Deal With the Devil--3 Book Box Set

Her mobile rang, jerking her out of her thoughts, and her heart leapt when she saw that it was Marcus who was calling.

Although she wasn’t officially living with him yet, she was spending more nights in Marcus’s bed than she was her own.

‘Has your mother sent out the wedding invitations yet?’ he asked.

‘They went out yesterday,’ Lucy told him. Her mother had spent several afternoons cloistered in the Holy Grail of stationery requisites that was the basement of Smythson’s Sloane Street premises, poring over samples of wedding stationery. ‘Although she’s telephoned people as well, in view of the lack of time. You do realise just how many guests are going to be at our wedding, don’t you, Marcus?’ she cautioned him.

‘Two hundred and rising at the last count—and that isn’t including my second cousins four times removed from Nova Scotia—at least according to my mother and Beatrice,’ he relied promptly.

‘What? No, Marcus.’ Lucy panicked. ‘It’s more like—’

‘Two hundred each. That is to say, my mother is planning on inviting two hundred guests, whilst I understand your mother can’t get her list down under two hundred and fifty.’

‘Oh, Marcus,’ Lucy wailed. ‘We said we wanted a quiet wedding.’

‘Talk to your mother—apparently that is a quiet wedding,’ Marcus told her dryly.

Lucy sighed. ‘Thank goodness it isn’t summer. Ma said the other night that if it had been she thought it would have been a good idea to tent over the gardens in your square.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen it done.’

‘So have I, and I know exactly what hard work it is. Anyway, I thought we both agreed that we just want a simple wedding breakfast, somewhere like the Lanesborough—not five hundred people and a ballroom at the Ritz.’

‘Well, maybe we do, but we aren’t our mothers. Stop worrying about it,’ Marcus advised her, ‘and let them get on with it and enjoy themselves. I don’t want you too worn out to enjoy our honeymoon.’

Lucy could feel her face stating to burn.

‘If I am, that won’t be because of the wedding preparations,’ she told him valiantly.

‘Shagged out already?’ Marcus asked her directly.

‘Totally,’ Lucy agreed lightly. There was no point in wishing he had spoken more lovingly. ‘When will you be back?’

‘Oh, not so shagged out that you don’t want more?’

‘I was asking because of the christening,’ Lucy told him in a dignified voice.

‘Uh-huh? Well, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten that we’re driving down to the christening on Thursday.’

Julia and Silas were having their three-month-old son christened at the weekend, and Lucy had been asked to be one of his godmothers along with Carly, the third member of their trio.

Although Silas was based in New York, he and Julia spent as much time as they could in England, mainly because of Julia’s elderly grandfather, and the christening was being held in a small village close to his stately home.

‘I’d better go; take care of yourself,’ Marcus told her calmly, before ending the call.

No I love you; no do you love me…But then, how could there be? Marcus didn’t love her.

‘I’m going now, Mrs Crabtree,’ Lucy called out to the housekeeper, forcing back the threatening tears clogging her throat.

Marcus’s housekeeper had made it plain that she welcomed the idea of Marcus being married, and she and Lucy had spent several very happy afternoons discussing how best to renovate the slightly old-fashioned kitchen.

‘There’s a parcel just arrived for you, Lucy,’ she called back.

‘Oh?’ Lucy hurried into the kitchen and stared at the large box sitting on the table.

There was a note attached to it, in Marcus’s handwriting.

Hope that this will make our mornings together worth waking up to.

Slightly pink-cheeked, Lucy started to open it. Marcus had already ensured that she thought he was worth waking up to, and it was difficult to imagine how he could make their mornings any more of a sexual pleasure than they already were.

But she realised that had been wrong as she opened the box to reveal not some outré sexual toy, but an espresso coffee machine.

‘Oh, Marcus!’ she whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by the emotions she had been trying to suppress.

‘He said as how you were missing your espresso in the morning,’ Mrs Crabtree told Lucy with a wide smile.

She desperately wanted to ring him and thank him, but she contented herself instead with simply texting him—in case he was already with his client.

Lucy exhaled slowly in relief. It looked very much as though the evening was going to be the success her corporate clients had hoped for. Having half a dozen Premier League football stars here had certainly been a good draw, and the models and It Girls clustered around them were making heavy inroads into the orange and red striped cocktail invented to match the orange and red flash on the new football boots being promoted.

If so far as the female guests were concerned the footballers were the main attraction, then her clients were equally delighted by the number of media people attending, and had told her so.

The cheerleaders had done their bit and been wildly applauded, and even her tongue-in-cheek curry and chips mini-suppers had been greeted with enthusiasm—especially by the footballers.

‘Lucy!’

‘Dorland.’ Lucy smiled affectionately as the magazine owner and editor took hold of her arm and guided her to one of the tables.

‘You’re a very naughty girl not telling me about you and Marcus,’ he told her, wagging his finger in front of her. ‘I had to read about your engagement in The Times.’

Lucy gave what she hoped was a convincing laugh. ‘Blame Marcus for that, Dorland, not me. But you are coming to the wedding, aren’t you?’

His expression softened. ‘Of course.’

Lucy had insisted that Dorland was to be invited as a guest, even though her mother had not totally approved.

‘Lovely stiffie by the way, sweetie. Very grand. It has pride of place on my mantelpiece.’

Lucy giggled. These days, ‘stiffie’ didn’t mean ‘upmarket invitation’ to her.

‘Lucy, there’s something I want to talk to you about,’ Dorland added, suddenly looking unfamiliarly serious. ‘Come here and sit down for a minute.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Lucy asked him, as soon as they were tucked away in a corner.

‘One of my snappers mentioned that he’d seen you having lunch at the Pont Street Brasserie the other week with Andrew Walker.’

Lucy could feel herself starting to colour up guiltily. What bad luck. She had seen the paparazzi outside the Brasserie, and she should have guessed she would be spotted. Dorland had eyes and ears everywhere.

‘He knows my cousin,’ she answered as casually as she could, but Dorland was shaking his head.