Desperate Measures

She hesitated again. ‘Also, I was wondering whether you wanted me to have a medical examination.’

He put down the quarter of apple he was eating and stared at her. ‘Why should I wish such a thing? Are you feeling unwell? Do you believe your father’s illness is hereditary in some way?’

‘Oh, no.’ Philippa’s face was like a peony. ‘I was thinking over what you said about wanting a—a child—an heir. I thought maybe you’d want to check that I was capable …’

Alain lifted a hand and stemmed the halting words. ‘You are not some brood animal that I am purchasing,’ he said bitingly. ‘I think, when the time comes, that nature should be allowed to take its course, don’t you?’

She mumbled something in acute embarrassment.

‘I can’t hear you,’ he said with faint impatience. ‘And why don’t you look at me when you speak?’

She gave him a despairing glance. ‘I said—this is never going to work. I mean, no one in their right mind is ever—ever going to believe in this marriage.’

‘Pourquoi pas?’

‘Well, just look at me!’

‘I am looking,’ he said. ‘You are a little underweight, and your hair needs cutting. What else is there to say?’

Philippa’s hands clasped together tensely in her lap. ‘I don’t feel like anyone’s wife—especially someone who’s a millionaire and has got houses dotted all over France. I don’t know what you expect …’

‘Believe me, I expect very little. At the beginning it will be enough that you exist—that you appear in public at my side.’ He shrugged. ‘As for my homes—I employ efficient staff.’ He gave her an ironic glance. ‘You will not have to keep the rooms clean or cook for me.’

‘But you’ll want me to act as hostess when you entertain—and I’ve never done anything like that before.’ Her voice broke a little as she remembered the endless sundrenched days with Gavin in the southwest of France, the casual camaraderie, the street markets and the tiny bistros.

‘You can speak,’ he said. ‘You can express yourself articulately. But I would be at your side—and I would naturally warn you if there were any topics of conversation best avoided with particular people.’

‘And I’d have to wear—different clothes.’

His mouth twisted in faint amusement. ‘Did you plan to spend the rest of your life in those deplorable jeans, ma petite?’

‘Of course not.’ Philippa was silent for a moment, then said jerkily, ‘I don’t think you realise just how fundamentally my whole life is going to change.’

‘Mine also. Marriage as a concept has no more appeal for me than for you, ma chère.’

‘Well, I still think it would make more sense if you married your cousin Sidonie,’ she said stubbornly, drinking the last of her coffee. ‘She must know you don’t care for her, and if she’s prepared to pretend …’

‘But she is not,’ Alain said coldly. ‘She would wish me to do so, however. She would expect me to act as if I was madly in love with her—to explain every absence from her side each minute of the day and night in order to spare myself tears, temper and jealous scenes. I would find that wearing in the extreme.’

‘I can imagine,’ Philippa said sarcastically. ‘I gather I’m not supposed to ask questions?’

‘Ask whatever you want, ma chère.’ He gave her an enigmatic look. ‘But don’t blame me if you do not like the answers.’

He pushed back his chair and rose. ‘And now we have a busy day ahead of us. I will contact my lawyers, and the London branch of my bank, and arrange to have a preliminary payment made to you for your father’s expenses.’ He walked round the table and stood looking at her with a slight smile. ‘You will not, I hope, take the money and run, chérie. Because that would not amuse me at all.’

‘I’ll keep my word.’ Philippa lifted her chin. ‘We shall just have to—trust each other, monsieur.’

‘So it seems.’ He held out his hand. ‘Shall we seal our bargain in the usual way?’

Reluctantly, she allowed his fingers to encompass hers, and, shocked, found herself drawn forward before 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.