Bridal Bargains: The Tycoon's Bride / The Purchased Wife / The Price Of A Bride

And Claire couldn’t help laughing even though she was still feeling like a terrible fraud.

‘You will wear it next week when you marry my grandson and he will bless the day he found you because that dress is lucky,’ she promised, having no idea that Claire had switched off from the moment she’d mentioned marriage next week, which was news to her. ‘I had fifty years of happiness with my husband before the cancer took him. You will have the same luck. You mark my word, child. That dress is lucky …’

‘But this whole thing is getting out of control, Andreas!’

Claire was pleading with him across the width of his study desk, having come to search him out the moment she had been dismissed from his grandmother.

‘She wants me to wear her own wedding dress!’

‘You don’t like it?’ Sleek eyebrows arched in haughty enquiry.

‘Like it?’ Claire repeated incredulously. ‘It’s old, it’s handmade, it’s utterly unique and it’s exquisite!’ she sighed. ‘But she loves that dress, Andreas!’ she told him painfully. ‘And she loves you! Yet here we are intending to dupe her any which way you want to look at it!’

The only response she got to that was the slow lowering of lazy lashes then the same slow lifting of them again. But then, he was the ice man today, Claire noted impatiently. Yesterday hadn’t happened. He had clearly dismissed it from his mind.

‘Do something!’ she snapped in sheer frustration.

‘What would you like me to do?’ he asked quietly. ‘Go and tell her that this is all nothing but a lie?’

‘No,’ she sighed, hating him for his smooth simplicity! ‘I just feel—’ She sighed again, and turned her back on him so she could slump wearily against the desk. ‘I hate liars,’ she said. ‘Yet here I am, lying to everybody I speak to.’

‘Is she happy?’

Claire dipped her head to stare at her shoes. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Did the dress fit you as it must have fitted her more than seventy years ago?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, seeing the joy in that old woman’s face when she’d seen herself as she would have looked all those years ago.

To her consternation he gave a soft laugh. ‘She told me it would.’ He explained the reason for the laugh. ‘Last night, after having met you, she laid a wager with me that if the dress fitted you then I must buy it from her for you to wear on our wedding day. Oh, don’t misunderstand,’ he said quickly as Claire turned to stare at him. ‘She is a shrewd old thing, and she loves a good wager. The dress is a museum piece and practically priceless. She knows this. She means to fleece me, and will enjoy doing so.’

And thereby keep the weak lifeblood flowing through her veins that little bit longer while they haggle, Claire concluded, beginning to see again what her guilty conscience had blinded her to—the fact that this man was willing to do anything to keep his grandmother alive.

Today it was a wedding dress. Tomorrow it would be something else. Then there was a wedding to plan and a great-grandchild to meet and …

Without really knowing she was doing it, she began planning and plotting herself. ‘She wants the wedding to take place next week.’ She frowned. ‘Perhaps, if I insist that we put it off until my plaster-cast comes off, it will—’

But already Andreas was shaking his dark head, the expression on his suddenly grave face enough to tell her why.

‘She hasn’t got that long?’ Claire questioned thickly.

He didn’t answer with a straight yes or no. ‘She knows what she is doing,’ he murmured. ‘Let her set her own timetable, hmm?’

A timetable … She shivered, hating the concept so much that she sprang abruptly away from the desk. ‘I’m going to see Melanie,’ she told him as she walked quickly to the door.

For at least Melanie was everything that was bright and optimistic about life, whereas—

‘Claire—one more moment of your time before you go, if you please,’ that infuriatingly level voice requested.

It reminded her of a softly spoken headmaster she’d once had, who’d used to intimidate everyone with the simple use of the spoken word. Resenting the sensation, she spun around to glare at him. Seeing the glare, he responded with that brief grim smile she despised so much.

‘At the risk of infuriating you even more,’ he drawled, ‘I have to warn you that there will be a party here tomorrow night. My family wish to meet you before the wedding takes place,’ he explained, watching the varying changes in expression cross her face. Annoyance, trepidation then eventually dismay. ‘It will take the form of a—betrothal celebration.’ Smoothly he poured oil on the burning waters.

‘No,’ she refused, point-blank and unequivocally.

The leather chair he was sitting in creaked slightly as he sat back into it, the morning sunlight pouring in through the window behind him putting his features into shadow so she couldn’t see whether he was smiling that smile.

But she knew it was still there! ‘I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do to make this lie work for you!’ she informed him hotly. ‘But I will not be paraded in front of your family to be scoffed at because they think I am a—a fallen woman who trapped you with a baby!’

Despite the sun behind him, she saw his eyes flash. ‘Let only one of my family be so crass as to scoff at you and they will never be welcome in my home again.’ At last he sounded as if he had some emotions left. ‘But if that is your wish—’ he stood up, and there was nothing calm or cold in the way that he did it ‘—then of course I will accede to it. I will go and inform my grandmother right now that she must shelve that particular plan.’

His grandmother. He was agreeing to this party thing because his grandmother wanted it.

She was only agreeing to any of this for Melanie’s sake.

Grandmother—Melanie. Melanie—grandmother.

What about Claire? she wondered bitterly.

‘Oh, have your stupid party,’ she snapped. ‘But don’t blame me if they all think that you’ve lost your marbles when they see me!’

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHE was still angry about the emotional blackmail being used on her the next evening as she finished getting ready for the party.

So the dress was a defiance.

Claire knew that even as she stood in front of the mirror frowning in trepidation at the reflection that was coming back at her. Made of pale blue high-stretch gossamer-fine silk tulle, the flimsy bodice was supported by bootlace-slim halter-style straps that held the two triangles of fine fabric over her breasts. From there it followed the contours of her shape with such an unremitting faithfulness that it really was the most daringly thought-provoking garment.

She looked naked beneath it—felt naked! Though she knew that she wasn’t if you took into account the tiniest pair of smooth silk briefs and a pair of white hold-up silk stockings. But nervous anxiety was making the hard tips of her nipples protrude to add to the illusion. And because the fabric clung so lovingly to her warm flesh she could even see the way the point high on her stomach between her ribcage was pulsing in tense anticipation of the evening to come.

‘I can’t wear this,’ she muttered on a sudden arrival of common sense that should have hit a lot sooner.

Standing behind her, carefully teasing the final gold-silk strands of a natty fantail knot into which she was dressing her hair, Althea paused to glance over Claire’s shoulder.

‘I think you are so brave,’ Althea confided—which helped not a tiny bit because she didn’t feel brave at all!

Not any longer, anyway. This afternoon when she’d picked this dress out off the line of other evening dresses she had been feeling brave—brave, bold and brazen! she mocked herself deridingly. Seeing herself boldly taking on all those critical looks she just knew she was going to receive for not being their first choice of bride for their lord and master.

But now, with reality hovering over her like the shadow of a giant black-winged eagle preparing to swoop, her fickle emotions had flipped over into cowardice. And she knew now with absolute certainty that she just was not going to be able to carry this off!

A knock sounded lightly on the connecting door.

That pulse-point between her ribcage gave a large throb, and she froze. So did Althea, her gentle brown eyes fixing on Claire’s pale face in the mirror. And silence rained down on top of both of them in a fine sprinkle of flesh-tingling static.

How much Althea and her parents actually knew for a fact about Claire’s relationship with their employer Claire didn’t really know. She thought that they at least suspected its lack of authenticity. After all, did Andreas look like the kind of man that seduced women like her?

But he does seduce me. She instantly contradicted that remark. Those increasingly passionate kisses are definitely seductive. And every time his dark hooded eyes settle on me now I feel dreadfully seduced even though he is trying his level best to pretend that it isn’t happening.