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Disarmed by his thoughtfulness, his attempt to please her, she accompanied him to the door and waved him off.
The old walled garden was a suntrap. Eyes closed, head pillowed on her discarded woolly, Raine lay flat on her back on the smooth, green expanse of turf in the centre while she waited for her fiancé.
The late afternoon sun shone redly through her eyelids. She could hear the bees buzzing around the lavender and autumn roses, and smell the various pungent herbs. A baby breeze patted her cheek and ruffled her wispy half-fringe.
Calib sat on her stomach, blinking sleepily while he contemplated nothing in particular. Applying a pink tongue to a velvet paw, he began to wash leisurely behind one ear.
His hearing was more acute than his human companion’s, and he looked up and paused in his ablutions a second or two before the door in the high pink-brick wall opened.
Raine heard the steps cross the crazy-paving path that meandered past the flower-borders, and felt Calib’s easy spring as he abandoned his perch. He always absented himself when Kevin came, determinedly repulsing all his attempts to make friends.
Her fiancé’s shadow falling over her face momentarily blotted out the sun. Keeping her eyes shut, she murmured a lazy hello, and smiled a little invitation.
When he sat down beside her and leaned over to let his mouth lightly brush hers, she reached up to put her arms around his neck.
Rather to her surprise she felt him stretch out beside her. Normally Kevin wasn’t one for lying about on the grass. Even the touch of his lips seemed different. Less deferential. More disturbing. Much more disturbing.
All thought was suspended as, making her heart start to race with suffocating speed and sending a swift surge of pleasure through her, he deepened the kiss.
While her entire body sang into life and a core of liquid heat formed in the pit of her stomach he explored her mouth with masterful thoroughness, one hand following the curve of her hip and buttock in a way it had never done before.
A sudden fear, like the shock of an icy plunge, made her brain click into gear.
Until now, Nick had been the only man who had ever been able to engender such an urgent and overwhelming response. And she didn’t want to feel this way. It terrified her.
Stiffening in rejection, she tried to push him away.
Refusing to be so summarily dismissed, he finished the kiss unhurriedly before lifting his head.
Raine’s eyes flew open.
At first, dazzled by the low sun, she could see nothing but brightness. Then she found herself focusing on a lean, sardonic face, with brows and lashes several shades darker than the thick blond hair, and eyes of a deep midnight-blue. A strong-boned, handsome face. No, much more than handsome—a fascinating, compelling face. A face she had taught herself to hate. A face she’d hoped never to see again...
Panic swept over her as her worst fears were confirmed. ‘You!’ she whispered, jerking upright. Trying to swamp fear with anger, she demanded furiously, ‘What are you doing here? How dare you kiss me like that?’
A level brow was lifted mockingly. ‘How did you want me to kiss you?’ His mouth, the top lip thin, the bottom one seductive, was much too close for comfort. ‘With more respect and less enthusiasm, as I understand your noble fiancé does?’
‘I don’t want you to kiss me at all,’ she hissed at him.
‘You did once,’ he reminded her with deliberate cruelty.
Her mind was suddenly in confusion, beset by memories that returned to her with devastating clarity.
Calib, who had been watching from a short distance away, came back with a little rush to push between them as, face burning, Raine ignored the goad and demanded, ‘And how do you know how Kevin kisses me?’
‘Your father described Kevin Somersby as a minor civil servant—a steady and correct young man.’
‘Which you interpreted as dull and inhibited!’
Rising to his feet in one fluid movement, Nick held out a lean suntanned hand. ‘Was I wrong?’
‘Totally wrong! He’s—’ Breaking off the hasty words, she said coldly, ‘I’ve no intention of discussing Kevin with you.’ Carefully avoiding Nick’s outstretched hand, she scrambled to her feet.
The clamour of her own heartbeat almost deafening her, she busied herself brushing wisps of grass from her grey and white striped cotton shirtwaister.
Her diamond solitaire flashed in the sun. Aware that his eyes followed it thoughtfully, she asked again, ‘What are you doing here?’
His healthy white teeth gleamed in a smile. A smile that, like his words, held a subtle threat ‘If the mountain won’t come to Mahomet...’
Just for an instant both her heart and breathing seemed to stop. She took a long, shuddering breath and asked the first thing that came into her head. ‘Did Dad know you were coming?’
‘Yes, he knew. I gather he didn’t tell you?’
Her green eyes flashed. ‘You probably asked him not to!’
Neither confirming nor denying the charge, Nick said, ‘I thought it was high time we had a talk.’
Feeling as though a silken noose was tightening around her throat, she informed him, ‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to be married in a month.’ She spoke the words as though they were a talisman with the power to keep danger at bay.
‘Really?’ he drawled.
‘Yes, really.’ She strove to sound serene and certain, but all at once she hardly believed it herself. To add substance to the declaration, and aware that her father and Nick corresponded regularly, she added, ‘Surely Dad must have mentioned it?’ And then she knew that of course he had. That was why Nick was here!
His smile oblique, Nick agreed, ‘Oh, yes, he mentioned it...‘ But he wasn’t very happy about it. The words were as clear as if they’d been spoken aloud. Eyes glinting, Nick went on, ‘However, I gather he doesn’t think too much of your intended.’
It was the truth and she couldn’t deny it. Angry with both of them, she said sharply, ‘What he thinks of Kevin is nothing to do with you.’
‘Oh. I don’t know... Apart from anything else we’re family. Kissing cousins, you might say.’
When Raine failed to rise to the bait, stooping to stroke Calib, who, purring like a young traction engine, was winding sinuously around Nick’s ankles, he remarked reflectively, ‘Though, apart from just now, it’s almost a year since you last kissed me.’
Swallowing hard, feeling the past she’d struggled so hard to leave behind closing in on her, Raine denied it. ‘I didn’t kiss you just now.’
Straightening to his full height of well over six feet, towering over her five feet six inches, he said, ‘Strange. That’s what it felt like.’
‘I thought it was Kevin.’
‘Well, if he’s able to make you respond so passionately, perhaps your father’s wrong about him being prudish.’
Though she knew he was trying to provoke her, she couldn’t stop herself saying, ‘Kevin’s not prudish. He just isn’t—’ Breaking off, she continued raggedly, ‘I much prefer romance to...’
‘Passion?’ Nick suggested when she faltered. Dark blue eyes holding an expression that could have been contempt, he continued derisively, ‘But of course romance is so much less disturbing than passion—less of a risk. Holding hands, a stroll in the moonlight, a chaste kiss—that doesn’t demand any real commitment, any great depth of feeling. Everything’s calm and orderly and safe.’
He was a fine one to talk about commitment, about depth of feeling. Desperately she fought back. ‘If that’s how I want things to be it still has nothing to do with you.’
‘Why do you want things to be that way?’
Because surrendering to passion had almost destroyed her, and she had no intention of ever letting it happen again.
When, staring blindly at a magnificent display of orange dahlias, she failed to answer Nick’s question, he took her shoulders and made her look at him. ‘Why, Raine? Why do you want things to be calm and orderly and safe? It doesn’t seem to be much of a recipe for marriage. It’s like trying to sail a three-masted schooner on a pond rather than taking it out to sea.’
She made an attempt to pull herself away and felt a rush of relief when he let her go. ‘Some people get seasick.’
‘Kevin, for instance?’
‘It suits us both to have a calm, friendly—’
‘Friendly! Ye gods ... a platonic marriage.’
On the defensive, she cried, ‘It won’t be platonic. It just won’t be...’
‘Stimulating? Passionate?’
She sought for a word. ‘Stormy. Neither of us care for an excessive display of emotion.’ Realising just how priggish that had sounded, she flushed and dipped her head, so that the long black hair fell forward, half curtaining her face.
Nick laughed harshly. ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy can’t have any good red blood in his veins if he’s willing to settle for a tepid relationship like that It seems as if your father was right when he—’
‘Dad’s not right. For once in his life he’s prejudiced and—’
‘Save your breath,’ Nick broke in softly. ‘It looks as if I’m going to have the opportunity to judge for myself.’
Kevin was advancing towards them over the grass, and for the first time she noticed that his shoulders were somewhat rounded and that he carried himself with a slight stoop.
Despite the warmth of the day, and the fact that it was a Saturday, he was conservatively dressed in a suit and tie.
Against Nick’s smart but cool attire of casual cotton trousers and dark blue open-necked shirt, he looked overheated and overdressed. But, Raine was pleased to note, he was by far the most conventionally handsome of the two.
Determined to prove something, she exclaimed brightly, ‘Darling...’ Going to him, she flung her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to press her lips to his.
Kevin didn’t actually say, Steady on, old thing, but he looked so uncomfortable that Nick had to turn his choke of laughter into a polite cough.
Raine glared at him.
Holding out a civil hand to the newcomer, he said blandly, ‘I’m Dominic Marlowe—Raine’s cousin.’
‘Kevin Somersby. How do you do?’ Pale eyes distinctly curious, Kevin shook the proffered hand, his grip moist but studiously firm.
Raine picked up her woolly and brushed it free of grass, then, slipping her hand through her fiancé’s arm, asked, ‘Shall we go up to the house?’
As though the suggestion had included him, Nick joined them, strolling along, sandwiching Raine between himself and Kevin, with a calm assurance that rattled her afresh.
Glancing from the slender black-haired girl by his side to the blond giant beyond her, Kevin remarked in his clear voice, with its upper-crust accent, ‘I fail to see any family resemblance—though you mentioned you were cousins?’
‘But not blood relatives,’ Nick said shortly.
‘Yet you have the same name?’
‘My mother had been widowed and I was just a year old when she married Harry Marlowe. He adopted me.’
‘I see.’ Kevin nodded, before asking a shade condescendingly, ‘What line of business are you in, Mr Marlowe?’
‘The family call me Nick.’
‘Then Nick it is.’ The words were just a fraction too hearty.
With a thin smile, Nick went on, ‘I take over small, near-bankrupt companies and make them into large, successful ones.’
Clearly disconcerted, Kevin adjusted his glasses and said awkwardly, ‘That must be very satisfying.’
‘It is, believe me.’
For no earthly reason, Raine shivered.
Calib had, as usual, made himself scarce when Kevin appeared. Now, to her annoyance, he emerged from a clump of purple Michaelmas daisies and attached himself to Nick with almost dog-like devotion.
Noticing the overt display of affection, Kevin collected himself and commented, ‘The cat appears to know you very well.’ When Nick said nothing, he continued a shade pompously, ‘It seems a little strange that we’ve never run across each other before... In fact, I don’t recall Lorraine ever mentioning you.’
‘She’s a funny girl,’ Nick observed with a smiling, intimate sidelong glance at his cousin. ‘Until today she’d never mentioned you to me.’
Kevin seemed unsure what to make of that. There was a rather awkward pause, during which Raine silently cursed Nick, before, either prompted by genuine interest or good manners, Kevin resumed the conversation again to ask, ‘I take it you don’t live in this part of the world... er...Nick?’
‘I live in the States—in Boston, Massachusetts.’
‘Ah... I wondered about the accent. I understand many Americans consider a Boston accent refined...’
When Nick failed to react to that piece of snobbery, Kevin went on, ‘Are you one of the Boston Brahmins, by any chance?’
‘Hardly,’ Nick replied coolly. ‘Though my mother’s ancestors came over on the Mayflower.’
‘What on earth is a Boston Brahmin?’ Raine asked.
It was Nick who answered. ‘It’s a name coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes back in the nineteenth century to describe the “aristocracy”—wealthy merchants of the city who were well-read, well-travelled and very conservative. They were usually descendants of the early Puritan settlers.’
As they left the walled garden and began to walk up the gentle slope of green lawns that led to the house, with its rosy brick herringbone-patterned walls and overhanging eaves, Kevin smoothed back his already smooth hair and pursued the matter. ‘So, have you two known each other all your lives?’
Nick shook his head. ‘We didn’t get to know each other until... when would it be, Raine?’
She ground her teeth. ‘I don’t remember exactly.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you do.’ He caught and held her glance. The gleam in his dark blue eyes brought a quick flush of betraying colour to her cheeks.
‘About a year ago, I suppose.’ Her tone was as offhand as she could make it.
‘It’s rather a romantic story,’ Nick went on conversationally. ‘Wouldn’t you say so, honey?’ Then, turning to the other man, he went on, ‘You see, when—’
Afraid of that “honey”, and of what he might be about to reveal, Raine interrupted jerkily, ‘I’m sure Kevin won’t want to be bored by all the family history.’
‘Not at all,’ Kevin said politely. Then to Nick, ‘Do go on.’
