For Revenge or Redemption? (13 page)

‘And how’s my step-granddaughter?’ she asked in that
too-perfectly-English voice, then punctuated her question with a very audible shudder. ‘Don’t you just hate it when people refer to us like that? I do. It makes me sound so…
ancient
,’ she announced, and without waiting for Grace to answer any of her questions went on to enquire, ‘so how’s that gorgeous husband of yours?’

‘Fit,’ Grace responded, smiling to herself. Corinne was like a runaway train when she got going. ‘And disgustingly tanned! He’s out at the moment.’

‘What, already?’

Grace sighed to herself, wondering why she was always left wishing she hadn’t said things that Corinne could pounce on.

‘He’s at a meeting involving one of his own companies. Some emergency or other.’

‘And it’s obviously too early in your marriage to ask if you believe him.’ Corinne gave an affected little giggle. ‘I must admit, I never imagined a man like Seth Mason tying himself down to one woman. Not after what he said to me, not too long ago, when I asked him if he was ever going to settle down with anyone.’

‘Don’t tell me—he said no?’

‘No, he didn’t actually. All he said was that if he ever chose to marry anyone it would be because of mutual benefit to them both.’

Mentally, Grace shrugged. ‘So, he was cynical about marriage. A lot of people are.’

‘Possibly. Who knows what goes on in any man’s mind? I do think, though, that you were part of his long-term plan.’

‘Plan?’ Grace was beginning to feel decidedly uneasy.

‘Oh, come on, Grace, you’re a prize for any man. You have to see that. Particularly to one who’s had to drag himself up from the bottom of the heap. Clever move on his part, getting you pregnant so you’d marry him. He certainly doesn’t believe in dilly-dallying, does he?’

‘What exactly are you saying, Corinne?’ Grace was holding the phone so tensely that her fingers were beginning to hurt. ‘Are you accusing Seth of deliberately seducing me just so he could…?’ Little doubts were creeping into her mind as to how much truth there was in what Lance Culverwell’s widow was saying. Stupid doubts, but doubts nevertheless.

‘Not accusing, my little innocent.’ Grace cringed at the condescending phrases Corinne was too keen on using whenever she spoke to her. ‘I’m applauding him. I’m sure he’s madly in love with you, but you must admit that having Grace Tyler beside him won’t do him any harm socially, either. What with all your high-flying contacts and upper-crust connections, the man can’t fail to get where he’s going—and fast.’

Corinne was only saying these things, Grace was sure, because she was jealous of her. After all, Seth Mason had it all—looks, money, power—while Corinne had had to content herself with a man two and a half times her age to give her the type of lifestyle she obviously craved.

‘Seth doesn’t need anyone to help him get where he’s going,’ Grace snapped, as much to convince herself as Corinne. ‘And he certainly isn’t interested in social climbing. He hates that sort of snobbery.’

‘That’s what we all say, but if the opportunity arises…’ Grace could almost see the woman’s expressive little gesture. ‘And you did accuse him of being an opportunist, before you suddenly surprised us all by announcing you were having his baby and getting hitched to him.’ Which wasn’t quite how it had happened, Grace thought, but was feeling too unhappy to correct Lance Culverwell’s widow.

‘Our reason for getting married so soon—and he was as committed to this as I was—was to give our baby the best possible start.’

‘That doesn’t stop him from being the opportunist you obviously thought he was.’

Only because after we made love he seemed to vanish into
thin air! Because I thought he’d only been using me!
Grace wanted to cry out, but realised that that would just endorse the things Corinne was saying.

‘And you didn’t marry my grandfather for personal gain?’ The accusation slipped out before she could stop it.

‘Oh, come on! I was very fond of your grandfather. I thought he was a poppet—you know that. But a girl’s got to think of her future, too.’

‘Well, you certainly succeeded there, Corinne.’

‘Which is why I think I know the Seth Masons of this world much better than you do,’ the woman persisted, too thick-skinned to be unduly affected by the things her late husband’s granddaughter reproached her for. ‘I’m not claiming to be a saint. I know I’ve got my faults. And I really don’t want to see you get hurt.’ Poor Corinne; she really believed that, Grace thought bitterly. ‘But let’s face it. You’ve got a hell of a good deal too, haven’t you? I mean, he’s got to be
incredible
in bed.’ It would dawn on Grace later that for the model to surmise about Seth’s mind-blowing prowess as a lover meant that Corinne could have done nothing more than fantasise about sleeping with him. ‘And what’s wrong with allowing somebody to use you just a little if your reward is mind-blowing sex with a man who looks and sounds like that?’

After Corinne rang off, Grace speculated unhappily on all that the woman had told her. Had Seth really been so keen to propose because of the personal gains he believed he could make by marrying her?

She was sure that first and foremost he had the interests of his baby at heart, but had he also seen her as a way of furthering his brilliant career, as Corinne had so unkindly suggested? Had that supposedly unselfish act to do what was right by her and the baby masked a mercenary streak that allowed him to use his child’s mother for his own ends? The mercenary streak that had driven him to take Culverwells from under
her nose so humiliatingly? And he’d done it with Corinne’s help, because without the model’s compliance he’d never have succeeded in exacting revenge in quite the way he had.

The only positive point to come out of that telephone conversation with Corinne, Grace realised, was the confirmation that Seth had been telling the truth—that he and the model weren’t, and apparently never had been, lovers. It was small consolation, though, after everything else that her grandfather’s widow had said.

Her pregnancy had already begun to show. Grace knew there were whispered comments and wild speculation in the office about the exact timing of her baby’s conception, but she deflected the surreptitious glances and casual remarks with her usual air of detachment and calm efficiency.

They had to wonder, though, she thought at the moments when unvoiced curiosity made her feel a little self-conscious, whether their new and dynamic CEO and Lance Culverwell’s granddaughter had actually known each other before Seth had seized control of the company in that hostile bid. Or whether, having faced each other on opposite sides of the commercial battlefield, their determined new boss had broken through his pretty opponent’s line of defence with guns blazing and had swept her up onto his charging steed and into his bed before she had time to realise what was happening.

Which was about the size of it, Grace couldn’t help thinking, still plagued by doubts after that last conversation she had had with Corinne a couple of weeks ago. She wondered if those curious speculators were also silently applauding Seth Mason, as Corinne had, for what must look like a very shrewd move, in view of the antagonism and opposition he had been getting from her.

On the up side, her morning sickness seemed to have all but sorted itself out. Nor did she feel as tired as she had during the first weeks of her pregnancy. But her worries and suspicions
about why Seth had actually married her were beginning to make her feel an emotional wreck.

She already knew that he didn’t love her, that he had only married her to give her child his name. But, like every woman before her who had found herself in a similar situation, she was troubled by insecurities while nursing a desperate, if not completely vain, hope of making him love her.

That was until the day she found that photograph of herself with Paul.

It was the only snap she had kept of her fiancé because it featured her grandfather standing between them with an arm around them both. It had been taken shortly after they had got engaged.

She didn’t realise Seth had come into the bedroom until he said over her shoulder in a voice that was frostily controlled, ‘If you still want him, you only have to say.’

Startled, she dropped the photo back into the open drawer she had been sorting through, realising how guilty that must make her look even as she swung round to retort, ‘Of course I don’t want him. How could you possibly imagine that?’ But he did, she realised, because ever since that day she had spoken to Corinne he had clearly sensed a change in her, once or twice even querying if anything was wrong.

His smile didn’t warm the steely grey of his eyes, and the fingers that lifted lightly to her cheek were cold too, making her gasp. ‘Then why are there tears glistening in your eyes?’

‘They’re not. I mean…’

Not because of that
, she was trying to say. But she couldn’t seem to form the words to tell him that it had been the picture of her grandfather looking fit and well that had brought on that spurt of emotion.

‘And why, when I touched you, did you flinch?’

Her shoulders sagging, Grace realised that she was in a no-win situation. Seth Mason was a possessive and dominant
male and wouldn’t take being side-stepped by his wife for another man lightly—even if he didn’t love her.

‘Perhaps you
want
me to tell you I still want Paul, is that it?’ she tossed up at him with disbelieving eyes, barely able to contain the hysterical little laugh that bubbled up in her throat from the absurdity of it all, but even more from the harrowing suspicion that she might just be right. Perhaps he
had
originally married her to suit his own ends but now, realising the enormity of what he had done, just wanted an easy way out.

‘Do you?’ he challenged again.

‘If you believe that, then there’s no hope for us, is there?’ she murmured dismally. ‘I married
you
, didn’t I?’

‘Yes.’ His powerful chest expanded on a sharply drawn breath. ‘You married me.’ Not a glimmer of emotion moved those harshly sculpted features as he added, exhaling air from his lungs, ‘And would you care to tell me why?’

Caught in the trap of her own making, Grace didn’t know what to say.

Because I love you!

The admission, even in her own mind, made her go hot and cold. How hopelessly lost she would be if he realised that!

‘Well, not for the same reason as you—obviously!’ she hurled at him.

‘And what would that be?’ His narrowing eyes were glinting with anger.

‘To open the doors you haven’t actually managed to kick down yet.’

There, she had said it, thrown it in his face like a douse of cold water.

Deny it!
her heart screamed, only he didn’t.

He stood stock-still for a moment, like some cold, unfeeling statue frozen in time. But then a muscle twitched in his jaw, the only indication that there was life pulsing inside him, before he tilted his head in the briefest of acknowledgements.

‘So we now know where we both stand, don’t we?’ he stated grimly, and walked away, his actions only reaffirming what she already knew. That he hadn’t a scrap of feeling for her beyond the fact that she was going to be the mother of his child.

After that their marriage seemed to undergo a marked change. What comradeship there was started to ebb out of their relationship. Seth began to stay later at the office, often arranging for his car and driver to bring Grace home.

They seldom made love any more, sleeping back to back like strangers, and when they did it was with an almost antagonised passion, as though each resented the needs that only the other could supply.

Somehow Grace managed to keep up appearances in the office, particularly as Seth was conducting a lot of business outside of it for a lot of the time. When the weekends came she spent most of her Saturdays when he was away working helping Beth at the gallery, feeling lonely and confined in the apartment—for all its spacious luxury—when Seth wasn’t there.

‘We’ll have to find somewhere else to live when the baby comes,’ she suggested tentatively to him one morning when they were getting ready to leave for the office. They had made love the night before, a lengthy, wordless exchange of excruciating pleasure; it embarrassed her too much to even look at him as she recalled it, as it only seemed to accentuate his cold detachment this morning, emphasised by his hard executive image in the cold light of day. ‘A child needs a garden to play in. Somewhere to run around and make a noise in without upsetting the neighbours.’

‘Of course’ was Seth’s succinct response.

But then two days later he surprised her by coming home and tossing a pile of glossy brochures featuring ultra-superior properties down on the coffee table. Georgian mansions with
acres of woodland; huge, modern split-level state-of-the-art glass houses, and one gothic-like stone building with gargoyles and turrets that also boasted its own lake.

‘I’m sure you can find something in there to suit you,’ he remarked.

‘Any limit to the budget?’ Grace enquired after a few moments, looking up from a page of homes with hair-raising price tags to see him casually shrugging out of his suit jacket. The sight of his broad shoulders beneath his white silk shirt and that tapering torso, spanned by the dark waistband of his trousers, caused a painful contraction in her throat.

‘Let me worry about that,’ he advised.

So she kept on browsing, and when she had finished she laid the last of the brochures back on the pile on the coffee table without a word.

‘Well?’ he enquired over the paper he was reading when she sank back against the creamy cushions of the sofa.

Grace wondered if her disillusionment showed in her face.

She couldn’t tell him that looking at those houses had lowered her spirits. That she found them as cold and impersonal as he seemed to be with her the minute she was out of his bed.

Had success and power changed him so much from the home-loving, surprisingly tender young man she had given herself to all those years ago? she couldn’t help wondering desolately. Did he just want money to flaunt at the type of people he believed deserved his contempt? Like her grandfather? Like the Paul Harringdales of this world? Like her?