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‘She is well—and happy with Victoria. Sky is a resilient child; apart from missing me, the removal from everything and everyone familiar to her has left her with no apparent ill effects.’
‘I’m happy to hear that. So what now? What are your plans?’
‘I’ve returned to England to reclaim the life I was raised to live—and to become reacquainted with my wife. I do not expect you to fling yourself into my arms and weep tears of joy on my return, but to hear you say that you are pleased to see me would have a nice ring to it.’
Amanda stiffened. ‘You speak as if you have already decided the course of our future.’
Christopher passed his hazel, dancing eyes over her face, heedful of the wrath gathering pace in her expression. ‘I have. You are my wife, after all.’ His voice was soft, though knowingly chiding.
As dearly as Amanda wished to fling an angry denial in his face, she could not. The truth of it stung, but she was determined she would have it otherwise. ‘In name only. You did me a great service in exchanging marriage vows and so making it possible for me to escape an intolerable situation at the time. I am grateful to you for that, but that is where it must end. I did as you asked and brought your child safely to England. Be content with that and let us put an end to the charade—the pretence that there can ever be anything between us.’
Kit’s hazel eyes were suddenly cold under the dark flare of his brows. ‘Believe me, Amanda, it is no pretence. We made a pact. Part of our bargain was that our marriage would be legal and binding for the time I have left to live—and I fully intend to be around until I’m ninety. On my reprieve I hoped I wasn’t mistaken in you, and that you were the type who would keep a bargain, who wouldn’t forget important promises, whose word when given meant something, which to me was as binding as the marriage vow itself. When I came back to England and thought of you and Sky waiting, I thought I had something to come home to. You promised me that if I succeeded in securing my freedom, you would acknowledge me as your husband and become my wife in truth. All this was in return for my name—my family name, a name I honour.’
‘Then do you set so little worth on your family’s honour that you will hold me to an arrangement made in desperation?’
‘My family’s honour!’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘If you knew anything about my family’s honour, you would close your mouth rather than ask such a damning question.’
Amanda was momentarily taken aback by the ferocity of his statement. She was curious as to where the remark had come from, but quickly thrust it from her mind. ‘I know nothing of your family and care not at all. I am only interested in putting an end to the arrangement we made.’
‘So you do not deny that we made a pact?’
‘No, that I cannot do,’ she lashed out in anger, with a thrust to her chin that told him she was ready to fight. ‘I know I am bound by my word, but it is hard for me.’
‘You belong to me, Amanda.’
‘That is a matter of opinion. Yes, we had an arrangement, an arrangement that profited us both. I cannot yield to a man who, at best, is a stranger to me.’
Christopher peered at her closely and took note of her sudden uneasiness. ‘I will not always be a stranger. I delivered on our bargain, only to find you reneging on your vow. Do not imagine that you can rescript the rules to suit yourself. How do you feel now you find I am alive?’
‘Cheated,’ she spat. ‘Cheated—and I want no part of you.’
‘Come now, Amanda, why so hostile? We have a lot to discuss, you and I.’
Mutinously she glared at him. ‘I have nothing to discuss with you. Nothing at all. You were supposed to hang, leaving me a widow. This was not part of my plan. I did not want this.’
The hazel eyes sparked. ‘You mean you want me dead?’
‘Yes—I mean, no— Oh, I am so confused I don’t know what I mean. I just want you to go away—to leave me alone. I don’t want a husband.’
‘Be that as it may, Amanda,’ he said lazily, ‘but you have a husband—and he is not going to go away.’
‘He will if I have my way. I don’t want you. You will not have me. What are you doing here anyway? How have you managed to wheedle your way into my father’s favour?’
‘Our mutual interest in horses.’
‘I advise you to have a care. Father will treat you with the same courtesy he shows to anyone in his employ—as long as he has no inkling that there is anything except casual friendship between the two of us. If he so much as suspects there is anything between us, he will treat you with freezing contempt.’
‘I’ll risk it.’ Beneath a raised quizzical brow his gaze travelled over her beautifully cut coat of dark blue-coloured tweed that flared out from the waist over her high-necked grey dress. ‘I was under the impression that a period of one year’s mourning is customary after the death of one’s immediate family,’ he remarked with underlying sarcasm.
‘I am in half-mourning. I do try to observe the rules even though I can see no point in doing so. After all, I am no grieving widow. How dare you come here? You cannot stay. You must leave at once.’
‘Your father has hired me to train his horses. I aim to do just that.’
Amanda didn’t believe him. His meeting with her father had been by design rather than chance, this she was sure of—so what did he want? Could he be bribed to go away?
His face hardened, as if he had read her thoughts. ‘Do not think you can buy me off, Amanda. No amount of money you offer will tempt me to disappear now that I have found you.’
‘Why not? Your promise to stay out of my life in exchange for a few thousand pounds seems fair enough trade to me.’
‘I am not going to go away, so you’d save yourself a great deal of trouble and heartache if you got used to having me around. I will make it impossible for you to ignore me. Everywhere you go you will be aware of me, of my presence, watching you.’
‘Like a rat nibbling away at a floorboard, you mean.’
He laughed softly. ‘Aye—with flawless success.’
The olive green eyes narrowed in a glare. ‘You’re pigheaded, arrogant and impossibly conceited, Kit Benedict. I will not be your wife.’
‘There I must contradict you. Pigheaded I may be, but you are my wife.’
‘And you seem to take a special delight in reminding me,’ she remarked drily. ‘I am your wife in name only.’
‘Which I intend to rectify as soon as can be.’ His lips curled into a rakish smile as his eyes captured hers. ‘I’m already looking forward to it. I find the mere thought of marriage to you most entertaining. I think we shall do very well together. You’re looking beautiful, Amanda. Just as I remembered.’
‘And you’re looking disgustingly smug and self-righteous.’
Leaning back against the fence, he folded his arms across his broad chest, grinning leisurely as his perusal swept her. ‘I have plenty to be smug about. I am a man, Amanda,’ he assured her softly, the laughter gone from his voice, ‘with all the desires, all the needs of a man. When you came to my prison cell, when I first saw you, you were so beautiful it tortured me. You captured my thoughts, my dreams, my fancy, and when you left me I became hopelessly entangled in my desires for you. You made me want, made me yearn for things I could not have. Now I can. I want you.’
Amanda was taken aback by his blunt honesty. ‘I am surprised. I never imagined I had made so deep an impression.’
‘The very knowledge that you are here with me now makes me even more determined to find a way of breaching that barrier of thorns you have wound about yourself.’ As her husband, he could insist she kept her side of the bargain, but some inbuilt sense of chivalry prevented him from doing so, dictating that if she came to him under duress it would only increase her resentment. ‘Yet I must accept the fact that your shock of finding me alive has been great and that you are confused. I have no wish to cause you any embarrassment. I even gave your father an assumed name.’
‘How thoughtful of you, but it isn’t assumed, is it? You’ve merely omitted your surname.’
‘Which I share with you.’
‘I have no wish for my father to find out who you are. He has no idea. It would distress him terribly.’
Kit’s eyes grew warm as he gave her a lazy smile. ‘I am no black-hearted villain, and I accept there are times when it is expedient to hold back the truth—for the present. However, you, my dear Amanda—’
Her expression was mutinous. ‘I am not your dear anything.’
‘As I was saying, you, my dear Amanda, seem to have a penchant for self-destruction. Better to have told your father the truth in the first place. He will find out one day, that I promise you. We are man and wife and must live as man and wife.’ He shrugged. ‘That equation seems perfectly logical to me, though not apparently to you. You are going to be difficult?’
‘I am going to be impossible.’
He smiled at that, not in the least discouraged. ‘Then it should be interesting getting to know one another. In time I shall insist on you becoming my wife in truth.’
‘And if I don’t comply?’
‘If you don’t, then I will confront your father.’
There was a wealth of warning in the words the deep voice uttered and no drawl to soften them. Swirling round in a flurry of skirts, Amanda tossed him a cool glance askance. ‘Then for the time being don’t get any high-minded ideas that you’re any better than any other hired help.’ She was about to walk away, but whirled round when Kit’s hand suddenly shot out and gripped her arm like a vice.
‘I am trying to be patient with you, Amanda,’ he said quietly, ‘but you’re trying me sorely. Now listen to me and don’t anger me. For the present I am happy to work for your father. I shall train his horses and train them well, but I will not be treated like an underling. Rest assured that, despite my time spent in the Smoky Mountains with the Cherokee, I am quite civilised. I will not be dictated to by anybody—especially not by my own wife, whose schooling in manners appears to be somewhat lacking. I trust I’ve made myself abundantly clear?’
Amanda yanked her arm from his grasp, her eyes spitting fire. ‘Perfectly. Good day to you, Mr Benedict.’
‘And good day to you, my loving wife. A pleasure meeting you again.’ He chuckled aloud as he watched and admired the indignant sway of her hips as she left him, which, to his sceptical mind, was the most piquant of provocations. It was clear that a submissive, compliant wife Amanda was not. She was like a vixen, fierce and ready to fight, and he thanked God for it; he wanted her to match him strength for strength, as an equal, and in that, he was not going to be disappointed. But first he must show her that no matter how hard and furiously she fought against him, she was his wife.
He grinned broadly, totally assured in his arrogant masculinity that he would have his way, no matter what.
Kit’s low, mocking laughter followed Amanda all the way back to the house and for a long time after. Cursing beneath her breath, she fed her wrath as she stalked homeward with her fists clenched by her sides. Be damned if she’d discuss their marriage any further, not until she’d had time to face the rest of her emotions and consider the best way forward. The matter was complicated, but it must be resolved somehow.
The trouble was that since her marriage, which had brought her independence, she had become herself again and valued her freedom, and she was regretful and resentful that she would now have to set it all aside. She realised she wasn’t being fair to Kit—but then life wasn’t always fair, and her father had been right when he had said that to succeed in life you had to be ruthless. He might have been referring to the world of business, but Amanda would apply it to her personal life.
Still fuming silently to herself and a mass of conflicting emotions, she found her father in the hall still waiting for his lawyer to arrive. Amanda appeared before him looking for all the world like she’d like to commit murder and proceeded to speak without thinking, to act without considering the consequences.
‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she flared when he enquired why she was looking as cross as a bucket full of crabs, ‘but I think Mr Benedict is overbearing. He is also insufferably arrogant and I cannot see why you like him. You must dismiss him at once and find someone else.’
Henry looked at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses. His daughter seemed to be in the grip of a fury and to have lost all reasonableness. Her anger was out of all proportion to what appeared to be a perfectly normal and innocent situation.
‘Don’t be absurd, Amanda. Kit hasn’t been on the place two minutes and already you find fault with the man. What the devil has happened between the two of you? Has he offended you—made untoward suggestions?’
Amanda could feel the pull of her explosive fury dragging her into further turmoil, but somehow she must control it and be careful. ‘No, no, nothing like that,’ she hastened to assure him, softening her tone, not wishing to give away anything about her relationship with Kit and hoping she sounded convincing. ‘In fact, his manners are in order. But surely you don’t need him. You know enough about horses to train them yourself. You were doing splendidly before he arrived.’
‘Nay, lass,’ he said, his tone reproachful. ‘Kit is a man of good and able character. He also has a good mind and a deeper understanding of horses than I ever will. He’ll prove his worth to me in no time—even suggested we get one of them trained up in time for next year’s Gold Cup at Ascot,’ he said, rubbing his hands and puffing his chest out with glee at the mere thought. ‘Think about it, Amanda—me—with a runner in the Gold Cup. Aye, it’ll be a proud moment—so it will.’
‘I agree, Father, but—where is Mr Benedict to live?’
‘I’ve thought of that. I’ve put at his disposal a nice little furnished cottage in the park—close to the stables. He’ll be comfortable enough there.’
Yes, Amanda thought crossly, he would be—right on her doorstep. ‘I still think you could manage to get your horses to the standard required without Mr Benedict’s help.’
Henry looked at his daughter for a moment, his eyes piercing her through. ‘Impossible. Kit is an expert in buying, selling and management and has all the expertise to be a racehorse trainer in his own right. I want only top-class horses in my stable and to do that I need him. He also has a young daughter who is being taken care of by a cousin of his—his wife died some time ago, so he’s going to need time off occasionally to see her. Have you such a strong aversion to the man?’
Simmering in her breast, tightening with pressure, was the urge to blurt out the truth into his innocent face, that he was being deceived, but she bit her tongue and damned the truth inside her. ‘Well—no—not really, only—’
‘Then he stays—and as my daughter you will be as gracious towards him as you are to any other guest I invite to the house. Which reminds me—he will be dining with us tonight, so ask Caroline to have an extra place set at the table. It seems senseless for him to dine alone when we have food going spare.’
Having delivered that diatribe, he went to the door to greet his lawyer, who was just arriving.
Amanda received the news that Kit was to dine with them with less enthusiasm than she would a public flogging. Seeking some outlet for her indignation, she headed towards Caroline and her father’s suite of rooms, and found Caroline in her sitting room of gold leaf and pink-and-white furnishings, décor that suited her stepmother’s lavishly feminine temperament exactly. Sifting through some correspondence, she looked up and smiled, but the smile faded when she saw Amanda looking down in the mouth and her dark eyes sparking with ire.
Having become well used to and tolerant of father and daughter’s altercations, which always ended up in laughter, she said, ‘Oh, dear. What’s Henry done to upset you this time?’
‘He’s invited his new horse trainer to dinner tonight, Caroline, and has asked me to tell you to have another place set at the table. Doesn’t he realise that it’s highly irregular for an employee to join the gentleman of the house and his family for meals?’
The vehemence in Amanda’s tone quite startled Caroline. ‘Why, Amanda, you sound quite heated. I had no idea you would mind so much. I suppose it is rather unconventional; nevertheless, Henry has a high opinion of Mr Benedict, so you must be prepared to endure him without complaint as best you can—for your father’s sake.’
Seeing she wasn’t going to acquire an ally in Caroline, Amanda sighed. ‘I suppose I must, but I do hope he isn’t going to make a habit of inviting the servants to dine with us,’ she retorted ungraciously.
When Amanda entered the drawing room at seven o’clock she was disappointed to find Kit alone and was immediately put out, although she could feel his presence in her home with every fibre of her being. It was difficult to believe that this extremely handsome, fashionably dressed man was the convict Christopher Claybourne.
The rustle of her taffeta gown caught Kit’s attention. Glancing up he immediately put his drink down, for the apparition in the doorway in an amethyst gown, cut low to reveal her white shoulders, was like a jewel set against a background of unashamed opulence, wiping his mind clear of anything but sheer appreciation. His lips curving in a slow, appreciative smile, he came across to meet her while his eyes plumbed the depths of her beauty, touching her all over, giving her the sensation of being naked.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you again, Amanda. The servant who let me in informed me that your father and his wife have been detained by a domestic matter and will join us presently. May I say how lovely you look.’
Amanda gritted her teeth and forced a smile to her lips. Never had a man looked so attractive and never had her heart called out so strongly to anyone. As she looked into his eyes, all at once she knew she must fight her attraction for him.
‘You can say what you like just so long as you stop ogling me like that.’
‘I’d be a fool to ignore the way you look,’ he answered smoothly, his grin mockingly congenial as he affectionately reached out and chucked her under the chin, which made Amanda step back, torn between giving him a kick in the shin or slapping his face.
‘You really are the most unmannerly of men,’ she hissed, thankful that her father and Caroline were not present. ‘Kindly keep your hands to yourself. Did you have to accept my father’s invitation to dine?’
‘My dear wife,’ Kit murmured. ‘It is not for inferiors like me to refuse the powers that be. That is not a right expected of underlings such as myself.’
His voice was soft, casual, but his face was serious, and Amanda mistrusted the gleam of mocking humour lurking in his gaze. ‘I’m sure you could have found an excuse if you’d wanted to. I have no doubt that you accepted just to annoy me.’
‘Not at all. I was delighted to join such gracious and delightful company.’
‘Do you have to look so pleased with yourself?’ she snapped irately. ‘You must forgive me, Mr Benedict. I don’t often find myself entertaining my father’s employees.’
‘I will not argue the point, but I scarcely suspect that my mere presence at your dinner table can disrupt the smooth running of things, however much you may wish to claim it will. But worry not, my pet. I shall not expose your most intimate secrets to the scrutiny of your father just yet. You have my word that I shall comport myself with such dignity and propriety that you need have no fear that I shall make a fool of either of us.’
‘As long as you realise this is just dinner and certainly no high affair—and as long as you don’t smell of the barn, I suppose I can tolerate you. I find it difficult coming to terms with your presence at Eden Park—or the fact that they didn’t hang you,’ she uttered scathingly. ‘Your guardian angel has a lot to answer for.’
‘She did work overtime to get me acquitted,’ Kit replied in undaunted spirits, his eyes gleaming devilishly. ‘Come, my love, stop scowling at me and try smiling. Your father will arrive at any minute and he has sharp eyes.’
Amanda obliged—albeit reluctantly. ‘I suppose there is nothing like a bright smile to confuse an adversary.’
‘Or charm a friend,’ he countered.
‘You are not my friend.’
‘No, I am much more than that, so don’t fight me, Amanda,’ he said softly, his voice a caress.
‘But I will,’ she said vehemently. ‘I will fight you with every ounce I possess.’
He smiled. ‘Then do so, my love. Torment me all you like—I may even come to enjoy it—but in the end you will be mine. It is your destiny.’
His statement was said with such certainty that Amanda chose to let him have the last word on the subject—for now. This was neither the time nor the place to become embroiled in an argument about their marriage. ‘I trust you find your accommodation to your liking. You are comfortable in your cottage?’
The sweetness of her tone did not conceal the sneer she intended. Kit smiled in the face of it. ‘Perfectly, thank you. I’m looking forward to showing you around.’
Amanda met his eyes unwillingly and saw they were as teasing as a small boy’s. ‘I don’t think so. You really are conceited, Mr Benedict. I cannot think of anyone who has gained my father’s interest as you have done.’
‘Amanda!’ Overhearing his daughter’s remark as he came in with Caroline on his arm, Henry was reproachful. ‘You will watch your tongue and be gracious to Mr Benedict. Employee he might be, but he is also my guest.’
