Just as it had five months ago, when he’d visited Sedeshire Hall to ensure that she knew and agreed to the marriage, only for Lady Octavia to walk—no, stride—into that conservatory at her family home, carrying herself like a queen rather than a mere lady. She’d made his entire body leap on sight, even as she’d declared confidently that, deal or not, she knew what she was doing and she was prepared to marry him.
As though the decision had been hers.
Desire had walloped him then, just as it did now. Hard. Like a punch to the gut when a fighter dropped his guard in a bout—which he never did. He’d wanted her right there and then. Like nothing he’d ever known before.
And then she’d fixed him with that inscrutable stare of hers—wi
th eyes far too intelligent and fierce and assessing than the air-headed, social-climbing creature he’d been led to believe she was.
Making him wonder at the veracity of all those rumours. Making him wonder if she really was such a vacuous socialite and making him want to piece together the fascinating puzzle that this woman suggested she was.
And that killer body that she seemed to have absolutely no idea that she possessed.
He’d known she was pretty enough. The photos of her exploits as an It-girl—clad in scraps of metallic dress or barely-there bikinis—revealed as much, though he’d believed that her personality would be as plasticky as so many socialites of his acquaintance. Perhaps that explained why he hadn’t been prepared for the almost visceral reaction he’d had to her.
In that one moment, five months ago, he’d been taken over by a desire that he’d never experienced before in his life. He had never wanted a woman so badly, with such a need that he thought he might go mad if he didn’t have her.
And yet at the same time, crazily, he’d wanted to protect her. From her father. And maybe from others. Perhaps that was the part of it which made the least sense.
He’d wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out of that place, and if he’d had a damned horse then he’d believed he might have thrown her over that too. Rescuing her as if he was some medieval knight instead of a modern-day one, and she was his damsel in distress.
He, who had never been given to flights of fantasy in all his years.
It was the moment Lukas had realised that Lady Octavia Hendlington was the last woman on earth he should ever marry. Yet he’d done nothing to stop it, and now this vision was gliding gracefully up the aisle towards him, and she was no pretty-but-plastic girl. She appeared every inch a stunning woman with an indefinable quality that Lukas could neither put his finger on nor dismiss.
It unsettled him.
Not for the first time, he felt the tiptoeing steps of doubt creep into his brain, casting the faintest black shadow.
And, not for the first time, Lukas shut it out.
So she was attractive. It meant nothing that he noticed—he was, after all, a red-blooded male—but it didn’t mean he couldn’t control it, this jolt of heat that she seemed capable of igniting within him.
Attraction was fleeting; flames died. And, no matter how innocent his bride-to-be appeared on the outside, he could not afford to forget that Lady Octavia Hendlington was an autumn crocus—beautiful to look at and seemingly harmless, but in reality she was toxic right through. Just like her father.
Finally, she drew to an elegant halt beside him and he was suddenly struck once again by quite how vivid, how piercing her eyes were. A blue that almost seemed to reach inside him and strike that black thing which had long since resided where a heart would normally be.
He couldn’t bring himself to look away. Worse, he didn’t want to.
So as she stood before him, calmly allowing her bridesmaids to sort out the ridiculously long train of her wedding gown, Lukas fought to rein himself in, telling himself that the interlude was also a chance to get a grip on his own traitorous reactions.
‘You made it then,’ he remarked drily. For her ears only. As though engaging in banal conversation could somehow lessen her impact on him.
But, as she tilted her head up to him even further, that punch became a fist, tightening around his lower gut. He forced himself to ignore it.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’ she asked.
‘It crossed my mind. Especially since your father told me that you were at your special spa retreat, which I understand is your social circle’s euphemism for rehab. Again.’
‘I wasn’t in rehab,’ she bit out, and he couldn’t have said why he thought she hadn’t intended to speak.
For a moment it appeared that she was going to say something else, but then she blinked at him and closed her mouth. The air seemed to shift around them, leaving Lukas uncharacteristically unsettled. As though he’d somehow missed the mark.
But he hadn’t. It had been well-documented in the media that the first time she’d attended some kind of rehab she’d been fifteen, about the time her out-of-control partying had really begun to hit the headlines. Although she’d been decidedly more discreet in the past decade or so, the rumours had persisted.
That was presumably why her father had insisted on Lukas marrying her as part of the deal for Sedeshire International.
Without warning, his bride-to-be turned her head elegantly to look around the cathedral.