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His hand tightened on her hand to keep her firmly beside him when she would have pulled slightly away. And like that they walked across her room and out onto the galleried landing. In silence she let him lead her, his hand warm around hers and faintly comforting, which confused her rather because she knew she should be shying right away from his touch.
At the head of the stairs he walked them beneath a deep archway that led into another wing of the house. With no natural light flooding in from the gallery, in here it was darker, and there was a different atmosphere—a hushed silence that felt slightly suffocating as they travelled along a carpeted corridor towards a pair of double doors at the other end.
‘Where’s Melanie?’ Claire asked in a hushed whisper—it was most definitely a whispering kind of place.
‘The nursery quarters are in the other wing,’ Andreas informed her. ‘She will not be meeting my grandmother today.’
‘But I thought that she was the sole reason why we are both here at all.’ She frowned in confusion.
‘My grandmother is ninety-two.’ He seemed to feel he needed to remind her. ‘She lives by a different set of social morals than you or I do. She will not acknowledge Melanie until we are married.’
Oh, great, Claire thought heavily. I am about to meet a ninety-two-year-old puritan with the kind of moral codes that will file me under the heading marked ‘loose woman’ for being so free and irresponsible with my sexual favours!
The short dress was as big a mistake as she’d suspected it would be, she realised as she stood there with Andreas beside her, his arm casually resting across her narrow shoulders now while his grandmother inspected Claire.
Ninety-two was certainly old, Claire noted as she, in turn, studied the elderly lady. She looked thin and very frail, sitting there in an old-fashioned wing-backed chair which suited the old-fashioned possessions that surrounded her.
The light in the room was unnaturally dim, made so by a tall folding screen that had been pulled across the window, and the air was so warm it was stifling, yet his grandmother was draped from shoulders to feet in shawls and blankets as if the blood in her veins must be too slow to help keep her warm any more.
But the pair of beady amber eyes in her withered face were certainly very much alert. She snapped something at her grandson in Greek. He replied smoothly.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’ the old woman scolded, switching to scathing English.
‘Resigned to my lot is the truth of it,’ Andreas threw back lazily. ‘The too old and the too young.’ He dryly marked the distinction. ‘Both of them the bane of my wretched life.’
To Claire’s surprise the old woman laughed, the sound shrilling the stifling air with a high-pitched cackle. ‘I will speak to you later,’ she informed her grandson once she had recovered her composure.
Then she flicked her sharp eyes back onto Claire’s face. Claire stiffened in response, readying herself for the blast of criticism she sensed was coming her own way next. The hand Andreas had curved around her shoulder gave a gentle squeeze as if in reassurance. He was still very relaxed himself—which had to mean something, Claire told herself as she waited.
As perceptive as her grandson at picking up other people’s vibrations, the old lady challenged, ‘Scared of me, are you? Wondering what I am going to say to you as you stand there next to my grandson with your short skirt and your long legs enough to tempt a saint out of celibacy. Did your mother never warn you that men are weak of the flesh?’
‘My mother is dead,’ Claire answered levelly.
‘Your father, then.’ Death, it seemed, held no excuse to the old woman.
‘Dead also.’ It was Andreas who answered this time, his tone revealing just the slightest hint of a warning. ‘And treading carelessly on other people’s feelings is unacceptable, even for a dying old woman.’
Claire’s shocked gasp was ignored as the old woman flicked her eyes back to Andreas and glowered at him. ‘Oh, come over here,’ she then commanded him impatiently. ‘I want my kiss now …’
At last he deserted his post beside Claire, walking gracefully across the room to bend over the old lady. They embraced, exchanged a few softly spoken Greek words that somehow made Claire feel rather sad.
‘You next!’ the sharp voice then snapped out at Claire as Andreas straightened again.
Going over to her, Claire obediently bent to brush a kiss on the old woman’s lined cheek. ‘What did you do to your hand?’ she then asked curiously.
Claire explained. The old woman grimaced then pushed back the blanket to reveal her left arm, which she tried to move but clearly couldn’t. ‘Snap,’ she murmured ruefully.
A joke, Claire realised, even if it was a wretched joke. And impulsively she bent to drop another sympathetic kiss upon a withered cheek. The old lady didn’t reject it, and there was something very close to a sad vulnerability in her eyes as Claire straightened again.
But the voice was as surly as ever when she said, ‘Now go away, the pair of you; I’m tired. I will see you later, Andreas, before I retire,’ she prompted as Claire moved back to his side.
‘Of course,’ he nodded, making Claire aware that this must be something he always did when he was here.
‘But you come back tomorrow to discuss your wedding dress,’ Claire was then commanded. ‘And we will see if we cannot add ten years to your age to save this family from another scandal.’
Another—? Claire thought sharply. But that was as far as that thought went as Andreas placed his hand on the base of her spine and urged her into movement.
‘I like her exactly as she is,’ he threw over his shoulder in a firm warning.
‘You think we do not already know that?’ the old woman snarled scathingly after him.
He just laughed and was still laughing when the door closed behind them. ‘It keeps her will alive to spar with me.’ He seemed constrained to explain the banter between the two of them.
‘Yes, I realise that,’ Claire nodded as they began walking back down the corridor.
He nodded too, pacing beside her. ‘I know she is surly,’ he added after a moment. ‘But she feels the weight of her own helplessness. It makes her—’
‘Surly,’ Claire acknowledged. ‘At least while she snaps people listen.’
‘Yes.’ He sounded almost relieved she understood that. ‘But she means no harm by it. And, as she will no doubt tell you herself, she does not have the time or the energy to find out what she wants to know by more devious methods. So she jumps straight in there. She meant no offence regarding your mother and father.’
‘None was taken.’ Claire frowned, wondering, as they walked along, why he felt it necessary to explain all of this to her. ‘Actually,’ she added, ‘I liked her.’
‘Good,’ he murmured as they reached the arch that would take them back into the other part of the house.
Claire stepped sideways slightly so they could both move through it. Andreas did the same—and the front of their bodies brushed. Claire stopped breathing. She had a horrible feeling that he had done the same. Tension was rife. She attempted to break it by sliding away from him—but, on a thickened sigh that was all the warning she got, Andreas placed the flat of his palm on the centre of her back, drew her harder against him—and took hungry possession of her mouth.
It was no use trying to delude herself that this kiss was anything other than it was because it didn’t pretend to be. It was need, pure and simple. Even Claire, with her inexperience of these things, recognised that telling little fact as she was pressed back into a darkened corner of the arch and held there by the kind of need that was not going to take no for an answer.
Not that she was saying no—or considering saying it. Because from the moment his mouth moulded to the shape of her mouth her lips parted to welcome him. With his expertise to show her the way, she delved into the kind of heated passion that was utterly new to her. She felt hot and breathless, the dim quietness of the hallway helping to fill her head with a steamy mist that made him and what he was doing to her the only thing that mattered.
His hand drifted downwards to splay at the base of her spine so he could gently urge her into deeper contact with that part of him that so clearly needed it. He was aroused and pulsing; her gasp of awareness was breathed into his mouth. His other hand was making long stroking movements down her body, stimulating senses she hadn’t even known were there but made her subside against him in drowning pleasure.
It went on and on, growing deeper and more intimate with each heated second as his hand made its way down to one of her silk-covered thighs then began a pleasurable stroking upwards again. Long fingers made contact with bare flesh above her lace edged stocking. Claire responded by arching her spine closer to him.
In all her life she had never experienced anything like it. It was hungry, it was intense, and it was deeply, deeply sensual, the whole thing coiling around them in burning tendrils of pleasure that poured fire into her veins.
A door opened somewhere down the quiet corridor. They broke apart like guilty teenagers.
Both dazed and momentarily dysfunctional, he muttered something—a curse, Claire suspected. Then another—and another while he blocked her from sight with his big body as someone walked down the hallway and in through another door.
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.
