With This Ring Read online

  “You make it sound immoral.” Claude was suddenly amused, and Tania realised that in criticising James, she criticised Claude too. She didn’t let it worry her.

  “Not immoral. Just heedless of other people’s feelings and wishes,” she said pointedly.

  “Meaning yours, I suppose. Do you think you had any right to question what he did with his life, any more than he questioned what you did with yours?”

  Tania glared at him. “I would have expected you to speak the way James did,” she said scathingly. “It’s a very selfish attitude to think that one person’s life is totally complete in itself. It isn’t. It touches other people, brings them hurt and disillusionment.”

  “I know about your background, Tania.” Claude’s voice was suddenly gentle, caring even. “James and I had many lonely hours to discuss how we would change the world if we could. It must have been a strange sort of childhood after the early years, with your parents pursuing their own interests so much.”

  Far from warming to him at this intuitive appreciation of her feelings, Tania felt burningly embarrassed that James would have discussed their private affairs with this man. It antagonised her towards him even more. She didn’t want to feel exposed to his understanding. She didn’t want anything from him.

  She opened her mouth to give him some blisteringly witty remark that would leave him in no doubt of her resentment, when those dark eyes of his, that she could only describe as hot and intense, held her own in a penetrating look.

  “You and James were twins, weren’t you? I wouldn’t have thought so. You look younger than twenty-four.” His gaze scanned her face, as if he could see into her very pores. Tania squirmed under so frank a gaze, feeling the delicate colour stain her cheeks once more.

  “You caught me at a bad moment,” she said crisply. “Just out of the bath and with no make-up on, no woman looks her best —”

  “I didn’t say that you didn’t look good, Tania,” the voice was more seductive when it softened. “You have a beautiful skin texture. It would be a crime to hide it with make-up. You don’t need to enhance your bone structure, nor to prove that you’re a woman. That fact is very obvious to me.”

  He didn’t actually undress her with his eyes, nor even move his gaze any lower than her neck, but the effect on her was the same as if he had physically slipped the Chinese robe from her shoulders. Tania could almost feel the coolness of the air against her flesh as the unbidden fantasy of it filled every part of her. She shivered. It was as if she heard James’s eager young voice in her head, drumming the words at her again. This time, when he had contacted her after he and Claude had struck up their friendship.

  “He’s the best, Tania. An expert on the mountains, and the finest teacher any novice could want. He’s also the most charismatic man for miles around. It’s a good thing it’s me and not you who’s taking on the Lundgard climb with him next weekend. You’d go all besotted over the man, like all the other women around here!”

  Tania didn’t want the image of James to be so strong in her mind tonight. The day itself had been ordeal enough, without Claude Girard managing to conjure up some of the poignant moments she and James had shared. She certainly didn’t want James’s posthumous reminder that Claude Girard was charismatic … she could see that well enough for herself.

  “You have the same extraordinary eyes as James,” Claude said, still watching her. “On him, they were tigerish, showing his keen enthusiasm for some of the gruelling tasks we undertook on the mountains.”

  She was willing to admit that there were rescues too, as well as what Tania called the reckless clambering about on rocks! James and Claude had formed a superb mountain rescue team, and had been duly honoured in various parts of the world because of it.

  “Cat’s eyes, James used to call mine,” Tania said abruptly. She had finished her meal, and her fingers reached for a bread roll, merely to give them something to do. Claude’s hand covered hers across the table. Beneath his touch, she felt trapped, as if her whole body was held in the gentle grip of those strong male fingers. I must be going mad, Tania thought angrily. She snatched her hand away, biting into the bread roll without tasting it. Her heartbeats were erratic.

  Claude laughed, a rich, husky sound. “Then he had no soul, Tania. Your eyes are beautiful, like warm honey —”

  She couldn’t take any more of this. She put down the bread roll and looked directly into his eyes. “You didn’t come all this way just to flatter me, Claude. You got my letter. You know my feelings about the mountains, and you know I snubbed you by not wanting you at James’s old college today. So either you’re a masochist for coming here like this, or there’s some other reason, and I want to know what it is. Just what do you want?”

  “I want you,” he stated. No more, no less. He returned her stare unflinchingly, daring her to read what she would into his statement. Tania flushed an angry red. At this rate, she’d end up lobster-hued, she thought!

  “You’d better explain that remark,” she said freezingly. Far from putting him off, she was annoyed to see it amused him. He threw back his head and laughed again. She could see why he was so attractive to women, physically at least. He had a strong face, very tanned from the outdoor life he led. Strong and masculine, and yet somehow he gave out such an aura of sensitivity that a woman felt instantly aware that he would be a tender and considerate lover. Tania hated herself, as well as Claude, for even letting the thought into her head for a single moment.

  “My dear, lovely Tania, forgive me! I didn’t mean to shock you, but your prim English reaction was so like the way James described you —”

  “Did he?” She forgot her antagonism for a moment as his words checked her thoughts. “I don’t think I was ever prim.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it.” There was a definite grin on Claude’s face now. “And I didn’t mean to imply that James gave me a strait-laced idea of you, merely that you disapproved of his choice of career, and to him you were always the cautious one. Afraid of shadows, I believed he phrased it.”

  “Charming! I’m not sure I like to think you discussed me on your day trips!” She minimised the danger of their work in a kind of self-defence. Claude’s eyes glinted, but he made no comment.

  “Oh, we sometimes had other things to think about,” he assured her lightly. “But to clarify my earlier statement, I’ll try to be as brief as possible.”

  “That would be best. I have a friend coming to see me this evening,” Tania said pointedly, half-hoping that David would turn up after all and put an end to this ridiculous confrontation.

  Claude ignored the barb. “I have been approached by a French publisher who wants me to write a book about James and me, and I need your help. We want to use a different angle from the usual thing of recent exploits leading to James’s tragic death, and where do I go on from here, kind of thing. Our backgrounds are very different. Mine was quite well-to-do and pampered. James’s was — well — you know it better than I, and that’s where you come in. I want to compare those early years, describing our backgrounds and seeing what turned us into the men we became. Socially from vastly different lives, yet ultimately with the same ideals and incentives. I gather your parents worked on a shoestring until they were rewarded for their researches, enabling them to send you and James to the schools they wanted for you. But my information is all very sketchy.” He paused for breath.

  Tania’s own breathing had quickened. “Why should I help you? Why should I exploit something in which I knew only fear for my brother? Fear which was well founded as it turned out. Why should I help you write a book to make money, and lead some other poor unfortunate enthusiasts to kill themselves —” She was winding herself up very effectively.

  “Because if you don’t — and the book isn’t all that I want it to be, a tribute to James as well as an account of our failures and our triumphs — then it will be as if he never lived. As if you’re giving yourself the right to deny his very existence. Do you think you have that
right, Tania? Is that how James would have wanted you to react to my suggestion, or would he say you were being afraid of shadows again?”

  She felt the damp beads of perspiration on her skin. This wasn’t fair … it wasn’t fair …

  “That’s emotional blackmail,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “How dare you use my love for my brother to get what you want? I don’t need to see his life portrayed in a book to keep his memory alive. It’s all here, in my heart.”

  She pressed her hand against the silk robe, feeling the taut nipple beneath her fingers, not because of any sexual arousal, but because her hatred of Claude Girard’s methods had tightened her whole body. She loathed him, and he had no right to come here with his cleverly worded suggestions. It didn’t help her equilibrium to see his eyes stray to where she clutched at herself. Her hand dropped away at once.

  “Are you so selfish that you want to keep his memory all to yourself, Tania?” Claude went on relentlessly. “Other people loved him too, and respected him and admired him. James wanted the story told. We had talked about it vaguely from time to time, and when the publisher wrote to me, it was as if James was prodding me from somewhere in the ether. Telling me this was the time.”

  It was too much like her own weird feelings that James was somewhere around, approving all this. If she hadn’t felt so emotionally involved, Tania would have scoffed at the idea. And if James had any crazy ideas that he could do a little matchmaking between his sister and his partner, he could forget it! She passed the back of her hand across her forehead. Was she going completely crazy, to be thinking like that!

  As if realising that Tania was unable to think clearly any longer, Claude stood up, towering over her at the table.

  “You’ll need time to consider, of course. I have to tell you that I am going ahead with the book in any case. Naturally I hope for your co-operation. There is always the danger of half-truths creeping in, unless facts are verified, and I would hate to do James a disservice in that way.”

  Oh, but he was so clever, she thought furiously. He was blackmailing her to agree as surely as if he held a gun to her head. Knowing she couldn’t run the risk of her brother’s memory being falsified in any way. She rose and walked past him towards the door, her chin high. Her hair seemed to cling damply to her neck. She felt as if she had covered a hundred years in one short hour of knowing Claude Girard.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Of course. I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon. I’m staying in London for the weekend.” He came towards her, and she avoided looking at him, afraid he would see the active dislike in her eyes. Her hand reached for the door handle to wrench it open, but before she could reach it, he had caught her arm in an iron grip and pulled her into his arms. Tania gasped with fury and outrage, struggling vainly to free herself, and then his words made her pause just a little. They were spoken very close to her face, his breath warm on her cheek.

  “You know the circumstances of James’s accident,” he said in a low voice. “The terrible fall, the dreadful injuries. He was alive when we reached him, but barely conscious. It was a relief to us all when he blacked out.”

  She swallowed, the imagery he evoked too painful for comfort. Why was he doing this …?

  “James was one of the bravest men I ever knew,” Claude went on. “And although you may have washed your hands of him, he was always very proud of you. The clever one of the family, James said. You never knew him as I did, Tania, despite your blood ties. You never fought to survive the elements with him. That’s when you really learn a man’s worth. You know him to his soul and beyond. That’s why I knew he would have wanted me to contact you.”

  Tania’s mouth was dry, hardly knowing how to answer this. There was a tremor in Claude’s deep voice, betraying his own emotion, signifying the truth of his words. She could feel its resonance against her body where his chest crushed her breasts, as he would crush her to his will. His eyes slowly focused on her face, and she held her breath at the look.

  “The last words I ever heard James say, referred to you,” Claude said. “He was jaunty, even to the end, even though I had difficulty in picking up the words.”

  He dangled the bait, and she couldn’t resist. She had to know. “What did he say?” she whispered.

  After the briefest pause he told her.

  “Kiss Tania for me.”

  Even as she registered the words, Claude Girard was putting the words into action. Her lips were still slightly parted when she felt the pressure of his strong, sensual mouth touching hers. Gently at first, and then with a ruthless, crushing passion, his fingers tangling in her hair. As if he was driven on by a promise to his dead companion, the kiss seemed to go on endlessly, holding Tania bemused as if she was in some fantasy world. A stranger had stormed into her life and was kissing her as if he owned her … she struggled out of his arms, but before she could tell him just what she thought of him, he had turned on his heel and walked out of the flat without another word.

  Chapter 2

  Tania couldn’t have said whether she stood there for minutes or hours. She seemed to be transfixed to the spot where Claude Girard had left her, while some of the worst adjectives she could think of to describe him raged through her mind — and in several languages at that. He was arrogant, despicable, a blatant womaniser, shamelessly using her love for James to get what he wanted … those were only the mild things she thought about Claude Girard. She scrubbed her hand across her mouth, still tasting his kiss. Once he had left the room, it was still filled with him … he dominated her senses, whether she wanted him to or not. She despised him. She didn’t dare question whether or not James’s last-heard words to him were true. She wanted them to be, because of James, not because of the man who delivered them as James had wished.

  She was still standing motionless, with every nerve-end alive and tingling, when the sound of the doorbell right alongside her made her jump. If he had come back again, he could stand there for ever, she thought furiously. They had nothing more to say to one another.

  “Go away,” she shouted at the door. “You’ve done enough for one evening!”

  “Tania, it’s me!” David’s anxious voice came through the wood panelling. “Are you all right?”

  She opened the door with trembling hands, almost dragging him inside. He was as tall as Claude Girard, nearly as dark, but without the indefinable Continental charm … Tania’s full mouth twisted. Oh yes, Claude had charm all right, but it wasn’t the sort that appealed to her. For one thing, she didn’t feel the need to drag the Chinese robe more firmly around her body when David was around, the way she had with Claude. Its lines were perfectly respectable, but she had still felt at a distinct disadvantage when the Frenchman was around.

  “What’s going on, Tania?” David Lee said at once. He took in the table still set with two places, and the remains of a meal. She couldn’t blame him for the speculative look in his eyes then, considering her appearance.

  She didn’t owe him any explanations. He didn’t own her … The same phrase she’d used about Claude’s assault on her senses slipped into her mind. Somehow it sounded far more harmless when used in David’s case. But maybe she did owe him something. He was her friend, while she could never think of Claude Girard as anything but her enemy.

  “An unexpected visitor, that’s all,” she tried to make her voice light, and only succeeded in sounding husky. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, David. It hasn’t been a good day.”

  He put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders, squeezing the soft silk of her robe. She didn’t feel any need to flinch away. With David, she felt very little, if she was honest, just a comfortable friendship. He should find some nice girl to marry and raise a family, she sometimes thought. There was no point in him hanging around her, because their relationship was never going anywhere beyond this point. But since he was here, she leaned on him, physically and mentally, at that moment.

  “I thought it would be rough on you, going to your br
other’s old college, love. I would have taken you if you’d asked. I could have taken the time off —”

  The ceremony at the college seemed light years away. The tension of the occasion had been nothing compared with Claude Girard’s arrival in London and into her life. She couldn’t rid her thoughts of him now. She realised she was going off into a dream world when David stopped talking and looked down at her, frowning.

  “You look as if you need a drop of brandy, Tania. You were quite flushed when I came in, but you’ve gone very white now. Sit down, and I’ll fetch you some. I know where it is.”

  She obeyed like a rag doll. It was a fair description of how she felt. It was just as if she had glimpsed a little of the future in those split seconds, and seen that her life was destined to be inextricably bound up with Claude Girard’s. As if some quirk of fate had ordained that with James gone, she was to slip into his role of companion to Claude. The uncanny feeling washed over her and made her shiver. She wasn’t normally given to second sight, nor even sure that she believed in it, but the feeling was so strong that she clutched at the glass of brandy David handed her and swallowed it down, praying that its sting would enable her to laugh at such fanciful thoughts. In reality, she knew she was perilously near to crying. The college business, and the talk with Claude Girard, had brought James vividly near, reviving all the anguish of six months ago, when she had learned of his death on a French mountain.

  “Better now?” David still peered at her anxiously. Slightly short-sighted without his trendy glasses he used at the office, it gave him an endearingly caring look. Any woman would feel cherished, married to David. Tania moved restlessly, hardly knowing why such thoughts kept coming into her head, when she had no intention of being his wife.

  “I’m fine, really,” she smiled into his face. The brandy must be doing its work, from the warm glow spreading through her. It was calming her nerves a little anyway. “I’m sorry I gave you a fright, David. The last person in the world I wanted to see turned up here tonight, and it threw me, that’s all.”