Маргарет Уэй – Australia: Outback Fantasies: Outback Heiress, Surprise Proposal / Adopted: Outback Baby / Outback Doctor, English Bride (страница 11)

‘Nothing, Dami. Thank you.’ Francesca shook her head. Even Dami was staring at her flowing mane with what appeared to be outright admiration.

By the time she had closed the door Bryn had poured a cup of tea for her from the silver pot. She had seen it countless times before. It was part of a valuable five-piece Georgian service. The matching lidded sugar bowl was there, and beside it a silver dish with lemon slices. The bone china tea cup and saucer had an exquisite bleu celeste border and a gold rim, as did the matching plate, holding an array of delicate triple-layer sandwich fingers, all very elegantly presented.

‘Come along,’ Bryn said, as though it was his duty to get her to eat. ‘I notice you didn’t touch a thing downstairs when everyone else was most enthusiastic. You’d think the whole country was going to be hit by famine in a matter of days.’ He glanced back at her. ‘Leave your hair alone.’

‘Goodness, you’re bossy!’ she breathed.

‘I have to be. I know you grew up thinking your hair had to be tied back in plaits. It was Carrie’s golden mane that was always on display. Even Elizabeth knew better than to present you as a foil for her daughter.’

‘Oh, hold on!’

‘It’s true.’

‘Okay, it’s true. No secrets from you,’ she said with a helpless shrug. ‘Elizabeth spent a lot of time brushing my hair as a child and telling me how beautiful it was. “Just like your mother’s!” She always said that, smiling quietly, before hugging me to her with tears in her eyes. She and my mother had become the closest of friends, she said. Growing up in this strange house only Elizabeth affirmed my value. Then she had to make her own escape.’

‘Well, the Forsyths tend to stomp on people,’ Bryn said, very dryly. ‘It took a tremendous amount of guts for your father to get out. He was never forgiven, of course.’

‘I used to think I bore the brunt of that. The father’s sins visited on the daughter?’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s always puzzled me why Elizabeth married Uncle Charles. All right, I know he would have been very handsome—he still is—and a Forsyth with all that money. But he’s so … shallow.’ She gave a little shamed sob. ‘No, I’ll take that back. I’m sorry. Not shallow. But not a lot to him. Or not a lot that shows.’

Bryn shrugged. ‘You know why. Your grandfather drained the life out of him. There’s a word for your grandfather, but I can’t use it on this particular day. He made his own son feel forever anxious and insecure. He made him feel he would never be good enough to take over the running of the Forsyth Foundation, let alone Titan. Oddly enough, Charles is now acting as though a huge load has been lifted from his shoulders and dropped onto someone else’s. Did you notice?’ He shot her a laser-like glance. ‘He even tried chatting up Elizabeth. He sounded as though he was actually aching for her company.’

‘I can’t think she can be aching for his,’ Francesca said sharply, then winced. ‘Oh, what would I know? Maybe Uncle Charles knows something the rest of us don’t?’ She finished off one of the sandwiches, then used the edge of a linen and lace napkin to brush away a crumb.

‘He could know the contents of the will,’ Bryn mused aloud. ‘But it’s inconceivable he might be bypassed. Or is it?’ He spoke as though the thought had just occurred to him.

‘What are you saying?’ Francesca stared back. ‘By tradition Uncle Charles will take over from Grandfather, won’t he?’

‘Well, we’ll soon know.’ Bryn deflected her question briskly, an edge of mockery in his tone.

‘We?’ There was a flicker in her eyes. ‘You mean you’re staying?’ She had thought now that he had brought her home he had come to say goodbye.

‘It appears I’m a beneficiary.’ He gave a brief laugh that was quite without humour.

‘Good Lord! Aren’t you wondering what it is?’

Bryn held up a hand. ‘A set of golf clubs? He borrowed my grandfather’s and never gave them back. Come here, Francey.’ He watched her rise gracefully from her chair and walk towards him. ‘People do the damnedest thing when it comes to making wills. We all might be in for a few shocks. Even the wicked, like Frank, aren’t absolutely sure they won’t have to face up to a higher authority. Give an accounting. Face the music. Listen while a long list of sins are read out.’

Her father had been sinned against, Francesca thought. His share of the family fortune had been slashed right back. ‘Well, Carrie was very anxious you should stay.’ She lifted her eyes to his, aware she was trembling. ‘She needs your support.’

‘Carrie is well able to look after herself,’ he replied, without expression.

‘Yes, but we all need a shoulder to cry on from time to time. I couldn’t help seeing the two of you together. The way you gathered her to you.’ The kind of intimacy she imagined herself and Bryn might share!

‘So? What would you have had me do?’ he countered, raising a black brow. ‘Carrie was looking for comfort. I gave it. All three of us have been locked together since we were kids.’

‘I’ve never felt it was a triangle,’ Francesca said slowly, hardly able to sustain his concentrated glance. Until now.

‘Sure about that?’ Very gently he lifted a finger and began to twine a silky lock of her hair around it.

The slightest contact; a wild adrenalin rush. ‘What are you doing, Bryn?’ Her voice quavered, soft and intense. By now he had drawn her face closer, his filled with mesmerising intent.

‘Looking at you,’ he answered, mildly enough. ‘What else? You must be used to it by now. You’re very beautiful, Francey, though I see it torments you.’ She would have dreaded upstaging Carrie, he knew. Something she could easily have done.

‘I’m unsure why you’re looking at me,’ she questioned. ‘And with such concentration.’

‘Should that make you feel threatened?’ He drew back a little, to stare down into her eyes, putting her further off-balance.

Oh, my God … Oh, my God … Oh, my God …

The breath caught in her throat. ‘I’ve never felt more threatened.’ Her head was beginning to swim.

‘Does that happen when I touch you?’ A kind of agony was deep in his voice.

Such a change in pace! Such a tremendous build-up in pressure. What was he doing? Her heart seemed to be pumping at the base of her throat. Her will giving way under the force of his. ‘You are not to kiss me, Bryn,’ she warned, aware she sounded pathetically frantic. ‘If that’s what you’re planning.’ She had been exposed to such a look many times before—desire—but never from Bryn. Yet there seemed no way out. As if it was something he fully intended to do.

Her whole body was locked rigid. All the breath was sucked out of her. How could she resist him? It would take every ounce of her will and self discipline. She knew in her heart of hearts she didn’t have enough.

‘How do you know I haven’t been planning to kiss you for some time?’ he challenged her, a burning intensity in his eyes. His hands closed slowly and gently around her throat, a warm, living rope binding her to him.

‘Bryn, it makes no sense to experiment.’ She tried to free herself to no avail. ‘You have no reason to hurt me.’

That appeared to make him angry. ‘Hurt you? Would kissing you do that?’ He maintained his hold on her, the air thrumming with electricity.

‘You need to consider that possibility.’ Even as she argued her position, hot blood was thrashing through her veins. ‘It could hardly be worth it.’

‘Now, that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said very crisply, his dynamic face all taut planes and angles, his eyes glittering with such dark radiance Francesca was forced to close hers.

Pretend it’s make-believe.

How could she, when every nerve was screaming reality? Francesca found herself standing perfectly still while his hands slipped over the curve of her shoulders, then he locked a steely arm around her quiescent body.

Sensation was so overwhelming she gasped aloud. She knew she would remember these moments all her life: what it meant to be swept away. But if she allowed herself to go with it, this would be a life-changing moment. An emotional disaster, even. She wasn’t equipped to handle disaster.

But what use to fight the tyranny of the senses? His dominant face was bent over her. What could seem absolutely wrong, could also seem absolutely right.

He kissed her—not once, but repeatedly, the pleasure blotting out all resistance.

Each kiss was deeper, more seductive, than the last. She could taste the salt of her own tears. ‘Bryn, you mustn’t. ‘Yet she was going with the moment. It might only happen once. Rapture was flooding her heart and her mind and her body. Filling up every little bit of her, swirling into the deepest recesses. The masks were off!

It was an agony to think of it, but if she didn’t stop him soon, she would be totally consumed. She had to end it. There would be no way back. She would never have the life she’d once had again. She had to stop him.

She didn’t.

Why? She could die for this. Die for it day after day after day …

‘Some shall be pardoned, and some punished.’

Who was that? Shakespeare, of course. Romeo and Juliet again. Tears ran down her face.

Bryn took them blindly into his mouth, savouring them like nectar. ‘Francey, I’m sorry. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry!’ he begged, but the instant he said it his mouth closed on hers again like an all-powerful compulsion. Desire was thundering, smashing through Bryn’s defences. Her parted lips bloomed, opened like petals to him.