Bride Of His Choice

The right material wedded to the Durant genes.

Hence the proposal of marriage.

Except she couldn’t be the chosen one…never the chosen one.

There was one huge flaw in Richard Seymour’s selection of her as his bride, and Leigh wasn’t the only one who knew it. Her mother certainly did. Her four sisters might very well be aware of it, as well. They’d tell him soon enough, if it served their interests, and the evidence of her own observations pointed that way.

All five of them undoubtedly knew the contents of the will. Whomever Richard chose to marry would be sitting pretty in the world they knew. It explained why her mother and sisters had been so focused on courting his favour and not paying any attention to the return of the prodigal daughter. It was the same old sick game, sucking up to power.

Leigh found her gaze had dropped to the leg Richard had propped on the sandstone platform. The fine woollen fabric of his suit trousers was pulled taut over a strongly muscled thigh. Her mind fuzzed over an image of how he might look naked, all that male power energised by desire, wanting her…

Another fanciful dream turned to dust, she thought, feeling the same old ache of disappointment Richard had always left her with. If she told him the truth he wouldn’t want her, not as a wife. Even if he still fancied her—the woman she was now—she couldn’t allow anything to come of it, knowing he would inevitably choose to make one of her sisters his bride. Best to cut it dead right now.

She dragged her gaze up and kept it levelled on his as she delivered her rejection. “The answer is no, Richard. I won’t marry you.”

Then to emphasise the matter was closed, she was up on her feet with her back turned to him and heading towards the steps that led down to the next terrace, away from him, away from the house that had dominated much of her life, away from the family who cared more for what it represented than they’d ever cared for her.

“Why not?” Richard shot after her.

She waved a dismissive hand without glancing around. “You have four other daughters to choose from. You just struck out on me, that’s all.”

“I don’t want any of the others,” he declared vehemently.

She shook her head over the black irony of that statement and kept on walking, down the steps to the summer-house which presided over the terrace of rose gardens. She could hear his footsteps following her and fiercely wished he’d leave her alone.

It was so perverse of him to choose her ahead of the far more suitable daughters, the beautiful blonde accomplished socialites with the right blood in them, only too eager to snap him up and grace his arm, his bed, and his bank balance. Felicity, Vanessa, Caroline, Nadine…such pretty, feminine, classy names.

The impulse to shove one truth she’d had to accept down Richard Seymour’s throat made Leigh pause by the summer-house and cast a derisive look at him. He was already at the foot of the steps and striding towards her.

“You know, Richard, most people don’t get everything they want. You may not be used to that but I’m sure compromises sometimes have to be taken, even in your world.”

He kept on coming. “You can have everything you want from me, Leigh.”

The strong conviction in his voice clutched at her heart, but only for a moment. He wasn’t offering love. He probably didn’t know what love was, any more than she did. The sheer sweep of his extravagant promise suddenly evoked another wild laugh, peeling into a wind that carried it away from her as swiftly as it arose.

It didn’t stop him. His eyes didn’t waver from hers, determined on burning away her scorn and supplanting it with possibilities that could breed hope. But there was no hope.

“It’s very simple, Richard,” she said flatly. “Regardless of what you can give me, I can’t give you what you want.”

He came to a halt, barely a metre away, totally un-perturbed by her claim. His eyes challenged it with ruthless intent as he said, “Because you’re not Lawrence Durant’s daughter?”

Shock reverberated through her. “You know?” The words spilled from her lips before she could catch them back. Had he guessed or had he pushed her into admission? His proposal made no sense if he knew. A churning turmoil of shame and pride robbed her of any movement as he stepped towards her, a mesmerising satisfaction written on his face.

“I knew the day I first met you, Leigh. You didn’t belong to Lawrence, not physically, not mentally, not emotionally. No bond at all and nothing of him in you. Nothing.”

It wasn’t proof, she thought, but he went on, shattering that thought.

“Lawrence confirmed it when you went away and I suggested someone should be hired to keep track of you in case you were in need. ‘She’s my wife’s child, not mine!’ was what he said, then swore me to silence on the subject. A proud man like Lawrence didn’t care to have it known that you weren’t his.”

The power of his total self-assurance held her still, though her heart was pounding wildly and tremors of shock were still running through her.

“Legally, you are his.”

“No.” Her voice sounded hollow but the words had to be said now. “He disinherited me when I left.”

“He made no provision for you in his will, Leigh, but nowhere is there a claim that denies you are his child. And since Lawrence was cremated today, there can be no DNA tests to prove you aren’t. I can marry you in good faith with the terms of his will.”

Instinctively she fought against the relentless beat of his logic. “My mother could name my real father.”

A grim little smile curled his mouth. “It’s not in her best interests to do so.”

The manipulation of wealth! Leigh’s hatred of it spurred her to argue. “What makes you think my real father wouldn’t come forward if he saw money in it?”

That killed the smile. Yet, even more disturbing, his eyes seemed to soften with sympathy. “It won’t happen, Leigh,” he said quietly. “Your mother paid for him and his family to go back to Italy before you were born. From the date of their departure, I’d say he knows nothing of you.”

“Go back to Italy?” she picked up in bewilderment.

“You didn’t know he was Italian?”

She shook her head. On the terrible night she had learnt Lawrence Durant was not her father, her mother had refused to reveal the true circumstances of her birth. The argument between Lawrence and his wife had raged over her head, and had more to do with financial arrangements than the infidelity that had brought her into their world. They had forgotten her in hurling threats at one another. She’d simply slipped away, packed her things and left.

Italian…well, that explained her colouring. There weren’t too many blonde Italians. It probably explained her non-boyish figure, as well. The only Italian actress she could think of was Sophia Loren, whose curvaceous femininity was legendary. Leigh supposed a hot-blooded Italian lover would have made a tempting contrast to Lawrence Durant, but her mother had hardly been wise in having a child by him, risking the possibility of producing the cuckoo Leigh had turned out to be.

“He was the gardener here at the time of your conception,” Richard explained.

It shocked her into speech. “A gardener? My mother took a gardener as her lover?” It seemed unbelievable. Her mother was a dyed-in-the-wool snob who invariably disdained to notice what she considered the lower classes.

“He had four sons, Leigh.”

Ah…the logic of it was instantly crystal clear. No escaping that connection. A man who fathered sons was precisely what was wanted when four daughters had been delivered and a son was required.

Leigh closed her eyes, revolted by the calculation that had gone into her conception…the payment that had been made for a service rendered. No doubt, if there’d been ultrasound scans done all those years ago to determine the sex of the baby, the pregnancy would have been terminated and she wouldn’t even be alive today. Her mother had probably gambled on having a child that took after her in looks and colouring. No wonder she’d been unwanted. She represented failure in every sense.

“How do you know all this, Richard?” she asked, raising lashes that felt unnaturally heavy, but needing to see the answer in his eyes.

“I made it my business to find out.”

“Why?” A weary, aching cynicism prompted her to add, “To ensure there was no wild card that could upset your plan?”

“There was no plan when I set about getting the information. That was six years ago, Leigh.”

She frowned, realising the terms of the will would only have been revealed on Lawrence’s death. “Then what use was it to you?”

His serious expression was softened by a touch of whimsy. “Oh, I thought one day you might like to know who your real father is.”

“You did it for me?” She shook her head incredulously, unable to believe such altruism from a man who clearly calculated everything.

“We have more in common than you think,” he said wryly. “I was not the child of the man my mother was married to. I bear his name but I’m not his child, and I knew it very early on.”