‘And you?’ she questioned him. ‘What would you gain from this act of gallantry?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Why the old Hall, of course,’ he responded silkily. ‘Did you need to ask?’
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sp; But of course. She ought to have guessed.
‘Think about it,’ he told her, standing up. ‘I’ll come and collect you in the morning and take you back to my apartment to see Lucy. I’m perfectly serious about this, Jenna. It’s obvious that you won’t sell the Hall to me and if your business is in as fragile a state as I suspect, the bank could go over your head and re-auction it. I’ve got several commitments abroad at the moment and it would be just my luck to lose out again—I don’t want that happening. A marriage between us seems to me to be the obvious solution.’
‘You would think that with your ancestry,’ Jenna flung at him bitterly, remembering the story he had told them about the man in the portrait.
‘The benefits wouldn’t be all on my side, Jenna,’ he reminded her coolly. ‘If you can’t think of any yourself, then think of Lucy. You can’t have it all ways. Either you tell her who her father is, or you allow her the luxury of inventing a substitute. If you don’t the kid’s going to destroy herself.’
Jenna couldn’t deny his accusation.
She pressed tired fingers to her head. ‘I’ll…I’ll have to think about it,’ she told him huskily, too disturbed and overwrought to be aware that she had not, as she had first intended, turned his proposal down flat. She felt so muddled and confused; she had already endured more than enough emotional turmoil for one short day.
‘Give me those phone numbers,’ James told her. ‘I’ll make the calls while you get ready for bed.’
He saw her expression and lifted his eyebrows and, although she wanted to demur, strangely she found it impossible. She showed him the pad where she had written the numbers and heard him pick up the receiver and start dialling as she left the room.
She had thought she would be far too upset to sleep, but with the low, confident murmur of James’s voice reaching her from the sitting-room she found herself quickly drifting off.
He came in to her room before he left and stood at the foot of the bed.
‘You’ll be all right on your own?’
‘Yes.’ What would he do if she said no, Jenna wondered wildly—volunteer to stay with her? She shivered at the sensation her thoughts produced.
‘I’ll come round at ten to pick you up. And I’d like you to have an answer for me by then, Jenna.’
She wanted to protest that he was rushing her, that she couldn’t think straight right now, when all her emotional responses were so drained and flat. It was an effort merely to say yes or no, never mind make a commitment for her entire future.
But would it be for the future? What kind of marriage did James have in mind? A temporary arrangement meant to last until Sarah was better and Lucy was adult? Or perhaps just until he found a way of taking the Hall away from her.
Tension flared along her nerve paths. She sat up in bed, suddenly restless, shivering in the night air.
She was being selfish again, Jenna told herself, putting herself first and not Lucy. Perhaps James was right. Perhaps it was time she started making some sacrifices for Lucy’s sake. She would have to tell James that it would not be a real marriage, that physically they could not be man and wife, but that should hardly bother him. She had little doubt that even married he had no intention of remaining faithful. It would after all be primarily a business arrangement. She would have to find a way of making sure he could not take the old Hall from her, though.
Frowning, she lay down again and tried to go to sleep. Time enough to worry about that in the morning. After all, she hadn’t made her mind up yet, but as she drifted into sleep Jenna acknowledged that she had precious little alternative. She had been given a second chance to put things right with Lucy…and if she threw it away, how long would it be before Lucy ran away from school again? Or from home? She couldn’t watch her all the time. It was wrong to allow Lucy to believe that James was her father, but the deception would be far more acceptable than the truth.
The decision tormented her, even in sleep, disturbing dreams full of unseen stalking fears. One moment her dreams were full of James telling her equably that marriage could be a business arrangement, a logical partnership between two people with something to give each other. The next he had changed into the man in the portrait, determined to subdue her both in mind and body.
She woke up shivering, wondering if her brain was trying to tell her something—if there was perhaps more of his ancestor in James than she had yet recognised. But even she could not see James forcing himself on a woman: he was too suave, too coolly controlled, too cynically convinced that sex was an appetite easily fed by the act of possession to feel any strong desire to possess one specific woman, which surely made it all the more strange that he was so determined to possess the Hall.
Outwardly, James was a cynical, controlled man who treated life with a lazy self-assurance that Jenna found intensely irritating. He gave the impression of never having had to try very hard to get anything; he was the only son of an extremely wealthy man, and wealthy in his own right too. Although he had taken on the responsibility of his step-sister, Jenna had never heard him express any anguish at the loss of his father and step-mother. But, then, why should he to her?
She sat up in bed, wrapping her arms around her knees, her hair falling over her shoulder in a red-gold swathe. In the eyes of the world she would be very fortunate in securing a husband like James, of course, and from every viewpoint she took, there was really little logical alternative other than to accept his proposal. But inwardly she didn’t want to. Buried under all her hostility and dislike of him was a sharply cutting fear that she could neither analyse nor understand. Originally she could have dismissed it as a result of his connection with the Deveril family, but now that was not possible—he wasn’t connected with them by blood at all.
Jenna got up reluctantly and showered. How would Lucy react to seeing her? It had hurt to know that her niece had gone to James, and where on earth had she got the idea that James was her father? It was too late to worry about that now, Jenna thought, putting on clean plain underwear and opening her wardrobe doors.
Most of her clothes were geared for work and she pulled out some toning separates—a peach skirt in a fine wool gaberdine mixture, and a soft figured silk shirt two shades lighter.
The outfit was new and she hadn’t worn it yet. It had a beautifully cut top coat in the same fabric and shade as the shirt to go with it, and while it was elegant it was also slightly more feminine than the clothes she normally chose.
Would Lucy be glad to see her, or would she reject her? Jenna worried over how Lucy would receive her while she played with her breakfast. If she married James Lucy would be pleased, Jenna knew that; she had been drawn to him, even before she had convinced herself that he was her father.
The phone rang just as she was finishing her coffee and she picked up the receiver, pleased to hear Nancy’s down-to-earth Yorkshire tones.