Sophisticated Seduction
Jayne Bauling
Opposites attractHaving fled to India to escape the painful disillusionment of one relationship, Bridget had no intention of embarking on another… especially not with someone as complex and dangerously attractive as Nicholas Stirling!While he was ruthless and sophisticated, Bridget was shy and gentle. To let down her guard to such a man would be pure folly. His talent was for seduction, not commitment. Nicholas might just break her heart again.
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u14f911a6-40f1-5d1b-9909-c32d2353b964)
Excerpt (#u44ef3722-4eeb-5ad6-8573-f8d04e7e4343)
About The Author (#ufb315ebe-2c7d-5e98-a78f-70a9309c500f)
Title Page (#uc5518789-f9a1-5b16-90f0-6d3ab2bdd0b2)
Chapter One (#u718b81d1-19f4-5058-b12f-e5b2d10b8880)
Chapter Two (#u2393c325-67bc-5c59-aabf-5da4120a3a0d)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Why would I want to get involved with you?”
Bridget continued, “Anyone who is interested in you is lacking in discrimination.”
“As you are?” he derided. “Since you happen to be attracted to me, Bridget.”
She hesitated. “I’m too—fastidious to want anything to do with a man like you.”
“And what am I like, sweetheart?”
“Cynical, decadent, incapable of proper feelings!”
JAYNE BAULING was born in England and grew up in South Africa. She always wrote but was too shy to show anyone her work until the publication of some poems in her teens gave her the confidence to attempt the romance novels she wanted to concentrate on, the first published being written when she was attending business college. Her home is just outside Johannesburg, a town house ruled by a seal point called Ranee. Travel is a major passion; at home it’s family, friends, music, swimming, reading and patio gardening.
Sophisticated Seduction
Jayne Bauling
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e1973c59-0ca2-5d97-a7ef-2bf806994e4b)
BRIDGET retrieved the long white T-shirt she had just discarded and pulled it on again, accepting that she would have to wait a little longer for the cool shower she needed so badly. She was still not fully acclimatised to the Delhi heat, although almost a week had passed since she had flown from London to this sometimes troubled, always fascinating city.
The sounds from the front of the house were unmistakable. Someone in possession of a set of keys was entering, and it could be almost anyone, Stirling Industries having company houses in the capitals of most countries in which they were active, and any newly arrived employee had only to call on the head of their Indian office to obtain a spare set of keys.
Or it might be a specially favoured girlfriend of the notorious Nicholas Stirling, permitted to have her own set. If so, she was destined to be as disappointed as those others without keys who had called so optimistically over the last few days, having noticed that the house was occupied and hoping to find him in residence.
An air hostess, an English girl currently working for All India Radio, and an elegant young woman from the British Embassy here in Delhi, they had all claimed to have been passing by chance, but even Bridget, unburdened by cynicism, had suspected that the route was a regular pilgrimage among the man’s admirers.
‘Hello!’
‘And who are you?’
There were two people in the beautiful entrance hall, but Bridget hardly noticed the woman who had spoken first, her shadowy green eyes instantly drawn to the man who had asked that coolly disdainful question. He had that rare quality, a presence which commanded and held the attention and would do so in any company however large and glittering.
She had never seen him in the flesh before, but there was no mistaking Nicholas Stirling. Tall, lean and obviously powerful, with a strong but sharply chiselled face unusually allied to sensuously curved lips, dark grey eyes and the sort of true black hair which had eventually made her realise that her own was not the black she had believed it to be as a child, but simply very dark brown.
His skin was dark too, especially against the pale, cool colours of the hall, and he wore the glamour and decadence of his reputation like a patina. Bridget had never seen anyone so overtly sophisticated, and for several seconds she could only keep on staring at him, as if under some compulsion that excluded conscious thought.
Then she realised that he was waiting for an answer.
‘I’m Bridget…’ She saw disdain become irritation and tried again. ‘Bridget Greer, Mr Stirling. I work for your sister.’
‘Oh, yes? In what capacity, precisely?’ he wondered in a sceptical drawl. ‘Where is Virginia, anyway?’
The question presented her with a dilemma. Virginia had issued all sorts of instructions as to what might be divulged in the event of her brother’s arriving in India— the unlikely event, she had assured Bridget—but here he was, and how much loyalty did she owe her employer?
‘Somewhere in America, I think,’ she answered vaguely but with absolute truth.
‘Why? She’s supposed to be here,’ Nicholas Stirling snapped. ‘Buying fabrics for Ginny’s.’
‘I’m doing it for her,’ Bridget supplied, her voice still naturally soft and gentle, despite slowly rising resentment.
‘Nonsense—or highly unlikely, anyway.’
The grey eyes flicked disparagingly over the strands of dark silky hair that were escaping untidily from the loose French braid that hung down her back, before sweeping her face, so completely bare of make-up, and finally skimming the loose T-shirt which concealed the slenderness of her body but left most of her long, slim legs on display.
Bridget’s face heated in response to a surge of chaotic emotion. No one had ever called her a liar before, and she was lost for an adequate response. She glanced at his blonde, blue-eyed companion, but there was no help to be had there.
‘Why else would I be here?’ she began hotly.
‘I cannot begin to imagine right this moment, although it will probably come to me presently.’ He had clearly put aside his irritation, looking and sounding merely bored now as he indicated the suitcases resting on the marble floor just inside the huge double doors of carved teak. ‘But, as you can see, we’ve just flown in and I’m really not in the mood for solving mysteries. So if you’re set on making this a guessing game, would you mind very much if we postponed it until tomorrow?’
‘Right! Fine! That suits me perfectly!’ The words emerged as an odd series of soft explosions as she gave way to unaccustomed anger in response to the exaggerated courtesy of the request.
She turned swiftly and stalked away, bare feet frustratingly silent on the marble floor, as she would have liked to stamp out. Virginia was right. All the Stirling men were as vile as each other, arrogant, superior creatures, patronising people like her.
In the short, wide passage leading to the bedroom and adjoining bathroom she had chosen for herself, Bridget slowed down. It was so rarely that she experienced anger that she lacked the knack of feeding it, and her conscience was stirring. Most people were tired and irritable after a flight; hungry too, occasionally, and she had told Sita Menon that she wouldn’t need her tonight…
With something a little less than her usual simple good nature, she turned and retraced her steps. By now Nicholas Stirling and friend were in the room Bridget tended to think of as the salon, too elegant and exotic to be called a living-room or lounge.
Her voice too accentless for her origins to be identifiable, the woman was speaking with rueful amusement, and Bridget hesitated uncertainly.
‘…infuriating. I can never manage to achieve that tousled, just-out-of-bed look. It’s very effective.’
‘Wanda, I don’t imagine the girl is a day over eighteen, and she’s young with it,’ Nicholas Stirling drawled. ‘Additionally, I doubt if there’s anything studied about the look you’re referring to. That hair has never seen a gel, a mousse, a spray—or even a hairdresser, in all probability. Forget her. Girls bore me. I like women.’
This time Bridget’s anger was soaring pure blue flame, a pyre for her conscientious intentions, fuelled by the fact that Nicholas Stirling was absolutely right about her lack of acquaintance with hairdressers, but almost four years short of her real age. They could go hungry!
Once more, she turned to leave the hall, but some sound, perhaps her outraged gasp on realising that it was she who was being discussed so contemptuously, must have betrayed her.
‘Just a minute.’ That unspeakable man had emerged from the living-room, closing the door behind him and surveying her impatiently as she spun round. ‘Did you want something, or were you just eavesdropping?’
‘In fact, I was coming to offer to cook a meal for you,’ Bridget announced with a sharpness she hardly recognised as coming from herself.
‘Where’s Mrs Menon—the woman who looks after the house and does the cooking?’ he demanded suspiciously.
‘I told her I didn’t need her tonight, and I happen to know she’s visiting a relative in hospital. That’s why—’
‘I suppose you’re one of these teenagers who never eats?’ he cut in disgustedly, eyes raking her concealing shirt. ‘Your generation doesn’t seem to possess any civilised habits whatsoever, picking at left-overs and listening to private conversations!’
He spoke as if there were at least thirty years between them, but Bridget knew he was thirty-four. Virginia had told her, and his jacket, shirt and trousers somehow confirmed it, elegant and subtly fashionable, but above all obviously comfortable, and worn so unconsciously that there could be no doubting his self-confidence.
‘Well, maybe your friend will be willing to warm up some left-overs for you,’ she suggested tartly.
He caught the note. ‘My friend? Ah, Wanda. Before she warms me up, I suppose you mean?’
It was meant to disconcert, she sensed, and she forced a limpid smile, remembering that he thought her eighteen.
‘Well, yes, as I understand it’s the kind of thing your generation goes in for all the time.’
The way his mouth tightened momentarily gave him a ruthless aspect, but he was too cool to react directly, and a moment later he was smiling at her.
‘Bridget Greer, you said. But I imagine you get called Biddy?’ Unexpectedly, the question revealed a glimpse of charm, but somehow Bridget found it slighting.
‘Bridget,’ she insisted shortly, having decided it was more appropriate to her independent, adult status, now that she had a permanent job with prospects and had moved out of her parents’ home, although her family still tended to use the diminutive.
He seemed to guess what lay behind the insistence. ‘Ah, yes, very mature.’
His smile really was an incredible thing, full of an overwhelming magnetism, and Bridget was momentarily rocked by it. It enabled her to understand the attraction he held for those women who had come to the house and, presumably, for Wanda, and she felt sorry for them. She knew what the Stirling men were really like.
‘You’re not seeing me at my best,’ she submitted dismissively, an acknowledgement of how she knew she must appear to him at present.
‘So you can understand why I’m sceptical about your claim to be working for my sister,’ he agreed.
‘Nevertheless, it happens to be true,’ she asserted.
‘In which case I mean to find out what’s behind it, and particularly what’s behind your presence here. But as I have a guest to entertain it will have to wait until tomorrow morning.’ He paused and added deliberately, in a softly silky tone of warning, ‘So no absconding in the night, please, Bridget.’
‘Why should I? Absconding implies guilt.’
‘And I haven’t caught you doing anything wrong?’ It was almost teasing, and somehow it rattled her.
‘No!’
‘Apart from occupying my company house when it’s my sister who should be here, and you either unwilling or unable to tell me where she is. I don’t like seeing my family taken advantage of, but, as I say, we’ll discuss it in the morning. Would you mind making yourself scarce until then?’
Because he wanted to be alone with Wanda! Bridget achieved the first truly drop-dead smile of her life, without thought or effort, her fury the instinctive spur.
‘With absolute pleasure!’
She stared at him in open dislike for a moment, and he stared back, unnervingly intent, as if he were seeing right into her. Her bare feet put her just three inches below him, which made him approximately six feet. Then, simultaneously, they turned away from each other.
Under the stinging spray of a cool shower, Bridget wondered what had driven her. She had never behaved so aggressively before. It was because he was a Stirling, of course, and an even worse one than Loris. Virginia must be the only Stirling alive with any likeable human qualities at all.
Presumably Wanda hadn’t been asked either to cook or make left-overs palatable, because she heard the sound of a car’s arrival and almost immediate departure while she was drying herself, and the house was silent and empty of other presences when she made her way to the kitchen.
She had meant to cook, experimenting with the day’s purchases, but inclination and appetite had gone, leaving her guilty of Nicholas Stirling’s contemptuous accusations, picking at left-overs.
She was in bed, the light out, by the time her senses, swiftly followed by faint, far-off sounds, told her that she was no longer alone in this house which she had occupied for almost a week now.
To her surprise, neither unhappiness nor the October heat that pressed down on New Delhi had prevented her sleeping on previous nights, but this one was different. That man had restarted the cycle of futile, humiliating thought again. Just because he was Loris Stirling’s cousin.
With so many of her contempories struggling to find permanent jobs, and after occupying several stressful, short-term positions herself, Bridget knew how lucky she had been to secure employment at Ginny’s, a small but successful enterprise producing a range of female fashion-wear that fell happily somewhere between exclusive and mass-produced. Virginia Stirling no longer designed or sewed herself, her energies devoted to the business side of the operation, although she still indulged her passion for fabrics, disappearing for weeks at a time on buying trips, but during those periods when she was back in her London office she took a personal interest in her staff. Thus Bridget had gained experience in most departments before joining the tiny team Virginia was training to assist her in her own job.
And here she was in Delhi, doing Virginia’s job for her. It would never have happened so soon but for the coincidence of the two of them falling in love with two very different men at more or less the same time.
‘You’re new,’ a teasing voice had commented from the door of her office one day, and Bridget had found herself staring at the most romantically handsome young man she had ever seen.
‘No, you are,’ she had retorted shyly, a tight hurting sensation already manifesting itself somewhere in her breast.
‘Fair enough, I suppose. My cousin Nicholas has had me grounded in Seoul, implementing and overseeing the upgrading of safety standards in some new factories he has acquired there—unusually for him, as it’s something he rarely delegates, but I was having woman trouble,’ he had explained with a brave smile that had wrenched at her heart. ‘I’ve just dropped in to say hello to Virginia. I’m Loris Stirling, by the way, the baby of the family. And you are…?’
He had asked her out and she had hesitated before accepting, but his exemplary behaviour on that first date had reassured her: she wasn’t being rushed into anything. There had been many more, some on several successive nights, but with long intervals between others, keeping her guessing, but the way he had kissed her and talked meaningfully about what they might be to each other in the future, and his habit of seeking her out whenever he visited Virginia at work, had encouraged Bridget to dream. One of these days, when he was fully over whatever it was that had caused his cousin to pack him off to South Korea…
She had been dreaming again after one of his visits to the office when Virginia had summoned her, and she had responded with alacrity, snatching at the chance to see him again as she had guessed that Loris would still be with his cousin.
Disappointingly, Virginia had been urging his departure when Bridget paused at the open door, feasting her eyes on the back of his elegant dark head.
‘Doesn’t Nicholas expect you to work occasionally? Get out, Loris. I’m busy even if you’re not, and I’ve got Bridget Greer on her way to fetch a list of quantities I forgot to give her this morning.’
‘Ah, Bridget.’ Loris laughed in a way Bridget had never heard before, the sound somehow both indulgent and contemptuous. ‘She’s a sweet thing—and I’m keeping her sweet, so to speak, for when Pagan has had her day, as I’ve an idea I might like to spend a night or two initiating her into the delights of bed, since I suspect that’s what it would amount to. It could be soon, too. Pagan is starting to get too possessive. I rather think Nicholas is going to have to give me another foreign assignment when I get tired of her, the same as he did with the last one. Maybe I’ll persuade Bridget to go with me.’
The hand Bridget had lifted to knock fell, the movement attracting Virginia’s attention, her beautiful grey eyes growing appalled as they met Bridget’s hurt green ones.
Then she was saying lightly but with an odd, underlying note of urgency, ‘Pagan? That’s the would-be actress? Or singer? She doesn’t strike me as very talented, but she’s certainly well-publicised. Oh, sit down again, Loris; I’ve just remembered something I want to ask you.’
Pale with shock and humiliation, Bridget retained just enough presence of mind to understand that Virginia was giving her the chance to slip away without having to face Loris, and she accepted it frantically.
No wonder she had found his kisses so reassuringly undemanding! He wasn’t interested in her—yet, just expecting to be at some future stage when he tired of the other girl. Cynically, he had been keeping her on ice!
She was barely functional when she returned to her employer’s office half an hour later, the time too short for her to have come to terms with her hurt, its sting still fresh and poignant.
‘Don’t be embarrassed, Bridget,’ Virginia adjured kindly, noticing how she flushed self-consciously as she entered the office. ‘You’re not the first and you won’t be the last to discover what the Stirling men are really like behind their handsome faces. I didn’t bother telling Loris you’d heard, incidentally.’
‘I was in love with him,’ Bridget confided in a small voice, incapable of pretence, the exigencies of pride too new to her to be accommodated.
‘I know, but there’s not a one of them, not my brother or either of my cousins, who is capable of loving, although they all enjoy women.’ Virginia grimaced ruefully. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been too distracted lately to notice what was happening, otherwise I could have warned you. But things have… Oh, now that’s an idea! Or perhaps not. It would be a solution to my problem, but it might not be the right thing for you. On the other hand, I do think you need to get away from here for a while, Bridget, and as it’s through my preoccupation, not to mention my cousin, that you’ve been hurt like this… You’re almost ready to undertake overseas buying on your own now, only I’d meant to send you somewhere nearer to home and less exotic initially. But how would you like to go to India in my place? I’d better explain properly, but first I want you to swear that you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone unless I give you permission?’
Her employer was a kind woman, but Bridget had a feeling that she was being swept into some scheme that was more to Virginia’s benefit than her own, especially as Virginia was looking slightly guilty. Nevertheless, going to India would be a major step towards the independence she was aiming for, a goal she had temporarily lost sight of, thanks to the distraction Loris had provided. Additionally, in the newness of her humiliation, the idea of having to face Loris again was acutely distressing, and ‘Virginia did seem to be offering her at least a temporary reprieve from having to do so.
‘Of course I won’t,’ she promised shakily. ‘But I thought your trip to India was all arranged?’
‘It was! It is, but I can’t go! Oh, I wish I knew if I was doing the right thing asking you!’ Virginia sounded unusually confused, angry and amused at once. ‘I just can’t believe this has happened to me. I’m supposed to be like all the other Stirlings. We don’t fall in love! I never have, although I’ve had a few good relationships, and you’d think if I could get to the age of thirty-one without losing my heart I’d be safe from ever doing so, wouldn’t you? I’ve put up a good fight this time too, but that’s partly why I’m now required to prove my commitment.
‘After all my resistance and carrying on about how my work came first, Mortimer isn’t completely sure of me—and I want him to be, now that I’ve had to capitulate, because I know I’ll lose him otherwise. He’s a travel writer and he’s due at a convention in America at the same time I’m scheduled to start buying fabrics in India. I want to go with him, but it’s not fair to my designers and everyone else involved just to scrap or postpone that range after all the work they’re putting in, and my other buyers are all already committed elsewhere… You know, Bridget, I suppose that ultimately the difference between me and the men in the family is simply that I’m a woman. We’re victims—not of men, but of our own natures, and I’m still not sure if I like it!’
Such sentiments were alien to Bridget. In love with Loris, she would quite simply have been delirious with happiness had he returned her feelings.
‘Is that why you want to keep it a secret? Or—’ Natural delicacy made her break off as it occurred to her that the man might not be free.
‘Or is he married?’ Virginia laughed. ‘He and his wife separated many years ago, but they never bothered with divorce. Mortimer is seeing about it now, but I want our marriage to be a fait accompli before I tell anyone. That way, my brother won’t be able to interfere, and he’ll want to, I know. He’s so used to directing our lives, deciding things for us, and he’s likely to decide I’m making a mistake, especially as Mortimer is fifty. I’ve learnt not to confide in Nicholas, although there was a time when I was grateful for the way he’d take command and get us out of our difficulties. He got rid of my very first lover for me when I became unhappy in the affair because I wasn’t in love and the man was. I later found out that my next lover, who didn’t make the mistake of loving me, had been pointed in my direction by Nicholas, to keep me happy. I was furious, and it was after that that Nicholas set me up with Ginny’s, to keep me out of trouble and my mind off men, because I was never satisfied, he said.
‘But since then I’ve run my own life, started and ended my affairs for myself without any help from him. But this! I remember once some woman Nicholas was involved with had set out determined to join the Stirling family; it turned out she’d deliberately provoked her husband into giving her grounds for divorce so she’d be free before engineering a meeting—she actually admitted all this in a fit of pique when Nicholas foiled her.
‘Anyway, when Nicholas made it clear that he wasn’t interested in marriage, she quite coolly transferred her attention to Adrian—Loris’s older brother—as one Stirling was as good as another in her book. But Nicholas was even cooler, the way he extricated Adrian and sent him off to run the American office. I suspect he’d try the same on me and Mortimer. I can’t risk it!’
Virginia gestured expressively, and Bridget could see her point. Nicholas Stirling sounded the most ruthless of autocrats, at least where his family was concerned.
She liked Virginia, and if she herself couldn’t have the love she had dreamed of, so unrealistically, at least she could help Virginia have and keep hers.
Thus she had agreed to this Indian trip, confident that she could handle the buying and prove herself an asset to Ginny’s, doing her best to soothe the doubts Virginia so obviously had. She had arrived in New Delhi to find that Virginia did in fact still rely on her brother, or Stirling Industries, for some things in addition to using the company house, as the head of Stirling Industries’ Indian interests, Mr Bhandari, had insisted on making all Bridget’s domestic travel arrangements for her, brushing aside her embarrassed protests with the assertion that he always did the same for Virginia on her trips.
Tonight, thoughts of Loris were relentlessly intrusive again, invading her mind, tormenting her as they had done so persistently in the days and nights preceding her departure from England, which had mercifully coincided with one of those periods when Loris didn’t contact her—presumably in deference to the possessive Pagan. Since then, the novelty of her surroundings and the responsibilities of her job had provided some relief, but now the ache had begun again, somehow stirred by Nicholas Stirling’s arrival.
Surprisingly, Bridget had found herself unable to shed any tears over Loris, but that too was now suddenly at an end, she discovered as hot tears welled, filling her eyes irresistibly and tightening her throat. Her mouth worked and finally she had to yield to the hurt and humiliation she felt.
The house was situated towards New Delhi’s outskirts and not for the first time Bridget heard the howl of jackals from the hills outside the city, the sound seemingly so full of a profound, poignant grief that she felt her own to be trivial and was abruptly furious with herself—lying here in the dark, sobbing in her bed for an impossible dream, just like the teenager that horrible man Nicholas Stirling believed she was.
But crying had given her unhappiness a looser, more manageable feel, and the emotional release ensured that she slept well and woke with her plans for the day bubbling round in her mind.
Of course, Nicholas Stirling’s presence in the house remained a flaw, but perhaps he and Wanda would sleep late.
As she had formed the habit of doing, Bridget took a tray bearing a glass of mango juice and a pot of coffee out to the table on the long covered veranda with its ornately fretted arches on the side of the house away from the road. The garden here was a formal, symmetrical one, tiled walks running between massed roses which she had been told bloomed for most of the year, and the morning was already hazy with heat.
She had just put down her glass and was pouring coffee when Nicholas Stirling appeared on the veranda, carrying a tie and the jacket of his lightweight suit.
‘So you’re still around?’ He dropped them over the back of a chair and stood surveying Bridget challengingly. ‘I suppose you’ve also told Sita Menon that she’s not required in the mornings? Presumably you don’t eat breakfast either?’
Bridget experienced a frisson of complex emotion as she stared back at him, unable to look away although normally her natural shyness would have had her dropping her eyes after a moment or two. He looked so dark and strong, and yet the vigorous impression was at odds with the jaded, cynical expression in the grey eyeseyes that had seen everything and believed nothing.
‘I accept that I’ve inconvenienced you, but neither Sita nor I could know you were arriving,’ she submitted tightly. ‘Mr Bhandari didn’t mention that you were coming.’
‘He didn’t know,’ he admitted shortly.
‘I hope you’re not expecting me to provide breakfast for you?’ she mocked, adding gently, ‘Although I suppose it’s almost certain that someone like you can’t cook! What about Miss—Wanda? Is she still in bed?’
‘I wouldn’t know. She isn’t here,’ he returned caustically, and his sudden slashingly savage smile was a taunt. ‘She went to a hotel in the end. Your presence here must have inhibited her, or perhaps she balked at the idea of being a corruptive influence on one so young.’
‘Oh.’ Disconcerted, Bridget spoke without thinking. ‘Is that why you’re still in such a bad mood this morning?’
In talking about her brother on various occasions, Virginia had drawn a picture of a man accustomed to having women fall into his bed for his pleasure whenever he wanted them, although he seemed to be discreet in his affairs, his liaison with the fashionable wife of a mainstream rock star the only one to have invited the more prurient attentions of the media.
As she regarded him from beneath the screen of her long eyelashes, potent was the unsought word that came drifting into Bridget’s consciousness. Then her face flamed as she registered its true meaning.
Of course, the thought was prompted by the way he had suddenly been looking at her, as if his thoughts were a kind of reverse, or the other side of hers, and he was contemplating her as some kind of recipient of his maleness—and rejecting her!
‘No, you won’t suffice at all, although it seems you have heard of frustration, as I presume that’s what you’re alluding to,’ he observed with cold amusement. ‘But I’m not here to satisfy your juvenile curiosity. As for breakfast, I’ll get something when I go out. I want to talk to you.’
He had dropped easily into the chair opposite her, and now he took several seconds to scrutinise her once more, rejecting her all over again, Bridget noted with automatic relief. She probably still looked eighteen to him this morning, with her hair gathered loosely up into a ponytail that fell straight and silky from the top of her head, a few strands already escaping to frame her face, which was again untouched by make-up because she had discovered that even the little she occasionally wore melted in the Delhi heat. She was wearing a white sleeveless cotton top tucked into a short, straight skirt in dark pink, her low-heeled court shoes the same colour, her lightly tanned legs bare and delicately golden-brown, wonderfully long and slender, her arms the same shade and very slim. Earrings were her only jewellery, plain little hoops of fine silver.
‘Mr Stirling—’
‘I have to accept that you do work for my sister,’ he overrode her arrogantly. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, because Anand Bhandari wouldn’t have allowed you to have the keys. So what I want to know is how you conned Virginia into handing over one of her most cherished projects to you.’
‘I didn’t!’ Bridget began indignantly. ‘She asked me to do it because she couldn’t.’
‘Why couldn’t she?’
It was the question Bridget dreaded, and she hesitated, torn between her dislike of lying and loyalty to Virginia.
‘Because she… she has fallen in love.’ Surely it could do no harm to tell him that much?
Nicholas Stirling’s brief laugh was drily sceptical.
‘Virginia is no more likely to fall in love than I am. She’s far too intelligent.’
‘What has intelligence got to do with it?’ she wondered faintly.
‘Quite a lot, I’d say.’ Pausing, he let his eyes rest a moment on her mouth, its tender shape so expressive of her gentle nature, and his own tightened. ‘Now, will you kindly stop wasting my time, trying to see how far you can go with these wild stories, and tell me the real reason for Virginia’s change of plan?’
‘I have. It’s true—’ Seeing his disbelief, Bridget broke off, and finally came to a decision. ‘Mr Stirling, I’ve told you as much of the truth as I can, but I can’t go into any details because I promised Virginia I wouldn’t.’
Hard, compelling grey eyes held hers, searching their dark, shadowy green depths.
‘So break your promise,’ he invited her impatiently.
Bridget’s eyes widened, and now she was the one searching his face, endeavouring to gauge his seriousness.
‘I can’t do that,’ she protested eventually.
‘Why not?’
‘Break a promise—’
‘Everyone else does,’ he cut in on a note of finality, as if that concluded the argument and he was now waiting for her to proceed.
‘Well, I don’t,’ Bridget snapped.
She wasn’t exactly shocked, but the extent of his cynicism dismayed her as she had never encountered it in such total, unrelenting form before.
‘I could make you, quite easily,’ he observed softly.
‘You’re unbelievable!’ The words were torn from her. ‘No wonder you’re only ever called Nicholas, never Nick or Nicky.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’ Nicholas demanded irritably, and Bridget had to acknowledge privately that she didn’t really know what she had meant by it either. ‘And what are you getting so emotional for? Did you think I was threatening you? I merely commented to the effect that I could make you tell me the truth, but it’s only an option I’m keeping in reserve for the future. An even easier one is to find out what Anand Bhandari knows about all this.’
It would solve her problem if Mr Bhandari could tell him what he wanted to know, but Bridget wasn’t sure how much Virginia would have confided when she had been in touch to warn him to expect her. At least she didn’t have to break her promise quite yet, although she supposed she would be driven to it if Nicholas looked like hindering her business here unless she told him everything, because she was determined to make a success of the task Virginia had given her.
‘Virginia did say she might phone, so perhaps you’ll be able to talk to her yourself,’ she offered, hoping it might act as a curb to his impatience.
‘You can’t phone her yourself?’ he probed, accepting it without comment when she shook her head. ‘Is this your first time in India?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s in charge of you?’
‘In charge?’ Bridget stared at him in astonishment. ‘What do you mean? I’m here—’
‘Do you have a family back in England? Parents?’ he elaborated.
‘Of course…’ She wondered what he was getting at with his peremptory questions.
‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ he retorted, and she stirred contritely, recalling Virginia telling her that their parents, along with Loris’s, had all been killed together when Nicholas was eighteen. ‘So what are they doing, letting you loose on your own like this?’
Bridget’s chin lifted. ‘They know I can cope.’
‘But can you? You’re not out of your depth and homesick?’ He continued the interrogation relentlessly.
‘Of course not!’ She denied it vehemently, incipient indignation making her eyes sparkle.
‘Then what were you sobbing your eyes out for last night? It didn’t sound exactly like coping to me,’ he announced sardonically.
Bridget had coloured sensitively.
‘You could pretend you hadn’t heard,’ she suggested resentfully. ‘Any nice person would.’
‘I’m not nice.’
‘Tell me about it!’ She was scathing.
‘So what were you crying for if you’re coping so well?’
‘Something personal—private,’ she emphasised pointedly.
‘A broken heart, I suppose,’ he guessed disgustedly, lips curved in mockery, and Bridget wondered if the hot, angry emotion suddenly choking her could be classed as hatred.
‘What would you know about broken hearts?’ she challenged scornfully.
‘Not much,’ he admitted coolly. ‘But I do remember glancing through some of the magazines my sister used to read as a teenager, and there’d always be some girl writing to the problem page convinced that her life was over because the boy of her dreams hadn’t even looked at her at a party.’
‘This would be when you were vetting her reading matter, I suppose?’ It was rare for Bridget to lose her temper, but now she discovered how exhilarating a sensation it could be. ‘I suppose you did it with a fat black pencil in your hand, ready to delete anything undesirable! She told me how you’ve always interfered, managing everyone’s lives for them!’
‘Back then, Virginia’s life required a considerable amount of managing,’ he informed her edgily, his glittering eyes making her aware that she had succeeded in provoking him. ‘But censorship was not part of it. The more she knew, the better she’d get at handling her own life—as she does quite ably these days, which is why I do not believe your pathetic story about her having fallen in love. She’s not that stupid. So if I don’t get the truth from Bhandari you’re going to have to break whatever promise you made and give it to me yourself. Will you be here today or are you going out?’
‘It seems to me that you’re still trying to manage her life by insisting on knowing things that are her private business,’ Bridget taunted but, seeing the way his eyes blazed, she added swiftly, ‘I’ve got a meeting with a man who sells fabrics in Connaught Place. He’s going to put me in touch with his suppliers. Virginia told me she always shops around rather than relying on the same people every time. Also, Mr Bhandari’s wife is taking me to the Rajghat as there’s a ceremony in memory of Gandhi today.’
‘Oh, you’ve got Mirabai looking after you, then,’ he registered in a neutral tone, but Bridget still resented the implication that she needed looking after. ‘One more thing, Bridget. I don’t want you sneaking off to a hotel now I’m here and asking questions. Until I hear from my sister what this is all about, I want you here under this roof where I can keep an eye on you—or on her interests, rather. I’ll want reports on what you’re doing, too, as the Indian lines have always been her pride and joy, the focal point of her collections, and I won’t stand by and let you sabotage her reputation.’
Sheer rage was choking her at hearing her professionalism so openly doubted. ‘Virginia herself trained me!’
‘And now you’re off to do business on her behalf,’ he murmured amusedly, his mood suddenly dramatically altered as his gaze dropped briefly to the white top she wore, his unexpected smile so full of wicked charm that Bridget’s breath caught in her throat.
Then she glanced down and saw what had caused it.
‘Oh!’
She must have been so preoccupied with her plans for the day that she hadn’t paid any attention to what she was putting on, and the pink and white candy-stripes of her bra were clearly visible through the thin white cotton of the shirt.
‘Where are you going?’ he enquired innocently as she leapt to her feet.
‘To put a plain white bra on, of course,’ she answered bitingly.
‘I never said a word,’ he protested, still using that mock-innocent voice and still with that smile that hinted at an aspect of his personality less impatient and cynical than that which he had so far shown her. ‘But fleshcoloured would be better. It won’t show at all.’
‘Well, I haven’t got one!’ She always bypassed fleshcoloured when shopping because it seemed so utilitarian, attracted by the more prettily frivolous colours. ‘You would be an expert on women’s underwear!’
She heard him laughing at her as she stalked from the veranda into the house, and she thought tempestuously that she had never met anyone so vile in her life.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_89cc3f69-078c-5087-b3f0-822e581f536a)
‘You got my message, then?’ With a quick, raking glance for Bridget, Nicholas addressed Sita Menon, having found the two of them together in the cool, spacious kitchen on his return to the house that evening.
Bridget’s senses had given an odd little jump as he entered, and somehow the kitchen seemed smaller in response to the overwhelming vibrancy of his presence, as if he existed surrounded by an aura of energy that took up all the space around him.
‘Yes, sir.’ A slim, trim woman of thirty, the housekeeper and cook gave him an open smile. ‘And welcome back. It has been too long, but in fact your welcome dinner comes with the assistance of Bridget.’
‘I’m honoured.’
Slightly sardonic as it was, his smile made Bridget catch her breath, and the reaction put her on the defensive.
‘Don’t flatter yourself. I’d have helped even if you hadn’t been here.’
She had offered on getting back to the house and learning that Sita had been summoned, Nicholas intending dining here tonight. Her participation in preparing the meal certainly hadn’t been meant as a peaceoffering, since she didn’t owe him any such thing, but now it occurred to her that it might help create a more agreeable atmosphere between herself and this man with whom it seemed she would temporarily be sharing the house. She just wished she were in a position to ignore his warning not to retreat to a hotel, but as Virginia herself always stayed here the budget for this trip wouldn’t stretch to the expense.
Not a fighter by nature, Bridget could usually find excuses for people’s bad behaviour, and of course Nicholas would have been irritated at discovering a mystery surrounding his sister and no explanation forthcoming from Virginia’s replacement, especially if he had business matters on his mind as well.
Now he turned his gaze on Bridget, who had changed into a simple thin cotton dress with tiny creamy flowers scattered over a golden-yellow background and had pulled her dark hair into a single loose plait that hung down her back.
‘You cook?’ he enquired, considering her dispassionately.
‘And eat,’ she added, recalling his comments in that regard, before her enthusiasm for the discoveries she was making brought a shy smile to her face. ‘It’s fun cooking in a new country, a challenge because some of the things we use at home aren’t available here, but then there are all sorts of other fascinating ingredients I’ve never come across before. I’ve been shopping with Sita a couple of times and she has been teaching me some Indian dishes— only simple ones so far, so it’s tandoori chicken tonight. She says you like it?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed almost absently, seemingly studying the pure, youthful curve of her cheek.
‘Sita could have the evening off, couldn’t she?’ she went on quickly, taking advantage of his mood. ‘If you don’t need her to serve? Remember I told you she has got a relative in hospital? I could do it just as easily.’
‘You are eating with me?’ he prompted, his tone unfathomable.
She didn’t really relish the thought of being alone with him, but Sita’s need was real, and perhaps by now he had accepted that Virginia really had given her this assignment and that she must therefore be capable of doing the selecting and ordering it entailed.
‘If I may,’ she responded demurely, and he laughed.
‘Then fine. I’ll be with you shortly. I want a shower.’
It was a start, she reflected with relief as she departed.
‘Thank you, Bridget,’ Sita said gratefully. ‘I didn’t like to ask so soon after his arrival, but my nephew relies on me now that the doctor has ordered my sister to bed for this stage of her pregnancy, and my brother-in-law is away on these army exercises. He gets so bored if no one comes, and upsets the whole ward with his mischief.’
‘Poor little thing.’ Bridget already knew all about the nephew’s accident. ‘Maybe I could visit him too one evening?’
Sita had departed by the time Nicholas returned, wearing casually stylish trousers and an open-necked shirt.
‘Time for a drink first?’ he asked, finding Bridget in the living-room, and she nodded. ‘I don’t use spirits here—the Scotch in the kitchen is just in case my grandfather was right to swear by it for scratches and cuts in a hot climate. I presume you’ve been warned to be careful if you acquire any sort of wound? Have you tried Indian wine? It’s in the Portuguese vinho verde tradition. You know about Goa? But I’m not sure if you should have any ’
‘Just how old do you think I am?’ Bridget demanded, peaceable intentions blown.
He looked amused. ‘I wasn’t referring to your age, but this is your first time in India and if you’re not acclimatised yet you should stay with soft drinks. Take lots of liquid anyway. Don’t fight the heat. Give in to it, slow down, drink lots, forget fashion and go for comfort—only I notice you don’t follow fashion anyway, although that’s a pretty dress, and it suits you. Strange, that, for someone from Ginny’s.’
He would spoil it. She had been about to apologise for jumping to conclusions, but that last observation killed the impulse.
‘Perhaps they’re following a different trend in your elderly circles! You’re the rudest, most bossy man I’ve ever met,’ she told him in a soft, angry rush. ‘What makes you think I need all that advice?’
‘Since most people in my experience are incapable of taking care of themselves in any environment, why should an innocent like you be any different?’ he derided.
‘So you think you’ve got to look after them?’ Bridget taunted. ‘Most people would rather be left to get into trouble all by themselves.’
‘That’s generally what I let them do,’ he returned dismissively.
‘Not your family, though.’
‘That’s different,’ he snapped, a glint of annoyance in his eyes. ‘Wine, then, Bridget? I saw Anand Bhandari today, incidentally. You’ve really made an impression on him, haven’t you? He kept referring to you as “that lovely young girl”.’
‘Oh!’ Unaffected surprise and pleasure made her face light up. ‘That was kind of him.’
‘I think he was being truthful rather than kind,’ Nicholas commented unexpectedly. ‘You’re certainly going to be very lovely once you’ve acquired some poise and maturity. You could make a lot of yourself.’
‘There has to be a sting in the tail of everything you say, doesn’t there?’ Bridget accused in some confusion, anger warring with amusement as he brought her a glass of wine. ‘Was Mr Bhandari able to help you? About Virginia, I mean?’
‘No, not at all, and he didn’t have any wild theories such as yours to offer, either. She merely told him she’d had to cancel this trip for herself but was sending you in her place.’ Nicholas was frowning. ‘I cannot believe she’s stupid enough to sacrifice her favourite part of her job for what she might imagine is true love, and yet I have to believe that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, sending a child like you out here as a buyer.’
‘Thanks.’ Sarcasm was new to Bridget and she spoilt the effect by continuing with her habitual sincerity, ‘I really am a trainee buyer, you know, and Virginia would have started sending me overseas next year.’
‘She has always handled the Indian trips herself, though,’ he mentioned thoughtfully. ‘Just as I and my cousins have for Stirling Industries when a presence from head office has been required. Our grandfather spent years in pre-Independence India as an engineer, and my father and his brother were both born here. I was only twelve when the old guy died but even the younger of my cousins, who was just five, remembers his stories, and I suppose something in them got hold of us and drew us back, although it’s a very different India today, better in most ways.’
‘Is that why—this house?’ Bridget asked with a shy laugh. ‘It’s not my idea of a company house.’
‘Yes, in fact it was the city residence of former, minor Rajput royalty. You’ve probably noticed that sun with its writhing rays carved into the front doors. Many of the more important royal town residences around here house embassies these days. If you’re going to Rajasthan for material you ought to stay with the previous owners. Tell me when and I’ll let Chiranji know.’
‘Those bright tie-and-dyes…’ But Bridget was more interested in the man now that he had forgotten to be so superciliously condescending. ‘What are you here for?’
‘Some extra factories we’ve acquired. The present safety standards do meet current regulations, but I want to be sure there won’t be any tragedies, so I’m having a look and then Anand can implement any upgrading I feel is necessary.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard you like to do that personally rather than delegating.’ Then pain passed across the young smoothness of Bridget’s face like the flying shadow of a cloud in the wind as she remembered that it was Loris who had told her that, and she stood up swiftly. ‘Can we take our drinks with us? I think I’d better serve now or it won’t be so nice. I’ll have to improve my timing.’
‘Why, are you planning to cook for me on a regular basis?’ Nicholas asked, rising and following her, and the idly mocking note in his voice prompted one of her uncontrollable blushes, leaving her fleetingly tongue-tied before resentment restored the power of speech.
‘Don’t get your hopes up!’
‘Not before I’ve sampled the fare, anyway,’ he retorted, with one of those quick, scintillating smiles that kept upsetting her perception of him as an arrogant archcynic.
‘What do you think?’ she ventured, when they had begun their meal in the beautiful dining-room which was furnished in western style, the teak table bearing a bowl of pale pink roses from the garden, and then wished she hadn’t because she didn’t want him getting the idea that his opinion mattered to her; it didn’t!
Nicholas regarded her with detached amusement. ‘How much of it was you and how much Sita? I’m just wondering what’s behind this. Possibly the fact that having realised that you cannot divert, let alone seduce me in the most obvious way, you’ve decided to turn what is clearly a real talent to distracting me from finding out what my sister is really up to.’
This further evidence of his absolute cynicism had an unexpected effect on Bridget. She felt weighed down by something very close to despair.
Strangely enough, the feeling gave her the courage to return his look steadily.
‘And why in the world would I want to seduce you?’
‘On the surface, for the reason I’ve just cited—to distract me from asking any more awkward questions about Virginia. Then again, you must be about the age when girls start thinking it’s high time they acquired some experience, and you wouldn’t be the first to look to me to supply it.’
‘Experience for experience’s sake?’ Bridget was scathing. ‘Not this girl!’
‘If you want me to believe that, you’d better stop those speculative looks I keep catching from you,’ he advised her coolly. ‘Not that they’d get you anywhere. I’m not interested in initiating innocents. So what are you really hoping for with all this?’
‘If anything, that once you’ve got a good meal inside you you’ll become human enough to respect the promise I made Virginia,’ she said flatly, following it with a shrug. ‘If not, I’m sorry—but I’m still sorry; you’ll just have to wait until she phones with an explanation.’
‘If she phones.’ Nicholas spoke equally flatly and was then silent, scrutinising her mercilessly for some time before apparently deciding to abandon the topic, if only for now. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one.’ Bridget concentrated on the delicately flavoured pink-tinted chicken on her plate.
The fact that his surprise was entirely genuine was hardly flattering.
‘I was imagining you as about eighteen, and probably still living at home with your parents.’
‘Then perhaps you’ll realise at last that you’re wrong about a lot of other things as well,’ she snapped.
‘All the same, I hardly think the twenty-one counts for much,’ he remarked slightingly. ‘If anything, it increases the likelihood that you are in fact hoping either to satisfy your curiosity, or at least to make some sort of gesture that will proclaim you irrevocably an adult woman.’
‘I can promise you I don’t feel the least curiosity about you, and I don’t know why you think being thirty-four makes you so superior. It just makes you cynical and decadent and—and used!’ she concluded inarticulately.
‘Do you mean used up?’ he quipped. ‘Not yet, darling. Not by a long way.’
‘Obviously not,’ she allowed tartly, ‘judging by Wanda and your army of female fans who’ve been arriving at the door all week, hoping they’d find you, when they realised someone was living in the house. You’d better gladden their hearts by letting them know you’re in town, hadn’t you? There was an air hostess, and someone from the Embassy, and a girl from AIR.’
Laughter lurked in his eyes. ‘Are you very shocked?’
‘Why should I be? They didn’t say so, but they all struck me as being single—not like Troy Varney,’ she added impulsively, picturing the rock star’s wife who managed to be one of the most glamorous women in England despite a downbeat style that somehow mixed raggle-taggle with Goth.
It banished the amusement and she saw his features tauten slightly.
‘Ah, so that did shock you,’ Nicholas surmised silkily. ‘Are you expecting me to defend myself, Bridget?’
‘Hardly!’ she snapped.
‘At least you possess that much intelligence.’ Somehow the insolent comment carried a warning edge, cautioning her against trespassing further, but then his mood changed as something else occurred to him. ‘Tell me one thing. I think you can do it without breaking your promise. This man Virginia is supposedly in love with. Is he married?’
‘Separated years ago,’ she answered him, hoping it wasn’t something Virginia would count as a betrayal, but sensing real concern behind the question.
Now she thought she detected a flicker of relief in the grey eyes, and she supposed the way he managed and directed his family’s lives could be ascribed to protectiveness, even if he did take it too far, to the point of interference. Of course, given his own past relationship with Troy Varney, he couldn’t have any moral objections to Virginia’s becoming involved with a married man, so presumably he simply wanted her to be spared the sort of pain that was integral to relationships in which one partner wasn’t free.
During the remainder of the meal, Nicholas questioned her about the materials she would be buying for Ginny’s. Bridget had a feeling that he was testing her, but she responded equably, talking about the heavy silks in brilliant contrasting colours that Virginia wanted from the south, white voile with chikan embroidery from Uttar Pradesh, Benares or Varanasi brocades, lovely off-white shot with gold from Bengal, Chanderi cottons with their tiny floral motifs in gold, expensive and beautiful Jamdani muslins, an inch of which it might take eight men a day to weave, summer material from the Deccan, the variations in texture rather than patterns favoured by the Maheshwari, and the intricate designs woven by a secret process handed down from generation to generation that characterised the Baluchar fabrics.
‘Show-off,’ Nicholas murmured when she paused, and Bridget laughed.
‘Just trying to ease your suspicious mind,’ she corrected him limpidly.
‘So you know a bit, but I still don’t trust you, Bridget, and I mean to keep an eye on you, at least until I have Virginia’s assurance that you haven’t somehow manoeuvred her into giving you this assignment,’ he warned her casually.
‘Because my word on that isn’t good enough for you?’ she challenged scathingly.
‘I don’t know you,’ he pointed out.
‘Whereas you know your family are always honest?’ she prompted bitterly, with a thought for the way Loris had misled her, not with outright lies, admittedly, but through his silence about the other woman in his life. ‘Sita says you don’t like puddings, so there isn’t one. Shall I make coffee?’
‘I’ll do it, as you helped cook.’
He started to, but she swiftly began to suspect that he was doing it to avoid having to offer to help clear the table as it became obvious that he was not at home in a kitchen.
‘You’re in the way,’ she told him softly after a few minutes.
A slow smile transformed his face as he stood still, regarding her curiously.
‘That’s a very old-fashioned attitude, but then I suppose you’re too young yet to have been domestically exploited by my sex… And this makes you look even younger! Why are you blushing?’
He had reached round behind her to tug gently at her long, shining plait, the action catching her unawares. Suddenly incapable of moving, Bridget stood staring at him. She could feel his long, lean fingers against the back of her neck, and she was pierced by a sharp needle of sensation, oddly pleasurable and yet utterly disconcerting at the same time, dismaying and embarrassing her.
‘I’m… Nothing! It’s you! I’m just not used to—to living with anyone else,’ she prevaricated, aware of how gauche it sounded and blushing even more deeply.
Nicholas took his hand away, a speculative gleam in his eyes as Bridget retreated a step.
‘This isn’t exactly living together. Believe me, you’d find it a revelation if we were.’
‘I meant I’m not used to sharing a house with a stranger,’ she corrected herself, just before resentment got the better of her. ‘You take delight in trying to embarrass me, don’t you?’
‘Judging by this emotional reaction, I gather you find the whole situation embarrassing—or improper, Bridget?’ he taunted, his eyes seeming to study her hairline, observing the silky dark hair shadowing her temples, fine as a baby’s, the growth too new and short to be pulled back with the rest of her hair. ‘Relax—as I’ve said, I’m not interested in young, untouched girls, however lovely they promise to be, so you’re not in any need of a chaperon.’
It incensed her, goading her to rash retaliation. ‘Are you sure you don’t need one, though, Nicholas?’
Somehow she didn’t just see his slashing smile. She felt it too, cutting into some tender centre of sensitive emotion deep within her.
‘Oh, I think I can cope should you decide to leap on me in some frenzy of girlish lust,’ he claimed sardonically, and paused deliberately. ‘Nevertheless, I’m seriously advising you not to get any ideas of that sort where I’m concerned, sweetheart, because you wouldn’t enjoy my method of dealing with either infatuation or curiosity.’
‘You—’ Bridget was too enraged to find words. ‘Arrogant—I wouldn’t!’
‘What was that?’ He pretended not to understand, slanting her another brilliantly mocking smile. ‘You’re somewhat incoherent. Calm down, you baby. As I’m in the way, I’ll remove myself.’
But Bridget couldn’t calm down. She had never met anyone so utterly and deliberately provocative, and her fury was exacerbated by her confusion over the sensation that had assailed her when she had felt his fingers against the back of her neck so briefly.
When the coffee was ready, she took a tray through to the living-room, the faint fragrance of sandalwood that permeated the room for once failing to soothe her. Nicholas was scanning the front page of a newspaper and she would have liked to slam the tray down on to the low table beside him, but she had too much respect for the intricate inlay of delicate slivers of pastel semiprecious stones that adorned its upper surface.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ he asked, noticing the single cup and saucer.
‘Not with you,’ she snapped, and his face hardened visibly. ‘And I’ve only brought this here for you because I was the one who told you you were in the way!’
‘How very fair-minded of you! Off to your lonely bed to spend the night crying over your lost love or whatever he is again?’ he prompted unkindly.
‘No!’ Bridget denied it fiercely.
‘Here’s some free philosophy for you. I’ve often thought it might be of comfort to those of you who play this game of love.’ His tone had grown thoughtful. ‘I believe it evens out eventually, like bad line-calls in tennis. Next time around, it’ll be someone agonising over you, and even if the guy you’re crying over at present isn’t suffering over you he will be some day, over someone else.’
He wouldn’t say that if he knew it was his cousin Loris who had been responsible for her tears, Bridget reflected with wan humour. He would know Loris too well to believe in such an eventuality. Stirling men were all alike.
‘That’s horrible,’ she protested, unthinkingly dropping gracefully to her knees, her back straight, and beginning to pour his coffee, causing Nicholas to shoot her a startled look from beneath thick black eyelashes.
‘It’s about as much revenge as anyone can realistically hope for,’ he asserted.
‘I don’t want revenge,’ she insisted angrily. ‘I wouldn’t want someone to—to suffer over me the way I… Or over someone else either. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’
‘You’re unbelievable!’ Nicholas was insultingly astonished. ‘Come on, Bridget, it’s unnatural not to want whoever has broken your heart to know what it feels like.’
‘He’s never likely to,’ she said in a dry little voice. ‘Milk and sugar?’
He laughed abruptly, startling her, and she lifted her eyes from her task to look at him. They were very close, so close that she could see the texture of his dark skin and the day-old stubble that darkened his jaw and upper lip. Nicholas stared back at her with cynically amused curiosity.
‘You really do believe in the helpless male, don’t you? No one else I know, however good-natured, would be serving me like this, and especially not if they were so furious with me that they weren’t prepared to join me. You’re doing it quite instinctively too, without a thought—’ Nicholas broke off, an irritable expression manifesting itself as he noted her sudden bewilderment. ‘I can assure you that I’m perfectly capable of putting sugar in my coffee and stirring it myself, Bridget.’
She rose with unconscious grace, bewilderment giving way to rage.
‘You’re right, I wasn’t thinking!’ she confirmed acidly, and walked out of the room, the sound of his soft laughter following her.
He quite clearly thought her an absolute idiot, she realised self-consciously, but he had been right in one respect. The instinct to tend to the comfort of others was so deeply ingrained that not even her angry resentment had stopped her doing it. She hadn’t even paused to wonder what she was doing, waiting on him like that, until he had pointed out the incongruity of the action.
Well, in future he could beg her on his knees and she still wouldn’t do a thing for him!
His mockery rankled and she was even more furiously convinced than before that he was the most unfeeling, offensive monster in existence. That was what made that strange pleasure she had taken from the touch of his fingers so shaming.
Bridget was restless that night, but at least there were no tears, mainly because she was too busy resenting Nicholas to spend more than a few minutes thinking about Loris, and then only to reflect that Nicholas was even worse than he was. At least Loris had seemed nice, but Nicholas had started out being offensive, and careless of her feelings, and had kept right on the same way.
Some sound woke her early in the morning, a telephone ringing, she thought, but by the time she was sufficiently awake and orientated to know who and where she was the house was silent and she soon went back to sleep.
When she woke again, she found Sita in the kitchen.
‘I heard your shower running, so your juice and coffee are waiting for you on the veranda, Bridget,’ she told her. ‘Mr Stirling is having his out there too.’
Bridget sighed, wondering what sort of mood she would find him in today, and taking a few seconds to check that no strangely coloured or patterned underwear was showing through her thin cotton dress, which was a deep shade of cream with touches of matching embroidery, calf-length and sleeveless.
But it seemed that it was her face that won her Nicholas’s attention this morning, at least to begin with.
‘You’re one of the few women over twenty I’ve seen who looks good without a scrap of make-up,’ he observed, perhaps meaning it as’ a compliment, but it seemed more likely, considering his reputation, that it was simply habitual for him to notice how a woman looked and comment on it, especially as he went on immediately, ‘My sister rang.’
‘Oh.’ Sinking gracefully into a chair, Bridget gave him a tentative smile, her dark green eyes hopeful. ‘Did she tell you anything?’
‘She did,’ he confirmed grimly. ‘Once she’d got over her horror at finding me here. It seems you’re right. The fool really believes she has fallen in love, and that was the reason for opting out of her Indian trip and sending you in her place—although I have to wonder how much encouragement, not to mention pressure, she had from you. Either way, there’s not much I can do about it at present, as she refused to tell me where she was except that it’s somewhere in the States. She wanted to talk to you, but I told her she’d have to try again later because you were still asleep. She’d got the time-difference slightly wrong, but she was too clever to be trapped into telling me even which time-zone she’s in.’
‘You could have woken me,’ Bridget suggested, betraying a trace of anxiety. ‘She might have had something important to tell me.’
‘Then she could have told me and I’d have passed it on.’
Briefly, Nicholas examined the way she had chosen to wear her hair today, in a single plait pulled to one side and hanging over her shoulder.
‘I’m not one of your relatives. I don’t need you running my life for me.’
Where had this touchy mood suddenly sprung from, making her feel she needed to keep on the defensive or surrender her entire life and personality to his direction?
Nicholas shrugged indolently, unperturbed by her resentment, and Bridget was aware of something tightening within her, in resistance to his forceful personality. He was casually dressed and he looked what she knew him to be—a virile, powerful man accustomed to running people’s lives for them.
‘Virginia seems to think you do.’ His expression had grown inimical. ‘She asked me to… look after you.’
‘She had no right to do that!’ Bridget was indignantly resentful.
‘I can assure you I found the request as unwelcome as you do, but, as I’ve told you, I do intend keeping an eye on you—for Virginia’s sake! I’m not having you messing up her business for her when I know how much it means to her. Incidentally, she also confirmed that you have recently been disappointed in love.’
He gave a quick, sharply derisive smile as he noted how Bridget stiffened, her face paling slightly. ‘Oh, she didn’t go into any embarrassing detail, if that’s what’s worrying you. She was far too busy kidding herself, and trying to kid me, that she was doing you a favour, sending you here; I suppose it was you who planted the idea in her mind in the first place as she so obviously had doubts about it… I’ve never understood why a change of scene is supposed to be a cure for a so-called broken heart. If it’s broken, it’s broken wherever you are, and will mend in its own good time. She hasn’t really got herself convinced, though; both her doubts and her guilt came through. Hence, I imagine, the demand that I look after you. You may have used her idiocy over this man and the excuse of your own broken heart to wangle this trip for yourself, but my sister is using you equally, Bridget.’
‘The way all your family use people,’ she retorted, thinking particularly of the way Loris Stirling had referred to both her and the woman he was expecting to tire of at some stage.
‘Is there something wrong with that?’ Clearly it was all right for Nicholas to criticise his relatives, but no outsider was permitted to do so. ‘If people are stupid enough to let themselves be used?’
‘Why not take advantage?’ she supplemented it for him caustically. ‘Some people aren’t as cynical as—’
‘Some people are just too damned trusting,’ Nicholas corrected her with all the cynicism of which she had been accusing him.
‘Don’t sound so condescending about it,’ Bridget mocked, in a tone of such sizzling rage that she scarcely recognised herself. ‘Where would you be in a world of cynics? If there weren’t people who let themselves be used, you wouldn’t have half the women you’ve got in your life. And what about your success—Stirling Industries?’
Rejection made his expression remote and she felt almost as if he had pushed her away physically.
‘I would never deny the former charge—’
‘Yes, I know, and I should never have said the other bit,’ Bridget rushed in, albeit with a trace of reluctance, her sensitive conscience compelling the admission, although she hated having to back down when he was so arrogantly sure of himself. ‘Your sort of industry is boring to me, but I do read about it and listen, in case I meet someone and have to talk about it, because people feel uncomfortable if you don’t understand, and sometimes they only know one subject… And I know absolutely everyone says it’s things like drive, initiative, integrity and caring about your personnel that have made Stirling Industries so big—built it up. And that was you, wasn’t it? It was a small domestic thing before. I thought your grandfather had started it, but you said he was an engineer out here. Your dad?’
Nicholas was studying her with faint, sardonic incredulity.
‘And his younger brother,’ he added eventually. ‘Oh, they’d probably have extended their activities in time, but the two of them, my mother and aunt with them, were killed when I was eighteen, my younger cousin only eleven, and the other two somewhere in between. The four of them were all on their way to India for a holiday when it happened.’
Then he seemed to dwell on some private irony, staring down into his half-full coffee-cup for a few moments.
Bridget wanted to reach out and touch him. He was so alone, and had been alone since he was eighteen, she suddenly knew intuitively, unable to share in the grief of the other three, Virginia, Loris and Adrian, because he had had to comfort them and take control, of the family and of the business, untimely head of both. But shyness prevented her because they were strangers.
Instead, she started to say, ‘Anyway, I shouldn’t have—’
‘No, you shouldn’t have,’ Nicholas agreed with a harshness she hadn’t heard from him before, but in the next moment he had resumed the interrogative manner with which she was more familiar. ‘What are you doing today?’
‘Not much, today or tomorrow, except that I must pay a courtesy visit to the Embassy. Virginia says she always does. So you can relax, can’t you? I’m not likely to get Ginny’s into any trouble before Monday. That’s when I’m going to Madras to look at cotton.’
‘When I have business appointments, unless I can rearrange them.’ He was frowning. ‘How well do you know your way around Delhi?’
‘A bit,’ Bridget responded cautiously. ‘Mrs Bhandari and Sita have both taken me round a little, and the taxidrivers have been amazingly helpful.’
‘You don’t need to use taxis. I’ll tell Anand to let you have the use of a car and driver.’
‘I don’t—’
‘I want to make sure you know your way about well enough to be safe, so finish your coffee and we’ll go before the day gets too hot,’ Nicholas swept on decisively, ignoring her protest.
‘I don’t need you to do that either,’ Bridget asserted in a stronger voice.
‘As my sister has temporarily lost her senses, that makes her business my responsibility, and that includes ensuring that her employees know what they’re doing,’ he stated decisively.
She regarded him curiously, perception beginning to work. Perhaps he needed someone to bully and direct, with his sister and cousins so far away. After all these years, it must be habitual.
‘Won’t Wanda—?’
‘Wanda can take care of herself. She doesn’t need me. I rang her at her hotel last night to make sure, but I’m seeing her later today anyway.’
‘I can take care of myself. I don’t need you. You and Virginia are both wrong,’ Bridget emphasised tartly. ‘But as you’ve been kind enough to offer to show me around—thank you, Nicholas, I accept.’
He merely laughed at her tone, but Bridget was half regretting her submission. She was subject to a sense of being taken over, sucked into a community in which lives were directed by this man, and where autonomy was smothered and personal will counted for nothing.
‘Then be ready as soon as I’ve finished phoning my cousin Adrian in America.’ Nicholas pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I don’t suppose Virginia will have been in touch with him, but I’d better check.’
His tone wasn’t quite weary, but he definitely sounded disenchanted, and Bridget stared at him in surprise. He had paused beneath one of the veranda’s ornately carved arches to look out at the morning, or perhaps the lavish expanse of roses, and a stray shaft of sunlight had found his head and was trapped in the darkness of his hair, turning it glossy blue-black—so different from hers, which would have revealed the odd darkly red highlight.
‘Nicholas?’
He turned at the sound of her soft voice and Bridget’s breath caught in her throat as she saw him against the light. He was tall and so dark and—beautiful, a word she had never before associated with his sex, and yet it was true of him and did nothing to detract from his masculinity. But how could it be that she saw him thus, when deep shade obscured his features from her?
‘What is it?’ he questioned her neutrally.
‘Virginia is old. I mean—’ She stopped in confusion because, of course, he was even older.
Nicholas had moved, his face properly visible to her once more, and she saw that he was laughing at her, revealing strong, healthy teeth, white and even.
‘You mean she’s an adult.’
‘I mean she can’t always be your responsibility,’ Bridget persevered. ‘Let her live her own life.’
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