Frazer saw her shiver and said curtly, ‘You’re frozen.’
He was walking towards her and had just reached her when the sitting-room door opened and Rory emerged, looking bored and irritated. When he saw them, he smiled tauntingly.
‘Still here? Very slow of you, brother dear! In your shoes, I’d have lost no time in whisking Rebecca upstairs to the privacy of her room.’
Rebecca stiffened angrily. She had been used once by Rory in his jealousy against his brother; she was not going to allow herself to be used again.
She started to move away from Frazer, intent on leaving them alone, when suddenly she found that she couldn’t move and that the solid wall of his chest was in front of her while somehow or other his arms had locked round her body.
The only advantage of the situation was the fact that the bulk of Frazer’s body hid her from Rory’s view, and that advantage was heavily outweighed by all the disadvantages of her unwelcome position, which included the knowledge that her heart had started to pound at a startlingly fast rate and that her body was reacting nervously and very betrayingly to the proximity of Frazer’s.
In a voice she barely recognised as belonging to the Frazer she knew, so soft and thickened was it, she heard him saying rawly, ‘Go away, Rory.’
And then somehow or other his hand was cupping her face, firmly holding her so that she couldn’t turn away from the downward descent of his mouth. She caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, feral and dark, cold no longer, but startlingly quicksilver with heat. Her lips parted on an instinctive protest, but the sound was silenced by the firm pressure of his mouth. She sagged weakly against him, shivering with shock and anger that he should treat her like this.
Rory was still there, watching them. Rebecca could sense his presence without looking at him, and it crossed her mind that if she and Rory had actually been lovers, then his demonstration that Frazer was patently staging for his benefit was hardly conducive to restoring good family relations.
She tried to hold on to that thought as Frazer continued to kiss her. His hand had left her face now and was buried in her hair, the pressure of his mouth against hers forcing her back against his other arm. Beneath her weakness and shock, heat ran like liquid fire through her veins, the fine trembling of her body no longer caused by anger. The sensation of Frazer’s hand moving to the small of her back, caressing her, burned through the fragile protection of her clothes.
He moved slightly, moving her with him, so that their movement caused the fabrics of their clothes to rustle provocatively together, and then she felt the hard pressure of his leg pushing against her body as he subtly used his greater strength to manoeuvre her so that she had no option but to accept the visually erotic embrace. Her hands were already clinging to his shoulders, although she had no knowledge of putting them there, and, when she tried to protest at his actions beneath the pressure of his mouth, his teeth nipped punishingly at her lower lip and then his tongue caressed the bruised tender flesh, causing such a fierce flood of sensation to pour through her that if Rory hadn’t slammed the sitting-room door, shocking her back to reality, she would not have been able to stop the small moan building in her throat; a sound that had nothing at all to do with any physical discomfort from the sharp pressure of Frazer’s teeth, raking the soft inner tenderness of her lip, and everything to do with the shockingly pleasurable sensations that caress had aroused.
He let her go almost abruptly; too abruptly for her to be able to conceal from him the stunned, almost bruised expression in her eyes.
Instinctively she lifted her hand to her mouth, and for a second something primitive and dangerous blazed in the dark heat of Frazer’s eyes.
‘You can’t do this!’ Rebecca whispered painfully. ‘No one is going to believe that we’re engaged. Everyone will realise what you’re doing.’
‘I don’t give a damn what everyone else thinks, just so long as Rory believes it, and if you give him any reason to believe otherwise, I’ll make you sorrier than you can think possible. I suppose you believe you still love him,’ he added broodingly.
Here was her chance to escape, and all she had to do was to tell the truth.
She shook her head and said firmly, ‘No, I don’t.’
For a moment it was almost as though what she said had shocked him. She could almost feel a totally unexpected tension emanating from him, and when she looked closely at him she saw a brief flicker of emotion disturb his otherwise impassive features. He looked if anything almost angry, and yet why the knowledge that she did not love Rory should make him angry she had no idea. Rather she would have thought the news would have pleased him. Irritating, aggravating man! He never seemed to react as she expected. By rights she ought to walk away from him right now and leave him to explain to everyone just how he lied to them, but she knew that she wouldn’t…couldn’t…
‘All I want is to leave this house and go back to London. If you hadn’t said we were engaged, I could have done that,’ she told him fiercely.
‘And have Rory follow you down there? No, you’re safer here where I can keep an eye on you…where I can make sure that he knows that you’re out of bounds.’
‘Has it occurred to you that the fact that he believes I’m engaged to you might increase my appeal rather than diminish it?’ Rebecca asked him tartly.
‘Maybe so, but Lillian will be here in a few days and between us I’m sure that she and I can make sure he realises he’d be wasting his time. You say you don’t love him. Prove it,’ Frazer ordered unexpectedly.
‘By doing what? Letting everyone believe that we’re engaged? I can’t. Aunt Maud…’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ he told her. ‘If it’s your parents you’re worried about, I’ll make sure she understands the real reason for what I said.’
‘It’s crazy!’ Rebecca protested. ‘It would be so much simpler if you just let me leave.’
‘Do you honestly believe that would be enough?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘I saw the way Rory was looking at you.’
‘But I’ll be leaving anyway in a week.’
‘Why?’ he asked her baldly, silencing her. ‘You don’t have to go back to London, do you? After all, you’d already made a commitment to stay here until September.’
‘But you wanted me to leave,’ she protested Her mind see
med to have turned to cotton wool again, and, although she knew there must be a hundred or more excellent reasons why she should stand firm and tell Frazer that there was no way she was going to allow him to manipulate her like this, she couldn’t summon one strong enough to convince herself, never mind him.
He gave her a cynical look and asked acidly: ‘Since when have my wishes been so important to you? Think of the twins, Rebecca. You said yourself that they needed a stable background and proper family life. You wanted to help them…well, here’s your chance. The best way you can help them is by keeping their parents’ marriage intact.’
Rebecca knew what he said was true. To adult eyes, Rory and Lillian might not have a very good marriage, but children were blind to the faults in their parents’relationships.As she knew from experience, it would be far more important in the twins’ eyes that their parents remained together. Children hated their parents divorcing, and these two were more vulnerable than most.
She felt dreadfully tired, her mind and body aching with the strain of the last few days, and as she nodded bleakly she had the uncomfortable conviction that she was doing the wrong thing, but it was already too late. Frazer was already saying curtly, ‘Right then, we’re agreed. You and I are now engaged.’
‘Temporarily,’ Rebecca added tiredly, turning to go upstairs.
‘But of course,’ he agreed urbanely. ‘How could it be anything else?’
How indeed? Foolish of her to make that rider. After all, she knew quite well that Frazer would be only too glad when the time came for him to dismiss her from his life.
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN she opened her eyes in the morning, Rebecca cravenly contemplated suffering a relapse of sufficiently dramatic proportions to ensure her prompt removal somewhere safe and calm, like the nearest hospital, but it only took a very few seconds’contemplation of this proposal for her to acknowledge its shortcomings.
It was true that she did still feel very weak and that her chest still hurt, but she was far more anxious about how on earth she was going to survive the next few weeks than she was about her health.