The Blackmail Marriage

Without allowing her to answer he continued, ‘He works for a merchant bank, I believe? Would it surprise you to know that he’s been taking some very dangerous risks with the bank’s clients’ money? That he’s been on the verge of making some very bad decisions? No, of course it wouldn’t, would it?’ he mocked softly. ‘Not a devoted, caring sister like you! You were the first person he turned to when he realised the mess he was getting himself into, weren’t you?’

Carrie felt as though her vocal cords had completely seized up. Unable to respond, or refute his savage indictment, she could only listen to him in growing shock and discomfort whilst an icy fist of fear embraced her insides. No one, but no one—apart from herself—could possibly know about the problems Harry had been having, the danger he had been in. But somehow Luc knew! Did that mean that he also knew…?

‘How fortunate for him that he has such a devoted and clever sister there, not only able but also willing to help him out of a mess of his own making. A sister, moreover, who was prepared to risk her own career and professional reputation to do so. Because that is exactly what you did, isn’t it, Catherine.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ At last she had got her voice back, but Luc was quite plainly unimpressed and unconvinced by her immediate denial.

‘Liar!’ he told her. ‘You know exactly what I mean. Harry got himself into a mess and you got him out of it by advising him on what shares to buy to undo the damage he had done.’

Carrie looked away from him. How on earth had he managed to find out about that? She had sworn Harry to total secrecy, too shocked and worried for him when he had shamefacedly told her what had happened to be able to refuse to help, even though…

‘He’s my brother,’ she responded woodenly. ‘Naturally I wanted to help him.’

She hated the look of cynical satisfaction she could see in Luc’s eyes.

‘Even if in giving him that help you were guilty of insider trading?’ he challenged softly.

Carrie heard her own audible indrawn breath of anguished despair.

‘No, that’s not true,’ she protested ‘It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t insider trading at all. I—’

‘Not in your eyes, maybe, and perhaps not under the strict terms of the law. But, as I am sure you will agree, Catherine, in the right hands and with the right kind of publicity—or rather in the wrong hands and with the wrong kind of publicity—what you did could be made to look very bad indeed for you. For starters you’d probably lose your job and your professional status, and without you to rely on your little brother would certainly lose his. I could quite easily destroy you both, Catherine.’

‘You’d do that? But what about Maria? Or is it Maria you really want to hurt?’ she demanded.

‘Certainly not! My proposed marriage to Maria was a diplomatic arrangement, not a love-match. She is the last person I would want to hurt in any way. As a matter of fact I am extremely fond of her, more than enough to keep a watchful eye on your young brother. If he does anything—anything—to hurt her or make her regret her decision to marry him—’

‘You say that, and yet you’re the one who is threatening to…to lose him his job,’ Carrie reminded him fiercely.

‘And you are the one who has the means to make sure that I do not,’ Luc reminded her smoothly. ‘The decision is yours, Catherine.’

Carrie stared at him. The room was warm, but she felt as though she were encased in ice. She could feel the coldness seeping into her bones, dripping through her veins, as deliberate and insidious as Luc’s threat to compromise and ultimately ruin her brother!

‘You would do that?’

All the horror and disgust she felt was in her voice, but Luc seemed impervious to it.

‘I am glad to see that you do not question that I can do it, Catherine. That shows an admirable grasp of reality. What would be even more admirable would be for you to show an equal grasp of the inevitability of our closer relationship. Don’t worry. No one expects a modern marriage to last for very long. I am sure I shall very quickly realise the error of my ways in marrying you and we shall be free to go our separate ways.’

‘You’re threatening me with blackmail!’ Carrie accused him, adding darkly, ‘There’s a law against that kind of thing.’

‘You seem to forget,’ Luc returned in an ominously silky tone. ‘In S’Antander, I am the law!’

‘You’re despicable!’ Carrie told him, her voice thick with loathing.

‘The choice is yours,’ Luc told her calmly. ‘Either you agree to marry me or your brother—’

‘You know I can’t do that to Harry. I have no choice,’ Carrie told him bitterly. ‘You haven’t changed, have you, Luc? I can’t imagine why I was ever naïve enough to—’

Carrie stopped, her face beginning to burn.

‘Go on…’ Luc taunted. ‘To…what, exactly? Beg me to take you to bed…to show you what it meant to be a woman…to…?’

‘Stop it. Stop it!’ Frantically Carrie covered her ears with her hands as she tried to blot out not just his cruel words but also the haunting and disturbingly clear images they were conjuring up inside her head.

‘It’s a bit too late to take on the role of injured innocent now, Catherine. After all, you never made any secret of the fact that you put what you learned in my bed to good use during your time at university.’

Carrie’s teeth sank into her bottom lip as she forced back her instinctive response.

After all, it was true that she had written to her father describing her social life at university in terms which had made it seem as though her life was one long party—and that she was dating a different boy virtually every week. But nothing could have been further from the truth. The pain of Luc’s rejection had caused her to retreat into herself and hold the opposite sex at a distance, concentrating instead on her studies. It had only been her pride that had made her write to her father pretending that she was having the time of her life! She knew that her father had never been entirely happy about her youthful passion for Luc.

‘You’re only eighteen, Carrie, with your whole life and its opportunities ahead of you,’ he had told her. ‘Whilst Luc already knows what his future and its responsibilities will entail.’

Her father, Carrie remembered, had felt that the task that lay ahead of Luc was an extremely daunting one.

‘His grandfather ruled S’Antander as though it was still a medieval state,’ he had once told Carrie. ‘And it will be Luc’s task to broker a way of bringing S’Antander into the twenty-first century. I certainly don’t envy him!’

He had admired him, though; Carrie knew that…

‘Luc, you’re back! How did it go in Brussels?’

Carrie tensed as the salon door was suddenly thrown open, her breath catching in her throat as she stared in shock at the man who had walked in. His physical resemblance to Luc was so extraordinarily marked that it was obvious that they had to share the same blood—indeed, could have been brothers, if not twins!

Carrie didn’t recognise him, though, and she frowned slightly, detecting an American accent.

‘Oh!’ As he saw Carrie he stopped speaking and looked enquiringly at Luc. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise that you weren’t alone!’

‘It’s all right, Jay. In fact you can be the first to hear our news and to congratulate me. Allow me to introduce you to my bride-to-be—Catherine Broadbent.’

His eyes were a different colour from Luc’s, Carrie recognised as he focused on her. A bright warm blue instead of that cold steely grey, and she guessed that he was probably a couple of years younger in age—maybe a thousand years younger in terms of personality and self-will.

‘Your bride-to-be? But I thought that Maria…’ Jay stopped, looking uncomfortable.

‘A common misconception,’ Luc told him calmly. ‘But, as it happens, Catherine and I go back a long way. Circumstances beyond our control led to us parting, but happily we have now rediscovered one another.’

‘Well, I guess the old brigade don’t mind too much who you marry, just so long as you do! They were beginning to get real twitchy that you might decide to step down and turn the country over to self-rule because of all the hassle you’ve been getting. I suppose as an American citizen I ought to claim that is what you should do, but I confess that I kinda like being able to boast that I’m related to a real-life ruling prince—even if it is on the wrong side of the blanket. I guess that tracing my family tree has to be one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.’

‘You’re a billionaire, Jay, and you’ve earned that success by your own efforts. I should have thought that was something to be far more proud of than any merit bestowed by a mere act of birth.’

‘Careful, Luc, otherwise I might begin to believe that you think I got the best out of our shared gene pool. Remember, I know for a fact that you could have done exactly what I’ve done. You’ve got one of the best financial brains going, and don’t forget I had the advantage of being handed my first million by my old man. All you inherited was a load of problems and a set of state regalia!’

Carrie’s eyes rounded as she listened to the two of them subtly teasing one another. This was quite definitely a side to Luc she had never seen before.

‘By the way, do I get to be the first to kiss the bride-to-be?’

Carrie smiled as he came towards her, but to her bemusement, just as he reached her, Luc put his hand on her arm and drew her to his side, keeping his own body between them.

‘Catherine, allow me to introduce you to my second cousin—Jay Fitz Kleinburg. As you will probably have gathered, Jay and I have only recently discovered our shared relationship.’