A Husband's Revenge. Lee Wilkinson
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quite a reputation as a goer...’ There was contempt in the deep voice. Softly, he added, ‘You’re very like her.’
Every trace of colour draining from her face, she sat quite still. Surely she couldn’t be the kind of woman he was describing?
Watching her expressive face mirror her consternation, he allowed a scornful little smile to play around his lips.
In response to that smile, she lifted her chin. No, she refused to believe it. Some fundamental self-knowledge told her he must be wrong.
‘I can’t answer for my mother,’ she said calmly, ‘but I’m sure I’m not like that.’
‘You’re the image of her in looks...’
‘That doesn’t necessarily make me like her.’
As though she hadn’t spoken, he went on, ‘You both have the kind of beauty that can drive any man wild.’
Clare shook her head. ‘When I woke in the hospital I had no idea what I looked like. The nurse gave me a mirror. I’m not even pretty.’
‘You’re far more than pretty. You’re fascinating. Wholly bewitching.’
But the way he spoke the words made them a damning indictment rather than a compliment.
A shiver ran through her. ‘I didn’t bewitch you,’ she said with certainty.
His voice brittle as ice crystals, he contradicted her. ‘Oh, but my darling, you did.’
She didn’t believe it for one moment. Almost in despair, she asked, ‘Why did you marry me?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘I don’t know. If I’m like my mother—’ She broke off in confusion.
‘You mean it wouldn’t have been necessary?’ He smiled like a tiger. ‘If I’d only wanted a casual affair, it wouldn’t have been.’
He spoke with such certainty that her blood turned to ice in her veins.
‘But I wanted a great deal more than that...’
Without knowing why, she shivered. ‘So what did you want?’ Perhaps she needed to hear him put it into words, like some coup de grâce.
His mouth smiled, but his eyes were cold as green glass. ‘I wanted to own you body and soul.’
She shivered again. Then slowly, almost as if in accusation, she said, ‘You didn’t love me.’
With no reason to dissemble, he told her matter-of-factly, ‘I never pretended to. On the contrary, I went to great lengths not to mention the word “love”, so there would be no possibility that you could have any illusions, be under any misapprehension...’
Filled with a lost, bleak emptiness that was far worse than anything she had yet experienced, she accepted the fact that he had never loved her and she must have been aware of that.
Then why had she married him?
Recalling the overwhelming effect his kisses had had on her, one reason immediately sprang to mind. Yet surely common sense would have prevented her marrying a man simply because he attracted her physically?
Unless that attraction had developed into an infatuation and, more like her mother than she wanted to believe, she’d been unable to help herself...
‘And neither was I...’ Jos was going on, his voice like polished steel. ‘I knew perfectly well why you agreed to marry me.’
Shrinking inwardly at the realisation that her sexual enslavement must have been obvious, she waited for him to crow.
Incredibly, he said, ‘I was wealthy, and you wanted a rich husband.’
At that moment all she could feel was relief. The fact that he didn’t realise how obsessed she must have been went some way towards salving her pride.
‘Someone who could give you the right kind of lifestyle.’
‘It’s my impression that I already had that.’ Somehow she kept her voice steady.
‘Ah, but you didn’t. When you left your smart finishing-school, for some reason—you never told me exactly what—you struck out on your own. You rented a small cottage in the village and took a job in a real estate office while you waited for the opportunity to catch a suitable husband.’
‘Did I tell you that?’ she asked sharply.
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘And I suppose by “suitable” you mean...?’
‘Stinking rich.’ He spoke bitterly. ‘Because of the kind of life your parents led—jet—setting, champagne parties, lots of entertaining-they always lived above their income, and I suppose you must have realised there’d be nothing left when they died. Therefore, you needed to hook a man with money.’
The picture he was painting of her was a far from pleasant one. Pushing back a tendril of dark silky hair, she objected, ‘If I was an ordinary working girl, what chance would I have had of ever meeting any rich men?’
‘Hardly ordinary. You still had that air of good breeding, that finishing-school gloss, and Ashleigh Kent, the firm you worked for, was an up-market one, dealing mainly with wealthy clients wanting country estates and the like. In fact that was where I met you—when I was over in England on a business trip.’
‘And you blame me for hooking you?’ That explained at least some of the hostility she sensed in him.
To her amazement, he shook his head. ‘No, I don’t blame you for that. It would be different if you’d used your wiles to try and captivate me, but you didn’t, did you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted huskily. ‘I don’t know what I did, how I acted...’
‘Like a perfect lady.’ His lips twisted into a smile that wasn’t a smile. ‘You intrigued me from the first moment I laid eyes on you. Though you were obviously attracted to me, you looked at me with such composure, such cool reserve.’
Whereas a lot of women, she guessed, would drool over a man with his kind of looks and that amount of blatant sex appeal.
Slowly, she said, ‘You seem pretty sure I was looking for a rich husband...so if I didn’t, as you put it, use my “wiles” to try to catch you...’ She hesitated. ‘Why didn’t I?’
‘When I first asked you to have dinner with me, you refused without giving a reason. I found out later that you already had Graham Ashleigh—who was worth quite a bit—in your sights.
‘Though I didn’t think the...shall we say attachment... on your side, at least, was too serious, and I had a great deal more to offer financially, it still took me over a week to persuade you to go out with me.’
He sounded annoyed.
Her smile ironic, she suggested, ‘Perhaps I was just playing hard to get.’
Privately she thought it far more probable that she’d been chicken—scared stiff by all that overpowering masculinity.
He shook his head. ‘Somehow I feel that playing hard to get isn’t your style... It certainly wasn’t your mother’s.’
She flinched at his deliberate unkindness.
‘But that’s enough delving into the past for the moment,’ Jos said decidedly. With a short, sharp sigh, he rose to his feet and stretched long limbs. ‘Now I suggest a breath of air. If you have no objection to New Yorkers en masse, Saturday afternoon is a good time to take a stroll in the park. Feel up to it?’
His tone was neutral, neither friendly nor unfriendly, and, only too happy to leave the confines of the bedroom, she agreed eagerly. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Then, unwilling to get out of bed while he was there, she added, ‘If you’ll give me a few minutes...?’