Blackmail

Lifting one long, slender leg from the suds, she eyed it dispassionately. Gilles certainly knew how to live. Why had he not married? Surely a home and responsibilities such as his must make the production of a son and heir imperative, and Frenchmen were normally so careful in these matters. He was, after all, thirty-one. Not old … she laughed aloud at the thought of anyone daring to think such a vigorous and aristocratic man as Gilles old. Even when he did eventually reach old age he would still be devastatingly attractive. She frowned. Where were her thoughts leading her? Surely she was not still foolish enough to feel attracted to Gilles?

She got out of the bath and dried herself slowly. Of course she was not; she had learned her lesson. She glanced towards the telephone by her bed. She would ring Drew. Michael had assured her that she might, and that he would ensure that the call was paid for.

It didn’t take long to get through. Drew’s Boston accent reached her quite clearly across the miles that separated them. He sounded rather brusque, and Lee’s heart sank.

‘You decided to go, then?’

His question referred to the fact that he had not been pleased to learn that she was due to travel abroad with Michael. In fact he had tried very hard to dissuade her, and they had come perilously close to their first quarrel. Now, squashing her misgivings, Lee replied firmly, ‘It’s my job, Drew—you know that. You wouldn’t expect me to make a fuss because you have to work in Canada, would you?’

There was a pause, and then Drew’s voice saying coldly, ‘That’s different. There’s no need for you to work at all, Lee. As my wife you’ll be expected to fulfil certain duties. You should be spending these months before our marriage in Boston. Mom did invite you.’

So that she could be vetted as to her suitability to marry into such a prominent family, Lee thought resentfully.

‘So that she could make sure I don’t eat my peas off my knife?’ she remarked sarcastically, instantly wishing the words unsaid as she caught Drew’s swiftly indrawn breath.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ He sounded stiff now, and angry. ‘All Mom wanted to do was to introduce you around the family. When we’re married we’ll be living in Boston, and it will help if you already know the ropes. Mom will propose you to the charity committees the family work for, and …’

‘Charity committees?’ Once again Lee’s hot tongue ran away with her. ‘Is that how you expect me to spend the rest of my life Drew? I already have a career …’

‘Which takes you gallivanting all over the place with other men. I want my wife at home, Lee.’

All at once she understood. He was jealous of Michael! An understanding smile curved her mouth. How silly of him! Michael was in his late forties and well and truly married. All at once she wished the width of the Atlantic did not lie between them, but she had already been on the phone for several minutes. She glanced at her watch and said hurriedly, ‘Drew, I can’t talk any more now. But I’ll write soon …’

She hoped he would say that he loved her, but he hung up without doing so, and she told herself it had probably been because someone might have overheard. It was too late now to regret those impetuously hasty words. She could only hope that her letter would mollify him. There wasn’t time to start it before dinner, and she tried to put the whole thing out of her mind until later. The black dress set off her creamy skin, still holding the faint sheen of her Australian tan. The neckline, high at the throat, plunged to a deep vee at the back, exposing the vulnerable line of her spine, drawing attention to the matt perfection of her flesh. Long sleeves hugged her arms to the wrists, the skirt skimming her narrow hips, a demure slit revealing several inches of thigh, now encased in sheer black stockings. Her mother had been with her when she bought the dress, and it was she who had suggested the stockings. ‘Something about that dress demands them,’ she had insisted firmly. ‘It’s a wicked, womanly dress that should only be worn when you’re feeling particularly female, and with it you must wear the sheerest stockings you can find.’

‘So that every man who sees me in it will know just what I’m wearing underneath it?’ Lee had exclaimed, scandalised. She had already realised that there was just no way she could wear a bra with the dress, and now her mother, of all people, was suggesting that she go a step farther!

‘So that every man who sees you in it will wonder what you’re wearing,’ her mother had corrected. ‘And hope he’s right! Besides,’ she concluded firmly, ‘there’s something about wearing stockings which will make you feel the way you ought to feel when you’re wearing that dress.’

It had been impossible to argue with her mother’s logic, but now Lee wasn’t so sure. The fine Dior stockings enhanced her long, slim legs, the velvet sumptuous enough on its own, without any jewellery. On impulse, Lee swept her hair into a smooth chignon, leaving only a few softening wisps to frame her face. All at once her eyes seemed larger, greener, the classical hairstyle revealing her perfect bone structure. When she looked in the mirror she saw not a pretty girl, but a beautiful woman, and for a moment it was almost like looking at a stranger. She even seemed to be moving more regally. She applied the merest hint of green eyeshadow, a blusher frosted with specks of gold, which had been a hideously expensive Christmas present from her brother and which gilded her delicately high cheekbones to perfection, then added a lip gloss, darker than her daytime lipstick. Perfume—her favourite Chanel completed her preparations and then, slipping on the delicately heeled black sandals, she surveyed her reflection in the mirror, rather like a soldier preparing for a hard battle, she admitted wryly.

Michael whistled when he saw her.

‘What happened?’ he begged. ‘I know Cinderella is supposed to be a French fairytale, but this is ridiculous!’

‘Are you trying to tell me that I arrived here in rags?’ Lee teased him.

‘No. But I certainly didn’t expect the brisk, businesslike young woman I left slightly less than an hour ago would turn into a beautiful seductress who looks as though she never does anything more arduous than peel the old grape!’

Lee laughed; as much at Michael’s bemused expression as his words. The sound ran round the enclosed silence. A door opened and Gilles walked towards them. Despite his claim that they would dine informally he was wearing a dinner suit, its impeccable fit emphasising the lean tautness of his body. Lee was immediately aware of him in a way that her far more naïve sixteen-year-old self had never been. Then he had dressed in jeans and tee-shirts, or sometimes when it was hot, just jeans, and yet she had never been aware of his body as she was now; the muscular thighs moulded by the soft black wool, the broad shoulders and powerful chest; the lean flat stomach.

‘Do you two have some means of communication I don’t know about?’ Michael complained. ‘I thought we were dining informally?’ He was wearing a lounge suit, and Gilles gave him a perfunctory smile.

‘Please forgive me. I nearly always change when I am home for dinner. The staff expect it.’

Lee stared at him. From her estimation of him she wouldn’t have thought he gave a damn what the staff expected.

‘It is necessary when one employs other people to make sure that one has their respect,’ he said to her, as though he had guessed her thoughts. ‘And there is no one quite so snobbish as a French peasant—unless it is an English butler.’

Michael laughed, but Lee did not. God, Gilles was arrogant—almost inhuman? Did he never laugh, cry, get angry or make love?

The last question was answered sooner than she had expected. They were in what Gilles described as the ‘main salon’, a huge room of timeless elegance of a much older period than her bedroom. Louis Quatorze, she thought, making an educated guess as she studied a small sofa table with the most beautiful inlaid marquetry top. Gilles had offered them a drink, but Lee had refused. She suspected that only house wines would be served during dinner and she did not want to cloud her palate by drinking anything else first. Neither of the two men drank either, and she would feel Gilles watching her with sardonic appraisal. He was a man born out of his time, she thought, watching his face. Why had she never seen before the ruthless arrogance, the privateer, the aristocrat written in every feature?

The door opened to admit Madame Le Bon. She gave Gilles a thin smile.

‘Madame est arrivée.’

Who was the woman who was so well known to Gilles’ household that she was merely referred to as Madame? Lee wondered. Gilles did not move, and Lee could almost feel the housekeeper’s disapproval. She looked at Lee, her eyes cold and hostile, leaving Lee to wonder what she had done to merit such palpable dislike, and all on the strength of two very brief meetings—and then she forgot all about the housekeeper as another woman stepped into the room. She was one of the most beautiful women Lee had ever seen. Her hair was a rich and glorious red, her skin the colour of milk, shadowed with purple-blue veins. Every tiny porcelain inch of her shrieked breeding, right down to the cool, dismissing smile she bestowed upon Michael and Lee.

‘Gilles!’

Her voice was surprisingly deep, a husky purr as she placed one scarlet-tipped hand on Gilles’ arm and raised her face for a kiss which, her seductively pouted mouth informed the onlookers, was no mere formality.

The scarlet, pouting mouth was ignored, and to Lee’s surprise Gilles lifted her hand to his lips instead. Perhaps he was embarrassed about kissing her in front of them, she deduced, although she had thought him far too arrogant to mind about that.

‘Forgive me for not dressing more formally,’ she purred, indicating the sea-green chiffon gown which Lee was quite sure came from one of the famous couture houses. ‘But I have only this afternoon returned from Paris. And these are your guests …’

Gilles introduced them.

‘Louise—Lee Raven, and Michael Roberts. Madame Beauvaise. Her father is my closest neighbour. Another wine grower …’

Louise’s lips pouted, her eyes narrowing slightly as she scrutinised Lee, so thoroughly that Lee felt there wasn’t anything about her which had not been inspected and priced—including her stockings.

‘Come, chéri,’ she protested lightly, ‘you make it sound so formal and dull. We are more to each other than mere neighbours, you and I. And you, Miss Raven—you are wearing a betrothal ring, I see. Do we take it that you and Mr Roberts are to marry?’

First the housekeeper and now this woman; there seemed no shortage of people willing to thrust her into Michael’s arms, it seemed.

‘No, we are not,’ she said shortly, not prepared to elucidate. There had been a suggestiveness behind the Frenchwoman’s words which she had disliked intensely; it had almost been that of a voyeur, distasteful though the thought was, and for the first time Lee saw the sensuality behind the redhead’s elegant poise, the greedy hunger of her mouth as it parted suddenly when she looked at Gilles. Feeling faintly sick, Lee wished she could escape to her room. There was something about Louise which reminded her of a particularly deadly species of orchid, all dazzling beauty on the surface, but underneath … poisonous.

The meal was as delicious as Lee had envisaged—soup served with a perfect, dry rosé which cleansed the palate; deliciously tender lamb with a full-bodied red which brought out the subtle flavour of the roast meat, and finally a cheese board with a choice of Rocamadour, Picodon, and Charolles, all chosen to complement the dry, fruit white wine.

Michael was a skilled raconteur, and the talk around the dinner table was general and light, only Louise pouting occasionally as though longing to be alone with the man Lee now no longer had any doubt was her lover. It was there in every look she gave him, the constant touch of her fingers on his arm; the intimate possessive glances which said quite plainly, this man is mine.

After dinner they returned to the salon. The housekeeper brought in the coffee; like the dinner service the cups were beautiful porcelain, and had not, Lee suspected, been purchased from any store.

Louise got up gracefully to pour the coffee, but to Lee’s amazement Gilles restrained her.

‘Perhaps Lee will be mother?’ he suggested with a slight inclination of the arrogant dark head. Lee was astounded, but such was the authority of his voice that it never occurred to her to refuse.

The hauteur with which Louise surveyed her almost made her laugh out loud.

‘Mother?’ she repeated disdainfully.

‘An English expression,’ Gilles informed her. ‘I should have mentioned it earlier, but Lee and I are old friends. We have an aunt in common.’ He reached for Lee’s hand as he spoke, such a look of tender amusement in his face that she almost caught her breath in disbelief.

Louise seemed to share her bemusement. She was staring from Lee to Gilles with narrowed eyes, her face no longer beautiful, but hard and dangerous.

‘I hope that as such an old friend, Lee will not mind sharing you with … newer friends …’

There was a warning as well as a question in the silky words, and Lee realised with a sense of shock that the redhead actually thought she might be a contender for Gilles’ affections. As though she would attempt anything so foolish!

She was even further astonished when Gilles carried her fingers to his lips, an expression which in anyone else might almost have been called doting, in the slate-grey eyes, now warm and smouldering.

‘Well, darling?’ he enquired in tones of deepest affection. ‘Will you be jealous of my old friends?’

‘Darling?’

For a moment Lee thought she had been the one to say the word, and then a look at Louise’s furious white face informed her that although they had heard the endearment with equal shock, the Frenchwoman had been the first to announce her shock verbally.

Lee glanced at Michael to see what he was making of all this strange behaviour on the part of their host, but he was simply relaxing in his chair, a small smile playing round his lips as he waited for the explosion none of them were in any doubt was imminent. Unless of course it was Gilles, who was looking for all the world as though there was no reason why he should not call Lee ‘darling’ in front of his mistress, and none at all why she should resent it. That look of icy hauteur would certainly have been enough to make her think twice about creating a scene, Lee reflected uncertainly, but then perhaps she had more experience of exactly how brutal Gilles could be when he wanted to than the infuriated Frenchwoman.

‘Isn’t that how one normally addresses a fiancée?’ Gilles murmured smoothly.

‘A … You mean …’

‘Lee and I are engaged to be married,’ he agreed silkily, obviously realising that while Louise had grasped the meaning of his words, she was, as yet, incapable of vocalising her reaction to them.

‘She is not wearing the Chauvigny betrothal ring.’

‘A small omission,’ Gilles said coolly. ‘It has been an understood thing between us for many years that we should marry, but on my last visit to England I found her so grown up and … desirable that I could not wait to … seal our betrothal. Since I do not carry the Chauvigny emerald around with me—which I am sure, my dear Louise, you will have already marked, will match Lee’s eyes exactly—I had to make do with this small trifle.’

Drew’s diamond was removed from Lee’s finger before she could protest, Gilles shrugging aside Louise’s impatient questions as though he found them both boring and impertinent. After a long tirade in French which Lee was mercifully relieved that she could not understand, the redhead got up and stalked over to her, eyes venomous as they stared down into her oval face.

‘You may have made this innocent your betrothed, Gilles—do not think I do not know why. The woman who gives birth to the Chauvigny heir must of course be above reproach, but she will never bring you the pleasure in bed that I did. She will have milk and water in her veins, your English bride, not blood. And as for you …’ her eyes swept Lee’s pale face. Events were moving much too fast for Lee. She ought to have denied Gilles’ statement right from the start, but she had been far too stunned, and he, taking advantage of her bemusement, had spun a tale around them which pointed to him being a skilled and resourceful liar.

‘Do you really think you will keep him?’ Louise demanded scornfully. ‘How long will it be before he leaves your bed for someone else’s, in Paris or Orléans, while you are left to sleep alone? Look at him!’ she insisted. ‘He is not one of your cold, passionless Englishmen. He will take your heart and break it as he did mine, and feed the pieces to the vultures. I wish you joy of him!’

Gilles, looking unutterably bored, held open the door as she stalked towards it, and through it, leaving a silence behind her which could only be described as deafening.

CHAPTER TWO

‘AND what,’ Lee asked dangerously, when the front door had slammed behind the furious Frenchwoman, and Michael had discreetly left them to it, ‘was all that about?’

Far from looking ruffled, Gilles appeared enviably calm—far calmer than she was herself. He lit a thin cheroot with an expensive gold lighter, studying the glowing tip for a few seconds before replying coolly,

‘I should have thought it was obvious. You are not, I think, lacking in intelligence. You must surely have observed that Louise considered her position in my life far more important than it actually was.’

His sheer arrogance took Lee’s breath away.

‘An impression which you of course did nothing to foster!’ she smouldered, too furious now for caution. Of all the hypocritical, arrogant men! To actually dare to use her to get rid of his unwanted mistress!

‘Louise knew the score,’ he replied emotionlessly. ‘If she decided she preferred being the Comtesse de Chauvigny, rather than merely the Comte’s mistress, it is only natural that I should seek to correct her erroneous impression that she may step from one role to the other merely on a whim.’

‘Her place is in your bed, not at your side, is that what you’re trying to say?’ Lee seethed. Really, he was quite impossible! ‘She was good enough to sleep with, but …’

‘You are talking of matters about which you know nothing,’ Gilles cut in coldly. ‘In France marriage is an important business, not to be undertaken without due consideration. Louise’s first husband was a racing driver, who was killed during a Grand Prix; for many years she has enjoyed the … er … privileges of her widowhood, but a woman of thirty must look to the future,’ he said cruelly, ‘and Louise mistakenly thought she would find that future with me. A Chauvigny does not take for a bride soiled goods.’

Lee made a small sound of disgust in her throat and instantly Gilles’ eyes fastened on her face.

‘You think it a matter for amusement?’ he demanded. ‘That a woman such as that, who will give herself willingly to any man who glances her way, is fit to be the mistress of this château?’

‘She was fit to be yours,’ Lee pointed out coolly.

Hard grey eyes swept her.

‘My mistress, but not my wife; not the mother of my children. And before you say anything, Louise was well aware of the position. Do you think she would want me if it were not for the title, for this château?’

‘Possibly not.’ Now what on earth had made her say that? Lee wondered, watching the anger leap to life in Gilles’ eyes. What woman in her senses would not want Gilles if he owned nothing but the clothes he stood up in? The thought jerked her into an awareness of where such thoughts could lead. What woman would? she demanded of herself crossly. Certainly not her, who knew exactly how cruel and hateful he could be!

‘I am not interested in your emotional problems, Gilles,’ she told him firmly. ‘What I want to know is why you dared to drag me into all this, or do you still enjoy inflicting pain just for the thrill of it?’

There was a small silence when it would have been possible to hear a pin drop, had such an elegant room contained so homely an object; a time when Lee was acutely conscious of Gilles’ cold regard, and then, as the silence stretched on unnervingly, she held her breath, frightened, in spite of her determination not to be, by the hard implacability in Gilles’ face.

‘I will forget that you made that last remark. As to the other—’ he shrugged in a way that was totally Gallic, ‘because you were there, because we are known to one another; because you were already wearing a betrothal ring which made things so much easier.’

‘Well, as of now,’ Lee told him through gritted teeth, as she listened in appalled disbelief to his arrogant speech, ‘our betrothal is at an end!’

‘It will end tomorrow,’ Gilles told her arrogantly, as though she had no say in the matter. ‘When we marry.’

‘Marry?’ Lee stared at him. ‘Have you gone mad? I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth! Have you forgotten that I’m engaged to another man? A man whom I love, and who loves me …’

‘But who does not trust you,’ Gilles drawled succinctly. ‘Otherwise he would not have telephoned here this morning to ask if you had arrived, and if you were to share a room with Michael Roberts. I confess I was intrigued to meet you again; you must have changed considerably, I told myself, to arouse such jealousy.’

Lee ignored the subtle insult. He had known she was coming, then. Had that scene with Louise all been planned? She didn’t want to think so, but knowing Gilles, it was just the sort of Machiavellian action he would delight in.

‘Sit down,’ he instructed her coolly, grasping her shoulders with cool hands, tanned, with clean, well cared for nails. Hands which held a strength that bruised as he forced her into a brocade-covered chair, which alone was probably worth more than the entire contents of her small flat. ‘Before you lay any more hysterical charges at my feet, allow me to explain a few facts to you.

‘Louise’s father is a close friend of mine, and a neighbour, whom I greatly respect. Louise has completely blinded him as to her true personality, and out of charity his friends keep silent as to her real nature. He owns lands which borders mine, fine, vine-growing land, which will eventually form Louise’s dot should she remarry, but Bernard is growing frail and can no longer tend this land himself. I should like to buy it from him …’

‘Why don’t you simply marry Louise?’ Lee butted in, too furious to stay silent any longer. ‘Then you’ll get it for free.’

‘On the contrary,’ Gilles said smoothly, ‘I shall have to pay a very heavy price indeed. The price of knowing that my wife is known intimately to every other man in the neighbourhood who has glanced her way; the price of not knowing whether I have fathered any children she may bear. However, I now discover that our names have been linked by local gossip—gossip deliberately fed by Louise, I am sure, for she would stop at nothing to become my wife.’

Again his arrogance took Lee’s breath away, but before she could protest, Gilles was continuing emotionlessly.

‘I had two choices open to me. Either I must give in to Louise’s blackmail, or cause great pain to an old friend.’

‘And thereby lose his rich land,’ Lee commented sotto voce, but Gilles ignored her.

‘However, on this occasion I was presented with a third, and infinitely preferable choice—marriage to someone else, a marriage which will calm Bernard’s suspicions, silence Louise’s malicious tongue, and far more important, a marriage which can be set aside when its purpose has been achieved. In short, my dear Lee, a temporary marriage to you.’

Lee was lost for words. She stared at him, her green eyes wide with disbelief.

‘I won’t do it,’ she said positively, when she had found her voice. ‘You can’t make me, Gilles.’

‘Oh, but I can,’ he said silkily.