The Hired Husband

‘I didn’t think so.’

Suddenly the thought that had crossed Sienna’s mind a moment before came rushing back with a new and worrying force.

Once she had convinced him. Keir hadn’t wanted this marriage. When she had first proposed the idea he had rejected it outright. It had only been when he’d made it a condition that they had a proper marriage, complete in every way, that he had been persuaded to agree to her proposal.

‘Sienna!’

Her name in Keir’s voice held a note of warning that dragged her back to the present. The best man was getting to his feet, ready to make his speech. Somehow Sienna found the self-control to appear to be listening. She turned her head in James’s direction, focused her eyes on his face, and even, forewarned by the ripples of laughter from other parts of the room, managed to smile at the jokes he made.

But the truth was that she heard little of the witty address, and registered even less. Deep inside, her stomach was just a twisting mass of nerves, a knot of fear that made her stomach heave nauseatingly.

What had she done? She had actually asked this man to be her husband. To live with her, share her home, her life, her bed. For the next year, at least, she would have to make it appear that she and Keir were deeply in love. That they were no longer two individuals but that indefinable thing known as ‘a couple’.

What had seemed so simple just a few days before now seemed impossible, unendurable, fraught with pitfalls and traps to catch the unwary. The twelve months that had once appeared such a short space of time now stretched endlessly ahead, three hundred and sixty five days of it, and she had no idea how she was going to live through it.

Fear pounded inside her head, beating at her temples, so that she had to fight against the impulse to push her chair back and run from the room. She had chosen this path, knowing she had no alternative. Married to Keir she would inherit her father’s money, and with it all the security and comfort it could bring. Without him she would be once more alone and desperate, with her mother totally dependent on her.

The speeches were over, the toasts completed. At last she was free from the obligation to stay in her seat. The feeling caused a rush of relief that brought her swiftly to her feet, unable to keep still any longer. She had no idea where she was going, thinking vaguely of heading for the huge French windows, now flung open in the late summer heat, of getting some much needed fresh air. Perhaps some deep, cooling breaths would calm her racing pulse, ease the pressure inside her head. But…

‘Sienna…’ Keir said abruptly, reaching for her. ‘Wait…’

His grip on her arm felt like a steel manacle, imprisoning her. Panic flared afresh and, reacting purely instinctively, she tensed, pulling back, away from him, earning herself a dark, disapproving glare.

‘What the…? Sienna, just what’s got into you? People are looking!’

The savage undertone was somehow more disturbing than if he had actually raised his voice to express the anger he was clearly barely holding in check. The blaze in his eyes terrified her, and suddenly the ground no longer seemed steady beneath her, the thick red carpet shifting unnervingly under the soles of her white satin slippers.

‘I won’t go with you!’ It was a desperate whisper. ‘I can’t!’

‘Sienna, have you taken leave of your senses? Might I remind you that this is our wedding day?’

Remind her! As if she could forget!

‘We have guests…people we should speak to.’

Speak! Sienna’s tongue felt as if it was glued to the roof of her mouth, preventing her from forming a word. But with Keir’s strong hand still clamped on her wrist, the other pressed firmly against the small of her back, she had no option but to follow him out into the room, somehow managing to acknowledge the greetings of the people they passed.

Her face seemed frozen into an expression of feigned happiness, the muscles around her mouth aching from smiling too many false smiles. All she wanted was to get away, be by herself, find peace and quiet in which to try to come to terms with what she’d done. But Keir was unrelenting in his determination that they should greet everyone. Ignoring her murmurs of protest, her obvious reluctance, he steered her from group to group, covering her awkwardness with the smooth ease of his own conversation.

‘For God’s sake!’ he hissed in her ear. ‘Now you’re the one who looks like the condemned man! Smile, damn you! No one will believe you’re madly in love with me if you look at me as if I was some deadly poisonous snake about to strike.’

‘I am smiling,’ Sienna retorted through clenched teeth. ‘And as to looking as if I love you—I’d manage that much better if you didn’t frogmarch me round the room as if I was either drunk or insane. I can manage to stand on my own two feet, you know. If you’d just let me go…’

‘Be my guest!’

She was released so abruptly that she staggered awkwardly, afraid she might actually fall. Instinctively her hand went out to steady herself, and to her total surprise she found it taken by someone new. Soft fingers closed round hers, supporting her.

‘Steady!’ a female voice cautioned. ‘You nearly took a tumble there.’

‘Th-thank you.’ With her balance restored, Sienna managed to turn to her rescuer with a smile more genuine than anything she had managed before.

‘Not to worry,’ she was assured. ‘Those long skirts can be so very difficult to walk in when you’re not used to them.’

‘That’s true!’ The woman’s perfume was rather cloying and overpowering, but Sienna struggled not to reveal her response to it. At last she felt something of her earlier panic receding, evaporating in the warmth of this new companion’s smile. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think…’

She didn’t recognise the face. This must be someone Keir had invited. Someone she hadn’t yet met.

‘Keir, won’t you introduce me…?’

But Keir stood at her side, stiff and withdrawn, his face appearing to have been carved out of the cold, immobile marble that formed the statues out on the terrace. Even his eyes were blanked off, revealing no emotion.

Why had this had to happen now? Keir asked himself furiously. If he had tried to think of the worst possible moment for Lucille to finally meet up with the woman he had married, then it would have been hard to imagine one that beat this. Sienna had already been behaving like a nervous thoroughbred, fearful of being handled for the first time, so he could just imagine how she was going to deal with this additional development.

The problem was that his new wife couldn’t lie to save her life. She had come up with this ridiculous scheme of their pretend marriage, presenting it as the answer to all his problems as well as hers, but the truth was that she didn’t know the half of it. She didn’t know how appallingly Lucille had behaved—the sort of damage she was still capable of wreaking if given half a chance. And if his stepmother so much as suspected the true reasons behind this hastily arranged wedding, then she was more than likely to pounce on the information like some ecstatic predator. She would use it quite cold-bloodedly to her own advantage, especially if she could work on his own destruction at the same time.

‘Keir…’

Just one word from the other woman’s lips, but it had a dramatic effect on him. His head jerked round swiftly, his eyes narrowing to mere slits above his high, strong cheekbones.

‘You want to be introduced? Well, fine. It had to be done some time, so I suppose now is as good an occasion as any. Sienna, darling, this is Lucille, my stepmother…’ He spat the word out as if it left a foul taste in his mouth. ‘Lucille, obviously this is Sienna, my wife.’

Lucille. Sienna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was Lucille, the stepmother Keir so detested that he had finally agreed to their marriage solely because it offered him a way of getting rid of her, expelling her from his life once and for all? This was the monster who, like Medusa, had turned his heart to stone in the moment he had first seen her, and had never let a single redeeming chink of light into it since then.

But this woman was nothing like the one she had imagined. In her thoughts, influenced by Keir’s own feelings, she had created a vicious harpy, cold-faced and cold-eyed, not this smiling, bright-eyed creature. And Lucille Alexander was so much smaller than she had anticipated, smaller and lovelier, with her peachy skin, green eyes and red-gold hair. But what rocked her back on her feet, threatening her balance again for a moment, was just how young Keir’s stepmother was. She had anticipated some woman in her late forties, early fifties. This Lucille looked barely five or so years older than Keir himself.

‘Sienna…’ Lucille was holding out her hand. ‘It’s wonderful to meet you at last. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get to see you at all. But now that I have I can quite understand why Keir wanted to keep you all to himself.’

‘I doubt if you understand anything at all,’ Keir put in with biting cynicism. ‘And if I’d had my way you would never have been invited to the wedding. But Sienna wanted all my family here and, much as I hate to acknowledge it, you are family, if only by marriage…’

‘Keir…!’ Sienna put in reproachfully.

But Keir ignored her, his attention still fixed on Lucille.

‘But, seeing as you are here, perhaps it’s just as well. There’s a small matter of business we can get out of the way. If you’ll just follow me.’

Once again he clamped his hand over Sienna’s arm, forcing her to go with him as he turned and marched towards the door. It was either that or be dragged inelegantly and embarrassingly in his wake. He didn’t pause to look back and see if Lucille had followed them, apparently totally confident that she would do just that.

And it appeared that his confidence was not misplaced. When he finally came to a halt in the small private room the hotel had put aside for the bride and groom’s use, Lucille was only seconds behind them. She was barely through the door before Keir kicked it shut, blocking off the noise and bustle of the reception.

‘Now…’

Releasing Sienna abruptly, he reached into his inner jacket pocket, pulling out a long white envelope that he dropped onto the highly polished surface of a nearby table.

‘This is what you’re really interested in, dear stepmother. Oh, it’s all right…’ he added, seeing Lucille’s curious glance in Sienna’s direction. ‘My wife and I have no secrets from each other. Quite the contrary. As a matter of fact, it’s Sienna, not me, who’s buying you out, at the price we agreed last night. Darling…’

It took Sienna the space of a couple of uneven heartbeats to realise that Keir was now speaking to her. And even when she had registered that fact she found herself staring at the fine silver pen he held out to her, unable to comprehend just what he had in mind.

‘Sienna,’ Keir urged softly. ‘I need your signature. The document’s all prepared. All you have to do is sign.’