‘Thank you for everything,’ she said. ‘I know I’ve been a trial to you, letting you finish the first dress and then changing my mind three days ago. You worked a miracle getting everything done on time.’
‘As long as you’re happy,’ he said, forcing a smile.
‘Oh, Benedict, is it as bad as that?’
‘I got to thinking about the day I married Amanda, how happy we were, how beautiful she looked in her wedding dress. Oh, Meryl, what am I going to do?’
‘Things will get better. She loves you; she’ll come back in the end.’
‘I don’t believe it. I’ve got nothing to look forward to.’
‘Except that you’re going into business in a big way. I’ll be taking a flying trip to New York to help start it up. I want to be involved in everything. It’s going to be so thrilling.’
‘Yes,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘Thrilling.’
‘Hey,’ she teased, ‘don’t tell me I did all this for nothing.’
That made him smile. ‘Meryl, I’ll be grateful all my life for what you’ve done for me-’
‘Skip that,’ she said hastily. ‘You said it all on the first day. What’s your point?’
‘This. Don’t kid a kidder. I’m just your cover. First of all you did it to tell Larry where he got off, and recently-well, let’s just say you had another agenda.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘Only to me. But then, I’m in love, too.’
‘Shh!’ She placed her finger over her lips in the manner of a conspirator.
‘Look at her,’ Sarah said, glancing over her shoulder as she waltzed with Jarvis. ‘Sharing a secret joke with him at your wedding. Don’t you realise it’s you they’re laughing at?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jarvis replied gravely. ‘I’m beginning to think-I might have been wrong about Meryl-maybe-’
‘That’s what she wants you to think.’
‘Hush, my dear. Don’t say anything bad about her. I don’t like to hear it.’
She fell silent, and the party swirled on to its close.
CHAPTER NINE
THE last guest had gone to bed, the last sounds of revelry had faded. Meryl sat in her room listening to the castle shutting down around her.
How quiet it was. The loudest sound was the beating of her own heart; a bride waiting for her groom. Except that it wasn’t like that.
It was a business arrangement. Jarvis would resist the temptation to come to her, no matter how he longed to yield. Today he’d briefly weakened because of the spell cast by the wedding, but that was fading, as she should have known it would. Instead, a few glances, an ardent look in his eyes, and she’d deluded herself.
As she undressed and put out the light the euphoria of the occasion melted away like popping champagne bubbles, and the great room seemed to mock her.
She lay for an hour, listening, her heart beating at every tiny noise. From below came the soft roar of the sea swirling at the base of the castle. Nearby there were a dozen creaks and whines in the old building. She knew them all. But the one she longed to hear was the sound of a door opening at the far end of the passage that connected their rooms, the sound that would tell her there was more to this moment than a contract fulfilled.
He would come to her, because he wanted her. She knew that with every fibre of the body that ached for him. He would stay away because he distrusted her, because he’d spent his life fending off anyone who might get too close to him, knowing that that way lay desertion and pain. And she was the greatest threat of all.
He would come to her room because he couldn’t stay away.
He would stay away because he was too stubborn to concede defeat.
‘But so am I,’ she murmured into the darkness. ‘And I don’t mind sacrificing the first pawn, as long as I can mate the king.’
Moving decisively now, she slipped out of bed, pulled a lacy robe on over her nakedness and noiselessly opened the door into the passage. Just a brief hesitation, while her nerve almost failed her, then her head went up and she took the first step into the darkness.
She inched her way slowly along the narrow corridor, then paused again. Suppose he wasn’t in his room at all? Suppose he was there but snubbed her? He’d resisted temptation. It was she who’d weakened.
As she stood there, torn with indecision, a noise from the far end made her heart beat with frantic, disbelieving hope. A quiet click, then the sound of the door easing open, then silence.
She sensed rather than heard someone moving closer and stopping a few inches away. The heat of his body reached her, his warm breath, and finally the faint sensation of his fingertips on her face, her lips. An uncontrollable tremor went through her and her heart beat madly as his touch trailed down her neck to the swell of her breasts. Then it vanished altogether and she gasped in protest. The sudden deprivation was unbearable.
She waited for him to caress her again, and in the silent darkness she could experience his struggle. He neither moved nor spoke, but his torment reached her in waves. Now it was her turn to reach out until her fingers brushed his face.
It was as though a spark had set off a charge of electricity. Hands came from nowhere to seize her shoulders and pull her against him with all the urgency he’d been trying to deny. Beneath a light robe he was as naked as she, and now she could feel the power of his desire, demanding, unstoppable.
He paused, waiting for her signal. A mortal, fallen into the hands of fairies, might have waited like that, wondering what mysterious step he was asked to take. Meryl found his hand, grasped it, began to retreat to her own room, drawing him after her, until she could close her door behind them.
There was no moon and the mullioned windows gave very little light, but that was good. Tonight darkness would be her friend, blotting out everything except those selves that they would give to each other. The selves of the daytime, wary, fumbling, hiding suspicion beneath bright words, had withdrawn a little way, so that these two might reach out to each other in a shared secret.
Instinct told her that he wanted to speak, but she brushed her fingers across his lips. Words must came later, or perhaps not at all. When her fingertips had left his lips her mouth followed, touching him softly at first, then more determinedly as her message became unmistakable and he answered with one of his own.
This wasn’t like the kiss he’d given her for the cameras, when his surprise had been clear to her, or like the one earlier today, in the church, when she’d sensed the eagerness and warmth that were overtaking him, despite his resolution not to yield. He’d yielded now and was giving her the kiss he’d always wanted to give, and the one she’d always wanted to receive.
She felt him toss away her robe and his own. No barriers between them at last, nothing to stop her exploring his masculinity and revelling in every discovery.
They lay together on the bed, body to body. Without sight she had to rely on her other senses, and this man reached her through them all. The power and force of him was against her hands, her breasts, her thighs. The tangy scent of him was in her nostrils and her mouth wherever she kissed him. With every step her desire flowered, demanded more. Jarvis had always feared that she’d come to conquer, and he was right. But it wasn’t his lands or title she claimed. Only the man himself would do. She would never be satisfied with less.
He too was exploring, lingering on the curves and valleys that had tempted him, free now to indulge his curiosity. The soft roundness of her breasts against his palms made a sigh break from him. She heard it and arched against him, wanting more of him. He wouldn’t give her the words of love, she knew that, but there were signs that she could read.
And the signs were there in the ardour and tenderness with which he claimed her, parting her legs gently and moving slowly, giving her time to think, even to reject him. But she was way past that now. She reached for him, pulled him over her, claiming him in the moment that he claimed her. Giving and taking together. Possession, yielding, surrender, triumph.