LITMIR.BIZ

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she could resist. Alain’s arm went round her, anchoring her against him, and she felt the firm, cool pressure of his mouth on hers.

      She tried desperately to pull away, but he would not allow it. If she’d been tempted to think of him as an effete businessman, she now realised her mistake. His muscles were like iron.

      Yet his lips were silk, she realised with a kind of wonder, moving gently and persuasively on hers. Coaxing her. Tempting her …

      The kiss could only have lasted a few seconds, but it seemed an eternity before he raised his head.

      When she could speak, she said thickly, ‘You—shouldn’t have done that.’

      ‘No, I shouldn’t,’ he agreed, running a rueful hand round his chin. ‘I have not shaved yet today, and I have marked you a little. You have delicate skin, ma belle. I shall have to remember that.’

      ‘All you need to remember,’ Philippa said hotly, ‘is that you promised you wouldn’t—molest me. That you’d give me time.’

      Alain’s brows lifted. ‘What a fuss about such a chaste salute! Now if I had really kissed you …’ He slanted a smile at her. ‘Come and talk to me while I shave,’ he invited softly. ‘And then let us see, hein?’

      ‘No.’ She took a step backwards, aware that her breathing was flurried, and that he knew it too. ‘I—I have to go. I’ve got to talk to my father—to his specialist—tell them the good news—make arrangements.’

      To her relief, he made no attempt to detain her. ‘So how do I maintain contact with you?’

      ‘I’ll be at Lowden Square. Monica has invited me to stay with her—until the wedding.’

      He nodded. ‘Then I will see you there. Au revoir.’

      Until we meet again, Philippa thought wretchedly when she was safely outside in the corridor with the door closed between them. She stood for a moment, allowing her hammering heartbeat to abate slightly. But she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to meet someone as disturbing as Alain de Courcy again especially under the circumstances to which she was now committed.

      I wish, she thought, that we had just said—goodbye.

      A week later, she saw her father leave for America in the care of a private nurse. She’d invented a story that some money had been left inadvertently in a company pension plan. She wasn’t sure he believed her, and if he had been well he would probably have asked some searching questions. As it was, he was having one of his bad spells, and he was clearly too relieved at the prospect of some treatment to interrogate her too minutely, and she was thankful for that. Three days after his departure, she became the wife of Alain de Courcy.

      The days in between had passed in a kind of blur. Philippa retired somewhere inside herself, and allowed events to take charge with a kind of passivity totally foreign to her nature.

      But then nothing that was happening seemed to bear any resemblance to real life. She tried on clothes with total detachment, sat in the hairdresser’s while her long hair was cut in a sleek and manageable bob, and subtly highlighted, and listened to Monica’s impatient chivvying without actually hearing a word she said.

      Reality finally impinged when she found herself on a private jet flight to Paris in the chic amber wool going-away dress which Monica had chosen for her. She stared down at the broad gold band on her wedding finger, and tried to remember without success how she’d felt when Alain had placed it there a few hours before.

      Numb, she thought. And that was how she still felt.

      But at least she did not have a honeymoon to endure. They would have to dispense with that convention for the time being, Alain had told her, because he had already taken more time off to stay in London than he could spare. So they were going straight to his Paris apartment.

      ‘I hope it won’t be too dull for you,’ he said.

      ‘Oh, no,’ Philippa had stammered, hardly able to conceal her relief. Simply sharing a roof with him would be ordeal enough, she thought. The prospect of being alone with him in the bridal suite of some exotic location with all that implied had been more than she could bear. And judging by the sardonic slant of his mouth he’d known exactly what she was thinking.

      She put a hand to her throat and touched the string of matched pearls which had been his wedding gift to her.

      ‘Exquisite!’ Monica had exclaimed as she helped Philippa to change.

      ‘Yes—but don’t they mean tears?’ Philippa had felt faintly troubled as she fastened the clasp.

      ‘Not, my dear, if you have any sense.’ Monica’s smile held a touch of envy not unmixed with malice. ‘Enjoy the loot, Madame de Courcy. Because you may find that’s all there is,’ she added cynically, then glanced at her watch. ‘Now do make haste. Your husband’s waiting.’

      Your husband. Philippa stole a covert look at this unexpected and alarming phenomenon who sat beside her, apparently engrossed in a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.

      She didn’t know whether to feel glad or aggrieved at his absorption, and decided on balance that even if it wasn’t exactly flattering, it was a relief. At least she didn’t have to try to make conversation.

      During the past ten days she had seen Alain almost daily, but she knew him no better than she’d done that first evening when she’d walked into the library at Lowden Square, she acknowledged ruefully.

      To her relief, he had made no further attempt to kiss her, or move their relationship on to a more intimate level than the friendship he’d promised, although they were still really no more than acquaintances, she admitted to herself.

      He had been invariably charming to her, however, setting himself, she realised, to draw her out, discovering her tastes in literature and music as well as art, whether she preferred ballet to opera, if she enjoyed tennis or squash, her preferences in food and wine.

      It was as if he was compiling a dossier on her. And perhaps he was—a series of facts to be fed into a computer somewhere at De Courcy International and resurrected at birthday or anniversary times.

      And she was only just beginning to realise how very little he had vouchsafed in return, this stranger who was now married to her for better or worse.

      For better or worse. Philippa repeated the words in her head, and shivered suddenly.

      In no time at all, it seemed, they were landing. The formalities at the airport were mercifully brief, then Philippa found herself being whisked away in a chauffeur-driven limousine. She supposed this was the kind of treatment she would have to get accustomed to.

      Almost before she was ready, she found herself walking into an imposing building in one of the city’s most fashionable areas, and travelling up in the lift to the penthouse.

      The apartment, Alain had told her, was not part of the family estate which he had inherited, but had been acquired by himself a few years previously as a pied-à-terre near his business headquarters. He was looked after by a married couple, a Madame Henriette Giscard, and her husband Albert, and they were waiting to welcome their master and his new bride, their faces well-trained masks.

      When the introductions were completed, Alain took her to one side. ‘Will you be all right if I leave you here?’ he asked in a low tone. ‘I need to go to the office, and I cannot say when it will be possible to return.’

      ‘Oh, that’s all right—that’s fine,’ Philippa stammered, feeling the colour rise in her face under his quizzical look.

      ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Mouth twisting, Alain ran his forefinger down the curve of her hot cheek. He turned back to Madame Giscard, waiting at a discreet distance. ‘I shall not be here for dinner, Henriette. Make sure Madame has everything she requires.’ He lifted Philippa’s nerveless hand and pressed a swift kiss into its palm. ‘Au revoir, mignonne.’

      If the Giscards

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