on, are you?’ he drawled with super-dry sardonicism.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she answered coldly.
He smiled that smile. ‘Then let me put it this way,’ he offered. ‘I don’t think there is going to be any doubt in the minds of anyone here tonight why I find myself having to marry you.’
‘Lies can be such uncomfortable things sometimes, don’t you think?’ She acidly mocked all of that. ‘But this one you will have to live with,’ she then informed him. ‘Because I am not going to cover myself up just to save your embarrassment.’
His sleek black brows shot up. ‘Did I say I was embarrassed?’
You didn’t have to, Claire thought, and turned away from him as an unexpected wave of disappointment hit. Even with defiance flying as high as a kite from her, she discovered, to her annoyance, that she had still been looking for his reassurance, not his disapproval.
Needing something to do to keep her muddled emotions hidden, she was glad that she had it—in the form of a white stretch-silk sleeve Althea had cleverly fashioned for her to wear over her plaster-cast.
It was waiting for her on her dressing table, and she walked over to get it, stingingly aware of those dark eyes taking in the amount of naked back the wretched dress left exposed.
‘Where is your sling?’ he enquired levelly after a few moments.
‘I don’t need it any more,’ she said—then, with a half lift of one slender white shoulder, added, ‘Well, not all the time anyway.’
‘Here—allow me …’
A long-fingered hand appeared from behind her to take the white sleeve from her grasp. ‘To cover your cast, I presume?’ he said lightly.
The temptation to snatch it back from him and tell him she could manage very well by herself almost—almost got the better of her. But even in the strange antagonistic mood she was in she knew that would be just too childish.
So she stood silent and still while he came to stand in front of her—her very own giant black-winged eagle, she mused as the feeling of being swooped down on overwhelmed her again. But then, she might be tall at five feet eight inches but he was one hell of a lot taller.
Taller, wider, bigger, darker, she listed as he picked up her injured wrist and began feeding the sleeve over the plaster-cast protecting it.
‘Is the age thing a big problem to you, Claire?’ he asked her quietly.
Older, tougher, calmer, cooler—the list went on. She gave a shake of her head in reply to his question.
‘Perhaps you are still angry with me because I—over-stepped the boundaries of our arrangement, then.’
Wiser, she added. Because it hadn’t really hit her until he’d said it out loud that this was exactly the reason why she was feeling as emotionally confused as she was.
‘You blow hot and cold all the time,’ she felt constrained to answer. ‘I just don’t know how to respond to that.’
‘Then I apologise,’ he murmured rather grimly.
Gracious, too, she added to the growing list. Because I’d have cut my own throat before I’d have had the grace to apologise as quickly and as sincerely as that.
Giving that small shrug with her shoulder again in acknowledgement of his apology, she then added a small sigh. ‘It isn’t going to be easy for me, you know, having to deal with all of these people who are coming here tonight, knowing what they will all be thinking when they look at me.’
‘I know.’
‘Althea said she thought I was brave to dress myself up like this for the party. But I’m not brave, not really. I’m just …’ She ran out of words on a discontented sigh.
‘Trying to cope the best way you can.’ He supplied them for her.
Silly tears tried to fill her eyes because now she was having to add understanding and gentle and sympathetic to her list and it really couldn’t get any longer!
Yes, it can. She then had to amend that thought as he put his hand to her cheek and used his thumb to gently draw her chin up so he could look gravely into her swimming blue eyes. Because he was touching her for real rather than touching her through the protection of her plaster-cast, and she now had to add dangerous to that list because his touch made her feel so—!
He bent down to brush his mouth across hers, and the list was halted right then and there as it suddenly raced away from her in a mad, frantic blur of sizzling adjectives.
‘Althea should have said beautiful and brave,’ he murmured huskily as he drew away again.
So he did like the way she looked! If Claire could have seen her own eyes then, she knew it must have been like watching a dark shadow pass over and the sun coming out.
He smiled; so did she—the first real smile she had offered him in days. And while she continued to stand there feeling starry-eyed and breathless he picked up her other hand and slid something onto one of her fingers.
‘A betrothal ring for my betrothed,’ he murmured lightly as Claire glanced down then went perfectly still when she found herself staring at the most enchanting little diamond cluster ring she had ever set eyes on. ‘It is a necessary part of the game-plan.’
The game-plan. Her heart thumped in her breast. How could she keep forgetting the game-plan?
‘And it fits, too,’ he added in that same lightly teasing vein. ‘Which means Grandmother is going to make me pay for the pleasure of placing it here.’
‘It’s your grandmother’s ring?’ Swallowing her silly sense of let-down, Claire glanced up at him questioningly.
‘The first of many my grandfather gave her,’ he said with a small grimace. ‘But this was her favourite. Do you like it?’
‘It’s a beautiful ring,’ she murmured softly; it was not big enough to be ugly, not small enough to be cheap. ‘Thank you for allowing me to wear it tonight,’ she added, belatedly remembering her manners. ‘I promise to take precious care of it for you.’
He had been about to move away from her when she said that. But now he stopped. ‘It is yours to keep,’ he stated rather curtly. ‘I was not expecting to get it back.’
But Claire shook her head. ‘No.’ This ring did not belong to her and it never would. She could accept the new wardrobe of clothes and the luxury lifestyle she was being treated to here, because they only cost money and, as she had already learned with Andreas, money was a commodity he had more than enough of. But this ring—like the wedding dress—was different. Both had feelings attached to them, memories, for an old lady that belonged to this family, not to Claire, who was only passing through, so to speak.
He knew what she was thinking. She could feel him reading the sombre thoughts as they passed over her face. As she stood there with baited breath, waiting for him to start arguing the point with her, he surprised her by not doing that at all.
‘You have integrity, Claire,’ he murmured quietly. ‘That is a rare commodity; try not to lose it.’
‘Integrity?’ she repeated, sending him a wry little smile that thoroughly mocked the suggestion. ‘Where is the integrity in marrying someone you don’t love, even if it benefits the both of us?’ she asked him cynically.
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t blame him because there really was no answer that did not confirm she was telling the truth.
‘Come on,’ he prompted rather harshly instead. ‘It is time for us to go and greet our guests.’
And that small amount of harmony they had managed to create between them withered and died as they both remembered what this was really all about: a stranger’s child that he, for no apparent reason, had decided to adopt as his own. For