Passionate Retribution

'You complacent, smug…' She twisted wildly, infuriated by the denunciation of her life. 'You've done all those things, I take it. I should possibly follow your example. The first step is naturally to walk, blessing my good fortune, into your bed—and leave a better and wiser person! Like the multitude that have been there before me!' She almost choked on the sentence. 'Did you have to blackmail them too? I know you for what you are, Lucas Hunt, and I know you don't give a damn about me or how I feel. I'm just a way to get back at my parents, a tool. Well, for your information I like them as little as you do. I have never looked to a soul-mate to live my life through—I've seen poor Charlotte try and do that. I might have made a mistake where Gavin was concerned, but at least I wasn't blinded by some animal lust elevated for the sake of convention to the heights of some sickly romantic ideal. I don't intend to start bed-hopping now!' A sudden sob, dry and racking, robbed her of words. 'From your point of view I'm a failure. Think what a lot that gives you in common with my parents.' She held her hands up to fend off his attempt to recapture her. Whether this physical approach was meant to comfort or censure she had no notion.

'You can hardly accuse me of advocating casual relationships, Emily, not when it's marriage I'm proposing.' His eyes were almost navy with emotion, turbulent and as angry as she'd ever seen him. 'As for getting you in my bed, my taste runs to warm, confident women who don't need reassurance every other word. When did you become such a soulless little cynic, Emily? You'll marry me because you're afraid of what it will do to your father if he believes we were lovers four years ago. When it boils down to it, you know that despite all the window-dressing and protests you're still the dutiful little girl,' he said derisively. 'You can be as sanctimonious as you like, rant on about the lust you clearly expect me to believe you find distasteful, but the truth, Emily, is you can't cope with your own sexuality. You want to be that little girl,' he told her, his mouth compressed to an austere line of distaste. 'You don't hate the way my mouth feels on yours; you're hungry to taste me.' He made a guttural sound in his throat and released her hands. 'You're aching for me to touch you,' he continued with blighting scorn. 'But if it makes you happy in your own perverse way to think you're nothing but an unwilling victim, fine.' He shrugged.

'I don't know what you mean,' she faltered.

'Has it occurred to you, infant, that the sacrifice is mine? Marrying a Stapely is hardly my life's ambition. Nothing matters to me except repaying a debt. It makes the slate clean as far as I'm concerned.'

'Is that supposed to be some sort of incentive to go along with this crazy scheme?' The fact that she loved him gave him a unique ability to inflict a staggering amount of pain… The only redeeming factor was that that, at least, remained her own secret. 'If I marry you, Luke, to stop you telling Dad all those vindictive lies, it will be a marriage in name only. Considering I'm the unclean, a full-blooded Stapely, you can hardly object to those terms.'

He regarded her with an absence of emotion that was bedrock, cold. 'I'll need to get a valid licence once we get back to London…that will be long enough for you to rethink that scheme, Emily.'

'I won't—' she began hotly.

'And when you do,' he interrupted, a small, malicious smile playing about his lips, 'you'll do the asking!' He strode away from her without a backward glance, his spine rigidly erect, his long legs putting distance between them swiftly.

'Never, never, never…' she muttered to herself from between clenched teeth.

CHAPTER SIX

'Do you plan to work so industriously all evening, or will you join me to eat? This is by way of being a celebratory meal,' Luke reminded her mockingly.

Emily had stiffened the moment he'd leant over her to see the typewritten words on the page she'd been transcribing. 'I've no doubt you would consider it a celebration,' she replied coldly. He had her tacit agreement to this farcical marriage, his ultimate revenge; he couldn't make her act as though she was happy about the situation! For years he'd waited for such an opportunity, and she had provided it.

'And such a diligent fiancé—I scarcely need secretarial assistance.'

Emily flexed her stiff neck. 'There's precious little else to do here,' she muttered. The truth was that occupying her hands if not her thoughts had been one way of avoiding him; the cottage was too small actually to escape. Eventually she had even begun to be engrossed by the story unfolding beneath her fingertips. Luke's storylines were always original, and underlying the brisk action was a depth of local knowledge, no doubt gleaned from his extensive travels. It was the underlying vulnerability of the hero which had captured her interest, because beneath the gung-ho exterior he was a man attempting to regain an idealism she knew his inventor to despise.