But fantastic in bed, her wanton alter ego piped up smugly, and her skin burned with embarrassment because she had to live with this new side to her character, this sexually attuned side which took over when Alex touched her. Sudden hope blossomed inside her. Maybe it wasn’t love; maybe it was just a physical infatuation. What did she know about love? Nothing. A severe crush at sixteen and then an emotional desert ever since. It wasn’t love, she told herself staunchly, it was just hormones erupting like a volcano, having been suppressed too long.
She crawled out of bed, aching in every joint. He was oversexed. He treated her like a bimbo. He’d married her with gritted teeth and then informed her that she would make the perfect mistress...yuck! Every move she made was misinterpreted by his rampaging ego! He made Neanderthal man look like the very pinnacle of male mental development. Alex was so basic, he ought to be extinct.
But he wanted her...oh, yes, Alex wanted her...for the moment—for probably about as long as it took for him to register the fact that she was no longer a challenge. If she clung, her novelty value would shrivel up and die. Being married to Alex, she decided, was more like having an affair.
She was emerging from the nursery when Claudine and Alex’s butler, Henri with the expressionless face, appeared.
‘A special delivery, madame.’ Henri extended a package to her, unusually breathless, as if he had hurried instead of strolled at his usual stately pace.
‘For me?’ Frowning in surprise, Sarah tore off the fancy gold paper and found a jewel case. She flipped open the lid, her eyes widening as she read the message on the card, penned in Alex’s almost indecipherable scrawl. ‘For the most erotic and exciting five hours of my life... I can be romantic too. Alex.’
Beneath the card was a breathtaking diamond necklace on a velvet bed. Her eyes smarted and burned. ‘I can be romantic too’... Like hell he could be, she thought bitterly, painfully. What was so romantic about being rewarded for giving him a good time in bed? Neanderthal man had bombed out at supersonic speed. He hadn’t a clue how to be romantic because he had never been forced to stir himself into making that amount of effort.
Conscious of politely straining heads and still hovering company, she dug the card into her pocket and extended the box for appraisal.
‘Oooh!’ Claudine gasped ecstatically.
‘Magnifique,’ Henri breathed, impressed to death.
‘Want to try it on?’ Sarah offered Claudine carelessly.
‘Non, madame,’ Claudine said in shock. ‘But allow me to assist you...’
A minute later Sarah had the diamonds round her throat, for the sake of appearances. She was duly admired and then mercifully freed from her audience. She hung over Nicky’s cot. ‘He’s not only unromantic, he’s insensitive. It’s as if he’s paying me...you know?’ A sob caught in her working throat. ‘It should have been flowers or just a note or a fluffy toy or something.’
She had only just finished eradicating the streaks of mascara half an hour later when she was interrupted by Henri. A visitor. A Madame du Pré.
The woman who advanced towards her across the depth of the salon quite took Sarah’s breath away. Very tall and slender, her smooth black hair caught back ballerina-style in a snood, her clothing just screaming designer style, she was not only beautiful, she was enviably elegant. A grave smile curved her perfect bone-structure as she extended a slim white hand. ‘I am Elise. I hope I may call you Sarah.’
‘Elise,’ Sarah gulped. ‘Please sit down.’
‘I can see you are not feeling quite up to dealing with a visitor,’ Elise assured her sympathetically. ‘I am very sorry to intrude at such a time.’
‘I had lunch ages ago,’ Sarah murmured, wondering why she wasn’t supposed to be up to coping with her first, indeed her one and only visitor.
Elise uttered a rueful laugh. ‘I think we both know that I was not referring to the hour of the day.’ Gracefully she sank down into an armchair. ‘I have known Alex for so many years that I count myself a close friend of the family. If it were not for that fact, I would not have dreamt of coming here to offer you my assistance.’
Sarah settled down rather jerkily opposite, unnerved by the perfection of the woman Alex had planned to marry, her concentration lapsing. ‘Sorry... your assistance?’ she queried uncertainly.
‘I would hate you to consider this visit of mine an intrusion.’
‘Of course not. You are very welcome,’ she assured the older woman manfully.
‘Thank you,’ Elise conceded graciously in turn and then sighed. ‘If only we could have met in less fraught circumstances. Forgive me if I am blunt but I am well aware of the treatment Alex has been subjecting you to... You must be feeling so alone, so isolated, so humiliated...’
Sarah stared at her. ‘Must I be?’
‘Sarah...’ Elise chided softly. ‘When all of Paris is agog to read the latest outrageous exploit in the gossip columns, there is no need for you to feel that you have to save face with me. I am here truly in a spirit of friendship and concern. The newspapers are behaving atrociously, but then Alex has courted publicity with such brazen disregard for the honour of the family name, what can one expect?’
Sarah hadn’t a clue what Elise was talking about. Newspapers. It dawned on her that she hadn’t set eyes on a single newspaper since the morning after the wedding. Since she only read newspapers occasionally, preferring the television news or a good book, she hadn’t until now missed that astonishing absence of the printed daily word. Alex courting publicity...latest outrageous exploit? Her imagination went into overdrive. She struggled to conceal her ignorance from Elise.
‘Yes, what can one expect?’ Sarah said with studied casualness.
‘Discretion,’ Elise murmured in a suitable undertone. ‘And to offer you my advice may seem encroaching...’
‘No, I’d be very grateful for your advice,’ Sarah assured her shakily.
‘Tell Alex that you will not stand for such behaviour. He may not have chosen to publicise his sudden marriage but naturally society is aware that he is a newly married man. For him to flaunt a variety of different women night after night in the most public of places is naturally conducive to the kind of media furore one can only deplore,’ Elise completed with a shake of her beautiful head.