A Vow of Obligation (Marriage by Command 3)

Ironically, what Tawny was thinking about then was the number of times she had heard Navarre talking on the phone in Italian, a language that he seemed to speak with the fluency of a native. Could he have been speaking to Tia? Surely not every time she had heard him using Italian, though, she told herself irritably, for that would have meant that he talked to the gorgeous blonde almost every day.

At the end of the afternoon, when Zara departed assuring Tawny that she and her husband would attend her wedding, Tawny was conscious that there was now a tiny little seed of doubt planted inside her that was more than ready to sprout into a sturdy sapling of suspicion.

Prior to her pregnancy, Navarre had seemed so hungry for Tawny, but not so hungry that he had made any attempt to get her back into bed in advance of the wedding. Who had been satisfying that hot libido of his during the three months of their separation? And why was she thinking that him having wanted her automatically meant he could not have also wanted Tia Castelli? Was she really that unsophisticated? After all, Tia was married and the sort of catch many men would kill to possess even briefly. Even if Tia and Navarre were having an affair Tia must surely accept that there would also be other women in Navarre’s life. Her peace of mind shattered by that depressing conclusion, Tawny went to bed to toss and turn, troubled by her thoughts but determined not to share what she still deemed might be ridiculous suspicions with Navarre. Revealing such concerns when she had no proof would make her look foolish and put her at a disadvantage.

In the middle of the night she got up and performed an Internet search of Tia and Navarre’s names together to discover any links that there might be. An hour later she had still not got to the end of the references, but had discovered nothing definitive, nothing that could not be explained by honest friendship. There were several pictures of Tia and Navarre chatting in public places, not a single one of anything more revealing—no holding of hands, no embraces, nothing. And if the paparazzi had failed to establish a more intimate link, the likelihood was that there wasn’t one, for Tia Castelli’s every move was recorded by the paps. But ironically for the first time Tawny was now wondering what had been on Navarre’s laptop that he had so feared having exposed. What had Julie’s high-paying journalist really hoped to find out from that computer? About the buyout of CCC? Her worst fears assuaged by that idea, for she recalled Navarre’s comment about the deal already being in the news, Tawny went back to bed.

It was a wonderful wedding dress, fashioned by a designer to conceal the growing evidence of the bride’s pregnancy. Tawny looked at her reflection in the mirror with her sisters standing anxiously by her side and then hugged Zara, who had located the glorious dress, which bared her shoulders and her newly impressive chest in a style that removed attention from her abdomen.

‘You’ve sure got boobs now, babe,’ Zara pronounced with a giggle.

Tawny grinned, her lovely face lighting up for it was true: for the first time ever she had the bosom bounty that she had always lacked and no padding was required.

‘Are you happy?’ Bee prompted worriedly. ‘You’re sure Navarre is the right man for you?’

Tawny lifted a hand to brush a wondering finger across the magnificent diamond tiara that anchored her veil and added height to her slim figure. ‘Well, it’s either him or the diamonds he’s just given me,’ she teased. ‘But it all feels incredibly right.’

An offer had been made and accepted on a town house with a garden in the same area in which Bee and Sergios lived. In a few weeks’ time it would provide a very comfortable base for her and Navarre when they were in London, ensuring that she need never feel that she was being taken away from absolutely everything she had ever known. She was on a high because everything in her world seemed to be blossoming. After all, she had just sold her first cartoons as well. One of the publications that her agent had sent her work to had shared them with a French sister magazine and the French editor had offered Tawny a contract to create more of her Frenchman drawings. Ecstatic at the news, Tawny had still to share it with Navarre because she wanted to surprise him by putting the magazine in front of him when the first cartoon appeared in print.

‘You should’ve let me twist Dad’s arm to give you away,’ Zara lamented. ‘He would have done it if I’d pushed him.’

‘I don’t know our father, Zara. I wouldn’t have wanted him to do it just to please you and Bee. I much prefer Sergios. At least he genuinely wishes Navarre and I well,’ Tawny pointed out.

Her opinion of Sergios had recently warmed up, for it was thanks to Sergios and his managing ways that her grandmother, Celestine, was being whisked to London in a limousine for the wedding and put up that night in Bee’s home so that the extended celebration was not too much of a strain for the old lady.

At the church, Tawny breathed in deep, her hand resting lightly on Sergios’s arm before she moved down the aisle, her sisters following her clad in black and cream outfits. All her attention locked to Navarre, who had flown back to France within days of his proposal, she moved slowly towards the altar. Devastatingly handsome in a tailored silver-grey suit teamed with a smart waistcoat and cravat, Navarre took her breath away just as he had the very first time she saw him and she hugged the knowledge to herself that he would soon be her husband. As she reached the altar Celestine, a tiny lady with a mop of white curls, turned her head to beam at her granddaughter.

Although Tawny’s head told her that she was entering a shotgun marriage of the utmost practicality, it didn’t feel like one. She loved the ceremony, the sure way Navarre made his responses, the firm hold of the hand on hers as he slid on the wedding ring. In her heart she felt that he was making a proper commitment to her and their child. Before they left the church Navarre took the time to stop and greet her grandmother, whom he had not had time to meet beforehand.

‘Do you like the dress?’ she asked him once they were alone in the limo conveying them back to her sister’s home.

‘I like what’s in it even better, ma petite,’ Navarre confided, his attention ensnared by the luminosity of her beautiful eyes, and momentarily a pang of regret touched him for the parts of his life that he could never share with her. He had always believed that as long as he kept his life simple nothing could go wrong, but from the instant Tawny had walked into his life to try to steal his laptop his every plan had gone awry and things had stopped happening the way he had assumed they would. He didn’t like that, he had learned to prefer the predictable and the safe, but he told himself that now that they were married his daily life would return to its normal routine. Why should anything have to change?

Tawny gazed dizzily into beautiful emerald-green eyes framed by black spiky lashes and her heart hammered. Her breasts swelled beneath her bodice, the pointed tips straining into sudden tingling life. His attention was on her mouth. The tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her lower lip and he tensed, his sleek strong face hard and taut. The silence lay heavy, thick like the sensual spell flooding her treacherous body, and she leant closer, propelled by promptings much stronger than she was.

‘I’ll wreck your make-up,’ Navarre growled, but a hard hand closed into the back of her veil to hold her still while his mouth plundered hers with fierce heat and hunger, the delving of his tongue sending every skin cell she possessed mad with excitement.

Tawny wanted to push him flat on the back seat and have her wicked way with him. That fast her body was aching with need and ready for him. Her fingers flexed on a long powerful masculine thigh and then slid upwards to establish that the response was not one-sided. He was hard and thick and as eager as she was and even as he pushed back from her, surprise at her boldness etched in his intent gaze, she was content to have discovered that the exact same desire powered them both. Her face was flushed as she eased away from him, her body quivering with the will power it took to do so.

‘Mon Dieu, ma belle … you make me ache like a boy again,’ he confessed raggedly.

And the gloss on Tawny’s day was complete. Happy at the response she had received, reassured by his desire, she sailed into her wedding reception in the ballroom of her sister’s magnificent home. Perhaps he had only restrained himself sexually with her out of some outmoded idea of respecting her as his future wife, she thought buoyantly, for she had noticed that Navarre could sometimes be a shade old-fashioned in his outlook. Whatever, her insecurity was gone, her awareness of her pregnancy as a source of embarrassment banished while she held her head high and stood by his side to welcome the wealthy powerful guests whom Navarre counted as friends and business connections. Only recently she would only have got close to such people by waiting on them in some menial capacity, but now she met with them as an equal. Tia Castelli kissed her cheek with cool courtesy, her previous warmth muted, while her husband, Luke, gave Tawny a lazy smile. Tawny perfectly understood and forgave Tia for that dash of coolness in her manner, for the actress had to be aware that a married man would be far less available to her than a single guy.

Later that afternoon, it did her heart good when Bee drew her attention to the fact that Navarre was sitting with her grandmother, Celestine. ‘They’ve been talking for ages,’ her half-sister informed her.

Tawny drifted over to Navarre’s side and he laced long fingers with hers to tug her down into a seat beside him. ‘You’ve been holding out on me, chérie.’

‘And me,’ Celestine added. ‘All these months I had no idea you were paying my rent.’

Tawny froze. ‘What on earth are

you talking about?’

‘One of the other residents spoke to me about his problems meeting the maintenance costs and when certain sums were mentioned I knew that I did not have enough money to meet such enormous bills either,’ the old lady told her quietly. ‘I spoke to my solicitor and although he didn’t break your confidence, I soon worked out for myself that there was only one way that my costs could be being met. I felt very guilty for not realising what was going on sooner.’

‘Don’t be daft, Gran … I’ve managed fine!’ Tawny protested, upset that the older woman had finally registered the level to which her expenses had exceeded her means.

‘By slaving away as a chambermaid and waiting on tables,’ Celestine responded unhappily. ‘That was not right and I would never have agreed to it.’