Unwed and Unrepentant

‘What’s more, he’s sharp enough to see it’s men like myself who’ll be doing the directing in the future.’ Iain grinned. ‘I have to admire the devious old bugger, even if he is deluded. I’ve no interest in earning a fancy title, and I’ve certainly no desire to rub shoulders with those who’ve nothing better to do than spend their ill-gotten gains on clothes and parties and horses.’

‘Good heavens, are you a revolutionary? Perhaps you have ambitions to put my father’s neck on a guillotine?’

‘No, but I suspect you would. You’ll forgive me being blunt,’ Iain said, ‘but you don’t hold the old man in much esteem, do you?’

‘I doubt you are ever anything else but blunt.’ Cordelia turned towards the desk and began to footer with the blotter, aligning the pen holder and inkstand up. ‘No, I don’t have much respect for him. About as much as he does for me.’

He could not see her expression, but something in the hunch of her shoulders made him guess at the hurt she was attempting to disguise. ‘If he means so little to you, why do you let him upset you?’

She turned at that, and he saw he was right. Pain shadowed her eyes, though she was fighting it. ‘My sister Cressie said something similar to me recently. She seems to have found a way of overcoming nature which I have as yet to discover, despite my attempts to do so.’

‘I must consider myself fortunate not to be encumbered by parents then,’ Iain said gruffly.

‘You are an orphan?’

It was his turn to shrug. He had no desire to add a discussion of his pathetic history into the conversation that was already convoluted enough. ‘He may be your father, but you’re a grown woman, Cordelia, he can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

‘All very well for you to say that. You are a man.’

‘Aye, and when you look at me like that, I’m very glad I am,’ Iain replied, because the mocking look was back in her eyes, and there was something irresistible about the challenge of it, and in the sensual downward curl of that mouth of hers.

He caught her arm and turned her towards him, losing his train of thought in the scent of her, and the rustle of her gown against his legs, and in the way she reacted to the heat of his gaze, neither shrinking from it nor denying her own reaction.

‘I’m not going to kiss you,’ she said.

She spoke coolly, though her words were belied by the tempting tilt of her mouth. He slid his hand up her back, finding the delightful patch of naked skin at her nape, under her hair. ‘You’d better not hit me again.’

‘What, will you hit me back? I should warn you, Iain, I am not the sort of woman to take that sort of pleasure.’

‘Firstly, I never hit any woman, no matter what kind.’ Iain put his other arm around her waist, pulling her close. The perfume she wore was exotic, though the scent eluded him. The way she spoke his name made him shiver, made the muscles in his belly tighten, sent the blood coursing to his groin. ‘And secondly, you seem to have forgotten that I know very well what particular kind of pleasure you like.’

She did not move. He knew, despite her denial, that she would kiss him back this time. It shocked him, the fierce possessiveness he felt just touching her, so much so that he let her go. ‘I want that business, Cordelia. What has he got on you? I’m not daft, you wouldn’t still be here talking to me if he didn’t have some sort of hold over you. What is it?’

She hesitated, returning to her compulsive straightening of the desk furniture, aligning the already aligned pen holder and inkpot. Then she turned, her mouth tight with anger. ‘My family. My aunt. My half-brothers I have not seen since I left nearly ten years ago, the half-sister I have never met. And most of all Celia and Cassie. They were his trump cards.’ The pen in her hand snapped. ‘My two elder sisters,’ she explained with a curl of her lip. ‘Both are married to Arabian princes. I knew Caro and Cressie—they are my other sisters—would pay no heed to my father’s decree. Indeed, I was fairly certain his disowning me was sufficient for them to make a point of keeping in touch, but as to Celia and Cassie—’

She broke off, obviously near to tears. Iain wrestled with this completely unexpected revelation. ‘Your father disowned you? What on earth for?’

‘I refused to marry a man of his choosing.’

Iain shook his head in bemusement. ‘You wouldn’t marry the man he picked for you and he took the hump?’

‘I wouldn’t marry any man he picked for me. And if by taking the hump you mean he was offended—he was furious.’ Cordelia cast the broken pen on to the desk. ‘I know it sounds mediaeval, but he really could have ensured that all doors were closed to me if I’d given him the pleasure of trying to open them.’

Iain stared at her in horror. ‘Your own flesh and blood! Who does he think he is—some sort of god?’

‘One of my other sisters calls him a puppet master,’ Cordelia said wryly.

‘So they don’t condone what he did? But you said the eldest two...’

‘Celia and Cassie. It’s not that they condone it exactly, but to respond to any overture of mine would require them to keep it secret from their husbands. I have never met Cassie’s husband, and Celia’s but once, but the code of honour with desert princes is strong. No matter what they may think of the circumstances, my father’s will must be respected. That is the ace he was going to play, I suspect,’ Cordelia finished contemptuously.

Iain shook his head in disgust. ‘I can’t believe he would stoop so low. To keep your own sisters from you, and him your father.’

‘Which is exactly why he does not see it as anything other than his natural right, to order my life,’ she replied bitterly. ‘Cressie—my middle sister—used to say that we were his pawns in the game of matrimonial chess. She was right, Iain, believe me.’

‘And unless you do as he says, you won’t get to see your sisters in Arabia?’

‘I don’t know. I had hoped today that I could persuade him to—but that was before he came up with this ridiculous idea. Now—I simply don’t know.’

She shook her head, biting her lip and screwing shut her eyes, and Iain cursed himself for being so blunt. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve nothing to apologise for.’

‘He’s a right wee shite, your father.’

She laughed tearfully. ‘I have no idea what that means, but I suspect you’re right.’

‘Aye, sorry about the language. You can take a man from the docks, but you can’t take the docks from the man.’

She smiled at this quip, but seemed suddenly at a loss. ‘I’d better be off.’

‘You’re not staying here?’

She shuddered theatrically. ‘Good heavens, no. I have rooms at Milvert’s on Brook Street. I suppose this is goodbye. I wish you luck with your contract.’

‘We’ve both got too much to lose to turn our backs on this. I’ll walk with you.’

He was not fooling himself. That day over a year ago had been in every way extraordinary. He had never, before or since, experienced that instant of certainty, that deep connection that had led them both to believe they’d met before, that had transformed into the most intense attraction he’d ever known. Circumstances had colluded to put them together on the docks at the Broomilaw at the same time in the same frame of mind. Since then, he had thought of it as a day—and night—out of time. It had not occurred to him that they would ever meet again, but now they had done so, under the strangest of circumstances, Iain couldn’t help thinking that fate must have taken a hand. Not that he believed in fate, though his mother had been a great one for it.

‘I beg your pardon?’

He realised, as he took his hat and gloves from the footman, that he’d spoken his mother’s words aloud. ‘What’s for you won’t go by you,’ he repeated tersely, as they ascended the steps into Cavendish Square.

‘You think that fate has brought us together?’ Cordelia asked.

She had a smile that did things to his insides. Provocative, that was the word for it. Iain never spoke of his mother. His memories of his family were so painfully tarnished that he rarely allowed himself to remember the few happier times when Jeannie was still alive. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed, and he automatically closed his mind to that memory. He had always been driven, but this last year, he had immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of all else. He hadn’t realised he’d missed Cordelia until he saw her today. It didn’t matter that their entire acquaintance spanned less than twenty-four hours either. At some elemental level, he and she were the same.

Iain took her hand and tucked it into his arm. ‘You want to know what I really think?’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I think we should tell your father we’re getting married.’

* * *

Cordelia’s rooms at Milvert’s exclusive hotel were on the corner of the second floor. Pushing open the window of her sitting-room, she gazed out on to the busy street, her head whirling. With the Season starting to get into full swing, there was a steady flow of carriages and horses making their way past Grosvenor Square to Hyde Park.

‘You haven’t said what you thought of my suggestion,’ Iain said, throwing his hat and gloves on to the table.

She pulled the casement closed and began to wander disconsolately about the room, tidying her notebooks, folding her cuffs, wiping her pen, absent-mindedly straightening the various objects which sat on the tables, the mantelpiece, the hearth, before finally taking a seat opposite him. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘Do you have an alternative plan?’