The Bartered Bride

‘Absolutely not! No way!’ Fran said emphatically, but not with much hope he would accept her refusal.

He didn’t. ‘No to dinner, or no to help with the packing?’

‘No to both...no to everything. Have another look through some magazines and pick out some other woman. I’m not for sale, Mr Kennard.’

‘Do you like music?’ he asked.

Disconcerted by the seemingly irrelevant question, she said, ‘Some music...yes.’

‘How do you feel about Smetana?’

‘Never heard of him.’ It was an exaggeration. She had heard the name but that was the limit of her knowledge.

‘He was a Bohemian composer who lived in the last century. His most important work was done in Prague, helping to form a national opera. He had a nasty end...went deaf and died insane.’

‘If I wanted to know about the lives of obscure composers I’d borrow a book from the library.’

‘Is reading one of your pleasures?’

‘Yes, as it happens it is, but—’

‘That’s good. It’s one of mine and I have a large private library.’

Feeling her temper starting to simmer, Fran said impatiently, ‘I shouldn’t think it includes the kind of books I enjoy and if Smetana is one of your favourite composers your CDs would send me to sleep. I had enough of that stuff in musical appreciation sessions at school. I only like pop music.’

It wasn’t true. Julian had taught her to share his love for classical music, but if Kennard thought she was what he would define as a Philistine so much the better. It might put him off this insane determination to marry her.

Not visibly deterred, he said, ‘The reason I mentioned Smetana is because his most famous opera is called The Bartered Bride. Barter, the exchange of goods, was how people traded before money was invented. I’m not trying to buy you, Francesca. I’m proposing a trade-off...things I need for things you need. Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come out to dinner?’

‘Definitely not!’

‘In that case I’ll leave you to your pizza and take myself off for some Arbroath smokies at Scotts, or maybe their Loch Fyne smoked salmon.’ As he mentioned two specialities of one of London’s best restaurants, the hard eyes warmed with malicious amusement.

Could his private detective have found out that she adored fish and seafood?

On his way to the door, Kennard added, ‘I’ll call you in the morning. After you’ve slept on the idea, you may find it more appealing.’

‘Thanks for the warning. I’ll take the phone off the hook,’ she snapped, as he let himself out.

CHAPTER TWO

SINCE Julian’s wedding, Fran had had a lot of sleepless nights, prowling around in the small hours, tortured by thoughts of Julian making babies with Alice...babies which should have been hers.

All she had ever really wanted was to be Julian’s wife and the mother of his children. Not the kind of ambition applauded by the teachers at the expensive boarding-school where she and her sister had been sent to learn to be ‘ladies’.

That had been Gran’s idea. Though Gran’s own origins were humble, she was a tremendous snob and hadn’t approved of her eighteen-year-old Daphne marrying a rough diamond like George Turner, even if he had gone on to make pots of money.

Gran wanted to see her granddaughters marrying men who were not only well off but also what she called well-spoken. To that end she had chivvied her son-in-law into sending the girls to one of the most exclusive schools in England. To Gran’s disappointment, her eldest granddaughter, Shelley, had fallen in love with a young man who had once spent a summer working in her mother’s garden. He now had his own plant nursery and was a contented man, but he didn’t make a lot of money. John and Shelley couldn’t afford to support her mother. With two small children and another on the way, they didn’t even have a spare bedroom to offer her.

Had Gran known of Fran’s secret passion for the chauffeur’s son, she would have disapproved, at least until his achievements at university had signalled an impressive future.

The irony was that Gran would probably regard Reid Kennard as a wonderful catch. She didn’t think much of love as a basis for wedlock. She wouldn’t admit it under torture, but her granddaughters suspected there had been a metaphorical shotgun in the background of her wedding, and the marriage hadn’t been happy.

In the morning Fran woke with a headache, the result of too little sleep and too much wine the night before. Staying up late, she had finished the bottle.

She spent the morning sorting out things in her bedroom and waiting for Reid Kennard’s call. When the telephone remained silent, she should have been relieved. Instead she felt oddly uneasy.

What if he’d changed his mind? What if her animosity had made him have second thoughts? During his solitary dinner he might have decided he couldn’t be bothered to wear down her opposition when there were plenty of women he could have for the asking.

The longer she considered this scenario, the more it seemed to Fran that she might have rejected in haste an opportunity she would live to regret turning down.

As things stood, all the future offered was relative penury for her mother and a dull job for herself. It wasn’t an attractive prospect.

The trade-off Reid had suggested—suddenly she found herself thinking of him by his first name instead of his surname—would mean that if they were miserable, they would at least be miserable in comfort.

But what about her side of the trade-off: being the wife of a man she didn’t love and who didn’t love her?

Well, love, for long the first item on her private and personal wish list, had been crossed off the day Julian married Alice. So that brought it down to the question of whether she could face having sex with someone other than Julian in order to have some babies. They wouldn’t have the father she had dreamed of, but any father had to be better than none.

Thinking about sex with Reid, Fran felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. He had all the physical makings of a good lover; his aura of animal magnetism deriving from a great body, a sensual mouth, hands that looked strong enough to crush, but also capable of performing the most delicate and subtle caresses. Just thinking about the components of his disturbing personality sent strange little quivers through her.

Even though still a virgin, her innocence saved as a gift for her first and only love, Fran knew all the theory, knew what those frissons meant. She had recognised the passionate depths of her nature a long time ago. From the beginning of adolescence she had been excited and moved by amorous scenes in books and movies, recognising her capacity to feel the same fiery emotions as the women in the stories and on the screen.

But she had also had a strong streak of idealism. After falling in love with Julian, keeping herself inviolate for him had seemed more important than indulging her natural curiosity about what it felt like to do the things many of the girls in her class had experienced as soon as they were sixteen.

A lot of them were the over-indulged, under-disciplined children of broken marriages. During the holidays they had too much pin money and not enough supervision. Several girls she knew by sight hadn’t completed their time at school. They had been expelled for serious misdemeanours ranging from night-time truancy to drugs.

Fortunately, although described as ‘lazy’, ‘inattentive’ and ‘irresponsible’ in her school reports, Fran had never been taken up by the group known to the serious-minded girls as The Decadents. The fact that she was reserving herself for Julian would have debarred her from that clique. Although far from being a teacher’s pet, from The Decadents’ point of view Fran was one of the girls they called The Nuns.

She was thinking about her lack of sexual experience and wondering what conclusions the detective had drawn about her in that respect, when the telephone started to chirrup.

She forced herself not to grab it, letting it signal six times before she said coolly, ‘Hello?’

‘Good morning.’

If the distinctive voice at the other end of the line had mocked her about not leaving the phone off the hook, she would have cut the connection and dashed round the flat disconnecting all the extensions.

But Reid didn’t refer to her parting shot. He said, ‘I’d like to show you my library. Will you have lunch with me?’

She drew in her breath, knowing she was on the brink of one of the defining moments of her life.

‘If you’re worried about being alone with me, you needn’t be,’ Reid went on. ‘My household is run by staff who are far too respectable to stay with any employer who doesn’t live up to their standards. But even if that were not so, I’ve already made it clear my intentions are honourable.’

She could guess from the tone of his voice that there would be a sardonic quirk at the corner of his chiselled mouth.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘What time and where?’

When he had rung off, she looked at the exclusive address she had jotted down on the notepad and wondered why she had relented.