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Lissa wanted to vigorously deny what he was saying, but how could she without betraying the truth?
‘I must go back to London today,’ she mumbled, desperately anxious to change the subject. She was going hot and cold all over with the onset of a familiar fear. It seemed incredible and she knew that Joel would never have believed it, but the closest she had come to real intimacy with any man in the years since her fifteenth summer was what she was sharing with him right now. Suddenly she became intensely aware of the weight of his body on her mattress; the warm male scent of him as he leaned forward to tickle Louise. The little girl giggled and moved closer to her, grabbing the soft fabric of her nightdress. It was a fine lawn cotton, and covered her quite adequately, but as Louise grabbed the fabric she was suddenly intensely conscious of the way it was tightening across her breasts. She could feel Joel watching her as thought his glance were burning into her skin.
‘London?’
The sharpness in his voice made her tense, and when she managed to compose herself sufficiently to meet his eyes they were cold and angry.
‘Joel, I’ll have to arrange something about my house … and then there’s Simon and my job. I’ll have to explain that …’
‘I’ll do all the explaining necessary,’ he told her curtly. ‘I want you to stay here with the girls.’
‘But Simon …’ Lissa expostulated. ‘I must tell him myself that …’
‘That you won’t be sharing his bed any longer?’ Joel bit out grimly. ‘That he’ll be losing a lover as well as a secretary. No Lissa, I’ll tell him for you. I don’t want you seeing him again, now that you’ve agreed to marry me. I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that if he’d really thought anything of you, he’d have proposed marriage … knowing how you feel about the girls.’
It was on the tip of Lissa’s tongue to tell him that Simon had, but for some reason she suppressed the words. ‘What are you so afraid of Joel?’ she lashed out instead. ‘That if I see Simon I won’t be able to resist jumping straight into bed with him. You always did have a high opinion of me didn’t you?’ she finished sarcastically, watching the way his mouth twisted with bitter derision as he looked at her, and wondering why she should feel this knife twist of pain so deep inside herself; why she should lash herself so unmercifully, when she knew … oh how she knew exactly how much he despised her. Why should she seek further confirmation of that knowledge so determinedly?
‘You’ve certainly never gone out of your way to show yourself to me in a good light have you?’ Joel countered. ‘In fact I sometimes think you deliberately want me to think the worst of you Lissa. I’ve often wondered why?’
He got up before she could make any retort, dropping light kisses on the two small blonde heads of his nieces as he did so.
‘Aren’t you going to kiss Lissa too?’ Louise piped up instantly. ‘Daddy always kissed Mummy before he went to work.’
‘But I’m not going to work,’ Joel explained, ruffling her curls. ‘I’m going downstairs to make some telephone calls. However, poppet, just to please you.’ He bent his head, and although Lissa cringed back as far as she could, until the back of her head was pressed against the unyielding brass of the Victorian bedstead, it didn’t stop Joel from kissing her, the torment of the warmth of his mouth moving softly against her own making her shiver with shock and fear. When he released her he was frowning and Lissa held her breath, wondering if she had betrayed herself, and if he was now having second thoughts about marrying her. He was a virile man; even she could see that and when he discovered that … that she was neither prepared nor able to be a true wife to him. Tell him, tell him the truth now an inner voice cautioned … but she couldn’t … she couldn’t lay herself open to the male mockery and contempt she would see in his eyes if she did. And besides she would lose the girls. No, after they were married … after they were married she would tell him that she had changed her mind and that she could not accept him as her lover. After all he would still have what he wanted from her; the children and her service as a stand-in mother. For the rest … well she doubted that he had had any thoughts of being faithful to her in any case … Feeling a little uncomfortable because she knew she was deceiving him, Lissa was glad when he turned his back on her and walked towards the door. Once he was through it and had closed it behind him she let out a shaky breath. Emma took her thumb out of her mouth and stared up at her with golden brown eyes. A huge smile split her solemn little face and she said firmly, ‘Mummy.’
Lissa had to dash away tears. Amanda had complained that Emma was slow to speak because she had Louise to translate for her, and it seemed prophetic that she should choose now of all times to start.
‘No, not Mummy,’ Louise corrected her sister, ‘Auntie Lissa … but you can call her Mummy I s’pose,’ she said kindly. ‘Shall I call you Mummy too … and Uncle Joel, Daddy?’ she asked Lissa.
‘You must call us whatever you like Louise,’ Lissa told her. She suspected that by the time she reached school age Emma would not be able to remember her parents, but Louise was old enough to do so and the last thing Lissa wanted to do was to try to erase from her memory the reality of her parents. The best thing to do was to let Louise feel free to decide for herself and see what happened, she decided, trying to occupy her mind with the girls’ problems and not her own.
She left them playing together on the bed while she showered and dressed, and then wearing comfortable jeans and a soft russet silk shirt that toned with her hair, she shepherded them back to their own room.
Joel had put them in his own and John’s old nursery, and while the bedroom with its bathroom and study-sitting room was large and airy the decor was more suited to two teenage boys rather than two small girls. Making a mental note to talk to him about it, and to ask him about the girls’ toys and clothes, Lissa helped them to get dressed and took them downstairs.
The sooner a proper routine was established, the sooner they would ov
ercome the trauma of their parents’ death. Making another mental note to enquire locally about play groups, Lissa headed for the kitchen, suddenly conscious that Louise was hanging back, a worried frown puckering her forehead.
‘Come on darling, you want some breakfast, don’t you?’ Lissa asked gently.
‘Mrs Johnson doesn’t like us going in the kitchen,’ was Louise’s quavery response. ‘She says we’re pests and that it’s time Uncle Joel make some proper arrangements for us.’
Listening to this artless confirmation that little pitchers did indeed have long ears, Lissa repressed a quiver of anger against the housekeeper. Surely the older woman could have made allowances, knowing the circumstances surrounding the girls.
‘Uncle Joel got us a new nanny,’ Louise continued confidingly, ‘because Nanny Jo’s boyfriend didn’t want her to come and live here with us, but we didn’t like our new nanny …’
Lissa was not surprised that ‘Nanny’ Jo’s boyfriend was reluctant to allow his girlfriend to live virtually alone with a man of Joel’s calibre, even she was aware of his powerful, vibrant brand of masculinity, but while other women were attracted by it, she was repelled, she told herself, witness her revulsion when Joel had kissed her. And yet there had been no violence, no domination in his kiss … If anything the first touch of his mouth against her own had been almost tender, coaxing … Shutting such dangerous thoughts away Lissa turned her attention to the task of getting the girls’ breakfast, secretly appalled to discover how little there was in the way of food in the kitchen cupboards. She was going to have to speak to Joel about his housekeeper and she grimaced faintly at the thought.
She had just settled the girls at the comfortable farmhouse table with plates of toast and honey, when Joel walked in.
‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’ he enquired of Lissa, lifting one eyebrow interrogatively. When she nodded assent, he sat down between the two girls, deftly preventing Emma from dropping her toast sticky side down on to her lap. Watching his easy confidence with the girls, Lissa realised she was seeing a new side of him. In her mind he was and always had been the sardonic contemptuous enemy of her youth; the man who had torn from her all her romantic yearnings and dreams and tossed them back to her blemished and made sordid by his totally unexpected intrusion into the bedroom where she had been experiencing her first tentative and innocent forays into the land of sensual pleasure. Had they been left alone she knew that nothing more than a few fumbling kisses and caresses would have been exchanged between Gordon and herself. For all his image as the school pin-up, his worldly experience had not been more than hers, and with the wisdom of age she realised that both of them would have drawn back before they had gone much further, but the reaction of her father and the disapproval of Joel, the stranger he had brought with him to witness her shame and degradation, had made it seem as though she were more of a nymphomaniac than a shy and rather naïve fifteen year old experiencing virtually her first kiss. Now she could accept that her parents had been over-strict with her, much more so than they had been with Amanda, but Amanda had been the image of her mother while she apparently, or so Amanda had once confided, was very much like their father’s sister … someone who was never mentioned at home, and who apparently as a teenager during the War had led a rather promiscuous life, eventually leaving home and disappearing. This explained some of her parents’ strictness and even possibly her father’s dislike of her, Lissa acknowledged, but surely if they had loved her as they undoubtedly loved Amanda they would have seen—known—that she was not the wanton creature they themselves had branded her.
She could still vividly recall her shock and mental anguish at discovering from another of the pupils that the school she had been sent to was for ‘naughty’ girls. ‘What have you done to get here,’ the latter had asked her.’ Boasting, ‘I’m here because I hate my new step-brother.’
The nuns hadn’t been actively unkind, indeed some of them showed an extremely enlightened attitude towards their wayward pupils, but Lissa had felt too out of step … too alien to respond to them. She had also felt besmirched … dirty and degraded … defiled in a way that made her recoil from any human contact.
‘Lissa?’
