Australia: In Bed with Her Groom: Mischief and Marriage / A Marriage Betrayed / Bride of His Choice

Ashley’s eyebrows shot up. She hadn’t even begun to consider such a means of redress. Even if Gordon Payne had carried through on his threats, how on earth could she have proved he was behind the harassment? People like him always covered their tracks.

‘I’d be obliged if you’d assure Mr. Cliffton I’ve put everything he demanded in train and there’ll be no reason to get into litigation.’

Harry?

Enlightenment blossomed.

Harry had overheard the threats. He was a witness. He must have gone shopping for a peaceful and fair resolution to the Gordon Payne problem, as well as food to lead her into temptation.

Images of Harry deftly turning Gordon Payne inside out with clever arguments and putting the fear of messy legal action into him flashed through Ashley’s mind. She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a wild giggle. She wished she’d been there to watch him run rings around the pompous power monger. It must have been a marvellous performance. A Rolls Royce definitely had the weight to buy more lawyers than a Daimler, and undoubtedly Gordon Payne respected that kind of money.

Having sobered herself enough to speak, Ashley blithely said, ‘I’ll certainly repeat the content of this call to Mr. Cliffton.’

‘Thank you, Mrs. Harcourt. I won’t trouble you any further. Good day to you.’

Ashley put the receiver down and laughed out loud, joy and relief bubbling through her amusement. She felt like dancing. Harry had done it again! The dragon had been slain by her irrepressible white knight. Was it any wonder that she was in danger of falling in love with him? If he kept on righting the wrongs in her world…

But what if he saw it as simply settling her affairs, smoothing the path for her to wind up her business without any hassles before leaving it behind? That was part of his mission, wasn’t it? This act of gallantry might not be inspired by any personal wish for her well-being at all.

On the other hand, she was very grateful for the outcome, so why should she quibble about motives? She snatched up the telephone and dialled Cheryn Kimball’s number, delighted that she could pass on some good news and brighten Cheryn’s day.

Despite the many question marks in her mind, Ashley could not repress her high spirits when Harry and William arrived home from their shopping trip. She heard the Rolls Royce purr to a halt and hurried out of the office to open the front door for them. Harry and William emerged from the back seat, Harry using his silver-tipped walking cane with elegant panache as he stepped out, his beautiful three-piece suit stamping him as a man of class, William following, happily clutching a bag emblazoned with the toy shop logo.

Ashley moved out to the porch, eyeing her son with exasperation. ‘William, I told you… .’

‘I didn’t ask, Mum,’ he expostulated. ‘Mr. Cliffton said we couldn’t have a proper war game without model cannons and cavalry. It was his idea. I just showed him where they could be bought.’

‘Led him there by the hand, did you?’

‘Aw, come on, Mum. Mr. Cliffton doesn’t need leading. He’s the smartest man I know.’ William broke into a run. ‘I’ll duck upstairs and put these away. Then I can help the chauffeur with the other shopping bags.’

Such virtue was highly suspicious, but Ashley let it pass. She looked at the smartest man William knew and was inclined to agree with her son. Harry’s mouth was twitching with amusement as William bolted past his mother. His blue eyes danced with mischief.

‘I don’t suppose you’d know anything about the cavalry arriving in Gordon Payne’s office this morning,’ she said archly. ‘I got the impression that a few cannons were fired there, as well.’

‘I love cavalry charges. Did you know in the Battle of—

‘Let me guess. One of your ancestors led it.’

‘No. He blew the bugle.’

‘As you did with Gordon Payne.’

He grinned. ‘It seemed like a good tune to play.’

Ashley couldn’t help laughing. ‘It worked. The enemy has been routed, and the money is in the mail.’

‘A celebratory lunch is in order?’

‘It certainly is. And thank you, Harry, both for Cheryn and myself. You’re a great bugle player.’

He laughed, and a sweet harmony danced between them, dispelling the defensive reservations Ashley had meant to hold. Harry was a prince amongst men, and there was simply no sense in dimming the pleasure he brought into her life.

They had a positively sinful lunch. Moet and Chandon champagne, cold lobster and an array of exotic salads, plus a selection of temptations from a French patisserie. William made short work of a large slice of chocolate mud cake. Ashley succumbed to an exquisite mille-fleur. Harry produced everything with irresistible flair, and it would have been absurdly churlish to stand on some independent dignity in the face of such treats.

Last but not least, he presented Ashley with a box of Belgian chocolates. ‘To help pass the time sweetly in your office this afternoon,’ he said with a smile that would have charmed the stoniest heart.

By this time, Ashley’s heart was well and truly under siege. She retreated to the safe confines of her office, which was the sensible thing to do, but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling it was a stupid waste of time. How long would she have Harry in her life?

She found it impossible to settle to any productive work. Her mind kept wandering to what she could be doing with Harry—lazing the afternoon away on the beach, showing him some of the scenic beauty spots on the central coast, revelling in his sparkling company.

She wondered how he would look stripped down to a brief pair of swimming trunks. It occurred to her that his skin should be very pale, particularly since he had come from an English winter, yet it wasn’t. Where had he got the light golden tan that gave his face and hands such a warm glow of vitality?

Perhaps he accompanied the master of Springfield Manor to the Caribbean to escape the cold. Ashley could well imagine Harry arranging vacations he would find attractive. She suspected he organized quite a lot to suit himself, then used his persuasive powers to make others feel pleased he had gone to so much trouble for them.

A clever manipulator. She mustn’t forget that. Under-neath all the charm, there burned a steady, relentless and ruthless purpose. He would wear her resistance down until she surrendered to his will. But what precisely was his will? Simply to get William to Springfield Manor for his master? Or did he have some personal desire to have her there for himself?

The doorbell rang.

As she rose from her desk she heard Harry and William come into the hallway from the kitchen. It was a butler’s job to answer doorbells, Ashley reminded herself, but she was drawn to the office door to see who was calling anyway.

It was a florist. Harry took receipt of a magnificent bunch of white carnations, thanked the delivery person, shut the door and turned to present them to Ashley as she came forward.

‘Wow! Chocolates and flowers!’ William remarked with unconcealed glee. ‘You’re doing real good, Mr. Cliffton.’

It drew an ironic smile from Harry. ‘They’re not from me, William.’

His face fell. He frowned at Ashley as Harry handed her the carnations, two dozen of them prettily set off with sprays of baby’s breath. ‘Who’s giving you flowers, Mum?’ he demanded.

Ashley was at a loss to answer until she read the accompanying card. Then she laughed. ‘It’s a peace offering from Gordon Payne.’ Harry must have fired a whole salvo of cannons to wring these expensive blooms out of her erstwhile enemy.

William was not amused. ‘Who’s Gordon Payne?’ he asked in a darkly disapproving tone.

‘A gentleman who did some business with me,’ Ashley replied, and took the opportunity to deliver an appropriate rebuke. ‘He was here yesterday afternoon and but for some very timely intervention, young man, you would have broken the windscreen of his Daimler.’

‘Wish I had,’ William muttered.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Mutiny looked her in the eye. ‘I don’t want him coming around to our house and giving you flowers. You didn’t even tell me about him,’ he went on accusingly.

‘I’m not in the habit of discussing my business with you, William,’ Ashley reproved, taken aback by what was plainly an aggressively rebellious stance.

‘If he’s sending you flowers, it is my business,’ he argued. ‘I want Mr. Cliffton to be my uncle. I reckon he’ll be tons better than any uncle Rodney Bixell’s ever had.’ He marched over to Harry’s side. ‘So I’m telling you right now, Mum. This is where I stand.’

Ashley was stunned speechless. She knew children were growing up rather too fast these days, but to have her nine-year-old son claiming the right to choose a live-in lover for her was a bit much to swallow. Even if he was echoing her own secret fancies.

A flood of embarrassment swept a tide of heat up her neck. She couldn’t meet Harry’s eyes. What had William been telling him? Or worse, proposing to him? Did he think she was to be had as easily as Rodney Bixell’s mother?

Harry, characteristically, took William’s declaration in his stride. ‘Thank you for your vote, William,’ he said with superb aplomb. ‘I don’t think you need worry about Gordon Payne.’

William looked up, eyes glistening with hope and something suspiciously like hero-worship. ‘You mean you’ll fight him for Mum?’

‘A duel to the death,’ he promised, blithely uncaring that William was taking a personal and not a professional slant on this totally misdirecting piece of gallantry.

Ashley found her voice. ‘That’s enough!’ she snapped, her eyes flashing a fury of pride between the two of them. ‘I will not have either of you arrange my life for me.’

‘It’s my life, too,’ William pointed out with irrefutable logic.

‘Go upstairs this instant, William,’ Ashley commanded, losing patience with him. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’

She thrust the bunch of carnations at Harry. ‘You finagled these. You deal with them. And after you’ve done that, I want to see you in my office.’

Having seized control out of threatening mayhem and impressed her displeasure on both of them, Ashley strode into the private sanctum where she had always ruled the roost. She slammed the door behind her to drive home the fact that she was the boss here. Her own boss. Those who lived under her roof had better toe her line.

Which was all very well, but as Ashley paced around her office in a ferment of passionate conviction about her own autonomy, an insidious little voice in her mind persisted in questioning what her line was. It was utter hypocrisy to deny that her own desires ran parallel to her son’s feelings as to Harry’s role in their lives. How, in all honesty, could she reprimand her son for virtually giving her the go-ahead to take what she had been dreaming about most of the day?

But Harry shouldn’t have encouraged him to believe there was a chance of him becoming his uncle, going so far as to suggest he would fight any other man for the position. It was wrong, without conscience.

Unless he meant it.

CHAPTER NINE

HARRY STEPPED INTO the office and closed the door quietly behind him. His demeanour was completely unruffled. To Ashley’s intense relief he wasn’t smiling. Nor was there any amusement twinkling in his brilliant blue eyes. She was so churned up, any trace of a humourous response from him might have triggered a burst of angry frustration.

She realised, after a few fraught seconds, that the tension in the room wasn’t entirely hers. His relaxed air was a cloak, another act of self-discipline. She felt the same sense of connection she had felt yesterday, stronger now with their knowledge of each other, pulsing with the need to broaden it, deepen it.

Goose flesh shivered over her skin. Her heart skipped to a faster beat. She faced him defensively across the desk, yet there was no defence in objects or space. His eyes held hers with searching intensity, with indomitable determination, and she stared back, caught in a thrall of desire that would not be repressed, despite the doubts that plundered her mind of any peace.

‘Why did you do it?’ she asked. ‘It wasn’t fair to involve William with our…with—’ She couldn’t find appropriate words.

‘He is naturally involved,’ Harry answered quietly. ‘He is not separate from you, Ashley.’

‘But you let him think…’ She gestured helplessly.

‘That I want to be your lover?’ he finished for her.

She nodded, her throat too constricted to speak.

‘I do,’ he said simply. ‘Why should I pretend other-wise?’

She struggled with his apparently open honesty. ‘Last night—’ she forced the words out ‘—you spoke of your love for Pen.’

‘She was a very meaningful part of my life. I will not deny or hide what I felt for her. But as you yourself pointed out to me, Ashley, that’s in the past. You and I occupy the present.’

It was precisely the argument she had comforted herself with last night, but she knew there were other considerations—their backgrounds, the countries they inhabited, the lives they lived…so much to separate them, even if these feelings could be trusted.

‘What of the future?’ she asked, struggling to decipher what was right, whether to seize the moment or give more weight to consequences.

‘Who can foretell the future? At this moment I want you. More than any woman I’ve wanted in years.’

She wanted him, too. More than any man she had ever met. She couldn’t deny it. Nor could she hide it from the blue eyes relentlessly boring into hers, revealing their own naked desire, compelling an unmitigated response from her. Yet how could she give it? How, when there were so many uncertainties plaguing her?

She had a responsibility to herself and to William to make the right decisions, the best decisions. How could she recklessly turn a blind eye to consequences and take what she wanted at this moment, for this moment, simply because she wanted it? She was used to weighing everything, wary of inviting any possible disaster. But if she rejected this…

Harry moved, impelled to take the decision from her, sweep aside her painful uncertainty with action. He knew he was behaving recklessly, gambling that it would all turn out right somehow, but he didn’t care. He had to do it, had to know, had to feel. He’d been gambling with death for years and come out alive, if one could call it life.

He hadn’t realised how dull everything had become until he had met this woman. She had awakened him, and he couldn’t let go of this new exhilarating vibrancy, couldn’t let her turn him away, as she might if he didn’t act. She had the strength of will to do it if she decided against him. Time was his enemy. Every second that passed was his enemy.

He quickened his pace, closing the distance between them with ruthless intent. The blood was pounding through his veins and he knew the thrill, the primitive excitement of the hunter, the warrior going into battle. The bugle call was ringing in his head and nothing was going to stop him. He would take all before him, carry her away on a journey of discovery that he desperately wanted, that she wanted.

Yes, she did. It was burning through her, too, this need to join with him, to explore the sense of being truly alive, uninhibitedly alive, wantonly alive, awareness driven to the ultimate extreme. It was in the wild turbulence widening and darkening her eyes. It was in the faint tremor of her body as she turned to face him, watching him round the desk, coming to force the admission from her, taking the responsibility for it, changing what had been to whatever would be.

The future held no meaning for him. He would deal with it as it came. Only now mattered. And now was what he chose it to be for both of them. That was how it was, and she didn’t back away from it. Nor was she passive.

When he took her in his arms, her hands lifted to his chest, not to push him away but to touch him, and even this feather-light touch was like a hammer on his heart. He could feel a tingling heat spurting through his body, and it was imbued with the zestful joy and splendour of life, igniting the lust of the flesh to experience and savour all that bound it to this earth, to this woman who made the world bearable again, who breathed sweet air into his lungs and dazzled his mind with hope, with a promise that it wasn’t over for him.

There was more.

He gathered her closer, craving her softness, her femininity, the heart and mind of her, the soul that called to his from the same pit of loneliness he had known, the pit where the ashes of dreams resided in a greyness devoid of the beautiful colours that dreams could paint.

The need to pick up the palette and splash all the bright primary hues around both of them in wild abandonment was upon him, irresistible. Let colour fall where it would. Some of it must stick to them. No more grey. Grey was emptiness, the void waiting for a new creation, and the fever to create was too compelling to forgo.

Her hands slid to his shoulders, around his neck, and her lovely face was lifted to his, the lush curve of her lower lip tremulously inviting his plunder, and in her eyes the kindled blaze of hope, the wish, the want, the need to know, the temptation of the dream of life, to share the depths and the heights and everything in between with one who could…who would.

It was a chance, and she couldn’t resist it any more than he could.

He wrapped her more tightly to him. Willingly her soft thighs leaned into the rock steadiness of his, muscles taut with the strength of irreversible need. Her belly pressed over his loins, an enticing cushion of promise for the intimacy within. Her breasts, crested with hard beads of excitement, imprinted themselves on his chest. Her mouth opened under the pressure of his, sweet cavern of sensation, of passion released on a whirlwind of need that swirled from one to the other and fused into a tornado of feeling that swept them up in its tempestuous funnel, away from all worldly things, away from yesterday and tomorrow and the pedantic necessities of getting on with day-to-day life.

Passion feeding on passion, bodies straining to appease the long hunger, hands moving to shed the unbearable barrier of clothes, a totally consuming need to bare all to the desire burning through them, to give all, to take all on the chance that it might prove right, the chance that it would add that precious lustre of true togetherness they both sought, the silver lining beaming from behind the dark clouds, the red-orange-yellow sunburst of golden warmth, the deep calm of blue-green peace.

Their physical surroundings were irrelevant. Behind the desk in Ashley’s office they sank to the floor, she pliantly inviting, urgently welcoming, offering the cradle of her womanhood with an utter abandonment of any other care, he needing their mating with an intensity that went beyond all rational thought. Yes was the beat of his mind. Now was the beat of his body. Her was the beat of his heart.

And he plunged himself into the sweet, moist tunnel that would take him to the innermost core of this woman, reaching to the door of her soul, urging it to open with every powerful thrust of himself, wanting to find there the culmination of all he had been blindly searching for since Pen had died.

It came. He felt it begin, the exquisite flowering of ultimate giving to him, the utter yielding of self to the most intimate fusion any two people could achieve, the surrender of every particle of separateness, and it was a wild and exultant intoxicant to him. He moved faster, rushing to meet her climax with his, to share the ecstatic stream of pleasure with her, the essence of life itself mingling, melding, bonding to create the most indescribably beautiful union. He spilled the liquid warmth of his seed into the convulsing heat of her womb, and the blissful perfection of it rippled through them in waves, a wondrous rhythm of togetherness fulfilled and complete.

And they looked at each other, their eyes swimming with the glory of it, their minds dazed that it could be…and was…the possibility, the promise that neither had quite believed in, the chance taken and rewarded, the awareness of its vibrant reality pulsing through them.

She lifted a hand to his cheek, stroking it as though in awe of him or what he’d done with her, and it moved him to kiss her with a surge of tenderness that melted the last of the hard casing that had been around his heart since Pen’s death.

‘Ashley,’ he whispered, and it was a prayer of thanks for being the woman she was, for reaching so far into him that the past had fallen away and he could rejoice in the present because she was here, with him, sharing this moment of revelation, of renewal.

Harry…His name was a throb of sweet exultation in her mind and heart. She couldn’t speak it. She felt too much, and his lips were grazing over hers so softly, gently, beautifully, and he was still inside her, filling her with the wonder of all he had made her feel.

What she had known with Roger was a pale thing in comparison, leaving her totally unprepared for such an explosion of exquisite sensation, the sheer billowing glory of it seizing her body, holding it in thrall to the movement of his until that moment…that moment when she was no longer herself but him, too, an entity that belonged to both of them, yet more than either of the two, like an ecstatic star burst that she imagined must have fired the dawn of creation.

It slid into her dazzled consciousness that she wasn’t protected against the act of creation that might well be taking place right now with Harry’s seed deep inside her, spilled as wildly and wantonly as she had received it. He hadn’t thought of it, and she had abandoned all thought from the moment he had first kissed her, abandoned it to the yearning for all she had missed and craved, beyond bearing the emptiness any longer.

What if a child was born of this coming together?

Strange that she didn’t care. Perhaps she would care later when the afterglow dimmed, but she doubted it. To know this at least once in a lifetime was worth any price. It was what a man and woman were made for, and Harry had made it happen for her, giving her this precious gift, a memory to treasure no matter what else happened in her life.

He rolled onto his back, carrying her with him, his arms encircling her, hands soothing away what she suddenly realised was a rough prickle on her skin from the carpet. Not once in her marriage with Roger had they ever made love on a floor. She searched for some tiny shock at such uninhibited behaviour and found none. Her office was strewn with carelessly discarded clothes, and she was in a naked, intimate embrace with a man she had known for only one day, but none of it mattered. Only the feeling mattered.

How long would it last? She snuggled her head below his chin and listened to the steady drumming of his heart, weaving music around it, a melody of happy satisfaction she didn’t want to end. Let it beat on, she thought, turning now into forever.

Harry lay in contented languor, his fingers weaving through the long, silken strands of her hair, loosed from its pins in the heat of their passion for each other. His senses were drunk with the feel of her, the taste of her, the sight of her, the scent of her. She was beautiful, her skin like satin, her softness more sensual than velvet, her warmth more comforting than any he had known.

He thought of making love to her more slowly, savouring every moment, every nuance of intimacy, but it was better to wait. It was enough to revel in what they had just shared. There was no need to take it further right now.

He should have asked about protection, but he hadn’t known beforehand what he was going to do. If she conceived…Harry couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face. A child. His child. An heir for George and Springfield Manor. He almost laughed at the irony of it. So unplanned. Yet if it happened, he would leave no stone unturned to change Ashley’s mind about coming to England.