Blackmailing the Society Bride

CHAPTER TWO

‘GOODNESS. It’s actually warm in here!’ Lucy removed the cashmere wrap she had pulled on over her delicate silk chiffon dress the moment she walked into Great-Aunt Alice’s hallway.

‘Yes, I bribed Johnson to put the heat on.’ Her brother Piers grinned.

‘You might have told me that before,’ Lucy grumbled affectionately, as she fanned herself with her hand to cool down her flushed face. ‘How warm did you tell him to make it? It’s like a sauna in here. The flowers I’ve bought Great-Aunt Alice will have wilted before she gets them.’

‘Never mind your flowers—what about my chocolates?’ Piers told her ruefully.

‘Piers thought Johnson was probably still working in Fahrenheit,’ Lucy’s father chipped in. ‘So he told him to set the temperature gauge at sixty-eight. None of us realised what had happened until Johnson came back and said that the gauge only went to forty.’

Lucy joined in the good-natured laughter at her brother’s expense, and then suddenly froze as the door opened and Marcus walked in.

Was it her imagination or was there really a small, sharp silence—as though not just she but everyone else was aware of just how formidable and commanding Marcus was?

It wasn’t only that he was tall—just nicely over six foot—or even that he was sexily broad-shouldered and taut-muscled. It wasn’t even that combination of thick dark hair and striking ice-grey eyes which could sometimes burn almost green.

So what was it about him that made not just her own sex but men as well turn and look towards him? Turn and look up to him, Lucy amended.

Could it have something to do with the fact that he ran the merchant bank which had been in his family for so many generations? Because of that he was in a position of great trust, responsible not just for the present and future of his clients, but in many cases for the secrets of their ancestors as well.

But even if one took away all of that—even if he had walked in as a stranger off the street—women would still have turned their heads to look at him and would have gone on looking, Lucy acknowledged. Because Marcus was sexy. In fact, Marcus was very sexy. Her heart attempted to do a high dive inside her chest, then realised it was attempting the impossible and ended up crashing sickeningly to its floor. She gulped at the glass of champagne Piers had handed to her as much for something to do—some reason not to have to look at Marcus—as for Dutch courage.

He was wearing one of his customary hand-made plain dark suits, a typical banker’s white shirt with a blue stripe, and a red tie.

She took another gulp of her champagne.

‘Want another?’ Piers asked her.

Lucy shook her head. She wasn’t much of a drinker anyway, and her work meant that it was essential she kept a clear head in social situations, so she had quickly learned to simply take a small sip from her glass and then abandon it discreetly somewhere. The up side of this was that she always had a clear head, but the down side was that her body was simply not up to dealing with anything more than one small glass of anything alcoholic. But right now the numbing effect of a couple of glasses of champagne was probably just what she needed to help her cope with Marcus’s presence, intimidatingly up close, if not exactly as personal as her foolish heart craved.

‘Oh, good. Marcus has made it after all,’ Lucy heard her mother exclaiming to Lucy’s great-uncle in a pleased voice. ‘Charles, do go over and ask him to join us.’

‘Goodness, it is hot,’ Lucy said wildly. ‘I think I’d better go and get these poor flowers into some water.’

Her heart was thumping its familiar message to her as she made her escape, champagne glass in hand, heading for the rambling patchwork of corridors and small rooms to the rear of the huge apartment which her great-aunt still referred to as the servants’ quarters.

How on earth did Johnson and Mrs Johnson, aided only by a daily, manage to cope with looking after somewhere this size? Lucy wondered sympathetically as she hurried down one of the corridors and into the ‘flower room’. A row of vases had already been assembled on the worktop, ready filled with water, and Lucy unwrapped her own offering and busied herself placing the flowers stem by stem into water.

Was she really so afraid of seeing Marcus? Her hands trembled. Did she really need to ask herself that question? How old was she? Twenty-nine. And how long had it been since she had come down from university and looked at Marcus across the width of his desk and known…?

Tears suddenly blurred her vision.

Oh, yes, she had known then, immediately, that she had fallen in love with him, but she had known with equal immediacy that he did not return her feelings—that in fact, so far as he was concerned, her presence in his life was an inconvenience and an irritation he would far rather have been without.

She had been young enough then to dream her foolish dreams regardless, to fantasise about things changing, about walking into Marcus’s office one day and having Marcus look at her as though he wanted to drag her clothes off and possess her right there and then. She had whiled away many an irascible lecture from Marcus by allowing herself the pleasure of imagining him standing up and coming towards her, taking hold of her and putting his desk, or sometimes his chair, more often than not both of them, to the kind of erotic use for which they had definitely not been designed.

But the reality was, of course, that she was the one who wanted to tear his clothes off. And then one day she had looked at him and seen the way he was looking at her. And she had known that her foolish erotic fantasies and her even more foolish romantic daydreams were just that. Marcus did not either want or love her, and he was never going to do so. That was when she had decided that she needed to find someone else—because if she didn’t one day her feelings were going to get too much for her and she was going to totally humiliate herself by declaring them to Marcus.

A husband and then hopefully a family of her own would stop her from doing that, surely? she’d thought. But she hadn’t even managed to get that right, had she? Her marriage had been a disaster—privately and publicly. Very publicly.

She wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to be alone. She loved children, and had known from a young age that she wanted her own. Although she loved them both dearly, sometimes she felt wretchedly envious of the love and happiness her two best friends had found with their husbands. And one day she knew Marcus would marry—and when he did…A shudder of vicious pain savaged her emotions.

When he did, she made herself continue, she hoped to be protected from what she knew she would feel by the contentment and love she had found with another man and her family. How foolishly and dangerously she had deluded herself.

She couldn’t stay here in the flower room for ever, Lucy realised, and with any luck Marcus might actually have already left by now. Giving her flowers a final tweak, she turned to leave.

As soon as she opened the door into the drawing room the first person she saw was her cousin Johnny, who grabbed her arm and announced eagerly, ‘Great—I’ve been looking for you. More champagne?’ Without waiting for her to respond, he took a glass from a passing waiter and handed it to her.

‘Must say the old girl isn’t stinting with the champers. It must be costing her a pretty penny to put this do on. Champers…waiters. Did you organise it?’

‘Yes,’ Lucy said ruefully, remembering the hard bargain her great-aunt had driven over costs, and how in the end she had given in and suggested she give Great-Aunt Alice the business cost as her birthday present, provided her great-aunt supplied the champagne, the hors d’oeuvres and the waiters’ wages. Which probably explained the lack of any food, Lucy decided.

She tried not to look at Marcus, who was standing the full width of the room away from her but facing towards her, and watching her, she could see, with a very grim look tightening his mouth. She took a quick, nervous, sustaining sip of her champagne, and then another. She couldn’t bear to think about what would happen if Marcus ever got to hear about that idiotic lie she had told Mr McVicar. In the absence of a miracle, she was going have to dispose of her supposed investor as speedily as she had invented him.

‘Actually, Luce, there’s something I need to discuss with you.’

‘What?’ Somehow or other Lucy managed to drag her attention away from Marcus.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Johnny repeated patiently.

‘You do?’ Immediately Lucy was alert to her own prospective danger. ‘Johnny, if it’s a loan you’re after,’ she began warningly, ‘I haven’t forgotten that you still owe me fifty pounds from last time. Even if you have.’

‘It isn’t anything like that,’ Johnny assured her earnestly. ‘Fact is, sweet cos, it just so happens that a business acquaintance of mine has asked me if I would introduce you to him.’

‘He has?’ Lucy said cautiously.

‘Mmm. Have another glass of champagne,’ he added encouragingly, removing Lucy’s half-empty glass before she could refuse or protest and summoning the still-circulating waiter so that he could hand her a fresh glass.

On the other side of the room Marcus’s unwavering focus on her had hardened into a grim-mouthed coldness that caused Lucy’s hand to tremble so much she almost spilt her champagne.

‘If he’s thinking of commissioning Prêt a Party to do an event for him…’ she began, trying to move round so that she couldn’t see Marcus, and failing as he moved too.

‘No, what he’s got in mind is making an investment in Prêt a Party.’

‘What?’ Now she did spill a few drops of her champagne, before managing to take a steadying gulp of it.

‘Oh, yes. He’s a bit of an entrepreneur. He’s made absolutely stacks of money from this turnkey business he owns. You know the kind of thing…’ Johnny enlarged. ‘He employs cleaners, cooks, someone to wait in for the gas man, someone to collect your cleaning—all that kind of stuff—for these rich City types who can’t afford the time to do it themselves. He saw the spread in A-List Life, and heard that you’re my cousin, and he said that Prêt a Party is exactly the kind of investment he’s looking for. So I said I was seeing you today and that I’d sound you out.’

‘Johnny…’ Her head was spinning, and it didn’t occur to her to connect that with her unfamiliar consumption of champagne.

‘Why don’t you let him talk to you and tell you what he’s got in mind himself? I could give him your office phone number…’

When she had reflected that she needed a miracle she’d never imagined she would get one—and certainly not one of this potential magnitude. She felt positively light-headed with relief, almost dizzy.

‘Well, yes—okay, Johnny,’ she agreed gratefully.

‘Great.’ Johnny looked at his watch, announcing, ‘Lord, is that the time? I’ve got to go. His name’s Andrew Walker, by the way.’