‘Half my stuff has vanished from my room!’
‘Wives don’t sleep on the other side of the house.’
Her hackles came up, since nobody had consulted her on what she assumed to be a move to another bedroom. ‘I’m not a wife.’
‘You are now and it’s obvious that the status of being my wife is what you wanted all along.’ His lean, tanned face granite hard, Lysander turned her back to him. ‘Clearly you planned the maximum possible exposure for our marriage in the media.’
Ophelia discovered that she was fighting a very irrational urge to giggle. Just at that instant she didn’t feel she could have planned her way out of an open space. The alcohol she had imbibed had gone straight to her head, for she had had nothing to eat since breakfast. ‘You’re so distrustful-of course I didn’t plan it! Why would I have wanted people to know about this crazy arrangement?’
‘So that you could become my wife in reality.’
‘In reality? Meaning?’ Ophelia queried as he strode dow
n the passage, trailing her willy-nilly in his wake.
Lysander swung into the Long Gallery. ‘Plan B is about to go into operation.’
‘Plan B? Where on earth are you taking me?’
Lysander thrust wide the door of Madrigal Court’s principal bedroom. The huge room had not been used by Ophelia’s family, who had found the Victorian wing at the back of the house easier to heat. Now a fire leapt and glowed in the giant grate below the stone chimneypiece, sending shadows snaking and flickering over the oak-panelled walls. A fabulous four-poster bed, wholly in keeping with the feudal splendour of the new décor, sat centre stage.
Ophelia had never been the slightest bit domesticated. She was untouched by any desire to rearrange the furniture or shop for new curtains, but she had occasionally been conscious of a wistful yearning for her surroundings to be warmer, more comfortable and inviting. Now she stared in astonishment at the imposing bed, draped in flamboyant golden fabric.
‘Your employees have contrived the most amazing transformation. I’ve been so busy in the garden I haven’t had the chance to keep up with all the improvements.’ Her smooth brow indented. ‘Why did you bring me in here?’
‘This is our room.’
‘Our…room?’
Lysander shot Ophelia a long, lingering appraisal that made her skin prickle. ‘The marital bedroom.’
‘We don’t have a marital bedroom because, well…what would we do with one?’ An uneasy laugh was wrenched from Ophelia, who was recalling his crack about the sort of boots he liked a woman to wear. She really didn’t like his sense of humour.
‘All the usual things, glikia mou,’ Lysander murmured lazily. ‘Not much else to do at this season in the country and at least it would keep us warm.’
‘Let me get this straight…you are expecting me to share a room with you?’ Ophelia gasped.
Grim amusement gripped Lysander. She was amazingly good at acting the naïve country girl while simultaneously contriving to look quite extraordinarily beautiful. ‘Even if our marriage had remained our secret we would still have had to share a room when I was here. How else could we ever have pretended that it was a normal marriage?’
Ophelia was bemused. ‘But I had no idea you were expecting me to share a room with you!’
‘We have an agreement.’
‘Yes, but everything has changed now-’
‘Only the will. You are still my wife and, since that is no longer a secret, we are much more married than I ever expected to be,’ Lysander delineated with cold emphasis.
Discomfited pink winged across her cheeks. ‘Yes, I appreciate that.’
Lifting a lean, elegant hand, Lysander skimmed the troubled pout of her upper lip with a careless fingertip. ‘Do you?’
Her colour fluctuated and her tummy turned a somersault. The deeper note in his rich dark drawl reverberated down her taut spine. It took conscious effort not to lean closer and invite further contact. ‘Other people knowing about us will make a difference.’
‘More than a difference. Marriage has never been on my to-do list. I enjoy my freedom,’ Lysander continued, ‘but for the foreseeable future I have no choice other than to behave like a newly married man.’
Now Ophelia sensed the inner tempest of the emotions that he had previously kept hidden; neither Gladys’s second will nor the paparazzi had provoked him into a loss of temper. Firelight gilded his eyes to pure gold and threw his strong bone structure into prominence. He was a natural born predator, she reflected helplessly, and as dazzling and dangerous as a glossy jungle cat in his prime. Even when every inner alarm bell was urging her to back off she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘I’m surprised you have so much respect for the conventions.’