The Groom's Revenge

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‘Which is where I came in.’

‘You know I never shared my father’s opinions on—’

‘No—you didn’t care where the money came from, so long as there was plenty of it and it took you out of that “genteel poverty” you so hated,’ Aidan inserted in a voice that seemed to freeze the air around them, making it difficult to breathe.

Suddenly it was as if she had slipped back in time, seeing herself little more than a year ago at that party that had started it all.

If it hadn’t been for Rob, she wouldn’t have felt that way in the first place. Rob—the man she had been seeing for the past few months, and with whom she had believed herself more than halfway in love. She had been so convinced of her feelings that only the week before the party she had finally given in to his persistent pressure and slept with him—her own first experience of physical lovemaking.

If the experience hadn’t been everything she had hoped for, and certainly not all that the books she had read had led her to expect, she had told herself that it was only the result of inexperience. Time and commitment could only make things better—or so she’d believed.

And so she had been devastated when only a day or so later Rob had brusquely, and with brutal indifference to her feelings, broken off the relationship.

In an attempt to drown her sorrows, India had downed a couple of glasses of wine with more haste than she was used to. Her feelings of hurt pride and loss had been made even worse by the appearance of Rob himself at the party, with another woman on his arm.

‘His boss’s daughter, no less!’ she complained to her friends, hiding her hurt behind a veil of contempt as she went on, ‘But I mean—just look at her! That hair isn’t natural for a start. And, well, to call her a bimbo would be an insult to all self-respecting airheads. What on earth can he see in her?’

‘Face it,’ Rose said, her tone one of knowing cynicism, ‘What he really sees when he looks at Miss Bannister is a private income of X thousand a year and an easy way into Daddy’s good books—not to mention, if he plays his cards right, the prospect of a very comfortable future. Your family may have a high society name, Indy, and the family tree to go with it—but you haven’t got the disposable income men like Rob look for.’

‘And what income the Marchants do have is taken up by that crumbling old pile my father insists on calling the ancestral home!’ India agreed. ‘It’s going to need a new roof soon, and there’s not enough in the bank to fund it.’

‘Not a problem dear Miss Bannister is likely to have to concern herself with,’ Jane put in with a nod towards the dance floor, where the blonde was draped all over Rob. ‘That little slip of nothing she’s wearing is fresh from the Paris catwalks, and I’ll bet that what Daddy paid for it would go a long way towards your new roof. Our high street couture just can’t compete.’

‘High street!’ India’s laugh was wry. ‘You must be joking. I made this myself, from one of Mum’s old evening dresses, cut down and restyled.’

Another glance towards Rob and his attentive companion twisted the knife deep inside her heart.

‘Oh, God, I’m sick and tired of genteel poverty! I think it’s high time I did something about it. You just watch me! I’m going to find myself a wealthy husband, one who can keep me in the manner to which I have every intention of becoming accustomed. Then I can just sit back and enjoy myself, not have to worry about anything.’

‘Well, you couldn’t do better than to start here, tonight,’ her friend had told her. ‘There must be the cream of the society, artistic and business worlds right here under one roof. You could take your pick.’

‘I intend to!’

Buoyed up by the wine, India hadn’t cared if her voice carried.

‘And I don’t plan on waiting for him to come to me. In fact, the very next rich man who walks through that door will find himself on the receiving end of such a campaign of seduction and enticement that he won’t be able to resist me. I’ll bet you anything you like that I’ll have his ring on my finger before he knows what’s hit him—three months at most, start to finish!’

‘That was how you saw it, wasn’t it?’ Aidan’s cold voice broke into her memories now. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said it was all a joke?’ she managed, not meeting his eyes.

‘In that case, the joke was on you,’ Aidan returned harshly, his steely eyes and the tightness of the muscles in his face driving home the message of his tone.

‘I didn’t know you were listening.’

‘No?’ Aidan laughed nastily. ‘You really slipped up there, didn’t you, darling? You must have thought you were home and dry. As ordered, one extremely wealthy man who seemed to fall straight into your carefully baited trap.’

That laugh was worse the second time around, a grim travesty of humour that made India wince away in distress.

‘What a pity that you hadn’t realised that the window behind you was open when you hatched your grasping little plot, and that it carried every word of your conversation out to where I had just arrived at the front door. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. You should have seen your face. You looked as if all your Christmases had come at once and you’d got exactly what you asked Santa for.’

‘Well, you got what you wanted too!’

Unable to bear his goading any longer, India needed to lash out at him, verbally at least, make him feel a little of her inner distress. The fact that her own conscience wasn’t exactly comfortable with the events he was making her remember only made matters worse.

‘And what was that?’

His voice was freezing again, and India shivered in nervous response

‘You got me! You wanted my body—you made that only too plain. You wanted me in your bed, nothing more, nothing less, so you went along with my “grasping little plot” because it suited you. Or are you going to try and deny that now?’

Aidan’s emphatic, silent shake of his head, the dark eyes fixed disturbingly on her face, drove that jagged knife in a few inches deeper, twisting it viciously in the wound.

‘So you wanted sex. You wanted to screw me...’

She didn’t care how crude she sounded, how harsh and vicious her tone had become. Her emotions felt crude. She felt soiled, dirty, used and discarded.

‘And, boy, did you do that! You took what you wanted for as long as you wanted, promising marriage and happy ever after just to keep me sweet! But then, when you’d had enough, when you grew tired...’

‘Damn you!’

India’s voice failed her suddenly, the words disintegrating in her throat as Aidan flung the savage imprecation at her, getting to his feet in a violent movement, his chair scraping back over the floor with a harsh, ugly sound.

‘Damn you to hell, Princess! If it’s truth time, then it’s that for both of us,’ he declared, coming round the table towards her, his face set in an expression that had her shrinking away fearfully, reading danger in his look.

But Aidan’s hands came out swiftly, fastening onto her arms, hard fingers digging painfully into soft flesh as he easily controlled her impulse to escape. Unable to move, she could only turn her head away—anything to avoid looking into his eyes.

‘And you’ll listen,’ he growled into her stubbornly averted face. ‘You’ll hear what I have to say if I have to shake every damned word into you.’

Suiting action to the words, he gave her a rough shake. Not violent, but controlled just enough to let her know what it would be like if his temper finally broke free from the constraint he was imposing on it.

‘Yes, I wanted you—’

‘For sex,’ India couldn’t stop herself from inserting, and out of the corner of her eye saw the hard nod of his head that confirmed her words.

‘I’ve never denied that. I’d be a fool to try. I’ve only got to look at you to want you—and even the knowledge that you’re nothing but a cheap, money-grabbing little bloodsucker isn’t enough to change the way I feel, unfortunately. I wish it was. But you got one thing wrong.’

‘No...’

The protest escaped involuntarily, India’s head going back in shock as her mind focused on and fully registered just what he had said. I’ve only got to look at you to want you. Present tense—not past.

‘No!’ She didn’t want him to say it, didn’t want to hear her fears confirmed.

‘Yes.’

His smile was hateful, curling his lips in acknowledgement of the way that the sudden darkening of her eyes told him she had guessed what was coming.

‘Oh, yes, my darling Princess. You got one thing totally and unequivocally wrong, and that one thing makes all the difference. You can say that I got what I wanted and, in a way, I did. But I didn’t get enough of it—nowhere near enough.’

Hopelessly, desperately, India shook her head, her hands coming up before her face as if she could actually ward off what he was saying. But Aidan ignored her and ploughed on ruthlessly.

‘I never grew tired of you—not in that way at least. I wanted you in my bed then, wanted you with a need so sharp it hurts just to think of it, and I want you now. In fact, I want you more than ever, and nothing that’s happened has done anything to change that.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I DIDN’T get enough—nowhere near enough.’

Aidan’s harsh-voiced declaration swung round and round in India’s head, gaining further devastating impact with each repetition. It almost seemed as if a grenade had just exploded right in her face, blasting her thought processes to bits.

The only thing she could see was Aidan’s eyes, ebony-dark, no light in them at all, holding her stunned gaze with a powerfully mesmeric force.

‘I never got enough of you,’ he conferred, dropping his voice even lower, so that it seemed to coil round her beleaguered senses like thick, warm smoke. ‘Not then, my lovely, and certainly not now.’

Inwardly, India shivered at the huskily sensual promise in his voice. Or did she mean threat? Right now, she neither knew nor cared. But then a new thought struck with stunning force, making her pull herself up sharply.

This was exactly what he wanted, she realised. He had set out deliberately to throw her off balance, and she had responded exactly as he had planned. If she showed fear or reacted nervously then he had won, or at least gained a very powerful advantage—and she was damned if she was going to let him get away with that!

Swallowing hard, she moistened dry lips with her tongue, and when she saw his dark-eyed gaze drop down to follow the tiny movement she deliberately made herself repeat it, more slowly this time. The change in pace turned the gesture into a lazily lascivious self-caress, like the sensuous reaction of a cat that had just cleared a saucer of cream, and she knew its impact wasn’t lost on the man before her.