‘Tasha? Good heavens!’
At another time, the disbelief in his voice would have amused her, but now for some reason it merely served to underline her own aloneness.
‘For a moment I thought…You and Emma normally look so different. I’d never have mistaken the two of you. I… You look so different…’
Richard faltered into the kind of silent eloquence of a man who had confidently flung himself off the top of the highest diving-board, only to discover that the pool below him was empty of water, but Natasha took pity on him and said drily, ‘Luckily for you, I’m prepared to take that as a compliment, even if it was a rather back-handed one. I think you’ll find Emma’s in the drawing-room talking to your mother.’
‘Tasha, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’
‘I know you didn’t,’ she agreed wryly, and then added severely, ‘Just don’t do it again.’
‘I suppose I’m so much in love with Emma that I can’t think of anyone else. I saw you out here wearing her dress—Why are you wearing it, by the way?’ he asked awkwardly. ‘I mean, it isn’t your sort of thing at all, is it?’
‘Oh, isn’t it?’ she asked quizzically, watching him flush uncomfortably, irritated without knowing why that he should automatically assume that she didn’t have either the ability or the desire to be seen as a sensual woman.
In fact, she was so engrossed in the shock of discovering that she could feel such illogical irritation that she didn’t realise they weren’t alone until he looked abruptly away from her and said eagerly, ‘Luke, come and meet Emma’s cousin, Natasha. Natasha, I’d like to introduce you to my, or rather my father’s cousin, Luke.’
Without knowing why, as she turned round Natasha felt both vulnerable and nervous.
The man walking along the terrace towards her had the familiar Templecombe features of a tall, athletic frame, good bone-structure and a shock of dark hair, but in him some rogue genes had added features which neither Richard nor his father possessed, she recognised uneasily.
Whereas the most common expression on the faces of Richard and his father was one of benign, almost unworldly kindness, on this man’s face was an expression of hard cynicism; his eyes, unlike Richard’s, weren’t brown, but a light, pale colour which seemed to reflect the light, masking his expression. He was taller than Richard, and broader, somehow suggesting that beneath his suit his body was packed with powerful muscles and that it had been used in far more vigorous and dangerous ways than playing a round of golf. Natasha, who had never in her life experienced the slightest curiosity or arousal at the thought of the nude male body, suddenly found herself wondering helplessly if the dark hair she could glimpse so disturbingly beneath the crisp whiteness of his shirt cuff grew as vigorously and as masculinely on other parts of his body, and if so what it would be like to feel its crispness beneath her fingertips.
She stiffened as though her body had received a jolt of electricity, and heard him saying evenly and without any inflexion in his voice at all, which somehow made it worse, ‘Emma’s cousin. Ah, yes, I thought I recognised the dress.’
‘Yes, so did I. In fact I thought for a moment that Tasha was Emma.’
‘Really?’
Natasha watched, fascinated, as the dark eyebrows rose indicating polite disinterest, and then said hurriedly, ‘I think we’d better go in. Emma will be wondering—’
‘If you’ve borrowed her fiancé as well as her dress,’ the cynical voice suggested, causing Natasha to grit her teeth and force back the sharp retort springing to her lips. He might move in the kind of circles where people swapped lovers as easily as they changed clothes, but if he thought that he could come here and insult her by suggesting…But what was the point in quarrelling with him? As a painter he might be worthy of her admiration, she thought angrily as she stalked past both men, realising too late that she had not retrieved her shoes, but as a man…
‘Won’t you need these?’
Seething, she turned round to discover that he was holding her shoes. Damn the man; he must have eyes like a hawk. Of course, as a painter he would be used to monitoring every tiny detail. Her heart started to jump erratically as he came towards her. His wrist and hand were tanned a rich brown, and as she put out her own hand to retrieve her shoes she noticed how pale and somehow delicate her own skin looked against his, how fragile her wrist-bones—so fragile that, if he were to curl his fingers around her wrist, he could break it as easily as he might snap a twig.
She gulped and swallowed, furious with herself for her idiotic flight of fantasy, almost snatching the shoes from him with an ungracious mutter of thanks.
Richard, keen to find Emma, had already gone inside, and she wished that his cousin would follow suit, she decided resentfully as she put the shoes on the terrace and then started to step into them.
As she slipped on the first one, the heel wobbled alarmingly and she kicked the other shoe over. Cursing the uneven paving of the terrace, she started to bend down to pick it up and then tensed as Luke Templecombe said coolly, ‘Allow me.’ He was already holding the shoe and there was nothing she could do other than grit her teeth and stoically concede defeat as he suggested mockingly, ‘I think it would be much simpler if you put your hand on my shoulder to steady yourself. The ground here is very uneven—hardly suitable for this kind of footgear, but then when ever did a woman consider suitability of prime importance when choosing what to wear?’
Natasha opened her mouth to deny his unfair comment, and then closed it again, her whole body going into shock as she felt his fingers close round her ankle.
‘Silk stockings,’ she heard him murmur, and then, unbelievably, his hand travelled up her leg, resting briefly on her knee before travelling expertly along her thigh, stopping on a level with the hem of her skirt.
For almost thirty seconds Natasha was too mortified to speak, to do anything other than tremble in furious indignation. When her parlysed vocal cords were working again, to her intense chagrin all she could manage was a very mundane and choked, ‘How dare you? What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I thought I was accepting the none too subtle invitation I was being given,’ he told her laconically. ‘No woman who wears black silk stockings and that kind of dress is doing so because she doesn’t want to be looked at and touched.’
Natasha was furious.
‘How dare you?’ she repeated, almost stammering in her rage. ‘I suppose you’re the kind of man who believes that women are never raped—that when they say no, they always mean yes. For your information, I am wearing this dress and these stockings, not for the disgusting reasons you have just suggested, but because—’
She stopped then, realising that she could not tell him exactly why she was dressed as she was. She looked wildly at him and saw that he was still watching her with cynical amusement, waiting for her to go on, and instead of completing her sentence she said thickly, ‘Oh, go to hell!’ and stormed rudely past him, ignoring the mocking laughter that followed her, so upset that she was physically trembling, that she wanted nothing more than to rip the dress from her skin and to consign it and the stockings to the fire, and then to bury her head under her bedclothes and give way to the relief of a prolonged bout of tears.
No one…no one had ever infuriated her like that, nor insulted her like that…no one had ever made her feel so many confusing or violent emotions within such a short space of time.
Emma had been right; the man was loathsome, abhorrent, dangerous…
Very dangerous, she acknowledged, giving a tiny shiver. Very, very dangerous indeed.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS the dress, Natasha told herself shakily half an hour later on her way back downstairs from her bedroom, to which retreat she had escaped to recover her poise and pull herself together.
It