With This Ring Read online

  By the time Claude called for her, Tania was acutely sensitive to every move he made. She noted the affectionate smile between him and his sister, and the easy relationship they had. She and James had never known anything so comfortable.

  She noticed the way his clothes fitted and moulded his masculine shape. She noted the grace with which he moved, the lithe, athletic walk, the proud tilt of his head, the arrogance in his eyes that could soften into tenderness. She remembered the sharp inexplicable envy she had felt when he had held Henri in his arms that first day at the pool. And now she knew exactly the reason. This was love. This irrational, sometimes dizzying, sometimes overwhelming feeling. It was love. Love.

  “Did you have a good day?” Claude asked her as they drove away from Toulouse, glancing at her with a smile.

  Had the timbre of his voice always been that deep, that sexy? Or was it only that her ears were suddenly hypersensitive to the fact?

  “Marvellous,” she said quickly. “It’s always a boost to buy something new, especially the knock-out dress I bought. I didn’t realise Monique’s boutique would be so exciting.”

  “I can’t wait to see this creation.” Claude was grinning now. “If it’s as good as you say, I’ll have to blindfold every other man in the room.”

  “Why? Do you think I’m your exclusive property?” Tania said, before she could stop herself. A crazy reckless need to hurt him rose up in her. If he could be hurt. “Why shouldn’t I look around for some eligible Frenchman, since I’m obliged to stay here for your researches? I might find myself married to a count —”

  She gasped as Claude’s hand suddenly reached out and gripped her arm. He was driving too fast around the narrow bends in the road, and she knew what a foolish time she had chosen to goad him in this way.

  “Don’t play with me, Tania. It doesn’t suit you to be so flippant about serious matters.”

  “Put both hands on the wheel, please.” She could hardly concentrate on anything else at that moment, as the car tore around the hairpin bends. Was he trying to kill them both?

  “Then tell me you didn’t mean what you just said,” he spoke grimly, not relenting for a second.

  “I don’t see why I should,” she muttered, “but if it will stop your stupid showing off, then all right. I didn’t mean what I said. I’ve no intention of looking for a husband at your party, or anywhere else. And certainly not a French husband!” She finished with heavy sarcasm. “I prefer my men to act a little more civilised.”

  Claude let go, and she rubbed at her arm. He hadn’t really hurt her, but the pressure of his fingers was like a brand on her skin. She glanced at his set face. It looked as if it was carved out of marble. Tania was filled with misery. She had just discovered that she loved him, and here they were, like two enemies on the battlefield once more. Love didn’t enter into Claude’s vocabulary, she thought bitterly. Substitute desire, possession, lust, but it wasn’t love he wanted from her.

  “Like your pale Englishman, I suppose?” he retorted. “The one who sends you so many letters and has to print his name so laboriously on the back of the envelope. Does he think you’ll have forgotten him unless he does so?” He was scathing, contemptuous of David. Perversely, Tania rallied to his defence.

  “At least he knows when to take no for an answer,” she said heatedly. “He doesn’t storm his way into a woman’s emotions by caveman methods.”

  “Then he is a poor example of a man,” Claude whipped back. “He obviously can’t want a woman enough. I never take no for an answer.”

  The arrogant conceit of him took Tania’s breath away. How could she think that she loved him, even for a moment, she raged? Thank goodness the crazy emotions were subsiding. With his own words, he had killed them. She didn’t love him after all. She definitely didn’t. She deliberately shifted a few inches away from him in the small sports car and stared out of the window without speaking to him again for the rest of the journey. She was incensed to think he had studied her letters and knew how many she had received from David. He had no right, no right at all.

  When they arrived at the château, lovely in the late afternoon sun, the shadows already lengthening, Tania reached into the rear seat for the dress box without a word. Claude reached for it too, and his hand closed over hers. She met his eyes, angry glints darkening the amber.

  “I can manage,” she said frigidly. “I’m not made of glass.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re made of flesh and blood,” Claude said shortly, his own eyes snapping at her. “Am I not to see the dress until the party, then?”

  Tania shook her head. A sudden weepy feeling took hold of her. The moments when she had worn the bronze dress in the boutique had been so magical, knowing she wore it for only him. Now, she wished he never had to see it at all. Everything had changed. Nothing would be quite the same again.

  “It’s to be a surprise,” she mumbled. His fingers moved slightly on her bare skin, caressing, gentle.

  “Don’t fight me, Tania,” he said. “Be my friend, as James was my friend.”

  She looked at him wordlessly. And then the words came out in a gasping torrent.

  “I can’t. I don’t think I can ever be your friend. I always knew it. Why couldn’t you have left me alone? I never wanted to meet you — never. Why didn’t you leave me to live my own life? I didn’t ask to become part of yours. James knew that. At least he respected it.”

  She could see by his shocked face that he took her words to mean her hatred of James’s obsession with the mountains, and Claude’s encouragement of it. It was what she hoped he would think. Anything but the truth, that mere friendship was something that could never exist between them. It had to be all or nothing. Love or hate. There could be no compromise. And she would settle for nothing less than love from him. Total, exclusive love.

  She was learning more about herself by the minute, Tania thought painfully. She was every bit as bad as Claude. She wanted what he wanted. Exclusive rights. But for her there had to be that one vital extra ingredient. There had to be love.

  She pulled the box from the car and almost ran inside the château. Madame Girard was in the drawing-room. Tania hesitated. She must thank her for the lovely gift, but right now she felt her cheeks were too heated, her eyes too bright, to be due to a shopping expedition, however exciting. She would take the dress to her room, and take a shower, inviting Madame to see the dress later. She turned quickly to ask Claude to relay as much to his mother, and was surprised to see a look of something akin to anguish in his dark eyes. He just couldn’t believe he was being turned down, Tania thought cynically. It was probably a novelty to him, and one that he didn’t like. It wouldn’t hurt him to share the feelings of the common herd for once!

  * * *

  By the evening of the party, Tania had her feelings more or less under control. They had to be. In her job, she had been trained not to betray any hint of emotion at some of the odd phrases the foreign delegates put to her. She mustn’t laugh or scoff, or appear to be superior when they struggled with her language. She must be calm at all times, and put them at their ease. Such training stood her in good stead now, when the last thing she wanted was to betray her feelings to Claude.

  If she had expected his pursual of her to continue, she was in for a shock. The party guests were clearly in the same social scale as the Girards, if not all as wealthy. They glittered, sparkled, with bright, frothy conversation. They were young, witty, successful. They adored Claude, and Tania realised she was just another party guest. She hadn’t really wanted to be anything else, but she was slightly piqued that Claude treated her so.

  There was one special moment though, before any of the guests had arrived. Madame Girard had seen the glittery bronze dress by now, and Tania thanked her warmly for it. But until the evening of the party, no-one but Monique had seen Tania wearing it. They insisted laughingly that she made an entrance. To her embarrassment, the entire family waited at the foot of the curving staircase as she
came down.

  Her one consolation was that she knew she looked her best. She had never felt so regal, so gorgeously attired as she did that night. And as if to complement the gown, Tania knew that her hair shone like burnished chestnut, her skin glowed. She held the banister lightly with pink-manicured fingers as her delicate high heels trod carefully on the twisting stairs.

  There were only five people awaiting her, yet it seemed as if a sea of faces looked her way as she reached the bottom. Madame, pleased and smiling; Monique, splendid in a sheath of black silk, the distinguished Denis by her side; Henri, allowed to stay up for an hour or so, struck dumb at the golden vision in front of him, and Claude.

  He moved towards her, and then there was only one face that she saw. He wore a black evening suit and bow tie, a crisp white silk shirt accentuating the deep tan of his skin and the dark hair and eyes. His look was enigmatic as he approached her, to take her cool hands in his and kiss each one separately, deliberately, as if he had no conception of how his touch inflamed her. Nor could he, from her serene exterior. Only inside did her blood surge more wildly, her nerve-ends tingle and curl, her pulse race.

  “You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” Claude said, his voice very low so that only she could hear. “You take my breath away. I would give you my heart, if you had not already broken it into little pieces.”

  The flamboyant, extravagant words were interrupted by Henri’s shrill voice.

  “Are you a princess, Tania? You look like the one in my story-book.”

  Tania laughed quickly, moving away from Claude’s mesmeric gaze to give him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “Thank you, darling. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  Not quite, but right now she was thankful the child had broken the electric tension between herself and Claude at that moment. She had felt it instantly, even if no-one else seemed aware of it. But she deliberately kept away from Claude as much as she could during the evening, once he had introduced her to people. She had no wish to be seen as the little English ingenue, unable to hold an intelligent conversation. And the party guests were pleasantly surprised to find Tania could converse fluently in their own language, and had no need to practise their varying levels of English on her.

  She danced, she conversed, she enjoyed herself— more than she had expected to. Henri was put to bed under protest, and she agreed to go up with him for a short while, since he couldn’t bear to let go of his golden princess. She came back downstairs in time to catch a snippet of conversation between several guests below.

  “Well, I know she’s James Paget’s sister, but how long is she staying? Do you think she’s Claude’s latest? I never thought he’d fall for an English girl, though I must admit she’s very charming, and beautiful too.”

  “Since when did it matter to Claude which flag they were born under, chérie? A woman is a woman, and that one is definitely all woman.”

  Tania’s cheeks burned. She couldn’t have avoided hearing the conversation, and while some women might think it complimentary, she hated to hear herself compared with some of Claude’s past loves, as if they were all in some kind of cattle-market. Her poise wavered, but the guests moved away from the stairs before she reached the foot, and didn’t notice her. Her eyes smarted with unshed tears that she would be too proud to show, anyway. The party was in full swing. She wondered if she could sneak away to her room, and if anyone would miss her. Before she could decide, a shadow blocked her vision, and Claude was holding out his arms to her.

  Dancing with Claude was sweet torture, but Tania could hardly refuse. Couples drifted past them, wrapped in each others’ arms as they moved to the seductive music, in worlds of their own. Tania’s world was very different to any of theirs. Hers was one of magic laced with pain. To Claude, a woman is a woman … That other guest’s words seemed to drum into her mind, reminding her that none of this was real. Not the brush of Claude’s lips against her cheek, nor his soft-whispered words, nor the feel of him next to her, so close it seemed they shared mutual heartbeats.

  It was all a game. Ironic, when it was he who kept telling her not to play games with him. His game was a far more dangerous one than hers. It undermined all the carefully built fabric of her life. That veneer behind which she hid, that protected her from the wider world that spelt danger. Danger that had killed her parents and her brother … She shuddered briefly in Claude’s arms. He felt the tremor run through her and his arms tightened.

  “Do you believe in fate, chérie?” he asked softly.

  She was wary. “If you mean, do I believe that everything is pre-ordained, then I’m honestly not sure. I do believe that we can change our fate, that we have the God-given right to choose. Otherwise we would all be puppets, wouldn’t we?”

  “Then if you believe that we can change our fate, you must believe in it,” he went on, smooth as silk. He pressed her even closer to him, his body becoming almost part of hers as she seemed to curve against his hard masculine frame in one fluid movement. “So believe in us, Tania.”

  “Us? There is no us,” she spoke through dry lips. She refused to be one of his women. She heard him give a soft laugh, the sound richly vibrant against her breasts.

  “Then what are you doing here, in my house, in my arms, in my life? You said it yourself. You have the God-given right to choose, and you chose to come here. Why won’t you accept that you are my fate, as I am yours?”

  “I didn’t exactly choose to come, did I?” He may seduce her with his caressing hands on her body that seemed to burn through the silky bronze fabric of her dress to touch her skin with fire. He may touch her cheek with his mouth, so near to her lips that she felt she would scream for him to reach them. He may dissolve her into melting fire by his animal masculinity … but he wasn’t getting away with that!

  She moved slightly out of his arms as best she could, though she was still imprisoned by them, and the other party guests dancing around them. They didn’t exist for Tania. They were mere watercolours on the edge of her vision as the bright dresses moved past. There was only Claude’s dark face, still smiling, not in the least upset by her words, which made him all the more dangerous. When he was angry, she could hit back. Smiling, seductively sure of himself, she didn’t trust him an inch.

  “I couldn’t have forced you against your will, Tania. Nor could I have forced your boss to give you the time off, despite my offer to buy it. Admit that fate had a hand in it. Admit that you’re not exactly indifferent to me, when everything about you tells me otherwise!”

  She despised him for his arrogance. It was as if he knew exactly when her feelings towards him had changed. Knew when to close in for the kill. Her heart raced, then steadied with a sudden strange calm. Desperately, she knew that there was only one way out for her, and that was to get away from here. She was aware of her own weakness where Claude was concerned. That much she would admit. It would only be a matter of time before he overcame all her resistance, became her lover. The sweetness of the thought made her dizzy for a moment, as if the ground shifted slightly beneath her feet. But what then? When he had had his fill of her, would she be relegated like all the others? To become just one of the legion of others in his life? She couldn’t bear that. Far better to get out now.

  Chapter 7

  She told him the next morning, when the party guests had all gone, and the château was back to its normal elegant appearance, cleared up by an army of silent workers, so that by the time the family appeared for a late breakfast, it was just like any other day. Yet not the same at all.

  Yesterday’s sunlit warmth had gone, and a heavy mist lay over the valley. The chill of autumn was in the air, and the change in the weather matched Tania’s mood. She had spent a restless night, her mind too alert after the party to sleep, and now she had a dull headache. But when Claude said he was going to spend an hour or so in his study, looking not unlike the way she felt, Tania said immediately that she would join him there. Henri was still compla
ining at missing most of the party, and his mother promised to take a day off from the boutique, and she and Madame would take him out when the mist cleared a little.

  “There’s no need for you to work today,” Claude said curtly to Tania. “You must be tired.”

  All his warmth seemed to have vanished too, but she wouldn’t be fooled by it. “I’m here to work. I prefer it.”

  “Come with us, Tania,” Henri pleaded. “Don’t go into Claude’s stuffy old study!”

  She laughed at him. “You go and enjoy yourself, darling. I’ll see you later.”

  She didn’t feel like eating much breakfast anyway. She had too many things on her mind. She wondered if Claude had anticipated what she was going to say. In the study he sat behind his desk as if it was a stage prop, though the simile was one that would never be applied to Claude. He would never need such an aid to get him through an interview. All the same, he sat there unsmiling, as if his face was sculpted out of stone, and for a breathless moment, Tania longed to go to him, to touch the hard, tight skin around his mouth, to kiss away the tension, to bring the warmth back to his eyes … she pushed the feeling down at once.

  “I’ve decided to go back to England as soon as it’s convenient, Claude,” she spoke in a rush, before she lost her nerve. Though why should she be suddenly afraid of him? He didn’t own her. She was free to do whatever she wanted. She ignored the fact that her palms were clammy, her heartbeats loud in her ears. The blood pounded there, rushing, like the sound of the sea over a shingle beach. She was angry with herself for reacting like a frightened child in front of a headmaster, but that was just how Claude made her feel at that moment.