Forbidden or For Bedding? (14 page)

‘Why?'

A single word, but to Alexa it held a universe of demand. Shock was still seizing her, but she'd gone into that ultra-calm that accompanied the condition. Everything seemed to have stopped around her.

‘Why?' she echoed. Her voice seemed calm too. Preternaturally calm. ‘Why what, precisely, Guy?'

‘Why did you run?' His voice was less controlled than hers. Deeper. Harsher. And his eyes still burned green.

Alexa tilted her head. Very slightly, but discernibly. ‘What did I have to stay for? Your…offer…didn't appeal.'

His eyes narrowed, pinpointing her with laser focus. ‘No? That wasn't the message I got when I had your body beneath mine. You gave me a quite different message then, Alexa.' His voice caressed her like the tip of a whip.

She felt colour flare in her cheeks. ‘That shouldn't have happened.'

‘But it did. It did, Alexa, and now I want an explanation of what the
hell
you think you're doing!'

He was angry. He was actually angry. Alexa stared at him. Inside, she felt a leashed, powerful emotion at seeing him standing here, in the very place she had sought refuge from him. But she would not let it loose. She would keep it smothered. Controlled.

‘How did you find me?' Her voice was clipped. ‘No one knows I'm here.'

‘Your letting agency knows. I found them through the tenants in your flat.' His tone was offhand.

‘I instructed the agency to disclose this address to no one!' she snapped. ‘How dared they tell you?'

His eyes glinted sardonically. ‘I have access to all their files. As of yesterday, the agency belongs to me.'

‘What?'

‘I bought the agency, Alexa. It was clearly the only way to find out where you were.'

She stared. ‘You
bought
the agency to get my address?' There was incredulity in her voice. Then, with a lift of her
chin, she bit out, ‘You wasted your money. I don't know what you think you're doing, but—'

‘I'm doing what I clearly ought to have done that night—making things clear to you!'

Her eyes flashed. ‘Oh, you made things very clear—don't worry. I got the picture, I promise you. But like I said, I didn't like the offer, so I turned it down. And now—' her face hardened ‘—you can just get out—get out of my life!'

His expression changed. ‘You don't mean that.'

It was the calm assurance with which he spoke that lit the touchpaper. Exploding her fury.

‘My God,' she breathed, ‘you arrogant, conceited pig! Do you really think that just because you're Guy de Rochemont you can behave any way you want? Do you think that just because like a complete
idiot
I fell back into bed with you I'll do whatever you want? Do you? You think you can have an affair with me, and then calmly tell me one fine day that you're getting married, and that's it—and then months later turn up again and just pick up again where you left off, not worrying about anything as trivial as your fiancée?
Do
you? Because—'

‘Stop—Alexa, listen to me.' His hand had flown up, as if to silence her passionate outpouring with an autocratic command.

‘What for?' she bit back. ‘So you can tell me how
discreet
you're going to have to be when you pick up with me again?'

His eyes flashed. ‘I can't help that, Alexa! Do you think I
want
to be clandestine in that way? I have no choice. And if you will simply
listen
to me, I will explain why—'

‘Oh, I'm sure you will!' she thrust witheringly. ‘To you it's all totally straightforward, isn't it? Well, it is to me too. I
don't want anything more to do with you. There is nothing,
nothing
you can say that will change that. So go—
go
!'

She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, adrenaline pumping. It was unbearable—unbearable that Guy had walked in here. ‘Just
go
!' she repeated, because he hadn't budged at all, was still standing there, looking like the lord of the manor in the humble cottage of one of his countless peasants. Rich, arrogant, conceited—thinking he only had to find her to dictate his terms to her again. ‘Just
go
! You pushed your way in here. It's unbelievable! You actually went and bought the letting agency just to find me. Your ego is monstrous—monstrous! Just because you're Guy de Rochemont, born with a whole canteen of silver spoons in your mouth, and just because women swoon at your feet, you think you can do anything you want, get anyone you want. Any woman you want. Well, not me—not any more! There is nothing,
nothing
you can say to me that would
ever
change my mind.'

His face was stark as she threw her bitter words at him. Two white lines flared along his cheekbones.

‘Then I won't waste my time talking.'

He was in front of her in an instant. He seized her arms, lowering over her. Panic, rage, fury, convulsed her. She threw herself backwards. ‘
No!
Not this time. Don't touch me.' She took a shuddering, shaking breath. ‘Whatever we had, it's over. I'm not going there again. Ever. I don't
care
,' she spelt out, her words cutting like stone knives, hard and heavy, ‘whether you have a tame, cowed little fiancée in tow or not. I don't want anything to do with you.' Her face worked. ‘You were bad news right from the start, though I was too stupid to see it—and you're bad news now. You always will be. I don't want you. I don't want anything to do with you. On any
terms.' She took one last shuddering breath. ‘Any terms at all.'

Her voice was flat. Final. She stared at him. She was back under control now. Back from that dangerous maelstrom of emotion. She'd mastered it, quelled it.

His face was stark, his jaw set like steel, the white lines along his tensed cheekbones etched like acid. His eyes were unreadable. Completely unreadable.

They always were. I never knew him. I loved him, but I never knew him. How stupid can a woman be, to love a man she doesn't know? Who keeps her out of his real life…

Pain twisted inside her. All she'd ever had of him had been brief, bare snatches. Making do with scraps. No wonder he'd thought she would accept that vile adulterous offer of his. He'd had every expectation she would comply. After all, all he had to do was seduce her, just as he'd done that first time, and she would acquiesce in anything he wanted.

But no more. No
more.

The desolation she was long familiar with swept through her. This had to end—now. His eyes were on her. Masked. Unreadable. The pain twisted again—the pain of seeing him, wanting so much to reach out and let him take her in his arms, let his mouth lower to hers, let him do what every cell in her body suddenly, flaringly, vividly, oh, so vividly, wanted him to do—let him make her forget everything that her head knew about him, everything that she must not forget. To melt her flesh and melt her mind, so that they were only bodies, bared and beautiful, twining together, made one together…

But they weren't one. They were as separate from each other as it was possible to be.

‘Alexa—'

There was something in his voice. Something that she blocked out. Had to block out. Something dangerous.

‘No.' She shook her head. ‘No—I'm not going there. This ends, Guy. Now.'

She moved away, making the move deliberate, controlled. Heading for the kitchen and the lean-to beyond.

‘At least your journey won't be wasted. I've no idea whether you still want this, but I know I don't.' Her voice was cold—as cold as she could make it.

Her painting equipment was in the lean-to, and resting on a chair was the object she was going to fetch. He might as well take it now—it would save her having to courier it at some point, whenever the time came when she could no longer hole up here in the middle of nowhere. She'd wrapped it up already. She didn't want to look at it. She'd finished it—the ability to do so had come to her, and she knew why it had, and hated herself—and it—for that very reason. But then, and only then, had it released her from its loathesome power….

She gathered the parcel up and turned, ready to take it out to him. But he had followed her. He wasn't looking at her, however. Not even at the object she was holding. He was looking to the canvas on her easel.

She stilled.

His face was immobile. Silently she held out the wrapped painting in her hands to him. It was his portrait. The one she'd not been able to do. Now she had.

But not on its own. The portrait—quite deliberately and intentionally—was one of a pair.

Its companion was still on the easel. As finished as it would ever be.

His eyes were fixed on it, and in them Alexa saw a shadow flicker deep, deep within. Something moved in
her, something even deeper inside her than the shadow in his eyes. Something even darker.

‘That one I'm keeping,' she said. Her voice had no emotion in it. The emotion was all in the paint on the canvas.

In the twisted, demonic image of his face. The face of a man she had once loved.

But now only hated.

‘It's to remind me of you,' she said.

For a second, an instant, his eyes went to her. But there was nothing in them. Nothing she could discern. The mask over them was complete.

He took the wrapped portrait—the other one, the one that bore the face that Guy de Rochemont showed to the world. To the women in his bed.

Then, slowly, he inclined his head to her. ‘I won't trouble you again, Alexa.'

There was nothing in his voice just as there was nothing in his eyes.

He turned and left. Walking out. Out of her life.

Leaving only the dark portrait to keep her company.

Slowly, haltingly, she went back into the sitting room. The fire was still blazing fiercely in the log-burner, and she could feel the warmth after the chill of the lean to.

But she was shivering all the same.

 

Guy drove. The long motorway back to London stretched before him, and the powerful car ate up the miles. On either side of the motorway the drear wintry landscape stretched, monotonous and rainswept. Grey and bleak.

Just like his life.

It stretched out ahead of him—swallowing him up.

He had seen hope—hope almost within reach, within his grasp and he'd stretched out his hands to take it.

Seize it.

Instead—

Instead it had been like a shot through the skull. Instant, total destruction. The work of a second. All it had taken for his eyes to light on, to focus on that square of canvas resting on the easel.

A mirror—a mirror held up to him.

In the few brief moments when his eyes had rested on it he had known—searingly, punishingly—that Alexa was gone. Out of his life.

She would never come back into it.

He pressed the accelerator, increasing the speed taking him away from her. Back to all that was left to him now.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Alexa was lost to him—he could not have her on any terms. She had shown him that in a square of canvas.

So now a heaviness settled over him, a weariness. All he could do was continue on the course he had resolved on. Ahead of him waited the girl he had said he would marry. He would do what he could for her.

What else was there for him to do? With Alexa gone—nothing.

Only Louisa.

S
PRING
came. The days lengthened, the tender shoots of new growth peered between the blasted stalks of last year's vegetation. In the garden and in the hedgerows primroses pushed their way out of the dark, confining earth, new leaves unfurled on bared branches. Life returned.

And Alexa returned to London.

But not to live. Only to pause, then pack again, and head to Heathrow. She'd booked a desert safari—a tough one. Bumping across endless dunes in a Jeep, sleeping in a bedroll underneath the stars which burned through the floor of heaven, revealing blisters of brightness, cracks showing the existence of a realm impossible to reach.

By day the sun burned down, hazing the horizon so that it was impossible to know if the Jeep were making progress or not. Yet each day they were a little further on. Each day a little further from their starting point.

They reached their goal—old ruins of an ancient city that had once been filled with living, breathing people, each one of them with their own life, their own aspirations, hopes and dreams, their own dreads and losses. Now only the desert dust blew through their emptied houses, along their deserted streets.

Alexa stopped and stared out over the desolation. Lines, bleak and spare, tolled in her head.

‘“For the world…hath really neither joy, nor love…nor peace, nor help for pain…”'

No, there was no help for pain, she knew. But the cruel-lest lines of the poem she could not say:
‘Ah, love, let us be true to one another…'

Could not even think them. Could only envy the poet who'd had someone to be true to, someone true to him.

Beyond the city's ruins, the bare and boundless desert sands stretched far away, and she stood looking out over their loneliness, encircled in isolation, filled with a quiet despair.

And a new resolution. This could not go on—this endless desolation. It could not. Or it would destroy her. Somehow she had to find the strength to get past it. She had done it once before, when her parents had been killed, and she had found the strength to renew her life. Whatever it took, she had to do it again now.

So, at the end of the safari, when the Jeep returned to base, she did not head for the airport with the others. She found a small
pension
, simple but respectable, and stayed there awhile, going out every day with paints and inks and sketchbook, her body shrouded to keep attention from her, her head covered against both the sun and male eyes. The locals thought her mad but let her be, unmolested and unchallenged, and she was grateful.

Each day she worked, depicting in starkest lines the empty vastness of the lifeless desert, and each day, in the dry, relentless heat, little by little the endless pain in her desiccated a little more, a little more.

Until she could feel it no longer.

Had it gone completely? She couldn't tell. Only knew, with a deep, sure certainty, that the work she had done was good. Spare, stark, bare. But good.

Then and only then did she pack up her work and head
for home. The six-month lease of her tenants had expired, and they had moved out. She was wary, deeply so, of returning to London, lest it plunge her back into the vortex of memory again. Above all she knew that she would not—could not—simply return to the life she had had. She would put the flat on the market, move away, right out of London, for good. Find a future in her work.

It was hard to walk into her flat. Hard to see its familiar contours. Hard to block out the memories that went with it. But block them she did. Not bothering to unpack, she left her suitcase in the bedroom, with her newly created portfolio of desert art, and took a quick shower to refresh herself after her long flight. Then she changed into a pair of well-cut grey trousers and an ice-blue jersey top, knotted her hair into its usual neat chignon, took up her handbag and went back downstairs.

She needed to go to the shops to refill the fridge. On the way back she would look in at the estate agents—
not
the agency that Guy had so arrogantly bought!—and talk about marketing her flat for immediate sale. In the evening she would go through all her finances to see what her options for the future would be. At some point, too, she knew she would have tell Imogen she was back—but not until she had a good idea of what her plans were going to be. Her mind busy, determinedly so, she stepped out of the front door and headed down the short flight of steps to the pavement.

‘Miss Harcourt—'

A car had pulled up in front of her at the kerb, and a man was getting out. The car was nondescript, and so was the man accosting her. In broad daylight, on a busy pavement, her only emotion was puzzlement.

‘Yes?' she said.

‘I work for a security firm,' the man said. He handed her a business card, with an upmarket-looking name on it that
even she had vaguely heard of. ‘My client has requested a meeting with you.'

‘What client?' said Alexa. Warning bells were ringing now.

‘Madame de Rochemont,' said the man.

Alexa froze. Madame de Rochemont. Guy's wife.

Despite the heat of the afternoon, a chill went through her. A chill she forced to subside. She had not spent all that time away, purging herself of the past, only to be felled at the first reminder of what was no longer a part of her life, a part of her. But her insides churned for all her resolution.

He had a wife.

It was done—Guy was married.

Married to that poor girl—the one who'd looked the antithesis of ‘radiant' at the prospect. With good reason. Alexa's mouth thinned. Louisa von Lorenz had known what kind of man she was marrying. What kind of marriage she was in for. What kind of husband she was getting.

The adulterous kind.

Alexa's thoughts were like knives. But why on earth should Guy's wretched new wife have asked for a meeting with
her
? What for?

How does she even know of my existence?

And how could she possibly know I'd be walking along this pavement today?

‘How,' demanded Alexa frigidly, ‘does Madame de Rochemont come to know of my whereabouts?'

The man was unfazed by the question. Maybe it was a familiar one to someone in his line of work. ‘When your tenants moved out, Miss Harcourt, your flat was put under surveillance on the chance you might be returning shortly. As indeed you have.'

Alexa's mouth twisted. Of course. Guy had bought the lettings agency, hadn't he? When you moved in the
stratospheric circles that the de Rochemont family moved in such things were unexceptional. Just like hiring people like this man to wait until she showed up.

But how Guy's wife had found her was inconsequential—the question was why on earth did Louisa de Rochemont want to meet her?

Cold went through her suddenly as realisation struck.

Does she think I'm going to take up with Guy again now that I'm back in London? Is that what she fears?

Had that poor girl somehow found out—or been told—just who the last woman was that her husband had had a liaison with before he'd become engaged? Had she then, knowing what her husband was going to be like, speculated that he might well carry on after their engagement and their marriage with the same woman he'd been seeing before?

The chill in Alexa's veins deepened. Had all this security surveillance and private investigation shown up a photo of her? It was more than likely. And then—she swallowed horribly—then Louisa would recognise her from that evening at the charity gala.

She'll know that she spoke to me—will she think that I knew all along who she was?

But, whether Louisa had seen Alexa's photo or not, Alexa knew that one thing was clear—she was not going to have Guy's bride think the worst of her. Whoever was providing Guy's adulterous sex, it was not her! And any attempts, by any of them, to subject her to surveillance and investigation could stop right now! She was clear of Guy de Rochemont and she would stay that way. She would not be sucked back anywhere near that maelstrom. Wasn't she doing everything she could to be free of it all?

She looked straight at the man. ‘Where is your client?' she demanded.

‘Madame de Rochemont is currently in London, Miss
Harcourt,' he answered, in his professionally neutral tone. ‘She has indicated that it would suit her to see you this afternoon.'

London? Well, that was convenient. And so was getting this over and done with right now. Another thing she could put behind her.

‘Very well.' She pulled open the rear door of the car and climbed in. The man got into the driving seat and restarted the engine. The car set off, heading out onto Ladbroke Grove, and thence towards Holland Park. Cutting across Kensington, it made its way into the pristine, elegant squares of Belgravia, pulling up outside a vast white-stuccoed terraced house set on an elegant square with a private garden in the centre. It was a location where, Alexa knew, only the richest of the rich could afford to live. But then, Guy de Rochemont
was
in that ultra-exclusive echelon.

I knew he was rich, but I hardly saw it
, Alexa thought as she got out of the car. So was it really so surprising that a man like that, so blessed by the gods—not just with vast wealth and the highest social position, but by incredible good-looks and searing masculine attraction—should have thought that she, or any woman, his wife included, would do whatever he wanted of them, without question or demur or objection? Would such a man not naturally have a natural arrogance that expected others to comply with his every wish, every desire?

Like the way she'd just rolled over into his bed the moment he'd indicated he wanted her there…

But even as she thought that memory intervened. Not the memory of Guy casually informing her that he'd bought a lettings agency as he might buy a bar of chocolate, simply in order to locate her, or informing her that she had been selected to provide his sexual amusement and compensate for his being required to marry a teenager for dynastic
purposes, or demanding to know what the hell she thought she was playing at by objecting to his plans for her.

Not that Guy.

The Guy who took me to bed—breathtakingly, wonderfully, amazingly! The Guy who held me afterwards, slept with me, woke with me. Ate with me, smiled at me, talked with me about art and history and culture. Who would sit and check his e-mails on his laptop, or look through business papers, while I watched a TV documentary or read a book. Nothing much, nothing extraordinary
.

Yet precious—so precious…

The old, familiar rending ache scraped at her. She had to wrest it away, make herself think of Guy as she had to think of him now.

Above all, a married man.

A married man whose wife—young, naïve, innocent—did not deserve to have her marriage, as difficult as it must be, blighted even more by worrying about whether her husband was going to take up with his former lover again. A wife who, though she might call a house in Belgravia only one of what were doubtless half a dozen palatial homes around the world, deserved the reassurance that only Alexa could give her.

Yet as Alexa walked up the wide steps of the multi-million pound house, stepping into the grand hallway beyond, she felt anew the gaping distance between the world she moved in and the world that Guy and his bride inhabited. She had been kept far apart from it.

He's a world away from me—he always was.

Like a spear in her side, she felt the force of how pointless it had been to fall in love with such a man.

Reluctance at being here filled her. But this had to be done. Head held high, she followed the member of staff who had admitted her as he proceeded up a graceful sweep
of stairs to the first floor. She was ushered into a vast drawing room.

She stopped short, her eyes going instantly to the walls. It was the paintings that drew her first, not the opulence of the Louis Quinze decor. She heard her breath catch as she took in enough priceless artworks to fill a small museum. Fragonard, Watteau, Boucher, Claude, Poussin—

Instinctively, without realising she was doing so, she walked up to the one closest to her and gazed at it. A riot of Rococo art, a
fête galante
, with girls in clouds of silks and satins, and young men as lavishly adorned. A fantasy of the Ancien Régime that took her breath away with the exquisite delicacy of its brushstrokes to catch the richness of the fabrics, the hues of the fruits and flowers.

A voice spoke behind her.

‘Rococo is no longer fashionable, but I confess I have a particular fondness for it. It embodies all that is most
charmant
in art.'

The voice that spoke had the crystal quality of the upper classes, but with a distinct French accent. It was not the voice of the young girl that Alexa had encountered in the powder room at the charity gala. She swivelled round.

A woman who must have been in late middle age, but who had the figure of a woman no more than thirty, chicly dressed, was standing before a huge marble fireplace, on an Aubusson rug, between two silk-upholstered facing sofas. Her dress was a couture design, Alexa could see instantly, and several ropes of pearls were wound around her neck. Her hair was tinted, immaculately styled, and her
maquillage
was perfect.

And her eyes were green. As green as emeralds.

Alexa started.

‘Yes,' said the woman, acknowledging why Alexa had reacted. ‘My son has inherited his eye colour from me.'

Her son—?

Alexa swallowed.
Madame de Rochemont
…

She had assumed—of course she had assumed—that it could only be Guy's wife.

The woman who was not Guy's wife—who was his mother, could
only
be his mother—walked forward several steps, holding out her hand. Alexa found herself walking forward as well, to take it briefly.