Her ears just caught the sound he made, something between derision and…anguish? But she wouldn’t let herself believe that. Why should James feel anguish on her behalf, or Rachel’s? It had all been a long time ago.
Despite her denial, Jenna found herself taking a small sip of the reviving brandy when James held the glass to her lips. It burned fiercely down to her stomach, making her shudder in faint distaste.
‘Was that why you wanted the old Hall so much?’ James asked her quietly.
‘At first,’ Jenna admitted, ‘at least that was my intention. Bill and Nancy were horrified. Neither of them wanted to see me making decisions based on a desire for revenge.’ Amazingly she could talk quite calmly now: the storm of emotion and pain that had threatened to destroy her earlier had cleansed her of the past, removing all the dark bitterness that had tormented her for so long. She would never forget what had happened to Rachel, but now at last she was no longer haunted by the bitter hatred that had tainted her life since her sister’s death.
‘But, ridiculously in some ways, the moment I saw the old Hall properly, I fell in love with it. I told myself I was doing it for Lucy’s sake, that it was rightfully hers. I told myself it would make good sense from a business point of view, but in reality, I wanted the house for myself. It called out to me, satisfying some need inside me.’
‘You talk as though those feelings are now all in the past,’ James told her, watching her.
Jenna shrugged, suddenly aware that she was treading on ground as delicate as eggshells. If she wasn’t careful, James would lure her into betraying the real reason the Hall no longer held her heart—namely, the fact that it now belonged to him. She fought to revive her earlier resentment and anger against him, but they had both gone. She could feel nothing…just a vast emptiness.
‘I don’t know what I feel at the moment,’ she told him at last. She gave a wry smile, and then raised her eyes to his face. ‘Your godmother told me all about your mother.’ She saw his expression change, become shuttered and dark, and instinctively she reached out to touch him…hurt because he so obviously did not welcome her knowing. ‘I’m sorry if you’d rather she hadn’t told me,’ she whispered tensely, ‘but please don’t be angry with her, she was acting with the best of motives. She wanted me to understand why you wanted the old Hall so desperately.’
‘Yes,’ his mouth curled wryly, ‘she would, she and my mother were very close.’
They sat in silence for a moment and then he added huskily, almost as though the words were dragged out of him, ‘I couldn’t believe it when she died…I loved her so much, and yet in a way I hated her for…’
‘Dying and leaving you alone with a burden you were too young to handle?’ Jenna supplied for him, recognising in his admission a trace of her own feelings on Rachel’s death. She too had experienced that mingling of pain and anger, and with it both guilt and resentment.
He looked at her and for a moment Jenna felt as though for the first time they were really seeing one another. Hope fluttered tentatively inside her and then James ruined it all by saying curtly, ‘You realise that Lucy will have to be told the truth.’
‘No!’ The denial was wrenched from her already aching throat in a husky cry of pain.
‘Yes, Jenna,’ James replied firmly. ‘She has to know.’
‘But she thinks that you are her father.’
‘Does she?’
The wry doubt in his voice reinforced Jenna’s own private belief that Lucy did not behave towards him as she would have expected her to react to her father.
‘I think she finds me a convenient substitute, but as to whether or not she genuinely thinks I am her father…’
‘But it was because you believed she did that you married me,’ Jenna pointed out in bewilderment.
‘That was one of the reasons, but since then I’ve had more opportunity to observe her.’
Cold icicles of dread formed down Jenna’s spine. Was this James’s way of telling her that he wanted their marriage to end? Was he using the truth about Lucy’s parenthood as a means of escape? Pride kept her from asking him.
‘She’ll have to be told, Jenna,’ he softened the words with a brief smile, and added huskily, ‘but not tonight…’ He was looking at her mouth and a tingling reaction of delight heated Jenna’s skin. Unwittingly provocative, her lips parted.
James’s fingers touched her throat, and slid upwards to cup her jaw. Against her mouth he murmured hypnotically, ‘Tell me to stop if you don’t want this.’
Dizzy with emotional exhaustion, she had no energy left to fight against her need and love. Her mouth clung welcomingly to his, her body shivering in delight beneath the light touch of his hands.
When they had made love before, it had al
ways been with an element of raw savagery and Jenna had never totally overcome her own inner rage and confusion that James should be able to make her respond in such a way, until passion had blotted those feelings from her mind, but this time that elemental anger wasn’t there.
James’s touch was gentle, tender, reverent almost, the slow spiralling dance of desire building up between them so achingly beautiful that it brought a tight lump of pain to her throat.
This time when she caressed and kissed James’s body he seemed somehow less invulnerable, less hard and unyielding, his voice a soft, husky litany of pleasure against her skin as he muttered hoarse words of praise and delight at her touch.
They seemed almost to be making love in slow motion, as though there was all the time in the world to enjoy and relish each simple caress, with no urgent rush to satisfy their mutual craving for satisfaction.
Long before she felt the hard warmth of James’s body sliding over her own Jenna had abandoned reason and reality in favour of emotion and fantasy. She was here in James’s arms where she had longed to be for so many empty weeks, and he was touching her, making love to her as though he did indeed cherish and adore her. It was a precious dream she did not want to relinquish, and her body opened willingly to the first thrust of his, moving in perfect time to his demands, sharing with him the sweetly piercing pleasure of escalating desire.