, his eyes seemed to soften with sympathy. “It won’t happen, Leigh,” he said quietly. “Your mother paid for him and his family to go back to Italy before you were born. From the date of their departure, I’d say he knows nothing of you.”
“Go back to Italy?” she picked up in bewilderment.
“You didn’t know he was Italian?”
She shook her head. On the terrible night she had learnt Lawrence Durant was not her father, her mother had refused to reveal the true circumstances of her birth. The argument between Lawrence and his wife had raged over her head, and had more to do with financial arrangements than the infidelity that had brought her into their world. They had forgotten her in hurling threats at one another. She’d simply slipped away, packed her things and left.
Italian…well, that explained her colouring. There weren’t too many blonde Italians. It probably explained her non-boyish figure, as well. The only Italian actress she could think of was Sophia Loren, whose curvaceous femininity was legendary. Leigh supposed a hot-blooded Italian lover would have made a tempting contrast to Lawrence Durant, but her mother had hardly been wise in having a child by him, risking the possibility of producing the cuckoo Leigh had turned out to be.
“He was the gardener here at the time of your conception,” Richard explained.
It shocked her into speech. “A gardener? My mother took a gardener as her lover?” It seemed unbelievable. Her mother was a dyed-in-the-wool snob who invariably disdained to notice what she considered the lower classes.
“He had four sons, Leigh.”
Ah…the logic of it was instantly crystal clear. No escaping that connection. A man who fathered sons was precisely what was wanted when four daughters had been delivered and a son was required.
Leigh closed her eyes, revolted by the calculation that had gone into her conception…the payment that had been made for a service rendered. No doubt, if there’d been ultrasound scans done all those years ago to determine the sex of the baby, the pregnancy would have been terminated and she wouldn’t even be alive today. Her mother had probably gambled on having a child that took after her in looks and colouring. No wonder she’d been unwanted. She represented failure in every sense.
“How do you know all this, Richard?” she asked, raising lashes that felt unnaturally heavy, but needing to see the answer in his eyes.
“I made it my business to find out.”
“Why?” A weary, aching cynicism prompted her to add, “To ensure there was no wild card that could upset your plan?”
“There was no plan when I set about getting the information. That was six years ago, Leigh.”
She frowned, realising the terms of the will would only have been revealed on Lawrence’s death. “Then what use was it to you?”
His serious expression was softened by a touch of whimsy. “Oh, I thought one day you might like to know who your real father is.”
“You did it for me?” She shook her head incredulously, unable to believe such altruism from a man who clearly calculated everything.
“We have more in common than you think,” he said wryly. “I was not the child of the man my mother was married to. I bear his name but I’m not his child, and I knew it very early on.”
Leigh was dumbfounded. There’d never been a whisper of anything scandalous in his background. Another private family secret? Then it burst upon her that he knew what it felt like…travelling the same road…and he’d seen it all along in her…a fellow traveller.
“The truth of such a situation is not easy to deal with and a name can become important,” he went on. “Your father’s name is Mario Vangelli. He and his family live in Naples. I can give you the address should you ever want to visit.”
Vangelli…Richard was right. It was good to have a name instead of a blank. “What about you?” She eyed him curiously. “Did you find your real father?”
“Yes. He was married to someone else. They had a family. He didn’t know I was his son and I didn’t tell him.” His expression hardened. “As with your father, it was just seed sown that he walked away from.”
Paid to walk away from in her case. “I wouldn’t feel right about visiting, but thank you for telling me about him, Richard. It is better knowing than not knowing.”
He nodded, an understanding in his eyes that shared the scars of being a bastard child who didn’t belong to the marriage of either parents.
“I might never have come back,” she mused. “You might have got that information for nothing, Richard.”
He shook his head. “Information is always useful.”
Cynicism returned in a swift bitter sweep. It was information he could have used against her mother, or Lawrence, for that matter. “Of course,” she drawled. “Knowledge is power.”
“And you were always going to come back,” he continued without so much as a ripple in his cast-iron confidence. “When you felt ready to.”
“Lucky for you it was now or you would have had no choice but to propose to one of my sisters,” she mocked.
“Luck has nothing to do with it. If you hadn’t come I would have gone to you.”
Her heart contracted. He really did want her above the others. “You would have had to track me down,” she pointed out.
“I’ve kept track of you all along, Leigh. As soon as I knew you had gone, I acted to ensure you were safe, and stayed safe, wherever you went and whatever you did. There wasn’t one day of these past six years that I haven’t known where you were, and been assured you were managing by yourself. I knew what flight you took out of Broome, where you stayed in Perth, and what time you arrived in Sydney last night. And I knew you would be here today.”
It shook her, more than any of the previous shocks he’d delivered. Or perhaps it was the culminating effect of all of them. “You had someone spying on me?”
“No, not spying. Just checking that you were coping on your own, not in trouble, not in need of help. There was absolutely no interference in your life, Leigh, nor in whatever you chose to do.”
“Why did you do it?” she cried, still appalled at having been so comprehensively watched over.
It came again, that brief flash of something deep and dark and dangerous behind the crisp blue of his eyes. “Because I cared. And no one else did.” Even his voice carried a note of ferocity, suggestive of feelings he hadn’t quite kept under control.
Leigh tried to focus on it but Richard distracted her by moving closer, lifting a hand and touching her cheek, soft fingertips grazing her skin, raising electric tingles. “Think, Leigh,” he commanded, the powerful impact of his eyes increased by the knowledge he had of her. “You came, looking for some portion of justice…”
That was true.
“Marry me…and you’ll have what your mother sacrificed you for…what your sisters covet. You’ll have all that Lawrence denied you and more. What greater justice than to take what you were born for…”
Her head whirled with his words, all of them striking such painful places.
“I hand you the keys to the whole Durant empire, everything Lawrence acquired in his ruthless drive for power…”
To the exile, the spoils, she thought wildly.
“…and no one will scorn you again, Leigh, or treat you in a contemptible manner. As my wife, you will be my queen, in every sense.”
As long as I give you a son.
There was always a price for the pot of gold.
“I want you as my queen, Leigh.”
The low throb of his voice was like a drumbeat on her heart.
“Only you can satisfy me. Only you. We’re two of a kind, Leigh. You and I.”
And that mesmerising message blazed from his eyes as he moved closer, an arm sliding around her waist, taking possession, the hand on her face suddenly cupping her chin, holding it tilted, and she knew he was going to kiss her, knew he meant to seduce her to his will, but somehow she didn’t want to stop him.
Her entire being was quivering with anticipation.
CHAPTER FOUR
LEIGH held her breath at the first brush of his mouth on hers, the contact so tantalisingly gentle, it took all her concentration to absorb each shift of pleasurable sensation. It wasn’t a taking kiss. She would have fought it if he’d tried to blitz her with dominant strength. The relief of this controlled exploration allowed her to relax and let the urge to know flow freely.
She had blocked him out all these years, coupling him with Lawrence Durant, yet today she had been forcefully reminded that her hatred of Richard had been fed from the fierce wish for him to act differently. To her teenage mind he’d had the strength to fight her father, to stand up for her, to be her champion, and he hadn’t done it. Not how she’d wanted it done, not enough to satisfy the bitter churning of needs inside her.
Could he give her satisfaction now?
Would he?
The feathery caresses teased her into responding, and no sooner had her lips softened and parted than the light pressures changed to a deeper searching, and she felt moving through her a great swell of yearning for the promise of everything…everything she’d ever wanted and could ever want.
Had the normal flow of such feelings been somehow locked up around Richard Seymour? Was this strange shifting inside herself the release of barriers that had been subconciously focused on needs he should have fulfilled?
Her mind and body were in such a whirl of inner chaos, she wasn’t aware of lifting her arms. The instinct to press closer, to hold on to this moment of reckoning, to see it through as far as it went, swept her hands around his neck. His embrace instantly tightened, moulding her body to the hard length of his, and his mouth engaged hers in a far more passionate intimacy, stirring a sensual storm that spread like wildfire.
The heat of it banished the cold emptiness of being unloved and unwanted and ignited a hunger that craved everything she had missed out on. She revelled in the hungry ravishing of her mouth, exulted in every bit of the physical contact, the squashing of her breasts across the muscular breadth of his chest, the exciting pressure of his arousal, the straining of rock-hard thighs against hers. He did want her. It felt as though he was reaching out to her with every fibre of his being and the thrill of it was too enthralling to stop.
It was he who broke off the all-consuming flow of desire, suddenly throwing his head back, dragging in air, breathing so hard his chest heaved, bringing a rush of sensitivity to her breasts and stirring an intense frustration at the abrupt halt to what he’d started. She stared at him in confusion, seeing the tension on his face, not understanding anything except he’d stopped kissing her.
He moved the hand he’d curled around her head, touching her sensitised lips, tracing them with his fingers. Her daze cleared enough for her to see the glitter of triumphant satisfaction in his eyes as he spoke.
“It feels right, doesn’t it, Leigh? The time has come for us.”
Control, she thought. He wants to control this to suit him. Just as Lawrence Durant would. Never again would she submit to that. Never! The sweet, warm chaos he’d wrought inside her welded into a savage bolt of rebellion.
He’d run everything his way, following her out here, feeding her information, capitalizing on the chemistry between them. Well, she wouldn’t let him control this. He wasn’t going to mastermind when and how she got to satisfy herself about him.
All these years of spying on her, knowing where she was but not coming to her, waiting for her to come to him, thinking he could manipulate what he wanted of her, pressing buttons he had the power to press…oh, no! It was her turn to press the button!
“If it feels so right to you, Richard, what’s wrong with now?” she challenged.
“You want now?”
The flare of raw desire in his eyes shot a turbulent mix of fear and elation through Leigh. What was she inviting, goading from him? The challenge had been a vengeful impulse. She hadn’t stopped to think of the ultimate end of what she was laying on him, and he didn’t wait for a reply.
