‘Well?’ Damien harnessed his wandering mind and focused narrowly on her.
‘Why are both our suitcases in this room?’ Violet asked bluntly. She already knew the answer to that one, yet she shied away from facing it. She hadn’t given much thought to the details of their stay. In a vague, generalised way, she had imagined awkward one-to-one conversations with Damien and embarrassing economising of the truth with his mother, along with stilted meals where she would be under scrutiny, forced to gaily smile her way through gritted teeth. She hadn’t gone any further when it came to scenarios. She hadn’t given any thought to the possibility that the loving couple might be put in the same bedroom. She had blithely assumed that such an eventuality would not occur because surely Eleanor belonged to that generation which abhorred the thought of cohabitation under their roof. Eleanor was a traditionalist, a widow who still proudly wore her wedding ring and tut tutted about the youth of today.
‘Because this is where we’ll be sleeping,’ Damien replied with equal bluntness. His unaccountably introspective and dark frame of mind had not put him in the best of moods. Having questioned his devotion as a son and on-hand supportive presence as a brother, the last thing he needed was to witness his so-called girlfriend’s evident horror at being trapped in the same bedroom as him.
‘I can’t sleep in the same room as you! I didn’t think that this would be the format.’
‘Tough. You haven’t got a choice.’ He began unbuttoning his shirt, a prelude to having a shower, and Violet’s eyes were drawn to the sliver of brown chest being exposed inch by relentless inch. She hurriedly looked away but, even though she was staring fixedly at his face, she could still see the gradual unbuttoning of his shirt until it was completely open, at which point she cleared her throat and gazed at the door behind him.
‘There must be another room I can stay in. This place is enormous.’
‘Oh, there are hundreds of other rooms,’ Damien asserted nonchalantly. ‘However, you won’t be in any of them. It’s a few days and my mother has put us together. Somehow I don’t think she’s going to buy the line that we’re keeping ourselves virtuous for the big day.’ He pulled off his shirt and headed towards his case on the bed, flipping it open without looking at her. ‘We have roughly an hour before we need to be downstairs for drinks. My mother enjoys the formal approach when it comes to dining. It’s one of her idiosyncrasies. So do you want to have the bathroom first or shall I?’
Violet hated his tone of voice. It was one which implied that he couldn’t even be bothered to take her concerns into account. He was accustomed to sharing beds with women, she thought with a burst of impotent anger. In his adult life, he had probably slept with a woman next to him a lot more often than he had slept alone. It wasn’t the same for her. Did he imagine that she would be able to lie next to him and pretend that she was on her own? The bed was king-sized but the thought of moving in the night and accidentally colliding with his sleeping form was enough to make her feel like fainting.
‘I hate this,’ she whispered, filled with self-pity that the last vestige of her dignity was being stripped away from her. ‘You’ll have to sleep on the sofa.’
Damien glanced at the chaise longue by the window and wondered whether she was being serious. ‘I’m six foot four. What would you suggest I do with my feet?’ He raised his eyebrows and watched as she struggled in silence to come up with a suitable response. ‘I’ve spent hours driving. I’m going to have a shower. Don’t even think of trawling the house for another bedroom.’
With that, he vanished into the adjoining bathroom, leaving Violet to fight off the waves of panic as she stared at her lonesome suitcase on the bed. Everything about the bedroom seemed designed to encourage a fainting fit, from the grandeur of a bed that would have been better suited to the lovers they most certainly were not, to the thick, heavy curtains which she imagined would cut out all daylight so that the intimacy of the surroundings became palpable.
Wrapped up in a series of images, she almost forgot that he was in the shower until she heard the sound of water being switched off, at which point she raced to her suitcase, extracted an armful of clothes and then stood to attention by the window, with her back pointedly turned to the bathroom door.
She heard the click of the door opening and then she froze as his voice whispered into her ear, ‘You can look. I’m decently covered. Anyone would think that you were sweet sixteen and never been kissed.’
He was laughing as she unglued her eyes from his bare feet and allowed them to travel upwards to where he was decently covered in no more than a pair of boxer shorts and his shirt, which he was taking his own sweet time to button up.
If he called that decently covered then she wanted to ask him what she might expect of him when the lights were switched off.
‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ she said coolly, at which he laughed a bit more.
‘You wouldn’t have a clue where to go,’ Damien pointed out. Her face was flushed. Her hair, which had started the journey in a sensible coil at the nape of her neck, was unravelling. He could feel his mood beginning to lift, which was a good thing because he was ill equipped for negative thoughts. ‘You’d need a map to find your way round this house. At least until you’ve become used to it. Most of the rooms aren’t used but good luck locating the ones that are.’ He reached into the cupboard where a supply of clothes, freshly laundered, were hanging, awaiting his arrival.
Once again, Violet primly averted her eyes as he slipped a pair of trousers from a hanger. She backed towards the door but he wasn’t looking at her.
Good heavens! She would have to get her act together if she was going to survive her short stay here. She couldn’t succumb to panic attacks every time they were alone together! She would need immediate counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder as soon as she returned to London if she did! He wasn’t even glancing in her direction. If he could be unaffected by her presence, then she would follow his lead and everything would be smooth sailing. Two adults sharing a room wasn’t exactly a world-changing event, she told herself once she was in the bathroom, having checked the door three times to make sure that it was locked.
She took a long time. She had bought a couple of dresses so that she didn’t have to spend the entire stay in jeans and sweaters. This dress, a navy-blue stretchy wool one with sleeves to her elbows, was fitted, although she couldn’t quite see how fitted because there was no long mirror in the bathroom. Nor could she do much with her make-up because the ornate mirror over the double sink was cloudy with condensation. Her hair, she knew, was fit for nothing except leaving loose. Her curls were out of control, a tangle of falling tendrils which she impatiently swept back from her face before taking a deep breath and opening the bathroom door.
He was sprawled on the bed, the picture of the Lord of the Manor waiting for his woman to emerge. His trousers were on, although, her inquisitive eyes made out, zipped but with the button undone. His long-sleeved jumper was dark grey and slim-fitting, so there was no escaping the lean, hard lines of his body.
One arm behind his head, Damien watched her with brooding eyes. It was the first time he had ever seen her in a dress that actually fitted. More than that, it clung. To curves that did all the right things in all the right places and lovingly outlined the sort of breasts that mightn’t work on a catwalk but sure as hell worked everywhere else. He forgot about any tension that might lie ahead. He forgot those vague, never disclosed concerns that he had turned a blind eye to his brother for too long. Hell, he forgot pretty much everything as his eyes raked over her body and he felt the pain of an erection leaping to attention. Which made him hurriedly sit up.
She was running her fingers through her hair and wincing as she tried to gently unravel some of the knots. Then, without saying a word, she flounced over to her case and excavated a pair of high-heeled shoes which she self-consciously slipped on with her back to him.
‘I’m ready.’ She smoothed nervous hands along the dress. This wasn’t the sort of thing she ever wore. She had always favoured baggy. She wondered whether her stupid brain had actually paid attention to that passing compliment he had given her about her figure and then decided that if it had, she was pathetic. But she still felt a thrill of excitement as he lazily scrutinised her before shifting off the bed, taking his time and moving at an even more leisurely pace to retrieve his watch from the dressing table.
‘I hope I look okay...’ Violet was mortified to hear herself say and she was even more mortified when, with deliberate slowness, he eyed her up and down and then up and down again for good measure.
‘You’ll do. New dress?’
‘You can have it back when this stint is over.’
‘What would I do with it?’
‘I just wouldn’t want you to think that I wanted anything from you but my sister’s freedom.’