The Price of a Wife

'Bonjour, Josephine.' As they stepped through the door into a huge sun-splotched hall a large woman in a severe black dress hurried forward, hands outstretched. 'Madame Marat, my housekeeper,' Luke whispered in her ear. 'If you get on the right side of her she'll be a great help to you.'

And if I don't? Josie thought wryly as she smiled and nodded at the somewhat dour-faced Frenchwoman who had clasped one of Luke's large hands in her own plump fingers.

'Monsieur, you have been away too long. We have wondered when you would come.' There was no doubting the large woman's pleasure at seeing her employer, and when she was joined by the cook—a thin, angular woman with a tall, bony body who was the very antithesis of Josie's idea of the average cook—she too fairly bubbled with delight.

Well, his staff like him, Josie thought drily as, once the greetings were over, they walked through into a large drawing room. Luke gestured for her to be seated in one of the massive winged armchairs facing the French doors, which were open onto the garden, as he walked across to the drinks cabinet in the far corner of the room. 'What would you like to drink before lunch?' he asked quietly as he turned to face her. 'Sherry, white wine or perhaps a cocktail?'

'Could I have a soft drink, please?' She had decided, after the Germany disaster, that she would never drink alcohol when she was with him again. She needed all her mental faculties working and unimpaired, and the fact that she didn't even like the taste of the stuff was an added incentive. And if he thought that was naive and unsophisticated so be it; she couldn't keep pretending otherwise. 'I don't really like the taste of alcohol,' she added defiantly, in much the same manner as one might throw down a gauntlet.

'No? And you expect me to disapprove of that?' he asked softly, with that intuitiveness she had come to expect.

'I— No, of course not,' she said quickly. 'I was just explaining, that's all.'

'And your rather enthusiastic consumption in Germany?' He had paused with his hand on the cabinet as he held her eyes across the room. 'That was to convince me that you were a seasoned woman of the world, perhaps? A Charlotte Montgomery or someone equivalent?'

'You know Charlotte well?' she asked in surprise, but she chose to ignore the rest of his questions, her heart beating fiercely.

'I don't have to,' he said grimly as he watched the colour stain her pale, creamy skin. 'Charlotte Montgomerys are ten a penny, my deceitful little siren; it is the Josie Owenses that are hard to find and even harder to understand.'

'I—' She searched for something to say, something that would defuse the sudden electricity in the air. 'I just fancied a drink that night, that's all,' she said hastily, her gaze falling away from the directness of his..

'And pigs fly,' he growled darkly. 'Josie, I don't give a damn whether you drink or not, but I do care that you seem determined to present a shallow facade to me at every available opportunity. I don't know the first thing about you, do you know that? You never talk about your family—'

'I told you, I don't have a family any more,' she said tightly. 'I was an only child and both my patents are dead—'

'What about grandparents, old schoolfriends, then?' he asked levelly. 'Who do you spend Christmas with? The New Year?'

'I—' She paused as she fought the panic that was gripping her throat in a stranglehold. When she had left the little village after her mother had died she had said goodbye to everyone who knew her history—apart from one distant old aunt on her mother's side with whom she still corresponded and whom she visited occasionally, simply because the old woman had no other family of her own.

Her own parents had been only children themselves, and both sets of grandparents were long since dead. When she had moved to London it had been a fresh start; it had had to be—she couldn't have coped with anything else. 'I have lots of friends,' she said as calmly as she could, 'but no grandparents or immediate family.'

She raised her eyes and stared at him steadily. 'And I really don't see what it has got to do with you anyway,' she added quietly, praying that the thundering in her ears and rapid beating of her heart weren't obvious to those silver-grey eyes watching her so closely. 'I don't mean to be offensive but it's really none of your business—'

'Perhaps I want to make it my business,' he said softly, his eyes glittering and sharp. 'You intrigue me, Josie Owens. This virginal, don't-touch air is very sexy, do you know that?'

'No.' Her cheeks were burning now but she kept her eyes fixed on his, willing herself not to falter before the rapier-like gaze. 'This virginal, don't-touch air.' What would he do if he knew she was in actual fact a virgin? Laugh his head off, no doubt.

'No, I don't think you do, at that.' He looked at her for one more moment before he indicated the cabinet. 'Lemonade, iced orange, lemon and lime…?'

'Orange.' Her hands were shaking, she suddenly noticed, and she quickly buried them in her lap, willing the trembling in her body to cease. She was a challenge to him, that was all, and every word Andy had spoken returned in stark red letters in her mind. There was a physical attraction between them and that was all it was. The way it affected her was regrettable, but perhaps that was her own fault. If she hadn't shut her emotions away after the accident, refused to let herself get romantically involved with anyone, then perhaps she would be in a better position to put this whole thing into its right perspective.

But because she was who she was she couldn't have done anything else, she argued silently to herself as Luke poured the drinks. She wasn't made for light affairs and the accident had robbed her of the chance to find the sort of man who would want a family, children—the only type of man she could fall in love with, she acknowledged bitterly. Thousands, millions of women the world over might be happy for life with a partner who wanted nothing more than a comfortable lifestyle without the complication of children getting in the way, but without exception she had found that such men did not even stir her to friendship. It wasn't their fault; there was just some essential ingredient missing with them as far as she was concerned.

And she was no use to the other kind. Oh, she had often acknowledged that she might meet someone who would say that it didn't matte, that he still wanted to stay with her even when he knew the truth, but then the relationship would be built on one sacrificing something infinitely precious for the sake of the other, and she couldn't handle inflicting that on someone sh

e loved, seeing a man for whom she cared deeply battling with the demons that had afflicted her simply because he loved her.

And what if, as time went on and they grew older, he grew bitter and disillusioned about the choice he had made? She lived with the knowledge that she could never be a mother because she had to; to ask a man to make the same decision about being a father when be was able to have natural children of lids own would be too cruel.

'Here.' Her eyes shot upwards from where they had been focused on her clenched hands as she heard Luke's voice, and as he placed the glass of ice-cold orange juice in her hand she saw that his eyes were hooded and remote, un-fathomable. 'You are going to drink this and have the excellent lunch Madame Marat has ordered, and later, when we are full and replete, we will doze most of the afternoon away down by the pool under the big umbrellas I bought specially for that purpose. We will swim a little and maybe doze again in the warmth of the evening before wandering back up here to eat an enormous dinner.'

He smiled lazily. 'And you will relax, Josie Owens. The world outside, all that has gone before, will not touch you here. I will not allow it, you understand?'

Madame Marat's entrance to call them to lunch saved Josie the necessity of a reply, but as he took her arm and led her through to the magnificent dining room, with its heavy antique furniture gleaming and polished and the walls hung with the sort of paintings Josie knew Mr White would kill for, she knew there was no way she would fall in with his suggestion to laze the afternoon away. It was too dangerous a temptation. Far, far too dangerous. Every instinct, every nerve, every sinew in her body was telling her so.

So… she would defy him—again. And she would go on defying him because that was all she could do, her only defence against the treacherous inclination of her heart, which had leapt and raced as he had spoken, frightening her with its longing.

CHAPTER SIX