Promise Of Passion

‘Sign of the times,’ he muttered in return and turned to the house.

‘I’m really sorry about bringing Martha, Mr Frazer,’ Caroline said as she followed him a pace or two behind, trying to catch up.

‘Ellis,’ he corrected her. ‘What’s done is done,’ he clipped over his shoulder as he led her between the stone columns of the house and into a wide, spacious hallway that screamed out his wealth. She wasn’t surprised by the opulence but was surprised by the warm ambience of the place. She’d imagined him a man of marble and austere elegance but, as her feet sank into inches of luxurious Axminster and the smell of ancient beeswax assailed her nostrils, she guessed she’d got it wrong about him again.

‘You have a lovely home,’ she murmured as he led her through double doors to an equally spacious and luxurious reception-room.

He said nothing in return, obviously not a small-talker, but stopped at another panelled door with Georgian gilt hardware and before opening it said, ‘I’ll introduce you to my mother, but remember she’s a frail lady and I don’t want her tired. Be as brief as possible, do what you have to do and don’t antagonise her. She has a biting temper so be warned.’

Caroline stared at him in open dismay. She sounded an ogre—a family trait, no doubt!

Suddenly he lifted her chin and looked deep into her anxious eyes. ‘Do you think you’re up to this?’

Already he was having doubts about selecting her for this commission, but no more than she had about taking it on, Caroline told herself. Well, rats to him. She was a professional and besides, he didn’t know it but she didn’t suffer fools gladly either.

She twisted her chin away from his grasp and her eyes darkened to glare back at him.

‘Mr Frazer…Ellis, I’ve told you already, I want this commission but don’t need it. I see this as a two-way proposition. You have doubts about me and I have doubts about you. Let’s see who cracks first!’

A glint of humour crept sideways into his eyes. He leaned back against the door-jamb and crossed his arms over his chest, lightly tapping the riding crop against his shoulder.

‘I’m beginning to like you,’ he uttered under his breath.

Feeling her chest tightening, Caroline covered the sensation with a defiant jut of the chin he was so fond of lifting.

‘You have an advantage over me, then,’ she told him coolly. ‘For I fear I won’t live long enough to begin to like you.’

The humour in his eyes didn’t flag, which was curious to Caroline because she had expected him to rise to such an insult.

‘So what brought that on?’ he asked quietly, raising a teasing dark brow to accompany the query.

With difficulty Caroline held his quizzical look, but without difficulty she knew what was bothering her. He was an attractive man and she had acknowledged that in her heart but there could be nothing more. David had taught her a salutary lesson in what made attractive men tick. But she would have to be careful with this man. Her defences were spilling silly insults from her lips. If she wasn’t careful she could insult her way out of his commission.

‘Attitude,’ she said at last. She’d go for that. He was obviously very displeased with her for bringing Martha.

Both brows came up this time. ‘Oh, I have one, do I?’

‘Yes,’ Caroline said bravely.

‘Perhaps you’d like to expand on that.’

To be honest Caroline didn’t know where to begin because now that she had started all this she didn’t know where it was going.

‘You can’t, can you?’ he said when she failed to respond. ‘Allow me to try and analyse you, then. I suspect it has something to do with me not falling rapt at the feet of your small daughter. Appealing as she is, I’m afraid I have no rapport with females under the age of twenty-five. I don’t know any children, I’m not about to father any in this world or the next and frankly I find your daughter an irritating encumbrance I’d rather live without.’

Flushing hotly, Caroline opened her mouth to protest, but she wasn’t allowed such a pleasure.

‘But,’ he went on deliberately, ‘she is here and a part of your life and I accept that because I want you to do these commissions for me. Now I will make a deal with you. I will suffer your bringing the child with you when you need to be here but in return you will have to suffer my “attitude”. If we can put personalities aside and get on with the job I see no reason why we can’t both part happily at the end of it. Does that sound like a deal to you?’

It sounded like a deal between her soul and the devil! Of all the pompous, arrogant, child-hating, misogynist creeps it had ever been her misfortune to meet, he was the Prince of Darkness! Wild horses in his crummy old stables wouldn’t keep her here to immortalise his wretched stud horse and his wretched mother. Over and out Caroline.

With one last contemptuous look of disdain she turned to walk away but before she knew what had happened he had swept her back against the oak panelling of the wall, so imprisoning her, and his mouth came down to hers in a shocking kiss that was pure thousand-watt electricity.

The pressure was intense, searing with a heat she could never have imagined from such a cold, inhospitable Prince of Evil. It charged through her whole body, turning bones to jelly, skin to flame, sending emotions through the roof of her head. Her head swam dizzily as the pressure on her mouth eased and drifted and swirled into something more infinitely dangerous than the initial thrust, a softness that stilled her pulses till she thought her life’s blood had ceased to function her heart. Her heart was floundering badly and nothing else was working either. Suddenly she realised the pressure on her mouth had gone and she fluttered her eyes open. She stared at him in horror, shocked that he had done that, shocked that she hadn’t done anything to stop it.

His dark eyes were riveted on where his lips had just assaulted her, drinking in her heated lips with the same ferocity. Her tongue snaked out to balm those lips, to somehow smooth away the fire that stung as if he had used his riding crop on them. His eyes shifted up to meet hers and his voice when it came was soft and beguiling yet speaking arrogant poison that wrenched at her sensibilities, infuriating her even more.

‘I suspect that will go a long way to dispersing any animosity between us.’

Taking her upper arm, he urged her into the next room, pushing her ahead of him, kicking the door shut behind him with a highly polished riding boot.

Drunk with fury and frustration for not defending herself against those arrogantly spoken words, she spun dizzily into the room, the clicking of the door behind her going nowhere near to snapping her out of her shock. Her head started to clear as Ellis Frazer strode across the room to a silver coffee-service elegantly arranged on a side-table by long French doors overlooking a rose garden.

The scent of roses was the first sensation that registered with Caroline, then the heat of the room from a blazing coal fire in the Adam-style grate. It was a warm September day and a fire was unnecessary; then Caroline noticed the wheelchair positioned in front of it.

There was a sudden whirring sound as the chair moved and slowly turned to face her and it was in that moment that Caroline swallowed down her anger and frustration with Ellis Frazer.

The fragile lady that focused her gaze on Caroline took her breath away. Once she had been a raving beauty, Caroline recognised that immediately, but she still was beautiful, in a hauntingly pale, luminous way. Her hair was snow-white, piled high on top of her head, her face, though ravaged by illness, was perfectly made up. She was dressed in pale lilac silk which added to her appearance of delicacy and her jewellery was the finest of amethysts set in platinum around her fragile throat. She was a lady, a true lady in spite of the clumsy wheelchair she sat elegantly in. A light blue cashmere rug was draped over her legs, legs which Caroline instinctively knew were of no use to her now.

Ellis Frazer’s mother stared at Caroline for a full minute, a minute in which Caroline sensed she was being coolly assessed but not appraised. When she spoke, to Caroline’s dismay, it was with the same arrogant coldness which characterised her son.

‘You look nothing like a sculptress,’ she stated positively, as if, since she said it, it must be.

‘Caroline is, I assure you, Mother, the best, so don’t give her a hard time.’

That was good coming from him, Caroline thought, at the same time wondering if she should step closer to the woman. She stayed where she was, midway between that formidable wheelchair and the door Ellis Frazer had just propelled her through.

‘My mother, Vanessa Frazer,’ he told Caroline, pouring coffee as he spoke. ‘You might be honoured by being allowed to call her Vanessa—if she likes you,’ he went on, adding cryptically, ‘But don’t count on it.’ He spooned sugar in a coffee-cup and added a few drops of cream before taking it over to his mother.

Wide-eyed, Caroline gaped at the two of them, knowing deep in her heart that if she stayed and did this job it would be the most difficult of her life..

‘So what does she call you?’ Vanessa Frazer directed at her son, meaning Caroline but ignoring her as if she weren’t even on the same planet, let alone in the same room. ‘Not darling already, surely?’ she went on bitingly. ‘She looks far too sensible to fall for your disputable charms like the rest of them do. Heaven knows what they see in an ugly, whip-cracking tyrant like you but then most of them have been mindless society beauties only seduced by your money and your connections.’

Caroline listened in fascinated horror at the cutting words that spilled from her mouth.

Vanessa Frazer suddenly looked Caroline directly in the eye. ‘You wouldn’t be swayed into his bed by the thought of his wealth, would you?’ She immediately answered her own question before it had barely registered with a shocked Caroline. ‘Of course you wouldn’t. Far too sensible. Come closer; let me take a good look at you.’

Holy Mary! Caroline thought in utter dismay. This was a scene out of Dickens’ Great Expectations!

‘It’s for Caroline to scrutinise you, Mother, not the other way about,’ Ellis told her firmly. ‘Drop the Miss Havisham act and drink your coffee while I pour one for Caroline. Milk or cream?’ he asked her.

‘Neither,’ Caroline uttered weakly, still reeling at his perception in likening this scenario to the one she had been thinking of. But it wasn’t so surprising, she supposed; the two of them were as eccentric as any of Dickens’ characters.

‘So I live in a world of make-believe,’ Vanessa Frazer mused on, talking to no one in particular. ‘It’s all I have these days, that and memories. Nothing to live for because it’s all gone. I’m going out with a whimper because to fight is too wearing——’

‘Get out the violins,’ Ellis interjected quickly and to Caroline so cruelly that her hand shook as she took the coffee he brought to her. ‘It gets worse,’ Ellis told her, loud enough for his mother to hear. ‘She eats nurses for breakfast but before she does she reduces them to nervous wrecks with her demands and her insults. She enjoys it too.’

‘The only pleasure I have these days,’ Vanessa said sourly, burying her nose in her coffee-cup as if sniffing for poison. She lifted her head and nodded towards her son. ‘He gives me nothing but heartache.’