High Society (30 page)

Lucy’s colour came and went whilst she struggled between truth and fear—and love.

In the end, love won out.

‘No, of course not. Why should there be?’

‘No particular reason—other than that you don’t exactly look like a glowing newly married,’ Marcus heard himself saying curtly.

‘Glowing newly marrieds are normally glowing because they are in love with one another,’ Lucy told him lightly. ‘And we aren’t.’

She would have to tell him soon that she wanted to end their marriage. Soon, but not yet. Please, just let her have a little more time with him. One birthday, one Christmas...she would tell him before the New Year, she promised herself.

* * *

Lucy hesitated outside the jeweller’s. It was Marcus’s birthday today, and tonight they were going out for dinner with his family. She had already bought him a new silk tie, and she certainly couldn’t afford to buy him one of the expensive watches displayed in the window in front her.

Besides, he would replace his stolen Rolex himself in due course. It had been insured.

Even so... There was a discreet sign in the window saying that they also sold good quality ‘previous owner’ watches.

She could always go in and enquire.

Half an hour later she was back on the pavement outside the shop, huddling into her coat to protect herself from the icy blast of the wind, the Rolex watch on which she had just spent virtually every penny she had in her bank account safely tucked in her handbag.

It was exactly the same model as the watch Marcus had had stolen, and she was thrilled to be able to give it to him for his birthday. Would he keep it for ever? Even after they were divorced? The pain caught her breath and held her immobile in its grip.

* * *

They were going for dinner at the Carlton Towers—mainly because in Marcus’s opinion they served the best steak in London.

Marcus arrived home just as Lucy stepped out of the shower. By the time he had reached the bedroom she had wrapped herself in a towel and was seated on their bed, his watch carefully gift wrapped beside her.

‘What’s this?’ he demanded as she handed it to him.

‘Your birthday present.’

‘I thought I had that this morning.’

‘Your tie? Yes, I know. But this is something extra,’ Lucy told him huskily.

She was beginning to have an effect on him that wasn’t what he had planned, Marcus acknowledged as he sat down beside her and unwrapped his present.

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. But when he removed the paper and saw the familiar Rolex box he was surprised.

‘It isn’t new, I’m afraid. I couldn’t... But it’s just like the one you lost.’

It wasn’t—not quite—because the one he had lost had originally belonged to his father. But he didn’t tell her that. Instead he put the watch on without a word, and then took hold of her and kissed her fiercely.

It seemed to have been such a long time since he had kissed her like this—even though in reality they had only been back from their honeymoon a fortnight. And if he had not made love to her as passionately since their return then that was very probably down to the fact that she had not encouraged him to do so. Lucy had that brief thought, and then she stopped thinking about anything as he rolled her down onto the bed beneath him and kept on kissing her.

Yearningly Lucy kissed him back. She loved him so very much...

* * *

‘You two are late. What kept you?’ Lucy’s mother asked, when Lucy and Marcus hurried into the restaurant of the Carlton Towers hotel.

Automatically Lucy looked at Marcus. Thank goodness it was too dark in here for anyone else to notice the look Marcus was giving her.

‘Marcus, you’ve got your watch back,’ Beatrice announced halfway through dinner.

‘Actually, no. Lucy gave me this for my birthday.’

Again he looked at her, and this time Lucy suspected that Beatrice
had
seen the gleam in his eyes, and had guessed exactly what the giving of the gift had led to, because she suddenly grinned and said quietly to Lucy, ‘Aha—
now
I think I know why we weren’t the last to arrive for once. I thought it was unlike my normally prompt brother to be late.’

It was gone midnight when they finally got home.

‘Only another three weeks to Christmas,’ Lucy said sleepily.

‘Mmm. Early in the New Year would be a good time for us to start looking for that country house we’ve been thinking about, I suspect.’

Lucy’s heart missed a beat. Early in the New Year their marriage would be as good as over, thanks to Nick and Andrew Walker.

‘What’s wrong?’ Marcus asked her sharply.

‘Nothing. What makes you think there is?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that the emotional temperature has just dropped by ten degrees might have something to do with it,’ Marcus responded, his voice every bit as cool. ‘Something’s on your mind, Lucy.’

‘Nothing is on my mind. I’m just tired, that’s all,’ she lied.

‘I want to get this business of Prêt a Party’s debts sorted out before the New Year,’ Marcus announced. ‘I think we should go and see McVicar together and—’

‘No!’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve already told you. Prêt a Party is my business and I want to keep it that way. And—and I don’t want to be bullied into doing something I don’t want to do!’

Marcus didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. The look he gave her said it all.

Lucy wanted to plead with him to understand, but how could she do that? Dorland had not been joking when he had said to her that Andrew Walker was a bad man. People’s happiness, people’s lives meant nothing to him, or to those he worked for; she knew that. Ending her marriage to Marcus was the only way she had of protecting him. It was like...it was like performing an amputation to save a person’s life, she told herself. But whilst Marcus would survive that amputation, and probably go on to make a perfectly happy life for himself without her in it, she knew that losing him would leave her bereft for the rest of her life.

* * *

Only a week now and it would be Christmas. All the Knightsbridge shops and of course the big stores—Harrods and Harvey Nicks—had been flaunting their Christmas finery for weeks. Lucy had done all her shopping—her cards were posted, and her presents wrapped. Mrs Crabtree had taken some extra holiday so that she could spend more time with her daughter and her grandchildren, and Lucy had been enjoying showing off her domesticity to Marcus via her cooking—even if he had turned the tables on her by cooking for her last night.

He hadn’t mentioned Prêt a Party again, but there was a tension between them that hurt her—though at the same time she was clinging to every second of the time she had with him.

At least he was still making love to her—every night, in fact—with skill and passion and determination. But not, of course, with love.

The doorbell rang as she was on her way through the hall. Automatically she went to answer it, and then froze as she saw Nick standing on the steps.

She tried to close the door, but Nick pushed it open and stepped into the hall, telling her sullenly, ‘What are you doing? I thought you’d be pleased to see me. Andrew said you would be when he told me to come round.’

Andrew Walker had sent him here? Why was she not surprised?

‘Nick, you shouldn’t have come here,’ she protested. ‘If Marcus saw you...’

‘He isn’t here, is he?’

‘No, he’s at work. But if he were here—’

‘But he isn’t,’ Nick cut her off. His earlier sullenness had been replaced by the slick, facile falsity of what Nick considered to be charm and what she knew to be a shallow pretence of it.

‘You know, Lucy, Andrew’s right—we did rush into divorcing without giving our marriage a proper chance. I admit that I was a bit thoughtless, and selfish...’

Had Andrew Walker made him repeat those words until he had them off pat? Lucy wondered cynically. They certainly didn’t ring true, and neither did they accord with the look of patronising conceit she could see in Nick’s eyes as he looked at her.

‘I’m not surprised you regret marrying Carring. I suppose when you compare him to me, you’re bound to find him wanting—especially in bed.’ He smirked. ‘Bed is my speciality, after all—remember?’

Lucy longed to tell him that all she remembered of his so-called speciality was how barren and empty it had been, in every single way, but of course she could not do so.

‘You were my first lover,’ she told him quietly instead.

‘Yeah, and I guess you took it for granted that all men would be as good as me—right? Silly little Lucy.’ He shook his head mock-playfully. ‘But never mind. Pretty soon you and I can start making up for lost time. In fact...’ He looked towards the stairs. ‘Why don’t we start right now, eh? Why don’t I take you upstairs and give you a very special Christmas present?’

Lucy wanted to scream at him to leave before she was physically sick. But if she caused him to think that she loved Marcus then she would be putting Marcus in very great danger—and giving Andrew Walker something to blackmail her with.

‘Not here,’ she demurred, trying to look regretful. ‘Perhaps if I came to you...’
Never in a thousand years.

‘Came to me? How about I make you come
for
me, Lucy? And it wouldn’t take long, would it? I can see in your eyes how much you want me. Come on...’

Nick was reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him. She could smell the too-strong scent of his cologne, overpoweringly unpleasant after the familiarly of Marcus’s cool freshness.

‘Nick—no! I was just on my way out...to meet my mother,’ she fibbed.

‘Andrew told me to give you a message from him,’ he told her, abruptly releasing her. ‘You told him that you planned to leave Carring, but you’re still living here with him.’

‘I can’t just walk out,’ Lucy protested.

‘No...’ Nick gave a speculative look around the hallway. ‘I dare say you want to make sure you get a nice fat slice of his millions before you leave, and I don’t blame you for that.’

‘Yes. That’s...that’s exactly what I’m planning to do,’ Lucy agreed untruthfully. ‘And I can’t meet up with Andrew at the moment, Nick. Marcus might get suspicious. In fact he’s already suspicious because I won’t let him become a partner in Prêt a Party.’

‘Well, Andrew’s getting very impatient—and so are the men he represents. Andrew said to tell you that if you don’t get rid of Marcus voluntarily, then he’s going to have to make arrangements to do it for you. Oh, and he said to tell you not to even think about telling Carring what’s happening, because that will be as good as signing his death warrant.’

* * *

Lucy had no idea how long it was since Nick had left. And she didn’t know either that her body was cramped and stiff from sitting on the stairs, her arms locked tightly around her knees as though she were trying to stanch a wound that would not stop bleeding. She did know—vaguely—that it must have gone dark outside, because the hallway was in darkness.

Dissociated thoughts and images jumbled together inside her head. The first night she and Marcus had been to bed together; the fact that this weekend they had planned to go and look for a Christmas tree—Lucy wanted a real one and, although he had grimaced, Marcus had given in and promised to take her out to get one. The espresso machine he had bought her—the thrill it had given her the first time she had woken up beside him here in this house, as his wife; the pleasure it gave her just to look at him and watch him and the pain it gave her too, as she stored every second of time she had with him with the greed that only the deprived and starving knew.

Soon now all that would be over. It had to be. Otherwise...

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘W
HAT
!’

‘You heard me, Marcus,’ Lucy repeated shakily. ‘I want a divorce.’

She could see how shocked he was, how unbelieving and how white-faced with anger, even in the soft lighting of their bedroom.

‘We’ve only been married a month.’

He couldn’t believe the intensity of the pain ripping him apart.

‘I know. I’ve counted every day of it. Every hour,’ Lucy told him truthfully. ‘It isn’t working, Marcus. And I won’t—I can’t—stay in a marriage that doesn’t make me happy. I’ll find somewhere to live, and then we can start divorce proceedings...’

‘No!’

Lucy looked up at him.

‘I warned you when we married that I was making a lifetime commitment to you, Lucy, and that I expected the same commitment back from you. There won’t be any divorce,’ Marcus told her furiously.

He wasn’t going to let her go. Not ever. She was his and he loved her.

He
loved
her? He loved Lucy?

But that wasn’t possible. He had sworn years ago that he was not going to allow himself to fall in love. It was as though there was a vulnerable fault inside him, similar to those responsible for causing earthquakes, and his emotions—those emotions he had buried and denied and stubbornly refused to acknowledge could exist—were causing so much pressure within him that they simply could not be controlled.

Pain, grief, jealousy, and a determination never to let her go exploded inside him with a subterranean force that sent a mighty surge of love and need roaring through him, crashing through every barrier he had erected against them.

He loved Lucy!

His passionate refusal caused Lucy to waver between wild hope and joy—and the stark, horrifying reality of what his refusal meant. She hadn’t expected this kind of reaction from him. She had expected him to tell her to pack her things and leave straight away.

‘All right, don’t divorce me, then,’ she told him, making herself scowl and shrug, and keeping her voice cold and sharp. ‘But you can’t stop me leaving you, Marcus, and that is exactly what I intend to do. So far as I am concerned, our marriage is over.’

Marcus struggled to suppress an unfamiliar desire to break something—because something inside him was breaking. His heart?

He had known ever since they had come back from honeymoon that Lucy wasn’t happy, and he had believed he knew why. But he had not known then what his own feelings were. He did now! Why should he let Blayne take her from him and ruin her life a second time? She was so much better off with him—even if she was too besotted with her ex-husband to see that herself. One day she would thank him for what he was doing; one day she would come to realise, as he saw with such blinding clarity himself now, that they were meant for one another. He wanted to reason with her, to plead with her, but the unfamiliarity of dealing with such intense emotions was too much for him. He could feel jealousy, burning too high and too hot. It burst out of him in a slew of bitter, angry words as he warned her savagely:

‘Don’t think I don’t know what all this is about, Lucy. Because I do. I know exactly what’s been going on behind my back.’

Marcus knew? Her heart was hammering. He couldn’t, could he?

‘It’s Blayne, isn’t it?’

He heard her give a small, betraying gasp of shocked admission.

‘I saw you with him at the airport.’

Marcus had seen that? And he thought...

‘That was a coincidence!’

What else could she say? Lucy wondered, as she struggled to grasp what Marcus was saying to her. Initially she had thought he meant he knew about Prêt a Party and Andrew Walker, but now she realised that Marcus thought she wanted to end their marriage because she was still in love with Nick. And wasn’t it better that he should continue to think that, rather than have him become suspicious and start to ask questions she could not answer?

‘A very unhappy coincidence—as I believe your common sense would tell you if only you would let it,’ Marcus was continuing bitterly. ‘Surely you can’t have forgotten what he did to you?’

‘It’s different now,’ Lucy told him. How true that was. ‘He’s changed.’ And how untrue that.

‘He’s changed? But have you, Lucy? Are you sure you really know what you want? After all, in my bed you wanted me...’

‘No!’

Yes. Yes...

‘I thought I did, but I didn’t. Not really.’

Yes, really—now and for ever. Only you and always you, Marcus. This is killing me, and I can’t bear it. I love you so much.

‘You’re lying, and what’s more I intend to prove it to you.’

Marcus could hardly believe what he was saying and doing. He was a man out of control, driven mad by love.

He had reached for Lucy before she could stop him, dragging her against his body whilst his mouth took and then savaged hers in a kiss of furious male anger.

Downstairs, the Christmas tree they had bought at the weekend, and which Lucy had spent all day yesterday dressing, shimmered in the window, its lights twinkling softly with promise and hope. Upstairs, in the bedroom above it, there was no promise and no hope. Only a man and a woman locked together in an embrace devoid of both, and the savagery of Marcus’s anger.

Lucy felt Marcus’s hands tugging at her clothes whilst she stood motionless and numb with despair.

She heard the sound of fabric tearing as he wrenched a button from its fastening, saw the dark burn of colour staining his skin as his hands gripped the soft flesh of her bare arms.

‘Have you been to bed with him since we’ve been married, Lucy?
Have you?
’

Please, God, let her say no.

‘No.’
At least there she could be honest.

‘Not yet? But you intend to? Is that it?’ Why was he torturing himself like this?

Not ever. Never. Ever again. Not with anyone if it can’t be with you, my dearest, only love.
‘Nick...’

‘Stop it. I don’t want to hear his name,’ Marcus told her thickly, crushing his mouth over hers to silence the words he did not want to hear in the only way he could.

Lucy trembled—not with cold, and not with fear either, she recognised. Even though it would have been very easy to be afraid of Marcus in this mood.

But how could she fear what she longed for so much? How could she fear what she craved so desperately? One last time. One last memory. One last sip from the chalice of bittersweet desire.

She could feel the edge of the bed behind her, she could feel, too, Marcus pushing her down against it, his removal of her remaining clothes and his own almost brutally efficient.

‘I can make you want me, Lucy,’ he warned her. ‘And I shall do so.’

‘No.’

Yes. Yes, Marcus, do it...do it now. Take me now. I want you.

He had never taken her like this before, in an angry passion that burned and seared, but she was still responding to him. Her flesh, her emotions. Her whole self was still welcoming and wanting him, ignoring his dark rage, discarding it like the shell of something sweetly craved, focusing instead on what lay within it, on what she wanted within it, taking her, transforming her, holding her in thrall to it as her body held him in thrall to her, if only for those few precious seconds out of time.

‘No!’ The raw denial was dragged from his lungs to burst between the sounds of their breathing, the bed moving.

What the hell was he doing? Sweat beaded Marcus’s forehead as he fought against the hot tide of his own rage, pushing it back heartbeat by heartbeat, as he superimposed over his savage image of Lucy with Nick Blayne a softer, gentler image of just Lucy herself.

He must not—would not give way to his furious bitter pain.

‘Yes!’

She was not going to let him go now. Not when he had brought her so close. Not when, within a heartbeat, she could take the base metal of his anger and, like some fabled alchemist, turn it into the pure gold of shared need and equally shared fulfilment. Lucy clung to him and refused to let him go, holding him with her will and her muscles, mentally and physically, as he tried to withdraw from her, moving with him, against him, on to him, slowly and rhythmically, creating a physical tune that soothed her aching need and stoked the sweet hot fires of his desire as well as her own. In this she would have her way—and she would have him. For now if not for ever, Lucy knew, as she tightened her muscles around him and drew from him the response she needed him to give.

* * *

Marcus watched Lucy, broodingly aware of how thin and fragile she looked, her face too fine-drawn and her neck so slender it looked almost too delicate to support the drooping weight of her head.

He had reiterated to her that he would not divorce her, and he had demanded from her too a commitment not to say anything about her desire to end their marriage to any members of their families over Christmas.

‘Have you forgotten that there could be a child?’ he had demanded harshly

‘There won’t be,’ Lucy had told him. But she wasn’t sure if that was true. They had had sex since her last period after all.

Marcus had seen the tears bleeding from her eyes then, and he had seen them there again on Christmas Eve, when they had gone to Midnight Mass with her parents and his mother.

On Christmas Day they had joined Lucy’s family for lunch, and so had his mother, Lucy’s great-aunt, and his sister Beatrice and her family. Lucy had barely spoken or eaten, and Marcus had seen the surreptitious looks all the other women had given her, obviously sharing his own knowledge that she was too thin and too sad to be a happily married new bride.

The Christmas presents they had bought one another still lay beneath the tree unopened. He had declared that it was pointless for them to open them, causing Lucy to run out of the room in tears.

He wanted so desperately to keep her with him; to take her by the hand and make her look into the future; to see how happy they could be if only she would accept his love and reject Blayne.

He loved her so damn much.

Did he? Surely if he loved her, really loved her, then happiness, her desires, her tears, should matter more to him than his own?

They did, he insisted stubbornly. That was why...

That was why he was trying to force her to stay with him, was it? That was the measure of his love for her, was it?

Blayne would destroy her. He would hurt her again and again; he was just using her...

And
he
hadn’t hurt her?
He
hadn’t used her?
He
hadn’t almost taken her by force physically and he wasn’t now trying to do so emotionally?

Lucy looked at Marcus.

‘We ought to leave. You know what Great-Aunt Alice is like.’

They were due to attend her great-aunt’s traditional Boxing Day family get-together.

Lucy was wearing a soft velvet dress in a mossy green. It had lace cuffs and she was wearing a little lacy cardigan thing embroidered with pink rosebuds over it, Marcus noticed.

She looked wonderful—and heartbreakingly fragile.

‘Lucy?’

He saw the apprehension in her eyes as she looked at him and he hated himself. ‘I’ve been thinking...’

He was going to say that he wanted them to try again, that he wanted their marriage to continue, that she meant so much to him he could not give her up. Bittersweet tears filled Lucy’s eyes. If only she could go to him and tell him how much those words meant...

Marcus took a deep breath. He had made up his mind and he wasn’t going to falter now. He had to prove his love to himself and to Lucy by putting her needs first, by accepting that she must have free choice.

‘You’re right. It’s pointless allowing our marriage to continue. As soon as we get into the New Year I’ll instruct my solicitor to start divorce proceedings...’

Because I love you enough to let you go. Because that’s what love is. It’s more than a person’s own feelings—it’s putting the one they love first. And I do love you, my Lucy. So very, very much.

He was going to divorce her!

Lucy’s stomach churned and she felt acutely sick.

But this was what she wanted.

No, not what she wanted. This was what she had to have in order to protect him.

* * *

‘Lucy, you’re shivering.’

‘I’m cold,’ she answered her mother truthfully.

‘Cold? But it’s lovely and warm in here. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

I’m dying inside and I will never, ever be all right again. Marcus is leaving me—for ever.

‘Lucy!’ Lucy managed to force a smile as Johnny came swaggering over, bringing a pretty, shy-looking girl with him.

‘Meet Tia. Tia—this is my cousin, Lucy. Want some champagne, Lucy?’ he offered, showing her the bottle he was holding.

Lucy shuddered sickly. She couldn’t even drink coffee any more, she felt so unwell, never mind champagne. And besides, champagne reminded her of that first night she had spent with Marcus.

‘Have you heard about Andrew Walker being the mastermind behind some gang trafficking in immigrant workers?’ Johnny asked, continuing blithely without waiting for her to reply, ‘Apparently the police have been watching him for months, and now they’ve got the whole gang. They were involved in all sorts of dodgy scams—money laundering, prostitution, extortion. I’d no idea he was involved in that kind of thing. Dessie Arlington told me. His father’s a barrister, and he was saying that the likelihood is that he’ll probably end up spending the rest of his life in prison, along with the rest of the gang—I say, Lucy?
Lucy
!’

It was Marcus who caught her just before she hit the floor. Marcus too who insisted tersely that nothing was wrong, she just hadn’t been feeling very well lately. But Lucy wasn’t aware of that because she was still in a dead faint.

When she came round, several seconds later, she was lying on her great-aunt’s parquet floor with Marcus crouched down beside her.

‘It’s all right, Lucy. You fainted, that’s all.’

‘Marcus, I feel sick,’ she managed to whisper to him. ‘Please don’t leave me.’