as they were still climbing the stairs to the first floor where she and her mother lived. ‘Not in an ideal world, anyway. It’s certainly not the way I ever dreamed of marrying, but beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the only way I can think of for getting out of a very tight corner indeed, and if you don’t agree to help then there’s no one else I can turn to.’
She couldn’t look at him as she led him into the small sitting room that he had stormed out of such a short time before, painfully conscious of the fact that it was only a few short weeks since the first occasion on which he’d visited her home. Just two months or so since the party at which they’d met.
‘You know how ill my mother is—and that it can only get worse. I need to find somewhere for us to live so that I can look after her properly, so…’
‘So naturally you want your father’s house?’ Keir put in harshly.
‘Yes.’
Sienna’s voice was low and shaken, still carrying the echoes of the way she had felt when a solicitor had contacted her out of the blue. She had been stunned to discover that her father, the man who had abandoned her mother before Sienna had even been born, had had a belated attack of conscience and decided to acknowledge her as his daughter. As his wife had died some years before, and he had had no other children, he had left her everything he owned in his will. But there was a catch.
‘If my—if Andrew Nash hadn’t left me all that money, I don’t know what I’d have done. And if he hadn’t put in the condition, then I wouldn’t be forced to involve you in this.’
At last she turned to face Keir, her heart quailing as she saw the heavy lids that hooded his eyes, hiding his thoughts from her. His hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his dark trousers, his shoulders stiff, his very stance declaring hostility and opposition to everything she said.
‘The condition being that you have to be married, I presume?’
‘That’s right. In his letter he said that he’d lived his life wishing he’d chosen differently all those years ago. That he’d realised too late that the love my mother and I could have brought him as a family was more important than the wealth he kept by staying with his wife. And so he made it a prerequisite of my inheritance that I had to be married—happily married—before I could inherit.’
‘Happily married,’ Keir echoed cynically. ‘And who’s to be the judge of that?’
‘My…’
Sienna couldn’t get her tongue round the word ‘uncle’. After twenty-five years of believing she had no family at all, it was too much to accept that she now had an uncle, particularly one who held her future so securely in his hands.
‘His brother, Francis Nash, is to have the final say in seeing that his wishes are carried out. But he knows nothing about me. He’s never even seen me. It shouldn’t be too hard to—to convince him that…that…’
‘That you and I are madly in love and desperate to get married?’ Keir finished for her when she couldn’t complete the sentence.
‘That’s right.’ It was barely more than a whisper and once more her eyes skittered away from the coldly assessing stare that fixed her like a specimen on a laboratory slide, awaiting analysis. ’W-would you like a drink? There’s wine…’
‘I think I’d better keep a clear head for this,’ Keir returned dismissively. ‘I wouldn’t want anything to muddle my thinking.’
Did that mean he was actually considering the idea? Sienna didn’t dare to allow the thought to enter her mind.
‘So you want me to play the devoted groom?’
He made it sound like the most repellent task possible. As if he would rather put a gun to his head—anything other than what she had asked of him.
‘To lie? Don’t you know that lies have a nasty habit of breeding more lies? Before you’ve time to think you’re tangled up in them so tightly that you can’t get free and they’re dragging you down…’
‘But we’re not going to lie! Not really. People already know us as a couple. We’ve been seen out together often enough. It wouldn’t be all that different from what we have now. It wouldn’t!’ she declared vehemently when he expressed his disagreement in a harsh sound of disbelief. ‘You’re here almost every night as it is. What if I’d asked you to move in with me?’
‘I’d think you were taking a lot for granted, lady.’
‘Keir, it’s only supposition!’ Desperately Sienna tried to make up the ground she realised she’d lost. ‘We both know that our relationship isn’t on that sort of footing—that it will probably never be. But we’re the only ones who know that. And what we do have is good, isn’t it?’
Keir’s stony face gave her no encouragement and it was all that she could do not to give up in despair.
‘If we decided to say, after a year, that we knew it wasn’t working, then we could split—both go our own ways—and it wouldn’t matter. There’d be no frayed ends, no regrets, no complications.’
‘But this arrangement comes weighed down with complications,’ Keir pointed out with cold reason. ‘It can’t not do that. A marriage certificate complicates things, darling.’
‘But it’s only a temporary solution, you must see that!’ she pleaded with him. ‘It won’t mean anything to either of us, so you needn’t worry about getting trapped in something you don’t want! There’ll be no commitment beyond that one year—just a twelve month period and then we’ll go our separate ways.’
‘You make it sound so simple…’
‘It is simple! It couldn’t be anything else. After all, it’s not as if you’re madly in love with me, or vice versa. And…’
Her voice faded into silence as Keir snatched his hand away from her and moved to stare out of the window, affecting an intent interest in the cars going by in the street.
‘It might work,’ he said slowly.
Was it possible that he was going to agree? Sienna was past knowing whether she hoped for his agreement or feared it dreadfully. She was so caught up in her own disturbed thoughts at the prospect that she jumped like a startled cat when he suddenly whirled round to face her.
‘And what, exactly, would I get out of the deal? Because I presume you were going to offer me something—some remuneration for my co-operation, some compensation for the loss of my freedom by entering into this agreement.’
‘Of course.’
Sienna swallowed hard. She had expected this. Had known it must come inevitably. But she hadn’t thought he would be quite so cold-blooded about it.
You fool! her heart reproached her. What had she expected? That he would declare that of course he would do it, that he would do whatever she wanted and not expect anything in return?
Of course not. She had known she would have to offer Keir something in exchange for his agreement to help her out. It was just that she hadn’t been prepared for the way his demand made her feel that it was that compensation that mattered and not her.
‘So?’
