Tore swung round to face her. ‘You have achild?’ he raked at her in unhidden horror.
‘You see that there is the big problem of choosing not to meet either woman you might have married beforehand. You miss out on the little details,’ Violet pointed out with satisfaction.
Tore sat in brooding silence and fumed. A kid? She had a kid! A child could not be as easily located in a distant wing of his house and forgotten about. Children were lively, noisy and demanding. Tore knew nothing about kids but he had occasionally been forced to socialise with friends who had reproduced, and what he had witnessed had not warmed him to the idea of sharing his life with little people. He liked his life just as it was: smooth, efficient, static. He liked his routines. He did not like surprises or disruption of any kind. His household ran with clockwork efficiency, he reminded himself soothingly. His staff would deal with the hassle created by a child.
‘When can I expect to be in a position to be reunited with my daughter?’ Violet pressed curtly.
‘You should’ve thought of that before you married me.’
Violet reared round to look at him like a tigress protecting her cubs, blue eyes lightened by sudden fury, her face flushed, her tiny hands in fists. ‘You willnotkeep me from my child!’ she hissed back at him.
Taken aback by that startling burst of aggression, Tore studied her with academic interest. Not quite the nervous co-conspirator he had assumed; not quite the fearful victim she had been playing. ‘Obviously, I am unlikely to do something which I have no power to do,’ he breathed thinly.
Thoroughly rattled at the wayshehad allowed him to frightenher, Violet whipped her head away again, accepting that truth. But the smouldering blaze of his emerald-green eyes stayed with her. Nobody had ever looked at her before with such hostility and distrust. Belatedly, it occurred to her that having married Tore Renzetti in a deceptive manner could well make life very uncomfortable for her and Belle. The prospect of three years living in such an atmosphere left her bereft of breath and her usual optimistic spirit. It was time, she thought unhappily, to regroup. But she was stuck continuing in their marriage because she had signed a legal contract and accepted payment for doing so.
‘I’m sorry that you feel…er…threatened by what my sister and I chose to do. No offence was intended.’
His perfectly sculpted lips compressed. ‘I am not feelingthreatened. I abhor lies and avarice. You deceived me for money. I cannot and will not respect that.’
Violet pictured herself telling him the truth behind theiravariceand cringed at the concept of plucking a thousand violin strings with their story. Tore wouldn’t respect that, either. She suspected that he was a man who only saw in shades of black and white and nothing in between. He criticised, he judged, he wouldn’t try tounderstand. In his opinion, she had wronged him, even though she could not think of any lasting harm coming from that sisterly swap in brides.
‘You’re a very stubborn man,’ she muttered unevenly. ‘But you must see that if we’re stuck with each other for the next three years, we have to—’
‘I don’t intend to be stuck with you in any guise for that length of time,’ Tore framed with dulcet precision. ‘We will live in separate wings of my home here.’
Violet’s delicate profile tensed and she turned round to look at him and almost smiled. ‘Oh, that’s a very good idea,’ she told him cheerfully as if he had handed her a beautiful bouquet of flowers.
Tore was taken aback, not having discarded the notion that his bride might strive to make their marriage into a real marriage by being sexy. After all, the more he looked at her, the more on some subconscious level he was aware that she wasnotunattractive. That mane of wavy, tousled blue-black hair was glorious, the blue eyes enormous in that pointed little face, her mouth ripe and pink. She had curves, a faint hint of cleavage peeking from the straining bodice of her gown, but she was small, slight in stature, the very last kind of woman Tore went for with such height and width of his own. She looked downrightbreakableand that was not a trait that fired his libido. He preferred tall, graceful women and she was neither. She would never appeal to him, he assured himself calmly. If she had any seduction plans, she would soon find herself barking up the wrong tree.
The tip of Violet’s tongue slid out to moisten her taut lower lip beneath Tore’s burning scrutiny. She didn’t know why those sharp green eyes were staring, but she didn’t like the sensations he aroused within her. A sort of warmth was snaking up through her, making her tummy tumble, her dress feel constricting, her very hands restive. It was truly uncomfortable and in haste, she looked away.No, I do not fancy him; no, I do not, she told herself firmly. And she knew it was a lie even while she was telling herself that; one of the biggest lies she had ever told herself because he was absolutely drop-dead beautiful from the dark brows and lush black lashes that framed those stunning eyes below that unexpectedly pale hair to the high cheekbones that led to such facial definition that it was a challenge not to stare back.
In an uneasy silence, the limousine drew up in a driveway and stopped dead at a front door. A massive double front door beneath an imposing portico. The door beside Violet cracked open and she stepped out, not remotely inhibited by her bare feet, her gown trailing round her ankles.
Trailing like a shroud, Tore reflected as he automatically swept her up into his arms again, striving to do the newly married thing even though there was nothing remotely romantic about either of them. He wondered why in that initial glimpse she seemed to have shrunk when she had not been very tall even to begin with. He was startled when a small fist struck his shoulder hard.
‘Put me down!’ Violet demanded.
‘Act like a bride,’ Tore told her drily. ‘This is what you’re getting paid for.’
Furious pink lit Violet’s cheeks and she set her teeth together. ‘I didn’t know that acting was included.’
‘Then you didn’t read the paperwork. Behaving like a normal wife is part of it.’
‘While we inhabit separate wings of your gigantic house? Isthatnormal?’ Violet asked snidely as he strode indoors because the more she glanced around herself the more she realised that she had never seen such a large house beyond her tour of a handful of rooms at Buckingham Palace.
Tore ignored the comment and lowered her to the ground, belatedly noticing that she wore no shoes, wondering what had happened to them but not really caring because his bride was not at all what he had expected. There was a sort of angry insouciance about her piquant little face as she gazed up at him with a fixed, utterly unconvincing smile. She didn’t like him either and the knowledge startled him. He had been prepared for all sorts of behaviour from the unknown woman he had to marry but not the same rancour that he was also experiencing. He had expected sweet as sugar submission or provocative sex appeal, all the wily lures of the determined women who usually chased him…but he wasn’t gettinganyof that.
‘What happened to your height?’ he framed abstractedly, noticing that she had shrunk to alarmingly tiny proportions.
‘My sister’s a few inches taller,’ Violet revealed between gritted teeth.
‘What height are you?’
‘None of your business,’ she whispered in embarrassment. For someone who had told her to act he wasn’t doing a very good job in front of his hovering staff: an older man garbed like a butler and a middle-aged woman with a polite smile of welcome.
‘You’re not even five foot, are you?’ Tore gritted like height was next to godliness.
‘I’ll leave you to guess but I suppose you could say that we’re not a match made in heaven. You’re much too tall,’ Violet pointed out with pleasure. ‘Now, do you think you could have me shown to my room and given some food because I’m starving.’
