Horror engulfed her. What had happened to her? She had reacted to Kieron’s touch like brushwood to tinder. She pushed him away, sick with self-revulsion. Oh, God, what must he be thinking? She couldn’t possibly marry him now. White with self-loathing, she stared up at him, her eyes blazing defiantly.
‘Well, go on, then,’ she hurled at him. ‘Gloat! That’s what you’re doing inside, isn’t it? Thinking how easy it was to turn me on? Oh, God, how I hate you!’
Kieron’s face was nearly as white as her own.
‘Is that what you think?’ he demanded furiously. ‘That I’d deliberately and coldbloodedly do something like that?’
How long they stared at one another in mutual bitterness, Briony did not know. She only knew that when she eventually managed to drag her eyes away from him she was shaking uncontrollably.
‘You did it once before,’ she reminded him bitterly.
‘And since then you haven’t allowed a man into your life, is that it?’
She laughed then, sobering only when he shook her hard. ‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded harshly.
‘I’ve let one man into my life,’ she reminded him. ‘Your son. The reason we have to go through this farce of a marriage.’
‘It’s too late to back out now,’ he warned her. ‘Nicky.…’
‘Yes, I know. It’s for Nicky’s sake that I’m doing this. I want that understood plainly, Kieron. I won’t be degraded by lovemaking without love again.’
He studied her for a few minutes, his expression unreadable, and then the colour drained from her face as he said slowly.
‘And if it was with love?’
Her mind rejected the words instantly, only the terrible aching of her body confirming that she wasn’t entirely free of the past. She clamped down on the feeling.
‘I don’t love you!’
The ring of the telephone broke the tension-filled silence like a gunshot. Kieron got off the bed and went into the living room, leaving Briony to fasten her robe and pad resentfully after him.
‘It was for me,’ he told her calmly, replacing the receiver. ‘I gave the paper your number.’
Who had it been? Gail? Why should she care?
‘Something’s cropped up and I’ve got to get down there,’ Kieron told her as though he had sensed her suspicions. ‘What I came to tell you is that I think I’ve managed to find us a house. Some friends of mine who live in Surrey are going to the States for twelve months and they’re prepared to let their house to us, which should give us time to look round for what we really want. It will also mean that you aren’t exhausting yourself going round estate agents’ offices. What are you going to do about clothes?’
The question caught her off guard.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked stiffly.
His impatient sigh rustled through the space between them.
‘I mean do you want me to organise someone to look after Nicky while you go out and buy yourself a wedding dress? Look, I’m not suggesting white with all the trimmings,’ he said hardily when she flinched, ‘but most women seem to consider marriage an excuse for buying themselves a new outfit.’
‘Well, I’m not most women,’ Briony said tartly. ‘If I wore something appropriate to my mood, I’d probably be dressed in sackcloth and ashes!’
For a moment she thought she had gone too far. Something blazed angrily in his eyes, but as she took a step backwards it faded, to be replaced by a faintly mocking smile, which strangely enough annoyed her more than his anger.
‘You really do believe in making things hard for yourself, don’t you?’ he said softly. ‘Tomorrow you will go out and buy yourself something to be married in. And if you don’t, I shall personally make sure that you do, even if it means stripping you myself and putting your clothes on you. Do you understand?’
He was gone before she could retaliate, leaving her exhausted and drained and yet, curiously, more alive than she had felt in years.
* * *
Kieron certainly didn’t believe in doing things by halves, Briony thought lightheadedly as she sipped her champagne. She had had no idea until after the ceremony that Kieron had arranged a reception at the Savoy.
The wedding itself had been a surprise too. She had somehow expected a simple register office service, and had been caught off guard when the taxi Kieron had organised for her stopped outside her local church.
There had been a moment when they had been making their vows when she had thought fleetingly of how different it could all have been if Kieron had been the man she had once thought, but she had banished it as being stupidly romantic, concentrating instead of the real reasons for their alliance.