LITMIR.BIZ

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somehow she had to smile and go on, pretending it didn’t matter. She took a surreptitious glance at her small gold watch, wondering how long it would be before she could make some excuse and seek the refuge of her room.

      Tonight, as never before, she found herself welcoming the duties as hostess with her mother which kept her perpetually on the move from group to group as the house filled with guests.

      She had half expected, half dreaded that Alex Constantis would seek her out with some taunting reference to Tricia’s words. But perhaps he too had been embarrassed by the exchange, for he never came near her.

      Her father was almost always at his side, guiding him through the crowded rooms explaining, making introductions, while their friends loyally strove to mask their surprise and dismay at the news.

      And even now it could all be for nothing, Julia thought with misgivings. Wouldn’t it be hysterical if Tricia proves to be the final straw, and the whole deal falls through? But she didn’t feel much like laughing. Even if Alex Constantis withdrew from contention, another buyer would come along. Ambermere could not be saved, and she had to come to terms with that.

      As midnight approached Julia realised that the toast to the first Lady Kendrick was going to be drunk as usual.

      ‘Oh, God, I can’t face that,’ she muttered to herself, slipping through the partially open french windows on to the terrace.

      There was no breeze, but the night air felt refreshingly cool against her uncovered shoulders and arms. A scent of flowers hung in the air, making her starkly, poignantly aware that this was the last Midsummer night she would ever spend in this house.

      She leaned on the balustrade, gazing sightlessly over the starlit gardens, wondering painfully what changes Alex Constantis would make if he bought the house. He would probably plough up the south lawn and replace it with a swimming pool, and a helicopter pad, she thought scornfully, and she should be glad she wasn’t going to be around to see such desecration.

      She could hear the laughter and the cheering from the drawing room, and the cries of ‘To Julia’, which followed her father’s traditional, humorous speech, and wondered how many of the particpants realised they were drinking the toast for the last time. Julia Kendrick—scandalous wife, daring mistress, Toast of the Town—had reached the end of her reign.

      She felt sudden absurd tears sting at her eyelids, and thought, ‘To Julia’. And heard, with sudden shock, the same words echoed aloud from only a feet away.

      She whirled round, her hands flying to her mouth to cover the little startled cry forced from her. ‘You!’

      ‘Yes,’

      Somehow, in the shadows of the night, he looked taller—more powerful than ever, the dark face an unreadable mask as he stood between her and the sanctuary of the lighted window.

      He said, ‘I came to wish you goodnight, thespinis.’

      ‘You’re—leaving?’ The words seemed to twist out of her suddenly dry throat.

      He smiled. ‘That is what you’re hoping for, ne?’ He shook his head. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you. I shall be back—later today.’

      ‘You’re going to buy the house?’

      ‘I think so. You have rekindled my interest in it.’

      ‘I—have?’

      ‘Certainly. Ambermere must be a unique property, if it can rouse such passionate commitment in you.’ He paused. ‘I wonder, in different circumstances, if you would ever have found the husband you are looking for, Julia Kendrick—a man so little a man he would deny his name and his birthright in subjection to your whim.’

      ‘It wasn’t a whim,’ she denied huskily. ‘How could you possibly understand?’

      ‘You think perhaps that I have no right to the name I bear?’ The dark eyes glittered at her. ‘Well, you are not the first to say so—even though there have been few who would dare utter the words to my face.’

      ‘Because they’re all so terrified of you?’ Her voice sounded high and rather breathless. ‘When you take Ambermere, you’ll have done the worst you can. You have no power over me after that.’

      ‘You don’t think so?’ Slowly he advanced on her, making her retreat until her back was pressed against the balustrade with no further physical withdrawal possible. ‘But you are wrong, Julia Kendrick. Because if I take Ambermere, I shall also take you.’

      His hands descended on her shoulders. He used no particular force, but with the first shock of his touch on her bare skin, Julia knew her flesh would bear the imprint of his fingers as if he had bruised her.

      She tried to say ‘No!’ but he was bending towards her, shutting out safety, blocking the starlight, and the word was stifled on her lips by the stark, demanding pressure of his mouth. She tried to resist, to keep her own mouth closed against his insistence, but it was a battle she could not win. A battle he was determined, with total sensuality, that she should lose.

      In some distant corner of her mind, she admitted this. Recognised that this confrontation had been inevitable since she had entered the drawing-room that night.

      A sigh trembled through her, and she capitulated, allowing him to invade her mouth and deepen the kiss in any way he wanted. But even that was not enough. His lips, his tongue demanded a response she had never before been required to give—a response she wasn’t even sure she capable of. She couldn’t breathe, and her legs seemed to be turning to water, as his hands pushed the straps of her dress from her shoulders, then drew her against him so that her bared breasts were brought into aching, erotic contract with the hard wall of his chest.

      And from somewhere in her innermost being, she felt the first slow uncurling of heated, treacherous, unbearable excitement.

      Her hands went up to clasp the lapels of his jacket as an insidious weakness began to spread through her. When he took his mouth from hers, she gasped, her head falling back helplessly as his mouth traced a path down the column of her throat.

      But as his hand lifted to close intimately on one small naked breast, she cried out in outraged modesty, summoning all the strength of will which still remained to her in order to drag herself out of his arms. She was shaking so much she thought she might fall, her hands fumbling as she tried to drag her dress back into place, to hide her body from that dark, devouring gaze.

      For one shuddering moment she thought he might reach for her again, and shrank back against the support of the balustrade.

      She heard him catch his breath, and saw the savage, single-minded hunger die from his face, to be replaced by an odd wryness.

      He said, to himself, ‘A virgin. And that, of course, changes everything.’

      Then, before Julia could move or speak, he turned, and walked away from her into the darkness.

       CHAPTER THREE

      JULIA stayed in her room until late the following morning. Downstairs she could hear the whine of vacuum cleaners, and a subdued hum of voices and movement, as the small army of cleaners from the village restored order after the party. Normally, she would have got up and pitched in with them.

      But this time she didn’t seem capable of doing anything but lying staring at the ceiling, letting the events of the previous day, and more particularly, the previous night, re-run in her mind like some slow-moving action replay.

      It was still impossible for her to believe that she had behaved like that—responded like that, especially with a man she resented and despised. She even wondered whether she had dreamed the whole thing.

      It had been, after all, Midsummer Night. But Alex Constantis’s kisses were far from being ‘the stuff that dreams are made on’, Julia thought wryly.

      And

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