‘Don’t worry, I’ll be the perfect pupil.’ She hugged Jenna tightly. ‘Sorry for being such an obnoxious toad lately, Mum…but you do understand, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ There were tears in Jenna’s throat. In one way she resented the fact that James was the one who had restored her loving, affectionate daughter to her, and yet she knew she ought to feel gratitude, but then, when had the human heart ever been able to be schooled in what it should and should not feel?
‘I thought we might stop for dinner and a talk on the way back,’ James suggested, as they drove away. ‘Sarah will be all right for a few hours with my housekeeper.’
‘What exactly is there left to talk about?’ Jenna asked sarcastically. ‘It seems you’ve anticipated my acceptance of your proposal. You’ve even decided where we’re going to be married!’
‘I didn’t tell Lucy deliberately, if that’s what you’re hinting,’ James returned evenly.
Jenna compressed her lips. James had never struck her as a man who would let himself be pushed into saying or doing anything he did not wish.
‘What did she do?’ Her voice was dripping with acid. ‘Apply thumbscrews?’
‘Not in a physical sense. She asked me if she could spend part of her school holidays with me, and if I would talk to you about her visiting me in London. She was working herself up into quite a state and so I told her that I’d proposed to you.’
‘But not that I had not accepted.’
Jenna was aware of him looking at her, his glance sharp and objective. ‘You could always have told her that yourself.’
Jenna mentally visualised Lucy’s reaction if she had done so and remained silent.
‘You don’t need to give me dinner,’ she said after a few minutes.
‘Maybe not, but it will provide a relaxing background for us to talk in—and on neutral territory. There’s a place a couple of miles down the road from here. I sometimes call in on the way to my godmother’s. Which reminds me, I must take you down to meet her soon. I’d thought of asking her to take charge of the girls while we’re away.’
‘Away?’ Jenna frowned. ‘Away where?’
‘Where do newly-married couples normally go? On honeymoon, of course.’
‘No! There’s absolutely no reason for anything like that!’
‘On the contrary, there are several excellent reasons,’ James argued silkily. ‘None of them the ones that usually apply I’ll admit, but excellent none the less. For a start I have business in the Caribbean that needs attending to. The holiday complex I’m involved in has reached the stage where discussions are due—as a matter of fact I want to pick your professional brain over some aspects of the décor of the luxury suites, so it won’t exactly be a holiday for you either. And then there’s the fact that we are going to be living with two extremely sharp-eyed young women and I think a brief break away on our own, so that we can get used to one another and feel more at ease with one another, is essential.’
Jenna took a deep breath. ‘Before you go any further, I want to make it plain to you that if I marry you, it will be a marriage in name only—without sex,’ she added baldly.
‘Unusual…but not impossible. Am I allowed to ask why?’
For a moment she was too startled by his calm reaction to speak. ‘I don’t love you.’
She saw his eyebrows lift and could have sworn his mouth twitched in faint amusement. ‘Is that necessary?’
He was making her feel like a gauche seventeen-year-old. ‘For me, yes,’ she said firmly. ‘Since you’ve put me in a position where I can’t really refuse to marry you, I will, but only if I have your guarantee that you’ll never…’
‘Force my unwanted attentions on you?’ He sounded more amused than put out. ‘Very well. You have it. Tell me, though, does this guarantee me to live life as a celibate?’
‘Would that be possible?’ She said it drily, and was disturbed by the sudden glint of anger in his eyes.
‘Maybe not, but obviously it is for you unless you’re trying to tell me that you have a lover.’
Jenna’s mouth went dry, but she knew he meant to get an answer to his question.
‘No…no, I don’t,’ she admitted at length, her voice a cracked, hoarse sound in the silence of the car, leaving her with the feeling that she had betrayed far more to him than she had intended.
‘So. No lover and no sex. Why?’
‘Why not? Not everyone centres their life on the gratification of their sexual desires.’
‘No, but very few people exclude them from their lives entirely, which is, I assume, what you’re saying you do?’