He was a good driver and the Beethoven tape playing through the car’s cassette speakers was pleasantly soothing. It was very tempting to lie back and close her eyes.
‘Go to sleep if you feel like it.’
His ability to follow the direction of her thoughts was something that Jenna found distinctly disturbing. She wasn’t used to other people anticipating her wishes for her. In truth, she wasn’t used to the sort of intimacy her relationship with James was forcing upon her. Unlike her, he seemed to have adapted to the role of her fiancé with comparative ease, whereas she felt acutely uncomfortable in it. She jumped every time he came too close to her, and she knew he was aware of it. She was tense nearly all the time she was in his company, and yet there was no reason for her to be; he had given her his word that he would respect her wishes in regard to the physical side of their marriage, and anyway, it was hardly likely that he should have more than a passing interest in her. Not when there were so many other far more attractive and sensual women only too willing to share their beds with him. She shrugged the thought away, her face burning hotly as she had an unwanted mental image of James’s body entwined with that of another woman, his skin dark and virile against her paler slenderness.
‘Too hot?’ He bent to adjust the heater and Jenna turned away from him, thanking providence that he didn’t really possess the ability to read her thoughts.
A second later she was wondering if she had misjudged him. ‘My godmother is old-fashioned,’ he told her calmly, ‘and there will be no question of her giving us a shared bedroom, or indeed considering us to be lovers, but in general, friends and acquaintances will find it extremely odd that you jump ten miles in the air and freeze every time I come near you.’
‘Sarah…’ Jenna began desperately, her face burning again.
‘She’s asleep,’ James told her. ‘Is this reaction reserved solely for me, Jenna, or for mankind in general?’
She opened her mouth to speak, but he forestalled her by adding coolly, ‘I know you’re about to damn me to eternal hell for daring to ask, but if we’re going to establish any kind of working relationship there must be at least some degree of honesty between us—and trust.’ He glanced across at her, his eyes inimical as they held hers. ‘I have already given you my word that I’ll make no unwanted sexual advances to you, but if you’re going to continue flinching away from me as though I’m Bluebeard you’re going to make life unnecessarily difficult for both of us.’
Jenna knew that he was right, and that it would be foolish to allow her dislike of his probing to lead to open warfare between them. That was not how she wanted to live, it would not be good for Lucy and Sarah, and ultimately she suspected that James would, in any case, weather it far better than she.
‘It isn’t just you,’ she managed to say with a creditable degree of openness. ‘I don’t like being pawed…touched…’ she amended quickly on seeing the look he gave her, ‘by any man.’
‘But you must have liked it, or at least acceded to it at least once,’ he pointed out.
‘Lucy…’ he added enlighteningly, his grim expression suddenly darkening, his mouth tightening even further as he said quietly, ‘unless of course she was the result of an act of violence, such as rape.’
Jenna went white, jerking involuntarily against her seat-belt her eyes wide with terror.
She heard James curse, the car slowed down and then stopped. He glanced in his driving mirror to check that Sarah was still asleep Jenna guessed, and then said slowly, ‘Is that it, Jenna? Were you raped?’
She had never been more relieved to be able to say with all honesty, ‘No, no, I wasn’t.’ She knew her words held an unmistakable echo of truth, and although James’s grim look did not totally disappear he seemed to relax slightly.
Jenna was just about to draw a shaky sigh of relief when he pressed, ‘Then why? Were your first sexual experiences bad ones? Have you had some sort of unpleasant sexual experience?’
Once again she was able to say quite truthfully, ‘No.’
‘Then this abhorrence of the male sex springs from the fact that your lover deserted you and left you alone to carry Lucy, is that it?’
He was persistent, Jenna had to give him that. She moved restlessly in her seat and forced herself to face him. Now that the immediate danger was over, now that she was safely past that hated word ‘rape,’ she could do so with at least some degree of equanimity. ‘I don’t want to discuss what happened in the past with you, James. It has no bearing on our relationship today.’
‘No.’ His eyes were bleak and cold. ‘How can you say that to me, Jenna, when you flinch every time I come within touching distance of you? I should say completely the opposite, that the past has every bearing on the present, but since I can’t force you to confide in me we’ll let it lie, but I promise you one thing. I have no intention of becoming the object of speculation and curiosity among my friends and acquaintances because of your obvious abhorrence of me. We’re engaged, Jenna, and that in today’s terms means we’re lovers. If you can’t find a way to accept my touch in public with at least indifference, then I’ll have to find a way to teach you, and believe me I will.’
She did believe him, and even while she hated him for what he was saying, one part of her brain acknowledged that he had some grounds for his comments. Even so something goaded her to say childishly, ‘What’s the matter—are you afraid that if I don’t cling adoringly to your arm you’ll lose your macho image?’
His mouth tightened as he restarted the car.
‘Let’s just cut out the childish comments, shall we, Jenna? And while we’re on the subject—’ his glance swept her suited figure with derogatory thoroughness, ‘if your wardrobe is full of look-alikes of that, you’re going to need some new clothes.’ He saw the angry rejection trembling on her lips and continued smoothly, ‘As my wife there will be certain functions you’ll be expected to attend with me, certain duties you’ll be expected to perform.’ Something glinted momentarily in his eyes as he finished with silky menace. ‘If you won’t help me in this respect, Jenna, I’m perfectly capable of choosing you a new wardrobe without that help.’
For once rage overcame caution, and she spat at him bitterly, ‘Go ahead then, because I’m perfectly happy with the clothes I already own.’
It was a lie as she had already proved to herself once tonight, but she was not going to have him reordering her life to his requirements.
‘If you don’t like it, you know what you can do,’ she added tauntingly. ‘We aren’t married yet.’
‘But we will be.’ There was a certain savage satisfaction in the way he said it, but she was too furious to register
it properly.
‘Yes, because you can’t bear to lose the Hall,’ Jenna agreed bitingly.
‘That’s one consideration. Lucy is another, or have you forgotten her?’