A Vow of Obligation (Marriage by Command 3)

His expression told her nothing and she suppressed the leap of hope inside her that told her more than she wanted to know about her own feelings. ‘There’s no future in us seeing each other,’ she replied flatly.

‘When I find it a challenge to stay away from a woman, there is definitely a future, ma petite.’

‘But that future doesn’t extend further than the nearest bed.’

‘Don’t all affairs begin the same way?’ Navarre traded.

And he was so right that once again she was tempted to slap him. She didn’t want to want him the way she did because such treacherous feelings offended her pride and her intelligence. Yet here she was already imagining how she might lie back in readiness as he pushed aside the sheet and shed his clothes to join her in the bed. Her mind was out of her control. Desire was like a scream buried deep inside her, longing and frantically searching for an escape. Her brain might want to wonder where the relationship could possibly go after fulfillment, but her body cared only that the fulfilment took place.

‘Tonight, ma petite … I would like to make you mine and you will have no regrets,’ Navarre purred, stroking his fingertips delicately along the taut line of her full lower lip, sending wicked little markers of heat travelling to every secret part of her as she thought helplessly of that mouth on hers, those sure, skilled hands, that strong, hard body. She couldn’t breathe for excitement.

The shooting lunch was delivered to the men on the moors while those women who had no taste for the sport joined Catrina and Tawny for a more civilised repast at the castle. During that meal, liberally accompanied by fine wine, celebrity and designer names were dropped repeatedly as well as descriptions of fabulous gifts, insanely expensive shopping trips and impossibly luxurious holidays with each woman clearly determined to outdo the next. It was all highly competitive stuff and Tawny hated it, finding the trip to the spa something of a relief, for at least everyone was in separate cubicles and she no longer had to try to fit in by putting on an act.

‘You and Navarre won’t last,’ Catrina informed Tawny confidently as they were driven back to Strathmore.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Navarre will get bored and move on, just as he did with me,’ Catrina warned. ‘I was once in love with him too. I’ve seen your eyes follow him round the room. When he ditches you, I warn you … it’ll hurt like hell.’

‘He’s not going to ditch me,’ Tawny declared between clenched teeth, wondering if her eyes did follow Navarre round the room. It was an image that mortified her. It was also unnerving that she could be unconscious of her own behaviour around him.

When she entered the bedroom it was a shock to glance through the open bathroom door and see Navarre already standing there naked as he towelled his hair dry. Her face burning, she averted her eyes from that thought-provoking view and went over to the wardrobe to extract the evening dress she planned to wear—a shimmering gold gown that complimented her auburn hair and fair complexion. Her palms were damp. He was gorgeous, stripped he was even more gorgeous. Tonight … I would like to make you mine. She shivered at the memory of the words that had burned at the back of her mind throughout the day, full of seductive promise and threatening her self-discipline. For never before had Tawny wanted a man as she wanted Navarre Cazier—with a deep visceral need as primitive as it was fierce.

The towel looped round his narrow hips Navarre strolled out and tossed her mobile phone down on the bed. ‘Ring your grandmother,’ he told her.

She switched on her phone but there was no reception and after a fruitless moment or two of pacing in an attempt to pick up a signal at the window, Navarre handed her his phone. ‘Use mine.’

Celestine answered the call immediately. ‘I tried to ring you yesterday but I couldn’t get through. I thought you might be too busy to ring, ma chérie. And on a Friday evening that would be good news,’ the old lady told her chirpily. ‘It would mean you had a date which would please me enormously.’

‘I am going to a party tonight,’ Tawny told her, knowing how much her grandmother would enjoy that news. ‘Why were you trying to ring me?’

‘A friend of yours called me, said she was trying desperately to get in touch but that you weren’t answering your phone. It was that work friend of yours, Julie.’

‘Oh … forget about it, it wouldn’t have been important.’ Tawny felt her skin turn clammy as she wondered what Julie was after now. How dared she disturb her grandmother’s peace by phoning her? And where on earth had she got Celestine’s number from? It could only have been from Tawny’s personnel file, which also meant that Julie had used her computer skills to go snooping again. Had her calculating former friend hoped that the old lady might have information about where Tawny and Navarre had gone after leaving the hotel?

‘What are you wearing to the party?’ Celestine asked, eager for a description.

And Tawny really pushed the boat out with the details, for the old lady adored finery. Indeed Tawny would have loved to tell Celestine about the Golden Movie Awards and Tia Castelli and her husband, not to mention the castle she was currently staying in, but she did not dare to breathe a word of what Navarre probably considered to be confidential information. Instead she caught up with her grandmother’s small daily doings and she slowly began to relax in the reassuring warmth of the old lady’s chatter. Unlike her daughter, Susan, Celestine was a very happy personality, who always looked on the bright side of life.

‘You seem very close to your grandmother,’ Navarre commented as Tawny returned his phone to him.

‘She’s a darling,’ Tawny said fondly, gathering up stuff to take into the en suite with her, mindful of the fact she had been accused of being a tease and determined not to give him further cause to believe that she was actively encouraging his interest.

‘What about your mother?’

Tawny paused with her back still turned to him and tried not to wince. ‘Relations are a little cool between us at present,’ she admitted, opting for honesty.

Mother and daughter were still speaking but things had been said during that last confrontation that would probably never be forgotten, Tawny reflected painfully. Tawny could not forget being told what a drastic disappointment she was to her mother. But then mother and child had always rubbed each other up the wrong way. Tawny had refused to dye her red hair brown when her mother suggested it and had sulked when a padded bra was helpfully presented to her. She had done well in the wrong subjects at school. She had declined to train for a business career and as a result had failed to attain the salary or status that her mother equated with success. And finally and unforgivably on Susan’s terms, Tawny had failed to make the most of her entrée into her half-sisters’ wealthy world where with some effort she might have met the sort of man her mother would have viewed as an eligible partner. Her recent work as a chambermaid had been the proverbial last straw in her dissatisfied mother’s eyes. No, Tawny would never be a daughter whom Susan felt she could boast about with her cronies.

Supressing those unhappy memories of her continuing inability to measure up to parental expectations, Tawny set about doing her make-up. She had watched the make-up artist who had done her face for the Golden Awards carefully and she used eyeliner and gold sparkly shadow with a heavier hand than usual, outlining her lips with a rich strawberry-coloured gloss. The dress had an inner corset for shape and support and she had to breathe in hard and swivel it round to put it on without help. Toting her cosmetic bag, she emerged from the bathroom.

Navarre fell still to look at her and it was one of those very rare occasions when he spoke without forethought. ‘Your skin and hair look amazing in that colour.’

‘Thank you.’ Suddenly shy of him but with a warm feeling coiled up inside her, Tawny turned to the dressing table to put on the diamond earrings and bracelet. Even while she did so she searched out his reflection in the mirror, savouring the sight of him in a contemporary charcoal-grey designer suit. So tall, dark and sophisticated, so wonderfully handsome, Navarre Cazier was the ultimate fantasy male … at that point her thoughts screeched to a sudden stricken halt.

Why was she thinking of him like that? It was past time that she reminded herself that absolutely everything, from the fancy clothes she wore to her supposed relationship with Navarre Cazier, was a giant sham. She felt her upbeat spirits dive bomb. After all, she was not living the fairy tale in a romantic castle with a rich handsome man, she was faking it every step of the way. It was a timely recollection.

CHAPTER SIX