Somewhere in the distance Matt was saying lightly, ‘I agree with Emily. Besides, you haven’t set a date for your wedding yet, have you, while Emily and I hope to be married in June?’
In June…Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing. June was just two weeks away.
‘June…But the parents aren’t due back from Brazil until then,’ Gracie was saying.
Emily struggled to comprehend what on earth was going on. Someone—Travis, she thought—handed her a mug of tea, which she gulped thirstily. Gracie was still talking about weddings, and Matt was saying something completely ridiculous and insane about not being prepared to wait very long to make her his wife, and that, as she had a romantic desire to marry in June, that meant that marry in June they would, whether it was only two weeks hence or not.
‘Which reminds me, darling,’ Matt added, coming towards her, and somehow or other elbowing Travis out of the way so that he was standing right beside her, his arm draped very possessively along her shoulders. ‘Did you finally decide on a dress?’ He turned to Gracie, and to Emily’s stunned horror told her confidingly, ‘She’s refusing to wear white, silly thing. After all, in this day and age, and feeling as we do about one another…’
The look he gave her would have burned holes in metal, Emily decided disbelievingly. It was certainly doing the most incomprehensible things to her insides…almost making her believe that that burning, melting look of desire was actually real, and not simply fabricated for heaven alone knew what purpose.
‘But she tells me she’s found something she likes in cream. Personally, I’d like to see her in something very twenties-style, all soft, flowing satin or chiffon and heavy antique lace—’
‘Oh, yes, that would be just right for you,’ Gracie chimed in. ‘If you haven’t found anything yet, there’s a place in London that specialises in the most wonderful period clothes.’
Emily discovered that her hands had curled into protesting fists and that, moreover, she wanted very badly indeed to open her pretty mouth and scream loudly. Her head was buzzing and aching, she felt as though she had strayed into a scene from a play where everyone apart from her knew their lines, she couldn’t understand why Matt wasn’t demanding to know why she had lied about being engaged to Travis, and, most of all, she could not understand how she had supposedly come to be engaged to him.
Engaged to him. The shudder that racked her body was so self-illuminating that Matt who was watching her had to fight not to take hold of her and make love to her so passionately, so lovingly, that she wouldn’t be able to resist loving him in turn.
Loving him. Was he deluding himself in believing that she did love him, that this whole ridiculous situation had arisen because neither of them had had the courage to tell each other when they had made love just what they had really been feeling, because neither of them had had the breadth of imagination, the trust, to accept the precious gift they had been given?
‘Emily, we were hoping you could put us up here for a few days,’ Gracie was saying. ‘We want to have a good look round so that when Travis’s parents arrive we can make sure they see everything they ought to see. Matt said he didn’t think there’d be any problem with us staying.’ She pulled a face and added drily, ‘I suppose for Uncle John’s sake we’d better follow your example and have separate rooms, but next to one another, please. You and Matt might not mind flitting up and down the landing…’
She ignored the gasp Emily gave, just as Matt ignored the rigid tension in her shoulders.
‘Come on. Show me which rooms we can have,’ Gracie pressed. ‘And you can tell me more about what’s been going on, as well,’ she added cheerfully. ‘Fancy not letting me know you were engaged.’
‘It was very sudden,’ Matt said breezily.
Emily found she was trembling when she stood up. Somehow or other Matt was standing right in front of her, and as she tried to step past him he moved as well, so that she walked straight into him.
He put his arms out, to steady her she supposed, but what actually happened was that they closed round her, and the warm, familiar, arousing man-smell of him went straight to her head like wine and she had a dizzying impulse to simply lean against him and howl like a child.
Indeed, she discovered that she actually was leaning against him, and that one of his hands was cradling the back of her neck, burrowing beneath her hair to stroke the tension from the overstrained muscles there.
She felt his breath against her hair and then her ear as he bent his head to murmur, ‘Don’t be long, will you. I want to show you what I’ve been doing in the garden.’
As she lifted her head she saw Gracie’s amusement, and felt herself flushing.
‘Emily and I share an interest in gardening,’ Matt told her sister loftily. ‘We’ve both been working very hard to try and resuscitate the garden here. In fact, we’ve both fallen in love with it so much that we’re hoping your Uncle John will sell the place to us.’
If anyone other than herself was conscious of her shock, they didn’t betray it. What on earth was Matt saying? Just for one heart-stopping second she had felt her heart leap fiercely with joy and excitement and had known illuminatingly just how much she would have loved to make her home here, and then she had fallen swiftly and painfully into the pit of truth, and had known how stupid she was being. She had no idea what was going on, but the moment she and Matt were alone she intended to find out.
But first she had to take Gracie upstairs and show her the spare rooms. Fiercely hot colour dyed her skin as she pulled away from Matt and heard him whisper, loud enough for Gracie and Travis to hear, ‘The sooner you and I are married, the better. Gracie is quite right, I’m tired of having to leave you on your own and go back to my own bed.’
Emily didn’t know where to look. Why on earth was Matt making such outrageous remarks? He must know… What? That her sister, who knew her so well, would never believe she would have such an intimate relationship with someone unless she was deeply, wildly in love with them and knew that that love was returned in equal measure.
It was all very well for him to talk about a marriage between them as though it were an accepted fact, and certainly he was lying very convincingly—even she, for one light-headed moment, had almost believed…but sooner or later Gracie would have to know the truth.
As she turned towards the door, Matt pulled her briefly to him so that her back was to the others, and then, as he bent his head down to her, pressing his mouth first against her temple, so that she shivered involuntarily, and then lingeringly and devastatingly against her mouth, so that she swayed and fought dizzily against an overwhelming impulse to fling her arms around him and hold on to him, he whispered against her lips,’ Meet me in the garden as soon as you can, and I’ll explain.’
So there was an explanation. She had no idea what on earth it could be, she reflected numbly as she led Gracie upstairs. Needless to say, as soon as they were out of earshot of the two men, Gracie rounded on her and took hold of her shoulders, saying teasingly, ‘What a dark horse you are, Emmy… All those letters and never once any hint of what was going on. Oh, you mentioned Matt right enough, but if I hadn’t read between the lines I’d have had no idea.’
Read between the lines. Emily’s face flamed as she wondered what on earth she must have betrayed so unknowingly, unaware that her sister was using a little licence of her own in maintaining Matt’s fiction.
However, the sight of Emily’s pale, drawn face caused Gracie to have a small pang of compunction. Emily had already suffered once by loving a man. She paused halfway up the stairs and stood there, making Emily feel even more like a dwarf as she stood looking back up at her.
‘I like him, darling, and it’s plain he adores you,’ Gracie told her, ‘but you’ve hardly said a word, and you look so tense. You do love him, don’t you?’
Here was her chance to say that she had no idea what was going on, and that she and Matt were most definitely not engaged. Here was her chance, so why on eart
h wasn’t she seizing hold of it? Why on earth was she saying shakily, and oh so truthfully, to her sister, ‘Yes. Yes, I do love him.’?
And with such conviction in her voice that Gracie smiled happily back at her, and said cheerfully, ‘Well, that’s all right then. Now, show me these rooms Travis and I are to have. Poor Travis,’ she added with a chuckle. ‘He won’t take kindly to our having separate rooms. Your Matt must have the self-restraint of a saint. I’m not surprised he’s not willing to have a long engagement. You’ll have a church wedding, of course, and at home. Look, Travis and I are on our way up there—why don’t I have a word with the vicar and fix things up with him while I’m there? Matt told us that you were both hoping to take a couple of days off to make all the arrangements, but that you were reluctant to leave Uncle John. We could easily—’
Emily managed a strangled, ‘No,’ which caused Gracie to stop and turn to look at her. ‘I…I haven’t written and told Mum and Dad yet,’ Emily told her weakly.
Gracie seemed to accept her explanation, although she did warn, ‘Well, you’re cutting it a bit fine, you know. I appreciate that Matt doesn’t have any family and that you’ll only be having a small reception, and that you want it at home, but there’ll still be an awful lot of organising to be done, and if you think that Louise is going to let you off without the full works food-wise, then you don’t know her as well as you ought.’