The Accidental Mistress Page 17

  But she had got rid of the underpinnings somehow, and the way she was curling and writhing to get out of the silky skirts was more than flesh and blood could take unmoved.

  I’ll think about it later, he promised himself, bending to take one lifting nipple in his mouth. And, as she moaned, A long time later.

  And after that nothing was little any more. And nothing went wrong.

  She fell asleep abruptly, still sweat slicked, her body utterly surrendering to profound peace, as if she had not slept well in a long time. For a while Dom leaned on his elbow, watching her. In spite of his sated body, he was aware of faint regret. He wished she had told him her name.

  Well, he knew it, of course. Izzy. They had been introduced, for heaven’s sake. And she had told him again this afternoon, only it was Cuban dance music that had got it out of her, not love of Dominic Templeton-Burke. He tried to be amused. She was not a very good liar, his lady in red.

  He pushed curling tendrils of red hair gently back from her forehead. Not a very good liar at all. When she made love she gave up her whole heart with her limber body. No evasions, no pretences, no make-believe. Just—

  Love?

  It was a sobering thought. But it was right. He knew it. Dom bent and feathered a kiss across the air above her parted lips.

  Her nose wrinkled and she puffed a little in her sleep. He grinned, settling himself down to sleep beside her at last.

  It definitely paid off, he thought drowsily, holding out for the best. Most sensible thing he’d ever done. Tomorrow he would tell her. In fact tomorrow he would point out that they were destined for each other and she had better get used to it. Oh, and tell her that he knew her name.

  That should be good for a couple of hours’ fireworks, he thought, grinning. And fell into the sleep of total satisfaction.

  Izzy did not know what time it was when she came awake. The sky beyond the strange window was grey, just lifting into morning. She slid out of bed and padded across the uneven boards. The moon was still out, pale as water, and you could make out one or two of the brighter stars. But it was nearly morning.

  She wrapped her arms round herself. She was naked. Inside and out, she thought, trying to make a joke of it. She felt cold to her bones.

  Beside her, the man she loved and had lied to comprehensively stirred. He muttered something. She was not sure what. Maybe ‘Honey’.

  The all-purpose term of affection when you can’t remember who you went to bed with the night before, thought Izzy. She felt sick.

  She looked round, but she could not see her clothes. His jacket had fallen into a heap just inside the door, though. She picked it up and huddled it round her. The lining had to be silk, from the sensuous way it slithered across her skin. And the coat smelled of sandalwood.

  Sandalwood was going to remind her of this man for the rest of her life. She sniffed hard.

  A sleepy voice from the bed said, ‘Darling?’

  Another safely impersonal term of endearment!

  ‘Don’t call me darling,’ she flashed.

  He jack-knifed up in the bed.

  ‘What’s going on…?’

  Quite suddenly Izzy could not bear it. She was trembling again. But not with passion any more. Not even with laughter. She could not remember that she had ever felt either—not for this man, not for anyone. All she could feel was a great fog of self-disgust.

  He got out of bed and padded towards her, unselfconscious in his magnificent nakedness.

  ‘My love, what is it? A bad dream? Tell me.’

  A bad dream! Yes, that was what this was. From the moment she’d seen him in those beastly, beastly combats. He was her nightmare, waiting to take her back into the pit of darkness….

  He put an arm round her.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said in a voice like honed steel.

  Horrified, Dom tore his hands away and stepped back.

  ‘What is it? What is it?’

  But she was not making any sense. Even Izzy knew it. And that attempted embrace, so touching, so warm, was her undoing. She began to judder like an earthquake and her words fell over themselves. All he could make out was ‘third date’ and ‘whatever I have to’.

  Dom could not bear to see her so distressed.

  He hooked a chair forward with his foot and urged her into it. He judged that now would not be a good time to touch her. Then he went to the old-fashioned chest of drawers and dug out a decanter. He unstoppered it and sniffed.

  ‘Madeira for Uncle Gerald. God knows how long it’s been there.’ He poured some into a glass. ‘Have a sip anyway.’

  She gulped it down like medicine.

  ‘That bad, huh?’

  She shook her head. She could not manage a smile. There was a lingering look of horror in her eyes that filled him with dread, though he did not know why.

  He pulled a cover off the bed and wrapped it round her shoulders, taking care not to touch her flinching skin. Then he pulled an old robe out of the wardrobe and sat crosslegged on the rug at her feet. He did not attempt to touch her again. But he looked up into her face as gently as a caress.

  ‘Want to tell me what that was about?’

  He saw her throat move. Hastily he reached for Uncle’s Gerald’s Madeira again.

  ‘I knew there had to be a reason for having a dipsomaniac in the family,’ he muttered, trying to find some healing laughter. ‘The old buffer just justified his existence.’

  Izzy tried a smile. It was as pallid as the morning moon out there, though. Dom shook his head, concerned.

  What can be this bad? he wondered. Tell me, my love. But he said it silently.

  She said with difficulty, ‘You’re very kind, aren’t you?’

  ‘Kind?’ said Dom, revolted. ‘Me? Nah.’

  ‘You are. I’m sorry. I—should have been straight with you. Only I thought—this time—it didn’t seem—’

  He held up a hand.

  ‘Hold on there. Transmission breaking up. Can you run that past me again? Starting with the bit where you should have been straight with me. Straight about what?’

  Izzy sniffed and knuckled her nose, for all the world like one of yesterday afternoon’s penguins, thought Dom.

  His eyes lit with tender laughter. He fished a pristine handkerchief from the chest of drawers behind him and handed it over.

  She blew her nose loudly. Several times. Then she cleared her throat.

  ‘Sorry. I usually manage better than that.’

  His eyebrows knit in a puzzled frown. ‘Manage better? Manage what better?’

  ‘Me,’ she said baldly. She waved her hand at the bed behind her, although she did not actually look at it. ‘Sex. The third date thing. Sorry.’

  Suddenly all desire to laugh left Dom. ‘The third date thing!’

  ‘Um, yes. You know—um—first date you exchange telephone numbers; second date food and drink; third date bodily fluids.’ Her voice broke.

  Dom did not hear it. All he heard was flippancy. He was outraged.

  He said grimly, ‘I think you’d better explain.’

  ‘It’s not you,’ said Izzy hastily. ‘It’s me. It’s all me.’

  His mouth tightened dangerously. ‘Are you telling me that there’s nothing wrong with my technique? Just in case I get a complex?’

  Izzy sucked her teeth. That was exactly what she was doing, of course. But it didn’t seem to be having the desired effect. In fact, she saw, quite the contrary. He was looking furious.

  ‘Yes. I mean, no. I mean, sorry.’ She was floundering.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dom, awfully.

  She blew her nose again.

  ‘Look,’ she said, goaded. ‘I once went to bed with—well, I didn’t, but I thought I was going to have to—I—oh, hell!’

  He stopped simmering. ‘You what?’ He sounded thunderstruck.

  Izzy marshalled her thoughts. This was something she had not told before. She was not sure she could. It would take all her self-control.

&nb
sp; She swallowed hard and said in a hard voice in case she cried, ‘I was going round the world by bus. You know the sort of thing?’

  He nodded, not smiling.

  ‘I’d done it before. I thought I knew the form. I thought I could deal with anything. But—We got stopped by some rebels in a little town in the mountains.’ She swallowed. ‘They were very jumpy. And—difficult to talk to. Even though I spoke Spanish quite well. They didn’t seem to be able to concentrate. Couldn’t reason, or something. Anyway, I wasn’t getting through.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘How many were there of you?’

  ‘A whole busload. The rebels let the locals go. It was only the tourists they hung on to. I told everyone to co-operate. No eye contact. Give them what they want. Keep your head down.’

  ‘You did the right thing.’

  ‘I know. Only—they’d lost their leader and they didn’t seem to know what to do next. And one of the men in our party tried to square up to them—’ She swallowed, remembering. ‘They marched us off into the jungle.’

  Dom began to understand. He took both her hands and held them strongly. ‘And you got everyone out?’

  ‘Oh, no. It was a joint effort. But I—negotiated.’

  ‘Ah.’ His hands tightened comfortingly. ‘I’ve done the negotiation bit myself.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  He let her sit quiet for a minute or two. Then prompted gently, ‘I take it sex was one of the bargaining counters?’

  She nodded. She didn’t look at him. She was twisting and twisting his handkerchief between her fingers and she was concentrating on it as if her life depended on it.

  This was where it got difficult. She said, as much to herself as to Dom, ‘It’s crazy. I didn’t even have to do it in the end. They got into a panic and ran away. Just left us there. But somehow, just making up my mind that I would if I had to—’ She closed her eyes. Her lips felt numb. From behind her closed eyelids, she said, ‘It’s stuck—like a splinter that I can’t get out.’

  “‘I do whatever I have to,”’ he said slowly, echoing what she had said to him. Was it only yesterday? It felt like another century.

  ‘I—yes.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Nearly two years.’

  ‘And no third dates ever since?’

  She opened her eyes at that. If possible, she looked even more wretched.

  ‘No. No, I—er—I do date. I’ve got quite good at covering up, as long as I have enough warning.’

  He did not understand and said so.

  She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. ‘You’ve seen When Harry Met Sally? Well, she’s right. Orgasm isn’t all that hard to do. You cross your eyes and go into an asthma attack.’

  There was total silence in the grey morning.

  ‘I see,’ he said at last.

  She dared a look at him. He was quite expressionless.

  ‘And that’s what you do?’

  Izzy did not trust her voice. She nodded.

  He stood up.

  ‘I see. No wonder you didn’t want me to touch you.’

  She put a hand over her mouth.

  ‘That was quite a performance you gave last night,’ he said, still in that deadly, expressionless voice. ‘But it would have been better to say No, thanks, I don’t want to, you know.’

  Izzy struggled to her feet. The coverlet pooled around her ankles. She clutched the jacket that smelled of him round her so tight that it looked as if she would never give it up.

  ‘I didn’t mean it—’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ve grasped that.’ The voice lacerated her quivering senses like an ice burn.

  ‘No, you don’t understand—’ Her voice rose.

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ he said gently, and quite, quite icily. ‘You don’t want to make love. But last night you tried. Am I supposed to be grateful?’ His bitterness flamed out at her.

  Izzy was alarmed. ‘No, of course not. I never meant—’

  ‘Because, you see, I don’t want you to try. I want you to come to me and stay with me and love me. I don’t want you—’ Dom’s voice rose in a sudden roar that made her recoil in alarm ‘—to cross your eyes and pretend everything is all right when it clearly isn’t. I want the truth.’

  Izzy moistened her suddenly dry lips.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he said savagely.

  ‘Oh. Um. Sorry. I just wanted you to know the truth,’ said Izzy, shaking but determined.

  He sent her a long, unfathomable look which she couldn’t read.

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The whole truth?’

  ‘Look, what do you want from me?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve never told anyone about the—bargain—I made with the rebels. Not even my sister. No one. But I told you. What more can I do?’

  Dom said deliberately, ‘Do you or don’t you remember the night I put you to bed?’

  ‘The night—?’ Realisation hit. She gave a great gasp and sat down on the edge of the tumbled bed. She was very pale.

  ‘Ah,’ said Dom. Quite kind. Rather regretful. Implacable as a hanging judge. ‘I see you do.’

  Her mouth felt as if it wouldn’t quite work. ‘You know I was the girl in the nightclub. You must know I’m not Jemima, then.’ She looked up, suddenly suspicious. ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘From the moment you turned up at the jump site.’ He put a hand on the doorknob. ‘It’s odd,’ he said reflectively. ‘I kept thinking that if you told me why you were impersonating Jemima Dare everything would fall into place and we could walk off hand in hand into the sunset. I was so sure—’ He broke off, with a gentle laugh that chilled her to the marrow. ‘Still, as you pointed out the whole damned family is a bad judge of women.’

  Izzy was utterly silenced.

  He opened the door.

  ‘You’ll be more comfortable alone,’ he said formally.

  And was gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IZZY did not sleep for the rest of the cold bleak morning. She wondered if Dom did.

  The thoughts went round and round in her head.

  She thought, He saw through every pretence, every single evasion, right from the start. I never had a chance.

  She thought, I called him my love. Not aloud, not in his arms. In my head. Where it’s true. Did he know that, too?

  And then her more sensible self said, Don’t get carried away. He may come on like the lord of the universe. All right, he puts your blood pressure through the roof. The man is, by anybody’s standards, fairly gorgeous. He’s still just an ordinary man. He is not a superhero and he does not have X-ray vision. Get real, Izzy!

  So he wasn’t a superhero, and yet he had known from the first that she wasn’t Jemima Dare. Account for that, Izzy!

  There was only one feasible answer. He and Jemima had to be an item. That crazy dance at the Out of the Attic launch hadn’t been enough for him to be able to recognise anyone instantly. Especially not across a yard full of photographers the moment she got out of Culp and Christopher’s limousine. No matter what he said. He hadn’t recognised Izzy. He had simply known she wasn’t Jemima.

  And yet…And yet…

  She had recognised him, hadn’t she? She hadn’t even known what he looked like but she had recognised him. The pulse of the blood. The scent of sandalwood. The dark chocolate voice that teased or lured, that made love with words as potently as his body made love to hers…

  Izzy dressed and sat in a big armchair by the window, watching the sunrise. It was cold. Dom had said it was always cold in English country houses. Izzy hugged her knees to her chest and wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

  How do I know you’re not for me? Let me count the ways: my sister saw you first and I don’t poach, even if I could. No man in his right mind would look at me when he could have Jemima anyway and I don’t see why you would be an exception. You’re way out of my league in the gorgeous stakes. And you’re a celebrity. And, to cap it all, you’
re a blasted English aristocrat who knows how to survive in a stately home.

  And I lied to you.

  But not as much as you think I did.

  She knuckled her aching eyes. ‘I’m sunk,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m well and truly sunk. He put his mark on me and I didn’t even realise it. What on earth am I going to do now?’

  In the morning she looked terrible. Her eyes had great shadows under them. No one noticed.

  The kitchen was like Times Square, with people coming, people leaving, people telephoning and leaving messages and some patient woman standing at the big pine table peeling potatoes for a small army.

  ‘Help yourself to coffee, darling,’ said the Duchess, waving Izzy towards an industrial-sized pot. ‘Dom’s gone to pick up Abby.’

  ‘Abby?’

  The Duchess raised her pencilled eyebrows. ‘You are a new acquisition, aren’t you?’ she said indulgently.

  Izzy winced. An acquisition! She nearly said, Not any more. He unloaded me at five o’clock this morning. But the Duchess didn’t give her time, and anyway what was the point? The only person who cared was Izzy.

  ‘His sister—Lady Abigail,’ explained the Duchess, blithely unaware that Izzy’s heart was breaking. ‘She’s staying with friends a few miles away but she’s coming over for the celebration lunch.’ She added as an afterthought. ‘She has to. She’s doing pudding.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Izzy, struggling to be polite. ‘How nice.’

  The coffee tasted as if it had been stewing since the night before. She emptied it down the sink, took a huge glass of water and went out into the garden.

  The booths and tents of the day before were still up in the field. But the refreshment tables in the sunken garden had been cleared away. Izzy dropped onto the grass under some luxuriant late roses and tried to sort out a sensible plan of action.

  She had to talk to Dom. She had hurt him and been too stupid, in her obsession with looking after Jemima, to see that she was betraying something a lot more important. She had to tell him that she saw that now. She had to make him understand.

  Okay, he would probably not forgive her. He certainly did not love her. They might have had a chance, but she had spoilt it all with her wilful determination to stick to the masquerade, come hell or high water.