Unwanted Wedding

She had blinked away the vision immediately, of course, telling herself that it must have had something to do with the sexy film she and a friend had been discussing earlier in the day.

She and Guard had continued their argument later in the evening, just before Guard had left with the extremely glamorous and elegant-looking blonde who was accompanying him.

‘Anyway,’ Rosy had told him, her small chin jutting out defiantly as she felt herself losing ground, ‘it makes sense these days not to have too many sexual partners.’

‘The present climate is certainly a convenient hedge to hide behind,’ Guard had agreed suavely. ‘Especially when…’

‘Especially when what?’ Rosy had challenged him.

‘Especially for you,’ he had told her blandly.

The return of his companion had prevented Rosy from saying anything else.

An arranged marriage with Guard. She must have been mad to let Peter talk her into such a crazy idea. But he had talked her into it and she couldn’t back out now. Did Guard want Queen’s Meadow enough to agree? Half of her hoped not. And the other half…

‘All right, Rosy, what’s this all about? And if you’re after another donation to that charity of yours, I’m warning you that right now I’m not feeling in the most generous of moods…’

Dumbly Rosy watched Guard walk into the hall. Her heart was beating so heavily it felt as though it was going to force its way through her chest wall.

She couldn’t remember ever, ever feeling so nervous before—not even when Gramps had found out about her sneaking out at night to go poaching with Clem Angers. She had had Guard to thank for that, of course, and—

Firmly, she brought her thoughts back to the present.

Guard was slightly earlier than she had expected, and if the sight of him wearing the expensively tailored dark suit with its equally expensive, crisp white cotton shirt had not been one that was already familiar to her, she suspected she would have found it extremely daunting.

But then Guard could be daunting, even when he was casually dressed, she acknowledged, and it wasn’t just because of his height, nor even because of those broad shoulders and that tautly muscular physique over which her female friends cooed and sighed so stupidly, either.

There was something about Guard himself—an air, a manner, a certain intangible something—that set him slightly apart from other men, made him stand out from other men, an aura of power and control, of…of sheer maleness, so potent that even she was acutely aware of it, she admitted. Aware of it, but not attracted by it, she reminded herself sharply. She could never be attracted by Guard; he was not her kind of man. She liked men who were softer, warmer—more approachable, more…more human, less…less sexual?

Nervously, she cleared her throat.

‘What’s wrong?’ Guard asked her drily. ‘You’re staring at me like a rabbit at a dog.’

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ Rosy retorted, stung.

‘I’m extremely glad to hear it. Look, I’m due to fly out to Brussels in the morning, Rosy, and I’ve got a briefcase full of documents to read before I do. Just tell me what you want, there’s a good girl, and don’t start backtracking now and telling me it isn’t important. We both know that there’s no way you’d get in touch with me if it weren’t.’

The irony in his voice made her frown slightly but he was watching her impatiently, unfastening his jacket, reaching up to loosen the knot in his tie.

As she focused on the movement of his hands, she could feel the knot in her stomach tightening.

‘Come on, Rosy, don’t start playing games. I’m not in the mood for it.’

The verbal warning was accompanied by a forbidding, hooded look that reminded her of former peccadilloes and his merciless punishment of them.

She swallowed nervously. It was too late to back out now.

Screwing up her courage, she took a deep breath.

‘Guard, I want you to marry me…’

CHAPTER TWO

ROSY had automatically closed her eyes as she spoke, but in the silence that followed her stammered request she was forced to open them again.

‘What did you say?’

The words, evenly spaced out and ominously soft, were snapped out between Guard’s strong white teeth, and he was looking at her as though it was her bones, her body, he would really like to inflict that punishment on, she recognised nervously as she cleared her throat a second time.

‘I—I asked you if you’d marry me,’ she repeated quickly, suppressing her body’s physical instinct for flight.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’

He sounded very angry, Rosy recognised, which rather surprised her. She had spent most of the last few hours trying to envisage exactly what his reaction to her request was going to be. That he might be angry had never even entered her head. Amusement, mockery, contempt, disdain, an outright refusal—all of these things she had expected, but anger…

‘No, it isn’t a joke,’ she told him, adding grimly under her breath, ‘I only wish it were.

‘It was Peter’s idea,’ she continued doggedly. ‘I told him it was crazy, but he says it’s the only way we can stop Edward from inheriting the house and destroying it. You know the terms of Gramps’ will.’

‘I know them,’ Guard agreed, ‘but I hadn’t realised this place meant so much to you that you’d be prepared to fulfil them. What happened to all that insistence that you weren’t going to marry until you fell in love, until you were sure that your love was returned? Or was that just a girlish fantasy that faded in the reality of losing this place?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Rosy told him angrily, ‘but…’

He had taken off his jacket and gone to stand in front of the huge, open fireplace which, along with the Grinling Gibbons carving on the stairs, dominated the hallway.

Guard suited the house, Rosy recognised, before hurriedly looking away from him. With his height and the aura of power and authority which he wore with much the same swagger and flair with which her original ancestor must have worn his cloak, he looked much more at home here than she did herself.

The large rooms, the dark panelling, overshadowed her. In looks and build she took more after her mother’s family than her father’s. Whereas most of the portraits of her ancestors showed stocky, sturdy-looking individuals, she was small and slender—thin, Guard had once disparagingly called her.

It was still her home, though, and a part of her, much as she was reluctant to admit it, would hate to see it destroyed. She was honest enough to recognise that, despite her own feelings towards Guard, the house would be safe in his hands.

‘But what…?’ he demanded. ‘But you love this place so much that you can’t bear to give it up? But you love me so much that…?’

He threw the last question mockingly at her, already knowing the answer, but Rosy still gave it to him.

‘No, of course not,’ she denied vehemently.

Why was he looking at her like that? Watching her with those hooded, eagle-sharp eyes that made her feel so uncomfortable.

‘So, you don’t love either the house or me, but you’re prepared to marry me to keep it.’

‘To save it,’ Rosy corrected him quickly, ‘from Edward and… And it would be an arranged marriage,’ she added carefully, turning her back slightly towards him. For some reason, she found it easier to talk to him like that. She felt safer knowing that he couldn’t see her face, and that she didn’t have to see his.

‘An arranged marriage. And it needn’t last very long. Peter said we could probably even get an annulment and that we need not— That we wouldn’t be—’ She broke off awkwardly, so anxiously conscious of the uncomfortable quality of his silence that unwarily she turned round to look at him.

‘We wouldn’t be what?’ he encouraged her mockingly. ‘Cohabiting…intimate…having sex…making love…?’

Rosy hated the way he almost caressed the words, rolling them over his tongue, purring over them almost, enjoying every second of her own discomfort, she was sure.

‘If that’s supposed to encourage me to agree, you don’t know very much about the male sex and its ego, Rosy. Do you really think that a man—any man—wants to stand up in court and tell the world that he isn’t man enough to take his wife to bed? Do you honestly believe that anyone, but most especially that repulsive cousin of yours, is going to believe the fiction that you and I are genuinely husband and wife when the very mention of the word sex is enough to turn you into a physical embodiment of the traditional, trembling, untouched virgin? Oh, no, my dear. If I were crazy enough to agree to this fraudulent marriage of yours—and it’s a very big “if”—in the eyes of the rest of the world it would have to look as though it was very much the real thing, even if that did mean that ultimately, you’d have to undergo the indignity of going through a divorce.’

Rosy’s heart had started thumping heavily as he spoke, but when she realised that he wasn’t, as she had expected, going to refuse her proposal outright, she stared uncertainly at him, her face still flushed from her earlier embarrassment. It was only Guard who made her react like that when he talked about sex, she admitted crossly. Not even when the teenage boys who used the shelter made what were sometimes extremely blunt and often crude comments did she get as embarrassed or self-conscious as she did with Guard.

‘But it wouldn’t be a real marriage,’ she insisted, turning round to focus watchfully on his face. You were supposed to be able to tell what was really in a person’s mind from their eyes, but that rule didn’t apply to Guard. She could never tell what he was thinking. ‘I mean, we wouldn’t be…’

‘Lovers,’ he supplied for her. ‘It would certainly be very hard to imagine. The only time I’ve ever held you in my arms, you damned near scratched my eyes out,’ Guard reminded her grimly.

‘You terrified me,’ Rosy defended herself. ‘Picking me up like that. It was dark and I…’

‘You were out clandestinely with Clem Angers, poaching your grandfather’s salmon.’

‘Clem had been promising to take me out for ages to show me the badgers’ sett. And then you had to interfere and spoil everything,’ Rosy remembered indignantly. ‘He had been promising me that he’d take me just as soon as I was sixteen.’

‘Really? I do hope you didn’t use that unfortunate turn of phrase when you were explaining what you were doing to your father. Sweet sixteen,’ he continued, ignoring the angry flush darkening Rosy’s face. ‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Just refresh my memory for me, will you, Rosy? How old are you now?’

‘Twenty-two almost,’ she told him impatiently.

‘Mmm…and presumably now well-experienced in the art of kissing, if nothing else. You certainly ought to be after the practice session I witnessed last New Year’s Eve at the Lewishams’ ball.’

Rosy’s flush deepened as she remembered the incident he referred to. One of the Lewisham cousins, a rather intoxicated, impressionable young man, who had been gazing adoringly at her from the other side of the dance floor all evening, had caught up with her just as she tried to make her escape, grabbing hold of her in the semi-darkness of the passageway that led to the cloakroom, imprisoning her in his arms for a few brief seconds while he pressed impassioned kisses against her determinedly closed mouth. It had been a harmless enough episode. He had presented himself rather sheepishly and shamefacedly at Queen’s Meadow the following afternoon, full of remorse and apologies, and begging for a chance to make a fresh start, which Rosy had tactfully refused. But up until now she had had no idea that Guard had even witnessed the small incident.

She turned away from him, pacing the room edgily.

‘Why on earth don’t you buy yourself some decent clothes? After all, it’s not as though you can’t afford it. Your father left you very well provided for. Or wouldn’t it impress dear, sanctimonious Ralph if you turned up looking like a woman rather than a half-grown child?’

‘Ralph is not sanctimonious,’ Rosy denied angrily as she turned to face him. ‘And as for my clothes…’ She frowned as she glanced down at her well-worn leggings and the thick, bulky sweater which had originally belonged to her father.

‘I dress to please myself, in what feels comfortable. Just because you’re the kind of man who likes to see a woman humiliating herself by dressing up in something so skin-tight she can barely walk in it, never mind run, teetering around in high heels… Mind you, I suppose at your age that would be your idea of style,’ she added disparagingly.

‘I’m thirty-five, Rosy,’ Guard reminded her grimly, ‘not some ageing fifty-year-old desperately fighting off middle-age, and as for my ideas of style, personally I think there’s nothing quite so alluring as a woman who has enough confidence in herself to dress neither to conceal her sexuality nor to reveal it—a woman who wears silk or cashmere, wool or cotton, clothes cut in plain, simple styles—but then you aren’t a woman yet, are you, Rosy?’

For some reason Rosy couldn’t define, his comments, his criticism had hurt her, making her leap immediately to her own defence, her voice husky with emotion as she told him fiercely, ‘I am a woman, but you can’t see that. You only think of women in terms of sex—the more sexual experience a woman has had, the more of a woman it makes her. Well, for your information—’

She stopped abruptly. Why was she letting him get to her like this? Why did they always end up quarrelling, arguing, antagonists?

‘For my information, what?’ Guard challenged her.

‘Oh, nothing.’ Rosy retreated. She had been a fool to listen to Peter. If, as he said, the only way to save the house was via an arranged marriage, then it would have to be with someone else. Anyone else, she decided savagely. Anyone at all just so long as it wasn’t the arrogant, hateful, horrid man standing in front of her, watching her with those mesmeric, all-seeing, all-watchful golden eyes.

‘All right, I know,’ she told him bitterly. ‘It was a stupid idea, and I was a fool to think you’d agree, no matter how much you might want Queen’s Meadow. I’d be better off advertising in the personal columns for a husband…’

Something flickered briefly in Guard’s eyes, a tiny movement so swiftly controlled that Rosy felt she must have imagined it.

‘I haven’t given you my answer yet.’

Rosy looked up at him.

‘You’re talking about taking a potentially very dangerous course,’ he continued warningly, as Rosy remained silent. ‘Edward is bound to be suspicious.’

‘But he can’t do anything. Not so long as I’ve fulfilled the terms of my grandfather’s will.’

‘Mmm… Edward is a very tricky character. It wouldn’t be wise to underestimate him. There’s an element of fraud in this whole plan of yours.’

‘Fraud?’ Rosy interrupted him anxiously. ‘But…’

‘I’ll be back from Brussels the day after tomorrow. I’ll give you my answer then. And, Rosy,’ he told her as he turned to leave, ‘in the meantime, no ads in the personal columns, hmm?’

It wasn’t fair, Rosy reflected indignantly when he had gone. Why did he always have to make her feel like a child? And a particularly stupid child at that.

‘You’ve forgotten to put sugar in my coffee again,’ Ralph reproved Rosy. He frowned slightly, his sandy eyebrows lifting almost into his hairline as he added, ‘In fact you’ve seemed very preoccupied altogether these last couple of days. Is something wrong?’

‘No…no, nothing,’ Rosy denied untruthfully.

‘Mm. You know, Rosy, it’s a pity you didn’t work a bit harder at persuading your grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to us. Hallows, the engineering place, is closing down next month and that’s bound to put more pressure on us. God knows how many more it’s going to make homeless. We haven’t got anything like enough beds here as it is. When I think of that damned big house and all those rooms…’

‘Yes, yes I know,’ Rosy agreed guiltily. She hadn’t discussed with Ralph the terms of her grandfather’s will and, since Edward had already made it plain that he expected to inherit the house, Rosy had simply allowed Ralph to believe that as well.

When she had first announced that she was going to do voluntary work at the shelter, she knew her father had been a little concerned but, needless to say, it had been Guard who had taken it upon himself to warn her that, in view of her family connections and her comparative wealth, Ralph might put pressure on her to help fund the shelter.

‘Ralph would never do anything like that,’ she had protested then, indignantly. And she had believed it… Had believed it… Still believed it, and if Ralph was cross with her because he felt she ought to have persuaded her grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to their charity, well, she could understand why.

She could never walk into the old, run-down shabby building on the outskirts of the town without a small pang.

They all did their best to make it as homely as possible, but the rooms still had that air about them that reminded her of the boarding-school she had attended when she and her father had first returned to England from his army posting in Germany. She hadn’t stayed there long, but it had left a lasting impression on her.

The first spring she had worked at the shelter she had arrived one morning with the boot of her small car filled with vases she had ‘borrowed’ from home and the back seat covered in a mass of daffodils.

Ralph had found her just as she was placing the last vase in position.

She winced even now when she remembered how angry he had been.

‘You waste money on flowers when we barely have enough to buy them food,’ he had shouted at her.

She had never made the same mistake again, but sometimes the sheer austerity of the shelter weighed her down, her own feelings adding to the compassion and anguish she already felt at the plight of the young people they took in.

Today, though, she was guiltily aware that her mind was more on her own problems than those of the homeless. Guard was due back this afternoon. What would his decision be? What did she want his decision to be?

She knew quite well what Ralph would say were she to ask him for his advice, and the modern, aware part of her agreed with him: there were far more important things to worry about than a house; there were people, her fellow human beings, in far more need than a building and yet, when she walked round the house, something she had found herself doing increasingly frequently recently, she was also emotionally aware of the love, the care, the human effort that had gone into making it what it was. It wasn’t the material value of the Grinling Gibbons carving on the staircase that smote her with guilt at the thought of its destruction, it was her knowledge of the work, the craftsmanship which had gone into its carving. If she closed her eyes she could almost instantly be there, smell the fresh, pungent odour of the new wood, feel the concentrated silence of the busy apprentices as they watched their master, see the delight and pride in their faces when they were finally allowed to make their contribution, when their work was finally inspected and passed, the experienced hands of the master running critically over their carving while they held their breath and waited for his verdict.

The plasterwork on the ceilings, the furniture in the rooms—all of it had been created with human endeavour, with human pride.

Ralph would no doubt see another side of it, of apprentices injured and maimed, thrown out of work to starve, of workmen paid a pittance by their rich patrons.

‘What’s up, boyfriend giving you a hard time?’

Rosy turned her head to force a smile in the direction of the thin, pimply boy watching her, ignoring his companion’s snigger and clearly audible, ‘I’ll bet if he was she wouldn’t be looking so miserable,’ without even a hint of the betraying colour that Guard could conjure so easily with a comment only a tenth as sexual.

‘Have you heard anything about that job you went for yet, Alan?’ she asked, ignoring both comments.

‘Nah… Don’t ‘spose I’ll hear owt, either.’

‘You could try getting some qualifications,’ Rosy suggested, ‘going to night school.’

She already knew what the answer would be and wasn’t surprised when the boy shook his head in denial of her comment. When a system had failed you as badly as it had failed these youngsters, it must be hard to have any faith in it, Rosy acknowledged as she watched the two of them swagger off in the direction of the television lounge.

An hour later, as she drove home, her stomach was already cramping at the thought of hearing Guard’s decision. To her surprise, as she pulled up at the rear of the house in what had originally been the stable yard, she saw that an unfamiliar car was already parked there.

As she got out of her own car she eyed the bright red Rolls-Royce uncertainly. She went into the house through the back entrance, through a maze of passages, past a cluster of small, dark rooms.

She could hear voices in the front hall and she tensed as she recognised one of them. Edward, her father’s cousin. What was he doing here and, more important, how had he got in?

Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door into the hall.

Edward was standing with his back to her, his bald head shining in the light from the overhead chandelier which he had switched on.

Both he and the man with him were looking up at it.

‘Mmm…I suppose it could fetch a tidy bit, although there’s not so much call for that sort of thing now. Too big and too expensive. We’d probably be better shipping it abroad, finding an agent—’ He broke off as he turned round and saw Rosy, and touched Edward’s arm, drawing his attention to her.

‘Ah, Rosy…’

Edward’s genial manner didn’t deceive Rosy. It never had. She shared her grandfather’s and her father’s dislike and distrust of him.

‘What are you doing here, Edward?’ Rosy demanded, ignoring his pseudo-friendly overtures.

The man with him had moved slightly out of earshot and Edward’s expression changed as he glanced over to where his companion was studying the carved staircase, his eyes hardening as he recognised Rosy’s hostility.

‘Just checking out my inheritance,’ he told Rosy smoothly.

‘It isn’t yours yet,’ Rosy reminded him fiercely.

Edward gave a dismissive shrug. Unlike her father and her grandfather, Edward had run to fat in middle-age and the angry flush now mantling his face emphasised his heavy jowliness.

Her father had once remarked that Edward had a very nasty temper. On the few occasions when Rosy had met him, the tension that emanated from Edward’s wife seemed to confirm her father’s comment, but this was the first time she had witnessed any evidence of Edward’s temper at first hand.

‘Not yet, maybe, but it soon will be,’ he told her angrily. ‘And there’s not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it. For once in his life, the old man was too clever for his own good. How much do you reckon the staircase will fetch, Charlie?’ he called out to the other man, smirking when he saw Rosy’s expression.

As she watched and listened to him, any ideas Rosy might have had about appealing to his better nature died. He simply didn’t have one, she recognised. He would enjoy destroying the house.

She heard the heavy wooden front door creak as someone pushed it open, and turned round warily, but it wasn’t another of Edward’s ‘business associates’ who had walked in, it was Guard.

He walked over to the fireplace just inside the doorway, frowning as he studied the scene in front of him.

Rosy saw the antagonism and, along with it, the apprehension flare briefly in Edward’s eyes as he glared across at him, but Guard wasn’t even looking at Edward, he was looking at her—looking at her, Rosy recognised in sudden, dizzy confusion, in a way she had never envisaged seeing him look at any woman, but most especially not her.

She blinked a little, her own eyes darkening as they were caught and held in a gaze of such smouldering sensuality that it actually made her physically shiver. When had Guard’s eyes developed that ability to turn from cool, distant gold into hot, smouldering amber? Where had he learned to look at a woman in such a way that she and every other person in the room with her was instantly conscious of Guard’s desire for her? Only Guard didn’t desire her; he didn’t even like her, he—