The Hired Husband. Kate Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ won’t go with you!’ It was a desperate whisper. ‘I can’t!’

      ‘Sienna, have you taken leave of your senses? Might I remind you that this is our wedding day?’

      Remind her! As if she could forget!

      ‘We have guests…people we should speak to.’

      Speak! Sienna’s tongue felt as if it was glued to the roof of her mouth, preventing her from forming a word. But with Keir’s strong hand still clamped on her wrist, the other pressed firmly against the small of her back, she had no option but to follow him out into the room, somehow managing to acknowledge the greetings of the people they passed.

      Her face seemed frozen into an expression of feigned happiness, the muscles around her mouth aching from smiling too many false smiles. All she wanted was to get away, be by herself, find peace and quiet in which to try to come to terms with what she’d done. But Keir was unrelenting in his determination that they should greet everyone. Ignoring her murmurs of protest, her obvious reluctance, he steered her from group to group, covering her awkwardness with the smooth ease of his own conversation.

      ‘For God’s sake!’ he hissed in her ear. ‘Now you’re the one who looks like the condemned man! Smile, damn you! No one will believe you’re madly in love with me if you look at me as if I was some deadly poisonous snake about to strike.’

      ‘I am smiling,’ Sienna retorted through clenched teeth. ‘And as to looking as if I love you—I’d manage that much better if you didn’t frogmarch me round the room as if I was either drunk or insane. I can manage to stand on my own two feet, you know. If you’d just let me go…’

      ‘Be my guest!’

      She was released so abruptly that she staggered awkwardly, afraid she might actually fall. Instinctively her hand went out to steady herself, and to her total surprise she found it taken by someone new. Soft fingers closed round hers, supporting her.

      ‘Steady!’ a female voice cautioned. ‘You nearly took a tumble there.’

      ‘Th-thank you.’ With her balance restored, Sienna managed to turn to her rescuer with a smile more genuine than anything she had managed before.

      ‘Not to worry,’ she was assured. ‘Those long skirts can be so very difficult to walk in when you’re not used to them.’

      ‘That’s true!’ The woman’s perfume was rather cloying and overpowering, but Sienna struggled not to reveal her response to it. At last she felt something of her earlier panic receding, evaporating in the warmth of this new companion’s smile. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think…’

      She didn’t recognise the face. This must be someone Keir had invited. Someone she hadn’t yet met.

      ‘Keir, won’t you introduce me…?’

      But Keir stood at her side, stiff and withdrawn, his face appearing to have been carved out of the cold, immobile marble that formed the statues out on the terrace. Even his eyes were blanked off, revealing no emotion.

      Why had this had to happen now? Keir asked himself furiously. If he had tried to think of the worst possible moment for Lucille to finally meet up with the woman he had married, then it would have been hard to imagine one that beat this. Sienna had already been behaving like a nervous thoroughbred, fearful of being handled for the first time, so he could just imagine how she was going to deal with this additional development.

      The problem was that his new wife couldn’t lie to save her life. She had come up with this ridiculous scheme of their pretend marriage, presenting it as the answer to all his problems as well as hers, but the truth was that she didn’t know the half of it. She didn’t know how appallingly Lucille had behaved—the sort of damage she was still capable of wreaking if given half a chance. And if his stepmother so much as suspected the true reasons behind this hastily arranged wedding, then she was more than likely to pounce on the information like some ecstatic predator. She would use it quite cold-bloodedly to her own advantage, especially if she could work on his own destruction at the same time.

      ‘Keir…’

      Just one word from the other woman’s lips, but it had a dramatic effect on him. His head jerked round swiftly, his eyes narrowing to mere slits above his high, strong cheekbones.

      ‘You want to be introduced? Well, fine. It had to be done some time, so I suppose now is as good an occasion as any. Sienna, darling, this is Lucille, my stepmother…’ He spat the word out as if it left a foul taste in his mouth. ‘Lucille, obviously this is Sienna, my wife.’

      Lucille. Sienna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was Lucille, the stepmother Keir so detested that he had finally agreed to their marriage solely because it offered him a way of getting rid of her, expelling her from his life once and for all? This was the monster who, like Medusa, had turned his heart to stone in the moment he had first seen her, and had never let a single redeeming chink of light into it since then.

      But this woman was nothing like the one she had imagined. In her thoughts, influenced by Keir’s own feelings, she had created a vicious harpy, cold-faced and cold-eyed, not this smiling, bright-eyed creature. And Lucille Alexander was so much smaller than she had anticipated, smaller and lovelier, with her peachy skin, green eyes and red-gold hair. But what rocked her back on her feet, threatening her balance again for a moment, was just how young Keir’s stepmother was. She had anticipated some woman in her late forties, early fifties. This Lucille looked barely five or so years older than Keir himself.

      ‘Sienna…’ Lucille was holding out her hand. ‘It’s wonderful to meet you at last. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get to see you at all. But now that I have I can quite understand why Keir wanted to keep you all to himself.’

      ‘I doubt if you understand anything at all,’ Keir put in with biting cynicism. ‘And if I’d had my way you would never have been invited to the wedding. But Sienna wanted all my family here and, much as I hate to acknowledge it, you are family, if only by marriage…’

      ‘Keir…!’ Sienna put in reproachfully.

      But Keir ignored her, his attention still fixed on Lucille.

      ‘But, seeing as you are here, perhaps it’s just as well. There’s a small matter of business we can get out of the way. If you’ll just follow me.’

      Once again he clamped his hand over Sienna’s arm, forcing her to go with him as he turned and marched towards the door. It was either that or be dragged inelegantly and embarrassingly in his wake. He didn’t pause to look back and see if Lucille had followed them, apparently totally confident that she would do just that.

      And it appeared that his confidence was not misplaced. When he finally came to a halt in the small private room the hotel had put aside for the bride and groom’s use, Lucille was only seconds behind them. She was barely through the door before Keir kicked it shut, blocking off the noise and bustle of the reception.

      ‘Now…’

      Releasing Sienna abruptly, he reached into his inner jacket pocket, pulling out a long white envelope that he dropped onto the highly polished surface of a nearby table.

      ‘This is what you’re really interested in, dear stepmother. Oh, it’s all right…’ he added, seeing Lucille’s curious glance in Sienna’s direction. ‘My wife and I have no secrets from each other. Quite СКАЧАТЬ