considered that a woman with anything over a thirty-two B chest should never be seen in public without her bra, but I must admit that you’ve gone a long way to change my mind, sexually if not aesthetically, although I would suggest that such a cleavage is rather gilding the lily; a simple high neckline would have been just as alluring and far more subtle.’
Natasha gaped at him in disbelief.
‘You look like a little girl who’s suddenly seen her grandmother turn into the wicked wolf,’ he taunted her. ‘Surely you knew the effect your outfit was going to have?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha saw Mrs Templecombe watching them frowningly. The last thing she wanted was for Richard’s mother to realise how upset she was, and so, ignoring his remark, she said brittly, ’Richard and Emma make a good couple, don’t they? I think they’ll be very happy together.’
‘Do you?’ He gave her a sardonic look. ‘Personally I’d have thought them exceptionally ill suited.’ He saw the outrage darken her eyes and added cruelly, ‘Your cousin has to be one of the most light-minded females I have ever come across, while Richard is destined to be a Templecombe in the same mould as his father and his before that. He’s a dedicated, very serious young man, who at the moment is infatuated by a pretty face and a willing body. Do you honestly want me to believe that they have the remotest chance of happiness together? I give them six months or less before she’s as bored as hell with playing at being the vicar’s wife and is looking around for the kind of diversion I caught her enjoying last year—on the very night she and Richard announced their engagement.’
Natasha discovered that her heart was thumping frantically, as though she had suddenly and frighteningly come face to face with something she found dangerous. And this man was dangerous, she recognised inwardly, both to Emma’s happiness and to her.
‘What exactly are you trying to say?’ she asked him unevenly.
He gave her a long look.
‘Oh, come on, don’t tell me you don’t know about your cousin’s premarital fling with Jake Pendraggon. I myself saw her leaving his house the very morning after she and Richard announced their engagement.’
As she looked into his face, any thoughts of trying to explain, to make him understand vanished, and she heard herself saying coldly, ‘I think there must be some misunderstanding…’
‘I don’t think so—the facts spoke for themselves. Facts which I suspect Richard remains ignorant of, poor fool. And if she was unfaithful to him on the very night they got engaged…She was wearing that dress you’ve got on tonight.’
Without stopping to think, Natasha drew herself up to her full height and lied determinedly.
‘You mean you think you saw Emma. In actual fact I was the one you saw. I arrived home too late to attend the party. I rang Jake and he invited me to go round. Emma had come home by then. She knew I didn’t want to drive back to my own place and get changed, so she offered to lend me her dress. Jake likes his women to look…’
‘Available?’ he supplied silkily for her.
’Hello, Luke. You two certainly seem deep in conversation.’
Both of them swung round at the sound of Emma’s voice. Richard was standing beside her and, as though she had been fabricating lies all her life, Natasha said smoothly, forcing a light laugh, ‘Emma, you’ll never guess what—Luke saw me leaving Jake’s house last year, after your engagement party, and he actually thought I was you.’
Somehow or other Emma managed to look not just shocked but affronted as well. ‘I did help Jake out with some research on his book,’she said stiffly, ‘and there was some silly gossip at the time. I think you found it quite amusing, didn’t you, Tasha? Are you still in touch with Jake?’
‘No,’ Natasha told her curtly, suddenly very annoyed with her cousin. It was one thing to help Emma out of a difficult situation; it was quite another for her cousin to openly brand her as Jake Pendraggon’s lover.
‘Richard tells me you won’t be able to make it for the wedding, Luke,’ Emma was saying.
‘No, I’m afraid not. I’m tied to a commission I accepted some time ago.’
It was said so urbanely and with so little regret that Natasha couldn’t help reflecting that he was not really sorry to be missing the ceremony at all.
Suddenly she felt so exhausted, so drained that she could barely stand up. The pit of her stomach felt as though it were lined with lead; her head ached and all she really wanted to do was to go somewhere where she could be alone. Excusing herself, she hurried towards the door. Some fresh air might help to clear her head. Not on the terrace this time—that was too public, too visible. No, she could creep out of the back door and wander round her aunt’s closed kitchen garden.
In the porch off the kitchen, she hesitated long enough to put on an old pair of trainers and the Barbour jacket her aunt used when she was gardening. She felt cold inside. Cold and empty in some way that made her want to hug her arms round her body.
As she let herself into the kitchen garden through the wooden door, she paused to breathe in the cleansing smell of her aunt’s herbs. She wished it might be as easy to cleanse her mind, her soul of the besmirchment it had suffered tonight. It was no use telling herself that Luke Templecombe didn’t know the first thing about her, that the woman he had insulted and scorned was not really her at all. She still felt sore, humiliated, defiled…
There was enough light from the moon for her to see the brick paths quite clearly. There was a seat under the wall, framed by an arbour of grapes which her aunt kept out of sentiment, claiming that the fruit they produced was worse than useless. She went and sat down on it, leaning back and closing her eyes, breathing deeply as she tried to unwind. It took her several concentrated minutes of forcing herself to breathe evenly and deeply before she felt she was properly back in control of herself.
That infuriating man. She prided herself on her calm, unflappable nature, but he had well and truly pierced the barrier of her self-control and revealed a woman of emotions and feelings even she had not known existed. Don’t think about him, she warned herself as she felt her tension returning, but it was a very difficult mental command to obey when his cynical, vaguely piratical features insisted on forming themselves against the darkness of her closed eyes.
‘Ah…Titania by moonlight.’
The too familiar, drawling voice shocked her into opening her eyes and staring in disbelief as she saw the object of her thoughts standing in front of her.
Too disturbed by his presence to guard her words, she said acidly, ‘Well, you’re certainly no Oberon, but we’re definitely ill met.’
She stood up abruptly, intent on escaping from him just as quickly as she could. He was standing several feet away from her and it should have been easy, but for some reason her feet seemed to be stubbornly glued to the path, while he moved easily and lithely towards her, blocking her exit.
‘What is it you want?’ Natasha heard herself asking breathlessly, helplessly almost, and inwardly she railed against the weakness in her voice, and her folly in asking the question.
He seemed to think so too, because he laughed, a soft, dangerous sound that raised the flesh on her arms, his teeth a brief flash of white in the dimness of the garden.
‘Such
