âLife is going to change for the both of us,' he said coolly. âYou're not the only one who's going to be feeling the repercussions of this, are you?' He called for the bill, but kept watching her, as though half expecting her to make a sudden dash for the door.
âI can take the underground back to my place,' she said, once he had paid.
âWe're going back to my house.' He steered her towards a taxi and she helplessly allowed herself to be ushered in.
âWhat for?'
âBecause I say so.'
âYou're not my lord and master,' she protested grimly under her breath.
âIf you want to be involved in joint decision making, then you're going to have to act in a more mature manner. Circumstance has put us both in a situation we hadn't banked on, and now that we're here we might just as well make the best of it.'
âThat's easier said than done!'
âOnly if you don't wake up to reality.' He looked at her with steely-eyed hardness. âYou can either make things difficult for yourself, or else you can accept the situation we're both in and enjoy it.'
â“Enjoy it?”' she asked incredulously. âAre you
enjoying it?
Are you looking forward to marrying someone you'd rather not marry? Does your heart thrill at the prospect of sharing a house with a woman who was meant to be a temporary blip?' Just uttering the words brought on an attack of self-pity, and she turned away and glared out of the window.
Her hormones were up the spout. Every word he had spoken was true and she knew that if a friend had come to her with a tale of pregnancy and marriage to a man whom most women would give their eye-teeth to have, her advice would have been to take it in her stride and enjoy it. She would have said that things could have been a whole lot worse. She would have counselled her friend to see the best in a man who was prepared to adopt the mantle of responsibility when he had no need to. Such men were few and far between.
It wasn't even as if she had nurtured romantic notions of white weddings with fairy-tale endings. This marriage of convenience was a logical step in a logical life, and as such she should have embraced it wholeheartedly.
So why couldn't she?
She wasn't going to make things easier for herself if she insisted on fighting him every step of the way.
The taxi drew up in front of his house and she looked at it curiously. She had pictured him as a man who lived in a penthouse suite at the top of an exclusive block of apartments somewhere very central. She couldn't have been further from the truth. His house was set back in gardens in a quiet street in the St John's Wood area, and as they entered it she was struck by a feeling of cosiness. It was no sprawling mansion, but neither was it a box. Warm, red brick, ivy clambering to touch the window-panes, and inside rich, deep colours and furniture that was old and comfortable.
âI thought all top businessmen who lived on their own inhabited apartments with lots of chrome and black,' she said eventually, gazing at the paintings on the walls and trying to place a couple of them.
âYet another of your hare-brained notions.' He led the way to the sitting room, which was small and had, a rarity in London, a wonderful fireplace with the original tiles on it. On the wall above the fire was an exquisite mirror, and, flanking either side, two paintings that looked disturbingly familiar. Everything she had seen spoke of wealth, but wealth without any accompanying fanfare.
âThe house has been in my family for generations,' he said, following her gaze and picking up on her surprise at her surroundings.
âIt's...'
âA far cry from chrome and black?'
âAbsolutely splendid.'
âWell, that's hurdle number one over,' he said dryly. âWould you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee?'
âTea would be fine, thank you. Milk, one sugar.' There were so many basic things he didn't know about her, and yet, every so often, she was struck by the strangest feeling that she had known this man for ever. She sat down in the sitting room, waiting for him to return, and thought that they should be writing down their CVs for each other to read. Filling in all the gaps which were normally filled in between two people during the period of courtship, when they got to know one another. They were doing things the wrong way around. The baby before the marriage and the marriage before the relationship. The scope for things going horrendously wrong was so enormous that she couldn't even dwell on it.
The most she knew she could hope for was the thing he saw as perfectly acceptable. That they would have the baby and would be able to communicate without friction. With no love to confuse the issue, their relationship would never soar to any great heights, but they might eventually become friends. Two friends sharing a house. She would turn a blind eye to his sexual adventures elsewhere, and presumably he would turn a blind eye to hers.
Not, she knew, that she would have any.
She had never considered marriage, but now that she was being forced to she might just as well face facts. She was no twentieth-century woman who carried the torch for sexual freedom, whether there was a ring on her finger or not.
For her, marriage was a commitment.
She stared blindly through the bay window at the glimpse of sky and garden outside.
It was all about love.
All about being in love.
Her mind began to travel back down the past few months, but this time all the connections were made. It was as though she was seeing her life, for the first time ever, with absolute clarity.
She had proudly thought that her background had hardened her, turned any thoughts of romance into cynicism. She had managed to convince herself for years that her career was all she wanted out of life. She had seen it as a positive sign, the fact that her relationships had been brief and pain-free. Men, she had thought, were objects of desire or at least temporary enjoyment.
She could see where her thoughts were taking her, and was powerless to drag them away from the route.
Outside, the sky was blue and flawless, undisturbed by clouds. It made the perfect canvas against which to view her life and to see how willingly she had succumbed to her illusions of independence and freedom from the rest of the human race.
The truth was that she had just never found love. Until Bruno Carr had arrived on the scene. All those intense, conflicting emotions she had felt in his presence had nothing to do with dislike. They had to do with opening her eyes for the first time in her life, and taking her first stretch, and finally coming alive. It was a shock in much the same way, she supposed, that a new-born baby feels the shock of taking its first breath.
She could feel her breath getting ragged, but she continued staring in an unfocused manner through the window, carried along with her thoughts like a stick floating randomly on an ocean tide.
When had she fallen? Impossible to tell, but fallen she had. Well and truly fallen in love with him. Little wonder that the pregnancy had caused her no real grief. Subconsciously, she had wanted his baby from the start. She closed her eyes to try and block out her thoughts, but they kept on rolling. She felt sick.
She didn't hear him enter the room. The first she knew of his presence was when he asked her if she felt all right.
âYou're as white as a sheet.'
She opened her eyes and looked at him, and she felt as if she were seeing him for the first time. She accepted her cup of tea and blew gently on the surface, then watched in silence as he sat down opposite her and crossed his legs.
This terrible realisation would have to be her secret. She would be businesslike and calm because that was the only way to conduct herself without revealing what was inside her.
He was looking at her, waiting for some kind of response, and she took a deep breath.
âJust some passing nausea. My stomach hasn't been accustomed to rich food.' She hazarded a smile which met with a frown. âHow long have you lived here?' she asked politely, reaching for the first pointless remark she could think of, and his frown deepened.
âI've already told you. The house has been inâ'
âYour family for generations. Of course. Forgot.'
âWhat's the matter with you?' He narrowed his eyes, searching to get inside her head, and she met his stare blandly.
âAmnesia and pregnancy. Well documented,' she told him. She sipped some tea and adopted a more relaxed pose.
âI don't think we should rush into the marriage thing,' she said. âThe baby's not due for another few months. I think we should take the time to at least get to know one another a bit.' She would need the time to let her emotions settle a little, or at least to learn to control them. The thought of sharing his house immediately filled her with horror.
âActually, I think we know each other better than you imagine,' he remarked. âBut if you want to wait a couple of months as opposed to a couple of weeks, then that's fine by me. I take it you won't object to an engagement ring.'
âDo people still get engaged these days?' She knew that they did, but an engagement seemed almost a greater show of hypocrisy than the prospect of marriage. Engagements, she thought, were all about being wrapped up in dreams and hope and plans. Rings to be shown off as the glowing proof of love.
âI have no idea...' he shrugged â...and it's not something that I care about one way or another. But my mother would find it very disturbing if the conventional rites of passage weren't adhered to. The gesture might mean nothing to either of us, but it would mean a great deal to her.'
His words stabbed into her with the precision of a sharp knife, but she forced herself to smile.
âIn that case...' she shrugged as well â...it doesn't matter to me one way or the other, as you say, and if it would make your mother happier, then that's fine.' Things should have been different. They should have been planning a life of happiness, with a baby on the way. But maybe it was better like this. If there were no dreams, then there were no dreams to be shattered.
âCome on,' he said abruptly, standing up. âYou might as well have the guided tour of the place.'
âWhy not?'
She followed him into all the downstairs rooms, and murmured favourably, and tried to close her eyes to thoughts of them happily growing old together, sitting on the sofa side by side, sharing laughter in the kitchen, entertaining friends in the dining room.
When they went upstairs, the beating of her heart quickened. Behind the closed doors lay bedrooms and the thought of bedrooms brought her out in a cold sweat.
The layout of the upstairs mirrored that of downstairs, with a large, central hall off which the rooms fell. Four huge bedrooms and a large sitting room which had been turned into a television area. Somehow, she couldn't imagine Bruno Carr finding the time to sit in front of a TV, but she refrained from saying that. Instead, she commented on the furnishings, peering at the paintings and delaying the onset of a further attack of nerves when confronted with the bedroom. His bedroom. Their bedroom. Their bed. God, would he want to touch her? Or would his eyes glaze over with disinterest?
His bedroom, as it turned out, was large enough to include a sitting area, in addition to a massive
en suite
bathroom.
âBig,' Jessica said weakly, not straying from the door.
âWhat the hell is wrong with you?' He swung around and stood in front of her, propping himself up with his hands on either side of the doorway.
âNothing's wrong with me.' She licked her lips nervously.
âDoes the thought of sharing a house with me frighten you?' he asked, reading her mind, and she shook her head vigorously.
âShall we move on?'
âNot until you answer a few questions.' He pulled her inside the bedroom, towards the small, squashy sofa by the bay window, and she reluctantly sat down, averting her eyes from the king-size Victorian bed dominating the room.
How many women had he shared that bed with?
The question brought a surge of angry, jealous colour to her face.
âEver since you walked through the front door, you've been acting like a zombie. Why?' It was less of a question and more of a demand for information. He was still standing over her, hands thrust into his pockets, but now he sat down next to her on the sofa, his thighs splayed against her own.
âIt all seems unreal,' Jessica mumbled, inclining her body to look at him, and feeling the full force of his personality like a sledgehammer.
She knew every line on his face, the way his mouth curved when he smiled and became a thin line when he was angry. It amazed her that she had never sought to discover why it was that a man she had told herself meant nothing to her could still have become so familiar. How had she not added up all the signs before? How could love have overcome her so stealthily that she had been unaware of herself falling headlong into the ambush?