Silas’ values, she had discovered when she had nerved herself to mention the topic to him, were equally rigid. Purity was what a man looked for in his future wife, he had told her flatly, and she could learn anything she needed to know from her husband when the time came.
When Jago held her close, she felt totally confused, her body at war with her mind, which insisted that such an intensity of emotion must be wrong, even in some way abnormal.
Eventually, it seemed easier to keep Jago at arms’ length. Or at any rate simpler, she amended hastily, because it had never been easy.
She had supposed naïvely that Silas was right, and that once they were married everything would be different. That wearing Jago’s ring, having the right to call herself his wife, would bring about some fundamental sea-change in her. Only she had never had the opportunity to find out.
The wedding had only been a few weeks away when she had finally found out the truth about the kind of man she was marrying. She hadn’t seen Jago for several days, not since they’d spent an evening at the theatre together. Afterwards, he had suggested she go back to his flat with him for a nightcap, and she had shrunk immediately. It was altogether too secluded and intimate an environment for her to cope with, feeling as she did, and she’d heard herself babbling some feeble excuse. That Jago had recognised it as such was evident, although he had said nothing. But his mouth had tightened, and he had driven her home with almost exaggerated care, depositing her on her doorstep with chilly courtesy, not even bothering to bestow the most chaste of goodnight kisses.
Ashley told herself he was being unreasonable, and that she wasn’t going to be the first to make amends, but as time passed without a word from him, her need for reassurance got the better of her pride, and she tried to telephone him. When there was no reply from the flat, she told herself he was probably staying at the Manor, as Giles liked him to do from time to time.
But when she drove out to the Manor that evening, she found only Erica Marrick at home. She was sitting in the big drawing room, stitching at a piece of tapestry set up in a frame in front of her, and Ashley, who had no skill at sewing, watched in fascination as the needle pierced the canvas over and over again.
Later, when Ashley allowed herself to recall that terrible evening and its aftermath, she was to remember above all that shining needle, stabbing in and out, and feel as if it was her own flesh that it was wounding.
‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey,’ Erica said, when the usual social pleasantries had been observed. ‘It might have been wiser to ring first, and check where he was.’
Ashley forbore to mention that she’d been trying to contact Jago for two days. She said, trying to sound casual, ‘I suppose you’ve no idea where he could be?’
Erica chose another strand of thread. ‘None at all, my dear. Giles is only Jago’s cousin, not his keeper. Jago’s an adult male. He comes and goes here as he chooses, and we don’t ask any indiscreet questions. Much the best way, I assure you.’ She threaded her needle. ‘Jago doesn’t actually live here yet.’
‘I know,’ Ashley said huskily. ‘But I thought—I got the impression he was spending more time here these days—using the flat rather less.’
‘I hardly think so.’ The needle stabbed again. ‘After all, it’s the one small piece of bachelor independence which hasn’t been eroded yet, and he’ll be anxious to hang on to that as long as possible, I would imagine. He’s sacrificed quite a lot already,’ she added almost casually. ‘I hope he finds Landons is worth it.’
Ashley’s brows drew together. ‘I don’t quite understand …’
‘How wise of you,’ purred Erica. ‘It’s always so much better to respect the conventions in these matters, and pretend the marriage has been arranged—such a telling phrase, I always think—for personal rather than business reasons.’
Ashley felt as if a hand was slowly tightening round her throat. ‘Are you insinuating that Jago is marrying me only to gain a stake in Landons?’
‘Hardly a stake, my dear.’ The deadly needle went in and out, doing its work. ‘After all, you’re an only child with neither the physical nor mental capacity to become a—a captain of industry. Your father, naturally, needs someone he can trust to run the company eventually, and who better than a son-in-law and as you were—gratifyingly ready to marry him, and Jago is extremely ambitious, everyone’s satisfied.’
There was a silence. Ashley said flatly, ‘I don’t believe you.’
Erica laughed. ‘Of course not. Why should you? And you have nothing to worry about. Jago will never forget that you’re Daddy’s daughter, and be less than attentive, but you must remember to allow him—a little leeway now, before the noose tightens for ever. So why don’t you go home like a good girl, and wait for him to call you. I’m sure he will, eventually. He tends to have a fairly strict sense of duty,’ she added blandly.
Some guardian angel must have protected Ashley on that nightmare drive to his flat, because she remembered nothing about it.
All the way there, a voice in her head was whispering, ‘It can’t be true—can’t be true …’
And yet suspicion, once planted, was growing like a weed in the sun, sending out deadly tentacles to smother and choke. She had to see Jago, to confront him, and find out once and for all the real truth behind their marriage.
Because, she had to admit, the romance had been a whirlwind affair. She hadn’t seen a great deal of Jago while she was growing up, but after Silas had decided to seek a permanent home base near the company headquarters, they had begun to come into contact with each other.
At first, she had been full of shy admiration, gauche and tongue-tied whenever he was around. As he shared her father’s professional interests, it was inevitable that they should meet. Sometimes he was kind to her, at others, he teased her unmercifully. Gradually, almost in spite of herself, her admiration turned to a kind of hero-worship, and then, bewilderingly, to something much deeper.
Ashley had found she was aching for a glimpse of him, and agonising when this was denied her. She was ecstatic when he noticed her—once he gave her a lift home from the library, and she lived on it for weeks—and miserable when the passenger seat in his car was filled by one of the leggy blondes he seemed to favour. Not that he was always at home by any means. A lot of the time he was away, pursuing his career, immersed in one of the civil engineering projects for which he had trained at university.
‘He’s going straight to the top, that lad,’ Silas had remarked more than once with unveiled satisfaction.
But Jago’s ambitions and professional abilities counted for little with Ashley. For her, he was the focus of all her romantic dreams, and when, right out of the blue, he had rung and invited her to have dinner with him, she had thought she would die of delight.
But she had lived, and it was the start of an idyllic period in her life. Jago dined her, and danced with her, partnering her at tennis, taking her on picnics, and visits to the theatre and cinema.
And when, after six heady weeks, he had asked her to marry him, she had said ‘Yes’ eagerly, with no thought of dissimulation. ‘Gratifyingly ready,’ Erica had said mockingly, she recalled with a shiver of nausea. But it was no more than the truth. She’d been foolishly, blindly ready to allow herself to be handed over in exchange for the Landon empire.
As she drove, a lot
