Lovers Touch

Quarter day … of course Her grandfather still had stuck by the old-fashioned calendar all his life, and he had left intructions in his will that every quarter day she was to present her household accounts to Joss, as first his wife and then his sister had once presented theirs to him.

‘Oh, yes, the accounts. Well, they’re all here.’

She got up tiredly, so that he could take her seat and study the books open in front of her. As she stood, her body reacted to its tiredness and she stumbled awkwardly, catching her hipbone on the corner of the desk. The impact sent a shock-wave of pain through her, making her catch her bottom lip between her teeth.

She saw Joss frown, the amber eyes flaming as they always did when he was annoyed. Of course, her clumsiness would be offensive to a man used to women who only moved with elegance.

‘You look as though you haven’t slept in a month, and you’re too thin,’ he told her brutally. ‘What the hell are you doing to yourself?’

‘Nothing,’ Nell countered, adding pettishly for some reason she couldn’t define, ‘I wish you wouldn’t allow Grania to believe that her allowance comes from Gramps’ estate, Joss. It makes it difficult for me.’

‘You know she believes this place should be sold and the proceeds split between you?’ he interrupted her.

Nell gripped the edge of the desk with slender fingers and agreed bleakly. ‘Yes.’

‘But of course your grandfather felt, as she isn’t a de Tressail by birth, that she should be excluded from inheriting from the estate. A court of law might very probably take a different point of view.’

Nell swallowed painfully. Was Joss telling her that he shared Grania’s view that Gramps had been unfair in not leaving the house to them jointly?

‘Gramps wanted the house to stay with the family. He hated the thought of it being sold.’

She had to blink back emotional tears and keep her face averted from him. She wasn’t like Grania, she couldn’t cry prettily. At Gramps’ funeral she had been too anguished to do anything more than simply watch in frozen silence. It had been Grania who wept, silent, pretty tears that barely touched her make-up, her head restling vulnerably against Joss’s chest.

She had watched them, telling herself she was a fool for the jealousy she felt. Joss would never look at her. In the three years she had known him, the only time he had come anywhere near embracing her had been the first Christmas. He had arrived at the house on Christmas Eve to see her grandfather. Nell had let him in and his eyes had gone briefly to the mistletoe hanging in the hall, and then to her mouth as he stepped inside. Even now she could still feel her pulses flutter dangerously at the recollection of that moment when she had known he was going to kiss her.

His mouth had been hard and warm and she had quivered in his arms, unable to hold back the sensations storming her. He had released her immediately, stepping back from her, and she was sure she had read derision in his eyes as her grandfather came into the hall to welcome him.

He had not touched her since, and she could hardly blame him. She was not his type of woman and she never would be.

‘I know,’ Joss told her drily. ‘One could almost say, in fact, that he was obsessed with it, to the point where the continuation of the de Tressail name and the family’s occupation of this house were more important to him than anything else. More important than you, for instance, Nell,’ he added cruelly.

‘Yes … he never really got over the fact that my father had no son,’ she agreed evenly, ignoring the look in his eyes.

‘Do you know what his plans were, had he remained alive?’ Joss asked her abruptly.

Nell looked at him. ‘Plans for what?’

‘For the continuation of the de Tressail family,’ Joss told her mockingly. ‘For your marriage, Nell, and the production of a great-grandson to carry on the name.’

‘He had no plans,’ Nell told him huskily, frowning as she saw the derision in his eyes. ‘Joss, the days are gone when families arranged marriages.’

‘Are they? Your grandfather was a desperate man, and desperate men do strange things. Six months before he died, your grandfather asked me if I would marry you.’

Nell was stunned, her white face giving away her feelings.

‘Surprised, Nell, that he should even consider such a marriage? With a self-made man like myself with no breeding or background; no family history stretching back for generation upon generation? But you forget one thing. I have one valuable asset: I’m rich … very rich. I have the money that Easterhay so desperately needs.’

Nell wasn’t listening. She swung round, her face in her hands as she murmured frantically, ‘How could he? Oh, how could he?’

‘Quite easily,’ Joss told her calmly. ‘To him, it was an almost ideal solution to your family’s problems.’

Beneath the weight of her shame and betrayal that her grandfather should humiliate her in such a way, she was desperately aware of how amused and contemptuous Joss must be. She was the very last woman he would want as his wife, and no doubt he was now going to enjoy letting her know it.

To stop him she said frantically, ‘The whole thing’s absurd. Poor Gramps. He was so ill towards the end that …’

‘His mind was as sound as yours or mine,’ Joss interrupted brutally,’ and you know it. What’s wrong, Nell? Having second thoughts now that you’re actually being called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice? It was all all right when you were playing at being the struggling Lady of the Manor, proudly trying to keep things going, but when a real solution to your problems presents itself, you flinch from taking it. No need to ask myself why, of course. I’ve no doubt that given your choice, you’d much rather have someone like Williams as a husband.

‘Unfortunately though, my dear, he has even less money than you do yourself, and you’d never keep this place going with what he earns as a country solicitor. Make your mind up to it, Nell. It’s either marry me or sell up.’

‘Marry you?’ Nell stared at him, her eyes dark with shock. ‘Joss, you can’t possibly be serious about this.’

‘Why not?’

‘But why? Why would you want to marry me?’

She missed the look he gave her.

‘How very modest you are,’ he said silkily after he had controlled it. ‘Surely it’s obvious, Nell? I’m a self-made man who’s made it financially in life, but, like all self-made men, I now want to crown my financial success with social acceptance. Not just for me, but for my children, especially my sons … my eldest son,’ he added meaningfully.

And then, in case she hadn’t understood, he added coolly, ‘Marriage to you will open doors which would otherwise have remained closed. Our son will inherit your grandfather’s title … Surely, Nell, you know how much men of my class yearn to become members of the aristocracy?’

She was sure he was mocking her. In all the three years she had known him, Joss had never once exhibited the slightest degree of envy for her grandfather’s social standing, and it stunned her to discover now that he was actually contemplating marrying her for the reasons he had just stated.

It was her grandfather’s fault, of course. He was the one who had initially put the idea in his head, but Joss had obviously not been slow to pick it up.

Unless, of course, he was simply making fun of her, constructing a hugely elaborate joke at her expense. Her common sense told her this was hardly likely.

‘Joss, I can’t marry you,’ she protested, struggling to deny the emotions churning inside her. Our son ̣. our son … the words seemed to reverberate inside her head, until she couldn’t hear anything else. In those two words, he had conjured up such an enormity of complex emotions and sensations within her that she could barely accommodate them all. To have a child by this man whom she loved so desperately. To live with him here in this house. To be his wife … but she was allowing herself to be swept away into a fantasy world.

Joss wasn’t talking about marriage as she envisaged it; he was talking about a coldly calculated business arrangement; a marriage that would have no emotions, no feelings, no love, and that would be nothing other than a mere exchange of assets. His money for her title and home.

It happened, of course it happened, even in these enlightened times, but not to her … never to her.

‘It was what your grandfather wanted, Nell,’ he warned her. ‘An ideal solution to a problem which never ceased to worry him.’

How dared he add to her guilt? He knew what he was doing to her by telling her that, although she didn’t doubt for a moment that he was telling the truth and that her grandfather had seen it as an ideal solution to their financial problems.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered painfully.

‘No …? Then I’m afraid you leave me no choice. As Grania’s trustee, I really have no alternative but to support her claim to half of your grandfather’s estate. In the courts, if necessary. Of course, if we were married, I’ve no doubt I could come to some suitable arrangement with Grania … a lump sum in lieu of what she considers due to her …’

Nell stared at him in disbelief and then whispered frozenly, ‘That’s blackmail.’

The dark eyebrows rose, and her mouth trembled as much with anguish as with anything else.

‘These days we call it gamesmanship … the art of being one step ahead of your rival.’ He flicked back the cuff of the jacket he was wearing. ‘I’ve got to be back in London this evening, and I shan’t be back until the early hours. I’ll come over in the morning, Nell. You can give me your answer then,’ he told her, ignoring her protest that he already had it.

He had no mercy … no mercy at all, Nell acknowledged half an hour later. She was huddled over the empty fire, her grandfather’s dog at her knee.