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‘Yes,’ she agreed. It was true. Guard and Edward were old business adversaries and, as her father had stated on more than one occasion, there hadn’t been a confrontation between the two men yet out of which Guard had not come the winner. ‘The mere fact that he knows how much Guard loves this place would only add to his pleasure in destroying it.’
‘We’re only talking about a business arrangement between the two of you, you know, some simple basic formalities which would enable you to fulfil the terms of the will. In time the marriage could be dissolved. You could sell the house to Guard and—’
‘In time? How much time?’ she had asked him suspiciously.
‘A year—a couple of years…’ Peter had shrugged, ignoring her dismayed gasp. ‘After all, it isn’t as though you want to marry someone else, is it? If you did, there wouldn’t be any problem, any need to involve Guard.’
‘I can’t do it,’ she told Peter positively. ‘The whole idea is completely ridiculous, repulsive.’
‘Well, then, I’m afraid you’ll have to resign yourself to the fact that Edward will inherit. Your grandfather’s already been dead for almost a month.’
‘I can’t do it,’ Rosy repeated, ignoring Peter’s comment. ‘I could never ask any man to marry me, but especially not Guard…’
Peter had laughed at her.
‘It’s a business proposal, that’s all. Think about it, Rosy. I know how ambivalent your feelings towards Queen’s Meadow are, but I can’t believe that you actually want to see Edward destroy it.’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ Rosy had agreed.
‘Then what have you got to lose?’
‘My freedom?’ she had suggested hollowly.
Peter had laughed again. ‘Oh, I doubt that Guard would interfere with that,’ he had assured her. ‘He’s much too busy to have time to worry about what you’ll be doing. Promise me that you’ll at least think about it, Rosy. It’s for your sake that I’m doing this,’ he had added. ‘If you let Edward destroy this place, you’re bound to feel guilty.’
‘The way you do for putting all this moral blackmail on me?’ Rosy had asked him drily.
He had had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable.
‘All right, I’ll think about it,’ she had agreed.
And ultimately she had done more than just think about it, Rosy acknowledged, as she dragged her thoughts back to the present.
‘The trouble with you is that you’re far too soft-hearted.’ How often had she heard that accusation over the years?
Too often.
But Peter was right. She couldn’t let Edward destroy Queen’s Meadow without at least making some attempt to save it. By sacrificing herself. A wicked smile curled her mouth, her eyes suddenly dancing with bright humour. Oh, how chagrined Guard would be if he could read her mind. How many women were there who would look upon marriage to him in that light? Not many. Not any, she admitted, at least not from what she heard.
Well, all right, so she was peculiar—an oddity who for some reason could not see anything attractive in that magnetic sexuality of his which seemed to obsess virtually every other female who set eyes on him. So she was immune to whatever it was about him that made other women go weak at the knees, their eyes glazing with awe as they started babbling about his sexy looks, his smouldering eyes, his mouth and its full, sensual bottom lip, his shoulders, his body, his awesome charismatic personality, his single state and the subtle aura not just of sexual experience, but of sexual expertise which clung to him like perfume to a woman’s body.
Oddly, the last thing that most of them mentioned about him was his wealth.
Well, she could see nothing remotely sexually attractive about him, Rosy decided crossly, and she never had. As far as she was concerned, he was an arrogant, sarcastic pig who enjoyed nothing more than making fun of her.
Only last month at a dinner party, when the hostess had been remarking to her that the male cousin she had had visiting her had begged her to seat him next to Rosy at dinner, Guard, who had overheard their hostess’s remark, had leaned over and said sardonically, ‘Well, if he’s hoping to find a woman somewhere under that mass of hair and that very unflattering outfit you’re wearing, Rosy, he’s going to be very disappointed, isn’t he?’
Since the ‘unflattering outfit’ he referred to had been a very carefully chosen collection of several different layers of softly toning shades of grey, all determinedly hunted down in a variety of charity shops, carried home triumphantly and repaired and laundered, Rosy had shot him an extremely bitter look.
‘Not all men judge a woman on how she performs in bed, Guard,’ she had told him through gritted teeth.
‘Luckily for you,’ he had responded, not in the least bit fazed by her retaliation. ‘Because, according to all the gossip, you wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do there.’
She had flushed, of course, the hot colour crawling betrayingly over her skin, not so much because of what he had said—after all, she was not ashamed of the fact that she was not prepared to jump into bed with every man who asked her—but because of the way Guard was watching her, because of the amusement and mockery in his eyes, because, oh, so shamingly and appallingly, just for a second, she could actually almost see him in bed with some anonymous woman, his body bare and brown, his hands stroking the woman’s paler, softer skin while she clung to him with small, pleading sounds of need…
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.
