Forbidden or For Bedding? (16 page)

His eyes burnt greener. ‘You see wealth, don't you? A château on the Loire. Stuffed with treasures. With art that could populate a museum. And this is only
one
of the de Rochemont properties! There are dozens of others—more!—all over the world. And you know what keeps them all? Keeps all the scores of de Rochemonts and Lorenzes living in the lap of luxury? Money—money that my family have been making for over two hundred years. Two centuries of accumulation, of wheeling and dealing and loaning and banking, to anyone and
everyone
. We're a byword for survival—we've survived
everything
! Because we guard everything we've got. No matter what history has thrown at us. Wars and revolutions and confiscations and proscriptions and competition and governments and commercial rivals. Every damn thing!'

He took a scissoring breath. ‘But there's a price to be paid. Oh, it's a trivial one compared to the price that the mass of humanity has to pay for their survival, but it's a price all the same.' He looked at her, his expression bare.
‘I pay in time, Alexa.
Time
. It's time that's my luxury—nothing else.' He glanced around at his palatial surroundings. ‘Yes, mock if you will, but that is the truth to me. It is time that is my greatest treasure. And something more, as well.'

He took another breath. ‘Do you know how many people there are in my life, Alexa? In my family?' He gave a short, abbreviated laugh. ‘Too many. Too many. And they all want something of me. Namely: time. Business time and private time. I am deluged with relatives—deluged. And they all want my time. All of them.'

His expression changed again. ‘Which is why my time with you—my brief, fleeting time with you—was so very precious.'

He shut his eyes a moment, then opened them again, and in them was something that made Alexa's breath catch.

‘You were my haven, my respite. My repose. When I came to you, or you came to me, I could escape everything about my family, and just be with you. Only with you, Alexa. No demands on me. Only the two of us, together—the world shut away from us. All that I wanted. You with me. I thought…' His voice stumbled a fraction, then he went on. ‘I thought it was what you wanted too. Just to be with me. It worked so well—so easily. It just seemed to happen. Without effort or difficulty. As natural as if it was ordained.

‘Then I realised what you were—something I'd never found before in all my life. A woman who was not setting her cap at me, a woman who was actually indifferent to me, who didn't care whether I commissioned her or not, who paid me no attention other than to study me for her work, for whom I held no fascination other than deciding how to capture my likeness, who didn't even notice…' his voice
became drier than ever ‘…that I desired her. And then—ah, then, Alexa—I knew what I wanted.' He paused.

‘You.
I wanted you. Just you. And you were everything that I wanted—in bed and out of it. In bed… Well, how could any man want more? Out of it… Ah, out of it you were peace and comfort, ease and quiet companionship. And I thought—'

There was a break in his voice now, an uncertainty that made Alexa's throat tighten. But not with the tearing of the wolf, with something quite different that she didn't dare think about. She dared not do anything other than stand and hear him speak to her.

‘I thought that it was the same for you. That you understood what it was you gave to me that was so precious, and I hoped so much that I gave to you in return. That you understood why I wanted you—and that you understood…' his voice now had an edge in it, an edge that was a blade turned not against her but against himself ‘…why I had to end our relationship.'

He looked at her. ‘I did not do that well, Alexa. I know that, and I am sorry for it. That morning when I severed you from my life, brutally and ruthlessly, because there was no other way I could bring myself to do it, it went against everything I wanted. I had to force myself to do it! Fighting every instinct that told me not to say those words to you! I had to force them out of me. The only way I could—'

She wrapped her arms around herself. It might help to stanch the wound. A wound he had reopened—a wound that had gouged so very deep in her, though she had tried so hard not to let him. Her eyes fell to the floor, picking out the lustrous blue and gold in the priceless carpet's pattern. Her breathing was shallow, difficult. Her expression anguished.

What was the point? What was the point in hearing this?
It was only torment—torment beyond any that she had thought possible—to hear him speak like this. And yet it was a treasure to her beyond imagining to know what she had once been to him.

But could never be again.

She lifted her head. Gazed right at him.

For a moment so brief, so precious, she felt emotion sweep through her—the emotion she had drained out of herself, forced out of herself, because there was no place for it, no point to it.

‘You should have left it like that,' she said heavily. ‘Let it go when you let me go.'

‘I tried to. But I failed. I saw you again, saw you with another man, and I knew then that I could let no other man have you. I knew then that I could not let you go.' His eyes were holding hers again, as if it was essential to him, vital. ‘I could not,' he said again.

‘And I,' she answered, and her words were crystal clear, cost her what they would, ‘could not comply with what you wanted. An adulterous affair. I never hated you till then. But then I did. It was all I felt for you.' She let the lie fall into the space between them, a space that could never now be bridged, that forever parted her from him.

For a long moment he just looked at her. Then, as if something had snapped inside him, he crossed to the window in front of his desk, looking out over the gardens of his château. There was tension across his shoulders. Abruptly, he turned, looking back at Alexa.

‘Do you know,' he asked, and his tone was almost conversational, ‘how many people work for Lorenz Investment? How many depositors it has? How many business loans? To how many firms? Employing how many people? Have you even
heard
,' he asked, ‘of Lorenz Investment?'

‘I take it,' Alexa replied, ‘that is the bank owned by Louisa's father?'

‘It is the bank,' Guy said, ‘taken to the brink of
ruin
by Louisa's father. And because of that every single person employed at that bank, every firm that borrowed money, every organisation that lent it money, was at risk—of unemployment, of collapse, of ruin!' His face worked. ‘Heinrich Lorenz, Louisa's father, had me at gunpoint. He knew that I would not,
could
not risk Lorenz Investment failing—or even merely to be at risk of failing—lest it start a fatal ricochet through all the other parts of Rochemont-Lorenz. He knew that the only way to allay suspicion was for me to have a convincing reason to invest in his bank.' He paused heavily. ‘Like becoming his son-in-law.'

He looked across at Alexa, so far away now—so very far from this world in which vast amounts of money flowed, from this family that was a dynasty, a complex network of wealth and power.

‘I didn't want to marry Louisa. But then…' his eyes shadowed ‘…I saw nothing strange about doing so. For two hundred years, Alexa, we have been making such marriages—both within the family and outside it. Louisa's parents made such a marriage, and she had been brought up to expect the same. My own parents had no particular desire to marry—but they did, and very successfully. When you are used to something like that it seems…normal. Unexceptional. Expected.'

He fell silent. All Alexa could hear was the subdued hum of the PC on Guy's desk. And the pulse of her heart. Telling her something she did not want to hear. Did not want to listen to.

Then, in a low voice, he spoke again. ‘I went on thinking that—thinking that such a marriage was unexceptional, acceptable,' he said, ‘right up until I had you in my arms
again that night when I saw you at the charity gala. And I knew then, like lightning ripping through my being, that everything had changed! I wanted you, and I had to have you. I had to have you in my life. I could not do without you.' His jaw tightened. ‘But I also could not let Lorenz Investment fail. Too much was at stake.'

She spoke.

‘So you didn't. You didn't let it fail. I understand, Guy. Truly I do.' Her voice had hardened. ‘I also understand why you thought you could have your bank-saving, emotionally empty dynastic marriage
and
have an adulterous liaison with me as well. I understand—but didn't condone. Never condone. And that is why—' she took another breath ‘—why I came here now. Simply to make it clear—as I know your mother must want me to, or else why should she have arranged all this?—to assure your bride of that.'

‘Ah, yes, my bride.' There was no emotion in Guy's face.

‘Yes. You said…' It was impossible to speak, but speak she must, with a strength she had to find. ‘You said she was in love with you. That she was happy after all in her marriage. So if she needs to know about me—about what I am no longer to you—then I will tell her.' Resolution steeled her. Too much emotion was in her, but this had to be done. ‘Where—where is she?'

There was a curious light in Guy's eyes. ‘Louisa's on her honeymoon,' he said. For a moment time hung still, then Guy started to walk towards her. ‘I told you—she's blissfully happy, in love with her husband. A husband,' he said, ‘who doesn't happen to be me.'

A
LEXA
heard him say the words. Heard them clearly. But they made no sense.

Guy reached her. Lightly, very lightly, he cupped her elbows. Slowly her tightly crossed arms lowered, as if they had become too heavy—which was odd, because the room seemed to be swirling around her.

‘I told you,' said Guy, ‘that Louisa had agreed to marry me. Saw nothing to object to. But it seems—' his voice was dry ‘—someone else objected. Someone she'd known for a while. Someone who told her that a loveless dynastic marriage was anathema to the soul. Someone,' he finished, ‘who persuaded her to marry him instead—because he was in love with her, and because she, after he'd pulled the scales from her eyes, was in love with him. So—' the green eyes glinted ‘—she jilted me and eloped.'

Too much was going through Alexa. It was as if electric currents were passing through her, overloading all her circuits.

‘What about the bank? Lorenz Investment—?'

It was all she could think to say. All that was safe to say.

‘Back from the brink,' said Guy. ‘Just as I'd planned.'

She frowned, trying to make sense. ‘But you had to marry Lousia—'

‘No.' His eyes were holding hers. ‘I had to let the world
think
I was marrying Louisa.' His expression changed. ‘That was what I realised that night after the charity ball. When I knew that everything had changed. When I knew I had to have you back in my life. I could not marry Louisa.'

His hands cupping her elbows tightened. ‘That was when I realised what I was going to have to do. Somehow I had to have it all—I had to protect the bank and have you, too. And I realised that I could do it if I could just keep the engagement going—because that would give me vital time, under cover of the betrothal, to pull together a rescue package. It was going to be a race, and it was going to be risky, but it could be done. I knew it could be done!'

Abruptly he loosed his grip, turning away from her, knuckling his fists on the mahogany surface of his desk. He twisted his head to look back at her.

‘I thought myself so clever—thought I had found a way to make everything work out. Because I had to, Alexa.' His voice changed. ‘The stakes had just become higher than I could bear to lose. That night—' his face worked ‘—that night when I made love to you again, I knew that I could
never
let you go! And I thought…' He paused, then went on, forcing himself to speak, ‘I thought it was the same for you. That you would agree to what I was proposing. I was scared, Alexa—scared that it would be all too easy for you to take up with another man, like the damn man you'd been with that evening. So I had to keep you—any way I could!—while I sorted out the bank, got myself free of my engagement to Louisa.'

He went on raggedly. ‘I was intending to tell you everything—talk to you—bare myself to you—make you understand the trap I was in. But you disappeared.'

He paused again, then made himself go on, his eyes
burning into hers. ‘When I found you I discovered what a fool I'd been—an arrogant, conceited fool—to think you felt for me what I felt for you. And when I saw that portrait—' He broke off.

‘Then I knew.' His voice was heavy, as heavy as a weight crushing him. ‘I knew I was too late. I had made you hate me. And I had lost you.'

There was bleakness in his face—as bleak as the desert sands blown by witless winds.

The room, despite its cooling air-conditoining, was suddenly airless. Alexa's throat was blocked. She couldn't breathe.

‘I—I need to get some fresh air,' she said faintly.

At once he was there, crossing to the pair of large French windows that opened on the other side of his desk out to the gardens. He threw them open and she hurried out, dragging in lungfuls of summer air. There was a little ornate garden bench, and gratefully she sank down on it. Her legs did not seem to be working.

Nor her mind.

Thoughts, emotions, swirled like a maelstrom, and she could make no sense of them—no form, no order. All the certainties she had lived with for so long now—certainties that had been like blades in her heart—had suddenly, in a few moments, dissolved to nothing…nothing at all. Desperately she tried to still the swirling maelstrom, make order of it, sense. She seized the one thought that swirled most vividly, most tormentingly. Seized it and stilled it and looked upon it.

Guy wasn't married. He hadn't married Louisa. He was never going to marry Louisa. And since the moment he had taken her to bed again he had never been going to marry Louisa.

The enormity of the realisation was like a tsunami going
over her. She seemed to sway as she sat, too weakened to move.

As arms came around her. Guy had lowered himself down beside her, his arm over her shoulder, steadying her.

‘Alexa—'

There was anxiety in his voice. At least it sounded like anxiety—but what did she know? What did she know of Guy de Rochemont at all?

She twisted her head, looked at him.

‘I don't know you,' she said.

His arm dropped from her, his expression transfixed.

‘I don't know you,' she repeated. ‘I've never known you.' She pulled a little away from him. ‘But then…' Her throat tightened, and the words were so difficult to say, but she had to say them—she must look right into his face, his eyes, and say those words to him. ‘I never tried to know you. Not in those months we were together—though the actual time we spent together was probably little more than a few weeks. But you had barriers all round you, keeping me out—keeping everyone out. I respected them, understood them, knew why you did it—because you were—are—a very private person. I am too. I…I keep myself to myself. Keep my emotions to myself. I'm…used to it. Just like you. That's why…at the time…I didn't mind the kind of relationship we had. It was only afterwards, when you came to me again, that I saw it differently. Made myself see it differently. As demeaning. Exploitative. With you just using me for convenient on-demand sex.'

She looked at him, looked into the troubled green eyes that held hers.

‘But it wasn't. I had been right before. I'd understood what there was between us, and I should have trusted that. I should have trusted
you
. Instead—' her voice was heavy
‘—I simply ran away, giving you no chance. No chance at all. No chance to talk to me, tell me what you intended.'

He disengaged his gaze from her, looking out over the gardens. The last of the sun caught the water in the stone-girded pond, which rippled lazily in a lift of air.

‘But I never did talk to you, did I?' he said. ‘Not about us. I just accepted what there was and was glad of it. Grateful for it. Grateful to have found a woman who could be, for me, an oasis in my life. So when I had to end it, had to agree to marry Louisa, all I could bear to do was—walk. Walk away. Leave that precious oasis you had become and instead walk out into a desert. Seeing you again…' He glanced at her now, a gaunt look on his face. ‘It was like seeing a mirage, beckoning to me—promising me all that I could want. All that my life did not have any more. So I reached out, and I discovered—' his voice was strained ‘—I discovered it was, in truth, nothing more than a mirage. My own imagining. Not real at all.'

He leant forward, back hunched, forearms on his thighs, hands loose, staring at the water rippling in the stone basin, slowly draining of its light as the sun slipped away, off the gardens, behind the shadowing trees that marched along the borders.

She sat beside him a while, saying nothing. The maelstrom had gone now, sunk down through her, absorbed into her veins. Quieted. Somewhere she could hear birdsong.

She looked about her. It was so very beautiful, this spot, with the vista of the level gardens spreading all about her, the ancient mass of the château behind, and the lingering sunlight just catching the tops of the protecting trees. An oasis of beauty. Of quietness. And peace.

Peace of the heart.

Slowly, very slowly, in the warm, peaceful quietness, she reached for his hand, closing hers over his, winding
her fingers into his. He pressed his into hers, holding her hand. Such a simple gesture. Saying nothing.

Saying everything.

He turned to her.

Tears were running down her face. Quietly, silently.

He gave a soft rasp in his throat. Then he put his arms about her, drawing her to him, holding her against him as they sat together, side by side. And still her tears came—so quietly, so silently.

Making words unnecessary.

Then he kissed away her tears and kissed her trembling mouth, kissed the hands he took again in his, raising them to his lips in homage, and she clung to his hand, and to him, and to his heart. ‘
Ma belle
Alexa,' he murmured. Then he drew back a little. ‘I thought you hated me,' he said wonderingly.

‘So did I,' she said. ‘But I was wrong.' She kissed his mouth. ‘So wrong. It was still love…all along.'

‘Still?' There was a questioning in his voice. Uncertainty.

‘For so long. I don't know since when. Only that I fell in love with you knowing I should not—that it was…unwise beyond all things. A
folie d'amour
. There was no point in loving you—not even before I knew you were going to marry Louisa. Because what hope could there be in loving you—you who were who you were, from so different a world, wanting only what you did from me and for so brief a time? And when I knew about your betrothal, when you came back and I ran from you, refusing to listen to you, then there was no point in love at all. Only in hatred. And I poured it all—all my hatred—into that portrait of you. The one you saw.'

A voice from the French windows spoke. ‘Just as you poured all your love into the one Guy gave me.'

Both started—Guy getting to his feet, drawing Alexa with him, her hands were still entwined in his.

‘Maman—?'

Madame de Rochemont stepped out on to the gravelled terrace. How she had suddenly arrived, Alexa had no idea. But then, as a de Rochemont, what was there to stop her having a second private jet at her disposal?

‘Mon fils,'
she acknowledged. Then, coming up to Alexa, she kissed her on each cheek. ‘Why do you think,' she asked her, ‘I made sure I would know exactly the moment you returned to London?'

She took a step back, her regard encompassing them both.

‘When it became clear to me that on no account should my son do what his father had done—what I had done—marry someone he did not love, I knew I must ensure it did not happen. Quite how to do it gracefully, I did not know. Sometimes, yes, such a marriage can be successful. But mine, Guy, was so because in the end I came to love your father, and he me. When I saw your portrait—the one you gave me—I knew.' Her voice changed. ‘I knew you were already in love—and were loved in return.'

She met Alexa's eyes. ‘That was why I told you I was grateful to have been given that portrait. Because it told me all that I needed to know.' She paused, her expression softening as she spoke to Alexa. ‘I can tell who loves my son as much as I do. And I can tell—' she looked at Guy with the same look ‘—when my son is looking at someone with as much love as—from time to time!—he looks at me. And so,' she went on, ‘there was only one last mystery to solve. Why the two of you were not together. A mystery,' she finished, with the air of one delivering a
coup de théâtre
, ‘solved not three hours ago, when you,
ma chère
, recommended I consult my daughter-in-law on the action
I was—in desperation to resolve this
impasse
—urging you to take.'

She glared at Guy. ‘How could you not have told her Louisa had eloped, and solved your problem
tout court
?'

‘Maman,' he answered, tight-lipped, ‘it was not that simple—'

Madame de Rochemont gave another imperious wave of her hand. ‘Love is always simple. It is men who are fools to think it is not! Do you not agree,
ma chère
Alexa?'

‘I think,
madame
, it is also women who can be fools—as I was.'

‘Well, I am sure Guy gave you cause. But now I can see that finally all is resolved, and that is a great relief to me. Ah…' her voice lifted ‘…perfect timing.'

Guy and Alexa turned to see what the cause was. Guy's face blanched, and Alexa could only stare, eyes widening.

Along the façade of the château a grand procession was approaching, its lead a resplendent personage in a velvet jacket, bearing a vast silver salver held in front of him with both hands. On it nestled a champagne bottle in an ice bucket, next to three flutes, and behind him three equally resplendent but lesser personages bore aloft silver salvers groaning with dishes of canapés and
hors d'oeuvres
. They were followed by a dozen uniformed staff carrying between them a gilded antique table and three matching chairs, which they proceeded to set down, with great precision, on the terrace. Upon the table with a practised flourish, the salvers were placed, one after another, and then the champagne bottle was opened and the flutes filled to perfection.

All the attendant staff stood back, apparently staring fixedly ahead, as well-trained staff would always do, but Guy knew they were actually riveted with full and absolute
attention on Alexa. They clearly realized—given the dramatic circumstances not only of her sudden unscheduled arrival, but also the arrival of his mother, not to mention the fact that he was still clasping her hand—that she was,
evidemment
, to be their new
châtelaine
.

With admirable composure Guy thanked them, his expression a picture, and they withdrew in good order.

‘I'm sorry,' he apologised to Alexa. Embarrassment was clear in his face at all this over-the-top grandeur.