knock sounded again, and she grimly pulled herself together. You’ve created your own monster here, Claire! she told that frightened face in the mirror. Now live with her!
With that little lecture to bolster her courage, Claire watched her chin come up, soft pink-painted mouth firming a little as the light of defiance sparked back into her eyes.
Seeing it happen, Althea took a step back in silent retreat. And when Claire turned away from the mirror to walk over to the connecting door Althea melted out of the room without another word spoken between them.
The way he was dressed, in a conventional black dinner suit, white dress shirt and black bow-tie, was the first thing Claire noticed as she pulled open the door. And the second thing was that he looked big and dark and dauntingly sophisticated.
Her pulse quickened; she tried to steady it. He opened his mouth to say something light and ordinary—then stopped when his eyes actually focused on her properly.
Claire gave up trying to control her pulse when it broke free and just went utterly haywire as his gaze rippled over her. There was really no other way to describe it since that was exactly what her skin did as he inspected her slowly from the top of her shining head to rose-pink-painted toenails peeping out from the tips of her strappy silver shoes.
And he wasn’t pleased by what he was seeing; she could see that immediately in the way his parted mouth snapped shut then tightened. ‘Taking us all on, are you?’ he drawled with super-dry sardonicism.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she answered coldly.
He smiled that smile. ‘Then let me put it this way,’ he offered. ‘I don’t think there is going to be any doubt in the minds of anyone here tonight why I find myself having to marry you.’
‘Lies can be such uncomfortable things sometimes, don’t you think?’ She acidly mocked all of that. ‘But this one you will have to live with,’ she then informed him. ‘Because I am not going to cover myself up just to save your embarrassment.’
His sleek black brows shot up. ‘Did I say I was embarrassed?’
You didn’t have to, Claire thought, and turned away from him as an unexpected wave of disappointment hit. Even with defiance flying as high as a kite from her, she discovered, to her annoyance, that she had still been looking for his reassurance, not his disapproval.
Needing something to do to keep her muddled emotions hidden, she was glad that she had it—in the form of a white stretch-silk sleeve Althea had cleverly fashioned for her to wear over her plaster-cast.
It was waiting for her on her dressing table, and she walked over to get it, stingingly aware of those dark eyes taking in the amount of naked back the wretched dress left exposed.
‘Where is your sling?’ he enquired levelly after a few moments.
‘I don’t need it any more,’ she said—then, with a half lift of one slender white shoulder, added, ‘Well, not all the time anyway.’
‘Here—allow me…’
A long-fingered hand appeared from behind her to take the white sleeve from her grasp. ‘To cover your cast, I presume?’ he said lightly.
The temptation to snatch it back from him and tell him she could manage very well by herself almost—almost got the better of her. But even in the strange antagonistic mood she was in she knew that would be just too childish.
So she stood silent and still while he came to stand in front of her—her very own giant black-winged eagle, she mused as the feeling of being swooped down on overwhelmed her again. But then, she might be tall at five feet eight inches but he was one hell of a lot taller.
Taller, wider, bigger, darker, she listed as he picked up her injured wrist and began feeding the sleeve over the plaster-cast protecting it.
‘Is the age thing a big problem to you, Claire?’ he asked her quietly.
Older, tougher, calmer, cooler—the list went on. She gave a shake of her head in reply to his question.
‘Perhaps you are still angry with me because I—overstepped the boundaries of our arrangement, then.’
Wiser, she added. Because it hadn’t really hit her until he’d said it out loud that this was exactly the reason why she was feeling as emotionally confused as she was.
‘You blow hot and cold all the time,’ she felt constrained to answer. ‘I just don’t know how to respond to that.’
‘Then I apologise,’ he murmured rather grimly.
Gracious, too, she added to the growing list. Because I’d have cut my own throat before I’d have had the grace to apologise as quickly and as sincerely as that.
Giving that small shrug with her shoulder again in acknowledgement of his apology, she then added a small sigh. ‘It isn’t going to be easy for me, you know, having to deal with all of these people who are coming here tonight, knowing what they will all be thinking when they look at me.’
‘I know.’
‘Althea said she thought I was brave to dress myself up like this for the party. But I’m not brave, not really. I’m just…’ She ran out of words on a discontented sigh.
‘Trying to cope the best way you can.’ He supplied them for her.
Silly tears tried to fill her eyes because now she was having to add understanding and gentle and sympathetic to her list and it really couldn’t get any longer!
Yes, it can. She then had to amend that thought as he put his hand to her cheek and used his thumb to gently draw her chin up so he could look gravely into her swimming blue eyes. Because he was touching her for real rather than touching her through the protection of her plaster-cast, and she now had to add dangerous to that list because his touch made her feel so—!
He bent down to brush his mouth across hers, and the list was halted right then and there as it suddenly raced away from her in a mad, frantic blur of sizzling adjectives.
‘Althea should have said beautiful and brave,’ he murmured huskily as he drew away again.
So he did like the way she looked! If Claire could have seen her own eyes then, she knew it must have been like watching a dark shadow pass over and the sun coming out.
He smiled; so did she—the first real smile she had offered him in days. And while she continued to stand there feeling starry-eyed and breathless he picked up her other hand and slid something onto one of her fingers.
‘A betrothal ring for my betrothed,’ he murmured lightly as Claire glanced down then went perfectly still when she found herself staring at the most enchanting little diamond cluster ring she had ever set eyes on. ‘It is a necessary part of the game-plan.’
The game-plan. Her heart thumped in her breast. How could she keep forgetting the game-plan?
‘And it fits, too,’ he added in that same lightly teasing vein. ‘Which means Grandmother is going to make me pay for the pleasure of placing it here.’
‘It’s
