The Bartered Bride

She started to shut the door but he put a foot across the threshold and the flat of his hand on the door to hold it open.

She had never expected to hear herself saying, ‘How dare you?’ to anyone, but it was what sprang to her lips, followed by, ‘Get out!’

‘I’m not inside yet,’ he said blandly. ‘We have things to talk about. May I come in?’

‘We have nothing to say to each other. You have no right to pester me like this. If you don’t go away, I’ll call the security man and have you thrown off the premises.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Making a nuisance of yourself.’

Reid Kennard smiled, but it wasn’t a kind or amused smile. It was the sort of expression she associated with sadists about to do something which would give them pleasure but cause excruciating pain to their victim.

‘I think you’re bluffing.’

He stepped into the hallway. To her chagrin, Fran let him. Not that she had much option. He was far too large and muscular for her to use physical means to deny him access. She had muscles of her own, but not in the same class as his.

He had looked a strong man in his office, but that might have been partly good tailoring. Now that he had changed out of his city suit into chinos and a dark blue cashmere sweater over a cotton shirt, it was clear that the breadth of his shoulders owed nothing to clever padding.

‘This is outrageous,’ she snapped, while instinctively backing away to avoid coming into contact with that tall and powerful male body as he closed the door.

‘Don’t pretend to be in a panic. You know perfectly well I’m not going to harm you.’

‘How do I know that? You’ve already shown signs of derangement.’

‘Not really. I’ll admit to being unconventional. You’ll get used to it.’ He glanced round the hall and then, with a gesture at the open door of the living room, said, ‘After you.’

Having no choice but to act on her threat or let him speak his piece, Fran walked ahead of him. If he expected to be invited to sit down, he could think again.

Grinding her teeth, she saw that she had left the file on the low glass-topped table in front of the sofa. Even worse, it was open, proving she had looked through it.

But the first thing that caught his eye wasn’t the file. It was the half-full glass of wine—her second—she had left by the telephone.

‘A bad habit...drinking alone,’ he remarked, with a sardonic glance at her hostile face.

‘I don’t as a rule. It’s been a trying day. I’m not used to dealing with people who think they can trample roughshod over the rest of the world.’ She folded her arms and glared at him. ‘You have to be the most objectionable person I have ever met.’

‘Because I want to marry you? Even if they don’t wish to say yes, most women regard a proposal as a compliment.’

‘Not when it comes from a stranger who regards women as chattels.’

‘There are cultures where it’s the custom for girls not even to see their husband’s face until after the marriage ceremony. Marriage is a practical institution. It’s because our culture ignores that that we have so many divorces. Wouldn’t you rather stay married?’

‘I’m not interested in marriage...certainly not to you.’

‘Why not, if there’s no one else in your life? Or did my investigator slip up there?’

At this point the buzzer sounded again. She saw him looking displeased by the interruption as she went to answer the door. This time it was the takeout delivery man. She took the box to the kitchen before paying him the money she had ready in her pocket.

Rejoining Kennard, she said pointedly, ‘My supper’s arrived. I’d like to eat it while it’s still hot.’

Ignoring the hint, he said, ‘You ought to keep your door chained until you see who your caller is.’

‘Normally I do. It’s only because I thought you were the man with the pizza that you were able to barge in.’

‘That was lucky...for me.’ He began to look round the room, taking in the colour scheme, the books and paintings, and the mirrors. Fran loved mirrors, especially antique ones. As a child, her favourite book had been a copy, inherited from her grandmother, of Through the Looking-Glass. Somehow the wrong-way-round view seen through a mirror always looked better than what was really there. She had often wished she could step through the frame of a mirror into a world where things were the same but different; her parents’ marriage a happy one and herself a model pupil like her elder sister.

‘Nice room. Who designed it?’ asked Kennard.

No one had ever remarked on the way the room looked. She couldn’t help feeling a slight sense of gratification that someone had finally noticed the effect she had spent a lot of time and thought achieving.

‘Nobody well known,’ she said. ‘Please...I want to get on with my supper and I have to have everything packed by tomorrow afternoon. I really don’t have time to talk...even if we had anything sensible to talk about.’

‘A pizza’s a poor sort of supper...especially if you’re eating alone. Let me buy you a decent dinner and try to convince you that my plan makes a lot of sense. Then, if you like, I’ll give you a hand with the packing.’

‘Absolutely not! No way!’ Fran said emphatically, but not with much hope he would accept her refusal.

He didn’t. ‘No to dinner, or no to help with the packing?’

‘No to both...no to everything. Have another look through some magazines and pick out some other woman. I’m not for sale, Mr Kennard.’

‘Do you like music?’ he asked.

Disconcerted by the seemingly irrelevant question, she said, ‘Some music...yes.’

‘How do you feel about Smetana?’

‘Never heard of him.’ It was an exaggeration. She had heard the name but that was the limit of her knowledge.

‘He was a Bohemian composer who lived in the last century. His most important work was done in Prague, helping to form a national opera. He had a nasty end...went deaf and died insane.’

‘If I wanted to know about the lives of obscure composers I’d borrow a book from the library.’

‘Is reading one of your pleasures?’

‘Yes, as it happens it is, but—’

‘That’s good. It’s one of mine and I have a large private library.’

Feeling her temper starting to simmer, Fran said impatiently, ‘I shouldn’t think it includes the kind of books I enjoy and if Smetana is one of your favourite composers your CDs would send me to sleep. I had enough of that stuff in musical appreciation sessions at school. I only like pop music.’

It wasn’t true. Julian had taught her to share his love for classical music, but if Kennard thought she was what he would define as a Philistine so much the better. It might put him off this insane determination to marry her.

Not visibly deterred, he said, ‘The reason I mentioned Smetana is because his most famous opera is called The Bartered Bride. Barter, the exchange of goods, was how people traded before money was invented. I’m not trying to buy you, Francesca. I’m proposing a trade-off...things I need for things you need. Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come out to dinner?’

‘Definitely not!’

‘In that case I’ll leave you to your pizza and take myself off for some Arbroath smokies at Scotts, or maybe their Loch Fyne smoked salmon.’ As he mentioned two specialities of one of London’s best restaurants, the hard eyes warmed with malicious amusement.

Could his private detective have found out that she adored fish and seafood?

On his way to the door, Kennard added, ‘I’ll call you in the morning. After you’ve slept on the idea, you may find it more appealing.’

‘Thanks for the warning. I’ll take the phone off the hook,’ she snapped, as he let himself out.

CHAPTER TWO

SINCE Julian’s wedding, Fran had had a lot of sleepless nights, prowling around in the small hours, tortured by thoughts of Julian making babies with Alice...babies which should have been hers.

All she had ever really wanted was to be Julian’s wife and the mother of his children. Not the kind of ambition applauded by the teachers at the expensive boarding-school where she and her sister had been sent to learn to be ‘ladies’.

That had been Gran’s idea. Though Gran’s own origins were humble, she was a tremendous snob and hadn’t approved of her eighteen-year-old Daphne marrying a rough diamond like George Turner, even if he had gone on to make pots of money.

Gran wanted to see her granddaughters marrying men who were not only well off but also what she called well-spoken. To that end she had chivvied her son-in-law into sending the girls to one of the most exclusive schools in England. To Gran’s disappointment, her eldest granddaughter, Shelley, had fallen in love with a young man who had once spent a summer working in her mother’s garden. He now had his own plant nursery and was a contented man, but he didn’t make a lot of money. John and Shelley couldn’t afford to support her mother. With two small children and another on the way, they didn’t even have a spare bedroom to offer her.

Had Gran known of Fran’s secret passion for the chauffeur’s son, she would have disapproved, at least until his achievements at university had signalled an impressive future.

The irony was that Gran would probably regard Reid Kennard as a wonderful catch. She didn’t think much of love as a basis for wedlock. She wouldn’t admit it under torture, but her granddaughters suspected there had been a metaphorical shotgun in the background of her wedding, and the marriage hadn’t been happy.

In the morning Fran woke with a headache, the result of too little sleep and too much wine the night before. Staying up late, she had finished the bottle.

She spent the morning sorting out things in her bedroom and waiting for Reid Kennard’s call. When the telephone remained silent, she should have been relieved. Instead she felt oddly uneasy.

What if he’d changed his mind? What if her animosity had made him have second thoughts? During his solitary dinner he might have decided he couldn’t be bothered to wear down her opposition when there were plenty of women he could have for the asking.

The longer she considered this scenario, the more it seemed to Fran that she might have rejected in haste an opportunity she would live to regret turning down.

As things stood, all the future offered was relative penury for her mother and a dull job for herself. It wasn’t an attractive prospect.

The trade-off Reid had suggested—suddenly she found herself thinking of him by his first name instead of his surname—would mean that if they were miserable, they would at least be miserable in comfort.

But what about her side of the trade-off: being the wife of a man she didn’t love and who didn’t love her?

Well, love, for long the first item on her private and personal wish list, had been crossed off the day Julian married Alice. So that brought it down to the question of whether she could face having sex with someone other than Julian in order to have some babies. They wouldn’t have the father she had dreamed of, but any father had to be better than none.

Thinking about sex with Reid, Fran felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. He had all the physical makings of a good lover; his aura of animal magnetism deriving from a great body, a sensual mouth, hands that looked strong enough to crush, but also capable of performing the most delicate and subtle caresses. Just thinking about the components of his disturbing personality sent strange little quivers through her.

Even though still a virgin, her innocence saved as a gift for her first and only love, Fran knew all the theory, knew what those frissons meant. She had recognised the passionate depths of her nature a long time ago. From the beginning of adolescence she had been excited and moved by amorous scenes in books and movies, recognising her capacity to feel the same fiery emotions as the women in the stories and on the screen.

But she had also had a strong streak of idealism. After falling in love with Julian, keeping herself inviolate for him had seemed more important than indulging her natural curiosity about what it felt like to do the things many of the girls in her class had experienced as soon as they were sixteen.

A lot of them were the over-indulged, under-disciplined children of broken marriages. During the holidays they had too much pin money and not enough supervision. Several girls she knew by sight hadn’t completed their time at school. They had been expelled for serious misdemeanours ranging from night-time truancy to drugs.

Fortunately, although described as ‘lazy’, ‘inattentive’ and ‘irresponsible’ in her school reports, Fran had never been taken up by the group known to the serious-minded girls as The Decadents. The fact that she was reserving herself for Julian would have debarred her from that clique. Although far from being a teacher’s pet, from The Decadents’ point of view Fran was one of the girls they called The Nuns.

She was thinking about her lack of sexual experience and wondering what conclusions the detective had drawn about her in that respect, when the telephone started to chirrup.

She forced herself not to grab it, letting it signal six times before she said coolly, ‘Hello?’

‘Good morning.’

If the distinctive voice at the other end of the line had mocked her about not leaving the phone off the hook, she would have cut the connection and dashed round the flat disconnecting all the extensions.

But Reid didn’t refer to her parting shot. He said, ‘I’d like to show you my library. Will you have lunch with me?’

She drew in her breath, knowing she was on the brink of one of the defining moments of her life.

‘If you’re worried about being alone with me, you needn’t be,’ Reid went on. ‘My household is run by staff who are far too respectable to stay with any employer who doesn’t live up to their standards. But even if that were not so, I’ve already made it clear my intentions are honourable.’

She could guess from the tone of his voice that there would be a sardonic quirk at the corner of his chiselled mouth.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘What time and where?’

When he had rung off, she looked at the exclusive address she had jotted down on the notepad and wondered why she had relented.

Less than twenty-four hours ago she had stormed out of his office, convinced he was out of his mind. Now she was going to have lunch with him. Had she gone out of hers?

Before setting out for their lunch date, Fran reread the file Reid had sent her.

He was thirty-four, twelve years older than herself. A big age gap. It seemed likely that wasn’t the only gulf between them.

Kennards, a merchant bank dealing with long-term loans for governments and institutions and advising on takeover bids, had been founded by his great-grandfather. The controlling influence had been retained by Thomas Kennard’s descendants.

Unlike her father, Reid hadn’t had to claw his way up from nothing. The facts in the file indicated that from birth he had been groomed for the position he occupied. But family influence couldn’t have made him head boy at his public school if he’d lacked the qualities needed for that position, nor could it have gained him an impressive degree at one of England’s most prestigious universities. He had to have a brilliant brain.

So why pick someone as unbrainy as me? Fran pondered uneasily. She knew she had other equally important qualities and had never wanted to exchange them for a superior intellect. But for a man like Reid deliberately to select a female who operated by instinct rather than logic seemed strange, not to say suspect.

He lived in a large house in one of the most select squares in the ultra-fashionable Royal Borough of Kensington. The butler opened the door to her and took her coat.

A man in his fifties, dressed in an ordinary dark suit with a discreet tie, he led her up a sweeping staircase, past a line of family portraits, to a large first-floor landing. As they reached it, Reid was descending the stairs from the floor above. She noticed his thick dark hair was damp and wondered why. It seemed an odd time of day to take a shower.

‘You’re admirably punctual,’ he said, holding out his hand to her.

As they hadn’t shaken hands the day before, it was her first experience of the firm clasp of his fingers. Then he took her lightly by the elbow to steer her across a rose and gold Aubusson carpet and through open double doors in an elegant drawing room with three tall windows overlooking the square.

Normally Fran would have swept an appreciative glance around the beautiful room, taking in some of the details. Instead she was overwhelmed by the strength of her reaction to their first physical contact.

‘I nearly kept you waiting,’ said Reid. ‘I came back from the bank at eleven to go for a run in the park. As I was coming home I saw an old man on a bench who obviously needed medical attention. That held me up.’

‘Do you run every day?’

‘I try to. Are you a runner?’

Fran shook her head. ‘I play tennis and ski. I don’t do work-outs.’

He slanted an appraising glance at her figure. Today, in place of the black suit, she was wearing a designer outfit bought on a holiday in Italy. It consisted of a fine jersey-knit top in lilac, a waistcoat in violet, and a swirling chevron-striped skirt combining those colours with pink and pale pistachio-green. The audacious colour combination was perfect with Fran’s dark red hair and green eyes.

‘You look in good shape,’ he remarked. ‘But people in desk jobs like mine need some kind of fitness regime to stave off the bad effects of a sedentary lifestyle. Come and sit down. What would you like to drink before lunch?’

She remembered his remark about the wine she had been drinking when he forced his way in the previous evening. Was he one of those people who drank only mineral water and made everyone who didn’t feel on a lower plane?

Fran had no intention of allowing him to intimidate her. ‘A Campari and soda, please,’ she said firmly.

Reid said to the butler, who had been following them at a discreet distance, ‘A Campari for Ms Turner and my usual, please, Curtis.’

With a silent inclination of the head, the butler withdrew.

‘Let’s sit over here, shall we?’ Reid steered her towards a group of comfortable chairs near one of the windows. ‘Have you finished your packing?’

‘Almost.’

Knowing that she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she had worked on it till long past midnight. At half past nine this morning a dealer from whom she had bought a lot of the furnishings had come round to buy them back. Luckily Fran had paid for them out of her bank account. Although the money in it had come from her father, technically they were her property, not his. As soon as his business had been forced into receivership, everything George Turner had owned, including the family home, belonged to his business creditors. But the cash the dealer had handed her could go in her own pocket.

It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing if, when Reid spelt out the terms of this trade-off marriage, she found that she couldn’t accept them.

‘What date is this house?’ she asked, looking up at the elegant cornice around the ceiling and the two crystal chandeliers, their chains swathed with coral silk to match the festoons of silk cord and big coral tassels at the tops of the heavy cream curtains.

‘Late eighteenth century. Are you interested in architecture?’ He sounded faintly surprised.

‘Sometimes.’

The butler came back with their drinks, hers a slightly more vivid red than the coral linen slipcovers on some of the sofas, Reid’s colourless except for a twist of lemon floating among the ice cubes. It could be gin or vodka, or it could be straight mineral water.

Reid said, ‘This was my grandparents’ house. My paternal grandmother still lives here when she’s not staying with her daughters. I moved here when my father died. We had been living in Oxfordshire and commuting by helicopter. For the time being I have an apartment on the top floor. But I thought you would feel more comfortable being entertained in the main part of the house,’ he added, with a gleam of amusement.

After a slight pause, he added, ‘I shall move out when I marry. The country is better for children... if their parents can choose where to live. Most people can’t of course.’

‘Where are you thinking of moving to?’ Fran asked.

‘I haven’t decided.’ His expression was enigmatic. ‘Where would you choose to live, given a free choice?’

Fran considered the question. Once the answer would have been ‘Wherever Julian wants to live’.

She said, ‘Probably not in England. Ideally, I’d like more sun than we get in this country. I wouldn’t mind living by the sea...or a lake would do as long as it had mountains round it. I’d like to look out on mountains... big ones with snow on top.’

He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Sounds as if New Zealand would suit you.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sure it’s a beautiful country but it’s too far away from Europe. Have you been there?’

Reid nodded. ‘The scenery’s magnificent...when it’s not raining. The South Island shares England’s problem. Unreliable weather. Where have your travels taken you?’

‘Mostly to holiday places...the Caribbean in winter... resorts round the Med in summer. My mother’s a passionate gardener. She doesn’t like travelling alone, even in a group. I’ve been on some garden tours with her...the south of France, Ireland, California. Where do you go for your holidays?’

‘I used to go with my father who also liked someone with him. We went to Japan together and to other Pacific Rim countries. I travel a lot for the bank. For pleasure I usually go to France or Spain. Where would you like to go for our honeymoon?’

The question, tacked on to innocuous small talk, took her by surprise.

‘I haven’t agreed to marry you,’ she said coldly.

‘If you found the idea unthinkable, you wouldn’t be here,’ he said dryly. ‘Let’s be straight with each other, Francesca. I need you...you need me. It’s a sensible, practical arrangement.’

She knew that at least the first part of what he said was true, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Was it pride that made her reluctant to fall in with his plan too readily?

She said, ‘I’m not clear why you’ve selected me.’

‘You’re very attractive...as I’m sure you’re aware.’

‘Is that all you want in a woman? An acceptable face and figure? Don’t you care what I’m like inside?’

‘I can make some intelligent guesses. People can’t hide their characters,’ he told her casually. ‘Even in repose a face gives a lot of clues to its owner’s temperament. Apart from yesterday’s evidence that you have a short fuse, I haven’t detected any characteristics I wouldn’t like to live with.’

His arrogance took her breath away. In that moment of silent shock, she was struck by the thought it would be both a challenge and public service to bring this man down from his lofty pinnacle and convert him into an acceptably unassuming person.

But perhaps it was already too late. One of Gran’s favourite sayings was, ‘What’s bred in the bone must come out in the flesh.’

Reid, with his long-boned thoroughbred physique and his autocratic features, looked a descendant of generations of men who had felt themselves to be superior beings and never experienced the doubts felt by ordinary people.

In a different, more rough-hewn way, her father had been the same. Probably, somewhere far back in Reid’s ancestry, there had been a man like her father: a roughdiamond unscrupulous go-getter who had founded the Kennard fortune.

Perhaps, if George Turner had married someone better equipped to handle him than her quiet and easily cowed mother, her father might have been saved from becoming an overbearing braggart.

Whether, at thirty-four, Reid’s essential nature could be modified was problematical. But it could be interesting to try.

She said, ‘I don’t find you as transparent as you seem to find me. It takes me longer to make up my mind about people.’