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  And he moved so that she could feel the truth of his statement in the arousal of his body, not intimidating at all, she realised in surprise, but pleasurably awesome, making her feel intensely female and powerful that she should be able to have this effect on him.

  Beneath his light caress her breasts ached, her nipples tight and hard. When he brushed one softly with his thumb, fierce darts of sensation pulsed through her, making her insides ache in unexpected recognition of her need.

  ‘Joss.’ She said his name uncertainly, an unspoken plea darkening her eyes as she looked at him. She had been prepared to want him, but she hadn’t realised it would be like this. She hadn’t realised that just this brief physical contact would make her ache for him with an intensity that went beyond pride and self-respect; that just that brief taste of him would make her want to adore his body with her hands and mouth.

  She found it extraordinary that she had never felt like this before; never suspected herself of being capable of this depth of physical abandonment; never known how powerfully strong her own desires could be.

  ‘Shush,’ he told her. ‘It’s all right.’ And his voice rasped slightly, raw and very different from the cool, often remote tone she was used to.

  ‘It’s all right, Nell,’ he repeated thickly. ‘I just want to look at you … to touch you.’

  And he eased back the duvet so that the thin light from the new moon filtered through the darkness and bathed her skin in a fragile silver-white beam that seemed to highlight all the shadows and curves of her flesh, making them mysterious and alluring and, even to her own eyes, unfamilar.

  Had her waist always had that narrow, vulnerable curve; her breasts that unexpectedly voluptuous fullness crowned with nipples whose aureoles were surely darker and larger than she recalled?

  Even the curve of her hip was offered up to the moon’s mysterious invoking light, the graceful line of her thigh and the delicacy of her ankle-bone all known to her, and yet in some way unknown, and, against their silvery paleness, absorbing rather than reflecting the light like her flesh, was the male darkness of Joss’s body.

  She sucked in a shallow breath as she gazed at the indentation of his waist, the flat hardness of his buttocks, the strength of his thigh where it covered her own flesh; a statement of ownership and possession.

  She shivered suddenly, raising a rash of goose-bumps from her throat to her hip.

  Her breath locked in her chest as Joss stroked her skin with one finger, smoothing delicately over the sensitive flesh, from her collarbone down over her breast.

  When he reached its flushed crest it seemed to Nell that he trembled—or was it her?—and then he said thickly, ‘Oh, God, Nell!’

  And for the first time in her life she experienced the tumultuous sensation aroused by a man’s mouth against her breast, as Joss gently sucked her nipple into his mouth. She must have cried out, although she wasn’t aware of it. Joss tensed and then released her, covering her moist nipple with his hand, as though he couldn’t bear to relinquish all contact with her.

  She was bathed in fine perspiration, her eyes dark and shocked.

  ‘I never knew it would feel like that,’ she said huskily, barely able to focus on him, conscious only of the intensity of what she was feeling.

  He caressed the swollen tip of her breast and she shuddered violently, unable to control the response that convulsed her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Joss told her. ‘It’s just that some women have exceptionally sensitive breasts, so sensitive in fact that …’ He broke off, and Nell wondered if he knew about the pulsing ache tormenting her lower body … if he knew exactly what effect he was having on her … A wave of shame washed over her. How could she be so uncontrolled, so, so …

  As though he knew what she was thinking, Joss groaned and gathered her against him so that the sensitive crests of her breasts rubbed against his chest, making her moan softly.

  ‘It’s all right, Nell … it’s all right …’ he reassured her, but Nell felt far from all right. Her whole body ached and pulsed, and she almost cried out with frustration when he slowly released her and moved away from her.

  He didn’t want her, after all. He had changed his mind about making love to her. Where she should have felt relief, she felt only anguish.

  She closed her eyes and then opened them abruptly as she felt Joss cup her breasts in his hands, shuddering wildly, as he caressed one and then the other with his mouth, sucking gently at first and then far less gently as he felt her abandoned response.

  Her spine arched, her nails digging into his shoulders, leaving tiny crescent marks as she cried out her pleasure.

  She was barely aware of Joss lifting her, moving her and even touching her, other than to dimly recognise above the fierce crescendo of her need that the gentle stroke of his fingers against the most intimate part of her soothed and comforted the tormenting ache aroused by the hot drag of his mouth against her breasts.

  It was only when he moved and lifted her on top of him that she realised what he was doing, and tensed.

  ‘It’s all right, Nell,’ he told her. ‘This way, you’ll be the one in control. You’ll be able to see as well as feel everything that’s happening.’

  Never in her wildest imaginings had she dreamed her initiation would be like this; that she would know the heady power of delicately absorbing his flesh within her own, and seeing in his face what she was doing to him.

  And then abruptly their roles changed and she cried out as she felt the sharp flash of pain, the sound silenced by Joss’s mouth as he kissed her and soothed her, seeming to know exactly when it faded, his hand on her hips tutoring her body to the rhythm of his.

  She felt within her an urgent reaching out, a desperate striving for some unknown goal, which despite her need remained elusive even though her body shook and trembled with her frantic attemtps to reach it.

  ‘Gently, Nell, gently,’ Joss said hoarsely against her ear, and miraculously he was right; as she allowed her body to respond to his tutoring, she felt the tiny ripples begin and then swell until they surged and exploded in mind-destroying eddies of pleasure that left her weak and drained.

  She felt the pulsing release of Joss’s body within her own, and wondered vaguely if she would conceive. It hardly seemed important in the light of her discovery of how pleasurable physical satisfaction could be.

  But if she didn’t love Joss, would she have felt like this? Somehow she doubted it. The thought was instantly sobering. She felt Joss move beside her, and turned the head to see that he was getting dressed. Of course. Now that his purpose was accomplished, there was little point in him staying, she reflected miserably. She was not what he was used to and no doubt she had bored him. She had often heard it said that experienced men did not particularly like making love to virgins.

  Joss was half dressed now. She, too, ought … but, as she moved, Joss stopped her, pulling on his shirt, and leaving it unfastened as he leaned down and, wrapping the quilt round her, lifted her off the bed.

  ‘Joss … What are you doing?’

  ‘Taking you to your room,’ he told her. ‘Making love for the first time can be physically and emotionally exhausting.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that I can’t walk to my bedroom,’ Nell told him.

  ‘True.’ He smiled at her, and she had an overwhelming urge to trace the curled line of his mouth, which she fought to resist. ‘But, since I can’t spend the night with you, allow me at least this indulgence, Nell.’

  She looked at the bed, and bright colour flooded her skin as he said calmly, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see to everything before I go.’

  He remembered which was her room, although Nell saw that his mouth tightened as he looked round it.

  ‘Why is there no heating?’

  ‘Aunt Honoria didn’t approve of heating in the bedrooms,’ she told him primly as he put her down on her bed.

  She wondered if he would kiss her, and was disappointed when he didn’t.

&nbs
p; As he straightened up, he said softly, ‘It’s too late for second thoughts now, Nell.’ His hand pressed lightly against her stomach, and it was almost as though her womb actually contracted beneath his touch.

  She fell asleep still wrapped in the quilt, not waking until it was daylight, wondering frantically what on earth Mrs Booth would have thought if she had happened to walk into her bedroom.

  Nell had never in her life slept in the nude … had never in her life had the kind of betraying small bruises on her skin that her body displayed now. Had never in her life experienced the enervating lassitude that possessed her limbs, nor known this faint soreness.

  All the time she was dressing she thought about Joss. About how he had touched her … about how her had aroused her … about how he had made love to her.

  And her heart sang. Perhaps their marriage might work out, after all … perhaps …

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WITHIN hours Nell had come crashing back down to earth. When she saw the chauffeur-driven Rolls pull up in front of the house her stomach muscles tightened pleasurably in anticipation of Joss’s appearance, only it wasn’t Joss who stepped out of the immaculately polished car, it was Fiona.

  Stifling her disappointment, Nell went downstairs to meet her.

  As always, the other woman was immaculately and expensively dressed. Nell, who had been helping Mrs Knowles to fit the newly made covers on to the old furniture, was wearing one of her new pairs of jeans and a sweatshirt.

  Under Liz’s approving eye, the outfit had seemed both practical and attractive; now with Fiona studying her with amused contempt, it merely looked scruffy.

  She had come, she explained, to get Nell’s signature to some forms that were required to open the bank accounts Joss was organising for her.

  As Nell led the way into the library, she thought that Fiona looked as smug as a cream-fed cat, and the other woman’s self-assurance only added to her own feelings of inadequacy.

  Feelings which had doubled and tripled overnight to such an extent that she was badly in need of Joss’s reassurance. As he had promised he would do, he had left the bedroom pristine neat.

  She signed the forms quickly, without speaking to Fiona, but something must have given her away because she said in evident amusement, ‘Poor Joss. He was rather apprehensive about coming to see you today, after last night.’

  Nell felt her heart thud and leap against her chest wall.

  She kept her head bent over the papers, but she knew her hand shook as Fiona studied them and pointed out where she had omitted one signature.

  She knew, too, that the other woman had seen the betraying tremor.

  ‘Poor darling. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to go through with it. I told him, it’s normally the woman who has to lie back and think of England. I told him to close his eyes and imagine that …’

  Nell couldn’t take any more. She stood up quickly, scattering papers all over the desk. She was breathing quickly, and she knew her face had lost all its colour.

  Handing Fiona the signed papers, she said with quiet dignity, ‘I believe you’ve got everything you came for. Please leave.’

  And then she did something she did very, very rarely. She touched the bell beside the desk, and when Johnson appeared, looking rather surprised and concerned, she asked him to show Fiona out.

  She saw from the other woman’s face that she was not pleased, and it gave her a brief stab of satisfaction, but that soon disappeared once she was alone and forced to confront what Fiona had said to her.

  She could hardly believe that Joss had actually discussed something so private and personal with his secretary, no matter what their relationship, and Joss had told her that they were not lovers. Had he lied to her? Not about that … but perhaps, by omission, about Fiona’s feelings for him? He must know she was in love with him and, knowing that, he had voluntarily betrayed Nell to her. How could he have humiliated her in such a way? Humiliated them both?

  Last night, she had thought she had seen, if not love, then at least tenderness and concern in his eyes; now she knew how cruelly self-deceptive she had been.

  And it wasn’t entirely Joss’s fault. He had told her why he was making love to her, warned her that there was only one reason; but she, self-deluded fool that she was, had thought that the desire of his body was for her as a person … as a woman.

  Now she knew she was wrong. Oh, but how could he have discussed her with Fiona like that? Have allowed the other woman to know how little he desired her, especially after they had agreed that they would behave like any other couple in love?

  She couldn’t marry him now. She wouldn’t marry him now. And then she looked around the room and remembered her promise to her grandfather. Her hand touched her stomach lightly and she trembled. Supposing she had already conceived Joss’s child? He was right, she was not strong enough to bring up her child alone … outside the bonds of marriage. She admired those women who could, for their strength and their self-reliance, but her strengths were not theirs. There was no escape for her.

  Half-way through the morning a man arrived and announced that he had been sent by Joss to install a central heating system. Despite the fact that, in the winter, Nell hated the cold dampness of the house and her great-aunt’s belief that cold fresh air was necessary and healthy, she immediately felt resentful that Joss should have arranged something without consulting her.

  She got Johnson to show the man round and went back to her self-imposed task of cleaning the silver.

  Normally for wedding buffets she hired cutlery and china, but for her own … There were cast canteens of initialled family silver dating back to late Victorian times. The Georgian silver had been sold by her grandfather and never replaced, but even the Edwardian sets would probably be valuable now, she reflected as she and Mrs Booth worked companionably side by side cleaning it.

  Somewhere in one of the cupboards was the dinner-service which had been specially commissioned for her great-grandmother’s wedding. She suspected that it was probably packed away in the attic, and, as she remembered from her great-aunt’s stories, there had been over one hundred and fifty guests at the wedding breakfast. The days were gone when people commissoned a dinner-service especially for one special event, even if once it had been common practice among the wealthy.

  Nell had never seen the service. She knew it was Spode and suggested to the housekeeper that they try to find it. She had already had a telephone call from the dealer who was going to view the china, and he was calling round later in the afternoon on behalf of his client, so that too had to be washed and displayed, and Nell chose to place it on the table in the formal dining-room.

  ‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ she commented when she and the housekeeper had finished this task. ‘It’s hard to believe it’s so valuable. Lucky for me, though.’

  Mrs Booth was as well aware as the rest of the staff of Nell’s financial problems, and, knowing that she was not the kind to gossip, Nell added quietly, ‘You see, with the money I’ll get from this, I’ll be able to pay for the wedding myself. And for the work I’ve organised on the house. Perhaps it’s old-fashioned of me.’

  If Mrs Booth found it odd that Nell should want to spend what little capital she had when she was on the point of marrying an extremely wealthy man, she kept it to herself. Nell couldn’t really explain even to herself just why she felt she had to make this final gesture of indpendence. She only knew that she could not allow Joss to pay for her wedding dress, for the new clothes she had bought, and the new underwear that Liz had slyly insisted on adding to their purchases. Had she been pressed to give a reason, she would have had to say that it just wasn’t the proper thing to do, but there was more to it than that. Perhaps even a desire to prove to Joss that though he might have bought the house and the title … he could not buy her.

  It was just after three-thirty when the antiques dealer arrived. Nell took him straight through to the dining-room where the china was displayed, and then stood pat
iently to one side while he examined every piece.

  ‘It’s excellent,’ he pronounced at length. ‘My client will be delighted. I’m empowered to offer you …’ and he named a sum that made Nell almost gasp in delighted shock. ‘That is for the full set, of course. It’s very rare to find one in such good condition. This one looks as though it has barely been used.’

  Nell just stopped herself from telling him that the reason why it was in such good condition was that no one had liked it; it seemed hardly politic in view of the vast sum he was offering her for it.

  She and Mrs Booth helped him pack it up carefully, the bankers’ draft he had made out in Nell’s own name carefully locked away in the desk drawer.

  They were just wrapping the final few pieces, Nell on her knees at the dealer’s side, in the dining-room, when Joss walked in.

  The sight of him, so unexpected when she hadn’t expected to see him and was unprepared for the jolting shock of pleasure seeing him always gave her, robbed her both of colour and breath, so that she could only kneel there staring up at him while he surveyed the chaos on the floor with frowning concentration.

  ‘What’s going on here? Doing a moonlight flit, Nell?’ he demanded harshly.

  Her colour flooded back, and the dealer discreetly got up, picking up the last box.

  ‘Thank you again, and if there’s anything else you wish to dispose of …’

  He handed her his card, gave Joss a brief smile, shook hands formally with Nell and was gone, hurriedly escorted away by Mrs Booth.

  ‘What exactly is it you’re disposing of Nell, and why? I wonder. Do you suspect I’m going to make a mean husband? Or is there another reason … a nest egg? A little something tucked away for the future? Running away money, Nell? Is that what this is all about?’

  He was angry, bitterly, furiously angry, and he had no right to be.

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that morally, if not legally, the contents of this house are now at least half mine. Is that why you’re selling them now, Nell? Before we’re married? What else are you arranging to dispose of? I wonder … perhaps I ought to have done an inventory …’